Chapter Text
Stephanie realizes she’s in over her head when Slade breaks the “detonator.”
He never really had her going with the whole freezing time thing. It was an escalation from sending randoms pointed at them with orders to “destroy them.” Too much of one, really, for it to be the only thing he has going on. When she slips away from the other Titans as they’re disarming the bomb, she thinks he’s played his cards too soon. That she’s getting one over on him by tracking him, by not waiting her turn.
There’s a lot of different types of bad guys out there. Bruce has this whole taxonomy, which does kind of become “here’s why it’s totally okay I make out with Catwoman regularly, I promise, she’s cool” at times but that doesn’t change the fact he’s got a point. There’s types of bad guys that like to blow shit up for the heck of it, who want to watch the world burn like the Joker. There’s the types that’re pranksters who have ridiculous schemes and are really only want to cause problems for the clout, like the Riddler. Prankster bombs don’t tend to actually be functional, but they are just often enough that it’s better to take them seriously enough they don’t start getting into genuine trouble. Slade had seemed somewhere much closer to the latter, but the thing is, a prankster never admits something’s a trick unless they’ve got something else up their sleeve.
There’s another type, one Bruce tried hardest to keep her away from. Pranksters are harmless and guys who just want to watch the world burn are as dangerous to Stephanie Brown as they are to Robin. Bastards like Black Mask, they take it as personally as pranksters and as brutally as the guys who just want to watch the world burn. At the time, Bruce’s unwillingness to let her get anywhere near cases involving bastards frustrated her. She grew up with Cluemaster, after all, who’s basically a failed bastard. She came to Jump City with the Titans because she wanted the responsibility. She can’t live under Bruce’s auspices forever.
She takes a moment to reevaluate the situation, and now the moment’s spent, Slade has her on the ground, arm twisted painfully. She could break out but at what cost? Fuck. Bruce, the bastard, has his taxonomies on heroes too. ”You pay your debts,” he’d diagnosed when she’d insisted. ”Those who help you, you protect with your life. Those that cross you…” She’d been annoyed but unable to protest because, yeah, he wasn’t wrong. He’s not wrong now. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for Slade to bait her, even now.
“What do you want?” she asks, keeping her voice under control. Her heartbeat is fast. “To fuck with me? Why? You from Gotham? Something about the Bat?”
“You seem unconvinced that I could be interested in you for your own sake.” Like that’s not ominous as hell. Fuck. She doesn’t struggle. She knows better than to try to force her way out while he’s got such a close eye on her. Gotta distract him and wait for the right moment. To do what? She can’t risk the Titans. Can Cyborg figure out a cure? How long will it take?
“You get used to some misogyny in the workplace,” she smiles with gritted teeth. He twists further. “People look at me, and they see something to use against the big bad Bat. Even now.“
“They think you make him weak, don’t they?” His tone makes it clear he thinks it’s funny, which makes her even more uncomfortable. He clearly knows more about the two of them than most. A lot about her, since he so easily exploited her need to be the smartest person in the room at all times. Fuck, this place is dark. Does he live here or is it just a convenient spot for a trap? “They don’t realize he’s been the one holding you back, do they, Robin?”
She growls, guttural and more feral than any sound Gar’s ever made, and shoves the elbow of her free arm into Slade’s gut. It lands but barely.
The armor there hurts to strike so directly, but it’s enough of a surprise to tear her arm free without hurting herself too badly. She bounces back as best as she can, scanning the mostly empty industrial room for anything she can use. It doesn’t cross her mind to call for help even now. She’ll kick herself for it later, but for now, she goes after him with everything she has. He doesn’t get to talk about Bruce. The Titans don’t make her talk about Bruce.
She attacks with a series of kicks, which he dodges, dodges, and then counterattacks, one hand on her ankle to throw her to the ground, again. When she has her team at her back, his tendency to knock her down is annoying, but it’s part of the rhythm of a fight. Ebb and flow. Sometimes he wins, sometimes they fight him off. It’s how this is supposed to work. She thought he was playing by the fucking rules.
“Did I touch a nerve? I meant it as a compliment.” He stands over her, and she twists in time to see his foot coming down on her back. He doesn’t press it down hard or with much impact, just stable. She tries to twist but when she does, he pushes just hard enough that it starts to scream. If he keeps pushing… with that supernatural strength, who knows? He can kill her if he tries. He can kill her team. She’s alone. “You intrigue me, Robin. You have such potential.“
She hates the way he says her name. Knowing. Mocking. It’s the way he talks in general— what she once jokingly called “the vaccent,” short for villain accent, and it’d stuck. Usually, it’s funny to mock, but right now, literally under the jackboot, it doesn’t feel funny. Conjured up images of a middle schooler talking like that or, better, him practicing in front of the mirror, don’t seem to be doing it for her right now.
“I’m—“ breath, “so sorry —“ breath, “to—,” breath, “disappoint—“ breath, “but I,” breath, “told I’m—“ breath, “ne’er living—“ breath, “up to—“ breath, “that.”
“Not yet, you aren’t. You have to know they’re holding you back.” I need them to. It’s not a rebuttal, so she doesn’t say it. She focuses on trying to breathe through the increasingly painful pressure. She just needs a chance. “You’re like me.”
She doesn’t shake her head. She thinks, No, but it sounds weak in her head. He sounds like Cluemaster, trying to be serious and intimidating only to fail at anything except for ruining Stephanie’s life. Except he’s not failing right now. How many times has Stephanie thought, with a little elbow grease, this half baked scheme could really go somewhere? If it weren’t for Bruce’s little intervention, how far would she have gone to unify Gotham? Just because she’s grown to care about Jump too, just because she has the Titans to protect, doesn’t mean those old ambitions don’t keep her up at night. If she had firepower like what Slade’s packing in his fists alone… but that was always supposed to be for Bruce. In the name of his vision.
“I’m—“ she starts, but he twists the boot and she shuts up because she doesn’t have the breath for words.
“I’ve been in search of a successor for some time, someone to carry on the torch. I have to admit, I was surprised to find someone so perfect had flown so flawlessly under the radar for so long. So clever, so determined… Yes, you’ll serve me.” He seems to drift off into thought for a moment there. He lifts his weight, no where near enough for her to break free but she’s got enough air in her lungs to talk now, so there’s that. “My apprentice.”
“No,” she hisses, putting as much venom into the single word as she’s capable of. Which is, considering how many years of rage she’s got stored up, a whole fucking lot.
She knows Bruce teaches her to hold back, to pull her punches, and for the most part, she’s fine with it. Cluemaster’s never actually tried to kill her in costume. If anything, he goes easier on her in costume. He’s always been under the mistaken assumption that she’s the only thing keeping Bruce from putting people into the hospital or worse on a regular basis. Lots of people seem to buy this, despite the fact he didn’t do that before she showed up. If anything, it’s Bruce keeping Stephanie from going down that dark path. She listened to Bruce for as long as she did and she listens to her team now, because some nights, she dreams of pulling off the Cluemaster mask and finding her own face beneath it.
“It’s up to you, really. You can do this the easy way or the hard way. You’re mine either way, it’s more of a difference between how alive and well your friends are. So, what will it be?” She glances up at the display where everyone’s vital signs are displayed. They’re clearly in distress. “I should mention, in case you’re expecting a rescue. They think you’re dead.”
Her heart skips a beat. She twists her head to look up at him, desperate for some sort of tell. It’s a bad situation, sure, but she’s a hero. Heroes get captured all the time, and they bail each other out. Every situation like this has a timer, counting down the clock until rescue. She’s gotten grabbed a few times before, despite Bruce’s best efforts, and they’ve mostly been relatively amicable situations. She’s been pinned before but not like this. He crouches down so she can feel the weight of the rest of him. However many pounds of pure muscle.
She’s not strong enough to fight him off, not alone. Not right now.
For fucks sake, she thinks, using annoyance to cover up the fear and, to be honest, the humiliation. She can’t stop thinking about what Bruce is going to say when he hears about this, and she’s not sure if she’d rather he be mad she was so stupid as to let herself get tricked like this or…
They think you’re dead.
Will Bruce tell her parents?
The excuse he gave for the Titans thing was that she’d gotten a scholarship for an elite boarding school, as an extension of the internship with Wayne Industries that she’d used to cover up Robinning. She’d been super annoyed with him for assuming she couldn’t figure out a cover story all on her own, but it’s not like she could fake the documents like he could, so she went along with it.
It’s not like she’s on the best terms with Crystal and Cluemaster, considering the everything, but all Crystal ever did wrong was not be there for her as much as Stephanie needed, which she knows and has at least been trying to be better about. A few years ago, she might’ve gone “serves her right,” but… And even if they hadn’t been figuring things out, Stephanie actually likes most of her cousins. Roxy is seven months pregnant, and although she doesn’t know Stephanie is Robin, Stephanie’s pretty sure she’s got a good guess, ever since she joked with Stephanie in private about naming the kid after her favorite cape and Robin had showed up on the official list.
Even if she does manage to get out of here, which she will one way or another, will she be able to go back to the civilian half of her life? It was already enough of a risk having Stephanie leave for “boarding school” at the same time as Robin moved to Jump City. Cluemaster is stupid, but he’s not that stupid. Suddenly, she can’t breathe for an entirely different reason.
She wants to say he wouldn’t hurt his own family to get to her, but he already has.
“Fine,” she says. If Slade wants to teach her, then he can teach her the very things she needs to know to kill — to stop him. When she’s strong enough to win, she’ll take her life back. All of it. If Cluemaster tries to stop her, she’ll stop him like she’ll stop Slade. Bruce wouldn’t approve, but Bruce isn’t fucking here, is he? Bruce thinks she’s reckless, proud, and vengeful, which he still isn’t wrong about, but he’s the same way. He just has a few more standards in some ways and a few less in others.
“Fine, master.”
Lessons about knowing when to bend go out the window. Bruce always tells her to put her safety above her pride, as if anyone would ever even try to do something like this to him. As if he doesn’t get the respect simply for being Batman, while she’s always left humiliated. Used as a tool, over and over again, never taken seriously on her own merits. For a moment there, she’d at least managed to believe Slade respected her. If he wanted her to work for him, then he had to recognize her strength as a fighter and a leader.
He so fucking obviously doesn’t.
“You’ve got to be fucking kid—“ He presses down, hard, and she chokes. She’d raise her hands in surrender, but she can’t. She doesn’t scream, but only because she doesn’t have any air left in her lungs. “Got it, got it!”
“No. I don’t think you do.” He steps off, then stands up, and she coughs. She pulls herself up into a crouch, planning to get all the way up, but she finds she can’t. Her muscles are refusing to listen to her.
“If you kill or hurt one of them,” she points out, twisting up to glare at him once she’s regained her composure. “Then the others will find out and remove the nanos. If you kill them all, then you don’t have any hostages left. I’ll follow orders, but you’re leaving that shit at the door.”
She thinks he’s laughing beneath his mask, but it’s hard to tell. She really doesn’t want him to call her bluff, because at this point, she’s not entirely sure how much of a bluff it is. She places her friends above her pride, deep down, right? She’s pretty sure she values her friends above her pride. Any arguments about this being some step on a slippery slope, about her needing to set boundaries now before things get worse, are nonsensical, because it’s already as bad as it can get. Captured by someone that’s quickly revealed himself to be a full on sadistic bastard with her friends held at gunpoint but thinking she’s dead. It’s going to get worse one way or another.
“I admire your priorities,” he says, clearly amused. “Very well then. I won’t kill them just yet, but you will learn discipline, my apprentice.”
“Renegade,” she corrects. It’s a name she’s had in mind for some time, just in case she needed to go really off the handle. It’s not that she expected she’d need to do a heel turn at some point, but so many other heroes have had their own edgy arcs, she figured it’d be best to have something picked out in advance. It’s only practical. Besides, it’s better than something as generic as apprentice. Ugh.
He raises an eyebrow at that, then he kicks her in the gut hard enough to throw her across the room.
Her head spins as she processes she’s moved, sure that at least one of her ribs is either bruised or broken. She knows how to evaluate her own physical condition, but her head is spinning so badly— concussion? She’s not sure if he’s that fast or if she just missed a second there. Maybe both. She coughs, and he’s right there in front of her, twice. Fuck. Fuck, she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe and when she tries, it hurts. Is she seeing double because concussion? Because she’s crying? She doesn’t— she’s not, it’s just the wind being knocked out of her— she can’t breathe.
He’s so close. He’s looking at her, and she wants him to stop. She tries to propel herself forward into some sort of attack, consequences be damned, but she can’t move. Not because she’s scared or pinned, her body is literally refusing to obey her, and fuck, fuck fuck—
“If you want your own name again,” he says, hauling her up by the collar of her costume. It hurts. Has he been going easy on her before? Is he still now. “You will have to earn it, apprentice.”
This is about when Stephanie decides the no killing rule is going out the window for real.