I don't own anything but original characters I may add.

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Chapter 15 - Torture

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A/n: I love this chapter, but at the same time I feel like it's a bit confusing. The next chapter will explain what happens here a lot better than I can right now without spoiling everything.

"THE SCARIEST MONSTERS ARE THE ONES THAT LURK WITHIN OUR SOULS" {Edgar Allen Poe}

"This should be a simple information retrieval mission from a villain compound near the base of the Appalachian Mountains," Dick addressed the original team. The other members were going through exams in their schools and had requested time off from missions and training, "From what we've gathered already, the plans we're trying to get a hold of a machine the villains are planning to build. We go, get the info, get out."

"Simple enough," I tugged on the sleeves of my uniform, holding back my excitement.

It would be my first trusted mission with the team, without an inhibitor of any kind. It had taken me weeks, nearly two months to gain back the trust I lost, but it was an impressively short amount of time all things considered. That being said, I wasn't going to take their faith in vain. I'd show my worth.

The team gathered around the main screen to look over a blueprint of the building.

"KF and Black Rose, get in there and grab the information. You know the codes for the compound right?"

"If they haven't changed them yes. I'll do what I can either way."

"Good. M'gann and Superboy, keep watch from the outside. Artemis, Kaldur, and I will search inside and destroy any pieces of the machine we find. I know I say this every time, and something always ends up on fire, but let's try to keep it covert."

"Good luck with that," Artemis snorted, gaining laughs from the team. The Young Justice team was famous for failing miserably at covert operations, yet they did really well in thwarting villain's plans.

The air surrounding us when we stepped onto the bio-ship was light. It wasn't a life or death situation, there wasn't a narrow time-limit which we had to meet or risk the world being destroyed. It was a simple retrieve and maybe destroy. Easy. A good start for me, a way to dip my toes in the water. I'd prefer that over fighting ghosts any day.

"Have you ever been to Jitters, in Central City?" Wally spun his chair around to face me.

"I don't think so. It's a coffee place?"

"Yeah. Do you wanna go there this weekend?"

"Sure. How about Saturday?"

"You have plans Friday?"

"We called dibs on her on Saturday," Artemis cut in, After two months of moping around, Bats finally ordered that we take her out and buy her some new clothes. He's upset her wardrobe is more vampire-like than his."

Everyone laughed at the comment, sensing the truth behind it. Leaning back in my seat, I wrote off the queasy feeling in my stomach as pre-mission nerves. I couldn't let them get in the way. It was my first real mission, and I wouldn't be messing it up.

~*~

"Status?"

"They changed the codes," I groaned mentally, rapidly typing in every code I knew from my years with the villains. One of them had to work, "This can't be- wait, hang on. I might have one."

Racking my brain for Lucy's birthday, I carefully typed in the numbers, grinning when the door swung up for me and Wally, "Thank you Harley."

"What was the code?" Wally asked, voice a mere whisper as we approached the main computer.

"Harley's daughter's birthday," I inserted a flash-drive- given to me by Dick before we separated- into the computer, letting all the hacking software on the device work its magic.

"Harley has a daughter?"

"Well, yeah. Good to know the heroes didn't know about her. And you shouldn't report it either. She's Harley's world, honestly," a pop-up asked for a password. Based on the last code, I input Harley and Ivy's ship name. If Lucy's birthday was the last, then that meant Harley was in charge of passwords for that compound, which lead to the reasonable conclusion of Harlon.

"Alright, plans, plans, plans," my eyes swiftly scanned over the different files on the screen. None of them were for a machine. They were simple things that wouldn't need to be guarded. Past plans, weapons transmissions, identities, funds, "This doesn't make any sense."

"What's wrong?" Wally peeked over my shoulder.

"Guys, there's nothing on this computer. No plans for a machine, anyway. Just past data that isn't useful to us." There was figurative static from the mental coms.

"I can't tell you how proud I am, (Y/n)."

In the computer screen, I watched the color drain from Wally's and my faces. We knew that voice, despised it. And suddenly, it became all too obvious why there was nothing useful on the computer.

"Klarion."

"What? Not calling me Father anymore?" Klarion tilted his head, stepping out of the shadows, "I thought our relationship was developing quite nicely, (Y/n). It appears I was wrong about that, along with many other things."

"Klarion is here. We need backup now!"

"We're on our-"

"Guys? Guys!" The static resumed.

"Oh no. I'm not letting you go that easily," Klarion snapped his fingers, and Wally and I were frozen in place, "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted. I am so proud of you (Y/n). You take wicked to a whole new level. Switching sides whenever you feel like it, betraying everyone as soon as they feel like they can trust you. The true start of a master villain."

I tried to choke out words, only managed a choking sound instead. The magic seemed to crush my vocal cords as well as my body.

"Well, you can be a villain after I kill your little plaything of course." Klarion rolled his eyes when both of us panicked, "Oh come on. You should have seen this coming. You must cut all ties to good before you can continue. I made a mistake by thinking you could do it yourself. But, like many parents, I need to step in. I killed your mother because she believed there was good. Maybe a spell would push you to kill him. Until then, how about your favorite pastime? Conditioning! This time, you'll have your boyfriend with you."

Putting everything I had into it, my hands lit up dimly, and I grit out- "No."

"Look at that. Has Nabu been teaching you? He doesn't know anything. A bit of defense maybe, but conditioning can control that easily."

~*~

"I'm so sorry, Wally," crying out in pain, my back hit the metal table of the conditioning room. Klarion brought another one in to set Wally on, "I should have known something was off as soon as I noticed the files weren't on the computer."

"It's the risk of being a hero. How bad can it be?" Wally's voice shook as he spoke. He knew the trauma I had from conditioning.

Klarion's voice echoed throughout the room, "(Y/n) leaving really opened up my creative side. After I got over my anger, I was full of new ideas. But something stood out. Physical torture is old, overdone. And we all know how crazy villains can be. So... welcome to your personal hell kids. Have fun~"

Klarion's voice trailed off as the world shifted around us. Wally disappeared from next to me, and I was trapped in darkness. In my own head.

~*~

"(Y/n), (Y/n), babe?"

Shooting up, I frantically looked at the room around me. Where was I? The room was cozy. A bed in the center, a nightstand on each side, a dresser in front and a TV on top. It was a normal adult's bedroom.

"Did you have another nightmare?" Body jolting in response, an arm wrapped around my middle, pulling me into a lying position again, "It's alright babe. That was years ago. You're safe now."

Flipping over, my nose rubbed against Wally's. Wally! He was smiling gently, eyes hooded with sleep.

"Years ago? What are you talking about it just happened," my brows furrowed in confusion, "Did I get hit in the head? I thought we were on a mission. We got captured and-"

"Klarion put us through some torture but the team tracked us down," Wally finished, "Like I said, it happened years ago."

"Oh..." My gut twisted. Was it really years ago? That didn't make sense...

A cry rang through the walls of wherever we were, loud and insistent. Wally chuckled, rolling out of bed.

"Well, you're right about a mission. But it's not from the team. It's my turn to feed her."

Wally left. Jumping out of the bed, I looked around the room.

"What the hell is going on? Klarion said torture. This is... not that."

"Shhh, it's okay. You're alright. Daddy's got you, Irene."

Picking up a baby monitor from the nightstand on my side, I squinted to make out the dark screen in the center. A small red flag popped up in my mind when the image immediately brightened up, crystal clear.

Wally was pacing around a baby girl's room, a little girl cooing in his arms. Smiling slightly, I frowned immediately after. There had to be something wrong with what was happening besides the fact that it was happening.

A ring on the nightstand caught my attention. It was beautiful, connected to another ring that was more plain. They looked like... wedding and engagement rings.

"This must be an illusion," I set the monitor down and picked up the rings instead. Real. I set them back down and walked to the dresser, stubbing my toe against the bottom in the process, "Ow! Doesn't feel like an illusion. God, that hurt."

Once the pain was reduced to a dull throb, I picked up a framed photo from the top of the dresser. I was in a wedding dress, Wally grinning next to me. A date was typed above our heads.

"I was twenty-four in this?" Setting the frame down I picked up another picture. A baby girl lied in a bundle of blankets, the date above her head two years later than the one in the wedding photo, "I'm twenty-six now?"

That was another red flag. I wasn't able to have kids. Klarion took that away from me. But looking at the photo, and from what I saw in the monitor earlier, there was no denying the similarities between Irene and Wally and me. What happened there?

"Midnight feeding is done," Wally leaned against the doorway, "We should be good until three or fou- you good?"

"Is this real?" Tears filled my eyes at the idea of all of this being a cruel joke. It was all I ever wanted, right in front of me.

Everything felt real. Even the pain was real. If it was actually conditioning... I didn't even know anymore. What if I would wake up in what I thought was the real world? Klarion had never done anything like that before. I wasn't even aware magic could create worlds like the one I was in. It was so unreal it was real.

"Of course it's real, babe," Wally kissed my temple, "Sometimes I can't believe it either. With everything that happened with your father... come on, let's enjoy some sleep while we can."

Nodding slowly, I walked back to the bed and pulled the comforter over my body once again. Wally settled next to me, close, comfortable. Trying to emulate what he was, I snuggled in and closed my eyes. Sure enough, I was able to drift off.

When I woke up the next morning, the sun was peeking through the partially open curtains, but that wasn't what woke me up. An insistent beeping coming from Wally's phone was what roused both of us.

"We have a mission," Wally groaned, slapping his hand to his phone to stop the beeping, "Irene can go to my parents for the day. I think her bag is still packed from last time."

My nose scrunched up at the thought of Irene, my daughter, going over to his parent's house. Wally noticed.

"I know you still don't like them babe, but this mission is for everyone. We can't ask one of the team members to watch her instead."

Rolling out of bed, I didn't argue. It was the whole team, and Alfred... why couldn't we ask Alfred? Shaking my head, I asked, "Meet you at the cave?"

"For sure, good luck babe."

~*~

When I arrived at the cave, in full Black Rose uniform, the team was already waiting for me- Wally included. All of them had aged subtly, just like Wally and I had. It was all smiles, like we had known each other for years. We did. We were twenty-six...

It felt like I blinked and we were at the mission site. A thick forest. The mission, the mission. I couldn't remember what the-

"Shit!" A branch slapped my face as I ran through the vegetation, and I remembered. A small gang had been rising in both their violence and large crime rates so we were going to face them, "Guys? Where are you? I don't see any of you anywhere."

We were separated into teams, but my team members kept disappearing, until I was wandering the woods by myself.

"Oh my god. Oh my god. No, no."

"What happened?" I asked through the mind link, anxiety levels rising. That was Dick's voice, and Wally was on his team, "Dick, what happened?"

Bart popped up in front of me, picking me up and speeding off before I could ask anymore questions.

"I tried to stop the blood flow. It hit major arteries."

Dropping down next to Wally's motionless body, I sobbed. The world blurred around me as tears flooded my eyes. Closing my eyes I looked away. Not real, not real, not real. That was the torture part. That was what Klarion wanted me to see. The mental pain was worse than the physical pain. None of it was real. The happiness, the false comfort. He made me think it was real, only to rip it all away.

"You've got me Klarion," I hissed, pounding my fists against the ground, "Okay? Is this what you wanted me to see? You wanted me to be in pain? Well, I am! You asshole!"

"You killed him," Artemis popped up next to me, "You have magic. Do you know how many spells contribute to healing? But you didn't. You did exactly what Klarion wanted. You cut off the good."

"N-no," my hands were scarlet with blood. Wally's blood, or the blood of every I had killed I didn't know, "No, no I'm not evil! I swore I wouldn't- how could I when I said I'd be as good as I could?"

"You think we trusted you either way?" Conner laughed harshly from behind me, "The missions Batman let you go on without supervision? He had inhibitors laced into your suit, ready to be turned on. Every single movement we watched. We were ready to take you out if we needed."

Nightwing was to my right and pressed a button on his belt. Something activated in my suit and electrocuted me. Screaming, my back hunched, forehead pressing to the nonexistent ground beneath me. I was falling apart.

"I would say see you on the other side," Wally's dead body sprang to life, hand phasing through my chest and gripping my heart, "But you aren't going where heroes go."

"Come on darlin'," A hand landed on my shoulder, gentle, "You can fight it."

"Come on, baby, it's not real. Come on."

Ivy and Harley replaced Dick and Artemis. Their faces were frantic as they shook me. They were shaking the world around me away. Everything warped, and the pain left. Baby Irene's cries were the last thing remaining from the illusion, before they too faded, and Klarion left my mind.

"That son of a-"

"Watch it Lex! We need to get them out of here before Klarion finds out and kills us all."

The world dropped around me as I screamed in confusion. The blood on my hands was gone, and replaced with a bright light.

My eyes opened.

Blinking slowly, I allowed my sight to adjust to the room I was in. Harley's pale face smiled down at me.

"Welcome back darlin', now let's go."