A/N: Prepare for another long one as a Christmas gift to you readers. And if you want to give me a gift, give me a review. Christmas is the time of giving. Giving a review is part of that Christmas spirit! And yes, I'm trying to sound extra cheesy and Hallmarkish. Is that even a word? Oh well. Just tell me if you enjoyed the chapter it will put a very big smile to my face. Thanks! And have a wonderful Christmas!

Disclaimer: look back on the other chapters and you will get a lot of disclaimers screaming that I don't own any of the Titans.

Chapter 16 He's Back

"You should get some sleep," Sam told Robin as she looked up from her laptop. She expressed an annoyed look and muttered into her headphones, "No, I'm not talking to you, Abe! Idiot!" Abe was heading into the jungle to keep going with the plan even though his talk with his dad didn't help much. Abe knew something was going on but he kept that unsteady feeling to himself so Sam wouldn't have to worry much.

"I'm fine," Robin said from he was sitting on the bed next to the one she was on. A thick book was in his bare hands. His mask was back on because for some reason it was like apart of the teen. Even though the boy was reading a perfectly good book and looking very relaxed, the truth was that he was very restless. His head spun with different thoughts about what he was doing. Small backup plans kept flying up randomly as he tried to read his book.

"It's one in the morning," Sam said flatly to him after glancing at the clock on the bedside table. "I know you didn't sleep on that plane, and I'm sure the day before you had none as well. To top it off, you haven't had lunch or supper. At least eat something."

"I'm not hungry," Robin answered simply while still reading. The statement was quickly shown as a lie when the teen's stomach growled loudly. Sam stared at him with worry on her face. She did care about the people she worked with. So far Robin was a pretty cool guy. She was afraid he would collapse from starvation or from being sleep deprived.

Robin watched the girl from the corner of his eye. He gave a small sigh of frustration while turning the page. He couldn't help being this way. He might not have his memory, but from doing the same thing for most of his life he created habits. Not sleeping for days was clearly one of them. He wasn't tired at all.

"Fine, I'll get something to eat," Robin muttered in defeat after a few seconds. He caught Sam's smug smile from where she worked at her computer as he marked his place in the book. Robin grabbed a mini banana out of a bowl on the small refrigerator in their room. He started to eat the sweet fruit as he leaned against the wall with a faraway look on his face.

"So while Abe is driving the bike out into the jungle to get to the site, let's talk about you," Sam said while sitting up on the bed. She gave him a big smile at his surprised look and said, "Maybe I can trigger a memory that you're keeping in that big head of yours. Want to give it a go?"

Robin shrugged. Truth be told, he had some second thoughts as to gain his memory back. But don't get him wrong. He really did want it! He couldn't go through his life knowing nothing whatsoever of his past. But what if he didn't like what he saw? What if what everyone had been telling him was just a lie and he was really someone else who he didn't want to be? There were so many possibilities. His fear was the unknown.

"Okay," Sam said with that same smile on her face. "So do you know anything about your real parents who died?"

"They were business people who got killed in a car crash," Robin guessed with another shrug. "That's all my mind tells me. I can't remember names or what they looked like."

"I don't think they were business people," Sam said with some hesitation. "Really, I don't know who you are under that mask. No one seriously knows."

"Yeah," Robin muttered. He gave a small wince and started to rub his forehead as some pictures flashed into his head. They were like fragments that flew at him then quickly whizzed by so he couldn't hold onto them. He couldn't make them out. But they created a lot of pain for his head.

Sam didn't see Robin wince and quickly moved on, thinking that there was no way he could gain those memories with her help. "What about Batman? Remember him?"

"He was evil," Robin said quietly. "That's all."

"No," Sam said with a sigh. Man, that machine had warped his past! "You were his sidekick. Both of you guys were superheroes. You then created the Teen Titans. Remember any of them?"

"Nope," Robin said with a sigh. "I told you already. I don't and can't remember anything! Ever thought that I'll never get my memory back? What if I'm bound to live a second life with all my childhood and half of my teen years gone for forever? Ever think about that?"

Sam wasn't affected by Robin's sudden outburst. It was what she was wanting and hoping for. Maybe something will snap in his head and make him remember. Till then she could keep on pushing more emotion out of him.

"What about Slade?" Sam asked him while getting off her bed with pretend anger. "Ever think about him, Robin? My dad said that you desperately didn't want to get your mind erased!" She was now yelling to stir him up some more. "He said you were almost pleading with him at the last second, even though that is so out of character for you. There has to be some bad memory about him that has a lot of emotion in it. Why can't you just remember one piece of information? Maybe you just don't want to!"

"Shut up!" Robin yelled back at her. "Don't you think I've been there already? I'm not stupid! I've tried millions of different ideas to get something back. You don't know what I'm going through. You don't know the confusion and frustration. It's hard living with no goals or a passion in your life. You're constantly wondering why you're alive or striving to keep going on. There's no hope in this brain of mine! You…" He winced a little as more of those fragments came at him. "You…" He had to stop because now the pain was too great and the fragments were speeding up.

"Oh no," Sam muttered. She ran up to him and wondered what she had done. Maybe she had pushed him a little too far. She watched hopelessly as Robin slowly dropped to the floor while clutching his head as immense pain burned his forehead. He tried to close his eyes to block all the visions that kept coming at him at light speed, but nothing could stop them now. All he could do was wait it out.

Sam quickly took out her cell phone and frantically punched in her dad's number with a look of panic on her face. It rung a few times and she swore quietly to herself because she thought her dad wouldn't pick up. But he finally did and she yelled shakily into it, "Dad! It's Robin!"

Robin looked up to the girl from where he sat on the floor. He quickly closed his eyes again with another wince. These flashes of memory zooming around in his head started to go faster, and this made the teen cry out in pain. His head felt like it was going to explode. When would it stop?

After a few minutes of extreme pain, the memory flashes started to slow down and they finally came to a complete stop. Robin took in a few deep breaths to steady himself. He was sweating profusely and shaking uncontrollably. He looked up to Sam and saw her give him a worried smile and put an ice pack on his forehead.

"I just called my dad," Sam whispered quietly to him. "He said you will be fine. He also said you were getting a lot of your memory back because a normal gain of memory wouldn't give you that much pain. What do you remember?"

"Enough," Robin said coldly as his deadly glare was placed on the ceiling. He had seen enough.

- Raven -

"Raven! Wake up, girl! Jeez, you're a sound sleeper!" Cyborg whispered sharply to Raven as he lightly shook her shoulder to wake the Goth girl up. She slowly opened her eyes and looked at her clock with a priceless, confused expression on her face. Her perplexed look quickly turned into one of deep annoyance as she saw that it was around midnight.

"What is going on?" she whispered harshly back at Cyborg while sitting up. Starfire was right beside him with a worried look in her wide, green eyes that kept darting around the dark room. Beast Boy stood there looking like he was dozing off even while standing up. But something was different about his vibes and mood. Raven could sense that he was extremely uneasy about something. But why?

Cyborg gave his friend a sheepish smile before answering, "I'm calling a meeting."

Raven pulled the covers over her head with a loud moan at their ignorance. "You all are crazy," she mumbled into her pillow. "Go to sleep. I'm not going to a one in the morning meeting."

Cyborg gave a short sigh of frustration before saying seriously, "It's about Robin."

Raven's eyes went wide with surprise from where she hid under her covers. She was suddenly awake. So she hadn't been the only one who thought Robin was acting strange. Raven sat back up and said emotionlessly to Cyborg, "I'm up."

In only the matter of minutes, the four Titans were in Starfire's room. They didn't want to wake Robin because the meeting was about him. Raven levitated in the air with her legs crossed while Cyborg and Starfire sat on the bed. Beast Boy laid off to the side of the round, pink bed and was trying his hardest to go to sleep and to act normal. He already knew what was wrong with their so called "Robin", and he wasn't about to go blab it out of the world.

"So, you think that something is strange with Robin too?" Raven asked them. "His vibes are different with me, and I don't have that connection with him like before. That is how I knew he was acting different. He's hiding something from us."

"He does not conversation with me as easily as before," Starfire with deep concern in her voice. She always did care a lot for the Boy Wonder. "I wasn't going to say anything, but Cyborg asked me and I couldn't lie."

"He's not his usual over obsessive self anymore," Cyborg said.

"Wait," Beast Boy said while sitting up. "Isn't that a good thing?" He was only answered by mean glares to make him shut up. Beast Boy shrugged and yawned. As long as they didn't catch on to his anxious mood, he was good.

"But he seems more unsure of himself nowadays," Cyborg went on. "He doesn't like to interact with us. He tries to avoid us at all costs. And he sucks at basketball."

The team gave him weird looks at his last sentence. Beast Boy gave a small laugh at his randomness while Starfire asked innocently, "How does the ball of basket have to do with the strange ways of our leader? I am confused."

"It was a joke, Starfire," Raven said emotionlessly.

"But it wasn't funny," Starfire said. "This meeting should be serious. This is Robin, our leader, we are meeting for. Would he crack the jokes if he had a meeting for one of us?"

"No, it wasn't a joke," Cyborg said to back himself up. "Usually Robin and I play basketball everyday if it is good weather. For the past week he has sucked so bad when we play that he can't even get a point." Beast Boy opened his mouth to say something and was cut off by Cyborg adding, "And he wasn't letting me win, if that's what you're thinking, BB." The changeling frowned.

"What about you, Beast Boy?" Raven asked him suddenly. Beast Boy's ears perked up in surprise and fright. Raven felt his nervous vibe, and she narrowed her eyes at him with suspicion. "Have you noticed anything different in Robin?"

There are a few things that Beast Boy couldn't do. One of them was lie straight face to his friends. The sweat was now dripping down freely under his short, green fur. He slightly shook his head no and looked down to his feet. He wanted to go back to sleep.

"You know something, don't you?" Cyborg asked Beast Boy. The changeling scooted away from the half robot teen and shook his head again. Cyborg frowned while Starfire narrowed her eyes sharply at him.

"What are you not telling us, friend?" Starfire asked him. For once there was some anger in her voice. This only made Beast Boy even more tense. He especially hated to make her mad at him because she usually was so happy with everything. It took a lot to make her angry.

"I don't know anything," he said as he put his hands up to defend himself. He then looked to the door and bolted for it when he realized that he was slowly getting pushed into the corner of Starfire's room. The others all went after him with shouts of protest for his stupid act.

"Get him!" Cyborg yelled to his team as he lunged for the green teen. Beast Boy screamed loudly in fright as he jumped into the air to avoid getting caught. Cyborg banged into the wall and Beast Boy ran for the door again.

Starfire swiftly blocked the door before Beast Boy could get to it. Beast Boy bit his lower lip before morphing into a fly and stealthily zipping past her. He buzzed around her head then headed for the side of the door that would lead into the wall. He was so close to escaping.

"Stop!" Raven yelled and suddenly the whole room was bathed in black with white outlining. Beast Boy, as a fly, soared right into the black wall and quickly changed back into his humanoid self with a wince and cry of pain and defeat. He lost his balance while backing up from the door while holding his sore nose. He then fell onto his butt.

When Beast Boy looked up, he saw Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven looming over him with deep frowns on their faces. They were clearly not happy with him. The changeling gave his team a weak smile that quickly fell from his face when they didn't give him any pity.

"Tell us," Cyborg said sternly down to him. "Tell us everything you know about Robin."

- Red X -

"We need to pick up the pace," Red X said over to Jessica. He gave a small grunt while setting the unknown computer device on his kitchen table in his small apartment where they had decided to store their many treasures for Slade. He glanced over his shoulder to see Jessica slowly coming into the room with the same kind of device in her hands. "Trouble?" he asked her while watching her wince from the heavy weight of the object.

"Why don't you just shut up?" she snapped back at him. She was still mad that she was working under him now. "We are going at a fine speed. Plus, the next place is going to be easy."

"No, you can't think that way when being a thief," Red X quickly said. He swiftly caught the device when she tripped and almost dropped it. "Nothing is easy," he said to her as he set the thing on the table along with all the other odds and ends they were ordered to get for Slade.

"Can't we just take a little break?" Jessica asked him. She collapsed into his dusty and old couch in the dark living room attached to the kitchen. "Nice place," she muttered sarcastically when the dust cleared away from her face.

"In an hour it will be four in the morning," Red X said in a rush. He started to pace the living room in front of the girl, in his own little world. "The Titans wake up in an hour to two hours after that time. I need to be there before they wake up."

"Crap," Jessica said with a sigh. "You're going to pull an all-nighter, so that means I have to do the same. Don't you ever sleep?"

Red X didn't answer her. He stared at the clock on the wall while calculating the timings of things in his head. "We need to move," he finally said. "Break's over. Hope you had fun."

"Can't we just take it slow, Jakey?" Jessica asked with a deep sigh of weariness.

"No," Red X snapped back at her.

"You're acting as if you like being a thief," she muttered while standing up. She looked at him thoughtfully with those cold, blue eyes and said sweetly, "You're a whole other person while in thief mode." She gave him her trademark wicked smile and said, "Slade picked the perfect person."

Red X raised his foot up and kicked her sharply in the chest. The girl was too surprised to counterattack and ended up landing on the couch with a wince. Red X stood there fuming and balling his hands into tight fists. Jessica looked up at him, and something very similar to a growl escaped her lips.

"I didn't want to be put into this position," Red X muttered to the girl. His voice was sharp and harsh as his eyes were narrowed dangerously. "You want me on Slade's and yours side, give me a better reason to believe that joining you is better than where I am now. But you're going after something you'll never kill."

Jessica picked herself up while still glaring venomously at the teen. She couldn't form any words or think of any way of getting back at Jake for knowing exactly what she had been trying to do. Red X gave a sigh as the tense air finally cooled down between the two and they could speak freely once again. It wasn't easy talking to her like a normal being, but they were both working at it.

"We're going to cut it close," he said. "Let's go." Jessica sluggishly jogged behind him to the door of the room. Red X noticed her laziness right away, and his anger at her carelessness finally got the better of him as he yelled behind his shoulder, "NOW!" His outburst did the trick, and the two were quickly heading for their next destination.

- Jake -

Jake rubbed his sleepy eyes as he dressed into his Robin uniform. He slowly and sluggishly pulled on his metal bottom shoes with a wide yawn. He had just gotten to the Tower, and it was around four or five in the morning. He was going to meet Beast Boy in the basement, but he wanted to get ready for the day first.

The teen gave a small sigh while shoving his Red X suit into his pillow case. He gave another tired yawn, but quickly told himself to wake up. He was wasted of all energy from his night of stealing. He had never stolen from so many places in one night before. And Jessica was not much any help. She was just two extra hands to carry the stuff away.

Jake's body refused to calm down, though. At the time of stealing, he had been calm and relaxed with an occasional sly smirk on his lips. Right now he was on the brink of a nervous break down because the stress and intenseness of the night was finally weighting down on his mind.

The hallways were dark and silent in the Tower that early morning. No one seemed to be up yet. Jake was very thankful for that part. He casually walked down the cold hallway and to the living room. He grabbed an apple out of a bowl on the counter there and then headed for the basement with a depressed look in his fading, blue eyes. The light in them was gradually vanishing with every command Slade gave him. The fun loving twinkle and fiery spark in those bright eyes was now gone. Determination was the only thing that could be seen in them as he tried to push through his struggle.

"Beast Boy," Jake called down the stairs of the basement when he saw that the lights were out. He wondered if the changeling was even down there. Did he forget to set his alarm? The hair in the back of his neck stood up as his gut feelings told him to flee. The teen swallowed his uncertainty and proceeded to walk down the stairs after putting his apple down on the first step.

Darkness surrounded the thief when the door behind him slid closed and cut off any light to the room. Jake didn't flick on the lights as he slowly went down the stairs with alertness to every step he took. An ominous echo sounded out when Jake's shoes hit the metal stairs under him. The foreboding sound clearly gave away his position and then came back to him as if mocking the teen for his very unwise decision.

It seemed like it took Jake forever to reach the very bottom of the stairs. "Beast Boy, are you there?" he whispered harshly into the threatening darkness that seemed to engulf his whole body. "Answer me! This isn't a joke! Beast Boy!"

"End of the line, Robin," someone said off to Jake's side. It sounded like Cyborg. The sudden sound of someone else's voice other than Beast Boy's made the teen jump and gasp a little from surprise and shock. The thief cried out in pain as the lights were suddenly turned on and the whole basement was bathed in bright light that burned his eyes that had got adjusted to the darkness.

"Or should we say, Red X?" another voice said with anger flowing in it. This voice now sounded like Starfire's. Jake opened his burning eyes as panic flashed on his face. He spotted Beast Boy tied to an old chair in the middle of the room. He was bound and gagged. The changeling only looked to the floor in defeat. Cyborg stood by the chair with his laser cannon aimed at Jake. Starfire and Raven where on both his sides and hovering in the air. All three didn't look too happy at his arrival.

"Or should we call you by your real name? Jake?" Raven asked him with her voice emotionless as always. Jake's brain went into shock for the first few seconds. He couldn't function. Things were coming at him way too fast for him to comprehend. He then put his head on straight and he barred his teeth in frustration and anger over the situation. Things weren't going to be pretty.

Without a word, Jake bolted for the stairs. He heard Cyborg shout something to his team behind him as he climbed up the stairs as fast as he could. A sonic blast flew over his shoulder and barely missed the teen. Jake jumped up to the railing while pulling out his grappling hook. He quickly aimed and in seconds was airborne.

Starfire acted quickly and threw a few starbolts at the cord propelling Jake into the air. One cut through the cord and left Jake battling with the gravity working fully against him. A sharp yell of surprise escaped the teen's mouth as he realized he was heading the opposite way he attended to go. He landed on the floor with a grunt of pain and had to roll a few times to lighten the impact. He finally got to his shaky feet as his legs threatened to stop supporting him.

BAM!

The boy could only wince as a blinding pain exploded in his head. He fell to the hard floor and slowly touched the back of his head. When he looked at his fingers he could see his crimson colored blood on them. Jake's vision doubled and he cringed while fighting for consciousness. Everything was starting to go dark, and he couldn't stay awake any longer.

"No!" Jake muttered faintly. "You don't understand!" He saw two feet come into his fuzzy vision. By the look of the shoes, it had to be Raven. "Raven, you don't understand. Believe me! Please." And then he succumbed to the darkness with dread of waking up again because he knew what would be in store for him.

A/N: Another long chapter! If it sucked it was because I had writers block for it. Hope you liked it! My next update will be on the 31st as a New Years gift to my wonderful readers! Please give a review!