𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐍 | 𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘴 -DISCONTINUED-

{1.8} Donna Troy

The bike purred under her, smoothly eating up the road as she drove back to Gotham; it had been too long since she had seen Bruce, and the Annual Wayne Charity Gala was the perfect excuse to return for a visit.
Besides, Dick and the rest of the Titans had San Fran covered whilst she was away.

Jerked out of her trance-like thoughts by a piercing horn, Harper flinched and was forced to violently swerve around an out of control lorry.
The speeding lorry had been swerving straight onto Harper's empty side of the road- for no apparent reason- and directly for Harper, forcing her to hit another oncoming vehicle- this time a jet black van- and be thrown viciously across it.

Soaring off her bike and through the biting midnight air, Harper expected to smash against the concrete, except instead of the unforgiving pavement she fell flat onto-
A surgical table?

With not a second for her confusion to set in fully, she noticed the familiar restraints against her body. Leather cuffs bound her wrists, feet, head and torso to the table as white-masked people swarmed over her.
The bite of a needle crept through her panic, stabbing unnecessarily forcefully into her arm.

The burning sensation began at her elbow, where the needle had entered, but swiftly spread up her arm and through her chest to the rest of her body.
Terrified, she began to squirm against the table as the pain increased with every passing second. The gag in her mouth refused her scream of suffering, her blood beginning to boil and her bones seemingly cracking in and out of place.
Her skin tingled and itched mercilessly, bubbling as if it was boiling or had thousands of small insects crawling under it, every breath felt like a drop of acid on her tongue and in her lungs.

Tears flooded from her eyes as she struggled desperately to escape, writhing on the table like a snake. Her agony-filled pleas fell on deaf ears.
No one would help her.

A gust of wind blew in suddenly, light pooling onto the ceiling above her signalling that a door had been opened.
A silhouette calmly strolled towards her, inky and with no distinguishable features; she begged this stranger for help, to release her, to kill her and put her out of her misery- anything to stop this unbearable pain...
But they stayed silent, unmoving from their spot by her bed.

Strangely, as her vision became more and more blurred by tears, the man's features became more and more clear; curly brown hair, tanned skin with kind chestnut eyes.
"Dick?" She gasped out, her hoarse voice struggling to breathe, let alone talk.

"Dick, help me! Please, please!" She was screaming now, her ragged shriek for help eliciting no reaction from him.
She started hyperventilating, each gasping breathe becoming more difficult than the last, yet Dick did nothing.

As he turned to walk away- leaving her to the torture- her howls of pain grew louder as the scene suddenly changed again.

She shot out of bed, the duvet pooling around her waist as she screamed, the last whispers of the nightmare still lingering.
Bruce, with a rare display of passion and care, laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, wiping away her tears as he pulled her against him with a hug.

Wrapped up in his arms, Harper eventually calmed down enough to recognise that this man was not her usual comforter. Ever since he and Bruce had rescued her from that hell, Dick had been the one to race to her room every night and wake her up, only to climb in beside her and hold her until she fell back asleep. Of course, he had multiple medical machines and monitors to work around, but he made it work.
It had been a week, and still the nightmares had not improved.