Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans or anything related to them. The story idea is also completely mine and any story similar to it is pure coincedence.
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Chapter 5
He walked slowly into the dark room, scowling silently as he bound his fresh wound with his good arm. Growning, he saw Slade sitting in his usual chair, watching clips of the recent battle, no doubt smirking behind that mask. "His performance worsened. Perhaps I should up the training," the man was musing quietly to himself.
Growling, he attacked, ignoring his throbbing left arm as his right first came flying down towards Slade, who nonchalantly ducked, then arose, assuming a fighting stance and staring down the shorter boy.
"I'm sick and tired of you!" he yelled as he dodged an incoming punch. "I'm tired of listening to you, tired of doing what you tell me to, tired of fighting them, and I'm tired of this idiotic getup!" he continued, pulling off the silver "S" and taking out the communicators in his ears, smashing them with his boots.
"Temper, temper, Robin," Slade chided easily as he dodged one of his flying kicks. Knowing that the boy was at a disadvantage, he swung towards the injured shoulder, but Robin saw it coming and pulled away just in time, letting the gloved fist connect with the hard metal.
Beads of perspiration formed on his brow and upper lip, which he tried to ignore. His shoulder really was slowing him down, perhaps he should have waited before exploding like this, but what's done is done; there was no turning back now. Reaching behind him, he grabbed a nearby pipe: not exactly a bo-staff, but it would be sufficient for his purposes. With a cry of anger, he lept out into the light, bringing his newly acquired weapon straight down into the ground, centimeters away. "If only he would stand still long enough..." he thought, exasperated.
Suddenly, a gloved hand connected with his injured shoulder, catching him by surprise. The pain shot up his arm, like a thousand tiny needles attacking his shoulder all at once. With a startled gasp, he grasped his shoulder in agony, rolling on the ground to avoid another blow. Moaning in agony, he tried to push himself back up, but the feat seemed impossible with only one good arm, so he resolved to stay put, not like he had any other choice.
A gloved hand reached down and picked the defeated boy up by his spiky hair and brought him up onto his feet. The owner of the hand spoke, saying, "Now that you have been reminded of your place, I have something you might be interested in seeing. As a glowering Robin, fixed his hair with his good hand, a screen lit up in front of him. In shock and disbelief, he watched as Starfire searched in vain for her friends, but was knocked unconscious by a stray rock caused by the fray Terra had wrought upon herself.
"Starfire!" he moaned, angry at himself for letting it happen and feeling an overwhelming guilt that told him that he was responsible for it, seeing as he had made Terra lose control in the first place.
"You've done well for my purposes, apprentice. Thanks to you, Terra knows we are aware of her weakness, and I do believe you have had quite a lasting impression on her," Slade chortled. As he spoke, he signalled to Wintergreen to bring Robin new communicators and a new silver "S". He took these grudgingly, but did not put them on. Scowling, Wintergreen "escorted" him back to his room, locking the door from the outside. The old man's expression never changed, but he rather simply stared ahead, letting his eyes tell the boy how disappointed he was that he had been injured and how apolegetic he felt.
As soon as he heard the click of the lock and the sound of echoing footsteps slowly leaving the vicinity, he threw himself backwards onto the cot, his thoughts and emotions overwhelming his already weakened frame. "My fault, my fault, it's all my fault!" he moaned over and over again. The throbbing shoulder did not help to deter his thoughts, but rather reminded him of what had recently transpired and how he had come to acquire the wound in the first place. "I'm such an idiot! How could I have let this happen? I should have done something, should have fought back, anything!" he growled at himself, beating himself up inwardly as tears came to his eyes. Though he bit his lip in an attempt to hold them back, he found that his cloth mask was suddenly damp and heavy from the fallen tears.
"Have you really sunk so low?" He could hear her voice asking him this question. Despairing, he finally succumbed to the sleepiness overtaking his frame, slipping into an uneasy sleep filled with nightmares in which he heard her voice and saw those eyes, those deep, tortured eyes that he had caused to be filled with pain and sorrow and sadness. His fault.
He awoke the next morning with a sore shoulder. Silently, he rebound his wound, then tried moving it. Despite searing pain, he could still use it. Good. At least it wasn't broken. As he moved about his room, brushing his hair and teeth and the like, the air was so much drier, quieter, than normal. Almost an eerie silence had befallen the place. Each footstep eachoed with distinct clarity magnified perhaps by his own emotions. This day had already begun in a depressing way.
There was no breakfast, nor any training session; the door remained locked from the outside, hemming him in. Truthfully, if this was punishment, he would much rather be made to fight and army of robots than be stuck in this room with naught but his memories to keep him company and nothing to do but reflect on the pain, the sorrows, the tears, the suffering. Every bit of which he had caused.
He sighed sorrowfully, letting all his breath rush out at once, picturing for a moment that he could banish all his horrible memories, everything he'd done, every day he'd had to spend living this way, along with the breath, but the feeling only lasted for a moment as a new course of pain racked his body through his shoulder. Though he would have believed he had developed a strong resiliance before, this particular injury was fueled by both pain and remorse, both physical and physcological pains.
For the entire day, he lay in that bed, sometimes, if he was lucky, drifting into an uneasy sleep that was often disrupted by painful memories taking the form of dreams every time he found the strength to return to the deep confines of his subconscious. There his worst fears and greatest wishes were realized; it could be both a torturing and enlightening experience, yet he returned to these confines every night. Never before had he found it so easy for him to feel his emotions full-force like what he was now feeling, and he was not sure if he enjoyed it or not, for this often meant that he would feel the overwhelming entirety of his sorrows. For those moments when he was not lost in his thoughts, he was exercising, trying to stretch out his arm, the like. As soon as he could get this dumb shoulder to heal up, he'd be back on his feet, making that wretched man pay for every last tear she had shed.
He knew that night had come when the shadows in his room grew to encompass it. Noticing ruefully that the electricty had apparently been cut off from his room, he sat back down on his cot, shivering in the pitch black room. After hours in this position, he finally drifted into a long, good sleep, as opposed to those five-minute nightmares he had experienced during the day. He was now experiencing a state of total peace and quiet, in which no dreams interefered, but rather his conscious appeared to be leaving him be for the moment. When he awoke the next morning, he longed for that state of total quiet, without a care in the world.
The first thing he noticed that morning was how hungry he was. Yet there was no breakfast that morning either. How was he supposed to heal if they didn't feed him? His stomach rumbled as he trudged into the bathroom to do his hair. This day would be just as long, as uneventful, as the one before it. This punishment was worse than any one before it, for it was psychological torment, tearing him apart from the inside out, as opposed to the normal thrashings that slowly defeated him from the outside in. Perhaps Slade had finally found a torture that would bring him into total submission.
On the final, third day, he had resorted to all sorts of small things to entertain himself to keep him from going insane. He drank from his sink, knowing that it was all he would get that day in terms of nourishment, then spent the entire day exercising the muscles in his left arm and shoulder, trying to loosen it up. It was working, actually. He had noticed that morning that he had been able to put weight on it without experiencing the all to familiar searing pain.
As he prepared for the next long, silent night, a voice emitted from his communicator, "Apprentice, come." At this, he almost jumped, for he had become so used to the quiet, so accustomed to the internal struggle, that he had almost forgotten that those things were in his ears.
Footsteps echoed through the hallway outside, the first sounds other than the dull echoes of his boots that he had heard in a long time. A key scraped, a lock clicked open, and a door swung on its hinges, allowing him to leave that small space for the first time in three days.
Wintergreen's initial reaction was one of surpirse. He had fully expected the boy to be weak from hunger, to show signs of submission, to be broken, but he was not. The boy who stood before him showed no emotion, if so perhaps anger and rebellion, but rather simply nodded wearily at him and walked past. There was no sign of the inner struggle he knew the boy had to have been experiencing. Shaking his head, Wintergreen wondered whether his master had truly succeeded in breaking the boy down or had just sparked more rebellion in him.
Robin walked into the briefing room, his eyes adjusting to the relatively bright lights. After having been in a dark room with no heat and no lights, everything seemed bright to him. Standing before him was Slade, the sneer evident in his one eye, even though his face was not seen to show it. Raising his chin, he stared up at the taller man, letting his own body language speak for him, telling the man sublimely that he was still as full of hate as before, and that he was not going to be broken down. The man did not waver, but instead informed him that his training would resume the next morning. With that, he was dismissed, thankfully without a new mission or any such thing. As he walked back, his stomach growled and he once more thought about the stocked frigde back at his old home in the Tower...