Being jurgen leitner the day that gerry almost killed him was probably really surreal. Imagine you’re minding your business, collecting fucked up books, and out of nowhere this goth guy covered in eye tattoos shows up and beats you half to death, then stops, goes, “no you’re too pathetic to be jurgen leitner” and leaves without further elaboration. And you dont correct him, you like being alive after all, and after that you just… continue with your life. And then several years later you tell this to some random guy in the tunnels you’ve been hiding in, and he not only knows who the goth was, but seems somewhat fond of the goth. And then you get brutal pipe murdered by the random guy’s boss. Oops
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Steph's new roommate's little brother was absolutely a meta.
The two of them weren't really trying particularly hard to hide it, but they weren't mentioning it either, so Steph just... followed their lead. Especially because Jazz, while a little neurotic, was a pretty good roommate and new some truly innovative things to make in the microwave with whatever was in their dorm fridge.
But anyway, back to the meta thing. Steph could totally back it up.
Jazz was from the Midwest somewhere, one of the "I" states. (Indiana? Illinois? Iowa? Steph could never keep them straight.) From the way Jazz talked about her parents and the things she said to Danny, Steph could tell that the Fentons still lived there and Danny with them. Yet at least four nights out of seven, without fail, Steph would come home from a long night studying or vigilante-ing to find Danny in their dorm room, usually passed out on the futon. As though Gotham wasn't halfway across the country from Indiana or Illinois or Iowa.
"Our parents are pretty loud," Jazz explained with a quiet grimace, the first time it happened. "Like 'keep you awake at all hours of the night' loud. I told Danny he could sleep here when he needs to, is that okay? Tucker's parents are great, but they'll kick him out eventually."
"As a sleep-deprived college kid, I wholeheartedly support sleeping wherever you can get it," Steph whispered back. "As long as he doesn't eat my half of the food, I'm not gonna tattle to the RA."
"Thank you thank you thank you!" Jazz squealed, flapping her hands. Steph darted a glance at the teenager passed out on their futon, but he didn't even twitch. "Oh, don't worry, you have to be loud enough to wake the dead to get Danny up," Jazz said with a smirk.
"Alright. Makes things easier, I suppose," Steph said with a shrug, moving to sling her backpack onto her bunk. "He gonna be here in the morning?"
Jazz narrowed her eyes as though Elder Sister Glare could penetrate dreams. Hell, maybe it could. "He'll be at school before you wake up, if he knows what's good for him."
School. Which should be halfway across the country. Sure. Well, Steph could recognize a topic that Simply Wasn't Spoken About and unlike the rest of the Bats, she actually respected her roommate's personal privacy. "Cool."
So. Definitely a meta. Teleportation, maybe? Or superspeed or flying, she supposed. Whatever it was, the kid was clearly only using it to get a good night's rest in a safe space, so it wasn't really Steph's business.
At least neither of them had noticed she was a vigilante. It was an impressive secret to keep in such close quarters, if Steph did say so herself.
~*~
Jazz had clocked that Stephanie was Spoiler in a week and a half. And it only took her that long because she was distracted by orientation. The girl wasn't exactly subtle. Especially not with her injuries. Jazz had three years of experience watching someone come home injured and try to hide it, and while she was better than Danny, it still wasn't good enough.
Still, Steph wasn't making a big deal of Danny portalling into their dorm half of every week. And, like she had with Danny, Jazz wanted Steph to trust her enough to tell her herself.
And if this meant that Jazz spent a good portion of her first semester figuring out the rest of the Bats' identities based on Steph's friends and acquaintances, well. That was between her and Steph's scary-but-sweet girlfriend who read her like a book as soon as their eyes met.
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So much of Garak as a person starts to make sense once you know his childhood was a fucking gothic novel. His main playground was a graveyard and he'd play pretend by perfoming improv eulogies to an imagined audience. For a long time his main touchstone for most important figures from recent history is 'oh yeah I know about that guy my dad buried him. great flower arrangements for that one'. He finds out later his 'parents' are actually a brother and sister who had to get married to avoid the utter shame and social devastation of having a child born out of wedlock, and they live in the basement of his biological father's house. (the madwoman in the attic vs. the tiny elim in the basement.) His biological father calls himself his uncle and locks him in a closet whenever he fails to live up to his insane and unpredictable expectations and everyone just has to act like that's normal and expected, and his will hangs over everything at all times, unseen but always felt keener than anything else. The father who actually raised him grows the world's most beautiful (and as it turns out, most poisonous) orchids and keeps the mask of a god hidden in a box in his work shed. Everyone in the house is choking down secrets like it's the only air they know how to breathe anymore.
What I'm saying is that right from the get-go this guy never had the faintest shot at turning out normal, so I'm glad that by middle age he's found a way to get a bit silly with it as he continues to be deeply deeply not normal about anything ever <3
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