#Honeslty I think the zone is a gift from God

[thememesthatwerecreated]

Fifteen minutes later, Dick nearly flung his packed bag in the back before slamming the car door and getting in the driver’s seat. He set his phone in the passenger seat and buckled himself in before setting off on the thirty minute drive from Blüdhaven to Gotham.

“Siri, play voice mail from Bruce.”

‘Playing all voice mails from Bruce’

“ Dick I-”

“I know you won’t hear this till you get back but, I–”

“I know we haven’t-”

“I-”

Dick swallowed back, held back his rising panic, and tried to focus on driving. Bruce sounded so unsure, so unlike himself.

“I’m sorry. I- You were right. I don’t listen. Not to you, not to Jay-”

His heart clenched, waiting in anticipation for what he’d begun to suspect. Because someone was injured - badly. Maybe worse than injured. And if Bruce was the one calling...

“Jay’s hurt, Dick.”

Thanks for the ask!

First of all, when I wrote this I was not driving on a regular basis. After getting into a fender bender in the city this writing is way more nerve wracking to me then when I originally wrote it.

This was a bit ago so most of this will be current thoughts/speculation.

I think I was mostly thinking about the structure and purpose of the writing.

Structure-wise, I wanted Bruce's voicemail to be intersperced with Dick's reaction. I think I might have writen Bruce's voice mail before Dick's reation and then chose where I wanted to splice it. So it's very likely I wrote half of this at a completely different time then the other half.

I think for Dick's reaction I was totally in the zone. There are times when I am writing, it has happened most often with this fic, where the words just flow and I'm in the zone. I usually start a scene or chapter with an idea or concept of what I want the scene to be or accomplish, but don't have all the details. However, when the words flow it's like I'm watching the chapter write itself. The details are created and show me the next logical step the story needs to take. Sometimes I'm ending a scene or chapter differently then I expected or with a new plot point I wasn't planning for.

I'm not sure if I was quite in the zone for this part of Dick's reaction, but later on when I connected Jason's death and Dick's trauma of loosing his parents the helplessness that connects the two, that was definatly zone work. Totally did not plan to make that connection going into that chapter.

For purpose, this is Dick's solo/intro chapter, the main goal was to introduce Dick and define his relationship to Bruce and Jason. (Bab's chapter pretty much covered his relationship with her).

One of the main things I wanted to show was that Dick really does love Jason. He's often portrayed as a jerk when it comes to Jason pre-death. I'm not saying that they were close, or even that Dick did a good job of being a present older brother, but he does truly care about Jason, just like he does Bruce. In the chapter after this, I do briefly dive into his regret about not being there for the family in his converasion with Alfred and how he promises to try to change.

Also see how fast he drops everything when he realizes something is wrong with his family. He may be on the outs with bruce and babs but he truely loves them too.

Thanks for the ask! I really enjoyed it! let me know if you have any specific questions about the section that I didn't cover.