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It’s been a slow night. Steph has spent most of it sitting on the edge of a rooftop, working her way through the burrito Mr. Diaz had given her as thanks for scaring a few trouble makers away from his stall. She can see a fair amount of her territory from here and she’s not noticed any signs of anything big going on.
Not that she expects anything big to be going on without her knowledge. Not after the brutal way she’d introduced herself to the underground. It will take a while for anyone to get brave enough to try something, after that.
Still, she likes to patrol. There are always petty crimes going on. Always desperate people trying to push their luck. And it’s good to keep awareness up. If people think she’s disappeared, they’re less likely to keep to her rules.
So she tugs her mask back into place once she finishes her burrito, tucking the foil into one of her jacket pockets for disposal later and stretching out of her crouch. She’d considered reviving her spoiler costume when she’d first come back to Gotham, but it didn’t seem to fit anymore. There would have been a sort of poetry to it - she’d first donned the costume to get back at her dad, after all - but Bruce wasn’t her dad. She couldn’t be Robin, not again, not ever again. She’d needed a new identity.
The mask had been almost a joke. She’d spent far too long on it, perfecting the ghoulish skull-like features. Making sure it was strong enough to withstand a solid blow, but flexible enough to not impede her vision or speaking. The splash of gruesome red had been entirely aesthetic, but she thought it completed the look.
It protects her face nicely from the cold. Something which her Robin costume had always been sorely lacking. It’s especially chilly tonight. The breeze whips at Steph’s jacket as she makes her way across the rooftops, scanning the alleyways below for any potential trouble.
Once she’s finished her route, she’ll turn in for the night and make herself a nice hot cup of cocoa. She’s trying to get better at treating herself. God knows no one else is going to do it.
Her final stop is the red light district - the street where most of the working omegas set up shop. Steph makes sure to check in with them regularly. They’re particularly vulnerable, but also often best placed to overhear valuable information. Even if Steph didn’t care about their well-being, it’s always good to have them on-side.
But Steph does care. She grew up on the rough side of Gotham. She knows what it’s like to be vulnerable in a city that takes more than it gives. She knows what it’s like to struggle for every scrap you can get. She might not have ever been in exactly the same situation, but she can relate to the working omegas more than most. Certainly more than Bruce Wayne ever could.
There’s a small group of them out tonight, clustered together in the way they sometimes do when they’re between jobs. Steph drops lightly onto a nearby fire escape before jumping down to the pavement below. The omegas look up at the noise, shifting to tighten the protective little huddle they’re standing in.
Steph raises a hand in greeting and watches as some of the suspicious tension eases from their faces. “Just checking in,” she calls, as she makes her way over to them.
“All good here, baby,” one of the omegas - Vivienne, Steph remembers - calls back. A cigarette wags at the corner of her mouth and she’s dressed in a tiny tartan skirt and fake fur shawl that must be scant protection in the frigid Gotham night. She’s older than most of the other omegas, her voice rough from years of abuse.
“Been as slow for you as it has for me?” Steph asks, because most of the group are still here. Business has been slower ever since Steph set up in crime alley, she knows, and she knows some of the working omegas resent her for it. But the work is safer now, at least, and that’s what Steph cares about.
Vivienne shrugs a skinny shoulder. Delicately manicured fingers tap ash from the end of her cigarette. “There’s too many of us to go around these days.”
Steph’s gaze flickers over the group. She recognises most of them - Dixie, who’s one of the younger members of the group in a pair of ripped up jeans and a tank top, Simon in his half unbuttoned shirt, Lou and Bella.
Her gaze flits across a gap between the huddled omegas and she realises, with a sharp flare of anger, why they’re standing like this - why no one has come to greet her, or alternatively, shuffled away to mind their own business.
There’s an omega she doesn’t recognise standing at the centre of the huddle. A young omega. Not just young. A pup.
“What’s this?” Steph asks, her voice suddenly whip sharp. Dixie flinches at the tone but Vivienne just rolls her eyes.
“Relax, sweetie,” she says, in her smoker’s rasp, “he’s not working tonight.”
Anger rises like bile in Steph’s throat. She’s been clear from the start that kids are off limits. They won’t be running drugs or standing corners in her territory. Not if Steph can help it. She’s seen enough children hurt by the streets of Gotham in her life.
She steps forward, into the huddle, and isn’t surprised when the omegas melt out of her way. The pup glances up at her - Jesus he’s small, Steph isn’t exactly a giant and he clearly has to crane his neck to look at her face - before quickly dropping his gaze back to the ground. The hood of his ratty red hoodie covers most of his features, but Steph can tell he’s young. If it weren’t for the smell of nervous omega wafting off of him, she might guess he was prepubescent.
“I don’t let kids stand corners,” Steph growls. It’s not an alpha growl, but Steph knows the omegas wouldn’t react well to that, anyway. It’s one of the reasons they tolerate her - because she’s a beta.
The pup’s shoulders hunch, but he makes no move to look at her. Normally, Steph wouldn’t touch a kid in a situation like this, but she’s angry and she grabs his arm on reflex. The kid stiffens and tugs against her grip. She can hear his breath quicken.
“It’s alright, kid,” Simon says. “You can trust Mask. She won’t hurt you.”
The pup keeps his face stubbornly turned down. He doesn’t seem reassured. Steph tries to soften her voice - it isn’t the kid she’s angry at, after all. “We’re just going to have a quick chat, pup. Then I’ll drop you off wherever you need to be.”
She tugs on his arm, steering him out of the little group of omegas. He whines, once, so quietly that she almost doesn’t hear him, but doesn’t resist. One of the omegas coos soothingly but none of them try to stop her.
They trust her with the pup, then. Or at least, they don’t think she’s any worse than the sort of people who would pick him up out here.
Steph grits her teeth and tries not to think about that. She’s seen enough battered omegas in her life. Enough pups barely old enough to heat with mating bites fresh on their necks, or their own pup on their hip.
She’s not going to let that happen on her watch.
She steers the pup far enough away that their conversation won’t be overheard by the other omegas, but close enough that he can still see them. The last thing she wants the pup to think is that she’s trying to kidnap him.
“Who put you up to this?” she asks, softly. No point in beating around the bush. “Your parents?”
That’s usually the case, in Steph’s experience. It’s a disturbing thought, but kids don’t fall into prostitution on their own.
“If there’s someone you need to get away from, I can help you. You don’t need to be out here.”
The kid heaves a breath. Then he looks up and the hood falls back from his face and Steph’s blood runs cold.
What the fuck?
She recognises this pup. And not from the streets.
“I’m fine,” the kid - Jason, it’s Jason fucking Todd, mumbles. “I can get home by myself.”
Steph’s grip tightens compulsively. She’s probably leaving bruises, but Jason doesn’t flinch. What the fuck?
Steph has made a sort of peace with Bruce. For a long time, she was angry. Angry at Bruce for never treating her the way he had Damian. Angry at the way he’d never trusted her. The way he’d never truly thought of her as Robin.
She hadn’t been angry about Roman - about her death. Not the way Bruce probably thought she was. There wasn’t a lot that he could have done to save her, she can acknowledge that.
But for a long time she’d been angry about the circumstances that had led her there. And that was definitely something she could pin on Bruce.
She’s still angry, really. But there’s not much point in it. As vindictive as she’d been, as hurt as she’d been, as much as she’d tried to hurt Bruce…none of it had touched him. If she wants to stay sane, she has to live for herself.
But this…this is too much. She can sit back and let Bruce do his thing if it’s only him who’s suffering. But she won’t let him fuck up another child for his cause.
What the hell is he thinking? Steph has patrolled with the kid before. Hung out with him, sometimes, although never out of the masks. And he’s good. Bruce wouldn’t have let him out if he wasn’t. But this. This is something different.
What? His new little orphan Annie turns out to be an omega - and Steph doesn’t know whether that’s a new situation or not, she’s never met the kid without his scent blockers - and he immediately takes advantage of that by putting the pup in a situation like this? Dressing him up to fight crime isn’t enough? The kid has only been Robin for a few months and already Bruce has him undercover as a prostitute?
The kid looks so small in his little red hoodie and torn-up jeans. Beneath the threadbare sleeve, Steph can feel how thin his arm is. The thought that Bruce had put him in a street-kid outfit and turfed him out onto a corner to - what? - report back on which assholes try to pick him up, makes her chest burn.
Batman is probably somewhere close by. He’s reckless with his kids, but not that reckless. She hopes. Surely Jason wouldn’t be alone out here, with only the other omegas for protection.
Either way, Steph doesn’t particularly want to confront him out here. And she doesn’t want the pup out here any longer, either. She has a safe house nearby that she was planning to burn anyway. She’s pretty sure that Tim knows about it and she doesn’t like the Bats up in her stuff. She’ll take the kid there and give herself a moment to calm down before she confronts Bruce.
“No,” Steph says, stiffly, trying to keep the angry growl out of her voice. “I can’t let you go home by yourself. You - Jason, you know why I can’t let you go home right now. Right?”
Jason scowls up at her. “I don’t need you to let me do anything.”
“Where’s Batman?” she asks, instead of touching that.
Jason doesn’t answer. Steph feels her rage stoke higher.
“Fine,” she grinds out, “he can meet us at mine.”
With her grip on Jason’s arm, she drags the pup along the street towards her safe house. Jason is silent. Whether that’s a reaction to her anger, his own anger, or because he knows that Batman will come to extract him anyway, she doesn’t know.
He baulks when they finally reach her apartment, as if suddenly realising that he’s alone with her. He tugs against her grip on him, but Steph doesn’t release his arm until they’re inside the safe house, standing in the rundown kitchen. She doesn’t want him to slip away. Especially not if he’s going to go straight back to the street corner.
“I’m not angry with you,” Steph says. The mask means the words come out a low growl.
“I don’t care,” the pup growls back. He’s wrapped his arms around himself, though, in a self-soothing motion, and his chin is tucked low in his hoodie.
Steph tugs her mask up so she can cut Jason a sharp look. “Good for you, kid. You gonna tell me what you were doing tonight?”
Jason sets his jaw, glaring up at her mulishly. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
Steph rolls her eyes. Not that she was really expecting anything different. This new Robin hasn’t been with Bruce long enough to be rebellious yet. There was never much chance that he would sell him out to Steph just because she’d asked.
She’s only met the kid a few times, after all. And Bruce has probably already given him the speech all about how Steph can’t be trusted - about what a failure she is.
Rather than pushing, Steph steps away to give the kid some space. Arguing with him isn’t going to get her anywhere. It’s not her job to teach Bruce’s kids about consent and boundaries. Besides, it will be far more satisfying to yell at Bruce rather than the pup.
She slips her mask back over her face, ignoring Jason’s soft, questioning sound and switching the attached comm to the line Tim had connected her to, when everything had first settled down a little. She hasn’t used it outside of a mission with the Bats before and those are few and far between.
Something pangs deep in her chest. Back before she’d died, her and Tim had often spent patrol chatting away on their own private comm line. Bruce must have known about it back then, but he’d never said anything about it. When Tim had first offered to connect her, Steph had barely thought about it, beyond the fact that she’d probably never use it. Now the gesture makes her ache, tender in a part of her that she’d almost forgotten about.
She has to swallow hard against the sudden tightness of her throat. She’s meant to be angry, not…whatever the hot ball of emotion trying to expand in her chest wants her to be.
“Mask to Batman,” she says and is pleased that her voice comes out hard.
There’s a moment of static on the line. Steph imagines she can hear their surprise.
“Wait,” Jason snaps. Small fingers close around her arm, tugging at the jacket she’s wearing. “Wait, what are you doing? Don’t - don’t call B. You can’t.”
Steph shakes him off. So he doesn’t want the Bat to realise he’s been rumbled? Steph can sympathise with that - with not wanting Batman to know you’ve fucked up - but it isn’t Jason that’s in the wrong here. If he thinks she’s going to let him go without treating Bruce to a tongue lashing, he’s sorely mistaken.
“Mask?” It’s Tim’s voice. Of course it is, because Batman must know that there’s nothing good she wants to say to him. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Steph says, icily. “That’s a good question.” She glances at Jason, who’s staring up at her with pleading blue eyes. She half-expects him to make a run for it, or maybe try to knock the mask off of her face, but apparently he’s not that stupid.
“Why don’t you tell me what the fuck is wrong with B?” she snarls.
Silence on the other end of the line. Then, “You’ll have to give me more than that. There’s a lot wrong with B.”
Steph wonders whether Batman is listening in on this, or whether the line is private between her and Tim. She wouldn’t be surprised with either option.
“Mask,” Jason says, with a desperation that surprises her. His voice is pitched low, though, trying not to be heard through the comm. “Please. I’m sorry. I won’t - I won’t go near them again, but please don’t tell B.”
“Why,” Steph says, through gritted teeth, ignoring him, “does B think it's appropriate to have his new little bird standing out on a street corner? Just because he’s an omega doesn’t -”
“Wait,” Tim interrupts, and the shock in his voice silences Steph. “What are you talking about?”
So he hadn’t even told Tim? Is Bruce really so arrogant that he thinks he can handle the undercover operation alone? It makes sense, in a way, because she doubts that Tim would have agreed to the plan. But knowing that Jason was out there without Tim monitoring him - with just the Bat as backup, only makes her more angry.
“I’m talking about the fact that I found Robin on a street corner with a group of prostitutes.” She takes a deep, steadying breath as Jason groans beside her. “And he wasn’t in uniform.”
“Robin isn’t out tonight,” Tim says, as if that somehow proves Steph is wrong, even though Jason is standing right beside her.
“Looks like he is,” she snaps.
Tim is silent for a long moment, then, in a slightly strained voice: “We’ll be there as soon as we can. You’re at the safe house by South Street right?”
Steph bristles, despite already knowing that this safe house was compromised. She’ll definitely be burning it now.
“Yeah,” she says, “don’t take too long. I’m not a babysitter.”
Tim clicks off without acknowledgement. Beside her, Jason is practically growling.
“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” he snaps. “I can handle myself.”
Steph ignores him, heading to the tiny little kitchen area running along the wall of her safehouse’s single room. She needs a coffee. Maybe something stronger.
Jason trails behind her. “I didn’t take you for a narc. I thought you understood.”
Steph pulls a chipped mug out of the cupboard and starts the coffee machine. It whirs to life with a horrible grinding noise.
“It wasn’t even a big deal,” he grumbles. “It’s not like I was working.”
Steph’s grip tightens on the mug. “I don’t let kids stand corners,” she grits out, “whether they’re intending to work or not. It’s too dangerous. Someone could have picked you up. You’re a civilian right now, you might not have been able to stop them.”
Jason scoffs. “I know how to handle johns. I’m not stupid.”
Steph whirls around. The kid is barely even a teenager. He might have seen some shit in crime alley, but he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about - he doesn’t understand how much danger Bruce has put him in.
“You might think you do, but -”
“I don’t think,” Jason snarls, “I know. If I didn’t know how to handle a john I’d be in the fucking Gotham harbour by now. I know how to handle myself. I wasn’t even working. You didn’t need to fucking narc to Bruce.”
Something chills in Steph’s core. She has the sudden, lurching sensation that she’s gotten this wrong. That she’s misunderstood the situation. It’s not a feeling she likes.
“What do you mean, you’d be in the Gotham harbour by now?”
Jason scoffs. “I’m not stupid,” he snaps, “I know how to keep ‘em sweet. And the others wouldn’t have let anyone take me. They knew I wasn’t working.”
Steph isn’t sure about that. They’d let her spirit the pup away, after all. And there isn’t much a group of omegas can do against some of the people who frequent the corner. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Jason is talking about this like he has experience.
Steph’s Gotham born-and-raised. She knows that before she’d swept in and cleaned the shithole up, it was full of the sort of shit that would make most people clutch their pearls in horror. She’s seen kids standing corners, or pulled into alleyways.
She knows that Jason was homeless before Bruce took him in.
“Why were you there, then?” she asks, stiffly.
Jason shrugs, still scowling, a jerky movement of thin shoulders. “I was just checkin’ in. Making sure the others were alright. I can only say so much as Robin.”
“Because you knew them from…before…”
Jason cocks his head. His eyes flash as he looks Steph up and down, considering. “It’s not like I need to turn tricks now, is it?”
Steph opens her mouth, but no words come out. Heat rises up her neck and warms her face. Her assumption that Bruce had Jason on some weird undercover mission seems suddenly unbelievably stupid.
She’s saved from answering by the arrival of a huge black shape forcing her window open and dropping onto her kitchen floor.
Jason whirls around, stumbling back until he bumps into Steph, like he’s seeking her protection. Batman unfolds from his crouch, huge in the tiny kitchen, as Tim slips in behind him, dressed in his Red Robin gear. He rarely wears it nowadays, Steph knows. It depends on how he’s feeling - physically, mentally. After his week with the Joker, he prefers to monitor patrols from the Batcave, as Oracle.
“Jason,” Batman says, in as soft a voice as he can probably manage in the cowl. “You’re supposed to be at home.”
Jason immediately bristles. His shoulders hunch and his face twists in a scowl, but his scent is all omega-submission. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” he snaps. “I just wanted to talk to them.”
Batman is silent, his head tilted curiously. Steph’s been the recipient of this technique enough times that it no longer works on her, but Jason hasn’t been with Bruce for that long. It only takes a few seconds of silence for him to speak again.
“I wasn’t working,” he says, hotly. “Blondie got the wrong idea. I wasn’t. I was just checking on them.”
“Why?” Batman asks, voice still surprisingly soft. “If you were worried about them, you could have asked me to confirm their safety.”
Jason’s scowl deepens, but some of the tension is easing out of his shoulders. “I wasn’t worried about them. I just - I never got a chance to tell them what happened. I didn’t want them to think it was something bad.”
“Why would they think something bad happened?” Tim asks.
Jason rolls his eyes. “Well, most of the time, when whores disappear, it’s not because they got adopted by a billionaire.”
Batman goes rigid. Tim, too, goes still. Even with Steph’s warning, the bluntness of the words must be a shock.
She glances at Jason. He looks so young. Younger than she ever remembers being as Robin. And, sure, he’s not a pup anymore - not technically, at least, now that he’s presented as an omega - but he’s still a child. And he would have been a pup on the streets, when he was struggling to survive.
She feels sick.
“You are not a whore,” Bruce growls, an angry, protective alpha sound. Jason shivers and Steph smells more submission leak out into the air. “Don’t ever say that about yourself.”
Jason seems to shrink in on himself. “Why not?” he asks, bitterly. “It’s what I was. It’s what you all still think I am.”
“I have never thought that.”
Bruce says it with the same conviction he always speaks with, as Batman, but Jason still doesn’t look like he believes him. His eyes flicker as he studies Bruce’s face - looking for a lie, maybe - but with the cowl on, it’s difficult to read Bruce’s expression. He’s still pressed back against Steph. She can feel his spine pressing into her, even through his hoodie and her own jacket.
“You didn’t know,” he whispers, horrified.
Bruce steps forward, but stops when Jason cringes away from him.
“No,” he says, and he doesn’t sound like Batman anymore. He sounds like the Bruce Steph remembers, although his voice is tight with strain, “I didn’t know. And I’m sorry I didn’t realise. I’m sorry you didn’t think you could tell me. But this doesn’t change anything. You’re not a whore Jason. You’re a pup who was forced into a terrible situation. My pup.”
Jason trembles. His breath hitches, wet with something that’s not quite a sob. Steph feels suddenly like she’s intruding, even though this is her apartment.
“But I - I -” Jason heaves. Steph smells salt in the air and her stomach twists.
Bruce steps forward again, but Jason doesn’t cringe away this time. The lenses of his cowl flash as he glances up at Steph, before dropping to his knees and opening his arms. For a moment, Jason stays pressed against her, before stumbling forward into Bruce’s embrace.
Bruce curls one thick arm around Jason’s back, then lifts his other arm to tug his cowl off. Then he peels off one of the scent blockers attached to the glands beneath his jaw. Jason whimpers, pressing his face into the exposed skin. Protective alpha scent floods the small space of Steph’s apartment. She bristles, instinctively angry at the invasion of her territory.
Tim sidles away from the window to join her in the kitchen. He’s watching Bruce and Jason with an odd, pensive expression, his face pale and drawn.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, just loud enough to be heard over Jason’s sobbing apologies.
“I’m sorry,” the pup is gasping, over and over again, into the wet skin of Bruce’s neck.
“It’s okay,” Bruce is murmuring back, no trace of Batman now, “it’s okay, sweetheart, you have nothing to apologise for.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” Steph says, gruff. “I didn’t do anything.”
Tim glances sideways at her. She doesn’t look at him, but she can feel the weight of his gaze. “You kept him safe tonight,” Tim says, softly, “and you called us. You didn’t have to.”
Steph doesn’t tell him that the only reason she’d called was to chew Bruce’s ass out. “I know what you think of me,” she says instead, in a sharp voice, “but I’m not a fucking monster.”
“I don’t think that,” Tim says. He turns back to look at Jason and Bruce where they’re still huddled on her kitchen floor. “Neither does B.”
Steph’s throat tightens. She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t know how.
Bruce stands, keeping one arm wrapped around Jason’s back, pressing him into his side. The little omega keeps his face turned against Bruce’s armour, like he’s too embarrassed to look at her.
“Thank you,” Bruce says, roughly, “for looking after him.”
Steph grunts. “Get out of my apartment, B.”
Tim barks a laugh. Bruce just tugs his cowl back on. It dampens the possessive alpha scent leaking off of him and the tightness in Steph’s chest eases a little.
“And don’t pull this shit again, kid,” she says. “It’s not safe for an omega out there.”
Nevermind that the kid has already been through more than any pup should. Nevermind that he spent years on the street, utterly alone, with no one but himself to look out for him.
Bruce’s face is grim beneath the cowl. She’s sure he’s thinking the same. She’s sure he’s thinking about exactly what could have happened to Jason, on the streets in his civilian gear, whilst Bruce had thought he was safe at home.
It’s cold in her apartment, with the window wide open. In the distance she can hear the sounds of the city - cars roaring and people shouting and laughing. She tugs her jacket tighter around herself and jerks her head at the open window.
“Don’t expect me to stick around here,” she says, levelling a hard look at Tim through her mask. “I’m burning this safehouse the moment you fuck off.”
“Got it,” he says, stepping across the room to draw level with Bruce. He sets a hand on Jason’s back, almost absentmindedly rubbing his wrist across the thin fabric of Jason’s hoodie, even though he’s wearing scent blockers.
Bruce guides Jason to the door rather than the window. Of course, Jason is in his civilian gear. They can hardly go jumping through windows with Bruce Wayne’s pup.
“Thank you,” he says again, voice gruff, before ushering Jason through the door. Tim glances at Steph, throws her a sloppy two-fingered salute, then follows after them.
Steph locks the door behind them, then goes to shut the window. Finally, she tugs her mask back off, rubbing at her tired eyes. The apartment still smells vaguely of distressed omega and protective alpha, even though most of the scent had been blown away by the chill Gotham breeze.
Steph sinks into her single ratty armchair and shuts her eyes. She’s going to have to burn the safehouse, which means she needs to set up somewhere new as her base of operations.
She takes a deep breath, smelling Bruce and Jason’s mingled scents. It reminds her of the weight of the pup against her, and the soft pain in Bruce’s face.
She shakes her head. Jason isn’t her responsibility, and neither is Bruce.
And their scents, threaded through with the intrinsic smell of Steph that fills her apartment, don’t smell like pack.
They don’t.