"Wally? Any word on Robin?"

"Batman asked me to see him a while ago... he wasn't doing great, sure, but it's weird that we haven't heard anything."

"What do you mean he wasn't doing great? Is he okay?"

Wally frowned, mind wandering back to a few days earlier when he had visited his friend. Yeah, Dick probably did not want the team to know about everything, at least not yet. But still, Wally was growing concerned too. It had been days since he had spoken to Dick, and he was growing anxious for news. "He's... I mean... I'd hope that he's doing better. He seemed like he would be doing better by now."

The vague words did little to convince the team, who were growing more and more concerned by the minute.

Connor stepped forward, eyes narrowing as he stared Wally down. "What's wrong with him? We're his teammates. We deserve to know if something is wrong."

"Um... it's a secret?" Wally stepped back, looking anywhere but at Connor. This was not going to end well. Why did anyone think that he could be trusted with secrets? He was horrible at keeping secrets.

"You better tell us, Baywatch. Unless you want something bad to happen."

When had Artemis managed to get behind him? And when had she gotten so scary?

Thankfully, Kaldur was there to step in. "I don't think we should be threatening our teammates, Artemis. But I do think that we need to know. If something is truly wrong with Robin, then it is our duty as friends to help. We cannot help if we do not know."

Well, shoot. Wally felt more than a little bit cornered, and speedsters hated being cornered.

His hands were starting to twitch with the effort of staying silent.

"Please, Wally? We are concerned for him..."

Aw, dang it. Why did M'gann have to get involved? And why, oh why, was she giving him those puppy dog eyes. Wally could not say no to that.

This was so unfair.

"RobinwassecretlyspyingonustheentiretimebecauseDeathstrokewasmanipulatinghimandhetriedtokillBatmanandfailedandthentriedtokillhimself." It all came out in a rush, the words tumbling over themselves even as the team looked at him like he had just grown a second head.

Kaldur lifted one hand, eyebrow lifting. "Mind repeating that, but at a non-speedster pace?"

Wally groaned, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. "Fine, fine... Robin tried to kill Batman, but that was only because he'd been manipulated by this really bad dude called Deathstroke who told him that Batman had killed his family. But Batman was able to fight him off and then Robin tried to kill himself."

"Wait... what?"

"He actually managed to trick Batman?"

"So he's a traitor?"

"Of course he's not a traitor. Did you not hear Wally? He'd been tricked."

"That's not very smart of him."

"He really tried to kill himself? Poor Robin..."

"Not poor Robin. He tried to kill Batman."

"Yeah, but..."

They were all talking at once, chaos breaking out as different members latched onto different parts of the information and began to argue about it.

"Shut up! All of you, just... just shut up!" Wally snapped, eyes narrowing as he looked around at his friends. "You didn't see him, okay? None of this was his fault. The guy who told him that Batman killed his parents... he'd been messing with his head since he was just a little kid. He lied to Rob about everything. It's not Di-Robin... it's not Robin's fault. Did you not hear me when I said he tried to kill himself? The guy had him so messed up that he actually thought death was better than failing to kill Batman. And he was terrified. He was just curled up in a corner of the room, waiting for an attack to come."

That shut the team up, or at least, it did until M'gann started crying, turning and pressing her face into Connor's chest, the clone holding her close. As for the others, Kaldur looked reasonably horrified and Artemis was mad.

Not just mad, she was practically fuming. She could understand what it was like to have a parental figure manipulate everything about her life. She could sympathize with Robin, but the thought that it had gotten so far... that Deathstroke had gotten so far into Robin's head that he had thought death was a good alternative... well, that made Artemis furious.

For all that her friendship with Robin might have been based off a lie, she was not about to just stand still and let a poor innocent child get hurt. Because that was what was happening. Robin was young. Too young for this to be happening to him.

"So, what are we going to do about this?" She asked, turning to look at Wally, determination set in her eyes. "Batman probably isn't going to let us help, but... but we're Robin's friends. It doesn't matter if he lied to us at the start. We're his friends, and we need to fight for him."

Connor nodded, letting go of M'gann to step forward as well. "Artemis is right. I know what it's like to be used as a weapon. I... I can't say that I know exactly what he's going through, but I do know that I wouldn't be here if you guys did not fight for me. Whether he lied from the start or not, Robin is a part of this team, and we deserve to know what's going on."

"We can help him... maybe he'd feel safer if he was at the mountain." M'gann added, joining their growing circle.

Slowly, Kaldur nodded, resting a hand on Wally's shoulder in support. "Well, that settles it then. We will help Robin. But we do need to be able to find him first. You said you visited him, Wally?"

Batman was going to kill him, but... but Wally knew that Dick needed him, needed the team's support.

"I know where they live."

~•~

Everything hurt.

Pain splintered through every single part of his body, stabbing into his consciousness like an ever-present blade, pressing deeper and deeper into his sanity.

Time was losing meaning, even though Dick knew that it could not possibly have been very long.

It felt like an eternity.

Blood bubbled from his lips, dripping down his bare chest and joining the steadily growing puddle pooling on the floor beneath his suspended body.

He had long since lost feeling in his arms, or at least, any feeling aside from pain and yet even that was growing mundane as his senses were overwhelmed with agony.

Breathing was becoming more and more of a struggle, broken ribs and internal bleeding making each quest for air an ever-harder feat.

Still, Dick had yet to yield any useful information.

He would not break.

He could not break.

He owed that much to Bruce after all he had done.

~•~

Bruce closed the door to Jason's room, face set in a hard scowl. Jason had not yielded much useful information.

This was not going to be easy.

Still, Bruce knew that he could not give up. He could not fail Dick again. The poor boy had suffered too much already for being so young.

It took hours of scanning through databases, hours of reconfiguring trackers and hacking into satellite data, hours of searching down seemingly useless rabbit holes, before Bruce finally had Dick's location narrowed down to a hundred-mile radius.

Still, that was too big.

He would never be able to find Dick in time.

The boy had probably already been subjugated to endless amounts of torture in the day that it took to get this information. He could only hope, only pray, that he would be able to find him before it reached a point that Dick could not recover from.

"Master Bruce?"

Bruce looked up, eyes bloodshot from staring at the screen. "What is it, Alfred?"

"You have visitors." Alfred did not look pleased, and Bruce could not help but share that feeling as Wally and the rest of the Team stepped out from behind his butler.

"Kid Flash, what are you doing here? And why have you brought them?" He asked, almost too tired to add the necessary harshness to his voice. Almost.

Wally flinched ever so slightly at the question, his expression shifting into a mixture of sheepishness and guilt. "Well... um... you see..."

"We know about Robin. We are here to help him." Kaldur stepped forward, narrowing his eyes at Bruce. "Kid Flash told us what we needed to know to find him."

Bruce could not help but loose a bitter laugh. "You're too late. He's not here anymore."

"I... what? What happened to him?"

"He decided to go after Deathstroke himself. Things did not go well." Bruce did his best to keep his tone emotionless, did his best to seem like the cold hero that he portrayed. But some of the tiredness and desperation seeped into his voice, his shoulders slumping ever so fractionally.

Wally was the first to react to that news, as expected considering that he was the closest to Dick. "How did that even happen? You let him get taken? He was terrified of Deathstroke. Terrified. I can't believe you would... he's... he's going to hurt him."

Bruce sighed, running a hand down his face. "He ran off on his own. I... I misjudged something. It doesn't matter now anyway. I've narrowed down where he is and I'm going to get him back."

"Narrowed down how much? Did you have a tracker on him?"

"Of course I had a tracker on him. I have a tracker on everyone. If you must know, he's somewhere in this area." He gestured toward the screen, sighing again as the young heroes crowded in around his desk.

"This is not a small area, Batman. Do you really plan on searching this all yourself?" Kaldur asked, tone incredibly skeptical.

Bruce scowled. He knew that tone, and he was not about to let this happen. "I am aware of that. And yes. I will be searching the area. It is unsafe to bring others in on this."

"But we can help. I can run faster than you can, Connor has super hearing and can see through walls, M'gann can sense emotions. Sure, Artemis and Kaldur can't do anything particularly helpful in this situation, but they're still two extra pairs of eyes."

"No."

The word was final; spoken so sternly that normally Wally would not hesitate in obeying, but this was not a normal situation. Dick was in danger, and every moment that they lost was a moment that he could be tortured or worse, killed. "He's our teammate. You put him on the team. It's our duty as much as yours to protect him."

"I said no."

"Well, we don't care what you said. He's our friend, and we're helping. We know where he is now. Either get on board or get out of the way." Wally snapped, crossing his arms over his chest, refusing to back down even when faced with Batman's heart stopping death glare.

And, wonder of wonders, the standoff actually ended in Wally's favor as Bruce sighed and looked away, shoulders slumping more.

"Fine. The Team can help. But you will do everything that I tell you to do. Everything."

~•~

Someone was screaming, the sound raspy and desperate.

Oh.

That was him.

Dick felt like he was floating, watching his body from afar as Slade continued to beat him, continued to slice skin from his body, continued to pour boiling water over the wounds, continued to rip his fingernails off one by one.

Everything was hazy, clouded in pain. He knew nothing aside from pain at this point.

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

And now, when he thought that he knew every kind of pain already, a new variation hit him with nauseating clarity, cutting through the fog and making his screams all that much louder.

It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his skull, as if someone was pressing into his brain with a burning hot blade.

No.

"NO!"

Too late, Dick saw a second figure stepping out from the shadows, a sickly white man with an exposed brain, his eyes trained intently on Dick.

Too late, he tried to throw up his mental walls, tried to block out the harsh intrusion.

Too late, he realized that he was far too weak to keep him out.

The walls shattered, drawing another agonized scream from his lips as the man simply smirked.

Dick could not stop him.

Dick was too weak.

~•~

M'gann screamed, body plummeting through the air, Connor barely managing to catch her before she hit the unforgiving cement of the rooftop.

"H-he's... he's in pain. So much... so much pain." She gasped out, hands clutching at her head, body trembling as she struggled to cope with the waves of emotions overwhelming her.

Connor gritted his teeth, nodding. "Yeah, I hear him. Batman? You got that? I'm pretty sure he's somewhere under this building."

"Got it." Batman gritted his teeth, turning and heading to the building in question. Finally, finally, they had found him. It had taken nearly a day of searching, but finally, Bruce could act. He could save his son.

The Team gathered in front of the entrance, watching anxiously as Batman came to stand in front of them.

"Be ready for anything. Deathstroke is extremely dangerous. Kid Flash, Miss Martian, and Superboy, I want you three to head straight for him. If a fight breaks out, keep on going. We can handle the fighting. Once you've gotten to him and freed him from whatever imprisonment he is in, Kid Flash, I need you to take him and run. He's not going to be in a good condition. You know where the nearest Zeta Tube is. Take him straight to the Watchtower. The rest of us will follow once Deathstroke has been taken out." It was a solid plan, the best that Bruce had been able to come up with at such short notice. He looked around at the group of young heroes, waiting until he saw each one nod before nodding himself.

"Good. Let's go."

~•~

"Look at you, Richard. Pathetic." Slade spat, nose crinkling in disgust as he eyed the broken body of his ex-apprentice. "Such a waste of potential. If only you had just done as told, but no. You wanted to play hero."

Dick gritted his teeth when Slade gripped his chin, lifting his head up to meet his eyes. He was barely hanging onto consciousness, his vison distorted and swirling with pain. But he was aware enough to gather up a mixture of blood and saliva in his mouth, spitting it into Slade's face.

It was not a particularly smart idea, something that he quickly realized as Slade delivered a harsh blow to Dick's stomach, the air leaving his lungs as he coughed up more blood.

"Just remember this, little bird, whatever potential you did have is gone. You're just a broken little boy. You have always been broken."

Another punch was enough to send Dick into unconsciousness, Slade's words echoing in his mind.

Broken.

~•~

He did not know how long it had been since Slade had knocked him out, but what he did know was that things had gotten to a point where he was hallucinating.

That was the only possible explanation for what was happening.

It simply was not possible for Wally, Connor, and M'gann to be there.

Maybe it was just a dream.

It was all just a dream.

But that did not make much sense either. He could hear the sounds of fighting, could feel the wetness of Wally's tears against his skin as the redhead cradled him in his arms, could feel the heat of explosions.

Maybe it was just a really vivid dream.

"Robin? It's going to be okay... you're going to be alright."

Dick smiled weakly. Dream Wally was nice... Wally was always so nice.

His smile only seemed to make things worse, however, dream Wally crying harder.

Hazily, Dick saw a blur of black fighting with another orange and black blur. Something about that did not seem quite right, but again, he could not place what felt off.

His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and when he opened them, he was suddenly outside the building, the rest of the Team standing protectively around him.

Wait.

The arms surrounding him were no longer dream Wally's... Batman. Batman was holding him.

That did not make much sense either though. Batman had been fighting the black and orange blur.

Slade.

Batman had been fighting Slade.

But if Batman was holding him, then where was Slade?

And what had happened to Wally?

The building in front of them was shaking, the heat of the fire making Dick feel cozy and warm.

Wait.

Focus.

The building was going to collapse.

Slade.

His half open eyes caught a glimpse of something orange and black moving toward the entrance.

No.

Not something.

Someone.

Slade.

Dick began to struggle in Batman's arms, reaching toward the building as it began to shake more.

"S-Slade..." He cried out, his breaths rattling in his chest as panic flooded every ounce of his being. Slade was going to die.

His father was going to die.

Batman's arms tightened around him, holding him close and refusing to let him go even as Dick screamed for the man who had raised him, hot tears streaming down his cheeks.

With a crash, the building collapsed, the orange and black figure going down under the falling structure, and Dick's screams grew more and more desperate.

Slade had died.

His parents had died.

He could not breathe, could not think, the image of his parents' deaths melding and clashing with the vision of Slade being crushed by the falling building, replaying over and over again.

Dick registered a faint prick in his neck before darkness once again closed in, his body going limp in Batman's arms.