Robin: Offline

Damian's body shuddered as his thoughts turned around and around and around inside his head. There was blood covering his eyes, staining his green mask. Was it his own?

"Kid!"

He couldn't move, couldn't think strait, who was?

"Come on kid, wake up!"

There was a hand on his shoulder, turning his body over. Why couldn't he focus beyond the senses of touch and hearing? Why couldn't he move?

"Hey what the-?"

The sound of another bullet being fired-

"Rohrbach!"

There were the steps of a figure rushing away, lightweight but sure-footed before a voice shouted out, "Up here chief, situation under control!"

Heavier steps pounded against the rooftop before he felt another hand rest against his chest, "Hey, you OK kid?"

There was stillness and silence and something was moving-

NO! Fingers were pulling at his mask.

Damian's hand shot up and clenched around the wrist of the hand.

"So kid, you're semi-conscious at least."

Would people stop calling him kid?

Another hand pried his hand off of his visitor's wrist and then descended to his face. The wound didn't flare up in pain until the idiot touched it! He felt the sudden fire spread as a thin finger ran down to his neck. The heat? So his neck/throat had been cut, but apparently not good enough, he was still alive.

"Rohrbach!"

Why did he feel something familiar about that name?

"Whoa, is that?"

"Yeah, help me get him inside around back, don't let the chief know."

"Shouldn't we call Nightwing?"

"I'll try while you're getting him inside."

Idiots, they couldn't call him if-wait, no he was jumping to conclusions, Grayson was fine! Wait, who was-

Damian didn't get much more time to think when he felt a pair of arms scoop up his dead weight body. Why couldn't he move again, or speak or open his eyes even?

"Uh, Rohrbach?"

"What!"

The Boy Wonder continued to force and force his will forward until finally, his eyes flashed open. He saw: two hands holding mercury coated Batarang, the sun behind them turning the sky a bright blue, and all in all, the city of Bludhaven was wide awake.

"Crap! Get him inside quick!"

Darkness returned in front of his eyelids before Robin could notice anything more. When had he been hit the Batarang? And why hadn't he felt it when it went in and when it was pulled out? The sudden rush of wind passing by his ears made his mind roll and roll, like a pair of dice thrown too hard at a gambling table in Las Vegas.

Grayson was influencing him obviously; such a ludicrous and unrelated correlation could NOT have appeared in his mind via his own thoughts.

Who the hell was carrying him anyways?

When he stopped and could hear things clearly once again, he inhaled deeply, drawing the attention of the one carting him around. Weird, he smelled a familiar scent of coffee and…doughnuts?

Before another thought could pass his mind, the suffering darkness behind his eyelids swallowed his mind completely and he was out.

When he awoke he was firstly aware of two things, for one, his shirt was off and someone had a damp rag on his forehead, oh and yeah, his head was on fire.

"Kid, where's Nightwing?"

He was only able to breath, couldn't see in the darkness around him in the room and promptly passed out once again as the damp rag fell over his eyes to darken his sight.

The second time he woke up, his thoughts came first. What was with Red Robin? Drake wouldn't- would he? No, the guy didn't have the heart him to betray anyone-but of course, he was an idiot so maybe-well, they'd never gotten along. Still, Red Robin wouldn't do that. Oh wait-Nightwing! The high rail train crash!

Damian took two deep breaths before pushing up with his hand with one extreme push to get himself righted again. OK, he was sitting. He was making progress. Though his stomach flipped at the action, the boy turned his head to stare down, feeling the security of his mask still being on as his eyes raked over the bandages that were wrapped around his torso. He brought a hand to his throat in curiosity and found bandages there as well.

OK, so who had-?

Fate seemed to decide that he had been in the dark long enough, for a door to the dark room opened and in walked the officer he had been trying to avoid alerting to his presence to when overhearing that news report. Robin reached for a Batarang in his utility belt but found it gone.

"Behind you kid."

He growled and looked behind him, still keeping his other senses on the female officer. He found his Robin tunic, all complete with a bloody tear where he guessed the Batarang had been, hit utility belt and his cape. He scooped them up quickly and got dressed, but didn't bother to go for a weapon, the woman hadn't done anything, as of yet anyways.

"Where's Nightwing?"

"I don't know who you're talking about," Robin huffed while his eyes searched the room precariously, he needed a way out and to get back to the edge of the city before too long.

Who knows how long he had been out and if the 'Cats' hadn't called and told Nightwing and the man hadn't come to find him, then he had to still be around the high rail train debris; knocked out somewhere, because he simply wasn't allowed to be dead, not at this point.

"I know Nightwing is Dick Grayson, now where is he?"

The idiot had told her? Grayson was going to get himself killed someday because of that, if he hadn't already!

Robin gritted his teeth and spun around, "Fine, I don't know why the idiot trusts you."

"We're partners."

Damian's expression turned into shock for just a moment before a scowl mapped itself over his face. Yeah, police officers...partners. The Boy Wonder felt a small green tone of jealousy cloud his face for just a moment. So what? He had been Grayson's partner too. He then shook off the thoughts and spoke quickly.

"He was heading back here on the High Rail Train that just crashed."

"WHAT! THAT IDIOTIC ONE-MINDED ROOKIE!"

The younger raised an interested eyebrow behind his mask.

"Let's go kid; I got my cruiser out front. I swear Grayson if I have to pull your but out of flaming debris I'll-"

Her voice faded as she disappeared out of an external door. Damian's expression switched from surprised and fell into an impressed smirk. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all; obviously Grayson hadn't been too stupid when it came to partners.

An hour, they had joined a team searching the debris for survivors for an hour. As far as the civilians of Gotham and Bludhaven were concerned, everyone had made it out fine. The crew had been the only ones on the train and all of them had been recovered safely with nothing but a few burns to speak of.

For Damian Wayne and Amy Rohrbach, their search had to continue. Nightwing must have stowed away instead of riding like a civilian, the train probably hadn't been taking passengers anyway. The crew had simply been returning home after being held up at the station outside of Gotham.

All of the other volunteers had left, and Damian mentally seethed at the fact that Nightwing had his tracker, if it was still in one piece that was.

"The 4th and 5th cars are empty," Amy reported.

"And the 6th one's now the 12th one," Damian said, catching the sight of the last car that had been ripped from the center of the train and tossed back behind the others.

It was empty as well.

Now what?

Robin leaned against a tree nearby that had its bark scorched slightly by the flames.

Had Grayson gotten out? The Boy Wonder had tried calling him quite a few times, but all he got was static and three shrill beeps from the communicator. What did that even mean anyways? If it did mean anything at all, his father had failed to tell him. Damian felt a bit of a pull at his heart. His father…

If Nightwing wasn't around, then maybe he should head back to Gotham, find the others and- what? Wait around for some other villain to strike? Or whoever this was- Azrael was it?-to get to someone else? Why couldn't his father wake up and solve this case, it would be a no-brainer for the Batman.

"FREEZE! PUT HIM DOWN!"

Robin near threw himself around to stare wide-eyed at the scene.

Amy had drawn her gun out and held it towards a figure draped in black and orange that was walking out the shadowed flames of the wreck. Robin darted forward and pulled out a few 'choice' weapons-never mind that they were intended for torture.

"Deathstroke!" Robin spat and held himself tense as the terminator walked out of the shadows.

He near dropped his weapons when he saw that the man was near carrying none other than Nightwing.

"Let him go!" Robin yelled, whatever this monster had done to him, Robin made silent promises to return it ten-fold!

The man said nothing, only crouched down to lay the hero down. As soon as the two others before him took a step forward each, he fell back and disappeared into the shadows. The Boy Wonder and BHPD Officer rushed to the hero's side. Damian set about making sure that he was alive while Amy said she'd be back with her cruiser in a minute.

"Stupid, idiotic, numb-minded," Robin kept mumbling as he checked for wounds.

Besides some bruises, he was fine, but if he had been in that flaming train debris, wouldn't he had have been burned and received at least some scratches from the shrapnel?

As the sound of tires rolling over sharp debris and stone reached his ears, Robin decided to worry about it later. Nightwing was still out and until he did wake up, he would be vulnerable, so it would fall to the Boy Wonder to look after him for that time. Such a decision was a logical one after all, Grayson had to know what had happened to cause that train derailing in the first place and he had to know how Deathstroke was involved with all of this.

Away from his city, his father comatose, most of the team missing, Nightwing unconscious, a rouge Timothy Drake, Gotham in lock down and now he assumed Deathstroke was involved-What else could possibly happen?

Robin mentally punched himself, he shouldn't have asked that. The important thing was getting his partner back to the BHPD HQ; the hospital was out of the question concerning distance and identity problems.

Well, that's it for Robin. Reason I wrote this was because I'm pretty positive that I don't write Damian even remotely well. That could be because he's a developing character, children grow and change.

Yes, Deathstroke, AKA Slade Wilson, is involved.

Now, I'm thinking about re-writing this in Slade's POV; if I did it would be called "Long Distance" so would anyone read it? I'd like to work with writing him as well and it might make things here a bit clearer.

I'm writer, therefore, I enjoy reviews.

~Moonsetta