June is LGBT Pride Month! Celebrate with one of these hand-picked books. Did you searching for health insurance facts you ought to know why obamacare must be repealed PDF And Epub? This is the best place to. Development and management foundations of database design, gun with occasional music by lethem jonathan 2004 paperback, the engineering of.

Copy and paste the following code to link back to this work ( CTRL A/ CMD A will select all), or use the Tweet or Tumblr links to share the work on your Twitter or Tumblr account. The man with guns for eyes (22053 words) by 8swordChapters: 1/1Fandom: Grayson (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)Rating: Teen And Up AudiencesWarnings: No Archive Warnings ApplyRelationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & Bruce WayneCharacters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce WayneAdditional Tags: batfamily, robins, Outward BoundSummary: “Don’t blame him, little D. He gave me a choice.”'He always makes it a choice,' Damian mutters. 'If you’re the one who makes the decision, it’s your fault if it’s the wrong one.”(Dick comes back from the dead.) • • • • • • • Work Header.

We fall because someone pushes us. We get up to push back. -- Dick Grayson They're in the cave when the sensors start to shrill.

Robin stiffens immediately to attention, looking up to scan the shadows between the cave's stalactites from behind the white lenses of his mask. Batman shuts something on the Batcomputer. 'Upstairs, Robin.' Robin wheels around at the order. If there's intruders--' ' Upstairs!' Batman snarls.

Robin flinches toward the stairs automatically, yanked like a puppet by the command in his father's tone; then just as quickly stops himself, forcing his legs to slow so that he can stomp up the stairs angrily, let his displeasure be known. Above the echoing raps of his steel-toed boots against the stone, he can hear Batman's low voice saying something; he makes out Alfred's name and 'call Leslie.'

He keys the control for the door that leads into the manor proper. He waits for it to hiss open, then steps backward, out of the light that will silhouette his outline, as it slides shut again. Slipping his boots from his feet, he sets them silently aside. Then he drops from the fifteen feet from the top of the stairs to the cave floor, landing soundlessly in a crouch in the shadows. His father is pressing more keys on the Batcomputer's console, opening a frequency. The last of a growl erupts from the speakers: '--on't let me in, I'll ram my way in, Batman!' Batman growls back, and at the same moment, Damian hears the door to the manor above him open, and Pennyworth's quick steps flying down the steps.

'I'm opening the door.' Damian presses back into the darkness as Alfred hurries down the foot of the stairs, already pulling nitrile gloves over his hands. 'Is it Master Damian--' he begins, and cuts off as a huge, dark shape swoops into the cave. It alights right in front of them, right in the faint blue light from the computer screen, and in its hold, maskless and splattered with blood, is Grayson.

All that anyone in the cave sees after that is a green and yellow blur exploding from the shadows under the stairs. Batman barks, 'Robin!' And Robin streaks past him, throwing himself onto Midnighter's back. There's a glint of light and Midnighter roars, bucking backward; red and white appears along his throat under the black of his suit. He bucks likes a wounded bull in a matador's ring, trying to throw Robin off.

Robin merely knots his arms around his neck, yanking backward. Midnighter makes a choked, furious sound. Then there's a snap and crackle of electricity, outlining Damian's skeleton, and Dick's, too. He tries to hold on, but slumps backward, to the ground, only to pant for a second before rolling back up onto all fours. A birdarang appears in his hand. Midnighter shouts. 'Somebody tranq the damn kid!'

Robin snarls. Then the lenses of his mask go wide and white. He crumples to the floor, revealing Dr.

Thompkins behind him, holding a syringe. Damian wakes up in his bedroom.

He's been neatly tucked in beneath his dark blue comforter. Pennyworth is sitting in a chair beside his bed. He clears his throat when their eyes meet. 'Some water, sir?'

Damian slaps the glass out of Pennyworth's hand. It flies into the wall, shattering. 'Where is he?' 'In the cave,' Pennyworth says. As you should be.' Damian flings the covers off.

'I'm going to him.' 'Master Bruce would prefer you did not.' 'I don't give a damn what he prefers!' Pennyworth says nothing.

He makes no move to stop Damian, either, and the boy sneers at him as he passes, as he goes to the doorway. There, he pauses, hand on the door jamb, and looks back at the butler. 'Does Drake know?' Pennyworth says nothing for a long moment.

Then, 'He does not.' Damian's sneer twists further. 'Summon him here,' he says, and disappears from the room.

In the cave, his father is sitting next to Grayson's body. There are two IVs set up, one on either side of the hospital bed in which Grayson lies, the large bores disappearing into his veins. One leads into his father's own elbow, the tendons of which rise and disappear as he opens and closes his fist around one of Titus' chew toys, open and shut, open and shut. Dark red blood fills the clear plastic tubing. He watches Damian approach with dark, quiet eyes. 'Damian--' 'Don't speak to me.' His father falls silent.

His eyes sliding back to Grayson, to the tubes in his veins and the blood pressure cuff around his arm and the thick, thick dressing around his thigh that speaks of a femoral artery wound. Damian does not stare at any of those things. He looks at the monitor where Grayson's heart is in sinus rhythm and his oxygen saturation is 97% and blood pressure and mean arterial pressure are still lower than they should be. He looks at the bags of IV solution labeled 0.9% Normal Saline and the vials of epinephrine on the metal tray beneath them. He looks at the shadows cast on the floor by the display cases in the corner, where Grayson's Nightwing costume is suspended beside Todd's Robin one.

'Damian,' his father says into the silence. 'When he wakes up--' 'You mean if.' 'When,' Father says. 'Don't blame him. This was my idea.' He doesn't have to clarify what it is.

There's no way Grayson could have been alive without his father knowing it. The late-night disappearances make sense now, the times Batman would send him away on his own while he spoke to someone. 'Of course it was your idea,' Damian says. So furious he could split open at the seams with it, could explode into something huge and mindless like the monsters in the ridiculous movies Grayson made them watch together, separated only by a bowl of popcorn on the couch. 'Todd is right, you are a megalomaniac. I wish you had stayed dead!'

Silence seeps back into the air between them. Broken only by the beeps of the monitors hooked to Grayson's body. Damian sneers, one more time for good measure, and retreats up into the stalagmites to watch, and to try to ignore the sudden twisting, sick hole in his abdomen.

Red Robin and Red Hood have just landed on a rooftop on Southwest 3rd when Red Robin holds up a hand. Hood skids to a stop beside him in the gravel. 'Aw, is it past Babybird's bedtime?' Red Robin rolls his eyes at Hood behind the mask, finger coming up to activate his comm. 'Sir, I'm afraid I must ask you to return to the cave. There's been adevelopment.'

Alfred, Red Robin mouths to Hood. 'A development?' 'Nothing I can share over this channel at this time.' Tim's curiosity is piqued. He looks over at Hood, whose face is invisible behind his helmet but who cocks his head to the side in the equivalent of a raised brow. 'All right,' Red Robin says.

'ETA thirty minutes, will that suffice?' 'To be honest, sir, I am not sure,' Alfred says dryly. 'However, I will attempt to keep our youngest master from killing our oldest one, no matter how much I may wish to join him.' There's an iron in Alfred's voice that Tim isn't used to hearing. It makes his pulse speed a little as he readies a grapple.

He deactivates the comm. 'That wasweird,' Hood says. 'Yeah,' Red Robin says shortly. 'You coming?' 'What, to the cave?' 'No, to the prom,' Red Robin says, and Hood cuffs him upside the head. 'No,' he says, unreadable.

'I'll keep an eye on things out here.' 'All right,' Tim says instead of asking him to come. He almost can't believe that he wants to. That they've gotten so lonely, so desperate, with Dick gone, that he's latched on to Jason as a big brother. Wants him to be a buffer between whatever's going on between Bruce and the others now, the way Dick used to be for all of them. Bruce has gotten more distant since Dick's death, but he hasn't turned violent and unpredictable the way he did after Jason's. If anything, he's just gotten cagier, goes longer without speaking to any of them, disappearing for long periods at a time and staring into space for long periods when he is around, brooding.

It makes him seem old, the way Batman never seemed before. Tim and Damian spent long, long hours in silence in the cave, tiptoeing around Bruce's silences, avoiding each other's eyes and those of their own reflections in the glass cases where Jason's costume stands, where Dick's does. Tim came back to Gotham from San Francisco to help them all through the hard time, the adjustment, even though they all know it's not an adjustment, because Dick being gone isn't something isn't something they can adjust to. Like the sun being gone: everything dark and cold and nothing left to nurture anything that was left behind; it's just a slow wait for the inevitable, the death that is crawling toward them.

Sometimes Tim feels so trapped by it he thinks he's been poisoned; a tightness in his chest that feels like dying, like he can't breathe. What is there to live for? 'Getting maudlin, Babybird,' Hood says quietly. Red Robin nods. He draws in a long, low breath. Waits for the terrified flitter-flutter of his heart to stumble into something slower, pulled taut by the discipline of his breaths. 'I'll keep you posted.'

'Whatever,' Hood says, with a shrug like he doesn't care. Tim inhales again, slow and slightly less shaky, and jumps off the roof. The lights lining the speedway inside the cave flicker to life as he zooms down them on his bike, the tight passageway of the cave finally opening up into the larger, fluorescent-lit expanse of the parking area where they leave the bikes and Batmobile.

Alfred is waiting there, pale and still dressed in his pajamas. That's the first sign something is definitely wrong. Tim skids to a stop and pulls off his helmet as he swings off of his bike. 'What is it?' In the fluorescent light, Alfred looks wan, and very tired. 'Master Jason didn't come with you.'

It's not quite a question. 'Should he have?' Alfred says nothing, just looks more tired. He turns, and Tim follows him down the lit path into the main space of the cave, where the Batcomputer looms up in one corner, and then into the smaller, better-lit area that serves as the medical area. Tim's helmet clatters from his hands.

From his corner, Damian shoots him a disgusted look. Tim doesn't register it, his eyes glued to Dick's face. There's a tanness to it beneath the oxygen mask and the clammy pallor of cardiogenic shock. It speaks of having been alive, and out in the sun, for some time. There is no muscle atrophy in his arms, visible above the sheet drawn up over his chest, or his legs, outlined beneath the same sheet, and no streak of white in his hair to suggest the use of a Lazarus pit.

His eyes slide to Damian, anyways, looking for any sign of complicity, of satisfaction--that Damian had somehow gotten Dick to a Lazarus pit the way he'd shouted at Bruce that they should have afterward, after the body was no longer in reach. But Damian's body language, his knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them, reads only of misery and fury. Tim's gaze slips to Bruce. There, in the carved lines at the corners of his eyes and mouths, and the slow, steady clench and unclench of his fists as blood drains from his vein. Guilt and relief, but no shock. He's pale around his lips.

He's beginning to break out in a sweat, too, his forehead gleaming in the white fluorescent light. Tim has a vicious thought of letting Bruce pass out before moving forward to detach the bag and tourniquet.

But Alfred steps forward and withdraws the needle carefully from Bruce's vein. 'That's enough, Master Bruce,' he says quietly, and sets down beside Bruce's unused hand a large bottle of Gatorade.

Then he wraps Kerlix around the gauze pressed over the small red hole in Bruce's elbow. Tim watches as it is wrapped, around and around. 'Did you know?' No one answers the question. It hangs in the silence of the cave, over the quiet beeps of the machine.

Tim's heart pounding. ' Did you know?' Dick's heart monitor spikes with a shrill alarm. Dick doesn't move, though. Bruce does, stirring like an ancient kraken finally roused from the depths. Tim stares at him in a cold, sick wash of disbelief. His lips are numb.

Bruce stands slowly. Like an old man, and he sways slightly for a second, hand coming out to grip Dick's bed to brace himself. Alfred moves forward, cupping Bruce's elbow, and Bruce stiffens, then allows himself to be helped out of the room. Tim stares at the heart monitor as the sound of Bruce's shuffling footsteps fade out of earshot. Then a chuckle comes from his left. His eyes snap there. A man moves forward out of the shadows.

He's dressed all in black leather, including a mask over his stubbled face, and Damian eyes him with dislike but makes no move to attack him. 'Never seen someone boss the Bat around like that.' 'Who are you,' Tim says coldly. 'The guy who saved your brother's life.' 'Midnighter,' Damian says from behind him. Tim gives a head jerk of acknowledgement. He's read the files on Stormwatch and its members.

'Thank you for that,' he says. 'As you may be able to tell, this is a family affair, so it would be best if you leave.' Midnighter gives a low laugh. 'Tell him to give me a call when he wakes up.' His eyes sweep back and forth between them behind his mask. 'I bet he'll be dying for a break from all the family angst.'

He strides out of the cave. In a moment, there's the sound of a motorcycle engine starting, and then the more distant sound of the cave doors grinding open and back shut. Tim sits down like a puppet with his strings cut. Into Bruce's chair, which is still warm from his bulk. It makes Tim stand back up again, running his hands through his hair. 'Do we know what he's been doing?'

It's not a question for anyone in particular, but Damian sneers. 'Father's had him acting as a double agent to infiltrate Spyral.' Tim has heard whispers of the organization but never more than that. He's almost too overwhelmed even to care, a tremble of adrenaline still coursing through him that he shouted at Bruce. He gestures at Dick: the oxygen mask, the IVs, the bandages. Thompson do all this?' 'Yes,' comes a voice from behind him.

Tim turns to see Alfred has returned, a robe pulled over his pajamas now. 'She's sleeping upstairs in case his condition' Worsens, Tim thinks. He feels behind him with one hand, finding Bruce's chair again and sitting down in it with his knees drawn to his chest, mirroring Damian. He watches Dick and, from the corner of his eye, Alfred. Guts knotted too tightly to ask.

Alfred seems to sense the question written in the tense curve of his spine. 'I did not know, Master Timothy.' There's raw grief in his voice, and Tim remembers coming down to the kitchen one morning after the funeral. Stopping in the doorway, because Alfred was at the island counter, a box of Dick's uneaten cereal in front of him, his head hidden in his hands. Creeping back upstairs, unwilling to intrude of Alfred's grief.

'Would you have told us,' Damian says bitterly, 'if you did?' Alfred says nothing.

Damian mutters, 'Tt,' and they fall into silence there in the cave, watching the slow rise and fall of Dick's chest. It's the smell that wakes him. The familiar cold sharp damp of the cave mixed with something that shouldn't be there. Cigarette smoke. He forces open his eyes, and there's Jason, sitting with his helmet in his lap, a cigarette between his lips.

Their eyes meet. Jason's mouth quirks up in the hint of a smile, around the cigarette with its glowing tip. 'Oh, the baby birds are gonna be pissed.'

He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, blows out a thin wisp of gray smoke that curls up into the shadows of the cave. 'I just sent them upstairs to get some z's and here you are waking up.'

Dick makes a sound like a question. He shifts, only to feel white-hot pain lance down his right leg. Jason stands up, grinding the cigarette under his heel and leaning over him. Dick realizes for the first time that he's in a bed, and there are machines next to him, the familiar tug of needles in both his elbows. Jason does something to one of the machines, a series of beeps, and almost immediately Dick begins to feel a fogginess creeping through him.

He blinks against it, trying to sit up. The last thing he remembers isa lot of sand? His heart skips. 'Careful there, Birdwatcher,' Jason says. Dick blinks up at him some more.

Jason using that name doesn't make sense; no one's supposed to know that name except Bruce, but But he's in the cave. 'How does it feel?' Jason's voice is dark and mocking. 'Coming back from the dead.' 'Jay' Dick feels a need to apologize that he can't quite find the origin of, like turning a box over in his hands and being unable to find the opening. But the morphine in the IV is tugging at him, pulling him down, and the last thing he sees before unconsciousness closes over him again are Jason's hands, clenched tightly inside his leather gloves.

The next time he wakes up, Jason is nowhere to be seen, vanished like a dream. Perhaps that's all he was, because Dick can focus enough, this time, to feel the guilt of having faked his death when Jason went through the real thing.

Thompkins is there, though, her hair as white as her coat, lips pursed tightly as she stares at the monitor above his head. He must make a sound, because she looks down, and her face absolutely crumbles in relief. He coughs around the dry, scratchy feeling in his throat, and she makes a fussing sound not unlike Alfred and reaches across him to hand him a cup full of ice chips.

He sucks on one gratefully, flashing her a smile. She gives him one back, resting her hand against his forehead, not so much to check his temperature as in a gesture of relief and affection. Then she pulls back, lips pursing again. 'Don't you smile at me like that, Richard Grayson. Do you know how angry I am at you right now?'

Dick swallows the rest of his ice chip, eyes flicking around the cave. He's in the medical bay, and the only person present besides himself appears to be Leslie. He begins delicately. Wondering how Bruce has decided to spin this; if the secret is still exactly that, or if the beans are out: He's alive. 'You know what for,' Leslie says severely. She takes out her stethoscope and listens to his heart, his lungs, lips pursed all the way.

When she's done, she pulls the earpieces out and straightens up, eyeing him. 'Bruce, I would have expected this kind of thing from. You' Her nostrils flare, making her look angrier, and then all the anger seems to drain away, and she just shakes her head, looking tired. 'You I expected better from.' Dick opens his mouth to defend himself.

Then the medbay door opens up, letting in a familiar voice. '--last time, Drake--' The voice cuts off. Damian and Tim stand in the doorway, frozen. 'Um,' Dick says. Guilt swirling in his stomach. Nine days later: 'Hey, so' Dick leans against the doorway of Damian's bedroom.

The boy, seated at his desk with a sketchbook, ignores him. Dick stands there a minute longer, rubbing his socked foot up and down the inside of his shin. He chews on the inside of his cheek.

After a minute, Damian reaches into his desk drawer without looking at Dick and pulls an expensive set of Bose earphones over his head. Then he pushes away from the doorjamb and heads back down the hallway, down the staircase. Tim isn't around; hasn't been around in days, although Dick doesn't doubt he's keeping tabs on them, through hidden bugs and cameras, because Tim is like Bruce that way. He doesn't blame him, or Damian, for being mad at him, but still, it's not the homecoming he envisioned. He finds himself missing Helena, and Spyral. Has to stop himself.

Knows he shouldn't be missing them. But there was something easier about not having to worry about other people's feelings, for once; to know that they wouldn't give enough of their hearts to him for him to worry about stepping carefully to avoid treading on them. There's a price that comes with being loved so easily and so well. Bruce's study is empty, too. Dick is hardly surprised.

He's barely seen the man, outside of the time he woke in the cave, still half-asleep with pain-killers, and Bruce was a black-clad mountain sitting in the chair beside him. He rumbled, 'I'm sorry.' 'Me too,' Dick said. Tongue and eyelids heavy. 'Didn'tmanage tocatch them.' Bruce said nothing. Dick sighed, more strength slipping out of him, and he's still not sure if he had imagined it, the warm weight of a hand on his shoulder.

He finds Red Hood in the Narrows. He's on his stomach on the lip of a roof, rifle scope held to one of the eyepieces of his mask.

Nightwing sits soundlessly beside him, folding his legs under him. Hood doesn't lower the rifle. 'You know, coming back from the dead doesn't suddenly make us besties.' Nightwing says nothing. 'What, no smart-ass comment?' 'What's there to say?' Nightwing says.

'I messed up.' ' Sorry would probably be a start for the brat,' Hood says. 'And the replacement.'

'I've said it. Over and over, and I'll keep saying it, but they're still ignoring me.' Hood shifts on his makeshift tarp. 'You seem to think I give a damn.' 'Even Babs won't talk to me,' Nightwing continues morosely.

'This may shock you,' Hood says, 'but it incredibly sucks when you think someone important to you is dead.' 'Like I don’t know that?” Nightwing snaps, incredibly bitter. Hood stiffens. His entire body language hisses, don't, and Nightwing sighs.

'Jay--' he begins. But then there's a flash of movement in the building across from them. Hood's shoulder tenses, his finger drawing back on the trigger-- Nightwing seizes his wrist, yanking as the glass of the window across the street shatters.

The rifle falls; Hood twists, making a grab for it even as he hisses curses at Nightwing and yanks his leg up to shove him away with the metal edge of his boot. Nightwing gasps, the air knocked out of him, but keeps his hold on Hood's wrist, twisting it behind his back. 'Jason, don't--' 'The hell?!' Jason spits, flinging him off. Nightwing hits the gravel-covered rooftop, hard. 'That was my fucking target, you fucking asshole--' Nightwing rolls painfully back up into a crouched position, hand splayed across his ribs.

'I'm not gonna let you shoot people while I'm sitting here, Jason!' 'You don't get to let me do anything,' Jason snarls. 'You don't have any fucking say in what I do, and if you ever did, you sure as hell lost it when you decided to play dead. He shoulders his rifle and vaults over the side of the building. Nightwing stumbles over to the lip of the roof, gripping his ribs. But Jason is already gone, melted into the shadows of the street. It's three a.m.

When Alfred finds him in the kitchen, seated in a stool at the island counter with his head in his hand. Alfred doesn't say anything. He just opens the refrigerator and removes a pitcher of milk. Pours some into a kettle and turns on the stove. 'I really messed up, Alfred.'

Dick's voice is muffled. Alfred lets it hang in the air for a moment, and then he says, 'Perhaps. But you are attempting to fix it.'

Dick gives a laugh, a little wildly. 'And failing.' He lets out a breath of laughter again, but this time it sounds more tired than wild. 'Maybe I should head to Bludhaven.' Alfred's voice is firm. The kettle whistles, and Dick listens to the sound of his movements as he keeps his eyes shut against his hand. A cup is set in front of him, heat emanating from the ceramic.

He drags his hand from his eyes. It's a mug of warm milk, streaked with honey. He smiles despite himself. Looks up at Alfred. 'Have I said thanks for forgiving me?' Alfred smiles back at him, putting his hand on Dick's shoulder and squeezing.

Then he draws his robe around him and says, 'Bed when you're finished, Master Richard,' in a voice that brooks no argument. Dick smiles again and ducks his head in acknowledgement.

Alfred goes down to the cave. Bruce is sitting in front of the computer, his cowl pushed back from his head. He doesn't acknowledge Alfred's presence. Alfred stands there, just behind his chair, until nearly ten minutes have passed. 'What is it, Alfred,' he says finally. Not looking away from the files open on the screen.

'I believe you know what it is, sir.' An exhalation. 'They'll get over it eventually.' 'Oh, doubtless they will,' Alfred says. 'Regardless, Master Dick has made efforts to apologize to his loved ones for his deception. Where are your endeavors toward the same?'

He lets his question hang in the silence. Then he turns and heads upstairs. The next morning, Tim ignores the steaming bowl of oatmeal set at his place at the breakfast table to tear open a protein bar from the messenger bar slung over his shoulder.

Bruce is already at the table, wearing a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows that seems unwisely light for the still chilly spring temperatures outside. He says nothing, and Tim doesn't, either, as he slides into his chair and pulls the business section of the Gazette toward him. Something slips out of it. A folded piece of white paper, and Tim picks it up at the edges with his fingertips as Damian's footsteps stomp down the stairs and enter the dining room. He stops in the doorway and eyes them both with narrowed eyes, then rounds the edge of the table to his place, where a neatly folded slip of paper also waits.

He picks it up distastefully. 'What's this?' 'A list,' Tim says, reading it. 'I can see that, Drake,' Damian says testily. 'What's it for?' 'We're going on a trip,' Bruce says. 'Will you be informing anyone else of this trip?'

'Or are you just going to send us off and let everyone believe we're dead?' Silence for a moment. Tim says nothing, but his eyes burn like coals in silent agreement of Damian's words. Dick comes into the dining room at that moment. 'What's the big emerg--' He stops when he sees the tableau around the table.

He doesn't ask, 'Is everything okay?' Because clearly it isn't, but his eyebrows rise. 'Master Richard,' Alfred says. 'I took the liberty of gathering your things for you.' He wheels a carry-on suitcase from the corner and presents the handle to Dick, who takes it with a confused expression. 'Go pack,' Bruce tells the other two boys. 'I'm not going anywhere,' Damian declares, as Tim rolls his eyes and picks up his bag, standing from his chair with the rest of his protein bar crammed into his mouth.

He heads for the door to the garage. Damian throws them all disgusted glances, then gets up to follow him. Dick looks down at the table, digging his knuckles into his knees. There's a thud from Bruce's study, where the entrance from the manor to the Batcave is located. They all turn to look at the doorway. There's a sound of scuffling, and angry sounds, and then Cass appears in the doorway, a pair of zip-tied ankles clutched under one arm. She smiles brightly at all of them, though a bruise is starting to bloom at the corner of her mouth, and comes more fully into the room to reveal Stephanie behind her, blonde hair a mess.

Stephanie, in turn, is making an effort to hold the shoulders of the man whose tied ankles Cass is holding; that man is a very, very angry-looking Jason Todd. 'Special delivery!' Steph chirps. 'Courtesy of Batgirls Incorporated!'

Cass reaches down and pulls the duct tape from over Jason's mouth. 'What the FUCK,' Jason explodes. 'Did you put them up to this?' 'Language, Master Jason,' Alfred says, but is ignored as Jason continues to rage.

'You've got no fucking right, I oughta tear your fucking balls off--' 'We don’t have balls,' Cass says in her careful deliberate way, looking to Stephanie for confirmation. Steph nods vigorously. 'Not you,' Jason says, although he looks very disgruntled. 'These asshats--' Dick holds up his hands. 'I had nothing to do with this.'

'Nor I,' Tim says. 'I wish I had,' Damian says with dark ferocity. 'Enough,' Bruce says. 'We're going on a trip, and that's that.

Stephanie, Cassandra, thank you for your help. Jason, Alfred has packed a suitcase for you.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' Jason says, cursing as Stephanie drops him onto the floor with a thud. Cass lets him down a little more gently, patting his zip-tied ankles as if in apology. 'What is this, some sort of Outward Bound schtick to get all the baby birds talking again?' He twists, getting his bound wrists to his feet so that the blade that suddenly appears from the toe of his boot can cut through the ties, freeing his hands. 'No fucking thanks.' 'It's not a request,' Bruce rumbles. 'Do I look like a give a fuck?'

He cuts his ankles free, then unfolds to his feet, pointing at Dick and Tim. 'I don't got a problem with Dickiebird being alive. Alive, dead, I don't give a fuck. It's these two douchewads who do.' Something squeezes Dick's hand.

He looks down to see Cass beside him, her slender calloused fingers wrapped around his. She looks up at him with a sad empathy in her dark eyes. He squeezes her hand back.

'Let's put it this way,' Steph says. 'Oracle said, no trip participation, no tech assistance for the next, oh, ten years.' That gives them all pause, except Damian, who scoffs.

'I don't need her assistance.' Tim is looking at Jason, who returns the look reluctantly but holds Tim's gaze before finally making a frustrated sound and looking away.

Dick watches them and nearly starts when Tim's eyes flick to his. 'Fine,' Jason says. 'But I ain't happy about it.' Cass squeezes Dick's hand again.

Dick tries to get Bruce's attention on the way to the plane, but the silence in the car is painful. Despite the spacious dimensions of the Bentley, it becomes cramped with the five of them as passengers, and Jason immediately calls shotgun by sliding into the front seat next to Alfred with his duffel bag in his lap and a murderous expression that warns anyone to try to take it from him. Damian harrumphs and refuses to sit next to anyone but Tim, which leaves Tim looking bemused, but he allows himself to be shouldered over from the window so that Damian can sit next to it, glaring angrily out at the passing scenery with his hoodie drawn up over his head. There's a Wayne Enterprises private jet waiting in the equally private air strip on the outskirts of town, not far from the manor. The pilot, a man with brown hair and a neatly pressed uniform, nods at them as they head up into the plane. The copilot takes the luggage from everyone except Jason, who pulls his duffel, slung cross-wise over his chest, more closely to his side and shakes his head. Dick can make out the tell-tale shape of a handgun bulging against the side of the bag, and Damian must notice, too, for he demands loudly, 'Why is Todd permitted to bring weapons and I'm not?'

Everyone ignores him except Alfred, who raises an eyebrow. 'I highly doubt you are without weapons, Master Damian.' Damian harrumphs. They've never all been on the plane together. Tim has been on it with Dick, and Dick with Damian and Tim, and Damian with Bruce, or Tim with Bruce, or Jason with Bruce, years and years ago, but never all of them together. There's no uncertain pause, though; Damian beelines straight for the single seat set against the miniature bar, plopping down with his knees drawn up to his chest, pushing ear buds into his ears beneath his hood and immediately ignoring the rest of them.

Bruce goes to one of the large reclining seats set beside a window, sitting down and looking out of it at the landing strip outside. Tim says something quietly to Jason, who tears his eyes away from the painfully familiar and just as painfully unfamiliar dimensions of the private plane with a 'tch' and slides into the seat across from Tim, who pulls out a miniature chess board and begins to set it up on the table between them. Dick slides into the seat across from Bruce. The plane is spacious enough that a good two feet are present between their knees, and they each have their own window to look out of. Bruce's gaze stays fixed on the view outside his own except for a glance at Dick. There's nothing but its usual assessment in it, sweeping across Dick to make sure his seat belt is fastened, as if he's still a child being granted the privilege of riding shotgun in the Batmobile, and then it returns to the window.

As if Birdwatcher, and Mr. Malone, never happened. Dick looks out the window, hand coming up to his chin, knuckles digging into his cheek. He watches as the lines painted on the tarmac begin to speed, then streak, by outside as the plane begins to taxi down the runway. Several hours into the flight, no one's spoken, except Jason's occasional angry outbursts when Tim comes close to checkmating him.

It happens more rarely than Dick would have expected; the times he glances over, Tim's forehead is actually creased in concentration, and Jason looks smug, an uncharacteristically youthful smirk on his face as he watches Tim study the board. When he senses Dick's gaze on him, though, and their eyes meet, the smirk vanishes to become his usual scowl. He looks back at the board. The cockpit door opens. One of the uniformed pilots steps out, the brown-haired man from before. He nods at Dick and Bruce, who are the only two to make eye contact with him. Dick nods back with a brief smile, and the pilot heads for the small bathroom located at the back of the cabin.

He's just reached under his seat to reach for the tablet in his bag when alarms shrill to life. In the same instant, the cabin depressurizes with a hiss and whoosh of air that tears past Dick's ears. Jason throws his legs out to pin Damian into his seat and Tim into his as the plane begins to judder.

Oxygen masks bounce down out of the overhead compartments. Dick heads fore, Bruce aft, each bracing themselves with hands against the cabin seats as Damian and Tim fumble the oxygen masks over their faces. The door to the cockpit flops open when Dick reaches it; he grabs it just in time, as the plane hits a particularly rough patch of air and shudders violently beneath his feet, pitching him left. He shoves himself through the doorway. The co-pilot is slumped over the console, mouth slack and eyes staring. Dick presses his fingers beneath his jaw looking for a pulse and finds nothing.

Bruce appears at his shoulder, hand braced against the bulkhead. 'The pilot went through the emergency hatch.' Dick's already sliding into the empty pilot’s seat, studying the console. He recognizes the commands, but-- 'The controls aren't responding. Get the others out.' 'Let me try,' comes a demanding voice behind both of them. Damian goes ramrod straight, and so does Dick: two Robins conditioned to obey the Batman voice.

Damian just as immediately scowls, but he pushes back into the cabin, just in time for Jason to strap a parachute harness from the emergency compartment under the chess table onto him. Tim's already buckled into one, his face pale but composed. 'What did you find?' Bruce shakes his head and reaches for the row of parachute packs still in the compartment.

One he tosses to Dick, and the other he pulls on himself. Jason yells over the racket of rushing air. 'We're jumping?' 'The pilot wouldn't have jumped at these coordinates unless there was something close,' Dick shouts back. 'The sooner we jump after him, the closer we are to whatever he was aiming for.'

'Yeah, except he could've had someone waiting to scoop him up,' Jason shouts back, but he's following Tim toward the back of the cabin, where the hatch is shaking violently, only partially shut. 'Too bad you didn't pack your wings, Swan Princess!' Tim shoots him an Eat Dirt and Die look, bracing himself against the bulkhead. 'Dick will have the dinghy.'

Bruce's rumble is only just audible over the roar of escaping air and rattle of the plane beginning to come apart. Tim nods and shoves open the hatch. He grabs Damian's hand and, before the boy can protest, he jumps. Damian's angry shout curls back up to them through the air. They all look at one another.

Jason is the next to move. 'Worst family vacation ever,' he shouts, then steps out of the open hatch.

Dick looks at Bruce. A suspicion is growing inside him, a pressure that pushes on his lungs. Before Bruce can do anything, Dick shoves the dinghy at him and throws himself out of the plane. Without goggles to protect his eyes, the cold air rushes into them, stinging. He narrows them as much as he can while still being able to keep sight of the blurry dark shapes that are his brothers beneath him. Beneath them, there's a few wisps of cloud and, mostly, the stretching expanse of blue, blue Pacific ocean. He tucks his arms in at his sides, twisting behind him to make sure Bruce is coming.

He can imagine the sour look that's probably on Bruce's face, but there he is, a shape detaching himself from the larger bulk of the jet. Dick lifts his hand in a wave, then turns back around and flattens his arms against his sides, pressing his heels together. Air slaps harder against his face as he picks up velocity, streaking toward the others. 'Spread out!'

He shouts, hoping for his voice to carry to them somehow even as the wind steals it from his mouth. If only they had their comms. He makes motions with his arms, throwing them wide and feeling the abrupt jerk in his motions, velocity noticeably slowed as he increases his resistance. It takes a few seconds, but then Jason seems to get the message: He tucks one arm in close to his chest and abruptly veers off to the right, a wide distance opening up between him and the closer shapes of Damian and Tim. A few seconds later, Tim or Damian must notice what's happening; Damian gives Tim a kick to give himself some extra momentum, soaring to the left. He spreads his legs wide like a mini human ninja star hurtling through the air, an image that makes Dick grin to himself despite the situation. He glances up one more time to make sure Bruce is still with them, then spreads out his own arms and legs to slow his momentum so that he can begin to drift even further left than Jason, giving his brothers room for their parachutes to deploy without tangling in one another.

Bruce, he trusts, will note all of their trajectories and adjust accordingly. One by one, the younger Robins open their chutes. The bright yellow parachutes bloom in loud, flapping explosions of noise, and Dick breathes a sigh of relief when they're all far enough apart that none of their lines tangle. The trickiest part is yet to come, though, and with the huge parachutes blocking them from his view, he can’t help them with it. He has to trust his brothers are smart enough--and he knows they are--to ditch their chutes before the hit the water so that the heavy harnesses don't drag them down.

The water is rapidly rushing up to meet him, he notices belatedly. He pulls his trigger, opening his parachute, and tries to spread his body wider to slow his momentum. The abrupt opening of the chute yanks him back with a sudden, violent movement, making him wince. He's going to have some wicked whiplash if they get out of this. He hits the water with a splash, eyes clenched shut. Water rushes up his nose into his sinuses, stinging. He struggles out of his harness, quashing the urge to take a breath.

A few seconds later, the space behind his eyelids turns from dark red to plain dark, the shift telling him that his parachute has fallen and settled onto the water above him. He kicks out blindly, trying to swim around it to find the surface. His fingertips scrape against the canvas material. He reaches further, trying to find where it ends. At the same time, something catches around his ankle and tightens, pulled taut by the weight of the parachute sinking in the water. His lungs are burning by now. He fiercely ignores the reflex to inhale, pressing his lips together tightly and his eyelids together harder.

A hand closes around his ankle. The grip is tight and not careful at all; a second later he feels the glancing sting of a knife as the harness around his ankle is sliced. He breaks the surface, gasping. Shaking his head to get hair and water out of his eyes. Eyes stinging. 'Here,' comes the voice from beside him.

'Jesus, Dick.' 'J-je-s-sus y-yourself,' he chatters back, finally finding his brother with his eyes. Jason looks disgruntled, spitting salt water from his mouth as it streams down his face, and there's a small red cut over his eyebrow, but otherwise he looks none the worse for the wear. 'Thanks for the save.' 'Whatever,' Jason says. He's fumbling with something under the surface, probably his knife. He begins to swim toward something.

Dick twists in the water to follow him and sees the bright mustard yellow of the dinghy in the water, still hissing as it inflates itself. Bruce is pulling himself into it, and Damian and Tim are swimming toward it, hauling themselves up over the edge. Dick breaststrokes after Jason to do the same, slinging an arm over the inflated yellow fabric to pull himself up. A small hand grips his sleeve to help him. He sprawls over the side, coughing. 'Thanks, li’l D.'

Hmph, says Damian's expression, but his little brother doesn't actually say anything, just sits back in the opposite side of the dinghy. It's about five feet in diameter, and they're all dripping a veritable lake into it. Dick's feet are submerged up to the ankles in the single loafer that survived impact with the water and the wrestling match with parachute rigging. 'Well,' he says. 'So much for the in-flight movie.'

He's met by silence, except for Jason's muttered 'Shut up, Dick.' Bruce, for his part, merely pulls off his shirt, wrings it out over the side of the dinghy into the water, and pulls it back on. Dick wants to do the same, but his abdomen is kind of a mass of fire at the moment from the belly flop he did into the water. Bruce's shrewd eyes take him in. 'How are your stitches?' 'Torn,' Dick says with a shrug that he quickly regrets, wincing as the movement pulls on said stitches.

'Luckily, salt water's a disinfectant?' He expects at least a snort from Damian, but the boy doesn't; instead, his eyes flick up, and Dick catches concern in them in the second that their eyes meet before Damian looks away. Jason breaks the silence.

'Working on it.' He has a black rectangle that doesn’t look like his phone in his hand. 'Are you getting signal?' Dick says in disbelief. He goes to fumble in his pocket for his own phone, but it doesn't even light up when he presses the button. 'No,' Tim say shortly. 'This is something else.'

After a moment of silence, Dick raises an eyebrow. 'Care to elaborate?' Dick feels a sting. He hides it, though, looking at the others. Bruce looks impassive, Damian angry, which is his default in any situations where he finds himself inconvenienced or scared, and Jason is looking over Tim’s shoulder as they both ignore the rest of them.

He can’t help missing Helena. When she was mad at him, she didn’t hide it, but she didn’t put it in the way of whatever mission they were on. She told him she was mad and let him find a way to fix it. Of all the things he’s missed about his family, the dark brooding simmer of grudges that go unvoiced isn’t one of them.

“Sorry, you guys,” he says, because he’s used to having to be the one to take the first step, to extend the olive branch. “It’s not your fault,” Bruce says. “Yeah, it’s yours,” Jason says, looking at Bruce. “So how ‘bout you call Supes and get us offa this shitcan?” Bruce says nothing. “What?” Jason says. “There’s no way you guys haven’t arranged some kinda code word that makes him drop everything to come find you.” He leers.

Bruce’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t rise to the jibe. All he says, tersely, is, “He’s off-planet.” “Kara, then.” Dick looks at Damian. “Aren’t you two friends?” “Also off-planet,” Tim says as Damian’s face turns redder than the heat warrants. Apparently it was a Super thing.” Jason crosses his arms. “Convenient.” Dick’s forehead creases in real concern.

“Bats and Supers out of commission at the same time—are we sure someone didn’t manipulate this?” “No,” Bruce says. “This trip was Clark’s idea.” Even Tim looks up at that. They all stare at Bruce, who doesn’t waver under the scrutiny. Damian, his eyebrows knitting thunderously, seems about to say something until he remembers that he isn’t talking to Bruce, and he huffs and looks away. “Got it,” Tim says suddenly.

“Got what?” Tim points over Dick’s shoulder. “That way.” “What that way?” “Land,” Tim says impatiently. He gives the device in his hand a little wave. “I planted a tracker on the pilot before he jumped.” “Ignoring the question of how you’re able to track a signal without cell service,” Dick says, “what makes you think we’re not just heading in the direction of a corpse?” “In my experience, corpses aren’t capable of fifty mile-per-hour movement,” Tim says, deadpan.

A smile quirks Bruce’s lips. Jason gives Tim’s shoulder a shove that is probably meant with friendly intentions but makes Tim stumble forward in the dinghy and grimace over his shoulder at him. “All right.” Jason starts to shimmy out of his sodden jeans, kicking off his combat boots. “Let’s get moving.” Dick moves to follow Jason into the water, but Bruce pushes him back down with a hand on his shoulder, casting a swift and meaningful look at his abdomen. Dick sits back down, hand pressed automatically to the torn-out sutures there. Bruce strips down to his undershirt and boxer-briefs instead, scars crisscrossing his arms and legs. Jason gives a wolf’s whistle that Bruce ignores as he lowers himself silently into the water next to Jason.

They both grip the edge of the dinghy, maneuvering it into the direction Tim indicates with his hand and beginning to kick. Bruce’s kicks are steady and powerful, and the look of concentration on Jason’s face below his streak of white hair as he concentrates on making his just as strong and steady would be amusing if it wasn’t also sad.

He’s almost scowling at the dinghy where his hands stay clasped around the flimsy rigging that rings its circumference. “Ease up the grip there, Jay,” Dick says quietly.

“You’re bleeding.” Tim looks up at that, but Jason scowls at both of them and pulls his hand down, out of their sight. “Sure would be a good time for your swan wings, replacement,” he says sarcastically. Tim gives Jason a hard look that says I know you’re scared but you don’t have to take it out on me. “You already used that joke.” Jason makes a “che” sound and goes back to kicking.

Bruce continues as silently as ever. Nearly an hour passes. Dick, who has watched the strain increasing on Jason’s flushed face, says, “Okay, break time.” Jason begins to scoff, but Bruce, who has probably been keeping an eye on the same thing Dick has, lifts himself into the dinghy without protest.

Jason, after a minute, follows suit. “I will go next,” Damian announces, to none of them in particular. Tim hands the tracker to Jason. “Me, too.” “Great,” Jason says. “We’ll move three feet an hour with you shrimps.” Tim shoots him a what did I just tell you look. Like Bruce, he strips down to his boxer-briefs, which are some sort of sleek under-armor, before climbing into the water; Damian removes only his hoodie and shoes.

He looks achingly young in his jeans and bare feet, and Dick moves forward, again, to take his place in the water instead. But Damian says sharply, “Down, Grayson,” and, with Bruce’s hand on his shoulder, he sinks back down. He feels stupidly useless as his little brothers begin to propel the dinghy forward and Jason cups his hand to his lap, flexing and opening his fingers. Tim and Damian switch off with Jason and Bruce twice more before land comes into distance on the horizon. Jason gives a heartfelt “thank fuck,” and even Damian looks relieved. They’re all burnt nearly as brown as Damian from the day in the sun, though with significantly more of a red undertone, and Dick hasn’t been this thirsty since those days in the desert with Midnighter, that baby clutched close in his arms. He wonders where she is, how she’s doing.

“Dick.” Bruce’s voice breaks into the blurry thoughts, and he blinks, focusing on him. “Mmm?” Bruce doesn’t say anything, just scrutinizes him. Dick straightens automatically under the examination, forcing himself to pull out of the sun-daze. “I’m okay.” Bruce makes an unconvinced sound but doesn’t push any further. The island is small, perhaps three miles across from what can be estimated with the naked eye from their vantage point as they float toward it. The sun is finally close to the horizon by the time they drag themselves over the sand bar up onto the beach, the light more golden yellow than white-hot.

As they pad up onto the sand, the long shadows cast by the trees to which the shore gives way fall over them, shielding them for the first time in hours from the sun’s heat. Jason sighs in relief, closing his eyes for a minute to feel the coolness spread across his burnt face.

A few feet away, Dick gives a pornographic moan of happiness. “Shut up, Dick,” Jason says without opening his eyes. Then he does open them, to look over at Tim.

His hair has started to dry, crusted against his forehead with salt. “Any line on the bozo, Timmy?” Tim is frowning down at the transmitter. He gives it a shake, as if that’ll do anything, then sighs, the air blowing his hair off his forehead. “The signal’s gone.” Damian is scowling.

“Convenient.” “Everything about this is,” Bruce rumbles. “Are you sure the signal’s gone?” Jason reaches for Tim’s phone. “Maybe you just—” “I think I know how to work my own tech, Hood,” Tim retorts, voice acidic, and Jason drops his hand, ears burning. He feels stunned and embarrassed and angry all at once. Fuck him for thinking he was close enough to Tim to have any expectations anyway.

“Fine, have it your way, princess.” He heads into the forest. 'We can't just split up!' Jason sneers. 'Not like you guys have a plan to get off this thing anyway.' 'We need food and shelter,' Bruce says. He's squinting off into the foliage like he hasn't been listening to them at all.

'Damian, you're in charge of finding food. Jason, go with him.' 'I don't want to be with Todd,' Damian says, affronted.

Jason gives him a dirty look of his own. 'Tim and I will put together shelter,' Bruce says, ignoring them both. 'What's Queen Big Bird gonna do, huh?' Jason demands. 'Dick's still wounded.

Best if he rests for now.' That shuts them both up, Jason crossing his arms over his chest and glaring into the dense foliage.

Damian does the same, except his eyes flicker toward where Dick has gone to sit propped up against a tree trunk. In the shade from the foliage above them, he looks pale under his tan again, and the heel of his hand is pressed surreptitiously against his belly.

'Fine,' Jason mutters, stuffing his hands into his sodden jacket pockets. 'C'mon, brat,' and crashes into the forest. Damian glares another second before heading after him, his footfalls silent compared to Jason’s.

Once they’re out of Bruce’s earshot, Jason lightens his footsteps to be just as silent, and Damian casts a glance over at him. “I didn’t realize you were capable of making less noise than a stampede of bison, Todd.” Jason casts him his own narrow-eyed look. “We were trained by the same people, kid.” Damian's lips compress at the reminder. Jason takes no note of it, eyes scanning the dense underbrush for edible plants. They travel near-silently that way for a quarter of an hour or more, picking their way through the dense green undergrowth, before Damian stops short abruptly.

Jason glances back at him. Damian's eyes are fixed on something directly in front of his face--a loop of vine hanging down from the branches above them which Jason realizes after a moment isn't a vine at all, but a snake. 'Found a girlfriend?' Damian's expression is murderous as he ducks under the snake.

'I could kill you with its venom.' 'First death threat I've heard from you in a while,' Jason says. 'Thought you'd lost your edge, baby bird.' 'I could slit your throat in less time than it would take you to blink,' Damian declares. Jason isn't paying attention to him anymore, his attention caught by a spray of white flowers cradled in the parting roots of a tree a few feet from them.

He stoops to peer under their leaves, holding the flowers out of the way. Beneath are several small green fruits growing from the same stalks. Damian crouches closer to study them, though not before glancing above and around him to make sure there are no other snakes hanging around.

'What are those?' Jason plucks the fruits from their stems, handing them over his shoulder to Damian. Damian scowls at being treated like a packhorse but bundles them into his salt-stiffened denim pockets. 'Not to be confused with ass.” He smirks. “You can eat the nuts.'

Damian sniffs one gingerly, not falling for the dirty joke. 'How do we know you're not trying to poison us?' Jason creaks back to his feet, one his hand on his knee to push himself up, and heads to the next group of white flowers a few feet away. They gather fruits in silence for several minutes, the only sound that of their sodden boots crushing the moist soil and growth underfoot.

Then: “You’re favoring your hand.” Jason glances over. Damian’s eyes are narrowed. “Gotta save it for funner activities,” he says with a leer. “If you know what I mean.” “Funner isn’t a word.” “What do you know,” Jason says. “English isn’t even your first language.” “It’s my third,” Damian retorts. “And I still speak it more fluently than you.” “No wonder you don’t have any friends,” Jason counters, moving onto the next cluster of aas flowers while keeping his hand tucked into his jacket pocket. “I have friends,” Damian says wrathfully.

He stomps after him. “Name three.” Nose in the air. “I could challenge you to do the same.” “I’ve got friends,” Jason says. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m part of a non-Bat team.” “Ah, yes—the drug addict and the exiled alien.” “Lots of judgment there for someone who was excommunicated by his mom.” “I hate you.” “Feeling’s mutual,” Jason retorts.

He finds an orange pinecone-looking thing and shifts his arm to transfer the rest of his load into the crook of his bad elbow so he can pick it up. Grab these, too.” Damian glowers for a full thirty seconds before accepting the fruit. “What is it?” “ Faach.” “My mother didn’t teach you all of this,” Damian says, almost challenging. “How would you know?” Jason says flippantly. “Maybe she taught me more than she did you.” Damian’s mouth twists. Almost sadly, before he remembers to knit his eyebrows angrily, and Jason takes pity on the kid.

“There was another assassin broad who trained me. A lot uglier than your mom.” “Of course she was. There is no one more beautiful than my mother.” Jason snorts. “Misplaced loyalty, but okay.” Damian locates several more faach fruits and bundles them into the front pocket of his hoodie.

Eventually he breaks the silence with “Who was she?” Jason smiles at the jealousy in his voice. “Her name was Ducra. Super-ancient old lady. Your mom introduced us.” “Why wasn’t I taught by her?” “I dunno the answer to that, kid.” Damian is quiet. Jason looks over at him, taking in the petulant mouth, the vulnerable brow. The kid’s really only ten, for all the hard-assery he dishes out, and Jason tosses a faach fruit at him. Damian snaps back to attention just in time to catch it, and directs a scowl at Jason.

“Don’t give yourself such a hard time,” Jason says. “Maybe you didn’t need the extra teaching.” Damian doesn’t seem convinced.

“Or,” Jason says, “maybe you were more than just cannon fodder to her.” He stuffs one last aas bunch into his jeans pocket, then turns back in the direction they came. He can sense Damian’s eyes on him. “C’mon, let’s get back.” “you are competent, Todd.” Jason snorts. Doesn’t say anything else.

But he does give the kid’s hood a tug to pull it over his head as he passes Jason down the path. “You can’t give me the silent treatment forever.” Tim glances over at Bruce. His arched eyebrow says, oh yes I can. Bruce’s mouth compresses. He says nothing more, and nor does Tim. The only sound is Tim’s Converse, ill-suited to the terrain, stepping through the undergrowth.

He moves with far less noise than Jason did, at least, but he hasn’t been trained to move silently in an environment made of lush plants and soil instead of cement and litter the way Damian likely has. He does his best to aim for areas of soft humus instead of spots where fallen branches lie, keeping his ears and eye trained meanwhile for any sounds of running water or objects they could use to contain said water.

Jason’s ridiculous red helmet would actually be helpful at a time like this, something he has no intention of telling Jason when they get back. Bruce must be keeping an eye out for the same thing, because about ten minutes into their trek, he sets down the collection of long dry palm fronds he has collected and says, “Tim.” Tim pauses, looking over. He’s carrying two fallen branches that looked promising, and these he drops beside Bruce’s, following Bruce’s pointed gaze up into what appears to be a spindly kumquat tree nestled among the greener trees here in the thick of the foliage. There is an especially curved frond extending from it, drooping toward the ground, heavy with orange nut-sized fruits, but not close enough to be reached from the ground.

Bruce stoops. Tim steadies himself with hands on either of Bruce’s huge shoulders and steps into his clasped hands. A moment of slight vertigo as Bruce rises; Tim sways, automatically gripping Bruce’s shoulders harder, but Bruce doesn’t waver. He lifts and lifts, and Tim, after a quick inhalation, steps one foot at a time onto Bruce’s shoulders, staying in a crouch as Bruce transfers his hold to Tim’s ankles, big hands closing around his calves so that his thumbs digging gently into the grooves of his gastrocnemius muscles. Tim takes another breath and unfolds slowly out of his crouch.

Dick would have been done already, but Tim doesn’t have his grace, or assurance, and he reaches up to close his hands around the rough fibrous texture of the frond to pull carefully. Bruce takes one slow step backward to give Tim extra leverage; the frond groans, and Tim pulls, and it comes away from the trunk with a ripping sound, crashing to the ground.

Bruce crouches. Tim steps down onto the ground again, pulse thumping. The slopes of Bruce’s trapezius are very strong and steady under his hands. He resists the urge to huddle under the shelter of those big shoulders like the small Robin he once was, hiding under the safe tent of Batman’s cape. He doesn’t move his hands from Bruce’s shoulders.

“I’m angry.” Bruce’s quiet gaze. “Understandable.” I’m as angry at Dick as I am at you. That’s the worst part of it.

Tim doesn’t realize the feeling until it travels through his brain, not making it to his mouth. Dick isn’t supposed to be like you.

The words stay inside him. Bruce shoulders the new frond along with the others, and they continue on their way. The sunlight is starting to turn long and golden by the time they make it back to the shore. Jason and Damian are already there, arguing over what appears to be the beginning of a campfire as Dick blows gently onto the kindling, his blue eyes orange in its light. Bruce crowds him out of the way, crouching down and coaxing the sparks to catch himself with careful, abdominally-controlled breaths. He eyes Dick balefully while he does so, for having taken on an activity that puts strain on his abdominal muscles.

Dick says nothing, sitting back down on the sand in defeat. “Here,” Jason is telling Tim, “have some ass and fuck fruit,” and Tim is giving him a look of Supreme Disgust, and Damian, despite himself, looks amused, which in turn Jason is quite clearly feeding off of if his smug expression is anything to go. Bruce rolls his eyes as he blows.

Dick smiles wistfully, and as the kindling finally catches and crackles up into a substantial flame, Bruce sits back on his knees next to him, the warmth of their hips touching. When Dick looks over, though, Bruce’s eyes are on the horizon, distant. Their meal of fruits passes mostly in silence as the sun sinks lower and lower toward the horizon. The last streak of orange has cleared from the sky when Bruce rises. “Whoah, hey.” Dick cranes his head back to look up at him. “Where are you going?” “Maybe the man’s gotta take a piss, Grayson,” Jason says.

Bruce grunts and, instead of heading toward the latrine that Damian was placed in charge of digging, under great protest, just beyond the tree line, begins down the shore. “Hey,” Dick says, starting to his feet. “Bruce, you can’t go off on your—” “Stay here,” Bruce rumbles. “No way!” Dick scrambles after him. “Exploring can wait until tomorrow, Bruce, wait till it’s light out, for God’s sake—” Bruce ignores him, of course, his stride lengthening.

“Keep an eye on them,” he says, and tosses his Swiss Army knife back at Dick. “Bruce—” Dick begins in A Tone, but Bruce ignores him, setting off. “Uh-oh, Mama Bat,” Jason says from behind him as Bruce’s silhouette fades into the darkness. “Is it time for marriage counseling?” Dick turns from watching Bruce disappear to give him a you suck, Jay look.

When he turns back around, Bruce’s silhouette is completely gone. His hand tightens around the knife, his mouth tightening, too.

On edge from not being allowed to do anything useful all day and from being ignored by his brothers, this bullshit from Bruce really pisses him off. He paces several meters out into the darkness, toward the near-invisible line of the water, the sound of the hissing foam hitting his ears like some sort of echolocation. Breathing in the spray, he makes himself exhale slowly. Has a sudden memory of doing the same thing at St. Hadrian’s, trying to suffocate the sudden desperate rage, the desperation. The nothing is ever going to be the same again.

He turns back to the fire. His brothers are an outline of sullen shadows in the dancing orange glow from the flames, Jason’s broad outline poking the kindling with a stick as Damian and Tim’s smaller silhouettes sit with their knees drawn up to their chests and arms wrapped around them, glaring into the flames, on either side of him. He forces looser his grip on the army knife. He starts back toward the light of the fire, his bare feet slipping and sliding in the easy give of the sand.

Deliberately, he drops down next to Damian, between him and Tim. “Thanks for finding food.” Jason shrugs. The other two don’t say anything. “C’mon,” Dick says in a voice more jovial than he feels. “You guys can’t ignore me forever!” Tim and Damian exchange looks like that's what he thinks. 'Any idea where we are?'

Dick continues. “My geography isn’t what it used to be.” “Well,” Jason says when neither of the other two respond, “we ain’t in Kansas.” “That you for that incredible insight,” Tim says. Jason glowers over at him. “You wanna pry those panties outta your ass-crack, princess?” “I don’t think I do.” “Guys, stop.” “Shut up, Dick,” Tim and Jason say at the same time. Then they Venom-Eye each other some more. “What’s going on?” Dick says.

“I thought you guys were super-team while I was gone.” “We were,” Jason says. “Apparently now that big brother’s back, little Timmy’s got no use for the big bad Hood.” “That is NOT what’s going on,” Tim says. “God, Jason, could you not make things about your issues for once?” “Okay, stop,” Dick orders. “Somebody’s going to say something really hurtful and then we’ll all be sorry.” Jason and Tim keep glaring at each other but don’t say anything more.

“How about this—time for some sleep! What do you think, three-shift watch?” “Fine,” Tim says briefly.

“Who’s first?” 'Me,' Dick says. 'I got to rest already, you guys didn't.' 'You sure we can trust you to keep watch?'

Jay challenges. 'You’re not just going to take off?'

Dick doesn’t flinch, but it must be a near thing. They’re all quiet, as if in guilty silence, and then Jason says, “Whatever,” and flips over onto his side, back to the rest of them.

Damian and Tim follow suit. Jason doesn’t sleep, though. He lies there in the flickering firelight, his hand throbbing mindlessly in his pocket, listening to the rustle of trees and the constant shuuuussshhhh-shuuuuusshhhh of the water.

The moon inching higher, its gray light replacing the fading orange of the fire dwindling to embers. He hears Dick shift, and sigh. He rolls up onto his ass to sit up.

“My turn.” 'But it hasn't been--' 'Go to sleep,' he says roughly. Dick’s silhouette is still for a moment; then it shrugs. “Have it your way.” He crawls over to the patch of sand Jason left unoccupied a foot from Tim on one side and Damian on the other, and settles down with another sigh, this one of relief, and something inside Jason twists. It’s not many minutes later that Damian has a nightmare. He doesn’t thrash or scream; his breathing just becomes harsh, his chest rising rapidly up and down in the darkness, and then all of a sudden he wrenches up, gleaming with sweat, eyes big and wet in the moonlight reflecting off the sand and water. Dick stays very still, although Jason knows he’s still awake.

Damian moves abortively toward him, then stops, breathing still rapid. “Back to sleep, brat,” Jason says gruffly.

“’s not your turn for watch yet.” Another few beats of breathing, coming gradually under control. Then Damian says, “Silence, Todd,” and lies back down. Turned toward Jason, Dick closes his eyes. The gray horizon is streaked with orange by the time Bruce rounds back onto the area of shore where he can see the outline of the boys. There are three prone silhouettes in the sand around the small, almost-extinguished fire and a larger shape sitting up a little away from them, his big shoulders curved forward over his up drawn knees. Bruce is used to seeing him sit like that with the orange glow of a cigarette between his fingertips, but any he might have had must have been ruined by the saltwater. Instead Jason is merely staring into the guttering fire, the flames reflected in his eyes.

They rise to follow Bruce as he treks closer through the sand, the irises green-flecked in the low light. Bruce folds himself down a few feet away. “I’ll take watch.” “Don’t need you to.” Bruce says nothing, merely studies Jason from the corner of his eyes. His son’s jaw gleams with a sheen of sweat in the humid air.

The sharp, hunger-hollowed angle of it is smooth, nothing like Bruce’s stubble-covered face and neck, and he thinks, not for the first and not for the last time, about the ways the Pit has taken Jason from them, and the ways it will continue to take him away from them. How long after they are all dead and gone he will continue on, his face that of a boy and his soul that of a man much older. The suction of those thoughts is always there, and, as always, he pulls his mind from them, Odysseus plugging his ears with wax.

“Dick?” “Not dead.” Jason pulls a strip of bandage tighter around his hand with his teeth. Bruce recognizes it as part of the shirt he left behind to bundle up their gathered fruit and raises an eyebrow. “Sorry.” Jason bares his teeth, not looking sorry at all. “Needed a bandage.” Bruce’s eyes take in the dark drying blood evident on the material pulled tight over Jason’s palm. “What did you do?” “Your demon kid got hungry,” Jason quips. “Didn’t realize he had a taste for human flesh.” Whatever Bruce might have said in response to that, or what question he would have posed with his inescapable gaze, is cut off by Dick rolling over with a loud yawn. “Who’s eating human flesh?

Are we that desperate already?” “Did you find anything?” Jason asks Bruce. “Yes.” He sets down the remains of the transmitter. Jason’s sharp eyes take it in. “No dead body attached, I take it?” Bruce shakes his head. “So whoever Tim attached it to was enough in the know to pick up on it,” Jason says. “Huh.” He toes Tim in the ribs.

“Wake up, Replacement.” Tim rolls away from his boot, trying to pull a nonexistent blanket over himself. Damian, in the path of his roll, makes a displeased sound and kicks ineffectually at him. Tim groans and sits up, rubbing his eyes. “Wake up, sissies,” Jason says. “Daddy Bats brought breakfast.” “Shut up, Jason,” Tim mumbles automatically. His face is creased with sand, and so is Damian’s, as he sits up, too, blinking owlishly at them from beneath adorably bed-headed hair before his usual scowl presses into the lines of his face.

He doesn’t quite manage to hide the relief that flits across his face when he sees Bruce has returned, though. Tim is already focused on the remains of the transmitter, ignoring the fruit things Dick passes out them from their stash. “Where was it?” “About three miles inland,” Bruce says. “I thought I smelled ozone.” “Alien?” Tim says.

“Possible.” Dick is frowning. “A human engineering a Wayne family plane crash, I could get,” he says. That’snot good.” “I don’t suppose you could think of any of your old Spyral buddies who have off-planet contacts and want us out of the way?” Jason says sarcastically.

Dick doesn’t deny it, is the thing, and Jason makes a “tch” sound and shoves his aas fruit at Tim. “Then why only maroon us?” Damian demands.

“It makes no sense to go to so much trouble only to leave us alive. It’s cowardly.” “Or sadistic,” Jason says. “It’s fucking torturing me right now thinking about how about I’m gonna die here with you dicks.” “No one’s dying here,” Bruce says.

“Huh,” Jason says. “Why don’t I believe you? Oh wait.” “Jason—” “Fuck off.” There are spots of color burning in Jason’s face: more than just the sunburn from days in the sun.

“I’m out of here.” He stomps away. They all watch him go, Bruce stone-faced and Dick stung. He rolls to his feet to head after him, but Tim holds out his hand, motioning him back down. “I’ll go after him.” Dick sits back down, his expressionbereft. He silently watches Tim start to pick his way through the sand after Jason. Then, after another few heartbeats of silence and a glance over his shoulder at them, Damian gets up and starts after Tim. It leaves Dick and Bruce sitting on the sand behind them.

Dick swipes a hand through his salt-stiffened hair, digging his elbow into his knee. Bruce, beside him, is motionless, and Dick resents him with a heat that feels almost tangible. Striding, at first, and then jogging, running into the water until the shells dig into his feet with tiny knives and stitches dig the same way into his ribs, hard painful gasps of breath. He crouches in it, digging his toes into it, and lets the water break over him: his butt, his shoulders, his head. Cold groping water that drips into his eyes and stings them. He blinks against the salt, combs his fingers through his sopping hair and digs his palms into his brows. When he feels numb with cold, goosebumps covering every inch of him, he stands.

Bruce stands in the water a few feet away. His rumbled voice barely carriers over the surf.

“I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” He knows it’s the truth even though every selfish, childish feeling inside him rails otherwise. Why did you send me away. Why didn’t you try harder. Why didn’t you love me enough to keep me. “It wasn’t a unilateral decision, Bruce.” Bruce says nothing.

He pushes his toes deeper into the water and watches the sand rise and billow. “Is this how it felt?” he asks quietly. “When you came back.” Bruce gazes at him.

He murmurs, “Like you didn’t need me?” Dick nods. Bruce’s gaze slides to the water. “Yes,” he says finally. Clark is Skyping with his parents when the laptop chimes disappointedly with the sound of a disconnected call and a green pixelated avatar appears on the screen. “Clark.” “Oracle!” He pushes back from his desk.

“I wasn’t expecting you.” “A pleasure, I’m sure,” the computerized voice says dryly. “Exactly,” he replies just as wryly. “What prompts the unexpected privilege?” “Actually,” Oracle says. “I didn’t expect to be able to reach you. Apparently you were supposedly off-planet.” Clark doesn’t quite squirm. “Mmm,” Oracle says. “I’m looking for the whereabouts of our mutual friend.” “Oh,” Clark says.

“Him.” Oracle waits. “Last I heard, he was planning some father-son bonding.” “And where was that being planned for?” “You would have to ask our grumpy friend.” “I would,” Oracle replies, “if he was reachable.” Clark feigns surprise. “Do you,” she says, “know anything about it.” Clark deliberates on his response. “I may know,” he says slowly, “that they needed some timeforced to be together.” Oracle is silent. Her silence, like her avatar on the screen, is unreadable. “Without surveillance,” she says finally.

“I doubted any of them would appreciate spectators,” Clark says mildly. And was our mutual friend complicit in the planning of this scheme?” “mostly.” Another silence. “I think you better let me know where they are.” Clark raises a brow warily. “What are you going to do with the information?” Oracle waits.

Clark sighs and picks up his phone. He already smells like a dead body. The sodden stiff fabric of Bruce’s shirt around his hand is thick with the smell of putrescence. He can smell the Pit, his skin is lined with sweat and goosebumps, and he shudders convulsively in his hoodie, teeth rattling in his skull. At some point he comes back to himself.

Enough to register that he’s sitting crammed up against the rough trunk of a tree. He makes himself breathe, and dig the heel of his good hand into his face, and pick up on the fact that there is someone a few feet away, watching him. “Come out.” Tim emerges silently from the undergrowth. “Why,” Jason says, “am I not surprised it’s you?” “Because I’ve been stalking you since you were twelve,” Tim says. “I’m predictable.” That startles a laugh out of Jason.

“You’re not going to die.” Jason’s mouth falls shut from its laugh. “You’re not,” Tim says. Jason’s not used to having to reassure other people with false platitudes. He only ever had to do it for himself, that night in the icy warehouse with his teeth splinters of bone in his bloodied mouth. Hot spit rushes to his mouth at the memory of it, his gorge rising. He swallows it down.

“’Course I’m not.” God, he wishes he brought a gun. “Get lost,” he tells Tim. “I am lost,” Tim says. He glances theatrically over his shoulder. “I’m depending on you to find our way back.” Jason snorts despite himself. He doesn’t believe Tim’s ever been unprepared enough to get lost. “Okay,” Tim says.

“I may not know exactly where we are, but your angry stomp trail isn’t going to be hard to follow back to shore.” “It almost implies you want to be found, Todd.” Damian drops down out of a tree branch above Tim, landing in a crouch. Jason tenses up like a cat about to bolt.

Tim says quickly, “Damian, could you go back and get us some more bandaging? I think Jason’s dressing needs to be changed.” Damian picks up on the subterfuge immediately. “You’re trying to get rid of me.” “No,” Tim says quickly. Damian glares at him. To both of their surprises, he doesn’t say anything, just flings a half-eaten aas fruit at them, hard, and stalks back the way he came. Jason didn’t miss how white his face was, though, the skin around his mouth bleached colorless by how tightly he compressed his lips.

“I hope you’re planning to go after him.” “No,” Tim says shortly. His face is white, too, around his tight mouth. He takes a step closer. “What’s going on?” “We’re shipwrecked on a fucking island with no metas around to get us off it, that’s what’s wrong.” “That’s not it,” Tim says. “What are you hiding, Jay?” “Maybe I’m a little tense from being stuck with Goldie and the Bat for seventy-two hours straight,” Jason snaps. “We’re not going to die here,” Tim says.

“We might all get scurvy and lose a few teeth, but we’re not going to die.” “It’s gotta be bothering you,” Jason says. “Nothing to brush your teeth with, what if you end up with a cavity, princess?” “I just had my sealants reapplied,” Tim says placidly. “I should be good for a while.

Your breath, though—” Jason breathes intentionally in his face. Tim makes one. “You’re such a Neanderthal.” “Someone’s gotta make up for your lack of stones.” “Ha ha,” Tim deadpans. He looks up as a crack of thunder sounds from above them, accompanied by a flash of lightning two seconds later. I don’t want to get stuck under a tree struck by lightning.” Jason hangs back.

Tim grabs his good hand and starts to drag him. Jason resists for a minute, face unreadable in the darkness under the trees, then relents and follows him. It’s only because his eyes are on the ground during the next flash of lightning that he catches it. “Hang on.” “What?” Jason is crouching, picking something up. He holds up a scrap of fabric with his good hand, running his thumb across the suspiciously sturdy and silken weave. “This look red to you?” Tim squints in the next flicker of light that flashes through the canopy.

His eyes flick to Jason’s. “Yes.” “Bruce said Supes is off-planet.” Tim’s eyes are sharp. “He’s not the only one with a red cape.” Dick watches the dark clouds rolling across the sky, then back again into the thick trees.

He and Bruce hauled their meager things closer under the trees, just close enough to make sure that they weren’t the tallest things around for lightning to hit and but far enough to make sure none fell on them if they were struck, which took them only about seven minutes, and now it’s been another three minutes and none of his brothers are back yet. “Do you think we should—” At that moment, footsteps become audible a few feet away. Tim emerges onto the sand, followed by Jason. “Hey!” Tim says. “We found—” “Where’s Damian?” Tim looks past him as though expecting to see Damian standing beside him. “What do you mean? We sent him back to you.” Dick shoves past them, into the undergrowth.

“Wait,” Jason says, turning to follow him. “He didn’t come back?” “No, he didn’t come back!” Dick snaps.

“Why’d you leave him on his own?” “It’s not like he gave us much of a choice,” Jason says, and beside him, Tim looks guilt-stricken. “Stay here,” Bruce says, and heads into the trees after Dick. Damian kicks his way through the overgrown rubbish sprouting from every viable tree trunk and patch of soil. Some of the plants are sticky, coated in some sort of sap, and others with thistle, clinging leaves, hanging fast to his jeans, and Damian misses, suddenly and fiercely, Titus and his sleek fur, the way he stands right next to Damian, his heavy tail hitting Damian’s legs as it wags back and forth. The air is sharp with the scent and taste of an impending storm. He changes his course to climb up into the dark branches of a rough-barked tree, moving silently from branch to branch.

The view, once he surfaces from the thick canopy, shows him a high bank of cumulonimbus piling over the horizon, the distant smudge of rainfall already covering the ocean horizon to his right. To the left, there is only the green slope of more forestry, rising up along the crest of low mountains that hide the rest of the island from sight. Lightning flashes. He drops down out of the tree, landing in a crouch. Only a few seconds later, rain begins to fall loudly, a thick curtain that lashes the big leaves and pours down off of them when the weight becomes too much for the thin membranes to hold. Damian pulls his hood over his head and continues on.

A few hundred meters later, there is a large, uprooted tree that has slumped against its brothers, providing a small shelter, and Damian crouches under it, blinking raindrops from his lashes. In the dark humus revealed by the trailing roots of the tree, there are dark glistening things moving: worms, he sees, trying to wriggle away from and out of the puddles filling up in the soil. He uses his finger to dislodge some of the soil from them, easing their progress. Watches the serpent-like flex and sway of their tiny bodies. His attention focused on the movements, he doesn’t notice the bird hopping down until it has already snatched one up. “Hey!” he shouts in reflex.

The crested bird scarfs down the worm dangling from its beak, then squawks loudly back at Damian, unfazed. Damian scowls, and it flaps closer, cawing angrily. He falls backward on his rear, and it darts for another worm, hops away with its bounty in its beak. The rain starts to fall harder, the drops bigger and closer together. Damian retreats further under the shelter of the tree: then, as a loud hiss comes from directly beside his ear, does not jump and dive away. When his heart rate has calmed down, he slows down, blinking around in the rain, and scrutinizes a likely tree before scaling it, pulling himself up onto one of the lowest branches, about two meters off the ground.

Quiet cheeping sounds come from it as he pulls himself onto it; there is a small nest with three puffy brown chicks and the remnants of speckled egg shells inside it. Water is pooling in the base of the nest from all the rain. Damian struggles out of his clinging wet hoodie and crouches closer to hold it over the nest, protecting it from the worst of the deluge that makes its way through the overhanging canopy. A few drops drip from his hoodie tie, one landing directly into the open, expectant beak of one of the chicks. It snaps, then makes a disappointed sound, liquid black eyes reproachfully on Damian.

“Not my fault,” he mutters. Then, grudgingly: “Sorry.” Maybe only a few minutes pass before a bird flaps up to perch on the opposite side of the branch from Damian: a crested bird like the one that ate the worms, if not the same one.

Damian looks at it, and it looks at him. Squawks angrily, hopping gingerly closer to its nest.

It hops backward again, cocking its head, considering him. Then it darts forward, one beady eye still on him, and regurgitates into the chicks’ beaks.

Damian grimaces. He pulls slightly, but not entirely, back, keeping his hoodie over the nest.

When the parent bird is done, it eyes Damian one last time, then caws and hops into the nest, the further driest spot away from Damian. Two of the chicks huddle up close to it. The third one toddles closer to peer curiously at Damian. It leans forward and pecks at his hand. “Stop that.” It eyes him, then pecks again, as if to make sure he really meant it.

“I mean it,” he assures the bird. It puts its beak up snobbishly, as if offended by the response, and heads back to its brother and sister. Damian releases one corner of his hoodie and traces his finger smoothly down its soft feathery back, the tiny fragile bones underneath.

He jerks and nearly drops off the branch when a shout erupts almost directly underneath him. “DAMIAAAAAAN!” The chicks erupt in a startled cacophony. The mutter flutters agitatedly, hopping up out of the nest and swooping at Damian. Damian drops down from the branch. “Shush, Grayson!” Dick blinks at him from under soaked hair. “Damian,” he says in relief.

“Thank God.” And then Damian’s face is smushed against Grayson’s wet shirt, arms crushing him close. “ Never scare me like that again.” Damian pushes out of the tight hold. “Rich words from you.” Grayson doesn’t reply. Damian, not meeting his eyes, struggles his sodden hoodie back over his head. They just stand there silently for a minute, the silence interrupted by flashes of lightning and rumbled thunder, before Grayson chuckles. “What.” Grayson pushes dripping hair out of his eyes, cupping his other hand at his brow to shield his eyes from the rain. “I’m just remembering that speech I gave you about hoods when I could really use a hood right now.” “Hmph.” Damian dugs his chin into his chest, hands deep in his front pocket.

After a while: “I am sorry, you know.” “It doesn’t matter.” Damian’s eyes stay on the tree behind Dick. “I thought you were different. You aren’t.” Dick’s hand makes an aborted motion to ruffle Damian’s hair. He forces it back down to his side instead.

But if I could do it again—” “What?” Dick stares at Damian’s profile, the angry defiant mouth and brows. He stares, and wishes Damian could understand what he feels, and at the same time, that he never will—how Dick feels like there are pieces of himself he has lost. The sunniness that used to come naturally is a performance piece now, like the last of an eggshell fallen away. He can’t look at his Nightwing outfit anymore without thinking of how obvious it looks, how the electric blue finger stripes stand out as a target, when before the thought of the danger they invited made his blood sing.

He thinks of the man with guns for eyes and can’t imagine only being able to see Damian through a barrel. He thinks of the baby in the desert and remembers how, sometimes, he had imagined that the baby was Damian, thought of how if it was Damian in his arms he would never stop, never let him go, never let him die. Losing Bruce had been like that desert, slogging on and on with a desperation born from knowing there was no light at the end of the tunnel: Bruce would never be back, and Dick was the only one, the only one, and if he stopped, everyone else would, too. Damian is still waiting. His eyes rest on Dick with the same intent focus that sharpens Bruce’s, but in Damian’s there is hope. Guarded, but there. Dick says, “I would’ve kidnapped you to be my back-up.” Damian’s face twists like he’s biting down relief, or a smile.

After a few seconds, he controls it and says, his dark brows knit back into their usual frown, “It wasn’t right of Father to send you into that without back-up.” “I wouldn’t have let him send you guys,” Dick says honestly. “Don’t blame him, little D. He gave me a choice.” “He always makes it a choice,' Damian mutters. 'If you’re the one who makes the decision, it’s your fault if it’s the wrong one.” “That’s a little more cynicism than I’m used to hearing from you,” Dick says.

“You been hanging out with Jay?” Damian just grunts. “If you do something like this again, Grayson, I’ll hunt you down and pulls your intestines out through your nose.” “There’s the Damian I know and love,” Dick says, and puts his arm over Damian’s soaked shoulder, pulling him close in a hug.

Damian submits to it with a token harrumph. They intersect with Bruce on the way back. His hand finds Damian’s shoulder, and he clasps it. Doesn’t let go until they get back to the beach, with its sodden sand. The sky is starting to lighten to deep blue, clouds starting to move away, just in time for night to fall completely.

Tim has managed to contrive somehow to keep some wood and ferns for kindling dry. They have a fire crackling in next to no time at all, a welcome warmth as the wind off the water starts to blow through their sodden clothes. Damian’s teeth manage to chatter even though he clenches his jaw tightly, but he makes no move to pull off his hoodie, which he pulled back on before he and Dick climbed down from the tree. He doesn’t like to expose the scar along his back, and Dick isn’t sure whether even Bruce has seen it. He sidles up close to Damian under the complained pretense of being cold, and tries to radiate to him what body heat he can. Jason looks little better off, shuddering every now and then at his spot across the campfire.

His face gleams from the drops of water trickling from his wet hair, and he eats very little, pushing his fruit over to Tim. Tim pushes it to Damian, who ignores it.

Tim sighs and looks at Bruce. “You said this was Clark’s idea. What did you mean by that?” Bruce’s eyes sharpen. “What did you find?” Tim pushes a torn scrap of red fabric across the sand.

Bruce picks it up. He turns it over in his hand.

“This isn’t Clark’s.” “It’s not cotton,” Tim says. “Or silk, or polyester, or any sort of fabric I’ve encountered before except with the League.” Bruce doesn’t say anything in argument to that. He says, instead, “He thought it would be a good way for us to reconnect. A trip somewhere distant and isolated so that we would be forced to be-.” No one finishes the sentence.

“Were we plane-wrecked on purpose?” Tim says bluntly. Bruce’s jaw and mouth tighten, the corners of his eyes. He says nothing, and that in itself is a sign that, turning over the facts in his head, he’s coming to the same conclusion as Tim.

“A red cape,” Dick says suddenly. “The pilot didn’t take a parachute, and he moved vehicle-fast—that could’ve been J’onn.” “What about the dead copilot?” “An illusion?

If Zatanna was involved—” “Does that mean they’re watching us?” Jason’s voice is unexpectedly hoarse. Dick looks over and sees that his eyes look glassy, like he found a bottle of vodka somewhere and drank it straight. His face gleams with sweat, pale in the moonlight. “Means they can come get us,” Jason stumbles to his feet. Get down here, you dickwads!” His voice rings out over the water. No echo responds. “Jason,” Bruce rumbles. Download Free Matrix Patch Of Neo Spolszczenie Software Development.

Jason shoves off his hand. “This is your fucking fault,” he snarls, and shoulders out of the firelight and shoves down in the sand. “I will take first watch,” Damian announces. Todd, several meters away, makes no sign that he heard, or cares; Drake murmurs some sort of assent; and Grayson is watching their father.

He has walked off to some distance, the silhouette of a figure that could be looking out at the water or could be looking back at them, and Damian allows himself to wonder whether he’s trying to contact the Kryptonian before refocusing his attention upon his predecessors. “I’ll take second watch,” Drake says in response to his expectant gaze, and lies down, although he does not close his eyes. He has the transmitter back in his hands, and he is fiddling with it, frowning at it with his eyes gleaming in the dark, every now and then casting glances at where Todd has curled up further from the rest of them, a dark shape outside the firelight. “He’ll be okay,” Grayson says quietly to both of them. He lowers himself onto his side a safe distance from Drake, who still isn’t quite acknowledging him, and closes his eyes. His eyelashes cast long shadows across his face in the flickering light from the fire. Minutes pass.

The flames crackle. Damian stares into them and does not turn to look and see whether his father is still standing at the water line or whether he has left, again. In the third hour, the dark shape that is Todd starts to make noises. Damian eyes him uncertainly and casts a glance over his shoulder for his father. No silhouette can be seen, and he turns back to look over the fire at where the shape is shifting, making noises like pained panting.

Todd has nightmares; they all know it, even though Todd makes a point never, ever to sleep at the manor, because they were all there the time Todd got a faceful of Scarecrow’s fear toxin with no mask to filter the effects. Grayson hadn’t chivvied him and Drake out of the cave quickly enough to keep them from hearing how Todd sobbed and pled as Pennyworth struggled to inject a sedative into his veins. He prowls closer. Heat fairly radiates from Todd, and now that Damian is closer, he can tell that he’s shivering. His breathing is harsh, shallow. He creeps back to the campfire.

“Grayson.” Grayson comes awake in a split-second, his arm tensing under the hand on his shoulder. “What?” Damian sits back on his heels and nods at Todd’s shape. Grayson’s brow furrows, and he rolls to his feet, striding over only to drop onto his heels next to Todd. “Jaybird?” His voice is low and kind.

Todd’s eyes crack open, and he blinks glazedly up at Grayson, cradling his right hand to himself with a hiss of pain. “What, Dickie?” Grayson catches his hand.

He unwraps the stained strip of shirt with painstaking carefulness. Todd’s hand underneath looks bad. It is mottled purple, the skin swollen and angry, oozing pus.

“Jay,” Grayson murmurs. Louder, he says, “Bruce!” Todd seems to become lucid then, his eyes clearing somewhat at the volume; he blinks and snatches his hand back, wrapping it back up.

“Fuck off, Dick.” “Jay, that’s serious.” “Yeah, so?” Todd says tightly. He finishes wrapping it up and tucks the dressing in under his sleeve, jaw ground together as a spasm of a shiver sweeps through him, fresh sweat breaking out on his forehead. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Not like there’s an ER to go to for an I&D.” Father is there then, suddenly, a looming shape in the dark blocking out the orange light from the fire.

In a movement too swift for even Damian to follow, he’s crouched next to Todd, immobilizing his wrist and yanking his sleeve up. Todd screams in pain. There are purple streaks extending up his arm toward his elbow from his wrist, and Father’s jaw is tight as a vice. “Start boiling water.” Grayson takes off at a sprint. “Get off, Bruce,” Todd is snarling, trying to yank away, but Father isn’t letting it go; has Todd’s other shoulder in his grip and is hauling him up. Todd moves like he’s inebriated, legs clumsy and unsteady beneath him; Father sweeps him up and carries him to the fire where Drake is just waking up and looks startled and scared.

“Bruce--?” “Here!” Grayson is running back from the water, holding Todd’s helmet—where did that come from?—cupped in his hands, the contents sloshing over onto the edges. He holds it over the fire, close to the flames, wincing at the heat licking his hands but not moving. “What’s going on?” Tim sounds like a child, fear in his voice. “Jay—?” “Who has the cleanest shirt?” Father says. Damian hesitates. Then he takes off his hoodie, and his white t-shirt underneath it, feeling the wind stroke up his scarred spine.

Father’s eyes sweep across him as he takes the shirt wordlessly from Damian. “Hold him down,” he says briefly. “What are we—” “He said hold him down, Drake!” Damian snaps. He settles himself atop Jason’s shins, pressing down on his knees. Jason is still moving, but weakly, his gaze glazed.

He doesn’t seem quite aware; is only fighting for the sake of it, the memory of needing to run. Drake looks uncertain, but stretches himself across Todd’s chest, pinning his arm and trunk at the same time. “It’s boiling,” Dick announces tersely. “Bring it,” Bruce orders. He tears Damian’s shirt into four strips, dunking each along with his hands, one at a time, into the steaming water in the helmet. His muscles tense at the scalding heat, but he makes no sounds of discomfort, only wrings out two of them over the sand before bending over Jason’s hand. “Dick,” he says, and Dick moves immediately to hold Jason’s elbow and forearm braced over his knee, the helmet left nestled safely in a hollow of sand.

Father sets the two white strips on either side of the darkest part of Jason’s hand, where yellow-white fluid is beginning to seep from the center. Then, with his thumbs, he gives a sudden fierce squeeze. Pus pours from the site. Todd gasps “ fuck” and passes out. Father is tight-lipped.

He continues to press the putrescence from Todd’s palm, digging his thumbs into the soft compartments of his hand until what comes out is bloody red instead of purulent-smelling yellow. He rinses it clean with still-hot water from one of the shirt strips, then folds a third one up and presses it against the site, binding it in place with the fourth. Damian is shaking. He doesn’t realize it until Grayson pulls him off of Todd’s legs and holds him close.

Drake looks like a child. He is pale and huge-eyed.

“C’mere,” Grayson says, and then they are both under his arms, Damian and Drake, being held close. “You don’t have any way to summon them?” he says to Father, sotto voce. “Nothing?” Father is as tight-lipped as he ever is beneath the cowl.

His hands around Jason are gentle, though. He shakes his head as he tips cooling water into Jason’s mouth. Cups his mouth shut and massages his throat to make him swallow. Dawn comes like a delusion, wavering with delirious heat. They haul Jason back to the shade of the trees, but there is no protecting him from the sweltering heat and humidity that wrings sweat from their scalps and skin. Jason oscillates between deathly still and feverishly restless, whispering for people who aren’t there and people who are. “Jay,” Dick murmurs into Jason’s forehead.

He’s motionless, right now, and that’s almost worse than listening to his dry lips call for his mom, Ma, Mom, Alfie. Bruce is here. B’s here.” Still Jason’s eyes dart under their lids, terrified. Dick squeezes his eyes shut. His insides roil with guilt. He knows exactly when Jason must have gotten the cut, when he was slicing Dick free of the parachute harness in the water; Dick’s the big brother, but Jason took care of him, and now he’s dying. “We’re here,” he says again, uselessly.

“Bruce is here, Jay. He’s here.” He thinks of the Hypnos implants that sat in his optic discs and communicated what he saw back to his handlers. What he wouldn’t give for them now, for someone to be watching, someone to know— He presses his forehead harder against Jason’s clammy brow. Bruce sits across from both of them, hands white-knuckled on his knees and mouth white with tension. Damian stares at Bruce and Dick where they sit beside Jason, mopping his brow. Tim feels, with the sick swoop of his insides that recognize one more thing to cram into his brain beside all the other anxieties writhing there, the ways in which he has fallen far short of the brother Damian needed while Dick was gone.

Dick would be hugging Damian close, trying to make him feel safe and like things were going to be okay; Tim is digging his feet into the sand and starting to hyperventilate. Damian throws him a look. “Control yourself, Drake,” he says, but fear creases his features.

Tim bites down harder on his knuckle and nods. Tries to keep his breathing steady instead of being pulled into the jagged, jumping rhythm of his spasming lungs. He almost doesn’t hear the whir of the blades. He thinks he’s imagining it at first; then his eyes meet Damian’s. They look up. “Father!” Damian shouts.

Bruce looks over. Follows their gazes. A sleek gray jet, too large to be the Javelin, is shimmering into visibility at the shoreline, a bare thirty feet away. As Tim squints against the sunlight bouncing off its metal surface, it descends slowly to the sand. A door neatly hidden in the starboard bulkhead unfolds. A woman comes down it.

Her hair is massively curly, her stride aggressive in gleaming boots, and her face is— “Helena?” Tim’s hands tighten. Distantly he hears Damian suck in a breath behind him. Dick is looking at the woman with the swirling, unrecognizable face like she’s Babs or Kori or Wonder Woman—someone he trusts to get them out of here. He’s pushing to his feet and starting toward her, too—Tim doesn’t reach out to grab Damian as he makes a sound half of alarm and half of anger and runs forward.

“Dick,” Bruce rumbles. He’s lifting Jason in his arms and—and looking at Dick like he’s waiting for his guidance. Dick is still looking at the woman.

She doesn’t move, and Tim can’t see her face, so he’s not sure what Dick sees that makes him nod at Bruce. Bruce moves forward, up the bulkhead. Damian says, “Father!” “It’s okay,” Dick says. He looks around for Tim, finds his eyes. “She’s a friend.” “Helena Bertinelli is not a friend,” Tim says, and hears the anger in his voice like it’s coming from another person.

“Maybe not,” Helena says. “But I am your only ticket off this rock, so maybe you want to get your ass on the plane.” Tim catches Damian’s sleeve as they move forward. Dick’s looking at her with affection, like a friend he’s about to hug, and Tim’s hand tightens in the salt-stiff material of Damian’s hoodie. He feels Dick’s gaze move to him, the concern in it. “Tim—” Tim ignores him. He drags Damian up the bulkhead with him, feeling Helena’s gaze on them, and Damian doesn’t protest.

Dick follows them, and Helena comes after him, pressing a control to close the gangplank once they’re all boarded. “Huntress,” Bruce says from behind them. Tim turns and sees that he’s strapped Jason into the security harness of a cot built into the bulkhead. Jason’s face is clammy, his hand an oozing discolored mess where it lies tucked against his side. “Do you have first aid equipment?” “Suturing material.” Helena’s voice is brusque.

Nothing on the level of—” The swirl of her face spins slowly as she takes in the extent of Jason’s injuries, the open wound and the purple streaks traveling toward his elbow, “that.” “Morphine, then.” Dick crouches, opening a storage compartment hidden under the cot. There is a drawer with neatly labeled syringes of epinephrine and morphine, bags of saline, capsules that look like cyanide. He’s familiar with this plane, maybe did missions on it while they were mourning him, maybe played Candy Crush in this very cot while Tim stood in front of his grave and dug his fingernails into his scalp. Helena’s head turns toward them like she scents the thought. She studies him for a moment, he can feel the regard even if he can’t see it, then asks evenly, “Either of you know how to fly?” Dick pushes Damian gently forward by the shoulders.

“Damian is the best pilot of all of us.” It’s an attempt to relieve the immediate vicinity of at least one Robin terrified out of his wits by Jason’s state. Tim moves silently backward out of the way as Damian and Helena go into the cockpit; as Bruce swabs and slides an IV needles into the crook of Jason’s arm and Dick draws up the clear morphine in a syringe. He pushes his shoulder blades against the cold metal of the bulkhead and just watches, the way he did before Jason died. The jet shudders and lifts into the air.

When Jason is well into his second bolus of fluids, Dick glances at Tim. The younger boy is ignoring him, his eyes fixed on Jason, and Dick looks at Bruce, aware of the reception that any comfort he attempts to give Tim will receive. But Bruce’s face is even more closed-off than Tim’s. He stares at Jason’s bloodless face like it’s his own personal hell. Dick slips away to the cockpit.

Warily, expecting to find that Damian and Helena have slit each other’s throats, or at least to be glaring each other down, but both of them are in full possession of all their limbs with no blood in sight. Damian appears visibly distracted, his gaze fixed on the controls but his thoughts clearly elsewhere, eyes unfocused. Dick puts an arm around his shoulders, tightening the hold gently when Damian starts. Their eyes meet, Damian searches his, Dick says, “He’s hanging in there,” quietly, and Damian looks away again, his shoulders tense under Dick’s. Dick looks over at Helena.

Her sunglasses remain in place on her face, hiding the direction of her gaze. Her features, as dark as Damian’s, betray no sign that she senses his eyes on her. “Helena,” he says. Can’t quite to think of what to say after that; the things all back up in his throat. A traffic jam, a clot. Things trapped.

He settles, finally, on, “Thank you.” “Don’t thank me yet,” she says shortly. She glances at the surveillance screen showing Jason on his cot and coaxes more speed from the snarling engines. She must comm ahead, because Leslie is already waiting for them on the rooftop of Gotham General when the jet touches down on the helipad. Her white hair blows back from her face as she runs forward with the gurney being pushed by another man in a white coat. They transfer Jason’s body onto the gurney quickly and efficiently, another IV site already accessed in his other antecubital and pumping fluid into him by the time they get him strapped in.

Leslie is issuing orders, a nurse holds a bag-mask valve at the ready, and Bruce is striding, almost running, alongside them, his hand around Jason’s good one. The elevator doors close behind them. The other Robins stand on the rooftop that is suddenly very cold.

The sun is setting behind them. Dick grips Damian’s sleeve. Tim is very white-faced, his own fists white-knuckled at his sides. Helena looks at them. Damian moves in front of Dick almost protectively.

“How did you know where we were?” Helena regards him. Her mouth curves, just barely. Then, returning her gaze to Dick, she holds out a small disc.

It looks like a watch battery. “EMP,” she says.

“When you’re ready, activate it. Your spleen will collect the remnants of the nanobots.

Fair warning, Poppy thinks they might cause autosplenectomy.” Dick takes it. His fingers close over it. She strides back to the jet. The gangplank closes, and it rises, lifting away and then—disappearing. “They still had you tagged.” Tim’s voice is deadly calm, but the last syllable wavers.

“Did you know?” Dick meets his eyes. “Does it matter?” “Yes, it matters!” Tim’s voice cracks, it’s so shrill. “They could have taken you back any time they wanted!” “Then,” Dick says, “I guess I’d just have to trust you guys to come get me.” Another silence. Tim breathing harshly, his fists clenched. Dick takes one of them. Enfolding his callused fingers gently around the balled ones. “C’mon,” he says quietly, and presses the elevator button with his free hand before offering it to Damian.

Damian takes it. The elevator doors open.

Tim lets himself be led inside. The trauma surgery suites are on the second floor. They are all unfortunately very familiar with the location. Leslie intercepts them almost the minute they step off the elevator. “Boys!” “Leslie.” Dick’s hand tightens around Damian’s. “How—?” “He’s going to the OR,” Leslie says tersely.

“That hand needs emergent debridement.” “Where’s my father?” “He went in with him.” Dick’s eyes ask, is he going to make it? “He’ll make it,” Leslie says grimly. “Whether his hand will—that’s the question.” Tim lets out a sudden laugh.

It’s strained and hysterical. “There goes his sex life,” he says, and laughs shakily again, and crouches on the floor, hands in his hair. Leslie eyes him with a mixture of concern and disapproval. “How long has it been since you boys ate?” Her critical eye travels to the other two. “Let me see your stitches,” she orders Dick. “Everyone wants a strip tease,” Dick says, which earns him a very severe look from Leslie. “Okay,” he quails, and pulls off his shirt.

They all end up getting hooked up to IVs for fluid boluses, by the middle of which Alfred has arrived, looking pale, haggard, and impeccably dressed. “Did you bring Titus?” Damian demands. He looks flushed and fever-eyed; Dick thinks he’s probably about two seconds from a meltdown.

“Unfortunately I did not think it was a wise idea to bring a dog to the hospital,” Alfred says. “I have, however, brought fresh clothing.

And” He looks meaningfully behind him. A very mediocre-looking brown-haired man slips into the room. “J’onn.” “I am very sorry,” the Martian says somberly.

“This was not what we intended to happen.” Tim is very pale and very angry. Dick catches his wrist, enclosing the clenched fist inside it. That’s the moment the door into the warren of OR rooms swings open. Bruce emerges in surgical scrubs and mask, a cap. His eyes are lined and strained and, when they land on J’onn above his mask, pale with fury. “Get out.” “I am sorry,” J’onn says. “I don’t care.” J’onn inclines his head.

“If these is anything I can do,” he says quietly to Alfred, and slips from the room. “What’s going on?” Tim demands.

Bruce shakes his head. “They asked me to leave,” he says, and sits down. Drags a hand down his bristled face.

Damian moves closer. He doesn’t sit but stands next to Bruce, their shoulders brushing. Alfred seats himself in the chair on Bruce’s other side and clasps his shoulder gently. Two and a half.

At hour four, Dick pushes to his feet. “I gotta pee,” he says lowly, not getting a response from anyone but Alfred, who nods, and made his retreat. There’s a one-person bathroom just outside the waiting room; Dick veers past it and down the hallway until he finds one further away; locks himself in and drops to his feet in front of the toilet. His mouth fills with hot spit. His guts clench and roil.

Nothing comes out. He grips the white bowl and tries to retch. Nothing comes out. He rocks back on his heels. Digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “You’re moping, Grayson.” He jumps, toppling backward onto his butt on the tile.

Fumbles the small metal disc from his pocket. “Helena?” “Yes.” “This—isn’t an EMP?” “It is.

Wasn’t hard to make it a transmitter, too.” He’s quiet. The thud of his blood in his ears, the warming metal of the EMP in his palm. “You’re brooding,” she says. He says nothing for a long time. Then: “He got cut saving me.” “And that justifies your brooding how?” “If he dies—” Dick falters.

Remembering how dead Bruce looked, looking at Jason in the plane. “Then they’ll need you more than ever,” Helena says. “Now get your face out of the toilet and go hold your brothers.” Dick doesn’t move. “ Now,” she says.

“Or I’ll tell them about Jim and Juan.” It’s still another one and a half hours before a man in scrubs leans his head in the door and says, “Mr. Wayne.” They all look up. The surgeon blinks tiredly at the whole brood of them, taking a half step backward. Bruce presses Dick’s shoulder lightly, and only Alfred accompanies him out into the hallway to speak in low tones with the surgeon.

The rest of them watch in mute suspense. Bruce digs his knuckles into his face. Breathes raggedly.

Tim’s fingers dig into Dick’s kneecap. A few more inaudible questions. The surgeon shaking his head. Making a motion with his right hand. Alfred says something.

Then Bruce nods and shakes the surgeon’s hand. He and Alfred come back into the room. The other families’ eyes watch them, the same way they had watched the other families who finally heard news on their loved ones. Bruce crouches. Damian is already leaning into him, looking heavy-eyed and half-asleep.

“He’s going up to the ICU,” Bruce says. He steadies Damian with one hand, grips the edge of a chair with the other. “They have a wound VAC on his hand, they think they were able to salvage all the nerves, but they won’t know for sure for a while. He’s going to need several repeat debridements, probably.” Dick exhales. Alfred presses him and Tim close.

They go upstairs. Jason drifts in and out of consciousness. He has a vague awareness of seeing familiar silhouettes: Dick, and Alfie, and Bruce, blurring together with scarier things, merging with pain in his hand that makes him remember the Joker’s loafers stepping on it, grinding into it, pulverizing the tiny bones in his wrist. His breath speeds up in reaction, the panic, the fear, and a very distant part of his mind hears the clinically disappointed voices of people around him saying, “All right, no extubation today; titrate him back up,” while the closer part registers only Bruce’s voice and a hand on his head, warm and heavy above his brows, soothing. They take him for debridement again after he does pass his spontaneous breathing test and get taken off the vent, and he swims back to consciousness as the narcotics wear off from the second debridement, blinking blearily and making some sort of sound. “Oh my God,” comes a voice from the corner.

He turns his head, and Tim is scrambling out of a recliner in the corner, his hair a bird’s nest and eyes ringed with black. “Jay!” He coughs. Tim grabs a plastic pitcher from a table next to the bed and pours ice chips into a Styrofoam cup. He tips one onto Jason’s tongue. Jason closes his mouther and slug of a tongue around it and sucks. Tim watches him anxiously.

Jason opens his mouth for another chip. Tim shovels two in this time. Jason swallows these ones down instead of waiting for them to melt and croaks, “Where are we?” “Gotham.” He briefly explains their rescue from the island.

“Everyone else was here, but Alfred said we make too much noise when we’re all here—Bruce and I stayed, he just went to look at your last MRI scans with the surgeon—” Oh yeah. Jason looks down at his hand. It’s heavily wrapped, a tube leading from inside the tan ACE wrap to a canister at the end of the bed. He becomes aware of a low hum and a gentle suction, like a starfish is attached to his palm. He snorts, throwing his head back on the pillow. “What?” Tim says. SpongeBob humor.” He waves his hand halfheartedly.

“Barnacle Boy.” “Oh.” Tim looks amused now instead of anxious, which is a relieving change. Jason smiles at him kind of dopily. It’s too nice having someone here in the hospital room with him, worrying whether he’s okay or not. A distant part of his brain is turning over the fact that he’s probably in some kind of Dilaudid dream. A soft knock on the door makes him turn his head on the pillow. The knob turns, and the last fucking person Jason would ever have expected pokes his head in the doorway. “Hi,” Clark Kent says.

“Uh.” Jason clears his throat. “B’s not here.” Clark’s eyes flick past him, taking in the room and its other occupant. “I know,” he says, carefully shutting the door behind him. “I wanted to talk to you.” Jason tenses. So much for the Dilaudid dream. This is the part where the paying for his sins part of being dead starts.

“DidTim tell you?” “No,” Tim says coolly from the other side of Jason’s bed. Why don’t you?” Jason casts him a glance, then looks back at Clark, brows raised. Clark takes a step further into the room. “WeThe League was aware of what a hard time everyone was having with Dick being back.” A picture is starting to coalesce in Jason’s brain. The red scrap of cloak they found on the island. He glances at Tim again, who raises his brow back as though to say, exactly. “We thought you all could do with some time to be a family.

On your own.” Clark shakes his head. “It’s no excuse for what we did—we shouldn’t have stranded you all out there without safe guards.

Jason, I’m sorry you were hurt. More than that—” His eyes burn into him, “I’m sorry you were put into a situation where you thought something worse might happen.” Jason’s fists are clenched tightly.

Tim reads his discomfort. A knock on the door rescues him from having to come up with some sort of response. A nurse in navy blue scrubs leans in the doorway.

“Did you ring your call bu—” Her eyes land on Clark. “Excuse me, sir, visiting hours are over.” “I’m sorry,” Clark says, and casts a last glance at Jason. He nods, his faint smile a last apology. Jason nods back.

As Clark slips past her, the R.N. Looks at them.

“Do you need anything, kiddo?” She can’t be much older than Dick is, with dark black hair the tips of which are dyed indigo. “We’re good,” Tim says. “Must’ve pressed it by accident. Sorry.” Jason waits until she’s closed the door again. “Pressed it by accident, my ass.” “If you’re gonna complain about me being chivalrous, I won’t do it again.” Jason “tt”s at him.

He can feel himself starting to drift again, as if with the stress of having Superman in the room removed, his strings can go slack again. There’s a giant red Elmo balloon bobbing around against his ceiling, and he blinks at it. “Bruce tore into him,” Tim says. Elmo bobs as the air conditioner cycles on. Tim leans over, slinging his arms over the bed railing and propping his chin on it as he props his phone up for Jason to watch the video on it.

Bruce, from a sideways awkward angle, clearly being surreptitiously filmed as he grips the side of a hospital bed—Jason’s hospital bed. There is a flash of red and blue outside the window—it looks dark, like nighttime, or very early morning. “—re my children. They get hurt. So help me, Clark, if he—” His voice catches.

Tim ends the video. “He know you have that?” “I pretended I was sleeping,” Tim says. “So, probably.” Jason doesn’t say anything. They both watch the clear antibiotic drip slowly into his IV, Tim’s chin on the rail and Jason’s on his chest. “How’re the D’s?” Jason says finally. “Damian hasn’t let Dick out of his sight. Titus hasn’t let Damian out of his.” Tim nods up at the Elmo balloon.

“Steph and Cass brought you that.” Jason snorts as he finally lets his eyes close. “Of course they did.” Jason’s room on the orthopedic floor, once he’s released from the ICU, is a private one, with dark wood paneling. A tinted window looks out over the Gotham skyline, and it has its own sitting area with way better cushioned chairs than the ones in the waiting rooms.

Dick sees Jason’s eyes flicking around it, taking it in, his gaze flicking between the window, the bags of IV fluids hanging from the pole beside him, and the five of them, as though gauging how long it will take them to fall asleep so that he can unhook himself from the IV and sneak out. “Dogpile,” he orders.

And Tim, with a long-suffering expression, climbs onto the bed, settling himself on Jason’s shins, while Steph and Cass comply with the order much more enthusiastically, vaulting onto Jason with no regard to what tender parts their elbows might land on, as Jason hollers, “Fuck, fuck, get offa me, get offa me” to no avail. “Shut up and soak up the love, Little Wing,” Dick tell shim, wiggling himself under the others so he can get an arm around Jason’s shoulders and haul him in, careful of his PICC line. Jason flips him the finger, glaring.

“I can’t feel my balls.” 'Tt,' says Damian, from where he has deigned to climb up into the big comfy armchair beside the bed. 'Refrain from such vulgarity in the presence of ladies, Todd.' Steph exclaims. 'That's so sweet.' 'Tt,' Damian says again. 'I didn't mean you, Brown. I was referring to Cassandra.' A320 Glass Cockpit Software Companies here.

Cass looks at him reproachfully. 'I told you he had a crush on you,' Steph whispers loudly. Damian colors violently. 'Cease your foolishness, Brown!'

Steph laughs madly and rolls off the bed, pulling another 'fuck!' Cass pats him consolingly in the affected area and slides off the bed after Stephanie. 'Patrol,' she explains to Dick's raised eyebrow, and touches his ear. Dick nods in comprehension.

'Thanks, you two.' Steph leans in close enough for him to smack a kiss onto her cheek. 'No problem, big bro.' He grins at her and points at Cass. She leans in, eyes serious, and he plants the same kiss on her nose, grinning at her as they both go cross-eyed from the proximity. Cass pulls back. She points at the bag in the corner.

'Damian, fetch!' Damian glares daggers at him. Jason barks a laugh. 'You just kissed his lady, Dickface.' Damian goes red again. 'She is not my lady, Todd.' 'True,' Tim says.

'If anything, I think she would definitely be the dominant one in the relationship.' Dick and Jason laugh so hard that Dick is clutching his stomach, feeling the stitches pull, which of course is when Bruce comes in with Leslie. They both zero in immediately on the hand Dick has over his stitches. He removes them immediately. 'Not my fault!' Leslie casts a disapproving eye around at all of them, except for Tim, who is her particular favorite, and Cass and Steph, who have somehow disappeared out the window, only a smiley-face drawn on the mirror to indicate they were there.

Bruce takes off the ski cap he had been wearing to avoid the reporters outside, running a hand through his hair, as Leslie comes to the bed and pushes Dick's shirt up to inspect his stitches, pressing none too gently at the edges of the wound. He hears Jason snickering beside him and says, 'Leslie, I think Jason was feeling a little warm before' Leslie's sharp gaze swings to Jason. 'Dick's being an ass to distract you.' 'Be that as it may,' Leslie says severely, and pushes Jason back against the bed to listen to his lungs. 'Deep breaths.'

Jason glares at Dick as he inhales, exhales. Dick just grins back.

Bruce, meanwhile, has settled into the less comfortable chair next to Damian's, as Damian has not relinquished his own seat. He raises an eyebrow at Tim, who remembers where he's sitting. 'Dick's orders,' he explains. 'Hn,' is all Bruce says. Leslie pulls back from listening to Jason's lungs and straightens to inspect the vials draining into his IV. She turns his hand over, then, pressing the skin gently to look for capillary refill, then sets it gently back down.

'You mean he can go back to his usual right-handed activities?' Tim says innocently, and Dick guffaws. Even Bruce's mouth turns up on one side.

Jason flips all three of them the bird. 'I can't wait to get the lot of you out of here,' Leslie informs them, but she, too, is smiling.

She looks over at Bruce. A meaningful look seems to pass between them; and then she steps to the sink, washing her hands. 'I expect you to be here when I return tomorrow morning,' she says over her shoulder to Jason. 'Sure thing, Doc,' he says sardonically, and Leslie pins him on one more severe look before stepping out and closing the door behind her. 'How are you feeling?'

Bruce says into the silence left behind. The three oldest Robins all exchange glances with each other, betraying their surprise at the moment; Jason seems to struggle for a moment with whether to reply, and finally shrugs. 'How stoic,' Tim says. 'Shut up, shrimp,' Jason says, and kicks his leg to dislodge Tim.

'Quit humpin' my leg down there.' Tim rolls his eyes and punches Jason in the knee. A throat is cleared in the doorway. They look up to see Alfred there, eyeing them with lifted eyebrow. Jason and Tim flush. Damian rolls his eyes. “I am, of course, very pleased to see you all back to your usual selves,” Alfred says dryly.

“Master Bruce, I’ve brought what you requested.” “Marshmallows!” Dick exclaims, spotting the package in the supermarket bag. He takes it from Alfred, pawing through the contents. “These are s’mores ingredients!” “Excellent,” Jason says.

“We could do with a little campfire.” “There will be no setting of fires in Dr. Thompkins’ hospital,” Alfred says severely. “There is a microwave for that purpose.” He opens one of the wooden panels opposite the bed. It reveals a microwave behind it.

“And.” Bruce pulls another of the panels out of the way. It reveals a television screen, and a small DVD slot beneath it. Alfred reaches inside his coat, pulling out a small DVD case. “I took the liberty of bringing your favorite, Master Jason.” “What’s his favorite?” Damian says curiously. The familiar strains of the Pride and Prejudice theme begin to play from the speakers.

The menu screen ripples to life, showing Kiera Knightley standing in a wide field looking out into the distance. Dick nearly tears his new stitches laughing. He falls asleep sometime during the director’s commentary, eyelids drifting shut to the soothing background music and Bruce’s rumbling voice, Jason’s nearly-as-deep-one.

Their voices fade as he sinks, and he dreams— He jerks back awake hours later. Skin clammy with sweat and body tense with the thought that he’s back at St. Hadrian’s, unable to raise Bruce on the radio. A loud snore breaks some of his panic. He stares, half uncomprehending, at the shape on the bed, silhouetted by the light from monitor machines lining the room. Jason, pushed onto his side in the bed to make room for Tim to squeeze into a ball, curled up next to him, and Damian curled up just as cat-like at the foot of the bed. He stares at them.

And, as his eyes adjust to the dark, he sees the eyes gleaming back at him from the other side of Jason’s bed. “We’re here,” Bruce rumbles. “Go back to sleep, Dick.” Dick does. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and as well as 249 guests left kudos on this work!

Outstanding Pretty Good Average/OK Could be Better Hated It Author's Note: Once again I have ventured into the world of human livestock. What goes through the mind of a human who finds that he has been reduced to the status of an animal? If you find yourself on that path, not by your choice, how do you cope?

How do you adjust? Update (2013/09/26): I plan to post three chapters approximately every four weeks. In these chapters Jacob becomes better trained as a proper pony. Chapter 1 Jacob had heard the expression 'no place to go but up'. But that statement implied things were about to get better. Each time he thought he had reached rock bottom it was only the edge of another cliff. It was hard to believe just how promising things seemed only a year ago.

Jacob had been doing well in his job. Even though he did not have a college degree, he had received a promotion at work and seemed on track to do even better. His bosses seemed very happy with him, and they should be, he worked hard and did a good job. Jacob's social life was good too. He was attractive and in good shape. He stood 6'3' and his 250 pounds were almost all muscle. He thought he had a handsome face with well-chiseled features.

He knew that most women found him attractive. He shared a three bedroom apartment with two cool roommates. The three of them were a great team and virtually inseparable. Everybody knew them at the local night clubs, and in a good way. They were always let in, and even though they were not particularly big spenders, they were considered part of the 'beautiful people', which meant that they hung with the best looking women and the big spenders. That meant lots of free drinks, lots of jealous looks from the other guys in the club, and the inside track to the best women.

One of the latter was Julie. Julie was not only the most beautiful woman Jacob had ever met, she had class, style, and when he finally got her to bed, the ability to turn into an animal. Jacob loved the way she could change from demur to sexually assertive. For the first time in his life, he only wanted to be with one woman.

He did what he never thought he would do and he asked her to marry him. Even more astounding, she said yes.

Julie and Jacob had talked about moving in together, but he was the one on the lease for the apartment he shared with his two roommates and there was still six months to go. Nevertheless, he and Julie were ok with that. It gave them a target date for step one - living together.

In about three months, they would start seriously looking for a place for them. Jacob now wondered if things might have been different if he and Julie had been able to move in together right away. If the first domino never falls does everything stay standing - maybe. Julie was a model.

This meant that she traveled a lot. They had been engaged for about two months when Julie had to go to London for a week for a shoot. She asked Jacob to come too, but he could not get the time off work. This was their most busy time of the year and as a new supervisor, he was not replaceable. Hey, maybe he didn't make the kind of money that Julie made, but he was doing pretty well.

He had even managed to buy a brand new BMW. It meant a healthy car payment, but he could afford it. So, Julie went to London and Jacob stayed at home.

The first weekend she was gone they talked on the phone every night. As the second weekend approached he anticipated her return to him and the fun they would have. Julie called him on Friday night.

She was very excited. She was not coming home the next day as he had expected. She had been hired to fly to Paris for 10 days of shooting there. Jacob had not been particularly jealous of her when she went to London. After all, she had invited him to come too. He had missed her, but it had only been a week. Now, another week and a half, this meant two more weekends.

Jacob had just stayed home the last weekend even though his roommates had gone out clubbing and had the usual great time. He had not been clubbing with them since he and Julie had become engaged. After his call with Julie he decided that he was going to go out with them this weekend. What was the harm? He needed a guy's night out anyway. Friday was a great night, he danced, he drank, he flirted, he was the life of the party.

He had been out of action for two months, but it was 'just like riding a bicycle' in no time he was back on top. Then there was this redhead. She was a knockout.

Not quite Julie, but pretty close. He didn't think he had really encouraged her, but pretty soon she was all over him. He remembered being sprawled back on one of the lounges in the VIP section with the redhead (he never even got her name) on top of him locked in a deep passionate kiss.

It was a bit unseemly conduct for the club, but Jacob, caught up in the moment, was not thinking of that. Shortly after that 'moment', she was gone, the club was closing and Jacob went home alone. Well, that was what he intended. After all he was engaged. Saturday night he was back at the club. He was looking for the redhead, and he found her - or did she find him? She snuck up behind him and started to breathe on his neck.

Then she was nibbling at his earlobe. Jacob missed Julie. He was supposed to be with her this weekend. They were supposed to be having a great time, but she had gone to Paris instead. Lord knows what she would be doing there. Paris for God sakes.

All those sexy French men, anything could be happening. The redhead had unbuckled his belt and reached her hand down into his pants. Ok, this was officially getting out of control. It wasn't so much that he didn't want her hand in his pants; he didn't want to get kicked out of the club.

He whispered to her. She withdrew her hand, but before he could refasten his belt she grabbed the buckle and pulled it from his pants. Then she made a loop putting the running end back through the buckle and slipped the loop over Jacob's head creating a leash. Jacob should have been mortified, but he was not.

So much blood had suddenly moved below his waist that he thought he might pass out. But as she pulled on the make shift leash and led him across the room he followed. The redhead led Jacob down the hallway and into the women's restroom. Several women were inside but nobody screamed or told him to leave. The redhead led Jacob into one of the stalls and closed the door. Jacob's pants were loose without his belt and he had had to use his hands to hold them up.

The redhead now moved his hands away from the top of his pants and unzipped his fly. Then she let go and his slacks fell to his ankles. His shorts followed his pants to the top of his shoes. Then she pushed him back onto the toilet seat. She pulled on the belt leash around his neck and he found it difficult to breathe. The lack of oxygen combined with the amount of alcohol he had consumed made everything blurry. Apparently, the redhead had lifted her skirt and removed her panties (she may have been commando) because Jacob could suddenly feel the moistness of her as she slid down his very erect penis.

Then she started to work up and down. She was rolling her hips with each stroke. Her mouth closed over Jacob's and he could feel her tongue deep in his mouth. He responded, parrying and thrusting with his tongue and thrusting up in response to her movement. Through it all, she continued to pull on the belt around his neck. He could have easily loosened her grip but both of his hands were under her dress holding on to her buttocks.

She let out a squeal and shrieks and he a grunt and groan as they both exploded. He rolled his head back and exhaled deeply. She gave him a big grin. Leaned forward and gave him a peck of a kiss on the lips then jumped back off him smoothing down her dress before she disappeared out the stall door and then the door of the bathroom. Jacob started to jump up to follow her but came up short with a jerk. Somehow, she had tied the end of the belt around the water pipe on the back of the toilet. Before he could even reach his pants and pull them up, he had to figure out the knot and get the belt untied.

Unfortunately she had not closed the stall door when she had left and several girls were now assembled there giggling, and - oh no - snapping pictures or video with their phones. Jacob tried to hold up his hands in front of his face to block the pictures, but he needed his hands to untie the belt. Finally, he just gave up and worked on the knot for what seemed like minutes. As the knot came undone and he was able to stand up, the girls with the camera phones screeched and ran away. Jacob quickly pulled up his underwear and pants and ran from the restroom.

He had not even removed the loop of the belt from his neck as he quickly went into the men's restroom. Only then, did he remove the belt and return it to its place around the top of his pants. He had now drawn a group of male observers. This just kept getting worse. Jacob left the club and went home. What should he do now?

Word would get out. Julie would learn something. What if the pictures from the bathroom went viral? What was he going to tell Julie?

He took out his phone with the thoughts of calling her - it would be morning there- then he saw there was a text blinking. It was from Julie. The text was: '????' There was an attachment. He opened it. It was a picture of the redhead straddling Jacob on the lounge from the night before, the two of them clearly engaged in a deep very erotic kiss. That was not good.

If someone had sent that, there was no doubt in his mind that what happened tonight was already on its way to Julie, if not there already. Jacob needed to explain.

He hoped he could get to her before she learned about tonight. He called, but it only went to voice mail.

Well, she was very busy. He sent a text: 'I can explain. Just then, his two roommates came in.

As soon as they saw him, they broke down laughing. There were three videos and they had all three on their phones. The first was Jacob being led across the room in the club by the leash made from his belt. That was not good. The second was in the women's restroom, looking at the closed door of the stall. You could see movement through the crack in the door, and the sounds from inside left little to the imagination. But, the third video was Jacob with his pants and shorts down around his ankles his penis slacked over, clearly wearing the results of prior sex, as he struggled to untie the belt/leash.

He noticed in the video that he had not even been able to close his legs because of his pants around his ankles holding him spread over the toilet. His roommates were enjoying this, but Jacob was miserable. How could he have been so stupid? He tried calling Julie a few more times - voicemail. He wasn't even sure what he was going to say other than how sorry he was. It was absolutely clear that he had been unfaithful.

He had had sex with another woman. And, he had made a complete fool of himself in the YouTube world.

Jacob sent several more text messages and left a few voice messages but there was no response from Julie. Clearly, she knew and she was figuring out what to do.

He decided all he could do was wait until she was ready to talk to him - if that day ever came. Monday an express mail delivery arrived for Jacob. It contained the engagement ring he had given to Julie. Nothing else, not even a note. By Tuesday the video trio had received over a million hits. Jacob was becoming a YouTube celebrity. Certainly not the kind he wanted to be.

He was suddenly 'that guy.' Julie had never spoken to him after that. He still tried to text and call her, but to no avail. She had even unfriended him. And, she was not the only one.

It suddenly seemed that many people that use to suck up to him did not want to be associated with him in any way. He was getting a lot of friend requests, but they were mostly from people who had figured out that it was him in the video and who were more than a little weird themselves. Finally, he took down his page. After three weeks his boss called him in to 'talk'. Even though the conduct in the videos had occurred on his own time, Jacob's boss deemed it to undermine Jacob's ability to be a supervisor.

How could he properly supervise people who had seen him in such a compromising situation? It seemed that was everyone. Jacob was not fired, but he had lost his promotion. Jacob had been hiding out at home, but then a weekend, now a full month after the redhead had devastated him, Jacob's roommates convinced him to go with them to a club. At least they were still talking to him.

It was not the club where the video was made. Jacob had been 86ed from that club. He was fearful that he would not be allowed in any club, but the bouncer gave him the 'I will be watching you' look and then accepted his cover charge. ( link opens in new window ) Jacob had a few drinks and had actually been able to talk to a couple of people who didn't seem to know, or care, about the video. Maybe it was finally becoming old news. If there was ever anyone who wanted his 'fifteen minutes' to be over it was Jacob. As Jacob was enjoying his third cocktail and talking to a nice and attractive blonde, a small redhead - not the one from before - approached him followed by two guys.

She may have had too much to drink or just been aggressive. 'Can I borrow your belt?' She asked as she reached forward and touched the buckle. The two guys exploded in laughter. 'Get away from me.'

Jacob shouted and swept her hands away from his body. This spun the girl and she fell hitting her head on the side of a wooden stool.

Her scalp split and blood started to spurt. 'You asshole.' One of the men said as he pushed his body into Jacob. The other man was helping the girl on the floor up to a sitting position.

There was a lot of blood. 'She was only trying to have some fun you didn't need to punch her.' 'I didn't punch her asshole. I moved her hands off of me. If she weren't so drunk she would not have fallen down.'

But by this time the bouncer was already there. What he saw was the idiot from the You-Tube videos next to a bleeding girl who appeared to have been knocked out. You are out of here.' He grabbed Jacob and dragged him from the club making sure he left the front door with an extra push. Jacob stumbled, could not maintain his balance, and fell to the sidewalk tearing a hole in his pants and landing on his knuckles which tore and scuffed the skin. He caught a cab home. As the cab drove away he heard sirens in the background.

Two days later the police showed up at his place of work and brought him down to the police station to give a 'statement'. Once in a small interview room, a detective, much too large for such a small room, invaded Jacobs body space and asked: 'What is about guys like you that make you hit women?' 'I never hit any woman.'

Jacob protested. The cop was not buying it. He examined Jacob's hands. Jacob tried to explain the fall outside the club. The cop scoffed. The interrogation went on for two hours before Jacob finally said: 'That is it, I am not talking anymore.

I want a lawyer.' The interview ended and Jacob was arrested for Aggravated Assault, a felony charge. It seemed the girl had gone to the hospital and had stayed there for two days.

Both of the guys with the girl said that she had only asked Jacob if the video was real or staged and without warning he had hit her in the face. Jacob sat in jail for three days before his roommates helped him make bail. Jacob later learned that they debated helping him but figured if he was in jail he couldn't contribute his third of the rent so they got him out. Jacob thanked them and protested his innocence. Jacob got the feeling they didn't believe him and that really worried him. If his best friends did not believe him what chance did he have?

And, in the end it was no chance. His lawyer got him a deal for a misdemeanor. Jacob at first refused, after all he was innocent. But the lawyer pointed out that if he was convicted of the felony he would go to prison for years.

And, the jury would get to see the videos. It was the prosecutions' theory that Jacob had hit the girl because she had mentioned the video that he was so embarrassed about and because she was a redhead like the girl who had humiliated him in the videos. They wanted the jury to see the similarities between the two girls. Jacob knew he was trapped. He pled guilty to the misdemeanor. His attorney told him he should get probation, after all he was a first offender.

He would probably have to take some counseling and do some community service, but the two days he spent in jail should be enough. It was not enough for the judge. As she began to speak to Jacob her face turned red - to match her hair.

She called this a 'brazen and vicious attack.' She told Jacob he 'was lucky the girl was not more seriously injured' and 'that the prosecution had been overly kind in letting him off without a felony.' He was given six months in jail. And, he was to be committed forthwith. He was placed in handcuffs and taken away. He was given no chance to even get his affairs in order. Six months is not a long time in most of our lives, but six months locked up while the rest of the world moves forward can be almost forever.

Suddenly Jacob had no income. He also had no family to help.

His employer replaced him, so he had no job. Shortly after he went in the lease on the apartment came to an end and his former roommates moved on. After the lease ended he never saw them again. After the second month, nobody came to see him and nobody was accepting his phone calls, which from the jail can only be collect.

Jacob worried about his things. He knew his car had been repossessed - that meant that his credit was fucked. His roommates claimed they had sold some of his things to pay his part of the rent for the last two months.

No mention was made of the cleaning deposit and neither of them would return his calls after he did get out. After he was released he went to the old apartment and talked to the manager. His old apartment had been re-rented.

The manager gave him two boxes that supposedly contained Jacob's belongings. Two boxes, that is all. No furniture. The manager did not know what had happened to it.

No electronics. Those were all gone when the apartment was empty.

No kitchen things of any kind. The kitchen had been cleaned out completely. No sign of his laptop.

Even his pictures were gone. The boxes contained only things that had been left in the closet in Jacob's old room after his roommates were gone. Mostly clothes, not neatly packed, but just stuffed into the two boxes. Jacob wanted to take them with him, but he did not even have a car, it had been repossessed.

The manager told him he would give him a week to pick them up and then he would throw it all out. The only good news was that Jacob still had about $5,000 in his savings account and a little over $400 in his checking. He found a 15 year old Honda for $2,000. The tires had reasonable tread and the engine sounded fine, home and transportation all in one. He collected his two boxes from the proprietor of the apartment house and then he drove. There was nothing left for him here. He wanted to go somewhere else.

Anywhere else, hopefully it would be somewhere where they had not heard of or seen him, if possible somewhere that did not even have Internet. He was young, only 24.

He was strong. He was in good shape. At least that had meant he was left alone in 'stir'.

It had not been prison. It had only been a county jail, really just a 'cream puff' place, but to Jacob it was the 'big house' and he was suddenly feeling gangster. Hey, he was an ex-con. Nobody better mess with him. There was no place in particular that he was going. Maybe work on a ranch or a farm.

It was hard, clean work, that was the kind of place that he would look for. He didn't take the interstate. The kind of place he wanted wasn't found on an interstate exit. Besides, he had discovered that his new ride needed an alignment and shook intolerably over 50 mph.

But, that was ok; he was in no particular hurry. He did not stop until he had put 1,000 miles between him and his past.

Then he started to cruise through small farming towns. They were small, but they also seemed inviting. These were not the ones with the super service stations for the truckers and tourists along the interstate. The nearest interstate was an hour or more away. These were the towns that had been bypassed. It was pretty much still 1950 in these places, even earlier in some.

Jacob would find the diner. Every town had one where the farmers had breakfast at 5 or 6 in the morning. He would ask if anyone was hiring. He got a few jobs this way, but nothing for more than a day or two. He also found the local bar or club, out here it was almost always called a 'roadhouse'. They all had a lot of cheap beer, bluegrass or country music that sounded better after two or three beers and women who had never seen a town with a population of more than 5,000 people. Sometimes he connected, most times he was happy just drinking his beer and listening to the music.

He was even starting to like country. It had only been about two months since he had been released from jail and started his quest for a new life but already he was feeling better about it. Nobody had mentioned the video. He sometimes received questioning looks when he came into town, but it was the 'what is this stranger doing in our town?' Look, not the 'where have I seen that guy before?'

Jacob wasn't even sure what the towns' names were. They all sounded the same. He would bother to learn the name when he found one where he could get hired. It was about 10 pm. Jacob was on his second beer when this cute little thing came up and sat at the stool next to him.

She looked to be about 20 (she wasn't asked for ID, but that would be pretentious in a town where everyone knew everyone) she had auburn hair cut to shoulder length. She was small, no more than 5'4' and could not have weighed more than 90 pounds. Jacob could have lifted her with one arm. She was wearing Daisy Duke cutoff jeans, a straw cowboy hat and red cowboy boots.

Her breasts were not large, but created perky points in her sleeveless plaid shirt. It did not appear she was wearing a bra. Given the surroundings, she looked like she had just walked onto set from central casting. She smiled and opened small talk. Jacob had been in a few towns were strangers were strictly avoided. He had sat all night in a few roadhouses without anyone other than the waitress or bartender acknowledging his presence.

He had tried to talk to people who only looked at him like he was speaking Chinese. But this girl had approached him and started talking to him. It was welcome. He offered to buy her a beer and she accepted. The next thing he knew it was 1:30 a.m., he and the girl were the only ones left and the bartender told them he needed to close up. Jacob had not taken a motel room that night.

He only did that every four or five days to get a shower. He was trying to figure out where he could take this 'pretty young thing'. She then suggested she knew an afterhour's place that was a lot of fun.

Jacob didn't hesitate for a second before taking her up on that offer. She asked if he had his car. He affirmed he did and they set out together along dusty country roads with her giving direction and him driving. It took about 30 minutes before they pulled up near a cluster of buildings.

Jacob could see lights coming from one of them and there were at least six cars parked out front. Jacob and Sally (he had learned her name) got out of the car and Jacob started to walk toward the building with the lights, but Sally took his hand and with a coquettish grin and led him off toward a different building. Jacob did not resist. As they entered a set of large double doors, Jacob could tell they were in a stable.

Sally moved him to one of the stalls. There were openings or windows or something high up in the building because the moonlight was streaming through and Jacob's eyes quickly adapted to the light. Sally stood on her toes and tried to kiss Jacob. The difference in height made this a challenge. She tugged on his shirt in a downward motion and he knelt and then sat on the floor in the straw. Then she was on top of him, her tongue invading his mouth. She unbuttoned his shirt working her mouth down his chest with each button, lingering and moving from side to side.

She stopped to lick each of his nipples. Her 90 pounds easily pushed his 240 back onto his back. He felt her hands at his belt, felt his fly open, and he used his legs to lift his body as she pulled down his jeans until both his jeans and underwear were at his knees. First, there was the touch of her hands on his balls and penis. Then as her hands fondled his balls, he felt her tongue touch first the tip of this penis, then work softly down the side. He had expanded to full height by now (he was proud of his length and hoped she would be impressed).

He felt her mouth move down the shaft of his penis and her tongue started to flick at his balls. This was pretty amazing. She was very good and he was really enjoying this. He opened his legs as far as he could to let her get her head in to continue her work. Then he felt pressure above his balls. She had taken a hold of his scrotum above the balls and seemed to be squeezing quite tightly.

It did not hurt, but it felt strange because it was a constant pressure, not moving. But then she pulled back and stood up. Strangely, the pressure around his scrotum was still there. ( link opens in new window ) Jacob reached for his testicles.

There was something else there. Around his scrotum but above the balls was a band. It was metal of some kind and seemed to be locked on. He tried to examine it looking in the dim light for a release mechanism. He could find none. Jacob rose from the ground, but as he did he found that the small collar locked around such a sensitive part of his body had a small chain extending from it.

Jacob pulled on the chain before realizing it was locked to a ring in the floor. He was anchored by his balls to the floor of this stall. Sally stood about five feet away smiling at him. He tested the limit of his movement and realized she was just out of his reach. 'Ok, pretty kinky.

What if I don't want to play?' He was not sure that was true, but figured he needed to assert himself. 'You don't want to have fun?

I guess I could let you go and we could just go drink, although I thought you were interested in other things. Or, I could just go drink and come back later to see if you are in a more receptive mood. Yea, that sounds right.' She turned and started to walk away. Jacob called after her. 'Ok, let's play.' He held out his arms and signed for her to come to him.

Once he got a grip on her, they could make love and then he could keep hold until she let him go. 'Take off your clothes.' She started to open her shirt as she said this.

Jacob was ok with that and very quickly stripped. As he finished removing his cloths, he noticed that Sally had unbuttoned her shirt but had stopped there. 'You have to take off your cloths too.' 'Soon, we have a little more to do.' She threw what looked like a dark colored bag to him. 'Pull this over your head and then tighten the drawstring at the neck.

It is like a blindfold, but a lot better.' She had a sexy inviting grin on her face. 'I have found that this really raises the sensuality.'

Jacob looked at the bag. He did not like the idea of not being able to see. 'We don't need blindfolds.' He gestured for her to come to him with one hand while continuing to hold the bag in the other hand. 'And I thought you were ready to have some fun.' The tone was pouting. She turned again and started to walk away.

Jacob's stomach lurched. He felt his muscles tense. I'll do what you want.' As she turned to look at him from where she had walked about 15 feet away Jacob found the opening in the bag and pulled it over his head. 'There is a drawstring at the bottom. Pull it and it will keep all the light out.'

Jacob found the strings and pulled on them. As he did he heard a clicking sound. He pulled a bit more, there were more clicks. He could feel the bottom of the bag around his neck.

The bag was made of some heavy fabric and it moved out and in with his breathing. It felt very confining and Jacob decided he didn't like this. He had given it a go. He grasped the bottom of the bag and tried to open it up so he could slip it off.

It did not budge. The string would close it, but there seemed no way to open it. 'I don't like this.

How do I get it off?' His words were loud inside the bag.

He did not know how loud they would be outside. In any event, she ignored him.

'Hold your arms out front of you and ball your fists.' 'Don't spoil the surprise. I guarantee this is going to be an experience like you have never had before.' He had had some experiences he wished he had never had; he was really hoping this was not in that category.

Nervously he held up his hands with his fist closed. He felt something go over his right hand, then his left. There was another clicking sound similar to what he had heard when he pulled the drawstring on the hood. He pulled his hands back. She had put something over them. He tried to open his hands and found that they were confined in bags similar to that over his head. He shook his hands but the coverings stayed in place.

She must have tightened them around his wrists. Instinctively he raised his hand to his mouth only to be reminded that his mouth was shielded under the hood. By playing along he had let her get a lot more control over him. But even without hands he was much larger and stronger than she was. He may not be able to grip with his hands but if he could get an arm around her she would never break loose. 'Raise your right arm and hold it extended.'

Her voice was less melodic and more demanding. I don't like this game anymore. Let me out of here...

He tried to sound commanding. There was a whooshing sound followed by a loud crack, almost like the sound of a gun, but it was not a gun and Jacob felt the air from the pop of the whip no more than an inch from his right nipple. 'Raise you right arm and hold it extended.' Her tone had not increased. It was exactly the same as the last command, authoritative but without any sense of anxiety. This has gone far enough already.

Get this shit off of me.' It came out more whiny than authoritative. He cursed himself for that. There was a whooshing sound again, but this time the crack was punctuated with a burning pain just below his left nipple.

He pulled both of his gloved hands up to try to massage the wounded flesh. 'Raise you right arm and hold it extended.' He did not think she would actually whip him, but she had, and it had hurt a lot. It did not seem that this game would play out well for him if he kept refusing. He raised his right arm and held it extended. He felt something wrap around his wrist and buckle or close shut. He could tell she was keeping a safe distance from him.

If he had hands he might be able to grab her, but with the bags over his hands that was impossible. 'Now raise your left arm and hold it extended.' What choice did he have? He held up his left hand as she wrapped and fastened something around the wrist. 'Turn around and kneel down.'

He complied without thinking of what she was going to do next. 'Place your hands behind your back and touch them, palms in.'

He knew what that meant. She was going to secure his hands behind his back.

That was not good. He needed a plan, but he did not know what it was going to be.

He did not want more strikes from the whip. He hesitated, she waited, and eventually he placed his hands together behind his back. Almost as quickly as his wrists touched he felt something clip through rings on the cuffs. He tested his arms.

His wrists were cuffed and fastened together with some sort of clip behind his back. They did not appear to be locked in any fashion, but with his hands covered he could not manipulate any type of clipping mechanism. 'Hold your position.' He did not move. He could feel her at his ankles. He thought of rolling to his side and kicking her, but he suspected that would not end well.

Even if he did damage to her he would still be anchored to the floor with his hands held behind his back. When she moved back he moved his ankles and realized that she had placed a cuff on each ankle and connected them with a short hobble. How short he did not know, but he doubted he was running anywhere. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe now she would release his balls from the floor anchor. She had not said anything to him, but he felt her at his back.

She placed something around his left upper arm just above the elbow. It felt metal.

Everything else had just clipped on; this seemed to require tightening with some sort of wrench. When she was done with the left upper arm she pushed his right arm out a short distance and began fastening the same type device to that arm. When she had finished he tried to move his arms and realized that the two cuffs on his upper arms were connected with some sort of metal rod. She ordered and he felt the bite of a switch or crop against the outside of his thigh.

It did not hurt as much as the whip had but he figured she could make it hurt a lot more if she wanted. He stopped wiggling. She was doing something on the center of the bar between his elbows and the effect was that the bar was lengthening and thus pushing his elbows apart. As his elbows moved apart his wrists moved up toward the bar. At some point she stopped turning the bar and he heard another click.

He tried to maneuver his hands and realized that his elbows were connected by a metal bar that ran from the inside of one upper arm to the other with his wrists then clipped to the bar in the middle. That was just unacceptable. He twisted his hands inside their bags and cuffs. He pushed his arms back and forth and tried to twist against the bar. He shook his upper body back and forth twisting and pulling at the restraints. Everything held tight and there was almost no movement.

He heard her giggle. 'It's way too late for that.' He felt her hand stroke his shoulder. 'Why are you doing this? Let me go now!' This did not feel like a game anymore.

This felt like something serious and he did not like that feeling at all. He felt completely vulnerable. Even when he was in jail he had not felt this vulnerable. There he always knew there were rules. Here, now, he had no idea what was happening and what would happen.

All he knew for sure is that this 90-pound girl had effectively subdued him and he was now very much at her mercy. Chapter 2 Jacob stopped struggling and let his head drop forward. The sound of his now heavy breathing was accentuated by the hood covering his head. He heard something. It was voices. Not Sally's, somebody else. At least two somebodys.

Jacob called out. Aren't you in a bit of a fix?' It was one of the two voices he had heard. She caught me. I can't get loose.

Please help me.' 'She certainly did. And a fine catch it is.

Good work Sally.' Jacob felt a finger tracing the muscle definition of his chest. It tracked over to his left breast and took a moment to tease the nipple. Jacob gasped involuntarily. 'Nice indeed. And responsive it would appear. Very strong looking, but do you think it can run?'

It was clear that this new girl was not talking to Jacob. It was also clear that she was not going to help him. He felt his body slump with resignation of the fact that he could do nothing to free himself. 'I don't know. I can't wait to get him broken and see how he works saddled.' It was Sally's voice. 'Saddled' that did not sound encouraging to Jacob.

He did not know what she had in mind, but it was pretty clear that Sally had no intention of letting him go. 'He is pretty compliant so hopefully training will go well.'

'Don't let your guard down. The seemingly compliant ones always have a little surprise waiting.' Jacob did not think of himself as compliant.

And, if they thought he was going to just give up to them and let them 'break' him or 'saddle' him then they did have a surprise coming. 'That is true, but this one is very pain adverse.

I can't wait to see how he reacts to a taste of the training ring.' Sally giggled as she said this last part. If he hadn't been frightened before he was certainly feeling it now. What in the hell was going on here?

This was not some bizarre spur of the moment thing. It did not seem that Jacob was the first to be captured by these girls. No wonder Sally had taken him so easily.

It was all planned out with everything see needed in place. She was able to maneuver him to just the right place and then get his guard down through sex to fasten him to the floor. Where had the little chain and ring been hidden? Must have been in the straw.

It really was true that the big head can't think when the little head was busy. From the moment she had his balls locked to the chain he was done and she had won. He wondered how many times she had done this before. Where were the others?

But more importantly, what was going to happen to him now? 'On your feet.' It was Sally and the command was accompanied by an upward pressure on the chain that connected to the ring around his scrotum below his penis and above his testicles. Any pressure on the chain pulled on the ring and put pressure on his balls. As leashes go this one worked well, he would go wherever she pulled without any question. He quickly got to his feet and then started to walk forward as she pulled on the chain.

At first he almost fell from the limited step allowed by the hobble between his ankles. It was only about twelve inches so he had to shuffle along to try to keep up with her. It did not help matters to be hooded.

He could not see a thing and with his arms fastened behind him he could not use his hands. There was not even the assistance of a hand on his arm to guide him, only the pull at his testicles, painful if he did not keep up, yet if he tried to anticipate he lost his sense of direction. He expected to slam into a post, or wall, or trip on something on the floor at any moment, but the threat to his testicles kept him moving forward.

( link opens in new window ) She had stopped pulling forward but Jacob only knew that because a hand against his chest stopped his forward progress. 'You may be right about this one. He seems very anxious to please.' It was the other girl. He had no desire to please any of these people.

He just had an abiding desire not to have his balls pulled off. Jacob's fear was being replaced by anger. He had never hit a girl.

Even if his record said differently he had never done it, but he was willing to change that now. He went to jail for putting a girl in hospital when he had really done nothing.

Now he wanted to put at least one, maybe two in hospital. But right now they were in control. He would have to wait. He would have to be patient, and then he would take his revenge.

And revenge would be oh so sweet. Now there were hands on his upper arms, hands on both sides. He was being guided forward, but slowly. He moved as they led until his upper body bumped up against something. He could feel something like a bar just below his neck, another at his stomach and another at his thighs. There were hands on his back pushing him forward against the bars - one of the girls. He could clearly have overcome her strength and pushed back even without hands, but he did not.

He felt straps cross his shoulders, then at his waist and then below his buttocks across his thighs. Now he was held to the bars. He wondered if he should have resisted. It was too late now, but did it really matter? He could have resisted but it is likely he would eventually be in the position he was in, only it would be after a lot of pain. Sally had called him 'pain adverse' he would rather think of it as intelligent.

There was no point in receiving pain just to demonstrate his resistance. In fact that seemed counterproductive. Better he appear compliant so they would make a mistake and let their guard down. Even if he had managed to break free of their grasp, what then? He could not see a thing. He did not have use of his hands.

He was hobbled to a twelve inch step. And, by the way, they had him on a leash to his testicles. There was no other option but to do what they wanted - at least for now. He felt his legs being pulled out to the limit of the hobble and then heard clicks as each ankle was secured outward. He would now not be able to move his feet.

There was somebody behind him. He felt the bags being removed from his hands. Maybe they were going to release his hands and arms, even secured to this frame that might present an opportunity.

He needed to remain alert and wait for an opportunity. His wrists and arms were not released. Instead each hand was opened up and he felt and smelled someone putting something on his fingernails. Were they polishing his nails? Oh well, that was not a big deal.

(What Jacob did not know was that it was not nail polish at all it was a special chemical designed to stop the growth of and kill his fingernails. They would stop growing within days and within weeks they would all fall off. They would never grow again. But for the purposes of his captors he did not need fingernails and growing nails would be a bother they did not want to have to deal with.) Whoever was working behind him removed the clip holding his wrists up to the bar, and even removed the wrist cuffs. Jacob was now able to straighten his arms, but with the cuffs on his upper arms he could do nothing more than flop them up and down.

He could feel the belt around his waist but there was no sign of a buckle or fastening of any kind. He could not reach the belt at his thighs or the one at his shoulders.

There were hands on his hands lifting them up against his arms. He pulled his hand free and dropped it down.

He heard the sound of the air being separated just before he felt the fire on his buttocks and heard the report of the quirk hitting home. Not insurmountable, not like the bull whip had hurt, but it hurt enough to get his attention. And it proved his point. They could hit him with the quirt a lot more times than he was willing to endure just to make a meaningless point.

He folded his lower arms up against each other and along the metal bar. The person behind him was now wrapping his arms and the bar with something like gauze. They worked from elbow to elbow until his lower arms were completely wrapped.

It sort of held his arms against the bar, but not tightly. But then he felt something being fitted over his arms. He could smell the leather, even through the hood. The leather molded to his arms from just above the metal cuff on each upper arm down and across this folded lower arms creating a leather U shaped enclosure. It laced along the inside and top but like a corset laces started in the center and then worked out in each direction until each lacing ended on the upper arm. Whoever was doing this had done it before.

The arm binder, that is what it was, was first installed loosely. Then the laces were tightened, working from the center out. Then the process was repeated working any slack out until both sides of the device almost met. A single leather form encasing both arms and the metal rod between them was formed. Jacob tried to move his fingers but could barely wiggle them. This thing was not coming off without help.

Then he felt heat near his upper arms and smelled a burning smell. The laces had been knotted at the top on each inside arm but then the laces were melted around the knot. It could not be untied. To remove this binder the laces would have to be cut. This was a pretty major complication. It was a pretty good bet with this amount of work that they did not intend to remove the arm restraints very often or soon for that matter.

Jacob felt the neck of the hood being loosened. This was done with ease, as if all one had to do was pull at the base, but Jacob knew that was not the case.

He had tried before he lost the use of his hands. He wondered what the secret was, although he was pretty sure it would at least require hands, something he no longer had. Then the hood was pulled off. They were in a room painted white with a clean concrete floor.

The person who had removed the hood was not Sally. It was, although, a small female. This one was only about 5'2' very petite.

She had pretty green eyes and light red hair pulled to the side in two braids. Of course it was red hair.

She held up what looked like a bundle of straps in her right hand. 'This is your head gear. Your bridle, it is going on, easy or hard, painful or not, it is your choice.' There was something in the way she looked into his eyes and the tone of her voice that convinced Jacob that not painful was the right choice. He also seemed to know that no response was called for from him. He just stared back into her face. She seemed to understand his acquiescence.

She lifted the tangle of straps; in her expert hands they quickly found their way onto his head. A strap circled his head at the forehead.

At either side of the head it intersected with another strap that circled his head from the crown down the sides and under his chin where it crossed and then passed around his neck to buckle in the back. Another strap came from the back of his head around to where it met rings located on either side of his head. Two shorter straps with additional rings connected to this ring projected forward so that each of these rings lay just forward of the corners of his mouth. The straps down the sides of his head also supported a panel of about three inches on each side near his eyes. This panel was equipped with snaps that would allow different types of additions to be added very easily.

Once in place the girl moved around adjusting the straps until she was satisfied with the arrangement. Jacob did not like the feel of this thing around his head. Even though it really did not interfere with anything it felt confining. He somehow knew that he was not going to like this appliance.

The confirmation came quickly. 'Open your mouth.' He really did not want to but did so hesitantly, still looking into her eyes. As soon as his mouth was open she shoved something between his jaws.

He stopped cooperating and tried to move his head from side to side to dislodge the invader, but she was ready for that and quickly snapped it onto the two rings that extended to the edges of his mouth. As her hands left his face he shook his head back and forth and pushed at this unwelcome thing with his tongue. Neither effort had any effect. He bit down to find that whatever it was there was a rubberized coating over its exterior.

He was pretty sure that the device was made of metal he was at least happy that it had some type of coating to protect his teeth. But it was more than a metal bar running through his mouth. He could feel something lying on his tongue. It had a brank of about two inches that extended back toward his throat. He could also tell that it had levers that positioned through the rings at the side of his mouth and that pressure on the levers would cause the brank to be pushed down against his tongue. Don't do this.'

He tried to say, but now it was just a jumble of noises that even he could not understand. He wildly shook his head, but the bridle fit perfectly to his head and the bit now lodged between his teeth was going nowhere. It had the effect of both bridling him and gagging him. Two birds with a single bit as it were. Jacob's attention was quickly drawn away from his head.

He felt activity below his waist. The band that Sally had utilized to capture him by capturing his testicles loosened and disappeared. He was glad to have that controlling device gone, but his relief was short lived. Something else was being placed in exactly the same spot.

Only this seemed to have more weight. In addition, as he looked down he could see the girl closing the two halves of this new device with some kind of Allen wrench.

When she was done it was tighter than before. Next she pulled a belt, at least six inches wide around his waist. Before she closed it into place she connected two wires from the device around his scrotum into slots on the inside of the belt. Then the belt was closed and cinched also using a wrench. Without the tool, even with hands it was not coming off.

'Ok pony, you are almost done. Even though ponies don't get to have conversations I want to make sure you understand the device that has just been placed on you.

This is a control ring. It has a GPS device monitor so we can always tell where you are, but just as importantly it is never allowed to be outside a defined perimeter. If you hit the perimeter there will be a five second warning.' She pushed a button and Jacob felt a buzzing around his scrotum. 'Pretty easy to discern. If you are not back in the allowed territory within the five seconds, or if someone pushes the control button, well... I think you should know what will happen.'

She held up a small remote control and pushed a red button. Jacob had never in his life felt such pain. It felt as if someone had reached inside him and dragged his insides out through his penis. He immediately lost control of his bladder and bowls.

Urine sprayed from his penis and brown goo leaked from his rear. He needed to get his hands around his stomach, but they were locked behind him. He needed to crawl into a ball, but he was held tightly to the bars of the frame.

All he could do was push his head back and shriek. 'Pretty much the same reaction I have seen every time. Would you like a second demonstration?' He was wildly shaking his head back and forth. He was ready to do whatever she wanted to keep from having that happen again. He looked down at the innocuous looking metal band that circles his scrotum.

How could something so small cause such horrific pain? This was a major game changer. As long as this thing was connected to him he was going to be very very careful. ( link opens in new window ) 'No. He tried to say, but it came out as babbling. Even without the bit in his mouth it would have been hard to understand. She said as she patted him on the side of the head, then she turned and walked away leaving Jacob shaking and shivering.

If it wasn't for the bands holding him to the frame he would have collapsed onto the ground. It was hard to breath. He was gasping for air. He was hyperventilating. He was alone. He was trying to make sense of things.

Why did they do this to him? Again he dropped his head forward and looked at the small metal ring. It was less than an inch wide. The interior diameter could not be more than an inch.

It was thick, almost half an inch. Tight, but not overly constrictive, but tight enough. It was not going to come off. Even if he had use of his hands it would be virtually impossible to feed his testicles through the small opening that locked around his scrotum.

He could see metal loops on the outside surface, at least two of them. The earlier device had shown the efficacy for attaching a leash. He was certain the loops preserved this diabolical use. Thus, it had the ability to control him both manually and through its implementation of pain to terrorize him. As his breathing came back under control he became more aware of the implement in his mouth. He was drooling down the sides of his face.

He tried to suck back the liquid, but with his mouth held open that seemed impossible to control. He could also feel the flat metal plate lying on top of his tongue. It moved freely up and down when he pushed with his tongue but did not seem at all limited in movement by the pressure exerted by his teeth on the shaft. The interior portion, the brank, must move on a free rod set inside the larger bar that extended from cheek to cheek.

The rings in his bridle - that is what she had called the head piece - held it deep in his mouth applying pressure to the sides of his mouth. He did not like the feel of it. He did not want this thing in his mouth, but like everything else they did there was nothing he could do about it. He hoped that it would not be permanent. Jacob heard movement. Had she returned?

Was Sally back? What were they going to do to him now? He was still fastened to the frame. Why had they not removed him? It sounded like something was rolling over the floor. He turned his head to the side trying to get a look. He saw another woman.

This one was pushing a small cart, really more a table, on wheels. It was somebody new. How many of them were there? As she pushed the cart around in front of him she smiled. He looked briefly into her face. She was a little older than Sally or the girl who had just finished torturing him. She was wearing a white coat like a doctor or a lab technician.

His eyes fell on the stainless steel tray on the top of the cart. There were devices that looked like tools for working leather. There were forceps, a soldering iron, and rings of various sizes. There was also a small box of cotton swabs and some bottles the contents of which he did not recognize. His body started to shake again. There were needles, large and long needles.

He was sure he was not going to enjoy this. As Jacob struggled to remove himself from the confining straps the woman put on a pair of surgical gloves. She took a piece of cotton and used one of the bottles to wet it. Then she used the now moist cotton to clean first one then the other nipple. The liquid felt cold and he could feel the nub of his nipples harden in response. She carefully inspected each nipple, placing her head close enough that he could feel her breath on his body.

It was not erotic. She lifted a pair of forceps. They had openings between the tongs. Then she used one hand to pinch and pull one of his nipples forward applying the forceps to the extended flesh. He tried to shake his body to dislodge the device but his range of motion was too limited to have any effect.

Then using something that looked like a wine cork and a needle that now looked about a foot long he watched in horror as she pushed it through the flesh behind the nub of his right nipple. He expected it to hurt, but compared to what the last girl had done the pain did not seem that bad. Removing the forceps she used the needle to thread a ring through his flesh. He was being pierced. She repeated the process on the other nipple.

Next she knelt in front of him and took his penis in her hand. Once again she swabbed it with the moistened cotton. He had heard of men who pierced their penis, but the thought of it turned his stomach.

There was little doubt in his mind what she was about to do. He also knew there was nothing he could do to stop her. There wasn't.

She pushed a needle through the head of his penis. Not the skin, the penis itself.

This did hurt and he screamed through the bit, but she paid no attention to him. Soon a ring of almost an inch and a half had been treaded through the end of his penis. She apparently knew what she was doing because it was set lower in the penis, obviously to keep it from interfering with the passage through the penis.

She was not finished with his groin. She picked up a can of shaving cream and quickly lathered his crotch. He watched in terror, holding as still as he could as she then went to work with a straight razor shaving away all of the hair between his legs. He hoped that she was finished, but she was not. She held his chin with one hand and inspected his nose with the other. He tried to free his chin and move his head back and forth.

'The easy way or the hard way?' Was all she said as she looked into his eyes.

This woman was taller than the others. Not as tall as Jacob, but close enough. He knew what her question meant. He stopped resisting and closed his eyes. He felt something pushed against his nostrils, he felt pressure on his septum, then there was a popping sound and a pinch of pain in his nose.

Her hands withdrew and he opened his eyes. He saw her lift a bronze colored ring about an inch in diameter and feed an open end through the opening she had made in his septum. He did not move as she fed the ring through his nose. The woman then picked up the soldering iron and quickly applied it to the opening in each of the four rings. It must have been a cold solder because he did not feel any heat as she closed each ring. She carefully inspected each ring, turning it in his flesh to make sure it moved freely and was closed in an inescapable circle. He had been ringed.

She removed her gloves and dropped them onto the tray. 'Those should heal up just fine in a few days. There may be a little pain, but I am sure you can endure it.' She had picked up something else from the tray.

He was not sure what it was. Her hand returned to his penis which was now completely limp. Acting quickly in case it responded to the touch she bent it back toward the ring at his scrotum. He heard a click and she let go.

His penis stayed bent over, doubled back to his scrotum. Jacob looked down and could see that she had utilized a small padlock to lock the ring in the head of his penis to one of the loops in the control ring.

'There, that should keep you out of trouble.' Jacob was horrified with the sight. What would that feel like if he became excited? She walked over to a table at the side of the room and returned with something in her hand. It was the hood that had only been removed after he had been locked in the frame. He did not want that back on his head. I'll be good.'

He tried to say as she pulled it over his head and he heard the clicking sound as it tightened around his neck. Once again he was plunged into darkness. After a short time - but it is very difficult to judge time inside a hood - Jacob felt the belts holding him to the frame being released. He was no longer anchored to anything but it made no difference. He knew he would be directed to go some place soon, but until that happened there was nothing for him to do but stand where he was. There was pressure at his control ring and a click. He was leashed again and he would follow where led.

The pull was to his left and he followed. There was a different feel to the control ring as compared to the ball restraint Sally had fixed him in before. The control ring was heavier. Even without the pull of the leash he could feel its weight pushing down on his balls.

When not pulled tight it swung back and forth with every step. It would be a constant reminder of his status.

Jacob didn't know how far they went. He was not really paying attention. He was stopped, turned, and then pushed forward. Once again his body made contact with something. This time it was a padded bar at waist level. A strap circled his waist and he was now restrained to this single bar. His current guide then clipped something to the outside of each ankle and pulled it tight.

His legs were now spread to the maximum of the hobble and anchored in place. Only then did she remove the hood. This was an entirely different girl.

How many of them were there? This was a redhead.

Jacob had in the last year acquired a strong aversion to redheads. Like most of these women she was very petite.

Again, clearly less than 100 pounds. Jacob wondered if it was something geographical to this area or something relating to what was going on at this place that led to the large number of very petite women. Maybe it was psychological. He was so much bigger, so much stronger than any of them yet here he was totally under their control. A single wisp of a girl could maneuver and move him with ease and there was not a thing in the world that he could do to prevent or even effectively protest what they wanted. This thought was underscored as the redhead clipped a line into his newly installed nose ring and pulled down. Jacob bent forward over the bar at his waist until he could physically go no further.

Keeping tension on the nose leash the redhead fastened the end to a ring in the floor. Jacob had been pulled forward to the point that his head was actually below the level of the bar at his waist. He had even had to go up onto his toes as his body was bent forward. With his arms held tightly in the arm binder behind his back he was unable to move at all. Tethered by the nose he could not even turn his head. The redhead ran her hands through Jacob's hair.

He had never worn it too long, but over the last few months it had grown out to a top length of about 3 inches. She produced an electric razor from a nearby table then starting at his forehead on the right side shaved back across Jacob's scalp. She continued taking a strip at a time from front to back. Jacob could see from the hair cascading to the floor that where she was cutting she was taking it all the way to the scalp. The beginning swipes moved quickly, but after he was sure she had rendered him bald Jacob could sense that she was now trimming. Something had been left. It was a strip about an inch to two inches wide down the center of his head from the forehead to the nape of the neck, a Mohawk.

After she put down the electric razor she produced lather and finished the job cleaning the shaved portions with a straight razor. Rubbing the now bald portions of Jacob's head clean with a towel she then proceeded to apply a gel to the remaining hair. Although Jacob could not see he could feel her working the hair so that it stood straight. Unlike the barber shop she did not ask Jacob what he thought. His opinion was not relevant.

She didn't even hold up a mirror for him to see what she had done to him. When she had finished with his head Jacob saw her pick up a lock of his freshly mown hair and carefully examine it.

She rolled it back and forth in her fingers checking the density. She held it up to the light examining the color and condition. Then she walked out of his range of view and he heard some drawers opening and closing. He tried to tilt his head to the side to see what was going on but the pain in his nose discouraged any further attempts to assuage his curiosity. He would know when, and if, she decided.

She was behind him. He felt very vulnerable pulled over with his buttocks held up over the bar and his legs stretching to keep contact with the floor. She used a damp cloth to clean up the mess that had been left on his butt and legs when he had lost control of his bowels after the shock from the control ring. Just having a woman cleaning him was degrading and underscored his complete loss of control. Then he felt pressure at his anus.

Something was being pushed into his rectum. Was she raping him? No, it was not moving in and out.

Whatever it was just went in. Then he felt something expanding just inside the anus.

The intruder was being pumped up. He was being given an enema. He could feel the water flowing into his insides. It was a gentle, but constant flow. He tried to clench to stop it, which would work for a bit, but as soon as he relaxed even a little more would flow in.

He didn't know where the redhead had gone. It seemed she had just left him to endure this most current indignity. ( link opens in new window ) Eventually the inward flow stopped. He did not know whether it was because a predetermined volume had been met or the pressure inside him had just balanced the incoming pressure. Either way the pressure was intense. He could see that his belly was distended and everything ached.

He really needed his arms to wrap around his stomach. He had never before realized just how important the use of one's arms were to providing self comfort and relief. Even though he knew it was futile he twisted and pulled at his arms, maybe the bindings had loosened a bit. They had not. He tried to push down as if passing a bowel movement to see if he could force this thing from his rectum, but the expanded plug held firm which meant that he continued to retain all the contents that had been inserted into his bowels. He was crying.

He hadn't even realized it until he felt a tear run down his cheek. How had this happened to him? If only he had never come to this place. He could have stayed in the city. That was his familiar ground. He was a stranger here and that had made him prey.

But even then, why had he left the bar with Sally. She had seemed like such a nice girl, well looks are deceiving aren't they.

But even then why did he go with her into the barn? It was for sex, and she was inviting him, right? He had come on to her. He had made it clear that he wanted to have sex with her.

But she was the one who had led him into the barn, into her trap. And how did he fall for that?

How did he let her secure that ring around his balls? He looked at the heavy control ring swinging gently back and forth with each movement of his body.

He wished he had the first ring back. There had to have been a way to get it off. Why had he not devoted his attention to removing it?

Without the ring anchoring him to the floor she would have been no match for him. Even with the assistance of her friends, assuming they were close by he could have prevailed. As he recounted the step by step erosion of his liberty he could not believe he had been so stupid. He had put the hood on his own head.

He had pulled the drawstring. He had held up his hands to be bagged. He thought it was some kinky game. By then it was clearly too late. He did not fault himself for not offering more resistance at that point. Hooded and without the use of his hands he would have never gotten that damn thing off his balls. He needed to have acted at least before his hands were bagged.

At least then he could have worked on removing the hood. He knew from having it placed on and taken off that there was some simple release mechanism. Had he resisted putting the hood on he could have devoted all his attention to the damn ring. Ok, so she threatened to walk away. That would have left him to figure out how to get that damn thing off. But no, he thought there was still sex in the offing. Well, there had been.

He had been fucked big time. Sally had played him perfectly, and from that point until now each thing they did just increased her control over him. The redhead was back.

She blotted the tears from his eyes. 'Now, now, I know that is uncomfortable, but it is almost over. You will be so clean and fresh, and I can fit your new tail.'

She ran her hand down his Mohawk, and then she ran her hands over his shoulders running them down across his chest and teasing his nipples with a finger from each hand. With his head pulled down by the line attached to his nose ring he could not see her face, but he could feel her touch. It felt really good. How could he be responding to her touch under these circumstances?

He was completely helpless and cramping with the liquid that filled his bowels, but there was something so erotic about this touch. Part of it was the knowledge that he had no control. He could not even avoid her touch, and it seemed he could not avoid his body's response to her touch. He was becoming aroused. He looked between his legs and saw that his cock was beginning to harden. But it was still bend double and locked to the control ring.

This was not going to be good. He tried to will it to soften. He tried to take his mind of the gentle stroking of his nipples, but they had somehow become the most sensitive part of his body. He could see her fingers moving back and forth, up and down but he could not even move his body. He could not move into or away from her touch.

He moaned through his bit, but she continued the gentle massaging and teasing. He looked at his cock. It was swelling. It wanted to straighten up, but ringed and locked that was not going to happen.

He could feel pain in the head of his cock as it tried to escape its bonds. The more it grew the more it hurt, but doubled over and locked to his scrotum it was worthless. She reached down and stroked it.

'Only very good ponies earn this reward.' She walked around behind him. He heard the sound of metal scraping on the floor and through his legs he could see her positioning a tub between his legs behind his buttocks. Then he could feel the plug deflating and being withdrawn.

This released a stream of brown water. She must have done this before because the position of the tub seemed perfect to catch the stream. Jacob felt utterly humiliated, but he could not have been happier to finally be able to expel the liquid. He felt her using a cloth to clean and dry his buttocks and legs and the area around his anus. Suddenly a finger inserted into his anus. Not far, just a small distance.

It was also rubbing around the anus itself. There was a cold sensation. He was being lubricated. What was that for? If she had not seen fit to lubricate him for the enema, what was coming? He tried to watch between his legs.

She had walked away for a moment but had now returned. She had something in her hand. He saw what looked like a shock of hair braided to about a 2 foot length. It was similar to the color of his own hair. He felt pressure on his anus. He wanted to move aside and dodge the invader, but the best he could do was wiggle his buttocks. That was not sufficient to prevent something that felt to be the size of baseball bat from being inserted into him.

It felt like it just kept going and going. He could see the tail. It did not hang straight down, it sat just above the invader pointing up. This meant that when he was standing it would extend parallel to the ground from his rear before it dropped down. Just below the tail, protruding slightly from his rear was a plastic tube of about an inch in diameter.

The end of the tube had what looked like a small hinged cap. From the bottom of this tube a small chain hung down. The redhead quickly pulled this chain between his legs and fastened it tightly to the back of his control ring. Jacob could feel as she took another chain from the top of the tube up to fasten at the back of the belt he wore. That would have been sufficient to hold the tube in place, but she was not finished. She produced what looked like a power screwdriver and went to work on a small Phillips head screw in the edge of the tube below where the tail connected.

As she turned the screw Jacob could feel the tube inside his rectum just behind his sphincter expanding. She must have been judging the results from the tension on the screw, as she stopped and then gave it a few more short turns. The interior of the plug felt huge. There was no way he could expel this thing even if it was not chained to his belt and control ring. He could not walk with that thing in his butt. He was sure of that.

He needed it out of him. It didn't really hurt, but it was uncomfortable. She had gone to some effort to install it. He was pretty sure it was meant to be permanent. The tube and its little gate would now replace the function of his sphincters.

But that meant he had no control over it. Waste material would accumulate and at some point the gate would be opened and the waste expelled. Based upon the tension set on the cap, the pressure required to cause it to open would be controlled. He could neither cause himself to evacuate his bowels or, more demeaning, prevent it from happening when the critical pressure level was reached. They even controlled when he could shit. He hoped that they were enjoying themselves because when he got the use of his arms back there was going to be hell to pay.

They could not keep this up forever. Eventually they would have to let him go and then. Just wait until then.

The redhead had been joined by the brunette. They moved the tub away and put a piece of paper under each of his feet. The redhead loosened the nose leash enough for him to flatten his feet back to the ground, but not enough to straighten up. As he brought his feet back flat on the floor the other girl used a marker to trace each foot onto a piece of paper. The girl left with the papers.

The redhead released the nose leash but refastened the clip to the loop on Jacob's control ring. Then she produced the now all too familiar hood and slipped it over Jacob's head. He did not resist. He already knew that was useless. Apparently they were going to move him again.

He had been in a number of places but he had no idea how they interconnected or really how big this place was. The hood was very disorienting. But it had another subtle effect. When hooded his dependence on the person controlling his leash was enhanced. Rather than feel anger and defiance toward that person he felt a sense of reliance.

They were taking care of him. They were watching out for him.

He hadn't formed these thoughts into analysis; he just knew that the minute the hood went on he felt differently about the person who controlled him. He wanted to know where the person was and he used all his available senses to try to keep track of their location. That meant that he paid almost no attention to where he was being taken or even how far it was. If he thought the person had left him there was a sense of panic. He was terribly afraid of being left alone in the hood. But that is exactly what happened. He wasn't sure where he was but he felt and heard the leash being attached to something.

Then he heard the footsteps of the redhead leaving. He listened for any movement. There was none.

He turned his head from side to side to see if that brought any sound. There was nothing. He reached forward with his foot in the direction the leash had been pulled. There was a wall there. He was standing facing a wall, not more than a foot away. He tried to turn to the side.

The pressure to his control ring from the leash prevented him from turning. He had been tethered to a wall and left to stand and await her return. Once again he twisted and pulled at his arms and hands in the arm binder. Once again there was no slack and no movement. He let his head move forward until his hooded forehead leaned against the wall.

Then he did the only thing he could do. He stood and waited. Eventually somebody did come for him. He could not know if it was the same person who had left him there. He could not know how long it had been. It seemed like a very long time, but his situation was disorienting and time was very difficult to judge. Nothing was said, but the leash was released from wherever it was connected and the directional pull led him away.

He was not even sure if it was the same or a different direction than the one he had taken to get to that spot. He sensed a door being opened and knew that he had been led into a new area. His leash was again secured and then the hood was loosened and removed. This room had wooden walls. There were pegs on the walls and leather items hanging from the pegs.

It looked like tack that might be used in a stable, but Jacob knew little of horses and riding and was unable to distinguish the use or purpose of what he saw. As in the earlier position he was facing a wall. There was a metal ring that could be raised from a position in the wall directly in front of him at just below waist level. His leash had been looped through the ring and tied off with what looked like a single overhand knot. The knot was not tightly tied. Any person could untie it with only a single hand, but for a person with no hands it was sufficient to hold the leash and thus him in place. His ability to examine the room was limited as a new leash was snapped into the ring at his nose and tied it off to another ring set higher in the wall.

( link opens in new window ) The redhead was there, she had just leashed his nose ring. She was assisted by another girl. Like most of the girls he had encountered here she was young, maybe early 20's.

Blonde hair cut in a page-boy. Once again, she was short with a petite frame. She was holding something in her hands. He could tell it was footwear of some sort, like small boots but somehow different than boots and thy where strappy. From this room he could see an open doorway leading to the outside. Light was streaming in.

It looked to be early morning. He had been held all night. There were shadows of movement outside the doorway but he could not see the people who created the shadows. The girl handed one of the boots to the redhead who had knelt down near Jacob's right leg. The redhead released the hobble chain from his right ankle but then clipped the free end to a ring in the floor.

Then she removed the cuff from the right leg. His right leg was free, but his left leg was chained to the floor and his body was still held by the leashes connected to his control and nose rings. He glanced at the doorway leading to the outside. He would have liked to have sprinted for the door but he would not be able to break free and run.

The redhead pushed against the back of his knee as she grasped his right ankle in her hand. She wanted him to lift his leg.

She would not have been strong enough to have accomplished this task over his resistance, but there seemed no point in resisting. He raised his leg and let her guide his foot up and then down into the boot. His foot slipped in easily and he felt his toes settle comfortably in the front of the boot. The front of the boot was actually open and he could see his toes under the strap. He expected to push his heel down but the inside of the boot was not flat. The heel was raised and then the arch sloped forward to the ball of the foot. The boot was a type of high heel.

He had never worn a high heel, but he had always enjoyed watching women wear and walk in them. At the ankle the boot had a three inch wide strap which she quickly fastened on the outside of his ankle. As he shifted his weight onto the new footwear he got a better sense of its structure. The toe area was a platform of about three inches wide and four to five inches long that supported the toes and ball of the foot. A strong arch support curved upward from this platform to the heel.

Although the heel was not supported from below, i.e., nothing extended down toward the ground, the arch was fully supported by strong and inflexible inserts. The body of the boot was not solid. It was made of straps and webbing.

From the platform at the toe the sole flared out to form a semi circular bottom with a four inch diameter but about three inches below the top of the platform. This platform was black and looked very much like a horses hoof. At first Jacob wobbled backwards but then was able to shift his weight slightly forward and maintain his balance on the forward part of the boot.

There was a loop on the inside of the strap around his ankle and she quickly released the hobble chain from his left ankle and attached it to the loop on the boot. The combination of the platform at the toe of the boot and the slope of the arch to his heel elevated him about six inches from the ground.

He rose to the toes of his left foot in order to keep his balance. Quickly, while Jacob was still studying the new addition she removed the cuff from the left ankle and signaled for him to raise his left foot. He complied and the left boot was quickly fitted and secured. As soon as she had secured the second boot and guided his foot back to the ground she released the hobble chain from the ring in the floor and connected it to the loop in the left ankle strap. He was no longer secured to the floor but once again he was hobbled.

He looked down at his feet trying to study this strange footwear. He could tell that all of the weight was carried on the ball of his foot and toes. The heel was completely open, but there was no flex in the boot.

He could not lower his heel. Wobbling slightly he lifted one of his feet and inspected the platform below his foot. It looked like a hoof, not a foot, and the arch of his instep held up by the footwear looked like the hocks of a horse's foot.

Jacob found that in order to maintain his balance on these new feet he had to role his hips forward so that he shifted the weight of his upper body to the front. They kept calling him a pony. He had found that curious. He had not taken that literally.

He had considered the bridle and bit as merely designed to limit his speech, but now he had to rethink that position. The redhead unfastened the leash from his control ring. Then she untied the end of the leash from his nose ring and pulled causing him to turn and then step.

With the extra six inches of height he now towered over the two small girls. The tension on the leash to his nose ring pulled his head down and he instinctively leaned forward. He was still hobbled so his steps had to be short, but he could not have taken a long stride in these boots without falling over. He prayed that he did not lose his balance and fall. He doubted that either of these wisps could have kept him up if he did. He was two and a half times the weight of either of them.

He guessed that they would just let him crash to the ground. That was not a welcome prospect without the use of arms to break his fall.

He concentrated on moving forward a short step at a time. The redhead was not rushing him. She seemed to know that he would need time to adjust to these boots and applied only enough pressure to keep him moving slowly forward. They were headed for the doorway. He was going to get a chance to see what was outside. He was not thrilled at being led by the nose. It really did make him feel like livestock.

Even though it was less frightening than when the leash was connected to his control ring guiding him be a ring through his nose was somehow much more humiliating. He could tell be the shadows that there were people outside.

He felt ridiculous. He expected roars of laughter at his expense. He was reminded of how he had felt when the video of him leashed to the toilet in the woman's restroom had gone viral. Was that what this was all about? Was he now going to be filmed and humiliated again?

Then where would he go? He had run away from the city to escape his last humiliation where would he go now? Chapter 3 As they reached the doorway he was already beginning to capture the ability to walk. The boots were surprisingly comfortable. He had heard women complain about their toes being pinched in their high heels, but these boots did not pinch his feet in any way. He could feel the strain of the raised position on the muscles at the back of his legs, but other than that the footwear was reasonably comfortable.

When you are led by a nose ring you do not turn your head from side to side so all he could see was what was in front of him and what he could capture in his limited peripheral vision mostly blocked by the blinders on his bridle. There was no person taking pictures. There was no laughing. In fact the people outside the door seemed to pay him no attention. He could tell most were women, but there were some men here. It dawned on him that he had been captured, subdued, outfitted and controlled totally by women so far. That just wasn't right.

He did not consider himself to be a chauvinist, but he did think men should be in control. That was just the natural way of things. If nothing else that was dictated by the difference in size and strength. But not here, his size and strength had been overcome completely. He was easily controlled by these very small women.

He was led across a dirt roadway toward what was clearly a corral. 'Great' he thought, 'just where you would put a horse.' The blonde opened the gate and the redhead led him through. She released the leash from his nose ring and walked back through the gate. He turned to follow, but the blonde shut the gate and engaged a latch to hold it closed. There was not lock, just a simple metal bar that was slide back and forth through metal loops.

It was enough. He could not open it. The gate and the split rail fencing of the corral were just over five feet in height. Normally he could have vaulted over it with almost no effort. In his restrained condition it might as well have been a twenty foot wall with razor wire. He knew it would hold him. He turned back to the inside of the corral.

He was not alone. There were three other males and to his surprise two females. Every one of them had their arms held behind them in arm binders similar to his. All of the livestock - that is what they clearly were - had hoofed boots similar to his although only one of the males and one of the females was hobbled. They were all bridled and had bits in their mouths and hair cut in a Mohawk style. Jacob had been unable to see what his hair actually looked like after they cut it but he could now see the style.

It was an upright inch wide strip from the forehead to the nape of the neck. From the nape of the neck most of them had a continuing mane of hair from 12' to 18' in length.

As he looked around the inside several of them looked up at him then looked away as if this was nothing strange. The two females stood together on one side of the corral. They stood so close to each other that their bodies were actually touching. The hobbled female looked like she was leaning into the other female looking for comfort. The three males were standing together. They had more distance between them. They were not touching.

One of the males was huge. He stood with his back to Jacob. His thighs were heavily muscled and as big around as the waists of some of the small girls that had tortured Jacob all night. His testicles seemed extremely large and hung at what seemed an unnatural length from his body. Jacob could see the control ring riding above them.

He must have stood at least 6'7' in height even without the boots and must have weighed 300 pounds, all of it muscle. His shoulders were as broad as an NFL lineman but there was no loose of flabby flesh hanging from his body. Everything was sculpted and looked as solid as marble. Everything that is except his upper arms. They were not large; especially in comparison to the rest of the body they were small. Whatever workout regime he employed to build the body Jacob was staring at it did not include strengthening his arms. And his arm binder looked old; although it was well polished there were clear signs of wear that comes only with age.

It looked more like... Jacob's stomach clenched. Jacob thought he was going to lose his balance and fall. The arms were like the legs of a paraplegic. It looked like they had not been used for a very long time. How long had they been held unusable in that arm binder?

This was bad. This was very bad.

Jacob turned toward the gate. He looked frantically around the corral. He needed to get out of here. He leaned back against the fence to keep his balance. It almost wasn't enough but he managed to recover and keep on his feet.

The other two males were facing toward him so he could not see their arms. He could see that they both wore control rings and that each of their penises was ringed and locked to the front of the control ring.

It did not appear that this was a temporary thing. They both appeared to be in good physical shape. The un-hobbled male was the larger of the two. Not as big as the first male, but still a large well developed individual. The hobbled male displayed a good number of red stripes and welts on his thighs. The marks wrapped around toward the back.

He had clearly been beaten. And judging from the difference in color it had been a series of beatings over a period of time. He looked up at Jacob and held eye contact.

There was sadness there. He was looking at Jacob with almost a pleading look as if he was hoping that there was something Jacob could do to help him. Jacob was looking at him with the same look of desperation. Jacob heard a whistle.

Turning toward the sound he saw a young woman at the gate of the corral. Come on boy.' The large male straightened up, turned and raised his head, then started to move in the direction of the gate. His pace was something more than a walk, but not a run. It could best be described as a trot. When he got to the woman at the gate he lowered his head and pushed his face forward against her shoulder and cheek, moving his head up and down slightly.

He was nuzzling her. 'Good boy, good boy.' She stroked his head as she spoke. She held a line in her hand, but she did not clip it into his nose ring, but rather into the projection from his bit at the side of his mouth. 'Let's go for a ride.' She said as she turned and started to walk out of the corral.

He walked next to her, slightly behind. The rein that had been connected to his bit made a deep loop before it came back up to her hand.

( link opens in new window ) Jacob was shocked at the look of joy he had seen in Bruno's eyes as he hurried to the side of the woman. He looked moon-struck. He thought, but was interrupted by another arrival at the gate. 'Come on Whisper.'

The hobbled male looked up. No look of affection on this face, more like terror. He shuffled back and away from the approaching woman.

He held a leather line with a clip end in her left hand. Her right hand held the end of the line swinging about three feet of it. 'You know how this ends. Now cut it out and get over here.' He was clearly not responding the way she wanted.

Because he was hobbled he could not move very fast but he was doing his best shuffling away. As she reached him he tried to turn his body away from her. She lashed out with the end of the rein held in her right hand first to his right buttocks and then crossing over and down onto his left buttocks. With the strike to the left buttocks he almost involuntarily turned to his right as she brought her left hand forward and snapped the rein to his nose ring. He looked down in horror and uttered a moan as he tried to back away.

She turned and walked toward the gate pulling on the lead. He resisted only a second before reluctantly following. What a contrast.

Two ponies, one left happy and willing. The second resisted but still left under the absolute control of a girl a third his size. Jacob did not want to be the first pony.

But he also did not want to be the last one. Maybe he was pain adverse.

But what was wrong with that? He saw the gate opening again. This time it was Sally. Jacob was only about five feet away so she did not even have to say anything. She just smiled and stepped forward to where he was standing. He did not move.

He did not back away, but he did not move toward her either. In her right hand she held the clip end of a leash.

He wondered where it would go. He must not be trusted because it went on his nose ring. 'Unnecessary', he thought.

He knew he couldn't get away. He wasn't going to do anything stupid like the other pony, but it was not his choice. She walked, she pulled; he followed, still hobbled, shuffling behind. She stopped by a rack on the wall. It was filled with plastic bottles that looked like they belonged in a boxer's corner. She removed one and held it up to his mouth.

'You need some liquid. She wasn't asking him if he was thirsty. He was thirsty. He was very thirsty, but he did not like the idea that he had no part in this but to obey. Never-the-less he opened his mouth creating space around the bit.

He hoped she would remove the bit, but no such luck. Instead she just squirted the liquid. He assumed it was water, into his mouth. He had to tilt his head back to keep it in his mouth and to swallow.

He was not use to swallowing with his mouth held partially open. She waited until he had finished with the first amount. He opened his mouth and she squirted more liquid. After a third time she decided he had had enough and returned to bottle to the rack. Once again, his role was to do as he was told; all that he was told and nothing more. She led him up the dirt road past the doorway he had come out of a little earlier.

They reached a paddock about fifty feet across with a metal tower of some sort standing in the center. The tower had four arms extending out about five feet off the ground.

The reluctant pony stood facing one of the extended poles. He was near the end of the pole, about fifteen feet from the center of the tower. Two leads about a foot in length extended from either side of his bit to rings on the pole. If the pole was turned he would have to follow. The woman who had removed him from the corral stood just outside the location where the reluctant pony was secured. Sally led Jacob into the paddock and up to the pole that protruded at 180 degrees from the one to which the reluctant pony was affixed.

She faced him in the opposite direction, fastened a collar around his neck with loops on either side then clipped the levers on either side of his bit to the pole with short 18' straps after passing each strap back through the loops on the collar. He too, now, would be guided in a circle by the pole and the forward pull of the pole would exert a downward pull on the levers of the bit. Only after Jacob was connected to the pole did Sally remove his hobble. It appeared that the only times he was not hobbled was when he was connected to something. Sally then moved outside the circumference mapped by the arms of the poles to a control panel mounted on a post outside the reach of the two ponies. A motor in the center of the tower started and the poles started to turn. The bit in Jacob's mouth with its brank facing inward had been irritating, but the brank had been free floating up until now.

As the pole moved forward and exerted pressure on the lines leading through the collar to his bit it pulled downward on the levers. This action pulled the brank down onto Jacob's tongue. He moved forward to ease the pressure trying to keep pace with the speed of the pole as it turned and stay in line with the circle that it drew. If he was not directly on line with the movement of the pole, i.e., off to one side or the other he would feel the pressure on one side or the other of his mouth as well as a pull on his head to one side or the other. The pressure alone was enough to move him to the right or left.

He didn't like it, but he could see how this system could be used to guide the direction of a pony just by use of the reins. The speed at which the pole turned was not fast but it did require him to walk at a brisk pace. As Jacob moved around the circle he knew that the reluctant pony was on the opposite side of the device from him. If he turned his head to the inside he would be able to see the other pony but turning his head would exert pressure on the straps from his bit, something he found he did not like, so he didn't do it. He just looked straight ahead at the pole in front of him.

Sally stood just outside the circle on one side and the other trainer in a similar position on the other. Each of them held what looked like a four or five foot flexible rod with about three feet of braided leather hanging from the top.

'Lift your hoofs.' Sally said as he came. Then Jacob heard a snap and a pop from the opposite side of the device followed by a slight whimper. An involuntary shudder ran through his body. The hoof boots felt awkward. He had purposely kept his feet close to the ground as he stepped forward trying to keep pace with the speed demanded by this device. As he made the circle he was moving toward the other trainer.

She shook her head. 'Lift your hoofs you lazy pony.'

She was looking at Jacob. He didn't want to take a chance on falling. As he passed her she tapped the back of his upper legs with the end of the stick. He tried to raise his legs higher as he stepped.

This slowed his pace and the reins caught and jerked forward pulling the brank down on his tongue. He adjusted speeding up the pace but losing most of the height on the step. The pole was now pulling him around toward Sally. He shook his head and pulled back, but the reins caught him again and forced him forward.

He saw the whip shaft in Sally's hand raise and snap forward. The leather braid caught him on the flank just below his hip.

Fire from the lash cut through his thigh. He was past her now and could no longer see her.

'I said higher.' He heard the swish and felt the sting on his right buttocks. He forced his legs to rise higher bringing his knees up almost parallel with the ground with each step.

He could see the other trainer ahead of him. But he was jerking back and forth and the reins were pulling his head from side to side and pressing the brank into his tongue. He kept the exaggerated step as he came around to Sally. She held her whip ready but did not strike. He tried to focus on smoothing out the pace, the motion of the brank pulling left and right and down in his mouth was becoming very uncomfortable.

As he concentrated on smoothing the motion the pressure in his mouth began to ease and it became easier. But with his concentration on smoothing the pace he had let the height of his step slip.

There was a swish, snap and pain on his buttocks again, this from the other trainer as he passed her. With a trainer on each side of the circle there was no escaping their view. He forced his legs up again but was now able to keep the pace without jerking about. Jacob lost count of the circles they made. The machine never got tired. It never slowed. But he was getting tired.

He didn't remember how many corrections he had endured from either Sally or the other trainer. It seemed he would be good for two or three circles and then he would start to flag only to feel the sting of one of their whips reminding him to keep his steps high. He wasn't the only one receiving correction. He heard the whip snap from the other side of the circle. Even though he knew it was away from him and punishing the other pony he would flinch with the sound. But he was sure he was receiving more strikes than the other pony. He didn't think he could keep this up for much longer.

He thought he was in good shape, but his legs were starting to burn. He was breathing heavily. Couldn't they tell he was winded? When would they give them a rest?

But it didn't stop. It just kept going, and somehow he pushed through the burn and kept going too. The pain from the whip strikes wasn't horrific, but it was worse than the burn in his muscles from the exertion. It was even worse than the stitch in his side, so he kept going. Without a word, without any warning the machine slowed and stopped turning. Jacob almost walked into it.

He was gasping for breath. He felt like he had just run a marathon. Actually he didn't know what a marathon really felt like, the furthest he had ever run was a 10K, but he felt like he had when he finished that race. Then he had been able to bend forward and wrap his arms around himself. With his reins attached to the pole and his arms tightly held behind his body he could only stand in place and try to get his breath.

That he was forced to stand with his weight on the balls and toes of his feet only made things worse. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to at least be able to stand with his feet flat but the boots would not allow that.

So he stood raised on his toes. With the pole not moving he could at least look around a little.

Sally and the other trainer had left the paddock. He saw them sitting on a bench about fifty feet away drinking what looked like a soda. They had decided to take a break.

The reluctant pony stood on the other end of the pole about thirty feet away. He was breathing deeply clearly trying to catch his breath. Both Jacob and the reluctant pony were still attached to the training device.

Did that mean that this would resume after the trainers had finished their break? Jacob didn't think he could take any more of this. He pulled back from the pole until the reins stopped him. He looked at the two straps that ran forward from the loops at his neck to rings on the pole just below his face.

They each snapped onto the pole with a simple spring loaded snap. A small gate in the snap could be depressed to open and remove the snap, but with the gate closed it would stay firmly in place. The end of the snap was not a heavy device, but easily strong enough to resist all the weight and pull he could exert. Sally was back at his side. He had not heard her come up. Maybe she was going to disconnect him.

She commanded, holding up one of the plastic water bottles. He tipped his head back and opened his mouth to receive the liquid.

She gave him two squirts, then left. As before she did not ask him if he wanted more, she determined and directed how much he would take. He considered refusing the second squirt, but he wanted the liquid too badly. He really wanted more. What she had allowed him had tasted wonderful, but it was a long way from quenching his thirst. He was sure that he had already sweated away more liquid than she had given him. ( link opens in new window ) There was a machine sound and a jerk at his reins.

They had started the trainer again. Jacob groaned, but stepped forward. Even in the short time he had stood still his legs had started to stiffen. Then there was the pain burning across his buttocks. He lifted his legs keeping them high and stepping forward. He didn't think he could do this again, but somehow he did.

He didn't know how long it went on. Time became a blur. Lift his leg, step forward and down. Lift the other leg, step forward and down. When the machine finally stopped again his legs were beginning to feel wobbly. He was sure he was going to collapse, but somehow he didn't.

The burning in his legs was only accentuated by the pain on his thighs, flanks and buttocks from the constant correction. He prayed that they would let him rest now. What time was it? There were no clocks to be seen anywhere, but the sun was very high in the sky, it was mid-day at best.

Sally was at his legs attaching his hobble. He did not think he could be so happy to be hobbled again. He wanted to say 'thank you.' Then she released the reins from the pole.

Familiar pattern, either anchored or hobbled. She clipped his leash to his nose ring and led toward the path that led back toward the corral following behind the other trainer who was leading the reluctant pony by the nose. As they entered the corral Jacob saw only one other pony inside.

It was one of the females. She was standing with her back to them leashed by the nose ring to a pole above what looked like a metal trough. The trough was about eight feet long and the female was at one end. The other trainer secured the reluctant pony to the other end and Sally secured Jacob in the center. The female pony had her head down in the trough as they arrived.

She looked up at them briefly and then returned to what she was doing. Jacob could see that her bit had been removed and was clipped to the pole where her leash was secured. Jacob had hoped that there would be some relief from the bit.

His mouth hurt terrible from the pressure exerted all morning. As Sally removed his bit it felt wonderful. He moved his jaw to one side, then to the other, but what felt best was to just close his mouth. It seemed like forever since he had been able to do that. The trainers then left them and closed the gate. The female had returned to the trough.

There were cubes of something in the trough. She bent forward and took a cube with her teeth, then she straightened up and maneuvered it into her mouth before chewing and swallowing. They were being fed. 'What is this?' Jacob said to the female.

She turned her head toward him and glared. Then she turned away and returned to eating. 'Don't let them catch you talking.' It was the reluctant pony to Jacob's right. 'They will punish you.' Jacob turned his head toward the voice. 'Keep your head straight.

Eat, or at least look like you are eating. Ponies aren't supposed to be able to speak.' Jacob straightened his head and bent forward into the trough. He took a piece of food in his teeth and tried to get it into his mouth. It slipped out and fell back into the trough.

'What are they doing with us?' Jacob asked before making another attempt at a piece of food. 'Haven't you figured that out? They are making us horses. They ride us. They race us.

They use us to pull wagons and carriages. They even use us for plow horses.'

'They can't do that. Someone will figure it out and they will all be arrested.'

'Best I can figure they have been doing this for decades. Not just years, but decades. This place is so far off the beaten track that nobody comes here. It is not on the way to anywhere. Only a few strays like us wander in - then here we are. Who are we telling?' 'How long have you been here?'

'Until you arrived I was the new arrival. Time becomes hard to tell here, but I figure two weeks. Best I can tell they train us six days a week then take a rest day. Once a month they hold 'events', but I have not seen one of those yet.' 'Is everyone held against their will?'

'I doubt anyone would sign on for this. Even if they did it would be an irrevocable decision. I stopped at the bar in town for a beer. Only planned on having one, but I got talking to a cute girl and ended up having about three.

She tried to get me to stay, but I decided I needed to leave. I hadn't gone more than a mile before the sheriff stopped me and arrested me for DUI.

After I was arrested he brought me here instead of jail. I knew something was wrong when he put that damn hood over my head. It took three of them to get me out of the car, stripped and bound.' I was brought her by Sally with the promise of sex. Next thing I knew she had me naked and bound and was leading me around like a dog on a leash.' As he thought about events that had brought him here Jacob twisted and pull at his arms.

The reluctant pony turned his head and looked at Jacob. 'You let that little thing strip you naked and tie you up?'

'Well, yea, one thing just kind of led to another. You had to be there.' Jacob felt his face flush with embarrassment. He turned back to the food. He was figuring out how to collect and retain a food cube. He didn't know what they were but they tasted of maple syrup. 'From what you say it probably wouldn't have made any difference if I had not fallen for her tricks, but I think she enjoys the idea that she was able to outsmart me.

Someone needs to get the word out of here and get help.' Good luck with that. In case you hadn't noticed their security is very good.

As far as I can tell the arm binder stays in place forever. I have never seen a pony without one. I am almost always anchored to something by my nose or balls. And anytime I am not anchored I'm hobbled. I thought they were not watching me once so I tried to get down the road - I have no actual idea how far the highway is. They didn't even hurry to chase me.

They let me go for almost a mile. It took forever in hobbles and I was exhausted when Samantha rode up on Bruno. He looks muscle bound, but he is really quite fast. I felt like a complete idiot trying to hurry up the road. As if there was anywhere to go. She threw a lasso over me like some errant calf, then clipped a leash to my balls, tied the end to her saddle and rode triumphantly back up the road pulling me along behind.' 'Wait a minute.

I thought the control ring was supposed to incapacitate us if we went too far.' I guarantee you it can be activated by their remotes. I am not sure if the perimeter feature is something they tell us to scare us, if I was still within the perimeter, or if they turned it off to toy with me. I hadn't even given it a thought until I was well down the road and by then I figured I had committed myself.' Jacob heard the sound of the gate opening. Reluctant Pony (Jacob had not even asked his name) had stopped talking and dropped his head to pick up another piece of food. Sally walked up to the side of Jacob.

She lifted the bit from the hook it was hanging on and held it in front of his face. Jacob's mouth was still sore from having that thing in there all morning. He didn't want it back in his mouth.

He knew once in he could do nothing about it. But he also didn't want to look meek in front of his new friend. Jacob had been embarrassed by the fact that Sally had subdued him all by herself. He was also embarrassed that he had made that admission earlier. He wished he had said that he had fought like a tiger, but to no avail. Even though Reluctant Pony was pretending to eat without paying any attention Jacob knew he was being watched.

Jacob turned his head away from Sally's hand and the bit. Sally untied the knot in the nose leash; then she pulled the leash through the ring to which it had been tied. She kept pulling as Jacob's head was turned back to the front from the pressure and then as his head was pulled forward until his nose was within inches of the tether. She tied it off. Jacob was pulled forward with his body leaning against the trough. His mouth was open slightly and she could probably have pushed the brank between his lips and teeth, but Sally was going to make a point.

Jacob tried to pull back, but the ring in his nose was just too painful for that. He closed his mouth removing even the small amount of space that had been there. With her right hand holding the bit directly in front of his mouth her left hand reached down to one of his new nipple rings and gave it a sharp twist. It was a combination of pain and surprise, but his mouth was open.

She pushed the bit into his mouth and quickly clipped it through the spring loaded gates in each of the rings at the corners of his mouth. Once the rings closed about the shafts of the bit it sat firmly in his mouth with the hateful brank resting on his tongue. As Jacob was learning. Around here actions (and inactions) had consequences. While his head was still pulled forward by his nose, Sally opened the buckle on the strap that passed behind his head at the level of his mouth and tightened it by two holes.

The bit was now pulled back more tightly into his mouth. Whereas the bit had sat at the corners of his mouth before, now it pushed the flesh at the corners back painfully. He immediately knew that his defiance had been a mistake, but there was nothing to be done of it now. Sally gave his nipple another painful twist, then she untied the leash and pulled it from the ring. As she started to lead Jacob away from the trough she swung the last three feet of the leash and struck at the buttocks of Reluctant Pony. 'Bad influence.' She said as he yelped and jumped dropping a piece of food.

Sally had already turned from him and was leading Jacob by his nose leash across the corral toward the gate. His nose was sore from being stretched forward, and the sides of his mouth were starting to hurt. He tried to use his tongue to push the bit into a more comfortable position, but there was none. Defiance had been a bad idea.

Sally wanted the bit in his mouth. He did not want it there. The bit was in his mouth.

There was never any other outcome. Jacob curved his body forward as he walked behind Sally. He was adopting a posture that seemed dictated by the change of balance created by the hoofs on his feet.

It pushed his chest forward but angled his butt back. Sally led him into what was clearly a tack room from all of the things hanging on the walls. In the center of the room were three posts each almost seven feet tall and standing about six feet from one another.

Jacob was led forward to one of the posts. Hanging from the post was a number of short straps. One was fastened to his nose ring, a second to his control ring and a third to the middle of the hobble chain. They gave a space of less than six inches between his body and the pole. Sally then produced two pieces of leather five to six inches square. She unsnapped the small three inch squares at the sides of his head. Then he felt and heard as she snapped each of these new larger squares to the strap at the side of his head.

When she was done his peripheral vision limited by the earlier squares was gone. He could only see what was in front of him, and on a short leash to his nose ring that meant the stupid wooden pole and bits of the wall five or six feet further on.

There was weight on his shoulders and on the top of the arm binder. With the blinkers and the restriction of movement from the nose leash he could not see any of what was going on behind him. Even when he turned his head as far as he could. He could only tell what he felt. Over each shoulder had been placed a curved piece of leather made inflexible with a metal or plastic core. Each side was four to five inches wide and extended down to where the fleshy portion of the breast (even on a man) began.

Another curved piece covered his arms the entire inside length of the arm binder. The pressure on his arms seemed to be somewhat more than on his shoulders, but he could tell she was working an adjustment in the device now attached to his back. The adjustment shortened the distance between the brace above his arms and the hooks over his shoulders. As it was turned, the pressure on his arms lessened and was picked up by the pressure on his shoulders. At some point she stopped the adjustment.

The balance was surprisingly comfortable. He was reminded of adjusting a backpack to carry a load. Jacob could tell that Sally was pulling straps around his body from the rear to the front. When he looked down he saw a metal ring about four inches in diameter. It had a three inch strap going in each direction. One of the straps ended in a buckle which quickly received a strap end from the other side of Jacob's body. Sally positioned the ring so that it sat just below Jacob's rib cage.

Then she pulled and tightened the strap through the buckle cinching it tightly. Jacob felt his arms being pushed in against his body. There had not been any movement available before so it did not really make him more helpless but it did fix the device on his back so that it would not come loose. Straps from the two sho.