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Evening sometimes seemed to be the time of day when the streets of the city were busiest. As the sun set, sidewalks became crowded with people on their way home from work, or running errands before the shops closed for the night. The streets suddenly seemed too small to hold the teeming vehicles that were somehow all hurrying in the same direction—no matter which direction it was. In the bustle of chaos that was so familiar, few took notice of a single individual, despite his unique appearance and unwarranted behavior.
He pelted through the crowds of people, eyes wide with confusion and fear as he glanced back and forth and over his shoulder. His arms were crossed over his chest, clutching the device close to his body, as though to protect it from something unseen. With a sudden turn of direction, he darted into traffic, barely noticing as an oncoming car swerved to avoid him. Even when he barreled into a street vendor's small cart and knocked it over, he did not stop.
Something had gone wrong—terribly wrong. He was not in the place he was supposed to be. But how could it not have been right? He had been so careful, calculating everything down to the last decimal, checking and rechecking.
But this was too soon. Somehow, he had come back too soon, too far from the time when he needed to be, and he was suddenly realizing that he did not know how to go forward again....
As if to make up for this subconscious realization, he redoubled his pace, as though moving forward as fast as he could through this horizontal space would somehow make up for it, somehow fix what had gone wrong. And as he neared the edge of the city, he saw something that had long ago been deserted and destroyed, something that should no longer have been there.
The silhouette of Titan Tower, rising above the shoreline.
He stopped in his tracks, panting, staring at the tall building that only served to confirm the fact that he was not where he should be.
Sinking to his knees in the middle of the sidewalk, he let the device slip to the ground as he hunched over, feeling a stinging heat behind his eyes. Blinking it away, he stared down at the device that was supposed to have made everything right again...
He fought the rising urge to smash the device to pieces with his own fist. It had lied to him, it had brought the promise of happiness to him, and then it had brought him here, to this place where he was not supposed to be. It was this cursed thing that had caused the accident, and so it was the fault of this device that Nightwing had died.
Nightwing was right. The thought surfaced in his mind far too late. Nightwing...
He suddenly choked on a sob as his mind cleared for the first time in six long years, remembering everything his friend had tried to tell him, all the comfort Nightwing had tried to give. He looked down at his hands as though he could see the guilt written on them. He had pushed that friendship away, blocked out the truth, fallen into the illusion that he could bring her back and make everything the way it used to be. And when he had tried to make that illusion a reality, he had only succeeded in bringing about more suffering.
He lifted his head to meet the fading right light of the sun as it began to set behind the dark Tower's silhouette. And as he gazed at the Tower through unshed tears, something else took hold of his mind. An idea suddenly sprang into existence in the back of his thoughts, and from it the fever began to spread once again.
Yes, he could still make it work, he could fix it, make it better. Now he looked back down at the device, and suddenly it was the same glorious thing that it had been all along. It was the salvation that would bring her back...
He was running again, clutching the precious device to his chest as though to protect it. But he was no longer glancing around him wide-eyed with fear. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, on the outline of the very familiar tower...
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It took the rest of the day for the Titans to finish the business with the police department and Nightwing's body. By the time they finally arrived back at the Tower, the sun had already set.
Robin pulled his cycle into the garage at the base of their home, gearing to a stop next to the T-car and his teammates gathered near it. As he pulled off his helmet, his ears were greeted with an angry tirade from Cyborg. The large teen was half inside the rear passenger's side, inspecting something in the backseat of his car and apparently unhappy with what he had found.
"Beast Boy!" he was yelling. "You got your teeth marks all over the seatbelt!"
"It's not my fault!" the shape shifter argued, making a leap onto the roof of the car, and then dangling upside-down over the side to peer at Cyborg. "Raven's the one who tried to suffocate me with it!"
The empath in question was standing a few feet away, arms folded, eyes glaring from beneath her hood. "Maybe if Beast Boy had the courtesy to be a little quieter for those of us who actually use our brains for thought and meditation, this wouldn't have happened."
"Hey!" the green Titan's head shot up to glare at Raven.
Cyborg glanced up at the green face dangling in front of him, then let out a yelp. "Gaaah! Get offa there! You're gonna get boot-marks all over my baby!" He made a wide swipe at Beast Boy's dangling form, forcing the smaller boy to jump off.
As the argument continued, Robin dismounted his cycle and placed the helmet on the seat. Catching sight of Starfire and Terra, who were moving away from the noisy garage and into the Tower, he followed them.
Giving a sigh, Robin tried not to listen as the three arguing Titans began to follow suit. They had just spent a day examining his own dead body and coming up with no leads or information, and he knew that it had left everyone's tempers a little short. But listening to his friends release their frustrations through petty arguments wasn't something he had the patience for at the moment. He needed to work off some energy and let his head clear a little bit. Intent on heading to the gym for a workout and some peace and quiet, he moved past the rest of his teammates as they all began to settle in the main room of the Tower.
But his evening workout would never happen. As he moved through the main room, something caught his eye. Glancing to his left, he stopped for moment to regard one of the houseplants that Raven kept. It was a spider plant, not very big, but full with its characteristic long, curling leaves that spread outward from its center, much like the gangly appendages of a daddy-long-legs spider. Thus, the reason for the plant's name.
Usually Robin didn't pay much attention to whatever plants or other decorations were in the tower, but his powers of observation were something to be feared. Even though he had only ever glanced at the plant before, he could tell that something was different about it—something that probably shouldn't be.
Altering his path, he crossed the room to stand in front of the small table on which it rested. He narrowed his gaze and focused on one of the leaves, which was broken. Touching a finger to the snapped portion of the stem, his glove came off with a spot of liquid on it, meaning that the break had been very recent, most likely within the last hour. On the table beneath the plant, Robin could also see a crescent shape of clear wood outlined with dust, indicating that the pot had been shifted slightly.
"Everybody be quiet," he said quickly. Although his voice was lowered, his tone had become serious and commanding. None of his teammates had any trouble hearing what he said, and his manner immediately ensnared their complete attention.
"What's wrong now?" Cyborg asked, slightly annoyed that his lecture to Beast Boy and Raven about fighting in his car had been interrupted.
Turning to regard them all with a tense gaze, Robin answered quickly, "Raven, when was the last time you watered this plant?"
She blinked at him for a moment before answering. "A few days ago. Why?"
Beast Boy made an exasperated noise. "Robin, what are getting all worked up over a house plant's watering schedule for?"
"I said quiet, Beast Boy!" the dark-haired teen glared at the offending team member. "Someone else has been here."
For a moment, silence greeted his statement. Then Terra raised an eyebrow. "Okay...so did the plant tell you that?"
At this statement, Starfire's eyes lit up and she clapped her hands in amusement. "How wonderful! Robin, I did not know that you practiced the art of leaf-speaking!" She gained a reminiscent look. "On my home planet, such a skill is most common! I had many pleasant conversations with the morpalgrar bush in my parent's home. But I had never thought your earth-plants were intelligent enough to perform the leaf-speaking with humans! Tell me, with which species do you most often converse?" Starfire glanced around at her friends, a smile plastered on her face...until she realized they were staring at her.
Cyborg gave a wide, mischievous grin. "Hey, Robin, maybe Starfire can give you tips on talking with the plant. Then you can get straight to the root of the problem! Ha!" Terra and Beast Boy immediately joined him in breaking into laughter.
Ignoring their guffawing teammates, Raven turned the conversation back to Robin. "Are you sure about this? I'm not sensing anyone else's presence."
"Yeah," Beast Boy piped up, halting his laughter just long enough to be skeptical. "And I don't smell anything weird. If there were other people in the tower, they would have left behind a different scent."
"I wouldn't have said it if I weren't sure," Robin answered. "There was somebody else here, very recently, too."
Cyborg's smile immediately faded as he realized the matter was truly serious. He gave a moan. "Man, I installed finger-print access security on the front door! Nobody else can get in here except one of us."
Robin shook his head and glanced up at the larger teen. "Well there's no sign of forced entry, so whoever it was got through the finger-print access without a problem. All security activations are recorded in the tower's main computer, right Cyborg?"
Cyborg nodded, "Yeah..."
"Can you check the records? I want to know if you can find out exactly when they got in, and whether or not they left. In the meantime, we have to assume there's an intruder in here. Raven, Beast Boy, can you two start searching the tower? See if they took anything, or left something behind."
The two teens nodded and quickly disappeared from sight, Raven floating upward to phase through the ceiling and begin a search of the upper levels, while Beast Boy headed for the hallway, his nose in the air and his ears twitching as he tried to pick up any sense of their uninvited guest.
Robin, Terra, and Starfire crowded around Cyborg as he wheeled a chair over to the main computer and activated his security system. "Got it," Cyborg proclaimed a moment later, pulling up an information box on the screen. "Exact time of entry, just over a half-hour ago. You were right, Robin."
"Any idea who it might have been?"
"Yeah, just a sec, let me see..." Typing in a few more commands, Cyborg watched the screen intently. As the information he was looking for blinked into existence, his single human eye widened.
"So?" Terra leaned around him, trying to get a closer look for herself. "Who was it?"
The answer didn't come for a long moment. When it did, Cyborg's voice held a note of disbelief. "Me..."
For a moment, the group was silent. Then Robin spoke. "What do you mean, it was you?"
Emitting a strange grunt of frustration and confusion, Cyborg raised a metal hand to point at a block of data displayed in front of them. "See, look, right there, that's my ID number based on the finger-print security input. The computer says it was my print that granted security access. I opened that front door and walked into this tower half an hour ago."
"But you did not," Starfire said from her floating position as she peered over their heads at the screen. "You were outside our home with the rest of us."
"Is the clock set to the wrong time?" Robin suggested. "Maybe it means just a few minutes ago, when we got in."
"No, the clock is fine," Cyborg drew another information box up next to the first one. "Look, here's our entry five minutes ago. It's fine. The system is functioning perfectly."
"Then someone must have figured out how to get inside using your fingerprint somehow," Terra put in.
"How can anybody use my fingerprint? My fingerprint is the natural imperfections in the metal plating on my hand!" Cyborg was typing faster now, checking several data references. "You can't duplicate something like that."
"Well somebody did," Robin stated matter-of-factly. "Is there any record of them leaving?"
After another moment and three more data screens, Cyborg gave the smaller teen a serious sidelong glance. "No. Whoever got inside must still be here."
Grimacing, Robin pulled his communicator out of his belt and clicked on the speaker. Normally he would just activate the loudspeaker for the entire Tower, but he didn't want to alert the intruder that they knew of his presence and were searching for him. Their advantage now was the fact that they knew their own home better than the intruder would, and could take him by surprise.
He spoke into the small device, knowing Raven and Beast Boy would hear the message from their own communicator speakers.
"Raven, Beast Boy, we definitely have someone inside the Tower. The rest of us are joining the search, activate communications if you find them."
Cyborg turned with the other three Titans as they moved away from the computer station to spread out through the Tower. He mumbled something about beating the stuffing out of hackers, and motioned that he was going to head for the upper levels.
Robin gave a quick nod and moved down the opposite side of the hallway, Starfire and Terra at his heels.
"So, let me get this straight," Terra said as she followed Robin for a short distance. "First of all, we find your future self dead, then the computer says Cyborg was here in the tower a half hour before he could have been. Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this is seriously weird?"
"You're not the only one," Robin gave her a smile that was only half-sincere and took a turn, leaving Terra to search on her own.
She paused for a moment. Being the newest member of the group, she wasn't as familiar with the layout of the tower as the rest of the Titans were, but due to her own past experience, she did know something about breaking and entering, and hiding in the midst of the enemy. "If I were an intruder, where would I hide?" she mused softly, faced with the decision of picking a direction. Allowing herself a small chuckle with the irony of the question, Terra moved towards one of the larger, more frequently used rooms, giving the answer aloud for no particular reason. "In plain view, of course."
The rec room was dark, the shadows of training equipment visible with the light from the open doorway. Flicking on the light switch, Terra gave the room a sweeping glance, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Several more rooms yielded the same results, until she had a strange burst of inspiration. Someone had managed to override Cyborg's security system, using his own access code, no less. If anyone was that technologically inclined, it might follow that they could be after some of the more highly developed and advanced technology that Cyborg created and used in the tower. "All techno-geeks think alike," she said to herself, heading down a stairway with her new idea of where to search.
Robin had just cleared the second floor of the tower when his communicator went off, and Terra's voice crackled to life.
"Ah, you guys probably all want to come down here now."
Surprised at her tone of voice, Robin tried to discern the emotion behind it. There seemed to be more disbelief and shock than fear. As he pulled the communicator from his belt to respond, she spoke again.
"I'm in the basement computer lab, you know, the one where Cyborg keeps all his crazy gadgets."
Robin turned on his feet, heading for the stairwells that would lead him to the basement. He heard the communicator go off again as Raven responded to Terra's message with a short acknowledgement, but didn't bother to initiate a communication himself.
As he cleared the last staircase and turned the corner, he could see Terra standing outside the closed door to Cyborg's lab. She glanced up at him as he came into view and emitted a short laugh, which wasn't really a laugh at all. "You can tell Cyborg to quit checking his security system. It's working perfectly."
Robin's eyebrow shot up as he stepped closer to her and the doorway. "What do you mean?"
She jerked a thumb towards the door. "Take a look for yourself. Our intruder is Cyborg."
As if on cue, the Titan she had just mentioned came barreling down the stairwell, part of his arm making mechanical whirring sounds as it shifted and repositioned itself to open the sonic cannon. "All right! Where is he?" He stopped at the bottom, scrutinizing the two Titans who were already there as though they were hiding the intruder from him. "Come on, let me at him. I'll teach him to mess with my security systems!"
A circular patch of the ceiling above them suddenly grew into a swirling mass of darkness, through which Raven promptly descended. The darkened space lingered for a moment even after she had fully emerged, the reason for which quickly became obvious as a green changeling dropped through after her, landing lightly in a crouch.
Now allowing the black vortex above her to dissipate, Raven turned to regard the cybernetic Titan. "Calm down," she remarked flatly.
The larger teen shot her a dark look, unsure as to whether her statement was due to the fact that she had heard his rant, or that she could sense his emotions. "I will calm down," he replied, "After I've taught this punk a lesson about breaking and entering on my turf!"
"What is this turf that has been broken?" A voice floated down from the stairwell, its echo followed by a worried-looking Starfire. "Can we not repair it?"
"Something's going to be broken all right," Cyborg muttered, "Namely, this intruder's neck."
"Enough, Cyborg," Robin answered. He was now leaning into the doorframe and gazing wide-eyed through the slightly opened door. "Something tells me you're not going to want to hurt this guy."
"Say what?" Cyborg deactivated his cannon and moved to peer through the crack over Robin's head. Terra moved aside, giving the rest of her teammates room as they all moved to crown around the doorway, trying to see.
The figure in the room was indeed Cyborg—but not the Cyborg that they knew as their comrade. This one was taller, older, more mature. He wore less metal plating; only a part above his left eye was still covered with the metal, extending down the side of his face and neck. One whole arm seemed to have been completely restored, while the other remained artificially enhanced. The clothes that he wore were wrinkled and disheveled, as though he had slept in them. At the moment, he was bent over one of Cyborg's worktables, concentrating wholly on a small, cylindrical device and muttering as he made adjustments to it. His manner had a feverish aura about it.
"It's Cyborg..." The tone behind Robin's voice was incredulous.
Crowded out by Starfire, Cyborg, and Robin, Beast Boy hadn't had a chance to look inside yet. He had his ear against the door and was listening intently. "Are you sure?" he answered uncertainly. "He keeps talking to himself, and saying 'Victor'."
"That's my name..." Cyborg didn't know what to think.
Raven was still standing a small ways back from the doorway, emotionless and logical as always. "This explains why I couldn't sense any foreign presences in the tower, and why Beast Boy didn't catch his scent."
For a moment, everyone was silent. Then Robin took a step back from the door and glanced at his teammates. "Whether he's Cyborg or not, right now he's still an intruder. And I, for one, want to know what he's doing in our tower."
"First we have found Robin's older self, and now we have found Cyborg's older self." Starfire spoke quietly. "You do not think this Cyborg might have had something to do with..." She trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence and its implications.
"We don't know anything for sure yet," Robin answered. He remained silent for a moment, then with a slight nod to his teammates, he pushed through the door.
Expecting the older Cyborg to give some sort of reaction as he entered the room, Robin was a little confused when he seemed to take no notice at all. Taking several more steps, Robin stood in plain view, looking intently at the man hunched over and hard at work. He heard his teammates footsteps behind him as they followed his example and entered the room slowly.
Still, the older Cyborg took no notice.
Not knowing what else to do, Robin made a quiet inquiry. "Cyborg...?"
Again, no response. Robin was amazed at how intense his focus must be if he still hadn't noticed them.
Quite suddenly, Raven's voice spoke up from behind him, using the name that Beast Boy had mentioned. "Victor?"
At the sound of his name, Victor suddenly glanced up in shock, then went deathly still, his human eye widening as he stared at Raven. He took a halting step forward, stretching out a hand. "Raven?" the voice came in a whisper of disbelief.
Raven's face darkened with uncertainty as his strange reaction to her. A barely discernible white glow began hinting behind her eyes as she drew slightly on empathic abilities. "He's not thinking clearly," she stated softly, "His emotions are fluctuating and his thought processes are detached."
"No..." Victor was whimpering to himself, even as he continued to gaze unblinking at the smaller, cloaked figure. His muttered, broken sentences made no sense. "This is wrong, too soon! It's not Raven, it didn't work, this is all wrong..."
Robin moved forward with a quick step. "Victor," he said softly. He didn't want to scare him, especially if he was in an unstable condition emotionally and mentally.
Victor's attention suddenly snapped to the black-haired teen, the human eye widening with fear. "You!" Suddenly he was backing away, clutching the device to him protectively. "Oh, god, you can't be here, you're dead!"
Robin halted, alarmed.
Victor's gaze was not shifting erratically between each teenager that stood before him. "No, it's too soon, and you're all alive again...because it's too soon...this isn't where it's supposed to be..." He glanced back down at the device in his hands.
The mutterings about people who were supposed to be dead, and the fact that their intruder was brandishing an unknown device were starting to make Robin feel very unsettled. This person before certainly wasn't the Cyborg that they knew, and he wasn't proving himself to be someone that they could reason with. And Robin decided that he didn't want to wait and see what Victor wanted to do with his strange machine in order to remedy the situation where he thought certain people shouldn't be alive anymore.
Extending a hand, Robin spoke in a commanding voice. "Let me see what you have there, Victor."
The older man's eyes shot up, locking on the smaller boy.
Robin nodded, his expression still serious as he tried to reassure the intruder by repeating things he had mumbled before. "Everything's fine, you don't have to worry about 'where it's supposed to be'. Just give me your machine..."
"No!" Victor screamed suddenly. He whipped the device up in front of him protectively, angrily, and something activated.
Before anyone knew what was happening, the device was glowing with a static, purple light. The light was shooting outward rapidly, expanding like a shield in front of Victor. And Robin was right in its way.
For an instant, Robin was encased in the strange purple shield of light, his body taking on a similar hue. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light suddenly faded, taking any trace of the dark haired teen with it.
Robin was gone.
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Author's Notes: Okay, I needed to use a different name for the older Cyborg, because I didn't want it to get confusing. I don't actually know his original character's real name, but I've heard him referred to as Victor Stone somewhere...so I used that. Sorry if I got it wrong.