Night by blank_sugar (zcon_disk@yahoo.com) (nc, bdsm, pierce, anal, drug) Barbara awoke to the feeling of claws stroking her face. When she opened her eyes, Catwoman was staring into her eyes and smiling. "Good morning, Barbara." "Wh...?" Barbara mumbled, still groggy and unable to get a focus on the world. "Don't bother sitting up if you can, darling," Catwoman said gently, "Those bonds are well-secured. You've been out for days," and she smiled again, viciously, "I'd have dropped the dosage if I'd known you constitution was so weak." "Where am I?" Barbara asked. The room stayed out of focus, she could make out figures but not details. "Still in your apartment," Catwoman said standing up, "It seemed like a good idea to make sure we hadn't killed you before passing you on." What was Catwoman doing in her apartment? As if Barbara had asked, Catwoman said from somewhere in the haze, "Your secret identity was a bitch to penetrate, darling - until you dropped your wallet when I kicked you at the museum last week. Careless!" Claws on her face again. Breath in her ear. "If it makes you feel better, Barbie dear," Catwoman whispered, "At least this way I won't have to thank your father personally for all the trouble." And then everything went into darkness. *** Barbara came fully to her senses sometime later. She could feel the van - or truck, or whatever she was in - bouncing, she could feel the cloth over her head, she could feel rope on her wrists and legs and a gag in her mouth, she could feel duct tape all over. She could smell ripe old fish. She could taste the gag, it tasted flat and smooth like rubber. She could hear nothing. She could see nothing. Think. Think. What would Bruce do? He'd try to think of the last thing he remembered; he'd trace it back. She thought back. The last thing she remembered was setting down her book, turning out the light, and lying in the darkness waiting for sleep. Catwoman must have come in while she was asleep. Without waking her. Surely Barbara didn't sleep so heavily? Catwoman. Cat burglar. Good at quiet B & E jobs. Obviously. What had Catwoman said? "Pass you on." They weren't going to kill her. At least, not yet. "Won't thank your father." Her father was safe from Catwoman at least. Would Catwoman spread the word? No, she was too solitary for that. But was she taking Barbara somewhere to be publicly unmasked? No, that would be useless. Even if Barbara had been wearing her batsuit - or anything, for that matter - it would prove nothing. "Dropped your wallet." Nothing more need be said about that. Punish yourself for mistakes when the danger's passed. *** That was Barbara's last thought before her mind went black - another drugging, presumably. She woke up sometime later in a small, white padded room. 'I've gone off the deep end,' Barbara thought, 'That's the first thing yet that makes good sense.' Her hands were cuffed behind her, and her fingers were taped together. 'Clever,' she conceded, 'Keep me from manipulating the lock.' There was a window in the corner of the room. Her legs felt like jelly, and the padded floor didn't help, but after some struggling, she made it and looked outside. All she saw was green. Nothing outside but fields. Nothing to identify the terrain, and from what she estimated must have been four stories up, she couldn't even see the grass well enough to identify it, and with it, at least a general indication of climate. Of course, for all she knew she could be looking into a television monitor anyway. She walked carefully along the walls, sliding her nude body against the cold padding as she went. When she'd half-crossed the room, she felt a few stray strands of her long, auburn hair catch behind her, and she decided she'd found the door. She tried examining the crevice with her bound fingers, her feet, and even her little nose, but the white padding was too thick, and all she could make out was a hint of steel underneath. The light blinked out suddenly, as did the "window." *** Barbara sat in the absolute darkness a long while. She would have guessed days, but without even a hint of natural light to discern them, it might have been hours or weeks, and she'd never have known. Not a single way out occurred to her. *** She woke up on the fifth day - she took her sleep to be night, and assumed that the time between waking and reasonable tiredness was night, not with the expectation of accuracy, but only because delineating time made things easier for her - to an ugly surprise. The "window" no longer showed a field, instead it showed an image of her on a closed-circuit camera - in the TV itself she quickly deduced. Somewhere along the line, she must have lost more than a night's sleep, she was sure. This much couldn't have happened to her in one night. Her breasts struck her first. The left one said in huge, red letters that she hoped were done in marker, but dreaded weren't, "SLUT," and the right one said "EASY." And they were huge letters indeed, since her breasts provided ample space for them. This made the shock easier by comparison when she realized that her small, sore nipples had silver rings through them, connected by three chains that rattled as she shuddered. On closer inspection, the rings had been welded. As had the ones pressing her labia together, the ones that ran through both lips, sealing inside of her vagina what she assumed with horror was a dildo. An enormous dildo. She could feel the tip brushing against her cervix, and from the bulge her sealed labia made over it, she guessed it must have been three inches wide. On her left thigh was the word, "FUCK" and on the right one, "ME." A plastic tube - a catheter, she guessed - ran out through between the rings and snaked around her thigh to her ass. Which was a story in itself. When she turned around, she could see in the camera that the catheter ran into the center of a butt-plug. No wonder her ass had hurt so badly. She wondered what the point was, since in her time here - which, she decided, must have been much more than five days - she had never been fed or given water that she knew of. Her hands were by far the worst, though. She could see that a metal band that covered her fingers from knuckle to tip had been welded on and attached to metal bracelets on her wrists. With her hands fully immobile, escape felt less and less likely. Strangest of all was that through her grogginess, every sensation seemed terribly acute. She brushed against the padded wall, and the soft padding made her arm _tingle_ with sensation. Barbara wonder if perhaps she'd been drugged with something new. When the vibrator in her cunt - and it _was_ a vibrator, she was sure of that now - was suddenly switched on by whomever held the remote, all doubt on that subject fled from her mind as her body burst forth in a supernova of bliss, and she screamed with joy in spite of herself and fell on the floor, writhing and thrashing her head in futile denial. Physical constraint she could handle; this, on the other hand, was too much. She flailed and sobbed and came and came and came. *** Someone was feeding her and giving her water while she slept, she was sure of that now. The waste that built up in her ass throughout the day (or what she had learned to take as the day) attested to that. And she was fairly certain that her sleep cycles were being regulated by her faceless captor, since she always woke up with the pressure in her ass relieved. And for all intents and purposes, she was just as happy with this. The plug in her ass and the rings through her pussy lips (which were welded shut) assured that she wasn't being raped in her sleep (odd, but no odder than anything else that had happened since she had first woken up here), and at least she was being taken care of in some way. Whomever was doing all these things to her had no intention of letting her die... at least, not yet, she thought with a shiver. *** "Where is she?" Batman asked without a trace of anything in his voice but the demand itself. Catwoman hung limply in his arms, trying to slice through the bat-rope that tied her wrists with her long, thin claws. "Can't say for sure," she muttered, pretending to be delirious and submissive from having lost the fight. "Perhaps you should ask Joe." There was, of course, no one involved named Joe that she knew of. "You're lying," he said. "Where is she?" "All right," she said, stalling for time. The cables were strong, but not unbreakable. "all right. You'll find her in no time if you ask this guy... he lives down on the pier... his name is-" and then she swung her claws at him, aiming for his mask. If he wasn't blinded, a maskless Batman could never turn in a criminal. Batman caught her arm in mid-swing without ever looking away from her eyes. "The name, Catwoman. Who did you sell her to?" "The highest bidder, darling!" Catwoman laughed. And then she smiled. "his name is Frank. He calls himself 'Frankie D.,' and he operates out of the Gotham Arms hotel, room 216. He'll have registered under the name Frank Danielson, although I doubt that's his real name. I hear he'll be there Thursday." Batman scowled at her for a moment, and she smiled. Everything she had said was true. Finding the girl would be worse on Batman and Commissioner Gordon than not finding her. Batman tied her arms and legs with two ropes apiece, and hung her from a lamppost for the Police, who were already coming down the street. He turned and threw his batarang into the air, and Catwoman called out, "Oh, and Batman, dear!" He turned and looked at her. She smiled, and purred, "Good luck." *** Who knows how long had passed? Barbara had long since stopped even trying to count the days. There was no way to know if she slept for and hour or a week, to say nothing of trying to keep track of time when she was awake. She had tried judging time by the length of her hair for a while, but when she realized that it had been getting shorter rather than longer when she slept, she gave up trying to reckon time altogether. Though she never thought of it that way, this was her life now. She woke up in the morning expecting nothing from the day but the white walls and an uncertain time of anticipation until the vibrator would blast her senses again. The television screen showed nothing but white anymore. She didn't even dream of escaping now, and she never stopped to remember her life before all this began. For all her strength, any spare memory of the time before this that slipped through her mental defenses was too much to handle, and she would shut her eyes and sob and try to black it out until the dildo would fire up and distract her. And in those moments, everything went away. In those moments, everything was all right. *** Which made it all the stranger when she woke up in a real bed one morning. She started and yelped when she realized she was wrapped up in silk sheets, that her hair - which had become matted and limp with filth - was suddenly clean, that her hands were free. She shook violently in the bed, praying this was a dream. Predictability was all that had made her life bearable. It didn't matter if she had overnight been crowned queen, she'd rather have woken up in her little cell with her little white screen and the butt plug - which was conspicuously absent - between her cheeks. She howled and skittered back against the wall. She looked down and saw that the rings were gone, felt the horrible void where the vibrator had been, and she started to cry. She flung open every drawer in the room. She squeezed under the bed. She looked under the dressers and in every closet. There were fancy clothes, and expensive jewelry, and every piece of finery a human being could wish for, but her dildo was nowhere to be seen. The door flew open, and a man with red hair stepped in. He was of medium build, and he wore a polo shirt with a tiny red alligator on the pocket. "Good morning, my darling," he said; the first words she'd heard other than her own delirious babblings - which themselves had become nothing but background noise to her - since Catwoman had promised not to harm her father. Catwoman, however, did not come to mind, nor did anyone else. To Barbara, there was only one man anymore, the man who had fed her in the night, the man who held the switch that would make her fell good, the man who allowed her to go blank. The man who had put her here, she decided, the man whose cruelty suddenly extended beyond all she could have possibly imagined - that is, if she imagined anything anymore. She looked into his eyes, broken, and whispered in a cracked voice, "What have you done to me?" The man reached out to her; she jumped backwards. "I've set you free, my love. I know the woman who had you before was cruel, but I promise you, my darling, you're safe now. Now you're mine and you'll never be harmed again. Not if it's not necessary." "...woman?" she mumbled. "The one who had in that awful cell. The one who first captured you." Woman? Which woman? Catwoman? The thought was foreign to her; it was as if a word in a language she had never spoken before suddenly popped into her mind. She mumbled the name. Unwelcome images suddenly burst forth. Spandex. Claws. That slinky, purring voice. The eyes. The goggles. The way she moved; the grace; the agility. The purple. And try as she might to avoid it, Barbara began to remember herself. Her name was Barbara. She knew that; sometime after the piercings had gone in (she looked down, half expecting the chain between her nipples to be gone) she had taken to chanting it. What was her last name? The word was on the tip of her tongue. It was almost there. She pushed for it now, what was it? G. Go. Go. Gore. Gored. Go. G-g-g... "Catwoman Gordon?" the red-headed man said suddenly, breaking her concentration. "No, no, that wasn't it. It doesn't matter now who it was, darling. The only thing that matters now is that I love you." He reached down again. He put his hand on her cheek. She reached up with a limp hand, and pressed it against his. He got the message; his eyes went hard, and he went tense suddenly and she was afraid. But like a cloudburst, his anger vanished as quickly as it had come and he smiled again. "I won't hurt you," he said in the same measured, well- practiced tone he had been speaking in originally. You needn't fear me, my love. Come here." He bent down, unzipping his pants, and he whispered, "You will call me master, and you'll be my slave. I love you; you'll see." Before she even realized what was happening, she thrust her foot into the air and kicked him square in the face. She remembered kicking the Joker like that. Her foot connecting with the solar plexus of the Riddler. Both had gone down in a moment, when she had kicked someone, it was almost always the end of the fight. No man could stand up against her martial arts training; many had already tried and failed. When Batgirl kicked someone, they were done for. What Batgirl could do, of course, bore little resemblance to what a weakened and emaciated (and she was; she had grown so skinny in that cell, her muscles felt weak and useless; her hands were in agony from the shock of movement) Barbara Gordon could do. If the man jumped at all, it was from surprise alone. To say her kick had no effect, however, would be incorrect. The man's smile had turned into a glare like daggers, his teeth were clenched, and his fist was shaking. "You... ungrateful..." unable to even form words, much less attempt the calm tone he'd rehearsed for so long, he used the only form of communication available to him, and punched her square in the mouth. Her head snapped back against the wall, and before she could process the first impact, she was already dealing with the second, and the third, the forth, the fifth, sixth, seventh... *** When Barbara awoke, the first thing she realized was that she was moist and warm. There was something on her legs. Something that smelled awful. She looked up, and saw she was in a basement with a gravel floor lit only by one 20- watt bulb. Across the room, through a set of bars, she saw the redheaded man standing with his hands in his pockets, looking cross, but in control again. "Darling slave," he said flatly, "Understand that I do love you. But love must be tempered with discipline, and it's clear that you have none. No discipline, no respect, no control - my love, you can't even control your bowels anymore." She looked down and realized with disgust what was on her legs. "I'm going to leave you down here for a few days to think about what you've done. Perhaps when you're ready, we can discuss allowing you to eat again." And he turned and walked up the wooden staircase. The 20-watt bulb blinked off, and the last shaft of light vanished as he closed the door behind him. Alone in the darkness, Barbara was helpless to survey her surroundings, so she decided to survey the damage her previous captor had done to her body instead. The rings were still there, but as she slid them through her nipples, she was certain that they were nothing simple wire cutters couldn't take care of. She slid her hand into her pubic hair. The holes were still there, but the rings were gone, as was the catheter, but as she slid a hand into herself, she realized that the dildo had left her permanently stretched out so much so that her entire hand slid into herself with relative ease. Her asshole was in the same condition, and she realized glumly that if she ever got out of this it would be diapers under her batsuit for a very long time. Her hands were still stiff and her wrists were screaming with pain, but she was sure she could get past that. 'Just focus, Barbara,' she thought, sitting on the gravel with her hand shoved into herself up to the wrist, 'Freedom is just a moment away.' *** Barbara was far past the point where the lack of knowledge of day and night would bother her anymore, but the lack of light seemed impossible to cope with. Her captor had left her no distractions in her cell, and although she was weak from malnutrition and lack of exercise, there were only so many hours a day she could sleep. As the days (weeks?) went on, she fell into a cycle: stretch and exercise to try to get herself back into shape, then collapse from exhaustion and masturbate futilely, just trying to stay blank for a little while. Even with her whole hand it was hard to get much friction up, but she managed, and could usually fist herself to orgasm in a relatively short time. *** "Good morning, slave," the redheaded man said. Barbara squinted and put her hand over her eyes. The light stabbed into her after so long in the darkness. "I've brought you food." He set a bowl down in the far corner of the room, outside her bars, then walked over and unlocked her cage. Barbara suddenly realized just how hungry she was. She hadn't eaten real food - or eaten at all, as far as she could remember - since all this had started. When he stepped into her cage (which was quite filthy by this point), she let him cuff her and put a black collar around her neck without even thinking about it. Anything was all right, so long as there was food in that dish. The man led her by the hand to the food, and she followed docilely. "You're doing better," he smiled warmly, assuming her passiveness meant she was giving in. He hooked her collar to a chain that dangled from the ceiling, then tied her nipple chain to a hook that was set into the ground, which left her kneeling on the gravel with her rear sticking up into the air. She shoved her face into the bowl, oblivious even of what she might be eating. It just didn't matter. She didn't even hear his fly unzipping, and hardly noticed as he slid his cock into her ass (unsurprising, as loose as she was), and for all the noise he made when he came, she couldn't have said when he had finally pulled out. *** They went round on this routine several times - she'd refuse him, he'd lock her up again, and when finally offered food, she'd submit to nearly anything - before he decided to shrug her off as damaged goods and make this a permanent state of affairs. Barbara saw very little light over the coming months, save twice a week (and she was sure it was a week now, since he had said at one point, "Time for your weekly meal, slave"): once when he came to feed and fuck her, and once when he came with a hose to clean the filth out of her cage (which, with her poor bladder and bowel control, badly needed it). By this reckoning, it was seven weeks before the day finally came. The man had no kindness in him anymore, which was a bit of a relief. Barbara always preferred to know where she stood with people. When he switched on the light that morning (afternoon? night?) he simply said, "Up, slut." As usual, she was ravenous and got up without a word. He hooked her to the floor and ceiling, and she shoved her face into the food and ate. He unzipped his pants, pulled out his cock, and slid it into her loose, messy asshole and had just begun to thrust when he heard a crash from upstairs. He paused. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he was just imagining things. Heavy footsteps above him said no. He pulled out. Whoever it was was in the living room. No way to get his gun. Had he closed the basement door? Thieves wouldn't look for anything in the basement, would they? The door at the top of the stairs creaked. He froze and started looking around for a weapon, but there was nothing except him and the girl and the cage. He'd made sure of that the first time he'd put her down here. The stairs creaked one at a time. Black boots came into sight. Barbara kept eating, oblivious. Catwoman's contacts had done their jobs well. Even Batman had had a hard time tracing Barbara's whereabouts, and when she hadn't shown up at the place in Mexico that she had been initially sold to, Batman had wondered whether he might never find her at all. Finding her, then, in the awful state she had been reduced to - starved, pierced, chained, sodomized, and filthy, her long, red hair matted with dirt and shit, gobbling out of a bowl on the floor like a dog - would have been an ugly blow to any man. A lesser man (although truth be told, even the best among us might well have been lesser men by comparison) might have hesitated, or cringed at the sight, but Batman hardly gave her a glance. Although behind his cowl, his eyes might well have been anywhere, the man had no doubt that Batman was looking straight at him. "This... it's not what you think," the man whispered. "She's my girlfriend. She likes this. You see..." Batman just stared. "Look, you don't - un-understand. See... it's like..." and his words caught in his throat, and it was all he could do to gasp, "Why are you not in Gotham?" Batman shook his head, and for the fist time spoke: "Because there's scum like you everywhere," and at that, the man ran as fast as he could for the stairs, and when he made it past Batman, he nearly sighed with relief. Let off with a warning. He hardly had time to register his mistake before Batman was on him, and had knocked him unconscious and tied him to the bars of the cage. Batman walked across the room to where Barbara was still eating. He undid her chains and put his hand on her shoulder. "Barbara," he said, but if she heard, she gave no notice. He gently pulled her away from the food, and she jumped and began thrashing and kicking to get back to it, but he grabbed her hands and after a moment, she looked at him and stopped. "Barbara," he said again, "it's all right. It's all right now." She stared at him with haggard eyes like those of a feral cat and after a pause whispered, "Bruce." Batman pulled her close and began stroking her hair, and she curled into him, sobbing and whispering his name over and over again. ______________________________________________________ Drop me a line and tell me what you think, kids. Seriously, if you don't do it, nobody does, and perfectly good writers quit because they think no one's reading. Even flames are better than silence. If you liked this one, the wonderful folks at ASSTR host an archive of my stories at http://www.asstr.org/~blanksugar last revision 8.20.03