the blip happened when dex was in the mental institution post surgery. so your right on track with how dex will deal with it, although since dex was medicated while there it could be possible he had a delayed reaction. with the blipped patients and nurses, the institute probably struggled with medication schedules for a little bit. giving dex the chance to sober up from his meds and truly realize what happenedš
thank you very much for this information, i hope the sunlight hits your features beautifully all week
pt 2 or prequel to this post. can be read by itself
post surgery still heavily medicated but refusing to start his physical therapy without his north star there (assuming theyd let anyone join him but lets just pretend)
sure he's drowsy and doesn't know what day or time it is, but one thing dex knows for sure, other than the looming presence of some 200 pound hired gun orderly behind him 24 hours a day, is that when they wheel him across campus and the clock hits 2:30 when it's daylight out, he'd get to see your face cheering on each step he takes with his broken body.
you'd never see him as broke though. you don't look at him like the nurses and other patients do. you bit the head off of one ex-coma patient and their nurse who stood and stared his first successful walk down that ramp thing with those bars on either side.... you guys with me? hello? anyway,
the first, and only, time you didn't show up on time, dex threw a fit and actually threw a nurses pen into a doctor's eye and the metal part of her clipboard into an orderly's throat. after that he was prescribed a mild 'relaxer' along with his other anti-psychotics to keep him juuust on this side of lucid. and with some trial and error, slightly less sedated during physical therapy to hinder his motor function as less as possible. also because you cussed out the nurse, his doctor and the head physician for barely being able to lift his head let alone attempt to walk
because of the meds, dex got better a lot slower than typical. as a scoliosis queen whose had spinal surgery as well (definitely not on the same level but hey we have matching scars what do you hoes have in common with dexš¤Ŗ) it did not take me that long to be able to walk, but for the sake of this let's say since the surgery was experimental and his spine actually got fucked up by fisk, it takes close to a year, year and a half.
after a while, he's better. well, good enough to cut physical therapy to three times a week instead of every day. if they keep dex in his room, away from windows or the curtains shut, most of the time staff can more easily manipulate his sedation, make his days blend together and forget. some, who have their humanity still intact or simply haven't witnessed the bulleye when you've been intentionally kept from him, think it's cruel and tries so help him as subtley as they can, telling him the time, or worse, the date, sitting him in front of a window into the garden because there's a candid of a gorgeous woman in a field of flowers hung on his wall, that he stares at often times instead of eating
and, no matter how sedated he was, dex was at least maiming two people before he's taken down and that nurse is never seen on that wing again.
then the blip happens. two days before his next therapy appointment. in the chaos of losing their staff and patients, someone had the sense, or terrifying realization, to call you, dex's north star, the only reason the entire building isn't a giant group funeral pyre (ik he isn't an arsonist, i like fire, i'm projecting, sue me)
they call. and call. and call. and call.
and after the fifth time, the hint is taken.
a week goes by, staff cannot keep tricking dex and holding out on his p.t., for the sake of plot, the very rash very fucking stupid decision was made to tell dex, about your disappearance. their reasoning? oh, he's going to find out anyways, he has to go to p.t. if only to see if the experiment was a success and when you're not there cheering him on, looking at the dex like a newborn puppy learning to walk to his owner when called for the first time? well, it already happened once and the ward barely escaped law suits and a media firestorm. but that took everyone by surprise, your tardiness and dex's outburst.
this time, oh this time, they'll be prepared not
dex's doctor and head physician ween him off his sedation just enough that they know he's able to comprehend the information relayed to him. and they tell him.
the words echo around in his head, both these strange men who shove their drugs in his veins, keep him from youāyou. their words begin to sound like your voice in his head and he refuses to believe the doctors because it just isn't true. he can hear you. how can you be gone? he can hear you. you said you'd never leave him. you said you'd never lie. and you haven't. you won't.
for some reason, as dex is being wheeled back to his room, where the light never shines in and a soulless blue lamp illuminates only one thing in the room: the photo of you. for some reason, the orderly leaves him parked in some random hallway alone.
and dex has been coming down from the joke of a sedative they gave him before the meeting through all the noise in his head hears something similar to your name and focuses in on two gossiping nurses around the corner
"--totally think the blip is a great excuse"
"how can you say that? do you know how many families were destroyed?"
"right, it's devastating, i'm not arguing that. but for people like poindexter's girlfriend? i don't blame her if she saw the blip and his... situation, as the perfect opportunity."
"to run! run away and never look back from that psycho. you do know who that is, don't you?"
at night when abe, who replaced clipboard guy, shut off his lamp light and ordered dex to go to sleep, the nurse's words rang in his head and turned into your voice again. calling him a crazy psycho, making plans to leave him, laughing as you spread dust on the floor of the home you shared together because you knew he'd have to go looking for you the minute he heard you were 'gone'
minute is an overstatement. it takes dex a while to fully come off all the medication they pour down his throat after he begins to fake out taking them. when he felt clean enough to properly go over his plan of escape, they found where he hid his stash of unswallowed pills and dex was set back years due to mistrust and an even heavier watchful eye.
but he'd get out. medicated or not. because he has to prove to himself, those fucking nurses, the noise, that you didn't leave him. that the doctors were right when they said you got blipped.
you didn't leave him. you'd never. you promised.
and if you did... he'd find you. he'll always find you, you know this. he knows you too well. and you know him. the two of you are made for each other, you agreed as much! but... why would you get blipped.... and he didn't? it doesn't make sense.
what would leave him on the same earth you were taken away from?
gods, he'd scourer the planet for you. break into, steal, kill anyone to get closer to any hint of a lead that could possibly bring him a boarder closer to where you are while simultaneously being a little more than half convinced you really did vanish with half the population.
and for some reason, though it angers him to no end, every dead end he hits in his search, lights a small candle of hope in dex's darkness. it's just more proof you were blipped, and proof you were really gone. not away from him lounging beautifully in some continent he doesn't share a time zone with. somewhere he can find.
there are some things that make him feel sort of better. until they don't. dex knows from christian mythology via the shows you'd watch or fanatics in the ward, a few things about the rapture, how all the good, holy people get sucked up to heaven while the monsters stay on earth to die. until he finds out even those the scum of the earth consider heathens were also blipped or found missing.
he feels better whenever he watches the moon, because every night and especially when you see her in the day, without fail you'd point her out (her because you adamantly stated the moon could never be a man) then gasp and stare in awe at her beauty and he'd stand with you, admiring for however long you deemed worthy.
dex liked it because he felt like you. he can picture you standing there next to him, naming which phase the moon is in, complimenting her, saying she looked extra full, how her light shone so prettily on him that night and you just had to stop to thank her.
sometimes he feels better returning to your shared home. when he first come home, the shower was running, water cold and steam long since left the mirrors from the scalding temperature you preferred it at, half your clothes on the floor as if you were taken while disrobing
so heād look for who was responsible, kill them, get you back and maybe be a āgood guyā while he does, like you guys talked about :)
