Entrance post.

[i_spoiled_it]

Stephanie Brown is more familiar with the Gotham skyline than any sixteen-year-old girl should be. Not familiar just with the way it looks, but with which buildings are good to shoot for, which provide the best views of traffic, which you can leap off and how long you can leap for before splattering in oncoming traffic. She knows which way to jump

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[someboywonder]

This can't be happening. It's impossible. Steph is dead. She's dead. This has to be a trick. It has to be. Illusion. Hallucination. Trickery, something, anything. It can't be her, because she's dead. Black Mask tortured and killed her. This I know for sure.

But I want to believe she's alive. The difficult part is making sure that hope doesn't blind me from the very real possibility that this is a trick. One that I won't take kindly to.

The first batarang misses her face by a good two inches. A good warning. I wonder if they'll know that it only missed because I wanted it to. It's sticking out of the ground by her side when I speak, the other batarangs held dangerously in my hand.

"I don't know who you are, but I know you can't be Stephanie Brown. She's dead. So you have exactly ten seconds to either explain yourself, or prove you're Stephanie by telling me what my father's first name was." If she knows, it means she knows who I am, which basically means it's Steph. Can't have her shouting out my name or my family name though. "If this is a trick, or a joke, I'm going to make you regret this more than anything you've ever done in your entire life."

And I mean it. I'm not the same kid I was when Stephanie was around, for better or for worse. I know how to use a batarang for a lot of things now. Painful things.

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph freezes as it whizzes by her face. That sound is not a good sound.

... okay. The Boy Wonder's here. So it's probably still somewhere she can get home from. But apparently, he's insane.

Steph lowers her hands and straightens up from the defensive position she's automatically dropped into.

"...Jack," she says, after a moment, deciding it's safer to just answer the questions until she knows what the hell's going on. "And he doesn't like Canadian Bacon pizza."

Or he didn't last night, anyway.

What does he mean, Stephanie Brown is dead?

[someboywonder]

Relief, hope, I don't know what to feel. The Cassandra Cain I met wasn't the same one who tried to get me to kill her father, the one that tried to kill me. And now Steph has showed up, which has some problems in it right off the bat in that...she should be dead. Really dead.

Time for that later. I tuck the batarangs away even as I drop to street level, latching onto some boarded up window to slow my fall before touching down at street level. I resists the urge to run up to her and never let go, instead opting to calmly, carefully move forwards until I'm at a close, comfortable distance.

The little smile on my face is, though I'm not aware of it, both sad and happy at the same time.

"So it really is you, huh?" I'm not beyond all doubt, but that's just the way it is with me sometimes. I'm not as bad as Bruce, but it can be hard for me to believe things until my guarantee is totally fool-proof. "I didn't expect to...I mean, I never...how are you here? You're...dead."

And I can't even count the number of nights I've spent mourning her. Her and my parents and Kon. All of them.

[i_spoiled_it]

She isn't gonna move until - ah, okay, he's put the sharp things away. She relaxes a little ... until he gets closer. And tells her she's dead again.

"Uh, really not, Tim. What's going on? What's with the new costume?"

She takes a step backwards, just a little one.

"You're Tim, right? Not - some long-lost older brother, or something?"

Just a Tim who's somehow aged a year and a half overnight. ... Sure.

[someboywonder]

"The name," I mutter to her, giving her a pointed look. "Nobody's around, but I don't know enough about this place to tell you it's not bugged and nobody's watching. But yeah, it's me. Alvin Draper, you could say."

I know I use her name in the open a lot (I used to anyways) and I know it looks deserted right now, but I can't seem to break into any of the buildings or scale this massive wall yet, which means I don't know nearly enough about this Eden place for it to be safe.

"And I changed my costume after my trip. But this happened after you passed away, so you wouldn't know about that."

Alternate version of Steph, maybe? Kinda like the way Cass was apparently different from the one I know?

[i_spoiled_it]

She just stares at him for a moment.

So right now Steph's thinking she's somehow fallen through a time warp somehow and dropped into the future. And okay, if that's happened, then obviously they all think she's dead, because she would have just vanished.

... but this place doesn't look like Gotham.

"I'm not dead, Tim." She's not calling him Alvin! "I think I'd remember something like that. Look, this might be a stupid question, but, uh. Where are we?"

[someboywonder]

I frown, just a little, at the name, but I already know that nobody (that I can see) is around, so there's no real harm in letting in slide. I mean, right now, who cares? Steph's alive! My girlfriend. Er, ex-girlfriend. Death kinda took care of that. Except now she's not, so...what does that make us, exactly?

Oh, who cares. Alive!

"You did die, Steph. It's not the sort of thing that I would just make up. And this place is called Eden, I think. It's some sort of strange, deserted street, and we're all trapped in here. Don't ask how you got here, I don't know. As far as I can tell, nobody does. Cassandra got here before I did, but not by much. She filled me in on everything she knows."

And so I tell her, with a little more enthusiasm than might be necessary given our situation. I can't help it. This is like having Kon back; it's exactly what I've been trying to do for a while now. I tell her about the people, about coming here, the wall, the noises, both those at night and those heard sometimes on the other side of the wall. I tell her about the way the alleys seem strange, and people apparently come here from all over. I tell her everything Cassandra told me, and when I'm done, I just kind of smile at her.

Which may not be the reaction one would expect, since I just basically told her we're pretty much fucked.

[i_spoiled_it]

Somewhere in the course of the conversation she's ended up sitting against the wall, rubbing her head. Maybe she hit it harder than she thought.

Okay. Weird world. Noises at night. Creepy people from everywhere. But Cass and Tim are here. Whatever, she can handle that. They'll get home soon, anyway.

Something's still bugging her.

"You weren't kidding, were you? I really died?"

[someboywonder]

That puts a serious stop to the 'Steph's alive, the world is a good place!' train in my head. I don't like to think about that time; I know I can't blame myself for what happened, but of course that doesn't stop me. I kinda suspect it doesn't stop any of us. We just say it for each other's sake.

"Yeah, you did. I guess wherever you're from, it either didn't happen at all, or it didn't happen yet. You probably don't want to hear all the details, but it wasn't very pretty. Black Mask did it. I...we would have done anything to save you, if we could have, but we were running all over Gotham, trying to save the damn city from tearing itself apart. There was a gang war. Bigger than any before."

I don't tell her it was her fault, I don't tell her he had her for two days and the things he did to her were just...I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him so bad back then, and if Catwoman hadn't, I think I might have eventually.

"But Catwoman blew his brains out, so at least there's that."

[i_spoiled_it]

"She shot him?" Steph looks horrified. Catwoman's mostly one of the good guys. Good guys don't kill!

Unless. Well. It wasn't very pretty, and the look on his face.

She shivers, reflexively, and yanks her cape a little closer around herself.

"Well... crap."

[someboywonder]

"Yeah. She gave up being Catwoman after that though; left that to somebody else. Still, I don't blame her for what she did. He deserved it."

It's cold, it's harsh, and I really shouldn't think or say things like that, but it's true as far as I'm concerned. I believe in Bruce's rule about not killing, but there have been times when I've really flirted with the idea of crossing that line and not looking back.

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph is just gonna pick herself up and go try wrap her arms around him now. New suit, a little older, but he's still her Tim. Even if he's - he's sort of darker. More dangerous.

"Well, I won't let anything happen. If I ever get back."

[someboywonder]

I let her put her arms around me. It feels good, if a little strange. It's been a while since I've been held by her. And it feels...well, nice. I've missed it, missed her. I just spent a lot of time burying this stuff.

"I hope not. I hope you never go through any of that."

My arms go around her, slowly, but they cling hard enough to make it clear; I don't really plan on letting go anytime soon.

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph can't help but hear the sadness there. She can't even imagine what she'd do if it had been Tim dead.

She could stay here forever.

After a moment, she rests her head against his chest (he's taller than he was... yesterday, for her) and just holds him close.

"Last night I was at your house bringing you pizza. For your sixteenth birthday. This is really weird..."

[someboywonder]

"My sixteenth, huh? Wow. It feels like ages ago, but it was only...about a year and a half, I suppose. Wasn't that long after my sixteenth that you...you know."

Died. Were captured, tortured and killed. I don't say it, but it shows in the little things, in the way my jaw clenches and my expression hardens and my shoulders sag, just a bit, from the weight of the memory.

I cling to Steph harder, if that's possible.

[i_spoiled_it]

She shrugs, and pulls back a little to look at him, concerned.

"I'm fine, Tim. It didn't happen. Maybe it never will."

She leans in close again, this time to kiss him - just softly, lightly. After all - a year and a half. Anything, she thinks, anything could have happened. He could have moved on. He could have. Anything. But ... it's a soft, closed kiss, just to let him know that she hasn't.