Work Text:
If you do something often enough, it becomes habit.
Sometimes, that’s unfortunate. Super unfortunate. Like, for example, if you’re sitting there with your college study group, struggling your way through the week’s assignments (well, Steph’s struggling, everyone else was acting like it’s fine, though none of them had fought FIrefly until 4am the previous night, but that wasn’t exactly something she could advertise) and a supervillain bursts into the library.
Jordanna shrieked and ducked under the table, Francisco held up his binder like a shield, and Steph leapt to her feet, rocked back on her heels, and punched the Riddler square in the nose.
“What the fuck,” he said, words garbled as he held his hand over his now-bleeding nose. “You broke my nose.”
“Move, you’re bleeding on my textbook,” Steph said, trying to shoulder him away from her books but not before they’re splattered with Riddler blood. Probably she should burn them now, no matter how much they’d cost her. Maybe Bruce would fund new ones.
She distantly realized that her study group was staring at her. Most of the library was staring at her. Even in Gotham, the normal designated response to an A-list supervillain wasn’t to break their nose and then bitch about the mess.
“You little--” Riddler started to point at her, then stopped. “Wait, I know you.”
“No, you don’t,” Steph said quickly. She could feel Jordanna and Francisco’s eyes on her and resolutely did not look in their direction.
“No, I definitely do,” Riddler said. He squinted at her, one hand still cupped around his nose. Steph probably could have gone easier on that punch, given how he hadn’t seen it coming at all, but old habits and all that.
“Aren’t you meant to be doing crime or something?” she said, hoping to derail him. Babs was on campus today, and no doubt had already sent out the alert. Encouraging the Riddler to go back to crime was totally not that bad, since there was no doubt a superhero on their way.
Because this was not how she wanted her secret identity to be revealed to the world. How did the Riddler even recognize her as Batgirl, anyhow? She hadn’t had any encounters with him in the suit-- maybe he was going to tell everyone she was Spoiler? She could maybe play that off as a thing of the past, that she’d left it all behind…
Ugh. She grimaced, bracing herself for her world to come crashing down.
“Stephanie!” the Riddler said loudly, pointing at her with the hand that wasn’t cupping his nose. “Cluemaster’s girl! I stayed at his house a few years back and you were a real brat about it.”
Steph blinked.
“I was not a brat, I was totally justified in not wanting to share my bathroom with your gross henchwomen,” Steph replied back heatedly. “They got what they deserved.”
“I had to pay them hazard pay because a goddamn teenager kept hiding the toilet paper, putting hard candies in the showerhead and filling their shoes with jell-o,” Riddler said. “Do you know how embarrassing that is to explain to your accountant? Huh? Do you?”
“Do I look like I have an accountant?” Steph pointed out. “And maybe you should have used that money to get yourself a lair instead of squatting in my house and then bitching about the treatment.”
Riddler narrowed his eyes at her. Steph narrowed hers back.
Then he tossed his head back and laughed. “Yeah, your dad always said you were a handful. Laughed when I told him what you were doing. Bastard.”
“He is,” Steph said, nodding, always happy to talk shit about her dad.
He looked around, at the cowered students, and the work spread out on the table. “You’re not following in his footsteps, right? Actually gonna make something of yourself?
“I was trying until some dumbass supervillain interrupted my study session,” Steph said.
“Touché,” said Riddler, and sighed. “This idea’s toast now, anyway. Can’t make a good speech for the hostages looking like this.”
“You technically haven’t done any crime yet,” Steph agreed. “You could just stroll out. Start fresh.”
They’d had a few snacks from the food cart outside before starting the study session, and she grabbed a few napkins left over from that off the table and handed them to Riddler.
He accepted and used them to mop up the blood around his nose. “Fair point. Next time you talk to your dad, tell him we’re even.”
“Bold of you to assume I talk to him, but okay,” Steph said, and waved a little as the Riddler motioned for his henchmen -- not the ones Steph had pranked, thankfully, henchperson turnover was a real problem in Gotham -- to follow him out of the library. She wondered briefly what her father could have done for the Riddler to owe him, then decided she didn’t actually care.
Silence filled the room after he left, and Steph sat down in her chair, staring at her ruined textbook and avoiding her friends’ stare.
“Okay, I’ll be the one to say it,” Jordanna said. “What the fuck was that?”
“Uh,” Steph said, “nothing important? Do you have the answer to number fourteen yet?”
“Oh no,” Francisco said, leaning forward on his elbows and staring her down. “You are absolutely telling us how you know the freaking Riddler.”
“He was work buddies with my dad?” Steph said. “So like, number fourteen. I’m thinking it’s C, because--”
“So when you found out about my dad, you never felt like you should mention that yours was a supervillain.”
“To be totally fair he’s a shitty one?” Steph said. “And he’s in Blackgate and I hope he stays there forever, so. Not really comparable to your family, who you actually talk to.”
“This explains so much,” Jordanna said thoughtfully. “You’re such a weirdo, and the fact that you think punching the Riddler in the nose is a valid response to a hostage situation is so much more understandable now that I know that you grew up in it. You know, I bet I could do a really interesting psychological study on the effects that growing up with a supervillain has on appropriate stress responses.”
“Absolutely not, no,” Steph said. She refused to answer any more questions, and hoped that the topic would drop.
*
The topic most decidedly did not drop.
Steph had been living a blissfully nondescript college life. She hadn’t even realized how blissful it was until suddenly everyone knew that she was the daughter of a supervillain. Like, she’d dealt with this shit enough in elementary school, she thought that by college it would be no big deal. But the thing about college wass that it’s made up of people from all over, even at a place like Gotham University, and apparently supervillains were still a noteworthy thing for a lot of people.
Steph finds this out in class.
She was sitting there, awake, taking notes, minding her own business when the person behind her tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, and the girl whispered, “Is it true you beat up the Riddler?”
“Of course not,” Steph said reflexively. “Or, I guess. The library thing? I, like, barely broke his nose.”
She turned back, ready to listen to her professor, only to find that apparently he’d been listening to her. She stammered out an apology, and he waved it away. “I think we all would like to hear a firsthand account of what happened there,” he said instead, eyes alight.
“Uh, what?” Steph said, entirely unused to being asked about fighting supervillains. She realized everyone was looking at her in a way -- well, she’d seen it before, but typically she was wearing a Bat on her chest when it happened.
It wasn’t a very dramatic story, though Steph added a little pizzazz to it so she didn’t disappoint anyone. Afterwards the lecture went on as usual, though she noticed she kept getting looks.
She got invited to three different parties on her way out of class, and fled to Babs’ office. She was actually in, though she gave Steph an annoyed look before returning her attention to her computer screen.
Steph waited as patiently as she could until Babs sighed, took her hands off the keyboard and said, “You wanted something?”
“So my identity’s blown,” Steph said, flopping into the chair across from Babs.
This got an immediate reaction. “Batgirl? Who all knows? We need to--”
“Not Batgirl,” Steph interrupted, before Babs started launching some sort of secret identity fail protocol. “The Riddler talked about recognizing me, and now everyone knows about my dad.”
Babs blinked. “I didn’t realize that wasn’t public knowledge.”
“The fact that Arthur Brown is the Cluemaster is something you can easily google,” Steph said, “but not that I’m his daughter. Brown’s not exactly an unusual last name. And people are being weird about it since I broke the Riddler’s nose in front of the whole library.”
“You don’t think that maybe the weirdness has to do more with your actions than your dad’s?” Babs said, with that eyebrow raise that Steph hated so much.
“I will admit to it being a factor but let’s be real, I’ve done weird shit before and no one invited me to parties over it.” Steph leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling. “Of all the damn things to finally make me cool in the eyes of my peers.”
Babs was definitely laughing at her.
*
It was weird, no doubt, but Steph actually was kind of enjoying the attention. Sure, it made dashing off on Batgirl business a little more difficult -- she actually had to tell one group of people who were wanting to hear what it was like to live with supervillains firsthand that she had ‘urgent supervillain business’ to attend to in order to escape, and while it wasn’t an actual lie, it definitely made her feel kinda gross -- but overall? Suddenly getting the respect and admiration of her peers, and seemingly a lot of it having to do with her own badass actions? Pretty great. Total confidence booster.
Especially since with the other Bats, her own supervillain ties were embarrassing, given that the others who had been born into supervillainy were related to the A-list. The Cluemaster was laughable when compared to David Cain, Lady Shiva and the al Ghuls.
So she laughed and demonstrated her left hook and did a few impromptu lessons showing girls how to get more power behind their punches, which was a definite public service for college girls in Gotham. She avoided actually talking about her dad or glorifying his actions, since she still hated his guts, and the vagueness of her answers on that topic only served to add more mystique to her growing legend.
Then it happened.
She was sitting in the commons with some of her new buddies, eating some nachos that had been gifted to her, when the girl beside her -- Frankie, that’s what Steph was pretty sure her name was -- sighed dreamily and said, “He’s just so hot, you know?”
“Who?” Steph said through a mouthful of tortilla chips and queso.
“Cluemaster.” Frankie flipped open her notebook, and wow. Wow. She’d drawn a picture of Steph’s dad. He was shirtless and had his hair fluttering over his shoulder like he was on the cover of a romance novel. Steph distantly noted that the art itself showed a lot of talent and effort, but most of her mind was occupied by the sound of the Kill BIll sirens echoing louder and louder.
“Right?” another girl -- Kala -- sighed. The guy next to her -- Miles -- nodded in agreement.
“What,” Steph managed to say.
“Like, you know how most of Gotham’s male villains are really gross-looking?” Kala continued, “which is totally unfair, given how fucking hot all the lady villains are.”
“Seriously,” Frankie said. “I mean, I enjoy looking at Ivy as much as the next person, but no one wants to check out Killer Croc or Two-Face, you know?”
“Well, Two-Face is at least half-hot,” pointed out Miles. “But the other half is a definite dealbreaker. But your dad, on the other hand…”
“No deformities, great hair, hot bod,” Frankie said. She smiled at Steph. “You’re so lucky.”
“I… what?” Steph struggled to find words. “Not really the word I would have chosen?”
Kala leaned in on her elbows. “He’s in Blackgate, right? Do they monitor his mail?”
“Do they--” Steph blinked rapidly. “You are not allowed to write dirty letters to my dad.”
They all laughed merrily, like she’d made a funny joke. Steph put down the plate of nachos and said, “That’s gross. He’s a terrible person! And in prison! And he’s married!”
She left off the fact that her parents’ marriage, at this point, was more a forgotten legality than a relationship. She stood up, brushing the crumbs off her lap and saying, “I’m gonna go now.”
She fled.
*
This time she didn’t wait for Babs to finish with her work when she burst into her office. “Babs! My life is a living nightmare!”
Babs gestured for her to be quiet, but Steph couldn’t hold in the horror of her discovery. “My new friends just wanted to be around me because they wanted to bone my dad.”
A choked laughing sound from Babs’ computer, and Steph hurried around the desk to find that Babs was in the midst of a video call with Dick. He looked entirely too amused.
“Are you sure?” Babs said doubtfully.
“One girl showed me her gross horny drawing of him,” Steph said. “I’m sure. They asked if Blackgate monitors his mail.”
Babs bit her lip, clearly holding in laughter. Dick didn’t bother with dignity and was full-on laughing at her.
“This is a nightmare.” Steph clunked her head down on Babs’ desk, then had a thought. “Dick, how do you shut this kind of shit down?”
“Huh?” Dick said.
“Like, with your buddies, how did you shut them down when they realized your dad was a hottie?”
Steph found that her own misery was somewhat lessened by the appalled look on Dick’s face.
“I mean,” she quickly clarified, so that no gross rumors got started, “I personally don’t find him bangable, you know, but clearly a lot of people do. He was voted People’s Sexiest Man Alive three times.”
“You’re very well-informed on the subject,” Dick managed, still making a face like he’d just tasted a lemon. Steph wondered if she’d been making that face at those awful Cluemaster fangirls. She hoped so.
“For his birthday this year I gave him a mug printed with the covers,” Steph explained with a shrug. “I think he took it to the Watchtower.”
Dick’s face went on another journey through a variety of emotions, then he said, “Babs, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye,” she said, waving her fingers cheerfully as he hung up.
Steph sighed. “That wasn’t very helpful.”
“You certainly enjoyed it, though,” Babs said, words tinged with laughter.
Steph couldn’t even deny it. Misery loved company.
*
Steph took to avoiding as many of her classmates as she could. She no longer trusted them. She went to class, hunched down in the back row like she thought she was famous, hoodie up and giant sunglasses on the second she left the building.
The only ones she trusted to eat lunch with were Jordanna and Francisco, who tolerated her presence. The revelation that her dad was a supervillain and that she was willing to punch other supervillains in the nose hadn’t been enough to change their opinions of her, which she was grateful for.
She was listening to Jordanna give a detailed rant about the reasons her new roommate was a nightmare when Jordanna went uncharacteristically quiet.
Steph realized someone was approaching, and she glanced up to see Tim sit down on the bench beside her. She blinked at him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, confused.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Tim said with a shrug, and opened up a takeout container. “Thought I’d have lunch with you.”
Francisco and Jordanna were staring again, Steph noticed. She glared at Tim, who calmly started unwrapping his gyro. “You could have asked.”
“You always tell me to leave you alone at school,” Tim replied easily. “I brought you some baklava, though.” He pushed the container towards her.
Steph accepted the baklava, but not the explanation. “Yeah, because aren’t you supposed to be at work.”
At Wayne Enterprises. She was ninety percent sure that Francisco and Jordanna totally recognized him.
“Meeting got cancelled,” Tim said cheerfully.
“Timothy,” Steph said, putting all of her angst into his name, dragging it out.
“You are Tim Drake-Wayne,” Jordanna said. She turned to Steph with narrowed eyes. “Why do you know one of the Waynes?”
“Good question,” Francisco said.”I mean, first the Riddler, now a Wayne? It’s like we don’t even know you.”
“We dated in high school,” Steph said, because the truth was always the best lie.
“And now we’re best friends,” Tim confirmed. “She’s basically part of the family.”
Steph looked briefly heavenward. This was not happening.
Jordanna looked between them. “How did you meet? I mean, a supervillain’s daughter and a billionaire’s son?”
“It was before he was a Wayne,” Steph said quickly.
“Because of the supervillain thing,” Tim said. Steph glared, but he continued on, fabricating total lies in the process. “My real dad was murdered by one, you see, and Steph here wrote me a really nice sympathy card. We bonded.”
“How sweet,” Francisco said.
“Yeah,” Steph said, “so sweet.”
Lunch continued on, and by the end of it Steph realized that there was no way that Francisco and Jordanna were going to let the knowledge that she had an in with the Wayne family die. When Tim offered to walk her to class, she accepted, and hissed into his ear, “What the fuck, Tim?”
“Dick told me about your problem,” Tim said cheerfully, waving at a few people as they passed. “We thought that you needed to distract from the issue at hand.”
“By showing everyone I’m even weirder than they thought? Ugh,” Steph said, clunking her head against his shoulder. “Tim, my friend, light of my life, how are you so smart and so very dumb at the same time?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said cheerfully.
“See, if you’d gone to college, you would, you high school dropout,” Steph grumbled.
“You didn’t finish high school either,” Tim pointed out.
“Yeah, but I got a GED and continued my education, so suck it.”
*
Steph found herself in the center of so many rumors after that. She understood what Dick and Tim had been thinking, but god, boys were such morons.
“True enough,” Babs agreed when Steph came in exclaiming that. Steph angsting in Babs’ office was becoming quite the habit.
“So now I’m the girl with the supervillain dad who is cozying up to the Waynes,” Steph said. “I heard a conspiracy theory that I’m trying to marry Tim and steal the Wayne fortune to disperse amongst the Gotham rogues.”
Babs snickered. Steph was beginning to think that her visits were the highlight of Babs’ workweek.
“I’m thinking about faking my death,” Steph said conversationally. “Then starting fresh with a completely new identity. That’s how I fucked it up last time, I went back to the old one. New me is the only way to go. Thinking about naming myself Esmerelda. Or maybe Jane. No one would notice a Jane.”
“Faking your death is not the way out of every problem,” Babs said.
“I mean, you say that, but are you sure?” Steph said. “Pretty sure I’m the resident expert on the topic here.”
“Rumors are only interesting for a little while,” Babs said calmly. “Just hold out a week or so, everyone will forget about this.”
Steph sighed. “I miss the good ole days when my biggest woes were finding out people were horny for my loser dad.”
“That was yesterday,” Babs said.
Steph wondered if Babs would fail her if she flipped her off.
*
The best and worst part about Barbara Gordon was that she was always right.
Steph suffered through the next week, but sure enough, the rumors swirling around her began to die down. She began her (thankful) transition into just another college student, instead of That Girl.
She no longer got free nachos, but she also no longer had to hear anyone talking about how hot her dad was, so that was an absolutely fair trade-off. Her connection to the Waynes was largely forgotten, her college friends just started talking to her about ping-pong tournaments and answering her questions about readings she didn’t get done. It was great.
Then a giant alien worm crash-landed in the center of campus, followed quickly by Supergirl. She wrestled the worm, taking out the math building in the process, and once the worm had been subdued, she spotted Steph.
“Hi, Steph, wanna go get ice cream?” she said cheerfully, seeming to completely forget that she was both still in her Supergirl costume and also covered in alien worm goo.
Jordanna and Francisco both slowly turned and looked at Steph, who had absolutely no idea how to explain that one.
Might as well lean into it. She shrugged at them and called back, “Sure!” to Supergirl.
Let the rumors fly.