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Sometimes Dick hated his life. Like in this moment, when the world in his head was crashing into the world around him.
Don't get him wrong, he was used to things at the edges of his life. The form of a collapsed, bleeding out boy that would disappear when he looked right at him or the whispered pleas of people he could never find and would never see again. It was simply how his world worked, falling apart at the seams as he ignored the quiet screams.
It had been a while since they were right in front of him though and he hated every moment of it. Fear toxin would do that to you, line up every failure and disapointment in your life and yank it to the front of your mind. Bodies everywhere, both the ones he didn't save and the ones he put down. He wasn't the golden boy people claimed, he was a broken, broken boy. Still screaming at the feet of his dead parents.
"Dick!"
His head snapped up to look at Peter. When had he gotten that close?
"What was that? Come on, we're going to the hospital."
What was what?
He heard a gurgle and turned to watch Damian choke on his own blood, hands pressed to a gaping hole in his side.
"This is your fault." Batman told him, standing over the body of his blood son. "You could have gotten here in time."
"It's my fault" he repeated the words, familiar with the shame and horror they brought him. "It's my fault?"
"What's your fault?" Peter's voice asked and a hand tugged on his arm.
"Peter?" He looked around but no body was there, just a hand and a faceless man. "Peter? Where are you?"
Amy laughed a few feet away, appearing out of air. "Dick! Look at you, all grown up and a Fed now!" Her smile turned malicious, "Too good for us lowly cops, huh? Leave us to the horrors of this city alone?"
BANG
She doubled over, gunshot would to the stomach.
"You always leave Dick. Anything that happens after that is your fault."
She fell to the ground, gasping as another cop, another friend went down a few feet away. Then another, another, again. The whole precinct of the BPD was down and it was all his fault. His friends dead because he left, because he wouldn't put up with Bruce. Wouldn't put up with the man that took him in.
Peter's voice again, a hand pulling him and pushing him around. He might have been sitting, he had no idea. "Come on buddy. I'm taking you to a hospital."
"No!" No, no, no. bad things happened at hospitals. Hospitals are where people go to die. A strange thought, seeing as he didn't know anyone who had managed to die in one. Peter could help him, would take him away from these people, these corpse following him around. "Take me home, Peter. Take me to your home."
He might have been begging, pleading, or just softly asking. He had no idea.
Bodies, more bodies. These ones alive.
"Daj! Tati! Get off of there! It's not safe."
His parents were laughing above him, twirling and twisting so fast that they were dancing in the air. The platform closer and farther with every swing then his mother was flying through the air, caught by the hands and laughing as she flew. She laughed even as the line broke and they both stopped flying, falling instead.
Twisted and in pools of blood, so large the two became one, lay one Mary and John Grayson. Dead.
"No!"
He could have saved them, told them about the line before they got on the platform. This was his fault. He killed his parents.
"Yeah, hun. We'll be there in a few minutes."
Peter loved his wife with his whole soul and being. They completed each other. Yet, every day he found something new to love her even more for.
"Is he going to be okay? Absolutely bring him here, do you want me to call anyone else to come? I'll get drinks out."
Peter glanced from the road to his friend, leg's curled into the seat staring out the window at nothing. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, this is all my fault."
"Jason, maybe. Hopefully he knows what's going on."
Dick was a wonderful person, but an idiotic self sacrificial one none the less. He'd thought his friends impulsive actions would have ended with jumping off the roof of a building, instead, there was an encore of shoving a rookie agent out of the way to take an unknown chemical burst to the face.
"Leave him alone!"
Peter jerked at the outburst and was extraordinarily glad that he had put the car in park before Dick shouted. Jason had better be fast.
"He buddy, let's get inside. Yeah?" He didn't wait for a response, rounding the car to unbuckle Dick from the seat, ignoring the elbow he took to the gut when he first leaned across the man. "It's just me, Dick. Just me."
El held the door open as Peter led the muttering man inside, his eyes wide and unseeing. Peter led him to the couch, dropping both their bags by the stairs.
"Come on, kiddo, look at me." El knelt down in front of the now sitting Dick, trying to hand him a cup of water. He took it, and held it lightly in his hand, unmoving. "Can you drink that for me?"
He didn't move, just stared at the floor behind them. Peter double checked, there was nothing there. There was a resignation on Dick's face and Peter was almost glad he couldn't see what he was.
"Jason."
El started at the name, not expecting Dick to actually say anything. A moment later the front door opened.
"Hey guys, what's going on?"
Jason came in without knocking and Peter was too relieved to see him to care. Sally, as always, following a single step behind. The door closed a moment later and a small Asian woman followed him into the room.
"This is Cass, she's my sister." Jason pointed to the woman then to each of them. "This is Peter and El."
Peter was pretty sure it was just Dick and the three boys last time he checked but now was not the time for questions.
"Hi. Nice to meet you Cass." Peter tried his best to be as calm as they were but it wasn't quite working. "So, Dick took some chemical gas to the face and refused a hospital."
Jason huffed a laugh, "Sounds about right. Do you know what it was?"
"No?" If he did then he'd have fixed it by now. "It was in a little purple canister, a green gas, he seems to be hallucinating?"
Jason looked relived and Peter was even more confused. "That, we can work with." He took a second to look around the room and spotting Dick's bag on the floor dug through it and pulled out a prescription bottle. "We know all about fear toxin, don't we, Dick?"
"Jason?" Dick looked up, hands on the glass tightening. "I'm so sorry."
"I know your're sorry, we've had this conversation already." Jason knelt down and opened his brothers mouth. "I'm going to give you two pills and you're going to swallow them, alright?"
Dick's jaw clicked as he closed it hard and shook his head. "No, no. Please no. Don't this to me, B. NO!"
El looked pained and Jason closed his eyes briefly before forcing his brothers mouth open and then shutting it around the pills. Hand covering his mouth and nose.
Dick refused to swallow, panic clearer on his face than it'd been the whole time. He clawed around the hand against his face, shaking his head.
"I'm sorry, Dick. But you gotta do this for me. You gotta do it."
Peter's heart sank as Jason forced Dick to swallow the pills through the panic. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. "Jason?"
He answered the silent question. "It's all good. Just antipsychotics, prescription, I promise. A double dose won't get rid of it but it will give him a little more clarity to deal with it."
Peter wasn't sure he wanted to know why Jason knew that or why Dick had prescription antipsychotics in his bag.
Jason let go of Dick and backed off, sitting of the floor next to Cass with Sally laying between them.
"Don't make me do it, B! Please!"
"B's dead, Dick. He can't hurt you or any of us ever again."
Peter had a sickening feeling that B stood for Bruce. He shouldn't be glad someone is gone, he is anyways.
"NO! Wally duck!"
"Wally isn't here right now, we could call him if you want though. He'd be glad to talk to you, haven't in years."
There were times that Peter forgot how much of a life Dick had before becoming Neal.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." quieter this time, begging a spot on the floor.
"Sorry for what?"
"I wasn't there and you died, Jay. I'm so sorry."
Jason didn't respond to that one. This carried on for several minutes, everyone watching as Jason disarmed the panic and hallucinations with facts. Dick seeming to come more to himself each time.
"Don't go!"
"No one's going anywhere, we're in New York right now."
"New York?"
"Yeah, Dick. We're at the Burke's house."
"Peter?"
He exhaled in relief even as he responded. "I'm here."
Sally stands from next to Jason and instead of laying on him as Peter had seen many times, she goes to Dick.
"Sal." Jason's tone left no room for question yet she took another step forward. "Stay."
She hesitated and Jason leaned forward to catch her collar right as Dick gasped at something behind them. Jason swore as he missed the collar by a hair, Sally darting forward, front paws on Dick.
For a half second Peter thought she was helping, then Dick froze. Terror on his face he put a hand above each hip, trying desperately to claw of something that wasn't there.
"No..."
Jason was moving, quicker than a man of that size should be able to, dragging Sally off of Dick.
"No, Cat..." A tear slid down his face. "No, get off me. Don't call me that."
Jason took a step towards Dick and hesitated, not touching him. Sally was a his feet, whining.
"Get off me." Dick was begging, swatting sluggishly at the air.
Peter had no idea what happened, he'd been doing better. From the floor Cass stood and Peter had no idea how she could help with it if Jason couldn't.
She moved to the couch, a foot away from Dick and raised a single eyebrow at Jason.
Jason closed his eyes for the briefest second, then nodded once. Cass, with the confidence of a war vet and no hesitation, moves.
Peter barely sees it. One second she's standing and the next she's kneeling with one arm wrapped around Dick's neck, the other locking it into place.
Jason took a step back, dragging Sally with him as Dick clawed desperately at the arm. He struggles for only a brief few seconds before his body goes slack, unconscious in her arms.
El is up a moment later. "Dick!"
"He's okay." Jason soothed her, going into what Peter could only describe as 'victim mode'. "He's gonna be just fine, El. Trust me."
"You just knocked him unconscious!"
"What he was seeing was worse, trust me." He turned away to glance at Cass who had just checked his breathing and pulse and was trying, and failing to drag Dick into a more comfortable position.
"Heavy." Peter looked at Cass, who was staring at Jason with a limp Dick weighing her down in her arms. "Jay. Move."
"Right, sorry." Jason picked up Dick and moved him down the couch, laying him flat with his head on a pillow.
"Cass?" El asked, dumfounded by her actions and lack of hesitation.
"Dad not good." She pointed at his limp form. "Better now."
Right.
Peter supposed unconscious was preferable to living your worst nightmares.