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Tweak says, "MARIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

stephanie brown loves justice...and waffles (ex_iambatgir760) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2011-11-26 23:53:00

Entry tags:

jason todd, stephanie brown

Who: Stephanie Brown and Jason Todd (aka: The Reject Robin Club; aka: Even Numbered Robins).
What: Post-breakout milkshakes and bonding.
When: Before the Soap Plot. After Steph breaks Jay out of Library Jail.
Where: A diner.
Rating: TBD. Probably a bit high for language if nothing else, but we'll see.
Status: In progress.

Steph hadn't broke in to the library on her own before, but she remembered various things Parker had taught her and it had proved easier than she expected. Of course, she figured Asaph was probably making it easy on her because he wanted Jason off his hands. But that wasn't the point. The point was that she had broken Jason out of Library Jail by virtue of her supreme awesomeness, and now they were sitting in a diner with milkshakes and cheese fries. On the rare occasions she'd thought about Jason, such as when she had to explain the whole crazy Batfamily story to Proxy, she'd never really considered a situation like this. She'd figured, if nothing else, she'd have to punch him in the face. She had to punch a lot of people in the face.

Taking a sip of her milkshake, strawberry to the surprise of probably no one, she tilted her head slightly and gave him a considering look. She knew she was probably supposed to judge him, given his complete disregard for what the Batclan stood for, but she mostly just felt a weird sort of kinship with him. She knew what it was like to be rejected by the people who mattered, to try and try and never measure up. Heck, that was pretty much her life story. So, she wasn't going to go into this with any preconceived notions. Nope. She was just going to talk to him and make her own impressions. Even if he was possibly a little crazy.

"And this, kids," she said, "is why you should always bring your library books back on time." Her lips quirked in a small smile. "So...you really aren't what I expected." She paused a second. "No...okay, getting locked in Library Jail five minute after getting here...that, I'm not too surprised by. I guess everyone just makes you out to be a lot crazier than you seem." And there she went again, not keeping her inside thoughts on the inside.

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ex_iambatgir760
2011-11-27 08:09 am UTC (link)

Everything Steph had heard about Jason had her thinking he must be some sort of dangerous psychopath who she should probably steer clear of if she had any sense. Of course, that was kind of true for Damian when he was younger, but he'd grown out of it. Still, Steph was glad she hadn't had any sense, because Jason didn't seem all that dangerous. He was just a guy. Part of her was surprised, and part of her felt she probably should have expected it. After all, reputation and gossip were what formed opinions in Gotham. Wasn't that why everyone had assumed she wouldn't be good enough to fill Cass's boots when she took up the Batgirl mantle?

She wasn't saying Jason was a nice guy or harmless, or anything like that. No, he obviously had some serious trauma, and he did go around killing bad guys. But she had her fair share of trauma, and lord knew she hadn't always fully agreed with the idea of never killing the psychos they fought. She just felt like she kind of got him on some level, which made her wonder if them not meeting hadn't been so much chance as design. Babs could be really protective when she wanted to be. It could be sort of nice, when it wasn't annoying.

"Well, I can't blame you for that," Steph said with a laugh. "I mean...that's some quality reading material right there. Who would ever want to give that up?"

She shrugged. "I don't think you're any crazier than the rest of us," she said with a tiny smirk. "Then again, we dress up in fetish gear and throw ourselves at bullets, so that's not really saying much when you think about it."

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ihatecrowbars
2011-11-27 06:47 pm UTC (link)

Jason could definitely get the people now thinking they filled their predecessor’s shoes well thing. The entire time he was robin and heck even now he always felt people were comparing him to Dick and that no matter what he did he could never be as good as him. Plus people always expected him to be just like Dick to even though he wasn’t and that he couldn’t be his own person. He didn’t know how many times he had to explain that to the Titans during his brief stint with them.

Jason was definitely finding this refreshing talking to someone with the bats that wasn’t immediately trying to arrest him or fight him. Though to be honest he couldn’t exactly blame Dick or Tim for that. Bruce he just couldn’t talk to he couldn’t keep a clear head around him. Babs he didn’t want to make her life any more complicated. Which is also probably part of why he never talked to Huntress.

Steph seemed to be trying to figure him out. If she wanted to try that she could he didn’t really care.

“Pretty dark stuff there,” Jason says, “And quite a couple picture of Jason Blood for various times.”

“Thank you,” Jason says, “I’ve been saying that for years. Bruce is probably the craziest one of them all.”

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ex_iambatgir760
2011-11-28 11:42 pm UTC (link)

She wasn't really trying to figure Jason out, or work out what made him tick, so much as just trying to get to know him. He'd been on the outside too, and she figured he could use a friend. Especially a friend who wasn't going to judge him. And Steph could do that. She definitely could.

Honestly, she was the last person to judge anyone. She'd had more than her fair share of screw-ups over the years, and she had always felt like she was on the outside with Bruce, a Batkid in name only. Even though he finally seemed to approve of her as Batgirl, she didn't mistake that for caring too much about her as a person. She wasn't like the others. She was a free agent, not part of the team. She had her team ups, sure, but she was very much separate from the Batfamily. She figured eventually she'd take a new title, like Tim had, and work with the Titans. They, at least, seemed to like her. But for now, Gotham needed her to be what she was. A symbol of hope in a city that lacked it.

So...yeah. She was just trying to be there for someone who'd had a rough run of it. Because she knew she would have liked someone to be there for her when she'd been in the same place.

"Gotham," she said with a small smile. "City of angst and vengeance." And wasn't that the truth. "I have to admit, being here is weird. And I'm not even talking about the whole kidnapped to another planet in another reality thing. I'm talking about the sunshine thing. I still get up in the morning and miss the comforting layer of smog and despair. Gotham's got a singular sort of atmosphere." Singular, in this instance, meaning crazy and kind of awful.

"You're welcome," Steph said, taking another sip of her milkshake. "I don't know if old Bats is worse than anyone else, but it's just...I wonder sometimes, if there's something in the water. That makes us more prone to insanity than other places. There's got to be a reason so many folks dress up and act insane. Don't you think so?"

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ihatecrowbars
2011-11-29 11:09 pm UTC (link)

Jason had been on his own for a while before Batman had found him stealing his tired and basically kidnapped him even before his step-mom had died. Which might be part of why he never seemed to do well with teams like the Titans or that universe hopping thing with Donna and Kyle.

Bruce had seemed to have done the best he could with him but somehow he never seemed to get it fully through his head that he wasn't Dick. Alfred seemed to get it but then again there wasn't much the man didn't miss.

He had tried to get Bruce approval and had lived for it when he was younger but not he just wanted to do things his own way because as far as he was concerned Bruce's way didn't work.

"Yes Crazyville definitely is," Jason says taking a large sip of milkshake, "You should have gotten out of Gotham more often. The world traveling thing is a lot of fun. Though that smog did have the comforting effect of home though."

Jason laughs at that part. "That would explain a lot actually or maybe it has something to do with the old legend about the land around Gotham being cursed. I think the sanest person I knew there was Babs."

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ex_iambatgir760
2011-12-07 11:16 pm UTC (link)

Bruce hadn't picked Steph, not the way he'd picked the others. Even Jason had been his choice in some way. Steph though, she had forced her way in. She'd made her own name and pushed her way into his world. Maybe that was why she had never quite fit with the others. Because she was different. She wasn't a Batchild. She was an interloper, eternally on the outside even when she wore one of their names.

"I did get out of Gotham," she admitted. "Went all the way to Africa. Just had to die to do it. It's better there and worse all at once. It's better because people there actually give a damn and they care if you help. Worse because...for all people in Gotham complain and for all that it sucks there...most of them have no idea how hard it can really be." She sighed. "That's the only time I left though. I mean...I'm not Dick or Tim or Damian. I can't just drop everything and leave. Mom works all the time, I work when I'm not in classes or putting on the suit, just so I can go to school. It's hard, making ends meet. You get that better than they ever will."

Steph smiled slightly. "I would absolutely buy the cursed thing," she admitted. "It certainly makes sense with how many nutjobs we get there...and all the other stuff." She shrugged. "Babs is the greatest. And she is absolutely as crazy as the rest of us. She just hides it way better."

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ihatecrowbars
2011-12-10 05:29 pm UTC (link)

Considering that Bruce had kidnapped bound and gagged him after he had caught him stealing the last wheel of the bat-mobile Jason definitely knew Bruce had had a choice in picking him.

"Dying is a good way to gain a new perspective on things," Jason says, "My own trip to Africa did not really end in gratitude though." Considering that his real mom had basically betrayed him there and that's where he had died.

"Though I probably never would have escaped the street without Bruce," Jason says, "I was barely surviving at that point and had pretty much dropped out of school with no one caring and finding food and shelter a bigger priority."

"It's funny the people in Gotham complain so much about how it sucks but there are even worse places in the US. Hub City is god awful bad."

"So maybe we really need Zatanna or Jason Blood to fix Gotham or something," He says, " But yeah lots of crazies there."

"OK I can buy that about Babs. I think if I remember correctly she forced her way into this line of work too."

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ex_iambatgir760
2011-12-11 07:00 am UTC (link)

"That it is," Steph said with a small smile, poking at the cheese fries as she thought back to her own "death" with a small shudder. Having Black Mask show up the month before, even if it had just been a hallucination of sorts, had really shaken her. She still felt uncomfortable with how that had gone. "Even if the 'death' is mostly fake." She sighed, glancing out the window of the diner. It was weird, talking about this with Jason, but she supposed he was the only one who could understand it.

"I wanted to kill Black Mask after what he did to me," she admitted. "I almost did. Had a gun pulled on him and everything. But I couldn't let go of Bruce's lessons even after all that went down between us. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have ended up with a bullet in the shoulder and everyone thinking I was dead." She glanced back over at him. "How did you do it?" she asked, knowing she was crossing into inside voice territory. "How did you let go of that and actually start killing them?"

She was quiet for a moment. "I would have been just another dropout with a dad in lockup, a mom too stoned to care, and two or three minimum wage jobs just to scrape by...so I know where you're coming from." And a baby she couldn't afford to take care of. Steph knew that she would have kept her baby if she hadn't fallen into crime-fighting, too selfish to let go of the one good thing in her life. Her daughter was better off for the things Bruce taught her.

"I don't know if anyone could fix it at this point," she said, thinking of the mess Gotham was. "It would probably just screw things up more. That's how it goes." She shrugged. "We all force our way in at least a little, in our own ways. Some of us are just better at it than others."

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ihatecrowbars
2011-12-11 07:30 am UTC (link)

"The way I heard it it was pretty damn close there," Jason says, "Faked death or not. Facing your own mortality is not fun."

"I guess it has to do with the fact that I never really had much sympathy for the criminals I was beating up and even before the whole coming back thing felt Bruce didn't do enough to stop them," Jason says reflecting on all of that.

"Then after I came back I couldn't believe Bruce allowed the Joker to still get on the loose like he did much less let him still live. I know I won't have if he had kill Bruce," Jason says, "And it's not like there is anything still worth saving in the Joker any more whatever humanity he had was long gone before I even met Bruce. And it just grated at me. So I began looking over all that mortal stuff Bruce had taught me and decided he was wrong about it."

"After all you are right for all the stuff Bruce has done Gotham never has gotten better about crime it's just pretty much stayed the same. So I decided to try something different when I first started out as Red Hood and I got crime to go down significantly," Jason says with a twinge of pride. He could have been the hero Gotham needed. All well Gotham sucked any ways.

"Very true," Jason says, "Definitely easier when Bruce likes you."

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ex_iambatgir760
2011-12-11 08:05 am UTC (link)

"Very close," Steph admitted hesitantly. "Sometimes, I'm still surprised Leslie managed to fix me up. I really thought I was dying there at the end."

She was quiet for a moment after Jason spoke. This was something she didn't usually own up to, but she figured she owed it to him. "I used to argue with Bruce about it," she said softly. "About why we tried so hard to keep the bad guys breathing. Some days it felt like we tried harder for them than for their victims. I still don't entirely agree with it...that they deserve so many chances."

"I don't blame you," she told him, giving him a small, reassuring smile. "If I had come back and Black Mask was still around...I don't know what I would have done. I'd probably have snapped." She shrugged. "And the Joker...I don't think he's even a person any more. He definitely doesn't deserve to be treated like one. If he died everyone would be better off." She looked down at her hands. "But that's not true for all of them," she said. "Some of them can be better. Some of them are the same screwed up people you or I could have been. And I think...maybe you're taking the easy way. You could stop them without killing them. You could do it without breaking a sweat. I'm not talking about the ones like the Joker, but the other ones. So why don't you?" Maybe this would shatter this weird understanding they had between them, but Steph wasn't the type to back down.

"I mean, I'm not judging here," she said after a moment. "I'm really not. I just want to know why. I mean...sure, maybe Gotham's asking for it, with how bullshit everything can be...but why kill them just because you can?"

She gave a small, bitter laugh. "Bruce never liked me," she said. "I think the only reason he cared what happened to me was because he could add it to his stockpile of guilt and manpain. That's what he runs on, you know..."

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