Sacrifice

by VegetaCold

Set during the events surrounding Terra's betrayal. In an attempt to protect the people he cares about the most, Robin makes a deal with Slade. Robin's POV. No yaoi. Rated for language and possible violence.

For awhile, I didn't approach him, and I just watched as he sat there, alone, his face in his hands; it wasn't that I didn't want to go to him and tell him that everything would be okay, but in truth, I couldn't—because that would be a lie. Everything wasn't okay, and I wasn't sure that things would ever be okay again for us, or more specifically, for him. It wasn't like things could ever just go back to normal after what had happened, after how he'd had his heart broken in the way it had been.

As I stood there in the open doorway, half peering into the living room that had once been filled with his joyous laughter and positivity but which was now taken with the silence of his depression and despair, I remained unnoticed by him. I watched as he slowly shifted, taking his face out of his hands to swipe at his eyes. He had been crying, and that was easy to see. I had never known him to be the kind of person to cry, even though he was very open and expressive, possibly the most out of all of us, save maybe Starfire—but it wasn't as if this sort of thing had ever happened to him before. In fact, I don't think this sort of thing happens to most people, and whether that is for better or for worse, I don't know.

Because what had happened was this: Beast Boy had fallen in love and had had his heart broken.

Some people say it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but at this very moment in time, I couldn't say that I agreed with those people. Those people hadn't seen my best friend, and the anguish he was experiencing in this very moment. Though to be fair, those people have probably never lost someone in the way he did. Most people have never had to deal with having a psychopath take the person they've fallen in love with and turn them into their admittedly delusional but decidedly evil apprentice—but that was what happened to Beast Boy.

It was almost crazy to think that only the day before, the six of us had been hanging out and enjoying ourselves like only the best of friends would. When I had decided that Terra would make a good member of my team, I hadn't been sure at first how she would ultimately fit in with our group, but if you'd seen us during the short time we all had together before the psychopath in question would attack us, subsequently exposing the true colors of everyone involved, you would have thought that we all had been friends since birth, Terra included. She was the kind of person who could laugh at bad jokes and liked to kid around just as much as any of us, and she never seemed to judge us for our admittedly a little strange lifestyle; whenever we had to order a pizza with some weird topping for Starfire, or had to listen to Cyborg's lectures about the new upgrades he did for his technology (for example, how his arm was now programmed to punch twenty percent harder), or were all made to sit down to watch one of Beast Boy's asinine puppet shows, she would always smile and seem to enjoy every minute of it, as if these things were the most normal things in the world.

Even if we were all very good friends for a short time, all of us getting along for the most part and enjoying each others' company, I think Terra had connected more with Starfire, Cyborg, and Beast Boy than she ever did with Raven or myself, but that wasn't particularly surprising. The three of them shared in her silliness and especially carefree attitude, but Raven and I unfortunately didn't have that luxury—not because we didn't want it, but because we couldn't afford to have it.

Raven's mind was always plagued by horrible things no one could ever really understand, and of course, given the nature of her powers, she wasn't allowed to let her emotions run wild like the three of them could. And as for myself—well, my mind was almost always preoccupied as well, always considering the villains that might be loose and creating chaos. When the psychopath in question was afoot, there was not a moment my mind ever rested from its constant worry about what he might do to us or others next. It was a constant question that spun around in my brain in a horrible whirlwind, and so while the four of them laughed and acted like friends, Raven and I often sat far away, stuck with our thoughts. Of course Terra hadn't cared much for us, probably thinking, due to what she might have assumed was coldness and unfriendliness on our part, that we disliked her, even if in actuality we had both accepted that she was going to be a regular part of our lives for the long haul and liked her as much as either of us could have. We just couldn't laugh with her like the others could to show her that.

But there was something else about Terra, and both Raven and I knew it; maybe Raven knew it better than I did, but there wasn't any question that we were both uneasy about her presence, at least at some level. Not uneasy enough, it seemed, to foresee what would actually go on to happen, but I will admit that whenever I saw her, there was always a small ache in my stomach, like the beginning of an unpleasant bout of nausea and vomiting, the first thing you felt that told you something was wrong within your body. Something just hadn't seemed right about her, and for whatever reason, I chose to ignore this fact. Maybe it was that I saw how happy she was making my best friend, or maybe I had had myself convinced that someone like her wasn't capable of betraying and hurting us like she did. She's too innocent, I must have thought in response to those flips of my stomach. And what reason would she have to betray us? We've been nothing but kind to her.

Maybe I had thought these things as I handed over to her an all-important communicator, branded with its capital T, a sign and symbol that she was now an official member of the Teen Titans.

But I know that in actuality, these thoughts had never even crossed my mind. I never even considered the fact that Terra might go on to do what she did to us. I should have, but I didn't. Not once, whether unwittingly or perhaps because I simply didn't want to. But all I knew was that if I stared at her too long, my insides would tighten to knots and my face would pale, especially if I looked into her eyes and noticed the way she was staring at us. It was a look that I was very familiar with, but I wasn't sure where I had seen it before. It was even more unsettling because, before she had left us for the first time after I'd mentioned something about her lack of control over her powers, that look had never been a part of her otherwise innocent and friendly stare, her sparkling blue eyes. And now it always was. That was what had bothered me most about her.

I remember our last gathering we'd had together, before we'd all gone to bed the night before and were attacked by the psycho who can never seem to leave my brain. Just yesterday. We had just defeated a horde of his robots and fended off what we had assumed or hoped would be the end to his advances if only for the rest of the day (but which of course in reality had only been the very beginning to this horrible nightmare), and the majority of the team seemed to think a celebration was necessary to commemorate this new victory. I had tried to remind my team that just because we had defeated his robots did not mean we had defeated him, but had been met with Beast Boy's typical slacker response that "Rome wasn't built in a day," the only historical fact he had taken the time to memorize if only because it was the perfect excuse to do less than he might ordinarily have to. The others, including Cyborg, Starfire and Terra had seemed to agree with this, and were content to allow their greatest concerns to shift to the matter of who would be the first to try out the new video game Beast Boy and Cyborg had gotten, and the type of food they wanted me to order for dinner.

Again, Raven and I weren't that lucky, to be so unconcerned and removed from reality.

Beast Boy and Cyborg had been playing the video game and were laughing and having quite the time as they did. Starfire had occupied herself with being their personal cheerleader, alternatively cheering for Beast Boy or Cyborg depending on who was ahead in the virtual car race.

Raven and I sat off to the side, withdrawn from the excitement, both equally uncomfortable for reasons we could not at that time and place identify. For whatever reason, I had felt the need to put my arm around her shoulders, and she hadn't seemed the least bit surprised when I did, even if I had been a bit taken aback myself when she gently took one of my gloved hands in her own pale and soft one and squeezed, almost as if to reassure me, to give me some sort of strength.

She hadn't looked at me as she did this—she was staring right at Terra, who sat across from us. And Terra had been staring back with her blue, blue eyes, not paying an ounce of attention to the video game that the others were so enthralled with. She was smiling strangely at us. It was a smile that was not in the least bit pleasant and seemed to be more of a smirk, radiating satisfaction and smugness in a very underhanded and secret sort of way. I had glanced over at Raven and saw that she was even more pale than usual, her thin lips pressed together tightly. She looked as though she was going to faint at any moment, and I could almost see the consciousness draining away from her face, perhaps retreating with the color that was also draining away, as she stared at the girl who was supposed to be her friend but was now smiling at her like she had just taken everything right out from under her and would be happy to tell her about it, was gloating in the aftermath of it.

"Robin, get me out of here…" she had murmured out of the corner of her tight frown, in a voice that was so quiet I almost didn't hear it at first. But when I had comprehended what she'd said, I didn't waste a second. I had learned that if Raven took the time to say something to you, she always meant it, and that you should take anything she said very seriously. If she was telling me she needed to be away from here, then she really did.

I moved my arm lower, reaching around and under her armpit so I could hold her up more securely. I moved my other hand to her opposite shoulder and stood, bringing her up with me easily and swiftly. As I went to turn us around and start for the doorway which led away from our living room, so to speak, I glanced at Terra and saw that she was looking at me with a new expression, this one just as unpleasant. The smugness had not left, but now I saw that she was looking at me with eyes that were so cold and iced over with disgust that I felt a shiver snake its way down my spine. In that moment I was sure that she hated me, more than she hated anything else.

Forcing my gaze away from the stare of those blue eyes, I turned Raven around and led her towards the doorway, supporting her almost completely in my grip. She was light, but of course also heavy enough that I couldn't hide the fact that I was essentially carrying her, giving the impression that something was very wrong with her, perhaps physically—and it seemed there really was, but for some reason I felt this fact should be kept a secret. Cyborg noticed out of the corner of his eye, and paused their video game before turning around and resting one arm easily on the back of the couch, a posture that was much more relaxed than the expression he wore on his half-mechanical face.

"Everything alright, Rob? Is Raven okay?" he asked, getting Beast Boy and Starfire to turn around too.

"Yep," I said, drawing in a breath and trying not to let how much I was struggling show through in my voice. "Raven's just worn out from our battle with Slade. I'm taking her to her room. You guys keep playing."

Before they could question me any further, I had already led Raven through the doorway, the door swishing closed behind us.

When we got to her bedroom, I led her over to her bed and helped her to lie down. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at her, meeting her stoic gaze as she cast it upon me. I took one of her hands in my own and cradled it, again feeling need rising in my chest to extend some sort of comfort to her. Maybe I realized in that moment that whatever was going on with her involved me just as much as it did her—involved all of us, actually.

"What happened back there?" I breathed out slowly, watching as she moved the hand that I was not holding to her forehead and rested it there, two of her thin fingers touching the ruby gemstone on her third eye chakra. Her eyes had a very dull look about them, seemingly vacant in what I realized almost instantly was hopelessness, the kind of look you might find in the eyes of someone who had been fighting a losing battle and was very close to giving up. It was almost as though she had felt the effects of what eventually progressed, was reeling in the aftermath of the events that would unfold that night before they even happened. For awhile, she didn't even look at me, just stared out into the darkness of her bedroom.

"Something's not right in there," she mumbled, eventually giving me only a small, fleeting look. "She's not right."

"Terra?" I asked, but I said it more as a statement, because there was no doubt in my mind that that was who she had meant.

Raven slowly shut her eyes, blinking purposefully in confirmation of what I'd asked. She breathed in deeply and then let out a short, tense sigh, her voice shaky, as if she was near tears or panic and was doing her best to hold it in; then her face suddenly scrunched up tightly, like she was holding in some great frustration and was preparing to scream it out. "This just isn't right," she mumbled, eyes closed. "I know I said I thought I trusted her after she helped to save the tower—but I don't anymore. The way she was staring. I can't get it out of my head."

I slowly withdrew my hands from hers, bringing them onto my lap and looking away from her, in the direction of one of the big windows letting in the early dusky glow of nightfall. Looking out at the beautiful view of the bay beneath us, I was suddenly hit with what I know now was a vision, a striking and horrible realization very similar to what Raven herself had been experiencing in that moment. As I looked at the home we had built for ourselves, a grand structure that had always represented the strength and legacy of our team, I found myself suddenly faced with images of its destruction. The bay window I looked out now would shatter; the bookshelves on either side of the bay window, filled with Raven's book collection, all the spells and magical knowledge that made her who she was and gave her the powers that made her a part of our team, overturned, the books scattered about and burned, turned to ash. Raven's supplies destroyed, becoming worthless in their purposes; layers of dust covering all of the things she had once touched daily—the things that defined who she was, now desecrated.

For a fraction of a second, I saw the tower abandoned and empty, the way it had been when we found it, before we became a team.

I closed my eyes, trying to will the images away and out of my mind. I suddenly felt a very dreadful feeling encroaching—the feeling of a faint creeping up into my consciousness. Suddenly dizzy, I lay back beside her on the soft silk sheets of her bed and stared up at her ceiling, the room spinning briefly. I heard myself groan a little, and groped for her hand, wanting it more for my own comfort this time than for hers. She grasped my hand and squeezed it, a gesture that seemed to bring some stability back into the shaky framework of my mind, steadying me. After awhile, the room stopped spinning, but even then I didn't sit up. And for awhile, the two of us just stayed there beside one another in complete silence, listening to the faraway sounds of our teammates enjoying themselves in their blissful ignorance, their laughter seeming surreal and haunting in the darkness where we lingered. The sun had set.

For the longest time, we held hands, not letting go.

"Why is this happening to us?" I heard myself asking.

"I don't know," she mumbled softly beside me.

In the darkness, I stared up at the ceiling. For the smallest moment, I saw a flash of Slade's face, the black and orange mask which seemed to have been burned permanently into my vision—like something horrible which I could not un-see no matter how hard I tried. Usually, whenever I visualized Slade in my mind—whether offhandedly and for a moment only or while engrossed in a seemingly endless session of late night to early morning brooding over the man which would leave me shaking and on edge and sickly for days afterwards as I struggled to get him out of my mind once again—I pictured him the way he always looked at me. The possessiveness in his one eye, the strange shining pride, the fatherly quality that was undeniable; his doting, gentle and soft attitude towards me always portrayed in that stare of his, as if he didn't make it clear enough with his actions—as if I couldn't tell that he favored me when he often avoided me in battles with the Titans and I and made a point to spare me of any particularly violent attacks, usually directing them at Starfire instead, who he seemed to hate more than anyone else.

He seemed to always be looking at me like he had something in mind for me—but during our last encounter, when he'd tried to sink our home, he had been looking at Terra this way, not me. I wasn't sure he had even seen me, or known I was there. All in one fell swoop, it seemed, I had gone from being the object of his desire, the driving force behind all his actions and schemes, the only reason he ever even bothered with us, to fading into the background, as unimportant as the other four Titans had always been—only there to be used if his plans surrounding the person of his interest called for it.

It wasn't that I cared about the fact that his attention was migrating elsewhere—it wasn't as though I wanted the attention, of course, and in fact his attention was the last thing I wanted—but the look in his eye worried me all the same, mostly because I was afraid of what it might mean for Terra, especially as I remembered what that look had always meant for me. I was only upset that he'd apparently moved on because I didn't want anyone else to have to deal with what I'd had to, especially not Terra, who was weak and admittedly very unstable and easily manipulated. If that look meant what I thought it did, and he truthfully did want her like he had once wanted me, then taking her would no issue at all, not for him, the master manipulator.

I'm going to have to keep an eye on her, I had thought that night after we returned to our home, which was again standing strong thanks to Terra and Raven. I can't let him get to her.

But the more time that passed, the more I found myself thinking that he already had. This most recent incident with Raven had been no different, and as I lay there beside Raven and thought about the way Slade had looked at her, I think I knew even then what would come to pass—and what would become of her if I didn't do something to stop it.

For a split second, I found myself thinking, seemingly out of the blue, unprovoked: she doesn't know what she's gotten herself into. She can't survive with him.

But I can.

I had tried to tell myself that this thought had no context, and was meaningless.

"Can you promise me something?" I asked softly, blinking away Slade's image. My eyes followed the path of a spider that was crawling across her ceiling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was watching it, too.

"Yes," she said, and she continued to watch the spider, nonplused, as it mounted its intricate, lacy web in the corner of her bedroom, its spindly legs delicately moving across the ins and outs of the structure, a trap that only it could navigate, working its way to a fly which had gotten caught in the sticky substance and which had been struggling helplessly for freedom. Now, near death, it twitched feebly and tiredly, almost as if it had realized that escape was impossible and was simply waiting for the spider to come and finish it off, put it out of its misery.

"Promise me that whatever happens, you'll trust me. You'll let me do what I feel is right. And that whatever I decide to do, you'll let me do it, and you won't try to stop me. And you'll keep the others from trying to stop me. Because you know…you know that I would do anything for you guys, and that I do the things I do because I want what's best for all of you. That's why I'm your leader, right?"

I watched as the spider reached the fly and paralyzed it, finally ending its struggle and beginning to feed.

After awhile, she said, gently, "Can you promise me something?"

"Yes," I murmured.

"Promise me you won't turn evil," she said.

"I didn't the first time," I said.

"I know," she said, and squeezed my hand.

"I won't. I promise."

"Then I promise you, too."

We glanced at each other for only a small moment, and then went back to looking at the ceiling, watching the spider as it feasted on the remains of the tiny creature, dismantling it and mutilating it.

It no longer looked very much like a fly.

Raven and I had fallen asleep on the bed together, both of us wrapped in the arms of the other. We were only awoken when the sounds of destruction fell upon the tower, and we realized that we were under attack.

Just yesterday.

"Beast Boy?" I spoke now after I forced myself out of my thoughts, suddenly feeling guilty that I had allowed him to sit alone for so long while I studied him from afar, like some sort of impartial and uncaring scientist observing the unlucky rat he had chosen for his experiments. I know that he had told all of us he wanted to be alone, and while the other three may have respected his wishes, busying themselves with the cleaning and repair of the tower after the aforementioned attack, I could tell that he had not been sincere in this request just by the way he had looked when he'd asked it; the pure pain I had seen in his eyes was enough for me to know that he was lying. I myself might have been the kind of person who liked to work through things by myself, but Beast Boy was not, and right now I could tell that he needed a friend. I knew he would have done the same for me if I had been in his situation, and as leader of the team and someone who cared about him more than most, I felt it was my duty.

I watched him startle at the sound of my voice, sitting up at once and immediately struggling to pull himself together, swiping his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffling in an attempt to will the tears away, making it very clear that he did not want to show me what he perhaps believed I would consider weakness on his part. I knew that Beast Boy admired me; he had admitted early on after we'd first met that he had always looked up to me and had strove to be like me, wanting to become the kind of hero I was. I knew he wanted to impress me, and I'm sure he thought that I would think less of him if I saw him in this condition. That was far from being true, but I immediately felt another kind of guilt replace what I had initially felt. I hadn't wanted to embarrass him, or put him on the spot in any way; I just wanted to help him. If my presence was making him even more emotionally conflicted, then I was clearly doing something wrong. Maybe I should have waited.

"Robin," he stuttered as he continued to swipe at his face, trying to conceal the pain that was undeniable in his expression. As he did this, he seemed to refuse to look at me, or to even spare me a glance. "I thought you were helping the others."

"I'm sorry," I said, and took a step away from him. My boot crunched on broken glass, a piece of metal clinking quietly as I kicked it aside. "I'll leave if you want me to. I just thought you could use a friend."

As I was turning to leave, he stood up and reached out to me, in a gesture that seemed so feeble and weak and helpless—and so unlike him. His face began to crumple again, and fresh tears glistened in his eyes. "N-no, don't leave," he said, almost pleaded, his voice filled with a heart-wrenching vulnerability. "I don't want you to leave."

At this, I turned and quickly made my way over to him. There was another cold tinkle of twisted, burnt metal—one of the many pieces which had been ripped mercilessly from the walls during the onslaught—as it ghosted against the floor beneath, displaced by my movements as I walked; the sparkling, shattered sounds of glass a constant with each step I took. Look what he did to this place, I thought, almost offhandedly as I made my way towards my friend. Look what Slade did. I stepped beside Beast Boy and looked down at him for only a small moment, unsure what to do—or, perhaps hesitant to do what I knew I should. Then, I forced myself to overcome my past inhibitions, my own ideas about weakness, to do what was right, and what he needed. Slowly, I reached over and hugged him, tightly. For a small moment, he simply stood there, perhaps too surprised or taken off guard by my gesture to hug back.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, my embrace tightening around him. "I'm sorry that this had to happen."

He suddenly hugged me back, his embrace just as tight as mine, as if the two of us were hanging onto each other for dear life, and maybe at some level we were. He had begun to cry again, and I could feel him sobbing against my shoulder, the tears soaking into the collar of my uniform. I held him as he cried and kept quiet, feeling very strongly that there was nothing I could say beyond what I already had which would remedy the situation at any length; the sound of his sobs filled the living room, where we had once gathered and laughed joyously together, at some joke he'd told which wasn't funny but which we laughed at anyway because his laughter was almost contagious. His good nature and sense of humor was always enough to fuel everyone's spirits, to lighten our moods and keep us sane when things seemed grim. But now I felt myself slowly going mad because of the new sound he was making, soft and horrible and seemingly ceaseless, a sound shot with pure and audible agony. A sound he was making because of the person he'd lost—a person who had been lost to a force of evil which I should have had the power and knowledge to defeat, but hadn't. A person who had, essentially, been corrupted because of my inability to fight my own enemy.

I grimaced as he dug his fingernails into my back, but kept quiet. Peering over his shoulder, I looked at the huge screen which had served jointly as our main computer, reserved for work, and our entertainment system, reserved for our enjoyment if we could get a moment to enjoy it. In the center of the screen, there was a huge, gaping crater, exposing a tangle of fried wires, hanging down like vines, and panels of shattered technology, most burnt and blackened. Stretching out from this crater, a web of jagged cracks reached to the edges of the screen. One of Slade's robots had shot the screen with some sort of beam, causing a deafening sound like a massive explosion to resonate throughout the whole tower as pieces of the screen were thrown every which way. In that moment I remembered the pain of one of the pieces slicing into my cheek, so deeply and severely that it would later need to be stitched, before I'd had time to react and had shielded myself and Starfire from the carnage with a swish of my cape.

After the initial force of the blast had subsided, most of the screen that still remained in place fell with a similarly deafening crash to the floor at the foot of the computer's control panel, and still lay in pieces there. That was where most of the glass scattered throughout the room had come from, but a lot of it had come from the bay windows beyond that, which were completely gone save a few jagged pieces of glass clinging to the edges; rather than using one of the doors, a large group of robots had decided to scale the tower and had come in through the big windows in an effort to surround us on all sides and ensure we could not escape from our home, somehow having become hostages in the place we knew and loved more than anything else. A soft ocean breeze drifted in through the open windows from outside, carrying in the sharp smell of sand and salt water and jostling the hair on our heads, a feeling that was far too gentle and innocent in comparison to the terror we had just barely overcome. One of the blackened circuit boards hanging down limply from the frayed wire tangled around it swayed soundlessly with that breeze.

Look what he did, I thought again.

My eyes traveled to our huge couch—springs and stuffing sticking up in every which way from the various facets of its bulk, looking like a cat with a temper and very sharp claws had been released upon the thing. It had suffered a few blasts as well, and had, at one point in time during our battle, actually been set ablaze when one of the robots had produced a flamethrower and had begun to use it in the most reckless and impromptu way possible, seeming to shoot it in any direction it pleased with one main object in mind: to destroy. A whole section of the couch had been reduced to ash before Raven was able to put out the blaze. The rest remained charred and beyond salvage.

I remembered how my eyes had bulged when the robot had flaunted this weapon. I had thought, almost comically in my disbelief, really, Slade, a flamethrower? But of course, it was far from being humorous, and in fact was a lot closer to terrifying. It had been at that moment that I'd realized just how far it had come with Slade, how much he'd changed; he had gone from playing mostly harmless mind games with us and sending the useless HIVE after us as a simple and impartial test of our endurance to breaking into our home at night, when we were unprepared and vulnerable, and attacking us in cold blood, intent on tearing down everything we'd ever worked for, set to annihilate us, attempting to slaughter us like animals. That was what it had come to. I'm sure he would have burned the tower to the ground if we'd let him, and that was what was scary. Before, it had always felt like Slade had been content to let us live, even if we interfered with his plans, as if our interference was amusing to him. But now it seemed like he hated us with a passion and only wanted to cause us pain, to watch us suffer, and to end our existence in this world after he had done just that. After that last battle, things had gotten real, you might say. Things were put into perspective.

I slid my hand up Beast Boy's back and brought it to my face to gently graze my right cheek, where Raven had placed a thick strip of gauze over my wound, about four inches long, stretching all the way to my ear. I had had to change the bandaging perhaps as many as five times in the past few hours. It had been a half hour since I'd changed it and it was already matted red and wet with my blood. The endless bleeding seemed to confirm our suspicions that it did indeed need to be stitched, but I told my team that our first priority was securing the tower, and it would have to wait until later. For now, I told myself, I could just power through the pain, ignore the bouts of wooziness from the blood loss and continue to clean and repair.

When I retracted my hand, there was a dark stain on the fingers of my green gloves. Quietly, I tucked them against my palm to hide them, balling them in a tight fist, feeling numb. Suddenly I didn't want to see what he had done to me.

We're really in danger here, I thought. We're seeing his true colors, and they're darker than we could have ever imagined. We're seeing how deranged this guy really is.

And now he has Terra, I thought.

She doesn't know what she's gotten herself into, I thought.

After awhile, Beast Boy spoke. His voice was barely audible, his words slurred by his tears. "I miss her so much."

He still had his arms tightly around me, and as he said this, I felt him pull me even closer, squeezing me, as if he thought that the closer he could get to me, the further away reality would be—that the more he could hide his face in the dark safety of the folds of my cape on my shoulder, the less he would have to see the light of what had just happened, what he'd lost. If he clung to me he wouldn't have to realize that he'd somehow let go of Terra.

"I know," I said gently, staring through the doorway and into the darkness of the hallway, where I saw vague shapes of jutting metal and hunks of rubble. A chair had somehow wound up in the hallway, split into several pieces after colliding with the wall. A chair leg here, a chair leg there. One at one end of the hall, one at the other.

We once again fell silent as words escaped us, and we were only jarred out of a quiet that seemed to briefly consume us for quite some time by the faint and faraway but horrible sound of Starfire beginning to cry, coming from the direction where we all had our separate rooms. The sound startled us so thoroughly that we both jumped, like something out of a horror movie.

"They destroyed it," I heard her almost moaning. "The gift Robin gave me—it's destroyed!"

"It's okay, Star," I heard Cyborg reassure her. "Robin can win you a new one. He's the best at those carnival games."

I realized they were talking about the stuffed animal that I had won for her at the carnival a few months back, not long before I would go on to become Slade's unwilling apprentice. Raven had told me upon my return that every night that I was gone, Starfire would lie in bed and clutch the pink teddy bear tightly to her, using it like a pillow and sobbing into it.

Oh god, I thought.

She wasn't crying about the stuffed animal, and I knew it. In reality, the teddy bear with its matching pink, sparkly bow had nothing to do with her tears, her despair. The last thing Starfire cared about was some material object, one so easily replaced. No, it was something much deeper than that, something that was not so easily fixed. Her broken heart and spirit could not be replaced like the cheap carnival toy I had won for her. No amount of tickets or tokens could ever win that back.

I found myself again tightening our embrace. It seemed at that moment that neither of us wanted to let go—not when I felt that I had already begun to let go of Starfire just like Beast Boy had seemingly let go of Terra. The fact was, in that moment, I felt something small snap inside of me, and like Beast Boy I wanted to be as far from the reality of the moment that had caused that break to occur as I possibly could. The faraway sound of Starfire's tears rung in my ears, reverberating with the knowledge that there was nothing I could do to really fix the situation, nothing I could do to make things go back to the way they were before Slade came creeping into our lives.

In that moment I felt helpless and small, nothing like the leader I had once been. With each sob I heard, the smaller I felt, the more worthless, the more incompetent. Because I had allowed this to happen; I had allowed things to progress to this point, allowed Slade to grow violent and reckless and angry and deadly. And my team was suffering because of this allowance, suffering in ways I had never before seen them suffer: Beast Boy had cried, and now Starfire had cried as well, and they had cried because of something I could have prevented, but did not. There was the way Raven had seemed so utterly consumed by despair yesterday, and there were Cyborg's tired reassurances, despair in his voice as well, something that seemed so out of place as it tainted his normally encouraging tone. And we had utterly lost Terra. I had lost her, not Beast Boy or anyone else—because if I had just gotten Slade under control when I had the chance, he wouldn't have had the chance to corrupt her. It was a reality that stung me, and like Beast Boy, I wanted to hide from reality, too. So I clung to him, hoping like him that the closer I got the further away that cold reality would drift.

But I couldn't do this for long. As the leader, I knew I couldn't.

I would have to face it sooner or later, whether I wanted to or not.

Oh god, I thought. Again. I let Starfire get hurt again. She got hurt because of me, because I couldn't get a handle on my own enemy. She's getting hurt again because I can't get a handle on him. And she'll get hurt again if I don't do something about him soon. They all will.

"I would give anything to get her back," Beast Boy said after a long while of nothing but the anguished sound of Starfire's tears. His arms loosened a bit, and so did mine, but nonetheless we continued to hug. "I would give up my life for her. Anything to get her back."

"Anything?" I asked, gulping down the lump that had formed in my throat.

"Anything," he said, and I knew that he meant this with everything in his being.

My best friend is not giving up his life because of my failure, I thought.

I closed my eyes, inhaled a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then opened them to stare at Beast Boy. Looking into his eyes in that moment, it was for perhaps the first time in quite some time that I realized just how young and innocent this kid really was, at least compared to the rest of us. He was the youngest of us at fifteen. Fifteen and already willing to give up his life for a girl, for a crush. Fifteen and having already been beaten mercilessly by a madman who cared nothing for his age or innocence. Yesterday, he had gone to an amusement park. When he should have been riding rides and enjoying himself like any kid his age would, he instead spent his time cornered and taunted in the house of mirrors, a scenario that might as well have come straight out of some violent and unpleasant horror movie, with no one to help him as he faced an enemy he had inherited and went through agony that he had also inherited. My enemy, my pain, somehow thrust onto his young shoulders. And then, that same scenario was passed onto the person he loved, Terra—my duties as Slade's apprentice suddenly falling into her lap for her to handle.

This really had gotten out of hand. There was no denying that, but there was also no denying that I intended, fully and with every fiber of my being, to put an end to Slade's reign over my friends, the only way I knew how. I had made up my mind on the matter then and there.

Time to face reality now, Robin, I thought. No time like the present.

"Okay," I said, my voice quiet but steady. "You'll have her back. Slade's not going to have her for long, I promise."

Beast Boy pulled back and looked at me, his eyes big and filled with a bizarre mix of hope and fear. "You…promise?"

"I do," I said, and released him. "I have to go check on Starfire now. Whenever you're feeling up to it, you should join the others and help with the cleanup. They could really use a hand."

With that, I turned and left.

---

Walking slowly through the darkened and destroyed hallways of my home as I made my way towards our sleeping quarters, the sound of Starfire's tears grew louder and louder with each step I took.

"Please don't throw it away," I heard Starfire sob.

"Starfire, you can't keep this. We'll get you another one, alright?" Raven answered.

Soon I found myself looking in through the open doorway to her bedroom, not even having to knock or open the door because there was no longer a door to serve those functions. One of Slade's robots that had been entering the tower through the window in Starfire's room had ripped it right off its hinges and hurled it through the expanse of the hallway; it came dangerously close to connecting with Starfire's neck, where it would have decapitated her if Raven had not thought quick on her feet and deflected it with her magic. Peering inside just as I had done in the case of Beast Boy, I saw Starfire kneeling near her bed as though she were praying, her face hidden in her arms which she rested on the charred tangle of fabric that had once been her mattress. She sobbed into her purple sheets, now ashy and dark and torn.

Cyborg stood over her, one of his hands on her shoulders. In that moment as he stared down at her, he wore an expression so grim I knew right then and there I would never be able to forget it, no matter how much I tried. Cyborg, who in my opinion had always remained the most mentally strong and especially positive of all of us during hard times, now looked as though he was very close to giving up hope. He knew he could afford no words of positivity in this case so he kept quiet. For some reason, his silence stung me, made my heart ache. I guess I could see that he'd realized all the reassurances he had been trying to give her could do nothing to lift her spirits, and as a result had given up the effort entirely. After all, why would he continue in his futile struggle to comfort her when it was clear that he could do nothing to change her sadness? But that wasn't like the Cyborg I knew—nothing like the Cyborg I had known before Slade's attack, who would have continued to extend comfort to her until he was successful in cheering her up no matter how long it might take, who would have done this simply because he knew his friend was depending on him and that to do so was only right.

Now it was clear that his energy for this kind of caring and empathy was gone and drained, and it was not the kind of energy he could simply recharge by hooking himself up to a charging station or replacing his power cell—mental energy, instead, which had never previously seemed to drain from him no matter the severity of the situation, and which was not such an easy fix. There was no upgrading his positivity; no downloading a new heightened zest for life into the software of his brain. Hope was not an attachment he could equip with the press of a button, the command of a key. Technology was not so advanced. And if he could not help himself as he had almost always been able to, somehow automatically maintaining that upbeat nature which always seemed to define him, how could anyone expect him to be able to help her? I was certain his mind did not at the moment possess the capacity for such an action—not anymore, after what had happened.

Raven stood near them, her cloak pulled over her head, her eyes almost glowing from the darkness inside. In one of her hands, she was holding a big black trash bag that sagged with the weight of what was probably broken glass and twisted metal, which now seemed commonplace as it lay everywhere throughout the tower; in the other hand she was holding the pink teddy bear, or rather what was left of it, because it had indeed been destroyed. Now, it was just a mass of pink and white fluff, shapeless and looking nothing like the bear it had previously been. A lot of its stuffing was scattered throughout the room, the floor blanketed in white as though it had just freshly snowed. It was as I noticed this that I also noticed how much damage the room had actually taken. It was strange because, even though all of our rooms (well, almost all of our rooms) had taken quite a bit of damage, the damage done to Starfire's was without a doubt the worst. It looked as though a tornado had ripped through the place, leaving nothing unscathed.

Furniture had been overturned and broken. Like the bay windows in the main gathering room, hers had been completely shattered, and similarly there was glass everywhere. One of her curtains had been ripped down and lay in a heap on the floor; the other had been partially burned, perhaps by the infamous flamethrower, and now swayed gently in the breeze that swept through the place. It seemed that one of the robots had gone into her closet and had ripped out every single piece of clothing she owned, throwing everything around the room in all directions—and like the shards of glass or the bear's stuffing, there were clothes everywhere. They had taken the time to smash her mirror and her collection of perfume bottles and all the little glass figurines I had bought for her one day at our favorite antique store, to rip down the posters she'd taped onto the walls, to throw to the ground the photographs she kept in frames on the table by her bed and step on them with uncaring boots.

Almost vandalism, reckless and uninhibited, just because they could. Destruction for destruction's sake.

And with everything else they had broken, they had also managed to break Starfire's spirit. And mine. Without a doubt, that had been the plan.

"Starfire," I said quietly from the doorway.

She startled just like Beast Boy had, withdrawing her head from her hands and sitting up to look at me. Cyborg and Raven followed suit, fixing their somber gazes upon me. When they had taken a moment to look at me, their grim expressions grew worried.

"Rob, you're bleeding like crazy," Cyborg said, and left Starfire's side, sliding his hand off her shoulder as he made his way towards me. "We need to get that stitched, right now. I knew we should have done it before. You're losing too much blood."

One of his cold metal hands reached up to touch my cheek, but I took a step away. "It's not as bad as it looks."

His eyebrows came together, his forehead creased with concern as he took his hand back. "Robin, it looks pretty bad to me."

"It's not. I'm fine," I said.

"Maybe you don't realize how bad it is, Rob," Cyborg said. "I know you want to get the tower back in shape as soon as possible, but right now our biggest priority should be making sure you're okay. It won't take that long anyway, maybe fifteen minutes tops. I don't even have to sedate you if you don't want."

From out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Raven was nodding gently. Starfire's wailing had ceased, and now she was sniffling in a futile attempt to stop the fresh tears that had pooled in her eyes from falling. She began to nod rapidly, as if her life depended on it, her red hair bobbing and jerking as she did. "Yes, Robin, we must—"

"I don't want to hear another word about the damn stitches," I snapped. "We're not going to worry about that now. I said I'm fine, so that means I'm fine. Got it?"

For a moment, the room was completely silent. The first thing I saw was the way Starfire was staring at me—and all I could see was the complete and total look of hurt that was plastered on her face. After a moment all too long of sitting there staring at me with this dejected, disbelieving look, Starfire put her face back in her hands and began once again to sob loudly, a sound which echoed coldly throughout the room. Cyborg frowned deeply at me, his expression now a mixture of his previous somberness and a new disappointment, not only frustrated that I would not relent and allow him to do what he believed was best but also disconcerted that I had made Starfire cry. Sighing resignedly, he made his way back to Starfire and put his hand on her shoulder, rubbing slightly as she continued to cry. When my gaze shifted to Raven, I saw that she looked betrayed, staring at me in a way that almost screamed, I thought we talked about this. You said you wouldn't turn evil, but you're already acting just like Slade, already doing his job for him. She glared at me as she dropped the mangled teddy bear at her feet, and then she went to Starfire and put a pale hand on her other shoulder. "It's okay, Star," she murmured, staring down at Starfire and clearly refusing to look at me, like I didn't deserve it. In that moment, maybe I really didn't.

Guilt gripped me in a tight hold, closing around me like a python and squeezing relentlessly. I wanted to punch myself in the stomach. I couldn't believe that I had had the audacity to yell at her after all of the garbage she had already gone through today, all of the pain and sadness she was already experiencing as she was met with the destruction of the home that meant so much to her, the home that made her feel like she belonged here on Earth with all of us, like she fit in. What kind of insensitive moron was I? She had only been trying to help, and so had the others. I know that I had much bigger things to worry about than getting my cheek stitched, especially since having made up my mind about what I would do tonight, but Raven's look had said it all. I was acting like Slade, and I hadn't even taken the first step towards the deal I wanted to make with him yet. If I was already mirroring his cruelness and insensitivity, the possibility that I might become evil in the future given the right circumstances did not seem so farfetched.

"I'm sorry," I said, and the three of them looked at me, Starfire's head again raised from her arms. "I know you're just trying to help. I know that. I just have a lot on my mind, that's all. I'm sorry."

I watched as the looks of betrayal seemed to slip from their faces, but the hurt and concern and hopelessness never left. I couldn't blame them for feeling this way; after all, I was their leader, and of course it must have been disheartening to see me losing it—like, if Robin's giving up, then why shouldn't we? Starfire stood up, pushing herself off the bed and moving towards me slowly. She came up to me and threw her arms around me, sniffling in my ear. I hugged her back.

"Sorry," I murmured again in her ear, as if I truthfully believed to repeat the word would diminish the pain on her face. I suddenly realized that I would never be able to say it enough, especially not in the case of what I was about to do and where I was about to go. I didn't think all the apologies in the world could make them forgive me for the choice I had made.

I wanted so badly for Starfire to pull back, look at me with her sparkling eyes and smile reassuringly at me—wanted her to show me that my apology had just magically fixed everything. She did not. Instead, her grip tightened and she said in a barely audible voice against my shoulder, "I do not want you to be in pain."

"I know," I said softly, quietly enough that the others could not hear, "but sometimes I think I have to be."

This time she did pull back, but instead of smiling at me with resolve, she looked at me with green eyes lighted by a flame of confusion and the smallest spark of fear. She seemed to want to question me on the meaning behind what I had said, but before she could I pulled away and stepped back towards the open doorway.

"Look, guys," I said, briefly scanning my eyes from Cyborg to Raven and then back to Starfire. "You're right. My priorities are out of order. The most important thing should be our well-being, and clearly—" I gestured to the despondent remains of the teddy bear on the floor. "—thiskind of environment isn't helping anyone in that regard. I know we need to get the tower in order, but I think we've done enough for today. You guys deserve a break. Beast Boy's going to be joining you soon, and when he does, I want the four of you to go down to the boardwalk; there's a carnival going on down there, and I want somebody to win Starfire another bear." I looked at Cyborg and smiled weakly. "It was dumb luck that I won it the first time, and I'm pretty sure there's no way I'd be able to do it again. You're much better at those games than I am, anyway."

Cyborg smiled sadly. "I wish."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. "Here's some money. Spend it all if you have to. But just don't come back without a prize for this girl." I nudged Starfire and smiled at her as warmly as I could.

She only looked at me miserably in return. When she spoke her voice was weak and fragile, very close to tears. "You are not coming?"

I shook my head. "You guys were right. I've lost a lot of blood. I'm going to stitch myself up and then lie down for a little while."

Cyborg's tired smile faltered at my words, his concern deepening. "You sure you'll be able to do it by yourself? It's in a pretty tricky spot, and I would feel much better if you let me do it. I can do it quick before we head out."

I looked down at my feet. Again, the gash on my cheek was one of the last things I cared about fixing, but I felt that I owed it to him in that moment. "If it would make you feel better, then you can. But I know how to do it myself and I would rather that the four of you head out now and try to enjoy yourselves a little."

"I don't think that's going to happen, Robin," Raven said.

I stared at her in silence for a long moment, feeling defeated in knowing that she was right. Still, trying to muster a hopeful and positive attitude like any good leader should, and like the old Robin would have, I said, "Nevertheless. I've kept you cooped up in here cleaning long enough. You might not be able to have fun like we used to, but at least you won't be stuck in here being constantly reminded of what just happened."

Raven grew quiet and looked away, withdrawing the hard gaze she'd had fixed so intently upon me, as if my answer had satisfied her to some degree.

"It'll be quick," Cyborg said, coming back towards me. "Like I said, I don't even need to sedate you if you don't want. Fifteen minutes and then we'll be out of your hair so you can get some rest."

"Fine. Do whatever you feel you need to," I said eventually.

"Come on," Cyborg said, smiling as much as he could muster. "It'll only take a minute."

He put one hand on my back, and I didn't resist as he led me from Starfire's room to what remained of our medical ward to do what he had insisted.

---

It had taken more than a minute to finish. More than fifteen minutes. In fact, by the time Cyborg had finished this unpleasant chore and the three of them had managed to convince Beast Boy to join them on their outing and the four of them had actually gone, the clock on the opposite wall of the infirmary, which still worked despite having had its glass face shattered during the onslaught of Slade's attack, read that it was one full hour later. The actual process of getting the stitches had taken maybe half an hour, most of that time being dedicated to finding the right supplies and cleaning the wound and trying to convince me to take a sedative or numbing medication despite the fact that he had told me before I wouldn't have to take anything should I not want to.

In the end I had had to put my foot down about the matter—after all I could not be half asleep and completely out of it when I made the call I was steeling myself for—and I firmly told Cyborg after what was perhaps his fifth or six time asking that I didn't want any medication and that he should be glad I was letting him stitch me up at all. That had shut him up, and he proceeded with the deed, which in and of itself had taken less than five minutes—perhaps a little too fast for my liking, because I could tell that he had been rushing, and I didn't need to be a doctor to recognize that he didn't exactly know what he was doing. The pain of the procedure was enough to tell me that, if I could not tell from his shaking hands or the unsure and hesitant placement of the needle with each stitch he made, the inconsistency in the tightness of his stitching or the clumsy knot he'd tied off. With each single stroke of his hand, I had wanted to scream, and regretted my decision to refuse the meds before we'd even really begun. Five minutes had felt like five hours, and before long I had felt myself growing woozy and dizzy, sure that I would faint with the next piercing sensation that came.

When it was over, Cyborg went to join Starfire, who was trying to get Beast Boy out of what remained of Terra's bedroom, where he was curled up on her bed, clutching the little sparkly silver box he'd made her. Raven brought me an icepack, which I pressed, with a life-or-death urgency, to my cheek, now throbbing and itching and burning with a sickly infected heat. "How does it feel?" she'd asked, but when I opened my mouth to answer her I felt the stitches tearing at the skin of my cheek.

Oh shit, I had thought. He made them too tight. I knew I should have done this myself.

And then I thought: How the hell am I going to be able to make my call like this?

I shut my mouth and shook my head at her.

"Why can't you just take a little medicine?" Raven asked, looking down at me with concern.

"You know why," I spat through gritted teeth, ignoring the pain coursing through me as I did, the whole time glaring at her as intensely as I could manage.

She shut her eyes, heaving in a deep breath. "I know," she said gently, "but do you have to do it tonight? You should just take some medicine and sleep…" She trailed off, opening her eyes and staring blankly out the window of the infirmary. Despite the fact that the rest of the room had sustained quite a bit of damage, and that windows seemed to have been a favorite of Slade's robots to destroy, the infirmary windows were some of the few that were still mostly intact. They would still have to be replaced, but it wouldn't cost the Titans nearly as much as it would for the others which had been shattered completely.

"You know I have to do it tonight," I said, and tried not to grimace as I felt the stitches pulling uncomfortably on the tender skin of my cheek. To distract myself, I allowed my gaze to fall in line with hers, staring out at the darkening view of the city before us. In the distance, I could see the lights of the carnival springing to life against the dusky sky. "Before this gets even more out of hand. And I'm afraid that if I wait…even for just a night…he won't want anything to do with me or what I have to say. It's just…a feeling I have, and after what happened with Terra, I know now more than ever that I can't afford to ignore my intuition again."

She sighed, and said nothing for awhile. For what might have been an eternity, the two of us simply watched, almost transfixed, as the sun set on the horizon; as we did, we sat in a silence that was heavy but not uncomfortable, a silence that was merely thoughtful and far from unpleasant.

"About earlier," I said absentmindedly, and then cringed again at the pain radiating from the wound. The side of my face was starting to feel numb, but somehow I felt that it was very important to address with her the incident earlier in Starfire's room, even if talking was impossibly painful and I had already done a lot more of it than I had wanted to. I felt I owed it to her just like I had felt I owed it to Cyborg to get these damned stitches. See how that turned out. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but remember the cold look she'd given me, the look that practically screamed: You're already becoming like him! "I…just don't want you to think that I can't handle this."

"I know you can," she said, not looking at me. "I just wish you didn't have to."

"Me, too," I said, and stopped talking when the pain in my cheek became too much to bear.

We were silent until the sun had set, and now the dark sky was ablaze with the city lights and the swirling carnival colors. The sounds of happy screams as the carnival-goers rode rides and laughter as they played games and wandered about mingling with one another floated in through the partially shattered window pane. They were sounds I simultaneously loved and hated in that moment. Their ignorance to what had happened and what was about to happen was both endearing and wonderful and horribly appalling and unfair all at once. In that small moment, I wished I was that kind of person, the kind of ordinary guy who could go to a carnival and laugh and have nothing else to worry about besides getting home on time so he could get up for his ordinary job the next morning, nothing to concern him besides remembering where he parked his car within the vast city or making sure his wallet didn't fall out of his pocket when he went on one of the upside-down rides. Then in my longing I finally realized something which made me sit up abruptly on the cot where the procedure had taken place.

"Beast Boy went to a carnival like that last night, didn't he?"

"The amusement park, I think," Raven said softly. "On the other side of town. Not that one."

"But that doesn't mean he's going to want to go to this one. I didn't even think about that."

Stupid, stupid, I chastised myself. Now I understood why it was taking forever to get him out of that room. It would probably be worse for his well-being and mental situation to go to a carnival like the one where he'd had his heart broken than it would be to simply stay in Terra's room, wallowing in his own depression. Stupid, stupid, worthless idiot…

"I just thought…so Starfire could get another…teddy bear."

She shrugged after a moment. "I didn't think about it either."

I flinched, knowing I had to salvage this somehow. I wouldn't let the four of them stay trapped in this godforsaken tower for the rest of the night—frankly, I was not sure what would happen if they didn't get out, especially with consideration to the current mindsets of Beast Boy and Starfire specifically. And in all honesty, I did not want them in the tower when I did what I had to do, for fear that they might overhear us talking, maybe tap into the audio or video feed of our conversation or walk in right in the middle of it all. So not only did I need to find a way to cheer up each member of my team while being simultaneously sensitive to their specific needs, I also needed to find something for them to do that was inclusive, would keep them all busy until I was done, and was preferably far, far away from the tower—all at once.

"Change of plans then," I said. "Go to the mall. Not the one here—at one point he went there with Terra—but the one half an hour from here. The upscale one. You know, we stopped a robbery at the jewelry store there? Those memories are a little better. Keep them there until it closes. Let Star pick out a stuffed animal and whatever the hell else she wants and tell her it's from Robin. You can take my credit card if you want."

Raven still did not look at me when she spoke: "It's not like a bear from the carnival would have replaced the old one, anyway. Nor will one from the mall. Because no matter where she gets it from, every time she looks at it she's just going to wish she had the old one back, 'cause that's the one that held all the good memories which made it so important to her in the first place. And instead of remembering the good time she had with you when you won the old one for her, she's just going to think of the pain that surrounded getting the replacement, and the reason it needed to be replaced. The carnival's almost irrelevant if you think about it that way—because you can't recreate that moment for her no matter how hard you try."

After a moment, I said very quietly, "Well, I know the carnival is out of the question, and I know you're right—I can't recreate that moment for her. But maybe just getting a new bear would be enough—enough to make her happy, or to calm her down, at least. We don't know for sure that she would associate it with this pain. Maybe she would think of those old memories."

"Maybe," Raven said with another almost dismissive shrug, "but maybe not." Then, she stood up and pulled the hood of her cloak over her head, shrouding her face in shadowy darkness and again making her purple eyes glow softly, in a way that was almost startling. "Look, I'm going to go get them. I'll tell them we're heading to the mall instead and Beast Boy will probably come along. While we're gone, please try to rest for a little while, at least. It's the weekend so the mall should be open later tonight. I'll keep them there until it's closed, so you'll have time to get your strength back and work through some of the pain before you go through with it."

"Please make sure to buy her a new teddy bear," I said, almost begged.

"I will," she said. "Will you rest?"

I glanced at the clock on the opposite wall. "For an hour. Any later and I'm not going to get an answer."

She turned back from the twisted remains of the door to look at me briefly. "You know him too well."

I smiled sadly at her and shook my head.

"No," I said, "I don't know him well enough."

---

They had left very quickly after Raven reached them. Whether it was the idea of going to the mall as opposed to the carnival that got Beast Boy in gear or something else I would never know that did the trick did not seem to matter, because all I knew—and all that mattered, really—was that the tower became very quiet, so bizarrely silent it was almost frightening. It was not that I hadn't ever stayed alone at the tower before, but for whatever reason, I felt the absence of my team so strongly and intensely, like I never had before, and not even the far-away sounds of the carnival where they would not go could remedy that. If anything, those sounds made it worse, somehow added to the silence and the overall feeling of loneliness. But I suppose I shouldn't be complaining—there would be no background noise to interfere when I made my call.

I don't think I'd actually intended to follow Raven's advice, because I hadn't been kidding about the time constraint—the man in question had told me himself that he never made any business deals or agreements after eleven, and whether or not he'd just been joking I did not think it worth it to take the risk—but nonetheless I found myself slipping in and out of an uneasy sleep, unable to help myself even laying on the uncomfortable infirmary bed and shivering in the cold that had enveloped the tower since the attack, which was unsurprising considering our current lack of windowpanes and the rampant ocean breeze that now constantly gusted through our home. For whatever reason, I felt more exhausted than I had felt in quite some time, even after vigorous training sessions or seemingly never-ending missions, and if that was due to my blood loss, the lack of sleep the night before due to Slade's attack or the emotionally trying type of day it had been, I did not know. I tried to keep myself awake, but eventually I realized I was not doing myself any favors and set an alarm to wake me in half an hour. Then, I shut my eyes and gave in.

When the alarm rang, with a sound that was horribly loud and abrupt as it tore through the silence, I felt like I hadn't slept a wink. Didn't I just shut my eyes only a second ago? I thought. Even so, I bolted up in bed and forced myself to get up right away so that I would not fall back asleep. I could have slept for an eternity longer, but in this case I couldn't afford even five more minutes.

As I made my way from the infirmary and down the hallway towards my bedroom, I felt a flame of fear beginning to burn in the pit of my stomach, and I had to force myself to take a few deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating. As I made the trek, one which seemed to last for an eternity and which felt akin to the final walk a condemned man might make to the gallows, I couldn't help but notice that the closer I got to my bedroom, the less destruction and disorder there seemed to be. The walk there had begun in a section of the hallway which had been mutilated by some sort of blaster, huge blackened dents in the metal walls and ceiling. The floor had been cut open, and I'd had to step around a crater of jagged metal sticking up every which way in the center of the floor in order to progress any further in my walk. As I did, I could only imagine how something like that had gotten there. A few yards further, the dents became few and far between, only a few scratches here and there as opposed to the horrid tangle of gashes where the metal walls had been practically stripped away a few feet back. Then, as I approached my door, I saw that the hallway was almost spotless, not even a scuff on the wall or a sliver of glass or misplaced metal on the floor. The door to my bedroom was unharmed, plain and solid as usual, looking out of place as I glanced back at the visual mess of destruction that lay behind me.

I took a step through the unscathed doorway, and I was met with a similar sight—a space that looked as though no one had touched it, as clean and orderly after the attack as it had been before it. My bed, which had been neatly made before the attack since I had of course fallen asleep in Raven's room, remained untouched, nothing like the charred and shapeless mess that poor Starfire's bed had been reduced to. The files I kept on each of my most important enemies, Slade included (the majority of the information was on Slade, in fact), were still stacked tidily in a straight pile on the corner of my desk next to another unperturbed stack of newspapers and news articles I had printed off. My computer, which I had expected would be the first thing Slade might attempt to destroy or tamper with in some fashion, was safe and sound. I did a quick mental run-through of all my belongings to make sure that nothing important had been taken, and I found that everything was indeed still here. It seemed as I glanced around the room that for the most part there wasn't a thing out of place—but then I found myself looking a bit closer, maybe a little too close for my own good.

The desk actually looked a lot more organized than usual, and some paranoid, compulsive part of my mind was sure that I had left at least two of my pens on the surface of my desk, not all in the pencil cup as they were now. In a similar fashion, I was quite sure I had left some of my notebooks open, as I had been taking notes yesterday morning after we had returned home from our apparent victory over Slade in that day's firstbattle with him, but now they were closed and stacked neatly with the other paper items I kept on my desk and used for reference. As I initially surveyed the room very early this morning after the attack in question had ended, trying to get a feel for the potential cost of the repairs we'd have to make and what we would need to have replaced, I noticed more things like this. It wasn't just the desk.

I thought there had been a pile of clothing on the floor near my closet, but now all the garments were hanging neatly inside, and had been organized in a way I did not at all remember doing. A few of the knickknacks I kept on my dresser seemed to have been shifted, ever so slightly, rearranged just enough for me to notice. It only took me a moment to realize that these things had been dusted, a chore that I had put off doing for several weeks simply because I couldn't find the time; the collection of items I had bought at the antique store we all liked to shop at had gone from dingy and dirty-looking to being shiny and pristine, just like that. Maybe I had gotten around to the dusting and simply did not remember doing so (I could have done it offhandedly, maybe using the sleeve of my t-shirt to wipe everything off and taking only a moment to do so), or maybe the things hadn't really been as dusty as I thought they had been and nothing had actually changed, but I suppose in reality that was probably only wishful thinking. Either way, it had to be one of the most bizarre things about the whole room and its subtle changes that I noticed, but even then there were still more modifications to take note of—and the changes to the dresser and its contents weren't finished, either.

After I had returned home from my first apprenticeship to Slade, Raven had given me a small worry stone to help with the stress and anxiety and depression I had often felt, saying that it might help somewhat just to hold it in my hand. It was jasper, she'd told me, a deep brick red color with swirls of crystalline white and dark silvery gray, and it had quickly become one of my most prized possessions, because somehow it did indeed help—not a lot, but enough. I carried it around with me all the time, and whenever it wasn't in my pocket or clutched in my fist, I kept it set out on my nightstand where it was in easy reach and where I could always see it. Well, now the stone was in the wooden bowl that I kept on my dresser for my wallet and keys. I didn't remember putting it there, and though it was possible that I had thrown it in the bowl on my way into the room after our first fight with Slade yesterday morning, I had a distinct memory of holding it while taking my notes and then dropping it onto my nightstand, where it lived next to the other items which were most significant to me, when I got up to go join my friends in their premature celebration.

The keys and wallet were still there, right where they belonged—that was good, but the contents of the wallet itself were a whole different story; when I looked it over, I saw that the bills had all been facing the same way, straight and in a tidy little stack, unlike the clumped-up wad I was sure I'd left them in that morning. And, if I wasn't mistaken, there was actually more money than I'd started with—almost sixty dollars more, in the form of a discolored and mangled ten dollar bill I was pretty sure I hadn't had prior to the incident, and a similarly worn-looking fifty dollar bill I knew I hadn't had prior to the incident. I never carried around big bills like that.

I suppose I should have made sure that when Raven bought Starfire her new bear, she told her it was really from Slade, not me, because that sixty dollars was part of the money I had given the Titans to use. I hadn't really wanted it in my wallet.

Is Slade screwing with me? I had thought this morning after having finished my inspection, sitting down on my still spotless bed, dismayed.

Then after a while of sitting there in puzzled silence, I glanced around me, looking more closely at the sheets and pillows and perfectly folded blankets than I had initially. I thought, Shit. I didn't arrange the pillows like that. And there's no way I made the bed this nicely yesterday morning—I was rushing because I woke up later than usual. I didn't smooth out the sheets or tuck anything in, and I sure as hell didn't organize these pillows by size and color. God, damn it all to—

I put my face into my hands and groaned. Why do this to my room? Why didn't he have his robots just destroy it like they did to everyone else's bedroom? Why do this to me?

Well, he hadn't left my room completely unharmed in any case. Just like Starfire, one of the picture frames I kept on my nightstand had been thrown to the ground and crushed, a small splay of glass surrounding it. But unlike Starfire, it was only that one single picture which had been broken—just one of them, even though I had about four on the nightstand and a host more hanging on my wall. The picture that had been destroyed was a nondescript and rather surreptitious shot I had taken with the man I called my father. Neither of us had been in costume, but neither of us was completely unconcealed, either, our eyes hidden by sunglasses, maybe as a joke more than anything else. When any of my teammates saw the picture, they never seemed to realize it was me, as if they were unable to recognize me without my overuse of hair gel. They had asked me once who the two half-smiling and seemingly somber figures were. I told them that they were old friends and left it at that, and they never asked me again. But that had been the picture broken—the picture he had chosen to break.

Now glancing about the room, my eyes traveled from the shattered photo to the too tidy desk to the closet, where the bulk of my hanging clothes lurked in shadow like a horrible monster, a hiding predator. I clicked on a light and snatched the little red worry stone out of the wooden bowl where it should not have been, caressing it absentmindedly in my fingers as I looked around. Why would Slade mess with you like this? I again asked myself silently. What would even be the point of doing that?

Then I answered myself: There's no point, which is why he didn't. You're imagining things, Robin. You're an organized person, and you can't stand to see a mess. You always keep your room clean, so why is it so hard for you to believe that you would have organized it like this yourself? You're stressed over Slade, that's all, and you clearly forgot doing it. That's all.

But the picture, the paranoid part of my mind tried to argue. A picture is broken, so the Slade-bots were clearly in here.

Why would they have wasted their time in your bedroom? the rational part of my mind argued back. They weren't here to house-clean, they were here to destroy you. The only reason they would have been in here at all is if some of them came in through your window—that was the reason they were in the others' rooms and destroyed them, mind you—but your window is pristine, intact, and probably wouldn't open even if you tried to force it. You really need to do something about that rust problem.

But the picture frame—

—Fell off the table because of all the booming and blasting from your fight. You kept it too close to the edge of the table anyway, and when the house was literally shaking, what did you expect to happen? Of course it was going to fall eventually.

Maybe I did keep it too close to the edge. But that doesn't change the fact that if it fell, it fell right side up. As if someone had set it there purposefully.

After a moment of standing hesitantly in the doorway—something I seemed to be doing quite a lot today—I stepped over the mess of glass and the crumpled picture and made my way slowly towards my computer, glancing at the stack of notebooks on my desk as I did. What exactly had I been writing in them yesterday? I couldn't quite remember. Notes on Slade, of course, but in that moment I couldn't recall what about him specifically I had been writing. Something about how he'd been using his robots to do his dirty work more frequently than he used to, and how he often did not take the time to personally appear as he used to, as if he was suddenly too good for us, maybe too disgusted by our mere presence to come and do any of the fighting or interacting himself.

I think I had also been doodling in the notebook for whatever reason, even though drawing was something I rarely did, nor was I very good at—and why exactly I'd chosen to sketch my enemy this time instead of write about him was completely beyond me. And to think that the one time I chose to draw something serious, something besides my lame nonsensical doodles, I drew Slade of all people. It wasn't as if to be drawn by me was some sort of grand honor—after all, I was no da Vinci, and Slade wasn't asking me to draw him—but without a doubt he did not deserve the time or care in which I had tried to recreate him on that paper—and I had put both these things into the drawing. It stood out from my other childish scribbles like a diamond among dirt. Not that it was really any good, but I really had tried to make it nice and accurate to him, hoping I could somehow convey his proud stature, the cold, calculating grey eye, and most of all, the evil that defined him and seemed to radiate from his being. Needless to say, it was a task that had seemed as intimidating as the man himself.

I had worked diligently on this, dedicated suddenly to the drawing's completion and determined to see it through to the end. As the others had begun with their undeserved celebration, I stayed at my desk where I had been for quite some time already and shaded and perfected each detail from memory, listening as strings of their conversation floated down to my bedroom and pervaded my thinking, their laughter as they enjoyed themselves suddenly becoming the inspiration for me to finish. It was as though I thought that if I could pin down the evil and darkness that defined Slade on the paper before me—taming him with each stroke of my pencil, deconstructing his supposedly terrifying exterior as I familiarized myself with his every detail, assets and imperfections both, rising above any power he had over me as I became something even he could not touch or influence: artist and creator, suddenly the one in control of the way he made me feel and not the other way around—I could somehow also pin him down in real life, get a handle on the chaos he constantly set out to cause and keep him from hurting my friends as I feared he would, hurting them so that they could not laugh as they had been laughing in that moment. Of course, this was not the case; again, it had only been wishful thinking, even though I had finished the drawing to the best of my ability and spent quite some time staring at it afterwards, a strange sense of satisfaction and guilty pride swelling in my chest as I did.

It's pretty good, I had thought. You should show this to the others.

That's not happening, I had answered myself immediately, and dropped the pencil I had been using in disgust, watching as it came to rest in the groove of the notebook's spine. I shoved the still open notebook off to the side of my desk and tossed away the other pencil I had also been using throughout the process, my eyes following it as it rolled slowly down the gentle slope of my desk and came to rest against the bulk of my keyboard. My favorite note-taking pen was near, lying propped up on the keys. No longer caring about these tools or their whereabouts, I had spared the desk a disdainful look before getting up to join my friends, suddenly wanting to be finished with this project I started and far away from my bedroom, as far as I could get. I had left in a hurry, not even pausing to close the cover of the notebook which now sat on the very top of the stack of evidence folders—not at all where I had left it.

Looking at it now, I felt like I was losing my mind, or had amnesia.

As I slid slowly into my seat, I reached down to touch the leather cover, caressing its smooth pebbled surface beneath my fingers. My eyes traveled across the desktop, absentmindedly looking for the soft graphite pencil I had been using to shade the picture, the crisp hard-leaded pencil I had used for details, the note-taking pen with its soft grip, the red gel pen that had rolled onto the floor. I looked even though I knew exactly where they were—right where they belonged but where they shouldn't have been in the small etched glass vase, something I bought for this purpose exactly the first time I ever went into our now favorite antique store.

No, I was right, I thought suddenly. I didn't touch those pencils.

Forcing my hand away from the notebook's leather cover, I moved my fingers to the computer's keyboard and began to type rapidly, trying to ignore the steadily increasing pain and numbness that threatened to consume the right side of my face. I worked fast, glancing periodically at the time on the computer's monitor. I had ten minutes: ten minutes to set up a secure video feed that would be untraceable with even the most advanced of technology, check myself in the mirror to make sure I looked at least halfway presentable, and mentally prepare myself for what I was about to do, going through the possible conversation scenarios in my head, trying to anticipate anything and everything he might say and counter these statements with solid and confident responses of my own. As I did this, I rubbed the worry stone between my thumb and forefinger, drumming one foot nervously on the floor. In truth, a lifetime could not have prepared me for what I was about to do, and a part of me didn't want to think about it anyway, urging me instead to let my mind wander somewhere else, somewhere brighter, and enjoy what I knew were the last few moments I had of my freedom.

In those last few minutes I had, I was not debating whether or not I would go through with what I was about to do, because in all honesty there was nothing to debate—because I had no other choice. Instead I alternated between mentally checking that I had done everything I needed to in preparation for this call and thinking rather hopelessly about the new life I was about to live and everything I would lose, including my friends, my home, this room. As I went into the bathroom to clean the caked blood off my face and comb my hair, I thought about strange things, like how much I would miss the leaky faucet on the sink or the view from the bathroom window, which was debatably nicer than the view from the bedroom itself. When I went back into the bedroom, I thought about how much I would miss the collection of books I had spent my life gathering. I would miss the armchair in the corner where I spent a lot of time quietly reading, where I would often fall asleep, probably spending more time sleeping there than I ever did in my big comfortable bed. I had missed all of these things the first time I had been Slade's apprentice, and it would be no different this time around. I was sure of that.

Five minutes to eleven I made the call, clutching the worry stone so tightly that my knuckles were turning white. I forced myself to take a few deep breaths as I waited for the connection to establish between us. I knew it could take one or two minutes, and that was if he chose to accept it right away, so I still had a little time. Out of nowhere I decided that I wanted to spend my last few moments of freedom looking at the picture I'd drawn of Slade, one last time.

Whether or not the practice had any actual influence on real life as I had hoped in my wishful thinking, there really had been something very therapeutic about drawing the man, and it couldn't hurt to relive those positive emotions now. I had secretly loved the feeling of authority I'd had being the artist; it was somehow so satisfying that I could draw him in any manner I pleased and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it to stop me or change the way I thought in that regard. I was in control of this drawing, not him, and I always would be. If I wanted to go back and give him a mustache or a party hat, I could. If I wanted to have him humiliated and wearing a dress, I could do that, too. I could do whatever I wanted.

Maybe that's the key, I thought, and found myself smiling. Gently I pulled my notebook down from the stack. I'll just imagine him in a dress when I talk to him. They always say that kind of thing helps with stuff like speeches. Maybe it'll help me with this. Couldn't hurt to try I guess.

Glancing at the computer screen as I paged through the notebook, I saw that the connection was still processing, the "loading" wheel spinning idly. I knew that this was because he was deciding whether or not he wanted to answer, and I had to swallow down bile. I was in the kind of position that meant I couldn't take no for an answer, and if he didn't even want to talk to me then I would definitely have to rethink my tactics and reform an entirely new plan, and fast. I always thought that the day I deliberately tried to get myself into Slade's good graces and back under his wing would be a cold, cold day in hell, though if the appearance of our tower or the mood of despair that had fallen over it were any indication, hell was not so far out of reach, and boy, it was a chilly day today, wasn't it? The idea that he might not dignify me, at least a little, with even five minutes of his time after I had reached out to him in this way was nothing short of mortifying to me, and for a small insecure moment I wanted to give up right then and there and flee from the room, pretend like I had never even considered doing this and begin the impossible task of convincing myself that I could get Terra back myself without taking this horrible step. But then, I forced myself to think rationally again.

You've already been through this, Robin. Don't underestimate how much he wants you. He might bluff, but when it comes to this you can see right through him. He doesn't have as much control over this situation as you might think. Remember that. You have the upper hand here, not him, I thought.

Taking a deep breath, I nodded slightly, as if to reassure myself of these facts. Just like the picture, I thought, and flipped to the page where I had drawn him just the way I had wanted to, where I would always have more control than he did.

Raven's worry stone fell from my hand and tumbled to the floor with a miniscule thud.

My breath caught sharply in my throat when my eyes found the page, a small gasp being forced out of me. For a moment I only stared down at it, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Then, horror filling me, I took the notebook and threw it as far away from me as I could, hearing the flutter of pages as they were scattered in every direction.

Beneath the picture of Slade that I had drawn, in tiny letters almost too small to see with the naked eye and which I almost missed, someone had written: NICE WORK ROBIN! I had almost missed it because this message had been written in a style which deliberately mimicked my own, almost blending in with the few notes I had jotted down on the page. From what I had seen of it, the handwriting was nothing like Terra's, nor was it anything like Starfire's or Cyborg's or Raven's or Beast Boy's. Reaching into one of the evidence folders at my right hand, I pulled out a small note that had been written on a simple piece of yellow lined paper. During my first apprenticeship with Slade, I had watched as he scrawled a message on the paper and then sent me out to deliver it to one of his business partners. Doing as I had been told, I showed it to the businessman who read it but didn't take it, simply giving me a note of his own to deliver back to Slade. I had decided to keep Slade's note, and I read it over now.

It was, without a doubt, the same handwriting as the message on my drawing.

Crumpling the note in my hand, I dropped it to the floor, where it bounced once and then came to rest near my trash can.

My eyes travelled past the splay of notebook pages and towards the paneled bay windows, which at first glance looked intact and untouched. Squinting to get a closer look, I saw that the small latch at the base of the window had been unlocked. Not broken, not destroyed, just unlocked. It was then that I noticed the curtain swaying very slightly and realized why the room had felt so drafty. The window had been left open maybe half an inch, maybe less, but it was indeed open.

It was mid-September, and the last time I had opened the window was around the end of August when our air conditioning had stopped working and the sea breeze was the only thing to cool us down. It hadn't been open long, and I had locked it right away afterwards. That had been the last time I had even touched the latch, even though I had meant to do something about the rust that had accumulated on its joints.

Turning back from the window, I stared down at the surface of the desk for what seemed like quite some time, my eyes tiredly following the pattern of the wood-grain, memorizing the lines and swirls without much thought or care. For the longest time I refused to take my eyes off it, afraid that if I did, I would notice something else in my bedroom which had been changed, another reminder that he'd been in here, be it a blatant suggestion or a subtle hint—simply something else to psychologically torment me. Then I felt my face beginning to crumple and my lip quivering uncontrollably. I raised my hands to my eyes as I started to sob quietly, just like Starfire and Beast Boy had both done that day. I'm not sure how long I sat there crying in the pure silence of that place, but soon I remembered the whole reason I had been sitting there, the reason I was not away from all these terrifying things and out with my friends, where I wanted to be more than anything else in that moment.

Through teary eyes, I looked and saw that it was now ten past eleven and my request to be connected with him had been denied a while ago.

Moaning, I put my face back in my hands and continued to cry.

Soon my computer monitor beeped as it always did to alert me that someone had entered the tower, but I didn't even look up. It wasn't as if I would be able to talk to him tonight, anyway, so it no longer mattered whether or not the others were here. In some ways, I was glad they had returned because the silence was becoming very pressing, but I was praying they wouldn't come in here and see me like this. They had never seen me cry before and I wanted to keep it that way, but at the moment I couldn't seem to stop the tears from falling. I rubbed at my eyes in an attempt to dry them, groaning at the intense pain that now radiated around the right. Blood and tears dripped onto the wood of my desk, running down my arms and mingling in slow streams of diluted crimson. I whimpered, rubbing even harder in this futile attempt to will the tears back into my eyes, but it only seemed to make me cry more as the pain intensified and became too much to bear. Needless to say, I don't think I could have looked any more pathetic in that moment.

Come on, I moaned to myself. Come on. If they come in and see you this way they're really going to lose whatever hope and faith in you they might have had left. You have to stop. You have to pull yourself together. You have to—

A huge hand fell on my shoulder and gripped gently, sending a wave of pure terror coursing through me, my mind going blank and my body locking up, frozen in place. In that moment, I was so stricken with fear that I couldn't have moved even if I had wanted to.

"Don't cry, my little bird," a voice cooed softly into my ear. "Daddy's here."

Very slowly, I pulled my face from my hands and forced myself to turn around.

One arm behind his back, the other outstretched, his hand still resting lightly on my shoulder, there stood Slade, staring down at me in a manner which made me sure in an instant that he was grinning beneath the cruel metal mask. In the light of the bedroom, his single eye gleamed coldly.

"You know I have to make all my business agreements in person," he said.

---

A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed chapter one. One of my life's dreams was to write a creepypasta that featured Slade and I think this is as close to it as we're gonna get. I honestly couldn't decide if I wanted to call this story "Sacrifice" or "Five Nights at Wilson's."

Seriously though, I really like this one, but boy this was a bitch to edit. I've had this completed for a while now, but I hadn't had the chance to edit it until now. I know some of you will probably be saying that I should have been working on my other story "Dark Eyes" and to that I would say…well yes, yes I should have. But I didn't! In case anyone is wondering, no, I'm not done with that story (I'm currently working on the next chapter), but I did need a little breather from it. As far as this story goes, I will try to update it as soon as possible, but I am so thankful to have gotten this part published. I'm running on maybe five cups of coffee right now and I'm ready to collapse. I probably won't though, I think I'm going to marathon Kitchen Nightmares as a reward for finishing this rubbish.

Please feel free to leave feedback. Comments are appreciated.

~Rick