Chapter Text
Steven gasped awake and, yet again, he was in water.
f*cking Gotham.
It’s like this place wanted him dead.
Thankfully, there was no glowing pink meteorite left behind to scare the locals, this time.. because rather than have an interdimensional fall through cracks in reality, he just had a normal, casual fall: being shot straight into the sky because he was standing right inside the epicentre of a massive explosion, and then landing inside a lake with a mighty splash. As you do.
He hopped off the bottom of the lake and dropped the bubble – thank you, reflexes – and ducked behind some bushes, and wasn’t that a sight? Greenery, in Gotham City. The greenery was mostly black and gnarled and twisted, but there was still green under all the dirt. He shook himself off and checked his status.
He ached. His hair was tangled, his skin was pale, and he had bags under his eyes. He was drained and in need of some sun, but he was still standing.
A black gate nearby with a name tangled into metal showed where he was. ℛ𝒪ℬℐ𝒩𝒮𝒪𝒩 𝒫𝒜ℛ𝒦 : or Robinson Park.
Nearby Catherine’s.
Without further ado, he was racing out. He didn’t even care to check whether he ran within human limits.
.;🩷;.
Lying upside down
everything stays, right where you left it
everything stays
but it still changes
ever so slightly, daily and nightly
In little ways, when everything stays..
Ash clinging to his arms, Steven finally dug the last folder from the rubble, dusted it off, and tucked it into the file cabinet that it had been blown out of, humming the whole way.
He wasn’t sure that these files were actually necessary, but he had to do something to help.
Catherine’s homeless shelter, when he found it, was in ruins. There was police tape around but he'd ducked under to enter smoldering wreckage, ignoring the smoke that crawled into his lungs. He wasn’t human. It wouldn’t affect him.
After the second time he’d pulled a brick up, expecting a bloodied and burnt corpse, and only found an errant sweater or unidentified strip of cloth, he found himself humming. Self-soothing.
……...
The lyrics were a work in progress.
I could.. daily and nightly-
In little ways,
when everything stays
“That’s some song,” Came a voice, and Steven nearly crushed the file cabinet. “Never met a looter who sang before.”
The voice was calm and self-assured, and he recognized him as Mr. Todd. He picked through the rubble, light on his feet, towards Steven, scanning him up and down warily. “Who are you?”
The question was said dully, but Steven knew instinctively it was a challenge. Things in Gotham were like that. Everything had layers and layers to hide their true self.
So did Steven. He raised a spindly hand in lazy greeting. “Kevin,” He said. “And ‘m not looting. Just.. helping.”
“Helping?”
Kevin - there was no way he was relaxed enough to show his real face - gestured to the file cabinet. “Seemed important, is all. I was just gonna bring it to.. Catherine.”
He didn’t actually know who ran the place. Todd huffed a sardonic laugh. “I’m sure my mother’s grave would appreciate it.”
.
.
Whoops.
Steven lifted the cabinet in offering which, conveniently, and purely by coincidence, hid his face.
The thought struck him that a large metal cabinet might be too heavy for the average human to hold with just one hand – but Todd took it fine, with nary a struggle, so he figured that he wasn’t any suspicious.
Steven spun around and continued rifling through the ash. This time, he retrieved a pair of children’s mittens. He would’ve repaired it with some healing spit if Todd wasn’t there.
“Jason,” The man then said, making him jump and almost rip the little things in half.
“Hm?”
“My name. I’m Jason Todd, I own Catherine’s.”
“I haven’t seen you around,” Steven replied, but just this side of unfriendly, that it was more than a simple observation.
Are you lying?
Jason sends him a shrewd look. “I haven’t seen you either.”
Are you?
Gotham was getting to his head, Steven thought, if he was really accusing a son of a dead mother of lying, right inside the ruins of the dead mother’s shelter. If he was right in his distrust, than yippee great gold medal, if he was wrong, then he’s accusing a son of a dead mother of lying, right in the ruins of the dead mother’s shelter.
You own Pink Diamond’s empire, get a hold of yourself Universe..
Breathe. Reevaluate the situation. Around last night, Catherine’s homeless shelter was just set on fire by an unknown source. Steven, as Kevin because he didn’t want to tarnish his civilian identity, was spotted rooting through the ashes.
He definitely looked like the culprit. The only thing he had going for him was that he didn’t know Catherine or her son Jason, except Jason might still think he’s a looter, drawn by the allure of free stuff, not caring who or what caused the fire.
Jason seemed friendly in a taciturn way.. to Declan and DeMayo. Steven was neither of them and he could barely get a read on the guy. It was like walking straight into a thick wall – and it was oddly familiar. Maybe Jason was related to Matches.
“I stayed ‘ere once or twice,” He settled on. It was the truth. “Shame what happened. Heard it was one of the good ones.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jason also moved to rifle around, and Steven thought that was it. They worked for a moment, back to back.
When next Jason spoke, there was a wistfulness to it. “We wanted it to be.”
When Steven looked over, Jason was dusting off what looked to be a book. A journal, owned by one Ma-- E-w-rdson, and it had racecar stickers over the cover. “It was my idea,” Jason continued. “I spent a portion of my childhood homeless after my mother croaked – overdose – while my father was in prison for yet another of his petty crimes. Don’t hate the guy. Don’t love him, either, especially after he pulled that Wingman sh*t – but my time on the streets was sh*t. Literal sh*t.”
Steven had to agree. You don’t realize how precious plumbing is until you’re walking past someone sh*tting in an alleyway without blinking.
“Wayne and I spent weeks working on setting up this shelter. It felt like at every turn, there was something in the way, but eventually we set it up. B let me choose the name, so I named it after my mother.”
Steven found an epi-pen. Better return that, they cost hundreds. He tucked it into his pocket. “What was she like?”
He leaned forward, perhaps too enthusiastically. Sue him, he has having mommy issues.
“You know, as a kid I desperately wanted to go to school, but there was no way for me to get there. My mom took on more jobs just to try and get me there. I thought of her when B and I were fighting to set up the scholarship program. It’s the reason I drive past Trigate Bridge, every day, whenever I can, to pick up stragglers who couldn’t get across.” Jason said, half-answering, half redirecting.
A topic change as discreet as the Diamonds. Steven didn’t push, however, as his attention snapped elsewhere.
“Those kids." Declan, Reggie.. "Are they alright? Was anyone killed?” There was a touch of despair in his voice.
Jason sent him a funny look but graced him with an answer. “Only one. Steven DeMayo.”
Well. Um.
Okay.
Steven chewed on the information that he was legally dead for a moment, but honestly it’s not the worse thing that’s happened to him. He could always make another identity. Perhaps in Metropolis..
“Kevin? You alright?”
“Ye-ep, good, fine, totally,” He said. He took out the epi-pen and all but shoved it in Jason’s face. “Just realised I had some errands to run. Could you return this to the survivors?”
“Yeah, I'm not sure if we can rebuild but we got a temporary shelter at–“
But Steven was already gone.
.;🩷;.
Students filtered into the grand, old money building that was Gotham Academy, chattering amongst themselves as they prepared for a day of study towards their bright future.
Deep in the bowels of Gotham city, Steven sat on a stained bleacher beside Don and Layne, roar of the crowd in his ears and his blood racing. On the stage, the two men, muscles glinting with blood and sweat, circle each other. The referee was red-nosed and slurring and clearly not going to stop anything if and when the two men kill each other.
When he’d found the two hanging around and they had turned to him and asked Hey Kev, wanna go catch a show? He had pictured an improv group on a stage, or a puppet show on a corner. Not an underground fighting ring.. and underground was an exaggeration. He walked past that building every time (twice) he walked to school. The high windows had looked like they were crying with the way dirt and grease stained down them in a wide smear.
On second thought, that might have been blood.
A fighter, the one wearing the blue shorts, goes down hard, head bouncing off the ground, and his opponent wasted no time to dive onto him and continue beating his head in and the crowd screams their approval.
Layne, meanwhile, groaned. “I bet a thousand on him,” they grumbled. Don guffaws and Layne lobbed an empty nitrous oxide can at his head. “I’ll get it next time, just you wait.”
Finally, the referee pulls the men apart, dragging them off the ring and through a jeering crowd. Though the winner roared in his victory, Steven got the distinct impression that people didn’t come to see someone win – they came to see people die. The loser was limp and bleeding from his ears and was being dragged away by his legs.
Steven slipped away from the crowd to follow, and in the excitement, no one noticed him step out. Below his shoes, the tiles were cracked and uneven. It stunk of smoke and blood and sweat.
He found the fighter lying on a cot in what was trying to be a medical room. Beside him, there was a suitcase, half open, and inside he caught a peak of green bills.
Leaning over the man was Matches Malone. Matches looked up with wide eyes and Steven blinked back, just as dumbly.
Then Matches’ eyes slid past Steven, and the was up and moving in an instant. Steven had barely a chance to say anything when thin scratchy fabric was shoved over his face. Matches then shoved what was in his hands into Steven’s – a roll of bandages – just as a man appeared in the doorway.
“Hiya, boss,” Matches drawled, slow and lazy, slumping back in to the chair at the fighter’s side. “Didn’t think you’d be here today. J’eet yet?”
Boss, whoever he was, seemed to glare daggers at Matches. Matches in turn gave Steven a heavy look, so thick with expectation that Steven started haphazardly applying the bandages to the fighter’s (perfectly fine) ankle (though his shin looked a little wobbly..). Just as quick as it appeared, that look was replaced with a slow grin as Matches stood and led the man out the room, meaningless chatter falling from his lips.
That left Steven alone with the fighter. He blinked and shifted the nurse's scrubs that he'd been shoved in until there were slightly more comfortable. At least they were clean.
He didn't understand what Matches was up to, so he pinned that for later and got to doing what he came for in the first place.
He unrolled the bandage from the man’s ankle and stood up to peruse the medical equipment at his disposal. There were more bandages, some disinfectant, pills of questionable legality, and not much else. The fighter had bruises marring his entire face, chest, and back.. a misshapen shoulder joint, crooked fingers, and swelling everywhere.
Examination of his face to check for fractures caused minor flinching, yet the fighter was still unconscious.
The fighter had no reaction to anything below his neck. Not when Steven rotated his shoulder joint back into place, and not when Steven wobbled one of his loose ribs.
His answer came when he gently lifted the man’s head to feel the back of his neck. It felt a lot like holding a fabric sack of marbles.
Steven looked around.
There were no security cameras in the room, so there would be no evidence that Steven did any healing.
He didn’t regret it one bit.
.;🩷;.
Matches cursed to himself as he rushed back down the hall. It had taken him longer than he’d have liked to get out of that conversation, and he worried for Kev’s state. The boy had all the right anxieties and guards of a Gotham native, whether born with, or left when the light had been beaten out of him, yet Matches could tell that he was new to this part of the city. There were no visual indicators to draw him to that conclusion though.. call it a hunch.
Thankfully, the boy was still wearing the blue scrubs he’d forced him into, and hadn’t seemed to rob Douglas or rustled him around too harshly. Douglas was in serious need of a hospital – or he thought, because as he walked back into the med office, the street fighter was sitting up and hacking up the congealed blood In his mouth while Kev rubbed his back.
Then, Douglas took a sip of water, smiled his gratitude to Kev, hopped to his feet even though last Matches checked, his fibula was shattered, and left with his earnings, whistling. He even gave Matches a jovial pat on the shoulder.
Matches glared at his retreating back, then snapped his gaze to Kev. Kev was wiping some blood and puke off the bed frame with a soft expression on his face and not a hint of disgust.
Kev, in turn, looked up at his entrance.
Kev, Matches decided, was a little too calm for almost getting caught being where he wasn’t supposed to be, in the Narrows of all places.
“Heya-”
“Just what were you thinking?” Matches snapped, cutting the boy off, squaring his shoulders and towering over the boy.
Kevin, to his credit, held his own with an ease that was almost disturbing. He mostly looked unimpressed. “What was I thinking?” He repeated.
“Coming back here – do you know how close-!” Matches sighed and scrubbed his face. He reined himself in and regarded the boy coolly. “Unfamiliar faces aren’t treated too kindly back here. Your Boss almost spotted you. He would’ve shot you on sight.”
Kev was relatively unfazed. Brave, or dumb? “So why didn’t he shoot me?” He challenged.
It felt familiar. For a moment, Matches saw another boy in his place, just as defiant, just as young. He was getting soft in his old age. He loosely tucked both hands into his pockets and leaned against a cupboard, breaking his straight posture to appear more open. “It’s ‘cause you look like the help, no one pays attention to the help. Anyone else would be eaten alive for tresspassin’. It kept you safe.”
He decided that he said that with too much warmth. “..You’re welcome, by the way,” He added. “Keep the scrubs. Or burn them. Matter of fact – take a shower, also.”
Kev glared.
.;🩷;.
Steven’s heels tapped against the sticky tiles as patrons bustled around him, and he had to make pains to dodge errant elbows and sloshing drinks. Few people were making room for him. He almost came close to dropping his own drinks.
“Hey, boy! Come deal with this mess!” Someone called.
Steven, wearing a stub nose, cleft lip, short black hair, and round eyes, turned. “Coming, sir!” He shouted.
“Boy! Don’t forget our drinks!” Shouts someone closer, and he rushed over to their table to serve them. He earned a shoe in his ankle and almost eating sh*t for his efforts.
Good thing he wasn’t there, in a bar wearing a stolen waitstaff uniform, for only the money and the pleasant company – no, he’s scouting out targets.
After getting a lecture from Matches, he’d come here, to this restaurant, which was also a front for several different businesses. He didn’t know all of them. He didn’t particularly want to, yet he had to.
Dressing as waitstaff was pure luck. He’d found a serviceable outfit in a clothes bin and deemed it clean enough for his own standards after a dip in the river and nearly scorching it in his hands – then getting in was as easy as walking with confidence, like he belonged.
Finding his target wasn’t as easy.
Based on where Matches’ eyes were directed in that hallway, he’s looking for a man about a foot taller than him. He cursed himself once again for not doing more to find out who it was, too shocked to do anything but what Matches directed him to do with a single glare. It was kind of embarrassing, to be honest. He’d used that to fuel his information rampage at the nearest library, scouring the internet for candidates.
One man went by the name of Black Mask. Steven spotted him in one of the booths, pretty lady on each arm as smoke curled around them, lit up gray by the flickering candles. Standing on the table, another woman danced in high heels, swaying to the low bass.
This was significantly different than the one Roxy took him to.
He had considered Matches as a target, briefly, but decided against it. Matches was retired.
In his disguise he could eavesdrop on everyone. It was like he was invisible – well, except for when he committed the irredeemable sin of being a second too late. Honestly, they’re drunk off their asses, how could they tell?
There was another man, Anton Falcone, who was from what used to be the biggest crime family in Gotham. It seemed like everyone looked down on him, and he sat in a far corner doing nothing but sipping whiskey and glaring into the scratches on the table like they killed his whole family.
A man wearing a monocle and a top hat, the owner of this establishment, was near a large ice sculpture, trying to get a drunkard off. The man had a unique beak-like nose and he’s heard some people calling him the Penguin, once was derogatory but now said with a nauseating co*cktail of fear and reverence.
The drunk man didn’t seem to care, he just kept dancing. Judging by Penguin’s grumblings, his name was Mr. Wayne, as in Bruce Wayne.
Steven didn’t know whether to fear for Mr. Wayne, or to be afraid of Mr. Wayne. The papers were always detailing his antics and scandals, yet he was also the backbone of the city, funding every single good thing that was happening. Steven made a mental note not to get on his bad side.
Some people were filming the whole scene, and Penguin switched out from grumbling at Mr. Wayne to shoo off the recorders with much more success. Steven didn’t know what was up with that umbrella, but the man brandished it like it was a gun. It might have been, honestly.
Another waiter spoke up at Steven’s side, whispering. “Mr. Cobblepot doesn’t like recordings,” He said. “Evidence n’ stuff. He doesn’t care for stopping Wayne, though. This is the fifth time this week. Maybe he likes the guy.”
Steven hummed.
.;🩷;.
Steven had never fancied himself as a spy, and he hadn’t needed to do much sneaking when he lived in Beach City, yet watching the night guards was easy as any head-on confrontation, waiting for one that he could take the place of.
Clothing was still a problem, however. He could never shape-shift clothes. That’s why he eventually picked a night guard that happened to be wearing casual clothes, and as the man clocked out of his shift, Steven ducked out of the passage and walked down to the security cams with his old uniform tucked under his arm. He made sure to walk exactly like the guard had – outward facing feet, confident swinging arms, sharply tipping his head up in a nod to whoever he passes.
After working his shift and getting a whopping pay of twenty bucks, he’d considered picking another face and working another shift, but he’s pretty sure that the maître d was onto him, with the way he’d shoved that twenty into his hands and all but flung him out the backdoor.
The man was rough and taciturn, yet was kind enough not to point out the fake worker in their midst, and even paid him for his efforts. He half expected to be shot on that grimy floor, patrons and staff stepping over him as the music blared. Still, he wasn’t about to push it by sneaking back into the Lounge. He got the impression that he just got lucky.
Steven Universe: always watching, never participating, surrounded by walls of CCTV.
.;🩷;.
The moon was barely visible under that thick barrier of gray, but it was still there, still shining.
Barely.
Streetlamps flickered but there was plenty of advert billboards around, and their neon light traced his every footstep in the damp streets. He should count himself lucky that it had stopped raining, he thought, because sleeping while soaked was nigh impossible. Then again, the steady drum of raindrops might have helped soothe him..
..and at that point, wet socks were a constant for him. He could sleep fine. The problem was where. The cops prowl around kicking on whoever looks weak and lonely enough, which was primarily the homeless. He’d been shoulder-checked four times before he’d gotten the hint and kept to his shadowy corner.
At the least, he could avoid all the gangs for tonight. He picked up some major movements when playing Diamond in the surveillance job. Didn’t pick up much else.
Well he did watch several someones shoot up cocaine. It send shivers up his spine and he had thought, once again, that he should not be there.
Technically, he was dead.
He had paid another visit to the place where Catherine’s homeless shelter once stood, in the hopes of finding a familiar face. He’d only found his own.
It was the photo ID for Gotham Academy, framed and leaning on a little table by the ruins. His own tired, drawn face peered back at him, framed by rusty flowers. Behind him, he could see the scrawling on the walls that they couldn’t properly get off. That was the cleanest wall in the whole building that the volunteers could find, and the camera took several tries to turn on, yet everyone cheered when they got a good photo.
He’d glossed over the memorial text and the bouquets around that were probably urinated on earlier that day, but he did pay attention to the funeral notice. It would be paid by the Catherine Todd charity, it seemed.. and it was to be held on the fifteenth.
Date of his birth, date of his crime, now date of his death.
His life was a cosmic joke. He was the galaxy’s jester. Pack it up, Spinel.
He considered attending, but he knew that his entire situation was seriously messed up.
Less than a week, and already dead, and already f*cking up, and –
“Oof!”
The figure clattered to the ground.
– and sending some poor guy to the ground because he’d been standing too solidly, inhumanely solid, and what should’ve been two people jostling each other was actually a human running into a brick wall that was pretending to be human.
Just as quick as they fell, they popped up to their feet. Their hood fell and Steven caught a glimpse of their face. They were about his age.
They yanked their hood down as they mumbled some apology, and then they were running off again.
Steven hadn’t dwelled on that for long. He picked up some newspapers at the subway, dodged some more policemen, dodged some suspicious adults, and then found a nice dumpster to sleep behind.
He’d just finished stuffing the newspaper into his clothes to insulate what little warmth he had, when he decided to check his pockets. He had a twenty and a bus pass, last he checked.
His hands met nothing but dust and lint.
.;🩷;.
“C’mon, man,” Steven said. “I was here yesterday, you know me.”
The bouncer was unfazed. He was a massive, unmovable man covered in tattoos, one of which Steven recognized to associate him with the False Facers, and if not by those, then by the blood red half-mask that was shaped like a skull.
Steven had a faint idea that he shouldn’t be talking back to him, but the words were out his mouth with no undo button. He just had to play on. “I was with Dan!”
“Danny ain’t here, is he?” The man said, and that was the end of that, punctuated with a stinging cheekbone and mud on his elbows.
Going in as a fighter, however, was a different story. Whoever owned the ring was so ecstatic to have more fighters, that he was practically dragged in. He loitered around looking mean and rough and soon a snake oil salesman approached him asking if he was looking for extra cash on top of that.
For that, he’d shifted to a buzzcut and a stronger brow. Less hair to pull and more space for head-butting. He also bulked up a little, enough to look strong but not so much that he looked abnormal.
With the way the salesman looked at him, and with the crowd roaring at his back and his blood running hot and bright, he did feel a perverse sense of power.
When his opponent was shoved forward and Steven caught the muted fear in their eyes, not so much.
The bell ringed out sharp and echoey before he could try and wheedle his way out of his mess.
Steven and his opponent wearily circled each other, arms up. They weren’t given boxing gloves nor any rules except to win.
Steven struck first. He turned what could’ve flattened his enemy into a mild glancing blow, a test, and this kicks off the match.
They lash out in return and get him in the face. Both them and Steven lock bitter gazes, and their mirrored steps melt from that tentative waltz to two dogs diving for eachother’s throats.
With moderation, of course. If Steven wanted them dead, they would be dead and, wasn’t that a horrific thought? That he was a demigod playing around with a human?
A foot thumps into his stomach and he appropriately rolls back, and again they kick him, getting him in the stomach.
It did piss him off. He kept a lid on it, though.
Steven got through a handful of minutes of dodging and weak hits when the crowd wanted more. They wanted blood. He hysterically thought, while flubbing a kick, that some of the sweat on his back must be spit from how rabid the onlookers seemed.
Steven planted both feet underneath him, aiming to get up – but they knock him down again.
Irritation tingled hot and caustic behind his ears. His fist slammed into his enemy’s face with a distinctive toothy crack, and the irritation is soothed, like meth running cold through heated vessels.
So he hits him again.
And again.
Blood sprayed and bruises bloomed.
He caught their leg and drag them down with him. They almost bite a chunk out of his shoulder.
The crowd approved. That wild animal inside Steven, one that he fears and loves in equal revulsion, also approved. His enemy redoubled their efforts.
The kid’s next attack caught Steven in the nose. He hadn’t dodged properly, expecting a helmet rather than a fist, and he goes down hard.
Again, they grapple on the ground, tendons straining as if trying to skewer each other through with their nails alone. What am I doing? Steven thought. What am I doing?
A hand gripped his ear and he bucks them off. He dove forward and wrapped one hand around their neck, another over their nose and mouth.
His enemy got a lucky hit to his stomach, and it clicked against his gem.
What happened next was just like reflex.
He kicked his enemy off, threw himself upwards, and swung his fists in a wide arc, light constructs sharpening to a point, strike aiming for -
Jasper –
Like having ice water poured over the head. Steven aborts the motion, limbs suddenly stiff – the kid easily takes advantage of his blunder, striking him to the floor.
Steven laid there, panting. Though honestly he wasn’t out of breath at all – yet the other child was, and he had to fit in, even though he had overcome human stamina levels somewhere between age sixteen and seventeen. The ground was chalky and dribbled on with sweat, blood, and bile, yet it was soothingly cold to his aggravated nervous system, half-deafened by the jeering audience and his blood beating at his chest.
He thought to himself:
Would the Gems be proud?
And he knew that they wouldn’t. He was running on fumes and half-baked plans on an Earth he barely knew, living and breathing violence as if it was air.. so exactly the same as before.
He didn’t get up, and he kept his head bowed as he was dragged out to the tune of screaming.
.;🩷;.
It’s easy to get lost in a fight, even when you’re as experienced as Steven.
“I did what?”
“C’mon, everyone knows the ol’ bite off his f*cking ear trick!”
“Please tell me I didn’t–”
“You didn’t, you didn’t. Leave the kid alone, man!”
The men in the room were not much older than him, and they were all sporting some sort of sling or splint made out of shoddy dirty bandages. Some were either unconscious or sky high. One teenager looked barely out of childhood, a ginger boy in the far corner who didn't say anything and nobody said anything to him.
According to the others, Steven had been in the pit for about twenty minutes, and it was almost one of the longest fights in recent years.. so Steven almost dragged the match out to the point that they’d be an anomaly. That realization, that he was still safe, untightened something in his chest, but he wasn’t entirely out of the spotlight yet.
“I’m sayin’, Q, there’s something off about ya’. Dijya do training abroad or something?”
“You accusing him of being a Bat?”
“With that flip, uh, chyeah..”
“Whaa-at?” Steven said, as casually as one could. “I didn’t do anything special, promise. I’m just a normal kid from the Narrows.”
“Sure you aren’t meta?”
Metahumans were a new concept to Steven. Back at his home, there were either non-powered humans or powered gems. Here, humans could have powers also. They were called metahumans, and everyone said meta with a certain weight.
Apparently, there was a decades-old video of the Batman attacking Kal-El. It was captured on a shaky camera and from a mile away, but Batman was clearly furious. The very same video was used in a lot of anti-meta propaganda thereafter.
Some of them spoke of metahumans with reverence, others with fear and disgust. They fought in these rings for money, and metahumans had an advantage. There were also such things as metahuman-only rings, though the idea that metahumans were advantaged fell flat when Steven found out about meta trafficking rings.
Bottom line: don’t tell anyone that you’re a metahuman.
Technically, Steven wasn’t a metahuman, the strict definition was one who has a meta-gene, but colloquially, a metahuman was any humanoid who had powers, including Superman, the alien, and Steven, the half-alien. Metahumans either became heroes or villains, it seemed. Heroes include Gotham’s own Signal, member of the Outsiders who were also more meta than baseline.
Villains include Bane, Poison Ivy, Faust, Giganta, Croc, the Joker allegedly..
..just a lot, really.
A lot that Steven’s been learning and reacting to, but very little time is spent doing. Honestly, he was getting frustrated by how little he knew and therefore how little he could do.
Getting side-tracked was easy. He was side-tracked at that very moment.
To bolster that thought, a slimy-feeling man appeared in the doorway, the same one that recruited him.
“Quent!” He called. “You’re back in the pit in five, get ready.”
Steven frowned. “You said I only had one match.”
The business man’s face was pure patronizing. “Well, there’s been a small issue with the numbers. You get it, I’ve known many young fighters in my day, and I see a spark of intelligence in your eye.” He said that with relish and fake grandeur. Steven saw it coming from a mile away.
“….Money’s tight, y’see. Just one more round, and I promise that you’ll get your reward.”
The other fighters in the room went silent. Steven put on his best diplomatic face and regarded the man coolly. He was not going back in the ring. “Can’t.” Won’t, he meant, “I have other business to attend to.”
The man smiled. “Walk with me, Steven?”
Steven felt like that would get him thrown down a river, two gunshots to the back of his head (clearly, suicide), or some other horrible fate. He stayed where he sat and looked expectantly at the man.
The man stared back, solid unbendable steel, then made a motion with his head.
All at once, arms closed in on Steven, grabbing at his wrists and upper arms and he let them take him to his feet. “I’m sure we can convince you, Quent,” the man said.
A fist drove into his gut. It was one of the other fighters. Maybe they were paid extra for keeping other’s in the cycle. Nonetheless, Steven wasn’t going to stick around. He ignored the moment of shock when he didn’t react to the punch and he twisted out of their grips and shoved past the man, racing down the hallway, followed by flickering lights.
This building used to be a hospital, he had found.
Immediately, pounding footsteps were gaining on him. He was ahead of them, though. Through practice of his new aura-reading ability, he could at least get a sense of how distant people were, which – in these echoey halls – was very useful, and the key to his escape….
He rounded a corner into a waiting baseball bat..! A metal baseball bat, electrified, and with shards of metal sloppily welded on. Pain lanced across his face and it was enough to stun him, to allow his chasers to get a hold of him again while red dripped over his vision.
Through the red, he struggled, but their hands were biting into his flesh hard, and he got struck across the face with the bat again. His feet scrabbled against the floor, slippery with blood.. and he was afraid.
He was afraid that he’d need to kill someone to escape.
And then someone else joined the fight. He was a hulking man, tall as Garnet, with bulging veiny muscles and soulless eyes. He had ginger hair and knuckle dusters and he hit someone so hard, cracks spread in the wall behind where they were thrown.
The recruiter screamed and attempted to drop him and run, but the new guy crashed a fist into his face and he dropped like a brick, his phone and wallet and other stuff from his pockets clattering to the ground. His other captors ran, perused by the goliath. Steven finally got his feet on the ground and stared down at the recruiter.
Steven saw, under the rapidly spreading contusion, an indent in the skin of his forehead. ABUSE it read. Brass knuckle dusters with a stamp in them.
He wasn’t sure if the guy smelt violence and wanted a bite, or was out to help Steven. Either way, Steven was free, even if those two unconscious men weren’t.
Those two wanted to cage Steven, but he healed them anyway.
..He left the ’ABUSE’ scar though.
.;🩷;.
An hour of jumping at shadows and scuttling around corners later, his face still wasn’t healed.
That was understandable. He hadn’t eaten much due to having no money, he hadn’t gotten much sunlight due to the thick blanket of clouds that came built in with this city, and he barely slept on account of being overly anxious about being found. He was also reluctant to meet Lady Gotham again, even though he hadn’t since that first night.
He’d retrieved his burner phone out of his shoe – the flimsy thing was big enough that it had wriggle room in there – where it was flopping like a fish from the message spam he was getting.
Under the cracked screen and the several dozen messages like Where are you boy? and You know what happens to snitches. and through the green-blue background, he could see his own face.
What a mess.
His entire face from his mouth to his forehead was one bruise, and he knew his nose was bent out of shape! He slid that back into place while he scrunched and stretched his cheeks – while the cuts were all healed into raw pink scars, they still needed a little more time before he could shape-shift them away, but he managed to hide some of the bruising around the edges. Not that it did him good.
At least he fit in, though he doubted that walking around with a busted in face would get him anymore cred with the gangs around, eyes darting around as he was careful to hide from passerbys.
Though, eyeing one familiar man passing by who always wore a ski mask, he decided that he could take someone’s identity for a change.
.;🩷;.
Knocking out people wasn’t his style, but the days were counting down to the fifteenth and options weren’t plentiful. He healed the guy after, just in case, but dragged him far away so that he couldn’t interrupt anything if he did wake up too early.
The man was taller and slightly broader than Steven, but due to the mask, Steven only had to shapeshift his body. The mask’s fabric rubbed uncomfortably on his still-smarting face but he was hoping that he wouldn’t need to take it off in front of anybody.
He knocked shoulders with somebody. “Viper, Watch it!” They barked.
The name of his current disguise was Viper. A whole lot cooler than Kev. Steven prayed that he wouldn’t mess anything up for Viper, in case the man somehow found out it was him and then came after him. Childish paranoia, but real enough that he could barely get a word out. He just grunted at the guy he knocked into.
And the next guy.. but he could blame that on having a bigger body than usual.
Later, he found that while Viper was more experienced than Kev and had been here longer, no one was willing to talk because they all assumed that Viper would already know, and if Steven-Viper asked, they might assume he’s been compromised, because Steven’s not the only shapeshifter around.
If only the dream-hopping power grew into mind-reading.. Steven grumbled, sipping some amber alcoholic drink and watching cigar smoke rise. But that grew and plateaued all during his fourteenth year. Same with all the other powers that Rose didn’t have.
He could sit closer to some people though, due to having a higher social standing. It was with this slight power that he sat in a shadowy corner by some talkative people, drinking an offered glass of something as he eavesdropped.
“-That bastard Wayne,” Someone was saying, “I don’t trust his sparkly grin one bit. Single man up there in a big mansion, and the only children he adopts are ones that are orphaned? He’s got pedophile written all over ‘im.”
Not a day had gone by without Steven hearing the name Bruce Wayne out of someone. Opinions ranged from obsessed to invidious.
“Woah, woah dude. I think he’s not as perfect as they say, but no way he’s like that.”
“..”
“Oi! Sit down, you. Alright alright let’s change the subject. How about dick?”
“.I’m not helping for that..”
“Dick, Dick Grayson you f*cking idiot! His eldest.”
“Right, the cop..”
“At least he took that to 'Haven, I don’t know how I’d handle it if a billionaire’s son came up to me like do you know how fast you were going?”
Laughter.
“What – whatabout the other one? The boy, Jason Todd-”
Shunk! Thud.
“Watch the booze-”
“The f*cking – did you really need to stab the table?”
“I’d stab him if I had the chance. Gets a rich daddy and he thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us in lower Gotham.. his whole schtick of witness protection for why he disappeared his whole teenagehood, I don’t tr –”
“Don’t trust him one bit, we know. Is it really all that?”
What was said next was in a grumble that Steven couldn’t pick up – but based on the reactions, it was outrageous. They worked through their surprise, with another round of alcohol and clicking open another box of cigars.
Then, Steven’s full attention was caught once again.
“Hah! You really hate him, don’t you?”
“Well. We all saw the smoke yesterday.”
“..”
“No way dude. You were the arsonist?”
“f*ck yeah. Burnt his establishment down whole in one night. Even pissed on the sign.”
Destroying innocent people’s lives, just to spite someone who won’t be hurt.. though judging by the dark edge to Todd’s expression, the stress lines around his eyes, and the greying of his hair, canities subita – even though Steven got the impression that he was much younger than he looked – Todd was far from unaffected. That man he met in the rubble was not who these people thought he was.
The conversation thankfully shifted to other Waynes.. or others that Bruce Wayne had adopted, because he hadn’t given them all the family name. Cassandra Wayne was the eldest daughter, and soon Steven quickly stopped being thankful.
He flicked his gaze sideways, peering around as covertly as he could. If anyone was uncomfortable, they sure didn’t show it, not wanting to be the odd man out.
“..And his cousin..”
Well, Steven wasn’t even a man.
“..and that other one, give me one night with her any day-”
Steven leapt over a table.
He at least gave pause just enough to rip off the mask and shift into someone, anyone, because he was getting into another fight.
.;🩷;.
It smelled of blood, sweat, and smoke. Steven’s knuckles stung and his forearms ached in a satisfying, animalistic way..
..Stars, what violent beast had he become? Or, maybe he was always this way, just a hair trigger away from gnashing his teeth in search of blood, just like a Diamond, conquering and taking planets all throughout the galaxy..
He can’t get intoxicated these days, yet he can get drunk off power, and he feared that. Maybe he’d already gotten addicted. It was that fear, combined with the late hour, that he used to pull away. On his way out, he saw Layne and Dan, looking neutral at their table, and Matches leaning in the doorway, unreadable, yet he silently moved aside to let Kev leave. The streets, although he now knew his way around, were murky and unrecognizable until he calmed down, a whole mile away. And he just so happened to calm down in a filthy bloody street. He had passed a rotting corpse, left exactly where it slumped after someone had blasted its brains out in a huge diagonal arc up the bricks. Behind, he heard children’s laughter, while he stopped to stare at it.
His first thought was bland indifference. His second thought was whether he could get anything useful out of the corpse’s pockets.
As if he’d been projecting his thoughts (very plausible, happened several times..), a voice came from behind him.
“Nothing in there,” A boy said. “I checked.”
Steven recognized the kid from earlier: the ginger boy, who was sitting in the corner of the medbay. Currently he looked completely unharmed and calm, with his hands stuffed into his pockets and staring evenly back at him.
“You checked?” Steven repeated. “..When?”
“First thing, when he was still warm. He had five bucks, by the way.” The boy jerked his head back. Behind him was St. Adens orphanage, and on the grounds, children played while being watched for by nuns. The boy specifically pointed at one window. “I watched him get capped from my room. That was a week ago.”
“Okay. Oh – I’m– Steven.”
“Colin.” Colin nodded and didn’t seem to pay any mind to his hesitation.
Steven wanted to ask if Colin had escaped during the chaos easily, or if he was hiding.. but he was no longer Quent, the street fighter – they were just two boys crouching by the road and gawking at a dead thing.
Still, he could.. be subtle. Steven Quartz Cutie Pie Subtle DeMayo Diamond Universe.
“..So,” Steven started, as the silence drew on. “How are you doing?”
“I ran away from a child fighting ring earlier,” Said Colin. “And we’re having ravioli for dinner.”
“Cool,” Said Steven. Was I this blunt when I was a kid??!! “Did you.. get out alright?”
“Yeah. Not my first.” Colin grabbed a stick and scrapped across the corpse’s neck. Goo and maggots came off it. Thankfully, he didn’t wave the stick at Steven, he just poked at the exposed bone. The toothy scrape made Steven shiver.
Colin then froze, and Steven feared that he was reconsidering waving the stick at Steven.
“How are you?” Colin then said.
Normal conversation. Steven can do that. “I-”
He was feeling impending doom heavy at the bottom of his lungs, and overwhelming helplessness akin to a cornered animal, anxiety almost eating away his thoughts, but he wasn’t telling a kid that. “..Ankle hurts.” He settled on.
Colin didn’t even turn his head. “Broken?” He asked. He was writing his name on the wall in the dirt.
Steven hummed a I-dunno noise.
“Good thing you’re not a horse. If you were a horse, they’d take you out back and shoot you. Like him.” Colin jabbed the corpse in its sternum. Horrifically, there was a squelchy creak.
“Great,” Said Steven.
Actually, he could probably shape-shift into a horse. He hadn’t tried shape-shifting into animals since the first and last time, because he turned into a cat monster, but he probably had more control now. And he was getting sidetracked. Steven shook himself and recited the conversation in his head, latching on to one thing he can research. He asked about it.
“Zsasz child fighting ring twenty-sixteen. Look it up.” Was the reply
“Oh, sure. Sure. Say, do you happen to know where the nearest library was..?”
Colin pointed with the maggot stick. “Walk around St. Adens. Just behind.”
“Got it. Thank you.”
Colin just hummed and went back to staring at the corpse. The boy’s expression reminded Steven of Onion; it was a nice bit of familiarity to find in a place still so new – but Steven couldn’t linger, he still had some work to do.
“..Say, is anyone going to get rid of that anytime soon?”
Colin looked at him like he was stupid, and Steven quickly got out of there, leaving the rotting corpse and the orphanage opposite behind.
.;🩷;.
Victor Zsasz is an active serial killer in Gotham, starting a couple years after a young boy, Robin, started appearing in the shadow of the Batman’s cape. Zsasz would typically slash his victims’ throat, mark himself with a tally, and leave the corpse posed all pretty for the police to find – and wasn’t that was a visceral reminder of the rotting corpse that Steven saw outside the Orphanage.
Steven found a video clip of Zsasz. The man had one scarred arm wrapped around a terrified girl, the other arm brandishing a knife as he ranted and raved. He claimed that he was helping people – that he was freeing them from the pointlessness of daily life. Now – part of being Steven is understanding everyone, and that means putting himself in people’s shoes. He does understand what it feels like to believe life to be useless, and he does understand the decision to take that task on his own shoulders, believing that only he himself could help.
For a brief moment, Victor was a bloody and cracked reflection of himself.
Then Steven clicked for the next page and accidentally hit the skip-to-the-end arrow, seeing Zsasz’s most recent crime – and he knew for a fact that he would never kidnap children off the street and force them to fight each other for a chance of freedom, then have them fight him in the final match, all for the amusem*nt of crime lords and other degenerates. There was never any official report on how it was taken down, but shaky video footage showed a masked kid and the same huge man that Steven briefly met.
Small world.
After that, Zsasz’ only next appearance was when he almost broke out of prison, by the help of a teenage boy who believed the man was his father. The boy was sent to a psychiatric hospital and Zsasz was quickly apprehended and sent to Blackgate Penitentiary.
Good, Steven thought viciously. Stay gone.
And if the man got out again, Steven would personally make sure he’s back where he belongs.
After that, Steven went down the rabbit hole of Gotham’s own dark knight, both on the official Wikipedia, and on archived message boards. There was massacre after massacre and world-ending cataclysm after another that the Batman was credited with fighting. Steven parsed through every recording he could find and most of them were too shaky, laughable distant dark shadows that were only allegedly the Bat.
The good recordings, however, were terrifying. Steven did not want to get on the Bat’s bad side.
On a lighter note, there were the rumor and theory boards.
Someone claimed that Batman was Bruce Wayne’s ex-lover, and that Timothy Drake was their child of divorce, which – what?
Ronaldo’s were better.
Steven peaked his head over the computer screen. The light drifting in from the cracked and grimy windows was gentle and young, signifying early morning. He also saw that he was completely alone, which was good.
He was a little embarrassed to research his school classmates, but he wanted all the information he could get.
There were a few more outlandish theories, and he lost a good ten minutes scrolling mindlessly, scanning the pages half-heartedly with his head rested on his fist, when one theory caught his attention.
There was an article linked:
Drake Heir Rescued By The Red Hood Repeatedly! It read. Routine Heroism, Or Unreleased Affair?
Apart from the fact that Tim was his age and the Red Hood seemed to be in his forties, the article did bring some strong evidence underneath the outrageous hook title.
Tim had been rescued by Red Hood several times, and recordings from these incidents show them speaking to each other in a casual manner. Could’ve just been familiarity, because in this world, it was a lot more dangerous to be rich than in his home world. However, the article claimed that there was something elicit going on behind the scenes, and he skipped the rest of it.
The theory was a little more level-headed. It suggested that Red Hood, a vigilante with seemingly erratic movements throughout the city, had been ordered to carry out those tasks – and ordered by the Waynes, like a mercenary – yet many of his actions were for the benefit of citizens, if a little violent, but that violence was on par with Gotham’s vigilantes: difficult to do as a (likeable) high society figure, but easier behind a mask.
Outsourcing the task to someone more capable.
Now that’s an idea.
.;🩷;.
Steven’s very first memory of stealing something was from around four or five years old, in that transition time between living with his dad: distant, almost lost yet happy memories, and living with the Gems: which, for better or worse, he will never forget.
They had gone out to eat at Fish Stew Pizza, just him, Dad, and Amethyst. He doesn’t remember what he ate, but he remembered snatching a set of keys off the counter while Dad and Mr. Kofi were chatting, and he remembered Dad only finding out while Dad was rustling for his own keys, and Steven had handed him the stolen goods.
Long story short, Steven had been made to hand them back and apologize, with a warning to not steal, Steven, it’s very rude. You don’t like people taking your things, do ya?.
While now it was with fondness, immediately before his episode, he’d relived that memory with contempt, wondering how he had learnt from that, but Amethyst hadn’t.
Steven unloaded his pockets unto the rooftop. He had seven phones, and none of them were his.
He did learn from that day! He just chose to.. unlearn. For one night. While very slowly stressing out.
Stealing everyone’s phones was half snap decision, half reluctant acceptance. While he didn’t quite have the sticky fingers of that pick-pocketer who’d taken his own stuff, he could fight, and he could grab attention. After all, if he coudn’t silently slip into people’s pockets, he could still punch them in the face. Punch them in the face until their pockets fall out on their own.
Not his proudest decision, but it had been done.
Retribution came in the form of heavy footsteps, steel on concrete, and a shadow falling on him. Steven glanced over his shoulder at him.
Red Hood’s eyes met Kevin’s.
That mechanical voice, again. “Stealing?” Red Hood asked. Still grating, still terrifying.
Kevin shook his head.
While not quite putting his finger on it, Steven was getting better at identifying where was that ever-present curse on Gotham and her inhabitants. He could see it all over Red Hood, but nowhere inside his soul.
It was for that reason that he waited on that roof for the man to show up.
“Gathering. And, for the record, I had nothing to do with the torching of Cath’s. Someone else did, because they were angry at Jason Todd. Here, I recorded it..”
Red Hood seemed disproportionately stressed out about that, but Steven didn’t want to waste any time, or give himself time to chicken out. He shoved the phones at Red Hood.
“And then – and-” He shoved the burner phone at Red Hood, too. “They’re gonna go again. Not- not arson, but..”
.;🩷;.
What followed was word vomit upon word vomit, but Hood listened and nodded, and it seemed like he understood.
“I’ll handle it,” Said Hood.
“..How?”
“I’ll handle it.”
Steven stared a little longer. “……...Murder?”
Hood paused, then shook his head. “No. Not my thing any more.” He hooked a finger under his helmet and, with some struggling, clicked off the voice mod. Steven had seen him turn it off with just a quick head movement. Red Hood was putting on an act.
“You seem a smart one,” Red Hood said, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Know-it-all. Good streak, despite everything.”
Steven shrugged. “I do live here.”
“Got a job?”
“No?”
“Here.” Jason took a card out his pocket and flung it at Steven. It spun slowly in the air before it was caught neatly. “You can contact me with that card, I pay for any and all information that I don’t already know.”
That’s very useful. “Oh! Thank you.”
Hood nodded. “Don’t lose it and don’t show it off. Get home safe, kid.”
“I will.”
Steven got up to the roof by jumping and he prayed that Red Hood left before he watched him jump down.
One last thing.
“.. Are Batman and Superman enemies?”
Hood sighed. “They’re best friends.”
.;🩷;.
Steven saw, grabber in one hand and bin in the other, as police poured out of the Iceberg Lounge, handcuffed detainees in tow. He ducked his head soon after, to not be accused of anything by the police (They must have been sent by Red Hood.. but he wasn’t taking his chances in this place).
Mission success.
It was a huge weight off his shoulders, to not only keep all his friends alive, but to have also gone to somebody else for help, and knowing that they have helped.
Now that the stress was gone, exhaustion rushed in. He needed a f*cking nap.
Before the f*cking nap, he was going to scrape a dead body off a wall, but after that? The loveliest little dark corner to sleep in, and he didn’t even care for secrecy – whoever tried bothering him is ending up in a bubble.
