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The days blend together. It’s a mess of dull watercolour paint: midnight cereal, painkillers dry-swallowed as the sun rises, and skipped showers. Here’s another day where Dick wakes up in the afternoon and can’t bring himself to get out of bed.
His limbs weigh like lead, but mostly the effort to even engage his muscles seems like a monumental task. He’s lying on his chest, neck at an uncomfortable angle, but he’s not moving anytime soon, so he’ll have to deal with it. A dull pain settles in his stomach and Dick tries to remember the last time he ate.
It must be hunger, the pain. He tries to picture his fridge; finds it empty. He should get groceries. Maybe he still has cereal. It’s the easiest thing he can eat.
He’s tired. He closes his eyes.
When he opens them next, it’s dark. He doesn’t allow himself time to think, throwing himself out of bed and bracing himself as dizziness threatens to overtake his vision. A glance at his clock tells him he probably won’t have time to eat before patrol. Coffee it is.
He navigates the darkness of his barren apartment. It’s unfamiliar but there’s nothing actually making a mess that he could run into. The last time he had actual personal belongings with him was the apartment in Blüdhaven that got blown up by Blockbuster, and even then it had taken a year before he was comfortable with giving things sentimental value, not after the ways he left his last places of living. Now, after that and after – Chemo, he doesn’t see a point in having personal belongings. It would only hurt again.
Alfred has always commented on it. His places always look like there’s no one living there, and the thing is, Dick isn’t living there at all. He doesn’t have a life outside of being Nightwing, and with what happened with Blockbuster and the BPD, he shouldn’t anyway. Dick Grayson shouldn’t be a life; it’s a cover, the way Bruce Wayne is Batman’s cover.
Dick puts on the Nightwing suit, his muscles aching as he stretches while the coffee machine whirs. The thought of actually putting anything in his mouth makes his tongue taste like ash, so he throws back the espresso when it’s done.
His eyes catch on a pistol on the kitchen counter. He might not be a cop anymore, might not have his standard-issue, but he still keeps a loaded gun. This one, Dick didn’t put away after last night. It sits innocently under the gleam of moonlight, and the safety being on is no assurance. He leaves it there and goes to retrieve his escrima sticks.
It’s – quick. Preparing to be Nightwing. By the time he’s ready, he still hasn’t shaken off the lethargy. At this point, there’s only one thing that can.
New York is completely different from Blüdhaven. It’s a cesspool of a city, yes, but if New York is a septic tank, then Blüdhaven was a radioactive nuclear waste dump.
Literally. Fuck.
He shakes himself out of his own head by throwing himself off a building. That’s one good thing about New York—its buildings are on average much taller, unlike the occasional skyscrapers in Blüdhaven that come in between the shorter buildings and throw off his rhythm. It had taken years to get used to Blüdhaven so that he could navigate it better than he could navigate the Batcave, but by now it doesn’t even matter. New York at least is easier to swing around. So that’s what he does.
This is the only time he feels alive. Adrenaline is his lifeblood and wind wraps around him as he falls. His heart sings, comes to a crescendo when he catches himself moments from the ground, and he feels it beating in his throat. He can do this forever.
Forever isn’t long when he hears a robbery called in on the police radio keyed into his ear. He changes the trajectory of his current swing and runs. The robbers stole from a high-end jewellery store, and if Nightwing waits for the police to do their job, the robbers would be in the wind.
He lands in the middle of them. A quip he won’t remember drops from his lips like a reflex. Fighting is – easy. Too easy.
Nightwing lets them get a couple of hits in. When he leaves them tied up, he has a few bruises that would hurt the next day. Good.
The night is uneventful. He’s used to the never-ending scum that scurry out the woodworks after midnight in Blüdhaven, so even with the big section of New York he’s taken a bite out of, the amount of crime in New York is underwhelming. He supposes it’s because he’s there as Nightwing solo, not as a Titan. The heroes who had occupied New York in the past—the Teen Titans and a statistically improbable number of Green Lanterns—protected them from the big threats, from supervillains and kaijus. Only a few of them had time for the little crimes, the ones that matter to the individuals. The ones that he stops won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but to the victim, who is just as human, it could mean the world.
He doesn’t do it for the ego, but seeing the relief in a victim, or just hearing a word of thanks—it makes him feel worth it. It makes him keep going, because if Nightwing can even save one person then there is some worth to doing this, even if it kills him.
There’s a jumper, and Nightwing doesn’t make it in time. Sunrise comes before he can throw himself into another fight.
He slinks back to his apartment. The bruises hurt now, but there’s no other injury. No open wound he can dig into just to feel something.
The sweat and exhaustion and failure weighs on him, the Nightwing suit restricting, and he feels like he’s back on that rooftop, Blockbuster’s blood in his mouth and concrete on his back. Failure hurts , but the thought that he’s disappointed Bruce was so much more incapacitating than the gunshot ringing in his ears that it had rendered him catatonic, and the weight of those past days made him feel disgusted, even more so when she—
He locks the memory up tight, swallows the key. It sits in his gut like a stone pit that will never go away.
He peels the Nightwing suit off like it burns, throwing it away from him with disgust. He doesn’t put on a shirt, just old sweats he hasn’t washed in – a long time. He stands in front of the mirror and pushes on the purpling bruise. It hurts, starling a gasp from him, but like this he’s not thinking.
He wants to keep the pain at the pit of his stomach as well, but any more hunger and he’ll be incapacitated, unable to do his job as Nightwing in the future, so he wills himself to eat. He turns on the TV so he’s not alone in his own head, then makes his way to the kitchen with intent to eat.
Instead, he sits at the kitchen counter, next to the gun like an old friend. All he has to do is get a bowl and cereal. His milk should be expired, but just cereal is fine. It's nonperishable, and it’s easy . His friends make fun of him for it, but it’s easy. All he has to do is get it, pour some out in a bowl. It should be easy.
But then he’d have to eat it. Lift it to his mouth, exert effort to chew, taste it, swallow. That’s – a lot. He doesn’t know if he can do it. He doesn’t know if he can do this everyday for the rest of his life.
He eyes the gun. The apathy wraps around his throat like a snake and the beautiful angles of the weapon is a temptation. This would be easier than breathing, especially when breathing is more difficult and painful these days. He wouldn’t have to do it for the rest of his life. Wouldn’t have to tread the fog in his mind, wouldn’t have to taste the ash ever present on his tongue, wouldn’t have to go out every night and constantly disappoint the man who made him the person he is today. He wouldn’t even have to get up from this stool to make cereal for himself.
The gun is heavy in his palm, even more so when he flicks the safety off. Just get it over with, he tells himself. He doesn't point it at anything, not yet, merely leans forward so his forehead is resting against the cool side of the barrel. This would be the easiest action he’s taken in days, weeks, months. In a year, maybe more, because nothing has been easy since Chemo – no, since Renegade, since Blockbuster. Maybe since the last time he just hung out with Tim, before Stephanie Brown died, before Tim was no longer Robin for a time. Maybe since Jason and Aspen, proof of it burned up in the ruins of his blown up apartment. Maybe since it was just Wonder Girl and Aqualad and Speedy and Kid Flash and Robin. Maybe he hasn’t breathed easily since his parents died, because how can you breathe easily after that? – (By being better. By being Nightwing, better than Batman. By not letting your grief define you. He doesn’t remember how to do that.)
He clicks the safety on. Off again.
He will come to a decision later. And after days of doing this same song and dance, coming home to this gun, conveniently forgetting to put it away, and finding it tempting him the same way the next day, he would make a decision. Maybe the decision would be to put the gun down. Maybe that would be the decision for the next few weeks, months. But in the end, there will be a day where he chooses to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger to blow his own brains out. In the end, the gun is there which means it has to be fired. But if he chooses to pull the trigger today, wouldn’t he be able to save himself the effort of barely living out those next few months? He could just get the facade of living over and done with right now. It would be easy.
He angles the gun back slightly until the mouth of the barrel is kissing his forehead. He thinks of what Bruce told him when he woke up after he was found in the wreckage of Blüdhaven after Chemo. How he could never forgive Dick for losing sight of the worth of his own life. As if he’s worth something.
If he pulls the trigger, Bruce will never forgive him. But it’s okay, because he won’t have to live with the consequences. It’s easy like that.
He’s thinking too much. If he thinks any more then he will not do this. Just do it. Just get it over with. Why is he still—
He hears his name on TV
“— Nightwing murdered these people? ”
“ I don’t know, Clarisse, but he’s definitely going too far in his own brand of vigilante justice this way .”
Dick freezes in the stillness of his apartment, freezing cold metal almost burning a brand into his skin. Just do it – just…
“ —he murdered these criminals! Just gang members! ”
“ Exactly! Even the police don’t execute so lightly. ”
Dick walks to stand in front of his TV. Safety on. Safety off.
The news tells him Nightwing killed gangbangers. There were witnesses. A copy-cat then.
The grip on the gun is unbreakable. His fingers don’t uncurl and he feels every muscle in his body wired up too tight. Dick clicks the safety on, then pushes against a bruise on his rib. The pain winds him, shorts out his thoughts for a moment. He’s left gasping, leaning over the counter, but the gun has dropped to the ground
He picks it up, places the gun back on the kitchen counter. It won’t be today. It will be more effort, it will be more pain. But he has a job to do.