Warning: Suicidal thoughts/ madness

"...And remember that time you were hanging under the helicopter with that shark on your leg? I always thought the anti-shark spray was just a joke from you, but then it really helped. I still don't understand why the shark exploded afterwards. I mean how careful can you be Bruce? And then I always came up with something like 'Holy oil sardine Batman, you're right again'.*

God, I was so naive. You probably could have told me that pigs can fly and I would have still believed you. I guess it was because I was so happy to be fighting with the Batman. But at that time I didn't know what a huge asshole you could be sometimes. I mean, did you really have to slap me just because I disagreed with your actions once? By the way, you never apologized for it prick. And always this 'I'm the hero Gotham needs, but not the one it deserves'. Don't you think that's a bit too melodramatic? Well, I probably shouldn't tell you. You can take the boy out of the circus, but you can't take the circus out of the boy. I'm glad we stopped doing that. It got ridiculous at some point. By the way, Joker's right. You should smile more often. Maybe then you'll have more fun in life someday, don't you think Bruce?"

Dick looked amused at the photo hanging on the other side of his cave. He was in a T-shirt and sweatpants, lying on some blankets and pillows he found in the remnants of his world, and was eating the last pack of chips he owned. Staring back at him from the photo was no other than Bruce Wayne.

 Richard had been here for about four weeks, or so he thought. He spent most of his time looking for usable stuff in the remains, but by now Dick had gone through everything three times. He can't find anything there anymore. Since he didn't find a clock in the rubble, he simply started marking the number of times he slept as days on one of the cave walls with lines, just like a little child. So 29 sleeps equals about four weeks.

And what had happened in the meantime?

Well a few days after he landed here, he started collecting newspapers and magazines in addition to survival essentials. It was initially just to pass the time, but eventually the walls of the cave filled with faces he knew. What started out as just Batman, Robin and Red Robin, as they filled the front page more than once, quickly became an entire gallery of superheroes and celebrities he knew. Consequently of that, it also didn't take long for the isolation to get him talking to them. Dick always had a lot of people around him. He craved conversation, so he talked either to the pictures or to the small voice recorder hidden in his back bracket. Originally it was meant for interrogating or spying on criminals, but in fact of his boredom he now used it as a logbook to pass the time. Kirk always did that too.

So Dick now took the little device and pressed the button on the side while he looked around the cavern:

"Captain Grayson to log, it's a light day outside with some sulfurous haze, they smell worse than the Eggman after three showerless weeks. So the usual. Co-pilot Mr. Wayne is mute throughout, but is still awarded employee of the month for not loosing his cool even in the worst of situations. However, unfortunately the supplies are no longer enough for his party. One food can won't fill our crews stomages. Mr. Drake should come up with a solution for this. The ribs and the burn almost don't hurt anymore, fortunately there was no inflammation, but a scar will remain. At least I can move properly again, so the two defense admirals Todd and Wayne Junior can no longer call me a nicely paraphrased obstacle. Hopefully there won't be any more grumbling on the next mission."

Dick paused briefly as he looked at Red Robin's picture and thought before sighing and continuing in his pseudo-captain voice:

"Mr. Drake seems to have found a worst case solution to our little food problem. Protocol 4.7. hunt and consume the native individuals. With the acid cocktail they always have in them, this will probably be hotter than freshly cooked curry from Starfire. My stomach is already looking forward to it. In the best case the portal opens before and we would finally see something else like stones, lava and monsters. But we can't hope for that. Get the men ready with weapons. We're going on a hunt. Captain Grayson out."

Dick had been lying for quite a while now under a large rock on the slope of the crater where the acid pond was. To avoid a mistake like last time, he had placed himself specially in a positio were the wind would not blow his smell into the crater. Many different monsters came to this soup to drink, be it hellhounds, some multi-headed giant snakes or other beasts. But some he could defeat were not among them. He had to kill something in the next 3 days before he ran out of food and would be too weak to fight any monsters. The food can he still had would not last long. Better to be safe before it would be too late. He had nothing better to do anyway. However, the heat didn't give him much time. So he waited further and made himself reasonably comfortable under the rock. Again and again Dick wiped the sweat from his face and compensated for the loss of fluids with his water bottle.

He was about to go back when again sounds of a new creature reached his ears. A scaly goat with chicken legs and a sharp-toothed mouth was fluttering towards the acid pond. Finally, a critter his size.

Dick crept cautiously into an area of the crater where the wind would spread his scent and hid there behind another rock. He took the katana and cut his hand once with it, so that blood now dripped to the ground. With a quick movement of his arm he spread the red liquid in a semicircle in front of him and hoped that the smell would be enough to attract the cattle. Sure enough, a short time later, the creature's snout moved upward.

It had taken the bait.

Step by step it came closer and Dick braced himself. He had to hit either the head or neck to land a fatal hit and avoid injuring the acid-filled organs. The goat now sniffed with interest at the fresh trail of blood. Dick took advantage of this moment of distraction, stepping onto the rock and jumped toward the creature with his iron bar raised. With all his might he rammed the tip of it into the armored skull. Thankfully it was enough to pierce it and shatter the brain inside.

But it wasn't done fighting yet. The limbs twitched back and forth uncontrollably, like a headless chicken. Dick tried to keep the kicking body on the ground and the sharp claws scratched his arms and legs. But after a few moments, the movements stopped and the creature now fell completely silent.

Sighing, Richard stood up and wiped the sweat from his forehead: 

"Well, that went better than expected. A few bruises but nothing too serious. I should get out of here quickly before anything major comes up again. That would save the employee of the month party." So he took his pray and headed home.

A few days later, Dick could not avoid eating his hunted meat any more. He had cut the meat into strips and dried it over the lava to make it durable. His supplies had run out on him and so he struggled now with himself werever he should eat the flat mass or not. But his growling stomach finally gave him the final push. Hesitantly, Richard took one of the pieces and looked at it. Unlike the meat he knew, this one had a slight greenish tinge. Appetizing was something else.

Dick lifted the piece toward the four photos and took a bite with a: "Thanks for the meal guys."

It tasted like it looked. Tough and sharply bitter, just plain rancid.

Coughing, Dick put his hand over his mouth:

 "And I thought cod liver oil was disgusting."

He almost spat it out again, but what alternative did he had? So he forced himself to keep eating until the entire piece was gone.

Dick washed it all down with water to get rid of the horrible taste and to not throw up. Hopefully this stuff wouldn't poison him.

Annoyed, he looked at the photos.

"Oh shut up Jason! Like you wouldn't make a face at something like that. Why don't you try that crap yourself and then we'll see who's laughing, you fake brunette. Stick your gloating somewhere else. Damian your snooty behavior does not help me right now. I don't care about your opinion.Go bug Tim or something!"

Dick leaned back onto the stony walls:

"Gosh, what I would give for Alfred's food right now. I'm so sick of this shit. Bruce hurry up, so I don't have to eat any more of this crap. Besides, someone has to stop you from screwing up once in a while, and I don't think you want to hire Superman for that job. Well, ain't I right?"

Grinning, Dick looked at the photo of his adoptive father, but his mood quickly faded. Resignedly, he closed his eyes and drew his knees up to rest his head on them. He felt so alone and was afraid of where this would drive him.

"Please hurry."

It took just less than half a year before he stood in front of the acid pond for the first time with the thought of just ending it all. Dick's soliloquies had continued to increase until at one point he became so depressed that they receded. They were, after all only conversations that led him to nowhere and could provide him with no answers. They only served to help him cope with the loneliness. But the more time passed, the more his hope to get out of here extinguished and the stronger the need to simply end this hellish trip grew. Every day the same disgusting food that his stomach had grown accustomed to by now, the same conversations, the same routine. Dick was so tired of it.

All he had to do was let himself fall forward and it would be over. The pungent acid would dissolve him in seconds, leaving him feeling almost nothing as he died. But Dick forced himself not to do it. He just didn't want to end up like this. His hope had not completely run out yet.

But time continued to pass. Half a year became a whole. Then a second and a third. Again and again Dick sought out the path to the acid pool and kept himself from just plunging in. Again and again he killed all kinds of creatures and used them for food and to make new things like weapons. Over and over he reflected on the events in his cave with the photos, treating them like people. Further and further he dulled.

Sometimes he would just sit among all the photos, now joined by all sorts of cave paintings, and let the katana slide over his arms. Small cuts spread horizontally on the limbs and bled slightly. It was not like he aktually tryed to cut deep enouth to end his life, he just did it because he was so bored and didn't even think about what he was doing anymore. He just needed something new in this monotony.

More years passed and by now the Eighth Year had arrived. Dick had gotten used to the monotony and had stopped thinking about just ending his life. He talked more with the now yellowed pictures, stopped the self-harming and also had stopped waiting for the portal to open again. He was not as broadly built as before anymore. He had become very slender and wiry. Just a shadow of the once handsome Nightwing. But what did you expect? With the sparse diet and lack of exercise, due to the temperatures it was no surprise.

This was his life now. Not a nice one, but how goes the saying? You only live once and should make the best out of it.

 He would be dead long enough. And at least there was a small change in his environment. The eternal day became an eternal night. Apparently, the constant red in the sky was merely twilight. This planet was just spinning very slowly. Probably he will never experience the rise of the sun and from now can only witness how the two moons creep they way in the sky as he lived on. But it wasn't as bad as he first thought, because it gave Dick a distinct advantage. Some of the creatures glowed turquoise, unlike him, and hunting became even easier. It was also a bit cooler compared to before, allowing for longer stays outside his cave. The lava flows illuminated the surroundings enough to make out rough outlines, and he had to admit that the world looked much prettier now.

New creatures appeared, swarming over the sky. They were more like glowing acient insects and deepsea creatures than hairless bat-beasts and scaly goats. The Living beings just wandered with their slowly moving habitat caused by the long term spin of this Planet.

Some of them were larger than the entire Batcave and glided gracefully between the clouds with their five pairs of wings, surrounded by hundreds of smaller flying animals. It was like standing at the bottom of an alien ocean. Simply beautiful.

However, over time, Dick noticed how dark spots formed on his skin. At first it was just a small spot on his arm, but by now it expanded and covered several areas of his body. Dick did not know if he was sick or something else. He had the feeling that something was changing in him. Less and less he longed to be near people, and there were situations after the hunt when he felt his teeth were tingling, waiting to bite into something. His senses became sharper, his actions more instinctive.

The tenth year passed when he hit another low point.

Dick had just returned from a successful hunt when something caught his eye. Several of his belongings layed scattered and broken outside his cave. Sheer horror rose up inside him. Panicked, Dick dropped his prey and ran into the cave, through the corridors and into his safehouse. But what he found there was pure chaos. Everything layed around destroyed. The blankets were torn, his supplies plundered. But worst of all, all his photos, which had become so important to him over time and served as a prop against the loneliness, were torn and the scraps paved the floor. Dick sank to his knees and began to rock back and forth, screaming. Stunned, his shaky fingers scraped over the rough rock, trying to somehow scrape together the remains. He didn't even realize how his fingertips were ripped open in the process.

But when Dick realized how he was only compounding the bad situation with his bloody fingers, he clasped them to his head in desperation and began to sob.

"They're gone, all gone, all gone. Don't leave me alone. I can't, not without you, not alone."

Dick fell into a state of shock. He was afraid of what would become of him from now on without the last social contacts he had left. It was driving him crazy.

Suddenly he heard something screech behind him and Dick turned around. One of those food-eating monkeys, twice the size of the normal ones, was hissing at him from the hallway and trying to threaten him. But all Richard saw was the piece of printed paper at the mouth of this predator.

Something in Dick's brain snapped. He didn't know what was happening, but the next moment he held the throat of this beast in his hand in front of him. It protested, screeched and scratched his skin. But the Richard only eyed it coldly, as if he were looking at a simple piece of meat, and again that familiar tingling of his teeth began.

On impulse, he began to bare them like an animal and hissed back, causing the ape to fall silent for a moment. Dick didn't know what was guiding him. It felt like an ancient instinct that he had been holding back all this time and now finally gave in. Before he knew it, his head dashed forewart and his normally white teeth sank into his victim's tender neck, turning everything red.

The monkey screamed in pain, but Dick didn't care. He just bit down harder, which turned the scream into a desperate gurgle and spurred him on to tear out veins and flesh. It satisfied that tingling sensation that had haunted him for so long. He enjoyed the soft texture as he swallowed the shredded parts and the way warm blood flowed down the corners of his mouth towards his chin pleased him. Without really realizing what he was doing, he bit into the now limp body again. Tore out flesh again and wanted to swallow it down once more.

But then his mind returned. Dick's eyes snapped wide open as he realized what he was actually doing. Shocked, he dropped the dead mangled creature to the ground and took several steps back, trembling.

What had he just done?

He felt a hevy substance coat his tongue and the metallic taste made his stomach cramp. Bracing himself against the wall, he promptly vomited his reddish stomach contents in front of him. He had just mauled that monkey like a wild animal and the worst part was...it had felt good. Panic struck him again and he let himself slide down the rocky wall. Sat trembling against it now, cramping his hands in his black dusty hair. Tears streamed down his shocked face as Dick stunned himself with a question:

"W-What's happening to me?"