Triggers: self-harm. Self-harm in a sort of idealized way. Please don't read if this will trigger you.
It was raining just like it had been that night, and the rain made his skin crawl in the way that it never used to, but he couldn't focus on that, not if he wanted to keep sane. Not if he wanted to keep being Nightwing. Not that he was doing a great job of that at the moment. Dick had ended his night early due because of the rain and how it was messing with his head. The only comfort he had was that crime levels in the street also tended to go down during storms.
Dick was drinking coffee as he kept alternating looking at the falling rain and then looking away, trying to focus on anything else. It was too late at night to be drinking coffee, even if he had ended it earlier than most. He ignored that as well because as much as he didn't want to think anymore, he also didn't want to dream because on stormy nights he only ever dreamt of one thing.
He needed a distraction. If it was day, he would probably exercise but most of his exercising regiment usually made noise and his neighbors had already called multiple times to complain about noises in the early hours, so that left that out.
He could talk with one of his fellow bats but A: they were probably still on Patrol and B: He would have to explain why he was having a problem. While they generally knew about what happened to Blockbuster, they had no idea that it was affecting him so much...or what happened after...Nothing happened after. Dick reminded himself again. Dick turned his head to the window as the rain pattered more loudly and quickly against his windows and he shut his eyes tightly as memories tried to make their way into his mind. He stood up from the table and started to pace, he had to do something- anything to stop his mind from going back there, because nothing had happened, nothing could have happened.
Blockbuster's face flashed through his mind and then Tarantula's. Dick vigorously shook his head, no he couldn't be lost in these memories.
Weapons training. There had to be one that was quiet enough, just something- anything to distract him. He opened up a panel and there was a long range of weapons he had to choose from, of course, his eyes focused on his knives. Dick didn't use them much as he was more experienced and it was easier to bring and conceal his wingdings but he trained with them sometimes. Training with the knives wasn't what was on his mind though.
Dick picked up a knife, despite his instincts screaming at him that it was a bad idea and shifted it slightly so that the light glinted off its edge. He hadn't thought about it in years. It had been so long since he had dealt with this urge that he almost forgot what it felt like but here it was back again and worse than any time he could remember as a teenager. It would definitely distract. It would definitely, if only for a short time, make him feel something else other than this feeling that if he didn't do something soon that he was going to fall apart at the seams. But he had made a promise long ago, not to what his hands were itching to do.
A promise to a dead man, some dark corner of his brain reminded him. A new spike of agony joined the others. Wally was dead. His fault. It was his fault. Blockbuster was his fault. And Tarantula...he couldn't think about what happened with Tarantula- he couldn't he just couldn't. He bit his lip, at first slightly but then more and more till he could actually taste the coppery liquid in his mouth. Dick felt a slight sting of pain but it wasn't enough, it wasn't enough to stop the thoughts, the memories, the feelings. But he had promised, promised Wally that he would never hurt himself again. Promised him back when he was a teenager, after Bruce fired him and before he had become established as Nightwing. Dick had been struggling figuring out he was without Bruce, without Batman without being robin. Dick hadn't done it, not in all that time. But Wally was dead and no one else knew. Wally had told him to tell one of his brothers but he had never been able to, so the only person who ever knew he had struggled with this, the only person he could even talk to about this, without explaining was gone.
"Wally.." he said aloud as he touched the knife's edge lightly. "I'm sorry." Sorry that Wally was dead, sorry that it was Dick's fault. Sorry that he hadn't been able to tell his brothers before all of their relationships seemed to have fallen apart. Sorry that he was about to break his promise. "I'm really sorry," Dick whispered as he moved the knife over to his upper arm, next to where he was pretty sure the old group of scars had been. His body was so scarred, it was hard to tell for sure, another reason it had been easy to pass off his scars as being from his time on the force when he and Bruce had patched things up again.
"I really am sorry," he said as his knife pierced his skin and he dragged it downwards, imagining an angry Wally looking down on him but soon that image along with all the other faded as pain soon became the only thing in his mind. Dick knew it was wrong and he knew he was putting himself back in the terrible place he had been in before and struggled so hard to escape from, but in that moment he didn't care, because in that moment he didn't have to focus on anything but the pain. The pain was the only thing that was real.