Disclaimer: I bet you think you know what's coming... I don't own Young Justice, I didn't invent it, blah, blah, blah. Actually, I give you credit for being smart enough to know that Young Justice was not invented by some random teenage girl with too much time on her hands.

I changed the ending to the last chapter on July 29. It wasn't sitting well with me at all. So, yeah.

And I also changed a little. The voice is bold and italics, while Dick's thoughts are simply italics.

The Bird and the Worm

The Used

Mount Justice, Happy Harbor

May 31st 20:16 EDT

Batman glares at all of the people in the room, minus Robin and Dick. "You're telling me," He starts, looking at each person in turn, "That my son has a voice inside his head telling him everyone hates him and he should go back to Harley Quinn." None of the team members look him in the eyes, and Black Canary had left to the watch tower to get Martian Manhunter after the team explained everything to Batman.

Noting that none of them are going to say anything, he targets the girl who he believes is most to blame. "Miss Martian, you heard this voice this morning." The green teen nods feebly, looking like she is on the verge of tears. "And it was telling him you all want him dead, yet you said nothing about it to anyone."

"He- he said he would tell me about it. I feared if I told them against his wishes I would be proving what it said true!" The Martian sputters.

Wally finally speaks. "You can't yell at her for doing what she thought was right." He opens his mouth to continue speaking, but nothing comes out of his mouth when the batglare focuses on him.

Robin steps away from the wall he had been leaning on. "You seem awfully unsurprised by all of this, Kid Flash. You knew something."

Wally nearly begins vibrating with fear when the glare intensifies. "I-could-tell-something-was-wrong-when-I-visited-t he-manor.-Roy-could-too.-It-was-just-a-feeling-I-s wear." Wally speed-talks.

"Robin knew something was wrong." Conner interrupts the bats glaring at Wally. "When he first arrived here today he was talking about Dick talking to himself."

"Actually, I think he said it was more like muttering to himself." Wally slips into the conversation again.

"But that was days ago that he did that. How long could he have possibly had a voice in his head?" Robin questions, causing Batman to walk over to his eldest son. The room quiets down as they watch the Bat pick up Dick and leave the room, with Robin right on his heels. After a moment of confusion the team follows the duo to the infirmary, where they walk in just as a blood sample is taken out of the younger brothers' arm.

Artemis opens her mouth to ask what they are testing for when they all hear a light groan. All eyes in the room flick to the second youngest there as he stirs. Instead of her question, she simply states "He's waking up."

The first thing he is aware of is a pounding in his head. He groans and clenches his fists around the sheet he is lying on. His mind reminds him what happened just before he passed out as he hears a familiar husky voice state the obvious.

"He's waking up."

His lips twitch into a smile as he fights to open his eyes against the harsh light. Okay so they state the obvious too. You really need some new friends. Not that these people are your friends, but you seem to still believe they are. A growl rumbles in his throat at the voice as Megan gasps. He opens his eyes as M'gann relays the voices message to the team. Automatically he wants to close them again so he doesn't have to see the varying emotions of shock, pity, confusion, sadness, and anger across his ex-teammates faces.

Oh, so she's going to be telling them now. This could be fun. What should I tell them first about you're time with the Joker?Okay when will you learn when to shut up? Dick listens sadly as Megan again relays what the voice said, although she excluded Dick's own thought response. Wally visibly flinches, while the others try unsuccessfully to hide their emotions.

Slowly Dick pulls himself into a sitting position, forcing himself to look at his guardian. He's not shocked in the least when the questions start immediately. "How long?"

"Started about a month after I was captured."

"Why then?"

Robin pauses, not wanting to let them know what he was so torn over. The voice in his head, however, wanted everyone to know. Because poor ole Richard Grayson had to hurt people. Automatically Dick tries to strengthen his mental block, but he hasn't been very strong mentally since he started torturing people for the Joker. He looks at Megan when he realizes she hasn't yet relayed the message and finds her watching him with wide eyes. Seeing his moment to stop her, he started talking.

"I should've been dead. It was a long month. I was practically starving myself before then, and I had just started eating what food I was brought about a week before then. Maybe something was in the food. I don't know, really."

Robin steps closer to him, eyeing him suspiciously. "What all has it told you?"

Dick forces himself to chuckle. If he was going to get out of this room ever to find Harley like he said he was going to, he had to start laying out the lies thick. "Oh, nothing big. Just the typical everyone hates me that I would have to be an idiot to believe."

Recognize: Black Canary 1-3, Martian Manhunter 0-7

Wally and M'gann both use their powers to get to Dick's side. "Dude, you can't say something like that is nothing." Wally argues, throwing his arm around his friends' shoulders.

Megan places a hand on Dick's arm. "It's not true. You know that, right?"

The ex-boy wonder forces a smile onto his face as he lies again. "Of course I know it's true. I mean, you guys are my family." Oh you're all such good actors. Very convincing. After their initial reunion with you and everything that's happened in those few days since, I'm proud you see them for who they truly are.

Dick flinches at the voice and he watches as Megan nearly bursts into tears again. Defensively, he thinks back Not all of them. Most of them, yes. Not all of them. Looking at the rest of the room he can see the faces change, and Dick knows she relayed the message to them telepathically. Wally pulls his arm back to his own body and opens his mouth to speak but he gets interrupted by Black Canary and Martian Manhunter entering the room.

"Manhunter. Do you know the situation?" Batman asks quickly, probably trying to get away from the emotional stuff happening.

"I have been briefed, yes." The alien replies. "I assume I am here to see if anything is wrong mentally."

"To find out what is wrong, yes." The Bat confirms, motioning for M'gann and Wally to step away from Dick. "Do not go into his memories."

The green man nods as he walks over to Dick, who tries to swallow his fear at what could possibly be wrong with him. More than anything, he's terrified at the option that nothing could be wrong. Without thinking about it, the acrobat lies back and closes his eyes, just wishing for this to be over quickly.

It takes an hour for the testing to be over, in which Wally is frantic. Dick had laid down before Manhunter had even gotten to him, and after that Manhunter and put him under. After that Batman had practically pushed all of the team members out of the room. The team stayed silent, most of them terrified that their brother would never trust them again. Wally suspects that Conner couldn't care less, since he doesn't trust Dick anyways.

When the door to the infirmary finally opens to allow them back inside, they don't even attempt to make it look like they weren't pacing outside the room.

"Well? What did you find? Why is he still sleeping? Is he going to be okay? What did you find?" Wally asks, firing question after question in rapid succession.

"Actually," Martian Manhunter answers calmly, "I didn't find anything wrong. Wherever the voice came from, it was not his brain. And he fought me scanning his mind, so I had to put him deeper under. He will wake in about an hour."

"So you're saying there's nothing wrong." Artemis clarifies, disbelief clear in her tone. "With everything that happened tonight, you expect me to believe that?"

"Nothing wrong with his brain. We still have to run his blood test to see if maybe something was put in his food." Batman states, grabbing the blood and heading after the Martian out the door.

"Wait, you can test the blood here. Where are you going?" Wally questions, following the Dark Knight.

"You may have the materials here, but they would be more thoroughly tested quicker at the Batcave. Me and Robin will be back with the results in the morning." Batman looks back at the speedster and his team. "You should get some rest. It is nearly midnight."

"My uncle said Dick would be waking up in the next hour. Should we not be up when he gets up?" M'gann asks, although they all know there is no way they are going to bed soon.

Robin chuckles as Batman just walks away from them. "Give him some sleeping medicine mixed in with tea or something when he gets up."

Conner grunts. "Since he doesn't trust anyone here, wouldn't he be expecting that."

Robin scowls at the kryptonian. "Dick trusts Wally."

Wally looks around, shocked. "Me? Why me?" He looks to the Boy Wonder for an answer only to find that the boy ninja'd away. "Seriously, can all bats do that?"

"Perhaps we should try to sleep. We do not know what to expect in the morning." Kaldur instructs, earning reluctant nods from most of his team, who begin to disperse to their separate rooms. "Wally, you go to bed after making sure Dick goes to bed." He earns a nod before he feels the speedster breeze by him on the way to the kitchen to make tea.

When Wally returns to the infirmary with sleep tea, he finds Dick awake and zoning out. Wally watches his best friend for a while, noting how he flinches about every twenty seconds. Finally he makes his presence known, striding forward with the tea in hand. "Hey dude. Arguing with that voice again?"

Dick doesn't jump, only looks at him with surprise sketched into his eyes. He bites his bottom lip for a second before responding. "You could say that. What's going on? I pass out with everyone in here and wake up alone."

Wally chuckles and hands over the cup of tea. "Batman sent us to bed. I didn't want to go to bed without talking to my best bud about what happened to him."

Dick smiles lightly and glances down at the cup before setting it on the table next to the bed. "I was tortured for a month endlessly. I had nearly broken the first day I got there, but after that I decided I had to fight as much as I could for you guys. The Team, Batman, the League."

Wally frowns at the discarded cup before focusing on what was said. "A month? Dude you were there for three. What happened the other two?" He watches the breath hitch in his best friends throat. "Dude, sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's.." Dick chokes on his words again. "I'll have to talk about it eventually." He closes his eyes and grimaces again. "People were brought in. Criminals, usually straight from jail. He would make me torture them. For the first month I refused, and then he would torture me and the criminal both. I never got it as bad as they did. They were killed. Every day. After that first month, I couldn't do it anymore. I tortured them at the Jokers instructions. He would try to make me kill them, but I couldn't."

Wally watches his friend, his younger brother, as he tries to fight back tears that threaten them both. Something in his mind clicks. "That's why he said you were dead after that first month. He-"

"He broke me. At that point, I had wished he had killed me. I still did until he let me leave. Then I came here."

"And then Supes attacked you." Wally finishes. "Oh, dude, I swear. He will not hear the end of this." He watches Dick lay back down, shaking. "You okay? Of course you're not okay. That was a stupid question."

"That's not everything. He let me go because he completely broke me. He- I killed a person. The day before I came back here. He let me go because he knows I don't want to have to live with that."

Wally's breathe leaves him. Before his mind processes what he was doing, he was on the hospital bed with Dick, holding him close as he loses the fight with the tears. The speedsters' tears blur his vision as he realizes what his friend has been through. He holds the boy as he cries himself to sleep. Only then does he let go.

Quieting his breathing, he situates the boy into a position that seemed like it would be more comfortable and threw a blanket over him. He fought the urge to stay with Dick and walked to his room, not wanting to leave his friend any faster than absolutely necessary.

Wake up you emotional waste of space.

What a nice morning call. He thinks as he rolls over. Surprisingly there is a blanket on top of him. Fleetingly he tries to remember who put it there, but all he remembers is spilling everything to Wally and crying himself to sleep. Inwardly he cringes at unloading everything onto the speedster.

They have all been in their rooms for over an hour.

Richard can't figure out why the voice isn't insulting both him and the people he is supposed to care about, but he doesn't care. He can understand why the voice woke him up with only that to say.

He can make it to Gotham.

He can get answers from Harley.

He stands and slips out of the room, making it to the Zeta Beams silently in minutes. As quickly as he can he disables the announcing so they can't hear him go and he sets the coordinates to Gotham. With a smile, he steps into the beam.

A/N I am a fantastic procrastinator. Too bad that it is not a good quality to have. Hope you guys weren't too mad that I changed the ending of the last chapter. I have received some amazing reviews and I will probably be bringing in an OC next chapter. She's not my character (she belongs to one of my fantastic reviewers. I will be crediting her!) and I'm not 100% sure how much she will affect the story, but I really liked her and she does have a big part in one of the upcoming chapters!

Anyways, reviews are always greatly appreciated. So are suggestions!