I do not own Young Justice

I do not own Robin, in legal form or body... XD

I may contiue this...though it will start as a one-shot, see how people will react.

He looked though his mask, staring down at the filthy streets, the whores on the corners, the gangsters huddled in the alleys. Mob bosses in several wearhouses, homeless people swarming around the overflowing trash bins, and runaways stealing and fighting, sometimes killing, just to survive the hour.

This was not just a home. A life. A city. It was his home. His life. His city.

This is what he protected -

Whores.

Gangsters.

Mob bosses.

Murders.

Theives.

Psychopaths.

The list of horror will go on as time wears away what little sence of humanity these people-Dare he call the human?-have.

-And for what?

Was this what Batman saw? Or was it what he saw in the past? Did he see only the good they did? Or merely tried to reach a fruitless goal never to be achieved? Or maybe he knew that there was nothing to save, and by being the only one who tried, he was seen as terrifying...A huge ego? He glanced at his caped mentor, who in turn looked back at him, questioning.

The city of criminals feared them, for they saw what really lied beneath the surface of daylight.

The city of innocence had dimmed, slowly fading to black, to evil.

Shrugging, Robin looked back down at the crowded streets below. What he saw was not streets, but gutters. Gutters that were overflowing with human blood, rotting corpses basking in the half-hidden moonlight, their faces frozen in terrified screams and harshly disfigured. The vermin that have somehow survived this long will drown in their combined blood lust and sex and murder. It will be intresting to watch, how this city will burn itself to the ground...or rather, drown in a seas of blood caused by a hate with no foundation.

Right now, they stared into the gates of high fire and darkness, the smell of brimstone burning through the air. Hell has opened again, having reached the Witching hour, taking more souls every night. Every person with any sort of intelligence will be left speechless, while the rest will screaming in agony. They will scream like children, who have just began witnessing what they have been sheltered from their entiore life: Reality.

The night reeks of murder and fear.

When his mind began thinking such thoughts, all he had to remember his first night as Robin...

The alley was cold and deserted.

Even now, he doesn't know what made him jump into it.

Was it a scream? A gut feeling? Batman's order?

There were three consecutive pops seconds after he landed in a puddle of some sort. The first thing Robin was aware of was pain. It seared through his mind. He couldn't think, could barely breathe and couldn't move. His vision was fading and quivering, he couldn't focus his vision. His chest was on fire, it felt as though someone had taken a white-hot poker and was stabbing him repeatedly with each intake of breath. The intensity was too much…..he was going to….

His vision cleared for a few seconds, he wish it hadn't. He desperately wished it hadn't. This scene, small and ominous, burned like an iron in the back of his mind. There, laying next to him, facing him, eyes open and glazed with death, was a child. Blood pooled around her head, or what was left of it. Grey brain matter was splattered all over him and the ground. Blood poured freely from her skull, its entire upper half missing. Her skull's pieces, white and drenched in blood, was scattered everywhere. Her eyes seemed to stare into his very soul…..

Robin shuttered at the memory, several weeks afterward.

He felt like icy water had cascaded down his back. It was fear, it was hate and it was painful. This image, this one, small, image burned his soul; nearly engulfed it in a sea of flames, brilliant against the void of his lonely, frozen heart. This solitary image kept it, the fear burning him. It slashed at his heart, repeatedly. It kept him up, late at night, wondering if he could have done anything, anything that might have helped. It caused him an agony, every day, to live and know, there was nothing he could have done. He felt the sting of tears but blinked them away. What good could come from crying? Nothing but weakness, crying was.

He shuttered again, clearing his mind. Now though, he barely felt any of that. The fear, the pain...But he felt the hate.

At times he feared he was becoming Batman.

Others, he felt like he was worse.

Even as Batman, he felt pain and fear and rage. As Robin, he felt disgust and distain. But somethimes, in the dead of winter nights, when crimson is splashed against sooty snow, he understands a villian's reasons for world domination. A need for a perfect society. The only thing stopping him, he knows to some vauge extent, is that he would hate to have to be some babaysitter for all of the adults, who should know by now that reality is more terrifying than any nightmare.

An alam goes off in the distance, snatching their attention.

Without a word, the disappear into the darkness of night, into the darkness in the minds of men.

Robin's creepy crackle rings throughout the emty streets, warning away those who dare interfere with his fun.

Somehow, somewhere deep inside, he knew his fun would end. But was it fun? The bullets, the blood, the broken bones? The dead people, the kidnappings, the irritating villians with their stupid need to having a pissing contest with The Batman? Strange to admit, but it was the best life in the world. He couldn't get enough of it.

And he knew that attitude would someday get him killed.

And he couldn't bring himself to care.

When they arrived, he went right inside. Gunshots were going off like crazy; the police huddling behind their cars in terror. Robin paused to wonder, did fear mean weakness? Or was it an instinct of survival? To be cauious?

Inside, they found three thugs and a madman. Joy. Bats had gone off to do wahever it was Bats did when there was a gun-type distraction from the real, behind-the-scene picture. Probably Joker or Ivy or...

Bang!

"Hey, bird brains! C'me down! Looks like yer suck in here with us!" one laughed, hefting his rifle. A rifle? A hunting gun? Man, Joker, or whoever it is, is slipping...
"The problem is...I'm not stuck in here with you..." he left his voice echo against the walls, and disappeared into the rafters, his voice eerily serious and threatening, "You're trapped in here with me!" He shot into action, scaring most of them shitless before knocking them all out.