[DC] The great Batcave in the sky
Title: The great Batcave in the sky
Fandom: DC
Rating: PG
Summary: The afterlife looks like the Batcave.
Notes: Terrific Table of Robins, Steph meets Pre-Crisis Jay. Set during War Games. Crit on the characterization more than welcome. (You have no idea how hard I've had to fend off the temptation to title this 'Retcon'. I'm keeping it for something that's either snarkier or more meta.)
It looks like the Batcave when she opens her eyes, if the Cave was out in space instead of deep in the ground. And not a spatial station either, no, like it's just floating out there in space with stars all around and that's perfectly okay. And that's not especially what she was expecting, but then there isn't much she'd predicted about her life that turned out to be true.
And now she's reached the point were predictions and expectations get their final reveal.
So. She's standing in the Cave.
It must be the mysticism that's getting to her, or else just the fact that she's dying, that makes her take so long before she realizes that she's standing. She's not sure how many of her bones and/or inner organs haven't been broken or ruptured or thing, but she knows well enough that she can't hope to stand in the real world. Hell, even speaking had been an effort. Though maybe that had been because they were her last words.
Her eyes mechanically flick down to her self - herself - her not-broken body soul self in the here and now of the Cave of death.
She's less surprised to confirm that she bears no trace of wounds than she is to notice that she's wearing the Robin suit. Not hers; the one hanging in the Case. That's more than a little creepy, but it fits, and Steph doesn't want to think why her skin doesn't break out in goosebumps even though she thinks it should.
Instead, she thinks that she still doesn't get how the old Robins could fight with bare legs. Or how Batman could let them. But she already knows the answer to that one; there's a reason why Tim's suit and her own held more armor. That leaves only the issue of 'leaping and bouncing and getting high kicks in while wearing a pair of panties'. Maybe that's got something to do with how young they were when they started; they didn't get how that looked.
Plus they were boys and that pretty much always makes a difference. What she means, there's more than one reason why the Spoiler suit covered as much of her skin as it could.
All of which is a very roundabout way to say that she's not used to seeing her thighs, naked, in the Robin suit, and maybe she's still a little more creeped out than she figured. That's a reaction that shouldn't come off as reassuring, and Steph is certain that it says a lot about her life had turned out that it still, in spite of all, is.
“Hey, Robin!”
She was so busy reeling in the freak-out she hadn't even thought there might be someone else. And maybe-- maybe she should've expected it, somehow, especially with the suit she's wearing, but the voice is friendlier and younger-sounding that she's come to expect when thinking of Jason Todd. Until her, there was only one dead Robin.
It's coming from the place where the Case stands - she so should've thought of looking for it - and when she turns around the Case is still there, but it's empty and there's a kid sitting on top of it, kicking his heels in the air and grinning at her. In a red and green and gold suit like Robin that manages to not look like any of the Robin suits Steph knows (maybe it was a sketch design at one point; something that could've been but never got finished to be good enough).
With tights, she can't help but note as she gets closer.
Never existed as far she knew.
“Hi,” she says. It's not like she knows the proper etiquette. Maybe he's the guiding spirit of dying Robins.
His grin gets even wider, as if by talking to him she's made him an incredible gift. Maybe she has at that. Guiding spirit of dying Robins, you don't get to see a lot of people in this job. Not in a while, at least. Unless he also works in case of near death experiences, which must make it better. But she hasn't seen him before, so that probably doesn't work that way.
“Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're here to take me to 'the next level', right?”
Oh hey, she can do the whole quotation marks in her voice thing now. Just like her that it decides to work when she can't show it off anymore. Then again, she got a lot more practice in the last few weeks than she ever did before, because she'd taken to mimic the Batman-and-RobinoSteph dialogs a lot more regularly.
He shakes his head and jumps down the Case. Somersaults down the Case. “Nah, but that's a terrific idea. Doesn't it sound way better than a dark corridor with a bright light at the end?”
His smile is level and friendly and unfailingly cheerful. Not so much as if it's a big joke as if it's a situation that'll get sorted out easy enough, maybe even without their interference. Which sounds... Well, she's got to keep in mind how her interference made things turn out last time.
She swallows the wince and looks away from the kid's face to the Case behind. Empty. It looks bigger that way. Hungry. Her eyes skid down the surface, reaching for the plaque, and--
It's blank. No name on it.
There's a sudden knot in her throat. Damn.
“Is-” her lips are dry, too; if she were to tell Tim, he'd probably make a remark about how physical reactions are deeply ingrained into the subconscious mind that'd make her wonder if he's realized yet that this kind of talk makes her want to kiss him, and just thinking about it makes her want to kiss him even more, “-is it going to be mine?”
God, she can't imagine her suit in a Case. She can't imagine Batman brooding at it the way he does at the one that's really in the cave - Jason's. Or maybe she can; Batman is good at guilt. And if she wasn't important to him, just Robin for a spell, it can't help the guilt.
That's one thing being Robin told her about Batman.
Robin-not-Robin lets out a startled giggle and twists down to be able to look at her in the eyes.
“What? No!”
From so close, his roots are showing. Strawberry-blond roots. Steph blinks. Was Jason Todd blond? In her mind, all the Robins (before her) had black hair.
“You're getting out of here the way you came in. I'm just here to keep you company while we wait.”
She tears herself from contemplating the untold traditions regarding the Batfollicles.
“I'm not dying?” she asks.
And she's stopped staring at the case at one point, because she's still looking the kid in the face and he's thirteen at most and small, but he's no longer crouching. He shakes his head, curls bouncing joyfully, and she can see him with blond hair, with a smile that's happy and trained, like he's used to smiling a lot at someone who rarely does, and like he means every single one of them. She smiles back before even meaning to. It's a familiar sensation.
And hey, she's not dying! So says the Robin spirit of the antechamber of Not So Dead After All! And he would know.
“What do I have to do to get back?”
“Wait until you wake up?...” His eyes are crinkled in a rueful smile. “I'm sorry, there's not much you can do about it here.”
He rocks on the balls of his feet as if his body wants to burst with excitation and he can barely contain it. His obvious pleasure at having company pretty much blazes through every note of sympathy in his voice, but in a good-natured way. Like he feels wholly for her, and he's also wholly in the joy of the moment, and the two are not at odds at all. And it's really nice, for a change, to be with someone who looks everything he feels and whose words she can take at face value without risking to disappoint anyone, or worse.
That's what her life's been made of for a while, and it still is her life and she'd like to get it back now please.
Behind the boy, the Case glints emptily at her. Steph looks away in a hurry.
“You see a lot of people up here? No, nevermind, that's not important.” She takes a deep breath. Nothing she can do. Right. Right.
She's gonna go crazy if she does nothing, she decides.
The boy seems to guess what she's thinking and smiles apologetically at her again. “Yeah, I know... It's not great at all. We can do something in the meantime, if you'd like,” he suggests.
Yeah, she'd like that. “Sure! Just that I'm not sure what there is to do down here. And I Spy is going to be over fast, and also that game lost a lot of its appeal now I've really started watching duty.”
Especially since she's had to play it on her own and silently, because she can't imagine Batman taking part in it and she knew better than to try. She's imagined how the conversation would go, and most times he didn't even deign respond to her argument that it was like training, in a way.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, keeping his legs straight from his hips down, like he's imitating the penguins in Mary Poppins.
“I was thinking, maybe you could show me how to do the uppercut? You know, the one when you use it you send them - woosh -” he makes amove with his hands, opening his fists with a flourish like a magician doing his show “flying? I've been practicing, and I think I got the movement right, but I never manage to get as much power as you do behind it. I'm better with kicks and stuff,” he explains with a business-like tone, “but I've been thinking I could branch out, you know? So they never know what hit them!”
Robin wants her to teach him something. Yeah, she knows she's got a mean uppercut - it is her favorite move - but validation is always cool.
She grins back.
“Okay, Robin. On the mats. I'll show you.”
Then she whirls around and she hears him spring into the air as she springs toward the training ground.
They reach the mats at the same time.
Fandom: DC
Rating: PG
Summary: The afterlife looks like the Batcave.
Notes: Terrific Table of Robins, Steph meets Pre-Crisis Jay. Set during War Games. Crit on the characterization more than welcome. (You have no idea how hard I've had to fend off the temptation to title this 'Retcon'. I'm keeping it for something that's either snarkier or more meta.)
It looks like the Batcave when she opens her eyes, if the Cave was out in space instead of deep in the ground. And not a spatial station either, no, like it's just floating out there in space with stars all around and that's perfectly okay. And that's not especially what she was expecting, but then there isn't much she'd predicted about her life that turned out to be true.
And now she's reached the point were predictions and expectations get their final reveal.
So. She's standing in the Cave.
It must be the mysticism that's getting to her, or else just the fact that she's dying, that makes her take so long before she realizes that she's standing. She's not sure how many of her bones and/or inner organs haven't been broken or ruptured or thing, but she knows well enough that she can't hope to stand in the real world. Hell, even speaking had been an effort. Though maybe that had been because they were her last words.
Her eyes mechanically flick down to her self - herself - her not-broken body soul self in the here and now of the Cave of death.
She's less surprised to confirm that she bears no trace of wounds than she is to notice that she's wearing the Robin suit. Not hers; the one hanging in the Case. That's more than a little creepy, but it fits, and Steph doesn't want to think why her skin doesn't break out in goosebumps even though she thinks it should.
Instead, she thinks that she still doesn't get how the old Robins could fight with bare legs. Or how Batman could let them. But she already knows the answer to that one; there's a reason why Tim's suit and her own held more armor. That leaves only the issue of 'leaping and bouncing and getting high kicks in while wearing a pair of panties'. Maybe that's got something to do with how young they were when they started; they didn't get how that looked.
Plus they were boys and that pretty much always makes a difference. What she means, there's more than one reason why the Spoiler suit covered as much of her skin as it could.
All of which is a very roundabout way to say that she's not used to seeing her thighs, naked, in the Robin suit, and maybe she's still a little more creeped out than she figured. That's a reaction that shouldn't come off as reassuring, and Steph is certain that it says a lot about her life had turned out that it still, in spite of all, is.
“Hey, Robin!”
She was so busy reeling in the freak-out she hadn't even thought there might be someone else. And maybe-- maybe she should've expected it, somehow, especially with the suit she's wearing, but the voice is friendlier and younger-sounding that she's come to expect when thinking of Jason Todd. Until her, there was only one dead Robin.
It's coming from the place where the Case stands - she so should've thought of looking for it - and when she turns around the Case is still there, but it's empty and there's a kid sitting on top of it, kicking his heels in the air and grinning at her. In a red and green and gold suit like Robin that manages to not look like any of the Robin suits Steph knows (maybe it was a sketch design at one point; something that could've been but never got finished to be good enough).
With tights, she can't help but note as she gets closer.
Never existed as far she knew.
“Hi,” she says. It's not like she knows the proper etiquette. Maybe he's the guiding spirit of dying Robins.
His grin gets even wider, as if by talking to him she's made him an incredible gift. Maybe she has at that. Guiding spirit of dying Robins, you don't get to see a lot of people in this job. Not in a while, at least. Unless he also works in case of near death experiences, which must make it better. But she hasn't seen him before, so that probably doesn't work that way.
“Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're here to take me to 'the next level', right?”
Oh hey, she can do the whole quotation marks in her voice thing now. Just like her that it decides to work when she can't show it off anymore. Then again, she got a lot more practice in the last few weeks than she ever did before, because she'd taken to mimic the Batman-and-RobinoSteph dialogs a lot more regularly.
He shakes his head and jumps down the Case. Somersaults down the Case. “Nah, but that's a terrific idea. Doesn't it sound way better than a dark corridor with a bright light at the end?”
His smile is level and friendly and unfailingly cheerful. Not so much as if it's a big joke as if it's a situation that'll get sorted out easy enough, maybe even without their interference. Which sounds... Well, she's got to keep in mind how her interference made things turn out last time.
She swallows the wince and looks away from the kid's face to the Case behind. Empty. It looks bigger that way. Hungry. Her eyes skid down the surface, reaching for the plaque, and--
It's blank. No name on it.
There's a sudden knot in her throat. Damn.
“Is-” her lips are dry, too; if she were to tell Tim, he'd probably make a remark about how physical reactions are deeply ingrained into the subconscious mind that'd make her wonder if he's realized yet that this kind of talk makes her want to kiss him, and just thinking about it makes her want to kiss him even more, “-is it going to be mine?”
God, she can't imagine her suit in a Case. She can't imagine Batman brooding at it the way he does at the one that's really in the cave - Jason's. Or maybe she can; Batman is good at guilt. And if she wasn't important to him, just Robin for a spell, it can't help the guilt.
That's one thing being Robin told her about Batman.
Robin-not-Robin lets out a startled giggle and twists down to be able to look at her in the eyes.
“What? No!”
From so close, his roots are showing. Strawberry-blond roots. Steph blinks. Was Jason Todd blond? In her mind, all the Robins (before her) had black hair.
“You're getting out of here the way you came in. I'm just here to keep you company while we wait.”
She tears herself from contemplating the untold traditions regarding the Batfollicles.
“I'm not dying?” she asks.
And she's stopped staring at the case at one point, because she's still looking the kid in the face and he's thirteen at most and small, but he's no longer crouching. He shakes his head, curls bouncing joyfully, and she can see him with blond hair, with a smile that's happy and trained, like he's used to smiling a lot at someone who rarely does, and like he means every single one of them. She smiles back before even meaning to. It's a familiar sensation.
And hey, she's not dying! So says the Robin spirit of the antechamber of Not So Dead After All! And he would know.
“What do I have to do to get back?”
“Wait until you wake up?...” His eyes are crinkled in a rueful smile. “I'm sorry, there's not much you can do about it here.”
He rocks on the balls of his feet as if his body wants to burst with excitation and he can barely contain it. His obvious pleasure at having company pretty much blazes through every note of sympathy in his voice, but in a good-natured way. Like he feels wholly for her, and he's also wholly in the joy of the moment, and the two are not at odds at all. And it's really nice, for a change, to be with someone who looks everything he feels and whose words she can take at face value without risking to disappoint anyone, or worse.
That's what her life's been made of for a while, and it still is her life and she'd like to get it back now please.
Behind the boy, the Case glints emptily at her. Steph looks away in a hurry.
“You see a lot of people up here? No, nevermind, that's not important.” She takes a deep breath. Nothing she can do. Right. Right.
She's gonna go crazy if she does nothing, she decides.
The boy seems to guess what she's thinking and smiles apologetically at her again. “Yeah, I know... It's not great at all. We can do something in the meantime, if you'd like,” he suggests.
Yeah, she'd like that. “Sure! Just that I'm not sure what there is to do down here. And I Spy is going to be over fast, and also that game lost a lot of its appeal now I've really started watching duty.”
Especially since she's had to play it on her own and silently, because she can't imagine Batman taking part in it and she knew better than to try. She's imagined how the conversation would go, and most times he didn't even deign respond to her argument that it was like training, in a way.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, keeping his legs straight from his hips down, like he's imitating the penguins in Mary Poppins.
“I was thinking, maybe you could show me how to do the uppercut? You know, the one when you use it you send them - woosh -” he makes amove with his hands, opening his fists with a flourish like a magician doing his show “flying? I've been practicing, and I think I got the movement right, but I never manage to get as much power as you do behind it. I'm better with kicks and stuff,” he explains with a business-like tone, “but I've been thinking I could branch out, you know? So they never know what hit them!”
Robin wants her to teach him something. Yeah, she knows she's got a mean uppercut - it is her favorite move - but validation is always cool.
She grins back.
“Okay, Robin. On the mats. I'll show you.”
Then she whirls around and she hears him spring into the air as she springs toward the training ground.
They reach the mats at the same time.