A/N: I have great respect for anyone who's written a line of dialogue for Starfire before. I had no idea how hard it was until I tried. Still... I guess I succeeded.

The plot begins to grow.

Disclaimer: If I really owned Teen Titans and everything that goes with it, I just don't think I'd be writing fanfiction about it.

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A Patchwork Christmas

Chapter Two: Under the Cape and Cowl

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Cyborg had flatly refused to take his baby, the T-Car, over to the wrong side of the tracks, saying that it was far too valuable a car to leave to the mercies of the bad part of Jump. He had parked in a respectable-looking parking lot nearby and the Titans had to hoof it the rest of the way.

Before they had even crossed the tracks, Robin was leaping onto the nearest rooftop, intent on making his way to Beggar's Alley without once setting foot on the ground. Beast Boy had once said that their fearless leader had a phobia of solid ground.

Robin had never given this comment much thought, but if he ever did, it might have occurred to him that he did have a sort of phobia of solid ground. He had been taught to stay off the ground whenever possible; to stay above his opponent's head because A) gravity was a powerful force when used to your advantage and B) during a search, people rarely thought to look up.

Plus he had developed a habit of making an entrance.

That's what he got for living with the master of making an entrance.

The flashing lights on top of the police cars guided Robin to the right location. As he approached across the tightly-packed rooftops, he started to hear a low murmur of voices. The wrong side of the tracks was silent in the presence of the law -- the ne'er-do-wells were keeping their heads low for the moment -- and the sounds were carrying well through the long, shallow canyon that was Beggar's Alley.

His cape whipped around him as he finally came to a halt, knocking a bit of snow off the edge of the roof. He looked down when there was movement, realizing that he was not as alone as he had thought.

Standing in the alley below was Police Chief Reilly and Detective Henley, both of whom looked a little pale and drawn. They were usually the first two people to be on a scene; Reilly did like to be out in the thick of the action and wherever she was, Detective Henley was usually a step or so behind, acting like the Chief's guard dog.

But they weren't alone this time. They were standing beside someone that Robin couldn't recall having seen before-- Scratch that; that brown trench coat did look familiar, as did the graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses-- Hold on... Was that--

"Commissioner Gordon?!"

Robin didn't even realize he had spoken out loud until James Gordon -- for it was indeed Gotham City's Police Commissioner -- turned to look up at him, a mixed expression of astonishment and delight appearing on his face. Robin wobbled slightly on his slippery perch in his own surprise, half-alarmed and yet oddly thrilled to run across such a familiar face in this neck of the woods.

At least it's not Batman. Snickered a wry voice from the back of his mind and he sternly told it to shut up.

As Gordon was standing with Chief Reilly and Detective Henley not too far from a murder scene, it was safe to assume that they were all here for the same reason and that Gordon had not come for the sole purpose of giving Robin the shock of his life. He probably wasn't here on the behalf of Batman either, though that wouldn't have been a bad guess. But Gordon had not sought Robin out first, meaning the official business was with the legally recognized branch of law enforcers.

"You've met?" Reilly looked from Gordon who still looked delighted, if somewhat surprised to see the Boy Wonder here in the city, to Robin who appeared to be experiencing some facial spasms as he tried to find an appropriate reaction. Gordon managed to pull his attention around to the Police Chief.

"Gotham was his old stomping grounds." the Police Commissioner said, jabbing his thumb towards the teen vigilante in question.

Reilly breathed a sigh of relief she didn't realize she had been holding in. She knew that the Titans had something of a temperamental leader, even at the best of times. She had met face to face with Robin on official business a number of times before and while his attitude towards stopping crime was commendable, the boy still needed a good smack across the face when it came to dealing with the regular folk. Reilly had been dreading when Gordon would meet the boy, so to hear that the two were at least familiar with each other was a great relief -- though how familiar was a question she would have to wait to find out. This would make cooperation much, much easier to come by, however. Reilly would hate to bring down the level of amenity that they all got along with just by bringing in someone brand-new.

Though there was still the matter of the other four Titans and what they had to say about this.

"Chief of Police Reilly!"

And speaking of whom...

Reilly glanced down towards where one the streets crossed the alley, where the rest of the Titans were approaching. Leading the charge was the resident alien girl and not for the first time, the Chief of police was seized by a small fit of jealously at the sight of her. Reilly was in good health and at a good weight for a woman of her age and occupation, but she would never get back the days where she could put whatever she wanted down her gullet and have it not go straight to her hips.

Gordon had a good look at the four people approaching and decided that Robin had put together a rather odd-looking team. He shouldn't be surprised; Gotham was home to some rather -- er, colorful characters. Very, very colorful characters. Given what he had spent most of his life fighting and who he had spent that time with, Robin no doubt felt more at home among stranger people who populated Jump, rather than the normal folk. And if they were still working together after two years so far, they probably balanced each other out quite nicely.

"Police Chief Reilly! How wonderful it is to see you!" Starfire said, clasping the Chief's hands in both of her own. "I truly hope that this wonderful season of Christmas has come to you in good health!"

"Yes... I'm fine." Reilly said through slightly gritted teeth. The alien girl's excessive cheerfulness was almost too much to stomach even at the best of times and with the holiday season upon them, it just seemed to have exploded all over the place. But Reilly was the type of person who always sought to be polite unless she was shaking down a perp. "Titans, go have a look at the scene and then we'll talk about this. I really think you need to see what we're dealing with first."

Not so surprisingly, they gave a look to Robin who seemed to have engaged a staring contest with Gordon, as though daring one another to say something first. Even Robin briefly forgot there was official business to attend to while there was a face from his past staring him down -- er, up? Then Gordon quietly cleared his throat and that snapped the Boy Wonder out of his stupor.

"Uh-- What?" he asked, tearing his eyes away from the Gotham Commissioner and looking instead at Reilly. He wasn't entirely sure when the rest of his team had arrived.

"Dude, you okay?" Beast Boy asked. "You spaced out."

"I'm fine." Robin said shortly. He jumped from the rooftop and making a rather pointed attempt to ignore the presence of the Gotham Commissioner, he started for the murder scene. The rest of the Titans followed, each -- with the exception of Raven -- giving the newcomer a curious look. Detective Henley gave a soft, derisive snort at their backs and then wandered away in the opposite direction, mumbling something about a cup of strong coffee.

"Motley-looking bunch." Gordon commented to Reilly, his arms crossed against the cold.

"And they've pulled our asses out of the fire more times in the last two years than I can count on both hands." the Chief said, shoving her gloved hands in her coat pockets. "If I had known that you'd be sticking around for a while, I would have pulled out our files on them."

"That's alight." Gordon said, hearing several loud noises of disgust from the murder scene as well as what sounded like a valiant effort not to puke. "Just a quick introduction will do."

"Okay, the big guy with the cybernetic implants is Cyborg. He's the tech-geek of the team. The really cheerful one who's floating is actually an alien--" Reilly laughed as Gordon did a double take. "Her name is Starfire and yes, I've always seen her that happy. The gloomy-looking one is named Raven and she says she's an empath. The green one calls himself Beast Boy and he can turn into any animal that exists and a few that are extinct." She shot Gordon a sideways look. "You're already familiar with Robin?"

"For the most part." Gordon nodded, though he would bet his next day off that he didn't know Robin very well anymore. And it had been some two year and Batman had been nothing short of tight-lipped (more so than usual) for a while so no one had heard a thing about the Boy Wonder after he had vacated Gotham. And it wasn't like they had met in coffee shops every other week.

"Good." Reilly said, glancing back to the crime scene.

The Titans were leaving it, each face bearing varying degrees of disgust and horror. No surprise that they hadn't spent very long at it.

"If I wasn't already a vegetarian," Beast Boy was saying, one hand covering his mouth as he staggered along behind the rest of the team. "That would put me off meat forever."

"Me too. I have totally lost my appetite." Cyborg said, sounding a bit faint and looking green. He still had a largely organic stomach and it could still reject whatever went into it.

"There's no way a human could have done that." Raven stated flatly. The only outward sign of her discomfort was that her face was drained of what little color it had had in the first place. She was just as un-expressionless as ever.

"Then what did?" Robin asked the all-important question, looking around as though he expected the answer to come bursting out of the walls and attack them. Then again, he looked at lots of things that way.

"That's the question we're hoping to find the answer to." Reilly spoke up, approaching the Titans as they cleared the worst of the crowd. She gestured back behind her. "This gentleman is Police Commissioner James Gordon, from Gotham City."

Gordon only gave a slight nod as the other four Titans saw him. Robin didn't so much as blink.

"The murderer originally came out of Gotham, so he's graciously offering his assistance and the information the G.C.P.D previously collected on this case." the Chief finished.

"Then," Starfire started before anyone else had thought to speak, floating right up to the Police Commissioner who stepped back, unaccustomed to floating alien girls. "Please feel welcome to our city! We are most thankful to have you! We must find the monster responsible for this!"

Any leads on possible suspects?" Robin asked, not interested in any small talk at the moment. He was definitely going to have a chat with his old boss later on today about this thing. If the being that had done that had gotten away from Batman...

"The only possible lead we had escaped nine days ago before we could get anywhere close to it." Gordon said. "As far as we've gathered, it's just one man. He has people working for him to cover his tracks -- that much is obvious. But the number of people; we were never able to figure that out. We suspected that he's rotating them out. Furthermore, we don't know who this man is, what his motives are, none of that." He shook his head, already feeling defeated. "You won't have very much of a head-start."

"Don't worry about that." Cyborg said, holding up a hand. After seeing the mangled body, he was eager to start getting to the bottom of this. "Start by telling us what you know and we'll try to put it together." He clapped a hand on Robin's shoulder. The Boy Wonder would have jumped quite badly if Cyborg's hand hadn't come down so heavily. Regardless, he still twitched like someone had slapped him. "Robin's research boy. He'll get it figured out before the rest of us. Guaranteed."

Gordon raised an eyebrow curiously. The scowl that was already on Robin's face seemed to deepen and the Gotham Commissioner was struck with the uncanny resemblance the boy had with his former mentor. It didn't help that Robin was enveloped in his heavy cape in a most Batman-like way. Gordon held his tongue on the comment he really wanted to make, deciding that this wasn't the place or time.

"We found seven victims in Gotham over a two-week period." the Gotham Commissioner explained. "The murders extended through Thanksgiving. The tabloids gave the murderer the name 'the Holiday Killer'. He killed indiscriminately. There were no verifiable links between any of the victims. They were all of different ages, income levels and ethnicity; both man and woman. Their bodies were left where they were killed and there was no pattern in the locations of the murders. Any clues that could have I.D-ed the perp couldn't be found. The only things that connect the victims are how they were murdered. They were all missing their hearts and they all looked like that."

He jabbed a finger back towards the murder scene and three of the five kids proceeded to look thoroughly disgusted. Raven kept up a straight face -- her shoulders did stiffen; but that was the only visible reaction -- and Robin began to look more pensive than before. The police were beginning to make preparations to move the frosted corpse to the city morgue for a more in-depth examination and it was about damn time too. The bloody thing had been sitting out all night. The stench of death was strong in the alley.

"Was there any record of this happening before Gotham?" Robin inquired flatly.

His voice was tight and there was an odd intensity in even the most casual of glances. Dealing with Batman had taught Gordon how to spot the extremely subtle gradations in facial expressions and Robin was really starting to pull those Batman-esque faces.

"No." The commissioner shook his head. "The killer first showed up in Gotham. We can be sure of that."

"And then he got away from the Batman?" Beast Boy asked, disbelieving the very idea. "The Batman's like, the best crime-fighter in the entire world. How does any criminal get away from him?"

"With sheer amounts of firepower and henchmen." Gordon replied flatly and the changeling fell back in a meek sort of silence. Any super hero could be overpowered if the villain had enough men to throw at him.

Robin tensed briefly for what felt like the billionth time at the mention of his old boss, but the conversation went no further on that. Instead, it degraded further into a question-and-answer session that he listened to quite intently; about the victims, past and present, trying to line up the pieces in his head. Every murderer had some kind of method to what they did; no matter how vague or farfetched. Every murderer killed for a reason; no matter how weak the reason was. Even if it was just a matter of revenge.

"When we get back to the station, I'll put in a call for the case files and the folders for each victim." Gordon said, yanking Robin out of his thoughts. "It's going to take a day or two for them to get here--"

"We can wait." Robin found himself saying abruptly. The muscles in his legs were starting to quiver uncontrollably. He wanted to run away from Gordon at the same time he wanted to say 'hello'. He wanted to ask about Batman at the same time he wanted to keep his past as far buried as he could. It was maddening the way he couldn't seem to make up his mind.

In the end, his desire for secrecy won out. He hadn't given any indication that he even recognized the man standing in front of him. His friends didn't need to know exactly whose shadow he had stepped out of. It wasn't the issue at hand here.

"Chief Reilly, if there's anything else we can do--" Robin started, but Reilly cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"You do more than enough for this city every day." she said with half a smile. "Keep your eyes open for anything suspicious and contact us the moment you learn something relevant to the case." She turned to Gordon. "And you had best make arrangements with your hotel about staying here for an indefinite length of time and I'll see about getting you some accommodations at the station."

"Thank you." Gordon spared a moment to turn to Robin. "Good to see you again."

Robin's mouth pulled deeper in that scowl almost automatically.

"You too." he said grudgingly after a moment, steadfastly ignoring the surprised stares that were suddenly being aimed at him.

Having guessed that the conversation was going to die before it ever got off the ground, Gordon followed Reilly out of the alley, leaving a frosty silence between himself and the teen vigilante.

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"Man... That is just sick. Absolutely sick." Cyborg said, though more to himself. He was looking at the coroner's pictures of the corpse and despite what he had said earlier, he was still scarfing down slices of pizza at an amazing rate that was only rivaled by Beast Boy. The green changeling was seven slices into his own vegetarian pizza with pineapple toppings.

It was late in the evening and the wind was picking up and the sun was well on its way down, spreading an unearthly chill through the air. The Titans had returned to the Tower about half an hour ago. There had been a round of questioning all the people who lived the area of the murder, trying to figure out if the dead homeless man had had any enemies, a trip to the coroner's office to pick up the photos and Robin had been incessantly nitpicking the scene of the crime. It was his way of making sure he had covered all the possible clues. The Boy Wonder had then retreated to his bedroom with his dinner and hadn't come out since. No one expected to see him for at least two, maybe three hours.

"What are we after? A dog?" the aforementioned changeling asked, slung across the back of the sofa like a cat and staring at the pictures over Cyborg's shoulders. "'Cause there's no way that a person did that. Unless the person has some super long fingernails or the teeth from hell."

The body parts in question morphed briefly to add emphasis to Beast Boy's statement.

"The Holiday Killer -- as they are calling it -- is not human. Or there is something working for him that is not human." Raven stated. She had taken a seat as far from the two boys as she could get without looking too rude and was attempting to have some form of table manners while eating pizza off a paper plate.

"I just said that." Beast Boy said with a small pout.

"I know. I'm saying that there was something else in that alley last night." Raven went on patiently. "Something that is not supposed to be on this plain of existence. Gotham's Police Commissioner has been looking the wrong way this whole time."

"Are we going to tell him that?" Cyborg asked, giving the empath a semi-dubious look. He trusted Raven's judgment on the ooky, otherworldly mojo, but she had a tendency to keep a lot of information regarding that ooky, otherworldly mojo to herself.

"Dude, that guy came from Gotham! I bet he deals with weird shit like that all the time!" Beast Boy put in before Raven could reply. "You know what Gotham is?"

Plenty of rumors abounded about east-coast Gotham City, but the Titans had never been there themselves. Gotham had its own vigilante to take care of things. Additionally, to their collective knowledge, none of their number had been to that city.

"You think we get some weirdoes here? Well, let me tell you something! Gotham has got weirdoes in spades and they're even weirder than our weirdoes!" Beast Boy explained, getting on his knees for a slightly better vantage. "It's full of mobsters and thugs and criminal masterminds like Dr. Frost! And the two-faced guy and that joker-guy who thinks he's some kind of -- some kind of joker!"

"That would be the Joker." Robin interrupted, having walked in just a few seconds ago; a slight surprise because he had locked himself away for only an hour. "And it's Mr. Freeze."

"Freeze. Right. I knew that." Beast Boy said, just now becoming aware that he had gotten the name wrong. He suddenly gave Robin a highly suspicious look. "Hey, wait... How did you know what Frosty the ice-freak is actually called?"

"I've done a lot of research." Robin said in a too-casual tone, placing his plate in the sink. Then he stripped off his gloves, rolled up his sleeves and turned on the water. It was his week to do the dishes.

"Anyways," Cyborg decided to steer the conversation back into the previous and far safer waters. Whenever Robin used that too-casual tone, it was sure sign that they had better stop talking on whatever the subject and get to a different one immediately. He fished out a high resolution photograph. "The coroner found a wallet in the dead guy's pocket. We're looking at a Lars Bauer from Gotham City. Judging from the expiration date on his driver's license, this guy has been living on the streets for a good twenty years."

"He's from Gotham." Beast Boy said like this explained everything. "What does that say?"

"Says you're thinking too much, BB." Cyborg commented. He paused on one photo that was bird's-eye-view of the death site. The stain of blood on the pavement wasn't the only thing marring it. There was a funny sort of circle there too, but the humanoid couldn't make heads or tails of it. It was too faint. So he handed the photo to Raven. "Hey Rae, you recognize this?"

Raven peered at the faint outline of the symbol that enclosed the stain of blood. It was arcane, certainly, but it wasn't something that she had ever seen before. If she had her books on her right then, she might be able to identify the component parts...

"I'll look into it." she said and casually tucked the photograph into her cloak, where it disappeared and could be recalled on a whim. Beast Boy would still ask how she could do that even after she had explained it in highly technical terms in an attempt to get him to back off.

Starfire came drifting into the main room right around then, having just fed Silky his evening batch of blue fuzzy food. There was quite a lot of it still sitting in refrigerator. The Tamaranean princess didn't understand why her friends didn't dare touch the blue fuzzy food. It was wonderful. The blue fuzz added just the right spice to the food to make it taste very interesting.

In fact, there were a lot of delicious earth foods that her friends didn't like to eat. She didn't understand.

"Friends!" she cried happily. Not even a gruesome murder could dampen her enthusiasm for the Christmas spirit. "I plan to venture to the mall of shopping tomorrow! Who will join me?"

The looks she got were kind of long-suffering. Starfire frequently ventured to the mall for reasons they hadn't figured out yet. The mall was mystery in general to the boys -- one they preferred to avoid at all costs -- and Raven just couldn't understand what was so alluring about a place full of eye-hurting colors, bad music and overly-caffeinated teenagers... Okay, the Hot Topic store wasn't too bad, but it wouldn't kill them to lower their prices and turn down the music to a notch below deafening.

"Starfire," Robin started placatingly. "I'm not sure if this is the time to be thinking about shopping..."

"But we cannot allow a criminal to ruin the glorious season of Christmas!" Starfire protested. She so wanted to go shopping tomorrow. She had presents to buy! For her friends! "We must honor the traditions of Earth and present each other with gifts hidden in the paper of wrapping and the ties of bows! We must roast nuts over fire and have the cocoa of heat with the mallow marshes and make the men of snow!"

She looked so hopeful about being able to fully indulge in the traditional ways of celebrating Christmas that Robin was reluctant to tell her 'no'. There hadn't been a single opportunity to do all this last year and from the way it was looking, they weren't going to be able to do any of that this year either. In fact, Robin would go as far as to say that they were never really going to have a proper Christmas. Not while leading the vigilante life. The best they would most likely be able to manage was something patchwork and piecemeal; just like last year.

"We have a murderer to catch." Robin said as seriously as he could while he was up to his elbows in soapy water. "And a bad one at that. He's not going to wait until the holidays are over. We've got to catch him and we've got to do it as soon as we can."

"The police can't handle this alone." Raven put in, fixing the alien girl with a steady stare that was neither accusing nor a glare. It just -- was. "What we're looking for either isn't human or there is something otherworldly backing him. I can tell you that much right now." She folded her hands in her lap. "I'm just amazed that G.C.P.D was able to learn as much as it did."

"That's 'cause the Batman lives there." Beast Boy said with a grin. He never said it out loud -- because Robin always seemed to get all weird and twitchy at any mention of the Dark Knight, however offhand -- but the Batman ranked high on the list of Beast Boy's most idolized superheroes. "The Batman's the greatest detective who ever lived!"

"I wouldn't go that far..." Robin muttered, but was careful to keep the comment well under his breath. He didn't want to invite any potentially awkward questions. Raven had already shot him suspicious looks after meeting Commissioner Gordon. Out of all the Titans, the empath was the only person who knew anything about the past that Robin deliberately kept hidden. But she was highly respecting of other peoples' privacy, so he trusted that she would never say a word on it unless she had permission to do so.

Strangely, Robin's nearly inaudible comment plunged the main room into silence, as though it had reached the ears of the others. For a moment, there was only the low sound of the television, on and tuned to the news; which was covering the weather for the next week and the reporter was hoping for a clear weather the weekend after next for the annual Christmas charity ball.

"It doesn't matter." Raven said, breaking the silence. "The killer is not entirely human, meaning we're going to have to use methods that aren't human-contrived to capture it. The moment I find out what it is, I'll have a way of subduing it."

"You're saying that the Batman couldn't capture it?" Beast Boy said, determined to defend the honor of his favorite vigilante.

"The Batman is human under the cape and cowl, you realize." Raven said, in no mood to put up with the changeling's hero-worshipping. Beast Boy gave another pouting expression, but did not push the matter any further

As if that statement was the cue, everyone looked to Robin for their next instructions. There was no doubt in their minds that he already had the next few steps planned out in his mind; he knew exactly what to do and how to do it and there was a Plan B if Plan A failed miserably. He had excellent planning skills. That was why he was the leader. That was why he remained the leader.

But Robin had gone unusually still; frozen in the act of rinsing a cup out. The water overflowed from the cup and sluiced over his bare hands, but he didn't seem to notice. He was staring at the overflow, but he wasn't really seeing it. The moment he was experiencing seemed far too surreal. Here they were, oh so casually bandying the name of the Dark Knight, largely unaware that one of them actually knew the man under the cape and cowl. He could never tell them. He wasn't interested in delving that far into his past. The way he saw it, his life with Batman was an entirely separate life and the information on it came on a strictly need-to-know basis.

The rest of the Titans had just never needed to know.

"Robin?"

Starfire's gentle voice jarred Robin from his thoughtful silence before it could become a reverie. Jerkily, he emptied the cup and placed it in the dish drainer. He drained the sink, shut off the water and reached for a towel to dry his hands.

"I'm going on patrol." he announced shortly, balling up the towel and lobbing it Beast Boy's head without a conscious thought. Then he swept out of the room, his cape fluttering behind him in a way that made him feel distinctly exposed. He resisted the urge to grab at it and wrap it around his body protectively. He wasn't a kid anymore; living in the shadow of some overgrown bat.

Gotham was his past. He had left it two years ago.

But he had not expected Gotham to follow him to Jump.