Additional Disclaimers: See the first chapter for the essentials. The 'HotWing' site is a reference to Chris D's awesome Cat Tales stories. The lyric extract is from Hate Me, Shake Me, Break Me, which belongs to Savage Garden and the record producers. I heard it on the radio and it just seems to fit so well to this chapter... :)
Summary: While another family is put under threat, the Batman arrives home...but to what reception? Meanwhile, the heroes find their path leads them to Nightwing's Lair...but the surprises awaiting them there aren't exactly what they were hoping for.
Which leads me to this warning: The final scenes parts that I've italicized are the sole reasons why I've kinda made this fic an R rated one to be safe, even though the rest of this fic is definitely PG13...and I honestly didn't mean to write it that way. A certain plot bunny from another writer grabbed me and wouldn't leave me alone, then kept on multiplying as I typed until I had an infestation on my hands, and what you see before you is the result. You've been warned, listen to me or not as you wish. I'll try and cover the basics next chapter for those that miss out. :D
Jim G, this is for you, its your 'reward' for feeding me the bunny. :D
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ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE
Missing In Action
Chapter 3
Death In The Darkness
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So break me, shake me, hate me, take me over
When the madness stops then you will be alone
Just break me, shake me, hate me, take me over
When the madness stops then you will be alone
So you're the kind who deals with the games in the mind
Well you confuse me in a way that I've never known
You confuse me in a way that I've never known
Hate Me, Shake Me, Break Me
Savage Garden
Ignorance is bliss.
The Matrix
On a dark night . . . a dark man waits . . . with a dark purpose . . .
Disney's Aladdin
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It was with a heartfelt sigh and a cracking of her knuckles that Barbara Gordon pushed herself away from her computers. She stretched her cramping muscles luxuriously, only to wince as her eyes fell upon the digital clock bearing the time. Twenty-five minutes past one in the afternoon. Almost twelve whole hours since her world imploded on itself.
It was bad enough that last night she had managed just over fours hours of sleep after two days of solid coding. Then, in the early hours of this morning – at exactly two o'clock in the morning, to be precise – she had received the call from Robin that had shattered her world. Her despairing hope of Dick's return had become full-blown grief in under two seconds, yet she knew she had only felt the tip of the iceberg when it came to the depth of desolation and sense of loss that ran throughout her heart. That was why she had been on the go ever since...she dared not give herself enough time to reflect on what she had lost with Dick's murder.
Oracle didn't have the time to let Babs fall apart.
However, now they – as in Robin and the Titans, not Oracle – had all decided that they needed a few hours of sleep if they wanted to find any more clues or answers, so Oracle was being put to rest – at least for a few hours. Barbara now had no choice but to face everything she had been holding back for so long.
Resolving to put it off for a while longer, she rolled her chair into the kitchen and blindly pulled down a mug, not caring which one she picked...until she looked down and realized what she held.
It was Dick's favorite mug, the one with the cute little Nightwing cartoon on the side and a caption that still brought a rosy tint to her cheeks and always made her think about the site dedicated to the study of Nightwing's butt.
She had picked it up at some dingy garage sale she could barely remember, and then she had carefully cleaned it and saved it for Dick's upcoming birthday. About a week later, the Joker invaded her home and stole a part of her soul when he broke her spine with his bullet. In the chaos that had followed, she had completely forgotten about the mug, only finding it again when she moved into the Clocktower...in fact, it had been nestled at the bottom of the very last box she had unpacked. She had finally worked up the courage to give it to Dick a few birthdays ago. Needless to say, he had been highly amused about her little find, and had used it religiously whenever he visited her apartment ever since. However, on the day he buried himself away from her and from the rest of the world, she had shoved the mug into the very back of the cupboard, swearing she would wait patiently for his return, not getting it out again until he came back to her and to their love.
Waiting had always been one of the things she found hardest to do. Now, especially now, she did not want to wait any longer; she did not want to have the time to think, to feel. Not now. There had been so many things they had both left unsaid...so many things they had simply assumed the other already knew...so many things she wished they had done...
And now she would have forever to dwell on them, to wish she could turn back the clock and stop this entire disaster before it ever happened...
It was ironic, really. Now he had returned, but only a part of him in a cardboard box...and she had gotten out the mug.
She let out a loud incoherent cry as she suddenly whirled and threw the treasured mug with all her might into the wall, feeling a bright, cleansing pleasure when it shattered into a million tiny shards. It was only fair that it should shatter, that it should break apart just like her heart already had.
She needed more...more shattering, more things to throw, more feelings to cleanse...
HOW DARE HE LEAVE HER ALONE!
The china plate on which he ate their last meal together.
HOW DARE HE DO THIS TO HER!!
A glass tumbler this time, the large one she kept especially for him.
HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT HER LIKE THIS!!
The vase from the kitchen table he had given her in anniversary of something she could not recall right now.
WHY COULDN'T HE SEE SHE NEEDED HIM!!
She threw the vase harder than all the rest, but this time there was no cleansing pleasure when she saw shatter and join the growing pile of shards on the floor. She glared at the pieces of china darkly, as if they were the cause of all her woes and not just a sign of her deep and painful anger. Her chest heaved and her breath came in panting gasps from her exertions, but she didn't care.
'It just isn't fair.'
She didn't care that her cheeks were wet, that her gasping breaths were actually desperate sobs, that her hands were shaking even as they gripped her knees until her knuckles were reddish-white.
'Why couldn't they take me instead? Why couldn't I die with him?'
She didn't care that the mementos of some of their happiest times together now lay only in pieces, shattered and broken beyond repair.
'Why did he have to leave me alone? Why did he have to die?'
She didn't care that she almost wished she had never broken his mug.
'Why did I have to be so lost without him?'
She only cared for her heart, lying within her in pieces, a thousand little splinters lodged so deep within her soul that the ache was incalculable. She cared only about the pain that would never leave, the emptiness within her that would only grow and grow and would never be filled, of the swamping loneliness that enveloped her, of having to face the rest of her life without him and without his love and soft words to guide her way.
'Why did it have to be him?'
But she also cared about the anger lodged deep within her, anger against him for leaving, against the killers for doing it, against Robin for not reporting in before Dick beat the Joker to death, against Cassandra for saying nothing, and against the Bat for God-knows-what...but mostly the anger was aimed at herself for letting him go in the first place.
'WHY?!'
A hard tap-tapping broke her out of her tirade just as she was feeling ready to start throwing again. She jerked her head up to stare at the security monitor mounted next to the fridge – in particular the monitor linked to the camera above her front door – and immediately relaxed a little. At the door was a shivering Tim Drake, knocking on her door for all he was worth.
It took her a few seconds to compose herself, to straighten her disheveled clothes, to tuck her fly-away hair behind her ears, and to let the color of her cheeks change into a more normal (calmer) tone. The youth entered as soon as she rolled over and pulled open the door, wordlessly slipping past her to curl up into a ball on her couch and stare at the silent television while he slowly rocked himself.
Barbara remained where she was for a moment, holding open the door to an empty corridor, staring at where he had been standing. After a long couple of seconds she softly swung the door shut as if it was a fragile stick of dynamite that would explode if she dropped it, then activated the security system before slowly rolling herself to the couch.
"Tim?" The tentative question was spoken so softly it was almost lost as it hovered in the air between the two companions and close friends.
Tim only shivered and continued staring at the blank TV as if it held the answers to all his problems. "Can't sleep..."
Trying hard not to startle him, she carefully reached over and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?" She winced inside when she heard her own words. 'What's wrong?' she mentally, than immediately answered herself wearily. 'Try everything.'
He closed his eyes and tried not to flinch at the touch. "Bad dreamin'..." He shuddered, pausing a moment to shove vivid images aside once more, and then muttered into his folded arms, "And he's coming back tonight." There was no need to explain who he was. They knew.
Bruce. Batman. Take your pick. Neither was an appealing prospect.
"When?"
It took a bit of careful maneuvering to get her chair close enough to let her transfer her body to the couch, but she managed – she always managed. She had to. Once she was settled, she reached over and wrapped her arms around the boy's shaking shoulders, pulling him closer until his head rested on her lap.
She had to close her eyes at the sting of pained remembrance... Whenever he stayed with her overnight, Dick would always want to curl up against her on the couch, resting his head on her shoulder or lap as he dozed away the hours of darkness. It had to be uncomfortable, but he would always smile at her in the morning with his grin at its highest wattage and tell her it was the best sleep he'd ever had.... She swallowed hard and tried to hold back the tears with the strength of her will, but still one traitorous drop emerged to trickle down her cheek.
"Three hours, I think," Tim muttered hoarsely, pulling himself in tighter. "He's coming in three hours, and he's gonna kill me."
He closed his eyes and snuggled in closer, desperate for companionship but unaware that she was silently crying. Even if he had known, he probably would not care. It wasn't that he did not love her... Hell, he loved her with all his heart. She was the big sister he had never had, the mother he had been denied, the friend and confidant he missed in his father. If possible, he had loved even more to hope that she would one day marry the man he considered his big brother... But these last twenty-four hours had pushed him to his limits. He had run the gauntlet of emotions, and he wasn't sure he had much left in him to feel. In his heart there was so much pain, so much grief, so much hurt, so much anger, it was all he could do just to hold the pieces of himself together.
Babs leaned her head back and closed her eyes wearily. "Why would he kill you?" she asked softly, her voice wavering despite herself.
He continued vacantly staring straight ahead, not game enough to meet her eyes. If he did, he knew he would see in them the grief that was mirrored in his own...and he knew he would break down completely. "Cowardice," he replied hoarsely (shamefully).
She frowned at the non-sequitur. "Cowardice? How can you be a coward?"
"I can't face 'im," he murmured softly. "I don't wanna be the one to tell him."
Using the hand resting on his shoulders, she slowly stroked his thin sideburns, trying to soothe the torment within him with what little she had to offer while she figured out how to reply. He closed his eyes at the gentle movements, slowly allowing the ball he had curled himself into to relax. A little.
"I don't blame you," she finally replied just as quietly. "I wouldn't want to tell him about Dick either."
He was silent for a long moment, thrown by her admission. "Why?"
There was silence a moment as she gathered her thoughts enough to figure out how to say what she wanted. "Remember Jason?"
She felt him nod on her shoulder. How could they forget?
"When he died, Bruce was...furious, for want of a better term. It was like Batman-squared, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week..." she explained softly, her eyes distant as she remembered those awful days. "When he found out that the Joker was absolved of his crimes when he managed to became the UN ambassador...well, the only reason the Joker was still alive to later resign his diplomatic status was because Superman had to physically stop Bruce from getting too close."
Tim's eyes jerked open and he stared at her in alarm. "You mean he wanted he wanted to kill the Joker?!"
"Cold-blooded premeditated murder," she confirmed. "And I know for a fact that Dick and Alfred are the closest ones to him, the only ones he's fully allowed inside his heart. You and I are about halfway there, but Jason..." she sighed and shook her head regretfully, "...he didn't have the time to make it far past the surface."
Tim was silent as he absorbed her words. "Oh."
She shook her head and suddenly smiled bitterly. "Then again, you never know what to expect with Bruce. Maybe we'll be lucky and all these months that Dick's been gone might have already prepared him for the fact that he's not coming back."
Tim forced out a strangled laugh. "Yeah, and maybe this is just some nightmare I'm gonna wake up from."
After that, they fell into a companionable silence neither tried to break as Barbara kept absently stroking his face. Her mind was far away, deeply immersed in kinder days lit with a brilliant smile and blue eyes shining for her that had never dimmed, of simpler nights and far simpler emotions, when they would just curl up on the couch and wait out the dark.
She looked down after a few minutes and smiled softly. Her gentle touches had managed to do what their talking had not. Tim was fast asleep on her lap, and she could tell by his slack, relaxed expressions that the nightmares were leaving him alone...for now.
With an ease born of long practice, she was careful not to disturb him as she reached over and grabbed the blanket she kept on the couch and pulled it over the worn-out youth. That done, she leaned back with a small sigh, closed her eyes, and tried to forget that it wasn't Dick's face under her hand.
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Twenty minutes to four.
One day that had lasted far too long.
There was nothing like mindlessly driving somewhere – anywhere – to take one's mind off one's troubles. So Tim drove his Redbird automatically, devoting only a small portion of his mental capacity to staying on the road and on track, preferring to allow the rest of his tangled thoughts to simply wander.
It felt strange, really. He normally wasn't allowed to just let his thoughts just drift – except in meditation, and sometimes not even then – as there was always something that needed his immediate attention.
It was refreshing to not have to worry about anything. In some ways, though, it was too refreshing. It made him wonder just how much stress he had been under lately. Looking back, Tim could see its increase, but so gradually it had built upon him that he had never noticed it until now. It all started about five and a half months ago, back when they were still expecting Dick to return to them at any moment.
Bruce had been his normal chirpy self, which is to say that he had still been subconsciously blaming Robin for not reporting to Oracle in time to stop Dick crossing the all-important line they drew between themselves and those they fought against. One month of the oppressive silences that only the Bat could inflict had been more than enough, so Tim had quietly changed into his Robin costume and gone to the Young Justice headquarters to just get away from the Manor and have some quiet time to himself to think.
So of course a problem had come up that only Young Justice could solve, so he'd promptly led the team halfway across the galaxy and back in order to save the universe from a fate worse than death. It was the usual 'save the universe mission,' but it was also one of those 'bending' trips, as he had come to call them in his mind – the kind that bend not only the mind but time as well. They had only been gone one month by his reckoning when they arrived back in one piece but worse for wear, but Alfred had calmly informed him later that it had really been one week.
During that 'month' he was away 'saving the universe,' it had seemed that everything went to hell in a hand-basket.
The Cave had been broken into, but they never did figure out if anything was taken. The JLA monitor womb had become the casualty of a supervirus that wiped out most of their data. Spoiler had decided that their on-again-off-again relationship was now officially 'off' – and told him so when he had shown up at her place for a long-awaited date.
As if that was not enough, some unknown entity had decided to play havoc with Gotham's power distribution systems and was knocking out almost all electrical systems in the city with random patterns of surges and blackouts. Barbara herself had only narrowly avoided severe damage to Oracle's extensive digital systems, but she might as well have been knocked off-line because she – along with everyone else in the city – could not even plug-in a power cord to a simple kettle until all the surges and blackouts had stopped.
It was chaos, to say the least. It was like No Man's Land all over again, but at least this time Arkham had managed to keep all its prisoners in their cells. All told, Gotham lost at least a year's worth of data overall, but it was much worse in the places where they'd been neglecting to back-up their systems.
Even though it operated on a separate, isolated power grid to the rest of Gotham, not even the Cave had escaped unscathed. Even there, they'd lost over one month's worth of files before they managed to contain the damage. However, what had made the whole thing far worse was that while they caught up on the files they lost and did all the investigating they had already completed, he and Bruce still had to cope with assisting the Gotham Police Department in preventing unscrupulous people from submitting fraudulent data as the city tried to reconstruct what they had lost.
Tim still was not sure that they had managed to catch everyone, but by now it was far too late for second thoughts. They could only sit back as everything slowly came back online, and hope like anything that they had been successful.
It had been a good two and a half months after the power fluctuations began before everything started to settle down once more into Gotham's definition of 'normality,' although it really did not stay calm for very long. Then again, it never did. There was always some disaster beckoning on the horizon, and it was no different then.
Within two weeks, Bruce had announced without warning that he needed to go undercover to wrap up a case he was working on. He told Tim/Robin that he would be gone for a while, that he was taking Cassandra instead of Robin, and that he was not sure when he would be back, but no matter what don't try to contact him 'cause he'll contact him if he needed help – which he wouldn't, especially from Robin – and he'd better not let Gotham burn to the ground while they were gone if he valued his health.
Not in so many words, of course, but the Bat had never been an outstanding conversationalist. Besides, the message was undeniably there that both Tim and Robin had a lot of work to do. Bruce still did not trust him, and Batman trusted him even less.
So, like any good little partner of the Bat, he had done exactly as he was told and stayed put. After all, how hard could it be to look after one city?
As it turned out, it was a lot harder than he had thought possible. It was bad enough that he was not as highly respected as the Bat by the average criminal due to his bright costume...but then the Fates had decided to give him a whole new complication. Batman had ordered him to keep the legend alive, to keep fear in the night and the respect in criminal's minds. Period.
And that meant pretending to be the Bat.
Simple, right?
One problem: Tim might be in the middle of his growth spurts, but Bruce had still towered a good couple of feet above his head. Even when in costume, he really only looked the part if he stood on stilts all the time . . . and you just can't fight and wear a pair of stilts at the same time, can you?
Besides, he did some serious damage to the muscles near his shin and the cartilage around his left knee during the first night he'd tried to be the Bat. It was hardly enough to prevent Robin taking to the skies each night, but Leslie (and the pain) had absolutely forbid him from doing anything more strenuous than a brisk walk and one tumble per night – be it through rolling out of the line of fire, or through a simple somersault – until his leg healed. Using grappling lines all the time had never been such a pain.
So he'd had to seek help elsewhere. The remaining Titans were out, because none of them were as aware of how the Bat worked as he would prefer. Which left the JLA, but Superman was out – to Tim's mind, the build was slightly wrong, and sometimes you just can't hide superstrength – and Green Lantern was uncontactable. That left J'onn Jonz, who was probably the only one sufficiently familiar with Batman's methods and able to look the part. After all, even Batman had little to hide from someone that could phase into your body and read your thoughts before you thought them.
It had worked quite well for a while – surprisingly well considering J'onn and Bruce tended to have a few philosophical differences more often that not. That is, it had worked well until the alien came down with some kind of weird Martian Virus within the first two weeks that had put him out of action ever since. Thankfully however, the JLA had been called out at about that time to deal with some interstellar crisis. Seeing as it was common knowledge that Bats was a part of the JLA's current incantation, his absence could pass without suspicion while the JLA were away.
So Tim went back to working solo in Gotham as Robin, trusting the Titans to keep up with whatever was happening in Blüdhaven and hoping that Batman would return from his personal mission before the JLA came back down to Earth.
All too soon for Robin, however, the JLA returned and Batman was still absent.
This time at least, Robin had managed to divert most suspicion by using a modified Bat-Suit that Alfred had created for him while the JLA was away. Able to be put on or off in moments, he had worn the suit over his Robin costume to make a few random appearances throughout each night to keep the criminals on their toes, but he was still able to work almost all cases by himself as normal.
He didn't think he'd ever been more grateful for velcro's invention in his life.
Life had gone on like this night after night as he tried to keep Gotham as safe as he could. The entire experience was very rough on his body and mind, seeing as it required a lot more split-second timing and faster reflexes than he normally used, but he had somehow managed to pull it off – he still was not quite sure how he did it, though. Nevertheless, no one had suspected that Batman was not even in Gotham – as far as he knew, anyway – and that was all that mattered.
Well, no one knew for the most part. Oracle had sworn not to mention that 'little' incident with the Vicelords to Batman on pain of death, or at least not without his express prior permission – and that was permission that if he never gave, it would be too soon.
However, the stress of trying to be both Bat and Bird at once was definitely starting to get to him. Dana was already beginning to wonder why his teachers were complaining that he was frequently falling asleep in class. There was only so many ways that he could dodge the issue with her before he had to give her some definite excuses. Whatever excuse he used, she had indicated to him in no uncertain terms that it had better be a matter of life or death that was keeping him awake each night. He had the two weeks until she came back from the holiday with Jack Drake to come up with an acceptable reason – and telling them the truth was nowhere near the right ballpark. At the time, he hadn't been worried. Two weeks was plenty of time to think up a good lie, right?
And then the Bat-signal had lit the sky almost twenty-four hours ago and shot all his fine plans to pieces.
When you came down to it, it was a wonder that he had lasted as long as he had before he collapsed on Oracle's couch. Yet as much as he needed – craved – the dark embraces of sleep, the images of the last twenty-four hours were still too fresh to give him the peace he so badly wanted.
Maybe if he had some answers, he could get the images to leave him alone long enough to really sleep, not just the little fifteen minute doze he had managed at Oracle's place before his dreams woke him.
Oh yes, he had questions.
Analysis of the samples he'd taken from Di— the body in the morgue – showed that he had been dead for about one week, if not two, before his body was found. Yet the hand had been removed three months prior to that at the very latest. So why was the body found before the hand was dropped off? Normally, killers sent things like severed hands to torment the families of the victim before they actually killed the victim. Why, then, did the severed hand arrive after the fact?
Hell, why hadn't they been notified the moment that Blüdhaven Police identified the body as that of one Richard Grayson? Surely Oracle had flags in their computers for anything relating to Dick. Not even the Blüdhaven cops were so incompetent that they'd fail to let families know the fate of lost loved ones once their bodies were identified. Surely they knew that such a failure was a major career-ending move, even in a city as corrupt as the Haven.
Why did the killer(s) leave the body in a ditch for anyone to find? Normally, killers went to great pains to hide the bodies of their victims. After all, it could be hard to convince a jury a murder happened without the body – and the obligatory autopsy photographs – to show for it. So why on earth leave it in an open-air ditch where it was bound to be quickly found?
For that matter, he knew it wasn't just his sense of hero-worship that told him his older brother was a hard man to capture, let alone kill. Dick would have never of survived his first few days in Blüdhaven if he had been a man easy to take down, let alone all the long, hard months that had followed. So how on earth did they capture him? And what they do to him to kill him?
Why did they, whoever they were, take Dick and not someone else? There were plenty of other cops in the Haven, let alone in Gotham and the rest of world. Why would they focus on the Haven, and Dick in particular? Was it something Dick had unknowingly done that lead his eventual killers to him...be it as Nightwing or as Dick Grayson?
And while he was at it, where did Dick hide during the time between his disappearance from their lives and his capture by the people that killed him? Wasn't like there was that many places open to him, especially if he wanted to avoid the legendary Bat-radar...or Alfred's for that matter— Hang on...
If Dick was abducted after his disappearance from their lives but before he returned to them, wouldn't all the things he left behind still be at his hidden lair...the same lair he'd only found with Alfred's help? There should be things like his sets of uniform, his cycle, the muscle car, and whatever else he had that was far too bulky to store in his apartment...
The apartment, he knew, was exactly as Dick left it. That is to say, all of his Nightwing costumes – including the costume he had worn to the fight with The Joker, even if it was now clean, fully repaired, and hanging up in his closest – and his police uniforms were still there, as well as almost everything he'd owned as Dick...
Except for the sets he kept at his Lair and at the Cave for dire emergencies. The Cave was out, though, because there was no way he was going back to the Cave until he could confirm that he wouldn't have to tell Bruce about Dick. So that left the Lair.
'Yes!' he thought to himself as his excitement began to grow, 'That's it! I can answer at least some of my questions by seeing what's missing and whether anything is out of place... And I really only need to check the Lair to find out!'
At least by taking a look at the Lair, they might be able to eliminate it from their enquires. He dared not bring himself to hope that they might also find a new lead, but nor could he forget that that was still quite likely, even after six months had elapsed. Often, he had found that it was the little details in a crime scene that helped solve a crime. And the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was probably a myriad of small details at the Lair that would help him solve this emotion-charged puzzle.
However, if he had known exactly what would greet him at Nightwing's Lair, if he had known exactly what the answers to his questions would do to his soul, he would have turned around the Redbird then and there, returned home, and promptly thrown every Robin costume he possessed into the incinerator. Even living the rest of his life as plain Tim Drake was probably going to be much more preferable compared to living through what was to come.
Yet he did not know, and so he continued on his chosen course regardless.
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Joey Flaherty sighed and slumped his head on the folded arms resting on the table in front of him. With his family away for a few days, he had taken advantage of the opportunity to work on the Grayson case from his home-office without interruptions. He did not need to travel into his office in order to do what he needed to do. Most of the calls could be done from the second line he had grudgingly put in six months ago – and now wished he had put in earlier – and the emails to the remaining contacts were easily made from his personal secondhand computer through a few (hopefully) untraceable email accounts.
But it was all to no avail.
He was no closer to solving this case than he had been this morning before Robin called in.
None of his contacts had turned up anything on the last moments of a certain Richard 'Dick' Grayson. It was not surprising considering the length of time since the rookie's disappearance. All he really had to go on was the fact that the rookie had left his apartment on Parkthorn Avenue and had taken a two month leave of absence from the Force, returning to work for just under one week before his actual disappearance four months ago... There was, of course, that time Joey could still swear he saw the rookie walking along Parkthorn Avenue looking very much the worse for wear...but the man hadn't turned around when Joey had called out his name.
It was probably just a case of mistaken identity, anyway.
The problem was that his gut told him that he need not worry about the almost four months between Grayson's disappearance from the Force and the discovery of his body. He did not know why, but his instincts told him that whatever had caused his disappearance had kept him for the entire three and a half months it had taken to kill the officer. Instead, it was those first two months that he kept digging at like a dog gnawing on a bone. He might not have any evidence, but he was still pretty sure that that two month leave of absence from the B.P.D. had everything to do with Grayson's later disappearance.
But why did he leave? Where did he go? And what on earth could one man have done in those two months that would make him so hard to track down? It was like the rookie officer had literally dropped off the face of the earth! Why, not even—
He froze and repeated that last phrase to himself again. Why did it strike a chord within him? What was it about it that seemed so familiar...so important?
'Think, Flaherty, THINK! "...literally dropped of the face of the Earth..." What does that imply?'
'It means being underground,' he answered himself slowly, 'of hiding in a covert manner, or maybe not even existing on the surface of the Earth itself...' He sat bolt upright and suddenly cursed as he realized what it meant.
'An alias! The little runt must've used an alias!'
That was why he couldn't find the rookie! 'Dick Grayson' literally hadn't existed for that two month leave of absence! At least, he had not existed in the sense that he hadn't bought anything, sold anything, moved something out of his apartment, spoken to anyone, or even breathed in any air. The rookie had abandoned everything tied into the "Richard Grayson" identity and created another...another name, another identity entirely under which to live...
Then again, why would he use an alias in the first place? What on earth had made him so desperate that he found it necessary to abandon his identity and create another? What had he done that made him want to disappear without a trace? What was he hiding from?
For that matter, who was he hiding from?
Didn't that kid Robin say that Grayson had connections to Nightwing? So maybe....
Nah, it couldn't have been Nightwing. It just wasn't the vigilante's style to do that kind of thing. Besides, if his memory served him right, Nightwing had disappeared about the same time after that fiasco with The Joker... So maybe Grayson have gained some kind of knowledge that could have prevented the whole thing, and was hiding because he could not get it to the vigilante in time and feared Nightwing's wrath?
Even as he formed the words, Joey knew the thought was wrong. Again, Nightwing was not the type to blast a contact for not delivering the truth. His own dealings with the vigilante had been a case in point. Such actions were more like the Bat, anyway...and wasn't the Bat rumored to be Nightwing's father?
Something like that.
So maybe Grayson had actually been hiding from Batman. Maybe he could have prevented the whole Joker thing, but didn't. Therefore, fearing that the Bat was going to come gunning for his hide, he hid himself so deep that now no one could find where he had been.
Now it was making a bit more sense.
Okay, so now he knew why Grayson was hiding...so where would he hide?
And while he was on that subject, why hadn't Grayson returned to his apartment after the two months were up? According to his super, Dick had just upped and left one morning before she got up, without even explaining why. She did say he had seemed worn and exhausted both physically and mentally the night before when they'd briefly talked, but he hadn't given her an explanation at all....and the next morning he was gone. Two months later, his leave from the B.P.D. was up and he dutifully returned to work as Richard Grayson...but not to the apartment under that name. Why the B.P.D. and not his own apartment?
However, now that he consciously thought about it, that question was fairly easy to answer. A highly powerful virus had wiped out all of Blüdhaven's computers the week before Grayson's leave was up. In the few days between his return to work and subsequent disappearance, there had not been hardly enough time to catalogue the damage to the digital files, let alone recreate the system and start entering new data as it came in. That was probably how his disappearance was not logged for so long... Come to think of it, the computers still weren't fully up, not with the recent power surges that were playing havoc with all kinds of electronic equipment.
So in the few days between the end of his leave and the actual disappearance, Grayson had returned to the B.P.D. but not to his apartment because the Blüdhaven Police Department were far too busy to record his return on the computer...while the super of his apartment building would surely notice his return and mention it to someone...
So, not only was he hiding from the Bat...but also from someone with the ability to hack into computer systems, and even had the guts to penetrate a system belonging to the police – a gutsy move even if the Blüdhaven system had the security . Who could possibly—? 'No need to finish that one,' he answered himself. 'Only one person would be brave enough.'
'Oracle.'
So Dick Grayson had been hiding from Batman...and Oracle, the greatest hacker the world had ever known...who'd also managed to get on Blockbuster's – and thus, as much as he hated to admit it, the Blüdhaven's PD – bad side.
Now everything was starting to make sense. Perhaps what he really should do is go down to the Blüdhaven library and see what he could dig up about Dick Grayson's past. Maybe finding out more information about the kid's past than his official file showed would help him figure out where the kid would hide, and maybe even some indication of how he got involved in the vigilante world...or, failing that, he could try his luck in an internet cafe and see how much he could find before another surge hit...
He nodded to himself in satisfaction and pushed himself away from his desk. That was what he was going to do. He would go to the nearest Internet cafe and try his hand at searching the net for Grayson's past...then, if that failed, he would go to the library and see what he could dig up there on the connection from the Bat and Nightwing to Gray—
KNOCK KNOCK
Joey frowned as he stood up and made his way to the front door. 'Now who could that be?' It wasn't his family. They weren't due back for another day at the very least, and Mrs Flaherty would not bother to knock either. He was not even expecting anyone....
....And he certainly was not expecting to see Sergeant Rohrbach through the peephole in the front door.
He pulled open the door and gave a friendly smile. "Amy?! What are you doing here? I thought you were—"
"Can I come in?" the female officer interrupted gravely, not returning his smile.
Joey hesitated for a second, his smile dying a quick death as he felt a sudden twisting in his gut that told him that something was wrong. Very wrong. Police only ask to come in when they want to search the place...or they had bad news... "This isn't a social call, is it?" he asked, his voice quiet.
Amy sighed softly and shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Joey. Can I come in?"
"Sure..." he replied automatically, not really thinking about his words as he stood off to the side to give her enough room to enter. His mind was whirling, trying to think if he had heard anything lately about Arnot threatening him again...or what bad news she could possibly...
The churning in his gut intensified as he turned around to face one of his few friends. "It's about one of the kids, isn't it?" he asked bluntly, his voice twisted in anguish. "Or my wife..."
Her hesitation told him all he needed to know. His worst nightmare was coming to life.
"Which one?" he pressed, grabbing the officer by her shoulders and barely stopping himself from physically shaking her. "Which one have I lost?"
Amy met his pained gaze with her own troubled eyes and replied softly: "I'm so sorry, Joey. It's...it's Lisa."
A roaring filled his ears as he let go of the Sergeant and stumbled back into the front door. He stared straight ahead and numbly slid to the floor as his knees refused to support him, not hearing the rest of Amy's words even though he could see her lips moving.
There was no need to hear what he already knew.
His youngest was gone. His baby was lost to him forever.
Then he had a thought that sent a chill running throughout his entire body. Lisa had been in the same car as the rest of his family.
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The Batcave was dark, silent, and mysterious, holding within its shadowed grasp more dark secrets than it normally did when the Batmobile pulled into its designated parking space at ten minutes to six on the evening of this auspicious day. The enlarged 'souvenirs' were shrouded in darkness, haunting reminders of lonely days and darker nights even without being illuminated. Even the glass cases for the uniforms of the Fallen were unlit, silent witnesses to the unusually deserted subterranean dwelling.
The atmosphere was so hushed and stagnant that the soft purr of the engine, just a few decibels above the lowest threshold of the human ear when it was idling, still seemed to shatter the quiet into a million pieces. When the key was turned and the engine died away, the silence returned as the noiseless environment quickly regathered itself into a stronger, more omnipotent and powerful presence, quickly thickening the very air till it clogged in the lungs and dragged at the heart.
It was so quiet.
There was no Robin waiting on the Cray with the latest reports of what he had been doing during Batman's absence, nor was Oracle's insignia on the screens to show that she was connected to the Cave to act as Robin's stand-in because he was out on some case. In fact, the Cray was as silent and still as the rest of the Cave. There was not even the smallest flapping of leathery wings from the nocturnal bats inhabiting the ceiling to break the oppression. Yet in all this, perhaps the most telling sign of all was that Alfred was not waiting with a warm robe for each of them and a tray of mugs, one of hot chocolate for Cassandra and the other with coffee for Bruce.
The Cave was instead silent, deserted, lonely and lost. It was deathly still, without a flicker of movement to take away the menace of the creeping darkness that constantly lived within the Cave.
To coin a phrase, it was as hauntingly quiet and still as a morgue – and a morgue probably had more in the way of companionship.
All this Batman saw and processed in the split second it took him to glance around the Cave as he emerged from his vehicle. One eyebrow shifted up a few millimeters, the only visible sign of his considerable surprise. 'What on earth happened? Where is everyone?'
"Stay here. Don't touch anything." This he directed to Cassandra, who had been sitting in the secondary seat in the Batmobile. She too was looking around the Cave in confusion, obviously expecting a warm welcome – especially considering that their undercover mission had lasted quite a few months – that was not in evidence. He did not bother glancing back as he strode away to see her respond with a very small incline of her head before she drifted over to the dressing rooms to change out of her outfit.
Batman didn't even take time to change out of the dirty and ripped jeans, the dirtier t-shirt and even more battered jacket that were far more reminiscent of Matches Malone – an expression of the Bat for the street – than it ever was remotely fitting for a multi-billionair like Bruce Wayne. His need to know what was going on was far too strong for him to adhere to Alfred's cardinal rule to leave Batman's business in the Cave...and to at least look like Bruce Wayne when he was in the Manor itself.
Something was wrong, and he intended to find out what it was.
He climbed the stairs two or three at a time, his mind quickly supplying all the things that could possibly have prevented Alfred from greeting his safe return from another successful mission. However, none of the possibilities he came up with – ranging from ideas as simple as helping Leslie treat an injured Robin to as macabre as an assassination – could compare to what he found in reality.
Alone and apparently in good health, Alfred silently sat in the lounge-room and stared up at the framed portrait of the late Thomas and Martha Wayne. Silver tracks lined his cheeks, and his face seemed far more wrinkled than it had been when he left all those months ago. For all the life he showed, Alfred might as well have been carved from stone – so much so that a part of Bruce was surprised that the kindly old man was not covered in cobwebs.
He paused in the doorway, hesitant to disturb the man that had served as his long-time friend, confident, guide, and father. He was also slightly surprised to find himself reluctant to discover what it was that had disturbed Alfred so when he had been as stable and safe as a mountain for as long as he could remember.
There was, however, no need for Bruce to make a noise to reveal his presence. With obvious effort, Alfred's seemed to gather himself together from wherever his heart and mind had fled to when his natural sixth sense of his employer's whereabouts sounded the alarm. The elderly man's face smoothed out and assumed his normal neutral expression with an apparent ease, although he had to draw on an internal strength of will and character to accomplish the simple act of standing up. He turned around to face Bruce with a small smile, trying to look as though there was nothing wrong...but the smile never quite reached his eyes. "Ah, Master Bruce. Forgive me for not greeting you upon your return. I'm afraid I must have lost track of the time while I awaited your return."
That did it. Something was terribly wrong with the world. "Don't worry, old friend. It's just the first time you've done that in over thirty years," he replied quietly, his forehead crinkling slightly in a puzzled frown. "What's wrong?"
Alfred said nothing, only breathing deeply as he slipped past Bruce and headed towards the Kitchen – probably to prepare a light meal, Bruce thought.
Bruce followed a few steps behind him, his confusion and need to know mounting with every second. "Alfred, please, tell me what happened while I was gone," he appealed quietly. "Please, tell me what's upset you so. Is it Robin? He's not injured is he?"
Strangely, Alfred completely ignored the kitchen – in fact he gave it a wide berth – and went instead to the stairs, informing him quietly as he climbed, "Master Drake is bearing up as well as can be expected, Master Bruce. At least he was when I saw him earlier today." A beat. "Especially considering the circumstances," Alfred muttered, sotto voice.
What? Did he hear that right? Bruce was more confused than ever as he followed the butler up the stairs. "What circumstances? Where is he?"
"Robin is in Blüdhaven," Alfred sighed as he entered the first-floor main hallway, "investigating a lead with Arsenal and The Flash."
Surely he didn't just imagine that sigh. "So what are the Titans doing in Blüdhaven?" Bruce asked, frowning instantly at the thought of meta's anywhere near Gotham as he paused beside Alfred outside a door. He did not, at first, realize at which door they had stopped when he suddenly added, "And what lead are they following?"
Alfred opened the door instead of replying. Bruce entered automatically, expecting Alfred to be right behind him...only to stop short just inside when the realisation of where he was froze the blood in his veins and halted him in his tracks.
Dick's room.
It would always be the room of his eldest (dearest) partner (son), even though he had never slept in it for well over a year, if not many more, before his disappearance.
Bruce slowly turned to face his long-time companion, his face pale and drawn. "Alfred?" he questioned hoarsely, his baritone a wan shadow of its normal self. He had not faced the empty, lonely room since the day Dick left after 'killing' the Joker...the day he'd resolutely pulled the door shut, determined never to open it until.... "Why did you...?"
Even as the questions left his mouth, he knew.
He knew.
And it was the worst thing he had ever known.
"He's dead, isn't he?" he asked, his voice broken and strangled by the hated dark certainty that was spreading like a cancerous growth within his heart. He quickly turned back to the room, his eyes darting wildly about, hungrily taking everything in like a man dying of thirst will try to inhale a bucket of water. "I've lost him..." he whispered softly, heartbroken, grabbing onto the walls as his knees trembled and threatened to drop him to the floor.
He backed up until he was out of the room and then continued until he was leaning against the opposite wall in the hallway. "I've lost him..." he repeated numbly, his blue eyes haunted and filling his unfathomable depths with pain as they locked onto the opening into the room that would now be forever empty.
Alfred placed a hand on Bruce's shoulder and squeezed as hard as he dared with a strength born of his own grief and desolation – which, under the circumstances, was more than enough to break bones had he held on for anything longer than the second he did. It was also enough to shake Bruce – for the moment, at least – out of the stupor he had fallen into. "It's not definite...yet, but it does not seem possible anymore that he is still alive," the elderly butler informed him quietly, his voice touched by his own deep sense of loss.
The pained blue eyes darted to the elderly man and stared with the same intensity as they had stared at a bed that would never be slept in again...and with the same intensity as the eyes of the boy who'd stared at the fallen bodies of his parents after the shooting in Crime Alley. In all of them, questions filled them to the brim and overflowed. "Why? What happened?" he pleaded, his voice broken and desperate with the need to know, to understand, to somehow accept what he never wanted to face. "Why why why?"
And so Alfred told him. For better or worse, he told him everything.
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At that moment in a certain seedy side of Blüdhaven Port...
The dealership had been long abandoned by some sort of company that had folded many years ago. For many years it had been standing quietly, empty, a forgotten reminder of better times, of profit in legal commerce and security for the average person. For many years, the only users of the entire building had been the generations of spiders who built their webs in the dark corners, the termites who never quite seemed to be able to destroy it, and the various vermin – walking on two and four legs – that came with life on the humid docks.
And then one night, not all that long ago in the stream of time – although it was almost certainly over eighteen months ago – the abandoned dealership had been reclaimed by a mysterious subsidiary company with deep pockets and a maze of owning companies. Within days, the spiders and termites were long gone, and the rats were leaving in droves. Within weeks, the squatters were too afraid of its new occupant to return.
If one had the time, inclination, and a couple of Crays available – and about three months to wait for the results – the maze of ownerships could eventually be traced back to one single, solitary man:
Dick Grayson.
It was he who had purchased this building for purposes even more hidden than his role in the whole affair...or rather, it was he who secretly acquired it for Nightwing's lair.
Robin – Tim was already wearing his costume in preparation for the night's activities – did not tell his two casually dressed companions that the only reason that they knew of the Lair's location at all was because he and Alfred had stumbled across it when they were trying to find an injured Nightwing after his disastrous first encounter with Bane over the Cabal affair. Since then, Batman and Oracle had also come to know it's location...but only after they had cleared making the revelations with Dick himself.
Roy and Wally advanced ahead of the young superhero into the remodeled dealership. Robin waited in the doorway, listening to their cries of exclamation as he hit the hidden switch to power the lights.
In one corner of the lair was a locker, workbench complete with sink, a cot, and several bottles of water. In the center of the room – in fact hanging from the roof – were the several chasse bodies Dick used to camouflage his car when necessary. There was everything from a Ford Mustang to a taxi cab, from beat-up bombs to the latest model sports convertible. Ironically enough, there was even a shell for a police cruiser. However, there was no sign of the Nightbird muscle car itself, or of Dick himself.
Roy whistled appreciatively as he looked at all gear from where he stood near the door. "Sure is one nice setup he's got here."
Wally nodded as he drifted towards the end with the cot. "Sure is." He peered around the concertina dividers that served as walls of a changing area. "Looks like its been cleared of uniforms, tho'."
"Which ones?" Roy asked. "Police, or 'Wingster?"
"Both," came the surprised reply. Wally's head re-emerged from the changing area, shaking in reluctant admiration for the detailed thoroughness of his leader. "Damn! Even the little things like toothbrushes and toothpaste are gone."
The two Titans continued moving around the lair, investigating what was there and was not. Behind them, still in the doorway, Robin quietly spoke to Oracle through the microphone in his collar. "Oracle? Where did you say his Nightbird was?"
The sound of tapping keys came through the speaker in Robin's ear. "Looks like the Lair. It's in the right vicinity, anyway."
"It's not here."
"Hang on. I'll check it against the locators you're wearing." More tapping of keys. "Strange; it says here that Roy's standing virtually on top of it."
"Acknowledged." Robin refocused on Roy and found him standing underneath the alternate bodies for Nightwing's muscle car in awed appreciation. "Hey, Roy!"
The Titan looked up, a guilty look flashing over his face for a moment at being caught muttering to himself about the benefits and drawbacks of each design. "Yeah?"
"You wouldn't happen to be standing on Dick's car, would you?"
Roy shot him an insulted look. "I'm not that stupid, kid. Do I look like I'm standing on it?"
Robin shrugged. "That's where Oracle says it is."
He crossed his arms belligerently and tried not to tap his foot in irritation. "Using what?"
"The standard GPS signal malfunctioned a few days before he fought the Joker," Robin explained patiently. "He never had time to replace it, so we were going by one of the locators the Bat placed on the car."
Roy snorted in disgust. "Trust the Bat to bug his own kid."
"He's just a man that hates to be caught unprepared . . . especially in situations like this," Robin pointed out, using what he thought was a fairly reasonable tone under the circumstances.
Only slightly mollified, Roy still looked ready to argue the point of where the car was – as well as his opinion of the Bat's idea of being prepared.
Realizing that this could easily escalate into a full-blown argument, Wally quickly tried to defuse the situation. "Chill out, Roy. For all we know, Robbie might've installed a below ground garage for the car. Can you see anything like that?"
Roy grunted in reply, admitting without words that Wally did indeed have a point. He stepped back to bring more into his field of vision. "Not really. I—" He froze when he heard something crunch under his foot, and bent down to pick the object up.
"Wait a sec, guys," Robin broke in, one hand pressed to his earpiece. "Oracle says that the locator suddenly went off-line."
He straightened up and held it up to the light, his face pale. "Would you mean this locator by any chance?"
Robin muttered a word he was not supposed to know then spoke again into the speaker on his collar. "Looks like another dead-end, Oracle. He must've removed the Bat's locator before he took off."
"Figured. I knew he didn't want the Bat to find him, but I had hoped he wouldn't go as far as that." The sound of a frustrated fist hitting the table and a muttered curse of her own. "Problem is that now we can't find him." She sighed heavily, rubbed her temples, and ordered, "Look, just take a look around while you're there. See if you can find any clues."
"Sure thing. I— Hang on..."
Robin never got the chance to finish before Wally cried out in surprise. He whirled, a hand drifting to his folded bo but then relaxing when he saw what had caused the cry. Wally stood by the workbench, on which was a brand-new TV that Robin had never noticed before. 'When did that get there?'
"Look what I found!" Wally cried out, holding up a black rectangular box. An innocent-looking videotape, on which was a Post-It Note.
"What's the note say, Wal'?" Roy asked, walking over to investigate himself.
He frowned in confusion. "It just says it's for Batman."
Robin appeared by Wally's side and examined the scrawled message on the Post-It Note. "That's not Dick's handwriting. His writing is more rounded and taller than this."
Roy shrugged and rolled his eyes, bouncing up-and-down on the heels of his feet impatiently. "So? Stress can change people's handwriting, you know. Just play the stupid tape already!"
"Uh, Roy," Wally began, looking askance at his fellow Titan, "this is a tape for Batman. You really think he'll be happy if we watch it?"
Roy looked slightly uneasy for a moment until his heart took control again. "We gotta look it at, guys. If we wait for the Bat's permission, we'll never see it. You know what he's like. What the control-freak don't know ain't gonna hurt him." His eyes pleaded with his companions to understand. "What if its some final message from Dick? What if he explains why he's been gone so long, or what he plans for the future? We gotta at least take a quick look at it."
Wally nodded, quickly seeing his point. Before he could do anything, however, Robin took the tape from him and went over to the new TV on the workbench and inserted it in the VCR.
"HEY!"
Robin shook his head. "Better let me put it on, guys. Batman might give me a little more leeway than he will you." He inserted it in the tape player and turned around, gracing them with a small but bitter smile. "Besides, can I help it if you refused to leave?"
Roy and Wally shared a knowing look. The kid-bat was starting to be more like his older brother every day.
Without waiting for a reply, Robin pressed 'Play' and stepped back to let the others see as well, hoping what was going to play would be as Roy had said it would be. The film that began playing on the TV, however, was anything but a comforting message from their friend and brother. It was a message about Dick, but not from their close friend and companion, rather an explanation and a warning to them all. But they did not know this at first, for there was nothing to see.
The screen was dark.
Pitch black, where there really was nothing beyond the end of one's nose.
Darkness, the kind that could be cut with a meat-knife.
The kind of darkness that only lurks in the darkest back streets of Gotham on a moonless night when the Bats are away.
Then one single light, in the middle of the room, activated after a few seconds to reveal a sight that would inhabit their nightmares for years to come...
Dick Grayson....quiet, unmoving, covered with his own blood.
He worked hard for each breath, chest heaving as he struggled to get air into lungs congested with either mucus or blood or both. His longish locks of black hair were tousled and messy, matted with a mix of blood and sweat, and at the annoying length that would always be falling in his eyes if he stood. He wore the remains of a police uniform, although the shirt was long gone, the small dirty white strips on the floor around him its only reminder. The black trousers were torn, tattered, doing little to hide the scars and bruises that marked his body.
Painful, deep purple bruises marked his handsome features, swelling his face until his eyes almost disappeared...although that had not stopped his captors from taping them shut with silver duct tape. Raised reddened welts lined his chest, forming a criss-cross pattern that spoke ominously of a whip, some of them still slowly oozing blood. Ugly brown and purple discolorations over his rib-cage indicated that they had been using him as punching bag and did not mind rebreaking his ribs with almost every session. Bone poked through the skin near his right elbow from compound fractures in his arm, and his left leg was also twisted at un-natural angles. Mixed in among these were deep, blistering burns from where they had been amusing themselves with hot brands, trying to see what made him scream.
Although he was lying on something resembling a chair for a patient of some dentist, this midnight-blue chair had been extensively modified. After all, it wasn't your average dentist chair that came with heavy metal bands encircling the ankles, waist, wrists, and upper arms. His skin was rubbed almost raw in the places where the heavy metal bands encircled his body and held him to the chair that was stained with his own blood.
He was also missing his left hand. Crudely bandaged with the remnants of what had once been Dick's shirt, the stump of his arm still oozed blood slowly.
The only good thing about the entire scene – if there ever was one – was that Dick was thankfully unconscious . . . or almost so. Every once in a while, he would jerk slightly against his bonds, mumbling cries of protest against whatever dreams plagued his sleep. He was whimpering in his restless sleep, begging, pleading with his torturers to stop.
Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing, who had saved the world numerous times, faced villains twice his size with three times his strength, crossed the galaxies and earths of the multiverse, who had been through hell-on-earth over the years, had faced down the Joker and conquered Two Face, had broken through Brother Blood's brainwashing with his own strength of will, had the courage to be his own person outside the Bat, and more . . . . here he lay, battered, bruised, shaking in fear even in the refuge of unconsciousness.
His torturers were obviously succeeding where decades of villains and criminals, heartbreak and corruption, had failed miserably: he was perilously close to breaking.
And then a deep baritone of a voice wafted out from the shadows, more electronic than human in nature, to say only one thing: "Positions."
Even semi-conscious, Dick flinched and seemed to try and draw away from the hated phrase. His mumbling slowly quieted as his body began to tense and his mind struggled to wake.
The shadows around him slowly parted to show twin giants gathering around the chair. Each one was as wide as he was tall, seeming nothing more than rippling muscles as they moved. They gathered around the battered man on the chair and awaited an order, stony faces not flickering with regret for what they've done, hatred for the vigilante, or even sadistic pleasure over what they'd inflicted . . . in short, they might as well have been carved from the same rock as the Bat for all the emotion they showed.
Behind them, from the depths of the shadows emerged what seemed to be their leader. The one Dick had come to know by many names – many of them definitely not for polite company – seemed just as large as the others, but wearing a mechanical suit that covered his entire body including his face, although his shoulder-length black hair was allowed to fall freely down his back. It was all made of the same metal, in the light seeming a strangely coloured goldish shade with hints of red depending on how the wearer stood. And yet even though he had stepped fully into the circle of light, he somehow seemed to remain in the shadows that caressed him like a second skin, as much a part of him as his strange suit. His voice emerged from behind the mask, distorted by the speaker that allowed him to be heard with a metallic timbre. "Eyes."
It was the same voice as had ordered the session to begin, and was apparently the catalyst to get the two giants to act. Standing one on each side of the vigilante, they reached out in unison and ripped the tape from Grayson's eyes with a flourish.
The eyes darted around frantically behind lids that remained tightly shut, as if the young prisoner was trying to wake but couldn't, as if something was holding him back from full awareness.
At a nod from the man in the shadows, a syringe suddenly appeared as if from out of nowhere in the hands of one of the giants and was quickly injected into Grayson's veins a stimulant intermixed with a temporary antidote for the drugs they were feeding him. His eyes snapped open as the liquid burned in his veins, but after that the tearing pain was lost on him as his body started telling him how it felt to be incinerated in a furnace of pain.
His blue-eyed gaze flat, lifeless, never quite focusing properly, he regarded his tormentors with an apathetic silence as they laid out their instruments. His gaze slowly skewed over to the man in the shadows. "Please," he begged, his voice emerging dry and rusty from a throat long since parched, "no mm–mmore, p–please..."
The Phoenix remained unmoving except for a slight shake of his head. "You know how to stop it, Grayson. Tell me what I want to hear, and it will all be over."
There was a long moment of hesitation before Dick slowly squared his jaw and shook his head weakly, forcing his eyes into a squint as the room slowly spun around him. "Nnoo . . . I'll never . . . . ever . . . tell . . . . . "
"As you wish." The leader seemed to shrug heartlessly. "Begin!"
The twins each picked up a small handheld device with knob controls and what appeared to be like twin antennae emerging from one end of the device. They held down a button, and the room immediately echoed with the distinctive sound of arcing electricity as lightning leaped between the metallic ends.
Dick's eyes snapped open at the dreaded sound, his gaze locking onto the devices as he instinctively tried to push himself into the chair, out of reach of the long, limber antennae. He wanted desperately to close his eyes again, to not have to see what they were doing, but the stimulant burning bright in his veins forbid him from even that small reprieve. And then the tips of the twin tasers touched him—
The scenes that followed caused most of those watching to avert their eyes and desperately try to block out the sound from the speakers.
Tears glistened on Wally's cheeks as he stood stock-still, his head turned aside, the screams echoing in his ears until he thought he would burst. Roy quickly turned towards the sink by the video and vomited, his stomach emptying itself until there was nothing left and still he continued to heave.
Robin said nothing, and did nothing. He seemed to ignore his companions completely. His natural instinct was to turn away and do what Roy was doing. But his training made him stay. His training made him watch. His training made him remember.
—Apparently tiring of this game, the suited leader signaled a stop.
In spite of the chill of the cavernous room – or at least it seemed that way from the echoes – sweat poured down the young prisoner's forehead, stinging his eyes and mixing with the tears of pain that flowed down his pale cheeks. It also glistened on his entire body, working its way into his numerous lacerations and burns, creating a constant nagging source of discomfort. By contrast, his mouth and throat felt like large grade sandpaper, his breath rasping painfully as he tried to force air past the surfaces made raw from his repeated cries of pain and rage.
"You must be unnaturally strong for a mortal, Grayson. But then, why else would you be Nightwing?" the suited man asked rhetorically as he moved forward slightly, the darkness still coalescing around him despite the bright light almost directly above his head. In one swift movement, he grabbed the fallen vigilante's chin and jerked Dick's head toward him, forcing the trembling young man to look him squarely in the face. "But you still haven't given me what I want. Give me the simple answers that I want and we'll let you go."
His hesitation was even longer than it was at first, lasting over five seconds before his eyes focused dully (apathetically) on the mask of his hated foe.
"G–G–Go–o t–t–t–to h–h–ee–e–ell..." he stuttered after a moment, ignoring the small spark of alarm at how it taken his retort to emerge.
As he gazed vacantly at his tormentor, blue eyes dulled and dilated by agonising pain still coursing through his abused body, he realized what the other no doubt knew: he was cracking under the strain. He could feel his will to resist wilting, crushed by the painful torture he barely remembered living without. He was holding onto his defiance and to life with his one good hand, but it was clear to him that his hold was shaky at best.
His stubbornness was all he had left to keep him going, to keep himself resisting, and even that was quickly wilting under the pressure of this treatment. His stamina had fled somewhere far away after only the first month here . . . or was it the second? Even his hope of rescue had deserted him by now, and he had resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die in the darkness. But how much longer could he keep his silence when all he had was his reluctance to let everything go?
The Black Phoenix made a disgusted snort and dropped the man's chin as he stepped back into the shadows, leaving Dick coughing painfully as a lump of air rushed into his lungs. He grimaced and tried to curl into a ball as the sharp motions of his chest pulled at his broken ribs but was once more stopped by the metal bands holding him down.
With the insight that comes after living through more sessions like these than he cared to remember, he suddenly seemed to sense that the twins were again approaching him with their tasers. His trembling increased as his imagination supplied the sensations that would soon assault him anew. He again tried to press himself back into the chair in a futile effort to escape what was coming, unconsciously whimpering as he pleaded, "Please . . . stop . . . . no . . . no m–more . . . please . . . . please . . . . . n–n–no—"
And then he screamed again...
...and again...
...and again...
...again and again...
...until he could scream no more, and still the burning, tingling, stinging pain assaulted him...
...when all he could do was jerk uselessly in a chair forbidding all movement in the throes of muscle spasms strong enough to break his body in two that wracked his body over and over without respite...
...and all he could focus on was the beating of his heart in his ears as it faltered, faltered and stumbled in its beats at the unrelenting burning that tore at his nerves and ripped at his mind and soul... like a..... with...claws.... cat's claws....... cats.......... ca............
—and then they stopped.
The blessed quiet descended once more, broken only by Dick's gasping breaths as he desperately sucked air into useless lungs. He collapsed in a boneless heap on the chair, finally free of the burning torture of the taser...for the moment. His head hit the headrest with an audible thump and his eyes closed for the first time since the taser had emerged as he struggled to hold back the darkness encroaching on his vision and the weighted muscles that made it so hard to breathe.
"Give it up, Nightwing," the leader encouraged (purred) persuasively, his voice dropping to an almost soothing tone. "Tell me what I want, and we'll leave you alone."
The young prisoner made no reply. He continued lying with his eyes closed, gasping for breath, the broken bones in his remaining hand grinding painfully as he made a weak fist, trying to grasp the life that was even now quickly slipping from his hold.
As if aware that he was losing his captive, the Phoenix nodded subtly at one of the twins. The contents of another vial of stimulants found its way into Grayson's system, but this time it did not have the same effect as before. His eyes only made it open half-way, and the involuntary trembling that never seemed to leave only got worse.
The leader stepped forward again, moving his helmet directly into the captive's line-of-sight. His voice dropped into a fairly close approximation of The Voice. "Tell me the answers, Grayson, or I swear to you that the next person in this chair will be your precious Babs...and this time I'll make sure you'll watch and feel everything we do to her." He paused to let the threat sink in.
Dick stared at the helmet with his vacant gaze, his existence of an untold number of weeks flashing through his mind in all its gruesome details. His thoughts whirled around his head too fast for him to hold and understand, but one thing remained clear.
He no longer cared what they did to him. They could tear him limb from limb if they wanted, he just didn't care anymore. He'd felt too much pain and agony in these last months to worry about a little bit more.
But not Babs. He had to protect her. No matter what, he had to keep her safe . . . no matter what it may cost him in the end. No matter what.
No matter what.
His torturer smirked behind the mask, knowing he had won as soon as he saw in those pained blue eyes the flame of defiance, the intelligence that was Dick Grayson, weakening and drastically faltering. "Now," he fairly purred, "unless you want your precious girlfriend lying where you are now, tell me where Superman's kryptonite bullet is."
He couldn't let his Babs see him like this...just like he couldn't let them do to her what they had done to him. He could not let her feel the same kind of abandonment and hopeless desolation he felt... He could not even stand the thought.... He just couldn't stand it.....
His eyes slowly slid shut as he weakly rested his head on the chair, listlessly accepting the knowledge that Babs had been his breaking point all along. So the answer finally came, almost inaudible in the hoarse remnants of a voice, "Unda . . . . Mmaaannn'rrrrr . . . . . Baat . . . . . caaaavvvvvve . . . "
No sooner were the words out than his body slumped in the chair as his soul collapsed upon itself at his betrayal. He did not bother fighting the darkness that overcame him with sudden surging strength. His final thought was a weak call for forgiveness before he passed out for the last time.
Unaware that he had lost at the same moment that he'd won, the Phoenix pressed on, "And the access codes to the JLA Watchtower?"
No response.
Another application of the taser made Dick's body jerk and buck against the restraints, but it seemed more an involuntary reaction than any real expression of pain. This time he did not scream, nor did he try to twist away. When it was over, his body remained limp, unmoving, ominously still once the taser was removed.
The Black Phoenix frowned. "Check him."
One of the twins reached out and pressed one huge finger to the carotoid artery under the jawbone. He shook his head, and spoke for the first time in a voice as emotionless and flat as his face. "Gone."
A moment of tense silence.
"Revive him...again."
And then the light faded, swiftly bringing back the darkness with only the echoes of that final phrase to remind them of the contents of that tape...as if they could ever forget them. And then even the echo faded, leaving only the silence.
Silence as they tried to absorb what they had seen.
Robin stared at the screen, his thoughts focusing themselves on that final word. He tightened his lips into a white line and a small furrow appeared between his brows. Inside, it was anything but silent and still. His heart cried silent tears, his body aching and shivering as if the taser had been applied to him instead of Dick. The same scream from early this morning was building within him once more, but this time he was determined that he was not going to let it out. 'Gotta channel the anger...'
Wally clenched his hands into tight fists as he struggled to hold back the anger that burned within his heart. Powerful, righteous hatred burned within him for the people that had maltreated his leader so, shattering his mind and breaking apart his soul. 'When I get my hands on them, I'm gonna...'
Strangely enough, it was Roy who vocalized what they all felt, the shock and the despair and the hatred that burned within those watching. In his eloquent manner, it only took a muttered curse:
"They broke him, killed him, then did it all over again," he muttered, his voice strangled. "The Bastards," he whispered viciously.
The silence returned, each one agreeing with the sentiment in the privacy of their thoughts, and more often than not adding their own curses and muttered vows to the mix.
And then a voice suddenly spoke up casually from the shadows in the far end of the lair:
"You know, I never did quite figure out the heritage of those twins." A twisted smirk behind the mask as the heroes froze in sickening recognition of its identity. "But aren't you glad I found 'em first?"
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Need I say that this is TBC? :D
Once again, I'm very sorry if I've upset people, but sometimes things just have to be written. And besides, would you believe that this was actually the much lighter re-write? The original two versions were a lot more...intense. ;-)
Next scene: The stage is set for some serious fighting as the Phoenix starts to reveal some of his cards. More fighters will enter the fray...and one of their own will vanish while another secret is stolen. This is one fighting arena that is about to turn on its head...