A/N: Happy b-day Ash Aijo (January 22)!
Warning: This is one of those short "Won't make you feel good" stories, so freestanding and rather dark!
I Trusted You
Robin woke up in an unfamiliar bed with a very familiar ache.
No… not again… why did this keep happening to him, why-?
"Good morning, Robin."
The teen gasped as he threw himself over to the other side of the bed and rolled around.
"Slade!"
The man was standing in the doorway, blocking his escape, only wearing a pair of boxers and a smug smirk. The man had been sloppy, however; Robin spotted his belt lying on the floor on his side of the bed and he dove for it. The first thing he did was activating the distress signal. He was up against Slade, he was alone and he was through being an idiot. He needed every ounce of firepower on this; he needed his friends.
A sharp Bird-a-rang came next and Robin didn't kid around, he aimed for the man's heart. Slade was able to duck it, but the smoke bomb helped Robin slip away, just grabbing his tights.
He ran, fled, only taking the time to cover himself when he couldn't hear the man's shouts echoing through the building anymore. Slade sounded angry, of course, but maybe the tone wasn't quite right. Not that Robin wanted to stay and investigate.
His team had answered the call and met him as soon as he burst out of the door.
"Man, what happen?" Cyborg asked, his voice overpowering the other's questions and shouts of worry.
"He… he… he raped me…" Robin gasped. "Slade… Slade's inside…"
"Slade?" the metal teen gaped. "The bastard! Raven, stay with Robin, Star, BB, with me. GO!"
Robin watched dully from the side-lines, swept up in a bubble of black energy and floating above it all, as his team tore the building apart, looking for their enemy. Slade escaped, but he didn't do so unharmed.
Back at the Tower the team tried to console him, but they didn't have it easy as they didn't know what to say.
"He fooled us all," Cyborg growled. "Had us think he was one of us now, helping out…"
"Yeah, you were looking forward to seeing him last night…" Beast Boy said in a hollow voice.
"I… I was?" Robin stuttered. "I… I don't remember…" he clutched his head, trying to fight through the fog clouding up his mind. Yes, he remembered being... happy? But then something must have happened… again…
"I'm… I'm going to my room, guys… I need… I need some rest," Robin mumbled and got to his feet.
He spotted it on his nightstand; his diary. He picked it up, the thick book covering over a year, and he started flipping through it. It had been Scott, the first one… They had met in a bar, and then… nothing. Robin had woken up the next morning, confused and naked, in a motel room, and Scott was nowhere to be found. It had hurt, and not just physically. He had tested himself for the more common rape-drugs, but with no result. That didn't mean anything, though; new drugs hit the market every month. Still, he recovered, and he didn't tell anyone, He just made sure he was healthy, and he was. He had himself to blame too, he decided, he had been out to 'hook up', finally lose that pesky virginity… he had just hoped he would remember it.
Robin continued through the pages and then, suddenly, Patrick showed up… just a mention here and there, at first. Patrick worked at their pizza-place and the teen had always thought he was cute. Turned out he thought Robin was too. They had started dating. He didn't feel any rush now, quite the opposite, he'd rather put it off, but he could read between the lines, and sometimes actually spelled out, that he was beginning to be able to trust again. Robin snorted. Big mistake. It had been the same thing. At least he had woken up in the guy's apartment this time, and he was still there, getting dressed. Robin had gone mad. He couldn't remember exactly what had been said, but he remembered Patrick claiming that he was 'begging for it'. There was screaming and Robin thought he had hit the other young man before he ran out… still, he hadn't told anyone, not pressed charges. Patrick had only known him as Robin, after all… 'Boy Wonder Raped by Pizza-Boy'… yeah… the press would love THAT… But it had taken longer to get over that time, a lot longer.
Tears had started to roll over Robin's cheeks, blurring his vision as he came to the last four months of diary-notes. Many of them were about Slade. About disbelief when the man announced that he was working for the government, their personal mercenary and assassin. Suspicion and doubt followed, and then that mission with the international bank-robbers, where they had been forced to work together. An uneasy truce which had lead to an uneasy friendship, which had led to…
Robin gasped for breath as he sobbed. He read about himself falling in love, slowly but surely, and he wanted to scream out, warn his earlier self to stay away… because Slade would betray him… just like the others… He would drug him, somehow, and he would wake up to that smirk… filthy… used… HURT. Hurt beyond anything he had ever felt before, a pain so raw and overwhelming that he couldn't breathe… that he didn't want to breathe.
Robin stumbled towards the bathroom. He didn't want to breathe.
"It was a brain tumor, one of the rarest kinds I have ever come across. Only three other recorded cases in history."
"A tumor…?" Raven asked the man as he gestured for them all to sit down in the hard hospital chairs.
"Yes. Our brain is constantly overrun by different substances, like endorphins and hormones of varying kinds. In some circumstances, like during sexual pleasure, the brain is all but drowned in them… and this made the tumor react, swelling, and, because of its location, affected the short-term memory."
"So…" Starfire said, holding Robin's diary in her hands. "When he thought those awful things had happened to him…"
"They most likely had not."
"Patrick denies rape and so does Slade," Cyborg said grimly. "But theirs is the only words we have… that we'll ever have."
The team sat quiet for a while.
"Is it… treatable? I mean… would it be if he hadn't…?" Beast Boy asked.
"Very treatable, even though it's rare that tumors affect the memory in this particular way, this type of tumor rarely even requires surgery."
"So if he was…?" Raven started, swallowing heavily. "Then… he'd be fine?"
"As far as one can guarantee anything when it comes to medicine… I could almost promise," the doctor said, smiling a little.
"And… now?" Cyborg wanted to know.
"Now…" the man sighed. "He has lost a lot of blood… but if he ever wakes up from the coma… there's hope."
The End.
A/N: I asked on the duckling facebook page if I should kill Robin or not… I said that the first vote to reach three would win, I got three "don't kill him" within a few minutes… ;) So I decided to be sappy and let him live… at least barely… ;)
The request was for Robin to wake up after a one-night stand with Slade without any memory of it, and I wondered for half a day where to go with it… no memory meant drugs to me, but did Slade really drug him or not, and where would that lead? As the wish was for a darkish story and Ash Aijo said she didn't mind if it was a shorter one, I decided to make it this kind of emotional mini-one-shot, once I got the idea for the tumor (NOT medically validated, just made up)… When you think about it, it's kinda funny, in a scary way, to lose your memory after sex… and what about masturbation? Walking around going "what the hell did I do last night"? *snicker*. Actually I did think of it, and I decided that if Robin rubbed one off at night and then went to sleep, waking up in his own bed the next morning a little fussy about what he did before he went to bed, wouldn't be so noticeable, so… oh, well, I liked the theory… ;)
EDIT: I originally had a mention of suicide and my views on it, but I've fount it posted out of context online and when it is it appears that I think people who have a depression or suicidal thoughts are idiots and should just "get over themselves". This is NOT what I meant, I wasn't talking about people with REAL problems here... All I'm saying is that suicide is always a waste, and I don't like writing fics featuring it because it can be seen as 'glorifying' it.