#aka when i rip off a tv yj storyline

[dukethomas]

29, Steph

Steph wakes up in a shed, sweat dripping down her face and sand in her toes. It doesn’t exactly take the world’s greatest detective to figure out something’s wrong. 

And as she stands, she finds the biggest clue: Robin (sans mask, but it’s not like Steph recognizes him, so). Robin has just returned, to the best of her memory, a tiny twiggy kid. Word on the streets is that he’s not the previous Robin, which means that the old one is officially dead. Which is weird to think about, considering how Steph is making her own costume right now so she can run away and hit the streets to foil—no, spoil—her dad’s stupid crimes.

Wait.

She looks down and she is wearing the costume she knows she’s only in the process of, except cleaner and with more actual protective armor-type pads than Steph could afford.

Something seriously shady is going on here.

Steph bites her lip—and through her full-face mask, so she’ll stop that—and pulls down her hood. Why is she wearing a hood? The costume is bad enough, in what feels like ninety degree weather in what should be January, but the hood and the mask just put it over the top. 

On second thought, she tears off her mask as well. At least now she can breathe.

She peeks through a convenient doorway with no door, and shrinks back. There’s only desert as far as she can see. How the hell did she get so far from Gotham?

Squeezing her eyes shut, Steph breathes. Inhale, exhale, which should be easy enough except when it isn’t. She needs help, and Robin is right here.

Steph kicks his leg. Is he alive? Did this one die not even two months into his career? Is it the Robin curse?

Robin’s eyes flutter open as he gasps, jolting straight up. Steph feels a pang of familiarity resound in her chest, but she has no idea why. Or why a name that’s not Robin is on the tip of her tongue, but when she reaches into the depths of her memory for it, she comes out empty-handed. 

“Robin,” she says, hoping the fogginess in her head would clear up. “You awake?”

Robin pats the area around his face and his pupils dilate when he realizes he’s mask-less. He digs through his utility belt and applies a new one wordlessly, and then he responds, “Who are you and what do you want?”

Well, that’s a surefire way to make a girl feel welcome. 

“I’m Steph,” she tells him, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. “I was hoping you knew what the hell’s going on, because I don’t.”

Robin shook his head. “Last thing I remember, I was helping Batman with a case. To track down the Riddler. Where are we?”

Steph blinks and stares at him. 

If Robin doesn’t know, how the fuck are they going to get home? 

“In the middle of the desert,” she says, drawing out the words. “I woke up in here with you,”—she jabs her thumb at him—“wearing this, and I have no idea what’s going on.” She throws her hands in the air. “It’s actually kinda creepy, someone must have finished this costume, I wasn’t going to be done with it until next month.”

Robin purses his lips and stands. “That’s weird, because there are several compartments on my belt that I don’t recognize.” He catches her staring, because he is the only person for who knows how far, and he flushes. “So I’m in the same boat.” 

“Good to know,” Steph says. “Do any of those new compartments have something we can use?”

“Uh,” says Robin. He presses a finger to his ear. No, actually, when Steph peers at it more closely, it looks like he’s pressing the grey piece of tech in his ear—comms. “Batman, come in. Batman, do you read me?” He shakes his head. “Nothing. No signal, I think.”

Robin glances down at his utility belt. “But I think it’s safe to say we’re dealing with some form of memory loss here. No real way to tell the extent of it, but it’s probably at least one month. Most likely more.”

Oh. Oh. That makes sense. So Steph did end up finishing the suit herself, probably. No creeps undressing her. That’s good. And now Robin is semi-competent. (And Steph is, most decidedly, not. But she woke Robin up, that has to count for something.)

“So we’re helpless,” Steph concludes, ever-so-helpfully. “But we can at least wander around the desert hoping there’s signal somewhere. D’you have a Bat-Canteen in that utility belt, or...?”

Robin rummages through his belt. “I’ve got... protein bars. No water.”

“Well, shit.”

Robin flinches at the curse, and Steph thinks, Oh, you sweet summer child.

“We just,” Robin tells her, pausing for a moment before his voice grows deeper and firmer in a way that sends a shiver down Steph’s spine, “have to hope for the best.”

“That we do,” Steph agrees. “And the longer we spend in here is time wasted, so let’s get to it, Boy Wonder.”

About an hour later, Steph and Robin are arguing about pirates versus ninjas.

Steph’s right, she thinks ninjas are cooler, duh. But Robin argues that Batman is like a ninja, and Batman is not as cool as he seems, so pirates. Steph finds herself letting her guard down, and letting herself be charmed by Robin’s nerdiness. 

In return, Robin stops being all wide-eyed whenever she talks to him, and becomes sharper and wittier. Steph would be lying if she said she didn’t think he’s cute. He didn’t seem like her type at first, and he still doesn’t, but maybe he can be a type all on his own. 

And finally, as Steph concedes to Robin after he told three embarrassing stories about Batman in succession, they come to a stop back at the shack they started from.

Steph shouts incoherently and punches the stupid (clay?) wall. She hisses and steps back, only to trip on a fucking huge branch, only to fall backwards. And if that isn’t mortifying enough, Robin catches her in his arms, and they have a moment staring into each other’s eyes. It’s not nearly as cool as it could have been, considering Robin’s eyes are currently covered by white lenses. 

“I know we only met a little while ago, but you seem to be falling for me,” he jokes, grinning.

Steph scowls. “It must be hard with your sense of direction, never being able to find your way to a decent pickup line.” Robin freezes and his arms pull back, leaving Steph to fall onto the ground with a thud. “I can’t believe you dragged me back to where we started.”

Robin is now standing straight up, holding his chin in the classic thinker pose. “We walked in a straight line in one direction,” he points out. “With no obstacles in the way. It’s highly improbable that we’d end up back here, so something is...”

“Oh yeah,” remarks Steph sarcastically. “We’re in the Matrix. Go figure.”

“We’re in a training simulation!”

“A training what—”

The desert fades away and so does the sweat clinging to Steph’s skin, which she now realizes, tugging at the not-damp fabric of her suit, was probably fabricated. Damn it. 

And the last thing to go back to normal is her memories.

Tim is a fucking idiot. 

She remembers him tiredly poking at the buttons, and he accidentally slammed down on the wrong one and what happened next was she woke up. And didn’t remember a thing. Blame the faux-Martian tech Bruce installed into this to make the simulations feel more real. That man has too much money.

“Oops,” she hears Tim say, the memories probably coming back all at once to him, too.

Steph knows Bruce is on a Justice League mission, and if it’s still today (not memory-loss-today but today-today, which is over a year later), he shouldn’t be getting back until tomorrow.

She locks eyes with Tim. “Not a word,” she tells him, and he nods. “If you don’t say anything about how embarrassing past-me is,”—she means, come on, ninjas? Pirates are so obviously better—“I won’t mention how bad your pick up lines are.”

Tim swats her and sticks his tongue out. “Says the one who says I have a bad case of the Stephs.”

“Yeah, but you love that one.”

“...no.”

Steph leans in to his face, thankfully sweat-free, lingers close to his mouth and at his awkward thumbs-up to the side, moves in for the kiss. It’s done quickly, but Steph still finds it hard to pull away. 

And Tim looks adorably like a kicked puppy when she does. “See?” she laughs. “Bad case of the Stephs. That’s not a bad pick up line, that’s just fact.”

Like she would ever admit her pick up lines are bad. That’s like getting Tim to admit he needs sleep, and if he won’t do that, Steph can at least have her bad pick up lines.