Whoever had said that life altering events happened in slow motion was an idiot. Life altering events went too fast. Wally didn't even know what had happened until long after it had finished.
Bruce registered it at around the same time as him, and at the scream and thud and silence, Bruce sprang quicker than a jack rabbit out from beneath the floorboards to stare at the remains of Barry.
"Please, God, please never take me to a circus," Barry was sobbing in relief, his face in his hands.
Wally could relate. He felt tears on his cheeks before he knew it, though when he went to wipe them away, there wasn't actually anything there. Being a ghost was still weird. Wally wished that Bruce would hug Barry for him, but that wasn't exactly the man's MO and it didn't appear to change after watching his teammate get nearly chopped up. Instead, Bruce walked over to Barry, seemed to take a deep breath, and offered out his hand.
Barry waved his wrist at him, refusing to lift his head. "I'll be fine," he hiccuped. "Go avenge me or something."
Apparently, Bruce didn't need to get very far in order to mostly complete that deed, because there was a thunk and yelp from the window, and Wally turned to see a hammer fall from it. "No!" was the high-pitched whine from outside of the window. "I want that back!"
"Good work," the man who Wally assumed to be Commissioner Gordon said gruffly and honestly, albeit somewhat awkwardly, to the shadows of the alley. Wally knew that Bruce had already left, but he replied 'you, too' for the man anyway.
Miss. Frances was being dragged, pouting face and all, into a police car just across the street. Wally had thought it would be satisfying, maybe relaxing, to see such a sight, but he had a hard time associating the Joker's crazy girlfriend to Dick's psychiatrist and instead, it only caused him more stress. He wouldn't be stress-free until Dick was right in the head and had a good night's rest away from white jackets and straight jackets and pills and tablets. If anything, Wally was more anxious, because all that there was left to do was play the waiting game.
The next night, Bruce was invited over to the West-Allen household to celebrate, though nobody really knew if they were celebrating, grieving, or regretting. The man had to enter the house's upper floor through the window in costume because, according to his logic, it was apparently more suspicious for a billionaire to be in Barry's house as opposed to a masked vigilante that was in the wrong part of the country. Wally didn't trust Bruce's logic anymore, anyway.
If it had been up to Bruce, everyone knew that he wouldn't have shown up at all. So Barry ensured that Bruce appeared right on the dot, Bruce brought the poison (and bat costume), and Iris poured said poison (which was, in reality, just booze) with not much of an idea on where to stop. Wally didn't contribute in the slightest. In fact, the second that Bruce fell in silence beside Barry on the couch, he left.
He was anxious.
Wally appeared in Dick's cell just as they were beginning to drag him away.
They had a white stretcher that looked innocent enough, if it weren't for the leather buckles hanging off the sides and clinking against the metal frame. Dick was panicking for the split second that Wally saw him awake, but then something was stabbed into his thigh (femoral artery, Wally assumed) and seconds later he dropped like a doll. The white jackets, two men and a woman, didn't bother with removing his straight jacket. They unceremoniously hauled him onto the stretcher and strapped him down as if they were restraining Frankenstein rather than a 5'2" teenage boy.
"He's secure," said the man closest to the door.
"Then tell them to prepare for the operation," the woman snapped as they wheeled him away
Wally was almost as sick of emergencies as he was of explosions. And clowns. And death. He was pretty much sick of everything. He didn't stay in that cell for a minute by the time that he was back in his living room again, watching Barry down his first shot and mutter something about unorganised macromolecules in the case he had at work. Bruce was just swishing his around in its glass, staring at it with an absent fascination.
When Wally stampeded up the stairs (as much as a one-ghost army could stampede), heart pounding, he found that all of his belongings had been cleaned up from the floor, but when he dashed into his room, none of them were there. He had no time to wonder where Iris had put all of the things that he had moved, however, because folded neatly on his bed was Iris' ugly Christmas sweater. She had probably had no heart to put it in storage.
It was the only object under fifty pounds he had left to touch.
He threw it downstairs. The itchy wool pooled on the hardwood floor without a sound, and Wally scowled. He preferred it when he had statues that he could dramatically shatter. By the time he got to the first floor, though, and bent to pick up the sweater, he saw the eyes of Iris from the living room. She was staring at the sweater in horror.
Wally reckoned that objects being silently tossed around on their own were probably creepier in the long run.
"Iris?" Barry asked, confused, and Wally ran into the living room to see the two men staring at his aunt unfalteringly. On any other day, Wally could already hear her remarking how flattered she was to have such attention. Iris moved into the hall to gingerly pick up the sweater. Barry, Wally, and Bruce followed. "Let me guess: Wally?"
Bruce looked on impassively.
But Wally was too frantic and on too short a time leash to allow for Barry to start his usual banter. He yanked the sweater from Iris' hands, as Bruce looked like he'd just seen a ghost - hah - balled it up, and threw it at Bruce's crotch.
It probably wasn't the most appropriate way to get the message across, but it was all that he had. It also felt kind of good to be able to throw something at the Batman without fearing for his life, considering he no longer had one.
Bruce slowly bent down to pick up the sweater and stared at it. Noting that Bruce didn't seem to get what Wally was trying to say, he tried to yank the article of clothing out of Bruce's hand, but soon found out that Bruce had a grip like steel.
"Let him have it," Barry said, and Bruce finally let go after a considering second.
Wally balled it up and threw it at Bruce's crotch again.
"If that's a ghost, then it's definitely Wally's," Bruce said with a mild frown. Wally picked the sweater back up, too adrenaline hit to care about Bruce's comfort, balled it up, and threw it at Barry's crotch that time.
Barry looked bewildered. "Did we make you mad?" he asked tentatively. "Why don't you throw this at Iris? She made it, and at least she doesn't have a-"
There was a tense, anticipating pause. Wally was jumping on the balls of his feet, his fingers twisted in his hair.
"-Dick," Barry finished, giving Bruce a sidelong glance.
"This is why I brought the costume," said Bruce simply.
They said nothing when they slammed open the door. Dick jumped and tried to hide, but there really wasn't anywhere to hide, so he stood and decided on confrontation instead.
After all, his head felt clearer than it had in a long time, even if he had no recollection of what had happened over the past however long it had been.
"Calm down," the man closest to him was saying. "We weren't able to medicate you because of your upcoming procedure, but don't worry, you'll be treated soon." Dick couldn't read the expression on his face. It was blank, but the voice felt soft. The woman between him and the man at the door scowled at it and presented herself boldly before Dick. She walked closer.
Dick went for a leg sweep. The woman stumbled and crashed into the stretcher they had wheeled in, shocked, but Dick couldn't do much else when the man who had been attempting to soothe him bear hugged him from the side aggressively, practically barrelling into him, and that coupled with his weak and nauseous state sent him crashing to the floor. He tried to reach for a pressure point on the man's neck, but remembered that his arms were securely bound to him, and there was no way for him to crawl away.
There was a prick of pain in his thigh, and then the world went black.
When he awoke, he was confused. There was so much light. Bright light, hard light, cold light, in his eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Cold light, hard light, bright light, glinting menacingly off of the sharp, sharp-
And he was talking, or trying to, voice like trying to move sluggishly through the mud in his throat, and a masked man was trying to talk, too, a bag covering most of his face, and Dick thought that was a peculiar disguise, but at least it worked better than Clark's.
Clark. Who was Clark again?
The masked man held up the sharp-something, but it was sharp, and the cold light was still glinting menacingly.
Dick couldn't see past it. It was too bright. He tried to talk again, and finally got to the end of the mud clogging his throat but then there was something muffling his words, he couldn't understand himself, couldn't hear himself, something was covering his mouth, and he tried to thrash, because without his voice he couldn't say no, they couldn't ask for his consent about anything they did and he did not give his consent, wasn't that illegal, what was going on- But he couldn't thrash, because his body felt like lead, and even if it didn't, he was also probably strapped down.
Dick thought that the masked man could have been smiling, but that might also have been fictional.
Voices, more voices, and they were all bustling about, and getting closer and further away from him and a click, there was a click, the click of a door, and there was the buzz of a machine and beep, beep, beep, beepbeepbeepbeep went his heart.
Closer, further away, closer, further away, closer, closer, closer-
The scrape of machinery, the scrape of metal, commands, demands, and the light was moving and being focused and suddenly all Dick could see was the light, he could no longer see the- knife, it was a knife, and he was frightened, afraid, and terrified, because he couldn't see what they were doing, he couldn't feel what they were doing, they could have been doing anything, they could have been inside of his head right at that moment and he-
Bebebebebebeep-
They could have been inside of his head. Maybe it was all inside of his head. Relax, and it would all go away.
Then suddenly, though he still couldn't see, it that wasn't because it was too bright. It was too dark.
Sounds, and thumps, and thunks, and cries, and the sound of leather and metal and clink, clink, and Dick was being lifted, though he couldn't feel the arms lifting him, and he was being draped over something, probably a shoulder because he was moving, and he felt a bit motion sick.
Everything was so overwhelming, and he was too numb, his head too filled with a background static to process it all.
When feeling was slowly returning to him, it was with the faint sensation of cold air being whipped through his hair and lashed across his cheeks. Dick realised then that his arms were still tied up, but he didn't have much time to feel discomfort when something was being opened high, high, high above the ground (look at that person over there, she was so tiny). He saw beige carpet when he was taken inside of a building.
"Batman? Oh dear god, please don't tell me that you've started kidnapping children. I had more faith in you than that."
Dick was let down into a chair, head swimming, feeling like he wanted to puke, but so bone-deep exhausted that he couldn't even be bothered to fix his posture into something more comfortable. His arms were being untied, and when he blurrily looked up, it was by another person in a dark mask. Batman.
Dick didn't react. The man probably wasn't real.
"Is that Dick Grayson? Batman, what in hell's name do you think you're doing?" exclaimed the panicked voice.
"Look at him, Commissioner." There was momentary silence. "I don't trust many things, but I trust that you can take better care of him than anyone else I know who's legally available."
"Is that a straightjacket? And his- jesus, I can count his ribs. As much as I want to, god do I want to, I can't. Quinzel's case hasn't gone to trial. I have no authority here."
"They were trying to cut his head open without any written consent. Considering he was put there in the first place by an arrested criminal, you can judge the environment potentially unsafe. You're a smart man, Jim. You can find a way."
"Cut his head open? Holy- okay, okay, just wait a second, alright? Don't go vanishing on me, I need to make a phone call."
Dick heard footsteps walking away (with the muttered, "This crap didn't happen to me in Chicago"), and then the muffled sound of someone speaking into the phone in another room. Batman was kneeling in front of him, and Dick didn't have much time to mentally backtrack and remember when that had happened when Batman (Bruce, Batman was Bruce, he was no stranger, but he sure seemed stranger than before-) gently took his hand. Dick stared with drooping eyes.
"We're going to get you out of this and you're going to get better, okay?" Bruce whispered.
Unable to open his mouth, Dick vaguely nodded.
"I'm so sorry," continued Bruce, and he sounded strangled. "Dick, I am so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me someday. I never wanted to put you through any of this-"
Bruce cut himself off and slowly stood up as the other man, Commissioner Jim Gordon, walked back into the room, a phone pressed to his ear. "No, I'm not sorry that it's late. This lady is blatantly insane. Knowing she's associated with the Joker alone makes her insane, and now I have a kid who, I've been told, very nearly escaped the verge of death dropped in a handbasket on my goddamn doorstep! I'm taking him home with me and calling every doctor there myself - there is no way in hell this boy is going back into a white walled facility tonight. Let me keep him until the trial and we'll call us even." Jim's voice echoed in the empty, mostly dark, police department. "Then kid proof my house in the morning. This boy is too sick to even look at me and he's not a five year old! You already know my record is clean. My home is a family home, just ask one of the Barbara's. I know you're tired, just let me have him for tonight and we can figure everything out tomorrow. Yes. Thank you. Goodnight." The phone was hung up and Jim sighed in exasperation. "You're lucky some people in important places owe me favours."
"Thank you," Bruce said sincerely, and Jim froze awkwardly before nodding. The masked man turned to Dick, and Dick had the sensation that he was being looked in the eyes, though it was hard to tell from the shadows. He stood there for a moment, ruffled Dick's hair gently, to which Jim pretended not to see and asked no questions (Dick knew there had to have been a reason as to why Bruce liked the man so much), and left, but Dick thought that the way Bruce seemed to have to yank himself away made it seem like one of the hardest things he had ever done.
But that was only inside of Dick's head. Relax, and it would all go away.
Okay, I find it super super ironic that the beginning of the happyish resolution is due on Christmas. I also realise it isn't Christmas today, but I'm spending all of Christmas working on cosplay, so here, have an early update.
Happy Holidays, everyone! Thank you all for sticking through the anticlimactic mess that is Point Of View. That's truly the best gift!
EDIT: No, you didn't miss anything. How Barry survived will be explained at a later date. c: