He hadn't moved in hours, he just kept staring at the chip in the off-white ceiling that may have once been white, that the landlord kept saying that he would fix but hadn't. There wasn't any point in moving. There was nowhere he could go. He couldn't work in either his night job or his late-night job. He didn't need the money. Thanks toLucius,he was independently wealthy and he could handle six weeks with no income. His night job was surprisingly understanding, his job would be waiting for him when he came back.
His late-night job, not so much. Bruce hadn't called back, either as Bruce or Batman. Dick knew that Batman had his hands full, he had read the headlines, couldn't read much more with guilt crushing through him that he hadn't been able to be there. If anyone was hurt because he had gotten himself injured, he'd never be able to forgive himself.
He was just lying there in the slowly lightening darkness. It would be morning soon and sleep had not come. He wasn't sure he slept last night eithe, surely some time he had to be allowed to sleep? To just turn his brain off for a few minutes. Or he could turn it off for longer...
Wally. For some reason, his mind came back to Wally when he had these thoughts. His hallucination? Why was he thinking about his hallucination he couldn't even remember clearly. Though in the last few hours with nothing to do but sit in the darkness, he was almost sure he remembered a few things his hallucination had said to him. The hallucination seemed worried about him, really concerned about him. He vaguely remembered Wally saying that he didn't blame him, even though his real self would blame him. Still, the notion of a Wally not blaming him fake or not was nice.
Not nice enough to let him sleep though. Usually, he didn't like to sleep, too many nightmares, too many memories. But maybe he would dream about Wally, or maybe he was tired enough after two days without sleep to not dream at all. But no matter how hard he shut his eyes and how much he tried to calm his breathing, neither sweet dreams nor oblivion came.
After an hour or two, Dick decided to stop trying anymore. The universe would not grant him rest, message received. Dick swung his legs around the side of his bed and thankfully remembered his leg was in a cast just before he sent himself windmilling into the floor.
He grabbed his crutches and started moving towards the kitchen looking for more coffee but his bladder insisted that he go the other way. How was it that sometimes you didn't know you had to pee until you stood up?
After Dick finished his business, he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He didn't really like looking at himself in the mirror. His hair was wet looking, greasy and unkempt. His skin was pale and his scraggly shirt was a bit too big which was funny because it used to fit him so well.
He hadn't showered in a while, other than a washcloth wash at the hospital. He probably should, he was probably rank with sweat. He didn't like showers as is, but putting the plastic wrap around his leg, made the prospect even more daunting, not to mention he should buy a shower chair.
It would be hard to shower without help. Most of the steps for showering, the nurse had gone through before discharging him required help. Help that he had lied and said that he had because he hadn't even to spend a single second more there than he had to. At the very least, he should give himself a sponge bath, he thought as he curled a limp greasy strand around his finger and order some dry shampoo. Amazon prime was probably going to be his new best friend along with other delievery services.
Suddenly he remembered he had bought some a while ago, just to try it out. Maybe he still had it? Where would he have put it? Dick eyed his bathroom. It wasn't very impressive, not like his bathroom at the manor but he had liked it just the way it was before
-Didn't matter. Except that it did. It helped create the feeling of blackness, of despair. Dick focused on the bathroom again, with its white and silver bath curtain hiding the tub and shower with gray tiles. The dry shampoo would not be in there. The two most likely places were the vanity and the medicine cabinet in front of him. Checking the vanity would require getting down on one knee, a position hard for him to get out very easily at the moment. So he just had to hope he had put it, if he even still had it, in the medicine cabinet.
The medicine cabinet was behind the mirror and there were three different sections that each swung out. Rifling through the content of the three sections, he found things like bandaids and other first aid supplies, even though he had a much more exhaustive first aid kit in the bedroom. He also found toothpaste and random elastics, but no dry shampoo. That meant the vanity was the most likely. How badly did he need it? A single look in the mirror reminded him he needed it badly.
The mirror sides hadn't been closed all the way, Dick noticed as he was reflected but slightly off because of the angles. Making it look almost like there were three Dicks, all slightly offset from each other kind making him look like he was in -
Wally! He remembered! Wally, or at least his hallucination, said that he was in another dimension, not dead, Wasn't that kind of far-fetched for someone so high to hallucinate? He wasn't sure. The last time he had been high before last night he had been in the Batcave on morphine and he didn't really remember much of it.
Was there any possibility that it was real? There couldn't be, right? It couldn't be that the thing he felt so much guilt, grief, and devastation for wasn't. That Wally was okay, out there somewhere just waiting to be somehow allowed home right? That was just wishful thinking, his drugged-out mind telling him what he wanted to hear.
Dick frowned as that sounded familiar. In fact, he was pretty sure he had said that the hallucination. What had it said back? It had been important. How could it be so hard to remember something so important? It was there, he knew it was in there like he knew this had been there. Did this come out because for five minutes he hadn't been thinking about it? Like a watched pot never boiled? Was that the only way it would come to him? How could he not think about it? It was a pretty big life-altering thing, if this wasn't somehow just inside his mind. It had to be in his mind right? That's what made the most sense. Certainly, more sense than somehow Wally was still around still watching and caring about him, right?
But Wally had said something to him, something important. He had to remember what it was, even if it was just a hallucination. It was probably important to his subconscious right? His usual first step to rejog his memory would be going back to where the hallucination took place and seeing if that jogged his memory. Two problems: one he wasn't sure which rooftop it happened on. Two, the more important one, he had a cast. There was no way he could go rooftop jumping, which other than the fact Dick had been trying to sleep before now, is why he hadn't tried it yet.
Dick gazed again at his distorted self in the mirror again, hoping like last time it would spark the memory that he wanted. It didn't. What had Wally said it could be the single most important thing in his life if it wasn't a hallucination, which it probably was. Still, he found his eyes darting around the room, checking the bathroom like he'd see a shimmer or catch a glimpse, just for a second if he was fast enough. He didn't see anything, and still the piece of information he wanted lied tantalizingly just beyond his grasp.
Unfortunately, his left leg was getting tired of supporting his whole body weight and he crutched himself onto the tub's side, where he sat down. If it was just a hallucination and he couldn't remember it, maybe it didn't matter what it said? Except that it did. He knew it did. Maybe if he did something else it would come to him like with the mirror? What if it didn't. What if he never remembered and it just became this thing always niggling at the back of his mind. Dick cupped his face and let out a huff of frustration. He rubbed his face and sighed.
"I'm hopeless," He mumbled before getting up and grabbing his crutches to move back to his room. As long as he knew it wasn't real because it made more sense that way, it had to be, maybe he shouldn't worry about it.