A/N: I really thought I updated this here, but I just realized today that I didn't. I updated on AO3 and meant to do it here in the morning and I forgot. Sorry about that. This chapter is unfortunately short but that's what it had to be in order to actually get posted before the year 2072. Anyway. uhhhh mind the triggers? And enjoy.

Dick made sure his apartment had a bathtub when he moved in. It's less painful to soak wounds than it is to spray them, and vigilante-style injuries make it difficult to shower sometimes.

Those are all reasons he would give out loud, and they're true. But there's always been something else, since he was thirteen or fourteen, about knowing all he would have to do is hold his head under the water for a little bit. That escape is right under his chin.

That, and it's awkward to wash blood off his thighs in the sink.

He's been in the bath for almost two hours tonight. The water is red and cold, his skin wrinkled. He's tried to get out five or six times, but he can't seem to bring himself to leave his little sphere of safety. He can't seem to bring himself to push his nose down into the water, either. It's a sort of limbo. He can't remember which thug of the night bruised his ribs. He can't remember if the scratches on his arms are his doing or someone else's. He definitely doesn't remember messing his thighs up so bad, but there they are, likely the main source of all the blood he's soaking in. It's disgusting. Alfred would have drained the tub and refilled it by now if he couldn't coax Dick out of it. He should drain the tub. No one's coming to drain it for him. It's just...just...five more minutes…

He sits in the dirty water and shivers, wonders what his family is doing. Bruce is almost definitely asleep now, patrol long over, but Dick bitterly entertains the image of him moping in Dick's old bedroom, bemoaning the loss of a son who didn't put his loved ones in danger, and cursing the wretched, heartless man that took his place. It's more comforting than the thought that he's too disappointed to even think about Dick, too scared of what he's become to be angry. Dick's stopped coming around the manor hoping to be yelled at instead of stared at with faraway sadness. It won't happen.

Tim would be in the room across the hall. In his mental image, Dick can only picture him with that wide-eyed, betrayed look, the one he had on his face when he found out about the mission. He had it every time Dick saw him for that first week after...after, while he stayed at the manor. Tim is smart. It's no coincidence how little he's seen him in the last few months.

His baby brother hates him.

Tim could be with the team right now, too. They could all be on a mission, maybe, with Aqualad leading, and Artemis- Tigress by his side. And Bart…

in Wally's costume…

Dick tips his head back into the bath, letting water flow into his ears.

The team. They'd be surviving. Doing missions. Moving forward. Everything Dick's not doing.

Okay. Time's up. Do it or get out.

But if you did it, Wally would be so disappointed in you.

Dick climbs out of the tub, pulls the drain before he can fall back in, and sits naked on the tile floor, utterly exhausted.

"'M sorry, Wally," he mumbles, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to his knee. "Can't do it much longer. 'M really sorry."

Wally doesn't answer. Just like he hasn't for months, every time Dick gets lonely enough to talk to him. Lonely is an understatement, really. He's been microwaving his pillowcase just to have something warm to hold while he sleeps. He needs someone here tonight. Physically. He's going to do something that would disappoint Wally if he's all by himself.

But there's no one.

Barbara screamed at him, beat her fist against his chest with tears streaming down her face, begging him to not run away for once in your goddamn life. The team sat close in folded chairs in the graveyard, looking at him like he wasn't supposed to be there. Bruce listened to him say I want to be alone - and Dick has never, ever wanted to be alone - and nodded, looked relieved. He has no one, and that feeling is so crushing and all-encompassing that he can't even move for at least twenty minutes, beyond shaking in place like he's back in the Arctic. He can almost hear Haly tearfully insisting to the police officers, he can't go, he has nowhere to go, he has no one. You can't take him away. He has no one else left.

It's different this time, though. He did it himself. Burned the whole circus tent around him instead of being ripped from it.

And when something starts a fire, you put it out.

He dreams in abstracts that night, everything meshing together in a horror movie of mismatched memories - Jason falling from a cut trapeze, Wally and the crowbar, Barbara faking her death and the whole team going to Rimbor, Bruce vanishing to dust in the Arctic, his parents shot down by the lasers from their failsafe mission - while he watches, screaming his throat raw and crying his eyes dry. They reach for him and he reaches back, hand trembling and coming up much, much too short as he's forced to watch them play Musical Deaths over and over, each scene giving him a new horrific combination.

He wakes up drenched in sweat, and pulls out a pen and paper.

To whom it may concern,