InsaneJournal

Who: Damian and Stephanie
What: Training
When: Backdated: Saturday, January 4th. Afternoon
Where: The Stark house and backyard
Rating: Low
Status: Complete



Damian had been looking forward to training Steph ever since they had first talked about it, which had really only been about a week earlier. Truthfully, Damian was just looking forward to spending some time with her. He still wasn't aware that she had a boyfriend, but he also didn't think he actually had a chance since she had seen a picture of him when he was ten and probably wouldn't be able to think of him as anything other than that now. Either way, he was just happy to spend some time with her and teach her some self defense. He knew it wasn't going to be anything like when him and Alyssa would train with Kitty; for one, Stephanie was a beginner and unlike Alyssa, he was sure that Stephanie would be wearing more than a pair of workout shorts and a sports bra. He'd never known if Alyssa had dressed like that because it was comfortable or if she was trying to mess with him. Either way, he hadn't minded.

Now that the snow had melted and it had gotten warmer, Damian had donned a pair of sweatpants and a wife beater for their training session and was currently waiting for Steph to show up.

The more distance Stephanie put between herself and the issue of her father’s possible parole the better she seemed to feel overall. She’d spent time with Danny, cleaned the condo at least twice, took on an extra shift at Granny’s, all in an effort to push it out of her mind. Today was the day it all came rushing back though, she was going to use it as fuel to keep with her training. She didn’t expect it to be easy, she didn’t want it to be. She wanted it to hurt so she could push through it and feel better.

She had too look up the address, knowing driving there in the truck with the GPS was much different than riding there on her motorcycle. Her eggplant motorcycle and matching helmet. Steph believed in sticking to a theme once you had one. She parked it with the cars like he said, making sure it wouldn’t be in anyone’s way, then took off her helmet, carrying it under her arm as she went to ring the bell. Damian had been right about her attire, nothing low cut, no shorts, no exposed stomach. Just a simple blue tank top that fit her form well without clinging, black yoga pants that stopped at her mid-calf and a pair of white and blue running shoes. She came to learn, not to titillate her underage teacher.

Damian was in the kitchen when the doorbell rang and after calling out that it was for him, he made his way through the house to the front door; luckily no animals followed him today. Reaching the door, he pulled it open, smiling when he saw Stephanie, “Hey. How’s it going?” He knew that she was having a tough time with family stuff, but he didn’t know what. He just hoped that whatever had been bothering her when he’d texted her a few days earlier. “Come on in. We’re gonna be out back in the backyard.” Of course it would have been nicer if it were the spring or summer, but even in the winter it wasn’t too bad; not bad compared to what it was like in Chicago at the moment.

Steph smiled, just because she might have been a little tense about the continued safety of herself and her mother if her father did end up being released early she wouldn’t let it ruin the other aspects of her life. Particularly her friendships and that warmth that she was becoming known for. “Hi. Pretty good.” If she said it often enough she figured she would start believing it herself soon.
She nodded as she came in, glancing about the place as she did. “How are things with you? Do any more of that… you know?” She wasn’t sure if there was anyone else about the place but even if there was it was possible that they didn’t know what Damian occasionally got up to in the evenings.

Damian shook his head as he lead her through the house and into the kitchen, which let out into the rather large backyard. It was surrounded by trees and on one side was an inground pool and patio then on the other side was the larger grassy area of the yard where they would be training, “Not recently. I’ve mostly just been hanging around the house, with Bran when he isn’t doing his homework or working.”

“Didn’t want to run the risk of getting injured or sore when you knew you had to try to teach me. Didn’t want me to get a big ego when I managed to throw you around.” she teased. Teasing was good, so was staying optimistic and aware of her surroundings. She didn’t want to bother Damian with what was going on, she hadn’t wanted to bother Danny with it either but after she started drinking her texting fingers developed a mind of their own. She would do better here though, use it instead of dump it on him. “Hopefully your very manly ego can take occasionally getting hit by a girl.”

Damian laughed and ran a hand through his dark hair, “Yup, you figured it out.” He was glad that he could joke around with her after the way he treated her in the dreams. “I didn’t want you to get too overconfident.” He gave her a smirk then started thinking about where they could begin, “I think I can handle that. So, we should probably start by stretching.”

She set her helmet down on the grass off to the side, taking her phone from the waistband of her pants and tossing it into the helmet. She would have left it with the bike normally but since her mother had heard about the situation with her father she had been low, low enough that she worried she might start slipping. Her mother didn’t have a sponsor in California yet but Steph was more than happy to talk her through any and everything that might have come up, hence keeping her phone close. She would apologize to Damian if it happened to go off but she would have to take it.

She was still in pretty great shape, in fact probably the best of her life since she hadn’t stopped exercising after she lost the baby weight. She still remembered her stretches from gymnastics, maybe she was a little rusty but she did a few shoulder stretches followed by touching her toes then by bending backward until she was able to touch the ground behind her with her hands. They weren’t proper stretches really, just warming up a little. “You’ve trained and you’ve learned stuff from your dreams?”

Damian would completely understand if Stephanie had to take a phone call from her mother; after all, considering he didn’t have any family of his own, really, he considered it important that other people be there for their own family. He too started stretching, doing the things he’d learnt from Kitty. He’d already meditated earlier in the day, so he wasn’t tense or anything like that. “Yeah. In my dreams, I was trained pretty much from the moment I could walk by a group called The League of Assassins. Then I got additional training afterwards, when I met up with my father.” It was still hard to believe that he could do things now that a year ago he would have only dreamt about. “And then here, I trained with a friend and my ex for awhile.”

Instead of coming back up to her feet she instead lifted them, swinging over her body and using the momentum after she hit the ground to push her to stand. She was more proud of herself for still being able to do that than actually concerned with how much it stretched her but she liked to take small victories where she could. “Bruce.” she said trying to remember all the names from the picture. “He give you the cape and the sword too?”

Damian watched Stephanie, impressed with the move she pulled. He didn’t see there being a problem with training her and he was glad. “Not exactly,” He shook his head and stretched one arm across his chest to stretch his shoulder, “The sword I got from my mother and Dick actually made me Robin.” It hadn’t dawned on Damian until then that the picture Stephanie had showed him as Robin along with Bruce as Batman, which meant that Tim was right and Bruce wasn’t really dead. Unless it wasn’t a real picture from the dreams and just showed all the members of the bat family at some point in their career. Either way, it didn’t really matter because his father wasn’t really around anyway.

“Can you tell me everybody’s like code names or whatever, or do I have to like wait until I have the dreams myself?” she popped one shoulder then the other, feeling loose and ready to begin. Though really, she had been ready to start since he offered to teach her. Maybe she should have been more focused on non-violence, after all violence was what got her father into trouble and the tool he often used to get out of it, but Steph didn’t work like that. Sometimes she had to hit something, or at least smack it around until it started behaving right.

Damian thought about that for a moment, "Might be better to find out on your own. You don't want to know everything that happens before you dream it, do you?" Of course part of Damian wished that he had, had someone around who could have told him certain things before he dreamt them, but all in all he had no problem with the way things had gone so far. "I mean, unless you really want to know." His dream counterpart had done a lot of snooping through the computers in the Bat Cave and knew quite a lot about everyone his father had worked with and against.

“Hm,” She actually had to think about it. There was something to be said for letting things unfold as they were meant to, then again it really wasn’t in her nature to shy away from spoilers. And given how some people talked on the Net about their dreams maybe knowing what was coming could occasionally help. “I tell you what, just tell me the names, not the real names, just the code names of everybody I might need to know about or that are important to me or you. That way, if I do dream about people I can know who to look out for or pay special attention to or whatever.”

“I have an idea.” Damian smirked, “How about, if you can take me down then you get the names.” He’d come to a point in both his dream and real life training that he could hold back if he needed to so that he wouldn’t accidentally hurt someone who wasn’t someone that he actually meant to hurt. He hadn’t had to hold back with Kitty and Alyssa since one of them was a mutant and the other had gotten stronger as a result of the dreams and had a magic bow. “Deal?”

“Uh,” she put her hands on her hips and looked Damian up and down. He wasn’t the tiny ten year old of the picture, he had a good six to seven inches on her now, not that height would have mattered given his training but she wasn’t to know that. She’d dropped bigger guys, usually with a punch to the face or a kick to the back of a knee. None of them had been trained though, they had relied on their stature to scare her off, she hadn’t minded hurting them. Punching Damian in the face though, it felt a little weird. “I guess. I mean, not like my full strength right, I don’t wanna like break your nose or anything.”

Damian smirked, “Don’t worry about that. Just try to take me down.” He figured the best place to start was to see what Stephanie already knew and they could go from there, “How about you show me what you know already.” He moved towards her, waiting for her to come at him first. Just because he was a little bigger than him didn’t mean she couldn’t take him down; after all, he’d taken down full grown super villains in the dreams and he was only ten.

Steph had fought more than most ever would have guessed, usually her father or anyone who gave her trouble at school. It was never anything near proper fighting, mostly hitting the other person with her first or whatever she could grab to hit with. Never anything polished, as Damian was likely able to tell. She hopped up onto the balls of her feet into what approximated a fighting stance, hands curling into firsts. At first it seemed as if she was about to punch him in the stomach with her right hand but then dropped her fist and aimed a roundhouse kick at the left side of his jaw.

One of the things that Damian had been taught by The League was to read other people he was fighting as well as anticipate the next move. Stephanie was no different than anyone else and as her foot came up towards his face, he leaned back instead of bringing his hand up to grab her ankle like he might have with anyone else, because his next step would have been to flip her and he wasn’t about to hurt Stephanie. So as he leaned back, he jumped a step back as well, quirking a brow at her, “Is that all you’ve got?”

“Ooh, the jailbait is getting lippy.” she grumbled. She had meant to catch him off guard with switching it up like that but clearly he had seen that coming. He would probably be able to block any punches she sent at him and looking around for weapons or other help from their surroundings did little for her. The next thing that came to her mind seemed really stupid, but there was always a chance that it could work. Without warning she launched herself at him, aiming for his middle. She hoped the whole force of her weight suddenly on him, combined with the slight angle she had make him unsteady enough to force him down, if not at least lose his secure footing.

And she was right. Dodging her kick had put him off balance slightly so when she threw herself at him, Damian went down hard. As he hit the ground the wind was knocked out of him and he managed to pull his head forward so that it didn’t hit the ground as well. “Cheap shot.” He laughed, hands moving to Stephanie’s sides without actually thinking. It’d been a couple of months since he’d been in this particular situation and suddenly having a pretty girl on top of him was causing him to not think properly.

“Victory is mine!” she proclaimed as she put her hands out on the ground next to both sides of his head and pushed herself up to look down at him. “Don’t you dare try to deny it or make excuses, you got tackled by a girl and went down, end of story.” She was actually having fun, teasing him, getting to hit something, it may have just started but she was already really enjoying herself. Almost enough that she didn’t notice the hands on her. Almost.

“Watch it, feeling me up isn’t gonna make me forget about the names you owe me.” There was the smallest of blushes on her cheeks but she chose to ignore it, instead moving away from his hands to where she was finally off him. On her feet again she reached out and offered him her hand if he wanted help up.

“Alright. Alright. I was tackled by a girl.” Damian said, smirking up at her then realizing where his hands were. Sure, it was completely innocent, but at the same time, he had a crush on the blond and if Stephanie knew, she probably wouldn’t be teasing him. “Right. Sorry.” When she got up, he took her hand and let her help him up, “Okay, so the obvious one is Bruce. He’s Batman. Then there’s Nightwing, Red Robin and Robin.” He wasn’t about to give her all the information at once, “You get the rest if you can take me down again,” Without giving her any warning, he came at her with a light punch.

Maybe she hadn’t been trained by assassins but Stephanie had grown up with Arthur Brown for a father, she had learned quickly how to spot when a punch was coming. Of course she didn’t know anything about proper blocking and instead ducked and backed off a few steps. The tackle had probably played her best card too early and now she just had to focus on just not landing on her ass. She tried to circle around him but it didn’t work, “I feel a little ripped off, you already said you were Robin.” But then she went for it, a typical right hook aimed at his nose, probably easy to block as he saw it coming, she told herself she was just testing the waters.

And block it, he did. When she moved away from his punch, he took note of it and quickly decided that the first official thing they should work on was blocks. If she could block a punch then the next step would be to use the other person’s momentum against them, “Hey, you wanted all the code names, right? That’s mine.” Having seen the picture, he wasn’t entirely sure who Cass was dressed as, because if Stephanie was Batgirl then Cassandra wasn’t, but the costume hadn’t been familiar to him. “Okay, so I think we should work on blocks. If I was anyone else, I would have come back after you when you backed off, but if you block, there are ways to use my punch against me.”

“Yes sir, sensei bird-boy.” she saluted with a smirk. She was taking this seriously though, she had watched how he moved to block her, how he had turned his arm and how he held his stance. She wouldn’t be able to replicate it until he showed her how, but now she knew what to look for when it was coming. “We talking something like those ninja things? Or like krav maga where you do like bursting and hit while you’re blocking?”

“I think the basics right now.” He thought for a moment about what to do first, “Okay, so throw a punch at my face, but not with any force behind it this time.” It would be easier to show her if she wasn’t actually trying to hit him.

Steph actually had to concentrate when she threw another punch. For as long as she could remember if you were seen throwing a punch you had better make it connect and make it connect hard otherwise you’d have one aimed at you. It was slower, mostly to make sure it didn’t accidently hit him, and so she could get a better grasp of what he was about to show her.

When she threw the punch, he brought his hand up to block and held it there so she could see what he was doing, “You want to have your hand like this when you block. Less chance of you breaking your hand or wrist when blocking. Punch with the other hand.” He gently pushed her hand down to ready himself for the next punch. He was thinking that after a few punches and blocks like this, they’d switch and it would be her turn to do the blocking.

The left cross came faster than the punch that came before it, Stephanie a little more confident that she wouldn’t hit him. Besides, she figured that if he couldn’t block a simple punch from her now he wasn’t much of a teacher. And really, she wasn’t doing her best to hit him, she was genuinely interested in seeing his blocks, knowing how useful it would be to her. As silly as it might have sounded she did actually want to join him those nights he went off to fight crime or whatever else he did.

Damian blocked the next punch easily enough, smirking as he did so. “Lets try a couple more. Alternate your hand each time.” It was all pretty basic, but he figured it was better to start with the basics before moving on to the harder stuff. Damian hadn’t even thought that Stephanie might want to actually go out crime fighting with him, but then again she was Stephanie Brown and once she knew more moves it’d probably be hard to keep her inside.

She did as he said, alternating the hand and the direction of the punch each time. She had wanted to keep him on his toes but he barely seemed to be bothered, almost like he was able to block her without thinking. He probably was, muscle memory and all that, it made sense but didn’t do much for her ego. She had knocked him down once already though, that was enough to make her feel good for at least the next few days. “I pity the fly that tries to bother you.”

Damian laughed as he blocked each of her punches, “Believe it or not, but flies still evade me.” He smirked and grabbed her wrist lightly during one punch, “Wanna switch?” She would have to try blocking eventually and he didn’t want to wait long before letting her try.

“Yeah.” Steph was more than ready, or so she seemed to tell herself. She was eager to learn, and by this point she trusted Damian’s control enough not to hit her, or at least not in the face, if she couldn’t block him. She brought her hands up, changing her stance to how he had been standing. “If you accidently punch me in the face, I will end you, just so you know.” she teased with a smile.

Raising his fists, Damian started throwing punches. They weren’t hard punches, but he wasn’t playing around either. He wasn’t trying to hit Stephanie, but he wanted her to block real punches. Standing this close to her, it struck him how different it was to be looking down at her a little instead of staring up at her like in the dreams and not for the first time, he wondered if his dreams would progress beyond him being ten.

She might have been a little shaky at first but by the second one Steph was doing much better. Maybe it wasn’t as easy as Damian had made it look but she thought she was getting the hang of it, at least so far. That might change later but for now she was doing alright. She had a natural affinity for throwing punches that she was hoping also translated to blocking them. “Maybe not wax on, wax off, but I think I’m getting this.”

Damian laughed, but didn’t stop punching, wanting to see just how many times she could block him, “Do you want one of those headbands? And for me to make you do tedious chores that in the end actually are part of your training?” He smirked and decided to switch it up a little and instead of punching with his right after a left handed punch, he punched with his left again, wanting to see if she was really paying attention.

“No,” she said with a smirk. He almost caught her off guard but she recovered well and managed not to hurt herself. “Mainly because there are like laws about smacking around minors and that’s sort of my default when teenagers try to make me do grunt-work.” she teased, clearly enjoying herself even though now she absolutely keep her focus on where the next attempt was going to come from.

“Good job,” Damian said as she blocked the punch. It showed that she was paying attention, “Good, cause I don’t really have any chores that will teach you a lesson like that.” He threw a few more punches before deciding to throw another surprise at her and instead of a punch from the front, he threw one from the side.

That one got her. It didn’t connect but instead of a proper block she essentially smacked it away and took a half step back out of his immediate reach. She realized her mistake right away, “Ah, shit. I’m sorry. Reflex. Dad used to come at me sideways, I used to grab his fist and bite it. I think not biting you is a good sign.” she said it like a joke but it was true. And she really didn’t know why she had shared that with Damian, she just wanted to explain it so he wouldn’t think she was inept. She really did want him to think she had enough talent to make this training worthwhile for him.

When she moved back, Damian was about to tease her until she mentioned her dad and his smirk vanished. He’d had no idea that her dad had hit her and now he felt kind of bad for doing that to her, “Crap. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Of course he knew who her father was in the dreams, but he’d wanted to think that he was different in the waking world, “Are you alright? I didn’t like….trigger anything...did I?” She didn’t seem to be upset at him, but at the same time, she could have been pretending and he wanted to be sure.

She really had made things awkward and she couldn’t help but kick herself for it, “No, no. I’m not made out of like tissue paper or whatever, a little punch isn’t gonna get to me. I just didn’t want you to think I go around slapping at people’s hands like that. I- I’ve gone and made it all awkward and like Hallmark special or whatever. Shit.” She ran a hand over her face. “I’m good, I’m good. Just really embarrassed, and yeah, trying to make it into a joke did not go well, like at all. So, yeah…” she clapped her hands together, brought them apart to snap her fingers then clapped again. “There’s nothing you can do that would like trigger me, or whatever, so maybe we could like move on to something so I can stop rambling and making an ass of myself.”

When Stephanie finally stopped rambling, Damian nodded, running a hand through his hair, “Right. Sorry. I just didn’t know...obviously. Okay, if you’re sure you’re fine then maybe we should move on.” He scratched at the back of his neck as he pondered over what they should do next, “Okay, so lets put the punching and blocking into use.” Damian took a step back, “Try to take me down again.” He hoped that this would make things less awkward.

“No tackling.” she forced herself to smile, trying desperately to move on beyond their little awkward patch. It really was no wonder why the word ‘awkward’ and her name came up together whenever anyone talked about her. At this point she was considering changing her middle name to awkward, if only just to save time when she met people. At least she wouldn’t be punching them the way she was with Damian. She hopped up onto the balls of her feet again, knowing staying rooted was a mistake when she didn’t have strength or size over him. She started with an old favorite, the right hook, her other hand up and ready to block his that was doubtlessly going to come.

Then they had something else in common, because often times, Damian was pretty certain that his middle name was also awkward. Truth be told, it was nice to find someone else who was just as awkward as he was, because Alyssa had always seemed so perfect and on those rare occasions when she did come off as awkward, it was just adorable. So, it was nice to feel like he was on an even level with someone. When Stephanie threw the right hook, Damian blocked it easily and threw a punch of his own, paying special attention not to throw the same one that had made her flinch moments before.

There was never a girl more normal or more awkward than Stephanie Brown, or so she generally thought. She had fallen into that attainable, girl next door category and had been pretty happy there for the most part. She, of course, still felt inadequate next to a lot of other girls, particularly the pretty, perfect ones, but she didn’t let it keep her down for long. Just like old memories of fighting her father. Damian may have been avoiding using that particular punch but Steph was going to own it, sending one his way after blocking his last.

Damian had stopped concentrating on the punches and blocks, part of him still focused on what he’d just learnt about Stephanie, so when she threw the punch it took him off guard and her punch connected with the side of his head. Having seen her in the dreams, he should have expected her punch to be solid, but it was such a surprise that it felt like it hurt more than it really did, “Damn….that was good.”

Thankfully her concern overrode her desire to rub it in his face, though later, when she started dreaming, that she had hit both of the Robins she had come into contact with. The hand that had hit him came to cover her mouth as he eyes went wide, “Oh my god,” her voice was muffled behind her hand. It couldn’t have felt good for him, Stephanie didn’t do things in halves, especially punches. It would be just her luck if she managed to do some serious damage to him. “I’m so so sorry. You okay? Do you need like an ice pack or something?”

Damian touched the side of his head and laughed a little, “I’m fine. That was a good punch.” He might not have been paying attention, but he was proud of her for taking advantage of his distraction, because that was what she would want to do if she was really in a fight. “Okay, so I guess I owe you more code names, huh?”

“Only if I didn’t give you a concussion.” she said, closing the small distance between them. The last thing she wanted to do was really hurt him, maybe once she saw him in her dreams she wouldn’t mind, but for now he was still really nice to her and she didn’t like hurting those who were nice. She brought a hand up to his chin, holding his face there and keeping it tilted so she could get a better look at the damage. She delicately pressed her fingers around the now red spot, then lightly on the spot of impact itself. “You’re already starting to swell, but that’s good.” Steph said as she let go of him. “You’ll probably have a goose-egg and some bruising but you’ll be okay.”

Damian winced slightly as she touched the area where she’d punched him, but her fingers on his chin caused a slightly shiver to run down his spine and he hoped that she didn’t notice, “I think I would have had to hit my head a little harder than that to get a concussion.” He smirked at her, fingers itching to reach out and touch her once he realized just how close they were, but he resisted, “How ‘bout we go inside and I’ll put some ice on this and if you’re thirsty I’ll get you a drink and then I’ll tell you the other code names.”

“Well, I could always hit you again, you know, at my full strength. See if you get a concussion then.” She feigned a withering look at him then shook her head as it turned to a smile and went to pick up her helmet, keeping her promise to her mother that she would keep it on and with her at all times. She hadn’t noticed his reaction to her touch, which was probably a good thing, that would just have made everything more awkward. “Yeah, ice and an anti-inflammatory might be good for your head. I tried to tell you before that I hit like a heavyweight, you’re looking at the wrong girl if you’re looking for petite and delicate, you know?” She let him lead the way back into the house. “I am sorry though. My mother is a nurse, I could call her if you think you might want to have it better looked at.”

Damian laughed and led the way into the house then went to the freezer and found an ice pack and wrapped it in a towel, “I don’t think I need a nurse to look at it, but thanks.” He smirked and pressed the ice pack to the side of his head, “So, drink then the rest of the code names?” Judging from how well Stephanie had done today, Damian was certain that she’d become a quick learner and chances were the more dreams she had the more she’d come to know through them.