Fic: Looking At The Stars

[trace_of_scarlet]

Fic: Looking At The Stars
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe/DC comics (Batgirl)
Rating: PG
Words: 6374
Warnings: None.
Notes: Thanks to camwyn for all her help. <3 The title comes from the Oscar Wilde quote ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’
Summary: Phil Coulson doesn’t wake up in the same universe he died in. But he does at least find himself face-to-face with someone who’s had a similar experience... And she usually goes by ‘Batgirl’.


When he wakes up, Phil is a little surprised that nothing hurts, and a lot more surprised to be waking up at all. He can see stars - literal, not metaphorical, though maybe some of the metaphorical kind too - but they seem very far away and remote, though lately he's been accustomed to thinking of them as dangerously (or at least worryingly) close. He is cool but not uncomfortable, and he seems to be wearing hospital pyjamas that are slightly too big for him and lying on a thin, cold mattress somewhere that smells of disinfectant and many patient layers of soap.

And then suddenly everything - the why, the when, the who, even most of the how - comes rocketing back at once: it hits him as hard as one of Thor's haymakers and he bolts upright, wild-eyed and startled. Or at least, he tries to: he's been manacled ankle and wrist to the cot, and now his wrists are screaming and raw where he just yanked them.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah!" says a voice, and a teenage blonde drops from somewhere above him to land with an acrobat's ease on her feet at the foot of his bed. "Easy, tiger," she continues, and peers at him with a grin. "And how is the patient this morning? Done feeling crazy yet?"

"I'm - wait, what?" Phil is pretty much entirely confused now, which is not exactly a feeling he's used to and definitely not one he likes.

"We put you in a Lazarus Pit," the blonde explains: she's young (about eighteen?) and preternaturally cheerful but, he notices, also really excessively scarred; she looks like someone drew a spider's web on her skin. "They revive people who're dead or dying, but they do also kind of have a tendency to, uh, drive people violently psychotic as well. Mostly they get better after, though!"

So that had been what Fury meant by 'not an option'. He sighs faintly - thanks, boss; don't bother to send flowers - but, on the plus side, not being dead-by-smug-Norse-asshole probably has a lot going for it, when he's not cuffed to a bed. "Well, I'm not psychotic," he tells her, although he'd like to think that kind of goes without being said. "But I am very confused. Where is this, anyway?"

"A hospital," says a new voice: older, drier, mid-Western, female; and he can just about see its owner out of the corner of his eye as she walks in. "And as for psychotic, Agent Coulson, I'll be the judge of that."

The newcomer is early sixties, educated-sounding, lab-coated, with mostly salt-and-pepper hair and intelligent sharp eyes behind an academic's scrupulously-clean wire-rimmed reading glasses. A doctor, then, or if not then certainly someone trying very hard to give the impression of being one. Possibly ex-military, judging by her demeanour, although he's known enough people who were like that naturally that he's reserving judgement regarding that one until he gets more intel.

"I'm Dr Leslie Thompkins," the woman continues, her attention more on her clipboard than on him, "And you won't be going anywhere without my clearance. Is that understood?"

"Yes ma'am," he says, because she reminds him of one of his first SHIELD instructors, and sees her lips jerk briefly in what might be a quirk of a smile.

"Very well," says Thompkins, and gives the teenager an incremental nod. "Steph, take the restraints off him, please."

"You got it," Steph chirps, but he notices that she undoes them one at a time, wrists first, and pauses to assess his reaction before she takes the manacles off his ankles as well. He doesn't pass comment on that, or anything else, for now - he's still assessing - but carefully pushes himself into a seated position before swinging his legs around and experimentally sliding to his feet. He still feels slightly wobbly but that's probably residual: he can't detect any pain or obvious weakness, so it seems that whatever a Lazarus Pit is it does pretty good work. Steph, he notices, has moved into a combat stance so easy it seems almost entirely natural for her; clearly, she's had very extensive training. She almost reminds him of Natasha, in fact: there's something about child soldiers that seems to linger, in attitude if not in personality. A wariness; a constant, matter-of-fact awareness that nothing is reliable forever; unceasing mental adjustment for shifting sands under the feet. He's not certain, himself, of what role he should be playing here, or of how much he should trust these two women. Is he on assignment? What does Fury expect for him to do? He revolves slowly on the spot, hands empty at his sides, and looks at Thompkins and at Steph, as harmless as he knows how to look - which right now is not difficult.

"I need to ask you some questions if I'm going to pass judgement," Thompkins explains, which makes sense but is also likely to cause some issues very shortly. "Name?"

"Philip Coulson," he says, because it's the one he always uses, and adds "Philip James Coulson" in order to seem co-operative.

"Date of birth?"

"Classified."

She doesn't seem surprised by this calm declaration, but makes a brief note on her clipboard. "SHIELD Agent number?"

So she knows about SHIELD. Probably Fury as well, but he'll systematically dismantle that bridge when he gets to it. "704235."

She asks him a lot more questions after that, to which the answer is "Classified" ninety-nine percent of the time, and finally tucks her pen behind her ear with a small you-are-my-last-task-of-the-day kind of sigh. "Very well. Agent Coulson, I am willing to give you provisional clearance for release under the care and custodianship of Stephanie Brown and her associates, subject to weakly checks on your state of mind, and to return to you your effects."

Steph, who is presumably the Stephanie Brown in question, hands him a transparent plastic bag containing his suit - neatly folded, and judging by the smell dry-cleaned - commlink, shades (now badly cracked; oh well) and for some reason a single Captain America 1942 trading card, slightly boxed at the edges and strangely sticky to the touch when he tries, as is habit, to gently smooth its corners down. The reverse shows Sergeant James 'Bucky' Barnes in all his limited-edition Howling Commando glory - now severely marred by large splashes of tacky reddish brown.

"...Is that blood?"

"Unfortunately so - yours, as a matter of fact." Thompkins looks at him directly over her spectacles, glass-blue eyes inscrutable. "Director Fury sends his apologies, but says - I'm quoting - "they needed the push". I'm told you would understand."

Understand? Understand irreparable damage to a set of priceless seventy-five-year-old antiques that took him twenty-three years and innumerable sweaty and slightly worrying memorabilia dealerships to compile?

"Is Director Fury your boss?" Steph enquires, cheery and very nearly successfully passing as someone not operating as a deliberate distraction from criminal damage to a set of irreplaceable collector's heirlooms. "He sounds a lot like mine, actually. I liked him!"

Phil turns the card over and over in his hand, wondering what he's supposed to do now. Wondering how long it's going to take him to collect a replacement set, if he even can, and if Captain Rogers will still sign them for him if he does. He can accept with a certain amount of equilibrium being murdered by a homicidal (and kind of whiny) enemy alien, but this betrayal is several steps too far.

"That homicidal break you mentioned..." he says, addressing Steph and not the doctor. "Do you think I could I get one after all?"

~*~

He's been in Gotham for ten days when he takes Jim Gordon out for a beer. Jim doesn't entirely know who he is, or more accurately is doing an Oscar-worthy job of pretending he doesn't know what being his daughter Barbara's colleague really entails, but Phil has played the completely bland jobsworth role more than often enough to know it for what it is. Jim is friendly enough, with that slightly guarded quality that big-city dwellers generally have cranked up a few notches, the way it tends to be in a city where your acquaintances and particularly your colleagues don't have a very high life expectancy. Technically, Phil gathers, Gordon is no longer Commissioner of the GCPD, but according to Barbara this hasn't done much to change the extent to which he hangs around central station like a decommissioned old soldier. That said, he isn't sitting in this slightly dingy cops' bar because of Gordon's career (or because of the beer, which is appalling): he wants to get the measure of the city, and Gordon seems like the man to ask.

"It's still horrendous," Jim confesses, halfway through his third pint, "But compared to the way Gotham was when I joined the PD, it's unbelievable how it's improved."

"What changed?" Phil is matching him drink for drink, because as bad as this beer is, he's still drunk far worse. "The Bat-guy?"

(He still thinks that naming a superhero for a flying rodent is ridiculous, but to be fair his own personal superhero technically goes by the catchy tagline of 'Captain America', so what does he know? But the thought of Cap makes him wince and wonder what he's missing - and anyway, there's surely nothing more ridiculous than an out-of-work secret agent sulking around a strange city alone with nothing to do.)

Jim is giving him a very shrewd look through his oversized spectacles, and Phil hastily checks he still has the 'neutral' setting on. "Are you on the force, Coulson?"

"I was." He actually wasn't, strictly speaking, but that's all right: he can fake it well enough. "And 'Phil' is fine, really."

"Well, when I joined up, being a clean cop in Gotham City was basically signing your own death-warrant. Having the big guy around was never ideal, but it meant we finally had somebody else on side. So, yes, it was the Bat. But it was more than that, too." He drains his beer and stifles a gentle belch through his moustache. "You picked a hell of a town to recuperate in, Phil."

"So I'm gathering." The more he learns about it, in fact, the more Gotham sounds like New York without any of the cleanliness, high living standards or personal charm. But that's fine: he's not stopping for long. "What made you stick around?"

Jim shrugs. "I don't like backing down. And I believe in Gotham City, whatever else it does." He pushes his glass away, with what Coulson recognises from innumerable army bars as the classic 'next round's on you' gesture. "I suppose you'd call it... digging in."

They leave the bar several further beers later, Jim gently unsteady on his feet but still reasonably sober. It occurs to Phil, mildly hazy himself and not lonely for the first time in at least a week, that being a cop in a city like this one would lead naturally to having an exceptionally high tolerance for alcohol. A few minutes later, though, they're about at the subway when four men in clown masks box them in, pull out a knife each and demand their wallets. (They do not say 'please'.)

Jim goes for his gun; Phil does the same and gets halfway through the old familiar movement before he remembers that for some reason he was never given his sidearm back. Before either of them can do or say anything productive, however, there is a faint whistling sound and a caped figure drops from out of nowhere to land squarely on the first guy's back.

His first thought, given the whirling black cape and the men's reactions to the arrival, is that this is the Bat he's already been hearing so much about, but there's long blonde hair flying loose (which surely is a major hazard: maybe it's a wig?) and purple on the suit and a very definitely not Batman-like bodyshape dancing like a vicious gymnast through their would-be muggers. Whoever she is, she reminds him of Natasha: acrobatic and flowing but every punch is perfect, every kick is precise, like a dancer in a warzone. She's young, though: younger than Natasha by far, maybe even teenage in her glee as she tosses a bolas at the one mugger smart enough to run and sends him crashing to the ground.

"Evening," she says with a giggle, and bows to them both in the frail, turgid lamplight. He still thinks that calling yourself Bat-anything is kind of ridiculous (she's clearly affiliated: she has the symbol on her chest, and he can spot a franchise when he sees one right in front of him) but like this, half-lit by shadows, cloak pooling in darkness at her feet, he can see why they've adopted the sigil. Smile or no smile, she looks eerie, unearthly - and he knows a thing or two more than he wishes he did about 'unearthly', these days.

And he's also pretty certain he knows who she is, although he very much hopes he's wrong, but before he can say anything she's gone - quick as a dustmote on the version. Beside him, Jim Gordon breathes out, slow and resigned like he's exhaling from his pipe, and reaches for his ID to arrest the four men now groaning amongst the rest of the unspeakable debris on Gotham's broken sidewalk.

"Was that-"

"Yes," Jim says, dryly. "And no, you never do get used to it."

~*~

The next morning, Phil goes for his usual long jog, five times around the block where he lives in the basement of Barbara's self-owned, self-made tower, and once he's showered he goes back out for just long enough to buy a Starbucks latte, which he takes to Barbara like an offering.

It's actually Steph who opens the door to let him in, which has the potential to be kind of awkward (given what he wants to talk to Barbara about), but as soon as she spots the cardboard cup in his hand Steph catches on.

"Double-shot half-fat hazelnut latte, right?" she asks, and grins when he admits that yes, it is. "I'll tell the geek goddess you want a consultation. Did you remember to get the cocoa powder on top? She loves that stuff."

He makes small-talk with Barbara until well after Steph has tactfully left the room, and gives it another seven minutes to ensure that if she is listening at the door, she's hopefully bored to death already. Doing so isn't exactly a chore, anyway: he likes Barbara, who is frighteningly intelligent and tells war stories the way other people talk about the soaps, and who reminds him of Tennison, a Level 3 at SHIELD who he's pretty certain died at the Ohio facility. She also set up this whole thing with Fury about saving his life; maybe he'll get her flowers, once he's positive he's not going to go suddenly homicidal any time soon. (And that it helped.)

"How long has Steph been Batgirl?" he asks, eventually, and Barbara doesn't seem surprised by either the sudden topic switch or by the question itself.

"Six months," she says steadily, and carefully cleans her glasses on a chamois cloth. "Although I thought you'd be quicker to catch on than this, frankly."

He shrugs with the side Loki stabbed, feeling the scarring tense and ease beneath his shirt. "Well, dying is probably enough to throw anyone off their game, I guess. But it wasn't that hard, living here." He raises his eyebrows. "She picked up that many scars in six months?"

"No." Barbara's fingers drum a sonnata on her wheelchair's arm. "Before that, she was Robin. And the Spoiler before that."

"Right." The names are familiar to him, because whilst he was aware that this conversation was almost certainly going to make him like a complete idiot, he was damned if it was going to make him look like a complete idiot who couldn't do the research. "And she's, what, eighteen?"

"Seventeen."

"Right," he says again, because Steph might remind him of Natasha but she reminds him of his nieces, too. "And nobody had a problem with this at all?"

"We discouraged her as far as possible, as a matter of fact." Barbara's eyes are hard and unreadable, like uncut emeralds as they pick out the fish tank behind him and something metallic in an oyster shell. "To be honest, I'm surprised someone from your organisation is so shocked."

Shocked? No. But every reference to SHIELD - to his other life, his other world - only reminds him that it's been far too long since he heard cello music. (He wonders what they've told Leo, and whether or not he'll ever be allowed to know.) "We have recruited juveniles, on occasion. But war is a choice made by adults." He thinks again of Natasha, and all the scars none of them can see. "Or it should be."

"And if everything was as it should be, Gotham wouldn't need any of us, and I wouldn't be in this chair." Barbara sounds hard now, too; flinty and brittle. "Steph stopped being Robin when she was tortured to death by the Black Mask. She understands what this is, Agent Coulson, just as well as any of us do. But she cannot - will not - be stopped, either."

That he can believe, so far as he believes anything these days, but he doesn't have to like it either.

"Okay," he says, as neutral as he's ever sounded. "Who's her handler?"

"Myself and the Batman, primarily," Barbara tells him, and frowns. "Why?"

"She doesn't have her own?"

"No." Her eyes narrow. "Again, why?"

He shrugs once more, and this time can't quite feel the scar tissue roll, because there are many, many things in the multiverse that he can't fix, but one or two that he might be able to help. Even now, being officially dead. "Would you mind if I... had a word with her?"

"I could hardly stop you." She sips the cooling coffee he brought her, although he'd bet the remains of his Captain America memorabilia collection that she doesn't taste it. "Steph may not like it, of course."

He nods. "I know."

He'll take his chances, anyway.

~*~

Phil leaves it a week or so before he talks to Steph, because he doesn't want to get this wrong. Besides, he needs to judge if he's even necessary: just because SHIELD has a one-agent one-handler policy (frequently ignored, though never for long) doesn't require every world to operate the same way. And he's still very much an outsider here: he knows so many operations which have gone wrong because of bad intel that, just as with the conversation with Barbara, he's going to do the background reading first - even if in this case, 'background reading' actually means hanging around Gotham trying to get himself attacked and rescued so that he can study the Bat-franchise's makeup and technique. In the evenings he makes himself cup after cup of bad coffee and plays endless bad cello CDs as he researches everything the internet and Barbara Gordon are prepared to tell him about Batman, Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing and all their various associates and iterations - plus, of course, Gotham's incredibly, ridiculously varied rogues' gallery. (He can only hope his own universe doesn't get any ideas, or SHIELD will need the recruitment drive of the century and Tony Stark might actually explode from all the opportunities to set himself up on a cross.) It's bizarre but it's fascinating, too: a city overrun by anarchy and the system's dogged attempts to bring it back in line, with distinctly limited success. He's not surprised the death rate amongst the capes is so high; in fact, he's surprised it's not a damn sight higher, although the thing about a costume is of course that it's impossible to tell exactly how many people have worn it.

He gets so interested, in fact, that he almost forgets to be lonely; can almost imagine, at times, that he doesn't have a life and a job and a cellist to be getting back to, whenever Fury can get the damn portal to work for long enough to collect him. (It could be years, Barbara had warned him: he's made a concerted attempt to erase that conversation from his memory, but hasn't succeeded anywhere near as well as he'd like.) At least with this he can fool himself that he has a job; that he's being useful.

In the end, actually, all the deliberately hanging around sketchy alleyways (although to be fair, in Gotham they're all sketchy) is almost pointless: in this city, as he really should remember by now, the easiest way to put yourself in danger is just to exist. He's leaving the last coffee shop of the day, half-caff skinny mocha latte in one hand and notes in the other, for once in his life completely lost in thought, when four men step out of nowhere with their knives already drawn.

He's so surprised that he completely forgets to be a victim until after he's absent-mindedly broken the first guy's nose. After that, of course, there's nothing for it, so the second guy gets a scalding-hot coffee to the face which also splashes enough of the third man that putting the fourth in a bruising headlock and breaking his leg is almost too easy. The half-splashed guy is staggering to his feet, swearing incessantly when Batgirl shows up, looking slightly more amused than scary (as far as he can tell, anyway) as he incapacitates him with a ringbinder spine to the throat.

"Nice work," she observes, sounding nothing like Steph at all (maybe a voice modulator?). "Are you a cop?"

"Peacekeeper," he says, and is a little appalled by how out of breath he sounds to his own ears: strange how quickly you lose it when you slacken training. "Although I did lose my coffee, so I'm not that good."

"Not bad for an old guy, then," she decides, and snorts her laughter when he raises his eyebrows at her like a schoolteacher.

"Not that old," he tells her, although there are days when he feels older than Fury with no Infinity Serum to keep him going, and (quickly, before she can vanish in a smokebomb) adds, "Can we talk? I'll bring the cherry hot chocolate."

The reference to Steph's favourite drink is enough, as he'd suspected it would be; she cuts a glance left to right, up and along like a hunter checking the landscape.

"Central Library," she says, "On the roof. In an hour."

And now she is gone, just as he'd thought she would be, and he doesn't see where she goes.

The choice of meeting-place is a test, again pretty much as he'd expected it would be: it's a little tricky, given that of course the place is now shut, but in the end he 'requisitions' a workman's hat and yellow vest and after that it's just a matter of refreshing his parkour skills and not setting off any alarms. It's a good view, up here, as if Gotham were any other electric-bright city in any other world. Almost as if it were New York, or Chicago.

"I'm impressed." Steph is early, just as he is: it's only good security, after all. "Are you sure you're a peacekeeper?"

Apparently the lack of a hello is a Bat-trait, from what little Jim Gordon has told him. "I was the pro-active kind," he explains mildly, and offers the cup of cooling hot chocolate like a peace-offering. "Hi."

"Hi, yourself." She sips the drink carefully - well, he supposes it would be hard to play the brooding 'I am the night' role with a burnt tongue - watching him over the top of it with a careful, assessing look that's much more Tasha than teenage girl.

"I like the costume," he adds, which is true: it's surprisingly effective camouflage, even up here, and the cape looks cumbersome but she handles it well. Must be all the practice, he'd guess. "Does that cape give you gliding capabilities?"

"Amongst other things." He's not sure if that was the right thing to say, but her answer - and that she's still here - suggests it probably wasn't all that wrong. "What kind of pro-active?"

Phil smiles faintly. "I wrangled ridiculous superheroes for a living. Or I helped to."

"Your 'verse too, huh?"

He nods. "Uh-huh. We're kind of new to it, though - no flying, uh, squirrels. Not yet, anyway."

Her eyes dance as she hides a giggle with her cup. "Probably only a matter of time."

"Probably," he agrees, and wouldn't be at all surprised if she was right.

Behind them at Gotham Central, the Bat-signal switches on: it flickers once or twice before settling into a steady golden beam, comforting and dangerous as it rolls into the clouds. It's a reminder of just what kind of city Gotham is, but a reminder too that it has its protectors.

"I gotta go," Batgirl says, looking at the signal the way Cap looks at his shield. "Was there something you actually wanted, Phil?"

Phil. Even now, even invited, it's a little strange to hear himself called that, like he's been on duty for so long that he can't stop. Like he's never going to be on duty again.

"Actually, I wondered if I could help with all this." He gestures faintly at himself, at her, at the city.

She stops dead still on the parapet and looks back at him, unconsciously graceful as a cat pausing to look before it leaps, and looks at him. "Why?"

He shrugs. "Where I work, every agent has their own handler - a liaison, I guess you'd say. I seem to have lost my agents, so... I thought I might be helpful."

She tilts her head, listening.

"Not so much for intelligence - I'm pretty sure you've already got that sorted - but... in the First World War, officers used to have a -"

"-A Batman?" Batgirl suggests, and when he laughs she laughs too.

"I'll talk to my boss," she promises, and waves just once before she drops into the falling darkness.

Phil lingers on the roof a couple minutes longer, looking more in the direction of the Bat-signal than at it, before he climbs down, thinking That didn't go too badly at all.

~*~

It's over a week later when Phil sees the Batman, and when he does he can't entirely help the small trading-card-collector part of him that thinks this is so cool.

He'd been out for an early morning jog, which seems to be the best time not to get mugged by that section of Gotham's criminal elite which has difficulty in learning from painful experience. He spots a slumped figure just inside the lip of an alley which doesn't immediately appear to belong to someone sleeping rough, but when he approaches to investigate it coalesces upwards into the man Gotham calls the Bat and whom Steph apparently calls 'boss'.

"Our mutual friend says you check out fine." He looms like a pro; like the kind of man even Fury could take lessons in 'tall-dark-and-scary' from. Phil's not that tall and always thought he'd basically gotten over that, but he still feels penned in, threatened.

"Uh, hi to you too," Phil says, wondering what the entire Bat-clan apparently has against 'hello'. He has to admit, though, the guy is seriously impressive: at least six feet five, probably six, with the helmet and cloak making him look even taller and the kevlar in the suit bulking him out. (He'd like to know how the suit is put together, actually: even just looking at it has given him ideas for improvements to his designs for Cap's uniform, although the cape is definitely out.) And if he'd thought Steph could look eerie in her costume, then she's got nothing compared to this guy, who's gone so far beyond that that he looks almost monstrous: even unable to see his face, Phil wouldn't mind betting that the man could out-eyeball even Fury (although possibly not Hill, who's won awards for it) without breaking a sweat.

"Your boss speaks highly of you," the Batman adds, in the same gravelly monotone that would be funny if he weren't so terrifying. "Although he did point out that you were supposed to be here to convalesce."

Phil shrugs. "I already did that - and after that Pit I got put in, it wasn't really necessary."

(He wonders if there's a fan-club, and if so what the badges look like.)

"Have you thought about what happens when you... leave town?"

Only every day. "Yes," Phil says honestly. "But our... mutual friend... has advised that I could be waiting some time." (Years, Barbara had said, potentially.) "And in the meantime, I'd like to be... useful."

Is willing to be used, just as when Fury told him what was needed he didn't hesitate before saying yes, because it was... important. Necessary. Here, in this strange city, he doesn't know if he can be needed again, but he knows he needs to try.

"Why?"

He thinks carefully about his answer before he gives it, because his sense of self-preservation alone is more than strong enough that he knows better than to lie. (Although Leo would snort disparagingly at the idea that he even has a sense of self preservation to use, in the first place.)

"Because I don't believe a teenager should be doing that, but if she is then she should have every chance she can," he says, voice very even. "Because if I'm alive, then it should be for a reason. And because I could be useful."

"Hnn."

They look at each other for a while, he and the Bat - for so long, in fact, that he wonders briefly if this isn't some kind of prank so advanced that even the nineteen-year-old Clint Barton he first met, angry in the Baltimore rain, would have wept tears of angry jealousy to be able to pull it off.

But no: he looks at the Batman, and the Batman looks back at him, and around them the Gotham night falls by inches.

"You can have a trial," the Bat at last informs him, breaking the twilit silence like a knife. "If she says you're done, you're done. Do anything - anything - to put her in danger, and you'll wish you had died of that stab to the heart."

And no suggestion as to when the trial ends, Phil notes, or even if it ever will. Well, that's fine: he's had this kind of trial before; he can work with it.

"And no guns," the other guy adds, flat and absolute as a judge. "Don't let her down."

"No sir," he says, only very gently ironic, and then the Batman is gone, leaving only a hole of black in his wake.

Phil looks up at where he is now, and sees the stars, and thinks that that was actually probably one of the coolest experiences of his entire life.

~*~

The first time Steph gets hurt on his watch, she's a lot calmer than he is about it, although it probably helps that he's had a lot of training in not letting things show. She's taken a couple knife wounds to the shoulders and upper arms whilst breaking up an armed bank robbery, so the wounds he helps her clean up are spectacular but, thanks to the kevlar, not particularly serious.

"You'll live," he advises her, reading the trajectory of the fight in the slashes across her shoulders. "He surprised you?"

"He played dead," Steph says ruefully, sitting perfectly, stoically still whilst he cleans - and, in one case, carefully stitches - her cuts. "Then got me while I was untying the - ow! - hostages, it was totally stupid."

Despite the yelp, she still hasn't moved: he's impressed. "You'll have another scar to add to your collection," he observes mildly. "Though I'm not sure if you'll be able to tell."

"I lost count ages ago," she admits. "But I know I haven't got as many as Batman has."

"I'd be worried if you had," he says, standing back to review his work: he's no medic, but he's had enough training (and practice, after the collapse in Ohio) to have done a pretty decent job. "Or, well, more worried."

She cants her head at him. "I kind of figured you'd be all used to this, where you're from."

"Accustomed," says Phil, "Not used to." He moves to the sink, carefully washing every millimetre of his hands. "What about you?"

Steph rolls her less-damaged shoulder in as much of a test as a shrug. "It's just what happens when you make a stupid mistake, basically. I can deal with it." She smiles crookedly. "It's not like I don't have experience in making stupid screw-ups."

"You're as good as anyone else I've ever known." He frowns a little, straightening his tie. He hadn't worn a suit in the time between dying and starting work again, and like the tai bo he feels as if he had slightly lost the knack. "Why did you start? All the superheroing, I mean."

Steph doesn't answer him straight away so he gets on with his jobs, setting out a new suit for her for tomorrow night, checking the police scanners and the CCTV, because it's not like she has to answer.

"My dad," she tells him eventually, pulling her legs up to her chest so that she looks her most teenage. She reminds him of one of his nieces: Caidy, fourteen and the image of her mother (his sister) and still undecided as to how she's going to save the world, although last he heard Greenpeace was winning out.

Phil quirks an eyebrow, because the way Steph says it doesn't exactly suggest a Disney-happy ending: maybe more like the Lion King, and the death of Mufasa. "He was a superhero too?"

"No," she says, with the oddest look on her face - a little like the one Hill pulls when she has to go report bad news to Director Fury. "He was a crook. And I wanted to stop him, so..."

Steph throws out her arms, indicating the Batcave, her costume and her scars all in one sweeping gesture. "Voilà." She tosses him a look like a batarang. "What about you? Why'd you start government-agenting?"

Phil frowns, and cleans his shades even though he hasn't been wearing them. "Well, the marines and I weren't exactly working out." Not least because it was apparently against the rules to invite your boyfriend to your graduation parade, although in absolute fairness he had known that; he'd just done it anyway. "Actually? Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a superhero. But I'd figured out by then that I wasn't exactly that kind of guy." He gives her the mildest of wry looks, one of the ones few people ever quite identify as a shift of expression, but the two of them understand each other pretty well these days. "Not flashy enough."

Steph giggles, which is when he knows she'll and they'll be okay. "You can be my Robin, if you really want," she offers magnanimously, like she's more generous than Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny all combined.

"The little green shorts didn't fit," he informs her, absolutely neutral, and about twenty-five years' worth of training in deadpan is worth it for just how hard she laughs.

~*~

They're standing on the roof of the Gotham Central Library again: it's become their accustomed meeting-place during work hours - although only in the most technical of senses, since none of them is so lacking in basic security-consciousness that they'd allow it to ever become a pattern. Around them, dawn is breaking by degrees over the city, but the stars still linger like diamonds on painted silk and behind them the Bat-signal has just been extinguished like a home-fire going out.

"Chatter says Lady Shiva's back in town," Phil remarks. "Have you heard from Cass?"

"Not yet," Steph says, and itches her cheek under her cowl. "She'll call when she wants to, I guess. Did you hear anything about going home yet?"

The change in subject is brutally abrupt, and her voice is almost brittle as she asks the question; he raises his eyebrows, a little bemused.

"Not that I've heard." Though he's not sure what he'd do if he had: he still wants to go home but he wants to stay here, too. He has a responsibility not to be yet another adult who disappears on her, and he takes his responsibilities seriously; always has. "If I did, you'd be the first I'd tell."

She shrugs, uncomfortable and teenage under the adult mask. Around them, rain starts to fall like confetti; ever-prepared, he puts up his black umbrella, and watches drops of water tumble around them like stars.

"Let's go home," he suggests gently: his eyes are still on the city, but he's watching her, too. "Job's done for tonight."

Steph smiles, because the job's never done, but that's all right with both of them. "Okay," she says, "Okay."

And maybe he's not her Batman, but being her Alfred is fine, too.

fin