asterous

chapter nine

chapter nine - bereft

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SOMEWHERE IN BIALYA
SEPTEMBER 4th — 21:16 EEST

when dick grayson woke up he had only three thoughts on his mind:

i wanna die.

wally.

why are the stars so bright?

dick ignored the first two, sitting up immediately upon realization. why were the stars so bright?

dick took his eyes off of the stars and the setting sun, scanning his surroundings. the fact that he was sweating obtrusively suddenly made sense. he was in the middle of the desert. the very hot, very dangerous desert.

alone.

dick sighed, pulling himself to his feet. why was he here?

...

he... didn't know. he couldn't recall. he didn't fucking remember how he ended up in the middle of the fucking desert. what the shit. at least he had his suit on, he felt better as robin than he did as richard grayson.

dick pulled out his hologlove, running a hand through his hair. it was longer than he remembered, and also curly. he never let it get curly.

how long had he been in the desert for?

dick turned on his hologlove, staring in silence for a few minutes at what he saw. the date... it was september.

it was september?

"what the fuck," dick muttered to himself.

six months? had he been in the desert for six months? his memory was wiped clean—perhaps he was captured? dick checked himself for signs of torture but only found the usual: too many bruises, too many scars.

dick sat back down, pulling his sleeve up and absentmindedly running his fingers over his scars. pressing hard on the new ones.

wait.

dick pulled his sleeve up to his elbow, staring at it in disbelief. there were no new ones. the oldest one was, maybe, a few months old. was he was kidnapped and treated for depression?

didn't seem likely.

dick's heart quickened and he pulled his sleeve back down. he put his hand up to his earpiece, about to call bruce, when something stopped him. an instinct. a memory.

absolute radio silence.

it was a mission. he was on a mission. a mission that called for total radio silence. so why was his memory wiped? he wasn't undercover in the slightest.

suddenly he heard something. a faint noise of... footsteps. marching. people.

dick tucked himself behind a nearby boulder, peaking out as a flock of army-men stomped a few hundred metres away from him.

their uniforms looked almost... bialyan. but that couldn't be right. he's confusing the colours. he has to be. dick anxiously checked his hologlove for his location, almost begging himself to be wrong.

location: east bialya
50°3'41.15"N, 19°56'11.69"E.
42.6km to zugzwang city

why was he here, hours away from the nearest city, in an active warzone? this wasn't like bruce. it wasn't like him at all.

dick missed wally.

but he sucked it up, starting his trek to the nearest city. walking through the desert was going to fucking suck. the last remnants of sunset were slowly heading beneath the horizon and that meant that the desert was about to drop in temperature and fucking freeze.