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No matter what his kids liked to say, Bruce did notice when something was wrong with them; when they were upset or agitated or running on fumes. That didn’t mean he knew what to do about it.
“Stephanie,” he said, trying to soften his voice from the growl of Batman. He had waited a few minutes after removing the cowl to make this easier. Sometimes he worried that the path he so often tread as Batman was becoming more of a rut, making it harder and harder to step out of it.
Stephanie jumped, whirling around and dropping the batarang she had been turning over and over for fifteen minutes. “What?” Her eyes were wider than usual, her voice just slightly higher-pitched than it was supposed to be.
Bruce cocked his head to the side and met her eyes. He knew how much they hated it when he ‘went detective-mode on them’, as Tim put it. “What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think something is wrong?”
The hysteric note to her voice, but that would only make her angry. Bruce weighed his words for a moment. “I have noticed...you have been behaving erratically.” He suppressed a flinch.
Stephanie’s face darkened, as he expected. “Oh, really? Well maybe that’s just ‘cause I’m stuck around a brooding asshole! Maybe I’m on my period, did you think of that? Just normal woman crazy, unable to handle the pressure!!”
Bruce watched her calmly. Her voice was shrilling at the end of her sentences. It wasn’t her cycle, he knew how she acted during those times and this wasn’t it. Plus if he had the timeline right since the last time she had barged in and stolen all their heating pads, she wasn’t due for another two weeks. They hadn’t fought Scarecrow or Ivy lately, or anyone else using toxins, but maybe he should do some bloodwork, just in case….
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Yes you are! You’re detective-ing me!” Dammit, he thought he had disguised it well enough. “Knock it off, I’m fine!”
“I am simply...concerned. For your well-being.”
Stephanie stared at him. Her chest was moving too quickly; she was about to hyperventilate and Bruce still didn’t know why. “I’m fine,” she repeated, but her voice was smaller. “I can handle it.”
“Handle what?” Bruce asked. He tried to soften his habitually-demanding tone.
“Everything! I can handle it and you don’t have to worry about- about your precious soldiers getting hurt in the field. So you can just fuck right off!”
Her voice had broken halfway through the statement, and her hands were shaking. Bruce was glad she had dropped the batarang. If she had been still holding it, she probably would have cut herself by now. “Stephanie,” he said, trying to sound absolutely certain without losing the hard-won gentleness. “I care about you outside the field as well.” It had taken a long time for him to admit that to himself, and he would admit that he had let fear control him for far too long when it came to her.
Stephanie laughed, and it was just a hair too close to Joker’s deranged cackle. Bruce flinched for real this time. “Stephanie,” he said again, hand twitching towards his utility belt and the hypodermic needles in the fourth pouch.
“I’m not gassed,” she said, jerking away from him.
Bruce raised both hands in the air. “Alright.” He didn’t move to follow her, but he didn’t relax either, ready to tackle her if she started cackling.
“I’m just- I’m handling shit. Adulting, okay? I’m fine. I can do it. I can handle it.”
“You don’t have to handle everything by yourself, Stephanie.” He was getting better at saying that out loud, though it had the unfortunate side effect of his kids saying it right back to him. It wasn’t hypocritical, he was the parent. Or mentor, perhaps, in Stephanie’s case.
She laughed again, but it was sarcastic this time, instead of manic, and he let his shoulders ease a little. “Oh really?” He opened his mouth to answer but she cut him off, pacing back and forth, her cape flaring behind her as she turned sharply on her heel. “You say that as if you wouldn’t judge me for it, as if you didn’t judge all of us every time we fail to live up to your insane standards. I know what you think of me, what Dick and Tim and even Cass thought about me for ages. I’m just some stupid girl trying to play with the big kids, huh? Not good enough to handle this life? Well guess what, I’m handling it! I’m handling it all just fine so fuck you and your impossible standards.”
Bruce blinked. “Stephanie, I-” He faltered, rolling his words over in his mouth before letting them out. “I am sorry for making you feel this way.”
Stephanie froze mid-step. She stared at him, mouth open, and Bruce shifted slightly. “Did you- did you just apologize?!” She sounded like she was about to start laughing again or suddenly burst into tears and Bruce didn’t know how to handle either of those situations.
“Yes,” he said awkwardly. “I did not- I fail to make my...feelings...clear, most of the time. And that is not your fault. I-” Admitting things to himself was very different and vastly easier than admitting them out loud, to the person they involved, but Bruce had a strange feeling that if he didn’t do something to fix this now, it might never be fixed. And he wouldn’t accept that. “I was...afraid…for much of your time with me. Especially as Robin.” She was still staring at him in shock and Bruce did not allow himself to break eye contact. “I...push you…all of you but...you especially. Because I am...afraid. Of what would happen. If I was not there and you were in over your head. And were hurt. You are the furthest from me in many ways and. I was afraid.” He took a moment to breathe. “This is not an excuse. You are...very talented. And a valuable asset in the field.” Her jaw tightened and he hastened to add, “And- I enjoy your company. Off the field. As well.” It was true, he realized. As much as she drove him crazy, and egged all of his other children on in insane stunts...he enjoyed hearing her laugh, seeing her smile, her bouncy and vivacious presence. “You are good enough. For this life. And anything else you put your mind to.”
They stared at each other in silence for a long few moments. The bats rustled in the darkness above them. Bruce resisted the urge to shift, to look away.
Stephanie laughed once, brokenly, and wiped at her eyes. “Wow, you really are the most awkward person on the planet.”
Bruce tried not to feel upset, that this was her reaction to his honesty. “So I have been told,” he said.
She wiped at her eyes again, sniffling. “Shit.” She looked at him, and Bruce felt suddenly like he understood why his children hated him ‘detective-ing them’. “You really mean it, don’t you?” she said, sounding awed.
“Yes.”
Stephanie sighed deep from within her chest, seeming to deflate. “Okay. Okay.” She marched up to him and Bruce tensed. She flung her arms around him and for one, shocked moment he didn’t move. Then he slowly raised a hand to cup the back of her head, the other arm wrapping securely around her back. “You’re still an asshole,” she mumbled into his chest.
“I will take that into consideration,” he said.
Her shoulders shook as she laughed, then kept shaking after she stopped.
After one minute and twelve seconds, she pulled back, eyes red but smiling. Bruce smiled tentatively back. He could feel how fragile this was, how easy it would be to slip back into the point where they were little more than tolerating each other. He took a quiet breath and said slowly, “Now that we...understand each other better...are you okay? I have been...growing concerned for you. Over the past week.”
Stephanie eyed him, and Bruce did his best to show the sincerity of the question in his face. Finally, she seemed to decide to trust the question and shrugged, diving into this strange new...trust...with an ease he had always admired and feared in his children. “I haven’t slept more than an hour at a time in five days,” she said.
Bruce’s eyebrows flew to his hairline and he barely managed to bite back an instinctive demand of You’re patrolling like this?! What are you thinking?! Instead, he nodded slowly and breathed. Said, “I see.” He could, it was obvious in the dark circles, the way her attention tried to skitter away, her eyes glazing over. “Let’s continue this somewhere more comfortable.”
Stephanie looked mildly suspicious but conceded towards his nudging towards the showers. Ten minutes later they were seated at the kitchen table, sipping on instant hot chocolate that Bruce had scrounged up from a dark corner of the pantry. They were both in pajamas -- “You can wear Cass’.” “Why would I do that?” “You are in no condition to return to Gotham tonight. You should stay here.” “...fine.” -- and Bruce was trying not to give into feeling exposed. He took another sip of his hot chocolate and met Stephanie’s eyes. She looked like she might collapse, and was only keeping herself up through force of will. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why haven’t you slept in so long?”
Stephanie shrugged, but her shoulders were tight. “Midterms,” she muttered. “And work. And patrol. And just-” she gestured vaguely, “life.”
Bruce was beginning to feel like a bobblehead with all the nodding he was doing. “You know,” he said, picking his way carefully. This was a statement that could easily be taken the wrong way. It had happened before, many times. He would have to rephrase. “There is nothing wrong with taking a break.”
She raised an eyebrow right back at him. “Really.”
“Yes. This was never meant to...to consume you.” He would have preferred if none of his kids be on the streets at all, but bitter experience had taught him that they would go, with or without him.
Stephanie sighed. “It’s not really patrol that’s the problem. It’s my stress-relief almost.” She huffed a short laugh. “As unhealthy as that is.”
Bruce understood that quandary completely. “Then what is? The problem.”
“Gen eds. They don’t interest me but they’re required and I have to do them to qualify for the classes I’m actually interested in and it sucks and I can’t focus because there are so many more important and interesting things that need my attention.” She planted her cheek on the table. Bruce watched the light shine off her blonde waves.
“What is...the worst?”
“Chemistry. I need a science core and I figured we use it in the field sometimes for like forensics and so I’d already know a bunch, but it’s not like that at all. I can use the stuff and I’m okay in the lab but the tests? I’m terrible. Like, really, really terrible. And I don’t have enough time to study enough with all my other subjects that I’m also not doing great in.” She sat up again, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “And I just feel so pathetic because you guys handle so much without breaking a sweat and here I am not even able to manage college and my boss said if I’m late again they’re going to fire me and I can’t lose this job and I don’t want to let any of you guys down and this is the only time I get to see my friends and it’s all too much.”
Bruce sat with that for a moment, trying to decide what to address first. “You know,” he began, “Tim dropped out of high school. Cass has never gone to a traditional school. Jason never got the chance. Dick never finished college.” He paused for a moment and smiled softly at her. “Neither did I.”
She blinked. “You didn’t?” Her voice was hushed, as if they were sharing a secret.
Bruce shook his head. “I went for two semesters, barely finished out the second one too.”
“Wow. I- just wow. I never thought Bruce Wayne would be a college drop-out.”
“Now you know.” He took another sip from his mug, which prompted Stephanie to do the same. “I did end up getting a business degree through a program that allowed me to speed through the requirements because I couldn’t have a hand in WE until I had one, but I don’t really count that. It was more along the lines of a GED than actual college experience. The point,” he said, taking a chance and reaching across the table to cover her hand with his own, “is that I think you’re doing amazing. You’re doing something none of us have tried before, and you’re managing beautifully. I’m proud of you, Stephanie.”
Tears filled her eyes and Bruce tactfully took the mugs to rinse them out in the sink to give her a few minutes to collect herself.
“Thanks,” she breathed when he had sat down again.
“Of course.” He patted her hand and said, more matter-of-factly, “And if you need help studying for chemistry, I’m pretty good at it myself. I could help you.”
Stephanie looked up, meeting his eyes, and Bruce felt his heart swell almost painfully, in the way it always did around his children. They were all so brave, facing the darkness with a laugh and a quip, diving in headfirst to pull others out and into the light. He had been one of those rescued ones, and even now he could feel them pulling him back when the shadows loomed too close, wrapping around him like a shroud.
“Really?” she asked.
Bruce smiled. “Really.”