A/N: This chapter was incredibly fun to write. The parallels of fatherhood apparent in the Apprentice arc needed to addressed. Enjoy!~ :)

"Why won't you let me go? Do I threaten all your plans? I'm insignificant. Please tell 'em. You have no plans for me. I will set my soul on fire. What have I become? I'm sorry."

Lost in the labyrinth of obscure, muddy dreams, Robin slept through the entire rest of the five hour journey back to Jump City. The sun was just beginning to awaken the sky, painting it lavender, as Slade pulled smoothly into the parking lot located on the wharf—home sweet home.

Bland buildings circled around the lot and blocked the view of the sea. Squawking seagulls flitted from roof to roof, swooping down occasionally to nab an abandoned morsel. Other than the birds, there wasn't a soul for miles.

With disquieting nonchalance, Slade killed the engine and the truck died with a final, shuttering roar. He calmly unbuckled his seatbelt and peered over at Robin. The boy hadn't moved an inch in hours. His eyes were firmly shut and his breath came out in soft snores. His face was smooth, peaceful—a far cry from his usual guilt-ridden, rage-filled countenance.

"Robin," Slade cooed in evil imitation. "It's time to wake up."

Robin didn't so much as stir; exhaustion held him in its intoxicating clutches.

In sleep, he looked like his Titan-self again. Despite his sunken cheeks, sickly tint, and vicious haircut, the rough edges and lines of his ashen complexion receded. The knots beneath his skin unraveled and relaxed. His carved jaw was slack and his paper-thin eyelids were tranquil, unwrinkled ponds. There was a lost innocence bobbing to the surface of his bloodied—almost grotesque—exterior, revealing the sixteen-year-old beneath.

Slade smirked; his expression beneath the mask was wicked. Pity he would have to ruin the moment.

He jabbed a button on his vambrace and the backseat floor began to lift, granting a view of the pavement below. The subsequent opening was large enough for a full grown man to fall through—unfurled—without hitting his head on the way down.

A breeze filtered up through the gaping hole, ruffling Robin's midnight hair like a proud father. Still, he did not awaken.

Slade pressed another switch on his wrist and the manhole that squatted underneath the truck hissed and sparked as it separated from its bolts. It slid smoothly to the side, revealing a black pit. The gentle caress of the morning air putrefied as a toe-curling stench wafted up from the sewers.

Noiseless, Slade pulled a lever on the side of his chair and slowly pushed his seat backward, granting him more room to work. A substantial divide stood between the driver and passenger sides, two to three feet across.

Slithering, Slade crouched to the carpeted floor and crept his way over to Robin. His movements barely registered, his tip-toes were absorbed.

He swatted the passenger seat armrest out of his way, quietly unbuckled the still-sleeping boy, and grabbed a fistful of Robin's uniform. Slade dragged his inert body out of the chair and pulled it toward him until Robin was secure in his arms.

Cradling his catch, Slade scuttled backward like a crab, stopping just before his back hit the bottom of the steering wheel.

He then gently lowered Robin's black-feathered head to the upholstered ground and positioned him in the rift between the seats. His small frame fit easily—his feet an inch from the dashboard and his head half a foot from the back seat borderline. With slow, patient pushes, Slade nudged Robin closer to the ledge, to the maw, and to the unfastened manhole beneath.

Robin awoke to the uncomfortable sensation of blood rushing to his head.

"Huh?" he mumbled in half-asleep surprise.

Swaying in suspended animation, he blinked away the sand from his eyes. Bits of dirt fell past him—over him?—adding to the vertigo.

Once again, the scene had shifted.

His world was upside down; his view was the rusty underbelly of a truck surrounded by a sea of flat asphalt. A faint morning heat tickled his flushed cheeks, accompanied by an increasingly violent—and fetid—draft. Something had him by the legs, but he couldn't see what. His arms swung above of his head, fingers grazing gravel.

"Slade…?"

Without warning, gravity returned with a vengeance.

He fell.

"Whoa!" he gasped in terrified surprise.

His limp knuckles clipped the side of the manhole as he tumbled into and through it. His stomach jumped—fell?—into his throat. Bile spilled into his mouth when he jerked to an equally abrupt stop. Nauseous and utterly bewildered, he stared into pungent darkness.

Where am I? What's going on? he thought.

"Master?" he called weakly.

Above, Slade acted as a pulley—he had tied a rope around Robin's ankles and was slowly lowering his apprentice into the sewers.

Panic rising, Robin flailed like a fish on a hook, desperate to free himself. His confused, strangled yelps rebounded all around him.

Hearing Robin's warbled cries, Slade's eye twinkled with mischievous malice.

A merciful fisherman, he released his catch. A knife flashed and the rope slithered away like a fast-moving serpent across the truck floor and disappeared over the edge, chasing after the wing-clipped bird.

"AH!" Robin screeched, falling.

Blind weightlessness consumed him.

He was torn away from the light above and swallowed whole by putrid pitch-black; Robin dropped into the sewers like a wishing-well coin, writhing in mid-air. A horrifying second or two later, he collided roughly with the stained, cobbled brick below.

Gravity was a cruel master.

Pain shot through his body as the crunch of bone welcomed him. His teeth smacked together like clapped lightning, crushing his tongue. His right cheek shredded as it smashed into the stone, painting the ground in spots of red. His already worn body ached with renewed hurt.

Every breath was a lesson in agony.

The calm, rushing waters of the sewer swished next to his head. If he had fallen a few feet to the right, he would have hit the curb that separated the sewage from the tunnel floor. His neck would have snapped on impact.

After a few moments of shock, his lungs contracted, revitalizing, and he wheezed out a haggard cough. Blood filled his mouth. He spat it out in a gasp. He had landed on his side, on his exposed shoulder. New cuts raked across it while the bone beneath throbbed. He didn't think it was broken.

His ribs on the other hand…

The all-too familiar feel of cracked ribs greeted him like an old friend as they jabbed his lungs.

Coupling the new developments with the burn-blisters that littered his chest, the bruises that covered him from head-to-toe, and the lacerations that competed with the contusions for dominance—Robin was truly broken.

He was tired, so tired, of being in pain.

Another round of blood-spattered coughs tore out of him, accompanied by an armada of suffering. Breathing became difficult in his current fetal position so he was forced to roll onto his knees. A tsunami of fatigue almost knocked him back over. His limbs shook as he struggled to remain upright. Air came easier but everything else was exponentially harder.

The manhole cover slid back into place above, shutting off the meager sunlight with a boom.

"That looked like it hurt," Slade said from somewhere in the dark, close by.

Robin hadn't even heard him come down. Ripened terror blended together with the wracking pain that consumed his body.

Crimson spittle trickled from his lips. Slade's footsteps crept closer.

The next attack came without warning. Slade's steel-tipped boot plowed into Robin's jaw. His neck whiplashed and one of his teeth was evicted from its root. Air left his lungs and traveled out of his mouth on a grunting wave of gore. A spray of scarlet sprinkled Slade's mask, painting his makeshift brow in Robin's blood. Small drops of red trickled over his lonely eye and down his copper cheek.

The force of Slade's kick flipped Robin onto his back. He landed hard on his spine, vertebrae bruising. His chest crunched like a can, squeezing the oxygen out of him.

He rolled pathetically onto his knees with a wheezing gasp. Slade's soft steps shuffled toward him, unrelenting.

Robin shook his concussed head—side-to-side, side-to-side. His pain threshold was a dot in the rearview mirror.

"No more…" Robin whispered into the dark, his words garbled. "…no more..."

"That's not your decision to make, dear boy," came the cruel reply from above.

The metal plating of Slade's boots glimmered in the corner of Robin's eye. The mere sight of them broke what little pride he had left. Tears rushed to his eyes and spilled over the lip unabated. They were salty and hot on his ruined cheeks.

"M-master…please…" Robin moaned.

Irritated, Slade exhaled profoundly. Such an obvious display of weakness only worsened Slade's mood and proved that his apprentice was far from perfection. Shattered sobs shook Robin's shoulders. Whatever semblance of bravery he possessed dissolved, never to return.

Tasting blood in the water, Slade's hand shot out and reclaimed the weeping boy wonder by the hair. The fury he had bottled up for the entire journey here was wriggling out of its collar. His indigo eye sparkled pitilessly, looking upon Robin with bold disgust.

"No, Robin," he replied matter-of-factly without a hint of remorse. "I won't stop."

Robin uttered a strangled cry as Slade yanked him upward by the roots. His scalp felt like it was ripping, detaching from his head. Robin's arms flailed and he dug his nails into Slade's hand, clawing at the stubborn leather.

Undaunted, Slade turned his knobbed head to the right, dodging Robin's weak attempts at freedom.

Two miles lay between them and the lair.

Slade started walking.

He dragged Robin behind him like unwieldy luggage. Robin's aggrieved gasps turned into shrieks. The pain was blinding, unreal. He felt the pinch and sting of each aborted hair; he left black-feathered breadcrumbs behind him. His feet kicked and flailed, unable to find purchase on the slick, slimy stone.

Supplication died on his lips. He couldn't think, couldn't exist, amidst such horrid anguish. The tears in his uniform opened wide like evil grins. His right sleeve was torn apart, leaving his entire arm vulnerable to the cruel rock beneath.

Scabbed-over wounds shriveled and split as his body slapped against the unforgiving ground. He shed skin like a molting snake.

He was in a never-ending world of hurt, lost to time and coherent thought.

Slade felt Robin go slack in his clutch.

The master clicked his tongue in patronizing tsks. The sound of it reverberated, enveloping Robin in echoes of mockery.

"Ah-ah-ah," Slade taunted, adding his jeering voice to the resonance. "No sleeping."

Halting suddenly, he released his hold.

Limp, Robin crumpled to the rank, granite ground. His head slammed into the stone—another peal of turmoil amidst a chorus of pain. The brick beneath him soaked up the blood that leaked out of his mouth and nose. He didn't bother moving; flight or fight never crossed his mind. He lay flat on his stomach. His arms and legs were cement blocks.

The coolness of the sewer floor against his throbbing, aching skin was a small relief. All of his energy was focused on keeping his lungs from collapse.

And, at that moment, Robin wished for death. The grim reaper's skeleton grin would have been a more welcome sight than Slade's expressionless mask.

The scythe did not come for him, however. His pain was just beginning.

Slade whirled around and crouched to Robin's level in his typical demeaning way. He enjoyed being up close and personal with his prey; he began to pat Robin's concussed head in a patronizing pet.

The faint glimmer of his façade sparkled in the murky dark.

"Before we continue, I need you to understand something, Robin," Slade remarked, his black-gloved fingers working through the blood-matted tangles of Robin's hair rhythmically. "I'm not hurting you because I want to, but because I have to."

His evil strokes became rakes, digging into Robin's already tender scalp.

"You disobeyed me, apprentice. I told you to attack, and you talked. I told you to leave, and you stayed. I told you to end that Titan witch once and for all, and you let her lure you into an ambush," Slade hissed, his eye flashing as he listed Robin's shortcomings. "The mission was a complete failure because you couldn't follow the simplest orders. It'll take months—years maybe—to clean up your mess. We may never get another chance…"

Slade stopped petting the bird's smarting head and moved onto his next target: he snagged Robin's limp hand from the ground.

Resting on his battered cheek, Robin's soul-tired eyes followed Slade's movements numbly. His mind was running at a snail's pace; his body disconnected.

"But there's a broader lesson at work here," the villain hinted as he assessed the captured hand. "One that you just don't seem to get."

Slade gave a subtle, approving nod and his fingers locked around Robin's right thumb.

"This may come as a shock to you, Robin," Slade prefaced, his other hand anchoring the boy's wrist. "But you're not as untouchable as you think..."

Crack!

As he spoke, Slade snapped Robin's thumb like a twig; the bones cracked like broken branches.

Robin's gnarled whimper crescendoed into a scream. His feet flailed meagerly as he gave a pathetic tug on Slade's grip. His hand was burning, throbbing, pounding.

It hurts, it hurts…his brain wept.

Slade freed the useless thumb and traded it in for the neighboring finger.

"I really shouldn't have to explain any of this to you," he censured, indifferent to Robin's writhing. "You should know that everything you do reflects back on me. Your success is my success. Your failure is my failure. It's not your reputation on the line, apprentice—it's mine!"

Crack!

Again, Slade splintered his finger. Again, Robin squealed like a stuck pig. Again, he was powerless to stop his master.

Clammy sweat covered his skin in a glittering veil. His neck strained against the unceasing agony. His face collapsed upon itself. Thin, spidery veins pulsated under his skin, thumping unpleasantly. His sight went in and out of clarity. Mindless groans flowed out of him unopposed.

The pain only seemed to grow.

"Please...please...please..." Robin panted frantically.

Two down, three to go—Slade moved onto the middle finger. Robin turned his head away. He couldn't watch. He squeezed his eyes shut and his body turned into tightly-wound stone as he braced himself.

"When will you learn that your actions have consequences?"

Crack!

Robin recoiled, cried out, as yet another bone was broken; however, something in the back of his mind reawakened: a memory.

He had heard that rhetorical question before, but not from Slade.

Life flashing before his eyes, a flood of repressed recollections poured into his pain-numbed brain:

The sight of his parents falling from the circus-tent sky like brightly colored meteors, reducing his childhood to cinders;

Bruce Wayne, the billionaire, enveloping him into a bone-crushing embrace as young Richard wept and wailed over the graves of his parents;

Batman—the monster behind the mask of Wayne—grimacing in rare, unconcealed pain as Robin—the bird who had risen from the ashes of his parents' deaths—turned his back on the man who had raised and trained him, and flew away from the only home he'd ever known.

That last memory haunted him more than he let on or wanted to believe. They had fought; Bruce had been trying to tell him something of import but Richard wouldn't hear him. He was too consumed by anger and resentment to listen.

Robin wanted vengeance on the man who had murdered his parents—to track down and kill the recently paroled mobster, Tony Zucco. Batman, of course, intervened and stopped him before Robin could carry out his murderous act.

The Batcave was quiet for once.

The nocturnal rodents that called the secret cavern under Wayne Manor home seemed to understand the need for hushed, uneasy silence. Not one of them squeaked or flapped their membraned wings. Their beady eyes glittered as they watched the confrontation below from their upside-down perches.

Richard and Bruce stood facing one another, profiled by the massive computer screen that took up the entire rocky, back wall. It painted the pair in ominous, blue fluorescence.

Robin was still in his uniform and appeared to have been within kissing distance of an explosion. His naked, blue eyes sparkled defiantly amidst a backdrop of sooty, charred skin; his mask was nowhere to be seen. The green tights he sported were ripped at the knees and his bright red tunic had a smattering of bullet-sized holes. Cords of lean muscle accented his uncovered forearms and his hair was a lush mess of onyx tendrils spilling over his furrowed forehead.

Despite the injuries, he was a picture of health. Beneath the muck, his skin was darkly tanned, his cheeks were currently flushed with color, and he carried himself with an air of spine-straight confidence, bordering on arrogance.

Although Bruce was a foot taller than Dick, the young teen made up for his smaller stature with sheer, unrelenting anger. Fury rolled off of him in waves as he glared mutinously, murderously, up at his adopted father.

Bruce glowered impressively back.

Strong arms crossed against a broad chest, Bruce was the epitome of male beauty—tall, dark, and handsome. With sharp, blue eyes, pitch-black hair, Snow White skin, and a body that would make Michelangelo weep, no one could deny that Bruce Wayne was easily the most beautiful of all Gotham's bachelors. His jawline was as sharp and pronounced as a mountain and his bone structure was equally, and perfectly, rugged. The faint stubble on his cheeks accentuated the flow of his flawless face and not one strand of his impeccably side-parted hair was out of place.

The intense glare he wore sharpened his already Spartan features to a knife's point.

He no longer wore his Batman cowl or his gloves—they hung over the back of a nearby chair. He was clearly done crime-fighting for the night.

Robin, however, was not.

"I'm going after him, Bruce," Robin snarled, completely unfazed by his injuries. "You can't stop me."

Bruce heaved a worn, tired sigh. He glanced over his shoulder at Alfred the butler, who stood at the foot of the stairs that led back into the mansion. The elderly gentleman's face was a mask of elegant calm and composure, but his worried gaze told a different story as he quietly observed Bruce and Richard's fight.

Nevertheless, Bruce seemed to gain strength from the stalwart presence of his closest friend and, when he turned back to frown at Robin, it was clear that he would not be reasoned with. It was a look the boy wonder knew only too well and he growled his displeasure.

Before Bruce said a word, Robin knew that this was his last night in Wayne Manor.

"When will you learn that your actions have consequences, Richard?" Bruce snapped, anger and disappointment clear in his voice. "If you kill Zucco, you take his place as a murderer and become the very person you've hated all your life. And once that line is crossed, there's no coming back. You have no idea where that road leads. And I'd rather see you locked up in Gotham State Penitentiary than find out."

"You would lock me up and not Zucco?!" Robin cried, his trust in Bruce shattering. "You would take his side over mine?!"

Bruce said no more. He simply continued to glare at Richard and let the weight of his judgment speak for itself.

The argument was far from over, but the schism was final.

The dynamic duo was done.

Unable to forgive or forget Zucco—and Batman's apparent betrayal—Robin flew the coop and set up shop on the other side of the country. He couldn't stand to be in the same city as the man who had murdered his parents or the billionaire who had replaced them.

Now, in the tunnels beneath the city that should have been his fresh start in life, Robin felt a surge of homesickness that had avoided him for two years. He wanted to go home, he wanted to flee to the safety of his childhood, he wanted his father...

...he wanted Bruce.

Semi-conscious, Robin whispered the words he had been too angry and prideful to say since that fateful night when he left Gotham for Jump City:

"I'm sorry dad…"

Crack!