24.
"You haven't a prayer, Titan!" Dr. Light sneered as he created another burst of light, temporarily blinding Robin.
"You're just lucky Raven isn't here, Light. Still having the nightmares?" Dr. Light's eyes immediately glazed over, and a sweat broke on his brow.
Yes, he still had the nightmares. The visions of the dark place deep in that girls soul. He came so close to it...it had touched him.
His vacant stare was just what Robin was looking for. He leapt into the air and kicked him square in the jaw, knocking him flying. He was out before he hit the ground. Out, it seemed, like a light.
"Ok, so that's one down..." Robin quickly whipped out his communicator and called the rest of the Titans.
"What's the situation?"
"NO HUMAN IS A MATCH FOR ATLAS!" Was the first thing that boomed over the communicator, followed by a series of metallic clangs.
"Atlas is under control, I just gotta figure out how to shut him up!" Cyborg yelled.
"I managed to stop Killer Moth, and Overload is...taking a bath." Raven said, monotonous as always.
"I found that Fang guy crawling around on a skyscraper downtown. Consider him dusted!" Beast Boy said triumphantly. Robin couldn't help but be impressed. It had taken all their combined efforts to take these guys down the first time.
"Great job guys. What about you Starfire?" He waited patiently for a moment. For some reason, a hot cramp gathered together in his gut.
"Starfire?"
A moment later her emergency beacon went off, and Robin broke into a run.
"Robin, we'll be there in a-" Robin cut Cyborg off before he could finish.
"No, you all have work to do, I'll find her." He was trying to sound like a leader should, but he couldn't hide the fear in his voice. The cramp he'd developed synched in even tighter, and he picked up his pace. His mind raced with a thousand thoughts and none of them were good. The only reason Starfire would have activated that beacon is if she were in trouble, and seconds counted. By her location, Robin figured he was close enough to be there in mere minutes, but he pushed himself to go faster. Minutes were too long, he had to be there now.
The thought that was constantly rising to the surface was that he was too late.
25.
He was entering a run down part of town, or rather the run down part of town. Jump City was blessed in many ways, and one of them was its upkeep. It seemed that only this section of it – measuring no more than a few blocks – had lived in a bubble for the past twenty years, and had slowly decomposed into the empty shells of buildings, home to nothing but a few different species of insects. Starfire must have chased someone down here, it was the only explanation. According to her beacon, she was in the building third on Robin's left, the only one with its door gaping open. It was a two storey house, which Robin considered large, though having spent a large part of his life living in a mansion, and an even larger part in a circus tent, he guessed he was a poor judge of the size of a building, and put the thought out of his mind.
He was gulping down lung fulls of breath, expecting that he'd come across quite a fight when he entered the building, and he quickly made a mental list of the criminals they'd yet to wrangle. On the top of that list, of course, was Slade. He reached the door and stepped inside.
No.
He didn't see all over her, just the bottom half of her legs, and a pool of red liquid spread beside her. The rest was obscured by a wall, which looked like it led to perhaps a flight of stairs, but Robin didn't care about that.
"Starfire?" He said, with a huge shake in his voice. He felt a cold chill spread on his skin, and goose flesh rose as he took a few wobbly steps towards her.
Too late, too late, too late...
He reached her side, and dropped to his knees. She was on her stomach, her left arm was bent so her left hand was next to her head, her right arm was extended as far as it could go. A small blood trail on the floor told Robin that she was crawling away from whoever...shot her. The hole in her back was small, but it leaked blood into the pool that he'd seen upon entering. He could already tell she wasn't breathing.
When his brain shut off like it was now doing, he reverted to instinct. First, he brushed her communicator aside, which had been placed on the small of her back, as if put on display, and turned her over. When he touched the bare skin of her arm, it was deathly cold.
Too late.
He breathed a lung full of his own air into her, making a tight seal over her mouth with his. Instinct was driving him, and it told him that he was her breath until help arrived...if it ever did. He pressed his palms together and pumped them five times on her chest.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Breathe.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Breathe
Her eyes were closed. Her lips were already starting to turn a little blue. He knew he was too late, instinct be damned. He unclasped his hands, and his face curled into a silent scream.
No sound came out, but he could feel tears well up behind his mask.
He pulled her tightly to him, and rocked her gently.
"No, please...no." He said, but she didn't hear him, and he knew it. He used to know a lot, but then all he knew was her. All he knew was the hot cramp in his gut was twisting his insides hard enough to make him feel ill. Most of all, he knew that Starfire, his teammate, his friend, his lover, was dead.
He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder and started to cry.
It was all he could think of to do for a long, long time.
26.
"Is that all of them?" Batman asked Wonder Woman. She was one of the few people he was on a first name basis with, and they spoke out of range of the rest so they could use each other's names freely.
"Awwww, does Bruce still want to fight, tonight?" She asked, smiling slyly. He'd noticed the gleam in her eye for a while, and knew what it meant. He couldn't help but be interested, she was completely gorgeous, after all.
"No, I just don't want any weirdo's in orange jumpsuits to jump out at odd hours of the night, looking to start taking up some old habits." They looked at each other, and then they both smiled. "And yes, I still want to fight."
He looked over Wonder Woman's shoulder and saw that young girl he'd fought beside earlier. She was speaking to a young man with orange hair and an oversized pair of sunglasses. Sunglasses in the middle of the night. Kids. Wonder Woman followed his gaze and arched her eyebrow.
"Have a new friend I should know about?" Batman didn't like her tone, or what it implied.
"She fights well, but she's fifteen." He smiled again, but didn't look at Wonder Woman. He hoped it aggravated her, just a little bit. She elbowed him in the gut, and he doubled over. He supposed that's what she did when she got aggravated. She grabbed his shoulder and stood him up. When he managed to right himself, Wonder Woman was standing in front of him with her hand on her hips, with a somewhat...suggestive look on her face.
"Forget about her." She said, and took a step forward.
Just as Batman was about to look away from the girl...Raven? He noted that she reached into her cloak and removed a communicator. When she held it to her ear to listen to whatever was being said, she let it fall from her fingers. She looked unsteady on her feet, and was swaying, like her legs were made of jello. Soon enough, she collapsed to her knees, and was holding her head in her hands. Even at the distance he was at, Batman could see her trembling, and hear her sobbing. The boy she was speaking to went to his knees as well, and grabbed her by both shoulders to support her. She fell into him, like she was completely unable to hold herself up anymore. Batman lightly pushed Wonder Woman out of his way, and looked at her intensely.
"To be continued, Diana." He walked over to the girl, and soon found out what had happened. When he told Wonder Woman, she ceased being mad at him, in fact, she felt a little weak kneed herself.
27.
"Where do we go from here?" Raven's eyes were puffy and red, like everyone else's. They'd gathered in Titan Tower after Robin had spread the tragic news. Everything that was going on outside seemed small and insignificant, and they'd left the clean up of the city in the hands of the Justice League. It felt a little weird, since 24 hours ago, they would have absolutely insisted to be in charge of any superhero activity going on in Jump City, but now, well, now it was a day later, and the world had changed forever. No one had an answer for Raven, and they all sat, staring at the space of floor between their feet.
"Who did it? Who?" Cyborg grunted. They all knew he was talking to himself, just as much as they all knew who did it. It had to be Slade. He was the only one sadistic enough.
"Someone should call Galfore back on Tamaran. He'll know what to do with...her." Robin said. His voice was wavering, they all heard it. Outside he was trying to remain composed, but inside he was completely falling apart. None of them really knew how far the relationship between he and Starfire had gone (indeed, the events of earlier in the evening would now forever remain a secret), but they knew the two of them were close in a way that went beyond friendship. He was only pretending to hold up, and it was only a matter of time before he did something drastic.
"Yeah, Galfore should come, we don't know what they do with their..." Cyborg couldn't finish. He was going to say 'with their dead' but just couldn't get the words past his lips.
Suddenly, Robin slammed both his fists down on the table between them all. He stood and started to leave the room.
"Robin, where are you going?" It was Cyborg. He stood and faced Robin.
"Make sure Galfore knows. I'll be back by tomorrow night."
"Where are you going?" Robin started to walk away, not even turning to face Cyborg. Cyborg made to follow him, but Raven grabbed him around the elbow and stopped him.
"Let him go, he needs time." Cyborg hesitated, but then he sat down. Raven was right, they all needed to deal with the loss in the way they felt most comfortable, and Robin always dealt with problems by himself, either that, or he talked it out with Starfire, and well...Cyborg felt a tear roll down his cheek, and returned to staring at the floor.
Wherever Robin was going, Cyborg hoped he found what he was looking for.
28.
Starfire was dead. He remembered that fact. All other facts concerning the last few hours he put out of his mind, and as the sun started to rise, he found himself back at that house, in the rundown part of town.
The JLA had asked the police to stay out of the investigation, and the Titans agreed to stay home and grieve. They wanted to keep it within their jurisdiction, make sure that they brought whoever was responsible to justice. Such was the way when a hero died, it was up to the other hero's to find and prosecute the killer.
When Robin got to the scene, Batman was there, which didn't especially surprise him. When dealing with a murder investigation, who better to have on the case than the greatest detective in the world?
He was collecting samples of something and sticking them into a hand held reader. It was one of his utility belt toys, and Robin knew immediately that it was for identifying trace samples of unknown substances. He fed in tube after tube, identifying every little thing he found on the ground. Robin knew that he knew exactly what went on, and had probably already figured the location of the guilty party's hideaway.
"Where is Slade?" Batman's head twitched, but he didn't turn around or get up.
"Who?"
"The man that did this, where is he?"
"I don't like that tone in your voice, Robin. You aren't planning what I think you are, are you?" He didn't have to turn around to see the look on Robin's face, he knew what was there. There was anger, rage even. There was the need to kill. He knew this, because he'd felt it before, worn that expression before, more times than he'd care to think about.
"What do you care what I plan to do?" Robin hadn't moved from the threshold of the disintegrating door. A small wind blew through and swirled his cape around him.
"Because if this 'Slade' is the one who killed the girl, then I know what you want to do to him. You want to kill him. I've taught you better than that, so don't even think about it." Batman slid another tube into the machine and it beeped, displaying something on its readout, Robin took a few steps and looked over Batman's shoulder, and read the screen.
Silica.
He'd fed in a sample of silica dust, which was a kind of quartz, it was the stuff they made glass out of.
"Whoever was in here had silica on their feet. Do you know how hard it is to get silica dust on your feet?" Batman asked, briefly turning his head to look at Robin over his shoulder. Robin did. It was not common to see it in its unprocessed form, and one of the only places to get it would be from a mine. There were a few mines in the area surrounding Jump City. One of them, if Robin remembered, was a silica mine. It was weak, but Robin felt that it might be enough. He turned to leave.
"Don't you care what else I've found?"
"Does it matter? He's at the mine, right?" Robin didn't turn around, but stopped walking.
"It might." Batman stood effortlessly, and turned to face Robin. "And yes, he is." Batman turned around and started to survey the scene as he spoke.
"This 'Slade', he's not your average criminal. I guess you already know that, but I know why." This perked Robin's interest. He didn't say anything, but he also didn't leave, which Batman took as a good sign.
"Turns out he managed to cut himself, this is his blood, here." Batman pointed at the smallest of splotches on the ground. Robin turned around. He saw the sickening, huge puddle of blood, Starfire's blood, and the void which her body had created in the pool (what they did with her body, Robin wasn't sure, he couldn't bare to ask), and all of the streaks and hand prints that marked her last struggle. It made him absolutely seize up to see it, his legs locked and he couldn't move. He managed to notice the small spot of blood that Batman was pointing to. It was minute, but for the Batman, it was plenty. Robin thought that perhaps Slade had been cut by some moving mechanism from the gun when he fired it, but how the blood got there didn't really matter.
"This mans DNA, its been altered, and whoever did it knew what they were doing." Robin snapped back to reality, and stopped staring at the blood pool.
"Altered? Meaning what? He's not human?"
"Meaning he's not normal, in which way, I can't tell from a blood sample. If you're going to confront him, I'd be careful."
"Don't worry, I always am." That was a lie, Robin was far from careful when he took on Slade, and this time he would not only be distracted, he was so enraged that Batman wasn't sure what he'd do. Robin turned towards the door.
"Robin, one more thing," Batman said, "I'm coming with you."
