[I do not own Teen Titans or any characters mentioned in this story. This is going to be so much fun to write! I spent all day yesterday plotting out worlds and chapters, and this is going to be fun! I'm going to focus on a different pair each chapter, and know that for certain not every pair is romantic or even platonic. For example, it was so fun to write Robin and Jinx butting heads for half a chapter.]
"He let us go...but why? Why did he let us go?" Jinx mumbled to herself as she glared down at a single rock on the ground.
When Jinx and Robin had woken up from their fear toxin induced slumber, they had no idea in the slightest where they were. Jinx had personal experience with most countries in the middle east, and Robin had gone through extensive and thorough education on all places on Earth a villain could send them.
God, Robin hated himself right now. As of now, he was sitting on the ground with his back turned to Jinx, his mind working at a thousand miles per hour. He should've known, he should've been able to lead his team out of there. Batman would've been able to handle that situation perfectly, and he'd told Robin countless times of how dangerous The Scarecrow was and how to handle him, and yet he'd still messed up.
No matter how terrible the two both felt about failing their teams, they had to focus on the here and now. Only, neither of them could figure out where here was - or if there even was a here.
All around them was nothing but a vacuous mass of black space. They were standing on ground that felt like rock - like a cliff. The cliff seemed to be colored a lightish darkish purple, changing hues as the rock moved along the ground. From where they were on the ground, Robin was swinging his legs over a strictly cut piece of cliff, one that definitely wasn't natural. The ground just...stopped. It looked like the sheer edge of a paper, cut perfectly in a horizontal line and seeming to go on forever and ever. As Robin looked down over the cliff, there was just more empty space. Robin took a moment to experimentally drop a bit of rock next to him over the cliff, and as he listened, there was no 'thud'. There was no way of knowing how far down a drop it was to the actual ground of the place, but Robin didn't want to find out.
Robin made a frustrated humming noise for a moment before laying down on the ground and hanging his head under the cliff. There were only about four inches of rock that made up the ground - something physically impossible to hold them up because of the even thinner cliff of rock that seemed to sprout of the darkness like an undergrown tree, connecting itself to the floating cliff and holding it in the air.
"Hey!" Robin said in dismay as he felt Jinx's claw like fingers yank on his hair harshly and pull him up from where he was looking down.
"What's wrong with you? If you fall, I'll die, remember? Electro-shock wrists?" Jinx said in a shrill tone, waving around the symbol on her wrist that marked where Scarecrow had inserted his electric device.
Robin smiled sheepishly before scratching the back of his neck.
"Ugh, you'd think the leader of the Teen Titans would at least be a little bit more mature than the overrated party of apes I take care of back home." Jinx muttered, rolling her eyes.
"Hey- don't push it, Jinx. You're still a villain, and I'm still taking you into custody when we find a way home. The only reason I'm tolerating you now is because we need to find home together." Robin said in his leader tone, glaring and standing up from where Jinx had more or less thrown him on the ground by his hair.
"Alright, alright, bird boy! Give it a rest, I'm not one of your Titans in need of a lecture or a life lesson." Jinx said turning around and looking down at the lonely rock on the ground again, no bigger than the length of her thumb.
"...So." Jinx said, turning back around. If she was going to get home, she knew she needed to keep this idiot around, he knew more about her than Scarecrow, and right now, her friends mattered more to her than her pride.
"...Why did he let us go? Does he normally do this to his test subjects?" Jinx asked.
Robin gave a surprised look for a moment, caught off guard by the idea of Jinx actually being willing to cooperate with him.
"...No. I...I don't know why he let us go. Maybe...he was trying to get rid of us without killing us? But even still...this place doesn't read anywhere on my scanner." Robin said, glaring down at his communicator.
"...It just says that we're...nowhere." Robin said, his voice echoing out into the black void and settling back into him with a feeling of dread.
"...Magic? What about a separate dimension, a black hole?" Jinx offered, slowly walking back to Robin and standing next to him, looking down at the numbers and code on Robin's communicator - none of which made any sense to her.
"Scarecrow works alone - he always had and he always will. The only person he'd ever work with and not kill is The Mad Hatter, and neither of them can use magic." Robin said before flipping his communicator shut and walking again to the edge of the cliff, glaring at the void in deep thought. Jinx tilted her head a moment and realized that that was the same look she got when she was on the verge of a breakthrough in her plotting.
Maybe...just maybe, Robin was as worried for his friends as Jinx was worried for hers.
"Scarecrow is a scientist - but he only uses chemistry. He's a modern day Frankenstein, he's an absolute genius in that department, but he's no Captain Kirk. There's no way he would've been able to create a portal to a different dimension - or a black hole - without somebody in the perimeter realizing what was going on way before we arrived." Robin said, shivering a bit as he felt a gust of wind blow through his hair.
"...What?" Robin asked when he turned to see Jinx giving him a weird but strangely amused look.
"...You watch Star Trek?" Jinx said with a shit eating grin.
"I-It's a really good franchise!" Robin spluttered, his face beet red as he internally screamed and reprimanded himself for letting that little bit of his personality slip in his monologue of thought.
"Oh, that's rich!" Jinx said among her buoyant laughter
Once Jinx settled down and realized Robin had just gone back to fiddling with his communicator, she took a deep breath and came to a decision.
"...Okay birdie, I've...got a proposition for you." Jinx said in all seriousness, turning around to face Robin outright.
"Oh no, no way. I don't make deals with villains. Let alone second rate thugs like yours-"
"Oh can it, bird brain, I'm not here to ask you to bust me out of jail." Jinx said in a hoarse tone.
"...Look. I feel like we can make it out of here and back home, but we both know that's only gonna happen if we work together. So...if you stop putting on that mask of yours, then I'll be...nicer…?" Jinx offered, holding out her hand.
"Negative. The mask stays-" Robin began, before he felt Jinx flick his forehead like he'd imagine an older sister to.
"Metaphorical mask, robin hood. Since we've left our teams I've seen how different you act." Jinx said with a knowing look.
"...I know...you miss them. They're your family. I miss my family too. And I mean…" Jinx said before letting out a deep sigh, making Robin finally turn to look at her.
"...I know how difficult it is to keep up a persona, to be this perfect, strong, confident person because you know that if you aren't, you're letting your entire family, everyone you've ever loved, down. You have to be strong for them, I get it." Jinx said, before blinking rapidly. Robin could swear that for a moment he could see her blinking back tears, but he refused to believe it true.
"...but I don't need you to be the hero for me, okay? Right now, what's going to keep me from having another mental breakdown-" Jinx said in a broken voice. Robin made sure to make a mental note of that. He didn't peg Jinx for the person to have any mental illnesses. From how she's spoken he supposes it's anxiety or-
"I need you to be a person, alright? My team is normally what keeps me afloat, all their dumb jokes and their immature games- it keeps me alive. So right now, I don't need you to boss me around, I need you to act like you're an actual human being - a teenager. Can you handle that?" Jinx said in a confident voice, her eyes nearly begging Robin.
"...I can try." Robin said after a long moment of silence.
"I'm not that good with jokes but I suppose...I can be a little less bossy." Robin said begrudgingly, smiling as Jinx's relieved sigh.
"...So does this mean you're gonna stop calling me 'birdie'?" Robin asked.
Jinx's smile was suddenly blocked off from Robin, and he heard Jinx let out a shrill shriek. All around them, thick metal walls the same color as the ground had sprouted up in weird arrangement.
"A maze...Jinx? Jinx, can you hear me?" Robin yelled, knocking on the steel that had cut them off to get her attention.
"Robin- Robin what's happening?! Where- I ca-can-" Jinx stuttered in a panicked voice, one that Robin had never heard in his life, as she desperately banged on the steel as if she could break through it.
"Jinx! Jinx, I need you to breathe, calm down!" Robin yelled over to her worriedly.
"I c-ca- I CAN'T! I...No! NO! These- th-these are the- are the same walls as-" Jinx stuttered, tears welling up in her eyes as she fell to her knees and clawed at the steel wall in front of her.
The same as the Academy! She wanted to scream. She couldn't. She wouldn't. She refused to let Robin know this fear of hers, she wouldn't let him in so easily.
Ever since the Academy, Jinx had hated steel walls, or any walls for that matter. She had been trapped, alone, freezing inside those walls for more than half of her life. The steel felt cold and dead and lifeless under her fingertips then, and it still felt the same now. The steel messed with her powers in the Academy, and though she knew she wouldn't be able to use her powers now anyway, she hated the reminder of being so helpless. Jinx's mind was flooding, all she could hear was Blood screaming at her and beating her and scrambling her brain with his commands! She couldn't see- she couldn't breathe! She-!
"JINX!" Robin yelled, his voice breaking over the wind and the suffocating breakdown Jinx was having.
"...breathe." Robin said.
It took almost fifteen full minutes, but Jinx could breathe. She stood up on her side of the chilling wall and placed her palms on it.
"...So what do we do now?" Jinx asked quietly, her voice echoing through the steel.
"...Well…" Robin said with a smile to himself as he finally got a read of what the area really looked like on his scanner.
"...Mazes are meant to be solved, right?" Robin said, plotting out where they would have to travel to get out.
[I love my stubborn masked leaders. Read and Review please! Tell me what you think!]