Waller walked towards the table full of torture instruments. She pretended to ponder the weapon to begin with while Renegade remained rigidly in place. His heart stuttered slightly when he saw her return with a whip.

Eh. The Owls have never tortured me with a whip. It will be a new experience.

"Take your shirt off."

With a sigh the acrobat took off his shirt, throwing it to the side.

"Turn around."

He turned around, his heart starting to beat a little faster.

"Kneel down."

He knelt.

"We'll start with thirty lashes."

"Do your worst, Waller." Dick bit venomously.

The first lash cracked violently in the center of his bare back and he remained impassive to the pain. Until the fourteenth lash Renegade had remained completely silent, barely flinching from the pain to the point that the guards exchanged shocked glances at his tolerance of pain.

At the fifteenth lash he clashed his teeth together, wincing slightly when the whip tore off a portion of his skin. He could feel several spurts of blood flowing from different parts of his bare back as portions of skin began to peel off from it.

"That's all you have?" he mocked her. "Hell, my grandma would hit harder than that."

The whip landed violently in the same place as before, making him wince slightly.

"Another 10 lashes because you spoke." Waller spoke coldly, whipping him in the same spot.

Dick immediately understood what she was getting at.

She wanted him to start obeying her right away so that it would become a habit of his.

The acrobat was really tempted to tell her to fuck off and continue talking when he wanted to but he repressed that instinct.

The less he was tortured the sooner he would be able to escape this hell.

The first slight moan of pain from him came at the twenty-eighth frustration. The next twelve lashes landed violently on the same spot on his back, drawing several grunts of pain from him and, even though he couldn't see her face, he knew she had a satisfied smirk on her face.

Breathing heavily, he barely noticed the multiple but abundant trails of blood flowing profusely down his back, his attention focused on the immense burning sensation of his skin.

It looked as if someone had set hellfire on his back.

Dick bet his back had several gouged patches of skin.

"Turn around."

Dick turned slowly, biting back a pained hiss. His masked gaze fell briefly to the ground, impassively observing a huge pool of blood at his feet accompanied by several tears of his skin, before returning to silently stare at his torturer.

Amanda nodded to someone behind him and he suppressed the urge to turn when he heard a pair of footsteps approaching his back. A few seconds of silence passed before a guard approached the mercenary, raised a basin full of very boiling water and threw it completely onto his back.

Renegade's screams of pain turned into heavy insults and curses in literally six different languages that lasted about two minutes. He dug his nails painfully into the floor as he tried to control his rapid, labored breathing.

"Now is the time for waterboarding." Waller announced with an innocent smile as several guards got to work. "Don't worry, Renegade. Now the water will no longer be as hot as before."

Renegade pursed his lips and growled silently at her.

Some guards positioned themselves behind him, immobilizing his arms and legs while another man positioned a basin filled to the brim with water in front of him. A guard tugged sharply at Renegade's hair, still kneeling, and forcefully plunged his head into the basin to the bottom.

Renegade let out an involuntary scream as his skin was hit by very icy water but the action only made the situation worse as more water entered his mouth, risking him suffocating. His body fought desperately but futilely against the guards' grip while the cold and frost painfully took hold of his face. He made strangled, choking noises that became more and more pleading as black spots began to flutter in his vision.

Just when it looked like he was on the verge of passing out, his head was forcefully lifted into the air. Renegade broke out in violent coughing fits while sputtering water. He greedily breathed in the oxygen he had missed so much a few moments earlier.

If I were still Talon the sensation would have been much worse due to the icy water.

Dick barely had to process that coherent thought before the same hand from before pushed his face back into the basin, plunging him into the icy cold water for a second time.

Renegade violently coughed out copious amounts of water from his mouth as his head was raised into the air, allowing him to breathe in much-needed oxygen.

There was a total of four waterboarding sessions to the point that Dick's vision was almost completely covered in black spots. His entire body shivered in the cold, a sensation made worse by the fact that he was still stripped of his shirt and by the bloody wounds, broken layers of skin and burning sensation on his back. He was pretty sure that his lips had turned slightly blue as they felt chapped and trembling.

"Look at me, Renegade."

The seventeen-year-old looked up at Waller, narrowing his eyes in an attempt to chase away the black spots obstructing his vision.

"What is your civilian identity?"

The mercenary smirked more like a grimace, showing off all of his blood-coated teeth. "I thought you were analyzing my DNA. Oh, wait: this is taking a lot longer than it should, right?" he let out a chuckle that turned into a coughing fit. "You're welcome, bitch."

Amanda narrowed her eyes in annoyance before shrugging casually and nodding.

The waterboarding sessions instantly became five.

Renegade shot a defiant look in the black woman's direction after the final waterboarding session.

If Waller thought it would take so little to break him, she was sadly mistaken.

His weakness as a living being, if it can be called that, was not physical torture -which he has already learned to handle thanks to the Owls who made his pain tolerance practically infinite when he was Talon and much higher than average as far as normal human beings were concerned, even more so than Batman himself- but the psychological one.

Of course, it wasn't easy to break him psychologically either -it would definitely take a lot for that- but still.

"Now what?" he challenged her fearlessly, sending her a mental fuck you.

He impassively raised an eyebrow as Waller began handing baseball bats to several guards.

"Well, do your worst, you ugly shits."

"Are you tired, Renegade?"

The young assassin, with numerous broken ribs, left arm tilted at an unnatural angle, broken right knee, fractured jaw, blood flowing profusely from his temple, head buzzing with pain to the point that he began to see stars spinning around him, sent her a shaky grin, showing his crooked and bloody teeth.

"Please, I love foreplay." he purred with a crooked smile.

I'm extremely lucky that I never died while I was Renegade, excluding Klarion. Because otherwise the news of my immortality would have reached Waller and she would not have hesitated to torture me without the inhibitor collar on, killing me countless times, which is very difficult by the way since I can only be killed with very brutal and inhumane deaths since I am been trained to survive with many lethal wounds on my body, by the way thanks again Cobb, only to be brought back to life.

…

Aaaaaand I digress. Blame the concussion.

When the acrobat's attention fell back on Waller, he saw her fiddling with pliers. "What do you want to do with it?" he asked in a grunt.

"Since you love foreplay, I thought I'd play doctor." she replied with a cold smile. "Or rather, to the dentist."

A mental image of Waller in a sexy nurse's outfit crossed his mind and a shiver, which had nothing to do with either the cold or his injuries, ran down his spine.

Fucking Hell, I'm not lying when I say I'd rather have a second round with the Court of Owls than see Waller in a sexy nurse outfit with my own eyes. Man, I'm going to need a lot of bleach for my eyes. Or I'll ask Martian Manhunter to do me a favor and erase that mental image. Even I'm not strong enough to handle it.

Dick was abruptly brought back to reality as several hands held his head, arms and legs still while others forced his mouth open. His heart unconsciously skipped a beat when he saw the pliers approaching his mouth and he made involuntary choking noises as the cold metal parts settled around a tooth.

Waller was deliberately prolonging the torture to make him panic but the only thing Dick wanted was for her to knock that damned tooth out of him to end it once and for all.

The mercenary let out a strangled cry of pain as the tooth was violently pulled out and he felt the familiar sensation of metallic liquid splashing in all directions. More blood poured out of his mouth and began to creep down his chin until it fell to the ground.

Renegade licked his mouth, tasting the metallic taste of blood and especially the empty feeling where his tooth was missing. He sent another crooked smirk at Amanda. "Where is the tooth fairy? No, wait. Please: don't dress up as a tooth fairy otherwise I'd rather detonate the bomb in my head."

This earned him a hard blow to the temple with the pliers and Dick grunted, his vision going dark for a few seconds as his ears began to ring slightly.

"Even without your superhuman abilities, you are still much more resilient than other supervillains."

Deathstroke's former apprentice's head lolled limply to the side and he gave her a faint smile. "I couldn't disappoint you, right?" he slurred in confusion, his head throbbing painfully.

"I guess not."

Dick narrowed his eyes, watching Waller walk away towards the table where the torture instruments were. When she returned to him a few seconds later, it took him a few seconds longer than normal to recognize the weapon she was holding.

"Hey! That's mine!" he grunted in displeasure, fixing a hard gaze on the woman.

"Good job, detective." Waller drawled sarcastically and she pointed the escrima stick at him, lighting it and smiling meanly as the weapon charged with high-voltage electricity. "If you answer my questions, I won't roast you." she was met with silence and continued undeterred. "Tell me something about yourself. For example, when were you born?"

"February 30th."

Renegade screamed in pain as intense high-voltage electricity shot through his entire body and he felt his muscles tense to the max. Darkness began to fill his vision and this time he let it surround him.

The young assassin jumped violently when ice water was suddenly thrown at him, waking him from unconsciousness, and he coughed up more blood. He barely held back a gasp as strong fingers gripped his chin and he met Waller's hard, cold gaze and he let out a low, menacing growl.

"I didn't give you permission to pass out!"

Renegade spat blood into her face in response, sending her a tired but meanly satisfied smirk at the flash of anger and annoyance that crossed her features. His gaze fell on the escrima crackling menacingly with electricity in Waller's hand and his masked eyes came back up to stare straight into her eyes.

"Do your worst, bitch."

After a short shower that removed all the remnants left from the inmates' carnage but also worsened the shivers coursing through his body, Renegade groaned as the guards roughly pushed him into his cell. His legs immediately gave out without any support and he fell to the cold, hard floor, barely recognizing the sound of his cell closing. For a few seconds he remained on the ground, breathing heavily and tiredly while his whole body screamed in pain.

He tried to stand up and only managed to do so after three attempts, managing to lean on the ladder of the bunk bed that was not his. He walked forward slowly, trying his best not to fall to the floor again, and his tired eyes fell on the ladder of the bunk bed. With a few curses in different languages he somehow managed to laboriously climb the ladder, but not without several bones and ribs cracking in protest. He dropped onto the mattress of his bed, grunting as his chest met the hard surface and more ribs protested.

For a brief moment the idea of grabbing the toothpick and freeing himself from the inhibitor collar crossed his mind but his brain, still confused, dizzy and in pain, discarded it a few seconds later. Not only would it be highly suspicious that his body would heal within hours -which was actually a few seconds- but it was also likely that if he got rid of the inhibitor collar, it would send a warning, a signal or something to Bordeaux or Waller.

And this explained how the two women reached the canteen shortly after he had momentarily regained his superhuman abilities and when he had finished massacring the rest of the inmates of his prison wing.

But Dick knew that not even sleep was an option, no matter how much his only human body wanted to shut down for a few hours to recharge with energy.

He knew that he would have to memorize the night patrol that would roam around the D wing where his cell was located: how many guards would pass by, at what time distance from each other etc.

The only positive thing was that no noise could be heard around inside Wing D since he had literally had a bloodbath with all the inmates of that wing.

No noise. No disgusting noises. No rape threats. No sign of a living soul. No chaos. Now this is peace.

Dick snapped out of his thoughts and his gaze fell outside the bars.

He would have spent a sleepless night if he wanted to escape from that hell once and for all.