Stephanie Brown

Drifting.

She wants Jason. She wants HOME. She wonders idly when home ever got to be a bar at the end of the universe, instead of a run-down shack in the suburbs or a cave under Gotham's most lavish mansion, but she hasn't got the focus any more to follow a train of thought for much longer than that.

She can't find anything to touch, and the nameless brightness is calling her more and more loudly every day. And she really doesn't want to go.

She flees, instead, pouring herself into living, experiencing as much of Gotham as her dreamlike ethereality will let her; and always keeping an eye out for that face in the crowd, that hood in the shadows, her one touchstone with reality.

It's about time to admit she needs help.

Steph drifts, incorporeal, disconnected, dazed, barely there at all.

Gotham moves around and through her; waves of people crash against grey steel and silver, in rhythm with the movement of time and the city. Nights are blurs of the smell of cheap vodka and the neon signs above the clubs, punctuated by screams she can't do anything about; days are cheaply metallic, sunlight on steel, business suits beating the pavements. She can't call herself together enough to recall anything but impressions, except ...

Gotham moves. Gotham lives. Cities have a heartbeat, and Gotham's is steady despite the filth it moves with. Steph feels it, pulsing through her own fog of existence; it pulls at her, keeping her there, keeping her alive. If she loses that thread of - of - whatever, she'll lose herself, and that vague knowledge helps her keep a grasp on consciousness.

The temptation to lose herself in the mist and haze that hangs over the city is almost overwhelming. If she lets go, if she relaxes her grip, there would be peace - a way to sleep, a way to forget. A place she can go and never come back.

When she thinks about it, though, faces rise before her - Dick, hugging her and insulting her in a breath; Barry, comforting her and holding her up; Mel, tricoloured hair damp and smile wide; Jason. She can't leave them - she can't lose them - she won't hurt them by giving up. So she clings, desperately, to consciousness, and the city breathes her in and holds her.

( ooc comments, anna pic! )

Cass - it was definitely Cass - turned gently in the current, not even kicking. Oh, no WAY. Steph pushed off - left the Door behind - looked back in time to see it swing shut and vanish entirely, leaving her incorporeal and surrounded by murky water, with only Cass's pleasedon'tletthatbeabody for direction.

How she knew what to do was mystery even to her; the water let her through, and she stretched out her arms and her cape swirled around her and she called to Cass in a voice no louder than the water around them.

Batgirl. Batgirl. Cassandra.

Cass moaned, and her eyes flickered open. "Stephanie?"

Yes, that's right. Come to me...and not into the light.

"What's happening?" Cass asks, weakly, and "Am I dead?"

Well, that's up to you. Steph smiles behind her mask. Here, lemme show you something...

Cass's life unfolds before them both, frame by frame, and Steph speaks words she never knew she had, until they reach now - Cass, drowning, alone.

Do what you do best, Steph says. What you taught me to do. Fight.

She pushes Cass away, towards the surface, and then gathers up Cass's abandoned cape and follows her.

Fight.

There is light above. The murkiness of the water gives way, slowly, to patterns of golden sunlight, and a darker shape, a buoy, bobbing on the harbour.

Fight for your life. Right up to the end.

Cass's head breaks the surface, and Steph, fading, pushes the cape after her until it drifts through her increasingly ethereal hands. Cass, gasping for breath, hauls herself painfully onto the buoy and says, hoarsely, "Stephanie?"

But Steph can't answer. The Door has opened in front of her, and no matter which way she turns it's right there, open, unavoidable.

"I'm not ready yet! I only just got here!" She backs away, and it follows her. "No!"

She jumps, backwards, and leaps off the buoy, flipping backwards towards the dirty water - but she hits a solid floor instead...