Work Text:
Okay To Hope
Batman never told her to stop working in his city - at least not after that once - but when Steph goes over a month without finding any real crime to fight, she knows what's going on. But she knows that Catwoman works the East End, and there's a few blocks between it and the rest of the Gotham where she might be able to do some good, so off she goes. Whenever she and Catwoman run into each other over a scuffled, they help each other out, but they aren't really partners, per se. She's another lone operative, and Catwoman's just the only one that doesn't want to see her grounded. It's nice. It's two weeks before a Bat shows up, and it's Cass, not him, so Steph is okay with it. It only happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays, rarely ever both in the same week, and Steph is never sure when it's going to be. Cass will show up halfway through her patrol, and for the last half-hour she'll show Steph fighting moves. She doesn't need to be able to read body language to know that she's supposed to practice those in the time between meetings. Steph's getting better, slowly but surely. It takes a few months for Steph to figure out that Cass is showing her moves that will take her only until their next meeting to learn, which means she can figure out how long it will be until Cass shows up. Then her mother falls off the wagon again (only, as pretty much all times before, Steph isn't sure whether she was ever on it to begin with) and her father is apparently dead. Batman sent her a note via Cass that says he was working with the Suicide Squad. Her father changed his ways too late, and it doesn't look like her mother is ever going to. Steph...maybe she can't be Spoiler forever, but she knows she needs her own life. She isn't going to get it at 'home.' A part-time job working after school and on weekends as a waitress only pays for a really crappy apartment, but she's learning how to make better tips (wear short skirts, flirt with single customers, always smile at the guys who pinch her cheeks - even the lower set) and staying on her feet carrying heavy trays for that many hours is, at least, building up her endurance. Plus, one night she comes home (for certain values of the word 'home,' none of which Steph has ever really gotten to use before) to find that Robin has installed a very new, high-tech security system which is probably worth more than she pays in rent for an entire year. Steph resolves to send Robin a thank you note via Cass. Then she changes the password from eggplant to hope and wonders if it's too obvious. The next week Steph finds out that she's pregnant, and decides that hope is all she has left. Hope that the future will be better, and that she can make something of it. She'd been thinking vaguely of trying for her GED at the end of the school year, but now it's a certainty. She can't go to school and make enough money to take care of herself and a baby. She also can't fight crime while she's pregnant. Spoiler avoids the rooftops, and Steph takes on later shifts, studying for the GED whenever she has a spare moment. The spare moments are spaced around her panicking tries to juggle her meager budget to pay for the prenatal vitamins Dr. Leslie at the free clinic advises her to take, and start saving up money for the kid's college fund. Her parents had never made any such preparations for her. Steph briefly thinks of giving the baby up for adoption; maybe he or she would have a better home with someone with money, or a husband, or even just a better set of role models for parents. But this baby is hers, and other than Spoiler (who she created because of her dad) or her homeopathic remedies for everything from headaches to pimples (that she uses because she doesn't want to become like her mother), it's the only thing that really is. The next time Cass shows up, Steph is thankful that she doesn't have to actually tell Cass any of it. Cass just sits down beside her on the roof, as if Batgirl sits with mopey blonde girls in jeans and tanktops (that don't fit right anymore) everyday. And Cass hugs her. She doesn't feel like crying for the first time in weeks, and it isn't just the hormones leveling off. Cass is there, and Robin will probably help, too, and Oracle definitely has bugs somewhere in her crappy apartment, so her kid would be safer there than anyone in that part of town ever had been. That's when Steph knows it really will be okay.