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Steph and Sokka left the farm early today, missing the dramas that are unfolding there tonight.

Currently, they're in Metropolis. Sokka is asleep in their "borrowed" apartment - or was, when Steph left, at approximately 2am. Now she is, of course, standing on top of a building, cape billowing, and frowning through her mask at the skyline.

(She totally left Sokka a note, though. It said: I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a walk and to grab some air. Love you. Back soon! Because that won't make him suspicious at all.)

There's someone she wants to see. She's just not sure if it's a good idea.

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A voice speaks from below her, where a Batman is perched casually on a window ledge. "I remember once upon a time I told you not to wear that outfit."

AUGH. That will never not make her jump!

Casually (covering): "Yeah, once or twice a month for, oh, my entire life."

"Mhmm." Tim isn't looking up at her. He's also not wearing the gun. Hmm.

"Patrolling?"

Steph is frowning as she looks him over for any sign of it. "This isn't my city. I was looking for you, actually."

"Not my city either." He glances out at the buildings. "Feels kind of odd, actually, Batman in Metropolis."

"You're not Batman," Steph says reflexively, pushing her hood back and running a hand through cowl-messy hair. "Batman doesn't kill."

"That's what you know." Tim glances up at her, finally. "Bruce killed plenty."

"... he did not," Steph says, but it's uncertain.

He's changed a lot, but then ... so has she. And even in Eden when Tim was getting older and darker, she always trusted him. Didn't like him, didn't like his attitude, his actions - but she trusted him.

It's hard to shake that off.

"He didn't."

"Did. When it came right down to it, when the chips were down, and it was kill or risk innocent life... Bruce took the shot." Kinda breaks down her little issue.

And, he's not lying to her.

Steph hops over the parapet to land on the gargoyle next to his and sit down, frowning intensely.

"When?"

She needs information.

"Ever hear of a Metropolis SCU officer name of Dan Turpin?" He glances sideways at her, then turns his attention back on the city. Tim seems very... Laidback.

He really does. It's starting to worry her.

Not that she's not worried anyway, deliberately seeking out the man who threatened Sokka's life, but ... this isn't what she expected at all.

"No," she says honestly. "Bruce killed him?"

Doubt is very evident in her voice.

It turns out, due to comics that came out after our Tim was first introduced, that there may have been some mind and emotional control going on, both from Miss Martian and Raven. So, here, out of said control, he's... unwinding. Coming back to himself a bit.

"Shot him."

Of course, there is more to the story.

Steph hisses impatiently. She was never good at patience.

"Tim - if it's really Tim - just tell me!"

"I just did. Bruce shot Dan Turpin. With a gun." Cause that makes everything better, right?

"Not helping," Steph says impatiently, leaning back against the building and scowling at him. "When? Was he nuts at the time? How did Batman possibly decide it was OK to use a gun and shoot someone? This doesn't make any sense!"

"Does it matter?" He looks over at her again. "The argument I used was that sometime,s in order to save people, other people have to die. But, now that you know Bruce has done it, the why becomes important?" He arches an eyebrow under the hood.

Steph doesn't answer for a while, drawing her knees up to her chest and staring out at the city below them, hair and cape billowing in the wind.

"...I don't know what to do," she admits, after too long. "You know we're not supposed to kill - you know what it's like. You know how long I've tried so hard to do that. If I do - if I kill people - doesn't that make me just like my dad, like everyone else?"

It's almost a relief to talk to someone who really does know. Not even Sokka knows that much about her dad, except that he was an alcoholic and that it's best to avoid the subject with Steph. But Tim always knew.

"But if I don't - I mean, those guys were cannibals. They'd killed Mel's sister. They would have killed us. Didn't we - shouldn't we have to stop them? What else was I supposed to do?

"I love Sokka. He's - he's a good person. I know that. But he kills.

"I just - don't know where to go from here."

"It's not an easy choice to make, the choice to cross that line. But it's a personal choice. Can you take it, can you deal with the memories?"

He's watching her. "Did you honestly think that I made the choice lightly? That I just thought one day, 'Hey, I'm gonna kill people?' It doesn't work like that Steph. Sometimes you run into a situation where it has to happen. And, if you're lucky, you make the right choice, and you don't stay up nights wondering how many more people someone is going to kill the next time they get out."

"Well ... yeah, I did think that." She shrugs, watching him warily out of the corner of her eyes. "You're not exactly ... I dunno. You threatened Sokka. If I didn't already kind of worry about your sanity, that would have made me."

But ... he's making more sense than anyone else has so far.

"I wanted to kill my dad, when I first joined you guys. And I would have, if Batman hadn't stopped me - if you hadn't. But ... I thought I was better than that, I thought I'd learned. That was nearly seven years ago. Seven years of learning that it's a line I just can't cross. How can I change that now and be okay with it again?"

"Steph... your dad isn't that bad of a criminal." It just has to be said. "At the end of the day, he's just another thief with a gimmick." Didn't stop this Tim from putting a bullet in his brain. He's not thinking about that right now. There's a lot he did, that he's not thinking about.

"He's not the type we're talking about here. We're talking about the Joker, Mister Freeze, the Pen-" His voice catches for a moment, before he remembers this Steph never worked for him."-guin. People who saw nothing wrong with killing random innocent bystanders. People who DON'T STOP!."

He makes a concentrated effort to get back ahold of himself. "If Wally had seen justice done, my dad wouldn't have died at the hands of a third rate villain."

"I know." The words are bitter in Steph's mouth. "He's just a wannabe. I still don't ever want to be anything like him.

"Or like anyone who ever held a gun."

The meaning is sharp, pointed, even if she hadn't glanced at Tim with it.

"And yet, you're still a vigilante like Batman. Or Wonder Woman." He gets the point, he just doesn't think it matters.

"Wonder Woman?"

This Steph missed that particular killing. She glances at him, confused - even more than before.

And reminds herself, again, that this is the Tim who held a gun on Sokka. She can't trust him. She can't trust anything he says.

... but ... she has to. He's the only one on this world who might understand.

"You missed that."

He's not enjoying this. It feels a little too much like rape to be fun. But she has to understand.

"Maxwell Lord. Ever read up on him? Financed the Justice League for a while. Was a minor league meta, could control minds, if he worked at it. He spent a lot of time working on Superman, without anyone knowing, leaving a lot of little triggers in Clarks head. And then he triggered them, drove the Man of Steel insane. And he told them, Bruce and Diana, that the only way he'd stop is if he were dead."

"And so Wonder Woman snapped his neck."

Steph stares at him, and then shakes her head in automatic denial.

"No - she didn't! Wonder Woman wouldn't!"

He reaches into one of his pouches and slips out one of those lovely little mp3/video players. A couple of quick touches, and he passes it over to her.

"Just hit play. Bruces secret artificial intelligence and anti metahuman program broadcast the video to the entire world."

Steph hits play, after a questioning glance, and watches silently as one of the foundational truths of her world is shattered in front of her eyes.

She hands it back without comment; but her face is paler than before even in the pre-dawn dark, and she opens her mouth to speak a couple of times before shutting it again helplessly.

"Do you see? What do you do when a madman can control the most powerful man in the world, and he won't stop?"

Tim crosses his arms over his chest.

"You do what you have to Steph.

"Once you helped me rescue a man who was trying to chainsaw us both to death," Steph says quietly. "In the snow, when the sun was gone. Do you even remember that? You said everyone's life is as valuable as the next and we had no right to choose who lived or died."

"I was wrong."

A simple enough explanation.

"Different situations call for different answers Steph."

"Stop saying my name!"

Steph yanks her hood back up, getting to her feet, poised on top of the gargoyle for a moment.

"I can't - I can't listen to you any more. I'm going."

"Well then, Spoiler."

He watches her get up.

"You do what you feel you have to do."

Steph stares at him for a minute longer, visibly distressed even behind the mask.

"Stay away from Sokka," she says, angry now because nothing is any clearer and he's still made a frightening amount of sense. "I mean it."

"Always planned to. Sorry if I scared him, I was in a ... bad place." Tim shrugs it off. "Take care of yourself."

Privately, he's chalking this one up as a win for him.

It probably is. Steph isn't much relieved, but at least he doesn't sound actively threatening any more. He sounds ... sane.

It's scary.

She doesn't say goodbye, just looks at him a second longer and then jumps out into space, soaring downwards and away.

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