Teen Titans
Fragile Dreams

A/N Yeah, a lot actually happens between this episode and Nevermore. Those episodes aren't importantly changed, so I'm ignoring them... for now. Flashbacks and memories of them might become important. For reference, here is the chronology so far:

Final Exam
Sisters takes place, but is NOT SHOWN because there is no change to the episode.
Divide and Conquer
Forces of Nature
Date with Destiny
Nevermore

Deep 6 takes place, but is NOT SHOWN because there is no change to the episode. The Sum of His Parts takes place, but is NOT SHOWN because there is no change to the episode.
Masks takes place, but is NOT SHOWN because… it will be told through flashbacks.

There. That should help clear up any confusion. One final note: Raven's sixteenth birthday came and went in between these chapters, and since no one else knows what it is yet, nothing happened.

Disclaimer - Think about it. If I owned the Teen Titans, I wouldn't need to be rewriting the show, now would I?

Fragile Dreams Chapter 8 - The Apprentice, Part 1
Robin was facing down Slade alone, chasing him through a series of desert hills. When he finally caught up to his arch-enemy, Slade was waiting for him between a set of four stone pillars. "So now you've found me." Slade said in his immaculate tone (A/N Ron Pearlman is the god of voice acting, seriously).

"And now I'm going to stop you." Robin replied as he brought out his staff.

Slade started circling, and as he passed behind a pillar he taunted Robin. "But how can you stop me when you don't know what I'm planning?" Robin tried to attack him, but the criminal, masterfully dodged out of the way of all his strikes, counter-attacking viciously. Robin finally landed a hard blow to the head, and Slade went down in a heap.

Robin grabbed him by the collar of his armor and pulled him up so he was looking Slade in the eye. "Now I've beaten you." Slade just laughed and laughed, finally managing to stop.

"And look what you've lost to do it." Robin glanced around, his face taking an expression of horror. During the battle, the four pillars had been destroyed. In the ruin of each, he could make out the ruined form of a Titan.

The first one he found was Cyborg. His arm ripped off, he lay staring off at the sky, his eyes unfocused and his expression one of so complete a resignation it reminded him of nothing Cy had ever done. The next was Beast Boy, his crushed form emerging from halfway under a mountain of stone. Starfire was likewise crushed, an expression of sorrow creasing the lovely features he had seen so commonly.

Last, Robin spotted Raven, petrified and head detached from the body, but still seeming to glare right at him. Her eyes, emotionless to most, seemed to shine for him with accusation and betrayal. She blamed him. This was his fault. "Raven..."

Robin's head snapped back to the limp form in his hands. "Who are you!" He ripped off the mask, but all he saw was his own face, smirking back at him. His duplicate laughed and laughed, the sinister sound haunting Robin.

Robin awoke with a start. Every night a new dream of Slade, growing increasingly disturbing to the teenage leader. 'God damn it, why was this man such an enigma?' Robin frowned. He had a beautiful girl who was absolutely dedicated to him, a team that was finally functioning, and real friends for the first time. Despite it all, the last two months were anything but pleasant.

Ever since his brief fight with the disguised Slade when Thunder and Lightning attacked, he had been preoccupied with him, even to the point of pretending to be Red X, ditching his team. That had been a disaster, resulting in Slade beating him badly and him losing the trust of his own team. Raven still had barely talked to him since that.

Raven... he found him thinking about her more and more recently, no matter how hard he tried to banish the beautiful empath from his head. When he was with Star he could think only of his Slade, but every other time Slade and Robin jointly dominated his thoughts. 'Damn it, I'm not supposed to feel this way!' He punched the wall by his bed.

Just then his door opened and Cy walked in. "It's him. It's Slade." Robin and Cy hurried to the Command Room where the rest of the team was already waiting.

"Hello Titans. I hope I didn't wake you."

Beast Boy was the only one to respond. "Dude, it's 5:00 in the mourning. What are you, some kind of insomniac villain?" Raven elbowed him, and he shut up.

"I've tried to leave you plenty of clues, but since you've been unable to discover my plans, I suppose I shall simply need to tell you." Slade stepped to the side, revealing a group of Slade bots working on a large, cylindrical object. "Can I assume your all familiar with a chronoton detonation?"

A collective chorus of gasps went up. BB looked embarrassed, and turned to Starfire. "What is that?"

"A bomb that shall remove all chronoton ions from matter in it's radius, disrupting the continuum of time-space."

He looked exasperated and more confused than before. "And that means?"

"It stops time," Raven said calmly, as if discussing dinner, "Permanently."

"Eeep!"

"We will stop you Slade!" Robin said, slamming his fist into the control panel.

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't try. See you soon, Titans."

As Slade signed off, Robin turned and started to storm out of the room. "Hey, Robin," Cy started.

The boy wonder spun, cape flaring angrily. "What?" Cyborg suddenly found the panel on his arm very interesting.

"Me and the others think maybe you should sit this one out." Cyborg said, not daring to meet the masked eyes of his leader. "No offense, but you get kinda crazy around Slade."

"I can handle it."

"Friend Robin, Cyborg is correct. Slade brings out much of the bad Robin." Starfire said, nervously wringing her hands behind her back.

Robin was shocked. Starfire was in on this? The others... including... Raven? He felt strangely hollow at the thought. He also felt betrayed. Hadn't she swore she would be loyal to him? Wasn't this the girl that had shown her trust for him in her own mind? If Raven had abandoned him now, he had nothing. He was about to just give in when Raven spoke softly from the screen. "Let him come. If he says he can handle it, he can."

Everyone looked at Raven. She was the last person any of the Titans expected to speak up. "Besides, Slade gave us more information than he thought. I found the bomb. Pier 41, the docks."

The three semi-mutinous Titans looked at each other, and shrugged. The area around the Titans went pitch black as Raven surrounded them with her soul-self. They briefly took the form of a Raven and faded into nothingness, reappearing just outside the docks. Robin shrugged of the flutters in his stomach that always came with that sort of transport. "Titans, Go!"

Raven hoped he had made the right choice. Robin did sometimes lose control when it came to Slade... she trusted him to figure it out and get it together. She trusted him... was loyal to him.

The reason for her unswerving loyalty still evaded her, and the phenomenon got more confusing the longer it lasted. Why wad she still so loyal to him? Hadn't he betrayed her trust by going alone against Slade as Red X? She still remembered the barely restrained anger as she instructed him "Don't you ever do that to me again, Robin." She hadn't really talked to him for two weeks since, but somehow her trust for him had returned, stronger than ever.

The Titans burst into the warehouse on pier 41, but it was empty. She sighed. Again, Slade was always a step ahead. Slade bots started dropping down from the ceiling. 'I guess the warehouse wasn't quite empty after all.

The Titans grouped up, then exploded into motion. Robin was moving faster than she'd ever seen before. She stared on in awe as he fought, taking on bots by the dozen, a real one-man army. The Titans stopped really trying as they stared at the spectacle of Robin winning by himself. "Dude," Cy finally dared to say as Robin beat mindlessly on a bot. "They're all done. We won."

Robin spun, sweating and breathing hard. "You call this victory! Slade got away, and has his finger on the detonator!" He stormed off. That was really worrisome. Raven again really hoped she made the right choice.

Fifteen minutes later, the Titans were marching through the sewers, following Star's nose. Cy stopped, pointed at his wrist sensor, and nodded ahead. He had found the bomb. As the Titans closed on it, the boat it was on raced off. As they gave choice, a pair of gray arms blasted through the sewer walls and grabbed Robin. Raven looked in, and saw Robin battling it out with Cinderblock. "Go! Get the bomb!" He yelled to the others as he fought.

Raven hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was leave Robin to fight alone, but she knew he was right... the bomb was most important. Her rational mind told her to go, but emotions screamed at her to stay, and the conflict was tearing her up inside. 'Trust...' She resumed levitating, and flew after the boat as fast as she could.

Robin was dodging from pillar to pillar in the vast room, just seconds before Cinderblock smashed them. On the third leap, Robin shot his grappling hook at the pillar he was leaping towards, using it as a pivot point to change directions, converting all his motion to a kick directly at Cinderblock's face. The massive stone golem staggered and went down. Robin dropped into a fighting crouch. "It's only fair to warn you: You caught me on a bad day."

Cinderblock got to his feet and charged again. Robin did a wall kick off one of the pillars, leaping clear over the charge and landing on the head. Robin placed a bomb on the back of his head, and then jumped away as it blew. He smiled as Cinderblock careened into a wall, and went down. He didn't get up.

Robin was about to run of after his team, but then he saw something in Cinderblock's hand. A tracking device. On it, it showed his current position, the position of the bomb, and a blinking S.

Slade.

Robin slowly smiled.

Slade was watching the screen where the Titans were desperately chasing after his bomb when the door to his clock tower blew open. He almost sighed. 'So predictable.'

"I've been waiting for you, Robin," he intoned without bothing to turn around. "I was beginning to think Cinderblock had been too much a challenge."

"I'm taking you down Slade!"

"Really?" he responded, his voice never losing its calm. He produced a detonator and lay it down halfway between Robin and himself. "If that's so, come and claim it." Robin charged, and launched himself in a flying kick. Slade ducked, back stepping Robin's next furious attack as he threw a threesome of bone crushing punches. Robin jumped, delivering two spinning kicks that Slade deflected, ruining the Titan's balance and sending him to the ground.

Robin rolled to his feet, coming up right next to the detonator. He made a quick rush for it, but Slade's flying kick knocked him too far away, and the pair came up in a beautiful choreography of strikes, parries, and counters. Robin would attack; Slade would either block or evade, and follow up by launching a counter. Robin would then parry or dodge, then make his own riposte. Robin couldn't land a real hit on Slade, he was getting frustrated to the point he was going to try something risky.

After rolling out of the way of a skull shattering kick from his nemesis, the Titan's leader came up with a spin of his staff, hitting Slade in the knee. Robin used the impact from that blow to reverse his rotation, shifting his grip on the staff as he spun so he now held it by the end and it had essentially doubled it's length. He whipped around in the spin, catching Slade under the chin with the wicked roundhouse blow as the mastermind tried to back up and evade. 'Yes!'

Robin's victory was short lived, however. Slade continued the spin given by the horizontal swing, and as he came around his hand lashed out the grab the quarter-staff. Slade's strength and the added momentum of his spin was more than enough to wrench the weapon out of the boy wonder's hands, and Slade stopped his spin with a roll backwards. He came up in a crouch, staff at the ready. "You'll have to do better than that to stop me, Robin."

Robin, however, was no longer facing Slade. When Slade had taken his weapon, the spin and the following backwards roll had created a blind spot for a second or two, and Robin had used it to claim the detonator. "Clever kid." Slade said, and you could just tell he was smirking under the mask. "Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything." As Slade spoke, the detonator fell to pieces in Robin's hands.

"Where is the real detonator!" Robin roared, his voice deadly.

"There is no detonator, because there is no bomb. Your team has already discovered the decoy by now." Slade unconcernedly walked up to the computer console and began to type.

'Raven…' was his first though, followed guiltily by 'Starfire…' a second later. "What do you want with them?

Slade stopped typing, and actually looked at Robin. "I don't want anything from them, Robin," he said, sounding disappointed. "It's never been about them, it's all about you. Leaving clues behind for you to find, the challenges, the fight we just had… I was testing you." The monologueing villain continued his typing. "You see, for some time now I've been looking for an apprentice; someone to carry on for me when I'm gone. And Robin… I've chosen you. After all, we are so very much alike."

The Titan was practically shaking with rage. "I am nothing like you! I will never serve you!"

"Oh, I disagree Robin. You'll serve me quite willingly. Observe." The screen now showed the Chronoton bomb fizzling in front of the other four titans, and then a laser popped up from behind and blasted the four. They went flying into the water but seemed otherwise unhurt. "Don't get your hopes up. I assure you, it worked." Slade boasted, as if reading Robin's doubtful thoughts. He tapped a few more keys, and the big screen suddenly displayed a view of the inside of veins in the four Titans. Millions of microscopic robots were even now attaching themselves to cells.

Slade help up another detonator. "This remote will trigger the nanite bombs, destroying your friends in moments. If you obey my every command, my slightest whim, your friends will live. Do you understand where I'm going with this?"

Robin tried hard to look confidant, but he knew he had lost yet again. This time, the cost would be the lives of his friends… Raven included. 'I don't have a choice,' he thought.

"I'll do it"

Raven and the other three titans were now walking the streets, looking for Robin. His communicator seemed to be off, as was his locator. Starfire frantically tried to raise him, and Raven tried to psychically sweep the city with equal fervor, if more calmly. 'Where are you, Robin?'

'I shouldn't have let him fight alone.'

End Chapter 8
A/N – Wow… it's been a while since I did any real fight choreographing, and to be honest I really enjoyed being able to write some more of it. You guys, the reviews get the final call though. Did you like the in depth writing on the fight scene? I'm a martial artist myself, so I have a pretty good idea of what each fighter is thinking and trying to do. Do you want me to keep detailing fight scenes? Well, the important ones anyway.

Anyway… there's a little blue button just to the left of this paragraph. Click it. Tell me what you think. That's all there is to it.

Next time on Teen Titan - Fragile Dreams:

-The team finds Robin
-Raven realizes just how much she really trusts Robin
-It's time for the evil genius to take a fall.
-And it's time for another LONG chapter.

Next Episode – The Apprentice, Part 2