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"I can tell him for you," Dick offers quietly one day, a week and a half after Bruce comes home.
He's still in the Watchtower medbay, tended to by a rotating squad of League-approved doctors and nurses, and Steph and Dick are walking back to the zeta tubes after Bruce's fading energy had ended their visit. He's getting better, now that his injuries are being tended and he's being drip fed the nutrition he's been missing out on for however long his trip through time was for him.
He's a stubborn asshole, Steph has to keep reminding herself. He'll be fine. He's not going to look this small and fragile forever.
"I'll tell him myself," she tells Dick firmly. "Later. It's my shit to deal with. If he's gonna lecture anyone it might as well be me."
"He's not going to lecture you," Dick tries to tell her earnestly, the lying liar who lies. "He'll be worried, that's all."
Steph huffs at him. She pushes a lock of hair back behind her ear, her fingers brushing over the numb stretch of skin carefully hidden behind the bangs she wears now. "Cool. Then you agree no one should tell him about things that literally don't matter. Since we don't want to worry him when he's still in recovery."
Dick grimaces in the way he does whenever Steph traps him by being very clever. "It does matter," he says quietly as she steps into the zeta ahead of him, apparently deciding he'd rather keep a secret from Bruce for a little longer than to let that slide.
She doesn't look at him, tapping in her code with a little more force than necessary. If she has to pause for a moment, struggling to call up the last couple digits in the right order, he very kindly says nothing. "I'm taking my meds, Dick," she says tiredly. "Leslie says I'm doing great. I'll tell him eventually if he doesn't figure it out first, but right now, I think he needs your motherhenning a hell of a lot more than I do."
Back in the cave, she beelines for the changing rooms before he can follow her through the zeta. She locks herself in and stays there for a full fifteen minutes until the nausea finally fades.
He is, unsurprisingly, still lingering in the cave when she comes out, scrolling through his phone as casually as though he's not just watching the clock before he decides to check on her.
He flashes her a smile as she heads for the stairs. But he doesn't push.
She wishes he'd be just a little bit of an asshole about it once in a while. It would make it a hell of a lot more satisfying to be this annoyed.
She really does mean it when she says she plans on telling Bruce herself. Seriously. It is on the to-do list.
It should be so simple. Hey, B, so, funny story — I got shot in the head while you were gone. But I'm totally doing way better now and it wasn't even that big of a deal. So if you have any other questions just ask Babs, because I only remember about seventy percent of the last eight months, if we're being so for real.
The guy's still hobbling around with a cane, for god's sake. She can just say it and then bolt. What's he going to do, chase her?
And yet, somehow, the right spot to say these words never quite makes itself known.
"You spent the night again," Bruce says one morning a few nights after coming home, watching her shuffle into the kitchen in her purple unicorn slippers. His tone is bemused, not upset or disapproving, but she still feels her spine stiffen as she drops into the chair at the kitchen table that she's started to think of as hers.
Across from her, Damian snorts derisively. She kicks him under the table. "Just thought I'd give Mom some space," she mutters. "Let the empty nest syndrome have some time to set in, you know."
Bruce's face does something odd — aggrieved and fond at once. She knows he probably thinks her blatant lie is because she's hanging out to keep an eye on him, and not because she's been living here pretty much full time for almost eight months now at Dick and Babs' insistence.
She feels a twist of guilt in her stomach at letting him believe it. She feels a bigger twist at the too-knowing glance Damian shoots her over his pancakes.
Alfred sets a plate with a couple waffles down in front of her, and she murmurs her thanks as she tucks in to avoid having to meet either of their eyes.
Damian sniffs. "So long as you keep your greedy hands off the snacks Alfred has purchased for me," he says.
The knot in her stomach eases. She kicks him again for show, but it's gentle this time. "I'm not touching your weird veggie chips, bird boy," she grumbles. "You're safe."
"Tsk," he says, and nothing more.
She's never felt more fond of the brat.
"You didn't take your medication this morning at breakfast," he says loudly when she opens her door an hour later. "Is your brain still malfunctioning, or were you born this naturally stupid?"
Oh, she has never wanted to drown him in a puddle more.
"Shut up, you asshole," she hisses, dragging him into her room and slamming the door behind him. "Do you feed off my pain, or is it just a hobby?"
"I assure you, nothing about you offers enough entertainment value to be worth a hobby." He shoves a bowl at her — it takes a moment to process that that is, in fact, a bowl of his weird little vegetable crackers. "You are meant to take your pills with a meal. This will have to suffice for now — I couldn't sneak anything else out of the kitchen without drawing questions from Pennyworth."
She takes the bowl, startled and deeply touched. "Thanks, little dude," she says when she's able to find her voice. She hesitates. "You're not gonna tell Bruce before I can?" she asks quietly.
He purses his lips. After a moment, he says, "I disagree with Richard's assessment that you should tell Father the extent of your disabilities," he says bluntly, and Steph flinches. There's a retort on her tongue, but she can tell that for once, he's not trying to goad her. "Father is a warrior, and you are neither his blood heir nor one of his adopted followers. He has little reason to keep you in his inner circle if you are unable to carry out his mission."
He turns away from her, leaving her frozen in her — in the guest bedroom she's claimed as he goes into her bathroom. He hears the medicine cabinet open and close.
"Hey," she says as he comes back in, half-heartedly remembering to protest.
He puts her bottle of anti-seizure meds in her hand not currently occupied by the bowl of suspiciously green crackers. "I won't tell Father," he says quietly. "If you focus, I'm confident you have the capacity to heal further by the time he is able to return fully to the field. There's no reason for him to find out, if you can simply control your instinct to act like a fool."
There's an earnestness to the way he says it — Dick's really rubbed off on him.
"Right," she says, swallowing with difficulty. "All I gotta do is focus."
He nods, looking pleased. He crosses his arms. "Now, take your medication," he orders.
She rolls her eyes. Using her elbows, she shoves him back towards the door. "I'll do it, I'll do it. Shove off and lemme eat my weird gross vegetable brunch."
"If you're not going to appreciate them —" he lunges as if to grab the bowl out of her hand.
She holds it up above her head, hip propped against the door. "Seriously," she says quietly. "Thanks, Dami."
"Tsk." He steps back out into the hallway. "I hope you will keep my warning in mind."
"Ominous little shit," she mutters to herself, hip checking the door closed behind him.
She leaves the bowl of crackers on her bedside table and takes the pills into the bathroom and fills the mug next to the sink.
She never used to have a problem taking pills. Most of the muscle weakness has faded, but she can still feel it in her throat sometimes, even though she's pretty sure it's all in her head by now.
Taking her pills is an ungraceful thing. "Urghk," she says, wiping away the water that spills down her chin.
Sure, the boys have seen worse from her at this point. But by now, she's pretty fucking sick of feeling this clumsy.
It takes her three tries to get the pills down. They taste especially bitter today.
She breaks her wrist coming down the stairs on a Tuesday, two months later.
"Jesus, Steph, are you okay? What happened?" Dick's panicked voice rattles around her ears like a coin tossed in a sink. "No no, hold still —"
"Goddamnit," she hisses, her white-hot wrist held against her chest as she rolls over slowly onto her side. "Damnit, damnit, damnit —"
When he's accepted that her spine appears undamaged, Dick helps her slowly sit up to lean back against the banister. She rolls her head to look at the rest of the steps below her.
It's a minor miracle she didn't roll all the way down.
"What happened?" Dick asks again as he examines her wrist.
"I tripped," she snaps at him. "On the stupid — the rug."
"Okay, okay," he shushes softly. She's humiliated to realize there are tears running down her cheeks. "You're okay. You didn't hit your head?"
She shakes it no, but unsurprisingly, he doesn't let her up until he's felt around her entire head for any goose eggs. Every time his fingers brush against the scar that runs around the curve of her temple like an angry pink shooting star, she feels her stomach roll sickeningly.
The fact that she's able to keep from throwing up on the stairs is probably the only reason he doesn't make her go to a hospital.
Instead, she's allowed to wait in the cave for Leslie to come put a cast on her wrist. She stares at the poor swollen thing in its temporary splint, and thinks that, shitty as it is, it's great timing.
"You're sure you didn't hit your head?" Dick asks. He flashes a penlight in her eyes before she can react, making her hiss.
"You worried I might be making a hobby out of smacking my brain around like a beach ball?" she shoots back, baring her teeth at his light until he puts it away with a roll of his eyes.
"You seemed really out of it when I first got to you on the stairs," he says, not taking the bait. His jaw is set in concern. "You weren't responding to me."
"Ugh," she huffs. "Dick, I went from being excited to go get Starbucks to lying on the stairs with a broken arm. I was a little distracted. I'm super sorry if I ignored you for a few seconds, but it had nothing to do with my head. Can you please just… chill out? I feel like I can't breathe with you around sometimes!"
Hurt flashes across his face, and she regrets it as soon as the words leave her lips.
She feels her cheeks burn with shame, and scrubs her good hand across her face, ducking her head. Then she curses, remembering abruptly that she's wearing makeup.
She hadn't bothered to do that for a while.
"I'm sorry," Dick says quietly, just as she opens her mouth to say the same thing. "You're right. I shouldn't have kept asking." He smiles at her a little when she lifts her head to look at him. "I'm really proud of you, you know that, right?"
She scoffs. "I'm being an asshole. You were just… checking on me."
"You're a pretty independent kid, Steph," he says gently. "And I've been checking on you a lot." He grabs a packet of wet wipes out of one of the drawers, and she takes them gratefully, wiping away the mascara she's smeared across her cheek. "Besides," he says, lowering his voice, "My standards for asshole kids is really high at this point. You haven't even stabbed me yet. We're cool." She laughs wetly, and he grins. "Next time, I'll take your word for it the first time, okay?"
"C'mere," she says, gesturing him in for a hug with her undamaged arm. "Get in here."
He takes the offer eagerly, because Dick's never turned down a hug in his damn life. "Thank you," she mumbles into his shoulder. "For everything."
He squeezes her back. "Anytime," he says quietly.
Later, after her cast has been put on, during which Dick left and then came back with the very caramel frappe with extra whipped cream she'd been dreaming of, she stands on the stairs right about where she fell and scrutinizes the rug for the slightest wrinkle that she could have tripped on.
When she finds none, she scrunches the corner of the rug with her foot, just a tiny bit — just in case anyone else looks.
Her coffee burns the swollen edge of her tongue where she must have bitten it when she fell.
She must have. She just doesn't remember.
Her wrist saves her from having to come up with any sort of excuse for why she's joining Bruce on comms instead of going out with the others. He's made good progress with his physical therapy, only sometimes using his cane these days, but he's still a far cry from being cleared to go grapple around the city and fight crime. As expected, though, he's started chafing at the bit to be allowed to do something — so, comms work it is.
She'd been dreading it. But, actually, it's been kind of nice.
"Damian's the one who switched out the soaps in the bathroom," she tells him, swiveling her chair back and forth as she tosses popcorn up into the air and catches it, the bowl propped against her purple cast. "Don't you dare tell him I said so, but I actually like the new stuff. My hands DO feel softer."
Bruce chuckles. He's keeping half an eye on the monitors, but it's a quiet night — nothing much to monitor other than making sure Dick and Damian don't break their necks playing everything is lava except gargoyles and that Jason doesn't shoot Tim for needling him about letting him put up some cameras in Crime Alley for a case.
The majority of his attention has been on Steph.
She can't remember the last time that was a good thing.
"I'm… impressed to see how well the three of you seem to be getting along," he says, his tone warm but cautious. "It didn't seem like… that was the direction we were moving in, before."
Steph shrugs, suddenly very interested in poking through her popcorn for the butteriest kernels. "Stuff changes, you know how it is." She hesitates, then says, "Damian's really not such a brat when you get to know him. I mean he is, but in a cute way. Like one of those asshole little French bulldogs that yaps a lot and likes to bite people's ankles, but that's just like, how they express themselves, you know? And Dick —"
She has to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat, thinking about Dick offering her a room at the Manor when it became clear that her mom couldn't take care of her and keep her job, covering her medical bills as casually as he'd buy her coffee, hanging out in her room with her to keep her company when her migraines had her flat on her back for days even though she knows he had a billion other things that he probably needed to deal with that were more important than her.
"He kept us all alive, you know? Couldn't have asked for a better guy in the cowl."
Bruce's expression, when she peeks at it, is as hard to read as ever. But she's confident there's pride in the crinkle of his eyes as he watches Dick's blue dot on the screen creep along.
He takes a deep breath. "Are you — ?"
He's cut off abruptly by the emergency alert going off.
"Damnit," he growls, spinning to read the notice, the flashing alarm illuminating his face in bursts. "There's an Arkham breakout in progress. Red Robin and Red Hood, you're closest, how quickly can you — ?"
There's a buzzing in her ears, throbbing in time to the strobe light. She reaches for the desk, trying to pull herself closer.
All she manages to do is throw the popcorn bowl to the ground.
Bruce turns to look at her. She hears his voice as if from underwater. The bowl is still spinning, ringing against the stone floor.
"M'fn," she mumbles.
She's on her back on the ground. She's very cold.
"Mmmmphnn?" she moans.
Her head is resting on something warm and firm. She tries to turn her head to look, but there's something braced on either side of her head, restraining her.
"Breathe," a tense voice orders. "You're okay. You're going to be okay."
She tries to obey. She discovers her mouth tastes like blood. "Okay," she slurs, latching on to the only word her brain seems to be able to get a grip on. "Okay. Okay."
"Two minutes, sixteen seconds," the voice above her says.
The things restraining her head are hands. She feels the fingers move, stroking through her hair reassuringly.
They find the scar on her temple and falter.
She jerks her head away from them, the muscles in her neck aching. "Ok-ay," she rasps, becoming frustrated with herself. There are tears in her eyes. She feels them spill down her cheeks, hot in the cold air.
"Miss Stephanie, have you taken your seizure medication today?" a different voice asks her, brisk but soft.
She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, and doesn't try to speak again. Her arm hurts like a bitch.
"Alfred, what — ?"
"Not now."
She can feel herself shivering.
A blanket is wrapped around her by gentle hands. The ones on her head never disappear, one broad palm cupping under her skull like it's an eggshell, the other stroking her hair. She's lifted up slightly so they can tuck the blanket underneath her, and her stomach does something violent.
She manages to twist just enough to throw up on the ground next to them instead of all over herself or whoever's lap she's in.
"You're okay," the voice above her says again, and she finally recognizes the tension in it as being fear.
Somehow, that registers before she's able to remember a name.
"Bruce," she mumbles, as she's gathered up in strong arms and fully off the ground. She cracks her eyes open to see his face. The cave is settling back into solidity as he carries her, the stalactites above brittle like teeth. "What…?"
"You had a seizure."
They pass Alfred, in the chair in front of the monitors, putting a comm in his ear.
"There's… a break out," she tries to say, getting about half the syllables correct.
"The boys have it covered," Bruce dismisses. He takes her to the medbay, setting her blanket and all down on one of the cots and beginning to get her hooked up to what seems like every monitor they've got.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. The blanket isn't a blanket at all, she realizes, rubbing it between her fingers, which prickle like her nerves are coming back online. It's one of his spare capes. "I got shot."
For a moment, he goes terribly still, an oxygen monitor gripped in his hand so tightly the plastic creaks. His expression flashes something that looks horribly like grief.
He puts the monitor on her hand with a care that doesn't match the shadows on his face. He doesn't say anything at all.
Goddammit, she thinks to herself, and this thought is clear as a bell in her muddled head.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
"I got shot in the head."
This time when she says the words, she's upright, propped up by a pile of pillows she probably doesn't need, a cup of warm tea clutched between her palms to settle her nerves.
Bruce is seated next to her cot. Alfred has forced a cup of tea into his hands too, though he has yet to touch it. Dick is perched by her feet, sweat and dirt from tonight's brief still outlining the edges of where the cowl had been, and Damian's gone ahead to the changing rooms.
Bruce doesn't flinch at the words this time, but she thinks he wants to by the way his fingers tighten around the mug.
She swallows. "Uh," she says. "It was about eight months ago, now. I was trying to get close to someone for some information, as Stephanie, and it went pretty bad, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." She tugs at one of the locks of hair covering her scar. "Their aim was kinda shit, so… it mostly just grazed me, didn't actually go into my skull, but, uh, it turns out that getting shot a little bit in the head is still pretty bad for your health." She grimaces. "Didn't help that I then fell and cracked my noggin on the curb too. I ended up with a TBI, and, uh… some symptoms that are taking a little longer than others to stop. Apparently."
"Like seizures," Bruce says lowly. She jerks her chin in a nod.
She barely even glances at Dick, but somehow he picks up on the guilt in her look anyway. His eyes widen. "When you fell on the stairs…?"
"I don't… know for sure," she admits. "I blacked out. But… uh, yeah. I think it was a short one."
"Geez, Steph," he sighs, squeezing her ankle. She feels awful — he'd been so worried when they'd gotten back to the cave. She doesn't know exactly what Bruce had said over the comms while her brain had been fizzing out like a shaken bottle of Zesti, but she knows he must have had to hear it. "Why didn't you tell me? We might need to adjust your meds again."
"I was just — hoping I was wrong!" She sloshes a little bit of tea over the edge of her mug and onto her cast, and bites back a curse. "Or it was a one off, or whatever."
Humiliatingly, she feels her chin quiver as she looks at Dick. "This is gonna be the fifth time we've had to change them," she whispers. "How many more meds out there can there be?"
"Hey," he says softly, scooting up the bed until he can take her hand. "It might just be as simple as upping the dose. Or maybe you need a new combo — I don't know, I'm not a doctor. But you're doing so well — we're not out of options here."
"Why didn't you tell me about this?" Bruce demands. Dick shoots him a glare, but he ignores it.
Steph bites the fresh cut on the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood again. She's exhausted, her body aching like she's just gone three rounds with Killer Croc, and honestly, she hadn't thought about what she'd say to Bruce if her secret came out before she could tell him herself. She shrugs.
He frowns, opening his mouth, undoubtedly to demand answers, or maybe to tell her what a dumb stupid idiot she's been.
"You can't kick Brown out."
Damian is standing in the entrance to the medical bay, arms crossed over his chest and his stupid little bulldog face set the way it gets when he's decided he's going to be the biggest little asshole in the room. She might love him a little.
"It would be foolish to toss away a valuable asset on the basis of an injury after significant resources have already been spent on recovery. There is no reason to believe she will deviate from her over all trend of improvement. And even if she is unable to recover past her current point of disability, you've allowed Gordon to transition from field work to a behind the scenes position to great benefit. I have considered a list of tasks in which it would be useful to have someone of Brown's intelligence and skillsets in a non-fieldwork capacity, if you would be willing to hear them."
He trails off a little at the end, for the first time in the entire rant sounding uncertain of himself.
Dick looks proud and a little horrified.
Bruce just looks grief-stricken. "I can assure you, kicking Stephanie out of this house or the team was never in question."
He says it so easily, as though Steph's fingers aren't trembling with relief. Dick squeezes them softly.
Bruce looks at her, and then sighs, running a hand down his face. "That's why you didn't tell me," he mumbles, almost to himself. Then, "Stephanie. You're a part of this family, as far as I'm concerned. That's not going to change."
He makes a sound of concern as her eyes well up with tears. "I'm not crying," she says soggily. "This is a side effect of the TBI. It's like allergies. Just happens sometimes."
"Okay," he says quietly. Cautiously, he takes the mug out of her casted hand and sets it on the side table where she can't make any more of a mess. He replaces it with his own hand. "I'm sorry you didn't feel safe telling me."
She shakes her head, hard enough that her bangs flop into her face and she can feel the cool cave air against her scar. "S'not your fault. I was being stupid." Then she adds, "Well, okay, maybe it was a little your fault. You can be kind of an asshole sometimes." She squeezes his hand as hard as she can without aggravating her wrist. "I'm still really, really glad you're alive, though."
He doesn't quite smile, but his eyes crinkle at the corners. "Right back at you, kiddo."
"Next time, I'll listen to you earlier," she mutters to Dick, her head resting on his shoulder a little later as they're all gathered in the family room to watch a movie. Leslie is supposed to come in a few hours to check her out and give her opinion on her meds, and Steph is trying to stay awake, but she already knows it's a losing battle.
"That is the nicest thing any of my little siblings have ever said to me," he whispers back, and then presses a kiss to the top of her head. "Next time, I'm going to bug the hell out of you if I even think something's wrong. You're never going to get away from me."
She lets her eyes drift shut, and thinks she could be okay with that.