Chapter Text
“I’m not crazy, Arthur,” her mom screeches. The sound of glass shattering against the kitchen wall echoes in the small space. “I may not have your genius fucking intellect, but that doesn’t make me a fucking idiot.”
Stephanie’s crayon scratches across the page, dark lines crossing and twisting. She is being very careful; each movement is meticulous and sharp, taking Steph’s complete concentration. She’s almost out of paper, and her teacher is getting tired of her always needing to borrow supplies. Besides, there’s no way her mom was gonna get her to school tomorrow, not after a fight like this. If this was going to be her last drawing for a little while, she wants it to be absolutely perfect.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Crystal.” Arthur is calm, always calm, as if he thinks himself above such trite displays of emotions. It only ever makes her mom angrier. “Do you think that maybe you're overreacting?”
“Maybe tell me how we’re gonna keep the fucking heat on, Arthur. Tell me how we’re gonna feed your fucking daughter.” Steph can’t see it, but she always imagines her mom's face turning crayon red and smoke coming out of her ears.
Arthur’s voice is soft and intimate. “I’ll get you your meds. I promise. I just need a little time.”
Crystal sighs, and Steph feels relieved that the fight is winding down. She’s been hiding in the cupboard for half an hour now and her legs are starting to fall asleep.
Arthur’s footsteps tap against the tile, but Steph doesn’t hear any more glass shattering so she guesses her mom must be ok with it. “Cobblepot didn’t understand my vision. You know I can’t stay in a place that devalues my intelligence.” There’s a pause, and Steph goes still. “I’ll figure something out. You know I always do.”
She presses her crayon to the page one last time, adding the final finishing touch. The darkness of the cabinet casts shadows on the drawing, bringing it to life. She stares down at two bright eyes hiding in a swirl of fabric and blackness. The newspaper she’s referencing only has one blurry photo of the phenomenon, but there’s no mistaking the drawing for anything else.
Steph leans back, laying her head against the back of the cabinet to dream of the Batman finally coming to carry her away.
-
Stephanie surveys the scene carefully.
Her dad is alone, which usually means trouble. Arthur is the kind of charismatic that draws in the malicious and naive, and catching him by himself is the first sign that he’s in a sour enough mood to scare everyone off. Still, he’s got the Gotham Post open to the crossword in one hand and a biography of Alan Turing on the other, which is a good sign. Steph takes a careful step forward, and the floorboard creaks. She freezes.
Arthur smiles, and Steph allows herself to breathe.
“You’re mom isn’t around, is she?” Arthur asks.
“Uhh, I think she’s asleep.” Steph moves another cautious step toward the pantry. “She had the night shift yesterday.”
He lays his book down on the table and turns to face her. “I supposed the demands of the medical profession cannot wait until daylight.”
Steph doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she says nothing. This seems to be the correct response.
“You’re getting pretty big, kiddo. You’re what, twelve now?”
“I’m starting middle school next week,” she tells him.
He smiles again, and Steph feels her stomach twist. “Would you want to help me out?”
She nods, and Arthur starts pulling papers out of the puzzle desk to show her. She knows all her basic ciphers and encryptions already, so Arthur starts to combine ciphers into one giant mess of dead ends and obscure references. Stephanie pulls the papers towards her to organize them.
“You know, when I used to host a game show…” Arthur starts to talk as she works. This is Steph’s favorite story, because it usually got her dad talking for a good hour and he was always in a chipper mood afterwards. He always skips over the end, but that’s alright with her. Rehashing history doesn’t help fix anything; the story always ends the same anyways.
She goes through the cipher forwards, then backwards, and then again in Spanish. She imagines for a second that she’s the kid hero Robin, and her dad is The Batman and they’re in a secret base solving crimes. Steph would be a great hero, she’s sure. And her suit wouldn’t be dumb like Robin’s is. Hers would be purple, and she would patrol her neighborhood the most even though Batman and Robin usually stay in Park Row and Gotham Proper.
She blinks the fantasy out of her vision, silently scolding herself. She’s eleven now. Much too old for baby things like staying up late on Twitter looking for Batman sightings or daydreaming about vigilantes when she finally gets time with her father.
Much too old to pretend her father is anything but the villain.
She finally cracks the cipher with three substitutions, and Arthur pats her head, looking over her work. “You’ve got a brain, kid. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. It’s what separates us from the rest of the bums and low lives around here.” Arthur tapped the side of his head. “We’ve got the juice to back it up.”
Stephanie nods, and Arthur turns back to his coffee and his book, now done with her. She scrambles to grab all of the papers and get out of the kitchen, not wanting to overstay her welcome. In her room, she carefully tacks the cipher onto her bedroom wall, all thoughts of breakfast forgotten.
-
“The operation is a simple one,” Arthur tells the group assembled at the dining room table. “I’ve got everything planned out, so if everyone plays their role, we’ll be gone before the GCPD knows anything is wrong.”
“And where will you be in all of this,” Cutter asks.
Crystal pulls her closer, tucking Steph against her side. They’re in the living room, drinking hot chocolate and trying to pretend nothing is happening across two feet away from them.
Arthur had blown up the night before when Crystal had suggested taking Steph to the one cheap motel that wasn’t a front for the mob for a night. Steph had never heard Arthur get so loud before, and Crystal had folded like a cheap plastic chair two seconds into the argument. Crystal’s punishment had been Arthur clutching her hand as the litany of hired goons shuffled into their apartment, Steph watching it all from the relative safety of the couch.
Cutter glances back at the two of them before continuing. “Unless the plan was for you to stay in the getaway car?”
Arthur grins at him, very pleased to have been asked. He’d been fishing for the question, but Steph’s pretty sure she’s the only one who noticed. “I, my friends, am going to be dealing with the little problem of Gotham’s own caped crusader.”
One of the hired muscle shifts in his seat, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation seems to be going. “Don’t you think this is a little small for him?”
“Not at all.” Arthur grabs a small box and lifts it for everyone to see, “In fact, I’m counting on him showing up.”
“I don’t know,” the goon continues. “I don’t mess with Batman, dude.”
“What is the Dark Knight but a man living in a fantasy? Are men in Gotham really so pathetic as to be cowled by a man wearing spandex and calling himself Batman?”
No one replies, but Arthur takes the time to look each man in the eyes. Even at eleven, Steph knows none of the men are going to back out. Reputation is a fragile thing in Gotham, and every wall has ears. None of these men can afford to be known as a coward.
“Besides,” Arthur says, setting the box onto the table. “Batman’s not the only freak who can wear a mask.”
-
…Arthur Brown, advertising himself under the name Cluemaster, had been involved in a string of robberies across Gotham spanning over two weeks. The case saw massive media attention after it was revealed that Brown had been leaving clues to the time and location of his next crime for the police to find. GCPD’s Commissioner James Gordon spoke on the involvement of the vigilante known as the Batman in the recent arrest and incarceration of Brown.
“The GCPD does not condone vigilantism in Gotham under any circumstances,” Commissioner Gordon says in the GCPD’s official press conference. “Justice done under a mask is no justice at all, and we maintain innocence in the rumor that our officers have any connection to the Batman or his affiliates. Arthur Brown is a criminal and a psycho, and it’s thanks to the efforts of our officers that he is behind bars today.”
When asked, Commissioner Gordon denied any further comment…
-
Steph finds out Arthur went to prison at her school lunch table.
It starts with whispers, then stares, then her teacher pulls her aside and drops her off at the principal’s office. She walks home early and arrives to an empty house. Everything else had been confirmed with a google search.
Her dad is gone, and she is alone.
Steph knows she shouldn’t be this calm. Her mom use to call her dad a sociopath when he acted like this, but all Steph can manage to feel is numb. She feels like she's sleep walking- like she’s gonna wake up in the morning and everything is gonna be the same. That’s the thought that fills her with dread, she realizes. Not that Arthur is gone, but that he might come back.
Some daughter she is. The sick feeling in her stomach swirls.
When the sun goes down and Crystal doesn’t come home, Steph climbs up to the roof to wait. She’s careful where she steps, remembering the first time she came up and her foot went through a mushy rotted section in the siding. East End comes alive at night, Gothamites crawling from the woodwork to start the real business of the day. She hears sirens wailing in the distance, but she knows they won’t stray far outside of Midtown. The bus comes every fifteen minutes, but no one gets off.
Except- there’s a black spot in the horizon, almost invincible except for the absence of light.
Steph squints at it. Squeezes her eyes shut and looks again.
It’s a child’s drawing brought to life. A swirl of cape that melts into the shadows, clinging to alleys and the cracks in Gotham’s rough exterior. She doesn’t think she would have recognized it, except that her vision had started to go fuzzy after hours of staring at photos of him, trying to imagine what it was like when Batman arrested her dad.
There was no mistaking it- Batman was standing across the street and looking right at her.
Steph squirmes, suddenly nervous. Why exactly would Batman come for her? Unless she was in trouble? She had sat in on her dad’s meetings, had seen what he was planning and the people he was hurting and had done nothing. She could have stopped him- Steph doesn’t even think it would have been hard. People seem to look past her, eyes always focusing above her shoulder instead of on her face. It would have been as easy as a folder dropped off on the precinct steps on the walk home from school. She’s not even sure why she didn’t. Loyalty? Fear?
It doesn’t matter now anyways. She hadn’t done a thing, and now Batman is here for her.
They consider each other for one second. Two. She holds her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the inevitable.
Stephanie blinks, and he is gone.
-
“Mom!” Steph calls the next morning, racing into the living room. Her mom is spread out on the couch. The tv softly playing a Friends rerun and Crystal is kneading at her temples. “Mom, you’ll never guess what I saw last night…”
She turns over with a groan. “Not now, sweetheart.”
“But I just-”
“I need you to get my medicine for me, ok? The big blue bottle in the kitchen. Can you do that for me, sweetie?”
Steph nods and heads to the kitchen, her thoughts racing. She wonders how her mom would get more medicine now that Arthur is in jail. She thinks about her mom's job at the hospital and the pile of paperwork on the desk. She can’t get Batman out of her head, his looming form stamped across her eyelids, the way his cape swirled on perpetual repeat.
She sets the pills and a cup of chamomile beside the couch, her mom already drifting asleep and heads to the kitchen to sit at the folding table that housed the family computer. The Gotham Post is already pulled up from the last time she was on it, so she switches to the r/thebatman reddit board and starts to read. Her dad is in prison, sure, but she knows it's only a matter of time before he gets himself out, and she's going to be ready for him when he does. No more sitting back, and no more being scared.
For the first time in a long time, Stephanie allows herself to hope.