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Blue panted as he rounded the dark corner, concrete floors under his boots. The night vision in his goggles kicked in as the dim light behind him began to fade, the scarab reciting various reports and status updates directly into his stream of consciousness.
“Blue, report,” said Nightwing’s firm voice, cutting through the noise.
“Nothing yet. This compound is a maze, I swear.”
“We’ve checked the left wing of the compound and found nothing,” called Wondergirl’s voice with minor radio fry. One or both of them must be getting too deep underground.
“No Kid Flash yet, but I downloaded some files that might give us some more information on the guy; sending them over,” reported Robin. “His name is Edwin Smalls, Eddy, owns an industrial construction company, has a criminal record, but isn’t in any of our records.”
“Good work.”
“Are we even sure he’s down here?” asked Wondergirl. “Kid Flash or the kidnapper-guy?”
Nightwing didn’t respond.
“Scarab, scan for heat signatures,” he said aloud, and colours splattered across his vision like paint. Blue and Purple— better known as nothing he could use. He spun around, squinting into the ultraviolet sea when he spotted it: a speck of turquoise just ahead of him.
“I’ve picked up on a heat signature down the hall,” he reported to the radio feed.
“Stay alert.”
“We’re almost back to the fork. We’ll come down after you in case you need backup.”
“Affirmative,” said Blue robotically as his left hand morphed into a massive plasma cannon, “Scarab! That feels a little… unnecessary!”
“It is more effective to prepare oneself before a potential confrontation,” it recited in his head. Blue still thought it was too much, but he didn’t say anything.
He watched the heat signature grow in size and deepen in colour, brightening into a lime green that rested eerily still below his waist level on the walls.
A door appeared, finally, on the endless walls of concrete.
He lifted his arm… and blasted it off its hinges.
An ear-splitting alarm began at once, red, flashing lights spinning overhead.
“Blue, report! What’s going on down there?”
He ripped it the rest of the way off, throwing it carelessly against the wall behind him as brighter lights filled the hallway.
He saw him, strapped to a gurney in the dank room, and he ran forward without a second thought.
“Jesus, ese,” he said, sliding to his side. His eyes were barely open, dazed and unseeing. His mouth hung ajar, too, and a pained expression made up his face like a plaster cast. He wasn’t wearing an inhibitor collar.
He placed one hand on his chest and the other on his face.
“I found him, Kid Flash. He’s unresponsive— really fast heart rate, but he’s alive.”
“Scan the area and get out of there.”
“I know,” the thermal camera turned itself on without prompting, “I don’t see anyone else.”
“That’s good, head back to the fork. Wondergirl, Robin, abort. We don’t know what Blue could’ve triggered.”
His hand transformed into a blade, and he severed the restraints, which were no stronger than a seatbelt, in a single swipe. He could feel his ribs as he collected him into his arms, supporting his limp head as much as possible as he retraced his steps.
‘What Blue could’ve triggered.’ Oh, sorry, only rescuing Bart from a creepy old guy’s concrete labyrinth.
“No inhibitor collar, regular restraints, and I can feel his ribs. I don’t think they’ve been feeding him, whoever they are,” he narrated to himself as much as to the radio feed, breaking into a run.
“He hasn’t eaten in four days?” questioned Robin. A funny sentiment, if it had been any other occasion.
“Speedsters and malnutrition do not mix,” stated Tigress’ voice for the first time since the whole mission began.
Blue swallowed, his brow lowering.
“Don’t I know it.” He looked down at Kid Flash’s pale, limp face, his long, auburn hair trailing behind, “I’ll have to replace my whole locker’s worth of snacks when he wakes up.”
“Do not worry, Jaime Reyes, the Bart Allen will survive.”
“I hope you’re right,” he murmured, as his footsteps were drowned out by the whirring alarm.
Blue stood at Nightwing’s side as Bart and the chaos of the medical wing were wheeled away. He watched the doctors and nurses in sterile white coats encircle his limp body like a swarm of flies, watched the ultra-bright white lights reflect off his hair. A doctor with tiny, coke-bottle glasses, whom Jaime didn’t know, approached them.
“Standard procedure,” said Nightwing, knowing what the doctor was going to ask before he asked it, “he’s 13 if you don’t have it on record already. Run the RQ, photograph any injuries before his healing factor kicks back in, make sure he doesn’t panic when he wakes up.”
“Standard procedure,” affirmed the doctor before he hurried off.
Nightwing cleared his throat, turning to look at the teenager at his side.
“Blue, next time, maybe don’t—”
“What’s the RQ?” He blurted out, staring after Bart before he met Nightwing’s gaze.
He took a moment to answer.
“The RQ, it’s a sexual assault assessment. It’s—”
“What!?”
“...done whenever one of us comes back from a mission unresponsive or unable to do their own report, especially with time unaccounted for.” He placed a steady hand on Blue’s shoulder. “As I said, standard procedure. The test itself is nothing to worry about.”
Blue blinked rapidly and then nodded diligently.
“Right, okay.”
Nightwing nodded slowly in reply, with an eyebrow lowered, pushing gently on Blue’s shoulder.
“Hit the showers, get something to eat. I’ll let you know how he’s doing as soon as the doctors tell me.”
“Okay, okay,” said Blue, raising his palms and backing towards the dormitories, “See you around, Nightwing.”
He tried not to look so uncomfortable as he practically scurried off. He was gone in seconds.
As much as she tried not to, Artemis couldn’t stop staring at Bart. When he woke up in the hospital bed, she was there at his side. Once he had some fluids in him and nutrients pumped directly into his stomach, he was awake and responsive in minutes. He was still pale, with low-hanging bags under his eyes, and somehow even skinnier than he had been, but he was awake.
Nightwing had put him on mandatory leave from any missions for the time being, citing the long recovery time for starvation, but both he and Artemis knew it was bullshit.
He had stopped her when she was about to head home for the night, pulling her aside and handing her a thin, manila folder. She had looked at him curiously, but found only stone-cold seriousness.
She tried to open it, and he placed his hand on hers.
“You might want to sit down,” he had said.
They both knew what happened to him. Obviously not in detail, but the results of the RQ, combined with the photos of the bruises and bite and claw marks all over his body, and how the compression shorts he had been wearing under his uniform were unaccounted for, revealed a lot.
Bart himself, however, revealed very little; that’s why she was watching him.
He was sitting on the back of the large, sectional sofa they had set up in the Watchtower, mostly for the kids. He was chatting with Jaime and Cassie and Gar, all crowded around Tim’s laptop, giggling at some video or show, or something.
He looked completely and utterly relaxed, normal, but he couldn’t possibly be. She couldn’t stop wondering what other things might have happened to him that they missed because he showed absolutely no signs of any distress or anything.
Did she even know him?
She searched his toothy smile for anything, but she found nothing.
She examined his body language as Jaime nudged him in the ribs, but she found nothing as he laughed and pouted playfully.
But she knew what she saw under the cover of that folder.
They hadn’t told any of the senior League members yet, not anyone other than Canary. She knew that they should, but they knew that it would prompt a full, prodding investigation into Bart that couldn’t be anything less than terribly traumatic and invasive after something so traumatic and invasive had happened already.
After his short meeting with Canary, she had told them that there wasn’t even a feeling that he wasn’t telling her everything, and that just made Artemis sleep worse.
What would Wally say?
“Anything?” Nightwing asked her after every Team member besides Bart had left the Watchtower to return home.
They were keeping Bart there for ‘Inpatient monitoring.’ He had groaned and moaned, but he didn’t argue, bidding goodbye to his friends as he returned to the sofa on his own and began scrolling on the phone Barry had finally let him have.
He didn’t notice Dick and Artemis standing there at first, shifting uncomfortably.
He looked up at them and quirked an eyebrow as he looked between them.
“Who died?” he asked.
“Bart…”
He blinked, turning off his phone and placing it face down on the cushion.
“Wait, did someone die? Is everything okay?”
“Bart, we wanted to talk to you about something,” said Dick, taking a seat a short distance away on the couch, and Artemis took her seat next to him.
He sat up to his full, admittedly small height. Artemis’ stomach turned as the thought of him being too small and weak and exhausted to fight back as he was—
Nope. Nope, nope.
“This,” she started, “is about your kidnapping.”
She searched his face yet again and found only the regular, Bart-style concern: lowered eyebrows, clenched jaw, bouncing leg.
“Did you catch the guy? Or, I don’t know… I already told you everything I remember. Am I in trouble?”
“You’re not in trouble or— or anything, Bart. We just…”
What they were alluding to hung over the two of them, worming into their lungs and muscles until they were stiff and uncomfortable.
“We don’t think you’ve told us everything about what he did to you,” stated Dick, establishing firm eye contact with Bart, who only blinked at them.
“I… I think I did? I thought I did. What… I told you, he grabbed me during the warehouse sting, put an inhibitor collar on me, broke my earpiece, and he blindfolded me and brought me to the room that Blue found me in.”
He sounded so… genuine, but he couldn’t be. He was just too good at lying.
“What about during the time you were held, anything… unusual?”
She watched as he frantically shuffled through the files of his brain, pretending to look for something different because he must know what they’re alluding to.
“Nothing different to any other time I’ve been kidnapped.”
She blinked.
Dick blinked.
“You were kidnapped by the Reach and the Light after Mount Justice. Had you been kidnapped before?”
Bart gave him a look, a confused one with a little smile.
“Duh, plenty of times, back in the future.”
Maybe he really didn’t know what they were talking about. Did he not remember? Did it happen while he was already unconscious?
“How many times?”
He thought about it for a moment, placing a finger on his cheek.
“Fifteen… Twenty times? Not too long usually, like this time, but one time I was kidnapped and held for almost three months! That time sucked.”
Artemis felt her eyes try to widen on their own volition.
“When you are kidnapped, what happens to you?”
“What, have you guys never been kidnapped? I’d think in this line of work…”
“No! No, we— we have, we…” Dick stammered, “We just need to…”
“Explain it in detail, please, Bart. What it means to be kidnapped.”
He replied with an anxious grin, lopsided and strained.
“Oooookay, if you want, um…”
She held her breath.
“To be kidnapped is to be… taken and held against your will, and— for me— they’ll usually put an inhibitor collar on me and restrain me and, you know, beat me up or fuck me or whatever and pretend it’s to get information out of me, but we all know that’s not wholly why.”
He looked at them with a little smile that said ‘you get it,’ but she watched as he uncovered that they really didn’t get it. His smile dropped, and he pursed his lips.
Holy shit, he really didn’t…
“Then, um, I’ll find a way to escape! Usually, or get rescued by someone, or… Why are you guys looking at me like that? Did I forget something I— Oh! They don’t usually feed me, that’s pretty—”
“No, Bart, um, did you…” Her throat caught.
‘—Beat me up or fuck me or whatever—’
“Bart, you said they, ‘fuck you’?” Dick asked gently, but she could hear the uneasiness of his voice.
‘—Beat me up or fuck me or whatever—’
Bart was getting more and more uncomfortable and flighty; she could see it now, glancing from each of them to the door.
“Yeah, they’ll fuck me, um, is that…” He shifted, his face dropping lower, “Do they not…”
“No, they don’t… that’s not— not normal here, honey,” she said because what was she supposed to say? “It happens, obviously, but not even the worst of the villains we face do that to us. They’ll torture us, or try to kill us, but they still won’t…”
“In this time at least,” said Dick, “To be… sexually assaulted, like you were, is considered one of the absolute worst things that can happen to you, that’s why we’re so…” gave him the same look Bart had given them, but it was his turn not to relate.
“I— so you’ve—”
They shook their heads in unison.
“Oh.”
The electrical hum of the lights was the only thing that spoke.
“How old were you when it first happened?” She asked against her better judgement, but she needed to know.
He was only 13 now, only 13 and—
“10? Or 11. In my time, it’s just… life? It’s— I’m sorry about— I didn’t—”
Oh, god.
Dick scooted closer to him in an instant and placed a steady hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Bart, it’s not your fault, not at all.”
She watched the cogs turn in his head. She could see everything now. He was never a super good liar; he just… wasn’t lying before. She could see his green eyes widen, staring blankly at his thumbs with his mouth hanging open, so she could see the little gap in his teeth that made him look even younger than he was.
10 or 11.
“I… remember when I was back in my time, I was a part of a group with some older people from this time and their kids, like my parents, and then me and… the oldest generation were always the most upset when we… Is that why? Because it doesn’t happen here, not even when you’re kidnapped?”
Dick nodded.
“That’s… probably why, yeah.”
He nodded slowly. He inhaled deeply and exhaled through tight lips.
“We are going to have you meet with Canary, privately, to talk about this. She won’t tell us what you tell her, but you need to see her,” he said.
Bart nodded slightly.
“And, we are going to have to at least… explain a little bit of the situation to your family, okay?”
Bart thought for a split second before he stiffened.
“They’ll… It’s— they’ll worry though, right? A lot? I don’t want them to…”
“I know, Bart, but it’s not something to be ashamed of. As your family and your guardians, they need to have an idea of what you went through, so that they can look out for you and understand you and… everything.”
“Do you have to tell all of them? Grandma Iris and Grandpa Barry are busy with Aunt Dawn and Dad, they don’t have to know, they’ve got so much to worry about already, they…”
“We don’t have to tell them, yet, if you don’t want. But, at least the Garricks need to know, since you’re living with them.”
He turned his big, green eyes up at Dick and nodded.
“Okay, okay. I’m— I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I didn’t know, I’m…”
Dick shook his head slowly.
“It’s alright, KF. You didn’t know, but now you do. If something like this ever happens again, we, or someone, needs to know about it, okay?”
Bart turned his head to face behind him, his reflection tense on the glass as he looked out into the emptiness of space.
“I… I know it’s bad, and all, but I don’t want you guys to— to worry about me, okay? It didn’t bother me before, and I’m okay! I know it’s really bad in this timeline, but to me, I already said it, but it’s life.”
Artemis looked at the floor, her own heartbeat loud in her ears.
Of course, she wished Wally were here, but she knew he would’ve died all over again if he knew.
Dick smiled painfully as he turned his head back, auburn hair flopping over his eye.
“Okay,” he said, finally.
Bart nodded, pursing his lips as he carefully collected his phone from the couch cushion and stood.
“I’m… going to go to bed.”
“Okay,” said Dick.
He shuffled out from behind the coffee table and headed towards the dormitories, looking back at the two on the sofa one last time.
“I mean it,” said Bart.
“Okay! Alright, just… Meeting with Canary tomorrow.”
“Yep, I promise.”
“Get some sleep, KF.”
“I’ll… Try! I’ll try. Goodnight!”
And then he was gone.
They exchanged a look with a sigh.
He really hadn’t known.