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Giving details about his torcher was not something Dick seemed like he was going to do voluntarily. Tim sympathized. He thought that was more than reasonable, give him some time and he knew Dick would eventually talk about it.

Tim was patient, nobody else was on the other hand. While they never directly asked for the details, they did give backhanded questions that hinted at the topic. Rather obviously, he might add.

Tim was going to respect his older brother's wishes, and let Dick come to him whenever he deemed himself ready to approach the topic.

So the sudden change of heart took him by surprise. Not only was Dick going to explain what happened to him to them, the Team was included in the conversation. Tim was positive it had been a good six months since the last time they saw him. A lot had changed.

He gone from a sterdy well built person, to a clearly starved shivery mess. He'd finally reached a point where he now looked like he just had a bad case of the flu, which was a rather significant improvement. But one would only know that if they saw what he looked like at the beginning.

He watched as Dick seemed uncertain as to where to begin. The words all sitting in his throat trying to figure out which one went first.

Does he give the pg version of the story, to make everything easier to swallow. Or give the gruesome details to avoid questions. A hard call, one Tim wasn't sure on the direction of.

Dick seemed to be chewing on his lower lip.

"The first week wasn't bad I guess." He began. "Just solitary, left me to count the bricks in the wall a hundred times. Then drugs were brought in."

He sucked in a breath, gathering his thoughts.

"At first it didn't seem like they were doing anything, I'd wake up to a new mark on my skin, after a little while I'd hallucinate. Weird things too, like lucid dreaming, only painful. Those hallucinations turned into people, they would tell me things that I would have to remind myself weren't true. It got harder, I couldn't sleep I was starving. All of those things combined with the lack of any kind of human interaction, it made it harder to get handle on what was real and what wasn't.

"The worst part wasn't even that…"

Tim felt it couldn't get worse, but knew exactly how it could. He knew the best ways to get a person to talk, all the ways to bring them to their knees and beg him for mercy.

"There wasn't any sort of routine, which I expected."

Tim knew that tactic, humanity thrived off routine. Every single person had one, a subconscious routine set. Once it's removed, it messes with your head, that combined with solitary confinement was going to push you closer to the edge a whole lot faster. The unknown was far more frightening than most other phobias.

"It's a good way to get information, keeping captives on their toes. I don't know exactly when they'd interrogate me for anything, I don't know what they asked. After I'd come out of it…"

He didn't elaborate, but it was pretty clear what happened. A whole lot of pain, he obviously wasn't very compliant even when they made him higher than a kite.

"Probably towards the, like the last week or something, they got more… aggressive and forceful. It was the first time I actually saw any of them. They'd interrogate, get pissed, and my scenery changed. I got locked in a small dark room for a while, completely restrained at another point, they got creative rather quickly."

He wasn't getting detailed, and Tim was rather thankful.

He was picking up on details Dick was leaving out. Like how Dick didn't really know how long things were lasting, his inner clock gave up. Tim also figured that the Court hadn't asked the obvious questions like 'who's Batman?', and 'where's the Batcave?'. Things he got asked constantly when he got captured.

Tim knew that the Court already had those answers, they had been asking more obscure things. Things that would be extremely difficult to find answers for, that Dick would also know. Those two thing overlapped strongly in this case. Aside from Batman, Dick probably knew the most about the League and all of their rather sensitive facts.

The reason had been, to keep up the illusion that nothing had changed. That Bruce wasn't 'dead', and Damian wasn't Robin. While people learning about the change in the Robin monikar wouldn't have been a bad thing, it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch to see the correlation.

So Dick would have the same clearance levels as Batman, and people would come to him with things the Batman was supposed to handle. Because the main founders trusted Nightwing, they dodged many metaphorical bullets and avoided even more hoops.

Tim glanced over towards everyone else.

B and Damian (Both still in masks and uniform) had identical blank expressions, digesting the information being handed to them. Tim couldn't tell what Jason was thinking, he'd kept his Red Hood helmet on, not enough people knew he was the second Robin returned from the grave. Meeting the new Robin and Dick providing this information was enough for one night.

The rest of the team all had rather similar expressions. A mixture of stone faced and sorrow.

How was one supposed to react to information like this? Give him a hug? Tell him they understood? There wasn't exactly a book out there on how to deal with older brother returning to society after horrific torture and trauma.

"Then I was thrown in the Labyrinth and the rest is history." Dick finishes.

That probably was the end of the story for the most part. Tim notices that Dick had left out a rather gruesome detail, that he'd attempted.

It wasn't something they needed to know, the family knew, which would be enough. Especially since Dick didn't really seem to be suicidal or have suicidal thoughts.

No need to cause more worry than necessary, Dick could keep that information to himself. No one would be the wiser.

Everyone seemed silent, unsure how to proceed.

Dick had leaned against the table staring down. He was avoiding their gaze.

"You don't know how you got out?" Kaldur asked him.

Dick shook his head. "That would be their story to tell." He gestured to Tim and Robin.

"Later." Tim told them.

No one seemed to argue. Instead opting to awkwardly stand around.

"So what now?" Artemis asked them.

Tim thought about it. There really wasn't a plan. Bruce's plan consisted of waiting and gathering more information. With everything going on with Dick, it would be hard to properly retaliate without a lot of backlash.

The Team's plan should really be to stay out of all this. Just move forward, not tell the younger members. Bad plan? Yeah it was, but only the core members knew. The Justice League didn't even know what was going on. They knew Batman had to take a leave of absence to take care of a few things that required his full attention.

He didn't specify and they didn't ask. He'd done it before, but he'd also gone dark whenever he did. Batman didn't vanish this time. Tim figured they were curious, or had an idea that someone was missing. But that was probably it, and it was probably only members that had been with B from the beginning.

Tim could feel a headache coming on, he was ready to retire for the night and it was barely eight thirty. Just collapse on his bed and be done with today. He'd only been up for four hours (which wasn't his fault), but he didn't care. Today had been stressful and it needed to end for the sake of his sanity.

"Now we wait to see what the Court's next move might be." Batman told them. "We can't risk an ambush or faulty and misleading information slip through again. And all of you will stay out of it."

"What?! You have got to be kidding." He heard Wally exclaim. "The last time you left them out of it, he almost died. We can help."

"No. End of discussion."

None of them seemed to thrilled with the order, not that they had been when it had been given the first time.

Artemis turned towards Batman, to state her case.

"I wouldn't." He heard Jason advise from behind them. "It won't get you anywhere."

"You're just gonna go along with all this?" Conner asked Dick.

Dick replied with a shrug. "We need minimal casualties, best way to do that is to cut liabilities."

"Why are you rhyming?" Jason asked.

"The less people involved the better. It makes it harder for the Court to get any wind on what we're doing. And we don't have the time to bring you to speed on how to defeat the owls, let alone how to properly fight one…"

"Which we still suck at." Damian added.

"Yeah that's not helpful." Tim shot back.

"Anyway," Dick continued. "It's just better if this stays with us."

There were many argument popping up in everyone's head.

Tim pulled the cowl off his face.

"Look I get the situation isn't ideal. But when you think about it, you know what they're capable of. Can you imagine what it's like to fight one. Hell, Ra's Al Ghul avoids conflicts because they fight the way they do. He doesn't want to have anything to do with that. Can you just trust that maybe we are just wanting what's best?" He asked them.

The looks on all of their faces said no. If he was looking in on this he probably would've laughed. Right now he just felt uncomfortable under their stare.

"It is not ideal to be kept in the dark again." Kaldur admits.

"Well lucky for you…" Jason begins to step past walking in front of everyone. "It's not Team or League business, so there's no need to feel left out of the loop. This is official Batman and associates business. And by associates, I mean us."

He gestured to Dick, Tim, and himself.

Tim wasn't sure if he meant to leave Damian out, or if it was implied that Damian was involved because he was Robin.

"Why are you involved in this?" M'gann asked.

"I found the Golden boy." He told her.

"You found a lead, that led to his location. Which I followed." Tim muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

Dick heard him and snickered under his breath.

"There are some things I wish to discuss with you." Kaldur told Dick.

"And they can be discussed anytime, even right now if you're interested." He replied.

Kaldur nodded.

So Tim figured the Team was going to get discussed. It was going to be a conversation that would not involve him, and he was completely okay with that.

"Nightwing can send Aqualad home when they finish with all of that. The rest of you on the other hand, don't need to be here. Go home, rest up." Batman instructed.

"And thank you." Barbara added from the chair in front of the Batcomputer. "Because I don't think he was going to tell you."

Tim had actually forgotten that Barbara was down there with them. She'd been sitting silently off to the side the entire time.

She turned back towards the computer and continued what looked like playing catch-up on everything she missed.

Kaldur joined Dick at the table he'd been leaning against, an almost instantaneous conversation in low voices commenced.

"Well that looks like my que, see ya later kid." Jason told Tim, patting him on the shoulder.

"What? Where are you going?" Tim questioned.

"Got a few loose ends to tie up. Don't wait up replacement, I can take care of myself."

"You're going to listen right? You're going to stay away from the court and not try and take the whole thing down solo? Because you and I both know how that'll turn out."

Jason turned back towards Tim.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything too stupid. Just blow up a few building and make a couple of lives a living hell."

And with that he mounted his bike, revved the engine and sped off out of the cave.

Tim didn't stay to watch the others get sent back home, and watch Batman and Robin leave for their usual patrol. Barbara said she would run comms if needed.

He retreated up to the Manor, deciding he was going to sleep some more. No sense wasting the opportunity again. He was still behind from the last four all nighter in a row he pulled. Of course no one knew about the first three.

He'd gotten far better at hiding the fact he'd been doing them more often as of late.

And he knew that it would come to bite him in the butt at some point, as it always did.

But until then, he was going to sleep the night away, and then he was going to take the information he learned, and figure out just what they did to his brother.

Batman had told him not to engage, and Tim was going to listen. He was not going to go looking for the court and its many owls. Instead he was going to spend as much time as he could analyzing the Court, like Dick had been doing for the past few weeks.

"Look out Dick," Tim said to himself. "You just got a new study buddy."

I spent a very long time debating weather or not I would explain what happened, and if I did how would I approach the topic. This was the best compromise. At this point, we are hitting a slow period. Take a little time to digest what's happening and create a new game plan. The next two or so chapter's a kind of filler, kind of not. They have important elements but, they're not very long.

Till next time I suppose...