based off this one book i read as a kid that really fucked me up and made me learn i can't do hurt no comfort - I haven't been able to find this book again but it was basically about this group of people who had been kidnapped and put into a bunker, it's written as a diary of one of the victims and slowly descends into the saddest shit I've ever read. If you know this book, let me know because I need to find it again so I personally fight the author after fighting the librarian who let me read it

also, i am repeating ideas but I'm on pt 4 of a one shot book after maxing out three and doing spin offs, let me reuse my shit 

The United Nations determined that the maximum time you can spend in solitary confinement is 15 days. Two weeks and a day. Even spending a few days in solitary confinement can lead you to experience acute anxiety and depression. Any longer than 15 days leads to permanent physiological damage and for those who already experience mental health struggles, the effects can hit much harder far sooner.

Nightwing was on his 15th day in solitary confinement although he had no idea it had been that long already with no hope of escape and only his training to keep him sane. Even then, he was holding on by a thread. He'd counted the bolts holding the walls together after bloodying his fingers trying to get them off when his weapons did nothing to budge them. He tried to sleep only when he felt tired, hoping his internal clock was still ticking correctly. The quiet, only broken by his thumping heart and breathing, made him on edge to the point where his own footsteps were deafening. He wanted his family, he hoped that they knew he was missing but a growing part of his mind said they knew but didn't care. He wanted to be wrong but the longer he stayed, the more he was inclined to believe it.

15 days prior, he'd been following some clues on the Riddler. He thought if he got ahead of the curve on his latest plot, he'd be able to at least prepare for whatever riddles would be thrown out even if he wasn't able to stop the whole plan before it was launched. He noticed that a building that sat above the abandoned tram system below Gotham had been bought out to a mystery buyer which was code for some villain had seen potential in the place. It wasn't that hard to connect it to Riddler since he hadn't done one of his big puzzles in a while and the place had been crawling with construction workers. 

Nightwing had decided to go it alone which, admittedly, wasn't his smartest decision. He could've called someone but he'd been alone for the last few weeks or so which meant his thoughts had turned darker and remained on the topics he didn't like to think about. Mostly he convinced himself that if he called anyone, they would simply roll their eyes at seeing his contact pop up and swiftly decline. 

He knew that wasn't true. His family cared about him and he hadn't fought with any of them recently to justify them ignoring him but he couldn't bring himself to answer the occasional text asking after him nor call to see how anyone was. They probably thought he was in another one of his moods where he made his life worse because he felt like he deserved it. It didn't help that he hadn't been sleeping well either so he was even more inclined to believe he would only bother them.

Searching through the abandoned train tunnels, he kept himself entertained by comparing how good it would be to live down here. No rent in exchange for damp dark conditions? Sounded better than most properties he'd seen when he was apartment hunting. It was definitely spacious but he could imagine actually getting his stuff down there would be a hassle. That didn't appear to stop the Riddler though with the half-made puzzles the builders had left for the evening. He wondered why the builders didn't work through the night and if they were just regular builders. Work was work he supposed, it didn't matter all that much who you were working for. Maybe they offered a special secrecy NDA. He laughed absentmindedly at the thought of their business cards being handed out in Arkham.

Upon the unfinished walls and half-painted question marks was a silver room. It looked like the containers builders used as makeshift offices on their sites but without the usual windows and corrugated metal. It was made with shiny smooth material and there seemed to be no door. There was some piping coming out of one side that disappeared into the ground but other than that it stood alone and out of place. Nightwing tilted his head at it and cautiously approached, knocking lightly on one of the walls and finding that the inside was definitely hollow. 

"What are you on Ed?" he muttered to himself. What good was a hollow metal box with some piping and no way to get in? He frowned and took a few steps back. It was around 7ft tall and 6 ft across. Maybe there was a hatch on top of it and the ladder hadn't been added yet. He crouched down and then pushed himself up to jump tall enough to just grab onto the ridge of it. He cringed as his boots squeaked against the metal but he managed to push himself up onto the top. 

Unfortunately, he was met with disappointment as there was no hatch on the top. There was however a slit down the middle that told him the roof wasn't one single piece of metal but rather two. He frowned and was about to investigate further when the roof suddenly gave in and dropped him into the box. 

"Fuck!" he shouted as he fell through, only just managing to land with some grace. He really needed to fix his sleep schedule after this. 

The roof swiftly closed again with a mechanical whir and left him in darkness.

"Nightwing! So kind of you to arrive so early!" Riddler's voice rang out. In the dark, he could just about spy out an object jutting out from a corner that he concluded was a speaker. He tilted his head with a frown.

"You know the old adage, early is on time, on time is late and late is unacceptable."

"So true. Not many appreciate it anymore," the villain replied. Definitely two ways then. "Now, you did arrive just a tad bit earlier than I could anticipate but honestly it works out better for me."

"Aww, were you excited to see me?" he teased. "Here I was thinking your favourite person to fuck with was Bats."

"Oh, no, no, no. You're not the receiver of my riddles. You're the prize! Or ransom I suppose but I much prefer a prize. You'll be able to feel out in the dark that I have provided you with the basics." The reason for the piping, he had intended for the vigilante to stay for the long haul. "You will be delivered food as and when. Any allergies?"

"None that I know of," he replied casually whilst his mind quickly ran through escape plans. 

"Great! I would tell you the schedule but that defeats the point."

"And what is the point?"

"Originally, you were intended to spend only a few days in isolation but you've gone and spared me the job of capturing you as well as extended your stay. Ever so helpful." Oh shit. "Now you probably intend to send out a distress signal but I've had the surrounding area reinforced to prevent such a thing. So glad it was on top of my to-do list, it really came in handy." Oh, shit x2. "I'll leave you to get situated. I'll be nice and give you a riddle to occupy your mind. I'm the sweetest of sounds in orchestra heard, yet in an orchestra never was seen. I'm a bird of gay plumage, yet less like a bird, nothing ever in nature was seen. Touch the earth I expire, in water, I die, in air, I lose breath, yet can swim and can fly. Darkness destroys me, and light is my death, and I only keep going by holding my breath. If my name can't be guessed by a boy or a man, by a woman or girl it certainly can." 

With that, the speaker died and he was left with no sound other than his own breathing which was competing with his heart pounding in his ears. He knew lack of sleep made him slip up. He knew that when his brain betrayed him in how he perceived relationships it would betray him when he worked. However, he always was his own worst enemy so he really should've expected this to blow up in his face. At least it seemed like he was being used as bait so he wouldn't starve to death in there. He was just left alone with his thoughts. 

Nightwing pulled out his communicator just to test if it truly didn't get anything out and wavered over hitting the distress signal. Was he really in distress? He put it away again. Try to get out and then decide if this is an emergency. Batman would probably give him the verbal lashing of a lifetime if he didn't even try to escape and it wasn't like he was about to be murdered. He was just captured. No, it wasn't worth bothering them until he was sure he couldn't get out on his own. Then he could call for help and get teased for getting caught like a rat in one of those humane traps. 

"Alright, let's get out of this mess."

It was decidedly an emergency. 

He'd tried everything to escape the room, even going as far to claw at the walls for any sort of screw so he could begin the long tedious process of unscrewing enough for a sheet of metal to come loose but there was nothing. With smooth metal walls and smooth metal floors, a hatch out that was too high, there was no feasible way to get out. He couldn't even feel speakers or cameras so he had no idea how much the Riddler could see and he couldn't deconstruct anything to help him make an escape. He had no explosives so he couldn't blow a hole in the wall although he doubted he would be able to do that anyway without being blown up too. He had a few Wing-Dings but he doubted they were sharp enough to cut through sheets of thick metal and trying to twist the bolts off wasn't getting him anywhere.

With a sigh of defeat, he hit the distress signal and waited. He'd never felt so humiliated as he sat on the floor in the dark. Rookie mistake going somewhere you don't know the ins and outs of. Rookie mistake not testing the new area. He's lucky it wasn't some sort of death trap where he'd walk in and the walls would move in to crush him into bloody goop. He could imagine Bruce rolling his eyes at him (although the hero would insist he did no such thing) and giving him a lengthy lecture. He might be bold enough to send over the training documents from the Robin days. 

Red Hood, if he was around to get himself involved, would likely say something snide about the golden child losing status or comment on how he wanted them to be a family one minute then went out alone the next. He'd pick on Nightwing going MIA and how it took being hopelessly trapped to give them a call. If he were in a better state of mind, the acrobat would remind himself that's just how Red Hood showed his care. He wasn't though and felt his skin begin to itch at the imaginary impending argument.

The others would just give him looks like he wasted their time needing help. He'd been in the game almost as long as Batman now so why was he getting himself into trouble like this? He had his own city to defend and so did they. Not everyone could or should drop what they had just to come pick him up. The world didn't revolve around him.

He felt himself regret hitting the distress signal but what else was there? It would be even more embarrassing to be held captive as ransom. He'd ruin so many plans because Batman, for all his bravado, wouldn't want to risk losing Nightwing no matter what. Unless this was the step too far. Maybe this was just one more mistake that Batman wouldn't be able to overlook and the pile was finally too high to justify keeping him around. 

He shook his head. No, he was catastrophising. His family cared about him and they wouldn't see his call for help as a waste of their time. All he had to do was wait for them to come get him. He could do that.

He couldn't do that. 

There was no sense of time inside the metal cube and he had nothing that could track the time other than his hunger and exhaustion which were both pretty bad baselines given his history. It reminded him of when he'd been buried alive although with considerably more space and less immediate certain death but that did little to comfort him. He could've been there hours, minutes or days and he wouldn't have a clue. He thought maybe the lights would help but they turned on and off at seemingly sporadic times. He'd try to sleep through the times when the lights were off but he was always awoken by the lights shining so brightly that not even pulling the blanket over his face or hiding underneath his pillow would spare him of their intensity. He couldn't be sure of how long he slept, only knowing he always woke up tired. He tried to measure the times the light went on and off but found there were no consistent times. It was purposeful. It was meant to confuse him, keep him out of the loop.

Food would be brought to him but there was never a person delivering it and he'd find it sitting in the room when he woke up. Attempting to stay awake or pretending to sleep confirmed that they were being thrown down from the roof when it opened slightly. It was so fast he never had time to curse the person out or attempt to escape. He was sure that Riddler only gave him packaged protein bars and bottled water to ensure he'd never arm himself with cutlery and the opening would never be there for long nor did it have to be that big. 

He tried his best to form a routine but it was clear that was going to be near impossible to keep up not only from the lights and seemingly random food supply. Nightwing had been prescribed a series of medications to help with various things. Some for depression, some for night terrors, and some for hallucinations. They helped greatly but he had to take them at the right times and consistently for them to work. He didn't think he'd be trapped like a rat so he didn't bring any of them. Not that he'd take them if he did for fear of either overdosing or taking too little. The doctors always said if he wanted to switch medications or if he wanted to do away with them altogether, he'd have to consult them and slowly ween himself off or symptoms would get worse. He never took that advice lightly. He knew enough people who stopped abruptly because they felt they were better only to take a steep decline into the worst conditions of their life. 

At some point, he realised he was withdrawing from the medications. Being trapped soon didn't matter. Neither did eating or drinking. He sat down and he didn't get up again. Not when his body became both numb and stiff from staying in the same position. Not when food was dropped down. Not when bottles of water were dropped deliberately close to him. Not when he wanted to sleep. Not when he saw people move in the shadows when the room was dark or when they stared at him in disgust clearly seen in the bright lights. 

The last thing Bruce wanted to do was fight the Riddler when Dick had been missing for the last fifteen days but crime never stopped for family affairs no matter how dire they were. He felt some comfort in knowing that his kids were still looking for Dick, wherever he may be. It was all so weird. He'd run away before, with good reason in hindsight, but this wasn't the same. His Nightwing suit was missing yet all of his clothes were still there. They couldn't see any signs of a struggle or a rushed leaving. CCTV showed him go to Gotham but disappear before any of them knew he was there. No one had seen him, no hospital had a record of him turning up in the early hours of the morning with some injury or another and there'd been no ransom call. He just evaporated into thin air.

Riddler's clues had led him to an abandoned building. He knew it was suspicious when it was bought after years of sitting there but it wasn't top priority. Batman walked into the building cautiously, his eyes darting around for any sign of danger. The rooms were decrepit and empty so this wasn't the main area he would play the game. Although his games and puzzles had a very homemade feeling, he kept things neat. He avoided cobwebs in corners, crumbling plaster and so on. Walking through, he found a table with a monitor sitting on it. It seemed he'd triggered something as it flashed to life when he walked closer and showed Dick sitting in the corner of a room dressed in his Nightwing suit. He was curled up into himself with his back pressed firmly against the wall. Batman knew immediately he was distressed, his head snapping to something in the room once then flinching at nothing. There were uneaten protein bars piled up near him and bottles of water that went untouched despite being so close to his hands. 

"I think you've been looking for this," Riddler's voice announced through hidden speakers. He glared at the screen since he had no way of glaring at the villain himself. "I have to admit, Batman, you're quite late. Your former protege has much better punctuality. He was actually early."

"What have you done to him?"

"Nothing. I've provided him with a bed, toiletries, food and water. He's well looked after physically I assure you." Physically. The distinction already had him listing everything that didn't fall under physical. "I'm sure as someone so obsessed with keeping societal conventions is familiar with the United Nations. They state solitary confinement is a rather brutal punishment and the limit is 15 days. Now originally, I had planned for only a week but as I said, Nightwing was early. Today is his 15th day in confinement."

Solitary. Dick didn't do well with solitary. He could take a lot of torture on the chin but lock him in a room with nothing but his own thoughts and he was done for. They tried techniques and training but you could only prepare someone so much for their weakness. The most he could last was a couple of days if that. It depended on his mood prior and although Batman wasn't as involved as he'd like to be in his son's life. He knew Dick was on a few things to help him along with therapy. 

"I'm positive you're just itching to get him back so please make your way to the door on the left. Your first puzzle awaits you. I would suggest you be quick. It seems the former bird is losing his voice in his cage."

If he had the time, Batman was going to beat Riddler black and blue until he looked like one big angry bruise. For now though, he needed to get through these stupid puzzles.

They weren't coming, Dick thought forlornly. They were happy now that he wasn't there and they weren't going to save him. Riddler would get bored of him, maybe he already was, and he'd be left alone to starve to death in here. The room had once felt open but now it was like the walls were closing in on him and he had no space to move. He supposed part of that came from stuffing himself into the corner but he had to press his back against something solid so nothing could sneak up on him. 

At some point, he started hearing whispers and at first, he'd been excited. He thought he was getting spatterings of conversations from outside the walls and he recognised the voices enough to hope for his rescue. He had pressed his hand against the wall and called for his family but the voices continued to whisper without acknowledging him. It was only when they started to laugh and taunt him that he came to the realisation that his hallucinations were back. Sometimes the whispers would turn into shouting, questioning his decisions and his worth and he frowned when he couldn't come up with adequate answers. He wanted so desperately to fall asleep and be awoken by his own rescue yet he never felt tired enough to do so. 

Dick wanted to go home. He wanted to apologise for pushing everyone away from him when he'd told enough people to never do that. He wanted to promise that he would never go so long without contacting someone so when he disappeared next, it didn't take so long to find him. The voices quickly reminded him that it was very possible they weren't looking for him either way. 

Dick knew he'd been in there for a long time from the way his body trembled. He knew withdrawals from the handful of times he thought he was fine to go off his medication only to realize he felt that way because of the medication. He'd gotten sick one day, spending what felt like an eternity with his face on the rim of the toilet seat unable to move. He wondered if Riddler was watching him with intrigue or disgust or perhaps a mix of both. Imaginary hands pulled his hair back and hushed his whimpers when he was vomiting nothing but liquid and acid. He missed the nice hallucinations. He missed his family. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to be better. He wanted his family to make him better. By the looks of things, they'd rather do anything else.

Suddenly, he heard a bang above his head but he knew better than to jump at the sound. It was just another thing his brain created to fill the void. He didn't understand why his mind insisted on keeping his hopes up when it would only bring disappointment. He continued to stare at nothing. At least that was dependable. Even if a hallucination walked into his field of vision, he knew it couldn't be real because he was staring at a spot nothing should appear in. It was empty. 

There was a screeching above his head and the once dark room was now flooding with bright light on the other end. His heart skipped a beat before he reminded himself that he couldn't trust his eyes. He couldn't trust any of his senses really. Just keep staring at the spot and pretend nothing is happening because nothing was happening. Still, he couldn't help but wince when the light finally hit his eyes and temporarily blinded him. It felt real but he had to keep saying it wasn't.

Then came the difficult part. There was another bang and at the edge of his eyes, he could see familiar black boots. They remained still for a moment and from their position, he guessed Batman was staring at him. He prepared himself for the verbal onslaught that would no doubt follow his appearance. Always so loud and angry about things he couldn't fix or change. He heard more of hallucination Bruce than he did the real thing. There was some humour in that.

Batman walked towards him slowly as though approaching a feral animal.

"Nightwing?" he called. Dick didn't dignify the allusion with a response. Just ignore it and it will go away, he assured himself. "Can you hear me?" Don't respond. Ignore it. Yet when Batman crouched directly in his field of vision, his eyes instinctively flickered to focus on the man's face. It looked like Batman. The real Batman. He didn't flicker or fuzz around the edges like his hallucinations did but who's to say his mind wasn't getting better at fooling him in the isolation? It knew he desperately wanted to be saved and not all of the conjured up visitors were mean to him. 

"You're not real," he whispered, his voice cracking and hoarse from not being used in however long.

"I am. I promise I am."

"You can't be. You don't want to save me. You left me here."

"I've been looking for you. We all have. We couldn't find you, we didn't leave you." Dick shook his head. "I'm here to bring you home." He sounded so real and sincere. "You look tired." Batman reached out slowly, carefully, and put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He looked pained when this didn't magically snap his foster son out of it but why would it? Plenty of visual hallucinations could evolve into sensory hallucinations. The brain was a powerful tool after all. "Why don't you come with me?"

"What would be the point? I'd snap back to here anyway." Batman hummed. He opened a pocket on his utility belt and pulled out a small ring before placing it in his hand. At first, the acrobat was left confused. He turned the ring in his hand a few times before a memory sparked. He'd asked Bruce for a code. Something to prove that he was real when hallucinations got stronger than he could handle. He admitted it wouldn't work every time because he might think this was part of the hallucination but it could help. He didn't think Bruce took it seriously until now.

"Do you know what that is?"

"Yes. Do you?"

"It's your mother's ring. She got it as a little girl and said it had good luck. When she outgrew it, she kept it on a necklace and we found it in the evidence locker."

"I don't know what's real."

"I know. How about you come with me and Leslie can give you some help?" Dick chewed on his bottom lip before nodding. He struggled to get to his feet, his limbs too used to being curled up against him but Batman quickly wrapped an arm around his waist and kept him upright. Even if this wasn't real, he supposed the only harm that could come from snapping out of it was disappointment. He could deal with that.

"He's malnourished and dehydrated," Leslie began. She always started with the least worrying thing to ease them into the worst of it, like dipping your toe into the pool when it was freezing. She gripped her clipboard tightly as she spoke. Leslie got just as angry as the rest of them when villains hurt someone in their close but dysfunctional family. She'd known Dick since he was little so it didn't surprise them that she also didn't find any joy in treating injuries bestowed to him. "Through the medical history I acquired from Bludhaven, he was on a series of medications that he's currently going through the withdrawal for."

"Is there any damage?" Bruce asked reluctantly. 

"Nothing physical although I'll need to do a check-up once he's fed and hydrated to ensure that. I'm more concerned about his mental state. Isolation for as long as he's experienced has significant mental effects on the most stable of people." She let out a sigh. "I'm going to slowly reintroduce him to his medications, if I give him the dose he was on at the time of his kidnapping, it could do more harm than good. He'll have to work back up to that dosage."

"How is he now?" Tim asked.

"I won't sugarcoat it. I need you all to ensure he isn't left alone and he's unable to get medications or weapons."

"A suicide watch," Jason confirmed. "How long for?"

"Until I see fit. I need you all to understand this, Dick is both in withdrawal and suffering from the effects of long-term isolation. There is no quick fix to this and you can't yell or lecture him out of it," she said, glancing at Bruce accusingly. "He still can't tell me if this is real or a hallucination which I believe may cause more distress later on. Right now, he seems to have accepted whatever this is to him. He is not Nightwing right now and he's not going to be for a while. He's Dick Grayson who has a long history of mental illness that needs support."

"We're not stupid," Damian insisted. "We can handle it."

"You must understand that he isn't always going to be easy or manageable. He will get angry, he will get destructive, and he will have highs that make you think everything is better only to have lows that could destroy his progress. He will have nightmares, he will be disorientated and he will talk to people who are not there. He's not just going to be sad and tired."

"Again, we're not stupid. We have witnessed him in times of mental distress. We know what to expect." Leslie nodded, accepting that they were prepared. 

"If anything happens, call me. If you ever feel like he's getting too much, you call me first and foremost do you understand? Gotham has a history of just prescribing patients to make them easy not to help them and I don't want to find him catatonic because you felt he got too out of hand."

"Have some faith in us," Jason told her.

"I'll need to."