Hi. In case your wondering, I updated this 'coz I need to pay some credit, and do a grammar check.
Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice and their characters. "Fanfiction"'s on the site label. Duh.
Part I: Parallels
"Robin, can I come in?"
Jason lay flat on his bed, eyes fixed on the whirling ceiling fan above him. If his mentor were here, he'd probably order him to practice his martial arts, or study villain profiles, or maybe just finish his algebra homework.
Well, he wasn't there, and Jason was glad of that. That's why he took a room in Mount Justice in the first place.
For the first couple of month, it had been rough, trying to fill into the shoes of his predecessor, both for Batman and for the Team. He couldn't boast that he managed to impress them all with the quick-wit humour the old Robin had, nor with any acrobatic grace, but the Team, grudgingly he suspected, eventually accept him as their own, and the Dark Knight came to terms with his new squire. As a matter of fact, Jason had actually started to enjoy the privileges of being the Boy wonder, whether weekending with the gang, or moonlighting the streets with as a masked hand of justice.
Then, he came back.
He had changed, definitely. New blue spandex, new escrima sticks, new name. But when he came, striding into Mount Justice platform through the Zeta-tubes, he got a hero's welcome, as if he hadn't just left a year ago just as suddenly.
Even Batman welcomed him back, well, in his usual gruff manner. Alfred had described their reunion as "the Prodigal son and his father." Jason had heard the story before. Supposing this was that story, then he would be the jealous brother, the one who stayed faithfully at home with his father. The one who didn't receive the feast and the celebration that his estranged brother did.
"Robin? Y'a there kid?"
He was well aware that he could have been prejudiced, but somehow, after 'Nightwing' showed up, everyone started acting, to put it kindly, ansty around him. Aqualad and Artemis took turns to chastise him after every mission. Kid Flash, of all people, rebuked him for fooling around during mission time. And when he happened to slam one of the henchmen into the wall just a little too hard, Superboy reprimanded him! As if the walking bulldozer never broke a few bones himself!
The worst of it came from Batman. He didn't always need to say out right, but Jason could feel them vibrating off him. Disapproval, followed by disappointment.
The knocking was persistent. "Yo, R-ob?"
He wasn't Robin. Not the one everyone wanted, anyhow. Without getting up, he said aloud, "Take a left turn down to the hall, then two doors to the right. He goes by another name. It's bird related, so you'll work it out."
A moment later, his room door slid open and the visitor stepped in. Jason didn't budge an inch, even though his shades were lying somewhere on the sheets. Without lifting his head, he squinted at the girl standing at the foot of his bed. She stared back at him, mouth hanging open slightly.
"What? He demanded of her pointedly, swinging his arms back against the pillow with an air of annoyance.
"Nothing, nothing," she quickly replied, a bit too quickly perhaps. Maybe she'd heard about his 'violence tendencies' from Superboy? Super.
He decided that ignoring her would eventually drive her away, so he continued to look intently at the ceiling fan, as if there was some fascinating to see. At the corner of his eye, he noted that she, having closed the door behind her, seated herself comfortably by his work desk, examining the clutter on it.
"Soooo, you wan'na talk about it?" She asked rather conversationally, picking up one of the batarangs to look at it.
"Don't touch that," Jason said automatically, though it was rather half-hearted. He supposed she talking about the fight. The fight.
A few days ago, after another mission, where he had, once again, failed to live up to the expectations of a Robin. Just as Aqualad was giving him one of the regular chiding sessions, somehow, something in him just snapped. Rather irrationally, he thought on hindsight, he swore at his team leader, much to the Atlantean's surprise, and to the rest of the team's disgust. When he didn't immediately apologise, one by one, the team started voicing their opinion on his 'contributions' to the team (well, to be fair, M'gann was a little more tactful). Then of course, Nightwing came along. The older boy said some things, though reasonable as it sounded, all it did was infuriated the younger boy. And the whole thing just erupted.
The hullabaloo finally died down when Batman intervened, but things didn't get any better. The Dark Knight took him aside in the Mission Room, not the Cave, ad berated him there and then.
"You shattered his collar-bone."
"He was a drug-dealing pimp! I didn't think that I had to throw in some pillows before I took him out!"
"The mission was to interrogate! Not incapacitate! You put him in a shock!"
"…Sorry. That was dumb…But he deserved it."
It's been nearly two days now. He hadn't returned to the manor since. Even in his tenure in Mount Justice, the team avoided him like a plague. Who would want to talk to the idiot who had gall to incur the wrath of the Bat? And so foolishly too?
Well, besides her, obviously.
"Well?" she asked, rather impatiently.
"No, now leave me alone," he growled, burying his head in his pillow.
"Try to be grateful, squirt. F.Y.I. not a lot of people are on speaking terms with you," she remarked, feigning a throw with the batarang, but catching it back at the last moment.
"You don't say," was the muffled reply.
She didn't take the hint. "Give a g'al credit when it due and open up a little, eh Robbie?"
"Stop calling me that!"
She looked up to gaze at the furious boy, bolt upright on his bed, glaring at her with his two_ eyes. Slowly and with considerably vengeance, he spoke again, "I'm not him, okay? And I'll never be. Sorry, team, sorry, Bats, the replacement needs replacing. Oh wait, I have been replaced! By the original too! Brilliant! Now y'all can kick me out."
There was a cold moment of silence, as Jason sank back onto the bed, feeling both tired and relieved after venting his pent-up emotions.
She, however, barely changed her expression. " Okay, not-Robin, what d'ya want me to call y'a, then?"
Jason heaved a sigh, before rolling his eyes. Was she trying to pull some kind of psychological therapy through reflection? Still, it was a good question. He couldn't tell her his real name; Batman would be fuming if he'd knew she'd seen his face, anyway, and he wasn't going down that road again. For cases like this, maybe just a simple nickname. Something like…
"Just call me 'Hood'," he told her.
Her face changed from one of skepticism to amusement. "Hood? Like Robin Hood? Seriously?"
"Before 'Robin' got a name, he wanted to call himself 'Hood', like Robin Hood. Batman didn't agree, of course, and made changed it to 'Robin'," he explained to her rather dryly. "Since I'm kind in the reject shop of sidekicks, I suppose I should take up a reject name. When I do my solo gig, that is."
"Solo gig?" She repeated, an eyebrow shooting up.
"Yep," he confirmed, with a slight grin on his face from her shock, "being a sidekick sucks. Obviously. I mean that's why Robin 1.0 turned into Nightwing."
"Whoa! Hold your horses, mister! Sidekicks suck? Am I hearing this?"
"Clean your ears, Rocket. Welcome to the reality," he informed her with certainty, starting to enjoy himself for the first time in two days.
"Well, I'll be!" She exclaimed, unknowingly rising from her seat. "Well, then I've got something say to that, Hoodster! So you clean your ears and listen up!"
Wheeling the chair over his bedside, she adjusted it such that she could right next to him. Jason just tucked his hands behind his head. She was probably going to berate him, so he might as well get comfy.
"Y'a know my boss? Icon?"
"Yeah, what about him?" Jason replied lazily, picking up his shades and cleaning them.
"Well, the first time we met, he was this top-notch lawyer in the uptown, and I was a street kid in bad company."
Jason's eyes widened open with interest. This sounded like a familiar opening…
Rocket started to look rather ill at ease at this point. "It happened when my gang and I were like, um, robbing his house, and there was chaos, then I found he was an alien, or at least super-being I thought. It was really awkward, come to think about it-"
As she recounted the events, Jason's mind couldn't help wander back to the first day he met Batman. It was in some grubby old alley, that he could barely remember, where he had found the state-of-the-art Bat-mobile parked there. Seeing no one around, he had whipped out his crowbar, and started working on the wheels. A fellow had to eat, after all, state-of-the-art or no.
While he was at it, a dark shadow fell on him. Swinging around, he came face to face with the Dark Knight himself. Well, Batman was kind of in the shadows, so all he could see was his towering figuring, with two menacing whites slits on his mask glowering at him.
Awkward wasn't how he would have described it. It was more like … pant-wetting.
"-And then I convinced him with all that power, he could be a superhero! An inspiration, a symbol,-"
"An icon," Jason finished for her, nodding his head approvingly.
"Exactly. And I designed the costumes for us-"
"Us?"
"Didn't you know? Both of us started hero work on the same day. And, duh! It was my idea. Anyway, Icon needed lots of guidance. For an alien who lived so long amongst humans, he was pretty green at relating to them. You could say, I'm his anchor to humanity."
When she was paused for a moment, she noticed that Jason had gone quiet. He was actually thinking about the stuff she had said. That's good.
"Y'know, Robin's kind of like that too," she continued. When the boy who called himself 'Hood' now gave her an incredulous look, she went on to explain.
"Batman has good intentions and everything, but he's always so, well, dark and scary and stuff. He's always running on rooftops, or driving in the Bat-mobile. It makes it hard for him to relate to ordinary folk. That's what Robin's for. Robin's the lighter side of the Dark Knight; the one who keeps him keeps him from falling into the darkness; the one who keep him caring for the people, and not just the job; the one who keeps him a hero. And that's why, young Hoodster, sidekicks don't suck."
Jason didn't say a word, but she didn't need to hear one. She already knew her whole pep talk already reached the boy when he flicked open his shades and placed them back on the bridge of his nose.
"Alright, Hoodster, I best be going," she told him, heading towards the door.
"Rocket."
She stopped at the door to look at the boy on the bed. "Yeah, Hood?"
"Call me Robin."
A small smile crept on her face. "Sure thing, Rob."
"Um, and thanks."
She just grinned at him, then slid the door behind her.
~~~~000000~~~~~
"What do you mean Batman didn't call this meeting?"
"He didn't! I thought it was Aqualad."
"I certainly did no such thing."
"Oh, damn it! Wally, if this is another silly prank, I will murder you-"
"Hey, I so did not-"
"I did."
Everyone in the mission room turned to face the small boy garbed in black and red spandex.
"Oh, look, Kid Blunder's here," Wally remarked, rather snarkily, and promptly received a jab in the ribs from Artemis.
Robin cleared his throat rather uneasily. With all those unfriendly eyes staring at him, he felt rather nervous. However, when his eyes met those of Rocket's, he gulped down his fear and begun to speak.
"I've called you all here today to make an announcement of sorts, and –oh yeah, erm, I'm sorry for yelling at you," he apologized to Aqualad. The Atlantean exchanged questioning looks with Nightwing, who just shrugged in the end. Rocket, however, was wearing a smug and somewhat triumphant expression.
"Right, to the announcement. I've been giving some thought, about what it means to be a hero, a team member, and a sidekick. Largely the sidekick bit."
"Um, I thought we agreed that we weren't sidekicks anymore," M'gann whispered to Zatanna, who shook her head in confusion.
"And, I think I finally understand what it means to be a Robin. As a sidekick to Batman, he's the one who keeps Batman on the straight and narrow, and he's also the one who people can relate to, of the two. That's why he always cracks jokes and stuff, I guess."
"He's talking about you, pixie-boots," Kid Flash hissed in Nightwing's ear, before dissolving into light chuckles.
"The point is, I'm still rather new at this whole hero gig, and obviously I'm not working well with the team," – he noted a nod from the rather grim Superboy – "so, I think I better go back to my roots. Robin's roots. To learn what to be a hero, by first learning how to be a sidekick. In other words, I'm quitting the team to go full-time with Batman."
There was a stunned silence as news sank in. Two days ago, any of them would have more than happy to send Robin the 2nd edition packing, but after the sincere, though graceless, speech, they somehow felt rather … reluctant.
"Are you certain of this decision, Robin?" Aqualad asked him, concerned.
"Yeah," Kid Flash put in, "you're going miss out a lot of fun with Bats breathing down your neck 24/7."
Sober and sure, Robin nodded. "This is something I have I to do."
"We'll miss you!" Miss Martian suddenly cried, swinging over to envelope him in a hug.
"Um… thanks?" He replied, uncertain about her sincerity. However, since she was Miss Martian, he didn't have much doubt.
After M'gann released him, Artemis headed over to him, wordlessly giving him a small squeeze on the shoulder. One by one, team members bade him farewell, either coming with advice, or with hugs, or with short grunts (in Superboy's case). When it came to Nightwing, Robin noted the hesitation behind the mask.
Slowly, the elder boy stuck his hand out. "Um, good luck in your venture, I guess?"
After a moment of thought, Robin took the hand and shook it firmly. "Thanks. "
All too eager to get it over with, Nightwing pretty much ran off after he parted with Robin. Soon, it was just Rocket left.
"Y'know," she told him with a sly grin on his face, "if it doesn't work out, you can always switch back to 'Hood'. I was thinking you could call yourself 'Red Riding Hood', then 'Hood' for short. What d'ya say, Reddie Ridin' Flippin' Hoodster?"
Robin feigned a punch at her, but he grinned back. "Sorry, I'm going to Robin for so time. And Red is such a girl's colour."
"Oh yeah? Then why're you wearing so much of it?" Her joking manner slipped into a serious one. "You ready, kid?
"Totally."
"Alright. " Saying that, she embraced him. Robin was slightly taken aback at this, for the lack of a better term, non-badass behaviour. As uncomfortable as he felt, he just hugged her back.
When they finally let go of each other, Robin got ready to leave. As he made his way to the Zeta-tubes, Rocket called out to him. "Hey, Robin Hood."
He swung around to face her. "Yeah?"
"You'd better be hero by the next time I see you. If not, don't bother coming back."
"Gee, thanks," he answered, with no small amount of sarcasm.
…Recognise: Robin B-14 …
The last thing he ever saw at Mount Justice was the wide grin on Rocket's face.
Hope you enjoyed it! In case you're wondering, the back-stories are pretty canonical to DC comics (pre-reboot), though I've only read second-hand information, and perhaps Grieg Weisman imagined out differently for YJ. Who can say?
The short argument between Batman and Robin is based on a scene from the movie "Under the Red Hood."
Part II may come in about 1-2 weeks time. F.Y.I. This story is going to fairly short, like I'll probably end after part III or IV.
Review if you like it, Critique if you don't.