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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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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?"

"It's not about me wanting you to say anything, Stephanie," Barbara continues in the same tone. "I just want to... talk. To know what you're thinking."

"We... used to be closer."

"Yeah," Steph agrees. "We used to be."

It was a while ago. And now she has friends who don't want anything of her except to be who she is, and who trust her, and haven't once told her she isn't good enough. She kind of likes that.

"The me in your world, the one who died... were you and she close?"

It wasn't a question she was expecting, not one she was prepared for. Which was why the genuine regret she felt over that, and the guilt, leaked through in her voice. "Not as close as I wish we had been."

Barbara is still convinced that that's what got Stephanie Brown killed.

"I thought it might be that," Steph says, giving her a slightly pointed look.

"Oracle ... I'm not her."

"I know." Babs almost sounds bitter. "You're still alive."

"And planning to stay that way," Steph reminds her, with a faint smile. "I've been doing all right on my own for a good two, three years now."

She doesn't need Babs and she doesn't need the Bats and she's Just. Fine. Like. This.

"Not on your own," Babs corrects. "Except, maybe, being the one who hesitates to kill."

Barbara looks at Steph and shakes her head. "It can't be easy to stick to that here."