#I’M SO SORRY FOR BEING DEAD

[mwarlyn]

the amount of times i’ve just came home and slept this week is outrageous

[lotus-pear]

he’s begging kuni to let them eat pancakes for dinner

[three-semicolons]

I wrote a post a while back about the fun that could be had with Dick’s canonical tendency to hallucinate. This is not directly expanding on that prompt, but does something similar.

This is a classic “Dick sees Jason and quite literally does not believe his eyes” short. It’s my first. Enjoy?

Dick strided towards the front door of his apartment, already shrugging off the top layers of his police uniform.

The day had been exhausting in the most mundane of ways. A pile of paperwork, larger than average but still within a standard deviation of the normal load. There were three separate repeat calls from the same bar a few miles from the BPD office — a regular had become incensed after a bad encounter with hallucinogens, leading him to seek comfort in a place he was familiar with and inadvertently harassing the other customers. Knowing Bludhaven, the man was probably much more likely to become another member of the overcrowded incarcerated population than receive the care he needed (not that the neighboring Arkham Asylum would be a better fit). Dick had assisted in de-escalation, his talent in that field far surpassing the other available officers on duty.

The encounter made Dick uncomfortable, if for a reason far different than his co-workers. The deepest recesses of his mind couldn’t help but notice the similarities between himself and the man he had talked down. Dick struggled with his own delusions at times; never enough to lose himself in them, always cognizant of their nature as hallucinations and managing to work around them, but he was nonetheless a victim of his mind’s creations more frequently than he’d care to admit.

Some days he wondered when the blurred lines would smudge into nothingness. He wondered when he would try to defend a victim of a crime who wasn’t there, or render himself vulnerable by attacking a phantom assailant instead of the real criminal behind him. He wondered if one day he’d laugh at a comment Tim never made and be unable to explain himself out of it. He wondered if one day he’d yell at Bruce over a conflict that never occurred. He wondered if he would be able to handle the concern, the disappointment, that he could already envision painted on the older man. He wondered when he would be the next reason for the BPD to be contacted for a public disturbance, and whether they’d be just as eager to lock him away for the crime of mental instability.

But things were getting better, Dick thought. He’d sought professional counseling under a pseudonym after a particularly convincing apparition of his dead brother almost managed to throw him off patrol. He could handle the anguish he felt at seeing his brother’s swollen, limp corpse, but he drew the line at threatening the lives of civilians. After some counseling, the psychologist had recommended a small list of prescriptions and grounding techniques, and from there he’d marched over to Leslie for long-term management of his medicine.

Things were alright. Never great — sometimes the static of his police-issued radio turned into the whispers of the dead, and sometimes he felt the soles of his boots squelch under phantom coagulating blood — but it was alright.

Everything was fine.

He pushed in the door, and on the other end was the unmistakable face of his brother wearing the costume of the Red Hood, helmet wedged between his armpit and his ribs, hand frozen midway into a bag of Lays Barbecue chips that Dick had left in the pantry for whenever Tim came to visit. Dick watched in awe as Red-Hood-Jason loudly chewed for half a second, paused, and then slowly resumed his chewing.

Dick blinked. Jason blinked back.

And then all at once, his eyebrows furrowed and his green (green?) eyes flashed.

“Are you going to say anything?” Another moment of silence. Jason snarled. “Are you that fucking pathetic? Am I that worthless to you? Do you have any idea how much you fucking failed me? Do you have anything to say for yourself, you piece of shit?”

Another blink.

“…did I really mean that little to you? Was I too worthless for a reaction? Did you care at all?”

Really, hours could have passed, or seconds. Dick had no idea. He felt the careful poker face crafted from a decade of fighting crime struggling to keep itself from shattering. He pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and waited casually as it rang. He gazed onwards, looking at the adult visage of his brother, his eyes glassy enough to suggest he may have been seeing nothing at all.

The phone finally connected. “Hey Leslie?” He began, with a stoic nonchalance that couldn’t be anything but fake, “I think I might need to raise that dosage again.”

The Jason in his mind somehow managed to furrow his eyebrows further. Numbly, Dick thought it was unrealistic to imagine a man with his eyes that narrowed. They didn’t even look open anymore.

Leslie responded. Dick put her on speaker, so her sympathetic voice echoed through the cramped entry of his home. “How come?”

“I’m seeing Jason again. The hallucination is extending to other elements of the world. He’s eating my chips.” Dick swallowed. “I don’t… it’s not- I don’t think it’s safe for me to be patrolling if I’m beginning to lose a grip on the state of my surroundings.”

Leslie audibly hummed. “I can’t argue with that. We’ll put you on a higher dose, give it a few days, and see where-“

And then, once again, the hallucination of his dead brother erupted. “What the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck is going on? Why the fuck are you ignoring me?”

The other end of Dick’s phone stayed silent. Finally, the tentative voice on the other line spoke. “Who was that?”

“Wait, you heard that?”

Both Dick and Jason were now staring wide-eyed at the phone in his hand. Leslie sounded unsure of herself when she responded with a “yes”.

The glassy haze disappeared in an instant. Suddenly, Dick’s eyes were dilated, flicking back and forth between the phone in his palm and the figure leaning stiffly on his sink.

“You know what, Leslie? Never mind. Can I call you back later?”

And, without waiting for a response, Dick hung up.

[qualityrain]

not pictured is joker teaching neku to dodge bullets idk

[yourlocalabomination]

Tick Tock, Teddy-Bear.

[vonvuuu]

Kevin’s Dream Job redraw!

Orig. screencap :)

[xavathun]

i am fucking Thinking about how death is handled in destiny 2 once again.

in regards to guardians it’s almost treated as like a joke or something deeply unserious? possibly even alien in a way due to how we kill and destroy and wreck havoc against our alien foes, but we ourselves never die. it’s really interesting to me cause there really isn’t a lot that can permanently kill a guardian so it makes sense we’d have this perception. like off the top of my head you have weapons of sorrow, hive rituals where the light is drained from a guardian, and paracausal beings which ofc includes other guardians. but that isn’t a lot, most deaths are not permanent and so this perception of death among guardians seems like death really isnt that big of a deal.

we jump off the tower and then get resurrected and have a little laugh about it. guardians constantly kill each other for fun in crucible. we are always doing incredibly stupid shit but we are rewarded because our enemies do not share in our immortality. it’s fascinating bc this not only makes us become riskier as time goes on due to being rewarded (enemies defeated) for our lack of self preservation, but this also makes guardians as a whole uniquely unsuited to handle grief and loss. if you spend your whole unlife winning and thinking that if a friend dies they’ll just come right back, it’s such a shock if (or rather when) they actually do die permanently. and then that guardian has to spend the rest of their immortal, undying life remembering. they have to live with that while they watch the newer guardians flood into the tower with the same naive disposition as they once had.

i’m sure guardians know theoretically they could die permanently at any point, especially because of those like dredgen yor, but i feel like for most it’s one of those things that most would say “well that would never happen to me” until it does happen. guardians seem to just have this inability to let go and it makes me want to bite drywall because i think abt it too long and start going feral. like!! the past may be the past but it sure doesn’t feel like it when you’re immortal and you remember that shit clear as day!!! aghhhh pacing around my room in circles and eating ROCKS

[minpage]

Will Turner :)

[rodysrollerskates]

I project onto rody a lot (i lose sleep over mildly embarrassing situations i get myself into) (consider that a headcanon) idk why rody looks kinda weird here it was the middle of the night when i drew this

[itsnotcasual]

my mom is visiting this weekend if it goes bad i’m taking it out on remus lupin

[gojoest]

[cabeswaterdrowned]

unstoppable force (Adam’s canonical teacher kink) meets immovable object (Gansey being a professor’s soul in a teenagers body).

[ghostvibesonly]

the siren confusing penelope’s instrument with polites’s is NOT helping the odysseus/polites brainrot

[xxspirit]

My son but adult

+

Also omg happy gay month my little gays!! So proud of u all! Keep up the gay work!! 🏳️‍🌈👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏳️‍🌈

[eggrolls-and-fandoms]

[lichqueenlibrarian]

EVEN IN SLEEP