I'm posting this first chapter as a sort of preview, and whether or not I expand on this idea depends on your reviews.
Warnings: This has lots of my opinions on abortion and such. If you are offended by anything pro-life (I am pro-life all the way) then do not read. Contains teenage pregnancy, but not by the usual methods, as you'll see. Some sensitive content. However, there is NO sexual content, no pairings so far, and this is not rape. Also warning: amazingly long rant in the AN at the bottom. Ye be warned.
Anyways, this is a Fem!Robin story and while most people usually make her name Rachel- since it's so much like Richard- I wanted to make this unique-er. Her name is Agatha Marie Grayson. Please don't hate on her name for not starting with an R.
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice.
Agatha loved her hair long. It might not be the most logical style, her being a crime-fighter and martial artist among other things (after all, it was almost as dangerous as having a cape- which she also had, the rebel- since it could get pulled or caught on something), but she preferred it that way. She- for some reason she didn't quite understand herself- simply relished the feeling of the soft ebony locks cascading down her slim shoulders, resting as a comforting weight on her back. Maybe it substituted for the friendly touches she secretly adored but didn't get near enough of with Bruce Wayne as a father.
Now, he was very affectionate towards her, don't be mistaken. He just didn't do as well with touches. Words were his weapons, his comfort and his safety. She had just learned to tamp down her own preferences and make words her comfort too.
Still, as she flew through the crisp nights, soaring from roof to roof, her love for her hair would be made anew as it flew right behind her, catching the wind and fluttering as gracefully as the body it was attached to. Every time she did a flip- did any form of acrobatics, really- her heart would beat twice as fast and adrenaline would rush through her, and her hair would flow ceaselessly behind her, constant and reassuring.
However, tonight she was thinking something completely different- somewhere along the lines of I hate it I hate it I hate it- as those very black locks, the same ones that usually made her internally smile, were snagged around a fat, greasy hand and woven through some sick bastard's groping fingers. She squealed in surprise and was sent flying backwards into the alley's wet, hard wall. A groan escaped her parted lips as she sat there, rubbing her head.
"See, I toldja she'd show!" Fat Goon #1 sneered with a giggle unbefitting for such a large, burly man. Gatzi snarled at him, jumping up to charge once more, before hissing in pain and collapsing back against the wall. On her earlier flight via United Hairlines, she had slid across the rough, gravelly ground before being stopped rather harshly by the wall. Now she finally noticed the large tears in her black leggings and sleeves, and the deep, jagged scrapes underneath. Goodbye dermis, epidermis; it was nice while it lasted. Just moving her arm slightly sent shooting pain straight through her nervous system and to her brain, making her gasp. And to make matters worse, the thick rainfall was hitting her wounds hard, mercilessly, making them flare uncontrollably. She wanted to sleep, wanted to cry, release the tears she could feel getting pent up behind her masked eyes.
But no, she was Robin, prodigy of the goddamn Batman, and she was going to stand up and fight.
"Lookit, baby Birdie's tryina' stand all by hersewf!" Fat Goon #2 chuckled, smiling a smile that was only a replica of his boss's. She stumbled to her feet, good hand flying to her black utility belt, searching for something to help her out of this mess. Her fingers wrapped around the familiar shape of the communicator, and her gloved thumb pressed the emergency call button before #2 could smash it into the wall. She smirked her signature smirk, one almost as famous- and fear inducing- as the Joker himself.
"Too late, porcine." She cackled madly, cherishing the looks of uncertainty crossing the idiots' faces. #1's blade shook just slightly. They're coming, She thought smugly, and these swine won't last another minute.
"Now now, Miss Birdbrain, that's no way to treat your escorts." Came a patronizing voice from the shadows. Even without the clichéd lightning strike lighting up his silhouette from behind, Gatzi knew exactly who it was.
She growled low in her throat, tired to her core and just wishing this long, work-yourself-to-the-absolute-limit night to be over already. Batman was off-world on some stupid mission, and he had of course tasked her with his precious city's protection. Sure, she had thought, I can handle it.
… Nope.
Hadn't she had enough bad guys to fight in less than four hours? First it had been Riddler, then Two-Face, and then some random dude who thought he was incredibly fearsome just because he could move rocks with some stupid-looking 'magic dance'. (No, he couldn't move the very rock they stood on; just round, throwable rocks. And you know how many possibly harmful sized rocks you'll find in a Gotham bank, much less the whole city? None... She still had pebbles in her steel-toed boots.) And it always started with the stupid, guileless goons who honestly needed to be kicked in the face. Multiple times. With a cleat.
Then would come the 'big bosses', the ones who dress the most ridiculously and somehow are feared by more people than their stupid goons are. They shout out something threatening, she taunts and slaughters the English language, and then she ties their hands to their ankles before they can blink and leaves them for the police.
This had occurred at least four times tonight; what was up with these morons? Couldn't they take a freaking break for one night, let her get some sleep? She was totally not feeling the aster.
While surrendering sounded great to her lazy, dead-tired side at that exact moment, she knew she had to just hang in there, just long enough for her team to arrive and help her whip this clown's ass into next Tuesday.
A grey canister hitting her shoulder brought her out of her dark reverie, and started spewing gas quicker than her dulled, tired reflexes could react. The green gas went straight up her nose, into her mouth, invading her lungs and making her see yellow as her head started spinning. A laugh ripped its way right out of her mouth, echoing on the hard bricks. It was joined soon after by another, then another, and before she could reach her antidote- 'third pocket to the right, third pocket to the right, Gat!'- she had lost so much oxygen that her vision swam and all memory seemed to abandon her, including how to stand upright. She collapsed to the ground once more, making her legs and arm scream in protest as she herself screamed in hysterical laughter that just wouldn't stop. The Joker himself started laughing alongside her, their cackling joining in a glorious, horrific harmony of cacophony. Finally, after almost two minutes of being oxygen-starved and hysterical, Gatzi Grayson laughed herself into unconsciousness.
~000~
When Agatha first regained awareness, her hyper-tuned sense of smell immediately told her where she was; hospital. Without using any other senses, it would have been an easy guess: disinfectant and rubbing alcohol scents wafted right into her nose, making her cringe. With this revelation brought many questions: Why am I in a hospital? Why can't I remember anything past laughing? Am I Agatha, or Robin? Wiggling a sore knee around, she realized there were no leggings adorning her slender legs. Okay, am I naked? She panicked, wiggling her arm slightly and sighing in relief when she felt a sleeve by her shoulder and a blanket resting beneath, covering her legs. Ugh- why do my eyes hurt so much? How long have I been out?
After habitually waiting five minutes and not sensing any nearby threats, Gatzi peeled her groggy eyelids open and blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog. Thankfully, the (probably blinding) overhead fluorescents were off; the only light came from somewhere to her right.
It was a medium-sized hospital room, with shiny white tiles and hideous tan walls. On the wall opposite was a line of white cabinets and a counter with an attached sink, and next to her bed was a heart monitor and saline drip, attached to her left arm. She wore a loose-fitting hospital gown that was boringly white with pale blue diamonds on it.
But what made her rethink her deductions of earlier was the wall to her right, where the light source was. The wall was made entirely of glass with a set of sliding double-doors, only opened with a passcode lock. On the other side was a large (factory?) room full of crates and multiple doors leading to mysterious places.
Suddenly, the memories of her apparent capture rushed right at her, bringing with them a terrible migraine that caused her to clutch her head and cry out. The heart monitor started beeping louder and blinking, making a screeching noise that only made her headache worse.
The doors slid open and hurried footsteps approached her, a cold hand pressing to her forehead. Buttons clicked and the loud screeching stopped, but her head was still pounding agonizingly. She leaned forward, clutching her head, and screamed as pain flared up in her stomach, arm, leg, and back.
"It's alright, hon, you're okay, I'm just going to get you some medicine, okay?" A woman's voice asked gently between screams. Agatha, in too much pain to do much of anything productive except clench her eyes shut, nodded and the woman scurried off to some other part of the room. Hot tears fell down the teen's face as a pain she had never experienced before kept stabbing at her relentlessly.
A tiny pinch in her neck alerted Gatzi to the woman's presence beside her once more, and within seconds the throbbing was dying down to a fuzzy pulse in the back of her skull. She sighed in relief and wiped away her tears.
"Th-thanks." She rasped, why did her throat have to hurt so freaking much? The woman nodded and handed her a glass of water.
The woman was maybe in her late thirties, short in stature and of average weight. Her hair was a light auburn color and cut short to hug her head, and her eyes were an intelligent brown. She wore thick-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat over a blue tee shirt and black sweatpants. The Bat-Detective side of Agatha was confused at the unprofessional state of dress.
Batman! Gatzi startled, realizing that if the Dark Knight was not currently at her side, he probably had no idea where she was. He had a habit of always being extremely close by whenever she was in the hospital, regardless of his other duties. That gave her goosebumps and fear stabbed at her heart. Where was she?
"What's going on?" She questioned the doctor, "Who are you?"
The brunette smiled slightly. "I am Doctor Janet Kassey, your OB-GYN." She introduced. Gatzi snarled.
"I already have a doctor, and you are not-" She froze, paling. "-did you say OB? As in, Obstetrician?" She whispered. Dr. Kassey nodded, surprised at her reaction. She was aware of her situation, right? The look on the tiny girl's face told her no. Troubled, Kassey gasped a little and hurried out of the room, towards the phone her captor told her to use.
The number automatically dialed itself as soon as she put the phone to her ear.
"How is miss Robin doing?" Came the deep voice of the Joker. She shuddered, as she did every time she heard it. And did he say Robin? Like, the Batman's partner?
Well… in a way it sort of made sense, made a small connection in her head as to why the girl might have been a target in the first place. Maybe this was to get revenge on his arch-nemesis? Did he know her secret identity?
"She- ugh, why the hell does she act like she has no idea what's going on? You told me she consented!" She growled.
See, Janet believed herself to be a good woman, to put it plain and simple. She didn't lie and she generally put her patients' wellbeing in front of her own. So when a jovial woman came into her clinic, knocked her out and brought her to this hellhole with orders to artificially give The Joker, of all people, an heir, she had of course asked plenty of questions to at least avoid dying a bad person if she had to. She was told the girl was nineteen (very tiny for her age), had volunteered to be a carrier, and that she would be unharmed after her job was done. That had been the best Janet could dare to hope for, and, really wanting to live and get back to her elderly mother, who needed her, she had gone through with the procedure.
But now that it had come back to haunt her after only a fortnight, she had a feeling this would be a massive problem.
"Oh dearest, I lied! I'm a villain, remember?" He sneered annoyingly. Janet's heart dropped to her stomach. 'What have I done?' "And it's not my fault that you believed me so easily!" While it made her slightly angry, Janet held her tongue. He did have a point and besides, she had sassed him enough already, hadn't she? She really did want to live through this ordeal.
"H-how old is she, really?" She asked in a tiny voice, fearing the answer.
"… Old enough." He replied, then hung up. She stood there, frozen.
"W-what have I done?" She whispered, shaking. She was so stupid, accepting something the Joker had said as truth, ignoring her common sense scolding her and telling her not to do it, impregnating a- a child!
She dropped the phone and ran back into the med bay, where the pale teenager laid stock-still, waiting for her to say something. The small girl easily noticed her obvious distress, and her eyes widened in fear. Hurrying to try and fix whatever she could, Janet smoothed her crumpled lab coat and put on a reassuring, yet smile-less face.
"I-"
The girl jumped up, disconnected herself from the various machines, and was at her side before she could register it.
Gat punched her left cheek, then swept her feet out from under her. She then rested her foot not-so-gently on the woman's stomach. Janet, thinking fast, reached out a long arm and pressed two fingers into the girl's midsection, wincing when she cried out in agony and fell to the floor.
The teen backed herself up, sliding on her butt until her back hit the wall, and then with a pale, shocked face ripped the front of her gown open to reveal her naked chest. Gatzi hardly noticed her nudity, however, as her attention was drawn solely to the small, straight line of sutured-together flesh right on her abdomen; a recovering incision that was now almost a scar.
"What the hell did you do to me?" Gatzi growled in revulsion and complete fury. Her long fingernails dug into her pale skin and her whole body began to shake. "Rahat, rahat, rahat, cățea, oh iad, Doamne ajută-mă, la naiba, la naiba, la naiba," She muttered under her breath.
Janet adjusted her glasses and crawled over to the teen, very slowly. A burning question bubbled in her chest as she stared helplessly at the girl; her long, tangled ebony hair rested like a rat's nest atop her head, contrasting greatly with the paleness of her skin and making her already-small form seem even tinier.
"H-how old are you?" She whispered to the shivering child. Gatzi gravely stared at her, blue eyes watering. She knew a question like that, spoken in this particular context and that particular tone, was not a good thing. She narrowed her eyes- which felt so naked with her mask- and snarled, folding her gown back over her exposed breasts. She might have not grown at all in the two years she'd been on the team, and she may have been slightly flat-chested and very bony and underweight, but the question still made her sizzle even more.
"I'm 15, you bitch." She spat, smirking at the stricken look on the woman's face. "Now I ask again, what the hell did you do to me?" She wondered if Superboy's tough-guy death glare could cause as much shivering as she just did. The doctor- she refused to call her obstetrician- gathered her courage and straightened up a bit.
"I… I was kidnapped from my clinic on New Clarence Boulevard a few weeks ago. Some lady in red and black. The Joker forced me to perform one of my more… advanced procedures. I-if I wanted to get back to my epileptic, quadriplegic mother, I had to remove one of your eggs, fertilize it, genetically modify it, and re-implant it into your womb." She stuttered, lowering her head in shame.
It took Gat a few seconds to translate what had just been said; her face froze up and her jaw dropped.
"Y-you mean I-" She gulped, her eyes getting glassy, "I'm… pregnant?"
Janet rushed to her side, placing a hesitant hand on her slim shoulder.
"Now, don't freak out! Listen, I hate the Joker, I really do. He wanted me to use a few eggs to make sure at least one caught, but I lied and told him I could only do one at a time. Now, the odds of the single one catching are slim, around 27%. Who knows, maybe we'll both get out of this unharmed?" She whispered into the girl's ear. Agatha pondered this for a moment. And then, anger billowing like a hot air balloon, she turned her suddenly hollow-looking face to the doctor, staring blankly.
"I doubt a whiny bitch like you will last."
I think this may be the darkest thing I've ever written. Now, I really hate hurting people's feelings, and just writing Robin being so cruel to the woman was really making me cringe; just remember, though, that this woman really did sort of ruin any semblance of innocence Agatha had left, egg catching or not. She took a shaky(at best) lie from the Joker for her own benefit, and so yeah, she's kinda on Gatzi's bad list.
Also, I know this is not how artificial insemination works, and but that's why I call it 'artificial impregnation' instead; it's a completely different process than the one used in clinics. (there may be a real process called artificial impregnation or whatever, but just pretend there isn't.) Totally fictional process, btw.
Don't worry, the team shall be in this at some point!
And another rant to add: Everything from season 2 and onward never happened. There was no time skip. Honestly, I just recently joined the fandom via Netflix, and fell absolutely in love with the team's dynamic and Robin's character. Then I find out that season 2 is 5 years later, the team has changed and he's been replaced with Jason Todd? No. Nuh-uh. I don't care if he's Nightwing, I want him to keep being Robin! (Probably sounds childish, but there it is.) It bugged me also that the show itself showed them getting older; I mean, cartoons are supposed to be a constant, one of the few constants you'll have as you yourself grow up! They're not supposed to age! Just thinking about it makes my heart kind of heavy. (I'm okay with fanfictions aging them, because that's just someone's creativity, not official and annoying and cannon.)
And I heard that Wally died, too. (Couldn't make it through episode one of season two, let alone the rest of the episodes). Nope, none of that happening here. Wally is and will remain alive - along with the rest of the team- and there is no Zatanna, BB, new team, new Robin incarnations, or Rocket either, because I honestly prefer the originals. And in this, two years later, everything is pretty much still the same, except for ages and such. Sorry, but this is my fanfic. Don't like, don't read.
Alright, end confusing rant.
So, now that my terms have been laid out and you've read the first chapter, should I continue? Yay or nay?
R&R!