Took longer than expected to update, because there's a LOT to handle with care in terms of the aftermath, as you all know. Last thing I wanna do is trigger anyone who has suffered this kind of trauma - or anything similar - or knows someone who has.
I have also just completed "A Lifetime and Beyond", one of my Jason/Kristine fics.
I'd been listening to Celtic Thunder's "A Bird Without Wings" (which may or may not have inspired me subconsciously), and pieces of it come into play for this tale. It's up to you guys to decide whether the whole song befits or not. :)
This chapter is more Barbara-centric (mostly), told in her POV.
I did say trigger warnings, so here they are: suicide attempts mentioned, forced stripping, graphic nudity. It's VERY upsetting, so be extra cautious, loves.
Chapter Two
A World Devoid of Song
Barbara Gordon was still reliving the nightmare after everything was over.
She was goddamned Batgirl, she had tried to fight them off, but the fact she couldn't due to the numerous gut punches without proper armor was the factor. She wasn't going to let anyone tell her any differently from that point on, but when had she ever?
She'd been dragged away from Dick - Dick with a bullet in the middle of his vertebral column, bleeding on the broken glass table, unable to move to help her - and yanked out of that van after what felt like an eternity in darkness, gagged so that her screams wouldn't have driven the other passengers crazy, and nothing would enable her to fight her way out.
Not even when she finally was brought to the place of "top billing".
Every time Dad and Batman put him away, we all begged God to keep that son of a bitch there for good, but it's always the same thing. He just escapes AGAIN like a hotel's revolving door for anyone to come and go as they please.
To think she'd known of this demon ever since when she was much younger, and Dad had mentioned the white face and green skin, which had sounded very much like it could have come straight out of those cartoons and the scary fairytales she'd been fed at the time. She'd been scared since then, but when she got older and put herself in the bat costume, the nightmares that kept her awake at night slowly went away, though they had paled compared to the real deal before her eyes.
This nightmare she was in now...it wasn't something that ran through her mind in the hours of the night only to vanish as soon as she opened her eyes to sunrise.
~o~
Opening her eyes as soon as she was pulled out of the van, having been in and out of consciousness, Barbara had been surrounded by three little beasts in mockeries of circus costumes - something Dick would have laughed with and appraised - akin to ballerinas. She'd mustered what little strength she could and thrashed when they held her down and set about yanking her black neck-tied blouse over her head and her leggings with the seven chakras on both sides, leaving her in the matching sports bra underneath. She shrieked and tried to cover herself up for privacy, but it wasn't like they would give her that.
If they intended to do what she thought, then they had another thing coming.
"WH-What are you doing!? You can't - STOP!" Barbara yelped when the zap of a laser was stabbed right into her back, the fire melting her brainwaves enough to make her lose track of what happened next, but the next thing she knew, she found herself in what looked like a little rollercoaster, and in the front seat. The somewhat tightness around her throat was the telltale physical sign of a dog's collar, and it was hooked to the back so that she couldn't turn to look behind her. Both of her wrists were stretched out on either side and zip-tied to the bar; no way even if she could use her legs to stretch since there were no hidden tricks she could find.
And that wasn't the worst of it.
Barbara had been stripped down, and this ghastly red thing couldn't even be a teddy or lingerie piece she would have chosen for herself! The look and feel of it made her want to throw up right now. The bands were soft and lined, but the sections in between them exposed more skin than she was comfortable with. They slimmed down her portions and highlighted all the "right places". Her breasts were supported underneath, with a thick strap centering them so that both nipples were covered. More vertically headed downward so that it was all one piece enough to preserve her modesty between her legs.
Hot and powerful humiliation mixed equally with rage. Barbara screamed and tugged at her restraints, uncaring if her partial nudity was for the perverts' eyes. They had her leashed like an animal, so she intended to give them a wild one in this game. "Who are you all and WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!"
And the voice she last heard crackled overhead. There on the great television, sitting on a throne and flanked with two torches was the man in the purple suit like he was king of the world. Joker laughed as he leaned forward to give her his rotten teeth. "Doing?" he repeated. "Why, you're doing what any sane person would do if they were in your appalling situation, Miss Gordon." That grin broadened with the demonic glint in his pitch-black eyes.
"You're going mad."
She snarled. "Bullshit I am. I remember you breaking into my home, shooting my boyfriend, and you put me in this -" She was cut off with a large hand grabbing her hair and yanking it backward with enough force to almost snap her neck and knock the air out of her lungs. Joker continued as if it all meant nothing.
"Remember, eh? Oh, I wouldn't do that. Remembering is a dangerous thing. I find the past such a worrying and anxious place - the 'past tense', I suppose you'd call it. Memory's so treacherous; one moment, you're lost in a carnival of delights with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candyfloss, and the next...it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp, ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes like children, I suppose." He leaned backward in his seat casually.
"Little Dickie boy was a child at heart, was he not? Poor little one with all those horrible memories, such as his parents until Brucie Wayne took him in...who would want to go through life with something like THAT?" A chortle. "But can we live without memories, at the same time? They are what our reason is based upon; if we can't face them, we deny reason itself."
Barbara didn't want to hear anymore. She'd heard enough, so she did the best she could to tune out the rest. She knew why he was doing this: to prove a point that it could sometimes take one bad day to drive a person towards insanity, and that was why she was here. Half of her was happy and relieved her father was safe from this, but she...
She was afraid of what was waiting for her through those double doors the rollercoaster was now going through, in the darkness which was soon penetrated with neon lights of more screens with God knew what aside from the narcissistic clown who began singing a song about the madness of the world that she didn't give a shit about in the slightest. The rhythm itself was enough to grate her nerves - until they flew into sparking flames upon seeing the stills on the screens she passed by, her hair still held in place by that firm hand she still couldn't see but had lessened its hold so that her roots weren't bleeding.
The first image she saw was of two lean but classically sculpted legs connected to one of the most desirous butts that belonged to Renaissance men in their glory. From the way the limbs bent inwards at the knees, it looked like the owner tried curling in on themselves to get away from the camera that violated their privacy. Her eyes widened with revulsion; was...was that...?!
...D-Dick?
It WAS Dick. There was also an up-close shot of his beautiful chest and abs which were smeared with his blood, the bullet wound in plain sight. It was like Joker to flaunt his hard work. Along with were the facial photos of Dick's sobs frozen in place, his tears shining in the light as his suffering was immortalized. Judging by one of the stills in which his head was arched backward as he seemed to be screaming, it was hard to tell if that was - she stopped thinking as soon as she saw a couple more shots that really made her scream his name louder than before.
~o~
Everything was a hazy mess after that, so she recalled bits and pieces as she "disassociated", as the therapists described her trauma.
She could still hear those sideshow freaks laughing at her and talking about how FUNNY everything was when it was far from it. But that was the clown criminal's style. The clown who labeled her as "Nature's most tragic and rare of Her mistakes: the Average Girl".
Average...yeah, she might be just that.
Barbara tuned much of it out, the words buzzing in her ears as everything blurred up to the moment she passed out from the panic attack: "...withered optimism...not for the squeamish...frail and useless with so much placed on the shoulders that she snapped."
She had awoken in the hospital with those two images of Dick's manhood up close and personal as gloved hands framed the streamlined dark triangle so that it was in full view with the limp, larger-than-life masculine flesh which was then shown standing up at attention, peaked with clear liquid and full arousal. Everything only she was supposed to see and have access to.
No doubt that he would be victim-blamed by someone out there, but it was NOT his fault.
Barbara was restless in her hospital bed she was still laying in, waiting for word on future appointments with a therapist. Her dad came in just after she was brought in the first night before she could agree to a rape kit test just to make sure. Jim hugged her like tomorrow was going to come for them at last and he didn't want to let her go. There was also a nervous tremor to him that she seldom saw in him except when it came to cases involving families and children when she asked him about Dick's welfare.
He had been the one to find her boyfriend, and the cold of the North and South poles of the world overtook her body from those points. She could imagine how her father must have felt compared to her...
...and how Dick was. She wanted so much to see him, to kiss him and tell him that she would always be there for him, her well-being be damned -
The examination buzzed by, but these were the important facts: definitely no trauma to her vaginal area and inward, and whether or not anyone touched her there or to her other intimate areas, she wouldn't even remember. For her sanity's sake, she hoped never.
Now she was lying in a hospital bed with the news that she could go home anytime, that they were happy she'd agree to counsel just to be safe. If only she could remain here because of the man in the room down the hall from her.
"Can I see Dick Grayson?"
Her wish was granted, but she had to be escorted and wear a robe because the back of her gown left her butt in the open, and she was going to throttle someone if they ever saw that, said, or did anything.
"Just come back outside when you're done, Miss Gordon. He's been sedated, but he could wake up on his own now that it's going to wear off soon." A sigh from the orderly. "It's monstrous, what happened to both of you. I hope you two can get through this together. It's this shit excuse of a city that some of us just wish would burn. How many times can you say in every lifetime that if you keep fighting, things would change for the better?"
He didn't say it aloud, but the message was hinted: it's a never-ending cycle and eternal ring.
The original reason Barbara had donned the Batgirl costume on her own in the beginning was both to save her father and his reputation, combined with her dreams of their home becoming a desired better place it had originally been built upon, and now it was part of her. But the guy's words...nothing could be truer. The boy she'd grown up with and had fallen in love with was proof of this.
He was still beautiful in his vulnerable, bandaged state. For a moment, she thought of herself as Psyche and he was Eros, albeit in different scenarios. In the sense that she watched over him while he slept and loved him all the more. He was a living god amongst men, friend to hero and villain alike, a badass virtue cop in the Bludhaven PD, and the last of his family line. A wonderful big brother to a kid from the worst background than his and Bruce's.
The bandages had been removed from his head, leaving behind freshly washed and combed raven hair. He had nurses and orderlies tending to his every need, especially when he needed to go to the bathroom, and that involved a humiliating catheter, which she flinched at the thought of. Dick was sleeping peacefully, but it wouldn't last.
Barbara's heart was broken enough, and the pieces grew smaller and smaller when her gaze fell on the little wooden box on the table next to his bed. She didn't have the energy to stand up and go around to pick it up. Her rage concocted with her agony.
Dick had wanted her to marry him.
It was up in the air now, because the trials ahead needed focus.
A soft moan and whimper snapped her out of it, followed by hoarse sobs. "N-no, no...don't touch me...please...stop it..."
Closing her eyes tightly, all Barbara could see were the immortalized nightmare shots and the damning force of a bodily reaction meant only between two people who loved each other.
As soon as she was out of the hospital...
~o~
He chose one of the times Bruce was away on patrol by himself, and as soon as the old man was gone, Jason slipped downstairs and searched for the file, swearing he wouldn't do anything until he knew the whole story. However...
Joker, you -
His red vision might as well either darken until it was black or get so bright it would turn to white; either way, it came down to one feeling with two combined.
Hatred and vengeance.
The blood. The exposure of everything that no one else should ever see - why the goddamned hell would you even keep this then, Bruce?! Evidence, of course, but this is your SON, like I am, even if you never formally adopted him! - and the very image of Dick's groin area he wished he could bleach out as soon as he saw it.
No way in all the layers of hell would Dick have gotten off at his own torture; he'd seen some instances where orgasms were forced out in rape victims. It looked this way with Nightwing, but according to doctor's reports, there was no evidence of physical trauma or DNA, and nobody disbelieved Dick when he'd been asked if he "enjoyed" his ordeal, based on the forced erection. Jason hadn't been there because he had school that day, but Bruce took the day to be there for the tragic news.
Joker's monstrous joke about "two men in an asylum" was present, but the words blurred in favor of Robin's dark rage.
Dick was still in the hospital, now a bird that would never fly again. Just crying out in song until the music died. He had survived but at the cost of his mental state. He was scheduled for physical therapy in the weeks to come, and counseling sessions with prescribed antidepressants to follow, and this had come just after word leaked that Dick tried. To. Kill himself. When the nurses had come in to care for him. He'd managed to grab a needle and tried overdosing himself, and another time he had tried to use a scalpel on himself, culminating in him wailing for death than living the rest of his life useless in a chair and trapped in one place, getting looks of pity and sympathy should he wind up going out with an escort.
Bruce was heartbroken, of course, showing it in his face for the public to see, but when it was just himself, Jason, and Alfred, those same emotions were there only to be schooled into stern constipation.
Jason knew his adoptive father was a good man, deep down, but now with Dick's permanent paralysis, the horizon had gotten stormier. His brother could have been KILLED by that maniac, Barbara had gotten angrier despite taking care of herself when she wasn't around them, and that monster was only back in the place he would just break out of in no time.
This line of thinking was on the verge of taking him to a certain place that his mentor always warned him about, but it had been born from living in Crime Alley and always doing what he had to. As a result, he knew that he was willing to do anything for his big brother and the rest of the family.
But before he could do anything, he needed to talk to a certain someone, but he did not mean Batman.
He called Bruce by his codename in his mind for obvious reasons.
Jason mentally calling Bruce Batman in his mind is a conflict. The man took him in from a life on the streets, gave him Robin as a purpose to help him, and a much better life - well, despite his good intentions, there are times where there's more harm than good. Canon is proof of that, and now will be no different despite changes coming.
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