A prison of Memories ch 5.
To start with, I'd like to express my apologies for not updating my stories for ages. It was inexcusable and I hope you will forgive me. Also, I'd like to say I have a bit of a hard time with the ages of Maureen and Dick when they were first at the Centre. I've currently got Maureen being down as 12 the first time at the centre and 17 now, and Dick was 8 the first time and now he's 13. I think this all works out – please correct me if it doesn't. This chapter doesn't have much action in it as it's mostly Dick/Robin/Silva remembering. Please go back a chapter if you can't remember where everyone is, their names, or what they're in Juvie for. And I think the Juvie was originally just for boys, but –ARTISTIC LICENSE, PEOPLE! Jay is about three years or so younger than Dick in this story, which puts him at about 10. I know this is the age people think he became Rob, and this story is set a while before that. See that sentence in caps? Read it again.
Emily/Artemis was getting worried. Of course, she tried to tell herself that it was just mission jitters, but she couldn't shake off the feeling that some serious shit was about to go down. And she was certain it had something to do with the very angry-looking teen at her side.
Bill, their guard, had been joined by another one after Silva's extreme reaction to him grabbing his shoulder. The second guard had rippling muscles all the way down his arms and a tattoo of a skull on his back visible under the tank top he wore. Silva didn't fancy his chances against that monster of a man, even though he was a fully trained Bat. The cuffs on Silva's hands were uncomfortably tight and although his leg chains allowed him to walk, he still felt extremely restricted and exposed.
After about two minutes of walking, Emily was shown her cell which, to her and Silva's relief, had no other occupant either. This left Silva alone with two guards and a whole load of attitude, with no-one to restrain him from his bad mood. Thankfully, he lasted until his cell was near, which was only a five minute gap but pretty impressive for the young convict.
To his surprise, his cell was empty too – he knew there were a lot of highly dangerous young people in Gotham City, and he expected lots of the higher security cells to be more occupied. In his cell were two small benches bracketed to the wall, one mouldy mattress on the left hand side bed. There was a small wall in the room and behind it was a toilet and chipped sink with a rusty tap on it.
Silva's emotions right now were one big tangled mess. He was currently in both hand and leg chains as he sat on the miserable excuse for a bed in the A block. He'd detatched himself slightly from the link, a gift he'd picked up years ago sparring with Martian Manhunter; to all the others he was still on the link and able to hear and talk to them, but his emotions were barred from revealing themselves due to a calm front he'd picked out. Hopefully, the only person to notice would be M'gann, as the central control of the link, and Dick hoped she wouldn't enquire of the strange silence.
He was glad, so glad, to hear of Maureen being in a cell with Kaldur. When he'd been mistakenly placed in this detention centre, she was in the cell opposite his and managed to comfort him during the first few days after the accident. She'd even managed to pass him blankets from her bed through the bars, by tying one end onto an apple from their daily rations and throwing it across the hall to him. The two had formed a strong bond, and Maureen, despite being only twelve at the time, had been a constant maternal prescence in his life from the start.
Maureen had had the kite tattoo even then, and she'd told him that it was a last gift from her mother, a tattoo artist, before she passed away from a terminal illness, leaving her with an alcoholic father and a bunch of cousins to care for. She'd joined one of Gotham's newer but more ruthless gangs, working as a thief and occasional drug runner. That was how she'd ended up in Juvie, her uncle had tried to take over the gang and she'd been caught with a backpack full of cocaine on the way to a nearby dealer's.
The two had formed an unbreakable friendship, and although neither of them was strong or particularly fast, Maureen had contacts in the gang of hers, and made no secret of it, often threatening those who would target her or Dick. She wasn't one for fighting, but when she fought she pulled out all the stops and bit, clawed and pulled the hair of her opponents. As one of the youngest there apart from Dick, and as a girl, she was often picked on by the older kids.
It got worse after the arrival of Zean, an 18-year old merciless drug addict who was put into a cell with the younger boy. He was going through withdrawal after not being able to smoke, snort, or inject any sort of substances after a day or two, and he was a cruel person to begin with. Zean was careful with his casual abuse of the young boy (ew not like that, this is T not M), so he never injured him too much as to avoid actually being punished or moved. He had to have control over something, anyways.
Even the prison wardens were scared of him, and as a result they rarely ventured anywhere near the cell when it wasn't compulsory.
Due to this, even the panicked, shrill screams of the tormented child were ignored by all staff, and his various injuries ranged from bruised limbs, black eyes and concussions to broken fingers and ribs. These were treated to the bare minimum, and a broken finger or two merited a night in a cell with one of the younger kids instead, whilst broken ribs even resulted in a cell to himself for a few days.
As a result of this, Dick even started to crave these harsh injuries in a sick and twisted way, because they would mean he got to spend time away from his tormentor. He would try less and less to hide or evade Zean, and he would flinch away no more as blow after blow was casually delivered. This seemed to anger the teen more, for after he started accepting the punishments and not avoiding them, the older boy didn't have control over him anymore.
It ended up as a vicious circle. Zean would punch, hit, kick or strike him in some other way, and he would end up with a cell to himself or sharing with one of the younger ones. He would come back sadistically eager for this to happen again, which would infuriate Zean into striking him more.
In the end it was more like self-inflicted punishment than anything else. Fortunately, through all this, he sometimes ended up staying in a cell with Maureen, despite efforts to have single-gender cells. Maureen eventually found out, though, after his stays with her got more and more frequent the more he was injured. She knew he was an acrobat, and didn't doubt for a second that he was able to dodge the majority of these blows. A confrontation followed, and the older girl managed to convince Dick to try and grin and bear it, not to let himself get hit on purpose.
Another reason for his 'self-inflicted' punishment was that it had been so long since he's felt anyone's touch on his skin or body. At the circus, people used to joke that in the first three years of his life he was never put down, and they took it in turns holding him and playing with him in their arms. Heck, he was even in a sling on his mother when she performed – that show was one of their best attractions. And now, he'd lost all contact with other people, so he let himself get hit just to know there was someone else out there.
Maureen figured all this out, along with the younger's constant desire for contact. As a result, they spent a lot of their free time hugging or holding hands – people used to bully them for being a couple, but they never felt anything more than platonic, after all, Dick was only eight and Maureen his motherly figure.
His outlook improved drastically after this, and he even started to do his acrobatics again in the exercise yard. Of course, this resulted in ridicule often for both of them, but he was no longer the depressed boy who let himself get hit and pushed around. He'd come a long way from that. And she'd been there for the entire journey.
And Dick was heartbroken when her sentence ran out and she left. But he hid it fairly well, holding up until about an hour after she was gone, when he ran back to his cell and just waited for Zean again. He retreated back into his former self, allowing prison staff to manhandle him and the others to hit him so much that when Bruce arrived and took him out of that hell-hole, there wasn't much space on his short, thin body that wasn't bruised.
He pulled himself back to the present and checked his sunglasses for the time. They'd taken his watch off him, so he had to rely on the various built in functions of the glasses. It was approaching lights out time.
There was a clatter and the heavy door slid open. The burly prison warden from earlier stepped in, followed by a 9-10 year old boy. The boy looked skinny but strong, with dark brown hair cut messily but short. It looked like he'd tried to cut his own hair but failed, miserably. He had on the orange prisoner's jumpsuit, and kept looking around as if searching for an exit.
"Oi, Silvey," The guard grunted, "Midget's gonna be stuck with you, looks like all available cells are full." He pushed the boy across the room into the wall, and then grinned as he locked the door and slouched away.
For a while, they stood there evaluating one another. From what he could figure out, this kid came off the streets – calloused feet with hard soles, used to wearing no shoes or poorly fitting ones, probably what he could find in a skip – and was quite a tough cookie – a nine/ten-year old on the streets of Gotham City? Definitely tough.
That was when the kid punched him in the face.
He reeled back, not expecting the blow. The kid punched him again, but he managed to block it with his arm. More attacks came, none of them too strong but well placed. They would have at least knocked out a lesser person than Silva. Finally, the kid tried to punch him in the face again, and he twisted round in an incredible feat of contortionism until he had his arms pinned in an uncomfortable but not painful lock.
"Let me go!"
"What, so you can punch me again?" Dick snorted. "Fat chance."
This was when he realised the older boy was not trying to attack him and was not causing him any pain. He relaxed slightly, but kept his arms tense just in case. "Those were some decent punches, where did you learn that kind of thing?"
The boy was silent. He scowled, before Dick released him when it was clear he wasn't attacking him again anytime soon. "Streets. Got put in here for nicking car tyres." He explained, "But I don't know why I'm in this kind of high security area."
Mentally, Robin commended the guy – he was smart, realising a high-security area even after being manhandled around. "You?"
"Manslaughter, assault, illegal weaponry…" To his credit, the boy didn't flinch at all, though he did go pale slightly. "Name's Silva."
"Jason."
Aaaayyy! Teaser! I'm sure you know who Jason is, but still… thanks for sticking with me on this story, and I'm sorry the update took so long. That was one long chapter, as a bit of an apology for the wait. I will try and update more often, please forgive me…
Once more, I'm very sorry.