New concoctions were constructed every minute with the sole purpose of torturing Nightwing. At least, that's what he thought. Every other week there'd be a chemist or doctor who decided that instead of curing all the diseases that plagued the world, they'd make something else that Nightwing would waste his time on finding an antidote for. He should be out enjoying his youth, getting drunk in dive bars or building the foundations for a good career that'd see him retiring early. Instead, he sat in his office with makeshift lab equipment using his relatively lacking chemistry and biology knowledge to find an antidote. 

Tonight was no different. Unlike the many times before when he'd been hit with unknown powders, injected with anonymous liquids and sprayed by unspecified gases, the attacker hadn't stuck around to give a lengthy speech on all the horrible things that would come after. He felt fine but he knew better than to write it off as a failed experiment. Just because the effects weren't immediate didn't mean they were non-existent. It could be long-lasting or activated in some way at a later stage. Whatever it was, he'd find it, rid his body of it and get on with his job. 

Dick knew that he could last 80 hours without sleep. Granted, he'd be sweaty, exhausted and not performing at his usual best but he could do it. He didn't like to but there were times when he didn't have a choice. He was currently on hour 40 without sleep. It was difficult to relax knowing something was coursing through his veins that he didn't know the effects of and he didn't fancy his chances if it turned out to be some new wonder drug that would keep him in a coma.

Unfortunately, whatever he'd been dosed with was certainly tricky. He couldn't even be sure if it was in his system anymore. His levels were normal, his heart rate was healthy, and cognitive tests were fine if not skewed slightly by his sleep deprivation. Dick tried running his blood through the database of Batman's known drugs since most of the chemicals he encountered were made in Gotham and then trickled down to Bludhaven. When that came up with nothing, he ran it against the Justice League's database. The world wasn't so small anymore and he didn't want to discount someone lucking out with an alien. He came up empty-handed then.

In lieu of an answer, he decided to flush it out. Charcoal was never fun, he swore up and down all those people adding charcoal to make food black didn't have tastebuds, but it did the job pumping his stomach would otherwise do. He wouldn't go there just yet. Stomach pumps were hard to come by and he didn't fancy trying to do it alone. He could go back to the Batcave. They had better equipment, more hands than they knew what to do with and more qualified people than himself. They wouldn't need a YouTube tutorial to remind them of the osmosis process.

However, with all those pros came the cons of returning home and being unable to leave until given the all-clear. Sure things were better than they once were but the constant bickering only broken by oppressive silences wasn't his idea of a good time. He'd keep it in the back pocket. His little get-out-of-jail-free card. It would also be his free food for a week card.

When it got to hour 70 and he was sure that he wasn't going to die, he called it a night. Third night to be exact. He'd exhausted all his coffee and energy drink supply too. He reasoned that whatever results he saw now could just as easily be attributed to caffeine and his body getting pissed at the lack of rest. He shut the lab down for the night and trudged off to bed. 

Some would expect that after a long few days of staying awake, the moment you hit a pillow you'd be dead asleep. They would be right in a majority of cases. Not his though. No, whoever was up there torturing him from his conception decided that even when he'd surpassed the time you could stay awake without major consequences, sleep would still come with work. Fortunately, not every chemist or doctor out there was putting their hard-earned degrees towards crime. 

The Z drugs (zolpidem, zopiclone and zaleplon) were firmly off the list of options he had. Whilst they did a good job of getting him to sleep and didn't have that hangover feeling other sleep medications had, they could cause sleepwalking. He was already familiar with sleepwalking and had an episode of it every other month. Given that he might have some unknown drug coursing through his body, he decided not to take something that wasn't recommended for those with lung problems. The last thing he needed was to die sleepwalking his way to the local coffee shop.

Antihistamines were never really his friend. They made his night terrors all the more visceral and he found it difficult to wake up from. He kept them around as a last resort but they weren't his go-to. He was sure the packet he kept in the mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom was two years out of date.

Melatonin wasn't great. It could muffle the background noise of his brain at the very least. He tried not to use it often so the times he did, it worked better. He wasn't sure what the actual science of that habit was but he felt like it was medically possible.

So as he settled in for the night, he took two melatonin, turned on a fan since studies found colder environments could be a sleep aid and put on some show he didn't really care about. He curled up and closed his eyes. 

Not once did he fall asleep. He shrugged to himself, guessing he was still filled with lingering dread that at any moment something would happen. One of the downsides to living alone was if anything were to happen, he'd have to hope someone checked in on him. There was no one sitting in the other room who'd be alerted by a thump and his neighbours couldn't care less about him. His brain was probably stuck thinking if he went to sleep and choked or went into cardiac arrest, he'd go silently into the night no matter if he screamed or not. 

Relenting that he'd need something stronger, he grabbed the spare packet of antihistamines. He didn't need a good sleep after all. Just sleep. He wanted to be still for a few hours so as not to feel like his skin was too close and tight around his bones. He retrieved the pills from the cabinet and popped them in his mouth as he adjusted the curtains to block out the sunlight. He collapsed back on the bed and resumed his sleeping attempt.

He failed. He didn't sleep.

All that left was to do all the natural sleep aids and try again. He couldn't take anymore sleep medication anyway. He drank a few cups of tea that had all been marketed as sleep teas, did a short workout to tire himself out, sat in the dark with no sound, took a warm bath, and found sleep-inducing videos. Nothing. He was still wide awake and as he lay there, too tired to function but apparently not tired enough to sleep, he counted how many hours he'd been awake. Too long he concluded.

Out of the many botched entrances the Batcave had been home to, Dick almost flying over the handle bars of his motorbike wasn't the worst he'd done but it was certainly not the best. His chest would beg to differ. Bruce glanced up as if the screeching tyres were just a pen clattering on the ground. He watched as Dick scrambled off his bike, uncoordinated and wobbly, then pulled off his helmet to reveal deep dark circles around his eyes. 

"What happened?" he asked. There hadn't been an emergency call so he wasn't giving the hospital a heads-up just yet but it certainly had him out of his seat. 

"Hoping your chemistry degree isn't just a pretty piece of paper," Dick answered. He shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a binder of papers that seemed hastily put together. Paper slipped out onto the floor but he kept storming towards him and shoved them into his mentor's hands. "Unknown toxin delivered in gas. Not picked up on blood tests, no physical or mental symptoms other than inability to sleep. Ran it through all databases but it's new. No prior history." 

Bruce raised an eyebrow and began skimming through the papers. 

"No hospital admissions under sleep deprivation so I'm patient zero. I've tried charcoal to flush it out even when it didn't show up on the blood test."

"And that didn't work?"

"Look at me, do you think it worked?" 

"Irritability a symptom?"

"Ha ha," Dick huffed. "Sleep medication was a dud. Melatonin and antihistamines did nothing. I've been caffeine-free for the last two days, exercising till the point of failure and every sleep trick the internet had including self-hypnosis. Even tried one of the Z drugs at the risk of eating raw chicken in my sleep. Nothing."

"So it's counteracting sleep medication but it's not showing up on blood tests?"

"Everything else is working normally. Apart from the symptoms connected to sleep deprivation of course but otherwise, healthy as a horse," he explained. "Which can't happen. Something is wrong but that something isn't coming up on the equipment. My only explanation is my shit isn't working properly but I checked. If you've taught me anything, it's to check. Ran a blood test again and all it picked up was my sleep medication."

"When was the last time you slept?" Bruce asked. 

"Bordering on a week. Hard to say when I could be microsleeping without knowing. Saw that on an episode of House MD but somehow I don't think I have the plague," he answered. "So I figured I'd come to you."

"After a week? Why didn't you come sooner?"

"I don't sleep a lot anyway, keep up. Point is, I'm coming to you now and I want the works with your fancy equipment that almost made a dent in your net worth. Maybe it'll pick up something mine didn't."

"None of your blood tests have your prescriptions on it. Did you rule those out or have you not been taking them?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means what I said."

"Can't remember the days, let alone the time."

"That's why you have alarms."

"I think the unknown toxin running around my system is more concerning than getting a little sad and antsy," he argued. "Now will you give me the tests or did you want to chat some more about my medical history?" Bruce stared at him for a moment too long before guiding him to the lab. 

The hope that had filled Dick when he first entered the cave now disapated. All the blood tests came back normal. There was no reason for him to be unable to sleep. He could cry. He wouldn't, not in front of Bruce, but he was close to it. He could feel the sting of it settling in his eyes. Bruce looked over the tests again with a highlighter at the ready to pick out the abnormal results but the cap never came off. 

"There's no-"

"Don't say it."

"Dick," Bruce said empathetically. "There is no drug keeping you from sleeping. Whatever you were hit with, it's gone."

"It's not gone because I can't sleep and you can't say it's nothing because it is something. I shouldn't be able to willpower my way through sedatives even if they're over the counter. Even more so when they're prescribed," he insisted. "Try to give me something stronger. Try it and I'll prove to you it's there."

"I'm not saying there's nothing there but I am saying I can't find what it is. I can't determine what's causing the lack of sleep."

"It's been days, Bruce. I can't do this anymore. There has to be something there," Dick continued to insist.

His voice hitched as he spoke, and he was doing everything in his power to stop himself from breaking down, but he was fighting a losing battle. He was so tired. His body was desperate to sleep, his mind needed a break from himself, and he ached. God, did he ache. He was used to the constant ache of his body by now, but he was at least spared of it for a blissful few hours before it came rushing back through him. He grabbed onto Bruce's arms, holding them tightly in hopes of convincing him this was so terrifyingly real. This wasn't a joke. He wasn't exaggerating. He couldn't sleep.

"Please B, just give me something. Anesthesia might work or ketamine or whatever the hell you keep in your toolbox. You've got something, right?"

"Take a deep breath."

"No, not until you promise me you have something or that you'll at least try to do something because I can't even think anymore Bruce. It's so loud and it hurts- you have to do something for me because I can't figure it out. I can't hack it."

"I never said I wasn't going to give you anything, I just need you to breathe." Dick swallowed harshly but did what he was told. If it got him to sleep faster then he'd do it. "Good. I'm going to give you a sedative that can keep Flash down for half an hour so it'll definitely overpower whatever is in your system. Then when you're rested, we'll walk through what it could be. Is that okay?"

"Yes," Dick agreed feverishly.

"Get comfortable. You'll be staying here."

"What's Dick doing here? And why is he crashed out in the med bay?" Tim asked, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand. 

"He thought he'd been hit with something causing induced insomnia. Hadn't slept in a week," Bruce answered.

"Thought?" His mentor slid over the binder as well as the new blood tests ran that day. He glanced over them but nothing struck out as wrong. The vitamins were a little low but nothing a daily supplement wouldn't fix. A Flinstone's gummy would do the trick. 

"Nothing in his system. I offered a sedative to knock him out."

"And judging by your wording, I'm guessing it wasn't a sedative," the younger clarified, taking a sip from his cup.

"Needed to test my theory and make sure it wasn't anything masking itself. His vitamin D was low so I gave him a booster."

"Placebo effect?"

"More so insomnia induced by anxiety and paranora. He was definitely hit with something but that something was probably cleared up by the charcoal. If it had ever stuck around in the first place."

"The brain is a weird powerful thing."

"Something like that," Bruce hummed.