Chapter Text
Finding a good table at school lunch depended on getting in the cafeteria line early, so you got your food faster and thus got your pick of the tables. But if you didn’t get your food at school, you could beat the kids who made it to the front of the line and have all the options.
Modern problems, modern solutions.
Maria sat at the corner table by the window, lots of natural light streaming through. With autumn finally in the air and winter coming soon, she wanted to savor the warmth while she could. Besides, her apartment didn’t have windows like this. She was a sucker for them. She decided that if and when she ever got to the point of owning a house, the first thing she’d look for was big windows, no matter how much she’d have to clean them.
As the lunch line stretched along the cafeteria walls, Maria pulled out her reading assignment and one of three granola bars she’d snagged that morning. She’d already eaten one for breakfast. She’d save the third for if she got hungry later.
Gotham Academy didn’t have those long, brown tables with the benches. No, instead they had several dozen smaller, circular tables with actual chairs. So she was downright comfortable, nursing her granola bar and reading Shakespeare—honestly, Othello kinda slapped—when Damian set his tray next to her. He frowned. “Is that all you brought for lunch?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. She thought about lying—he did it all the time to keep Robin a secret, even though he didn’t know that she knew. But that felt unfair.
“Our fridge is out,” she admitted. “Went out sometime last night, so most of the food spoiled. Mom, Em, and I spent the morning saving what we could and taking out so many trash bags so the place wouldn’t stink up.”
The greatest loss was what they’d stored in the freezer, food that was destroyed much more quickly and couldn’t be salvaged at all. Lucia had sworn in both English and Spanish while tossing at least half a paycheck’s worth of soggy pizza and cartons of milky soup that had once been ice cream.
“…is lunch here too expensive?” Damian asked, probably realizing just now that Maria had never bought anything from the cafeteria. She’d always brought food from home, sandwiches and snacks carefully tucked away in a beat-up lunchbox that had been old when she’d got it second-hand for elementary school.
It was only about three dollars for lunch at Gotham Academy, more if you went back for seconds. Emily’s school charged a buck fifty.
Lucia had only had three dollars cash.
Maria had insisted on the granola bars, saying how the meal that day was supposed to be lasagna, anyway—a dish she hated.
(It wasn’t. It was some sort of meat and rice dish, or veggie and rice if you were Damian, with a plethora of veggies and fruit as a side and pudding for dessert.)
“Lunch everywhere is too expensive,” Maria grumbled. “Don’t worry, we already called the landlord. They should have it fixed soon.”
“I can get you lunch today,” Damian offered.
“Absolutely not! We only have another fifteen minutes and you’ve barely eaten anything.” She nudged his tray closer to him.
“I’ll eat your granola bar while I wait in line.”
“You’re not buying me lunch, Damian,” she said. “I’m fine. Barely hungry, anyway.”
She took a small bite of her granola bar to prove her point. Damian made that “Tt” noise, but dropped it, tucking into his meal.
“Have you had the new chemistry teacher yet?” he asked.
“Mr. Brown? Yeah, he said he was surprised to see a ‘girl like me’ in a ‘school like this.’” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if he meant someone from Crime Alley or someone Latin. What happened to Miss Weston, anyway?”
Damian’s mouth thinned. “I overheard the faculty say that her paramour officially reported her missing, either last night or in the early morning.”
Maria sucked in a breath. That…that wasn’t good. It wasn’t good anywhere, but in Gotham, if someone went missing without some sort of ransom note, you had about two days before you should start looking at the bottom of the harbor.
“Maybe it was the boyfriend and he’s covering his tracks?” she suggested. “That’s usually how that works.”
“He has an alibi.”
“…well, I’m out of ideas.”
He tsked, smirking playfully. “Some scholarship student.”
Maria laughed. In the last month and a half, she’d learned that Damian had a rather dry, acerbic sense of humor. She was never offended by it; when Damian didn’t like you, or thought you were somehow incompetent, he let you know. Bluntly.
Since he never called her stupid—had even, in fact, called her intelligent—and only poked fun at her in situations like this, she was pretty sure that meant he respected her, if not liked her.
He popped a grape in his mouth, then scowled. “Ugh.”
She leaned forward in concern. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve had grapes before, but they were much sweeter and more pleasant. They were also green.”
“Oh, yeah. Candy grapes. Love those.”
“Well, these are awful.” He dropped the whole bundle in front of Maria. “Here. Jason will have my hide if I were to ever waste food.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as he resumed his meal as if nothing happened.
You’re not subtle, she thought, but didn’t say as she ate the grapes.
--
“Got it!” Maria cheered as the handcuff slipped from her wrist.
Stephanie clapped, sitting next to Maria against the wall of Wayne Manor’s (ridiculously massive) home gym. It also had excellent, tall windows, so Maria couldn’t complain.
“Nice! Let’s do it again.” Stephanie re-cuffed her wrists. “This time see if you can get it in under five minutes.”
“Hardy har har.” Still, Maria got to work, using the hairclip Stephanie had procured and snapped in half as a make-shift lockpick.
Every Saturday morning for the last five weeks, Damian had invited her to his home for “family workouts.” Maria had no interest in learning how to fight—certainly not as fiercely as Tim and Dick going at it on the mats while Jason and Damian heckled them—but she still found it fun, and Lucia wasn’t going to discourage her from learning a few basic escapes. She’d discourage it less if she found out those lessons came straight from Batman’s brood.
But today had been a little different. Rather than learning how to escape someone’s unwanted grab or grapple, Stephanie had brought out duct tape, zipties, and handcuffs.
Duct tape and zipties were surprisingly easy to get out of—so long as the hands were restrained in front of the body. “If they tie you up behind your back, you’re kind of screwed,” Stephanie had admitted. “Unless you find something sharp to cut through it, or dislocate your thumb.”
Once Maria had mastered escaping the duct tape and zipties (without the thumb-dislocation), they’d moved on to actual handcuffs. It was a unique challenge, one that Maria found herself enjoying, probably because it took more patience and strategy than brute force and dexterity.
“Got it again!” she cheered, hearing that lovely click of victory as the cuffs once again released.
And sure, Maria could chalk up the extensive knowledge of restraint-removal as part of the ransom training all the rich kids went through. Except that training stressed obedience to the kidnappers. Do as you’re told, don’t fight back, stay calm, and some combination of the parents, police, and superheroes will handle it. Angering or frustrating the kidnappers would just lead to them injuring you, or worse.
Of course, if the kidnapping wasn’t about ransom, then you needed to fight. And Maria would never be taken for ransom. Her mother worked two jobs—one at Batburger, the other as a cleaning lady for a conglomerate service—just to keep them housed in a crumbling Crime Alley two-bedroom apartment.
And if the Bats ever got kidnapped while in uniform…well. That wouldn’t be for ransom, either.
“Nice!” Stephanie high-fived her. “We’ve got another half hour before lunch. Anything else you want to cover?”
“Nah. I’d rather run away so I don’t get put in cuffs, so I’m gonna hop on the treadmill.”
“Preventative strategy. Smart.”
One thing Maria liked about Stephanie—and Jason—was that they were both born and raised in Crime Alley. None of the Waynes openly pitied her. There was no contempt or disdain even from Bruce or Tim. But there was a certain level of understanding with Stephanie. A relatability that Maria just didn’t have with the others.
So when Stephanie asked, “You thinking about joining a sport at your school?” Maria didn’t hesitate to answer,
“No. Too expensive.”
“Ugh. Even track? Or swim?”
“It’s at least $125 just to join. Even in Emily’s school; it’s why she can’t do cheerleading.”
“Oh, fuck that. And they wonder why everyone’s joining a gang these days. Sure, you’ll get shot, but admission’s free.”
Maria snorted, snagging a treadmill next to Duke, who gave them both an amused “I don’t know if you’re joking or not” look. (Stephanie definitely wasn’t joking.)
He hopped off of his treadmill. “Anyone up for a push-up contest?”
“Oh lord,” Maria grumbled, adding some speed.
What should have been a simple push-up contest turned into a contest of handstanding push-ups between Duke, Jason, Dick, Damian, Tim, and Stephanie. Cassandra broke her usual silence to say only, “Bad idea.”
Surprise surprise, by the time they all shuffled down to lunch, none of the boys nor Stephanie could lift so much as a paperclip. Not even Jason, who’d won. (And promptly collapsed immediately after Damian did.)
Bruce Wayne—already seated at the table with the very generous lunch spread Alfred set up—frowned at them over his tablet. “What?”
“Handstand push-up contest,” Maria explained as Dick dropped into his chair with a groan. Still not using his arms.
“Ah. And you let them?”
She sputtered, even at his playful smirk. “Sometimes you have to let the kids touch the hot stove, Bruce!”
She’d tried calling him Mr. Wayne several times. He always shot it down, saying it made him feel old. As if his dark hair wasn’t going silver at the temples.
Honestly, she hadn’t been sure what to expect from Bruce Wayne, even before figuring out he was Batman. She didn’t follow the tabloids, but everyone had heard of “Brucie’s” playboy status. Although that had definitely mellowed since he started collecting kids like Pokémon. Then she realized he was Batman, and she didn’t know what to think of his personality. Which one was the front? The goofball, or the stone cold vigilante?
Turned out, a little of both. Goofball appeared in the very dad sense of humor he portrayed that always made the rest of the table groan, and the vigilante came out just a little when he had to be stern with his kids (like when Tim and Jason had been seconds away from fighting for real a couple weeks ago. Hadn’t Red Hood beat up Red Robin a couple of times a few years ago?)
It was hard to judge someone completely when you only saw them for an hour a week, but Bruce had been nothing but kind and dorky to Maria. And Damian rarely had a bad thing to say about his father.
She should probably tell them that she knew about their nightlife, but…no. That seemed like something they (Damian) had to tell her. Like when someone realized their friend was a meta, or gay.
Maria couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the group as lunch got started. Stephanie’s arms were as functional as wet noodles as she tried to reach for one of the little sandwiches. The trembling limb dropped on the table halfway there. And she was one of the more functional ones; Damian was outright shaking. Maria took pity and put the sandwich on her plate.
“Thank you,” Stephanie moaned. “And one of those brownies, please?”
“They’ve got nuts and peanut butter. Damian said there weren’t any allergies…?”
“Only shrimp,” Tim piped up, slightly muffled, as he’d dropped his head on the table next to his plate in exhaustion. (He’d been the first to go down, quickly followed by Stephanie. It’d still taken an impressive twenty-one hand-stand push-ups to bring him down, which was twenty-one more than what Maria could do.)
Even though Maria could get to Wayne Manor via the bus—or Lucia driving her, on the rare occasions her work schedule cooperated—Damian always insisted on sending Alfred (or one of his brothers) all the way across town to pick her up. And so Maria always made sure to bring some sort of snack, dessert, or side dish, since the poor man was also in charge of feeding the lot.
If Bruce was going to feed her, then she refused to step foot in his house without a dish in hand, dammit. Didn’t matter that he was a billionaire, it was the principal of the thing.
And there was a certain pride in doing so, especially with the refrigerator still out of commission. (Damn landlord moved slower than syrup on everything except collecting rent.) Maria had scoured the internet for brownie recipes that didn’t require any eggs, milk, butter or other refrigerated goods, and while she’d found some good contenders, Mrs. Harriet had been her ultimate savior. When she’d gone over to clean the old woman’s apartment and mentioned her baking plans, Mrs. Harriet had flicked through some of her own recipes—handwritten on index cards and kept in a box on the counter—before finding one of her favorites. Her mother had been an adult during the Great Depression, and so had had to master the art of whipping up meals and snacks for a house of eight children with almost no ingredients.
Turned out: vinegar and coffee were the secret substitutes. And holy hell, was Mrs. Harriet’s mother a genius. The Waynes obviously agreed, because those brownies were gone by the time Maria started packing up to go home.
“Miss Maria,” Alfred called from the kitchen as the table was cleared. “A moment?”
“Sure.” She dropped her bag back on the chair and joined him. The kitchen alone was big enough to swallow her whole apartment, and the butler made good use of the space. “What’s up?”
“It appears I made a miscalculation,” he said sheepishly, opening the fridge to show it stacked. “I’m unable to put all the leftovers in here, and I hate to see food go to waste as much as Master Jason. If you could take some of this off of our hands, I’d be most grateful.”
Maria hesitated, but only for a moment. Yeah, her fridge was still busted. But Mrs. Harriet had said they could use hers, which Lucia had agreed to. Maria would insist the old lady help herself to the Waynes’ generosity as payment. So she snagged more than a few Tupperwares and ziplocs of deli meat, a spiced corn-and-rice dish, and the sacred Alfred cookies.
Honestly, Alfred wasn’t that subtle either. How this family managed to hide being the home of Batman was beyond her. But she appreciated the kindness, anyway.