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“I’m never getting out of here.”
It was something that, after two months of nonstop tests, Dirk was coming to terms with. Well, no— “coming to terms with” implied a certain level of acceptance that Dirk most certainly did not have. It was more so resignation, throwing his hands up, waving a white flag and surrendering the last crumbs of hope he’d been holding onto. He was a little surprised he managed to make it two months and some change before handing in the towel, but in all honesty, it had been the change in status-quo that had done him in.
When each day was more or less the same it was easier to fantasize about Farah and Todd coming to his rescue, to envision dozens of scenarios wherein he was miraculously saved, and they all went on to live happy, stress-free lives. And then Friedkin had gone and opened his big mouth.
Mind you, Dirk wasn’t sure what had happened to Riggins or why the bumbling lackey he had met for all of 5 minutes was now in charge, but it didn’t really matter. Friedkin seemed less likely to let Dirk go than Riggins had, and even that’d been murky territory. Regardless, Friedkin had been the one to buzz in over the intercom and let it slip that Todd and Farah were still free and out there somewhere (unless he’d had the wherewithal to play mind games with Dirk, which, given the evidence he’d seen already of the man’s logical capabilities, or lack thereof, Dirk was fairly certain wasn’t the case).
One would think that hearing his friends were safe from the evil clutches of Blackwing would have made Dirk feel more positive about the situation than anything. But if they still hadn’t caught up to Todd and Farah after two months, he couldn’t help but think they couldn’t have been trying very hard to bring them in. As much of a cool badass as Farah was, and as stubborn and brave and persistent as Todd could be, Dirk seriously doubted that when put up against the best of Blackwing’s resources, even with their new, seemingly leader, that they’d be able to fly under the radar for so long.
He knew the CIA had been watching him long before Riggins approached him in person back at the Ridgely building, that he could have been brought in at any time. He at least had the universe to… well, not protect him, but at least put him where he needed to be, which had been out in the real world. Todd and Farah weren’t like him. They were just… people, and if they were still out there, then Blackwing had to know what they were doing, where they were, and since they weren’t here, locked away with him, then presumably that meant they were no immediate threat. Meaning that they were nowhere close to jailbreaking Dirk.
So, he thought, I’m never getting out of here.
He was lying on his stiff mattress, staring at the ceiling and wallowing in the self-pity of it all while trying to sleep, (because really, what else was there to do?) when out of nowhere, a strange vision, taking the form of none other than Mona Wilder suddenly appeared before him. She looked ghostly pale in the dark of the artificial night, and her eyes seemed to glow as intensely and vibrantly green. It had been fifteen some-odd years, but he knew it was her; she hadn’t changed a bit.
“What are you doing here?” Dirk whispered to the apparition of Mona. She smiled coyly and leaned in like she was about to tell him a secret. He waited with bated breath.
She spoke, and her voice, though soft, carried through the silence with clarity, “Find the boy.”
Dirk hardly had time to think to ask any follow up questions before the sensation of wet engulfed his entire body, and he felt himself fall through the bed and land on something hard.
He was greeted with more darkness. But now, the sterile stale scent that the Blackwing darkness held, had been replaced by a musty grime and the overwhelming odor of rusted metal.
Odd. Not Blackwing, then? Too soon to say.
It occurred to Dirk that this was very likely just another dream. The reality that he could have been… splashed through his bed in Blackwing by his friend he hadn’t seen in over a decade seemed a bit too much of a stretch not to be just a fabrication of his sleep and stimulation-deprived mind. He dared not verbalize his thought though; fixating on that was a recipe to waking up and he was curious where this dream, so unlike the many that came before it, would go.
He lay there for several minutes, breathing in the warm, thick air, unsure how to go about continuing the dream. Most of the time, things just ended up happening, but he supposed, given this one started out so differently from the rest, he ought to put some effort in to try moving things forward. He maneuvered his arms in the tight space so he could investigate his surroundings a bit more. His hands almost immediately came into contact with a hard sturdy surface above his head in the dark. He shoved his hands up again, hard, pushing against the surface with a grunt. It didn’t give out, but he could feel the surface move, something bumping and shifting. He tried again, more forcefully this time, and felt the world shift under him. For a moment he was in freefall, then suddenly, and painfully, he was not.
Dirk wasn’t sure what this had accomplished for him, other than a sore back, so he simply laid there for some time thinking, alright then, it’s been fun and all, but I think I’m done with this particular dream and would like to wake up now.
This did not happen. In fact, it did not happen with such indifference that Dirk was beginning to suspect he’d somehow died and ended up in purgatory. Was this what purgatory was like? Trapped in a big metal box for the rest of his un-life? Could be worse, he thought, I could still be back in Blackwing… Maybe I don’t want to wake up yet.
His musings were interrupted by the sound of faint, muffled voices. Dirk couldn’t make out what was being said, but it sounded like a man and a woman and whatever they were talking about, they sounded pretty concerned, if the tone of their voices was anything to go by. The man’s voice moved closer, still muffled but louder than the woman’s. The longer their conversation went on, the more familiar he found their voices and he felt a sense of dread start creeping over him. Hang on, but that’s not right, is that--.
And for the third time that night, the world fell out from under him.
He’d heard stories about time in dreams being weird, spanning weeks in what might be mere minutes in the waking world, but had never experienced it himself, and certainly never like this.
Starting with Farah and Todd showing up out of the blue, which in a way, was typical for most of his other rescue dreams. Who else was going to break him out of Blackwing? But usually, they were… in Blackwing. Guns blazing and bursting through the door and running through the halls like the stars of an action film. And it hadn’t started with them either. No, it had started with Mona, with water, and falling through a bed into the boot of a car in a tree in the middle of nowhere, which all seemed improbable enough on its own, for a regular person, maybe, but it wasn’t even close to the strangest thing to happen to him before, so he thought, maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a dream after all. That this was actually happening.
For a moment, at least.
And then, the three of them had gotten arrested, met a policeman named Sherlock who was suspiciously on board with his whole holistic connection to the universe deal, been thrown in a cell, received the disconcerting update that Todd had pararibulitis now, and, to top it all off, had found a wildly whimsical air gun and a very much deceased person in a tree (which was separate from the other deceased person in the car in a tree. Too many dead bodies in trees in this one, so far, it seemed).
It was all a bit… much, and Dirk was finding the idea that this wasn’t a dream increasingly unlikely.
The truth was that, while all the mysterious events of the day (and shit, had it really only been a day?) were, indeed, evidence pointing towards the fact that this was actually reality, Dirk really wanted it to be a dream.
And that was primarily for two very important reasons named Farah and Todd.
He’d already known they were on the run, that much was real whether this was a dream or not. They’d gotten involved with him, and that meant that they’d be people that Blackwing would be interested in tracking down. Still, he’d rather been hoping, despite logic and evidence and previous experience, that maybe it was the case that Blackwing wasn’t very invested in their capture. But if Dream Todd and Farah were to be believed, at least in this version of reality, it seemed that was, unfortunately, not the case. They’d spent the last two months, while he was languishing in the underground floors of that prison, anxiously dodging the FBI and CIA and driving and driving to try to stay ahead of them.
And the second thing, that hadn’t stopped digging at his mind since he’d heard about it, was that Dream Todd had pararibulitis.
Dirk knew well and good that this was not “his fault”. He hadn’t intentionally cursed Todd, didn’t think that merely being present around him had triggered the disease. And yet, he couldn’t help but think that perhaps, had he not entangled himself in Todd’s life, then maybe he’d be better off. He wouldn’t have pararibulitis now.
Yes, it was better, easier, to believe that this was all, in fact, a dream. Real Todd didn’t have pararibulitis, Real Farah and Todd weren’t wanted by the FBI, and the three of them (or rather five, if he included Sherlock and Tina, though he wasn’t sure if they were real out there, or just conjured by his sleeping brain) weren’t all in imminent danger from both Blackwing and this new Case.
When night came and Sherlock half-heartedly shuffled them back into their cells, Dirk was eager to fall asleep and wake back up in Blackwing once more. As the quiet sounds of Todd and Farah's breathing lulled him into an uneasy sleep, he thought about how nice it had been to see them again, even if it was just another dream...