Chapter Text
Stephanie Brown could remember that she had once been beautiful.
Maybe it was vanity, thinking that, but it was a part of her memories of before. She remembered long, golden hair that touched her waist sometimes, and bright blue eyes that twinkled. She remembered boys kissing her by lockers and girls kissing her under bleachers and she could sometimes hear the echoes, “God, you’re so beautiful.”
Sometimes it was Tim’s voice. Sometimes it wasn’t.
The window that allowed the Bats to spy on her in her cell was a giant mirror. She couldn’t escape seeing what she had become every single day of her miserable existence.
Her face was hard now. Baby fat had melted away over the years, replaced by jarring angles. The scars on her face, although mild compared to the rest of her, were still noticeable and hateful. Bruce on her lip. The mask on her eyebrow. Her father on her nose.
She usually changed behind the screen provided, but sometimes she couldn’t be bothered, and sometimes she was trying to provoke them, so she’d strip carelessly.
She couldn’t avoid the scars then. The Y of the autopsy, the web of knives and drill bits. The broken angles of her fingers, the pale scar tissue that covered the tips.
“I love you,” her mother said to her, sometimes, when she came in, Cass there to stop Steph in case she decided her mother was a target of her anger.
Steph laughed whenever Crystal said that. “I’m damaged goods,” she whispered.
It was fitting, Steph supposed, that her outside reflected her inside.