Chapter Text
It’s on the night of his parent’s fifteenth death anniversary and in the back of a darkened and gritty alley, when the imaginary strings that hold Dick’s resting sanity finally snap.
Despite the many careful layers and tools he’s crafted over time to keep this under check, this time the episode comes out of the blue, leaving him right like the night he watched his parents die with his own eyes; paralyzed and shaking to the core.
It’s terrifying.
Because it feels, in this exact moment and time, as if Dick is dying.
He opens his mouth and gulps a deep mouthful of air, ignoring how his chest rattles as he tries to ride through the anxiety episode alone.
It’s not his first rodeo with these sorts of things; most of the time Dick doesn’t have trouble pushing through the anxiety. He’s gotten lots of experience thanks to his year of being a vigilante, but this time…
This time the panic and fear feels too real, in a way Dick can’t get out of.
The acrid smell of Gotham and the multiple voices talking over the channel—voices Dick should be paying attention to because there’s a mission to be done and currently in course and yet Dick is here, frozen to the bone, useless—is straight up overwhelming.
Trembling fingers push over to the comm button and he stalls, fighting through hollow gasps as he forces his lungs to put some oxygen there. The urge to ask for backup, to ask for help rests on the tip of his tongue, because whatever is happening isn’t… isn’t normal.
While Dick has had a long history with anxiety, it was never to this level of intensity and for the first time in many years, Dick feels scared.
With a deep breath, despite how much it pains him to hear Barbara’s rising voice asking where he’s at, Jason snarling at him to move the fuck over to where the fight is taking place, Damian telling him Grayson stop getting compromised and… and Bruce’s voice, he changes his mind and mutes the connection altogether.
The silence that follows feels deafening.
It doesn’t help make any of this stop, whatsoever.
The fear that has taken hold of him grips harder and before Dick can do anything else, he finds it ten times harder to breathe, his vision going blurry for a second.
God fucking damn it, Dick thinks to himself in frustration as he gulps and tries, multiple times, to get a hold of his breathing, to let some freaking air into his lungs, because he can’t, he can’t be useless.
He’s supposed to be Dick Grayson, Nightwing, a capable vigilante. Someone who the rest of his family and team are waiting for. He can’t be made useless by a simple episode; he must try harder.
He’s fought harder adversaries before.
An anxiety attack shouldn’t even affect him yet as Dick hears the pulsating beat of his heart - beating way too loud for his liking - and the rising aching pain somewhere in his chest, it feels like maybe this isn’t just anxiety.
Like, maybe this is something more serious than that.
The sudden wave of dizziness reinforces his theory, as he subconsciously starts swaying to the side, his legs feeling wobbly like jelly.
Out of instinct, his gloved hands reach to grip the wall, to not fall to the ground. He barely manages to not fall because his knees buckle at the end.
He closes his eyes and focuses on the sense of concrete against his fingertips, just to get the sense of feeling something, in the hopes it will help him ground him back to reality, because everything feels dizzy and not real and he can’t see well and why the fuck can’t he breathe?
In his last attempt to solve this, Dick decides to take off the mask itself, letting Bruce’s number one rule of keeping their identity a secret be damned. He struggles to take it off, his clumsy fingers having a hard time grasping the cowl.
He can’t breathe, his chest hurts, and there’s something… surely there must be something wrong with him because why?
Why does his chest hurt so much?
From that point Dick loses sense of reality. His vision swarms and a multitude of colors flashes through his eyes. It’s the red, yellow, and green that sticks out for some reason, reminding him once again of his parents, the Flying Graysons.
His parents, who are buried six feet under and are gone forever, only resting in his memory and why did they have to leave him?
Why?
Why?
Why?
It’s only when he hears someone yelling for his name that he glances up, with whatever resting force he has left. He blinks, sort of dazed, vaguely feeling the wet sensation of what seems to be tears sliding off his face.
He tries to wipe them away, his limbs moving clumsily and more uncoordinated than he would like and it’s there when he’s greeted with a familiar pair of blue eyes. Blue pair of eyes that reminds him of his Pa, who used to laugh in the morning while his Ma made them breakfast and—
Where do you think you’re going, little one?
So Dick musters the only thing he can think of, voice kind of strangled as he fights through the deep wrecking gasps, “Pa?”
Dick doesn’t get a reply.
Gentle hands touch his shoulders and force him to sit on the ground. Soon enough a paper bag is placed on his mouth, and the same hands that were on his shoulders are now intently rubbing his back.
“Breathe, son,” the voice tells him and if Dick tries enough, he can imagine it’s the voice of his Papa, holding him, his father, someone who despite being gone for more than a decade, Dick still misses so much.
There was so much left to learn from him, from his Ma. So many words and memories that had yet to be said and done and there’s no way back, no way to turn back in time. The only thing Dick can do is reminisce about the lasting memory that time has taken its sweet time to blur out.
“C’mon, chum. Breathe, let it all out.”
Dick wipes the tears clumsily, as he whispers, voice strangled. “I… I’m trying.”
He doesn’t get to hear anything else when his world suddenly turns black.