Original Author's Note

I really wanted to fill the "paralytic drugs" prompt, but couldn't fit it into the story at this point. so if you think this is bad, just know there's an alternate version of this story that's both longer and darker.

Prompts

mind control | paralytic drugs | “No one’s coming.”

Chapter 16: no way out

Owlman leaves him there. 

He doesn’t stitch up Dick’s back. He doesn’t bandage it. He leaves Dick stretched out on his stomach, chained to the bed, his back sliced open and exposed to the air. 

Owlman leaves, and he doesn’t come back for a long time. 

Time passes in a haze. It drips and rolls and dries like the blood on his back. It phases in and out of his grasp. Dick tries to count the seconds, tries to stay present as minutes turn into hours. He keeps losing track. Nothing changes, except the lines of pain on his back slowly fading to a dull pulse. 

A rank, musty smell rises from the bed. Dick doesn’t think about that. He couldn’t have stopped it. He can’t move. His arms are chained above his head, at the edge of the mattress. His legs are free. Dick thought that was an oversight at first, a possible opening, but he knows better now. He can’t roll off the bed with his arms tied down. He can’t fold his legs up and move onto his knees with his back a mess of open cuts. 

Are they still open? He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t think it’s been long enough for them to heal over. 

The cell door opens. 

Dick turns his head. Owlman stands inside the door, looking Dick up and down. His face twists in a sneer. 

“That’s disgusting,” he says. 

Dick stares at him. “You tied me up.” 

Owlman doesn’t answer. He turns and leaves the cell. He leaves the door open behind him. 

That seems important. Dick thinks once he would have tried to take advantage—to get up, to get out of the chains, to slip through the open door and escape. He can see it in his mind’s eye, but he can’t do it. He can’t slip the chains—his hands are strangely disconnected, almost numb, and he doesn’t have a lockpick, he can’t reach anything, he can’t move—

Owlman comes back with a plastic bucket. Dick’s brain stutters over that—because he knows those buckets, the ones from the Watchtower’s supply closets—and then he sees Owlman setting the bucket next to the bed. Sees liquid sloshing inside it. Sees the knife in Owlman’s hand. 

“Wait—” He lurches against the chains. 

The corner of Owlman’s mouth tightens. It’s a smile—a genuine smile—and then he brings the knife down. 

Dick braces for fresh pain. It doesn’t come. He feels the knife moving, slicing close to his skin, but it never turns and bites. It cuts into his suit. The lower half of his suit, soaked with blood and sweat and urine. Owlman slices it open and peels it away. 

Dick clenches his teeth. The suit is ruined, he knows that, but it’s his. He doesn’t want Owlman to take it, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to be naked. 

Stop, he wants to say. Leave me alone. Get away from me. He knows what will happen if he says that. At best, nothing. At worst—more pain. 

He’s tired of being in pain. 

“What are you doing?” he says. It comes out quiet and toneless. That’s almost like defiance, he thinks. It’s better than the alternative. 

Owlman doesn’t answer. He peels back the last strips of kevlar weave and tosses them to the floor. Dick watches them go with something like dread, but it’s too far away to take hold of him. He’s already lost so much. This is just the next step. Wherever Owlman’s line is, wherever this stops, they haven’t reached it yet. 

He shouldn’t be so detached. Dick knows this, in the back of his head. Dissociating will not help him. He needs to be present, needs to think, so he can take the next opportunity he finds, but—

He’s tired. He’s so tired. He just wants this to be over. 

Owlman picks the bucket up and empties it over his body. 

Dick winces from the sudden impact. Cold water washes over his back, over his ass, trickling down his sides. It soaks the bed underneath him. He shivers—another burst of motion against the chains—and feels a sudden burst of awareness, sensation, terror. 

“What are you doing?” he says. It’s not toneless anymore. It’s biting, fight and flight wrapped together, his arms tense against the chains. “What do you want?”

Owlman looks down at him. He reaches out—he’s not wearing gloves, Dick notes, and he’s not wearing his cowl either—and he runs a hand along Dick’s spine. Over the small of Dick’s back. Over his ass. 

Dick tenses. 

“You know what I want,” Owlman says. 

Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me. Dick bites down on his tongue until he tastes blood. That won’t help him. He knows. Saying no never does anything to help. But he can’t just lay here and let it happen, he needs to do something, he needs—

“No one is coming for you, Dick.” 

Owlman crouches next to him. It puts them at eye level, and Dick hates that as much as he hates everything else, but it means Owlman isn’t touching him anymore. It means—he isn’t doing that, at least not yet. 

Not yet. Not yet. Please—

“They’re gone. They’re dead, all of them. No one is going to save you.” 

He never expected anyone to save him. He knows how these things go. They were under attack, everyone was dealing with their own personal apocalypse, and the fate of the world was at stake. It still is. Dick knew that if he was going to get out of here he would have to do it himself—and he tried, he tried everything he could think of, but maybe it’s been too long since he had to rescue himself because he couldn’t do it and he’s still here and Owlman is staring at him, telling him his family is dead. 

“So this will end in one of two ways,” Owlman says. “Either you submit, or you die.” 

Dick knows this. He’s known since the beginning. But he appreciates the honesty. 

“Either way,” Owlman says, standing up again, “you’ll break. That’s not in question. But how long it takes, how much it hurts—that’s up to you.” 

Dick closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to participate in his own torture—to let Owlman twist him around and make it his fault. He knows how this game works. He doesn’t want to play. 

“Go to hell,” he says. 

Owlman snorts. He runs his hand over Dick’s back again, all the way down his spine. He lingers over Dick’s ass, and Dick can’t stop himself from shuddering.

Please, please, please—

“Oh,” Owlman says, “we’re already there.”