Note: Thanks, everyone, for the reviews! I really appreciate them. Though, for the record, this chapter was written long before I got any of them. I know Cyborg's not a jerk – he just sometimes plays one on TV.
Chapter 3: Thine own self
"Hey," Raven's gravely voice said, cutting through the silence. Robin didn't turn to look at her. "Mind if I join you?"
"No," he answered.
The girl walked up beside him and sat down, cross-legged. She didn't let her feet dangle over the edges of Titan Tower's roof, nor did she put up her hood to ward of the cold. She was neither that carefree nor that undisciplined.
For a while they sat in silence. Finally, she said; "They'll figure it out eventually, you know."
"Will they?" Robin asked. His voice, full of cynicism and sarcasm, was sharper than he wanted it to be.
"They will," Raven assured him. "They just need to realize that a bad choice can be the best choice too."
"They think I lied."
"Did you?"
"I'm not sure," Robin said as he looked down at his gloved hands. "I meant what I said back there: I'm not sorry. I mean, I am, but I'm not. I wouldn't change what I did."
"You have nothing to be sorry for," Raven assured him. "Don't be ashamed that you have something worth protecting and don't apologize for sacrificing to do that. I know you want to be honest with us, and I think they all do too."
"I'm not sure it's enough."
"It will have to be," Raven said with an uncompromising tone in her voice. "You're secrets are a deep and important part of who you are. If they want to accept you, they'll have to accept them."
"Seems to be asking a little much."
"No more than anyone else," told him. "We all guard ourselves in different ways. If we don't judge Best Boy for joking when he should be serious, I don't see why we should judge you for being cautious when you should be open."
Robin laughed softly at the unusual comparison. He wasn't quite sure Beast Boy's jokes were on the same level as his secrets, but it was nice to know that there was at least one person in the tower who was willing to see things in a favorable light. He turned to look at his friend and smiled. "How did you get so wise?"
"More than my fair share of suffering," Raven said flatly, not looking for pity or compassion, but stating it as a fact. There was even a hint of a smile in her eyes and voice. "You understand that."
"I guess I do," Robin said with a sigh. He looked up at the cloud-filled sky and rubbed the back of his neck. "Now I just have to decide what to do."
"Whatever you do, you know we'll stand behind you. All of us."
"I know."
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"I can't believe it," Cyborg muttered as he assaulted the simple, sand filled, bag with superhuman brute force. Beast Boy obligingly held the bag for him, but the small shape-shifter was forced to take the form of a Silver Back Gorilla to withstand the force of the half-robot's punches. "All that time together, all the things I thought I knew about him, it's all a lie."
Beast Boy grunted something, but, because he was a gorilla, Cyborg had no idea what he was trying to say.
"It's just that, it's hard to believe," Cyborg continued. "That an ordinary kid could make it up here with the big hitters, you know, that he could fight just as well, maybe better, then the rest of us."
Beast Boy growled.
"And it's not that I'm jealous," Cyborg continued, "'Cause I'd rather be me, and able to shoot plasma beams and interface with computers, and know that no bullets gonna take me down, then be him, and always havin' ta doge, and train, and out-think everybody else. I wouldn't want that kind of pressure on me."
Beast Boy groaned.
"And I guess that explains the secrets, the not-trusting. If you just a regular guy, who could be killed or hurt by just regular things, I guess you'd be pretty scared of everything, including your superfriends. "
Beast Boy grunted again.
"But," Cyborg said, pausing. "Robin doesn't seem afraid."
"Hey, can I say something?" Beast Boy asked, slipping back into his natural form.
"I guess," Cyborg said, temporarily halting his assault.
"Robin said he never told anyone who he was because he was protecting people, right?"
"Yeah, his butler or whatever," Cyborg said.
"Well, don't you think that's probably the truth?"
"Maybe, but who cares?"
"The people he's protecting, for starters," Beast Boy said. "I mean, look, we were all small timers doin' our own little thing until Robin approached us with the whole Teen Titans idea, am I right?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"But Robin was a somebody before this," Beast Boy continued. "He was fighting crime with Batman for years in Gotham, and he's got enemies ten times scarier than anyone we've ever faced."
"You're selling us short," Cyborg said.
"Well, ok, Slade is pretty creepy - but he's the biggest bad we've got," Beast Boy argued. "But compare him to the Joker, or Mr. Zasta, or the Scarecrow?" Beast Boy shuddered. "If they knew who your family was . . . and they wanted to hurt you . . . " He couldn't quite finish the thought.
"Yeah, I know," Cyborg said. "And you can't blame a guy for protecting his family. It's not that he didn't tell us his real name. That's not what bothers me."
"Well, then, what is bothering you?"
"Never mind," Cyborg said sharply. "You'd better go gorilla, I'm in the mood to hit something, hard."
"Wait!" Beast Boy said forcefully, walking around the punching bag so that he stood between it and Cyborg. "What's bothering you?"
"Nothing, I'm fine!"
"No, you're not," Beast Boy insisted. "Tell me what's up."
"I just don't think it's fair, is all," Cyborg said.
"Fair?" Beast Boy asked.
"Some people are different, special, and I'm cool with that. I mean, look at you, you're green and can turn into different animals, freaky, yeah, but cool."
"I'm, ah, not seeing you're point."
"Well, it can't be easy beein' all little and green," Cyborg said. "You kinda stick out in a crowd."
"Yeah, I guess."
"It's not easy being half robot," Cyborg continued. "People look at me on the street and sometimes they're scared, like I'm some sort of monster, and sometimes they're fascinated, like I'm the newest gizmo made for their amusement, you know. I'm never, in my whole life, gonna be able to shake that, 'cause I'm always gonna be different."
"So?" Beast Boy asked.
"So, how come Robin can take off his mask and just disappear into a crowd?"
"It's probably the trade off for having to put it on in the first place," Beast Boy said.
"And why is he so good?"
"He works hard," Beast Boy said, adding, "A lot harder than I've ever wanted to work."
"So could anybody be that good, if they worked hard?" Cyborg said. "There's got to be another piece, a piece we're missing, a piece he's not telling us."
"I don't know," Beast Boy said. "I think I'm gonna trust Robin. You know, trust that if there's something important he has to tell us, he'll tell us."
Cyborg looked away, steaming, and didn't answer.
"Raven was right," Beast Boy said. "I mean, he's got good reasons not to be the most open guy in the world, and he did infect himself with nanites to save us . . ."
Cyborg still didn't answer.
"So," Beast Boy continued. "I'm gonna trust him . . . that's what I really wanted to say."
The small green boy morphed into a huge, muscular gorilla and took hold of the punching bag. But Cyborg, it seemed, was no longer in the mood to work out. With a frustrated sigh, he turned and walked away.
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"Robin?" Starfire said tentatively, knocking on his door. "Robin, you have not eaten all day and Raven made lentil mushroom soup in which Beast Boy put tofu and Cyborg put bacon and I put peanut-butter cups, but I did not know what you would wish to put on it, so I brought all those things, and cheese, and pickles, and salsa, and marshmallows, and . . ."
"Starfire," Robin said, opening his door. "You can come in."
"Oh," The girl sighed, smiling at him beautifully. "I am very glad to hear it. This tray is very heavy."
She floated into the door, not bothering to walk and risk tripping, as she carried a tray so overloaded with condiments that she couldn't possibly have seen over the top.
"Ahh," Robin said uncertainly as he looked at her easily up-turned tray. "Why don't you set that over here?" He gently took her arm and led her towards the table in the middle of the room, quickly brushing aside the piles of old newspaper clippings he'd been going through.
"Thank you," Robin said, carefully taking the bowl off soup off the top of the pile. "I don't suppose you brought crackers."
"Crackers?" Starfire asked. "I did not bring crackers. I should go get them."
"Star, wait," Robin said, grabbing her arm. "It's no big deal."
"But, if you want crackers . . ." Starfire started.
"No," Robin said. "I'd rather have your company."
She turned and looked at him. He was smiling at her. She could feel herself smiling back, and she had to force her feet to stay on the ground.
"So," Robin started. "I take it from the soup that you're not mad at me."
"No, I am not," Starfire said. "If I thought that some of the horrible people we have fought might be able to reach my family, I would be most protective, perhaps even secretive and deceitful."
"You think I was deceitful?" Robin asked.
She wanted to look him in the eyes, but he was wearing the mask. It had never bothered her before, even after she'd seen his brilliant blue eyes the color of the sea just after a storm, she had not been adverse to the mask. It was part of Robin. But now that she knew that there was a Richard Grayson, she wanted to talk to him too, and the mask seemed to be in the way. "I just," she said uncertainly. "I just am not sure who you are."
"I'm Robin."
"But you are Richard Grayson."
"I'm both."
"At the same time?" Starfire asked. "Or are you one, sometimes, and the other at other times? Or are you half Robin, and half Richard Grayson - and if that is the case, are you sometimes more Robin than Richard Grayson or more Richard Grayson than Robin?"
"I don't know," Robin said. "I never really thought about it like that."
"But you have to know," Starfire insisted. "You have to explain it too me. I do not understand how you can be two people at once. And I do not want you to ever not be Robin, but if you are Richard Grayson, I do not want you to not be him too, and are you ever a third person, and when you grow up and become Nightwing, will you still be Robin, and will you still be Richard Grayson?"
"Star," Robin said, holding his hands in front of him. "Calm down."
"I am perfectly calm," She assured him. "But I am also perfectly confused."
"I'm sorry, but, I don't know if I can explain this to you," Robin said.
"But, it is your life. You must understand it."
"I guess," he said, after a moment's thought, "That, I'm always both."
"Both?"
"I mean, I am Dick Grayson, and the things that happened to Dick Grayson, the people he knows and the stuff he's witnessed, that's what makes up Robin."
"Then, Robin is a mask Richard Grayson puts on," Star said, staring at Robins mask, wishing he'd take it off.
"No," Robin said, shaking his head. "Robin is . . . it's who I am. Even when I take off the costume and go with Bruce at some WayneTech function, or help Alfred polish the silver, or hang out at Haley Borther's Circus, everything that's part of Robin is still there in me. The training, the deduction, the . . . . the deception."
"But, if you are really Richard Grayson, how can you be deceiving people when you are being Richard Grayson?"
He hesitated, mouth open, as if he were waiting for the answer to come on it's own. Finally, he started telling a story. "When I first came to Gotham, right after my parents died, Alfred tutored me. Bruce wanted to send me to a prestigious private school, but there weren't any openings, so, so I waited. During that time, I met Batman and I became Robin. Robin knows how to fight, he can pulverize a guy three times his size, without breaking a sweat. Robin knows other things as well, he knows all about criminology and technology and a dozen other obscure subjects. Robin has to to survive. "
"I know," Starfire said softly. She had no idea where the story was going.
"But Dick Grayson can't do those things," Robin continued. "He's just a kid. So, when the boys at school decided to pick on the new kid who grew up in a circus and was no more than a charity case, Dick Grayson couldn't do a thing to stop them."
"I do not understand," Star said.
"I had to let them beat me up, Star," Dick said. "Because if I hadn't, if I'd used my skills, someone might have wondered where a twelve-year-old who spent the majority of his time hanging upside-down form a trapeze knew all about T'hi Chi pressure points and ju-dit-zu fighting strategy. I had to stop being Robin to survive as Dick Grayson."
He paused and glanced up at the ceiling. After a deep breath, he continued: "I guess, I guess to answer your question, I'm always Robin, and I'm always Dick Grayson, because they're exactly the same person. But I'm also always pretending to be one or the other. I never, well, hardly ever, get to be both . . . get to be just me."
Star looked at him. Never, in her whole life, had she felt the way she did at this point: a mixture of compassion, excitement, sorrow, pity, and even devotion and joy was swirling in her chest. "Robin, may I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Will you take off your mask?"
"Ok," he answered, not hesitating. He removed the black and white disguise and reviled his beautiful blue eyes.
Starfire starred into his eyes, looking for a division. She wanted to see if she could see something she had never seen before, something that was only Richard Grayson. But it wasn't there. Everything she knew about her best friend was painted plainly in those eyes - and those eyes hadn't been lying.
"Will you," she started, her emerald eyes still locked with his. "Would you, perhaps, be both Richard Grayson and Robin with me?"
"What?"
"You say you have to pretend, to leave part of yourself aside," Starfire said. "Please, I want to be friends with all of you, all the time."
"Of course, Star," Robin said kindly. "I'm . . . I'm really glad you want to."
He smiled at her, not his usual smile full of confidence and strength, but a smile that showed relief and devotion and the kind of unrestrained happiness that Robin would never permit himself to feel. Star realized with a thrill of joy, that Dick Grayson was smiling at her.
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Cyborg was in a bad mood. It was unreasonable, he knew, for him to be in as bad a mood as he was in, just because Robin had done what Cyborg had always thought he wanted him to do: told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The conversation with Beast Boy, while frustrating, had solidified one fact in his mind. He could trust Robin. The bird-boy may have been, and probably still was, pretty secretive, but those secrets hadn't ever been malicious or conspiratorial. They were secrets born of caution and prudence, just like Cyborg didn't tell anyone his reboot code or which programming functions controlled what. As his grandmother had said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and there's never any harm in not-telling someone something they don't need to know.
In the end, that's all Robin had really done, not told his friends things they didn't need to know. If Robin didn't have any special super powers, that was his own misfortune. The Boy Wonder could take care of himself - that was all that mattered.
But there was something else . . . .
It could have been a bug of jealousy. It was no secret that Cyborg longed for the days when he was just an un-enhanced human. He wanted to feel the warmth of a girl's hand holding his, or the ache in his muscles after a good work out, or the comfort of curling under a blanket on cold night. It didn't seem fair that Robin could do all those things and still be a Titan. It didn't matter that Raven and Beast Boy and Starfire hadn't been asked to make that sacrifice, because they had never been normal. But Robin had been, and still was, and always would be just a normal guy, and, while Cyborg could lie to Beast Boy, he couldn't lie to himself. He envied the Boy Wonder.
However, that wasn't what was eating at him. Sure, on the outside it seemed like Robin had a sweet deal, an orphan who's adopted by a millionaire and becomes a super hero – it's the stuff of most kid's fantasies. But Cyborg was wise enough to know that fantasies make terrible realities. He wondered what it was like, to see your parents fall to their death and know there was absolutely nothing you could do to save them. He wondered what it would feel like, moving from the Circus to a mansion, he wondered what kind of person Bruce Wayne really was. Robin had said Wayne's parents were murdered too, but that didn't necessarily mean the millionaire would be a comfort. Robin seemed to be fairly dedicated to Wayne, he'd never said a word against him, but, on the other hand, he also lived in a tower in San Francisco instead of his posh mansion with the butler, and he never, ever talked about home.
As much as Cyborg wanted to be what Robin was, a normal kid who at least had a chance at a normal life, he realized he'd rather know his parents were alive and safe, he'd rather have warm memories of Sunday brunches at his grandmother's house, football games with cousins and uncles, loud, chaotic Christmas mornings, Easter egg hunts, well attended school talent shows; basically, a loving family and a normal life.
There was no point in being jealous of Robin's apparent normality, because everything Cyborg wanted back, Robin had never had. Still, realizing that didn't calm Cyborg any: there was something else bothering him and he just couldn't figure out what.
As he thought about secrets, his mind wondered to Raven. It had never bothered him that she forbade anyone to go into her room, or that she never told anyone anything about herself. He'd just accepted that as part of who she was. Why was it different with Robin? Was it because Raven was a girl, and he expected her to be aloof and mysterious, while he expected Robin to be his buddy? Was it because Raven rarely asserted herself, and she'd never butted heads with Cyborg, so there was no reason for him to butt heads with her? He thought about the one time he'd crossed the line and forced Raven to spill her secrets (by accidentally getting sucked into her head). That had turned out well, she'd needed help, and only someone who knew her secrets, who knew she wasn't quite as in control as she needed to be, who knew how strong she was, and how vulnerable too, could possibly have ever helped her.
Then it clicked.
Cyborg made a bee-line for Raven's room and pounded on the door. "Raven, ya in there?" he demanded loudly.
"Yes," came the answer. She sounded severely annoyed.
"I gotta talk to you," he said.
The door opened a crack and her dark eyes peeked out. "About what?"
"About Robin."
"I don't feel like another fight," she said, starting to close the door.
Cyborg grabbed the edges, not letting it shut. "I don't either," he explained quickly. "I think the boy wonder is in trouble."
She paused and looked at him. "The photographer?" she asked.
"He mentioned Haly's Circus," Cyborg said. "He knows who Robin is. That's why bird-boy went crazy on him."
Raven opened the door fully, "What do you propose we do?"
"I got some ideas," Cyborg said.
"Good," Raven said, smiling ever so slightly. "Titans go."
To Be Continued . . .