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Leslie Thompkins has lived a long, long life. It didn't matter that she'd barely reached her mid-fourties; time is relative and, in Gotham, in her parts of Gotham especially, every year is a hard fought accomplishment. She knew very few people her age that were born and raised under the city's harsh care, but every single one of them was well into the process of going gray. Seeing the things they've seen, living in the constantly high-strung environments, staying ever-vigilant, even just hearing what happens to other people- it ages you like little else in the world could.
There were times, years and years ago, that her and the Wayne family would hold semi-joking debates about the most stressful lifestyle in the world. Thomas would complain about residency work and headaches from studying, insisting that there was nothing more nerve-wracking then being a doctor, Leslie would yawn a retort about how however stressful his hours were at least he wasn't doing them and going back to the Bowery every night (as if she didn't end up sleeping on their couch at least half the time anyway). Alfred would chime in about the conditions of war and hints of his work in MI6, and in later years Martha would include herself with a firm assertion that none of them had anything on motherhood.
She'd give anything to hear Martha and Thomas make such simple complaints again, but. It was a lifetime ago, was her point. Quite literally. She may share the same name, but she was not the same person she was 13 years ago. That Leslie died with her closest friends. Every day since was a battle, every year a war, and 13 years was everything. Was the difference between before and after.
There was a young woman at her counter. The girl couldn't be much older then Bruce, but she had the same horrific heaviness in her eyes. The weight of carrying your own corpse around; the distinct divide between a before and an after. She introduced herself as Minnie, but call me Mick and had quite the story to tell.
She said she's been patching up her friends and family for years now, learned everything from stitches to resetting bones to surgery in an effort to keep her idiots alive, says she can take anything Leslie throws at her. She wasn't surprised that Leslie's never heard of her, proud to say she kept her talent under wraps with "no intention of being poached for the Falcone's or summat similar."
Leslie raised an eyebrow, crossed her arms, and let a challenging silence settle in around them. It's scared off a few recruits before, but that was the point. If they can't handle a mean look, they can't handle even the lightest of her work.
The girl, Mick, just smiles and meets her eyes, swaying casually in place as she waits out the silence, and it's just as Leslie feared- the girl has Gotham in her bones. It's in everything, from her gall to her gleaning eyes, hungry smile and hardened stance.
"I can't pay you fairly here." Leslie warned. "The kind of work I do- it's priceless, of course, but that doesn't make the pay any more appealing."
"You're giving me a chance." Mick shrugs, as if she's already got the job. "I've got nothing but my word, but you'll let me prove myself. I can't get that anywhere else. You're being more then fair to me, and I'll make it fair to you, Doc. Swear."
"You'd best." Leslie sighs, putting her hand out for a handshake. "You'll start in rehab with me on Tuesday. I'm keeping a close eye on you- one slip up and you're gone."
"I'm surprised you can be so picky. Word on the street is you never have enough hands around here." Mick hummed, taking it eagerly.
"I'm a practitioner of quality over quantity. Too many "street medics" stroll into my clinic thinking they can do the same half-assed jobs they could get away with when they were the only option, but that's not what the clinic is for. You said it yourself- me giving you this chance no other medical professional would dare consider without any on-paper experience is plenty generous. Making sure my staff don't use duct tape in place of bandages and properly clean areas before working with them is not being picky." Leslie huffed. Honestly, some of those kids could- and had- been trained to do better, but she wouldn't let the new hire depend on that.
Mick giggled, shaking her head. "Jesus. When you put it like that, I really can't blame you. My- the guy who taught me everything I know, he'd have an aneurysm if I tried to do any of that."
"Sounds like a sensible man." Leslie said evenly, still keenly aware of Mick's generally shattered disposition.
"The most. Only one of us with any real sense." She sighed, trailing off a little, eyes going unfocused. She really did remind Leslie of Bruce, back in the early days, just under a lifetime ago. Who did Mick loose?
(Did she have anyone left?)
"I'll see you Tuesday." Leslie nodded, getting back on topic. "14 dollars an hour, from 2 to 10 pm. I'll only be there personally for the first few hours, but that doesn't mean I won't have you under watch, you hear?"
"Ma'am yes ma'am." Mick nodded, still grinning.
"Good. Now get out, I have an appointment coming in." Leslie shed, squinting down at her papers. She didn't hear any movement, so looked up to press-
The girl was gone. Leslie sighed- were her ears already going bad?
She really was getting old.
--
Stephanie Brown owed her Leslie so, so many apologies that she'd never be able to deliver. The woman was right all along, about Bruce, about them. After every patch job, every brush with death, she would shake her head sadly and warn them You kids would be lucky to get out of this life alive. She'd even taken matters into her own hands once; Steph had flat-lined on her table, the second Robin to die, and Leslie had drawn a line in the sand. She shipped Steph off across the ocean and faked her death, because she refused to have that sixteen year old girl bleeding out in her clinic ever again.
It didn't work, of course. Steph made her way back to Gotham, and she hated Leslie for what she did. For taking a choice like that, Steph's choice about her own life, away, for dropping her off in the middle of nowhere just to wipe her own guilty conscious clean. It faded to more of a passive grudge over the years, as she started to understand Leslie's line of thinking, but she didn't really forgive the woman until she was already dead.
(Until the other bats and birds, her family, started falling down like dominoes around her.)
Now though, years and years later, Steph could firmly say that she didn't just understand Leslie's decision, she got it. She'd held a baby bird screaming high off his first dose of Fear Toxin in her arms, and almost didn't let go. She'd found him again, concussed on the floor, and distantly half-wished the concussion would knock whatever compelled him to launch himself into danger loose.
Unlike Leslie, she would never actually follow through with the thought- not when she'd seen and felt how horridly the other side of it played out, not when she knew the man Dick grew up to be would never want that for himself. But, that urge, that knee jerk protective this-can't-go-on, Stephanie got it now.
So when Stephanie finds herself once again with an injured Robin, bleeding from a slash too quickly to make it back to her and Tim's current safe-house, she barely hesitates to knock on the back door to Leslie's clinic- the one that led straight to her office, the one Steph probably wasn't supposed to know about here, but she didn't rightly care.
"I'm fine." Robin insisted again, though he didn't push away as she shifted her grip on him again. just watched, curious but not suspicious, as she opened the door.
When Leslie saw the bird in her arms, she didn't hesitate either. She gave Steph a quick once over before pulling her into the room. With the push of a button, bookshelves moved to reveal a walk-in closet redesigned to be it's own little one-room clinic. Steph almost sighed with nostalgia, but she was too focused on Robin to bother. The two of them make quick work of getting him fixed up, which leaves them in an awkward silence as they wait for Batman to show up- or, more honestly, Steph waited for an opportunity to disappear before Batman showed up.
"See? That was hardly a scratch. I was fine to keep fighting." Robin complained again.
"If that was true, you could've fought me to get get back to the fight." She pointed out, hands on her hips.
"Batman says not to fight civilians." He countered. She snorted.
"Oh yeah? And does Batman consider me a civilian?" she asked. He bit his lip and looked away. "Thought so. Take a nap, kid."
"You know each other?" Leslie prompted, packing her supplies away neatly. Steph nodded and lent a hand, mentally counting down how long it would take Batman to show up. The button Leslie pressed to open the bat-clinic also sent an alert to the Batcave saying she opened it; he'd be here any minute now.
"Oh yeah, me and Rob go way back." Steph nodded, ruffling his hair.
"She kidnapped me a few months ago. And hasn't stopped since." He huffed. She rolled her eyes.
"Semantics. And stalling, you brat. I'll see myself out before B gets here, if it's all the same to you."
"You-" Leslie gaped, but Steph was already waving and stepping back into the night. If she listened closely, she could hear the amused cackle of a Robin in her wake.
--
"She what?" Leslie demanded, turning back to the boy now that Mick was gone.
"Kidnapped me." He repeated, nose a bit scrunched. "Technically. You remember the Scarecrow guy from a few months ago? That nasty stuff he made?" He asked, turning his head to her.
"Of course." She nodded, because of course she did. She couldn't remember exactly what they'd decided to call it- horror gas or something- but she'd be very hard to pressed to forget what it was. She'd treated dozens of people that horrible night, and Gotham General even got in contact with her while they all collaborated on figuring out treatments and pretended that Leslie's operation was as legitimate as she said it was.
"Well, he got me with the stuff, at one point." Robin admitted, voice shaking just a little at the memory. She couldn't blame him. The memory made her heart speed up a bit, and she wasn't even hit. Certainly wasn't a child. "I don't remember it for obvious reasons, but the next thing I knew, I was in her safe-house. She saw me knocked out and got me off the street. I was scared, duh, she took all of my gear and wouldn't let me leave or contact B-man or anything, but I slipped away once most of the scary stuff was out of my system and got back to base just fine. Her and her boyfriend had long cleared out by the time B tried to hunt them down." Robin huffed, glowering at the door where Mick had disappeared. "We've been trying to figure out what their problem is since then, obviously. It's tricky, cause they only ever show up when I'm hurt and B isn't around, and then they take me away again until I get better enough, I guess. I dunno, they're hard to get a read on, and this is just like.....the third time?"
"The third?" She hissed, very concerned at the implication. Once or twice could be a coincidence, Mick just helping a kid she stumbled across in the only way she knew how. Much more then that was a pattern, and if it was a pattern then it was probably on purpose. Probably for a reason.
There are many, many reasons for a haunted woman from crime alley to make a habit of kidnapping Robin. Vanishingly few of them were pleasant reasons.
Robin nodded, not seeming to notice how worriedly she was now eyeing him. His eyes were closed- poor kid was obviously tired. She shouldn't press him too much. "Yeah, the third. Last time freaked me out more then the first time, actually- I couldn't escape, got too beaten up in the fight. Remember, then last time B benched me? That one. I thought I was gonna be trapped a lot longer, and I had no idea what they were gonna do- really worried they were just angry I had gotten away the last time. But they just.....took care of me. It was- don't tell B, he gets upset when I talk about it, but it was really nice. They were too. I fell asleep listening to a police scanner, and the next time I woke up it was to Batman finding me on a rooftop." He frowned a little, managing to only slur his words a little bit the whole time. He really was just falling asleep. Bruce better be making sure this kid gets enough sleep most nights, so help her. "They coulda kept me. Not forever, 'course, cause B would find me, but. For a while, they coulda. and they didn't."
He yawned, the most pronounced noise he'd made since Mick had left, and she didn't try to draw him back into conversation. She let the poor boy drift off to his much needed sleep. Across the room from the secret medical area, there was a phone. She made the way over to it, and made a call to one of her oldest friends.
"He's nearly here by now, isn't he?" She whispered, careful not to wake the child barely 10 feet away.
"He is. How is the young master?" Alfred asked.
"Asleep. One injury, nothing serious but I'd better not see him out for the rest of the week. Tell your slightly older charge to be considerate coming in." She teased lightly. It was important to alleviate stress, wherever possible. Really, she should talk to Alfred more often. Outside of the context of work.
"He'd best. He's far too old to need lessons on manners." Alfred huffed right back, and the line went dead. For all his tittering about manners, he had always struggled to end a conversation correctly. In the way she struggled with beginning them. They were both a bit too information and/or business orientated over the phone, she supposed. Little patience for pleasantries, when lives could be on the line.
Sure enough, a tall shadowed figure slipped into the back room of her clinic within the next few minutes, and took immediate vigil over his ward's cot. Ever so carefully, he lifted the boy, face twitching as he scanned for smaller injuries beyond the one she had mentioned.
She doesn't think about telling him about Mick. About how she knows the woman he's been hunting, could probably help him find her with relative ease. She'd already been tossing the thought around, while she waited, and landed on swearing to keep a close eye on the woman just in case, but.....Robin was a good judge of character, and Leslie liked to think of herself as one too. As long as Mick stayed a protective shadow for the boy wonder and one of the best damn nurses she'd ever been lucky enough to take a chance on.....well.
What Batman didn't know wouldn't hurt him.