Author's Notes

Part two of three.

Chapter 2, A Cyborg's Tale

"What?" spluttered Beast Boy.

The others were dead silent and tense as they watched Cyborg, waiting for him to say something more.

Cyborg just stared down at his hands, lost in his thoughts. What in God's name could have happened that the old man's become desperate enough to try and contact me now? How did he even know where to reach me at all?

He didn't move until a slender, gloved hand place itself over his own knotted fingers.

"Please, Cyborg," Starfire said in a gentle voice, "why have you never before told us of your family?"

His face had been blank until Starfire spoke. Now, it twisted into a horrible snarl that they had never seen him adopt before, and he burst out savagely, "He may be my father, but he is not my family."

Starfire kept her hand atop his, continuing to watch him with eyes brimming with concern. Cyborg still wouldn't look at the others. He was dreading to see their stares of worry. Or pity.

He cleared his throat. "C'mon, we should go."

With that, he strode out of the room. The others followed quickly.

-T-

The five Titans were quiet as Cyborg revved the engine of the T-Car to life and sped away from the Tower and beyond the Jump City limits. They stayed quiet as he maneuvered his way down twisting roads none of them had ever been down before, but he drove along them so smoothly that they were sure the same could not be said of him. The only exchanges between any of them were apprehensive glances among the three Titans in the backseat.

It had begun to flurry while they were decorating the tree, but the snowfall was becoming thicker and heavier as the T-Car went farther and farther north.

An hour into the drive, Robin couldn't stand it anymore. He almost laughed at the situation he found himself in. He was the one who was usually brooding and reclusive.

"Cyborg?"

No response. No acknowledgement of any kind.

"C'mon, Cyborg," Beast Boy tried from the backseat, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Talk to us."

"We…we only wish to help you. Perhaps sharing your burden with us will help alleviate it?"

"Starfire's right," Raven said in a rare, gentle tone. "We're your friends."

Another few seconds passed, heavy with silence.

Then Cyborg just started talking.

"Back when I was known as Victor Stone, when I was fully human, I lived with my mom and dad, Silas and Elinore Stone. I wasn't happy, exactly, but I had some good things in my life: sports, my friends, a girlfriend. I was normal."

Beast Boy, Raven, and Robin had never heard about Cyborg's life before becoming a Titan. Starfire had only spoken with him about it in passing after he infiltrated the H.I.V.E. Academy. They all sat looking at him now with their full attention.

"My father," he spat out the word like it was bitter on his tongue, "destroyed all of it in the blink of an eye. My parents were scientists. They mastered almost every field of science known to man; so, they started research in a few that weren't. Tampering with alternate dimensions. Dabbling in alchemy. God only knows what else. They were always experimenting, always pushing their limits, and disaster was bound to happen one day. There were just consequences I hadn't seen coming."

Cyborg stopped speaking. Raven could feel the anger and grief radiating from him as he tried to rein in his emotions.

"My parents went too far. They were stubborn and reckless. I'm sure they both thought they were invincible when it came to their beloved science. I…I tried to stop them, but it was too late. One of their devices was too unstable, and something escaped from whatever damn dimension spawned it and ripped through the lab, killing…killing my mother." He swallowed roughly as the vision of his one human eye was blurred by tears.

Robin dimly wondered if any of their parents had been good, were still alive. Starfire's hands were covering her mouth in horror and her own green eyes filled with tears.

Beast Boy was frowning as he stared out the window into the swirling snow, trying to recall something. A memory was nagging in the back of his mind, as if he had heard something like this before.

Then it hit him. That terrible day of Trigon's resurrection, when Cyborg had been fighting his Inner-Demon, Beast Boy overheard its taunts.

"You gonna go crying to your mommy? Oh…that's right. You don't have a mommy."

With everything that was happening, Beast Boy had completely forgotten about it. Now the significance of the words struck him with the force of lightning.

"So my mother was dead, but I didn't know because I was as good as killed myself." He gave a hollow laugh. "My father, though, decided he wasn't about to lose both of us—he made me into this." Cyborg gestured spitefully at himself. "Once I saw what he had done to me…what had happened to mom…I left him back at his precious S.T.A.R. Labs and never looked back. I haven't heard from him since."

He finished talking as abruptly as he had started.

-T-

Cyborg turned the T-Car turned off the dirt road and rumbled over a gravel path. The pebbly terrain led into the woods. After squeezing through a narrow trail, they came upon an enclosure that must have been near the heart of the wood.

It was actually quite pretty, between the snow and the oak trees. They found it hard to imagine that this was the scene of something as horrible as the video-message from Silas had seemed to be…that is, until they came upon the sight just beyond the glade.

"We're here."