We've reached beyond 1000! YAY! Anywho, one thing that has to come out I guess is that there's another option other than kidnapping and running away. and now we will address that. =]

Dick-16/17 Jason-13 Cass-11/12 Tim-9 Damian-3

Sacrifice

8 – Proof of Life

Bruce practically crumbled on his bed later that night, nearing midnight, hating himself and grieving at the loss facing him once more. Their one lead, those cameras, blew to pieces five minutes after he entered the cave from the outside route. As soon as he tried to trace the signal the cameras were sending their intel to, they self-destructed. He could hear pops and surprised yelps above him seconds after, telling him all the ones they missed also were no more. Not one survived.

How stupid he was! Carless and stupid! He should have dissected one of them first, make sure there weren't any explosives! Maybe then he'd be able to at least use one for part identification. His one solid lead to finding out what happened to his son fell through his fingers like water. Now… now he had nothing.

Selina tried to sooth his shaking and tears, not needing to hear what had happened to know something went wrong. Three weeks of nothing, then this, one hope, and… Devastated didn't even begin to cover it. Nothing she could truly offer him would be a comfort this time around. "We'll find him. Really Bruce, we'll find him."

"I…" A broken voice escaped his lips. Weeks of restless nights, scraping for clues, having hope taken away within an hour of finding it, all of it was taking a severe toll on him. A fear deep within him peeked out of hiding, taking advantage of how much this hurt him. "I don't even know if he's alive."

"Don't talk like that." It was something that crossed everyone's mind at one point or another. There were three possibilities really. Dick was either kidnapped, a runaway, or dead. The effort put forward by the mysterious third party indicated forethought and planning. Dick was useless dead, but no proof of life or any kind of demand gave them little to hope for. "He's alive, and we will find him."

Somehow.

They were on the road for a week (maybe?), not stopping except for gas and restocking on some supplies. They were using a U-Haul truck of all things as a cover this time. Slade would train Dick in the back of it most of the day and sometimes into the night. Only when they were about five miles outside of a town and needed to get gas in did Dick ever get to sit in front with Wintergreen and his master.

Due to the severity of his twisted wrist during their last session, the teen was allowed one day's rest and sitting in the cabby's backseat. Better than sleeping in back, but not by much. At first Slade was going to have him read some tactics documents to fill in the time, but the dizzy spell that came with reading in the vehicle put an end to that. Dick hadn't had sever motion sickness like that in years, but this one time he appreciated it.

"We'll have to pick up some Dramamine in the next town," the man muttered bitterly. He glared his one eye mildly at him through the mirror. "How long have you had this condition?"

"Inherited it from my mom," the teen answered, looking out the window to clear his mind. The sunglasses he was wearing (something they picked up for him in the last town) covered his black eye nicely. He hadn't dodged Slade's fist fast enough earlier, landed bad on his hand, and now was in the cramped back seat. His civies were welcomed in compare to the uniform he was forced into before. Warmer too, hoodie over long sleeve shirts, gloves, scarf, boots, thick pants and a ski cap can do that for a person. "Honestly I've never tried reading in a car after leaving the circus."

"Hm."

Dick glared at him through his glasses for a moment before looking back out the window. He hated how small things Slade did, like grunts or 'hm's reminded him of Bruce. The guy didn't fight like him and was a bit smaller, but there were several similar character traits they both had and it unnerved him. He was afraid one day the guy would do something Bruce would and he'd unconsciously call him 'Bruce'. He never wanted to do that. They were nothing alike at the core of things, and he had to make sure he remembered that.

Looking back out the window, he let his mind rest a little. He was so tired of always being on guard, always being tested. If this man was going to try something to manipulate him further, then he had to be ready to fight it. Occasionally Slade tried to act fatherly around him, comforting him on occasion when he had a nightmare (quite frequent lately) or helping tend his wounds. Dick made a point of rejecting him when he could but it still confused him to no end. He hated him, maybe as much as he hated Zucco or Two-Face. He shouldn't be finding any comfort in this man, at all. It was better to just look out the window and hate him.

Something caught his eye, making him blink in surprise. He adjusted his seating to lean his chin on his good hand, and have it cover his mouth as he looked out the window. He didn't just see… All around them was farmland. Snow covered farmland. But was it…

A sign came into view and it took all of his self-control not physically acknowledge it on instinct. He hid his smile, his hope, best he could. He peeked at the gas gage and felt the hope inside him grow with each passing second. They were going to stop. They had to stop.

'Okay, slow down Dick,' he mentally chided, controlling his breathing best he could without giving anything away. Slade had good ears. 'Slow down. You've got to think this through.' His eyes worked back and forth behind his shades, very very glad he was wearing them. If he was going to get anything right, he was going to have to be careful, and the best actor in the world.

Before he even formed a complete plan, they were pulling into the gas station. Slade gave him a shrewd look. "Remember, John Willis," he emphasized slowly, "we're moving from Missouri to Oklahoma. Your mother, my wife, died of leukemia. My name is Grant and your uncle is Mark."

"What was my mom's name?" he asked with a little sarcasm. It proved he was paying attention and would play along at the least. His captor couldn't punish him for that.

"Mary of course." Dick scowled. John and Mary. Had to bring up his real parents. At least they were common names. The man gave him one more warning look. "No funny business while we're in there. It'd be a shame to blow this nice place to pieces."

"Blowing up Hicksville." The teen rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's not suspicious."

He looked around, stretching a bit as he put his snow coat over the rest of his gear. Quite a bit of snow, so no pump boy to help out visitors. Well, even if there were one, Wintergreen would be handling the pump. This was one of the old fashioned stations where you couldn't use cards at the pump so they had to go inside.

"Welcome!" The person at the counter started, putting up his best fake face. Dick rolled his eyes at the jerkwad, very glad his glasses hid his eyes. "What can I help you with?"

Slade gave him a smile as he pulled own his scarf, some sunglasses covering his eye and patch and a ski cap hiding his hair. Not a bad disguise. "Just passing through. Sixty on pump three? And a few other things in a minute."

"Of course!"

"Mind watching him for a minute while we hit the head?" He first pointed to Dick then to himself and Wintergreen, who already was headed to the bathroom. The teen was checking out the tourist displays for the moment, seemingly bored. Since this was a normal gas station, two stalls were expected to each gender exclusive room. Age before beauty, and just where was Dick going to go?

"Go ahead." The man's fake smile became more genuine at the navy term, making the teen scoff as he played with the key chains with names and corn on them. Slade passed him, probably eyeing what he was doing behind those shades. Dick actually looked over his with a 'what? Think I can call for help like this?' look. Satisfied, he went into the back where the bathroom was.

Quickly he jammed the names he collected right under a familiar name. Clue one, if anyone bothered to look for it. Faking casualness, he made his way over to the marker display and started drawing on the test page. After a minute he smirked sadly to himself, ripped off the paper, folded it up, and slipped it in a crack just next to the display. Wasn't a real message and he doubted it'd get anywhere, but it wouldn't put the guy behind the counter in trouble. He then proceeded to write another note for later, making it as colorful as possible.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Dick nearly jumped out of his skin when Slade's voice appeared in his ear. He looked over his shoulder to the guy and glared a little. "As much as I can."

"Hm…" The assassin looked over the page he was doodling on and couldn't help but to smirk. 'YOU SUCK!' screamed at him in the most colorful display known to man. Complete with swirls, fireworks, and even a Superman crest with a bat underneath it. The boy was a fair artist. "Really. You could have figured out something else to write."

"For who?" He capped the pen and started towards the bathroom. "It's Hicksville."

"Hm." Slade let him pass him to the toilets without another word. He had other business to attend to.

Once in his private stall, he immediately got to work. Before playing with the pens and markers, he palmed one of them up his sleeve. Quickly he took off the cap and wrote on one side of the stall.

HELP! I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY AN ASSASSIN AND HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING HE SAYS OR ELSE! CONTACT RAY PALMER AND TELL HIM TO CHECK ON THE LEAGUE'S FIRST FAMILY! THE KIDS ARE IN DANGER! DO NOT ERASE!

'Please,' he pleaded in his heart, 'last long enough for him to see it!' A pit grew in his stomach as he used the toilet as quickly as he could. He knew deep down this was a long shot. Slade probably predicted he'd try something like this. Marker wasn't too hard to get off bathroom stalls really. He was going to need another backup plan. He looked forward at the stall door, grim determination settling in.

A couple minutes later he came back towards the counter, his palmed marker already misplaced on another display while Slade finished his shopping there. He was even talking friendly like with the man behind the counter. "You know how teenagers are. All doom and gloom."

"Don't I know it." Dick gave both of them a sour glare behind his shades. They were talking about him the whole time. Did he notice the palmed marker after all? "I'll take care of his little 'note' later tonight."

Apparently. His captor smiled graciously as he took up his bags. "Much appreciated. John? Ready to go?"

"Can I get a Snickers first?" Hey, teenagers ate candy too didn't they?

"Ah, no." There was a slight edge to his voice, one that made the acrobat's insides twist. "Defacing private property has removed that right for a while."

Dick rolled his eyes, groaning a bit. Yep, caught. As the two of them left the station, the truck refilled, Slade murmured in his ear. "You're lucky he's a reasonable man. He's not about to believe any crazy tale you put on those stalls."

"It's not crazy if it's true."

He had to smirk at that one. "What did you write?"

The teen clenched his teeth for a moment as he stopped just short of the truck. "Help? I've been kidnapped by an assassin and I have to do everything he says or else? He's threatening Bruce Wayne's kids' lives in Gotham with nano-scopic probes? Do not erase?" He rolled his eyes, shaking his head at the ridiculous sound it made coming from his mouth. Yeah, it really did sound crazy. "Do you really think I'd write that? No one would believe me."

"You thought of it though." There was a slight edge to his voice.

"I've thought about it in every town we've passed through," he admitted grimly. He really had wanted to leave a message at every point they stopped and let him out, but always hesitated and stopped before putting something down. "But I don't want anyone to get hurt. I put a bat on the side and wrote 'call him' instead."

This made the man smirk. "A bat. You've been drawing bats."

Dick shifted, uncomfortable. "Just twice."

"You draw bats on the ground whenever you think I'm not looking," Slade stated flatly. He shook his head. "Why bats?"

This actually made the teen smirk. "Ever heard of Batman?"

"Tank is ready." Wintergreen joined them, looking at the bag they had purchased. "Dramamine?"

The interruption ended the interrogation, putting everyone back into the vehicle and leaving the small town far behind them at long last. Dick watched it disappear behind him through the mirrors longingly. Silently he prayed his real message, the right message, would be received and from there would spring a light at the end of the tunnel. This had to work.

"Brr!" Jonathan Kent shook out his coat and boots as he entered the station's corner store. If they didn't need gas so badly, they would have driven to the one on the south side of town (much nicer people) but such as their luck would have, they were running on vapors. "Can't wait until the spring thaw arrives Martha, I really can't."

"If you had your way, we'd be in Arizona with all the other members of your poker club." Martha Kent grinned impishly at her husband, undoing her scarf as she started going to the counter. "I'll take care of this. Go ahead and take care of your business dear. You're still filling up the tank in a minute."

Her husband smirked and shook his head as he headed to the restroom for a bit. His miracle wife could handle Fredric a lot better than he could anyway. Stepping inside he could see the stall was recently cleaned, head to toe. Every scuffmark and doodle kids did was long gone. Well most of them were bad so he didn't mind really, but there was one large area that was nearly scrubbed down to where the paint was gone. He shook his head. Some days cleaning things wasn't worth it. A new coat of paint though was.

He sat down for a moment and started his business before looking at the stall door like always. Looking at it he blinked. Something was carved into the door, paint gone and even some of the metal. Fredric was definitely going to need a few coats of paint there. Thing was, the image was familiar. Quickly he took out his reading glasses and put them on. Looking at it again his jaw dropped.

"MARTHA!"

Hastily he put his pants back on, rushing out the room to his wife, calling again. "MARTHA!"

"What?" She looked over the man in confusion. "Please tell me you aren't having trouble again."

Quickly he grabbed his wife's hand and pulled her to the bathroom. "Get in here!"

"Jonathan!"

"Hey!" Fredric darted after them. "No women in the men's restroom!"

"Stow it Freddie. This is important!" Mr. Kent brought his wife into the stall he was using and showed her the door. "Look!"

Martha's jaw dropped in disbelief. "Oh my…"

"What are you two looking at?!" The man glared at them both, wanting them gone.

"How long has this been here?!" She demanded immediately. She pointed to the carving, making the grouchy clerk roll his eyes.

"That R? Some punk kid carved it in about a week ago." The old couple exchanged frantic looks. "His old man told me he was having a hard time getting over his mother's death and he was telling everyone he was kidnapped. Writing it everywhere they went. And he did, right over there. Crazy story too. What's it got to do with anything?"

"He might actually have been kidnapped!" Martha barked back, severely angry at this man. Before them was Dick's seal, what he carved or drew on any of his projects he did at their place. A poorly carved sculpture had it on the base (a present he was making that just couldn't get right). An R in a circle.

Jonathan took a picture of it and sent it straight to his son on his cellphone. "I'll call Clark over. He's been going crazy about this."

"You better remember everything about that customer Fredric Joel!" the old lady started, charging forward at the now panicking cashier. "Because if anything happens to that boy because of your carelessness, I swear I'll have your mother, your wife, and your sisters on your hide before you can blink!"

"Are you sure that's all you have?" Clark Kent, freshly arrived in Smallville about five minutes after receiving the call from his dad (claiming he was visiting over the weekend and was just around the corner earlier), looked around the shop at the same time as interrogating the man he remembered selling candy at his high school. Fredric went from slightly cocky ex-military store clerk to a shaky witness of something they'd been waiting for nearly a month.

"That's all! I swear!" The clerk cringed, devastated that he let something big slip through his fingers so easily. As if it wasn't bad enough he was kicked out of the navy. "Two men were with him, one claiming to be his dad. They all wore sunglasses and kept their hats on so I can't really give a good description."

"Bad with faces anyway," Pa recalled.

"I think they were military," he admitted. "Called the restroom the head."

"That's something," the reporter admitted, glaring and using his visions to see if anything was left behind for them to use. Any clue. "Would be better if your security camera wasn't fake."

"Anything else?" Bruce was on speakerphone, his voice exactly as when in Batman mode.

"Nothing. Sorry sir."

"What was that thing he wrote on the stall?" Ma demanded, remembering the scrubbing signs on the thing.

"Uh… 'Help' I think. 'Do not erase' too. I think I remember 'I've been kidnapped' and it had something about assassins and league and something about a family?" The man cringed. He really had a bad memory. One reason he was kicked out of the navy.

Clark jerked his head around in alarm. League? Assassins? Could that mean… "B. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Not their MO," the phone stated flatly, not noticing all the confused looks it was getting. "Last I checked, they have no interest in him and they wouldn't stay in the states if they had. But may be worth looking into later. Knowing Dick though, he would have left another kind of message if he could. What exactly did he touch around there?"

"Uh…" Fredric looked up trying to remember. "He… played with the key chains, moved a lot of them around."

"Do you remember which ones?"

He shook his head, cringing. "I fix them every day. Someone's always putting certain names together or just don't bother putting them on the right peg."

"Anywhere else?" Clark didn't think you could pass a message with those things anyway. Maybe prove he was there but that's about all. Kids liked to play around with them anyway.

"Uh… he was at the pen and marker display. That's where he got the sharpie I think." Immediately the Kents, all of them, went over to the display, hoping for some hidden message there. The clerk cringed again as he continued. "I rip off the used pages every night. I think that one day he made a pretty page saying 'you suck'."

"And he'd know that…" The older Kents looked at their son as he murmured, wondering what was going through his mind. Using his X-ray vision, he looked all around the display until he found was he was looking for: a perfectly folded five sided diamond piece of paper stuck between the panels of the gondola. It was one place the clerk wouldn't look. "Pa, help me slide this thing over. I think there's a note here, somewhere."

"Wai—"

"You got it son." Jonathan faked picking one end of the piece as Clark shoved the thing open, letting the paper (and a few others crumbled up between the holes) fall to the floor. Instantly he went to his knees and picked it up, unfolding it quickly. Dick was a clever kid who occasionally made notes for him and folded them like this. It was their thing. He stared at the words inside before giving a defeated laugh. "What is it son?"

"It says, 'Happy Birthday Cass. Sorry I can't be there. Stay safe. Love, Dick'." He looked up and away, both relieved and disappointed with the message. It was Dick's handwriting, but couldn't he have left a clue as to where he was going or who took him? No, he used his one chance to wish his sister a happy birthday. Sweet, but not helpful.

"Maybe he didn't have time to tell us what's going on. Or this was a one in a million chance and he chose this in case he was caught." Martha's theories seemed viable, but neither helped lighten their moods. She looked at the other papers that had fallen. "Maybe there's another note here!"

She and her husband gathered up all the other pieces of paper that fell to the floor, encouraged by Bruce's voice. "Bring everything. Including the door."

"You can't just take my door!" Fredric was at wits end how. If circumstances were different they might have been sympathetic to the man, but it wasn't.

"Mr. Joel," the phone started, very, very mad, "you neglected to report a missing person's appearance, a possible kidnapping victim, two felons, and tampered with all evidence that could lead to the boy's retrieval. Taking a door and causing a small mess in your store is the least of your worries. Either you deal with this or you deal with the FBI, where you will be heavily fined at the least for interference in a case."

Everything about that phone sent shivers down his body, the cold outside having nothing to do with it. Clark shoved the gondola back into place then came with his parents back to his phone to finish the conversation. "I'll bring everything I've found to your place as soon as I can. I don't see where any of this will lead—"

"It's proof of life Kent," his friend stated, exhaustion and relief entering his voice at last. "Dick's alive. He passed through town and saw a chance to tell us he was alive and thinking of us. And it's more than we've had in a month."

A/N: Proof of life is important when it comes to kidnapping cases, isn't it? And Dick's been gone for a month with no other leads. I mentioned once the R in a circle before, and I know the Kents know it. So going through Kansas while heading to no where isn't too far fetched, and leaving a message in a gas station bathroom stall is likely. I've cleaned stall doors before and the scratch marks are impossible to remove without a new coat of paint, and even then you can see an after image if it isn't done right. So, surefire message sent to the Kents. The reason why the other message he left is simple and non-specific was because it's a long shot and it could easily be discovered by the wrong person. He did leave a hint inside it, but that'll be revealed later. Someone told me Cass' B-day was January 28th (I think).

As for motion sickness, I have it and it is genetic. Dad's got it and a few siblings. it lessens as you get older and effects vary depending on where you sit in a car, but it never completely ends. I only get headaches if I'm in a car for more than an hour without Dramamine. Also can't switch from reading to sight seeing while in motion. Thought it'd be a good excuse for him not to study in the car and really take a look at their surroundings. Seeing the familiar farms and the Smallville sign helped lift his spirits. He'll be kicking himself later though for not thinking of something else to do later, in the extended. Here though it's enough.

Well, Happy thanksgiving to you all tomorrow! I'll still post like I should, but for those who don't read tomorrow, here's yours today. =]