I own nothing DC Comics or Warner bros related.
I changed the rating. Nothing exciting is happening. I know I have the power to change that fact, but that would require effort and time. Maybe in the epilogue.
Ignore what I wrote in Chapter not really. I'll figure it out.
Chapter 11: Wake
Something was tickling the back of Cyborgs neck; it was one of the few places on his body that still had human flesh and skin. He opened his eyes and discovered that it was grass- he was lying on the slope of Titan Island, staring up at a tangerine sky.
He heard a small groan next to him and lifted his head. Starfire was next to him on the ground, massaging her head.
"Cyborg, are you all right?"
"Yeah Star."
"Thank God you guys are okay," Beast Boy was standing over Starfire with a melted bag of water that had, at one point, been ice.
"What the HELL happened in there?" He asked, "It took me ages to get you guys out from all those freaking arms." His voice was raspy from his initial smoke intake, but at the moment he was the only Titan standing.
"Hands exploded, that's what. Raven didn't know the rule about not blowing his arms off, and she pulled this light trick that would have been wicked cool except for- what?" Beast Boy suddenly looked miserable.
"What is it?" Starfire asked.
Beast Boy continued to look like the world had ended. Starfire immediately thought of her other friends and snapped her head up. She searched the landscape wildly and was relieved to find Robin not far off, on the ground but sitting up.
Raven was nowhere to be seen.
"Beast Boy…"
"I tried." He said angrily. "I shouldn't have let the Joker get past me, but I was trying to see if Raven was okay and I got distracted, and then that thing jumped out of the window and nearly crushed me…" He waved in the general direction of the Tower- the main room window, once a sweeping full wall bay where Raven liked to read, was now glassless.
"I was so dizzy," Beast Boy was becoming more upset, and words tumbled out without much direction. "And all I could think of to do was get you guys out to help me because I couldn't even move my molecular construction. I tried so hard, but I only got my hair to grow longer …"
Cyborg turned to face the sunset, mind numb and reeling. Inside the brilliant orange glow was the black silhouette of his leader, head in hands and fingers knotted tightly in unruly hair.
"I tried," Beast Boy whimpered, finally overwhelmed with his story.
"Well you must not have tried hard enough!" Both Cyborg and Beast Boy jumped as Starfire thundered at him, bringing her face close to his and letting her eyes glow green.
Beast Boys eyes filled with tears now. Before he could respond, Starfire backed away, looking horrified.
"I am sorry, Beast Boy, I did not mean to blame you." She slumped onto the grass. The three watched Robin as he sat in front of the sinking sun.
His breathing was labored and a long, purple bruise was spreading along his jaw. But the Boy Wonder was suffering a much greater pain in his own head.
He longed for the numbness he had felt climbing out of Gotham River with gashes in his hands. Anything would be better than the guilt raking the inside of his throat. Slowly the guilt coiled inside of him, condensing into the all to familiar anger.
But it could not serve as a vent this time. His anger had nowhere to go but right back to the source.
He hated himself for his failure. Robin had let his guard down for a fraction of a second. It had been enough for him to lose everything.
All the fury boiled inside him. He was going blind, seeing nothing, feeling only the faint memory of her hand being torn from his own. He had simply let her go. It was then that he realized his hate for himself had reached the previously unprecedented levels he had for Batman.
What you're feeling is guilt, Robin. Not hate. Batman is just a convenient target.
This wasn't the same.
You have got to understand that not everything is your fault.
Was Robin just another convenient target?
Am I right?
Raven was always right.
Robin stood, overwhelmed by the epiphany. Someone was at fault. It was not him.
The Joker would pay.
He was reeling from his discovery. Set free. There was one person responsible, the true reason for his suffering. Then and now, it had always been that made up face, that foolish grin. That mind for games.
His anger was at last properly orientated in the right direction. No. More. Guilt.
It was a fuel.
"We'll find her if we find the Joker."
There was something different about Robin, but none of his team could quite put their finger on it. His voice was stronger, his posture like that of an Atlas who suddenly didn't have to hold up the world anymore.
"We'll find the Joker if we find Hands."
"Robin, they could be anywhere." Starfire rubbed a hand over her forehead.
"He'll lead us to him."
"That doesn't make any sense," Beast Boy piped up, puzzled. "Why would he attack us, take Raven, and then help us find him?"
"Because," Cyborg had made the connection from the little he knew of the Joker. "He wants to play some kind of game. Right?"
Robin nodded grimly. "But we're not going to play it his way. The Joker has a lot to answer for, and we're going to deliver him his own personal Hell." As he spoke, his communicator buzzed from his belt.
"What is it?"
"Where are you kids?" The mayor appeared on the screen, frazzled and distraught. "There's a monster down here making a hurricane with chunks of my office building!"
"What kind of monster?"
"I don't know, do I look like I majored in teratology? All I know is that it has way to many hands to count and they're all trying to kill me! Robin?"
Robin closed his communicator, determination set in every feature. No fear, no guilt, no anger.
"Let's go play."
A reporter stood at a safe distance, speaking to her camera as it panned to show the destruction caused by Hands. "The rubble is piling up in the streets, and there is only one question on everyone's mind: where are the Ti-"
"Come on," Cyborg said as he passed her. "That can't be the only question on peoples minds."
"Yeah, how about 'Why does that thing have so many hands?'" Beast Boy quipped.
"Or 'Where will we eat pizza if he destroys The Hut?'"
There was a massive blockage in the street, objects thrown by Hands no doubt. The dumpster lying across the sidewalk was blasted away by sonic waves; Cyborg stepped out from the dust. Starfire rose into the air, eyes glowing, waiting for her cue. Beast Boy bounded over, a whirl of fangs and green and black stripes. Finally Robin stood on an upended taxicab, surveying the chaos below him.
Hands was doing what he did best. Cars were smoking, tossed like stones into the windows of adjacent buildings.
"What's the plan, Rob?" Cyborg watched Hands inject a long arm into the hole he'd created in the mayors building.
"You're not going to like it."
"Try me, man, we're loosing time here."
"We have to go back. Follow the path, see where he came from."
"That's where we will find Raven," Starfire nodded, and started to head back over the blockage.
"But we can't just leave this." Robin clenched his jaw. Hands was rooting around inside the building, groping for something.
"Robin!" Beast Boy itched. Hands dragged a screaming woman from the building, waving her in the air. They had to do something; people were in danger.
"Do what you must do, Robin." It was Starfire who spoke. "We can handle this, and I believe you can handle the Joker. We will come assist you when we have neutralized Hands."
He looked up at her gratefully- there was a simple wisdom in the pretty alien when it came to tense situations.
"I'll get her back," He promised. "Titans, GO!"
Unlike Cyborg, Raven's body was entirely flesh, and it all of it was extremely sore.
When she had first opened her eyes, she had had to close them right away. The scene- dark, drippy, and grey- had been the opposite of the cheery white of the Titans hospital wing.
She chose instead the sanctuary of the inside of her eyelids. She stared at the soft blackness, thinking. She did not wake up where she had expected to. As far as she could hear, Raven was in a large, wet room. Water was running all around her.
This all meant that something had gone very wrong.
Time to be a big girl. She forced her eyes open.
"Why didn't you tie me up?" She asked of the vibrant man sitting in the center of the great room. He was peeling an apple with a pocketknife. Behind him was a toolbox of sorts, lying open and displaying a row of dark purple crystals. She sat up, stretching her limbs. They ached, but were intact. And unrestrained.
"I'm not into into those kinds of games," The Joker responded with a false, embarrassed giggle. Raven was irked at his smart answer, until she realized that she wouldn't put it past him. She shivered.
"Now that it's just the two of us," The Joker fixed her with bottle green eyes. Raven continued to tremble; she could feel the emotions peeling from his filthy coat and wafting around her. There were only two; giddy excitement and calculated malice.
"I was wondering if I could ask you a question about our friend Robin. Do you think the Batman fired him? Or did he run away from the nest?"
"You're an idiot." Raven snapped. "You don't know anything about him."
"Oh I do," The Joker stood, crunching on the apple. "I know he is an angry young man. I know he lost one of my games and didn't take it well. I wonder how this one will go over?"
Raven could feel Robin's anger building inside her again- or was it her own? She didn't care. It no longer mattered- they were one in the same.
"You really are an idiot." Orbs of black matter floated at her fingertips. The Joker regarded her, and she felt no fear emanating from him. Just glee.
She would fix that.
