This could be the very minute I'm aware I'm alive

[spoileralert]

WHO: Stephanie Brown
WHERE: 6i and the surrounding forest
WHEN: 8/5-8/20
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: None Anticipated

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[ Deep Forest ]
Steph has begun to spend the better part of her mornings foraging in the woods, picking up enough of the plants she'd seen around the inn to fill up half her backpack. With that done she took to the trees to practice her skills on the local wildlife. She was cautious of anything within ten feet of her prey, which was typically squirrels but occasionally birds and whatever else wandered close enough and could be killed by a thrown knife. Anything coming up behind her or from the side she was less conscious of. She was in the woods, after all. Any danger would be coming at her from the ground, and she knew how to make the most of a height advantage.

At least she wasn't likely to accidentally knife anybody.

[ Inn ]
Late afternoon Steph brought her prizes to the inn. She tried to wait until there were either several people around or nobody to drop off her kills, partly because she wasn't sure if it was cool to leave them without skinning them or anything but mostly because she didn't want to lie about how she caught them. The less people knew about her combat abilities the better.

She was less cautious about dropping off plants. She didn't want anyone to get the idea that she was going to be a steady source of food or wild herbs, but she was willing to look for something particular as a one-time favor.

She didn't seek out company, but she was out and about much more often these days trying to take Kat's implicit advice. She didn't have to cut herself off from the world just because she felt guilty.

[ Forest's Edge ]
Later in the evenings Steph hung out on the very edge of the forest to work out. This perhaps looked a little different for her than it did for other people. She started out with stretches, yes, maybe a few pushups and a set of pullups using a branch. But after that she turned cartwheels back and forth in the open area, starting with one round and maxing out at three. She wasn't quite up to speed yet to try handsprings. Eventually she would go down to the beach, where falling wouldn't hurt quite so much.

When she tired of cartwheels she moved on to handstands, holding it for 60 seconds before hand-walking to a tree for foot support and doing upside-down pushups. Then she took to the tree branch for some hanging crunches.

As a gymnast she is, of course, obligated to take requests.

[ Other ]
If you want a special prompt, feel free to ask!

Comments

[scathefires]

“Fuck Batman,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. He inhales a deep breath and sighs it out. “Yeah, I guess you could say I spent a lot of time thinking about him. You go out fighting the criminal element every night with a guy, you think you know him.”

He is that criminal element now, more or less, and Jason spent a good portion of the five years he let Bruce believe he was still dead thinking about him - about ways to hurt him the way he hurt Jason. But as it turns out, you can’t really hurt a brick wall; Jason realized this rather late into his elaborate stratagem, as Bruce turned to walk away from him, pistol held to the Joker’s head, yelling Him or me, decide, now! Even then, Bruce hadn’t chosen Jason over the Joker.

And yet ... when Jason activated the timer on the explosives, Bruce had pulled him out of the way of the blast. Why?

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head to clear that nagging memory away. “He’s not my partner anymore and I’m not playing by his rules.” Which explains the guns, of which there are none in this place, but you don’t need guns to fight. Jason rakes a hand through his hair, mulling over an idea.

“Do you know any self-defense stuff? ‘Cause if not, I can teach you. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of threat in this place right now but you can never be too careful.”

[spoileralert]

The fog clears by degrees, her logical brain waking up again as he keeps talking. He doesn't know, and he doesn't have to know. It feels selfish, keeping this secret from someone she already feels a kinship with, but what she did was pretty selfish too. Why change now?

She turns to face the ground again, letting the shakes run their course.

"I know a bit." At least she only needs to lie by omission and understatement.

"From what I've seen most of the danger here comes from wildlife, and things like earthquakes and thunderstorms."

[scathefires]

“Yeah ... not a whole you can do for that except stay aware of your surroundings.”

He senses, now that he’s pulled his focus out of his own well of pain, that something is off with Steph. Something caused a shift in her mood - something about what he’d said about being Robin, about knowing and working with Batman. He doesn’t have any inkling that she too wore that cape and mask, another soldier in Batman’s war on crime. For all he knows, she’s just a girl from Gotham who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time and died at Black Mask’s hands. What is it he said that shook her? He assumes it must have something to do with him, the violence he’d intimated at, the offer to teach her self-defense. Maybe she’s frightened of him now and trying not to let on.

“Hey,” he says, softening his tone again, “look, I know you don’t really know me, and you’ve got no real reason to trust me, but I’m not gonna hurt you, OK? I promise.”

[spoileralert]

That was more or less the impression she'd gotten from him the moment he heard her story and started to share his. Still, she looks up to search his face for any hint of a lie.

"I believe you," she decides, then looks down again. Can she afford to get close to him? What if she slips? She only just started making real friends here, getting out and about, trying to drag herself out of the funk she's been in. Jason might compromise that.

Then again, she told Kat as much of the truth as she could stand to. Clearly that young woman had no intention of letting a few hundred deaths and several thousand injuries get between them. She would have at least one person left in her life whatever happened here.

"When I woke up here, I thought I was done. I'd never have to think about Gotham again, never go back. But... life goes on, apparently, even when it really shouldn't. I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like for me."

It's not a real explanation, and it doesn't particularly answer anything, but at least it's true.

[scathefires]

Her answer doesn’t ring untrue, or even as a partial truth - it’s entirely in line with Jason’s own experience. Once he learned that his death hadn’t been avenged, he launched himself immediately into making plans, and that became his entire reason to keep pushing one foot in front of the other, all the way toward Gotham. Now, in the aftermath of the literal explosions those plans ended in, Jason is much less certain about what to do with this strange second chance at life he’s been given, and getting shuffled around to alternate dimensions doesn’t make that decision any easier.

There’s one thing he can do, though. He can be something for Stephanie, if she wants it - the support he never had when he was first in her position.

“I get that,” he says, with an understanding nod. “I’ve been there - hell, I’m still there, a lot of the time. And I don’t really have any good answers for you, but I know what it’s like.” He drops both legs over the ledge of the fountain, digging heels into the dirt. “Maybe sometimes you get stuck thinking about what you could’ve done different so this didn’t happen. Maybe that’s the thing that keeps you up at night when the nightmares aren’t taking a turn.” His own experience, but he imagines it’s probably not far off from hers, too. Jason gives her a sideways glance as he continues: “I don’t sleep a whole lot anyway, and I - I’m not great with the whole talking thing, but if you wanted to talk to someone about what happened, what you’re going through, someone who knows what it’s like - well, you know where I live.” He manages a tiny, crooked smile. “Just maybe let me know if you’re coming over first. Knock, or something.”

[spoileralert]

She gives a wry (if tired) smile in return.

"Aren't you supposed to expect the unexpected?"

She sniffles and wipes the last of her tears away. The time for crying is over, for now at least. She wasn't really expecting to start. That's just another thing she doesn't seem to have control over anymore, like fear and anger.

"But... it'd be nice to know I'm not the only one awake at 4am. I don't know how much serious talk I'm up for, but maybe we could just hang out?" She's been craving that kinship, she realizes now. Someone she can make casual comments to about how much Gotham sucks, who won't freak out when she talks about being dead, someone she doesn't have to hide her scars from to keep from upsetting. If that person happens to be an ex-Robin she needs to keep half a dozen secrets from, so be it.

[scathefires]

“Yeah,” he says, huffing something like a laugh. “Expect the unexpected, prepare for everything.” Lessons he learned from Bruce, but somehow, Jason doubts even he would’ve been prepared for the situation in which Jason and Stephanie have found themselves. “Some things you just really can’t predict. Best you can do is roll with the punches and try to come up on top.”

He shrugs lightly. There’s not much sense in dwelling on the things they can’t control. They can’t change the forces that have brought them here - they can only control their own actions and reactions, their own choices of how to spend the time they have here. And Jason has decided on offering what he can of his understanding and compassion to Steph.

“Hanging out and not talking I can definitely do,” he says. “My best friend when I was a kid wasn’t much of a talker.” He smiles faintly at his own words. He’s always been lonelier than he’d ever admit, and the idea of knowing someone who understands something of his own experience is - a little terrifying, because it’s not easy for him to open up to people, and he’s already opened up to Steph more than he has with anyone else he’s met since being whisked away from Gotham. But that kind of companionship is something he deeply craves, more than the idea frightens him, so he reaches for it now.

[spoileralert]

She tries not to dwell either. How could anyone have been prepared for the shitstorm that she started? At least the Bats had comm links, people watching out for them, a strategist, proper weapons. She never stood a chance, and she knew it.

She manages another smile when he talks about his friend. It makes her think of Cass. Maybe they had their tiffs, but Cass’s only fault was caring in not quite the right way. And where should she have learned the right way?

“Yeah? My best friend back home was never much of a talker either. I don’t mind carrying a conversation about nothing.”