Chapter 4... I think I was watching Batman Begins when I wrote this so enjoy the references, this is leading up to something I promise... and thanks to everyone for sticking with it :)
Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans or Batman
The man was dumbstruck; never before had he missed a flight at his air field.
"I-I- don't know what... how…" he stammered "I may be old but never before have I missed an aircraft at my air field" he said definitively.
"There's a first time for everything right?" Beast boy said with a smile, the old man just glared at him.
"Urrr Robin?" Cyborg said with the same tone as he did when he found Tia's PDA
"Yes Cy…"
"I don't think he was asleep by accident" Cyborg was holding a can of sleeping gas. The pig-men had put the old man to sleep so they could go unnoticed, that meant no flight plan.
"Ugrr, now how…" Robin said annoyed but then realised something "…don't worry" his tone was brighter; he picked up his phone and walked outside.
"What's he doin' now?" Beast Boy asked and got shrugged shoulders as a reply. The Titans waited patiently inside the hut as Robin passed backwards and forwards outside talking to someone and making modifications to a hand held device. All the time he was smiling, once he even laughed. Starfire held a permanent look of distress
"He's forgotten his mind. I want my Robin back please"
"Star's right do you think that the stress of losing his sister has finally got to him?" Raven said. All of the faces then turned to Robin who was still smiling
"She's not lost, just temporarily misplaced" He had put down his phone and was headed straight for the door.
"C'mon Titans, we've got a new lead. Thanks for your help" he said brightly and ran to the Tjet.
"No problem" the old man whispered in awe as the Tjet took off.
The phone rang for the second time... It was Dick. Bruce breathed a sigh of relief, and picked it up.
"Hey Dick, what's the latest?"
"No word yet. We were right; your Batwave buzzing was Tia's distress signal, we found her PDA in the desert, she was being taken to an airfield in the area, but obviously she no longer has her PDA, just her birthday present from you, and I was wondering what is was as she obviously thought it could help us-"
"I don't know if I've said this recently, but that girl is a genius."
"Not helping our present situation dad"
"Right sorry, you remember a few months ago Tia was working on a 'secret project'?"
"Yeah..."
"Well it turned out to be that she was working on this earwig type device that could be hooked up wirelessly to any phone/music player and sat completely camouflaged in your ear; an invisible headset if you would. Well I took her designs and schematics for it and got her a custom made set. I also managed to include that brainwave pattern recogniser she designed last year, so now she basically has control of it just by thinking."
"But how does that help us now? I have her PDA; she can't contact us"
"The headset itself has a GPS tracking system so the user can ask where they are... I should be able to access it from the Batcave it should only take a few minutes to get down there" he stopped talking, there was a very awkward silence.
"Sooo... You're back on Gotham then?"
"Yeah, along with about five FBI agents and GCPD posted at every entrance to the manor. Apparently I am at risk of attack, and so must be guarded 24/7" Dick laughed at how obsolete the guards were at Wayne Manor, but then again appearances must be kept up and so Batman must be guarded. "I've told them that you have been set to a friend's house for the duration so that you are 'away' from any harm" Dick could hear the sarcasm in his father's voice at that last comment "The agents aren't too happy about it but we convinced them and said you would be checking in periodically to say that you are fine. Anyway, Alfred is in such a state, you know how he hates mud tacking police officers, but really he's just trying to keep himself busy, this sort of thing really gets to him." Now he was just distracting both of them from the situation, it wasn't working. "Okay I have the headset up on the monitor, can you sync it with your PDA yourself or do you-"
"I'll be fine, quit worrying, it won't do you any good" he started pressing buttons and a few minutes later he could see what was on the Batcave's monitors "okay, we have to make that easier" he heard Bruce give a laughy exhale of air and Dick couldn't help but smile.
"We'll get Tia on that right away once we get her back" he was keeping optimistic, that was good.
"Well that should be fine Dick, are you sure you're okay, you have everything you need?" he was back with the agents, Dick however caught on and thanked him, and said he had everything he needed. "Good...Dick, stay safe"
"Will do, oh Dad, on the message Tia left me she asked if you could find out anything you could about a Captain Himngen, I think he is one of those who took her"
"Sure Dick, whatever you need, have a good night and we'll see you soon" Dick rang off so did he. Bruce was sitting at a table in the living room the phone was thrown back onto the table and he buried his head in his hands.
"Sir? Don't you think you should have told him?" Alfred said in a low voice so the agents at the door couldn't hear.
"What? that Tia left me a twenty minute long voicemail message of her being beaten up and threatened?" he said incredulously, Dick was beating himself up enough over this, even though it wasn't his fault. There was nothing he could have done about it. He didn't want to worry him even more. "No. It would do him no good to worry like we are." His voice was stern, unfeeling; it was a Batman decision. One he knew he may have to face later but right now keeping Dick in the dark was the right thing to do if he wanted either of them back alive.
"So Robin who were you on the phone to?" Cyborg asked
"My dad" Robin replied simply.
"Wait, your Bruce Wayne dad?" Beast boy said his eyes fully open, jaw dropped and drooling
"Yeah I wanted to know what he got Tia for her birthday"
"Sooooooooo…" Cyborg said eagerly
"A couple of years ago my sister invented a micro cordless headset that sits invisibly in your ear so you can talk, listen to music, et cetera " he took out his own PDA and accessed some rather complicated schematics "then my dad took her original designs, and had a custom set made putting in new features like; linking them up to her bat cycle, her PDA and even her brain waves, okay so Tia designed that, but hey, it means that she can now do things by thinking and not talking and then he gave them to her as a birthday present.
He's now putting the original designs on the market under Tia's Wayne Industries trademark."
"DUDE I WANT ONE…" Cyborg looked as if he could faint "…your sister is a genius!" he was flipping through the designs wide-eyed and drooling.
"I know, it even includes a tracking device so all we need to do is follow the signal" he started to do something with the guidance systems and engaged the auto pilot and sat back.
The hours passed slowly, the Tjet was fast but the kidnappers had had a long head start. The Titans had finished all the Lord of the Rings extended editions and still looked nowhere near their destination.
"Eeek Robin! Where are we?" Starfire was looking out of the window. The air around the Tjet had been full of thick, dense, cloud like fog, so they couldn't be seen out of, but now that fog was beginning to clear and the typography of their surroundings was emerging. Around them the Titans could see the shadows of mountains. As they flew the mountains became more defined; they stretched father than the eye could see, disappearing into the clouds above them, the titans gazed in awe; it was more beautiful than anything they had ever seen. They could see snow all around them on the nearest slope they saw some lonesome trees; green against the surrounding white and grey. As far as they could see it was a landscape untouched by the modern world, the people who lived here, were living in harmony with their surroundings, it was a place lost in time. It was magical.
"We're in Tibet" Robin whispered in awe, not wanting to interrupt the mystical ambience around them.
"How can you tell?" Beast Boy said destroying the mood in the Tjet. The others glared at him. He shrank back into his seat and whispered and apology.
"Advanced GPS tracking system…" Robin said now that the atmosphere had been broken. He then sad back in his seat and enjoyed the mesmerising scenery for a few moments before going into a separate explanation "… Long ago," it wasn't that long ago but Robin longed for the mystical energy that surrounded them and to him it seemed like the way to start a story like this one "when I was first adopted by Bruce and became Robin, he told me stories of his time in Tibet with the monks that live in these mountains" Robin paused he could hear each individual snow flake fall on his window, it was like crystal glass chiming, the sound was so beautiful "I was still grieving from the death of my family and so one of his stories really stuck in my brain.
He was telling me about the period in his life after his parents died. He was distraught. He told me he was like a zombie, or a mindless drone, I can't remember which, but anyway, he was just walking through life listing for something, but just not knowing what. He finished school with commendations, and he returned home to Gotham to try to rebuild the life he lost. He couldn't, his life was missing something, there was a void left where his parents had been and nothing seemed to be able to fill it.
Then his parent's murderer was found, Joe Chill, small time crook, got majorly lucky one night when he ran into the Wayne family coming out of the theatre, he hadn't meant to kill anyone but the Waynes wouldn't cooperate and things got out of hand. After that night he wasn't seen for the next decade and a half, but when he was he was caught and brought to Gotham courts to stand trial, he never made it; a citizen shot him when he was brought out of the police van he died instantly. Bruce went down to the Court room that day with the bitter thirst for revenge burning in his head, he had a gun up he sleeve, he thought that Chill dying would give him comfort.
It didn't. All it did was add to his grief. He knew he went to the courthouse that day to get revenge by taking another's life, and he has to carry that burden round with him for the rest of his life. After facing what he was going to do at the court house he couldn't go home to Alfred the only person in this world who cared about him as family and not an orphaned rich kid; so he decided to make Bruce Wayne disappear. He knew what he needed to fill the void was out there; he just needed to find it."
Robin paused. Bruce had told him this story just after he had lost his parents. He was out of control, so full of rage, so full of the desire to get revenge, at all costs. The story brought him back from the gates of despair and made him believe in something again. His reasons for telling it to his friends were mainly selfish, he knew how most kidnapping cases turned out, and it wasn't good for Tia, he believed that in retelling this story it would give him hope that he would see his sister again.
"I don't really know how he ended up in Tibet, I just know that he did and what he found here changed his life. He learnt to be at peace with himself by training in the ancient ways with some monks that lived in these mountains…
He has only told me the specifics of one of these training sessions, here he was not training his body; here he was training his mind. Well mostly, he did master some martial arts but that was taught to him by the locals... Not the monks... Anyway...
He spent most of his days meditating to no avail; his last resort was to consult his new found friend Monk Kunchen to meditate with him. His friend could tell that he had a spiritual block from a traumatic event; the only way for him to get over the block was for him to relive the event.
Bruce never told me how Monk Kunchen got him to do that but he did tell me that once he had, the block had still not been removed. Suddenly Kunchen asked him what he was angry at. Bruce was emotional and visibly shaking after he relived his parent's deaths so instinctively said
"Chill"
Kunchen said he had forgiven Chill the day he didn't use his gun, he asked again what he was angry at, and Bruce had had his eyes closed in meditation, now opened them wide and shouted
"If I'm not angry at Chill then I'm not angry at anything"
Kunchen replied in a calming voice
"No my friend you are angry at something and it is blocking your spiritual pathways"
"I'm angry at my parents, how could they leave me like that, all alone, I was five I needed their guidance but they weren't there to help me" his voice had grown louder, Kunchen still didn't think that was the matter and he told Bruce to look inwardly and find who he was really angry at.
"I'm…" Bruce was sobbing "I'm angry at myself, it's my fault they died, I shouldn't have asked them to go… it was my idea… I was so intent on seeing the film… and they paid the price… I caused their deaths. I'm angry at myself" Tears started to flow down his cheeks, Kunchen was smiling, he told Bruce that the first step in forgiving yourself is attainting something to yourself in the first place, that he had just achieved. He also told Bruce that what happened in the past is in the past. Everything happens for a reason, he told Bruce that he did not cause his parent's deaths, they could have died in a thousand other ways, it was not his fault, and the sooner he realised that the sooner he could move on and forgive himself and release the spiritual block the belief has caused him.
Bruce meditated for two days straight after that. When he emerged from his room he had truly forgiven himself and could move on, he told himself he was going to stop dwelling on the past and look to the future he was going to shape his destiny in his parent's honour, that was the day he decided to become The Batman and fight crime.
He spent the next seven years with the monks and in the neighbouring community, he found love, got married and had Tia but her mother died in child birth. She was brought up by the monks, they educated her and taught her the ways of peace and harmony, she was taught locally in more than four martial arts styles, she was very skilful and at eight she had developed her own style. By this time Bruce had returned to Gotham and reclaimed his family legacy, he was fighting the criminals in a way the Gotham PD could never imagine. A year before Tia came back and joined her father, I was adopted by him. I didn't know anything about her at the time, but got filled in as I got to know her. She is the brightest, kindest, most lovely person I have ever met. I can't lose her." Robin was as stern faced as he was when he was hunting down Slade. He had to find Tia. He had only known Tia for a few years, with her he felt at home, she was around his age, and being with her reminded him of the old days, when he was with the circus. She even let him teach her some acrobatics and trapeze tricks.
He knew that telling the others that story would either inspire them, or make them think his family was crazy, or both. It was a risk he was willing to take; he had to make them understand why.
Starfire was silently crying the others were just staring at him they all looked as if they had just seen ghosts. Each speechless moment to Robin signified that they understood and that they would stand by him no matter what. Friends. Back in Gotham he didn't have that many... He was mostly teased at school for being Bruce Wayne's kid, he only really had Barbra Gordon, the Commissioner's kid, who understood. But that's why he loved being with the Titans, they were his friends and would stick by come hell or high waters; and nothing was ever going to change that. He smiled.
Suddenly his attention was drawn to the monitor, they were getting close. He looked out the front window; it was just as he had imagined. The Temple of the Western Spirit.
Yay 4 down... I actually have to start writing chapters again (well I have half of another chapter already written) as these have been from *English school term* year nine and I have only been editing them and therefore they have been a bit decompressed story wise (that was the 'in' thing in our English lessons back then... do not ask me why as I don't know), but please stay with me i do have a plan... I promise :)