She didn't know what she was doing here. She didn't even really know what was going on. Œthel couldn't make out a coherent scene, she just knew she was somewhere, and she had to do something, and it was all up to her. She had one chance.
There were others around. People from the ship. People she didn't recognize. Everyone was waiting on Œthel to solve their dire problem, and when she looked forward, she realized she was looking at a computer screen. Okay. She could see right here what needed to be done. "Ensign," she called. (Ensign? Around here she couldn't even excuse herself by saying she'd stayed up late watching sci-fi movies.) After quickly muttering some equations under her breath to make sure she knew where she was in her cycle, she ordered, "You'll need to put all thrusters to maximum burn."
That wasn't right. That was the exact opposite of what needed to be done. But before she could get a grasp of what was going on, her subordinate had taken her order and put it into action, and there was a flash of red. A glowing red light, and a computerized voice warning, "One minute to core meltdown," and somewhere amongst the crew was the smiling face of her Class One mother, telling her, "We all believe in you, Œthel."
After a couple of minutes of walking, Ava finds herself in what appears to be some sort of futuristic control room. She obviously doesn't fit in dressed the way she is, but after she hears the computerized warning she rushes over to the only real-seeming person in the room.
"... uh. We should probably leave." she says to Ethel, pointing the thumb of her free hand at the door. Her other hand is still clinging tightly to her rebar, because there's no way in hell she'll give up her only weapon in these dreams.
Œthel just stares blankly at the control panel in front of herself until the strange voice snaps her out of her daze. She looks over, still completely at a loss.
"We'll never get to the escape pods in time." Her voice wavers like a good starship captain's never should.
Ava heaves a sigh, then gives Œthel a slightly exasperated look. She didn't plan on having to give pep talks during this whole fiasco, but... "Okay, look. None of this is real."
What? Of course it's real. She just killed everyone on board this ship. Right?
She just stares for a second, the feeling of butterflies fluttering around and gnawing through her stomach getting to her. She doesn't know this woman. Not real? And yet there's something about that statement that...
Thirty seconds. She wracked her brain trying to find a solution to this. It was like a nightmare.
Wait. "What do you mean by not real?" she demanded.
"The SparkNotes version? Evil demon thing living on our ship busted out of its prison and is trying to drive us all crazy through our dreams. Yeah, I know, it sounds insane, but it's one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction things." Ava says, tapping her bar against the floor anxiously. She would really love not to get killed by a figment of someone else's imagination, and that's exactly what's going to happen if the other girl doesn't snap out of it.
"Just because it isn't real doesn't mean we shouldn't leave, though."
If this really were one of those cheesy sci-fi dramas that has so influenced Œthel's nightmare, the countdown to certain doom would stop with only a second to spare. Instead, it stops with three seconds left, as the command center dissolves around the two of them. Decidedly less cool, but much more of a relief.
Œthel has to catch her breath for a moment, and mutters some numbers under her breath to get her bearings -- she's lying in order again. That should have been her first clue that she'd been having a nightmare, it's always the easiest way to tell. Then, she turns to Ava. "Sorry about that."
"Oh, thank God." Ava mutters, letting out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Dramatic convention or no, waiting until the very last second to escape is incredibly nerve-wracking when it's happening right in front of you.
"Yeah, don't worry about it. We're not dead, everything's fine... okay, so maybe not 'fine', because I'm still powerless and we're still trapped in a city where everything is trying to kill us, but at least your spaceship isn't going to explode?" she says, hefting her rebar anxiously.
"Spaceships not exploding is never a bad thing." Dick trots up, one leg still not quite functioning the way it should. Probably just psychosomatic, but annoying nonetheless. "Good to see people getting out of their nightmares on their own."
Œthel sighs and rubs her face with one hand. "Two plus two is five. Yeah, that's definitely a plus." She offers a shaky grin, then looks over at the man who approaches.
"Define 'worse'." Ava says, giving Œthel a Look. She debates saying something about the other girl's math being wrong, then quickly decides against it. Besides, the new arrival was hot distracting enough that she could let it go.
"The area of effect seems to be widening," Dick agrees. Also ignoring the math because anything that helps you keep your head straight in this is good. "And the injuries may be getting worse as well." His own hand is still bloody from glass and wood driven into the palm to help focus. "Right now, I think that's the best thing we can do. Keep helping people and keep our wits about us so that we don't get drawn into their nightmares."
Wonderful. She'd been so easily caught up in her own nightmare, helping someone else out of their own was bound to be plenty difficult. (Plus, Dick wasn't that hot.)
"Sounds like fun," she said. "Oh, before we go any further -- every other sentence I say is going to be a lie, just so you know." Might as well let them know now.
Well, that certainly explained Oethel's earlier math error.
"... oh-kay then." Ava says slowly. That wasn't the weirdest thing she'd heard all day, but it certainly came close. (And he is too that hot.) "So, does it matter which way we go?"
"Sarcasm counts as a lie?" Dick nods. It wasn't like it was the strangest thing he'd heard all day, either. "We'll do our best to keep that in mind, but please do your best to keep the lies to something innocuous?"
"No, it's the truth," she replies with as much sarcasm as she can muster. "I'll do my best. Okay, let's go... do whatever it is we're doing." This was going to be a pain.
"Not dying? Helping other people not die? I dunno." Ava suggests with a shrug. She never thought she'd be in a situation where she actually wanted her powers back, but this is kind of an emergency.
"Both good starts." Dick looks around and tilts his head in one direction. "This way first, I think. And stick close. We don't know what we'll encounter and I'd rather have someone at my back if we run into a nasty one."
The fall had been a bad one. One that probably should have killed Dick instead of breaking nearly every bone on the left side of his body. He'd never gotten the entire story on what the doctors were told about how it happened. Whenever anybody asked him, he just told the truth. He didn't remember. There'd been enough head trauma that nobody questioned it.
The doctors had told him from the start that it would be a long road to recovery and, at best, he'd regain maybe fifty percent mobility. There were just too many plates and wires holding everything together to expect more, but he might walk again in a few years. With a lot of physical therapy.
He was on his feet again with a year. They said it was a miracle, but it wasn't miracle enough. Not for Dick. Nightwing was grounded. Forever.
Once he was able to take care of himself again, Dick left Gotham. Went back to New York. Bruce and Tim did their best to keep in touch. Well, Tim did. Even Jason came by to bug him a few times, though he'd stopped. Bruce was...Bruce and Dick heard about how he was doing mostly through Alfred. It was just too hard for him to be in the same city he'd once roamed as a boy, fighting crime when he couldn't even make it to the living room without his crutches anymore. At least he never had to worry about money. Lucius Fox had made certain of that years ago and Dick had a feeling Bruce probably added to the funds. But it also didn't give him much reason to go out.
Then came the unthinkable. A morning shattered by news of a bomb being dropped on Gotham. Nobody knew how or why, only that there weren't expected to be any survivors.
When the news flashed a picture of the hole where Wayne Manor used to be, Dick had enough. He surged to his feet, needing to be there. To do something. To be certain that they were all still alive. His leg buckled under him and send him crashing to the ground, straight through the coffee table. His good hand clutched at the floor, teeth grinding as he started to push himself up.
'What's the point?' a traitorous voice at the back of his mind whispered. 'What use are you? You can't even walk properly, how do you expect to do anything to help? You're useless, Dick Grayson. Can't save anybody. Not Tim or Bruce or Alfred.
Not Blockbuster.
And you expect to be able to help Jason?
Why would he need to help Jason? There was something there, something...
Dick slammed his hand down onto the floor, splinters of glass from the coffee table sliding into his skin. It helped clear his head. Helped him remember--
"No!" he shouted, pushing himself up. His left leg locked, the dream unwilling to let go that easily. He gritted his teeth and bent it, forcing the joint to loosen up. "No," Dick repeated to himself, feeling the mask on his face again as the dream let go by inches. "I don't give up that easy."
Shaking himself, Dick started working his way through the halls, trying to find others trapped in their dreams.
Ava's back home, back in Manhattan. She can't feel the wind calling to her, making her instantly assume that the past few weeks, even the past year and a half, had all been some sort of... hallucination, just a bad dream from which she'd finally awakened. A dark-haired boy, slightly shorter than Ava, stands smiling near her. The glint of orange in his eyes and the suggestion of a pair above and below where human eyes should normally be are enough to instantly put Ava back on her guard. She scrambles for something, anything to use as a weapon and comes up with a decent-sized piece of rebar, clearly left over from some recent construction project.
"C'mon, Ava, let's go home." the boy says, holding out one hand. Her suspicions magnify as she gives the offered hand a skeptical look-- and shoves the rebar forwards. she knows she's right when she feels her makeshift sword go through one of his eyes. The creature abruptly fades back to its usual horribly fluid, shadowy gray form, then collapses limply to the ground.
"Please." Ava says, giving the prone imitation of her (boy)friend a contemptuous look. Her fury at seeing Patrick's face used against her was enough to temporarily override the panic. How many more creatures were there in the alley before she could make it to the exit? She didn't know, and had no way of knowing... but she wouldn't that wouldn't stop her from pressing onward, rebar gripped tightly in her hand.
Toph's strange dreams had always been rather vague and disjoint. Katara had told her to expect nightmares; to be on her guard and in the end, there was nothing really she had to worry about.
She'd wake up a few times a night, but would otherwise roll over and go back to sleep.
Except now... now things were different. She knew she was awake, and she knew that it wasn't necessarily real, these weird visions of masked soldiers, of being suspended from a great height and then falling, falling down into an abyss --
Everyone probably thought that, being blind, all of this would have been easier for her to process. But for her, she was all too acutely aware of air rushing past her, of the smell of burning forests, the twang-twang-twang of metal cables snapping as she fell.
Toph didn't know what she was experiencing, but she knew it wasn't real. She was here. On the ship. Part of her could feel her feet firmly on the ground, untouched, still encased in the crystalline slippers...
She took a step forward and the fall in her mind ended. Her feet slammed onto the ground as though she'd landed straight up. But everything was still... murky. Like she was experiencing two different things at the same time. She could make out the familiar architecture of the ship, but she couldn't see anyone.
She was alone.
What on earth was going on?
"Hello?" she called out meekly. "Is anyone there?"
Dick was searching the immediate area, looking for other people caught up in their dreams. So he was already on guard when he heard someone calling out. At least they didn't sound like they were in pain or much danger.
He turned in the direction of the voice, escrima sticks at the ready in case there was trouble. "Hello?" he called back. "My name is Nightwing. I'm with security on the ship?"
"Nightmare King seems to be making his big bid for freedom. Or, at least, the last one he's likely to get." He stepped forward, hand out. She wasn't one of the kids he'd met yet. "I'm gathering up people in the immediate area. Safety in numbers sort of thing."
Toph took Dick's hand firmly and gave it a rather masculine shake. "Sounds good to me. I'll come. I can barely see out here, anyway. That King guy is making it really foggy in here."
The air was probably clear, and the place just might be brightly lit. Toph can see none of this: all she can see are the contours of what surrounds her, and that ever-present haze of something else in her vision.
Toph's never met the girls Dick hangs out with. The handshake isn't that unusual.
The mention of not being able to see, though, merits a raised eyebrow before he gets a better look at her eyes. "Blind?" If so, she compensated very well. He hadn't even had to tell her where his hand was. "There are a couple of others who are also awake. We'll meet up with them and keep looking."
- and they're mobbing all around him every one of them aiming for him guns blazing missiles screaming scorch marks and shrapnel marring his Zoid's armor as it shrieks in pain and in the flickering strobe-light chaos of his mind he can feel him scrabbling for control a presence like hands grabbing reaching clawing and he is terrified of what is happening around him and terrified of succumbing to him because he fears that when he takes control again there won't be any of himself left -
There's a lurch and then blackness, and Jamie fears for a moment that he's trapped in his mind with him in control, but he wills his hand to move and it does, and he draws it shaking over his face and through sweat-damp hair, and he's so relieved to find that his body is his own that he can almost tolerate the pitch-darkness, but then when he starts to think about it it worries him, and he stands to try to find his bearings, back pressed to the wall and his heart still hammering, hammering, hammering and his nerves stretched taut.
Shuffling and scraping draw his attention and he peers into the darkness, trying futilely to see what's there. The noises cease for several long moments and then its face comes looming out of the pitch black surrounding him starkly visible though there's no light to see it by, all fangs and hot breath and slobbering tongue, but its eyes are squinted shut in a horrific grin that threatens to split its visage in two as it intones, its voice full of sadistic glee:
"You're MINE."
Jamie can feel him jostling for control again but he doesn't know what else to do now but run, run, run like the spineless little shit you are, I'd rather KILL YOU than end up stuck in your head again you FUCKING SONOFABITCH -
Although the other three had been out of their dreams before Dick found them, he's been taking point. It's not that he doesn't trust their abilities to stay out of the dreams they run into, but more that he's certain about his own fighting abilities.
He's just come around a corner when he hears footstep pelting toward him. Dick puts one escima stick back in the holster, waiting until he can see the person. The look on the kid's face is one he's seen enough times to know NOT to grab him without some warning. "Hey," Dick says, moving to stand in front of him. "Slow down there, kiddo. You're going to get hurt."
The man's sudden appearance takes Jamie by surprise and he flails as he skids to a halt, trying to avoid colliding with him. His head snaps back and forth from Dick to the pitch blackness he's just come from. Why is he even running, anyway? The thing with its wolf-face and horrible laughter will find him no matter where he goes, and -
Because you run from EVERYTHING, you pathetic whining little cocksnot, fucking MOVE if you're gonna keep actin' like a little pussy and LET ME -
- and the other thing is inside his head where he can't run from it anyway. One hand jerks up as though to swat at something unseen before Jamie redirects the gesture, if somewhat awkwardly, to rake a hand through his hair.
"Th - ahhhh. Where, um, where'd you come from?" he asks, casting more paranoid glances around them.
"Around the corner." He thinks about crouching for a moment, so that he can see the boy more on his level, but probably a very bad idea at the moment. "My name's Nightwing. I'm with security." It's the best he has at the moment.
"Nightwing. Right. Good. Okay." Jamie's moved to stand alongside him, now, arms held rigidly at his sides and hands clenching into anxiouis fists. He's trying to be calm, even though he's terrified of what's going on.
"Something, uh, really bad is probably coming for us. For me," he amends, in the same even cadence, "but he's a sick bastard so he'll try to screw around with you too if he thinks you've got something he can feed off of. So, uh." He flicks a glance at Dick that's both fearful and apologetic. "You might wanna...find somewhere else to be. Unless you think you can fight him."
Yeah, that doesn't sound so good. He looks behind the boy, the back to him. "I don't think I can. I think the only person who can fight it is you. Because it's not real. All of this is just a nightmare."
Jamie pauses to let this sink in. "...oh." He frowns, brow furrowed. "Oh. "
Well then your new buddy here's screwed anyway, ain't he? 'Cause you can't fight jack shit. So MOVE and let me OUT because nobody WANTS YOU HERE. The tirade is accompanied by the mental equivalent of a hard shove, and Jamie flinches, making a strangled snarling noise that's abruptly curtailed almost before it can be noticed. Composing himself, he glances again at Nightwing with barely-restrained panic.
"...yeah. You, uh, still might wanna find somewhere else to be." Jamie resumes staring resignedly ahead into the blackness. "Really."
"I'm not going anywhere." Nightwing doesn't take up his sticks again, but he does move up beside the boy. "I know we don't know each other, but you're strong enough to fight this. Stacy picked you for a reason, remember? Our stories resonate across the worlds. YOUR story resonates across the worlds. You're stronger than the Nightmare King is."
He had to be, because Dick wasn't entirely certain he could stand up to what was in that darkness. "You only need to break free of it. None of this is real. It's just the Nightmare King making your fears manifest."
Jamie barks a laugh as the voice in his head scoffs. "Stacy. Yeah, no, she's lying. There's no reason she picked me. All I am is - " He cuts off whatever he was about to say, lets out a slow breath and shakes his head. "...she's wrong. That's all."
He looks up again, back into the darkness where he last saw his nightmare. "I've never been able to fight him. All I do is feed him. Even when I tried to kill him it didn't work."
"But he's not here," Dick pointed out. "This comes from your mind, kid. You're the master here, not him and definitely not the Nightmare King. I'm willing to fight with you, but I can't do it on my own."
"I - know that. Logically." Jamie drew a breath and raked both hands through his hair again, a nervous gesture. "And that should make it easier to handle but it doesn't. Logic, it - doesn't work anymore. It hasn't for years."
It is scared and it is hungry. It wants to escape and it wants to feed. It can do neither of these things. Where would it run to? Back to its people, who would most likely have it executed? What would it eat? His host's adrenaline would only sustain it for so long, but could it bring itself to consume one of the other creatures on this ship?
Most of all, it wants to keep good, kind, generous Peter Parker safe. That it will not hesitate to kill for.
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There were others around. People from the ship. People she didn't recognize. Everyone was waiting on Œthel to solve their dire problem, and when she looked forward, she realized she was looking at a computer screen. Okay. She could see right here what needed to be done. "Ensign," she called. (Ensign? Around here she couldn't even excuse herself by saying she'd stayed up late watching sci-fi movies.) After quickly muttering some equations under her breath to make sure she knew where she was in her cycle, she ordered, "You'll need to put all thrusters to maximum burn."
That wasn't right. That was the exact opposite of what needed to be done. But before she could get a grasp of what was going on, her subordinate had taken her order and put it into action, and there was a flash of red. A glowing red light, and a computerized voice warning, "One minute to core meltdown," and somewhere amongst the crew was the smiling face of her Class One mother, telling her, "We all believe in you, Œthel."
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"... uh. We should probably leave." she says to Ethel, pointing the thumb of her free hand at the door. Her other hand is still clinging tightly to her rebar, because there's no way in hell she'll give up her only weapon in these dreams.
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"We'll never get to the escape pods in time." Her voice wavers like a good starship captain's never should.
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She just stares for a second, the feeling of butterflies fluttering around and gnawing through her stomach getting to her. She doesn't know this woman. Not real? And yet there's something about that statement that...
Thirty seconds. She wracked her brain trying to find a solution to this. It was like a nightmare.
Wait. "What do you mean by not real?" she demanded.
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"Just because it isn't real doesn't mean we shouldn't leave, though."
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If this really were one of those cheesy sci-fi dramas that has so influenced Œthel's nightmare, the countdown to certain doom would stop with only a second to spare. Instead, it stops with three seconds left, as the command center dissolves around the two of them. Decidedly less cool, but much more of a relief.
Œthel has to catch her breath for a moment, and mutters some numbers under her breath to get her bearings -- she's lying in order again. That should have been her first clue that she'd been having a nightmare, it's always the easiest way to tell. Then, she turns to Ava. "Sorry about that."
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"Yeah, don't worry about it. We're not dead, everything's fine... okay, so maybe not 'fine', because I'm still powerless and we're still trapped in a city where everything is trying to kill us, but at least your spaceship isn't going to explode?" she says, hefting her rebar anxiously.
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"Is it getting worse?"
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hotdistracting enough that she could let it go."Do we just... keep helping people, or what?"
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"Sounds like fun," she said. "Oh, before we go any further -- every other sentence I say is going to be a lie, just so you know." Might as well let them know now.
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"... oh-kay then." Ava says slowly. That wasn't the weirdest thing she'd heard all day, but it certainly came close. (And he is too that hot.) "So, does it matter which way we go?"
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The doctors had told him from the start that it would be a long road to recovery and, at best, he'd regain maybe fifty percent mobility. There were just too many plates and wires holding everything together to expect more, but he might walk again in a few years. With a lot of physical therapy.
He was on his feet again with a year. They said it was a miracle, but it wasn't miracle enough. Not for Dick. Nightwing was grounded. Forever.
Once he was able to take care of himself again, Dick left Gotham. Went back to New York. Bruce and Tim did their best to keep in touch. Well, Tim did. Even Jason came by to bug him a few times, though he'd stopped. Bruce was...Bruce and Dick heard about how he was doing mostly through Alfred. It was just too hard for him to be in the same city he'd once roamed as a boy, fighting crime when he couldn't even make it to the living room without his crutches anymore. At least he never had to worry about money. Lucius Fox had made certain of that years ago and Dick had a feeling Bruce probably added to the funds. But it also didn't give him much reason to go out.
Then came the unthinkable. A morning shattered by news of a bomb being dropped on Gotham. Nobody knew how or why, only that there weren't expected to be any survivors.
When the news flashed a picture of the hole where Wayne Manor used to be, Dick had enough. He surged to his feet, needing to be there. To do something. To be certain that they were all still alive. His leg buckled under him and send him crashing to the ground, straight through the coffee table. His good hand clutched at the floor, teeth grinding as he started to push himself up.
'What's the point?' a traitorous voice at the back of his mind whispered. 'What use are you? You can't even walk properly, how do you expect to do anything to help? You're useless, Dick Grayson. Can't save anybody. Not Tim or Bruce or Alfred.
Not Blockbuster.
And you expect to be able to help Jason?
Why would he need to help Jason? There was something there, something...
Dick slammed his hand down onto the floor, splinters of glass from the coffee table sliding into his skin. It helped clear his head. Helped him remember--
"No!" he shouted, pushing himself up. His left leg locked, the dream unwilling to let go that easily. He gritted his teeth and bent it, forcing the joint to loosen up. "No," Dick repeated to himself, feeling the mask on his face again as the dream let go by inches. "I don't give up that easy."
Shaking himself, Dick started working his way through the halls, trying to find others trapped in their dreams.
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Ava's back home, back in Manhattan. She can't feel the wind calling to her, making her instantly assume that the past few weeks, even the past year and a half, had all been some sort of... hallucination, just a bad dream from which she'd finally awakened. A dark-haired boy, slightly shorter than Ava, stands smiling near her. The glint of orange in his eyes and the suggestion of a pair above and below where human eyes should normally be are enough to instantly put Ava back on her guard. She scrambles for something, anything to use as a weapon and comes up with a decent-sized piece of rebar, clearly left over from some recent construction project.
"C'mon, Ava, let's go home." the boy says, holding out one hand. Her suspicions magnify as she gives the offered hand a skeptical look-- and shoves the rebar forwards. she knows she's right when she feels her makeshift sword go through one of his eyes. The creature abruptly fades back to its usual horribly fluid, shadowy gray form, then collapses limply to the ground.
"Please." Ava says, giving the prone imitation of her (boy)friend a contemptuous look. Her fury at seeing Patrick's face used against her was enough to temporarily override the panic. How many more creatures were there in the alley before she could make it to the exit? She didn't know, and had no way of knowing... but she wouldn't that wouldn't stop her from pressing onward, rebar gripped tightly in her hand.
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She'd wake up a few times a night, but would otherwise roll over and go back to sleep.
Except now... now things were different. She knew she was awake, and she knew that it wasn't necessarily real, these weird visions of masked soldiers, of being suspended from a great height and then falling, falling down into an abyss --
Everyone probably thought that, being blind, all of this would have been easier for her to process. But for her, she was all too acutely aware of air rushing past her, of the smell of burning forests, the twang-twang-twang of metal cables snapping as she fell.
Toph didn't know what she was experiencing, but she knew it wasn't real. She was here. On the ship. Part of her could feel her feet firmly on the ground, untouched, still encased in the crystalline slippers...
She took a step forward and the fall in her mind ended. Her feet slammed onto the ground as though she'd landed straight up. But everything was still... murky. Like she was experiencing two different things at the same time. She could make out the familiar architecture of the ship, but she couldn't see anyone.
She was alone.
What on earth was going on?
"Hello?" she called out meekly. "Is anyone there?"
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He turned in the direction of the voice, escrima sticks at the ready in case there was trouble. "Hello?" he called back. "My name is Nightwing. I'm with security on the ship?"
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"Hi!" she called. "I'm Toph. I just ... live here?"
That was a good enough explanation.
"What's going on?"
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The air was probably clear, and the place just might be brightly lit. Toph can see none of this: all she can see are the contours of what surrounds her, and that ever-present haze of something else in her vision.
"Where are we going to go?"
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The mention of not being able to see, though, merits a raised eyebrow before he gets a better look at her eyes. "Blind?" If so, she compensated very well. He hadn't even had to tell her where his hand was. "There are a couple of others who are also awake. We'll meet up with them and keep looking."
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And they're off.
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There's a lurch and then blackness, and Jamie fears for a moment that he's trapped in his mind with him in control, but he wills his hand to move and it does, and he draws it shaking over his face and through sweat-damp hair, and he's so relieved to find that his body is his own that he can almost tolerate the pitch-darkness, but then when he starts to think about it it worries him, and he stands to try to find his bearings, back pressed to the wall and his heart still hammering, hammering, hammering and his nerves stretched taut.
Shuffling and scraping draw his attention and he peers into the darkness, trying futilely to see what's there. The noises cease for several long moments and then its face comes looming out of the pitch black surrounding him starkly visible though there's no light to see it by, all fangs and hot breath and slobbering tongue, but its eyes are squinted shut in a horrific grin that threatens to split its visage in two as it intones, its voice full of sadistic glee:
"You're MINE."
Jamie can feel him jostling for control again but he doesn't know what else to do now but run, run, run like the spineless little shit you are, I'd rather KILL YOU than end up stuck in your head again you FUCKING SONOFABITCH -
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He's just come around a corner when he hears footstep pelting toward him. Dick puts one escima stick back in the holster, waiting until he can see the person. The look on the kid's face is one he's seen enough times to know NOT to grab him without some warning. "Hey," Dick says, moving to stand in front of him. "Slow down there, kiddo. You're going to get hurt."
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Because you run from EVERYTHING, you pathetic whining little cocksnot, fucking MOVE if you're gonna keep actin' like a little pussy and LET ME -
- and the other thing is inside his head where he can't run from it anyway. One hand jerks up as though to swat at something unseen before Jamie redirects the gesture, if somewhat awkwardly, to rake a hand through his hair.
"Th - ahhhh. Where, um, where'd you come from?" he asks, casting more paranoid glances around them.
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"Something, uh, really bad is probably coming for us. For me," he amends, in the same even cadence, "but he's a sick bastard so he'll try to screw around with you too if he thinks you've got something he can feed off of. So, uh." He flicks a glance at Dick that's both fearful and apologetic. "You might wanna...find somewhere else to be. Unless you think you can fight him."
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Well then your new buddy here's screwed anyway, ain't he? 'Cause you can't fight jack shit. So MOVE and let me OUT because nobody WANTS YOU HERE. The tirade is accompanied by the mental equivalent of a hard shove, and Jamie flinches, making a strangled snarling noise that's abruptly curtailed almost before it can be noticed. Composing himself, he glances again at Nightwing with barely-restrained panic.
"...yeah. You, uh, still might wanna find somewhere else to be." Jamie resumes staring resignedly ahead into the blackness. "Really."
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He had to be, because Dick wasn't entirely certain he could stand up to what was in that darkness. "You only need to break free of it. None of this is real. It's just the Nightmare King making your fears manifest."
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He looks up again, back into the darkness where he last saw his nightmare. "I've never been able to fight him. All I do is feed him. Even when I tried to kill him it didn't work."
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Most of all, it wants to keep good, kind, generous Peter Parker safe. That it will not hesitate to kill for.