Robin fic: Tree of Knowledge (Steph)
Jun. 8th, 2009 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Tree of Knowledge
Fandom: Batman
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,194
Author’s notes: Written for the Steph Needs More Love challenge.
Characters/Pairings: Stephanie Brown, Harley/Ivy, references to Tim/Steph
Summary: To be a good Robin, you have to learn things Batman won’t teach you.
Sunday evening and the pickings are slim. Despite what the media says, Gotham isn’t all crime, all the time. It mounts like a fever, ebbs like a bleed. Steph tries to listen to the city like the other Bats do, to let it tell her where it hurts, but the only thing she’s ever heard from Gotham is a long, violated cry.
Sirens doppler, four or five, always a good guide. She follows, wind in her hair, skirt pressed flat to her hips, and forgets how weird it feels to be in Robin’s skin.
Dolland Chapel, site of every dream wedding in Steph’s fantasy life. Anyone who’s anyone in Gotham gets hitched there. Only some of the stained glass is blown out and there are smoking craters alongside the police barricade. Steph settles on one of the rooftops with no snipers and learns from the hostage negotiator’s megaphone that it’s Harley Quinn holed up in there.
She lets Batman sneak up on her. “Robin.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I go in alone. You go home.”
“Aw, c’mon, I was awesome at defusing those practice bombs. I hardly ever got covered in paint!”
There’s a look she’s rapidly getting used to, a ‘why are you still talking’ look that would probably stunt her social life if she were exposed to it on a daily basis. But she always knew she’d have to make sacrifices to fight people like her dad, and one of them is to back off when every nerve in her body wants to make a stand. She slinks off, leaving Batman to his broody pose, and tries to think back to Quinn’s file.
Known accomplices: Poison Ivy. She’s a soft touch, by Gotham standards. In any other city, she’d be an activist who needed a daily regiment of chill pills. Here, she’s a killer.
There is an uneasy armistice between Ivy and Gotham, and by extension the world. She gets her park, her kids, and Gotham gets to pretend she doesn’t exist.
That leaves only one reason for Ivy to give a damn about Gotham: Quinn.
Steph is counting on that.
She knows stealth is a waste of time when every blade of grass is Ivy’s spy, so she just vaults the rusting-shut gate and holds still. Moments later, the vines come. Threatening… how could they not be with those foot-long thorns?… but not attacking. Steph knows a vine could crush her skull, a gas could ignite her lungs, even a kiss could turn her bloated and black. She’s seen the pictures. They’re even more disturbing than the Joker’s victims, because there’s nothing beautiful about those grins, but blooming flowers could be so pretty…
“I’m not here to fight. I mean you no harm. I just need to talk to Isley.” The vines wave around her, their motions seeming to doubt, jeer. “Which will cause more trouble, listening to me or doing me harm?”
“A fair point, little one.” Ivy melts out of the impenetrable forest with the movement of a flower blossoming. She’s beautiful, intimidatingly beautiful, the beauty of a great cat. Inhuman, yet yearningly woman. Even Steph feels her breath fall away. A leafy cloak covers Ivy with little modesty, shifting to reveal a jade nipple or a rosy red pubis at the touch of wind. “But no one has called me Isley in a long time. And while nature does not murder, it is red in tooth and claw… and vine.”
“I swear to you, I’m not wasting your time. It’s about Harley.”
If Ivy feels concern, she doesn’t show it. She just smiles like the wind going through branches. “It’s good to see you take after the boy rather than the bat. Harley is within my interests, though I’d be hard-pressed to say why.” Finally, a note of concern reaches her voice. “Is she well?”
“She’s in trouble. She’s taken Bolland Chapel hostage. There’s no telling what will happen to her if SWAT gets called in.”
“So?” Ivy waves dismissively, mirroring the grass in the breeze. “What’s Harley to me, her and her boyfriend? You’d never see plants living like that. It’s beastly.”
“She needs you. And you always come through for her, that’s what makes you better than the Joker.”
“As if she even notices.” Ivy walks back toward the forest.
“Do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that the woman who used to be Harleen Quinzel… the woman who the Joker broke down… that she doesn’t know it’s you who truly cares for her?” Steph shouts after her. “If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t lift a finger to save her. She’s better off dead.”
***
The Redbird is kind of a POS nowadays, but how else is Steph supposed to get Ivy to Harley, hail a cab? Just think of her as the world’s gnarliest air freshener, Steph tells herself, trying to remember to signal.
Ivy disdains ’the scent’ of air conditioning, so they drive with the windows down, Autumn leaves are drawn to Ivy like iron filings to a magnet. They swirl inside the cabin, playing for Ivy like a tiny dancing troupe, before being sucked out the windows to rejoin the world. Ivy is fixed on longing, her eyes reminding Steph of a poem about a lighthouse keeper she’d read for English Lit. She’d thought she was the lighthouse keeper and Tim was the lost sailor. She’d had no idea.
Beside Ivy, the leaves seem vibrant as flames.
The harsh blue and red of the police lights break into their little pilgrimage. Although the cops are less familiar with the Redbird than the Batmobile (Tim needed to fire his PR guy, if he hadn’t already), Gordon eventually waves them through. “Just let me do the talking,” Steph says.
Ivy just sits in the backseat, no longer summery but cold and imperial. She says nothing as Steph gets out of the car.
“Attention, everyone… can I have everyone’s attention for a moment… whoa, there are a lot of you.” Steph leaps onto a squad car. “I’ve brought in someone to talk Harley Quinn down. She’s a little… much, but I think she’s our best shot at ending this peacefully. So if everyone could just give her room, let’s end this thing so we can all go home.”
Ivy gets out of the car.
All hell nearly breaks loose. Officers fumble for their guns and Ivy screams, not with her mouth, but with the trees lining the sidewalk and the roots under the ground. Asphalt shifts, cracks. Gordon yells over the din. “That’s enough! You heard the lady, give Isley some air!”
Ivy pushes back her hood and walks to the foot of the steps that lead up into the chapel. Steph walks beside her.
“I didn’t invite you,” Ivy says.
“And that’s why I invited myself.” Steph hastens to keep up with Ivy’s long strides as they go up the stairs. “I don’t need this to end with Harley in custody, but I do need it to end peacefully.”
“You sound like him,” Ivy lilts, darkly amused.
“Under the circumstances, I’ll consider that a compliment.”
They reach the top of the stairs and wait. The doors are locked. Steph gives Ivy an expectant look. The other woman just shrugs.
Stepping forward, Steph remembers Bruce telling her she didn’t take Harley seriously. Smelling the barely-settled rubble and lingering acridness of explosions, she’s taking Harley pretty fucking seriously now.
She knocks on the door.
“G’way!” Harley shouts. It sounds like she’s crying.
Steph makes a little ‘that’s your cue’ gesture to Ivy.
She steps forward. “Harl? It’s Ivy. Can I come in?”
The sniffles coming from behind the door stop. “Red? What’re you doing here?”
“I was worried about you.” Ivy’s voice is so full of emotion that it’s hard for Steph to recognize her as the goddess of Gotham Park. “Could you open the door, please?”
There’s a choked-off sob, then locks begin to click.
“Tell her I’m coming in too,” Steph says.
Ivy glares at her before turning back to the door. “Harl, I’m bringing… a friend.”
“But I’m still your best friend, right?”
Ivy quickly wipes a tear from her cheek. “That’s right.”
Half of the double door swings open, just enough for Ivy and Steph to slip inside. Ivy shuts the door behind them, shutting out the police lights.
The hostages are tied up on a pew, hymnals duct-taped in their hands. One is bleeding from the head. Steph pads warily over to check him out. It’s a shallow cut, but she cleans and bandages it anyway. “Don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay. Just stay calm a little while longer, ‘kay? Doin’ great!” She bestows her little encouragements like benedictions. Tim always said hope was the most important part of the job.
Harley is lying against a choir stand, eating a pint of Rocky Road. Her greasepaint is smeared with tears and she’s taken off her domino mask. “Oh, Bats got a new bird-brain. That’s nice.”
Ivy walks to her, jogging the last few meters. “Harl, are you hurt? Is anyone else?”
Harley shakes her head both times. “I asked them to marry me and Mistah J. They laughed at me, Red. When I wasn’t bein’ funny!”
Ivy shushes Harley, cradling her in a long hug. Harley wraps her arms around Ivy and lets herself be rocked as gently as a child.
“Harley, where’s the Joker?” Steph asks.
“In jail. That’s why they wouldn’t marry us. And we need to get married so I can have—“ she sniffles, “conjugal visits!”
“There, there. There, there.” Ivy pats Harley’s back. “Where is the bomb, Harley?”
“Confession booth. I wasn’t gonna blow ‘em up, I just needed to have a good cry. They just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Could you turn it off?”
“I never turned it on!” Harley sobs. “Oh, Red, will you be my maid o’ honor?”
“Of course.” Ivy picks Harley up. Steph watches. Quinn looks so… tiny, in Ivy’s arms. “I’m taking her back to the garden.”
“The cops aren’t going to like that.”
“No.”
Steph looks heavenward, mind whirling, before looking to the hostages. “Can you give me five seconds?”
***
Steph walks out of the chapel, half the hostages rushing out in front of her. She stops in front of Gordon. By now, Batman has joined him. Steph gulps. “Harley has agreed to release the hostages and disarm the bomb, if we let her go with Ivy.”
“Out of the question,” Gordon says. “If we let Harley Quinn get away, she could try this again. Next time it could be a baseball stadium or an elementary school—“
“She wasn’t trying anything. She’s just confused. Maybe if we let her go with Ivy, she could get better… sir.”
Gordon scoffs. “That lunatic going sane?”
”We had the same doubts about Ivy,” Batman says. “As prisons go, Gotham Park has more chance of holding her than Arkham.”
Gordon’s brow furrows as he lights his pipe. “I trust you’ll keep an eye on her?”
“I keep eyes on everyone.”
***
Harley sleeps on the ride back to the Park, her head in Ivy’s lap, her jester’s cap off so Ivy can stroke her short blonde hair.
Steph tries to make conversation when the Redbird stops at a red light. “She’s very pretty without all the clown… gunk.”
“I know,” Ivy sighs.
Some of Ivy’s runaways and Feraks are waiting when they reach the Park. They carry Harley away on a giant leaf. Ivy watches until they disappear into the jungle, still watches as she says “You’re a good Robin.”
“Thanks,” Steph says. “Glad I have someone’s vote.”
“Fourteen hostages. And I’ll see if I can put in a good word for you with Harley.”
Steph blinks. “Was that a joke?”
Ivy sweeps back to her. “You see what she does to me?” She takes Steph’s hand and kisses it, causing a tingle that Steph really hopes isn’t her developing a crush on a poisonous eco-terrorist who already has a clown girlfriend. “You should start a garden,” Ivy says, walking away without a bent blade of grass left in her wake.
Steph pulls down her glove a little to see her wrist has turned green. “Oh, wow.”
***
Batman doesn’t fire her. He has a few words to say on trust and partnership, making Steph feel ten inches tall until he reminds her that Dolland Chapel is still standing. She agrees to keep him in the loop on her next crazy scheme. He probably believes her.
On Monday, she finds a packet of seeds that her mom never bothered to plant, grabs them from the back of the cupboard, and takes them to Tim’s house. He has a garden, untended since his mother died. They spend the afternoon planting seeds and watching them shoot up like fireworks.
“So, how was your weekend?” Tim asks.
“I drove the Redbird without a license, got chewed out by Batman, and helped a dangerous felon escape capture.”
Tim kisses her. “So, just another day at the office?”
“Guess so.”
Steph pushes an apple seed into the muddy earth and watches it grow.
Fandom: Batman
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,194
Author’s notes: Written for the Steph Needs More Love challenge.
Characters/Pairings: Stephanie Brown, Harley/Ivy, references to Tim/Steph
Summary: To be a good Robin, you have to learn things Batman won’t teach you.
Sunday evening and the pickings are slim. Despite what the media says, Gotham isn’t all crime, all the time. It mounts like a fever, ebbs like a bleed. Steph tries to listen to the city like the other Bats do, to let it tell her where it hurts, but the only thing she’s ever heard from Gotham is a long, violated cry.
Sirens doppler, four or five, always a good guide. She follows, wind in her hair, skirt pressed flat to her hips, and forgets how weird it feels to be in Robin’s skin.
Dolland Chapel, site of every dream wedding in Steph’s fantasy life. Anyone who’s anyone in Gotham gets hitched there. Only some of the stained glass is blown out and there are smoking craters alongside the police barricade. Steph settles on one of the rooftops with no snipers and learns from the hostage negotiator’s megaphone that it’s Harley Quinn holed up in there.
She lets Batman sneak up on her. “Robin.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I go in alone. You go home.”
“Aw, c’mon, I was awesome at defusing those practice bombs. I hardly ever got covered in paint!”
There’s a look she’s rapidly getting used to, a ‘why are you still talking’ look that would probably stunt her social life if she were exposed to it on a daily basis. But she always knew she’d have to make sacrifices to fight people like her dad, and one of them is to back off when every nerve in her body wants to make a stand. She slinks off, leaving Batman to his broody pose, and tries to think back to Quinn’s file.
Known accomplices: Poison Ivy. She’s a soft touch, by Gotham standards. In any other city, she’d be an activist who needed a daily regiment of chill pills. Here, she’s a killer.
There is an uneasy armistice between Ivy and Gotham, and by extension the world. She gets her park, her kids, and Gotham gets to pretend she doesn’t exist.
That leaves only one reason for Ivy to give a damn about Gotham: Quinn.
Steph is counting on that.
She knows stealth is a waste of time when every blade of grass is Ivy’s spy, so she just vaults the rusting-shut gate and holds still. Moments later, the vines come. Threatening… how could they not be with those foot-long thorns?… but not attacking. Steph knows a vine could crush her skull, a gas could ignite her lungs, even a kiss could turn her bloated and black. She’s seen the pictures. They’re even more disturbing than the Joker’s victims, because there’s nothing beautiful about those grins, but blooming flowers could be so pretty…
“I’m not here to fight. I mean you no harm. I just need to talk to Isley.” The vines wave around her, their motions seeming to doubt, jeer. “Which will cause more trouble, listening to me or doing me harm?”
“A fair point, little one.” Ivy melts out of the impenetrable forest with the movement of a flower blossoming. She’s beautiful, intimidatingly beautiful, the beauty of a great cat. Inhuman, yet yearningly woman. Even Steph feels her breath fall away. A leafy cloak covers Ivy with little modesty, shifting to reveal a jade nipple or a rosy red pubis at the touch of wind. “But no one has called me Isley in a long time. And while nature does not murder, it is red in tooth and claw… and vine.”
“I swear to you, I’m not wasting your time. It’s about Harley.”
If Ivy feels concern, she doesn’t show it. She just smiles like the wind going through branches. “It’s good to see you take after the boy rather than the bat. Harley is within my interests, though I’d be hard-pressed to say why.” Finally, a note of concern reaches her voice. “Is she well?”
“She’s in trouble. She’s taken Bolland Chapel hostage. There’s no telling what will happen to her if SWAT gets called in.”
“So?” Ivy waves dismissively, mirroring the grass in the breeze. “What’s Harley to me, her and her boyfriend? You’d never see plants living like that. It’s beastly.”
“She needs you. And you always come through for her, that’s what makes you better than the Joker.”
“As if she even notices.” Ivy walks back toward the forest.
“Do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that the woman who used to be Harleen Quinzel… the woman who the Joker broke down… that she doesn’t know it’s you who truly cares for her?” Steph shouts after her. “If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t lift a finger to save her. She’s better off dead.”
***
The Redbird is kind of a POS nowadays, but how else is Steph supposed to get Ivy to Harley, hail a cab? Just think of her as the world’s gnarliest air freshener, Steph tells herself, trying to remember to signal.
Ivy disdains ’the scent’ of air conditioning, so they drive with the windows down, Autumn leaves are drawn to Ivy like iron filings to a magnet. They swirl inside the cabin, playing for Ivy like a tiny dancing troupe, before being sucked out the windows to rejoin the world. Ivy is fixed on longing, her eyes reminding Steph of a poem about a lighthouse keeper she’d read for English Lit. She’d thought she was the lighthouse keeper and Tim was the lost sailor. She’d had no idea.
Beside Ivy, the leaves seem vibrant as flames.
The harsh blue and red of the police lights break into their little pilgrimage. Although the cops are less familiar with the Redbird than the Batmobile (Tim needed to fire his PR guy, if he hadn’t already), Gordon eventually waves them through. “Just let me do the talking,” Steph says.
Ivy just sits in the backseat, no longer summery but cold and imperial. She says nothing as Steph gets out of the car.
“Attention, everyone… can I have everyone’s attention for a moment… whoa, there are a lot of you.” Steph leaps onto a squad car. “I’ve brought in someone to talk Harley Quinn down. She’s a little… much, but I think she’s our best shot at ending this peacefully. So if everyone could just give her room, let’s end this thing so we can all go home.”
Ivy gets out of the car.
All hell nearly breaks loose. Officers fumble for their guns and Ivy screams, not with her mouth, but with the trees lining the sidewalk and the roots under the ground. Asphalt shifts, cracks. Gordon yells over the din. “That’s enough! You heard the lady, give Isley some air!”
Ivy pushes back her hood and walks to the foot of the steps that lead up into the chapel. Steph walks beside her.
“I didn’t invite you,” Ivy says.
“And that’s why I invited myself.” Steph hastens to keep up with Ivy’s long strides as they go up the stairs. “I don’t need this to end with Harley in custody, but I do need it to end peacefully.”
“You sound like him,” Ivy lilts, darkly amused.
“Under the circumstances, I’ll consider that a compliment.”
They reach the top of the stairs and wait. The doors are locked. Steph gives Ivy an expectant look. The other woman just shrugs.
Stepping forward, Steph remembers Bruce telling her she didn’t take Harley seriously. Smelling the barely-settled rubble and lingering acridness of explosions, she’s taking Harley pretty fucking seriously now.
She knocks on the door.
“G’way!” Harley shouts. It sounds like she’s crying.
Steph makes a little ‘that’s your cue’ gesture to Ivy.
She steps forward. “Harl? It’s Ivy. Can I come in?”
The sniffles coming from behind the door stop. “Red? What’re you doing here?”
“I was worried about you.” Ivy’s voice is so full of emotion that it’s hard for Steph to recognize her as the goddess of Gotham Park. “Could you open the door, please?”
There’s a choked-off sob, then locks begin to click.
“Tell her I’m coming in too,” Steph says.
Ivy glares at her before turning back to the door. “Harl, I’m bringing… a friend.”
“But I’m still your best friend, right?”
Ivy quickly wipes a tear from her cheek. “That’s right.”
Half of the double door swings open, just enough for Ivy and Steph to slip inside. Ivy shuts the door behind them, shutting out the police lights.
The hostages are tied up on a pew, hymnals duct-taped in their hands. One is bleeding from the head. Steph pads warily over to check him out. It’s a shallow cut, but she cleans and bandages it anyway. “Don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay. Just stay calm a little while longer, ‘kay? Doin’ great!” She bestows her little encouragements like benedictions. Tim always said hope was the most important part of the job.
Harley is lying against a choir stand, eating a pint of Rocky Road. Her greasepaint is smeared with tears and she’s taken off her domino mask. “Oh, Bats got a new bird-brain. That’s nice.”
Ivy walks to her, jogging the last few meters. “Harl, are you hurt? Is anyone else?”
Harley shakes her head both times. “I asked them to marry me and Mistah J. They laughed at me, Red. When I wasn’t bein’ funny!”
Ivy shushes Harley, cradling her in a long hug. Harley wraps her arms around Ivy and lets herself be rocked as gently as a child.
“Harley, where’s the Joker?” Steph asks.
“In jail. That’s why they wouldn’t marry us. And we need to get married so I can have—“ she sniffles, “conjugal visits!”
“There, there. There, there.” Ivy pats Harley’s back. “Where is the bomb, Harley?”
“Confession booth. I wasn’t gonna blow ‘em up, I just needed to have a good cry. They just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Could you turn it off?”
“I never turned it on!” Harley sobs. “Oh, Red, will you be my maid o’ honor?”
“Of course.” Ivy picks Harley up. Steph watches. Quinn looks so… tiny, in Ivy’s arms. “I’m taking her back to the garden.”
“The cops aren’t going to like that.”
“No.”
Steph looks heavenward, mind whirling, before looking to the hostages. “Can you give me five seconds?”
***
Steph walks out of the chapel, half the hostages rushing out in front of her. She stops in front of Gordon. By now, Batman has joined him. Steph gulps. “Harley has agreed to release the hostages and disarm the bomb, if we let her go with Ivy.”
“Out of the question,” Gordon says. “If we let Harley Quinn get away, she could try this again. Next time it could be a baseball stadium or an elementary school—“
“She wasn’t trying anything. She’s just confused. Maybe if we let her go with Ivy, she could get better… sir.”
Gordon scoffs. “That lunatic going sane?”
”We had the same doubts about Ivy,” Batman says. “As prisons go, Gotham Park has more chance of holding her than Arkham.”
Gordon’s brow furrows as he lights his pipe. “I trust you’ll keep an eye on her?”
“I keep eyes on everyone.”
***
Harley sleeps on the ride back to the Park, her head in Ivy’s lap, her jester’s cap off so Ivy can stroke her short blonde hair.
Steph tries to make conversation when the Redbird stops at a red light. “She’s very pretty without all the clown… gunk.”
“I know,” Ivy sighs.
Some of Ivy’s runaways and Feraks are waiting when they reach the Park. They carry Harley away on a giant leaf. Ivy watches until they disappear into the jungle, still watches as she says “You’re a good Robin.”
“Thanks,” Steph says. “Glad I have someone’s vote.”
“Fourteen hostages. And I’ll see if I can put in a good word for you with Harley.”
Steph blinks. “Was that a joke?”
Ivy sweeps back to her. “You see what she does to me?” She takes Steph’s hand and kisses it, causing a tingle that Steph really hopes isn’t her developing a crush on a poisonous eco-terrorist who already has a clown girlfriend. “You should start a garden,” Ivy says, walking away without a bent blade of grass left in her wake.
Steph pulls down her glove a little to see her wrist has turned green. “Oh, wow.”
***
Batman doesn’t fire her. He has a few words to say on trust and partnership, making Steph feel ten inches tall until he reminds her that Dolland Chapel is still standing. She agrees to keep him in the loop on her next crazy scheme. He probably believes her.
On Monday, she finds a packet of seeds that her mom never bothered to plant, grabs them from the back of the cupboard, and takes them to Tim’s house. He has a garden, untended since his mother died. They spend the afternoon planting seeds and watching them shoot up like fireworks.
“So, how was your weekend?” Tim asks.
“I drove the Redbird without a license, got chewed out by Batman, and helped a dangerous felon escape capture.”
Tim kisses her. “So, just another day at the office?”
“Guess so.”
Steph pushes an apple seed into the muddy earth and watches it grow.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-06-08 01:46 pm (UTC)My heart, which DC has been systematically breaking into tiny bits since Stephanie died and my Timmy started going grim and dark and Batty, has healed a little with this. It is utterly beautiful and uniquely you.
Please write more Tim/Steph and help me fix my poor, broken toys?
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 02:38 am (UTC)And hey, Tim is bound to
start stalkingbe a good boyfriend to Steph once she becomes a Robin, right?no subject
Date: 2009-06-08 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 12:36 pm (UTC)Thankyou for that lovely piece of awesome.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-09 07:33 pm (UTC)Also, Gotham would be really clearly screwed without Gordon.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 02:37 am (UTC)If she and Cass got together as Batman and Robin, they'd probably do more good for Gotham in the long-term than Bruce is likely to (read: kill Joker a lot).
And you're talking like it's not canon that Gotham without a Gordon automatically Turns To Shit, do not pass go, do not collect 200$.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-14 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-28 04:07 pm (UTC)