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It’s a while before Stephanie goes back to the cave after… everything.
After she died. After she “died.”
After the gang war, and Leslie sort-of kidnapping her so she could heal far, far away from Gotham. After being away from the sickness its heart, getting to decide whether she wanted to go back after she was clean.
Stephanie had.
And now she was back. And the cave was exactly the way it’d looked when she was Robin.
Exactly.
As in – Jason Todd’s Robin suit was still hung up as a memorial. And Stephanie’s is just back in storage somewhere.
The way she sees it, it’s all the more proof she’s the biggest fuck-up the cave has ever seen. Maybe even a bigger fuck-up than that weirdo who took over as Batman a few years ago and turned Batman bloodthirsty.
But unlike him, Batman knew Stephanie sucked from the get-go.
Which is like, the problem. She was the ultimate fuck-up Robin, and she doesn’t even get credit for it. She’s just swept under the rug, and there’s no part about Stephanie that was supposed to go down easy.
Stephanie stands there, in her shiny new Batgirl costume, and can’t help but stare at Jason’s trophy case. At the plaque. Guess the non-fuck-ups get trophy cases. Or maybe they're just reserved for the real Robins.
Everyone acts like they’re supposed to learn from Jason’s mistakes, because he died in costume and it’d be such a tragedy for Batman to lose another soldier. Which is kind of fucked up, in Stephanie’s unprofessional opinion. But from what little Stephanie has gleaned from Tim and Batman, Jason Todd wasn’t even that much of a fuck-up! He didn’t get in over his head intentionally. He just wanted to know the truth about his mom, and got stuck in a shitty situation. How was he supposed to know the Joker would be in Ethiopia? That was a crazy one-in-a-million chance!
Stephanie’s the real fuck-up Robin and she should be remembered as such! She innovated in ways that proved there was truly no limit to how bad a person could mess up. Except, everything she did as Robin, right up to the end, was entirely by the book. She followed orders, she did everything she was supposed to do. She stepped exactly half a toe out of line, something that she knew for a fact the other Robins did all the time. Especially Tim. She used her judgment, used her brain – and everything had gone fine.
And then she’d been fired. Just like that.
It’s infuriating. She’s heard about all the ways Tim and the first two Robins deliberately disobeyed. Tim got the gig specifically by ignoring Batman’s instructions! It wasn’t fair that the one time she improvised – which still led to a decent outcome! – she got sacked for it. Tim would’ve gotten benched, maybe. But because B already knew Stephanie was the fuck-up of all fuck-ups, everything she ever did wrong needed a triple dose punishment.
It wasn’t fair.
She wasn’t supposed to just be forgotten. She’d died, too, hadn’t she? However briefly?
But then, even if it was brief, they thought it’d been for good. And he still…
There wasn't even a trace of her here.
Whatever. It was short. Like what, two, three months? Jason had been Robin for almost three years. So he got the trophy case. And she got the storage room.
Because she’s a fuck-up. And fuck-ups don’t deserve memorials. They’re not even worth the cautionary tale. They’re only worth a tired, hand-sliding-down-the-face, ‘What did you do this time, Stephanie?’
So no memorial case for her. Whatever. it’s not like any of the others could even learn from her mistakes anyway. Not like Batman was just itching to hire more girl Robins, so why did it matter that she was Ms. Teen Pregnancy PSA? They couldn’t learn from it. Maybe they’d use a condom or something, but if Dick or Tim got someone pregnant, Batman would probably have just congratulated them. Yes, you’ve done your duty, you’ve put more batlings into the world. I’m so proud of you boys.
And the other Robins didn’t have evil dads, she was pretty sure, so why would they need to learn how hard it was to let your dad get arrested instead of killing him in cold blood? They wouldn’t need any kind of Attempted Fratricide Redemption course.
It’s just-
Every bad choice she’d made, she learned from, and she’d made the right choice in the end.
Well. Right up until the biggest fuck-up of them all.
A lot of people had died. All because she’d tried to prove herself. That she was good enough. That she was still worth something after she’d been fired. She'd been wrong and so many people were in graves because of her hubris. And now she was alive and they weren't.
Stephanie closed her eyes a moment.
Maybe she'd been fired for a reason. Maybe he'd got a premonition that she'd be capable of cataclysmic fuck-ups, so B had just chosen to fire her early.
Because it was different, for her. The others had been benched before, and sure, Dick had been fired pretty unceremoniously too, but he’d had the Titans, and another name, and gear, and…
No one had ever been just one-and-done fired like that. Not in such a short turnaround.
In hindsight, it was so obvious that she’d been nothing more than a placeholder for Tim at best, and a ‘look what you made me do’ at worst. Because Tim had been right there with Batman telling Stephanie to quit back when she started. She’d hoped that Tim had genuinely changed his mind, but… She was just there to lure him back out. She’d just been there to keep the mantle warm.
And when she got fired, to Batman, that was it. He didn’t care about her, which meant no second chances. Not like the other Robins got. Because again, she was the fuck-up, and she didn’t deserve second or third or fifteenth chances like all the rest seemed to get. She didn’t get to use her own judgment in the field because no one trusted her.
They don’t support her because she’s a huge fuck-up. One big walking hazard sign.
No one should’ve been surprised when she managed to start a gang war, and got captured and tortured, and died from her injuries.
But unlike Jason, who gets a whole trophy case, Stephanie didn’t even die in the Robin colors.
She died as Spoiler. No relation to Batman.
She wasn’t missed, she wasn’t remembered. She’s not even a goddamn lesson, because what is there to tell? “Don’t hire fuck-ups?” That doesn’t need a fucking plaque.
Or-
Or maybe it does. Fuck it.
Stephanie finally takes a step back from Robin II’s memorial case, and gives it a two-fingered salute. “I know you weren’t a fuck-up,” she tells him. “And believe me, I’d know. Don’t worry, kid. I’ll make sure you’re not totally alone here.”
And with that, she’s got a mission. She’s supposed to be in the cave for a supply run for Babs. Because apparently Babs is in the business of working miracles, and… After Cass gave Stephanie the suit, Babs…
Well. Stephanie isn’t entirely sure why Babs hasn’t tried to chase her off yet. Stephanie also isn’t entirely sure why Cass let her be Batgirl. But the point is, Babs hasn’t successfully discouraged Stephanie yet. She’s even been willing to work with her, give her supplies. Give her access to the Batcave again. Stephanie won’t abuse that trust, she'll finish the task Babs gave her, but she’s never been very good at following the rules to a T. And even when she did as Robin, it still wasn’t enough, so maybe it’s just a cosmic fuck-up thing.
Stephanie finds the old costumes, stowed away, clean and neatly pressed.
Hers is among them. She’s only a little surprised – she’d half wondered if B would’ve burned it in a new no-girls-allowed campaign. (Stephanie tries not to think too hard about how and why Cass is the exception.)
She unfolds it, looks at it properly for the first time since wearing it. The red and green and yellow of it all. The skirt. The headband.
She has half a mind to take it with her.
Instead, she sighs through her nose, and pulls out a sticky note. It’s no memorial plaque, but it’ll do.
A good fuck-up, she thinks morbidly, and almost writes it when the sharpie hits the post-it note. It lingers for long enough that it forms a dark, swelling dot. But the others would probably kill her if they ever found it. Disrespecting the properly-dead, and all.
Stephanie closes her eyes, and thinks about what the version of her who died on the operating table, however briefly, would have wanted to read.
…Fuck Black Mask, I hope he dies. Take care of my mom. Was I ever good enough?
Not quite punchy enough.
Spoiler Alert! She finally writes. She dies at the end. :)
She re-folds the uniform, then sets it back in its place, note tucked slightly under the fold of the collar.
There. Not much of a good soldier. But for now, it’ll do.