Chapter Text
Steph deciding it right here right now. She hates Batman, and she hates space. If she ever survives this, Bruce is never hearing the end of it. And she will recruit Damian with her. She’s sure he will back her up.
Go to space, Stephanie! Opportunity of a lifetime, Stephanie! Well her lifetime is about to be cut short because every single system on the spaceship she shares with Damian has stopped functioning.
Well. She wouldn’t have shared it with Damian in the first place if the main ship hadn’t been attacked and she hadn’t been forced to take the first escape ship she found with the person the closest to her. And now here she is, the least experienced person in space missions, with a kid. A highly trained, fairly badass kid, but a kid nonetheless.
They’ve been drifting. No motor, no radar, a broken oxygen indicator, and no way to say exactly for how long they’ve been drifting.
But she and Damian are still alive. She tries not to think about everyone else who was with them on the main ship. Maybe they’re luckier than them and have found some safety ships that are actually functioning. Yes. Yes, they did. She can think of the other options.
Damian is looking at the window, and she should try to find something to say to him. She opens her mouth, and their world chooses this moment to drop.
The ship tilts, moves, and suddenly starts accelerating. She barely has time to catch a handle near the control panel. She watches, useless, as Damian is projected to the back of the cabin. And suddenly, the silence that she hated is interrupted by a screams of their ship. They’re encountering resistance. An atmosphere?
“You okay?!” She screams oven the sound of… everything, really.
“We’re crashing!” Damian yells instead of answering.
“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock Jr!” She knows she shouldn’t antagonize him, not when they’re probably both at the end of their lives, but she can’t help it.
She can already see their epitaph. Here lie Stephanie Brown and Damian Wayne, bickering until their last breath. What an amazing way to be remembered.
“We’re attracted by this planet’s gravity!”
She looks at the window. Indeed. They’re attracted by a big blue sphere. Could be almost earth, except… “No land?”
Damian looks with her. “Not our priority right now! Is there anything working?”
He doesn’t seem to be able to move from the far end of the ship, not with the strength of their fall. Steph is still holding herself near the controls, but it takes her all her power to just hold on.
“The distress signal?” she offers uselessly. It’s blinking in green, but she has no idea where their allies are. Other than that, the commands are toasted. Anything that would have slowed them down a little is gone. “Wait, we have floaters!”
That is great news. Once they reach the water, they will be able to float on it. That is, if they survive the impact.
Their eyes cross. “We’re surviving this, little man,” she swears.
“Of course we are. I need to make your regret calling me that.”
And they keep going in the loud atmosphere.
It’s good news. It’s good news that there is an atmosphere in the first place. It means it’s potentially breathable, which they deeply need. Since their oxygen indicator is saying 199%, she has no idea how deeply they need it, but this kind of ship isn’t meant to be flown more than 5 hours, and she doesn’t know how long they’ve been drifting, but rescue will definitely take longer than that. If the ship even holds.
But the atmosphere also means friction, fire outside their little protective hull. She hopes it can slow them down, at least, and avoid the water impact feeling like they’re hitting concrete. Because the water is getting closer and closer, and closer.
They’re surviving this, she promise herself, and she silently promise Damian.
“Brace for impact!” she hears the kid yell uselessly, and she holds the handle with all her might, her hands bleeding, but not letting go.
She almost feel her ear drums breaking when they enter the water. She pushes on her arms, pushing all pain away to keep going. They will survive this. She pushes the floater button.
She thoughts her ears were hurting. The sound of the floaters make it worse. But it also means they worked. They will not be a wreck at the bottom of an unknown ocean.
When the ship stops rocking, she’s suspended by her bloody hands, but she sees a blue sky above her, and she allow herself to take a breath, then two.
They made it.
“Damian?”
She looks down. The kid has been tossed around, and she can’t see the lower half of his body, and he’s panting, but he gives her a thumb up. They have another issue. Water is infiltrating the hull.
Time to find out if the atmosphere is breathable. “Can you get up here?”
The kid shake his head. “My leg is stuck,” he says. Shit.
They can do it. She let herself down on to his level, leaving bloody hand-prints on the walls. They will survive this. She curses when she sees the amount of blood around his leg. Stuck, her ass. It’s way worse than that. He’s trying to wiggle out, and she decides against mentioning it.
“Okay,” she says instead. Okay. “Let’s move all this metal.”
They start to work, together. The water is raising.
Her ankles get underwater, then her knees, then her hips, then her chest. It’s coming faster and faster. She still sees the sky, though, so part of the ship is still floating. Good. That’s good.
“We’re running out of time,” Damian says. “You should-”
“No!” No way. “We’re surviving this. Together.”
She takes a deep breath when the water reaches her neck. And then she pushes and pull and sees Damian do the same.
They both died, in a way. They’re both surviving.
Teeth and nail, they will survive this. She gives it all her rage, all her pain, all her love.
And something breaks.
She doesn’t waste time figuring out what. She pulls herself up, Damian with her, and open the hatch.
She inhales as soon as she gets out, and the air isn’t toxic. It feels good, cold around her throat. Heavenly, even. She can hear Damian do the same. He’s breathing. They’re both breathing. They survived.
They survived the first part, at least. She pulls herself out, and she doesn’t say anything when she sees Damian not quite managing to do the same. Instead, with the last of her strength, she helps him out.
The top of their ship is floating. There is no land in sight, but they’re floating. She turns toward her companion in misery, and her joy is cut short fast. She has to swallow a few times. Throwing up will not help them.
There is a bone pocking out of Damian’s leg. Shit. Shit.
“How bad is it?” Damian asks between clenched teeth.
“Not that bad,” she lies, knowing full well he’s not believing her. “I just need to stop the bleeding.”
She removes a piece of her cape to try to stabilize the injury to the best of her capacity. It’s not much, but at least it will keep him from bleeding out. She hopes.
She then sits down on their raft of the moment, puts his head on her lap and remove both their masks. Her hands are still raw, and she leaves bloody trails on his cheek.
She looks at the sky. Breathable air. Endless sea. And beneath them, she hopes their distress signal is still active.
“We’re going to survive this, little man,” she says. “And then you can kick my ass for that nickname.”
And it’s a prayer. And it’s a promise.