A/N: Decided I'd get this done fast so I don't have another stray fic runnin' around. So here's another chapter. Thanks out there to all of you for reviewing!

I know this is against continuity of "Alpha Male" directly after "Homefront", but this hit me before this continuity and I wanted to get it down. So pretend there's a slight time lapse. For the sake of reading. Oh, also, none of these one-shots are related in any way unless otherwise stated.

Disclaimer: Nope, don't own, sorry.

Nine

It takes her a while to compute it, but as they're zeta-beaming back to Gotham, she catches his arm and pulls him aside, a few questions striking through her skull like the talons of a bird of prey. "How long did you say you've been doing this?" she asked after looking quickly to see who all was nearby. Megan was being harassed by Wally, as was usual, and Conner was at her side for protection upon request. Kaldur was nowhere to be seen. Who knew where he disappeared to some days...

"Since I was nine." His response is automatic, almost like a recording on an answering machine. Yet his voice was still Robin's. "Curious are we?" he asks with a sly smirk on his face and one raised brow.

Her face twists up in confusion. "Not curious, just stunned." She looks him over, trying to piece together how old he is. Younger than fifteen, older than eleven is about all she can get from him. The way he talks, he sounds about sixteen, calm with his words and yet still immature about every joke you'd learn in middle school. "You're, what, fourteen? And you're the greatest partner on the planet?" She puts a finger to her temple, trying to figure this one out. "How do you do it all?"

His hands are placed on his hips and the smirk still remains. He looks her over behind the mask and almost wonders why she has the right to question him. The Boy Wonder still doesn't comment. He just lets her ask away. It's no harm to him. They'd bonded over nearly drowning and burning together. And getting traught. That was pretty fun in his opinion. A normal day in the life of Robin. "Care to be specific?"

"How can you do all the acrobatics? You can't just learn that in three or four years!" She knows. She'd tried it once. Gymnastics had never been her strongest point, but once her father had put a bow and arrow in her hands, the ability to kill followed suit. Yes, she still knew her fair share of flips other such necessary things, but her skill level was nowhere near his.

"Been doing that since I was five. Next?" Again, like he was an answering machine responding to her questions. Rehearsed, practiced, recorded. Of course, being the ward of Bruce Wayne, he'd adapted well to answering questions as was expected. Reporters harassing him all the time, he had to be ready to spew out the generic answer of "Yes" or "No" or "No comment". These responses had been prepped with Batman years ago in case someone started prying. Artemis was a perfect example of when and where to use this training.

"But-" The continuity wasn't flowing right... Nine then five, where was the four in between? Four whole years missing-

"Acrobat since I was five, picked up Robin when I was nine. Completely unrelated training." His face seems to stiffen. "Next?" Robin sounds like he's calling for the next person in line for an audition. An automatic response.

Well, it obviously has to be followed up by Artemis asking, "Why so young?"

His face hardens. She can imagine his eyes turning to stone beneath the domino mask. She sees his fists clench slightly. "Bad stuff happened when I was younger. Circumstances led to Batman and my curiosity led to Robin. That's all I can give you without my whole life story leaking onto the internet." That, and he doesn't want to talk about it. Some days are already hard without mentioning it. Saying what went down is even harder. "What else?" He wants this interrogation to be over. If she presses too many of the wrong buttons, he may not have a knight to swoop in and save him.

"Why are you so calm about it?" She had been stunned earlier when he was so serene about their friends being murdered. He'd been silent most of the time except for the routine Robin things: here's the plan, here's how we're gonna do it, crack a wise guy joke, throw in some new word he just made up, and get the job done. He'd cut most of the jokes and had been darker than usual for the day. Her eyes had seen it all. "About everything?"

"You know Gotham as well as I do." He's no fool. He knows where she lives, about her mom, about her dad. He did his research. He's pretty sure she knows that he knows. "When you live there, it's bad. Especially when you get kidnapped every other week, nearly drown every few months, stabbed once a week, bruises every night." He shrugs and wishes he had pockets to shove his hands into. Tights are inconvenient for such things. "Adapt and overcome. Survival of the fittest, you know?"

She knew. All too well, really. You kill the assassin higher than you to keep from getting killed yourself. That was how the League of Shadows worked. It did take her a few seconds to realize that his implications meant he knew she lived in Gotham. She doesn't mind. She trusts him enough.

"Besides, we don't want to get dead, now do we?" He smiles up at her, his lips a little crooked, his blue eyes still dim with dark memories of a screaming crowd and two pools of blood. "So we've got to stay traught."

"Yep." She fingers her bow nervously, the metal cool against her skin. Her eyes are on the floor. The poor kid's been best up worse than she has, not to mention on more than one occasion. She always thought she had it bad, but he was thrust into a dangerous lifestyle young and forced to live like an animal rather than a fellow human, always beaten and bruised by the bigger beasts. And she just wants to clarify, "Nine?"

He nods and begins to set the coordinates on the zeta-beam. "Nine." He steps into the blue light and finds himself in the telephone booth moments later. Some part of him feels a little broken, and yet he still feels healed all the same. She knows the same pain.

He could see it in her eyes.

A/N: I know he's thirteen. Artemis doesn't know that.

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~Sky