Robin In Chains

Part Two: 'What Happened?'

Robin slowly came round, feeling a little nauseous and headachy. The room he was in took a long time in coming into focus. It wasn't very well lit, but it smelled clean. Air-freshener clean. No trace of dust.

His wondering at his location ceased once he realised he could not move his limbs. His fear rose; he began to panic at his helpless situation. He started to struggle, albeit weakly, desperate to break free.

A reassuring hand then placed itself on his shoulder. He swept his frightened gaze towards it, staring straight at the other person. Recognition – and hope – dawned.

"No…it can't be…" he whispered, afraid to think the person was real and friendly.

"Robin. Long time, no see." Aqualad's smile reinforced his supportive hand. He was glad that Robin still recognised him. Maybe this plan wasn't as foolish as several thought.

"But…but…where am I? How did you…what…why can't I move?"

Two other figures came into the light: the two that were with Aqualad on the balcony. "Let me introduce you to these two. This is Speedy, pretty much the best archer I've ever met. You may know of him already." Robin nodded as Speedy curtly greeted him. "And this is Terra. You won't know her. She's a geokinetic; she moves earth and rock with her mind. We found her wandering and we took her in."

"Hello," was her greeting.

Truth to tell, none of the three really knew of what to make of him. Ever since the events beginning eight months ago, there was nearly nobody at all who thought that Robin could actually be of some help in finally bringing Slade down. Everyone thought he was just as bad. But the ones who knew him – who were still alive, that is – felt that it was wrong to judge him as so.

The mistrust was obvious. The senior detectives had eventually warmed to the three's growing plan, until finally they had given the go-ahead and prepared for a long criminal interrogation session. But the three had intervened then, knowing that it wouldn't go well at all if they plunged straight into that. Capturing him with the drugging was going to be hard enough on his mind; they didn't want him to think that he was the one in serious trouble. Not too much, anyway.

No less than seven strong plastic loops tied Robin's wrists behind his back and the back of the chair. Steel handcuffs chained his ankles to the chair legs. The police had refused to let him be unrestrained at any time, much to Terra's dismay, but they said this would do for now. They had also taken off the armoured black uniform, instead dressing him in a thin yellow t-shirt and faded grey cotton pants. He was barefoot and bare-armed, and he could feel a plaster stuck over the wound on the back of his neck. He tried to guess at how long he could have been unconscious.

"Robin. Listen. We've been working on this for months. We're trying to stop Slade from turning the city into his empire, and we think you could be the key. I don't know how you must feel, but we would like your help."

Aqualad was startled by the sudden emotion that was shining in Robin's face. Salvation.

Speedy was the one who continued. "Okay…okay. I think we should start as we mean to go on; at the beginning."

"Good idea," said Terra.

"The…beginning?" murmured Robin, still a little disorientated.

"Tell us what happened. We need to know. All we do know is that eight months ago you switched sides, and the rest of your team died three weeks after," prompted Speedy.

All the way through that, Robin looked very thoughtful, as if trying to put his memories into words; but at the last few words he recoiled as if he'd been slapped round the face.

"Strike one," said Terra quietly. "Speedy, try not to mention that, would ya?"

Aqualad ignored them and pulled up a chair to sit directly in front of Robin. "But why you? What made Slade want you to be his apprentice?"

"I…" He swallowed hard. "Before it all…happened, Starfire said that we were similar. I didn't want to admit it…I was quite angry about it, but the remarks kept coming. He tricked the others to the trap, and me to his hideout. Then he triggered both traps at the same time – the nanoprobes into them, and me forced to…serve him."

"Nanoprobes?"

"Lordy…" Aqualad had figured it out very, very quickly. "No wonder. God, that man is smart, no matter how much you hate to say it, to devise blackmail so thoroughly…" He looked behind him at the other two. "If Robin had put one foot wrong then Slade would've set the nanoprobes to a destruction mode and let them wreak havoc within the Titans' bodies."

He turned back, and fixed Robin with a rather apologetic gaze. "I read the post-mortem report," he said quietly. "Their bodies were an utter mess inside. Even Cyborg's circuitry had been destroyed."

Robin lowered his head miserably.

"What did you do?" he asked softly.

"I tried to run away."

"Tried?"

"And failed. I…managed to get outside, and get to the woods out of town…but he caught up and…I don't remember much else."

He screwed his eyes shut painfully. "That's when he did it. Out of rage at me. I made him kill them, it's all my fault, I should've known better!"

Now he was trying not to cry and ruin his own self-esteem. From bottling everything up for eight months, releasing all that emotion was sure to have the repercussions later on.

"So what's that?" said Aqualad, seemingly talking to himself.

There was a pondering silence, but then a fourth voice spoke up.

"From a legal point of view, he isn't the one at fault. Morally, of course, it might be another matter."

The fourth voice was deeper and older than the other three's. The speaker came into the light and pulled up a chair of his own, surveying the restrained, still frightened and now very subdued teenager. The man was the senior detective who had supported the three's plan, and he had been eager to hear Robin's side of the story. He was intent on getting his city back to normality, and he had believed from the very beginning that Robin had not gone over to Slade's side willingly.

"So…you say that…"

&&&

It seemed to take hours, but in reality it was only forty-five minutes. The three watched the interrogation expert at work as he gently coaxed the beginning of the fable from Robin's memory to the detective's neat shorthand. But now his answers were slow in coming, and several times his head had seemed too heavy to hold up, and each time he jerked upright again. The detective knew that he would be overplaying his hand soon, as a testimony coming from someone who'd rather be asleep was not worth the same as one from someone wide awake. He decided to pause for some time, and he closed the notebook filled with his neat script.

"Time to stop?" said Aqualad.

"He's almost nodding off," remarked Speedy.

"But why? It's nine in the morning. Why is he getting tired now?" queried Terra.

"Slade must have deliberately re-arranged his body's clock to make him sleep through the day instead of the night. Like some kind of forced jetlag. It'll be hard to get his sleeping patterns back to normal," said the detective.

"So what do you suggest?" asked Aqualad.

"Well, we find him a bed. We'll have to continue this later." The man got up and called for the armed guards outside the door.

"Do you have to chain him up again? I just…think it's wrong." Terra looked down at the floor.

The two boys, helping the half-asleep Robin to stand with his hands still tied, looked at her.

The detective shook his head. "Sorry, Terra, but I think there's a total of five people in this base who even have a modicum of trust in him now, even disregarding his previous reputation. He'll be under police protection, but we have to do what's right for the public as well."

"What about…Slade…" Robin managed to get out.

"Ah. That reminds me." Brushing past Terra, the detective went to the table and picked up a thin, circular metal band. "We don't know how Slade finds you, Robin. For all we know, he probably has implanted some sort of tracking device within your body. If you wear this, it'll reveal nothing to any frequency or receiver but static." Purposefully, explaining as he did, he gently pulled Robin's head forwards a little, slipping the band around his rather thin neck and closing the ends together.

He gave a brusque nod to the three, effectively congratulation on the successful apprehension, and a dismissal as he took Robin's bare arm and helped him to the door.

Robin was glad, almost, of that strong but supporting hand. With his hands still bound behind him he was finding it difficult to balance, especially now he was fighting the fatigue that rolled over him like waves. "Where are you taking me?" he asked quietly.

"Solitary custody. But I reckon all you want to hear is that it has a bed. Sleep as long as you need and we'll see about feeding you later on."

"Do you have to…" He yawned spontaneously as they stopped outside a heavy windowless door set into the corridor. "…handcuff me again?"

The detective gave a nod to the guards behind him, but otherwise his voice was still gentle. "I'm sorry, but yes."

Robin nodded his understanding.

One of the guards behind him cut the plastic ties, but they kept a tight hold on his lower arms. They brought his arms round to his front, and fastened them together again. This time he could feel the coldness of the steel tight on both wrists, and he instinctively pulled his hands apart from each other, quickly learning that his limit was now about a ten-centimetre length of slack. Still holding his arms, they unlocked the metal door and half-led, half-pushed him inside. They weren't yet finished; a much longer chain was placed around his ankles, securing to a bolt in the floor and allowing him enough freedom to reach an adjoining bathroom, and more than enough for the bed, but not enough to let him reach the door. Satisfied, the guards left him and exited the room.

Robin impulsively cringed as he heard the door lock. He was sat on the bed, but for a long while he made no move, just staring at the chains on his wrists.

His shoulders sank. If there had been nobody there he recognised, and if he had sensed no hope in the air, he would have only ever felt this wretched once before in his life. Before he could think of anything more, the need for rest overcame him, and he welcomed the warmth of the blankets and the peaceful oblivion that soon followed.

There was hope, after all.

Yay! Second chappie!

Anyhoo. Um, please leave a review this time, I enabled the anonymous ones cause I only got two for the first chapter, and both from ppl I know. I'm at Winchester University now dances and I've changed my course to Creative Writing, and the lecturer said to alluv us fanfic writers: "Go back and have a look, and see if there's enough to make a real story out of your fanfiction!" Well I think there's loads in here, just gotta remove all the Teen Titans out of it...I think it's going to work. If you ever see a book very like this story, only with no TT except for the protagonist's name (Robin Holness! I already decided!) then I wrote it! But I will continue to write RiC, cause I need to know this story first!

And another thing...the 'chains' in the story are very symbolic. Okay, they're real in this chapter, but there's a whole load of symbolism that I realized...see if you can guess what it is. The next chap. will be rather short, almost like an interlude; just sayin'.