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Dear Diary...

Steph sighs and puts her diary back down on her lap. She's watching Hana and Loo play out in front of the farmhouse. They're happily occupied with seeing who can cough the biggest fireball, and Steph is, therefore, lightly scorched. Luckily, the girls are more excited by explosions these days than by burning people, and they're now contentedly playing with each other.

Steph's smiling at them, because they're adorable. But that's all she has to smile about. The journal on her lap is still blank, and she's chewing her pen thoughtfully. (She has not yet noticed that she's chewed through the end and therefore now has a blue ink-stained lip. It's the newest fashion, bb.)

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There's a soft creak as a wheelchair rolls to a stop behind Steph. Barbara's eyes sweep across the tension in the girl's shoulders (even if 'girl' isn't really all that accurate anymore). She doesn't know what happened, but somewhere along the way she stopped being one of the people Steph went to to unburden herself.

Babs sits quietly. Watching. Wondering what she should say.

Steph turns sharply almost before there's any noise, and doesn't relax much when she sees who it is.

(If it weren't for the girls, she might run away.)

"Hi, O."

She doesn't smile. She doesn't expect this to be a conversation with much reason for smiling.

Not 'Babs'. It's been a while since Steph's called her that...

"Hey, Steph."

Babs seems content to sit in silence for the moment, simply letting her eyes take in Steph's expression and posture.

Which doesn't make Steph much more comfortable, stiff-backed and frowning and tense, lips pressed together.

She always feels like she's about fourteen again in front of Oracle, a stupid newbie vigilante with more eagerness than skill and everything to prove. It's not a comfortable feeling, when she's only just started to feel like she's earned being nineteen.

"...you can start yelling any time you like, if you want to get it over with."

Barbara's face twitches in what might be an expression, but she gets herself under control before there's much of a chance to tell.

"Is that what you think I'm hear to do?" she asks softly.

"I don't know," Steph says quietly, turning back to watch the girls, resting her chin in her hands.

She'd been so upset about Babs, about losing herself, about becoming her dad, about giving up her identity as a bat-kid. But ... then Sokka had to burn his own sister, and it doesn't seem as important right now as it did.

"I don't know much of anything any more."

"Welcome to life," Barbara says softly. Not quite bitterly.

Steph manages a half-smile for that.

Loo comes running up to tug on the charred hem of Steph's jeans. "Soffaaaaaa, look! Look!"

"I'm looking," Steph promises, smile suddenly real, and Loo does a creditable imitation of hacking up a lung and singes an impressive amount of grass.

"Biiiig!" she tells Steph excitedly, and turns to make sure Babs knows too. "Big big big!"

Steph laughs and kisses her head.

Steph isn't watching so Babs doesn't bother forcing a smile of her own. She doesn't smile much these days, and it's getting harder to pretend she does.

"You want to talk about it?" she keeps her voice soft as she splits her attention between Loo's admittedly adorable antics and Steph.

Steph lets Loo run back to show Hana her big big big fire, but she doesn't turn around, tense and defensive. She can't look at Babs right now - not if she's going to pretend that this really doesn't matter to her.

"Is there anything to talk about?" she asks quietly.

"Steph, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away."

...

Barbara Gordon may have just secured her position as the biggest hypocrite of all time with that one right there.

Steph turns back to glance at her, one eyebrow raised in a very Sokka-esque way.

"I'm not ignoring anything - I'm not. It' s just - I just - there's just not much to say about it, O."

As long as she's on the hypocrisy train, she might as well keep on riding it.

"Talking helps. Just saying it out loud."

"I know," Steph says, looking back at the girls, smiling at them. "I've been trying to convince Sokka of that all week."

The hypocrisy train is fun! Steph is gonna jump right on behind Babs. TOOT TOOT!

"What do you want to say to me?"

Babs snorts in something that almost sounds like amusement. "It doesn't work that way, and you know it."

She shakes her head. "Don't make me go get my emergency stash of chunky monkey."

Steph snorts, amused in spite of herself, and gets up to scoot back a bit so that she can watch the twins without having her back to Babs.

"I don't think Chunky Monkey's gonna fix this one."

"No," Barbara agrees. "But years of experience have taught me that it helps."

There's a ritual to it. And Babs used to be really good at it before... Well... before.

"I'm sorry," Steph says, sighing, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. "For what I said."

You're there, safe in your little chair. You don't have to deal with this stuff.

"It was dumb. I was mad."

"You had a right to be mad," Barbara says, shaking her head. The words had hurt, of course, but she was going to pretend that they'd been no big deal. That's how Babs rolls.

"And I'm a big girl. I can handle a little yelling."

See? She even manages to sound sincere!

Steph gives her a Look. "I'm sorry anyway."

That's all she needed to say, right? She can relapse into silence without seeming like a sulky child?

... even if the answer to that is no, she's doin' it.

Barbara considers her options and settles on a new tactic.

"Talk to me, Stephanie. Please." She lets a tiny hint of pleading into her tone. Just enough to sound like she's trying to hide it and not quite doing so.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

Steph looks up at her from her spot on the ground, face tight with strain.

"I let my boyfriend kill people. I could have tried to talk them out of it, and I didn't. Do you think it hasn't been tearing me apart too?"

Now Steph has a boyfriend on the step next to her, also watching Hana and Loo play, and smiling faintly for it.

"Hey," he says and doesn't peek over her shoulder at what she's written (much). "How're they doing?"

Steph holds up one ankle to show off the charred hem of her jeans. "They're in perfect shape," she says, wriggling over to lean against him, glad for that tiny smile. Sokka should always have babies to play with and to make him smile.

-- Steph's thoughts have a worrying tendency to go in this direction lately; it's enough to make her wonder ...

She squeezes his hand and smiles at the girls, too.

"Hana's getting really good at controlling it."

His laugh is automatic, just like the way he reaches to finger her jeans, grinning. "Oh crap, you didn't get burned, though, did you?"

As for Hana getting good control, his littlest niece gets a bigger grin. He's so proud of them sometimes he could burst.

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