Chapter 8
As another day dawns in the tower, Robin is enjoying an exceptionally peaceful and friendly breakfast.
"You want s'more cinnamon on your French toast?"
"That's okay."
"How about your crusts cut?"
"I like the crusts, actually."
"I'll warm up the syrup for you."
"Uh, thanks, Raven."
Except he is not enjoying it so much as he is internally freaking out over it with a big smile on his face so no one will think he's freaking out over it. He'd gone from being in control of everything, to being in control of nothing. Not even his own breakfast. He didn't even know Starfire was, and whenever he asked they just shushed him with meaningless soothing babble and changed the subject! It was a conspiracy, that was what it was. Clearly, they were all in on it to get him... to get him...
To get him something or other!
He crunched one last stick of bacon and then set down his fork with a soft but meaningful clang. "So, guys, about Star..."
"It's okay, Robin, let us worry about Starifre. We know where she is, and she'll be back very soon, so-"
"Am I or am I not still the leader of this team?!" he snapped in aggravation.
"Of course you are, Robin!" all three of them chorused back at him.
A vein in Robin's forehead twitched. "Then how am I supposed to coordinate our activities for training and missions if I don't know where everyone is?"
"Starfire can fly fast enough to join us whenever we need her to, Robin," Raven explained patiently... almst suspiciously patiently, to Robin's eyes. But then, everything was suspicious to him lately. Could you blame him? "And with the homing function enabled she can get right to where we are without needing detailed instructions. We've been together for years and dealt with far more drastic situations easily."
He sighed and hung his head, staring at the syrupy crumbs left on his plate. "Okay. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. It's just that I'm not used to... um..."
"...not being in control?" Cyborg finished sympathetically.
Robin flushed. "Yeah. That."
"It's only temporary, buddy. Just a week or two, you can handle it. And afterwards it'll be just like normal, 'cept with a lil more fun and games time and a lil less working time."
Feeling unusually vulnerable without Starfire around for unknown reasons and with everything else in his life seemingly changing, Robin allowed himself a childish moment. "You promise?" he asked hesitantly, not daring to look into their eyes.
"We promise," Beast Boy said, giving a big thumbs up.
"Okay," he said with a relax in posture after glancing around at Raven and Cyborg. Maybe things would be okay after all. Maybe he was just overreacting and being silly. It wasn't like they were treating him like a baby or anything. "Um, Raven, can you let me out of my chair now? I appreciate that you're trying to keep me from possibly falling over and everything, but it's starting to get uncomfortable."
"No problem, Robin," she said smoothly, telekinetically moving him to another nearby, plushier chair and plumping the pillows for him. "That better?"
"Yyyeeaahhh," he said slowly, trying to decide if he actually wanted to be where she'd put him or not.
"Don't slouch, it's bad for your posture."
He grumbled but straightened up.
"And stop snickering and whispering behind my back," she added at Cyborg and Beast Boy, who immediately stepped away from each other and tried to look innocent. Cyborg and Beast Boy were, are, and always will be very bad at looking innocent (even when they are innocent). "We don't Robin to think we're keeping secrets from him, now do we?"
They shook their heads mutely.
"So, Cy, you wanna go shopping with me later?" Beast Boy asked cheerfully. "I need your opinion on some moped models I was lookin' at. I mean, I won't be able to afford them for like a year, but still..."
For some reason Cyborg looked ill at ease. "Sorry, I've got stuff to do. Maybe tomorrow." Raven looked at him sharply, but Cyborg didn't seem to notice. In fact, he seemed a little too obviously unnoticing of it. Robin knew it had to be deliberate. They were hiding things from him!
"Oh, okay. Robin, you've got a bike, do you wanna-"
The sound of the alarm rang out... except it was an incredibly soft, gentle, almost feminine tone now. He looked at Cyborg accusingly.
"I had it toned down so it wouldn't startle us or anything," Cyborg confessed with a sheepish grin.
Robin was examining an electronic map of the city in a flash. "Red X," he announced grimly. That annoying, flirtacious, oh so competent nemesis... he could hear the wisecracks already! "Robbing a pastry shop for some reason. Titans, go!"
"Ohhh, no," Cyborg said, grabbing his shoulder as he made to run off to his R-Cycle. "We go. You stay here."
"But I'm still the leaderrrr," Robin whined.
"Your heart's still weak and needs more time to recover, Robin," Raven said.
"Oh, come on! It's just Red X! It's not like it's... Slade, or Trigon, or anything! I'll be fine, I promise."
Faced with three adamant, stubborn faces, he did something he promised he'd never do.
He took off his mask, widened his eyes to pure innocence levels of wideness, and puppy dog pouted.
"Pleeeeaaaaaaaase?"
His caretakers exchanged glances. "Maybe he could just, like, stand back and watch?" Beast Boy suggested.
"Yes! I'll do that! I'll just... watch..." Robin said desperately, eager for any kind of excuse to get in on the action. He could apologize for breaking his word afterwards.
"You promise?" Cyborg asked pointedly.
"I promise," Robin lied with cheerful enthusiasm.
"Well... okay, then. But don't let his jokes and stuff get to you. You know how you get."
"I know."
"And you're not riding the R-Cycle either," Raven added. "Get in the T-Car. No, not the driver's seat! Not the suicide seat, either, that's the least-protected seat in the car. Get in the back."
He tried not to sulk on the way over.
They were doing all this for his own good, he knew. They meant well. They were just taking it way too far. All this paranoia was more likely to drive him into an early grave than anything else! Deep, even breaths. Like meditation. Don't think about anything stressful, like missing Starfire... or the currently crimespreeing Red X... or the still at large Slade... or the downspiraling economy... no, just look out the window and think happy thoughts, Robin. Happy thoughts, like all the exercising routines he enjoyed... and was no longer allowed to do. And how peaceful and spiritual it was to be the lone one awake before dawn... when he was no longer allowed to get up that early. And how so much nice, sympathetic mail had come in... albeit with large portions of it burnt.
Happy thoughts, Robin.
Happy thoughts.
Suddenly Rex X's face appeared upside down less than an inch away from his on the other side of the window, and Robin jumped. "AH!"
"Little jumpy today, aren't we?" Red X asked in his synthesized, perpetually laid-back voice. "Let me take a load off you. Or a roof, anyway." With that, he let loose with a needlessly complicated spinning, razrsharp X device that sliced through the roof once, twice, three times. The unattached metal flew away, leaving the wind to blow against four heroic heads with a crook hanging on to the trunk and looking cocky.
With a furious screech of tires, Cyborg parked the car in the fastest measurable unit of time, a New York second (which is the time it takes when the traffic light turns green till the car behind you blows its horn), hopping out and charging his cannon. "You are dead, X," he growled, plainly mortally offended by the damage to his metaphorical offspring.
"Careful with that thing, you might hit Robin," Red X said snidely, ducking behimd Robin even as Robin was standing up, reaching for a utility belt that the other Titans had absconded from him (it was almost like they didn't trust him to stay out of it or something!). "I hear he's in a delicate condition lately."
Robin ground his teeth as Cyborg actually backed down, trying to sidle around instead of trusting in Robin's own ability to dodge a projectile! This was ridiculous. "Just shoot, I'll be fine!"
"Remember the talk we had about yelling," Raven chided him, encompassing herself in black energy to phase straight through him. It was a sensation not unlike being raped by soggy oatmeal. "Why a pastry shop, X?" she asked the villain of the day, further annoying Robin by stealing his lines. "Of all the places to target..."
"Have you TASTED their eclairs?" X gestured to a dozen small white boxes bound together by a net that was, of course, a series of Xs joined together. "My God. I would have PAID for them, the bakers really deserve it, that's how good they are. But you had to stop my last robbery so I had no money. Cycle of violence."
"Get a job like a regular person!" Beast Boy suggested, turning into a chimpanzee to swing deftly towards the enemy. They had all learned what him turning into big, strong, clumsy animals accomplished around Red X (embarrassing things for Beast Boy and the rest of the team, that is).
That was the cue for the assault, no 'Titans, go!' being necessary from Robin. They were really good at fighting to keep X back from him, too, almost putting more energy into that than the rest of the fight, which only made things drag out longer, of course. They were never going to catch him playing so cautiously! There was no way the Titans' reputation could afford to let Red X escape again and again, it wasn't like the thief was some supercriminal mastermind like Slade! Still, he repressed the desire to give orders. The only chance he had was to let them all, including Red X, think he wasn't going to do anything... and then blindside the smoothtalking jerk with sudden violence.
"So, where's the orange cutie?" X inquired while dodging a stupendous number of attacks without seeming at all put out. Somehow he winded up casually sitting in the seat next to Robin, one arm resting casually on Robin's adjacent shoulder. Nothing was more insulting than being made to feel like furniture. "Did she drop you because you were too fragile to keep up with her, ah, active lifestyle?" Red X purred. Robin swore that behind the mask the thief was waggling his eyebrows.
A swing at X's endlessly-irritating visage was, of course, futile, but had to be attempted for the dignity of the thing. Robin was all set to charge properly and let loose with the compressed staff he had sneakily hidden in one shoe without the knowledge of his friends when...
His ears popped.
All of a sudden, Red X was facedown on the sidewalk, groaning, a single leg twitching in an unhealthy-looking way, while Starfire stood over him, both glaring and glowing from her eyes. Tamaranian eyes are great multitaskers. There was a small crater in the sidewalk where Starfire had apparently initially landed.
"I apologize for my tardiness," she told Robin with that uniquely Starfareish mixture of humility and warriorly fierceness, "but I see that I was not too late to put a halt to this miscreant's evildoing! And it appears my momentum was put to good use as well. Are you well, Robin?"
"Um... um... yeah, I'm great," he managed dazedly while she was hugging him (much, much, much gentler than usual, which was actually kind of nice for a change). "Thanks for..." He could not say 'rescuing me.' Even to his girlfriend, his superstrong alien girlfriend, his maculine pride simply wouldn't allow it. "...for doing your part. I just wish I'd known where you were, though..." he said meaningfully, trying to slip some information out of her that the others were being mum about. The rest of the team was pretty thoroughly occupied making sure Red X didn't get away again. Even though the thief appeared to be KOed, they knew better than to assume he was out of commission. "In fact, I really missed you," he added in a sudden brilliant performance of emotional neediness. All he had to do was get her feeling sorry for him and then she'd let him go back to doing things the normal way... at least, to the extent it could be snuck past Raven and Cyborg and Beast Boy.
"I am sorry for my absence lately, I have merely been working on a... side project that will do much cheering upwards for you when it is complete! The others have been taking care of you, yes?"
"Yes, Starfire," the other three dutifully chorused.
"He's been behaving very well," Raven put in, then smirked and winked at Robin, who growled lowly at her in much the same manner a leashed dog might growl at a roaming cat after his nose has been lashed by said cat's tail.
Star kissed him on the cheek gently, though, and after that it was hard to think. "I am so glad! Do not worry, Robin, soon I will be doing much of the spoiling and taking care of you. I just wish to finish this project the Kid Flash and I are cooperating on first. It will be done soon, I hope dearly. Speaking of such things, I must be off again now, please do call if any further emergencies arise!"
And with that, she was gone as suddenly as she'd appeared.
The ride home was uneventful, unless you counted the police notifying them that, regrettably, Red X had escaped from the jail cell he'd been put in, which left Robin quietly slamming his head into the window over and over until Beast Boy grabbed his head and held it still. After that Robin turned his thoughts towards other things... like what could Starfire possibly be working on with Kid Flash? The two had nothing in common except general amiability, good looks, and bodies inclined to be durable beyond the rulings of conventional physics.
And then, silly though it was, he couldn't help but wonder. Just a bit. They were both good-looking. They were both full of stamina reserves and durability beyond that of mortal men. They were both cheerful and friendly. They even both had red hair! In many ways, they could keep up with each other both in body and in mind. Whereas he, Robin, was currently so weak that Starfire hadn't even dared give him a normal hug. What if she thought he was too weak to really kiss, the romantic way? Even worse, what if she thought he would always be too weak? Tamaranians were very much a warrior culture. Even in their romantic gestures they were often somewhat aggressive. What if she thought he was too fragile for her kind of love now? What if she thought they could never... never... never do things he hadn't at all been thinking about, especially late at night or in the shower or when she hugged him just a little too long....
Maybe she was spending so much time away from him because she couldn't bear to tell him what was really going on in her head? Maybe she stopped seeing him as a warrior, and more as a housepet or something. Maybe she and Kid Flash were... doing things... and then justifying it to themselves by pretending to shop for a heart attack-related present or something! (Were there even such things as heart attack-related presents? Robin had no idea.) They probably weren't even doing things, to be fair, Star was too loyal, but maybe they were thinking about it, quite possibly, and was he in a position to stop them from thinking, when he couldn't even participate in a fight without being scolded? Maybe they were taking long walks around... wherever they were... and talking about him, but secretly thinking about each other. Oh, he could see how it went. All too easily. And Kid Flash was such a notorious flirt, it was legendary! It was unthinkable that he would hang out with a girl as beautiful as Starfire for a long period of time without at least playfully flirting.
Yes, there was no doubt about it. Even if he might be wrong, there was no way he could take the chance. Clearly, Robin had to come up with some grand strategem to keep Kid Flash from mackin' on his hot alien girl, before it was too late! He could take no chances, not when the stakes were so high! He had let the heart attack steal his authority, his dignity, his privacy, his hobbies, his exercise time, his fighting ability... but he would not let it steal his girl! This was war!
