Author's Note: Set just shy of a month after the previous chapter. Bruce is kidnapped. Dick is worried. Everything comes to a head and things take both a sweet and sour turn simultaneously. Dick's POV.

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(On a side note, publication of this story marks me surpassing 800,000 words archived on this site since I began seven years ago. Only 200,000 to go )

Breaking Point

Bruce told me about torture once. It was during training, when he was discussing what I should do if I was kidnapped. He told me about what techniques interrogators try to get you to sing. He instructed me how to resist them, about how to hold out on giving vital information. I asked him what to do if they tortured me. He just told me to try and hold out. I asked if he could put me through some pseudo-torture to see what it was like, what I was up against. He said no. I asked if he'd ever been tortured before. He said it wasn't important and moved on to something else.

I knew Bruce had been tortured before. I knew he'd escaped before. He never said when or where, but I knew. You could see it in his eyes. It was scary. But, after a couple of years of running with him on the streets, and suffering my own share of beatings, breaks and burns, I figured I knew what would happen if I got tortured. I knew it wouldn't be nice, but I reckoned I'd pull through the ordeal. Everything I suffered strengthened that idea until it was as solid as concrete. So, when I was pulled from class into Principal Weser's office, I wasn't sure what trouble I'd gotten myself into. I didn't figure kidnap would be on the agenda, but it was. Only it wasn't me who'd got bagged: it was Bruce.

Now it's nine hours later and the big guy is still MIA. Kidnappers have paraded him on the internet, which has been streamed to every media news outlet on the eastern seaboard. That was four hours ago. He's been tortured. His face and his white shirt are drenched in blood. They want serious ransom money, more than a billion dollars. The money, believe it or not, isn't the problem. Bruce's fortune is tens of billions, almost as much as Bill Gates. The problem is Bruce is the only man who can authorise a money transfer that extreme. And he needs to give the bank a password to make it official. Knowing Bruce, he hasn't even told them the name of his bank, much less what they need to get their hands on his money. While I'm sure that's an amazing display of resilience on his part, it doesn't help him get free.

Nine hours is a long time. Cops are everywhere on the estate, wiretapping phones and stacking hostage negotiators by the dozen. They don't call. All their demands were made on the video. Everything they want is on the video. They aren't calling. Ever. Jim Gordon says so. And he's never wrong about this kind of thing. It's grim. I expected Bruce to have escaped by now, gotten back here by now. Judging from the looks Alfie's been giving me, he expected it too. So, we're worried now. Bruce is really, freakishly strong, but if he's got a busted leg or missing a hand, he isn't getting free. And, even if I thought I could rescue him, I don't even know where he is. Everything he has a GPS tracker in – his belt, his shoes and his watch – were all left at the office when they grabbed him at gunpoint. These guys were smart. They knew. It makes me wonder what else they know.

Now, it's midnight. The police are still here, hoping for a miracle call that isn't coming. I'm still downstairs in the kitchen with Alfie. Neither of us can sleep. Until he walks through that door, we probably won't.

"Eleven hours, Alfie." I say sipping the hot chocolate he made me, "Eleven hours, and the big guy is still out there. Think he's…" I can't say it. I don't want to jinx it. Alfie shakes his head.

"No. Judging from the fact he's still not here, I would imagine they have yet to get so much as his favourite colour, much less anything credible."

"They must know they're never getting his money, right?"

"It will begin to dawn on them soon."

"And when it does?"

"Let's…not think about that now."

"No, there are more immediate concerns." We both turn to find him stood there. He's been worked over really well. There's dried blood in his ears, under his nose and his mouth. The whole left side of his face looks ten-times worse than on the video, just a spiral of purple mounds. He has a black eye on the right, but neither one of his eyes is out of action. All his limbs are intact too, no breaks or missing fingers that I can see. His shirt is open to show dozens of burns on his chest, some of which look like they were caused by a hot iron. He's still stood up straight. His expression is still blank, as if nothing had happened at all. "Where are the police situated within the house?" He asks whilst helping himself to a glass of water from the sink. Alfie speaks because I can't.

"In the living room, Sir. Are you…"

"Move them. I need access to the library, now." He says setting the glass down and moving towards the dining room. He's nuts if he thinks he can go out in this condition. Alfie's on his feet to fight for common sense.

"We need to tell them you're no longer in danger, Master Bruce. We cannot…"

"I am not in danger, but others are. They have hostages. If the police issue a statement that says I am no longer incarcerated, they will die. Move them out of the living room now. You have five minutes." Alfie looks at me, maybe for support or just some guidance. I can't do anything but shrug my shoulders. Bruce doesn't look at either of us. He wants to get at the cave and nothing else. The old man sighs and clears his throat.

"Where should I relocate them?"

"The other side of the house. Go now. We have less than two hours." Alfie goes because we can't do anything else. Bruce won't be reasoned or argued with at the minute. We either help him or he helps himself, which would only make things a lot worse. When Alfie's out the room, the big guy's eyes slowly drift to mine. I hold his gaze as long as I can, but it's too intense for a prolonged staring contest. After two minutes of crushing silence, I look away. "You need to accompany me. There are twenty hostages. I cannot save them by myself."

"Why weren't they mentioned on the news too?"

"They have been gathered over several weeks. Most of them are teenage homeless runaways. This group are trying to indoctrinate them into their organisation."

"How?"

"They forced them to torture me. It is apparently part of their desensitisation training. Those who refused to…were eliminated."

"How…how many died?"

"Three."

Alfie returns and tells us the police have been shifted to the drawing room on the other side of the house. Bruce doesn't even thank him. He just goes straight to the library. We both follow him warily. He opens the clock and begins to descend, motioning barely for me to follow. I glance back at Alfie who gives a look that I know is asking me to promise to keep the big guy safe. I don't know if I can, but I nod if only to reassure him. Then I go into the dark too.

By the time I'm putting on my domino mask, I see Bruce already heading for the car two floors down. His cowl is up and there's nothing to suggest he's endured horrific torture or is carrying any injury at all as he opens the car door and climbs inside. A double somersault later sees me join him in the passenger side. The mask hides every trace of damage underneath. As he fires up the engine and begins the turn out of the cave, I can't help look at his chest. I don't know how he can function with all those burns. It must be agony. Still, nothing shows on his face – it's just its usual grim self. I let five minutes go by in total silence before opening my mouth.

"How'd you escape?"

"I appealed to one of the children during torture. Later, after my guards had left me unattended, the girl returned and loosened my bindings as instructed. Once she had disappeared, I conducted my escape."

"How many people did you knock out?"

"One. That way, a single individual will be blamed for my escape rather than suspicion falling on the children."

"What if he gets killed for it?"

"The man I incapacitated shot two of the children who refused to cooperate. If he is killed, so be it."

"You saw them shoot the kids?"

"Yes."

"All three?"

"Yes."

He watched three kids get murdered in cold blood and didn't flip out? I don't know how he could possibly keep himself in check in a scenario like that. I don't know how he can be so detached right now, talking about it. I mean, just where is his breaking point if not right there? I literally can't imagine what's going through his head. He clears his throat. "With any luck, a physical confrontation should not be required. Whilst being tortured, I realised the building had a robust ventilation system. The network of pipes and shafts seems to permeate every area of the structure. By introducing a fast-acting knock-out gas into the system, and turning the fan controls to maximum, it should be feasible to incapacitate every person within the grounds without detection or alarm. The gas I have selected is colourless and odourless to further ensure success. Do you have your respirator?"

"Yeah, of course. That sounds...really sensible considering the state you're in."

"I am combat-ready if the need arises. We shall arrive in seven minutes."

The next seven minutes is a crash-course in how to survey your torture chamber's strengths, weaknesses and security details from the inside. Bruce tells me about the guards on watch, the type of weapons they use, where the alarms are, where the kids are kept. He flies through the details like he's reading them verbatim from a sheet, not stopping until he's pretty sure he's covered everything imaginable about the building and resistance we're up against. The basic plan is to infiltrate through the basement and access the fan controls directly. From there, he wants me to crawl through the vent system and plant a cache of the gas pellets in the intersection of the shafts. After heating them to break the pellets open, he's going to turn the fans on. He thinks eight minutes will be long enough for the gas to fill all the rooms. In any case, he says we can monitor progress with thermal goggles. It is very tame stuff for what he's witnessed in the last twelve hours. I respect the hell out of him for keeping his composure.

The base of operations is an abandoned Daggett Chemicals factory complex on the outskirts of the Industrial District. We park the car out of view and head for the rooftops to scope the area properly. He walks and skulks with his usual skill as we scout the basement entrance. It's just where he said it was, at the rear of the complex on the left-hand edge. It's fronted by a four-strong team of heavily-tooled guards, again like he said. Higher up, on a couple of makeshift gantries, there are another two guards, these two armed with Soviet sniper rifles. Their arcs cross everywhere but our current position, the fabled 'blind spot' Bruce spent hours drilling into me during training. These six guys aside, the rest of the security set-up is pretty lightweight. I spot three CCTV cameras mounted on the corners of the building and above the basement door. The big guy points out another one situated in the shadows to the right of the doorway.

I think we both decide to be smarter than a full-frontal assault. We withdraw back from the rooves, drop to street-level to break line-of-sight between us and them, then hunt out the nearest manhole cover. The smell is beyond bad when we get into the sewer tunnels, but the place is quiet. We have space to work. It takes less than five minutes of walking and flashlights to get underneath the basement. It doesn't take much to breach it, just a handful of low-yield charges to weaken the concrete and then a couple of hard pushes to shift it to one side and create an opening. And we're in. There is no guard – nobody ever suspects intelligence in an assault like this.

We track the pipes overhead to the ventilation system controls. There isn't any trouble along the way. Once gasmasks are on, and we've figured out the control panel, Bruce sticks his gas pellets into the fan system. Within five minutes of flipping the switch, the big guy is confident enough for us to venture upstairs. We pick the lock and slowly enter the main area of the lobby. Two guys with semi-automatics are lying prone on the floor behind makeshift barricades made of office desks. Bruce says nothing but gestures for me to cuff them as we move through. I do as I'm told.

He leads me into where he was held hostage. There's too much congealed blood on the floor to just be from him. My eyes are drawn to a medium-sized pool of the stuff directly in front of an empty chair with rope looped around the arms and legs. I see what look like drag marks where the blood is smeared. Whoever died at his feet was dragged out of here like a dead pig. I don't see the point of coming in here now. Nobody's in here. Bruce doesn't stay long. He walks out and gestures for me to follow. I take one last look at the floor and then shadow him.

Now we're in a dormitory full of bunk beds. I count fifty beds total, over half-of-them filled with sleeping kids. A few shines of the torch show them all to be around my age or thereabouts. A lot of them are seriously bruised. I notice the chains at the last minute as I sweep for more guards. The room's empty though. The big guy wanders back out. I'm getting dizzy just following him.

I'm not going to sugar coat it, as far as guided tours go, this one was brutal. Since my guide didn't say anything at all, I went to some pretty dark places imagining what life is like for these kids on a daily basis. The shower room reminds me of something I once saw in a history book, about the Holocaust. I was half-expecting poison gas to come out of the shower nozzles when we were cuffing another bunch of total scum. We find the three victims tossed in a pile like mail sacks inside a backroom. All of them have been shot in the face. We barely glance at this before moving on. One fatality for the bad guys, presumably the one Bruce knocked out during his escape, is in another backroom. He's been beaten to death. This is beyond gruesome now. There is no humanity in this place. I thought I'd barf halfway through this horror show, but I just felt sad. I think we've both grown beyond normal human reactions to death now. It just is, and so are we. When we finally complete the sweeps and have tied up nearly thirty armed-gunman with a bow for the GCPD, I'm ready to call it a night.

"Shouldn't you stay, so the cops can find you here?" I ask him as we're preparing to egress through the sewers. He looks at me over his shoulder.

"The children will state that I escaped captivity some hours ago. For an ordinary man without my training, the time from escaping to reaching the manor would have elapsed now. Once the GCPD leave the house to investigate this tip-off at the warehouse, Bruce Wayne will return to Wayne Manor." He replies matter-of-factly, like this whole night is part of normal routine.

"Wouldn't an ordinary man have raised the alarm or flagged down help after escaping?" I check, trying to join in this totally manufactured air of normality we've got going on.

"Not if he had explicitly been warned against such an action by his captors. I think disorientation and trauma would also provide suitable explanations for such unusual behaviour. Don't you agree?"

"Yeah, sure. It sounds...believable."

"In that case, we should return home before police arrive here."

I could argue with him about how suspicious all this behaviour from Bruce Wayne will seem in the media, how they might brand him as a coward, but I also know I can't take anymore tonight. I need this to be over. So, I nod. "Okay. If you think that's best."

We drive back in silence, as if I expected him to be talkative after what's happened tonight. The guy's been tortured by brainwashed kids, seen three of them get popped and then dragged his ass across nearly fifteen miles of ground in his best shoes to get home only to then drag his ass back the same distance to rescue the kids who tortured him. It sounds like the really bad plot of a thriller, something publishers would turn around and say was 'too dark' for publication unless they cut out half of the despair and gave it a happy ending. I don't even have to look at Bruce to know he does not consider this a happy ending. Not even close.

Two hours. They question Bruce for two hours about his kidnapping and torture. He receives medical treatment from EMTs as they do it. They're not grilling him though: they just want to get more evidence to put the scum away forever, instead of just the usual twenty-five years they would get. The kids are in police custody now. All of them are talking up a storm. Their kidnappers aren't talking at all, on the advice of their public defenders apparently. Bruce explains how, after escaping with the help of one of the kids, he managed to make contact with Batman on routine patrol duties in that area of the city. His explanation's got some holes, but nothing big enough to sink it. We'll know how bad this cult was by tomorrow morning when the story breaks on every news station in the city and Eastern seaboard. Everyone finally leaves after four in the morning.

I literally don't think I can summon the energy to do anything but yawn right now. The whole day has been one nerve-shredding mess. I manage to drag my feet into Bruce's room and find him barely conscious in the bed. His entire chest is plastered in antibiotic gels and a mountain of gauze. Half his face is mummified in bandages and four ice-packs too. He looks more like he's been in a car accident than a torture chamber. I don't say anything. Neither does he. We don't need to anymore. He gives one flick of his visible eye to tell me it's alright. I crawl onto the vacant side of his bed, just within touching distance of his right hand and settle down onto my side. He absently pats my head and then close his eyes. He falls into deep sleep a few seconds later. It's a good plan. I close my eyes and try to catch him up.

When I open my eyes, I find him looking at me with purple-bordered eyes. Looks like ice and anti-inflammatories, combined with the big man's ludicrous powers of recovery, have done their jobs. The mountain-range of bumps and whorls from last night are almost completely gone. He's actually sat up, reading the paper.

"Wow. One layer of make-up and you could pass for camera-ready." I say without lifting my head off the pillow. He smiles at me.

"I was thinking two or three at the very least." He says as I think about sitting up but decide to enjoy feeling like a boneless jelly. I know he hasn't put last night out of his mind, but at least he can smile. If he couldn't, I'd be worried he was going too deep inside his own head. Again.

"I'm glad you're okay, big guy." I tell him, making the effort to lift my hand and pat him on the arm.

"The media has been less than flattering in their portrayal of my actions this morning." He says showing me the front page of his broadsheet. It says 'Batman rescues children from savage cult as Wayne heir flees to safety.'

"Jack Ryder's never liked you. Screw his opinion." I say before begrudgingly shifting my weight so I'm propped up on an elbow.

"I know." He says folding the paper and setting it aside. "And I have disregarded his rhetoric for the time being. I am far more interested in how you are feeling this morning. Last night was...more than a little unsettling."

"You mean dead kids? I'm fine. I want to say I'm shocked by it, but I'm not. Even the smell doesn't get to me anymore. I guess I'm just as numb as you these days." I reply running a hand down the length of my face before covering a yawn. He nods at me. We need to be numb to this stuff. It's the only way we'll get past it in time for whatever comes next. It's not a great solution, but it works.

"I'm glad to hear that. For what it's worth, I think you handled yourself very well in the circumstances." He says. I'll take that.

"Thanks. I...I do have a question to ask you though. You can choose not to answer if you think it...crosses a line." I'm only hesitating because maybe it's too early to probe him like this. But he folds his arms and inclines his head anyway.

"Ask."

"Is nothing too much for you to bear? You got tortured by kids and watched three of them get their brains blown out right in front of your eyes. How can you possibly keep it together enough to not break every bone in their bodies? How can you be 'nice' and just knock people like that out with sleeping gas? Didn't you want to kill them for what they'd done?" I say, hoping this isn't going to completely sour him for the rest of the week.

He shrugs. "And risk my identity being exposed and more children injured in the process? My heart will never rule my head, Dick, especially when the stakes are so high. I did want to kill them. They deserved a death just as callous and cruel as they gave those children. But that would solve nothing. And inflicting violence on them would also solve nothing, except to suggest a link between Bruce Wayne and Batman that we do not need exploring. I acted with restraint because those dead children will only receive justice if their killers are alive. Families will only receive closure if they are indicted and imprisoned. Your own case is a prime example. Tony Zucco should have stood trial for your parents' murders. Instead, he died of a heart attack. Did you not feel cheated as a result? That Zucco had escaped justice?"

I can't help but roll my eyes at any mention of Zucco. Old Tony got lucky alright. I sigh in what I would class as begrudging agreement. "I guess. We can't make the law huh? We can only enforce it? Is that the tagline we're going for with this one?"

The big guy is not impressed. "Don't be flippant, Dick. It doesn't suit you where these matters are concerned. But, yes."

"Would anything actually make you snap? Don't you have a limit to how much you can take?"

"To be frank, I thought I had reached my breaking point years ago. But each fresh horror pushes the lines further back until I wonder whether there will be a line at all in future. Sometimes I look at you and wonder. Sometimes, I allow myself to imagine a scenario where...the worst has befallen you. I try to imagine how I would act in the aftermath, whether that would be the moment I flout my code and ethics." The big man smiles at me wistfully. "Losing control does not terrify me, Dick. If I were to lose all sense and murder another human being in your name, as revenge, that would not shock me as much as I would like it to. What would really haunt me would be if you were killed and I did not lose control of myself. My love for you is how I confirm my humanity is still intact, that it hasn't been stripped away with everything else Batman does not require. If you were murdered, and I were still able to function, it would confirm my greatest fear: that Bruce Wayne is nothing more than an empty husk for Batman to hide inside." He offers up a low sigh. "I apologise. Far too dark for breakfast time. Perhaps I am concussed after all..."

"Thanks for being honest." I tell him, putting my hand on his forearm and squeezing it. "I know admitting anything, especially your fears, isn't a staple of our normal conversations. It means a lot that you're scared of what you'll discover about yourself if I lose my life. I worry about losing you too, what losing...my dad again, would turn me into. Before you turned up last night, I started seeing a really messed-up future too. But we're here to keep each other alive and so far, we're doing a hell of a job."

He inclines his head in what looks like gratitude. I'm trying my best to lift him up as much as I can. "I would hug you if I were not currently in blinding amounts of pain." He says to make me smirk.

"Yeah, not sure I buy that, but thanks anyway. Hey, movie and pyjama party? We could watch one of your favourites."

"We can, if you agree to complete your homework assignments during the matinee."

"Jeez, it's like you weren't even kidnapped last night." I mutter manoeuvring into a sitting position before digging my feet under the covers until I'm buried up to my waist beside him. He ruffles my hair with his hand again to let me know he understands I'm still a little tense from last night.

"You can choose the film. Whatever you like."

"Really? Even a raunchy, immature teen comedy?"

"I am not exactly in a position to stop you."

"Don't worry, I won't subject you to that. My folks and I liked watching Scaramouche when we were on the road. You know, the one with..."

"Stewart Granger and Janet Leigh?"

I grin sheepishly. "Probably. I was going to say the funny clown who's actually a master swordsman. Do you like it?"

"Very much. That would be an excellent choice this morning. You will, of course, have to get out of the bed to put the film on the television."

"I know. I'm going already, but I'm coming back. Bet on it."

He smiles. "I know."