Fix You

Try

The days passed with alarmingly fast speed, slower than eons. One moment Dick would be in bed and the next he would… still be in bed, a week later. At the same time, he was in bed for hours on end, each minute feeling like an hour feeling like a year. It was no surprise, then, that whenever he deigned to lift his head up and look around, his mind was so confused by the hour that he ended hunching back down in his shell for another age.

Bruce and Alfred weren't happy with this turtle business, but Dick could care less. He hardly gave either of them the time of day (though he rarely, if ever, knew it himself) and ignored all attempts on their part at integrating him back into the world. For the first week or so they let him be, probably figuring he was still mentally (and physically, though that was of lesser importance in everyone's minds) recovering and needed time to sift through himself. As a result, they each in turn tried to play therapist and get Dick to talk about what happened, though never with any success. Leslie even tried once or twice, but Dick gave her twice as cold a shoulder and considered doing much worse.

After two weeks, however, the two adult inhabitants of Wayne Manor were beginning to reach their limit. Dick heard daily mutterings about 'needing to move on', 'responding to treatment', and 'responding to anything at all' and blissfully ignored them. He felt sick, he hurt, and sometimes he wanted to die. Never in the literal sense of considering taking his own life, but simply wishing that maybe he would fall asleep one night (or day) and just never wake up. Or at least, wake up somewhere else. One time he did wake up somewhere else, but that somewhere else was the bathtub and it was less than glamorous.

A few days after Dick's initial arousal he finally managed to convince Bruce to let him go into the bathroom by himself and do his business and clean himself up. Other procedures had previously taken care of that sort of thing for him and Dick was well through with them. He figured Bruce only agreed to his request, however, because it was quite nearly the only contact that Dick made with anybody. Friends had been presumably banned from the Manor indefinitely and, as previously stated, Bruce and Alfred were treated as part of the furniture. Quite annoying furniture, to be sure.

Bruce carried him to the bathroom; there was no negotiation there. Dick minded less than he would have thought as his injured leg had been making itself more and more known over the past few days. He had no idea when he'd be able to move it, let alone walk again, but at this rate, he wasn't feeling a particularly strong desire too. Once in the bathroom, Bruce had placed a chair along the wall as well as one in front of the mirror and sink (the shower and bath were still forbidden) and handed Dick a crutch, commanding him very sternly to not, under any circumstances, put any weight on either his leg or his arm (which Bruce had bound up in a sling). Dick had said nothing but was pleasantly surprised at all the freedom he was receiving, despite it only being in the bathroom.

His bathroom wasn't very big, so Dick suspected that Bruce expected him to transfer chairs if ever he needed to move, but he simply positioned the crutch under his good arm and prepared himself to look in the mirror. He'd been prepping for this day since he'd learned the extent of his injuries but still struggled to raise his head. His hand had already felt the fuzziness of his new haircut as well as the cut on his face, but touch and sight were two very different senses indeed. When he'd finally looked up, to say he'd been shocked was an understatement.

The first thing Dick saw was his hair. It was short – really short. Like, shorter than Dick ever wanted to see on his head. It was fuzzy and kind of greasy and stuck straight up and out. But that was the least of Dick's worries. The cut, or soon-to-be scar, on the side of his face was long. It stretched from his forehead to his cheek and was still bright red, despite being closed up. He'd kept his right eye closed, as he'd taken to doing, and he could even see a line over his eyelid. The scar was seared into a ridiculously pale face, especially for someone who was naturally tan, and it traversed sharp cheekbones overlooking gaunt cheeks. The feeding tube weaving its way out of Dick's nose didn't help anything.