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Language:
English
Series:
Part 10 of Even Chances
Collections:
Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
Stats:
Published:
2020-11-05
Words:
425
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
15
Hits:
1,064

Next Best Thing

Summary:

Second Robins. Different histories, similar futures. And One True Steph is born.

Work Text:

Next Best Thing 

 

It all started when she was ten years old, and snuck out to follow her father to his nightly ‘meeting’. She saw Boss Zucco – though what he was boss of besides her dad and some other mooks, she didn’t know; he certainly wasn’t boss of Gotham – get taken down by the Bat.

 

And she found one of his sharp throwing things. The Bat was there, he threw those sharp bat-knife things, and then he was gone, almost before she got a good look at him.

 

When he left, her dad and all the other mooks were knocked out, and Boss Zucco was on his way to the pen.

 

Normally she would have been cheering: her dad was going back to jail, and wouldn’t bother her and her mom anymore. She wouldn’t have to be caught between loving him for being who he was, and loathing him for doing what he did. But her mom…her mom wasn’t doing so good. She’d smoked too many cigarettes, or something, and now she had cancer.

 

And with her dad in Blackgate, pretty soon Stephanie Brown would be a veritable orphan.

 

That’s when Stephanie scrapped all her half-assed plans to be Spoiler, the Cluemaster’s sidekick, and started planning on being Batman’s partner. There was already a Batgirl – and what she wouldn’t give to have hair that bright shade of red – but she hadn’t seen Robin around for a while. A long while. Since before her dad had gotten arrested the last time.

 

So, using her mom’s old – and never used, as far as she could tell, except to patch their already second-hand and otherwise worn clothes – sewing machine, Steph made herself a Robin suit. It looked as much like the old one as she could make it, except for two things:

 

One, it had no green or yellow. She had some gymnastics training, but she wasn’t nearly as good as her idol, former Gotham City champ Barbara Gordon. Making herself a walking – or flying – target would quickly get her killed.

 

And two…she wanted pants. Maybe a skirt.

 

But definitely pants.

 

Even without the brighter colors, a few weeks darting across rooftops should get Batman to notice her.

 

And if he didn’t, maybe she’d just steal the tires off the Batmobile. Not exactly the best start to a crime-fighting career, but the next best thing she could think of.

 

That night, she slept with the bat-knife under her pillow and dreamed of flying through the Gotham nights with Batman.

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