Archive of Our Own ^beta

A year working as a nurse for Leslie abroad had led Stephanie Brown to miss a great many things. Her mother, patrol and him.

Robin. Tim Drake. Her boy wonder. For twelve agonising months she had no news on him, no idea whether he'd been shot dead in some alley. Steph couldn't begin to imagine how Tim had felt in her immediate absence though, when Doctor Thompkins had faked the Spoiler's death. How long did he cry? Did he even cry at all?

He seemed to move on pretty quick.

But Tim had asked Steph to come here tonight, as Spoiler. On a stakeout of course. Steph arrived late out of pettiness. It was immature she knew, but so too was she.

There he was: Robin. Leaning against the parapet, with sleek binoculars in one hand and a cigarette in the right. He was so different: nearly a man now. His suit was drab and dull, its vibrant greens now replaced with bloody crimsons and midnight blacks; his hair longer and more unkempt, as if he'd given up on taking care of it. But he still smiled the same whenever he was gracious enough to grant Steph one. His arms around her frame still felt the same. His lips...

"Hey," Tim said softly as he lowered the binoculars and peered over his shoulder to look at Steph. How long had she been standing there, lost in thought?

"Hey yourself." She returned, forcing some level of joy back into her voice. She loved doing being Spoiler, even if everything had changed. The vigilante walked over to her partner for the night and settled beside him. "You used to bring burgers to these." She remarked.

He chuckled. Beneath her mask Stephanie beamed. "I honestly don't have a response to that." Steph snatched the binoculars from Tim, eliciting another smirk and pressed them to the lenses of her mask. They were the same make as the ones she had used to spy on Robin a few months ago, although this pair had been modified by skilled hands under a trained eye. She peered across the street at the docking station Penguin's heroin was supposedly being smuggled through.

"Nothing?" Tim asked.

"Nothing." Steph responded as she handed the nearly weightless equipment back to him. Apparently, a brown van was going to pull through with a metric fuck-ton of the drug. Tim had been excited about busting this one for a while, and she couldn't really blame him.

"Damn." The boy muttered, taking a drag from his cigarette. When he was done he made to flick it into the street, before he offered it to Steph.

Stephanie had been around smokers and drug addicts her whole life. Not just her father's friends, but her mother too. In the past, when Crystal Brown wasn't doing lines of crushed up prescription pills, a cigarette was dangling from her fingers. Or a bottle of ugly brown booze. Steph had seen the destruction of her mother's life first hand and she had sworn that she'd never let it happen to her. That she'd never touch anything of the sort.

She took the smoke and rolled up her mask. What harm could one do?