"I took you home. Set you on the glass. I pulled off your wings. Then I laughed."
Raven came back to her body with a start.
Floating a foot in the air, she gasped and collapsed to the carpeted ground, landing on her back. The magical projections of her soul-self—the small, smoky ravens that had enveloped her entranced body—dissolved with faint squawks at her return. The spectral embers they left behind dissipated into the air like snuffed candles.
She was trembling all over. Cold sweat laced her forehead. Her damp, lavender hair stuck to her temples, her chin. Robin's mind had been overwhelming; his anguish clung to her, burrowed deep. She couldn't shake it.
"Guys! She's back!" came a frantic squeak.
Beast Boy was the first to reach her. His delicate, adolescent face peered down in comical concern. His lower fang tugged at his upper lip. He offered a wary hand.
"G-give me a second…" Raven whispered, closing her eyes.
There was so much. A hundred different images and impressions flicked through her brain like a rapid-fire slideshow, each picture more horrible than the last:
Slade's murderous eye flashing as it invented horrors; broken, bloody nails; Robin's body flopping spastically as he was electrocuted into submission; a barren room with dull, dank brick walls; a budding fear and a dwindling hope; Robin staring at his abused face in a cracked and dusty mirror; the glitter of scissors and the buzz of a razor; a monster's hand reaching out from the deep dark; a man with a sack over his head and bruises littering his suburban body…
"He's going to make me kill, Raven!" Robin's voice screamed, reverberating through her mind like the toll of a bell.
Her eyes snapped open. She bolted upright. Starfire and Cyborg had entered onto the scene alongside Beast Boy, leaning in. They all recoiled at her sudden movement.
"Er…Raven?" Cyborg pondered cautiously. "You ok?"
She peered at him with remarkably calm confidence. The colorless, sickly tint to her cheeks was slowly warming back to its usual pale blush. A newfound energy was crackling through her dark, purple-blue stare. Her expression was grave and utterly determined. She was regaining control of her senses, distancing herself from Robin's initial, powerful imprint.
Finally, she understood. The cloud of mystery was clearing. She could see the ground beneath her feet again; she glanced at the path that lay ahead.
With a savage glee, she had confirmed her original suspicions. She had been right all along: Robin needed saving; he wasn't a traitor.
This affirmation made her bold, hopeful.
"Robin," she explained cryptically, her thoughts buzzing with ideas.
"Yeah, what about him?"
She reached back, pulled her hood up, and positioned it into its proper place. She stood and dusted off, adjusting her wrinkled uniform.
"I know how we're going to save him," she explained simply with a victorious smirk.
Underneath dark layers of earth, Robin was not as cheered as Raven.
Having just killed a man for the first time, he felt oddly nonplussed.
He should have been more contrite, more tormented. He waited for a debilitating self-hatred that did not come. Why wasn't he beating his chest—crying, shouting, raging? The man's wife and son now had to go through life without a husband and father. And he was the sole reason behind it!
He should want to die. The guilt should have been tying a noose around his neck.
Instead, he merely stared at his hands—hands that were now instruments of murder. His fingers wiggled just the same; they had not changed since the wicked act. It unnerved him. They should have appeared more decrepit and sinister—like the gnarled limbs of a bare tree, like a black widow's legs, like monstrous tentacles.
He flexed them, trying to see their evil.
He watched his wrist bone rotate as it struggled hopelessly against the steel braces. He studied how his knuckles obeyed his mindless commands—hinging and straightening, hinging and straightening. His nails were unpleasantly short; he had a bad habit of biting them. The skin was pale and clung sadly to its skeletal framework.
These were hands to be pitied, not feared. And yet he did fear them.
Would they transform into Slade's corpse-cold ones at any moment? Would they want to kill again, now that they had a taste?
That thought sent a horrid shiver down his spine.
So entranced by the nature of his hands, he did not look up when his master walked in.
Slade took a moment to appreciate the corpse sprawled in the center of the room before stepping over it—as if it were a petty hindrance—and joining Robin. The boy's exposed cobalt eyes were wide and bewildered. His faraway stare was vaguely fixed on his hands, which were perpetually bending and stretching.
"The first time is always the hardest," Slade explained, understanding danced across his eye. "But don't worry. You'll get used to it."
Robin flinched at the sound of the villain's voice. He had not heard him come in.
"Get used to it?" he pondered distantly, unable to comprehend what his master was implying.
Slade bit back a chuckle.
"Of course," he asserted, clasping his hands behind him. "Your apprenticeship wouldn't be complete without a mastery of the deadly arts. Agility and endurance are all well and good, but they can only go so far. To truly become my weapon, you must be…lethal."
Robin waited for a sense of shock. He tried to coax the feeling out. It would not come.
He was numb.
Slade then turned his attention to the body splayed behind him. He lowered to the ground and examined the dead man.
"Good…" he muttered absently, tossing the broken neck between his palms and feeling the vertebrae with his fingers. "A clean break. Did you know, Robin, that snapping someone's neck doesn't kill them instantly? It only cuts off blood flow and air to the brain. The victim can remain alive for minutes—days even—afterward. In his case…"
He took another minute to prod and poke and shift the lifeless cadaver with the khaki pants. Slade felt for a pulse and nodded.
"I'd say he died shortly after I arrived," he guessed as he rose back to his feet. "Granted, he was unconscious for most of it, but it's sill something to think about."
"Think about?"
Slade peered at Robin over his shoulder. The boy's hands were now limp at his sides. His expression remained dazed. It was clear he was in denial.
"You're strong, yes, but you lack finesse," Slade critiqued, stroking the slits of his metal mask. "After all, you can't break necks forever. Close range like that is a luxury."
He placed a hand on Robin's slumped, frozen shoulder. An almost giddy pleasure was shining in his eye, electrifying through his blood, as he stared proudly down at his apprentice.
"I can teach you how to kill from every possible angle," he prophesized. "You'll know which arteries bleed the quickest when cut and how to strangle an opponent that weighs twice as much as you. You'll develop your own style—whether it's guns or knives or your bare hands. By the end, it'll be as easy as breathing."
Robin sucked in a gulp of air to accentuate that point. At the moment, breathing was quite hard. His lungs were seizing up. His throat closed. It was all too much. His system was cracking, shattering. He was a fish out of water.
Slade sighed in mild exacerbation, noticing the signs of a swoon.
It was the last sound Robin heard before his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
He fainted.