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He grunts as yet another foot connects with his already black and blue side. The metaphorical wind has been knocked out of him so many times, Dick’s decided to just forgo breathing altogether.
It’s been a while now, he’s pretty sure. Definitely more than a week, cause there was when he first got captured,
( There were too many, it was an ambush. His emergency beacon was damaged and no one was coming.
Punch, kick, dodge, block. Both Escrima were gone. Nightwing’s assailants were advancing, it didn’t look good.
Searing pain in his shoulder, and the room whited out. He staggered, they took advantage, then Dick was down.)
and that wound hasn’t healed per say, what with all the slashes going across it.
( Chains, holding him. Both wrists above, his legs secure below. A knife, going in, going across. He grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut as the blade twists.
The bullet had gone through, meaning there wasn’t anything to fish out, which was good, but it also meant there were two places in which they could torture him.
It had been a clean shot, nothing vital was hit, but it still hurt like crap.)
Then there’s his leg, which was broken during his first escape attempt long enough ago that it’s at least tried to heal.
( He slumped in “defeat” and the thugs take the bait.
Must. Get. Home.
Twisting out of their grasps, Dick makes for the door.
Must. Get. Home.
Down the hall, take out two more. Dodging bullets. Staggering as fast as he could.
Must. Get. Home.
There was light, up ahead. The good kind, the real kind, he can almost taste the fresh air-
Tackled, shackled, and thrown back into the room. His least favorite room.
“Looks like someone wants to run away”
“Oh no, we can’t!-have that. It’s time!-for another lesson!”
The two cackle madly as he’s turned on his stomach, struggling.
“ Birdies can’t fly without their wings”
she grinned at him.
“People can’t!-walk without!-their legs”
he laughed.
“Which one are you pretty birdie?”
A smirk.
“Pretty- birdie!”
That mocking look-
“No!”
His leg snaps like fingers. Sharp, drawing attention to the area, too fast, way too fast. Except with this, there’s no returning to normal, no movement without pain. He’d much prefer the fingers.)
Dick’s leg had been splinted at least, but the dragging around since hadn’t been fun. All the torture after hadn’t help matters much either. He knew the sh**y patch up job on his leg had been done and re-done at least five times.
Take now for instance, one of the goons currently assaulting him was aiming viciously for said area. Destroying the wood and wrappings supposedly keeping it in place. At least it distracted from the one kicking the bullet wound.
Please let me sleep…
“Stop it,” the woman hissed, Dick likes to think of her as Crazy Thing One, “he’s falling unconscious, and that’s just unacceptable!”
If her sing-song voice was bad, the brother’s is even worse, “tsk tsk, that’s not” and this is said monotone, “great! Sleep is for the weak! And the weak” now the tone goes up and down, undulating while always ending in exclamation, like that one meme with the mocking letters. The rest is said with that same flat voice, “don’t get to sleep.”
This time it’s water that’s dumped on his head, last time it was a fog horn, and a while back he’s half sure there was a light in his eyes. They didn’t catch him in at least three incidences, so there’s that. He’s had three bouts of unconsciousness- that he remembers- and feels like he could sleep forever.
Crazy Thing Two stalks over with that awful poker face of his, a malicious delight in his eye. He’s got something new in mind, and Dick just knows he’s not going to like it.
It starts with Damian of course, Richard is his favorite, and the others are such imbeciles to not notice (but secretly, he is ashamed. Ashamed that it took him so long.)
The favorite brother hadn’t texted in a while, hadn’t called or visited. That in itself was very odd, though it could be explained with many an excuse, mainly being “busy”. Grayson was hardly ever too busy to check in however, the man himself didn’t even believe in such a thing. Not to mention, Nightwing hadn’t been on the news much lately either, and the more Damian thought about it, the worse that feeling got. The one that had been bothering him all day, all week, and more.
In his defense, it had started as a bad gut feeling on patrol, which was not uncommon, though it did persist afterwards. Filling him with a sense of foreboding, it took him days to figure out what was wrong, and even then he dismissed it.
Well now he can’t, now he won’t.
Grayson’s number is on speed dial, the phone rings and rings and rings, going straight to voicemail. The eldest should be free right about now, it’s after his shift, but before patrol.
Damian frowns, as much as he loathes the thought, asking for assistance might prove prudent. That insolent Drake would certainly take this proposal seriously. They all loved the eldest after all, even Todd might care a little.
“It’s Grayson, I think something’s wrong and I’d prefer to know his whereabouts.”
“You think Dick’s in trouble? What makes you say that?”
A frown, “he hasn’t contacted us for a while, and Nightwing hasn’t been observed in Blüdhaven recently.”
Drake looks doubtful, “I’ll look into it.”
They ripped out his fingernails, put a brand to his shoulder. He’d screamed and screamed, had looked toward the door, watched it, watched the ceiling. Stared into the shadows so intently that the hallucination of his family coming almost seemed real. Then the pain, radiating from his shoulder, waves of intense heat bearing down, and he was gone.
When he woke, it was to find that his voice had left as well. Throat raw and throbbing, dry as the desert. A knife had been plunged into his thigh to wake him up, punishment for clocking out in the first place.
New horrors decorated his body, and Dick knew, even with his head fuzzy with pain and a million other things, that he had not lost his voice from the brand. Try as he might, the memories were gone, leaving only scars and agony behind.
Very quickly, they realized that he did not remember, that flashes and blurs were all he had of their “time together”.
“Birdie, birdie, birdie; birdie in the night dear, darling. How could you have forgotten, forgotten me ?”
“We had so -much fun! You sang! -for us, with a -most joyous voice!”
Crazy Thing One gestures to the goons nearby, and they grab Dick, hauling him into the next room over, a new one with dirty white-ish tile walls and a floor to match. There’s a bucket of water nearby, a towel, and most notably- a table. It was a special one too, set at an angle, and Dick can tell just what it’s for.
“Birdie doesn’t deserve air, birdie doesn’t need it. Drowning time, drowning time, drowning time’s his favorite!” She giggles madly, producing a gag from nowhere.
“ Still can’t!-remember? Hmmm, that -just won’t do! Maybe this!-will shock and shock, -shock the truth out of you!”
They waterboarded him that day, all day. With his throat swollen and energy gone, lungs exhausted, then right back into that tiny little cage, limbs twisted to their limits once again, an ever present ache in every muscle, every bone in his body. He just couldn’t keep up, Dick was tired, so very tired, and all he could think as the Crazy Things did everything possible to keep him awake was: where the h*** is he?
Where the h*** is he? Thought Bruce, they’d been looking for weeks, scouring every corner of Gotham, with no results. It was as if Dick had just vanished, disappearing into thin air, just poof! Gone.
Such a thing shouldn’t be possible, it wasn’t. They were missing something, they had to be. Whoever these people were, they were good. Maybe even better than good, but no one could just kidnap a person, especially not his son , without a trace. A reliable, actually helpful trace that is.
Oh there were plenty, rumors and chatter, contacts in the underworld, but they were all dead ends.
Bruce knew who it was, knew they were criminals not unlike the Joker himself. Two of them, twins as Tim had found out, a creepy crazy duo of sorts who were new in town. Low in the ranks, but undeniably intelligent, their motive is unknown.
At least one of them is an expert in torture, he does know that much. Just as he knows that this “dysfunctional big a** family of his” as Jason would put it, is falling apart.
Tearing at the seams, it’s as if they’ve lost the glue, the threads keeping them all together. Damian wouldn’t talk to him, won’t stop sneaking out and repeatedly refuses to follow his orders, Bruce doesn’t know what to do. The boy is clearly hurting, all of them are, he’s pretty sure.
They should’ve realized Dick was missing sooner, they need him to be alive, to be there. Always there for them, for him, and Bruce knows that they’ve been lulled into that safety of knowing this. That it’s unfair for so much pressure to be put on the young man’s shoulders when he probably has many other things to attend to.
Bruce just can’t help it. There was a breakout at Arkham yesterday, and there was no one to check the lines, to get everyone together to brief them, no one to keep the mood light, to take on the two remaining rouges, no one to leap in front of that bullet meant for Tim, no one to laugh in the face of danger, to crack cheesy annoying puns about every little thing, and to bandage up his little birds and make sure they went to bed.
There was no one, because Dick always showed up for important things like that, always rushed over right on time, ready to serve whenever Bruce called emergency. He’d never given it much thought before, of course, but Dick had a life, one so very precious, one upon which everything depended on. With him gone, life seemed duller, darker. As if they had lost their ever-shining light in the void that is Gotham.
Jason is another thing too, for though said man had shown up last night, and claims to have exhausted all his resources in this effort as well. Bruce believes him even, but he can still feel the disconnect. It was always there before, but now it’s more apparent. Now he doesn’t know if he should say something about the guns, doesn’t know if he should talk to his son. Dick had always done that, had laughed and joked and wormed his way into all their hearts, even the great Red Hood’s. In the end, it didn’t matter how much you resisted, how many times you attempted to block him out. Bruce’s first would always win that battle, if he so chose.
We’ll get you back, Dick he willed silently, no matter what.
“Batman’s so late, it’s almost embarrassing,” Crazy Thing One grins.
“He’s not!-Coming for -you! Little Birdie.”
“Never, never, never .”
“Not!-Ever for you.”
That’s what they said as he was strung up, as a long, fancy wooden box was brought out.
A big, many pronged, finely sharpened whip makes its appearance with quick, stinging lines across his bare chest. Red drips down, and he screams. Soundlessly that is, with his body arching and his lips far, far apart.
Starting now, he is to count to ten, each number in a different language. If he messes up, they start again.
The dark, heated color paints itself everywhere, ruining his back, front, and everywhere else.
He doesn’t make it to ten.
Oh he suffers way more than the allotted lashes, of course. Blacking out briefly at four, he forgets what number he’s on. They try again, and this time he counts in a language already used.
The next time he starts over, is the last.
When he wakes up, he’s back in that three by three by four foot cage, and ”bandages” cover him from head to toe. No pain relievers, obviously. The Coo Coo Twins have made sure of that.
Dick doesn’t even try to shift, he learned long ago that there is no comfortable position in this cramped h***hole. Especially when his entire body feels like one big, giant damaged thing. His limbs don’t even feel like his anymore, like the pain he’s gotten so used to all these years, pain that comes by for a visit every night on patrol, like an annoying friend, has now progressed to obsessive friend, mentally unstable friend, abusive friend-
Enemy. Sure, it helped him build up a tolerance, a so-called immunity . Well nothing could have prepared him for this, no physical pain he’d ever experienced could compare. Dick just wanted it to stop , to go away . It wouldn’t though, it hadn’t for the past several…what feels like years.
No one has come for him, and they probably never would. Why would they anyway?
Sleep deprived and pumped full so full of caffeine Dick would probably have a joke about it, and a concerned face with chiding words just ready and waiting for him. Tim knows how it would go, what the eldest would say if he could see him now, but I want you to be here to do it .
He’d gone over everything for the third time in a row, and was now out on patrol, Tim wracked his brain for anything he could have missed, going through everything he’d seen at the place of abduction with his exceptional memory.
There had to be something he was missing. RR is a little distracted tonight as he fights, thinking things through. Even as he came up with nothing, Tim continued on. It was better than thinking of everything that could be happening to the black and blue bird, of the words that basically meant “experienced torturer” sitting innocently on a certain lowlife duo’s profile. Everything is falling apart, just as it did the last time- no, this is different. The man is alive, they know it, and he will be found, he has to be.
They need Dick back, and soon, then everything would be normal again, or at least as “normal” as the bat life can be, but there is no normal without Dick. Everyone knows it, that’s why the Demon Brat has been somber, angry, and a million other things all at once. It’s why Jason is doing that thing where he drops by and checks in more than he ever does, yet there is still the divide. It’s the reason why Babs has been so stressed in Dick’s absence, desperately trying to keep everyone together, Cass doing her best to be the nice one, the mother hen in his place. They’re the only ones actually working to preserve what the man had worked so hard on. As Bruce locks himself away, leaving the family in pieces. If Batman needs a Robin, then his family needs a Nightwing. Tim thought he lost this once, and he is most certainly not going to again.
“RR, come in. We got a lead.”
No way in h***.
They arrive much too late. The place has been hastily cleared out, leaving behind evidence that paints a very terrible picture of what has transpired here, and the tortures Dick must’ve been having to go through, might still be going through.
Jason punches a wall, Damian hangs his head, disappearing into the night. All voices are grim as they talk, business of course, they are vigilantes right now, not civilians. They can’t afford to be close family when there’s the blood of one of their own splattered at their feet.
So Tim pushes down those feelings, those emotions, and gets straight to work.
“They can’t have gone far, and look, they made a mistake. We can track the vehicles, Oracle?”
Buried, suffocating, Luther- going to die- again. Need air-
(He’s going to see, it’s all my fault, I wasn’t strong enough-)
Fighting, hiding, pretending all the time
(Alone, I’m so alone. I just miss them so much )
The world on his shoulders, dragging him down with each passing day
(I live his life, and I’m going to die his death. I never wanted this-)
A different weight, pressing down on him, a voice in his ear. Deadly, dangerous, terrible and sickly sweet.
(Poisonous…)
Boom! A gun, going off right there, right next to him, and he just let it happen.
(I- I killed him)
Faces, staring up at him, so many he has failed.
(How could I?)
Little boys with black hair and blue eyes, dying, accusing.
(It’s all my fault…)
They suffer, everything he had. Everything he hadn’t wanted them to.
(I’m s-sorry)
He’s frozen, frozen in place as those he loves attack. Again and again, and he remains. A punching bag for them, he deserves it after all.
(No pain worse than this.)
A failure till the end.
In and out, in and out. Memories of the past, blurs of the present. Hallucinations and horrors, cooked up by his imagination, emotion after negative emotion after fear-
He doesn’t realize until too late. The toxin works its way into his bloodstream, through his mind, thoughts and memories, the real and unreal, all swirling together and he doesn’t try to stop it.
Dick can’t.
Vaguely, in the background, he’s aware that a new pain has blossomed, something…something he should probably care about. He knows he should, that he would’ve, but he doesn’t.
Not really, not at first. There’s voices, maybe real ones, the banging of things and slamming of doors, engines preparing. He’s somewhere new, and they’re going to leave him. The thoughts barely register, buried beneath everything else; he doesn’t pay them any mind. Not as new terrors dance before his eyes, destroying him inside out, but then something shifts. Something changes, and then there’s terrible, raw agony. In what feels to be every particle of his being, but mostly just his upper body. He thinks, he can’t tell.
The most unnatural noise Dick’s ever heard in his life echoes, and the world fades into nightmares.
Come on, come on, almost there. Just hang in there Dickie, we’re on our way.
This new building is enormous, filled with traps and a surprisingly low amount of guards.
He was nearly decapitated several times, fell halfway down a hole, and had to scale a wall. From what he can tell from comms, the others haven’t been doing much better. Replacement seems to have gotten himself stuck somewhere, and the Demon is cursing up a storm, something about water, spikes, and...height problems? Jason doesn’t want to know.
The big bat himself has been mysteriously silent, along with Barbie, and Black Bat. Though that last one isn’t exactly uncommon.
Creeping silently down the hall, he makes his way toward the end of it, finding a way down to what looks to be a basement.
Hood hears something, something familiar. F*** pretences, he rushes through. Crashing into doors, barreling like a madman.
Wood splinters, traps are foiled, he runs.
Thin, thin walls, way too thin. He bursts through one of them.
Dick is there, delirious, muttering hoarsely, and clearly in pain, but he is there.
Jason hadn’t known what to do with this poor excuse of a family without said man, everything was always over complicated. Everything, except with Goldie, because things made more sense with him there, to keep things from going out of whack.
The symbol on Hood’s chest may be the connection in theory, but without the big bird, there was nothing to back it up.
He rushes over, assessing the situation immediately and slicing ropes binding the wrists of his elder. Catching the man when he falls, and trying his best to be careful of injuries, Jason finds it to be nearly impossible.
Strappado, the word brings bile tickling the back of his throat, even as he catalogues Dickie’s other injuries, of which there are many. Recent stab wound, brutal whipping, and a brand - his vision clouds, blood blistering like those many, many welts- he forces himself to calm down, Hood has precious cargo.
Anyways, bullet wound, broken leg, dislocated shoulders- gonna shoot somebody, gonna shoot somebody- there’s no one to shoot. Looking around, at the very conspicuous garage door type thing in the corner, leading out through a tunnel, at the very obvious tire tracks and recently used torture device- then moving his gaze south, to the pale, pale skin and easily visible ribs, several of which may be broken, or bruised, probably just bruised. At the thin and shaking frame, lined with crimson and the tension of incredible pain.
Jason curses so long and so hard that when the others arrive he’s still not done, just takes a breath and keeps on going. Ignores the looks, ignores them all. He goes until his voice is hoarse and he’s gasping for breath.
Three days later he starts up again, but this time the objects of his hatred sit bound before him, and Hood intends to make them pay.