The tone of the voice behind her made Steph think she’d misunderstood the intentions of her new companion and she felt the starting wisps of guilt- it would be no good to yell at someone who’d just come in for a snack or something. Her intent was to shut up and mind her own business, though at the sound of her name she looked up with a curious hum.
Because she knew Hank and recognized his face and the sudden realization came that oh, he didn’t know she was in the Mousehole opened the door to her thoughts just as the realization of oh, they haven’t talked since Robin died came barreling through. The hopeful horror painted on his face was enough to make her hesitate and the desperate question- Stephanie Brown? Stephanie Brown? Stephanie Brown? -elicited a sheepish smile and a soft chuckle.
“At your service,” she said, which was perhaps not the most tactful way to reveal that her death had been less than permanent. Then again, in all her years of being a dead girl walking, she’d never found any way that worked better. Maybe she should’ve tried harder when she decided Spoiler needed to make a return to Gotham, but she hadn’t. Apparently she was still floundering for the right answer. “It’s um. Been a while, hasn’t it? Last time I saw you I was like, thirteen.”
Another laugh. It didn’t feel very honest to laugh like that, but Stephanie had never been a very honest person. Carefully, as if it were brittle as the sheen of ice on a window in Gotham’s winter, Steph set her bowl down onto the counter and smiled at Hank (somehow the smile seemed more fragile than the bowl) and let her hands fall to fidget with the hem of her shirt (please don’t be mad please don’t be mad please don’t).“Uh.. Sorry about that.”
Thirteen. All of that, with the Black Mask. The horror of it. They were thirteen, then. He’d nodded, barely. Remembering. Been a while, yes. She was certainly right about that. It’d been a long, busy while since Hank McCoy had last stopped by the Watchtower, shaking hands and sharing files with the Justice League, staying for working lunches with Wonder Woman, swapping notes with Martian Manhunter. Meeting kids like Steph, who’d got into this not-game of theirs even younger than he had.
Sorry? Hank blinked, and shook his head with an earnest sort of smile. “Oh, no, no, please - you don’t have anything at all to be sorry for. Obviously. Of course.” Oh, she seemed so… afraid, almost. As if he’d have any right to be angry. (As if he wasn’t well aware that the rightness of anger didn’t matter terribly much to angry people, more often than was comforting to realize.) Poor kid. To think anyone would be less than happy to see her again, nevermind mad about it.
He could reassure her about that much, at least. “I’m…” He paused, still smiling, gently. How to put this, without stepping on any stories she’d rather not tell, that weren’t his to know, that didn’t matter nearly so much as the simple fact that - well. It was simple, wasn’t it? Last he’d heard, Gotham was rather bereft of bats and birds and other assorted vigilantes; it’d be a lonelier place, now. He’d imagine. (Might be projecting, Genosha’s uncomfortably unfamiliar crowds still fresh in his mind - but, from the outside, certainly, the cavedwelling set had always seemed rather tightknit. Trying for it, anyway, which was something. Something an X-Man could certainly understand.) Lonelier and even more dangerous than usual. Which, given what he knew of Gotham, was saying something. Whatever she’d been put through - death and back and whatever as-yet-unfathomable states lay between the two - today, at least, Steph was among friends, safe. As safe as any of them could be. He sighed, brightly, the last of that shock-sharp tension wearing down into something soft and steady. “I’m just glad you’re here.” Genuinely, in the broadest sense possible. Steph Brown was here. And however that’d come to pass, the world was better for it.
