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thatblondeperson · 3 years

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TimSteph, taking care of chronic injuries!

Hey look, another ask that got buried! Sorry friend!!!!

This is all preboot, RR/Batgirl era.

Ok so Tim is super extra imo when it comes to treating any kind of sickness, injury, ANYTHING. He’s the type of guy who will go to CVS and buy out the entire “cold + flu” aisle as soon a Steph gets a runny nose. He absolutely drowns her in cough drops and tissues. I can see him being extremely attentive as well. Like bringing blankets and pillows around the clock, happy to carry her from point A to point B, almost insisting to do so on occasion, and just sitting with her for as long as she desires/needs company. He absolutely pays no mind to germs. Steph can cuddle all she wants.

Steph is similar but less extra. She’s got some more classic home remedies that Tim doesn’t have. She absolutely would baby the hell out of him if he got sick though, and probably more often than not she has to put her foot down on him trying to patrol even if he’s completely out of it and burning up. Tim has a hard time relaxing, but eventually the time is used for him to catch up on sleep. Tim getting sick is like a mini-hibernation. I can see Alfred stepping in occasionally if they were both sick because Tim’s an absolute mess, and Steph can only do so much before she gets wiped out. They’re hopeless and completely out of service if they’re both ill at the same time. Error 404: Dorks not found.

Chronic injuries are a constant process. Steph obviously has a ton just from Black Mask alone. I’m sure she gets aches and pains on the regular due to the severity of the torture she experience. Power drills would leave some lasting abdominal pain for sure. Hell, I wonder if it makes cramps worse for her? It could in all honestly. She may need serious pain meds during that time of the month which are of course always kept on hand. On top of that, the physical trauma definitely left endless mental trauma. No question about it. Not to mention that time she got lightly shot in the head. I say lightly because I forgot this was a thing because they don’t really address it again. I imagine that would cause occasional headaches/migraines, and I’m sure Tim likes to run a scan every now and again to make sure there isn’t any lasting damage. And of course, we return to the medicine cabinet for more pain pills. (Thank you @incoherentbabblings for reminding me of the gunshot.)

I headcanon that both of them get nightmares on almost the regular. They’ve both got it set that if one of them is in the middle of a bad nightmare, the other just holds them close, doing whatever they can to soothe them until the calmness sets back in. The nightmares get more spaced out some time after they move in together because I think the constant safeness of having someone beside them every night would eventually help them both sleep through the night better. It is hard to get back to sleep though. Both of them have been put through the ringer, they’ve both seen death of loved ones up close and personal, and I imagine a lot of what they’ve experienced is still very vivid and intense for them.

Tim’s got his own fair share of recurring pain. The boy doesn’t have a spleen and tbh I don’t know how he’s not getting sick more frequently. But extra precautions need to be taken to keep him from getting infections when he gets any kid of open wound, thank GOD Steph is a nurse. Tim has to be kept pretty healthy though if at all possible, which brings us back to my previous headcanon about him not caring about germs when Steph is sick? Yeah, not his smartest move, but Tim’s an idiot and forgets that he’s fragile.

Both of them have regular joint issues. They’ve dislocated enough things for just about everything to make awful clicking sounds now and again. Steph doesn’t have as much regular muscle pain, she’s far more flexible than Tim is so she stays pretty loose and limber, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to work at it every day. Steph does yoga as a part of her routine. She gets Tim to join sometimes but he’s not very good at keeping up with it. He’s flexible too but not to her level, and he locks up easier if he’s had an especially tough night. They both try to put the time in to exercise when they can, spotting each other, keeping a routine going, because given how much they both get beaten and battered on the daily, if they don’t keep up with muscle pain, it’ll just get worse. On bad days when the pain makes any mobility difficult, massages ensue. They’ve got at least 15 ice packs in the freezer at all times, and a stack of heating pads in the medicine cabinet. And if all else fails, a nice hot bubble bath never hurts. With Epsom salts and everything. Steph likes to add a touch of lavender oil.

Immediate injuries they’re both very good at treating. Steph obviously has more technical knowhow, and she is the most medically trained of all the Batfam members, but Tim is detail oriented and good at focusing when he needs to so he can keep up just fine. They’re both good at stitches and general wound treatment, but Steph is better at consistent treatment. Tim will absolutely forget to switch out his bandages or clean things because his brain is soup and he cannot be bothered to think about injuries when he’s too busy with 50 other things on the constant. He needs to slow down. We get right back into “more prone to infections” again. Alas. Idiot.

They both have their fair share of mental health issues, though Tim’s tend to be more intense. Steph has her ways of managing her own mental state but Tim gets stuck often. He falls into some pretty deep depression spells, and his anxiety acts up fairly frequently. Steph has started teaching him how to meditate, but also has a list of distractions and special remedies that she can utilize if need be. Movies and tea are a good base line, though Tim’s mind gets very far away sometimes and it’s hard to pull him back out. Like he almost wants to wallow in his sadness. Often she just tries to ground him as best she can so he doesn’t get so lost that he can’t come back. Steph likes to make sure that he isn’t always using patrol as a crutch for when he’s feeling upset or tense. It’s hard to sway him away from more pain when he lets himself get so close to the edge. It breaks her heart, sometimes she feels helpless.

Steph has anxiety as well, and some psychosomatic tics from her past abuse. She needs a lot of reassurance and gentleness when her mind starts racing. She’s still prone to trust issues, even now when she’s surrounded herself with stable people. She’s been let down and she fears losing her steady ground sometimes. Tim, let’s face it, hasn’t been the most reliable in the past, but I firmly believe that with some growing up he’d step up to the plate and try to be a solid home base for her to the best of his abilities. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon. He’s very good at being gentle. That’s canon as fuck. I will die on the hill that Tim is as delicate with Steph as one would be with a priceless porcelain heirloom. Fight me, the boy would never intentionally try to physically or mentally hurt her. He tries so hard to reassure her but I thinks he feels a little helpless sometimes too. Some of her trust issues are his fault, and he can’t just snap his fingers and reverse his mistakes. He tries his best, but there will always be scars.

All in all, I think they’re both very tender and caring with one another. They’re both beyond broken sometimes, and they are a mess and a half. But they know each other, they know each others pain and sadness and I think once they got back together they’d settle very easily into a care routine. Both of them are carrying the weight of countless consequences and mistakes and hardship on their shoulders. Pain is just a side affect that comes with carrying so much baggage, but it’s a little easier to manage when they have each other for support. I do think some of it would get easier over time, and my wish for them is that they can move somewhere just outside the city, maybe by a lake. Far enough away that things are quiet, but not so far that they would completely leave the hero gig behind. I agree with the consensus that neither of them could fully quit. Tim would just sink into the background, but Steph would be out there in the field for many years. Justas long as they have somewhere safe and comfortable to return to, I think they’ll both be just fine. Plus smooches are the best fallback medicine for all ailments and we all know that they never run out of those. 😘💋

THANK YOU FOR THIS ASK! More than half of this was not anything to do with chronic injuries but fuck it. We’ve tapped into the hurt/comfort section of my brain and there is a lot of material there to work with. Idk when you sent this in but I hope it wasn’t too long ago. I hope this answered more questions than you ever intended to ask. 💜❤

#TimSteph #tim drake #stephanie brown #robin iii #spoiler #robin iv #red robin #batgirl #batfam #batfamily #dc comics #dc #batman #personal #ask tbp

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annemariewrites · 5 years

Text

Drowning

She struggled in the water. Flailing and suffocating. A little girl in a yellow life vest, tossed by the waves against the sand and rocks of the shore. She struggled to reach the surface. Crushing and crushing, the waves strangled her throat as the beach cut into her knees and elbows. Stinging salt water filled her lungs. The girl struggled as the bright sun watched.

Hands grabbed onto her.

A stranger pulled her from the water. They picked her out of the current and carried her away from the rocks, toward her frantic parents.

“I had the dream again,” the little girl, now a grown woman, said to her therapist. A clock ticked, the time slightly wrong.

“The one where you are drowning?”

“Yes. I don’t know why it bothers me so much more now than it did back then. Sure, I was afraid of the ocean for a long time as a child but I got over it as a teenager. But now... now as an adult, it scares me more than it used to.”

“Perhaps because now you are emotionally mature enough to accept what happened.”

“Or what didn’t happen,” the woman mumbled.

“What do you mean, ‘what didn’t happen’?” the therapist asked.

“I didn’t drown. Sometimes that’s been hard to accept.”

“It’s hard to accept that you didn’t die?”

The woman looked down at the floor and did not answer.

“Did you talk to your parents about it like I had suggested?”

The woman shook her head, “They don’t like talking about it.”

The session was cut short. The clock ticked too fast.

At home, the woman chopped vegetables for dinner. The knife sliced through carrots and she wondered if it would look like an accident if the knife nicked her. No, that won’t do. It would just get blood in the food.

“So how was therapy?” the woman’s wife asked. Steam rose from boiling water on the stove.

“About the same as always,” she replied.

“What did you talk about? The drowning stuff again?”

“Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I’m sorry, love. Why does it still bother you after all this time? I mean, you haven’t been afraid of waterfor a while,” her wife said. “Maybe you should talk to your therapist about something that happened recently that’s still affecting you, instead of something that happened 20 years ago. Maybe that will help you more?”

“I’m not afraid of water, I’m not even really afraid of drowning,” the woman said, as she stared into the boiling water.

“What are you afraid of then?”

“I don’t know. Living?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t pretend like I understand how you feel, but I think you should be talking to your therapist about more than just that time you almost died as a child. What about that time in college when you tried to drown yourself?”

“My parents are coming over tomorrow for lunch,” the woman said, her wife rolled her eyes at the change of subject.

“Maybe you should ask them what they remember about it. I know they don’t like to talk about it but it could help to understand their perspective. Anything that could help you is worth a try.”

“They don’t like to talk about anything meaningful. And their perspective is ignoring me until a stranger pulls me out of the ocean.”

The knife did nick her finger but she swore this time it was an accident.

The woman and her wife sat facing each other as hot water filled the tub and steam filled the room. The woman’s dark hair tangled around her neck and shoulders like fingers trying to strangle her. She would let them if they were real. Her wife’s even darker hair sat tied up on her head, away from the water.

The mirror clouded over and fogged their reflection. They didn’t look like themselves.

The woman breathed in the overwhelming scent of lavender soap, nearly gagging. Her nerves ticked and her hands and feet fidgeted. She hated bathing and much preferred the rain-like feel of showering. The woman said nothing of this to her wife, who so loved the soothing scented bath.

Even now, after all of these years, the feeling of being surrounded by water struck at her nerves and she breathed with great effort.

The woman didn’t like smoking but appreciated its calming effect. Ash and smoke filled her lungs the way water could not, but burned and stung all the same. The glow of the cigarette reflected in her eyes and the smell of nicotine temporarily drowned out the scent of salt water that seemed to permanently fill her nose. But still, she could not breathe.

“Do you remember when I was about four or five and almost drowned at the beach? That time when I got tossed against the rocks and a stranger saved me?” she asked her parents, sitting at the kitchen table for lunch, sipping ice-cold tea. Their calm demeanor shifted. Her mother cast her eyes down.

An awkward pause. “Well, yes, of course we do. Why do you ask?” her father said, body tensing and fingers twitching.

“I’ve just been thinking a lot about it recently.”

“I don’t know why. It’s been years,” her mother piped up, still not looking at her.

“It just bothers me,” the woman said.

“This isn’t an appropriate conversation, honey,” her father said with a sour smile.

“I don’t care, I just want to know what you remember about it.”

Her parents exchanged a glance and her mother breathed a heavy sigh.

“Well fine, if you really think it’s that important,” her mother began, “We were on vacation at the beach, trying to relax. You were playing at the shore but went in too deep and the waves knocked you down.Then some woman picked you up and brought you back to us.”

“You were crying and your knees were scraped from the rocks and sand,” her father added.

“Is that all? I know what happened, but tell me how it made you feel.”

“Don’t you see a shrink for that, sweet heart?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “My therapist wasn’t there when it happened. I want to know how you feel about it.”

“What more do you want us to say? I don’t understand why you want to know so much about a terrible thing that happened a long time ago.”

“Because it’s still bothering me,” the woman huffed, her fists clenching and body tensing.

“Well how do you think we felt? A stranger had to come and pull you out of the water. That made us look like awful parents.”

“Oh well I’m so sorry that you couldn’t be bothered enough to watch me for five minutes while I nearly died,” she said. The chair made a horrible screeching sound as she pushed it away from the table and stormed out of the room.

She bathed alone that night and thought of gently slipping under the lukewarm water. She fought against the impulse, knowing that despite her despair she could not truly commit the act.

But still. Still she slipped slowly down. She held her breath and when completely submerged, she sucked in the water. The affect was immediate. She shot straight up, spiting the water out of her mouth, coughing and breathing laboriously. Fluid settled in her lungs as she heaved. She looked into her watered reflection as she tried to regain her breath. Strands of hair grasped at her throat and mouth.

The woman walked into the living room to see her parents, stiff and awkward, seated on the couch and her wife across from them. “I think it’s important for you all to talk about this without getting upset ateach other,” her wife said, taking her hand in her own.

The woman huffed; damp hair still clung to her neck. “You should have told me before they came again.”

“Why does your voice sound so hoarse?” her father asked.

She was silent for a fraction of a second. “If you must know, I got water in my nose while taking a bath and it made me cough a lot.”

“All you seem to do is breathe in water,” her mother muttered.

“What was that, Mother? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“I only meant-”

“Please stop, I don’t want you arguing anymore. It isn’t helpful. We’re here to talk and understand,” herwife said. The room settled with a heavy silence. The woman stared at her parents; they still would not make eye contact.

“Okay, we’ll talk about it,” her father sighed, “Just don’t try to start blaming us for what happenedagain, okay?” He finally looked up at her.

“Maybe I wouldn’t blame you so much if you had actually been watching me.”

“Plenty of children nearly drown, is it always the parent’s fault?”

“Alright, alright. I just hate that a stranger was paying more attention to me than my own parents.”

“Honey, why does being saved by a stranger bother you so much?” her father asked.

“I just told you why!” Why do all of their arguments end up like this?

“Please don’t start yelling,” her wife said.

The woman sighed, “Please just try to understand my point of view. I felt like you didn’t care enough to watch me and if my own parents don’t care about me then why am I even still alive?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, we love you,” her mother said.

“I don’t feel like you do.”

Her father looked at her in surprise, “You don’t feel like we love you just because of an awful accident that happened two decades ago?”

“I’m just tired of living with this feeling. This feeling that I shouldn’t even be here. That I should have died that day.”

“Honey, you know we don’t understand that,” he said.

“You could at least try to,” the woman said. Her wife’s fingers stroked her knuckles.

“Try to understand why you think you should have drowned as a child? That’s insane. You need to be talking to your shrink about this because none of us understand. You need to stop making us out to be the bad guys and take responsibility for yourself,” her mother said.

The woman tensed, she let go of her wife’s hand, and walked out of the house. ~

She raced down the road, trying to put as much distance between herself and her parents.

Hot tears streamed down her face as the moon glowed through the windshield. The woman’s throat tightened, she took deep breathes to steady her sobs. Her fingernails dug into the steering wheel.

She crossed over a bridge and had the urge to drive over the railing. To plunge into the rushing river and be swept away. She shook her head and passed over the bridge.

Bright headlights appeared in the opposite direction. The other car drove erratically and swerved in and out of both lanes. A loud crash sounded as glass shattered around her. Blood oozed from her hands and face, her hair grasped around her. A popping sound filled her ears and the smell of smoke filled her nose. She coughed and heaved as she had many times before with the ghost of water in her throat. Fire and gasoline coated the road and engulfed both cars. The heat stung and cut into her trembling body.

No hands of a stranger were there to pull her out.

#annemariewrites #my writing #short story #drowning #talk of suicide #I wrote this for my creative writing class my junior year of college

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