It's bruising, Greg thought when he first noticed the color. There were still plenty of blues and purples lingering after the worst of the damage was sealed. It's the healing magic, he corrected as the green spread further out from the wound. Zecora's magic had taken a strange and unfamiliar shape, and it was just continuing its course as Steven continued to heal.

It's infected, he thought as it thickened and grew out from the skin. Something's gone wrong, something's been done to him that no one expected or recognized at first look--Zecora's magic, or magic inside the offending bullet, or any number of things could have set something insidious and dangerous inside of his son and was spreading as a disease.

It's this place, he finally realizes as he touches at the hard nubs of horns jutting out of his own skull. Steven hadn't been touched by the transformative magic yet, and Greg had dared to believe it was more of that hybrid anatomy protecting his son. Maybe it had; it took this wound for the magic to finally break through Steven's defenses. There's no way for Greg to know. He's as clueless about this as with anything about magic. Anything about this whole incomprehensible place.

All he can do is all he's ever done: wait. Too exhausted to focus but too anxious to rest, Greg paces by the bed and waits for Steven to wake properly, water and food waiting for whenever his son is coherent enough to take them.