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“Does your mother know you’re drinking that much crap?”
It was a guess, but a calculated one. Tim was a lot of things but he wasn’t a slob. Clutter, sure, papers strewn across the desk as he worked, absolutely, but he wouldn’t just leave trash lying around. So the empty cans sitting on his desk were probably from earlier that night, making the one he’d just opened his third energy drink in a row.
Tim didn’t bother to turn around, if Stephanie’s presence in the room had caught him by surprise he didn’t show it. He just took a long, deliberate, sip of the drink in question, before dead panning. “What mother?”
Steph stopped dead, blinking at the rebuttal. It was supposed to be a joke, that was basically the only way the two of them interacted anymore. She made a jab, he rolled his eyes and snarked in return. Then they would go about their night, and Steph would try not to think about when it hadn’t been like that. It was a miracle they were even on speaking terms after everything that had happened, genuine conversation was off the table. Longing for the way things used to be would just make her sad, and Steph didn’t particularly like being sad.
Unfortunately, the universe didn’t usually care about what she liked, and now there was a brick lodged in her stomach. How could she have been so stupid? For the first time in months her voice was completely serious, “Tim, I didn’t- I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine,” Nothing about his voice gives away if he was lying. The only tell was the way his eyes never left the screen. The mouse continued to scroll, but Steph doubted he was actually absorbing any of the information moving past.
For the second time in as many minutes Steph didn’t know what to say. It was obvious she’d gotten to him, and there was an instinct to fix it, but she didn’t know how to do that anymore. Even before her death she’d never been great at comforting people, but with the people she was close to she’d at least had some ideas. But now? Everything was different. She still cared about him and she knew Tim cared about her too, but she wasn’t sure either of them really knew how far those feelings went. Things were better than when she first got back, at least they could talk to each other without a fight, but they weren’t how they were before. They’d both individually decided to ignore Batman’s desire for them not to interact, but his disapproval still hung over every interaction, as if things weren’t complicated enough between them without it.
She still had to try. As much as they would rib at each other and dance around serious conversations, they were friends. At least, Steph consider Tim to be her friend. Maybe her only friend. The small gang she’d unwittingly collected as she slowly took out their actual leaders didn’t really count.
Steph gave him a second before asking, “How’s Dana doing anyway?”
This time Tim paused. His finger lightly tapped on the mouse, enough to make the casing click, but not enough to actually registering on the screen. For a moment Steph didn’t think he was going to answer, then she saw something in his body shift, just a little. “How much do you know?”
“I know she’s in Bludhaven, and I know why,” Steph admitted after a second, only feeling slightly ashamed of it. Compared to everything else she’d done, some light snooping into Dana Drake’s medical files wasn’t worth worrying about. “Do they have any idea if she’ll get better?”
“They hope so. The doctor said her brain just needs time to process everything on it’s own terms so it doesn’t overwhelm her,” Tim recited the information as if from a textbook, but the next comment had just a hint of the emotion starting to peak through. “That was two yeas ago. She’s better now, usually remembers who I am, but she still regularly forgets my dad is dead.”
“That sounds awful.” She didn’t mean to say it. Stephanie cringed as soon as she had, because what kind of feedback was that? Tim knew it sucked, he didn’t need her of all people to tell him that, but she also wasn’t sure what else there was to say. And it’s not like it wasn’t true, it did sound awful, there had just probably been a more tactful way to put it.
“Could be worse,” Tim shrugged, and Steph had to fight the urge not to push further. Tim was shutting down the conversation, and maybe the old Steph would have tried to pry anyway, but that wasn’t the relationship they had anymore. She didn’t have the right.
Tim finally looked away from the computer, in fact he turned his chair so he was facing her properly. On instinct Steph pushed herself off the pipe she was leaning against to stand up. “She still asks about you.”
“Dana does?” Of course Dana, who else would he possibly be talking about? But it also seemed so jarring to her that the question slipped out before her brain had caught up.
Maybe it was for the best because it actually got a small chuckle out of Tim. “Yeah. It used to suck, having to remind her you’d died, but now it’s actually nice. It’s like the one line of questioning where I get to give her good news.”
“You told her I’m alive?”
“Was I not supposed to?” Tim looked as surprised as she did, “I know you’re not exactly making it public knowledge, but she asked, and it’s not like anyone else would believe her even if she did tell them.”
Steph opted not to think about the depressing element of the last statement. “No, it’s fine. I was just surprised she was even asking about me, we broke up before all of that.”
“She really liked you, and she knows I care about you,” Tim shrugged, suddenly seeming a little bashful about the situation. Steph did her best not to focus to hard on the present tense of his statement. It was probably just a slip of the tongue anyway. “Besides, she’s still sort of my mom, it felt like she should know.”
“Why? Mine doesn’t.”
For the third time since she entered the room Steph only realized what she’d said after she’d said it, and for the third time Tim seemed to need a second to process it. That had to be some kind of record.
“Your mom doesn’t know?”
“Nope,” Steph tried to shrug it off, stepping forward to set her helmet on the desk and lean against one of the outcroppings, trying to appear perfectly at home and unbothered. “Why would she?”
Tim pushed back from the desk so he could look up at her properly, taking a moment to study her. “Why wouldn’t she? You really haven’t told her?”
“Told her what? That her dead daughter magically came back from the dead? Yeah, she’ll totally believe that.” Steph shook her head, careful to keep her voice as light as it would be on any other topic. She even managed a small laugh. “You and Bruce didn’t even believe me at first, and you know a lot more about the weirdness going on in the world than my mom does.”
“But she also doesn’t have any reason to think you’re tricking her unlike Bruce did,” Tim countered, but it didn’t seem like he was really talking about that. He was still watching her. Analyzing. “And she’s your mom.”
“So what?”
“So don’t you think she deserves to know her daughter isn’t dead?” It was obvious Tim was trying to stay calm, but there was just a hint of frustration in it now.
That hint was what got Steph to finally drop her own facade. “What good would it do? It’s been three years, she moved on. She has a stable job that she’s good at, even a new boyfriend. The last thing she needs is something uprooting her whole life.”
“You’re not uprooting her life. You’re telling her her daughter is alive,” Tim insisted. “That’s a good thing!”
“Is it?” Steph finally met Tim’s gaze, challenging..
“Of course it-”
“No,” She cut in, refusing to let up “Don’t just say ‘of course it is’ like it’s obvious. Actually think about it. Think about how I died, how I came back, and everything I’ve done since I did. Then try and tell me it’s a good idea to tell my mom.”
To his credit, Tim did take a pause. He leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping on the armrest, shifting his attention past her as he thought about it. It was over a minute before his focus moved back on to her. “I know it would be complicated, and might take time to explain, but yes, I think it would be a good thing. She’d want to know.”
“Know what? That her daughter is a murderer?” Steph didn’t usually put it as bluntly as that. They tended to dance around the topic now, but they all knew it was the truth. It didn’t matter that she had good reasons, or that Steph still stood by the actions, it was still murder. “Every mother’s dream come true right there.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Tim argued, and he was right, it just didn’t matter.
“That’s not the way she’ll see it. You’ve seen how the news talks about me.”
“She doesn’t even have to know you’re Black Mask. You don’t have to tell her that part-”
“She’ll figure it out. I couldn’t even keep Spoiler hidden from her, Black Mask doesn’t stand a chance.” To be fair, she was older now. She didn’t have to live at home, and she knew a lot more tricks for how to sneak around, but it still wasn’t worth the risk. “Besides, she knows the signs of secret super villain-dom better than anyone else.”
“You’re not a super villain.”
“I might as well be,” Steph muttered. She’d diverted her gaze at some point. She didn’t remember doing it. All she knew was she was looking down at her boots, hands clutching the edge of the desk. “That’s why she didn’t want me to be Spoiler, she was convinced it meant I was taking after dad. It didn’t matter how many times I told her I was trying to stop him, she still thought it was just the first step towards eventual villainy.”
“Black Mask isn’t Cluemaster. That would be like comparing Selina to Quinn.”
“But I’m also not exactly one of the good guys anymore.” She was a good person, she knew that, she had good intentions and what she was doing was helping people. More than what Batman did she would argue, but it was also a lot less clear cut. “Her daughter died a hero, I’m not going to take that away from her and replace it with her worst fear come to life.”
There was a break, which honestly Steph was grateful for. She didn’t fill it, just waited for Tim to figure out what to say, and when he did it was softer. “Pretty sure she already lived her worst nightmare when she found out her daughter died.”
Steph couldn’t blame Tim for thinking that. It was what should be true, that a parent’s greatest fear was the death of their child, but Tim didn’t really known anything about her family or her mom. The were far from normal, and rarely followed along with what they should be doing.
Instead of pointing that out, Stephanie sighed. “She’s clean Tim. Even after everything that happened, she stayed clean.”
“That’s really great, Steph.” It still felt weird to hear anyone, let alone Tim, use her real name. It happened so irregularly now, most of their communications were over comms. “But if she managed to get through loosing you without relapsing, do you really think learning your alive again is what would push her over the edge?”
“Of course not. But learning I’m Black Mask? That could do it.” She felt like they were going in circles, but what was obvious to her didn’t seem to necessarily be to him. “The reason she started was because of my dad and his stupid supervillain antics.”
“Right, and I’m sure him being an abusive asshole had nothing to do with it,” Tim muttered. It only phased her for a second. Stephanie couldn’t remember having ever explicitly told Tim about what actually living with Arthur had been like, but honestly she would have been more surprised if he hadn’t figured it out at some point. He wouldn’t have even had to snoop that far, she’d talked with Cass about it more times than she could count.
“Of course it did, but it was more than that. If she was checked out than she didn’t know what he was up to, and if anyone came around asking she wouldn’t have to lie about it,” Stephanie’s attention was fixed on the spot in front of her, determined to keep her voice even as she spoke. “And because she still worried about him, even when she was hoping he’d get caught she worried about what he was getting up to. All of that for a guy who treated her like shit. How much worse would it be if it was someone she actually cared about?”
Even when things were at their worst, when Crystal had barely been able to hold a conversation with her, Steph had never doubted that. With Arthur Steph had never been sure if he actually cared about her in his own twisted way or not, moments of praise surrounded by all the to tight grips and slurred insults. But it wasn’t like that with her mom. It wasn’t always good, there were plenty of times when they fought, but Steph had never doubted that Crystal did love her and wanted the best for her.
“She wasn’t always a great mom, but I was rarely a great daughter either,” she offered softly, filling the gap that Tim had left. “I put her through a lot. Fights, Spoiler, pregnancy, getting myself killed. I won’t put her through anything else.”
“Most of those were out of your control,” Tim offered, but it lacked some of the defensiveness he usually had when she mentioned anything related to the gang war. It was softer, looking to reassure rather than correct. “You didn’t ‘get yourself killed’, you were murdered.”
“Same difference,” Steph shrugged. In other situations she would have agreed, she’d made that argument to Bruce plenty of times herself, but that wasn’t the point right now. “She’s dealt with enough.”
“What about you?”
What about her? Steph’s immediate reaction was to brush it off, but she knew Tim well enough to know he wouldn’t accept that. He didn’t like unanswered questions, and once he’d dug into something he wouldn’t stop till he had his answer. They were similar in that way, which was probably also why they seemed more willing to give in to each other.
Stephanie stared down at her shoes, trying to figure out how to answer. “If she ever talked about me the way she used to talk about dad- looked at me the way she used to look at him- You’re right, I’ve dealt with a lot. Maybe more than I should have had to, but I managed it. But that? I don’t know if could handle that.”
Tim didn’t seem to have a response to that. Instead they both sat in the silence, letting it thicken around them without complaint. Four years ago the same silence would have strangled them, Steph would have jumped to find anything to fill it with, but now she let it be. They weren’t those kids, always trying to act cool and collected around each other, anymore.
They stayed there longer than Steph would have expected. Enough that she felt herself starting to relax, resting back into the silence to a point where it stopped feeling quite so stifling. Tim didn’t say a word the whole time, but he didn’t turn back to the computer screens either. He just sat next to where she was leaning against the desk, seeming to have relaxed back in his chair. The only thing that broke the illusion was the way his eyes kept flicking up to her every once and awhile, waiting for any sign she was ready to continue or need something. It was sweet, even if Steph would never admit it.
Finally she shifted to look over at him, reaching her foot out to nudge him lightly. “I’m really glad Dana is alright, even if she’s not perfect.”
“Me too.” Despite everything, Tim smiled a little.
The next comment was more of a risk, it edged on something they weren’t supposed to talk about, diving to close to the serious moments they tended to skip over. Stephanie said it anyway, she had to. “It couldn’t have been easy, dealing with all of that at once. It’s more than anyone should have been expected to.”
“Says the girl who was busy being tortured to death.”
It was meant to be teasing, and as such Steph didn’t mind, but she also didn’t give into it. “Don’t do that. Just because my life sucked at the same time doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to feel… I don’t know, angry or upset that yours did too.”
“That’s not the reason,” Tim countered, before seeming to realize what he said “Besides, it was years ago, no point dwelling on it now.”
Anyone else might have let him get away with it, but Stephanie knew better. “What is the reason then?”
There was a moment where she thought Tim was going to try and argue with her, then his shoulders dropped. “It’s my fault.”
“I wish I could say it was a surprise to hear you think that,” Steph attempted to tease, but even as she did she knew it wasn’t the time. It was just a habit. “What exactly is your fault this time?”
“All of it.”
“Descriptive as ever Timmy,” Steph rolled her eyes, but when she looked back at Tim he didn’t look nonchalant or teasing anymore. He looked dead serious. Her own mocking dropped instantly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, all the shit that happened around then, Darla, my dad, you- all of that happened because of me.”
Steph’s immediate reaction was to deny it, but doing so wouldn’t actually help. Somehow they’d managed to make it this far, and despite everything this felt right. Normal. Just the two of them, talking the way they were supposed to, without having to worry about Batman’s wishes or unspoken rules. She wasn’t going to risk a fight right now. “Darla Aquista?”
“Yeah. She went to school with me.” Tim didn’t bother to ask why Stephanie knew the name. She was a victim of the gang war, that was the only explanation needed. “She was shot, the first day.”
“Last I checked that makes it my fault, not yours.” There was no teasing in it this time. They’d gone over the events of the gang war more times than Steph could count. The blame had been placed at everyone’s feet at one point or another, but it always landed back on her. It didn’t matter why she had done it, she was the one who had called the meeting. At the end of the day it would always be seen as her fault, so if she could leverage it right now to help elevate whatever misplaced guilt Tim was clearly feeling she was going to take advantage of it.
Except, of course, this was the one time it didn’t work.
Tim shook his head. “I was with her, when it happened. Her father was the leader of one of the gangs, so crew from one of his rivals attacked the school looking for her. At first I took charge, tried to get everyone to the safest places in the building. But then the guns started and I froze. I coward in the gym with everyone else when I should have been out there trying to stop them. When I finally got up the courage to go out in the hallway, it was to late. Darla wasn’t dead, but she was close. My instincts clicked in, and I tried to keep her alive. Everything I’d been taught, I did everything right, but that didn’t change the fact it was to late.”
“Being to late doesn’t make it your fault.” As if Tim didn’t know that. As if that wasn’t superheroing 101. As if knowing that made any fucking difference any time you weren’t fast enough.
“It doesn’t when you did everything in your power to get there on time. But when you weren’t even trying?” Tim shook his head. “The gunmen had already left by the time I found her. I knew it was already to late, I was just in denial.”
“You kept the school safe, everyone who survived that day might not have if you hadn’t been there.” Again, that wouldn’t help much. The people you saved never stick in your head the way the people you didn’t do. Steph knew that better than anyone, which is why she brought it up. Sometimes the reminder could help, even if it didn’t fix everything.
“But more might have been if I hadn’t been to scared to face them head on,” Tim countered without missing a beat. Of course he did, because that was always the argument. “Maybe I could have stopped them before they got to her, or gotten her to the gym faster… but I didn’t. Instead I was hiding.”
“You’re changing your own story. Were you helping keep people safe or hiding?”
“Steph-”
“What? Both can’t be true,” Steph refused to let up this time, she needed to get it through his head. “I’m sorry about Darla, it’s awful that that happened, but you weren’t just sitting around. Maybe you could have saved her, or maybe if you’d tried you’d have been the one who was shot, and than how many people would have died? Or maybe someone would have followed you and they would have died instead. You can’t play the what if game. There are to many options.”
Tim sighed. “I know you’re right, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.”
“It never does, but that doesn’t make it any less true,” Steph offered, though she knew that didn’t change things. At least he was acknowledging that she was right. That was a start. She just wished there was a way she could actually get him to accept it.
But there wasn’t, so it wouldn’t do them any good to linger on it. Steph nudged his foot. “What actually happened to your dad?”
It was maybe a little blunt, but it at least got them onto the next topic, and the truth was Steph didn’t know. For all she knew it was Tim’s fault. In the past it hadn’t really seemed to matter, Jack Drake was dead, that was all she needed to know, asking questions. Now she wished she had, it would have made it a lot easier to argue against Tim’s line of thought.
“I’m surprised no one ever told you, it’s one hell of a story.” Tim was clearly trying to keep up the teasing for a moment more, but when he spoke again it was detached. As if he were reciting a mission report. Maybe he was. “The Atom’s estranged wife, Jean Loring, hired Captain Boomerang to kill him in order to make it seem like there was a serial killer at large who was targeting the families of superheroes. She hoped it would scare The Atom into going back to her. I don’t know why, but my dad was the first person she targeted.”
“And that’s your fault how?”
“They targeted him because of me. If I wasn’t Robin-”
“Than it would have been someone else’s dad who died.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Tim’s voice was almost teasing, but for once Steph didn’t raise to meet it.
“It should yeah,” She shrugged, trying not to make her words sound as careful as they were. “It wasn’t about you, it was about Robin. If it was going to be someone’s dad no matter what, that means there was nothing you could have done.”
“So I should be happy my dad was killed instead of someone else’s?” Tim sounded almost offended.
“Okay, I can see how that’s what you got out of it, but that’s not what I meant,” Steph assured immediately. “I just mean that it wasn't because of something you did or something you could have prevented. The only way to have prevented it would have been for you to never become Robin, which is an absurd thing to have expected past you to not do, not to mention how many people you’ve saved because you were Robin. Hell, even your dad. How many times did Bruce go out of his way to save him? Without your connection to Batman he might not have been as focused on keeping him safe, he probably would have died years before Captain Boomerang got to him.”
“You have a funny way of trying to make someone feel better.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
Tim rolled his eyes, but did mutter “But I guess you’ve got a point.”
He didn’t sound anywhere near certain, which was fair. Steph wasn’t sure if she believed it herself, but she wasn’t going to back down. It wasn’t Tim’s fault, if it took a little bit of absurd logic to get that through his head so be it.
“I’ll take that,” Steph nodded, giving him a moment before continuing, “You’re oh for two, should we move on to the third or is that enough introspection for one day?”
To her relief, Tim smiled. “Hey you’re the one who asked. If you didn’t want to hear about my baggage you should have left it alone.”
“And miss out on all this juicy gossip? Wouldn’t dream of it.”
For a second Steph thought he might actually laugh. “So this is all just an excuse to gather gossip? I should have known.”
“What else did you think it was? You better tell me the rest so I have the complete story when I tell my friends about it.” As if she had any friends she would willingly share this kind of information with. Other than Tim himself. Maybe. Steph raised an eyebrow, “How the hell did you manage to make my death your fault?”
Tim’s smile dropped immediately, gaze adverting so he was looking at the table rather than her. Maybe this had been a mistake. It was one thing to ask him about Darla or his dad, but to ask him to confront his guilt when the person in question was standing right in front of him? That had to be a lot for anybody, and it couldn’t be helped by their current uncertain relationship. She should have just taken the out, maybe she could still find-
“I should have been here.”
Steph frowned. “What?”
“When Roman took you, I should have been here. But Bruce wasn’t listening to me, and by that point he’d taken full control of Oracle’s systems. All I could do was sit and watch.” Tim’s voice was soft, but he wouldn’t look directly at her. “I couldn’t just sit there, not well Gotham was falling apart, so I grabbed your Robin suit and I went to help. Which meant nobody was in the Clocktower to notice when your vitals started to drop, nobody even knew you were in the field. If I had, we would have found you before it was to late.”
Despite the comment, Steph actually felt relieved. This, at least, she knew how to deal with this.
“I was wearing my original Spoiler suit.”
Tim still didn’t look over at her. “What?”
“When Bruce fired me the deal was I was supposed to stop being Spoiler too, so he took back everything he’d given me. I had some gear stashed at my house that he didn’t know about, but I couldn’t exactly claim I’d lost an entire suit. So the only one I had that night was the one I’d made before we even met,” Steph watched Tim closely to make sure the words were sinking in. “Which means it was made out of old gymnastics gear and cheap fabric. There wasn’t anything in that suit that could read my vitals. There wouldn’t have been any alerts even if there was someone here to see them, and even if you knew I was missing there weren’t any trackers on me.”
“Oh.”
Under different circumstances it would have made Stephanie smile. She could almost see the way Tim’s brain was spinning, processing an option that he’d clearly never considered before. Not that she could really blame him, it wan’t like her suit had been the thing anyone was paying attention to when she’d finally made it to the clinic.
“Even if you had been in the Clock Tower, you wouldn’t have known. There wouldn’t have been any answer even if you had tried to reach out to me. A lot of things could have gone differently that night, but there was nothing you could have done. It wasn’t on you.”
And she meant it. Stephanie had blamed a lot of people over the years. Bruce, Roman, Damian, Leslie, Duke, herself… but never Tim. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t always done everything right by her, they’d had their problems, but she hadn’t always been good to him either, and none of it had any bearing on her death. Nothing about that had been his fault or within his control.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you?” Steph shrugged “But now you do.”
Tim didn’t smile this time, or even respond. He still wasn’t really looking at her, gaze fixed on a point in front of him, hands clasped as he tried to figure it out.
Stephanie didn’t push, she just stayed where she was, leaning back against the counter and watching Tim. Usually he could process information faster than anyone she knew, but something about this seemed to be holding him up. Whatever it was, Steph didn’t ask, she just waited, letting him take all the time he needed.
It was only when Tim leaned back in her chair that she finally spoke up. “Three deaths off your conscious in fifteen minutes. That’s gotta be some kind of record.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Tim didn’t sound sure, and there was no hint of the teasing in his response. Steph hadn’t really been expecting there to be.
There was a pause, but rather than contemplative, this one felt awkward. Where were they supposed to go from there?
Nowhere. Obviously.
“And with that, my work here is done,” Steph pushed herself off the counter and reached into her jacket to pull out the piece of paper she’d come to drop off in the first place. “This is a list of potential stash houses. Batman’s got two days to deal with them before I take care of them my way.”
Bruce wouldn’t like being given an ultimatum, but that was his problem. She didn’t have to tell him at all, she could have just taken care of it, and part of her wished she had. But she was trying to play nice, or at least nice enough that she didn’t have to worry about Batman hunting her down.
“I’ll make sure it he does,” Tim assured, and well Steph knew he meant it, even he couldn’t always control what The Bat decided to do.
Nodding, Stephanie reached over to grab her helmet. “Let me know if he doesn’t.”
She was reaching for the door handle before Tim spoke up.
“Would- Do you want to come with me next time I visit Dana?”
The offer caught her by surprise, and for a second Steph hesitated, trying to figure out why Tim was offering. If it was pity after the conversation about her mom, or some way to help Dana that might elevate his guilt. A way of reaching out, an offer to hang out without their vigilante persona’s that still gave him plausible deniability about wanting to spend time with her.
But maybe it didn’t matter why he was offering. Maybe it was just enough that he was.
“Just tell me when.”