Chapter Text
Stephanie Brown was just about to go on patrol as Spoiler when her comm exploded with noise, voices overlapping and panicked and barely making sense, but one thing managed to break through.
Tim Drake was dead.
He had been benched from Shadow for the past few nights after a sprained ankle and a bullet wound in his calf, and when his parents had been taken hostage by Penguin he’d been ordered to let Batman handle it. He hadn’t listened, of course, and then his distress beacon had pinged, and Batman was right there, only minutes away, but by then it was too late. Tim was still slow because of his bad leg. A goon had gotten a lucky shot at his back, right through the gaps in his armour and his ribs, and he was down. Flatlining before he hit the ground.
Stephanie Brown had just lost her best friend.
They didn’t— She hadn’t— She knew, how dangerous this was. She knew the possibilities, especially after Jon—wonderful, powerful, indestructible Jon Kent—had been killed. But nobody really believed it, even her, even though she hadn’t met him yet at the time. He was Superboy and then he came back and rose again as Flamebird because he was Jon, of course he wouldn’t stay down, but this was Tim and Tim was completely and painfully human and—
He wasn’t coming back, was he?
Stephanie Brown cried on her mother’s shoulder at the funeral.
It was all she could do. Penguin was in jail, the man who shot Tim was in jail, what could she possibly do that was more than that? Justice had been served, even if it didn’t feel like it. Maybe because she knew they’d just be out again within a few months. At least she’d get the chance to kick their asses, then. At least she’d be able to do something, even if it amounted to nothing.
It didn’t feel like enough. Not against the bullet that had killed her best friend.
Almost a year later, Stephanie felt… better was the wrong word. The grief felt smaller. Maybe she was bigger. It was hard to tell, but she was at a point where she had more good days than bad ones. Days where she wasn’t looking over her shoulder on patrol to speak to someone who wasn’t there. Days where she didn’t stare at an inactive contact in her phone, curled up in a hoodie she’d stolen from someone she lost, and talk herself out of trying to call, just to hear his voice on the answering machine.
Hi, this is Tim Drake! Sorry I can’t pick up right now, I’m probably just busy or my phone died or something. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, though! Beep.
She dimly remembered something she’d seen about grief being a ball in a box with a button. The ball bounced around the room, and when the ball was new it was big and always hitting that button. Over time the ball still bounced, but it got smaller—or the box got bigger, again, hard to tell—and it would hit the button less and less. The ball never went away, though, and the bad days would still come.
On the bad days, Spoiler still went out to patrol. Tim wouldn’t have wanted her to quit over him, even if it was only due to his lack of self-worth. It was something they’d been working on, together. Changing out self-deprecating jokes for self-aggrandising, accepting love and care and praise without argument. They’d been making progress, before—
Before.
Spoiler took a deep breath. It was a slow night, and Batman and Nightwing were wrapping up, ready to go home. Damian was back in Gotham to help with a case, leaving Jon in charge of Blüdhaven. Stephanie figured she should head home soon, too. Her mother would be asleep already, so it didn’t matter too much if Steph was late, but she was tired and it had been a bad day. Not one of the worse ones, not like she had in the beginning when she’d silently cried while chopping of half her hair because she didn’t want to feel like Stephanie Brown anymore, not without Tim Drake, but it hadn’t been good.
She checked in, told Bruce and Damian she was heading home, then went on her way.
Crystal had walked in on Steph hunched over the sink that day, tears dripping down onto the porcelain and chunks of blonde scattered on all surfaces. She said nothing, just went and grabbed a chair from the kitchen and gently sat Stephanie down in it before taking the scissors into her own hands and cleaning up the choppy mess. It ended up as something akin to a pixie cut, which had since grown out to almost shoulder length. Not dissimilar from Cass’s hair. Not dissimilar from Tim’s. She dyed it lavender, sometimes, just a temporary dye when she needed a change again but didn’t think it was a good idea to go that far.
Bruce had bought Stephanie a long, blonde wig after her haircut, to wear as Spoiler and limit connections to Stephanie Brown. There was no judgment, no talk of identifying features, and she took it as the safety measure it was. Tim had taught her well when it came to reading Bruce’s gestures. The lines of his mouth, the hunch of his shoulders. The silent handing over of a package that said I understand, and I don’t blame you for breaking.
Bruce had been getting better, too. At communicating, at not pushing people away. She knew he blamed himself for what happened to Tim. He’d been self-destructive after that night, passively suicidal right up to the point where Damian had to come home just to smack some sense into him. He still blamed himself, still hurt inside, but he was back to prioritising Gotham when he was in the cowl.
Stephanie Brown blamed him a little, too.
She landed on the roof of her apartment complex and made her way down the fire escape, quick and light on her feet. Normally she would’ve changed out of her Spoiler uniform before going inside, but she was tired and she had made sure to go in circles a little just to lose anyone who could potentially be following her. She ducked into her dark living room through the window, and then paused.
Something was wrong.
Stephanie couldn’t pinpoint it for a long few seconds, too many seconds if the danger was still present. And there was danger, at least at some point, because her apartments front door was wide open, the small chain lock snapped. She stood stock still and listened. It was a small apartment, one room that made up the kitchen, dining, and living area, and then the bathroom and the two bedrooms down a short hallway that was more like an alcove with the doors squished into it. The walls were thin. If someone was moving, she would hear it. She didn’t hear anything, but stayed silent as she moved through the apartment.
She checked the kitchen and found nothing but open drawers and cabinets. She checked the bathroom, empty. Her own bedroom, empty, if messier than she’d left it. She slowly turned to her mother’s door. It was slightly ajar, just an inch open because sometimes it didn’t latch properly and the building was on a lean. It didn’t mean anything was wrong.
Stephanie’s heart was pounding so hard in her chest that if she looked down, she could see it. Her hand shook as she raised it to press against the wood. This should’ve been the first place she checked, but she just couldn’t— What if the intruder was still here? She’d have led them right to Crystal, or she’d let her guard down once she knew her mother was safe and might not have been able to protect her.
The shock of relief that Stephanie felt at seeing her mother lying in bed was short lived.
There was a dark, uneven, star-shaped— spot, Stephanie was going to call it a spot, in the middle of Crystal’s forehead. The skin around it was blotchy, bruised.
Stephanie stepped closer. Her blood felt like ice in her veins.
The pillow was stained almost black in the low lighting, something having soaked through it. The spread told her it had been soaking for maybe a couple of hours.
There was some kind of powder around the wound. Point blank.
Crystal looked like she was asleep. Stephanie checked her pulse, two fingers to the side of her throat, despite knowing what she would find. Her skin was still almost warm. She didn’t have a pulse.
Stephanie Brown fell to her knees, staring straight ahead at the side of the mattress.
She’d seen dead bodies before. This shouldn’t— She should be ready for this, right? It was just a corpse. She’d seen them before. She’d cried on her mother’s shoulder as she watched her best friend’s corpse get lowered into the ground. That should’ve been the worst, that should’ve been—
She numbly pulled her phone out of its pouch on her belt. She needed to call someone, she needed—
Hi, this is Tim Drake! Sorry I can’t pick up right now—
Fuck. He wasn’t— She needed him, but he wasn’t there, was he? That was half the problem. She cut off the message and went to a different number. He picked up after two rings.
“Stephanie? Is everything alright?” Bruce’s frown could be heard even over the phone.
She looked up at the side of her mother’s resting face, silhouetted by the dim yellow of the streetlights outside. From here, she couldn’t see the bullet hole. From here, Steph could almost pretend…
“No.” Her voice sounded distant, blank even to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“My mom is—“ She choked. She couldn’t say it. “Mom’s…”
“Stephanie, I need you to breathe for me, okay?”
She hadn’t realised she wasn’t. Or, she was, but too much? Hyperventilating, that was the word. She forced herself to follow along with Bruce as he counted out her breaths until she wasn’t on the verge of passing out anymore. She wouldn’t have cared, really, but she needed to tell someone.
“Can you tell me what’s happened?” Rustling fabric over the line. That was… good, probably. “Stephanie? Report.”
She blinked. Report. She could do that. “Came home. Front door was wide open. Checked the other rooms, found nothing wrong, except some stuff might’ve been stolen. Checked Mom’s room. Thought she was just sleeping, for a second. She— Bullet wound, in her forehead. Point blank. She would have died instantly, about two hours ago.”
Bruce swore under his breath. Stephanie heard him call out to Damian, but she wasn’t really listening anymore. She stared at the side of her mother’s face. She didn’t know how long she sat there, it felt like a long time and only a few seconds all at once.
In the space between sluggish blinks there was a soft rush of air, and then warm blue eyes and black hair were in front of her. Not the right ones, never the right ones, but the deep reds and warm oranges and yellows of Flamebird’s costume were a small comfort in themselves. Jon didn’t look back at the bed, didn’t let Stephanie see it either.
“Hey, Steph? Can you hear me?”
She nodded slowly. She could hear him just fine, even if she wouldn’t stop looking at the spot where she could no longer see her mother’s face silhouetted by the streetlights.
“Stephanie, I need you to look at me, okay?”
She didn’t. Jon sighed.
“Alright, I’m gonna take you back to Wayne Manor—“
“No.” She finally looked at him, finally felt something that wasn’t the numb cold that had washed over her when she’d seen that star-shaped hole. It was panic. “No, I can’t— I’m not leaving her alone again!” She grabbed on to Jon’s arms—when had he put his hands on her shoulders?—and held tight. “I can’t—“
“Hey, hey, she won’t be alone. Batman and Nightwing will be here soon, they’ll look after her. I’ll even come right back after I drop you off with Batgirl, Signal and Agent A, alright?”
“I’m not leaving her.” Stephanie’s grip tightened despite the lack of give. Jon pulled back to carefully pry her off before she could hurt herself.
“You shouldn’t stay here. I know you don’t want to leave her, I know, Steph, but—“
“I couldn’t be with Tim, when he— I couldn’t protect him, I couldn’t protect Mom, I— I—“
She didn’t realise she was shaking, didn’t notice the tears running down her face, until Jon had pulled her close, tucked her face into his shoulder, wrapped his arms tight around her.
“You’ll never be able to save everyone, Steph. You can try, you can save so many people, but sometimes things happen that we can’t control. And sometimes those things happen to the people we love.”
“I should’ve been here, I should’ve been home, with her, so I could—“
A sob ripped out of her throat and she twisted her hands into his cape.
“You can’t be everywhere at once, Steph. You were out there helping people, she would’ve been proud of you for that.”
She faintly registered that this all sounded rehearsed, like something he’d said a million times before. To Damian, maybe, after Jon had come back. Damian had blamed himself for what happened, back then, even when there was nothing he could’ve done. They all knew there was nothing anyone could’ve done.
There was nothing Stephanie Brown could do this time, either. Nothing but cry on her friend’s shoulder as she finally let him take her to the Manor.
Alfred was already there with hot tea and a change of clothes in hand—she was still Spoiler, after all—that Cass helped her get changed into when she couldn’t make herself move enough to do it herself. She didn’t like that the younger teen had to see her like this again, but Cass didn’t complain. She understood. She always understood. Duke was there in Stephanie’s designated guest room with warm blankets, stuffed animals from who-knows-where, and an understanding, sad smile. He and Cass stayed with her the whole night while Batman, Nightwing, and Flamebird investigated the cri— her apartment.
As she lay there, wide awake and squished between her dead best friend’s siblings, Stephanie Brown thought.
A bullet had taken her best friend. A bullet had taken her mother.
That did not make her special. This did not make her feel better.
How many more best friends, brothers, mothers, sisters, fathers— How many more was it going to take?
There was nothing Stephanie Brown could do.
This did not make her feel better.
She needed to do something. She needed to stop this from happening to her again, stop it from happening to anyone else.
And oh, wasn’t that an idea?
Bullets stopped things. A bullet hole was a full-stop at the end of a sentence, a bullet hole was someone’s heart stopping in their chest.
Stephanie Brown just needed to become a gun.