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Febuwhump 2023 | Day 7 | Made To Watch
The videos are uploaded like clockwork.
Every day.
Same time.
And every day, every time, Barbara throws up.
She isn't letting anyone else watch them all, not in their entirety at least. They all have their own assignments, but when it comes to the footage, Babs takes the lead. She combs through the data, tries to track to sender, and watches all the horrors for some sign of how to save Dick.
When Nightwing is questioned by his captors, Oracle forwards those clips to Cass. She's the best with body language out of all them. Barbara does her best to edit out what happens when Dick doesn't answer.
Tim gets the segments of the criminals. Sometimes they will monologue to their prisoner, other times the torture will be interrupted by someone with news. Again, she cuts out the parts of the actual torture.
They've all seen enough, been through enough, but it doesn't mean Barbara has to add to their traumas. Or distract their search with nightmare images and guilt. Not to mention that these guys - they're brutal. She knew after just the first few days of footage that their beloved Dick Grayson might never be the same if they get him back.
When.
Jason stops by sometimes during the designated digital drops. He's the only one Babs has let stay and he only shows up a good hour into the video, when they know by now that the questions have ceased and the torture just for torture's sack has begun. Hood has struggled with anger since being ripped back from the dead, and he still does. She isn't exactly sure how he holds it together when he is there, but he does. He stands behind her, hands on her shoulders and hers come up to wrap around his. He squeezes and she squeezes back and they hold onto one another until Dick's screaming has stopped.
The rest of them don't get access. Not even clips.
Barbara is surprised that Damian didn't fight her more on it. He doesn't much look her in the eye anymore, though. The eyes that see Dick dragged out and sliced and burned and -
Bruce argued, of course, but even Batman can't wrestle something from Oracle's technical clutches if she doesn't want them to.
And she definitely doesn't want him to.
Bruce eventually threatens to break into the Belfry and just watch them with her when the footage is sent over.
She doesn't tell him that Jason already does.
"And how exactly is that helping Dick, huh?"
Barbara pushes away from the desk, wheeling to grab something on the far end.
"There has to be something," Bruce barks, heading for the computers, "a clue, a message from Dick, a -"
"Don't you think I'm looking for just that?" Barbara rounds on the man, blocking his path. "Do you not trust me? You think I'd miss something like that?"
"Two sets of eyes are better than -"
Yeah. She also sort of hasn't told him about Cass and Tim's clips.
It's better this way. For all of them.
For Bruce.
For Dick.
"No."
Bruce takes a step to the side, and then the other, Barbara rolling her chair in either direction. She can just remote shut the system down if she needs to. If Batman forces past her. He looks like he just might.
But then the man is deflating, shoulders slumped and he backs away.
He releases a cracked breath that breaks her a little more inside than she already is.
"Please," and that is all Bruce, none of Batman's bite, "I - I need to see. I need to know."
"Look," Barbara sighs, rubbing her forehead, "I get it. And, this is going to sound awful, but that - that's selfish."
Bruce's head snaps up, the glare threatening to cloud over his features again.
"God, I wish I could just hand this off to you, someone else, anyone else." Her hands start to shake and she just grips the arms of her wheelchair tighter. "The last thing I - I don't want to watch it anymore, Bruce. Every time I close my eyes, it -" clearing her throat, she straightens, "but I need to. Dick needs me to. Because that's my job. Mine. It's what we agreed to -"
"I know," Bruce swallows, thick, "but I -"
"No, Bruce -"
"Barbara, you -"
"Stop."
It's hardly more than a whisper, than a breath, but it silences the man.
Barbara turns away from him now, lifting those trembling hands.
"Please, just - stop."
The woman runs her fingers over the keyboard, gazing up with glassy eyes at the screens. She blinks and suddenly there is Nightwing, bound and bloody. Nightwing, electrocuted with his own escrima sticks. Dick, refusing to scream until he's bit through his tongue.
"If you," her voice is so quiet and she doesn't know how to make it go any louder anymore, "if you keep doing this - if you keep coming here, keep asking, demanding - I - I'm going to let you. I'm going to let you because it hurts so much and every day I just get new nightmares and it makes me sick, okay? Sick that it's happening. Sick that I want to stop. Because that's like giving up on him. And this?" Barbara gestures at the monitors. "This is all I can do for him. You have your leads. Tim and Cass are tracking the middlemen. Jason and Steph and Damian are keeping Gotham safe so the rest of us can work."
She whirls on him, skidding wheels against the wood.
"Me?" And there, that's her volume rising again. "I can't go pound the pavement, or pound skulls until someone talks. I can't track down someone, unless it's through security cameras or bank records or an IP address but we've already established that these guys are good, practically ghosts. This," she slams her hand on the desk beside her, "this is all I can do!"
It's not true, she knows it, came to understand it a long time ago after she was shot. But right now, it feels true.
"I will pick apart every frame, every pixel, every file fragment, every drop of data from every single video," she rolls forward toward Bruce, "and I will watch every single second, again and again, until I find a clue or a message or a piece of lint that will tell us where to find him. And you?" She lifts her shoulders, staring up at the man. "You will do what you can do. And leave me alone to do what I can."
There is a tense silence that stretches out, the air electric between them.
Finally, Bruce bows his head. He spares one last look at the monitors before turning to leave. Barbara holds her breath. She won't let him see her cry.
"It's not all you can do." He whispers, his eyes holding all the confidence of the Bat, and all the caring of Bruce. "Not even close."
He doesn't wait for her reply before disappearing into the night. It doesn't matter. She doesn't have anything more to say.
She barely has anything more to give.
It takes five more days before they find Dick.
Five more days of footage.
Five more days for Barbara to not sleep and watch the same videos until her eyes feel like they're bleeding and to toss a monitor across the room and to cry into Jason's jacket and to finally, finally find the missing piece in a single frame.
Five more days for them to break the first Boy Wonder.
To break the rest of them.
Dick is cracking a smile not even two minutes after waking up in MedBay.
He's not okay. Not even close.
None of them are.
But they will be.
Barbara deletes every scrap of film, erases it from the face of the earth.
And then she lifts herself onto the other cot next to Dick and sleeps until morning for the first time in weeks.