Who: Eddie and Stephanie (Part One of Two) When: Recently! Where: Dream land~ What: Shared dream about growing up together. Alternate universe style. Warnings: Some swearing, mention of tough childhoods, violence. Pretty mild.
Eddie Nashton was eight years old. He lived in the rat-infested, crumbling apartment building with his mom and dad. His hair was black and curly so even when it was cut short it mussed in the front and fell down over his forehead. He was smaller than the other boys, but louder and funnier. He memorized entire episodes of his favorite cartoons. He collected books he found for dimes at the thrift store. He always found new and creative ways to get thrown into detention. His teachers kept suggesting that he skip grades because he seemed bored, but he rarely did homework or studied anything he was supposed to. In only a couple months, he’d cheat on a school wide contest to see who could put together a puzzle the fastest and his father would go from neglecting his son to beating him senseless every time he got the chance.
But, right now he was eight and focused on winning matching decoder rings for himself and his best friend/next door neighbor, Stephanie Brown. They both had lame parents, not a lot of money and imaginations that could span so far out of Gotham that sometimes he forgot that he was destined to be a poor, do-nothing street rat for the rest of his life. She was one of the only people who let him talk and ask questions (even if she didn’t know the answers). She was one of the only people who would laugh when he gave names to street lamps and tipped his imaginary hat to polite dogs. She was his best friend and he wanted to do something nice for her.
It took ten boxes of cereal. Three he had accidentally ripped open at the supermarket. Two he stole from his neighbors down the hall one morning before they woke up. Three he earned by helping the sample lady at the store to pass out little paper cups of cereal for an entire week. One he earned legitimately by saving coins he found under the cushions and on the subway. And, the last he stole from Stephanie herself one morning while he was over for breakfast. All ten prize vouchers were sent in with a polite thank you note and a request for green (his favorite color) and purple (her favorite color).
The two weeks waiting were painful and it was made even more difficult because he had to keep it a secret from Stephanie which was nearly impossible for a blabbermouth like Eddie. By the second week, his only strategy was to avoid Stephanie altogether. When she came over to play, he’d slip out the fire escape. When she saw him hanging around the park with some of the other weirdo boys, he’d instigate them to say something stupid to her until she left. Little Eddie Nashton hated doing it, but it was worth keeping the surprise a...well. A surprise.
Finally, the decoder rings came in a large envelope and Eddie managed to snag it from the mailman before his dad could check for it. Shortly after ripping it open, Eddie sped off towards Stephanie’s apartment, knocking on the door in a melody that was his and waited with the large envelope clutched to his chest.
Where Eddie Nashton was all dark and gloomy, all questions and too smart for his own good, Stephanie Crystal Brown, eight years old too, was a little beam of light bouncing around Old Gotham’s dirty streets and sketchy alleyways. She was a mop of long, messy blonde hair that she tended to wear in pigtails and braids, clear, bright blue eyes that expressed far too much, and a smile that was too wide for a kid who grew up among the poorest of the poor in one of the shittiest sections of her godforsaken city. Gotham cultivated Gothamites, and where you were raised determined what kind of Gothamite you became. And, Old Gotham, with a majority of its community below or just skirting the poverty line, tended to churn out the city’s less than desirable citizens. People like her father, who Stephanie, even at such a young age, knew didn’t do good things. Her mom got angry with him a lot, even when she was sick or drank too much of that stuff that made the blonde’s nose wrinkle from the smell. (It smelled like medicine, and it made her mom speak weird and her dad try to hit them both. Steph didn’t like the stuff at all.) And, he brought weird people over who made Steph feel uncomfortable a lot. It wasn’t right, but then not a lot about Old Gotham was.
It wasn’t a place that fostered any good in people, but she had those annoying little personality traits that kids in Old Gotham weren’t supposed to have: faith and hope. The little blonde Brown idolized men like Batman and Superman, men who put their lives on the line to help the less fortunate people, those in danger, the downtrodden. She would run around her tiny apartment, dodging old pizza boxes and clinking bottles with her arms stretched out and her blue cape on and pretend she had superpowers, too. It was escape, it was hope, it was dreaming. Playing superhero was her favorite game. It gave her time to wonder if she and her best friend could change their worlds, too. She had an inexorable faith in her Eddie, who grew up a lot like she did. More faith than she had in the black bat haunting the shadows of Gotham or the alien in red and blue who shot through the Metropolis skyline.
But, he’d been acting weird the last week, hanging out with the other boys and making them say mean things to her. Usually, Eddie wasn’t like that, unless she said something to make him mad or wouldn’t let him take the controller he wanted when they played on the Playstation her dad brought home one night (that she suspected he didn’t really buy, but hey, she had a Playstation, right?). It didn’t make sense because she didn’t remember doing either recently. So, she got the hint eventually and went to pouting in her room because suddenly her best friend didn’t want her around anymore. Her mom told her he was probably just being a boy, that he would be around again soon, but Steph wasn’t so sure.
When the knock came to her door, she was practically alone in the house. Well, her mother was there, but she was nursing her bottle in the kitchen while Stephanie laid in the living room working on her book report of Matilda that was due in three days. The little blonde bounced up and skittered over to the front door. “Oh,” she said as she finally opened it, arms crossing in the bratty way that told Eddie, who was standing on the other side, that she was suspiciously angry with him. Her blonde hair was in matching braids that fell just past her shoulders, her blue eyes narrowed, and her scabbed knees peeked out underneath a pair of short overalls. “I thought you were too cool for me now.” Her gaze skirted over the envelope he held against his chest, and she pointed directly at it. “What’s that?”
Eddie was making an effort to keep the excitement out of his expression. He learnt pretty quickly that people could tell what he was thinking just by looking at him, so he started to narrow his big brown eyes when they wanted to go big and flattened his mouth when it wanted to smile. It worked. For like three seconds. “You’re cool.” He told her immediately, mouth wiggling, wiggling into a smile as his fingers clutched the giant envelope a little harder. Eddie knew that bratty stances she took with him and once upon a time when they were so much younger (six) it used to make him sad or sometimes angry right back. He learnt pretty quickly, though, that he could override it by being cute and funny. Or, in this case, bring her a present. Girls were kind of simple that way.
“Look. Okay.” He started, almost about to hand over the envelope, but changing his mind with a suspicious glance up to her. “I brought you a present. If you hate it, you can’t tell me or I’m really going to stop talking to you until school starts back up.” Eddie’s threat, as always, was completely empty. It was something he had done before when he was sharing a cartoon he taped on the TV for her or one of his puzzle books. Eddie’s way of saying, I like this thing and if you don’t like this thing too part of me is going to curl up and die. He looked at her for a long moment, deciding at the last second if she was worthy of something as serious as matching decoder rings and then gave a hum of approval.
He turned the envelope over and emptied the two rings out in his tiny hand. One of them green and the other purple. The top consisted of two disks, one with a set of symbols and the other with the alphabet. Eddie put his hand out for her to take one. “We decide on the symbol we want to use that day and then write the letter that goes with it.” He beamed at her. “Now that idiot Francis can’t steal our notes and read them aloud anymore. I’d really like to see him try to pronounce that one symbol with the squiggle thing over the swoopy thing.”
Stephanie still stood with her arms crossed over her chest and eyed Eddie with a sort of suspicion an eight year old was really good at. That sharp, brutal, honest sort of wariness towards her best friend that told him that yeah, him being mean to her this past week kinda hurt. But, when his lip started to wiggle, there was a twitch at the corner of her mouth, too. Eddie knew exactly where to hit her, her soft spots for him and the fact that she still had that stupid faith in him. Still, she eyed that envelope like it was a snake until he mentioned something about a present. And, yeah, maybe it was a little predictable, but Steph’s eyebrows rose curiously with a slow smile.
“A present?” she asked, voice a little high like she was trying to hide away her excitement. “I promise I won’t tell you if I hate it.” She unraveled her arms to hold up her Girl Scout salute up as if that was the end all, be all of swearing promises, and looked at him expectantly. She knew the threat was empty, but that didn’t mean she took it lightly. If she thought something was too dorky or too weird, she still gave it a chance because he liked it. And, even if she didn’t like it at the end of it all, she didn’t really tell him, at least not to his face.
A gap-toothed grin blossomed across her lips, her tongue sticking out where the missing tooth would have been. “Decoder rings!” She snatched the purple ring and rolled it around between her fingers before looking up at him. “Francis is a butthead jerkface. And we’ve got to write dummy notes next time about how bad he is at kickball so he’ll stop reading our stuff anyway.” Grin wide and childish, and blue eyes mischievous, she held out the ring again for him to take back. “You have to put it on me. C’mon, let’s go to my room,” she continued, grabbing his elbow and dragging him into the apartment, past the messy living room with papers all over and the kitchen with music blasting and glasses clinking, and into her tiny room. It was messy in the way that eight year olds always had messy rooms: crumpled papers, backpack on her purple-sheeted bed, socks scattered across the floor. She had her Superman cape hanging off the doorknob of her closet and posters of different things on the walls. A room Eddie was familiar with, of course.
She turned around again and wiggled her fingers. Waiting for him to put a ring on it. Innocently, best friend-only of course.
Eddie grinned when she did, throwing the envelope behind him into the hallway as she handed him the ring back and pulled him through her apartment. Stephanie’s home looked like it had always been this way. Like her parents didn’t care before she was born and just kept on not caring all the way through now. Eddie’s apartment was different. Eddie’s apartment looked like someone tore through a nice place, stole or broke all the valuables and left behind the smell of smoke and dirt that would never get washed out. He didn’t know what was worse. Eddie didn’t even know it was that bad because who did they have it to compare to? Everyone in their building lived the same way.
Still, he felt safe in her room. Her parents never barged in unless it was really late or they needed to go get something and even through the mess he felt a warmth there that didn’t exist anywhere else in the whole world. Afternoons were spent playing pretend and board games and coloring until they got too crazy and had to play outside with the other kids. Sometimes he’d bring his notebook over to draw and write stories, only to fall asleep on the floor half under her bed. Sometimes they’d build giant blanket forts and have pillow wars with each other like they were reenacting some old timey battle they learnt about in school. Sometimes they’d just talk about all the weird/dumb stuff that happened at school that day while they ate snacks they sneaked out of the kitchen. All of it felt like home more than his own living room.
He shut the door behind him and turned to look at her wiggling her fingers at him. “Uh,” Eddie looked down at the purple ring and then fidgeted with the dial to point today’s symbols to the corresponding letters. Then, his face turned serious, hand dramatically clutching her ring as he held it up to the heavens. “Best friend decoder ring activate.” Cue laser noises with his mouth. “With this power only the true decryptors of fate may understand the hidden messages. Dun dun da dumnnnnanana packaowww.” Eddie looked to her, doing his best impression of a Gundam pilot. “No true secret will be revealed.” He said dramatically, slipping the purple ring on her finger and then posing as he put on his own green one and kept making laser noises.
A couple fist pumps and air guitar solos later and the ring receiving ceremony was finished. Eddie plopped down on a pile of stuffed animals, immediately grabbing his favorite (a Stegosaurus) and looked up to her. “You really like it? I had to collect a bunch of cereal box certificates to get ‘em.”
Stephanie took in the decoder ring ceremony in with the same sort of weight that Eddie did, stern mouth and concentrated eyes taking place of her toothy smile and glinting blues. She looked older than eight and just as young at the same time, suddenly a little girl with knitted eyebrow, pressed lips, and the seriousness of someone double her age because this was serious business. This was serious, best friend, pinky swear on your life kind of business. The stuff that had gravity at eight when kids just wanted to escape the real important, heavy things going on around them. To an outsider, of course, the laser noises, the almost botched Macarana dance, the silly faces weren’t the peak of gravity, but to the two little kids in that tiny bedroom, that was like putting your life on the line.
When they were finished and the decoder rings had their blessings and rightful places on each kid’s fingers, she flopped on her bed next to him, amongst the stuffed animals, and she pulled out her old teddy bear with ratty fur and a missing eye. It was her baby bear, one of the few times her parents had gotten together and doted on her over something, and she never slept without it. “I love it. Scout’s honor.” She saluted, then grinned again, all gap-toothed and beaming bright. She wiggled her fingers in front of herself as if admiring the plastic beauty. “We’re gonna be the coolest kids in school now.” Leaning her bear down, she pressed the stuffed animal’s nose to the snout of the Stegosaurus and did a little smack sound, a little kiss between toys. Nothing more, duh, though Steph was still on the precipice of finding out that boys had cooties and it wasn’t cool for her to hold his hand or hug him anymore.
The stuffed Stegosaurus did a little dance on the bed to celebrate the quick kiss and then trotted back into Eddie’s arms. He, too, was just learning that girls were gross and boring from the other boys. And, while he was skeptical since he personally preferred the company of girls over the idiot boys in his class, Eddie wanted to be accepted. In the next year he’d make fun of her a little more to fit, only to find that there really wasn’t anything a genius like him could do to fit in besides shut up and sit down. That was something he would never learn to do. One day, sometime in November when the air was crisp and he wished his mom was around to make Thanksgiving dinner like she used to, a group of boys Eddie was trying to impress would try to take his decoder ring from him. Instead of doing the easy thing and throwing it at them like dogs to chase, he clutched onto the ring, rolled himself into a tiny ball and let them kick and punch him until they got tired.
Eddie would never fess up that it happened. Even later when she saw him covered in cuts and bruises, he would claim that they beat him up for making fun of their low test scores. Letting her know what he’d do for her wasn’t important. The important thing was that he understood, even then on the playground, how vital it was to have someone like Stephanie. Stephanie, who he knew better than his favorite puzzle book or math equation.
The purple decoder ring also never got lost either. Even despite all the fights that raged through the Brown household. Even in spite of her father and his friends romping around the apartment. Even in spite of years and years passing, that purple decoder ring was kept sacred for the little blonde, too. Of course, she didn’t actually wear it anymore, and more often she kept it tucked away in a draw of her writing desk where she stumbled upon in when she was looking for a pen or a folder. It was a symbol of that friendship, and throwing it away or losing it would be disrespectful to her connection with Eddie, right? Because, even as they grew up, Eddie was still her best friend in the entire world. Sure, they drifted apart, and sure, he tried to act cool for the sake of making more friends, but at the end of the day, they would go back to one of their houses and watch Jurassic Park and pretend like everything was still the same as it was when they were itty bitty kids. Even if now Eddie was wrapped up in puzzles and girls in dark make-up and she had joined the gymnastic team at school and had a crush on that boy wonder kid.
Stephanie Brown was now fourteen, and she was a lot more aware of the world around her. She had always been a street smart kid that knew too much, but now she really knew too much. Her father was the Cluemaster, a third-rate Gotham villain trying to make his mark on the city with silly clues and robberies and low-grade crimes, and Stephanie knew. She had followed her father a few times after suspicions grew too high, when her mom was in rehab again and her father would spend days away from her up to something. (There was one time that Arthur had left Stephanie with a friend, a creepy friend who tried to touch her, but after she told her dad, she never heard from that guy again.) She was trying to be a great detective, the way Batman was the world’s best detective, and her efforts proved fruitless until one night. One night where she followed him to the docks, hidden by darkness and black clothes, where she saw her dad and some men loading crates into a supposedly abandoned warehouse.
So, she told Eddie, of course, and she knew what they had to do. The next night found she and Eddie back at the docks. Her in eggplant purple and black bat skimask pulled up over her face. Her blonde hair was tucked away to keep her identity hidden as best she could, but her blue eyes still bore into her friend’s browns despite the pale streetlamps being the only light surrounding them. Arthur was already inside the same abandoned warehouse, and Stephanie was determined to catch him redhanded. Playing superheroes, of course, except this time it was for real. “He’s just--he’s got something in there, and we need to know what. C’mon, don’t worry.”
Eddie was trouble. That’s what parents said about him after school when he lingered around with the goth kids who only let him into their coveted circle of dark eyeliner because of the epic things he could do with a computer. To be fair he was always a little bit of trouble, but the past couple of years with his belligerent father and the constant temptation to just keep cheating on everything to prove the old man right had given him a reputation. A year ago he had run away from home, offering his hacking skills to afford living in a gossip blogger’s basement. Eddie would find him good sexting conversation between billionaires or questionable pictures of some movie star on the beach and get cut enough money to buy a second monitor or a new motherboard. It was all pretty damn close to illegal, but Eddie didn’t care. The shiny people had enough money to always be fine no matter what a gossip blog dug up.
The truth was, his moral compass didn’t line up with Stephanie’s anymore. He didn’t marvel at the Bats (where were they when his father threw him down two flights of stairs?) and he didn’t feel sorry for stealing from dumb, rich people (even though he had yet to actually steal any money). But, he didn’t like people who took from the rest of Gotham. People who stole from banks or knocked over diners. He hated those people. And, that’s what Stephanie’s father was. More than that, Eddie hated the man for personal reasons dating back to his childhood and the way he treated his best friend. If Stephanie really wanted to stop him, Eddie wasn’t going to say no.
Dressed in a Knight’s baseball cap, dark green coat, long black pants, black sneakers and a green bandana over his mouth, Eddie pressed his back against a brick wall and told himself this was the dumbest thing he had ever done in his life. He looked over her eggplant getup and raised his eyebrows high. “We’re going to take some pictures, you’re going to let me anon send them to the police and that’s it, right?” He asked, knowing full well that Stephanie wasn’t the type to drop something just because it was the smart thing to do. Honestly? He wasn’t either. The curiosity got to him and a successful takedown of someone he didn’t like was an added bonus. Eddie reached into his coat. “I made you something so you don’t get yourself killed in there and you refuse to use a gun like a sane person would.” He smirked, pulling out a jade green, thigh utility belt.
“Look. Okay. It’s not something as high-tech as Batman’s gear, but I put off buying a new computer tower for smoke bomb ingredients. There’s a tiny camera in there I manufactured out of old smartphone parts, a couple throwing knives because why not, a lighter, a magnifying glass and-” Eddie’s brow crinkled as he stared at her. “You look like if Shredder had a sidekick. From Ninja Turtles?” Like she didn’t know.
Stephanie waved a dismissive hand towards him. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, but he could clearly see that she had her fingers crossed for that promise. Not that it really mattered. Eddie knew her, just like she knew him. They weren’t the type of kids to back down from a problem or get scared easily. They were stupid like that, really stupid, but neither of them cared. It was why Eddie used to get beat up and Steph often found herself in the principal’s office for then beating those kids up. There was no way she would just let her dad get away with all of this; if she had the chance, she’d take it. For her mother, who was at home battling addiction. For all the people he’d ripped off, who needed to find ways to replace priceless possessions. For herself, who could count the bruises and scars caused by her dad without even thinking.
“Eddie,” she breathed, eyes rolling in that way that was especially for him. Fond and frustrated all at the same time. “You didn’t have to do--oh, of course it’s green.” She grinned, foregoing the argument about not needing to give her anything by taking the utility belt in her hands and running her fingers over it in appreciation. “You’re lucky green complements purple, Eddie,” she teased before he began to rattle off all the things on the inside. A hmph followed his observation, arms crossed and lip curled up, and she fought the urge to childishly stick her tongue out. “Well, you look like an outlaw from the wild, wild west,” she twanged in a very bad southern accent before slipping back into her gruff Gotham lilt, “mated with a college loner.” The little blonde in purple poked him in the chest, then his stomach, and then stepped out to spin on the toe of her combat boots. “I’m Spoiler. Get it? Because I’m going to spoi--well, you get it. And hey, I can’t afford like, kevlar and black. Don’t make fun of my purple.” She poked him again, this time in the shoulder, before looking at the utility belt again. “Seriously,” she said, voice dropping down. “You didn’t have to do this. This is--I’ll pay you back. I’ll help get your next upgrades.” She didn’t quite approve of the work he was doing, not when it was kind of toeing the line of legality, but she really wasn’t one to judge, right?
Clicking the belt around her thigh, she wiggled it around until it fit snuggly. “Thanks. For helping, I mean. I couldn’t go to Tim. He doesn’t--I couldn’t trust anyone else with this.”
He grinned at her description of his outfit, lifting his arms a little like he was inspecting to see if she was right and then making a small oof noise each time she poked him. “Spoiler, wow.” Eddie started, voice hitting that familiar geeky pitch before lowering back down to a murmur. “No, actually I really like it. Spoiler.” He repeated dramatically to show his approval. Eddie didn’t have a name for himself yet, but he also didn’t consider himself a vigilante.
When she snapped the thigh belt on his eyes wandered down to watch and he could feel his ears turn red and heart beat a thousand times a minute. Eddie was always a lot more self aware than the other kids (knowing your own strengths and weaknesses made you stronger) and he never once denied to himself that he had feelings for Stephanie. Denied to everyone else sure. Denied to her? Definitely. Stephanie had this dream guy cooked up in her head, like Tim, who soared far above Old Gotham like a superhero guardian angel. She wanted to be with someone as close to a Superman as she could get and Eddie would never, ever be that.
The mention of Tim stopped his jittering cold and he snapped his eyes up to look at her. “He doesn’t what? And, I don’t want you to pay me back. I made it because I believe in you.” Eddie said simply, dark brown eyes a little more intense than he wanted them to be for a second. Then he shrugged, rolled it all off his back and looked away. “Anyway. Don’t tell my girlfriend I’m running around town late with you. After I got her tickets to some lame-o goth band she’s been all over me. This weekend she invited me over to meet her goldfish, AKA vigorously make out. By next week she’s gunna let me to home base I can feel it.” He swung an imaginary bat and made a crack noise as he hit the invisible baseball out of the park.
She raised her eyebrows high, high, high as he rolled the name off his tongue, scrutinizing and testing it out as if this was her new, permanent moniker. As if she was no longer Stephanie, but just Spoiler. Her lips dipped down temporarily as he teased her, but she beamed up at him when he declared it okay. Even better that he liked it. “Yep. Spoiler,” she repeated again, doing some dorky jazz fingers and then bowing dramatically. Yeah, Steph was trying to be too cool for school as well, but she was just as dorky underneath it all as she had been when Eddie started playing dinosaurs with her all those years ago.
And, as she looked up at him while adjusting the belt with big blue eyes, she smiled gently. Because, well, Eddie believing in her meant more than anyone else in the entire world instilling some sort of faith in her. He was the one who had been there for her before any of the others were even blips on her map. Before Tim passed her that pencil in math class and she fell stupid head over heels for him, or before any of her other friends even existed in her mind. Eddie was there for her with his puzzles and big expressive eyes and his needling words. And, a small part of her knew that he meant so much to her because she liked liked him, but she would deny that to her grave. A, because she didn’t want to ruin her friendship, and B, because he liked those weird goth girls that made Steph’s nose wrinkle in distaste. She had no clue that Eddie had feelings for her because she was too busy denying her own to herself.
But, Steph was always a bad tell, and she couldn’t help rolling her eyes as she stood up again. “Don’t remind me,” she said, suddenly devoid of humor and teasing, but she cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows toward him. “Anyone who lets you go all the way is a dork, too.” The question Seriously, are you going to? rang underneath there, innocently, naively fourteen and maybe there was a hint of jealousy. Maybe. “Whatever. I’m still going to pay you back somehow, Eddie.” And she would think of some way to do it. As for Tim? She shrugged, rubbing the back of her neck a little nervously. “He doesn’t know anything. About my dad, about what he does, about what his friends do. He wouldn’t understand.” Tim came from a good family with good ideals; he could never really wrap his mind around having a father like hers or Eddie’s.
He took a moment to savor what sounded like an ounce of jealousy under the teasing. Smug, immature teenage boy satisfaction that he was achieving some kind of holy grail. “Tim probably wants to wait until marriage.” Eddie gave her a pointed look like who’s the dork now? and pushed off the brick wall. “You’re going to have to tell him sometime. Being ashamed of where you come from is unnecessary. Look at all the losers at our school with goons for parents just because it’s easier to be a loser when your parents are horrible or they’re dead. You never let that happen.” Eddie was never embarrassed or ashamed about giving Stephanie praise. It came to him easy when he really did want to make everything else just one big giant riddle.
Eddie smiled and pushed past her, shoulder bumping with hers as he walked back towards the warehouse her father was making plans in. “I’ve mapped out the perimeter and identified the best places for you to watch without being seen. If you are in trouble, push the emergency button in the third compartment in your utility belt and I’ll make a distraction.” His voice changed significantly from playful almost flirting and affection to something calculating and strategic. It was like a teenage version of how he’d tell her to construct blanket forts when they were kids and it was clear that while he wasn’t as invested in this as Stephanie, he had put a lot of time and effort to make sure they’d get out of this alive and, more importantly, not in jail.
He showed her his smartphone and where the pinpointed places to hide were. “Can you climb all the way up there?” Eddie asked, a little concern laced in his voice. “We could do ground surveillance, too, but it’s much more risky.”
Stephanie pulled a face that told him everything about Tim and waiting for marriage and everything. Sure, the other girls had been talking about their boyfriends, and Eddie had been talking about his goth girls, but Steph had other things on her mind. Things like putting her father in his rightful place. Besides, Tim would never go for a girl like her if he actually knew everything about her past, and that alone had her apprehensive about telling him anything at all. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said with another dismissive wave of her hand. Eddie was right, of course, because she would never let her past get in the way of being a good person, but that didn’t mean she wanted to have that conversation with Tim right away. They were barely even friends, okay.
She was glad for the change of subject and rolled her eyes as he bumped her. “Good, okay. Send it to my phone just in case?” She pulled out an older model of a similar phone, something she bought after saving up for a while, and checked to make sure it was still on. Lately, she had made it an effort to not take money from her father and trying to scrape up her own cash when her mom fell off the wagon again and couldn’t work. Glancing over the map and the points, she tried to memorize as much as she could in that quick gaze and decided on a spot where she could watch the action. As she was working out the perfect way to record whatever she could get and not get caught, however, Eddie distracted her. “That wall?” she asked, pointing unnecessarily because what other wall was he talking about. “I got it,” she said smugly. “I joined gymnastics, y’know. I’m very flexible.” She winked dramatically before stepping forward again.
“Okay. I’m doing this. If we get arrested, just blame it all on me, okay? Okay.” She smoothed her hands over that eggplant purple, a little obvious shake in her hands, and she swallowed hard. Caught his wide browns with her expressive blues, and he could see a second of doubt flicker over them. But, before he could say anything, she grinned, then leaned in and pressed a kiss on his cheek. With another wink, she pulled the mask over her face, then the purple hood, and bolted away without a word. Bounding over the wall and pressing herself into a corner where she could see the goings on, but they couldn’t see her. Hopefully.
After positioning herself, she pulled the hodgepodge camera out of that green utility belt, and pressed it to the glass. There were men moving crates around, unloading the contents (weapons, drugs, all the good illegal stuff), and she got a couple of good shots. Enough to have the police hopefully look into it. And, she should have left it at that, scrambled back to Eddie and get him to send it to the police. But, there was her father, bent over spread out blueprints and angrily yelling about something that she couldn’t quite figure out, and she couldn’t just leave that. No, she leaned onto the window, trying her best to figure out what was going on, camera pressed to the glass as she pressed her covered ear as well. “C’mon, c’mon, give me something,” she begged, drumming her fingers against the glass in what she thought was a quiet way.
But, she must have made a noise louder than she realized or maybe someone finally looked up because there was a shout and pointed fingers in her direction. “Oh, crap,” she said, mentally cursing herself as she scrambled to press the button in the third compartment of her belt. Just as the shots started to fire. She fell back, but managed to catch herself with surprisingly deft fingers on the windowsill. “Great work, Stephanie Brown. Top notch.”