INTERLUDE I: DISAMBIGUATION

Spoiler was not Lisa.  

It should have been obvious from the start. Sure, there were surface-level similarities—the sharp wit, the quick comebacks, the way she carried herself with a kind of effortless confidence. But that’s where it ended. The rest was just Taylor’s mind playing tricks on her, trying to force Spoiler into a mold that didn’t fit. A reflex she couldn’t shake, no matter how hard she tried.  

She knew why.  

Lisa had been one of the first people to truly see her. To look past the walls Taylor had built and understand her in a way no one else had. It had been comforting, once. Dangerous, too, but Taylor had needed it. Needed someone who could keep up, who could make her feel like she wasn’t navigating the world alone.  

Spoiler was not that.  

Despite Taylor’s initial misgivings, they worked well together—she couldn’t deny that. But the difference was in how they approached things. Lisa had been a manipulator, always working an angle, always thinking five moves ahead. Spoiler was an infiltrator, an operator, but she wasn’t trying to control the board. She moved through Gotham with a kind of reckless confidence, a stubbornness that made her frustrating in ways Taylor couldn’t even begin to put into words.  

She would follow a plan, sure. But only up to a point.  

“You do realize there’s a reason I wear purple, right?” Spoiler had told her once, grinning. “Subtle and sneaky are not my thing.”

And she’d meant it.

Taylor kept expecting Spoiler to play her, to twist a conversation, to steer things in a way that benefited her more than anyone else. But she didn’t. She just was. Direct. Messy. A little too eager to throw herself into danger for someone who wasn’t bulletproof.

Spoiler wanted to do good. That was the biggest difference.

Lisa had been in control. Lisa had to be in control. She had moved people like pieces on a board because that was how she won. Spoiler? She wasn’t playing to win. She wasn’t playing at all. She made mistakes, bad calls, and sometimes her plans fell apart spectacularly—but she kept going, kept pushing, because it wasn’t about control. It was about trying.

Taylor wasn’t sure when she stopped comparing them.

Maybe it was the moment Spoiler cracked a joke in the middle of a stakeout, something so stupid Taylor almost snorted. Or the time Spoiler got her ass kicked, laughed about it, then refused to sit out the next mission. Or maybe it was when Taylor realized that, for all their arguments, all the frustration, she didn’t want to stop working with her.

Spoiler wasn’t Lisa.

She was just Spoiler.

And Taylor was starting to be okay with that.