Who: Bruce and Damian What: Discussing Helena. Where: The hospital. When: Back while Hels was still hospitalized. Warnings/Rating: Some sads.
Damian wished he was back in Bludhaven, but for the first time he didn’t feel the urge to run for it. This wasn’t about not knowing his place in his family or miscommunication with his father. Damian knew exactly where he stood, knew that Helena really was becoming something like a sister to him, knew that he could rely on his father. No, his desire to return to Bludhaven didn’t hold a candle to the responsibility he felt for his family. A responsibility that had until this point felt unwanted and unnecessary. There was no doubt in the little bird’s mind that Helena would want him to be there until she got better. No doubt that later she’d appreciate how he waited at her door and refused to let anyone in. Maybe she’d even forgive him for the pancakes.
Still, he was frightened. This was about a problem he didn’t know how to fix and every time Helena started to act crazy all Damian wanted to do was shake her and tell her to please stop. He knew this was brought on by the party because of how quickly everything escalated shortly after, but he didn’t know what to do. He stood outside of her hospital room, arms folded and head down like a stone guardian as if waiting there alone would help Helena like it did before. Damian glanced up when he saw Bruce, eyebrows a little raised and eyes more frazzled and tired than they had been even after a night of patrolling.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Damian said weakly, a sad shrug of his shoulders. “I’ve never seen her like this. Not even when she was on the toxin. I don’t know what to do.”
Before Helena had been released into his care, her doctors had taken Bruce aside for a lengthy chat which was as much a series of questions as it was medical jargon about her condition, symptoms, and possible side effects. The true cause of her head injury, and potential brain damage, wasn’t made clear aside from blunt force trauma and vague explanations from Helena herself, but the doctors must have had their suspicions because they asked the sort things no father ever wanted to be faced with. Was your daughter depressed, Mr. Wayne? and Has she, to your knowledge, been experiencing suicidal thoughts and tendencies?
And so he’d stared at them, these men and women with years of education under their belt and fancy titles following their names, calmly asking if he’d had knowledge of his daughter wanting to take her own life, or being so severely unhappy that she might have considered it. “No,” he’d said, followed by “I don’t know.” Because he didn’t, really. He couldn’t pretend that he knew every detail of Helena’s life, and while he suspected that her concussion was somehow related to the party, he had no answers on that front either. He didn’t know what she’d become, or what she’d done, or what had been done to her. All he knew was that it, or a combination of it and something else, had been bad enough to drive her to this, a second trip to the hospital to fix complications which had been missed the first time.
After yet another conversation with her doctors, Bruce rounded the corner to find Damian in front of her room looking about as tired as he felt. He saw his own concern mirrored in the younger man’s gaze, too, and he felt a pang of guilt for agreeing to keep Helena’s injury a secret. “You did well,” he told him, because he had. But he couldn’t keep him in the dark any longer; Damian deserved to know the full truth. “Helena didn’t tell you anything that might have explained her behavior?”
Damian gave a thin look of gratitude when he was told that he had done well, though obviously part of the little bird didn’t believe it. “I should have let her keep sleeping.” He said quietly, more to himself than anyone else. He kept his arms crossed, head tilted down at the floor as he tried to force himself into thinking about anything except Helena turning an unnatural shade of blue and gasping for air on her bedroom floor. A moment passed as he collected himself and he looked up to Bruce with an attempt at bravery. “I don’t know anything. Selina told me she was having problems, so I just stuck by her door and made sure no one bothered her.”
Bruce took in a deep, deep breath and let it out slowly. Calm. He needed to find his center, to remain calm. “This wasn’t your fault, Damian,” he told him, and the words were true. There was no false coating of reassurance to ease his guilt, no lies created to make him feel better. The simple truth was that he was in no way at fault. Perhaps no one was. Oh, there were what ifs; what if Helena had remained in the hospital, what if he’d kept a closer eye on her himself and brought her in sooner, what if he’d forced her to talk about what had really caused her concussion. But there was no use in dwelling on any of that now, and he watched the boy carefully, waiting until he looked up again to continue. “Helena was in the hospital before. After the party. She called me, because they refused to discharge her unless she was released into someone else’s care. She didn’t want anyone else to know. I spoke to her doctors,” he admitted. “They told me she suffered a concussion, and to watch for certain symptoms in case her condition worsened. She said it was an accident, how she’d sustained her injuries, but...” He trailed off and took another breath. “The doctors weren’t quite convinced that was true.”
The idea that what happened to Helena wasn’t accident didn’t impact Damian right away. He looked up to Bruce, stormy blue eyes narrowed and confused at first before going large and angry. Angry at what wasn’t ever easy to pin down for the little bird. “She wouldn’t do something like that.” He protested through his teeth, hands clenching into fists at his side. “The party must have messed with her mind. She’d never do anything like that!” Damian was yelling now and it was clear that he wasn’t pissed at Bruce or Helena or even the doctors. He was just pissed that someone he cared about was hurt and it could have been self inflicted.
“Why didn’t she tell us? Why didn’t she ask for help?” Damian asked, flapping his arms in frustration and turning away from Bruce to walk down the hall a couple steps to cool off. Nurses were staring, families of patients were thinking about calling security. He knew he was getting worked up and had promised himself to try and keep his usually boiling hot temper down in public, but it was hard when something like this happened. Damian slowly walked back to Bruce, shoulders up and head down as he took a couple breaths and tried to calm down. “Do you think she’s unhappy?”
There was nothing he could do or say to make this better, and so Bruce said nothing. He was quiet, unflinching and solid in the face of Damian’s anger because that was what he knew, how he knew to be. He let the boy yell; he needed to get it out. Anger like that, all bottled up, only turned inward and destroyed, and he knew that the root of that anger came from the fact that he cared about Helena, and to see a loved one in pain was never easy. He knew people were staring, and he knew people were concerned, but he understood that Damian needed space to vent. He understood, because he’d felt the same, and it had taken a great deal of self restraint to keep from breaking the doctor’s jaw when he’d first spoken to him, and asked the questions he didn’t want to hear.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe she felt that she couldn’t. It’s difficult to ask for help, sometimes, especially from those close to you. The doctors don’t know that it was intentional, but if it was, the party likely played a part. Something might have happened. The problem is, I don’t know what, and Helena isn’t talking.” As for whether or not he thought she was unhappy, his expression became one tinged with sadness. “I don’t think she’s happy, Damian.”
Damian understood keeping secrets from people close. He was guilty of it, most of the batfamily was, but he didn’t like it when someone did it to him. Damian liked to think that people understood how seriously he took family. How far of lengths he would go for someone like Helena if she needed his help. And, when they didn’t trust him, he felt so lost. Just like how he looked right then. A lost little boy, picking at the edges of his shirt as he tried to deal with that creeping uncertainty. “She was happy before.” Damian said after a moment, looking up to Bruce a little sadly. “What happened? She used to be happy.”
Bruce shook his head, a quiet motion so unlike his usual self. “I’m not quite sure, Damian. I know it was hard on her when Kara was gone, and it couldn’t have been easy to have her return only to find that it was a different version who’d never met her. That might have been the start,” he said. “But I didn’t realize... I knew she was upset. I just didn’t realize it was this bad.” He glanced towards the closed door, mouth settling into a firm, grim line. “This isn’t going to be easy, but we have to be there for her. For however long it takes. She isn’t alone in this.” He hesitated, briefly, before reaching out and placing a hand on Damian’s shoulder, an awkward gesture of reassurance and a sort of comradery; they were both worried about her, and he knew they both wanted to help.
Damian bowed his head, eyes staring down at his sneakers as his shoulders shifted weight into his father’s hand. It was a literal sign of the little bird leaning on Bruce when he was feeling weak, one that he didn’t notice after being too wrapped up in concern for Hel- his sister. “For however long it takes.” Damian repeated like a good soldier, eyes still down for another pause before he looked up at Bruce and nodded. A small amount of strength came back to him and he stood up tall and cleared his throat, blue stormy eyes settling. For now. “You go in first. I don’t want to crowd her.” Which was Damian’s way of asking if he could have a moment alone to work through the rest of his guilt.
He might not have been the most comforting of figures, but if there was one thing that could be said about him it was that he was solid. Bruce could bear a great deal of weight for a long period of time, and unlike some, he would never break or bend. Damian could lean on him literally or figuratively and, if nothing else, would be supported. They’d come a long way, the two of them. Things might not be perfect and would likely never be, but he would never not be there for his son. He met the boy’s gaze when he looked up, a faint sense of pride stirring at the strength he saw staring back at him. “Alright. It’s likely best if we see her one at a time,” he agreed. He paused for a moment longer before pulling his hand away, and then he turned, shoulders back and tensed as he steeled himself for what awaited him on the other side of the door.