When Stephanie first met you, it was like she was already picturing the next 20 years into the future in the 20 seconds between the desk clerk fumbling for papers to signing the adoption papers. She imagined you in a school uniform, with a clique of friends, birthdays, graduations, everything from A-Z and A-O. You were just so cute and downright clueless when she had stumbled across your short 4-year-old self in Crime Alley. Like a goldfish but 100x more fragile and 1000x cuter. Needless to say she took you in and never regretted it. Three years later and it would've been damn near impossible to say that she wasn't your mum.

She traded saving the city for runny noses, and night patrol for bedtime stories, and yet, eventually Bruce roped her into doing vigilante work again when you were 'old enough' to sleep well enough alone. It turned out that it was that choice that she regretted, and led her to question her right to you at all.

All she wanted was to keep her little baby safe, and being a vigilante? Painting a bright yellow and purple target on her back? Also painted an x on your back. And you were a lot easier to get to. Steph would have given the world to never see you bloody and beat up again after the first time she had found you, and her stomach dropped off the face of the earth when she finally got to you, bound in tight rope so...frail. So small and hurt.

"I'm sorry, I'm so, so, sorry," Her voice came out in wavering whispers as her hands hovered over you face. She didn't want to hurt you more, and she definitely didn't want to frighten you. It was the first time you'd seen her fighting, and she was pretty damn angry. She mightn't of had metaphorical blood on her hands, but literal blood? Yeah, yeah there was a lot.