She doesn't see the knife that finally gets her, but she certainly feels it, sliding its way to a weak point between two plates of Kevlar armor and plunging into her abdomen with all the grace of a Crime Alley thug.
White hot agony erupts in her ribs, and Stephanie gasps sharply through the pain, stunned into stillness for only a second. Ohh, not good, ow ow ow-
She can't stop for long; another goon tries to take advantage of her shock and raises a tire iron above his head, preparing to bludgeon her brains out, but Stephanie moves before he can.
Unlike the rest of Batman's flock, she doesn't have breathing exercises, or pain management training, or compartmentalizing to help her survive a fight with a blade sticking out of her. Instead, she has adrenaline and the complete, utter certainty that if she slows down again she won't be fast enough to save herself.
So, she doesn't stop again until all five men that had been surrounding her are unconscious heaps on the ground.
It's about the same moment she realizes there's something red dribbling from her mouth and her throat is burning with the taste of coppery wet.
"Not good," she says out loud, voice strangely wobbly.
Stephanie breathes in and out a couple of times, letting her eyes drop to find the wound.
It's not hard to find; the knife is still lodged in there, stuck between two ribs like a bookmark between two pages, and that comparison is doing nothing to calm Stephanie's frayed nerves. She'd cold clocked the guy that'd stabbed her. If she hadn't, he might have yanked it out and left her much worse off.
The adrenaline rush is starting to fade. Stephanie tries taking shallower breaths to ease the ache, but each inhale still brings a fresh wave of pain to her ribs.
She can't lift her arms without blinking back tears, so swinging to Leslie's clinic is out of the question. Walking through gang territory while injured is also a terrible idea.
With a grimace, Stephanie taps her comm, trying to ignore the little voice insisting that she shouldn't admit defeat so easily.
"Hey O," she manages to keep her voice light even as her side pricks with pain again.
"Spoiler?" Barbara says, voice clinically calm beneath the voice modifier overlaying her words. "Everything alright out there?"
"Uh," Stephanie says rather intelligently, glancing down at the red seeping through the lovely eggplant purple of her uniform. Dammit. That'll be a bitch to get out. "Depends on your definition of 'alright'."
Normally she'd try to go for something a bit more chipper, but she's starting to feel a bit tired, which she knows isn't a good sign.
Barbara has been doing this job long enough to know anything but an affirmative to her question is cause for concern; she doesn't wait for injury details. The sound of her fingers typing rapidly across her keyboard fills Stephanie's earpiece. "I have a fix on your location. I'm sending B and Robin to come get you; ETA three minutes. You doing okay?"
Stephanie nods her head even though Babs can't see her and smacks her lips a bit. "Yeah, just sleepy. There's a knife poking out of my ribs, but if it hit something important I think it would hurt more, right?"
Barbara's voice sounds a bit wry beneath the modifier. "That can be hard to tell sometimes, Steph. Just stay awake until the boys get there, yeah?"
"Mhmm," Stephanie hums, and she listens to Barbara tapping more keys and quietly giving instructions to her rescue team on another channel.
She stays where she is, doesn't pace even though it might help her stay alert. She doesn't want to risk dislodging the knife or driving it in deeper.
By the time a dark figure drops from the sky to land on a small patch of ground not occupied by unconscious thug, Stephanie had found a nice dumpster to lean most of her weight on to stay upright, watching red slowly drip further downward across her uniform.
That's funny; it doesn't feel super serious. She's been stabbed dozens of times. She knows when things are serious and when they're not.
It takes her a moment to focus on the tall silhouette approaching her, and when she does it's to find his mouth is set in a grim line. So dour. She doesn't know what he has to be upset about; she hadn't even made the rookie mistake of yanking the blade out.
"Stephanie," Batman says, and that's odd, he doesn't usually like saying names in the field. "Listen to me, you need to stay awake."
It could be the blood loss talking, but Stephanie is pretty sure that gruff, gravelly voice is concerned.
She can't quite help the dopey grin spreading across her face as she salutes jerkily with one hand stained red and mumbles "Roger that, B-man!" before everything goes dark.
A/N: This is being posted a day late because I wasn't actually sure if I was going to post all of my Whumptober ficlets on this site, but then I figured, why the hell not?
Hope you liked it!
~Persephone