Chapter Text
Steph didn’t have very many options left. Scratch that, she didn’t have any options left, all her anonymous tips had gone nowhere, they’d searched her dad’s boat and found nothing, and she’d run into some guy the last night when she was trying to find her own evidence, and he’d pulled off her mask.
Her father knew. He definitely knew she was Spoiler, that she’d been the one reporting him everywhere, that she’d been on his boat last night, hunting for proof of his poaching. And if he gave her a black eye simply for overcooking dinner, he was going to kill her for this.
Steph hadn’t dared go home last night. Her dad was probably already scouring the town for her, and her mom was still away at rehab. She had nowhere to go.
But even if it was the last thing she did, she would expose her father’s schemes and get him locked away.
If no one was listening to her anonymous tips, she would go directly to someone who would. Steph took a deep breath, and knocked on Bruce Wayne’s door.
Everyone knew the Waynes weren’t human. It was the worst-kept secret in town. No one knew exactly what they were, but a butler that disappeared if you weren’t looking at him and kids that wore coats even in summer heat weren’t exactly normal. But they were kind and cheerful and charming, and her last hope of getting help.
The door opened, and she stared into blue eyes, the same blue eyes she’d seen just last night, squeezing shut as she smashed a compass in his face.
There was a large bruise on the kid’s face. He couldn’t have been much older than her, if he was older at all. And she watched blue eyes narrow, frozen to the spot.
“Dick!” the boy called out, and Steph couldn’t move, not even at the sound of quick footsteps. An older boy appeared in the doorway, smile on his face, looking down at her with eyes bluer than any human eyes were. The boy merely frowned. “This is her. The girl on the boat.”
The older boy’s smile slid off like water, but Steph still couldn’t move.
“I—I’m sorry,” she forced out—she had no idea—was he a Wayne? Did she just attack one of them? “I didn’t mean to—”
“Smash a compass in my face?” the boy crossed his arms.
Irritation won out over fear, just for a second. “You pulled my mask off!” she snapped back, and the older boy’s eerie stillness broke with a groan.
“Tim,” he said, shaking his head, and Tim puffed up.
“You were sneaking around a poacher’s boat!” he accused.
“It’s my dad’s boat. What’s your excuse?” she fired back. And then swallowed—she hadn’t meant to admit that, but it would’ve come out sooner or later.
“…Your dad’s boat, huh,” Dick said quietly, and she studied her shoes.
“He’s a poacher,” Steph said, her throat choked up because—because she knew that sea creatures didn’t follow human laws. That she was signing his death warrant, and he—he was a shit dad, but he was still her dad. “He—no one else believes me. I’ve sent tips everywhere, but he’s bought off or bribed everyone, and even the inspection didn’t catch anything. I—I don’t have proof, but I know he is.” She looked up, willing both of them to believe her. “I’ll swear it on anything you want me to.”
The older boy beckoned her inside. “That’s not necessary,” he said, “Come on in. Bruce will want to hear this.”
Tim shot her a dark look. She shot him a glare in return, because what kind of idiot went around attacking people in the dark and expected not to get hit?
Bruce—Bruce Wayne, pretty much their local cryptid, holy shit, she was actually talking to him—listened to her whole story, though it felt like he wasn’t paying full attention. His gaze was fixed off-center on her face, and even when Steph trailed to a stop, it didn’t move.
“So, uh,” she said, nervously shifting from foot to foot, “That’s why you should do something about him. Before he hurts someone else.”
Bruce nodded, still slightly distant. “Dick and I will take care of it,” he said, before he came closer. Steph resisted the urge to flinch back as he stared intently at her face. “And where did that come from?” he asked, nodding to the left side of her face. What he’d been staring at the whole time.
Steph reached up, and felt the edge of the fading black eye. “Um,” she said.
“From your dad?” Bruce asked, and—and his voice was perfectly pleasant and level, but there was something about him, the dark blue eyes, the edge in his tone, the shimmer of otherworldly that curled around him, that made Steph intensely aware that she was not talking to a human.
That there was a predator standing in front of her.
“I,” Steph started, and was alarmed to realize that her eyes were prickling. She snapped her mouth shut. No one else had asked her where she’d gotten the black eye from. Her father hadn’t cared at all.
“It’s okay, Stephanie,” Bruce said gently, “We can keep you safe. You’ll never have to go back to your father again.”
Some part of that hurt. There had been good moments. Her father hadn’t always been a poacher—once, he’d been a good man.
But people changed. And her father was no longer a good man. Even if she didn’t care about what he did to her—she knew it was abuse, okay, she knew—he hurt other people. And he needed to be stopped.
Steph nodded. Going back to her father was an option that had been revoked the very first time he’d brought back a bag full of mer scales. She only wished it didn’t have to be like this.
Maybe Bruce would still let her talk to her mom.