Original Author's Note

three updates in one day, baby! and with that, I am officially caught up. this will never happen again.

Prompts

sleeping in shifts | tossing and turning | caught in a storm

Chapter 9: the very noisy night

At some point, Dick finds the energy to move to the bed. 

The metal frame creaks under his weight. He lies on his side, facing the cell door, so he’ll know as soon as anyone comes. He doesn’t have much hope that they’ll leave him alone. Dick knows how obsessive Bruce can get. He doubts that Owlman is any better. 

If Owlman doesn’t come back… 

He thinks of Superwoman, an ugly sneer twisting her face. The golden lasso with barbed-wire spikes winding around pale skin. He shudders. 

His head throbs. Dick probes his skull with one hand. He doesn’t find a break. His scalp lights up with searing pain when he pokes it, but he doesn’t find any blood. His hand comes away clean. It’s a bad bruise—definitely a concussion—but it’s survivable. Given enough time, it should heal on its own. 

Given time. Dick doesn’t have much hope for that either. 

If he was back home—

He pokes the wound again and hisses. His head pounds. His face hurts. For a few minutes he can’t think about anything else. Then it fades to a dull pulse again. 

If he was back in the cave, he could sleep. Bruce or Alfred would check him for concussion symptoms and clear him. Damian would wake him at regular intervals, even if he didn’t need to, just to be sure he was safe. All of them would keep watch while he slept. They would make sure he was safe while he healed. 

Dick doesn’t think the concussion is that bad. His vision is clear; he doesn’t feel nauseous or dizzy; his thoughts are about as lucid as they were before. Dick also knows that he cannot reliably assess his own traumatic brain injuries. That way lies madness. With no one else to check him out and clear him, falling asleep is too risky. He needs to stay awake. 

He lies on his side. He watches the door. 

The light in the cell never changes. It’s bright enough to see, but too dim to simulate day. Dick wonders if the wiring was damaged in the attack. He’s pretty sure the Watchtower holding cells were designed to simulate a day-night cycle, same as the rest of the station. He wonders what else was damaged. He doesn’t know the Watchtower quite as well as Batman, but he does know it. If he had enough time, he could find a way out of this cell. 

Enough time, and a working body. 

His ankle twinges. It hardly registers next to the pain in his head. He slowly rotates his foot, stopping whenever the pain spikes. It’s alright. It’s healing. In another day or two it should be fine to walk on, to run on, and then—

Then he’ll still have stitches in his stomach. His ribs will still be bruised. His concussion may or may not have healed. That’s not something he can risk aggravating. 

The walls rattle. 

Dick starts. He lifts his head off the pillow, suddenly alert. The cell is empty. The hall outside—what little he can see of it through the door—is empty. 

What was that? 

He sits up. With some difficulty, he crosses his legs in front of him. He rests his hands on his knees. It’s almost like a half-lotus pose. If he’s not going to sleep, he might as well stretch, might as well work muscles that haven’t moved much in the last few days—

The room shakes again. 

It sounds like an earthquake—a distant rumble, and then everything shudders at once. Dick goes still until it passes. 

What is that? 

He doesn’t know what could shake the Watchtower like that. Even in space—Bruce designed the Justice League’s headquarters to be as durable as possible, practically unassailable. Now… they aren’t in space. Dick is pretty sure of that. When Superwoman held him up and ripped off his mask in front of the world—they were outside the Watchtower, but they weren’t in space. He knows that. 

The Watchtower is massive. Planted in the earth, held down by gravity, Dick can’t think of anything that could move it. 

The room rumbles and shakes. This time Dick hears something else—something that sounds almost like a scream. 

He stands up. Taking care not to strain his ankle, he goes to the door and looks out. The hallway is empty. An emergency light on the wall—just one—flashes a warning pattern. The others are dark. 

It could be a malfunction. Some kind of break in the wiring. Or it could be something else.

Someone’s here.

He knows better than to hope for a rescue. If someone is here—if someone is attacking the Watchtower—that could mean anything. The Crime Syndicate no doubt has plenty of enemies. This doesn’t mean a rescue. It just means that something is happening. Something that isn’t supposed to happen. Someone else is here.

Dick goes back to the bed. He sits down again. His head aches. His eyelids droop, though he has no intention of sleeping. He can’t afford to sleep. He won’t make himself any more vulnerable than he already is. Whatever happens—if the Watchtower really is under attack—he’ll be awake to see it.

He sits and waits. He stands up, paces the room, and sits down again. When a sudden wave of dizziness hits him, he lies down, but he keeps watching the door. He waits for the walls to shake again. He waits to hear something. He waits for a familiar voice in the hall outside. 

When the cell door slides open and startles him awake, he’s still waiting.