Chapter Text
Somewhere around hour sixteen the baby turns breach and refuses to be moved, no matter how hard the doctors try.
Bruce and Tim have traded off four times now, and in those lulls between the epidural wearing off and the next shot being administered Dick tries to apologize, because he knows he broke Timmy's hand at least a little bit, and Bruce is barely back in the suit after his back and that fucking psycho Jean-Paul.
Dick loves them, and it's not that he doesn't want them there, but he wants Roy and Garth and Wally and Donna. He wants Kory. But they aren't talking because Dick doesn't know how not to ruin good things, and he's early. He's so early he would be scared if he had the energy to feel anything anymore.
"Chum? Chum, I need you to answer the doctor," Bruce says, and Dick did not know the doctor was talking.
"'m tired," Dick mumbles. Because it's true, and he just wants to sleep, but his stomach hurts and he's never been able to sleep with a stomachache.
"The doctors want to do a C-section," Bruce tells him. "The baby isn't turning the right way." Right. She keeps flipping because she's a Flying Grayson. "That's right, Chum, she is. They think they need to do a C-section. She's not in danger yet, but—""I'm a teapot! Cut me open and take her out!""…okay, Chum."
"Kory's hair isn't really fire," he reminds the room at large. "Just really pretty. So if the baby has hair it's not gonna burn you."
There's a lot of rushing then. Not scary rushing. There's no beeping alarms, and Bruce doesn't look like he's gonna rip anyone any new holes.
Maybe it's just Dick losing time, because he's so very tired, and the baby that demanded she leave almost two months early has changed her mind.
It's a weird kind of novelty to be awake for an operation and not be able to feel anything. He can't see anything either, because of the curtain they have up, but he talks at the doctors and nurses who might talk back to him, he's not really sure.
All he knows is a weird continuous pressure that he's half-sure he's imagining, and then a tiny, shrill wailing cry. He's crying so hard he can barely see her when they lay her on his chest, and he loves her so much he can't even understand it.
He loved her while he was growing her, and thought that was so much, but he can't understand how this tiny, precious, perfect being is his.
Her tiny whispy curls remind him of Jason, and he swears that's Tim's little button nose, even though he knows those aren't possible.
He loves her so much he doesn't even care that her skin, eyes, and hair all match him.
He knows she's human before the doctors tell him.
Richard John Grayson is the only name that he puts on her birth certificate.