"Duuuuuudddddeeeeee!"
Robin knew that Beast Boy was home then. With a pained sigh, he pressed open the doors to the main room, where he saw all four of his teammates sitting at the table. Starfire and Beast Boy and Cyborg all engaged in a highly energetic conversation, and Raven watching them all over the covers of her book.
"Duuuuddddeeee!" Beast Boy repeated, turning then to look at Robin who had just walked in.
"Hey, BB, I was just–"
He couldn't finish his sentence, for just then Beast Boy had flung himself around Robin, arms squeezing around him and a whole bunch of words being babbled out. When Beast Boy finally did release him, it was Starfire's turn then. With just as much gusto, she flung arms around him, and when she hugged him, Robin was almost certain that his ribs were about to break.
"Oh, Robin, how I delight in seeing you again! Tamaran was wonderful, but nothing can compare to this feeling of being home with friends!" She was positively beaming.
Raven and Cyborg watched calmly from behind all of the action.
Robin made eye contact with them both, and their gazes held for a long time. The all seemed to be silently judging one another, as if they could communicate through nothing more than mere looks. Finally, Robin turned his attention away. Spinning away from all of his friends, he went into the kitchen, opening the fridge to search for something to eat.
"I'm...glad to see you too..." Robin struggled to say. "But I thought you and Raven weren't coming home for another few days."
"Cyborg said that he wished us to be home sooner than that," Starfire replied.
"Oh?" Robin arched and eyebrow at him.
"So how was your trip?" Cyborg asked Robin.
"It was fine," Robin said in a terse voice.
"Trip?" Beast Boy shouted behind them both. "Dude! You went on a trip and left Cyborg here all alone. That's not good!" Beast Boy turned to Cyborg. "Not that I'm saying you couldn't handle it, cause you so totally could, but still…"
"Where did you go?" Starfire asked him.
"Just…out…" Robin stuttered. They all seemed to know that he was lying, and he couldn't meet their gaze. He went into the kitchen reached in the fridge for a stick of string cheese, quickly unwrapping it and bringing it up to his lips.
At least now he had an excuse not to talk.
"But where exactly did you venture out to?" Starfire pressed.
Robin tried waving her off. "Nowhere, just someplace that I used to visit a lot. Y'know, old places from long ago. Those types of things." He knew he was talking in circles, avoiding the question as best as he could, and he hoped that his teammates would notice and back off.
But no such luck.
"Like, the circus or something?" Beast Boy asked.
That hit a nerve.
"Just out okay?!" Robin yelled at him.
Beast Boy shrank back away from him, eyes wide and his body instinctively becoming defensive. He backed up to Starfire, who was also wide-eyed with disbelief, and maybe something akin to fear. Worry? He didn't know. Didn't care. That nerve that Beast Boy had hit…
He left, punching open the sliding doors and storming out of the room.
Once he was sure he was alone, he leaned back up against the wall and sighed, dragging his hand over his face. He felt an entire riot of emotions, and he didn't know how to process any of them. This was uncharted territory for him; he was finally beginning to see the gray in between the black and white.
The only thing he was certain of was that he didn't like this.
Why did Red X have to be Jason? Of all people in the world, why him?
"Brother," Dick remembered once calling him.
"We're not brothers," Jason had always said back. No matter what the time, no matter where the place, he'd always replied that way.
Guess he always saw us as a fake family, Dick thought to himself.
Heavy footsteps pounded along the hallway near him. Can we not? Robin thought, as the footsteps neared closer and closer. He groaned and sighed and pushed his glove hand against his face again. He knew who was coming for him.
Cyborg.
Who else had footsteps like that? No one on the current team. And he was the one who'd been with Robin all through this entire thing; of course he would come after him. He was the one who was closest to grasping this situation.
Robin stood up just as Cyborg came into sight.
"Hey, man," Cyborg said, testing his words gently. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," Robin automatically responded. "Just need some time alone." He paused. "Surely you can understand?" His voice came out tenser than he meant it to.
"Look, Robin," Cyborg said, taking a few more steps towards him. "I know that BB was outta line with that circus comment, but I can't help but think there's more to this than you're letting on. Come on, man, let me in. I can help you. Tell me something…"
Robin didn't know what came over him, but he did think of something just then. He shot it down almost immediately, but it kept resurfacing in the thoughts of his mind. It demanded his attention, wouldn't go away. So Robin played with the idea, turning it every which was as he thought of some alternative.
A million other things could have been done. A million and more. But this was the one he was dead set on, for some stupid reason. He decided to go with it.
"I could use some help with something," Robin slowly said.
"Name it!" Cyborg replied.
"Well…" His throat tightened. "I need your help tracking a certain substance."
If Cyborg was suspicious then, he didn't notice it. Of course, he was still staring at the ground, focusing on the tips of his shoes against the metal of the floor. When he looked up at Cyborg, he didn't detect any hint of suspicion or even reluctance.
"Yeah, I can totally do that!" Cyborg exclaimed. "Come on, we can go to my lab. The one in my bedroom. That system can track anything!" His smile was bright and genuine, and Robin couldn't help but to return it.
Maybe it was just Cyborg's enthusiasm, but for some reason, Robin felt that maybe this would turn out well. Not in any scenario he pictured would this turn out well, but still there was that glimmer of hope in his brain that told him otherwise.
He decided to go with it.
Cyborg's door slid open, revealing the half-bedroom-half-laboratory that Cyborg called his. Robin let his eyes wander around the place as Cyborg went to one of his computer systems, pulled out the chair and sat down in it with a loud creak.
"So, whatcha need to track?" Cyborg asked Robin.
"Xenothium," Robin stated.
Cyborg's fingers stilled over the keys, and his organic eye got wide. He whipped his chair around, turning to face Robin. He knew by the look behind the mask alone that he was serious.
"Xenothium?" Cyborg shouted incredulously. "Xenothium? Haven't you learned your lesson from last time? That stuff is seriously unstable. Even tracking it can pose a risk!" Cyborg shook his head and closed his eyes before turning back to the computer screen. He'd do it. But still, it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"Cyborg, look," Robin said, placing a hand on his mechanical shoulder. "I need you to do this for me. All these systems are complex; I might mess something up, and I need this to be flawless."
"I know you're going after Red X," Cyborg said.
Robin blanched. "How–?"
"I'm not stupid!" Cyborg told him. "But what I can't figure out is, Why? Why are you going through all this trouble for him? I know he's pretty much at the top of your Shit List, and that he's been active lately, but you're willing to do a sensor track on xenothium because of him? There's something more to this than meets the eye, and I wanna know what it is."
Robin groaned, and went over to sit on the edge of Cyborg's bed. Leaning forward, he placed his head in his hands and repeated the same brooding actions he'd done in the hallway. Cyborg watched him, only waiting. Robin could brood all he wanted, it wouldn't change his mind. He wanted to know. Needed, more like it.
"If you want me to run this scanner, Robin," Cyborg said, "then you need to tell me what's up."
The final nail in the coffin. He watched as Robin admitted his defeat, watched as he realized that there was no way to back out of this or to talk his way through it. Robin peeled of his black and white mask, but still his face remained buried in his hands.
Cyborg waited still.
"Okay, look," Robin said, looking up at Cyborg finally. A pair of steely blue eyes met his, and Cyborg was once again struck by how different he looked without the mask. Sure, he'd seen his face before, but so rarely. Cyborg was speechless for a second, his ears deaf to the world around him, before he registered that Robin was talking.
"Okay, look, Red X ambushed me one night. We got into this big fight, and I ended up pulling his mask off. Long story short, Red X is someone I know, and someone I care about. I need to go after him before he makes a big, big mistake!"
And before our father finds out, he added silently.
Cyborg nodded slowly, as he put the puzzle together piece by piece. Robin wondered if Cyborg knew exactly who this person he cared so much about really was, but Robin thought that Cyborg couldn't know him that well. Surely, the fact that it was Jason–his long lost brother–wouldn't even be something in his mind.
He'd never told anyone about Jason, just the same as he had never told any of them about Bruce Wayne, or Barbara, or Cassandra, or Stephanie. Or anyone outside of them. The only reason that his teammates knew about his parents and his tragic circus past…
Well, Raven had gone into his mind and discovered that, but she was expert at keeping secrets. Even better than Batman himself at that. No, it had been Wally, the over-talkative Kid Flash, to spill those secrets to his teammates one night. After a few long hours and a vow to never let him into the Tower and be alone with his friends again, they all knew that much truth about him. He remembered that Raven was very quiet through the entire story.
"Okay, dude," Cyborg said, putting a hand on Robin's knee. Robin looked up to see him smiling, and a sympathetic look in his eyes. "I'll help you out." He straightened and went back to his computers.
"Do you have a sample of the stuff?" Cyborg asked him.
"Unfortunately, yes," Robin replied, and took a small bit of torn fabric out of his pocket. Cyborg eyed over the fabric before placing it under the scanners, and letting all of his high-tech equipment pick up the chemical compound that laced the shredded piece of cloth.
When the chemical mixture was secured in the system, the tracking process began.
Robin and Cyborg were both silent as the computers searched all over Jump City for traces of the xenothium. There were many positive results, all over the city where a tiny trace amount of the stuff was located, but Robin knew that that was just from previous battles with Red X. He was long gone from there by now.
The computers worked on and on, and they could only sit as still as statues as they waited. Once the entire scan of Jump City was complete, they found no trace of Red X anywhere.
"Can you search Gotham?" Robin asked Cyborg.
He cringed when he saw Cyborg shoot him a look, and he could almost hear the wheels in his head turning as he slowly started to deduce just what was going on. But still, he replied, "Sure, man," and did the scan anyway.
Robin sat in silence, and waited.
It wasn't long before there was a positive match on the screen. High, concentrated amounts all over Gotham, from Red X's more recent hits, no doubt. All over what Robin knew was the area around Selina's apartment, and oddly enough, a lot of trace amounts near the Batcave.
Apparently he'd been checking in on Bruce every once in a while.
But the highest trace amounts were from an alleyway down in costal Gotham. It wasn't near Crime Alley, at least. Robin was thankful for that much. But still, something about the location reeked of familiarity. There was a connection there that he just wasn't getting, a certain significance that he just couldn't pick up on.
By the way the map showed how thick the concentration was, Robin knew that that was where Jason was. And that he'd been staying there for days at a time. He was planning something…
No shit, Robin thought, chiding himself. He knew that Jason was planning on going after the Joker, and that he was most likely planning on killing him while he was at it, but to locate it to that specific place…
Something was going on and he didn't like it.
"Thanks for the help, Cyborg," Robin said in the cheeriest, most carefree voice that he could muster. He put a gloved hand on his friend's shoulder. "It really meant a lot to me. And you've helped a whole bunch. Thanks again." He smiled even wider, and then went for the door.
"Hey Robin," Cyborg shouted after him.
Robin paused at the open threshold, and looked back at Cyborg sitting in his chair with his arms crossed.
"Yes?"
"Don't do anything stupid," Cyborg told him.
"Alright." And then he was gone.
After he'd left, Cyborg looked back at the computer scanners one more time. He didn't know as much about Robin as he ought to know. He realized that a long time ago, back when Wally started spilling secrets. He'd realized there was so much about all of his teammates that he just didn't know.
Secrets were one thing, but a complete blank when it came to their life history and meaningful relationships outside of the Titans? That was something else entirely.
Cyborg stretched what muscles he had in his body, and left his room. He was going back to the main room, where he knew everyone else would be. Including Robin, since that was where he normally went. Not his bedroom or some detective work room, but the main room.
He craved the presence of his friends.
Cyborg had that same crave, but it kept nagging at the back of his skull. So he turned his feet, walking himself away from the main room and down towards rarely used hallways.
Down a couple of floors he went, turned another corner and another, before he arrived at the room he had wanted. The door noisily opened, the metal cringing shrieking up against each other due to lack of use. Cyborg didn't even blink.
He walked into the almost-forgotten computer room.
The old alien systems gleamed back at him.
It was the place where they had stored some of their most private files, details about their life that they needed to have on record but still were too important to have them be common information. It would take a lot of work to hack into them, but Cyborg knew that he could do it. He knelt down in front of a tower of monitor equipment, and opened up some of his systems.
"Sorry about this, Dick," Cyborg whispered, and hacked himself into the system.
Hours later, he had all the information that he wanted. And then some. Some that he didn't even need to know, and some that he didn't want to know. But everything important was fresh in his brain, and he knew then just what was happening between Robin and Red X. What was so important to him.
Should I be worried? Cyborg kept wondering.
Should I be worried? Should I not be? I should be worried, shouldn't I? I should be worried.
Cyborg decided it was time to take action.
Hopefully next chapter to come soon.