Lucidity
by Ang Griffen
July 11, 2005
Disclaimers: DC's, sucka.
Spoilers: JSA/Hawkman: Black Reign, Green Lantern v3 #152, references to various Infinity, Inc. storylines.
Summary: Brainwave, Jr. after JSA/Hawkman: Black Reign.
Author's Note: Unbetaed. 400 words.
The doctors say Hank is better.
He sits in waiting rooms next to his mother, who has gotten so old since he last saw her, and keeps waiting for something wrong to happen so he can figure his way out of this latest illusion, but nothing comes. The best he can do is trust; he's awake.
At home, there's a small row of medications on the bathroom counter. Hank's seen so many doctors in the last few weeks he's not even sure what they're for.
It doesn't matter; he doesn't take them.
Three years ago, not long after Uncle Syl died, things started getting bad. Like they'd been right after his dad died. Rushes where he didn't know what was real anymore, when his heart sped up and he couldn't wake up from the nightmares because he wasn't asleep.
Three years ago, he'd been committed, thanks to Green Lantern. Thanks to Jen's dad. The drugs made his limbs jerk, fogged up his brain. They made him weak.
He hadn't realized what was happening until it was too late. Until the day someone else spoke out of his mouth. Until he moved his hands without meaning to. Until the realness of the world started to fade out of his grasp, and he could only watch through the fog. Hank thought-- hoped-- he'd been dreaming.
Merry asks him nearly every day if he can remember what happened. She tells him about Mr. Mind taking control of his body, as though he doesn't know. Mr. Mind doesn't explain the years before that, and his mother knows it.
Hank keeps telling her he doesn't remember anything since his hospitalization.
He's lying.
It's vague, and he spent as much time as he could sleeping, but he isn't inventing the screams. He isn't inventing the gunshots, or the blood. He could never have imagined the things he found in men's minds. The things he made people do.
Hank can't sleep through the night anymore. The doctors gave him sedatives, but he can feel the wriggle of his father in the back of his mind, and as much as he wants to, he can't.
He's loud when he dreams. Loud enough that he wakes up with his mother's arms around him. "It wasn't you, Hank. It wasn't you," she murmurs against his hair.
And it wasn't him, but he's the one who has to live with it.