At first Barry hadn't understood why he had been taken. Why would anyone take him, he was just an annoying teenage boy. The kidnappers soon told him why, his connection to the Waynes. They wanted to know stuff, some stuff he had no clue about, others he didn't. He thought he heard something about ransom too, but he wasn't sure. Barry wasn't even sure how long he'd been there, it all blurred together eventually, even the pain went from excruciating to dull and then back to excruciating again. He really didn't mean to tell them anything, but eventually he couldn't take more and he gave them the info he could: the layout of the mansion, the security there and anything he knew about the security for W.E. main building. He had cried the entire time, knowing he had failed the family that treated him so well.
What Barry didn't take into consideration was that he at the age of fourteen had taken more pain than most adults could handle, having learnt early how to just escape in his own mind. The beatings, the cigarette burns, the hunger, the thirst, he had withstood it all. He'd just escaped to his safe space. What had finally made him break was when they tried to drown him by showing his head into a bucket. It was hard to escape anywhere when your face was in cold water.
He wasn't really sure what happened after he'd told them what he could, he thought he was knocked out and moved because one minute he was in the room they had kept him in, the next he woke up in another room and the door was open. Barry tried to get up, tried to walk, then to crawl, getting himself free, he needed to warn them. To tell them what he'd done, but before he could reach the door, darkness claimed him again.
The next time he woke up, someone called for him, a voice he recognized. It made him cry again. "W-Wendy... 'm sorry... I-I told 'em everything... sorry... s-sorry." Adopted or not, they were definitely kicking him out now.
It had been a week that her son had been missing. Adopted or not Barry was now her son, and this mama bear was going to defend him with the full power of Wayne enterprises and her fortune and her former military head of security. If it was one thing that she knew how to do was to organize to get results. Though she was pissed that it had taken a full week to find him, and get those responsible in jail.
She had stayed by his bed side from the moment he’d been admitted. It took her all of five minutes to overrule the hospitals board and ICU rules given her status as the main shareholder and history as a nurse to be allowed in though they were hesitant. It took even less to strong arm a copy of his chart.
Bruises, contusions, pneumonia, cigarette burns, malnutrition, dehydration. These were all signs she’d seen when she was treating prisoners of war. It made her blood burn with rage, as if fire was being supplied to every inch of her body with every beat of her heart. Alfred was dealing with the police, the investigation, and punishing those responsible but Wendy? Wendy needed to protect her son.
“I’m here..... I’m here now....” she kept whispering until he cried and apologized to her for saying something. “Shhhh...” she tried to calm him down, to relax to realize he had nothing to be sorry for. “I’m the one whose sorry....” she countered. “I didn’t protect my son....” Wendy ran her hand through his hair softly, gently, the touch of a mother. “I should’ve protected you.”
