Watchtower

August 16th, 4:00 AM

Robin sighed wearily. He'd spent the entire night trying, unsuccessfully, to hack into one of the Luthorcorp computers per Superman's request. Batman, who usually did this sort of thing for the League, was away on other business. And Nightwing, whose favorite activity was hacking...

Robin rubbed his neck, which had grown stiff from the position he'd been holding it in for the last three hours. He sat in front of the uncooperative League computer, who simply refused to link to any of the computers at Luthorcorp.

But he was even more weary of what he'd been going through the last month. The original Robin had only been in the shadow of Batman. He was forced to live beneath the shadow of Batman and Nightwing. Everyone looked at him either as Batman's sidekick, or as a leader like Nightwing was. He was tired of being asked to find solutions to problems he didn't even understand. He was tired of leading teams who looked up to him only because of the mask he wore, who expected nothing less than perfection from him because of who and what he was.

At least Nightwing had understood. Though he had pushed Robin beyond what he thought his limits were, Nightwing could read Robin like a book, and knew when he'd had enough.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that everyone looked at him, and assumed he was keeping secrets from them, because Batman and Nightwing both did. They questioned his motives with their mouths, and his actions with their eyes. Expectation and disappointment surrounded him, boxed him in on all sides, and it seemed there would be no relief until Nightwing returned. If Nightwing returned.

Even Aqualad seemed unaware of the position Robin was being put in.

He sighed again, returning his blurring vision to the screen in front of him.

"Come on, it's a simple enough request. Why can't you do it?," he asked the monitor, which glared blankly at him and gave no answer.

He rubbed his eyes and leaned back, wincing at the stiffness in his back. He was an athlete, like the Robin before him, and sitting still did not agree with him. It gave him too much time to think, and to be scared. In this line of work, there was no room for fear, that he'd learned early on. Keep moving, keep thinking about the objective, use your training, and do not be afraid.

Thoughtfully, he drummed his fingers on the desk. Then he tapped a few commands into the computer and waited, rolling his shoulders to relieve their tension while he did so.

He had no idea what time it was, or how long he'd been at it.

"You're still here?," the voice behind him after all the hours of silence startled Robin, but he checked himself mid-flinch and when he turned and stood, his face gave nothing away.

"I haven't gotten anywhere yet, I'm sorry,"

Superman looked down at him, and Robin found he couldn't meet the blue gaze of the Kryptonian. He looked instead back towards the monitor. A gentle hand touched his shoulder and he fought the urge to move away. Even the presence of others had become something of a torment to him.

"I didn't intend for you to drive yourself into the ground when I made the request, Robin. It can wait for Batman to return," the hand was gentle, the commanding voice was kind, but Robin refused to respond to either comfort.

"I can do this," he said, a bit shakily "I just... I just need more time,"

He knew inwardly that he wasn't talking about the Luthorcorp computer. He was talking about being what everyone expected him to be. But he was no more sure of being able to do what was necessary in that department than he was of his ability to hack the Luthorcorp computers from the Watchtower.

"You need sleep,"

"I'm fine," Robin shrugged off the hand and typed insistently at the keyboard.

He could feel Superman's eyes watching him, and hoped he wasn't trembling. He'd been motionless and sitting for so long that standing up had come as a bit of a shock to his system. His stiff muscles wanted to regain their former positions, made lazy and tight with hours of stillness.

He set his jaw and focused on the computer.

A whiteness flashed at the corner of his vision. Startled, he shook his head. This proved to be a mistake as the world suddenly swam, then skewed and darkened before him.

"Robin, are you alright?. Robin," the voice was distant as he crumpled to the floor, and the spinning world turned mercifully black.


"Tim?. Tim, can you hear me?,"

The intrusion to the blessed emptiness that was unconsciousness was irritating. Robin wanted to escape from it. Mentally, he turned away and shunned the voice, refusing to answer and come back to the land of the living. It was too hard there, there was all this pressure. At the moment, he wasn't sure what the pressures of living were, which was a mercy in itself, but he knew they existed and he didn't feel as though he could deal with them right at the moment.

A white flash cut through the blackness. Within the flash was a world of chaos, of flashing sword and flickering shadows in the night. Violence, anger, death, regret, all lay in that direction.

Although he was unaware of it, Robin's body spasmed at this point as his mind recoiled from what lay in that direction and turned in the other. A second white flash was stained with dripping blood, a silver blade of sorrow thrust through the heart of the undeserving. His body jerked again.

"Hold him down, gently. Tim, don't fight it, let it pass,"

"What's happening to him?," a second voice, lower-pitched than the first, intruded.

Robin just wanted to be alone. Left all alone. Without the responsibility, without the white flashes, without anything. He wanted it to be dark and silent once more. But that was apparently not on the list of options, as the feminine voice replied to the masculine

"I'm not sure. At first, I thought it was just exhaustion, but now I think something else may be going on," no, no, nothing is going on, he thought, go away, just go away and everything will be fine.

The white flashes were insistent, bringing forth a flood of agony and betrayal that Robin didn't understand. It was not his own, that much he knew. He didn't want any part of it, and didn't understand why it seemed to want a part of him. The visions tore at him, as though trying to drag him with them to another place, one worse than the living world he was refusing to inhabit now.

"Whatever it is, I think it's in his mind,"

"Then maybe I can help," a third voice, also feminine, interjected.

"Well, alright, but be careful,"

A light suddenly pierced the darkness, and Robin shied away from it. It was not a blinding, burning light, not like the flashes. It was soft, like lamp light, but Robin wanted no part of it. In the center of the light appeared a familiar figure, caped and clad in red and black.

"Robin?," the green skin and red hair were familiar, just like the rest of her, but he wanted nothing to do with her or her light "Tim, answer me, please?,"

"Go away," he said miserably, ducking further into the darkness of his mind as she turned towards him "and take your visions with you,"


Megan had been reluctant to enter Robin's mind, but from the readings Black Canary's medical equipment was getting, she feared he was being destroyed from the inside. Upon entering his mind, her fears seemed to be confirmed, as a blanket of darkness covered everything. Robin was nothing more than a thin, thread-like voice in the black.

"What visions?," when he failed to answer, she added questioningly "Tim?,"

"Go away,"

A white flash cut across what would have been the sky had this been a world. Twisting in the lightning flash of insight was a vision of blood and pain, which took Megan a moment to recognize as being anything at all. Was this a memory?. It didn't look like one. It seemed to be an attack from an outside source.

"Robin, come into the light, please?. So I can see you,"

"I don't like the light," Robin told her flatly "people can see you, and ask you to do things,"

"What kind of things, Tim?,"

"Things I don't want to do anymore. I just want to stay here, in the dark, by myself. Go away,"

"You don't mean that,"

"I do," it sounded as though he did "now go away, and take the visions too. I don't want them. They hurt and don't make any sense. Take them away with you,"

"They're not mine to take," Megan explained gently "I'm not even sure they're yours,"

"They're not mine," Robin answered swiftly "I know these places, the things happening are strange and they're not me. I wish they would go away, back to who they belong to. I don't want them,"

"A lot of us have to put up with things we don't like," Megan said reasonably "and it hurts more to fight things out of our control than it does to put up with them,"

"I'm tired," Robin's voice was pathetically withdrawn "I don't want to put up with anything else,"

"Else?. What are you putting up with that you don't like, Tim?,"

"I don't know. It's out there, in the real world. I don't want to remember it. Too much pressure. There's fear out there, and it's alive,"

"I see. But in here, you're not afraid?,"

"Not if you'll go away,"

"You're afraid of me?," Megan was incredulous.

"I don't know," the small voice was tortured, and Megan realized she was talking to a shadow, as if most of Robin were somewhere else, this portion of him was merely taking messages.

He's withdrawn so far, I don't know if I can even reach who he really is, she thought.

"Maybe, if you come back with me, your friends can help you," she suggested.

"No!," the shadow of Robin said vehemently "I want nothing to do with you, take your light away,"

"But it's so dark in here, wouldn't you rather be in the light?,"

"No. No, the light reveals, the light exposes. It lays you flat in the open and cuts you. The dark is safer, that's where the secrets are," it was probably more or less the same answer any of the bats would give, be they Batman or one of his proteges.

"But you can't see in the dark,"

"Don't have to," Robin told her sensibly "I have five senses, sight is just one. Sight is the betrayer,"

The last word seemed to trigger not one flash, but a whole sky of them, all flickering with scattered images which Megan suspected were not Robin's memories but something else entirely.

His imagination, maybe?.

She screamed as one flash plummeted towards her. She forgot for a moment that it wasn't real, then remembered just in time to retreat into the real world, narrowly escaping the deadly strike.

"There's someone in there with him," she gasped as she fell into reality and was caught by Superboy "I don't know who, or what they want. But they're attacking him, they're going to destroy his mind if we don't stop them,"