Young Justice -:- Roots
Can I just say THANK YOU to ALL OF YOU for the THREE HUNDRED AND TEN reviews? Because like... that's just AMAZING? I mean, wow. Just WOW. And to the couple of wonderful people who over the chapter have said that they see this little ficlet as their CANON, can I just say OMG! That... that is just... no words. I never expected that kind of validation, and yeah. Woah. THANK YOU!
Anyway, I'm done spazzing now. Onto this chapter. I feel like I should put a warning here, because well, there are some graphic bits and pieces (nothing to warrant more than a T rating, just, you know, in case you're squeamish) So, okay:
WARNING: This chapter was written by me and I am terrible human being. Any emotional scarring is unintentional, though potentially likely. Ummm... sorry about that?
Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Six
I spent the rest of that night playing the vigilante version of St. Nick – spreading goodwill and all that. The cash that I had stolen wasn't mine, and it was never meant to be; but I had met plenty of people these past few months who could definitely use it.
I stuck about a quarter of it in an envelope and posted it through Jim Gordon's letterbox. (He probably turned it in to the GCPD because he's a good cop like that, but I hoped that maybe he kept some of it). I swung by Leslie Thompson's free clinic too, leaving a wad of bills that most likely paled in comparison to what the Wayne Foundation donated to her, but felt good regardless. I even briefly went back to Bristol long enough to leave a gift for Nurse Angie to say thank you, with a note asking her to share the cash with Boxer and the others.
The backpack was feeling a heck of a lot lighter on my shoulders with every drop; but I had one more stop to make. There was a mansion-full of people that I knew could use a little financial aid.
It was nearing dawn by the time that I finally made it to Coventry, the deep blue sky turning burnt orange at the edges, and an orchestra of various birds providing the soundtrack for the otherwise silent cul-de-sac. The gated community with its perfectly manicured lawns and windy tarmac roads was picture perfect compared to the grimy city that I had grown used to; the weird peacefulness making some instinct tingle at the base of my spine.
But I ignored it and kept walking. Sure, it was a little weird that there didn't seem to be any cars parked on the driveways; but these McMansions all came with double garages – the SUVs and sports cars were probably just out of sight. And okay, maybe the fact that the street lights had flickered off of their timers a little early, leaving only the amber glow of dawn to light the way, was a little eerie; but maybe they were going green and saving electricity?
I will admit thought, that I definitely should have paid more notice to the mysteriously absent electric company truck. It had been idling on the sidewalk for the past few months, but now was gone. But right then, I just told myself that the feds had gone for a coffee run or something and kept going.
Ducking through the hole in the hedgerow, I made my way up through the meticulously landscaped garden and headed for the back door that I knew would be unlocked.
Silence greeted me as I stepped into the kitchen of Zucco's McMansion, but again, it was like four in the morning, it wasn't as if it was unlikely that the previously-homeless occupants would be asleep, so I didn't think anything of it. I just took in the damage done to the once-pristine kitchen; the ravaged larder, the open fridge door, the piled-high dishes in the sink and on every surface; the trash that had yet to make it to a can... I was grinning to myself, imagining Zucco's reaction when he saw the place.
Smug. Cocky. Over-confidant. Complacent.
Ignorant to the obvious signs that something was very wrong.
From the kitchen I made way down the hall, glancing through every door to see more of the damage that Burns and his friends had wrought. Graffiti, dirt, vandalism. I hadn't realised just how trashed the mansion would get with fifty-odd homeless people squatting there, but I had to admit, I was impressed.
So when I walked into the main entrance hall and saw Burns and a couple of his friends lounging on furniture dragged in from the sitting room, I didn't think twice.
"I love what you've done with the place," I quipped, smirking. Proud.
"Funny," a voice that sent chills down my spine replied from somewhere above me. I turned, glanced up at the top of the stairs, and froze. "I was about to say the same thing to you."
Tony Zucco.
My brain stalled as it struggled to process what it was that I was seeing. It was dark in the mansion, only the early morning light struggling to stream through the windows making any attempt to banish the shadows. But Zucco was impossible to miss as he leaned over the banister casually, his beady eyes boring into me from beneath a fedora.
I flashed back to that day, at Haly's, pinned under the same predatory gaze and powerless. None of what I had done; the obstacles that I had overcome, the strikes at Zucco that I had achieved, none of it mattered in that moment. All I could see was the man who had taken everything from me. All I could hear was the snap of a broken rope and the thuds of bodies hitting concrete. The anger that had fuelled me was gone; buried. Drained. All that I had left was the fear.
I had thought that I could face him; that I was somehow strong enough now. That the fear was conquered. And maybe, maybe if I had confronted him on my own terms, if he hadn't just appeared out of nowhere, maybe I could have. Maybe the panic wouldn't have gripped me so tight that it felt as if I was physically being held in place.
Maybe I would have remembered how to breathe.
Zucco made a gesture with his right hand, and I realised then that he wasn't alone. His guards, his entourage, his small army, stepped forward; surrounding me on all sides. They lined the banister like an honour guard on either side of Zucco. They appeared from alcoves and darkened doorways around the entrance hall. I couldn't keep my wits together long enough to count them; but I could feel every gun settle on me like a promise.
"Kid..." a strained voice wheezed from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, carefully, hesitantly, until I saw Burns staring at me through his one good eye. This time, I saw the restraints that kept him and the other few homeless residents bound to the armchairs. This time, I saw the bruises and the blood. "Run kid..."
Fight. Flight. Freeze. Bruce talks about it all the time in training; about how there isn't one correct response. You have to assess the situation; weigh up the odds, think through your options. He always makes it sound like an actual thought process, and maybe for him, it is. But for me, it's always been instinct.
And my first instinct is always to run.
That sounds cowardly, I know, but it's true. A millisecond later I might change my mind; override that base thought and choose to fight instead, but that first, knee-jerk reaction is always run.
I was moving before the first shot was fired; and then the tense silence was broken by a cacophony of gunfire. I wasn't paying attention as to whether they were shooting to kill, or maim, or disable; I was far more concerned with escaping. Any direction seemed like a bad idea, but Burns and his friends were between me and the front door and I had just enough sense to know not to let them get caught in the crossfire. So I ran the other way, back towards the hallway that I had come from, and the winding passages that would lead to the back door.
The corners provided a degree of cover as I fled; bullets pitting the plaster inches away from me and raining down splinters and dust, turning my red hoodie a speckled shade of grey. My lungs burned as I forgot to control my breathing; I was practically hyperventilating as my feet pounded the oak floors, running faster than I ever had in my short nine and a half years of life. I ignored it all as my vision tunnelled purely on the fast approaching kitchen, freedom almost in sight.
There were two men waiting by the back door, but they seemed more surprised that I had made it that far than concerned with stopping me, so I didn't bother entertaining the thought of slowing down or taking cover. No, with who knew how many men pursuing me down the hall and the two guys slow to raise their weapons; I decided to use the kitchen counter as a springboard and vaulted up and over their heads. It was clumsy; no flair, lacking the usual grace, and ended with me slamming through the back door and tumbling down the steps. But I was back on my feet, moving, heading for the tree line when –
Something slammed into my leg, yanking the limb out from under me with enough force to send me plummeting face-first into the grass. I thought that I had just tripped and was struggling to get back up when I felt something hot and wet running down my leg.
Oh come on! I remember thinking, believing that I had had a little 'accident', losing control of bladder functions in my panic. I'm not that scared! But then I looked down at the dark patch on my jeans; noting that the fluid was red and pouring from a hole in my thigh that hadn't been there a few minutes ago, and I realised that hell yes. I damn well was that scared. Because I had just been shot.
The pain hit moments later; indescribable. Worse than being beaten or stabbed – worse than anything I had ever felt before.
Italian shoes crushed the grass as they approached, forcing my eyes away from the wound and up at Tony Zucco. Several of his men surrounded him, but hung back a little, letting the boss stalk up to me like a predator. I tried to get away, using my elbows to half-crawl, half-drag myself backwards, but Zucco halted those attempts by simply stepping on me.
He pressed the sole of his expensive shoe right into the gun shot wound, twisting like he was stubbing out a cigarette. The pain – the pain, was too much. Excruciating. Blinding. Overloading.
I sagged back against the lawn, staring sightlessly at the sky as everything whited out to black.
I woke up looking at my knees.
My back was aching from the weird position that I had fallen asleep in, and my head felt funny, clouded. My eyes were dry and crusted with salt from my tears, but when I went to rub them, I found that I couldn't.
It took maybe five more seconds for the memories to come back.
I was tied to a chair; wooden, no arms, one leg shorter than the others making it rock with the slightest movement. My hands were bound by the wrists to the top of the back legs, stretching my shoulders painfully; my ankles zip-tied at a strange angle to the base of the front legs. I was hunched over, curled in protectively, giving me the perfect view of my bloodstained jeans; the crude bandage tied around the bullet hole already turning red.
My stomach rolled as the pain made itself known again, waking me up fully as I groaned against the gag that I discovered wedged between my teeth.
"Oi, oi," a voice I recognised said gleefully, encouraging me to lift my head slightly to look around. My eyes were blurry, but I could still make out the short skinny figure of Benny; the far larger frame of his partner in crime Joe shuffling into the edge of my vision. "Looks like the brat's awake."
I didn't have the energy to be properly scared. Blood loss and shock has that affect on you. But I vaguely recalled all of the reasons why these two goons might be ever-so-slightly pissed with me, the apprehension of what they might do making me a little more alert.
"Not'so smart now, are ya, Hoodie?" Benny gloated as he came closer, making the cigarette stuck to his lip dance as he spoke. He still moved with a limp from the exploding trailer episode; and looking past him, I could see the burn scars that marred Joe's bald head. And then there was the incident outside that bar in the Eastern Quarter, the pair of them failing to kill me a second time. Sonia had made it sound as if they had lost a lot of face because of me; relegated to babysitting, making up stories to make it sound like they hadn't been beaten by a kid...
Yeah, they definitely had a bone to pick with me.
"Youse thinks ya some kind a hero, do ya?" Benny asked dangerously. I leaned back in the chair as the smell of tobacco filled my nostrils, making me turn my head away just so that I could breathe. Benny barked a laugh at my apparent submission, and then looked back over his shoulder at his partner. "Come on, Joe. Come look at this pathetic trash. Looks like he don't lives up to the hype, eh, Hoodie?"
I heard the heavier footsteps of Joe closing the distance, his imposing size casting me entirely in shadow. A large hand clapped onto my shoulder and squeezed, making me grunt in pain through the gag. Joe laughed, perhaps a little nervously, and looked to Benny. "He ain't so tough no more."
"No, no he ain't," Benny agreed. The pressure alleviated from my shoulder as the two goons stepped back, allowing sunlight to hit my upturned face. I squinted in the brightness, just making out a long, thin window set high up in the wall. It was then that I realised that I wasn't at the McMansion anymore. I didn't know where I was. But there was the creaking of old wood and the smell of something musty mixed in with the tobacco, and I figured that if anyone was looking for me, they wouldn't look there.
The exhaustion got a lot heavier at that realisation.
"Youse got a lot to answer for, brat," Benny was saying, dragging my attention back to the room and the goons and the chair and the pain. "And not just for playin' us for fools. You picked the wrooong boss to mess with, Hoodie. And now Zucco's gonna make you pay."
My eyelids started to drift shut, each blink getting longer.
And then Joe slapped me across the face, his huge hand clapping across my cheek and making my ears ring.
"No checking out on us yet, kid," Benny said shortly, grabbing me by the chin and forcing eye contact. Ash from his cigarette dropped onto my cheek, my flinch at the heat making Benny's grin widen. "Ya see, we's just here to keep an eye on you, make sures ya stay put. But no ones said that ya had to stay in one piece. And I wants you to feel this, Hoodie."
He punched me, hard, in the gut, doubling me over as far as I could while bound to the chair as I coughed against the gag. And then Joe kicked me in the shin, making my leg jerk and the bullet wound burn afresh. I swear that I could feel the lump of metal wriggle in my thigh, the thought of the foreign object inside my body making the agony that much worse.
After that, I couldn't distinguish between the hits or who was dishing them out anymore. I couldn't even tell you how long the beating went on for or be certain of when it stopped. Everything just hurt, too much to comprehend.
"What makes me laugh, tho," Benny's voice broke through the haze. He was gripping my hair, tugging it so that I had no choice but to look up at him. "Is thats youse thought ya could get away with it. That because youse was wearing a hoodie, and fighting the good fight, that youse was one of them Masks types. Did ya think you were Batman, eh, Hoodie? Did ya think we wouldn' figure it out?"
Maybe every other word was getting through to me, and there was no way that I could answer through the gag, but that didn't seem to bother Benny.
"We saw you," Benny said smugly, his face so close to mine that I couldn't focus on it even if I wanted to. "It was us who figured it out. They all said we was stoopid, making up stories about t'Red Hood. The boss put us on babysitting, because a'you. But the thing is... the thing is, that we was watching the girl. And the girl's new friend. The girl vanishes on our watch. We thinks, 'this is it'. It's over for us. But no."
Joe came around the side of Benny and pulled up my hood. "We was watching."
"The girl gets walked home from her kidnapping," Benny continued, letting go of my hair and then making a show of straightening out my hoodie. "By a kid ina red hood."
The two goons let go of me, backing off to admire their handiwork. I sagged in the chair, the restraints the only thing keeping me from sliding onto the floor. Everything was getting fuzzy, blurry around the edges; the bruises, cuts and even the bullet wound growing numb as I lost my hold on consciousness.
"He ain't so scary," Joe said.
"Youse wait til the boss gets here," Benny answered. "Then you'll see scary."
It was dark the next time that I woke up. Pitch black except for the single bulb dangling above me like a spotlight.
I blinked under the onslaught, my sluggish mind and broken body struggling to co-ordinate enough to move my head so that I wasn't being blinded. My chin dropped to my chest so that my hood shielded my eyes, giving me the chance to try and wake up properly.
I sensed the movement rather than saw it. The scrape of chair legs on concrete as someone stood, before a shadow fell over me. A hand tugged my hood back, untied the gag. And then my heavy head was being lifted to look up at someone.
"Richard Grayson," Tony Zucco muttered with a weird smile. "I should have known."
He let go and moved back, but I was just with it enough to hold my own head up. I watched as the round man in the expensive suit pulled his chair forward and sat, so that we were knee to knee, and looked at me thoughtfully. I glanced around, looking for his guards, but there was no one.
It was just the two of us. Alone.
"Do you want to know how I killed your family?"
Zucco asked; his tone no different than if he were asking me what the weather was like or if I wanted to hear a story. My eyes widened and my breath hitched at his words; the Fall playing out in vivid technicolor in my mind's eye. Panic, fear and yes, a spark of anger, ignited my exhausted brain, but I didn't yet trust myself to speak. I glared at the man who murdered my family.
"I used this."
A vial appeared in Zucco's hands, seemingly out of nowhere; the bottle small and innocuous and the cause of so much loss and pain.
"It's an acid," Zucco explained as he twisted the cap. I watched, enthralled, hypnotised, as he lifted the cap to the light, exposing the pipette and the yellow fluid that gathered at its tip. "Highly corrosive. Completely untraceable. Painful."
He hovered the pipette above my uninjured thigh, and let a single drop of the acid fall.
For a moment, nothing happened. But the smell was familiar. In an instant, I was there; on the centre platform, watching the rope burn as my family performed their final show below me. The thin wisp of smoke. The fraying fibres. The SNAP-
"AAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!" I screamed, pain yanking me back to the here and now. My leg – it burned, so bad. The bullet hole was nothing compared to this. It stung like I was being stabbed with needles a hundred times over and then had salt rubbed on the wound and then scraped off with a grater. My scream choked off only when I ran out breath, my eyes slowly dragging open to take in the damage.
There was a hole in my jeans, maybe the size of a dime; thread smoking around the edges.
Beyond that, my skin was bubbling.
I was hyperventilating as I forced myself to look away, but the image was imprinted on my retinas, making my imagination exaggerate the pain even further. I was crying; tears streaming down my cheeks, but I hadn't the mind to feel embarrassed.
"Breathe, Richard. We're not done yet," Zucco said, almost reassuringly. He waited until I had regained some semblance of control over my breathing, and then he leaned forward conversationally. "I had one of my men put just a drop of this on the rope. Well, a diluted version of course. It wouldn't have worked if the rope was broken before the show now, would it?"
Two drops fell this time. The anticipation of what was to come had me thrashing against my restraints before the acid had even eaten it's way through my jeans.
When it actually hit the skin, I lost it.
I was sobbing uncontrollably, but whether that was from the pain or the thoughts of my family or the memories from that night or all of it together, I couldn't tell. It hurt. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally.
"It was an accident, you know," Zucco said nonchalantly, once the screaming had stopped. I glared up at him through my bangs, looking for the lie, but not seeing it. "I never intended to kill them. It was only meant to be a scare; a reminder that accidents happen. I didn't know that part of the act was done without a net. Tell me..."
He paused, studying me like I was a jigsaw puzzle, and then dribbled some more of the acid across my legs.
"Does that make it hurt less, or more?"
He asked as if he genuinely wanted an answer. The acid worked it's way through my jeans, who knows how many drops of the liquid scalding my skin. I wondered numbly if the acid would burn all the way through my thighs; the imagery of my legs falling off oddly less horrific than the screams and thuds and snaps that accompanied my pain-fuelled delusions. I couldn't tell if I was still screaming or if the strength to do that had long since left me.
When I found the energy to open my eyes again, I was hunched forward on my chair; my bound hands keeping me from falling off. I could feel blood from my wrists dripping from my fingertips from where the zip-ties had cut into them, but I couldn't feel the pain itself. In fact, I was starting to realise that I couldn't feel a whole lot of anything anymore.
That was probably shock setting in.
"I understand why you felt the need to retaliate like you did," Zucco continued as if we having a casual conversation. I watched him through my lashes, unable to do anything more than breathe raggedly and blink. "My home. My car. My watch. I took something important from you, so you returned the favour. I understand that."
He leaned forward again, and I flinched, expecting him to use the acid again. But he simply screwed the cap back on the bottle and laughed to himself. "Here I was, expecting some assassin of the night to find me, but no. It was a child pulling pranks." He shrugged. "I think, I think that I probably could have forgiven that. That we could have chalked that up to 'boys being boys'. But you had to take it too far.
"You had to bring my daughter into this."
His tone shifted, changed, becoming infinitely more dangerous. He stood from his seat and loomed over me, planting a hand on my shoulder to keep himself balanced. "You had to turn her against me. Poison her mind. Make her fear me. Because of you, my own daughter lied to me! Do you understand how mad that makes me?! Do you?!"
"Please..." I whispered, voice hoarse from screaming. I didn't even know who I was begging for. Myself. My family. Sonia. "Don't..."
"You took her away from me," Zucco hissed, spittle flying. "And for that you are going to join your family. But nothing so quick as falling, no. No – you are going to burn."
Zucco ripped the top back off of the bottle, ignoring the acid that splashed his own fingers at the rough motion, and then threw the cap to the floor. I didn't know what he was going to do, and that terrified me; but it wasn't half so scary as when I figured it out.
Zucco grabbed me by the back of my head, using his knee to keep the chair steady as I fought his grip. He held the bottle over my face, a manic grin splitting his round features. "Say 'ah', Richard."
"NO!" I yelled, before slamming my mouth stubbornly closed, struggling against my restraints with everything I had left. But then Zucco used his thumb to pressure my jaw open, and no matter what I did, I couldn't close it. My heart was thundering in my chest. Sobs tore from my exposed throat. The restraints shredded my skin.
BANG.
The door exploded open, the surprise enough to shake Zucco's focus. His arm jerked automatically, the vial tipping; but I managed to wrench my head to one side, out of his grip.
Something unbelievably hot burned through my hoodie, and then my neck and my shoulder, and I remember thinking that this was it.
And then there was a dark shape and nothing.
Someone was tugging my arm out of the sleeve of my hoodie. Which was weird enough in itself, but when I managed to open my eyes and look up, I found that it was Batman tugging my arm out of the sleeve of my hoodie.
"Stay still," he instructed when he noticed me glaring at him confusion. I was slowly becoming more aware; realising that it was cold and dark and we were outside. The distant wail of sirens reached us over the sound of the rain washing the streets; the heavier drips from the overhang we were sheltered under sounding as loud as drumbeats to my half-conscious ears. I also realised that I was lying against the kevlar of Batman's armour, the Dark Knight half-cradling me as he finally freed me of the hoodie.
"Wh-?" I kind of asked.
"Gordon can't know that you were the Red Hood," Batman explained. He then proceeded to examine the bullet hole in my leg and check the chemical burns that covered my neck, shoulder and thighs. "Zucco kidnapped you as Richard Grayson and tried to silence you from testifying against him."
I couldn't tell if Batman was explaining what had happened or was telling me my story, so I just nodded along like I totally understood.
"Richard, stay awake," Batman ordered. I hadn't even noticed that my eyes were closed. Everything was so dark anyway, I didn't see the point.
Apparently, the sirens had gotten closer than I remembered them being, because the next thing I knew I was looking up at the ginger caterpillar that could only belong to Jim Gordon. He looked me over with concern, helping Batman tie a fresh pressure bandage around my leg as he called out for a paramedic. I let my head drop back against Batman's arm so that I could see what was going on beyond; watching with detached interest as the GCPD rounded up Zucco's men that Batman had already taken out.
"-come after him," Batman was saying, telling the story that he had just told me to Jim. "He'll need somewhere safe, secure, to stay. Falcone won't let a potential witness against Zucco live now that you have the leverage to strong-arm him."
Jim nodded, a twinkle of something that I didn't have the energy to read in his eyes.
"I think I might know someone."
It was four days later by the time that I next woke up, and this time I was in a bed. But it wasn't in a hospital and it wasn't Leslie's clinic. No, it was Wayne Manor.
I couldn't feel anything through the drug haze, but with monumental effort, I managed to shift enough to get a look at some of the bandages that poked out from under the bedclothes. Several wires and tubes hooked me up to the IV pole, but that wasn't the only thing taking up residence beside the king-size bed.
"Brsss?" I muttered, and then crinkled my nose at the scratchy sound and weird feeling in my throat. But it was enough to get Bruce's attention, who had been dozing upright in the chair next to me. We kind of looked at each other for a minute, not really sure what to say, and then Bruce stood and made himself busy double-checking that I hadn't pulled anything loose in my attempts to wake up.
Finally, he stopped, and sat back down again, looking incredibly uncomfortable.
It would have been funny if it wasn't taking me so much damn effort just to be conscious.
"Is this... the part..." I wheezed, then growled in irritation at my own voice. "Where you say... I told you so?"
Bruce watched me for a moment, that way he always does, like he's... appraising you – measuring you against whatever expectations he had had in his mind and leaving you wondering whether or not you surpassed them. "No," he said carefully, his lip quirking slightly. "That comes later."
I think that that might have been a joke, but it was still early days in my efforts to give Bruce a sense of humour, so I decided to just roll with it and half-smile back.
"Zucco's in custody," he said abruptly, probably testing how much I remembered without outright asking. I just nodded, not having the energy to pay too much thought or emotional instability to the whole experience. And then Bruce decided to throw another curveball at me because, hey, why not? "Captain Gordon was concerned for your safety, so he petitioned the courts for me to have temporary guardianship over you."
I blinked, because that made no sense. "But you don't...want me..."
Bruce glanced away, something like shame flickering over his stoic features, which was too surreal for words. "Wayne Manor is your home now, for as long as you need it."
I figured that I was still asleep by this point. I had to be. So all I said was:
"M'kay."
FINALLY! It happened. Bruce has kinda semi-sorta adopted Dick Grayson. Now they can walk off into the sunset together and live happily ever after.
Except for the fact that, you know, it's me writing this, and there hasn't been nearly enough angst. C'est la vie.
Quick shout out to Alexandria-likethecityinEgypt: HAPPY BIRTHDAY for whenever it is this week! ;-P
Love you all! See you next chap!