Chapter 2: Beginnings

Robin bits at the end were completely redone.

Cyborg finally gave up hitting the snooze button again on his alarm clock. It was inevitable; he had to get up eventually and he may as well get up. He rubbed his eyes groggily, 7:15. That was quite early. If he wanted to finally go to work today, he would make it in time.

He got out of bed and headed towards his closet. Wait a second, something wasn't right. There was a smell-a nice amorous smell coming from the kitchen. Since when did that ever happen? Did his landlord suddenly become infected by the love bug and decided to be kind to his tenants?

He opened the door and headed towards the kitchen. Oh God no! He slapped himself on the forehead. It was his mother.

The look on his face that seemed to say, "Mom, what the heck are you doing at my house" was so obvious that his mother had already begun to explain herself.

"Now, Cyborg, dear, I'm sorry to barge in on you like this but I need to make sure that you get to work today. You've been putting it off for days now (Cyborg mentally corrected his mother at this point. He was supposed to start work on Monday, which was only two days ago.) Mr. Bruce Wayne has given you an excellent opportunity, and I don't want you to squander it hiding at home."

"Mom, I really was planning on going to work today."

"Well, all the better, I'll give you that little push out the door." His mother proceeded to the refrigerator and began pouring some orange juice for him. "And do something about your room. It's a mess. I tired reorganizing it a bit today, but…"

"You what!" Cyborg quickly rushed into his room. Long behold, his closet was nicely organized. "Great, now I can't find anything." He muttered to himself.

Finally after much deliberation, he chose out a large grey suit and tie to wear to work. He really hated dressing well for work or for that fact, any occasion. Ever since the accident and the operations (that made him into his robot like state about two years ago), he hated stepping out of his apartment. It was just so humiliating walking down the street having the passer-bys all react to him. It wasn't that great having people give him looks of sympathy, but it was even worse when they made fun of him. "Metal man!" "Tin man alert!" He had to resist the urge to punch the living day lights out of those kids, and it was very difficult at times. However, it was the worst when they avoided walking near him or when they just stared at him like he wasn't even human, cowering in fear.

Cyborg had only been fully functional and out of the hospital on his own in his apartment for the past six months. He was amazed at how Bruce Wayne had personally asked him to work for the company. Well, it wasn't a complete and utter surprise, he was very good with computers, even more so with his semi-human robotic form. Or perhaps it was out of pity…

As he rushed out the door, placing a large hat on top of his head to cover the hideous side of his face, the machine part, his mother approached him.

"Good luck at work dear. And Cy, your father really wants to talk to you. If you'd only…"

"Ma. I'm gonna be late. Can this wait till later?" Cyborg quickly rushed out the door and closed it shut. His father was the whole reason he was in this state. No, he just wasn't ready yet. He wasn't ready to face the outside world either. "Here goes nothing." He muttered to himself as he stepped outside into the streets.

Beast Boy stood backstage, a bit nervous. He flipped through his jokes again, specifically the biology oriented ones. It was his first comedian gig and he wanted to nail it. Sure, it wasn't going to be a large audience, but all famous comedians had to start out somewhere.

"Oh come on!" He muttered to himself. He had already forgotten the punch line to one of his jokes. "Oh gosh! It was my toe sis? Oh right that one. Man, how could I forget that one."

"Yea, how could you?" Beast Boy turned around. It was Terra, his girlfriend. "B.B., that's one of my favorites too." She giggled a bit and rushed over to Beast Boy and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "Good luck out there. I'm sure you'll do great." She smiled and quickly skidded off.

"Sir, you're on in 5 minutes." The back stage manager informed B.B. promptly.

Why was B.B. doing this? Well, for one, he had always loved making jokes and cheering his friends up whenever they were down. And through high school, he was the class clown. Sure, his classmates didn't always get his jokes and he didn't have that many friends, but he got attention. And in a world that does not appreciate the unintelligent and untalented that mattered to him. He, after all, had never finished high school. Who really needed to if you were going to make jokes all day? (A.N: I'm not trying to degrade comedians here. This is merely a representation of Beast Boy's reasoning for not going on to college.) In fact, he was really never too good at school. Education was more likely to degrade his comedic muse.

The curtains opened and B.B. stood in the spot light, a bit nervous and uncomfortable. He pulled at his collar. There wasn't much of a crowd. There were a few people scattered about the room. This hang out place wasn't very popular anyhow. With the name "The Misfits," it seemed to be doomed to small crowds. Because of the lack of people, B.B. did get the job for a stand up comedian on unpopular nights for the place.

"Hey you people in the peanut gallery out there!" He began. "How are you all doing?" Terra was the only person who responded. She clapped her hands eagerly.

Beast Boy wasn't really this bland with his friends. He had better, fresher jokes, but on stage, he just seemed to whither away. Each joke failing to amuse an already bored audience except Terra, of course cheered him on. By the end of the night, only he, Terra, and the janitor were left in the room.

He bowed down his head in defeat. He had accidentally laughed during a few of the jokes, making the rest of it indiscernible. Other times, he had stuttered, stumbled among the words, exacerbating the already dreadful situation. And other jokes were simply horrible. He reminded himself to practice more and to scrap those bad ones.

"That was horrible. I'm really sorry I have to put you through this." B.B. sighed, disappointed: ego broken and slightly ashamed. A comforting touch upon his should…Terra smiled warmly and patted him on the shoulder. "B.B., that was great. I found it very funny!"

Terra laughed at anything, and she was another reason for B.B.'s pursuit of the stand-up comedian career. With Terra's laughs and giggles, he felt completely better after the horrible gig. She always cheered him up completely, the bright spot in his life, a golden haired muse even…whenever sadness began to plague him and weigh down upon his jokes, she was there within his mind making the sorrow bate away…

Terra was the unattainable dream girl. He had always admired and had a crush on Terra all through his high school years. She was that extremely popular girl who was always surrounded by friends. He still couldn't believe his luck that somehow or rather, she became his girl. Imagine that! Of all the jocks, the preps, the SGA, smart alecs who pined after her in high school, she had chosen him, and it was a wonderful feeling.

Robin redialed Bruce's number. It was nearly four, and Robin was soon going to meet another dawn without sleeping. Where the heck was he? It was excusable that the cocktail party Bruce had been invited to would run over a few hours, perhaps to three at the very latest and that took into account Bruce seeing all of the guests off, being a perfect gentleman and seeing that all the ladies had a ride home, and staying behind to help the clean up group completely wipe the hotel spotless…

A ring

And then three more…

Fifth time's the charm…If Bruce was there, he would always pick up the phone on exactly third ring because it showed others that he respected the callers and recognized that by calling his home, there had to have been some rather important reason. Yet, by not picking up the phone too quickly, it also showed that he was a busy man with some more significant issues to deal with.

The fifth ring of the phone passed…he was not home. Robin's heart sank when Alfred finally picked up the phone after seven rings. A slightly tired yet still proper voice greeted him. "Mr. Wayne isn't available at the moment. May I take a message?"

"Alfred, it's me, Robin."

"Master Robin, dreadfully sorry, but Master Bruce isn't back yet. He's busy at the time. I'll let him know as soon as he gets back."

Robin sighed. He needed to ask Bruce this very important on reporting account information. It was due tomorrow or rather today, and he had a lot of company profits to calculate. However, he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to continue comparing them to last season's gains.

He admitted that he should have worked on it earlier, but he was just loaded up with work. Being an assistant CEO or more specifically CEO of the New York division wasn't an easy job. He was loaded with decisions, papers to sign all day. And it really didn't help that some of his employees considered him an upstart.

Take Gizmo, for instance. Gizmo was a whiz at calculations, but refused to work efficiently for Robin unless he periodically had private conferences with him in which he subtly threatened the rather obnoxious worker with pay cuts. Gizmo was on near top of his list for employees to replace, if at all possible, personality-wise. The calculation whiz was truly adept at his work, Robin had to admit that, but his attitude often negated his working progress. Yet, every day, there was just so much to do, so many appointments and meetings to attend that he hadn't the time to properly search for a suitable replacement. For the time being, Gizmo was unfortunately, safe in his position.

Robin didn't mind others' opinions of him…he would prove himself in time; others were free to judge him as they liked after he had a chance to establish his position yet it was a nuisance to fight others' engrained, deprecating opinions of him and to still remain as vibrant, energetic, optimistic, basically "youthful" as they say in the business world. Bruce Wayne's protégé…what a man to be always compared to…there were, of course, many expectations that others expected for him to fulfill, to accomplish since he was Bruce's "ward" after all ("the child had to have absorbed some of Mr. Wayne's prestige from living with the man for so long.") So what if he rarely slept in his bed at night, so what if he was starting to receive dark lines under his eyes (resulting in a small eye mask that he began to wear more and more frequently to avoid others from seeing just how tired he really was), and so what if coffee and caffeine was what kept him awake a majority of the time…he had a predecessor to live up to, and he certainly was not going rest to relax until the Wayne Corps legacy was fulfilled.

And he would be further yet from that legacy if he didn't have the budget done by tomorrow. Where else could he call to reach Bruce? He wondered, and a name resonated within his mind...it was going out on a limb but perhaps, if Bruce Wayne was feeling a tad bit sensitive (no, on the utter lack of sleep he was having, his rational skills had all slipped into a dreamer's illogical musings), he may have gone to visit her. Or perhaps, more feasibly, if she didn't hang up on him in frenzy over being woken at such an odd hour of the night, she could be of help.

He flipped through his desk drawers until he found the black, leather bound planar. Quickly, he tore through the letters of the alphabet under the directory…A, B, C, D…Daisy, Deborah…Diana.

Diana, Bruce's long time girl friend and the only semi mother figure in his life, would know as well as Alfred of Bruce's whereabouts. Feeling a tad bit guilty for calling so late or more correctly early, he slowly dialed the number and hoped that she was in a time zone where it was still a decent time to call.

A muffled yawn resonated through the phone, and then a mumble. "You better not be a telemarketer; I am on the do-not-call list, and these days, there are enough pop up ads to…"

"Diana?" Robin asked…slightly nervous, she didn't seem to be in the best of moods. Perhaps, calling hadn't been such a good idea after all.

"Oh, Robin! I-ignore what I just said…I had a bad experience with a foreign telemarketer a few nights ago." That was certainly a sudden change in tone. Thankfully, she was only brutal to certain callers.

"Sorry for calling so late…" But before he could quickly ask her a question, she interrupted.

"My…it's nearly five in the morning." She yawned again, and some loud shuffling could be heard.

"I'm sorry; I know it's a bad time to call…it's far too early…" He began what could be considered a rather awkward apology.

"Oh, no, don't be. It's a perfectly good time to call. And actually, I would beg to differ; I was running late this morning." Running late…he hated to imagine her hectic schedule. "I've got an early flight to catch this morning, and I slept through the alarm." More shuffling was heard…a door slam, a running faucet…"I'm sorry. What did you want to ask?"

"I just really needed to find Bruce, and since Alfred said he was still out, I thought that you might know."

"Ah…Bruce, always the elusive one to find. He's a bit busy now; something important came up."

"Yea…well I had these reports due in by today in about three hours. And you know how Bruce hates things to be late." He heard a faucet slam and a creak of a door. "Maybe I should call you back later…"

"Hm…well, I'll probably be on my flight then…I do know a little about budgets and such. It's not my foray, but let's see, what type of report is it?" Diana was in a similar line of business.

As Robin pondered over the budget with Diana, he could not help but to wonder where Bruce was. Bruce had been the closest person to a father figure in his life. Robin vaguely remembered his own parents through blurbs of memories in his dreams. He had to admit though; Bruce has hardly been there for him. Not that he minded…they weren't the closets of friends. Sure, the ever-successful Mr. Wayne had saved him from poverty and introduced him to the world of large corporations. He wouldn't have his job now, at this age, if it weren't for Bruce. Connections as they say in the corporate world.

Bruce wasn't much of a father. He was always too busy with his own life to have too much, if any, time for Robin. Bruce was often out during the strangest hours of the night. Something was going on. However, Alfred and Diana never mentioned anything. They avoided the subject and instead redirected Robin by either helping him as Diana did earlier or bringing up another topic. It was a bit odd indeed.

The question had always been in the back of Robin's mind, and he had even chanced to broach the question of what Bruce did besides Wayne corporations that kept him busy during those odd hours of the night. As he subtly implied the question, Bruce would look him in the eye to show that he was being genuine. "There is something else, but I will let you know in time." Yet Bruce never looked colder, more distant as those two discerning blue orbs stared into his.

AN: Apologies for lapses from the comic book history, I haven't read them, though I do know a bit more about them than when I started writing this fic. I know that some of you were a bit frustrated with the introduction of Cyborg's mother; she has a very minor role.

Reviews are very much appreciated!

And shameless self-advertisement: a one shot fluffy Christmas/holiday reflection fic called "A Christmas Star."