narrative: stephanie -- mazes and birthday candles. WHO Stephanie Brown. WHAT a narrative: a dream and a birthday. WHEN today, March 23rd. WHERE Wayne Manor. WARNING saaads. puppies. weird dreams.
It’s near pitch-black. She can see barely more than an inch in front of her face. Her hand extends out as far as possible, and there is no outline of her small, pale fingers wiggling in the air. Neck jerking back and forth, she tries to acclimate. She can feel her stomach start to plummet, her heart begin the climb from slow beat to a pitter-patter. Panic attacks haven’t happened in some time, and she associates it with a different sort of set of problems.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Bats shouldn’t even be scared of the dark anyway.
Stretching her arms out at her sides instead of ahead, her fingertips make contact with something, and she finds smooth rock beneath her touch. Her eyebrows furrow, and she takes a step further. Suddenly, she can see better, much better. There is a glowing not far off in the distance, but she can’t quite make out the source. Instead, she looks to her sides. Smooth concrete, which would be nondescript as could be except for one (not so) small detail: painted handprints scattering across the walls. Some smudged, some so precise you could see the lines of the person’s palm. She jumps, hands flying quickly back to herself, and she stumbles forward towards that glowing. That might be a way out.
Only, when she reaches the place where it should have been, there’s nothing there. She’s understandably frustrated, taking a sharp right where the glowing led. Nothing. Again. Around and around in circles, and no exit. No break in the walls, no lead to where that goddamn glowing could be. Nothing.
And, suddenly, she feels a wetness on the back of her neck. Stiffening, she turns around slowly to see the culprit…
Stephanie jerked awake, a gasp echoing throughout the empty room in that empty Manor. Sleep stupor blinking from her eyes, she flipped her blonde hair to one side and spied the fat, yellow head of her Labrador Retriever, Flounder, resting on the arm of her chair. He must have pressed his cold nose to her neck while she was sleeping, she assumed as she wiped drool from her face and rubbed at her sleepy eyes. A groan of tiredness, and she sat up more fully. Flounder, bless his soul, answered with a wag of his tail, which earned him an affectionate head rub and kiss to the top of his snout. “Hi, baby boy.”
She was alone in Wayne Manor, which was very typical at this point. Only the pets and the blonde bat roamed there more often than not, all wayward souls looking for the semblance of meaning. Or, frankly for the animals, their next meal. Steph knew that she needed to move into her own place, in fact she wanted to just to get away from the expansive, desolate loneliness she felt here. Or, rather, it wasn’t the place, but it didn’t necessarily help. As she had told Eddie, she didn’t feel like she fit in at all anymore. She didn’t feel like she belonged, and even while she assured Eddie that that could be a good thing, she didn’t like the feeling. She didn’t like the itching need to change. She didn’t like the loneliness.
“You wanna go out, Flounder?” An excited wag of his tail was her answer, and she pushed herself out of the chair. She had passed out in it while waiting for word from Bruce or Selina or both or anyone for that matter, but no buzz of comms or pinging of her journals indicated news. Good or bad. Whether she should be more worried (since, no shit, she was already worried witless) was a matter of working up the dormant anxiety buried in the back of her head. So, the dogs would be walked around the property, and maybe she would work on some patients’ charts to distract herself. Anything to avoid getting in her own head.
A quick walk around the upstairs found Bruce’s puppy, Thomas, snuggled on his owner’s bed, willing the man to come home. With a sad smile, Stephanie scooped him off the bed and carried him downstairs where the leashes were tucked away. “Yeah, I miss him, too.” She hadn’t even seen Bruce since she arrived. Hell, she hadn’t seen anyone but Selina, Eddie, and Crane, and only one of those meetings could be deemed anywhere near pleasant.
As she trotted down the stairs, in jeans, sneakers, and a purple sweater, snuggling the puppy in her arms with her own dog in tow, she tried to avoid getting into her head. She tried so fucking hard, but there was that nipping loneliness just at the edge. She wished so hard that she could just run off to another door and get stuck there for a while. She wished she could be selfish and just leave. But, selfishness had cost her that which was most dear to her, and she couldn’t dive down there again. So, she would stay and wait to hear word on Selina. She would wait to see if she was needed to patch someone up, or needed to jump in and save the day, or not needed at all. (The most likely scenario in her mind.) And, she wouldn’t run and hide away, as much as she fucking wanted to.
Steph plopped Thomas on the floor of the kitchen, where Flounder sniffed at the puppy curiously, large tail wagging to and fro, and she began the elusive search for the leashes. But as she combed the kitchen and its pots and pans for the things, the calendar caught her eye. March 23rd.
“Oh,” she said aloud, slowly standing up from her crouching position by one of the cupboards, leashes in hand. She had completely forgotten. Lingering there for a moment -- how could she have forgotten -- she snapped out of it and shuffled over to click the leashes onto both dogs’ collars.
She had even bought something a couple of days ago for this occasion, how could she have forgotten. Leaving the dogs to sniff each other for a moment, she moved to the fridge and pulled a small plastic bag from the back. In it, a box that held a cupcake -- small in size, but no matter -- and a single, purple candle already plopped into the center of the frosting. She pulled the cupcake out. Fishing in the closest draw to her, she found a lighter and sparked the thing until a flame awoke and she could light the wick of that cheap candle. Staring at the flame for a moment, she looked entranced, maybe even sad. (Okay, actually sad.) She scooped some vanilla frosting off the top of the pastry to smear on the doggies’ noses. A sad smile, and she turned back to the thing, elbows leaning on the marble counter and cheeks being held up by the heels of her hands.
“Happy Birthday, Stephanie Brown.” And she blew the candle out.