Redeeming Choices
Chapter Four: Lingering Doubt
Summary: Eight years ago, Starfire went missing, breaking the Titans apart. Now, Robin has spent eight years looking for, but the woman he's found isn't anything like who's he's looking for. What are Slade and his new partner planning? An AU.
Notes: This is out of character. In fact, this is so out of character that I'm going to go ahead and say that it's AU (Alternate Universe). Starfire is outrageously evil-sexy, Nightwing will be clueless, Slade will be maniuplative and cute, Beastboy is jaded, Raven is enlightened, and everything else is an original character or plot. WARNING: This is highly confusing to everyone but me. Enjoy. Also: Kori Anderson was Starfire's comic book name, Dick Grayson was comic book Robin (the first Robin)…I think that's it. This has elements of the show, comic books, Batman, one of my X-Men fanfics, and Jason Bourne. How cool is that? So if it gets confusing, just keep reading. It is AU, but if you go by the comic-verse Dick Grayson had at least sixteen different personalities and alternate storylines, so this one isn't really that crazy. Also, according to all canon, she can absorb languages through direct contact with a person. Don't see how that works, but one heck of a plot device…
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. The opening bit comes from the story The Hitman, it's a lovely Slade/Starfire so go read it. Beautiful Stuff all around.
------Kori Anderson was a naturally optimistic person. She always believed the best of everyone, thought life wonderful, everyone honest and kind underneath. To further her education, Slade took her to Africa.
There was always a war going on in Africa, over land, or water, or guns, or religion, or someone's skin being the wrong color. The village they went to was poor, dirt poor, overrun with some government regime carrying machine guns and sporting crisp new uniforms. The first time Kori saw them gun down a child, she cried. The fifth, she kept walking.
They packed light. Slade had a gun, some clothes, while Kori carried a backpack of cheap tank tops and wrinkled cargo pants. Between them they carried only $500—when they left, they'd spend only $150 of it. "You don't need money," Slade told her. "Not a lot of money. These people have no money, that's not what they really want."
Kori's optimistic attitude didn't last long. They visited a local government-run school, watched lines of children recite praises to the current dictator while Slade factually detailed his crimes. "How can they say such things?" Kori asked, her eyes wide.
"They'll be beaten if they don't," Slade said. "Honor comes second to physical safety. Mazlo's Hierarchy of Needs."
Kori nodded, quiet.
"This is what I saw in the wars," Slade said, and Kori quietly reached for his hand.
"Is it this way many places?" Kori asked one night. They slept at the local hospital, a mere hovel with dirt floors and imported metal beds. For Slade's extravagant $50 donation, they'd eagerly given the couple a cot in the corner, complete with curtained-off privacy—the room that normally served as the office. Kori's white tank top was dusty, her hair braided and unwashed. The two hadn't showered in a week. The local waterlines, such as they were, were broken again.
"Some of it," said Slade. He sat up in bed, leaning on one elbow. The faint light from his wristwatch illuminated the curve of his face and bathed Kori's in blue light. It was pitch black otherwise—there were no streetlights. "This is bad, yes…but this is arguably not the worst."
"The worst?" asked Kori.
"These are the crimes of poor countries," said Slade. "Most of Africa is this way, because it is a continent of poor countries. There are different crimes, of a different type, in industrialized nations."
Kori was silent. They shared the cot. Slightly bigger than a camp bed, it was nevertheless the largest the hospital could spare. Soldiers had free reign of this hospital, and took beds to sleep at night, sometimes evicting the dying to do so.
"Can't we help them?" she asked finally.
"How?" Slade asked. "What would you do?"
"Can't we…open an orphanage?" she asked. "The children…there are so many of them, always out in the streets, can't we feed them and clothe them and give them a real school?"
"We would go to prison," said Slade, "Or be shot, along with the children, for doing it without the government's permission, for refusing to sing praises to the current regime."
"Can we help the hospital? Give them more beds or medicine?"
"So more soldiers can sleep? As to medicine, the whole country is in short supply. Any good medicine would be seized and taken to government military hospitals immediately. It would help none of these people."
Kori was silent. "Isn't there anything we can do?" she asked finally, her voice quavering a little in the darkness.
"The problems can't be fixed here," Slade said gently. "These are problems of the government, the dictator, the mindset, the money, the people…this isn't something you can come in and fix. And if you did, it would be wrong, they would resent you for it. They don't want help from outsiders. Trying to help this one town? It's like giving a bandaid to someone with terminal cancer."
They both fell silent. In the darkness, they listened to the sighs of soldiers turning over in their sleep, the beeping of a few distant, ancient machines; soldiers on life support. Slade's watch beeped out and he lay down on the mattress, one arm gently resting on Kori's waist. When he heard the first muffled sob escape her lips, he pulled her close to him, their bodies warm and alive. The two clung tightly on the tiny bed, a celebration of life when so many around them were dying.
The days marched on, and Kori's education continued. They left Africa, returning to Slade's European home briefly before flying to China, Russia, Japan, Columbia, Venezuela, Mexico. Kori wasn't optimistic now. She watched everything with silence, sparse comments, absorbing as much as she could. Slade's quiet stories and instruction guided her. The two usually travelled light, and alone, taking no more than carry-on bags, things they could carry on their backs. Slade always wore a gun and Kori didn't need one. They visited slums, ballrooms, schools, hospitals, factories, museums, libraries, universities.
Sometimes they conversed with presidents, Slade's subtle advertising. Sometimes they dined with social workers, drug lords, orphans, the Mafia. Kori danced with the most powerful gangsters in Columbia. One was so taken with her beauty he left her a rose carved from a ruby—a present Slade thought tacky and extravagant. Kori examined it quietly, wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in a black box in her backpack, keeping it with her throughout the journey. Through dinners at orphanages, universities, palaces and on the streets, Kori watched, and learned. She watched all the people and especially Slade, how he behaved with them. He treated them all the same. If they ever needed formal clothes, Slade bought them and discarded them the next day, outfitting some beggar or young businessman with the most expensive suit to be had in the area, some young bride with one of Kori's dresses—always white.
Slade taught her much. He was never condescending in his lectures, and Kori was a fast learner. She learned the delicacies of global policy and came to read faces, trace motivations, sift truth from rumor, spot easily delicate cause-and-effect chains and their implications. Soon her knowledge of economics and geography was matched only by Slade.
She read widely, taking recommendations from professors, presidents, children, and gangsters, as well as Slade. Kori read von Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Machiavelli, Oscar Wilde, Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Harry Potter, Thomas Paine. She learned Spanish, French, Mandarin and Russian. The first seven years she spent with Slade, Kori Anderson learned Earth.
The eighth year, they retired to Slade's European home and learned each other.
At the end of this time, they were married.
--
Good superheroes are hard to come by.
Richard Grayson lived as best he could. He had a girlfriend, of sorts. Amy Hellman came over on weekends, talked about movies and work, watched movies with him. He thought she was nice, but that was all. She was nice.
His old friends never called him anymore. Just as well, he thought, setting down his coat as he walked into his small apartment. The LED on the answering machine blinked at zero, as usual. Being a superhero? How passé, he thought, and grimaced, pouring himself a drink. How boring. Like having a part time job.
He kept on, though. Even after everyone left. And in truth, he liked it. He liked the physical rigor, the mental challenge, the moral certainty. The last real chance to fight evil. Bruce was big on that. Evil. Willful destruction of all ideas held sacred and valuable—that was evil.
It wasn't fun. It hadn't been fun since she left, and he knew it. But something in the back of his head said: like this. Learn this. Use this to see her again, to save her.
He had a file. Bruce liked files, though his were computer-based. Record the evidence, draw logical conclusions. Her old picture was on the first page, her big smile and bright green eyes, red hair. The first page was nothing but facts—old facts, if it came to that. The last thing on the page was a date and a name. Last seen with, at time…as if he hadn't obsessed over those, obsessed over that last phone call. His hand clenched the glass involuntarily.
He stared at the file now as he drank, settling into a chair. He loosened his tie as he stared at the file, sitting innocently atop the TV. Eight years was a long time.
Bruce said this wasn't what he should be doing. "She called you," he said. "She chose this. If she chose to side with what you know is evil, you can't rescue her. You can't rescue people from their choices."
"It could have been forced," he argued. "He could have forced her to make that call, held her at gunpoint—she could be innocent!"
"Her behavior is not consistent with victim behavior," said Bruce, and turned off the TV. He had, for Dick's own sake, gone back over the records of all the calls, the facts of the case. "Give it up," he said. "Work with people you can save."
Dick didn't. Even now, with his head in his hands in this silent apartment, he could see her now just as easily as the day they sat on the roof of that tower together. Her face, so free of any worries, her eyes sparkling at him, her smile, for him. She couldn't abandon him…not after she'd sworn to him…
He didn't know what Slade had done with her. Killed her? If her body turned up he would have found it, he was sure. Maybe he took her on as an apprentice, like he had been. Dick shivered at those memories. "Get stronger," Slade always said. "Test yourself against the best, and keep working until you defeat them. Who better than your friends? Get stronger. Be better."
Seductive talk, to be sure. It was ingenious. Now, from the vantage point of years, Dick could appreciate it. Artful, almost, appealing to the good while making it selfish. Putting personal achievement above good or evil had appealed to him then, in his ambition. But it'd been a long time, and Bruce had taught him much.
He sighed and stood up, looking out the window, down at the city. The glass in his hand was empty when he went to take another drink, and he grimaced, walking over to the counter to pour another. The level in the bottle was lower than he remembered. He wasn't drinking that much, was he? He poured another anyway, finishing the bottle.
Now this matter with Miranda. And that party! His mind raced thinking about it. Just when he had almost given up on her…that party, he had practically run into her. Slade was there too. She was so different…he entertained doubts, momentarily, that they were one and the same, Kori Anderson and this mysterious woman at the party, but he shook his head. She looked exactly like her…just the accent, the personality, different. Slade had brainwashed her, obviously, in those eight years. His mind raced. Torture? Rape? Mind-altering drugs, wiping her memory? She was so different now. Her looks—and her face, when she shot at him. He shivered, taking another drink. To think of all those years of searching…
Dick Grayson turned his face up, his jaw set. He'd found her, finally, and he was going to rescue her…no matter who she was.