Broadway Macabre
The Teen Titans, save Robin, sat in the living room, absorbed in their usual activities. Cyborg and Beast Boy indulged their competitive sides while Raven read a book and Starfire pasted photos into a scrapbook. The sun had begun to set, his headache was gone, and Robin smiled.
Sometimes, napping while listening to the music that centered you healed all pain.
In his case, he'd fallen asleep listening to circus and carnival music; he had a large collection of such music, all arranged in alphabetical order on a shelf in his room. The years of living with Bruce/Batman had taught him perfect order: successful vigilantes did not have messy rooms, nor did they misplace things.
One measures a vigilante by the sum of his organization and preparation.
Words to live by, as much as Batman makes the rules, and Batman is the Boss, and don't take stupid chances.
Starfire noticed his arrival, nobody else did.
"Robin?" She asked with those green, green eyes wide, her head tilted to one side.
"Yes?"
"You "grew up" in a... circus?" She hesitated with the unfamiliar word. "What is 'circus'?"
"It's a form of entertainment... people go to a circus and watch clowns, acrobats, animals."
"Oh..."
They walked around downtown Jump City, headed towards the Pizzeria. Cyborg had complained at not using the T-Car, but Robin had insisted that it was only a short walk, and it wouldn't kill them.
He wasn't sure why it was so important to him that they walk today, but it was.
"Robin, since you grew up in a circus..." Beast Boy bit his lower lip, obviously unsure of whether he wanted to say what he had to say. Robin knew that expression well, and watched patiently as the younger teen gathered up his courage. "...that means you can do the stuff they can do in the circus, right?"
"Some of it," Robin allowed warily.
"So," Beast Boy poked his index fingers together, "you know how to juggle."
Robin blinked. "Yeah, I know how to juggle."
"Will you?"
"Uh, I don't have anything to juggle."
Beast Boy blushed.
And that ended that conversation.
Sitting in the Pizzeria, Robin noticed the looks Starfire and Beast Boy kept giving each other.
"Is something going on that I should know about?" Robin demanded.
"Well, we were just discussing things that you could juggle."
Robin blew out a frustrated breath. "Look, I can juggle anything I can toss. I'm not saying I could juggle a bunch of my staffs at full length, but I can juggle almost anything else."
"So..."
"No, I will not juggle anything right now. I have nothing to juggle, and besides, you don't perform circus tricks at meals."
Alfred had never said that, but he would wholeheartedly agree.
Walking back to the mall to get the T-Car, Beast Boy again brought up the subject of juggling.
Robin wondered if he now knew how Raven felt when she lost her temper with Beast Boy. If I'm right, he thought dryly, I'll have to cut Raven a little slack.
"Why don't we stay here a little while?" Starfire suggested abruptly. "I am not yet ready to return to the Tower."
Raven... agreed, in a strange, Raven-like way. "I wouldn't mind staying here a little longer. I've wanted to pick up a more complete collection of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poems for a while now." Robin could have sworn he heard her mutter, "And they told me that they'd have a few other books I wanted by now..."
"Yeah, I'm up for that," Beast Boy grinned. "More time at the arcade!"
With that, they split up in search of adventure... or at least a little fun.
They met up again an hour later, in the same spot at the food court.
Raven had a bag with her, the name of her favorite bookstore printed clearly on it. Robin noticed that it held only one heavy volume. The rest looked about the size of the contemporary novel.
Beast Boy had won a few prizes, and Starfire had purchased herself a book entitled, Learn to Juggle. It came with three brightly colored balls.
"You know, Star, if you'd wanted to learn how to juggle, you could have asked me." The Boy Wonder offered.
She beamed. "You could teach me?"
He grinned back. "Yeah, I could. In fact, I could probably teach you better than that book could."
"Well?" She melted the little mesh bag that held the balls. "Would you please teach me?"
He took the balls and tossed them in the air. The three orbs danced up and down sailing through the air, always to come back into one of his palms and then become airborne once again.
Starfire clapped, captivated. "Such a wonderful skill!"
"Thanks."
"Try four things," Beast Boy laughed, waving a plush prize.
"Okay," Robin continued to juggle. "Throw it in when I tell you." He watched the arc of balls, "Wait for it... wait... wait... throw!"
The plush doll joined the arc at precisely the right moment, and soon it joined the balls as a full-fledged juggling item.
"Hey, Raven, can he juggle one or two of your books? If he can that is?"
Raven looked bored. "Sure, why not?"
He paused in the juggling for a little while, and took what he felt he could handle. Soon, the arc consisted of three balls, a tiny plush toy, two books, and two keychain notebooks.
Beast Boy smiled wickedly. "How about these?" He spread a few sporks in his hand like a hand of cards.
Robin didn't take his eye off the arc of items. "Sure."
Five sporks joined the swirling arc, and Robin knew that the circus would be proud. He was juggling thirteen items without breaking a sweat.
"And two little things of apple sauce," Cyborg grinned. "Just don't let 'em break..."
Fifteen items and it was still going fine.
"And some straws..." Starfire smiled happily, learning how to juggle forgotten.
Three straws, which meant he was now juggling eighteen items— two above his record.
"I don't go much higher over eighteen," he told them.
"And..." Beast Boy laughed. "A key-chain Batman plushie."
The nineteenth item proved too much, and everything fell, despite his rather desperate attempts to gain control of the situation. It started with the first plushie— he missed it, and then missed catching two of the three balls, then missed the first tub of applesauce (that one went splat on his shoes), somehow managed to catch the two books and toss them to Raven. But he missed the other tub of applesauce and a keychain notebook so the notebook fell on his foot and the applesauce went splat on notebook.
Things only went downhill from there; the sporks cut him— not badly, of course, but the scrapes hurt for long enough to take away his concentration, so he missed the third ball, the second plushie, and a straw. Those fell on his applesauce-covered feet, but the other two straws and the second keychain notebook just fell in the applesauce mess on the ground.
He wasn't sure how to react to this failure. Usually, when he messed up juggling, he had been doing it alone, with things that didn't make a mess. Sighing, he grabbed a few napkins and began to clean up the mess on the floor and then clean up his shoes.
When he finished, he handed the notebooks back to Raven (who regarded them with a slightly grossed-out look), the plushie to Beast Boy, and threw the straws and sporks away.
And then he noticed that they were laughing at him. His face colored, and he rather desperately wished he'd never gotten up from his nap.
"Stop laughing at me," he muttered.
"I apologize," Starfire told him. "But the look on your face!"
He really hated it when people laughed at him, he decided. "Come on, guys, it's not that funny! I juggled three items over my last record. It's an improvement!"
"Yeah," Raven cracked, "but the applesauce doesn't do anything for your costume."
Blushing furiously, he strode back to the parking lot, their laughter ringing in his ears.
Robin sat up in bed, circus and carnival music blaring from his earphones. He took a shuddering breath, shook himself to clear his head, and swung out from under the covers.
A quick glance at the clock showed that he'd been napping for an hour.
"Calm down, Dick," Robin told himself. "It's okay. They don't even know you can juggle, so they obviously weren't laughing at you. Besides, it was just a dream." He switched the CD player off.
He reapplied the adhesive to the back of his mask, mopped the sweat from his face, and stuck it back on over his eyes.
Then, confidently, whistling a favorite circus tune under his breath, he strode out to the living room to see his friends engaged in their usual activities.
Starfire looked up from her scrapbook. "Robin?"
"Yeah?"
"You "grew up" in a... circus?"
Fini