#and Dick just shrugs and makes a pollution mutation joke

[dizaryswrites]

No but you see on the outside I seem okay but on the inside I’m still collapsed on the floor, still reeling from “And I didn’t realize why until I was in the bay one day swimming and I reached back for—” the mental image has just left me ahfjsvfkshrifh

Dick -as a mer- does not understand the existential dread the ocean brings some people. Bruce has tried explaining it, the way staring at the endless, unceasing horizon or picturing fathomless depths while standing on the shore (or swimming in it) can overwhelm the mind and leave you feeling less than a grain of sand. Politely Dick listens but none of it makes sense because the ocean is home and comfort and that never ending horizon is just more space to swim and explore.

Until the day his hand is closing around empty water and that primal dread engulfs him. Reminds him that in all those unimaginable miles of ocean, teeming with life, he's alone.