His first "fort." The turning cogs and gears that had haunted my nightmares for years after our first and final encounter there—and which would be the setting for my unpleasant high where Slade had seemed anything but false, a hallucination of my troubled mind. Now they were turning once again and clicking and interlocking in this eerie way, which somehow proved soothing in the deepest reaches of my mind but would be overpowered by the horrifying fear that came into my body and crept up my spine and into my throat, pushing a scream up with it. There was the terror of this place—our place, where now memories of his odd and fatherly promise to me were mixed with haunted memories of my past, pain, and my eminent death. Once again though he wasn't touching me I felt that pain, felt him kicking me and hitting me to my death; felt the undying fear of those last moments—the suffocating knowledge that my life would end there in that darkened place by a darker figure in a darker light. The basement of the tower and this place became intertwined and no longer did I recognize safety from danger or the other way around; that darkness and the cogs and the eminent sound echoing in my brain were enough to draw horrified shrieks of terror; as if, all at once, I saw that dark Slade which would kill me and the Slade obsessed with a stupid girl named Terra, saw the knowing, stylish and confident and sly grin of the old man as he held me against the tree and made me think for a moment that'd be it, saw the terror and conquering-obsessed corpse who would stop at nothing to regain his skin, all as one, when I heard that sound, and it reduced my body to rapid shaking and fast breathing, convulsions and gasps of a dying man in a deep murky pool of liquid. The now beautiful and young hand grasped my heart and my mouth fell open; I was sure in that moment I would die, the cardiac rhythm mimicking that which I'd had that dark, rainy night at Titan Tower, sure the stress on my heart of the suffocating nostalgia would finish me off once and for all. The other reached out, groping, for what I did not know, though it seemed in that moment of weakness all I could do to imitate control.

That hand was met with another—Slade's, the strong and confident and practiced hand. His other went around to my back, providing support as he made me sit up as I began to lower backward no matter how I struggled to hold myself up there. Of course the touch did absolutely nothing to calm me, filling what space was left in my mind with thoughts of eminent pain and death and horror, red hot rage and cool, dark and gray, fading and crumbling memories and a feeling of unavoidable passing. Darkness all around, I felt trapped in a "bad era" where things were new and exciting but dark and sinful and in that respect with tainted lust. That high I'd had had made what was once a gentle expulsion of cooped up emotions between Slade and I a knife slicing into an infected wound, pain, suffering. The hand moved to the time of the cogs and gears and when it touched me it infected me with its creeping blackness; and without any other thought I shrieked out that feeling like it was all that could be done to save my soul, as if, to try and revoke that blackness as he pumped it into me. It was arduous and breathtaking and horrible—but again it made me feel alive, and so I shrieked further. The endless circle was returning and I would do nothing to stop it.

Those shrieks were quickly intertwined with words of the other—that person who I knew completed me. Slade's voice, drawn out of its calm softness by alarm at my state, was melding swiftly into mine, almost becoming one; where his heart beat at a rhythm as fast as mine as he too, recognized the horrid creeping darkness at his unwanted touch. I could feel that in him—that longing for what I longed, and there our voices seemed again to be perpetuated, even if just to me. He was yelling—"Robin! Robin!" a frantic, panicked tone he'd used maybe just once before when I'd ran at the precious generator and realized what would become of us in that moment, and yet to me it sounded like shrieks of Satan and the ghosts of the underworld summoned by Raven, with a manifestation of the emotions I felt in regards to a brighter past, made grey by the circumstances which it was vocalized. I screamed harder and louder and with everything to mimic it; the fort echoed with that sound and reverberated horribly under the pressure.

And then—calmness. I felt my jaw loosen and heard the unreal screaming, seemingly detached from my body, be silenced and left only by the sound of gears turning and clicking. They seemed very imagined to me—and I was beginning to question in the sudden haze that undertook me whether or not I was just imagining the gears, imagining everything. The haze, it seemed, had made me hopeful that way, had made me override the animalistic urges; it was making me think and in doing so I saw the walls of the fort crumbling around me—remembered the collapse as he had fled and I'd been left in a dreamy wondering about how he had reacted to my "sacrifice" when I'd been so sure it was the end of all of us—thinking about the way he had looked at me, never removing the gaze off me as he threw away the controller which would end my friends' lives—and mine. Remembering the state of the place in the aftermath made me come to, drew that logical, all-knowing Robin out of the depths of my troubled mind, the Robin Larry would have expected to have gotten on the mystery of—just what the hell was actually going on—a long time ago; and this Robin was beginning to question that, thinking—none of this makes sense, I must be dreaming, high off the mask dust…There are no cogs and gears…

I looked up at him and saw that he had his finger resting gently on a button which looked eerily similar to the one that controlled my friends' fates. I realized immediately that only when he had pressed it had I been calmed—that it had stopped my screaming and brought relevance back to my mind. It amazed me in this strange, horrifying but beautiful way, immediately, too, because at once I recognized that now, without a doubt in my mind as I thought it, he had total control over my body. There was no question; these "happy probes" did more than just make sure I couldn't do a repeat of last time—the gave him every ounce of control I had over my being, and at once I felt the embodiment of Terra. Immediately I felt weak and useless and a fool, in the back of my mind still thrashing myself because I hadn't "been smarter" or "done something more to stop him." These things were not true, not necessarily—I knew it, too—but their power was amplified by the new knowledge; amplified by dark memories of Terra as she looked upon the streets of her "conquered city" like a dictator, an empress, a queen—Marie Antoinette. Strange thoughts of—would Slade have been okay if Terra had killed me?

He didn't need to tell me anything. There were no cogs or gears but there was that calmness and the way he was staring at me, gently and easily as always but with this strange sense of worriedness, something almost unseen, to tell me all I needed to know wordlessly. In essence—the power he now had over me was unprecedented. Ultimately in that moment, in that look, I saw that there was no escaping Slade and I knew it internally, too, even as the thoughtful Robin contemplated and buzzed with ideas; as if that Robin was made so aware by the push of the button that it now completely overrode any hopes stirred by logical thinking—as if this look was enough to throw me into stark reality and leave me stranded there. Because now I wasn't thinking about how I would get out; instead I was thinking seriously about how I would survive and what I would be made to do in the name of Slade, how my friends would react. These might have once seemed animalistic, uncalculated, but in truth they were more deeply-rooted than I realized.

Because I was a smart boy.

There were a lot of things I could have said to him in that moment as I looked up at him and we both had a cold, unspoken understanding; a knowledge of the other's position and all that implied; in that moment I could have gone a basic route—how the hell did you do this?—or maybe a little deeper—why do you want me? Would you have let Terra kill me? Would you have cared if I turned to stone? Does it matter to you anymore? But I didn't either, even if I would have liked to, because something popped out of my mouth before I could stop it without any thought whatsoever. In hindsight I was probably wondering about this—had been for a while—and so in regards to Slade it was at the very front of my tongue when I was left groping for words. Yet it seemed so silly and irrelevant in that moment it seemed it was all I wanted to know even given my situation and all it would bring, the pain in the future; something so insignificant that should have been the least of my problems slipped out like I had rehearsed it confidently, set with a serious and undying stare up at him:

"What were you doing with Beast Boy?"

And yet I would not catch him off-guard—because Slade is not so easily caught off guard. In fact his expression didn't change and immediately I knew he wasn't in the least bit surprised—probably had expected me to ask sooner or later. And I should have expected that—yet I was internally sneering, not so importantly or too my notice but I was, how much I hated that cool, calculated demeanor he always seemed to possess and how it could never for the life of him, literally, be shaken. I should have assumed that I could gain nothing back and yet was still groping and longing for power. I wanted to watch that eye widen uncertainly and store it in my memory, but I would not. Not for a while. Now he was street-smart Slade who had learned all my tricks and didn't give in so easily to any of them; a wary and practiced man who didn't act unless acted upon, not anymore, but remembered the days of his initial interference. He had a firsthand account of dealing with resistance and people like me; and there was not a chance he would have flinched at something so simple and irrelevant as a misplaced question after all he'd seen—after driving a young girl to both their deaths and subsequently dealing with betrayal from the Devil himself.

Instead he smoothly answered: "You will find out soon, my restless child. For now, you should get some sleep; the probes have adjusted to your DNA and so now you should give them a chance to finish healing you. There's a great deal of stress on your brain and we can't have that."

The resistant and stupid Robin was emerging, as if drawn out by his refusal to appease the thoughtful and wondering brother. It made me thrash suddenly in his grip. "The only reason," it spat, no matter how hopeless, pointless, it was, really, to do so, "there's stress on my brain, is because I was kidnapped by a psycho who should be really in the nuthouse by now!"

Again, he was unaffected. "Well I'm not, am I? Maybe if you could defeat me, little one, but we have yet to see that happen. If I recall, you were so far from that that I had to save you."

"I would have rather died."

The eye narrowed and gleamed, dangerously. Shivers were sent down my spine like venomous snakes. "But that's not up to you, Robin. Not anymore. If you wanted to die you should have spoken to another "villain," but how wise would I be, really, if I let you slip through my fingers? You see I'm persistent—and not even death could stop that…

The fact is, Robin, no matter what you do, or I do, you will always belong to me, and I can assure you that it is better for both of us that you stay at my side so that we don't lose sight of that again." The gaze softened as he fell into thoughtfulness. "You see, to be honest, when I served your little friend's father I thought of you little at first—mostly I wanted my body back. But you—you are so persistent like me, aren't you? Each time you interfered I remembered more of our earthly connection and grew farther from Raven's father. In the library I had decided how I would miss you when the end progressed; when I invaded your tower I decided I would not kill you; but when we fought together I decided if we lived that this is what would come of us—that I would make it be."

"So—that's what you meant by it not being so cut and dried." These thoughts, which should have been private musings, slipped out of my mouth in complete awe at what I was realizing—the completion of the puzzle that was our past; and though the pieces were less than crucial they were telling. I was caught up in placing them and little regarded the fact that he was practically claiming me for eternity in this one moment, or the fact that there was no way I should have missed this, not seen it coming, when our interactions in that ending world progressed—but maybe that was good, at least for now; though it led to my own telling questions which I couldn't keep contained, like the question about Beast Boy and the way it had almost spoken itself: "Why did you leave me alone for so long then?"

The eye gleamed softly, but now it had lost its evil sparkle of remembrance and was replaced by one gentle, an observing eye. Almost it seemed to sparkle in excitement though there was a veil upon it that was perhaps made to retain it as he said, "Later, Robin. Your heart is racing, and such stress is life threatening in these early stages. I shouldn't have used it so soon—yet your screaming alone could have very well killed you. I know you're emotional but for your own health, you need to train yourself to relax. What you can do now is go to sleep."

"How—can I sleep?" As he had said, my heart was racing dangerously quickly. Whether from the nostalgia in all its coldness creeping up on me or Slade himself or the situation in its entirety and what I could infer from it, I didn't know. The notion of calming to sleep from this seemed crazy—after all it's not like you're thinking about sleeping after you've fallen from a building, or faced Satan himself. "There's no way I can—"

He put two fingers to my lips. "You should start first by calming down—and I can help you; I can give you an anesthetic but only once your heart rate is back to normal."

"How can I—"

He held the other hand up and pressed the two fingers on my lips there more tightly. "Pst! Shut up—try some deep breathing."

I was exhausted and wouldn't deny him this—because in reality it wasn't like I had any choice when it came to the situation I was in and the type of control he had now over my life. Sleep was not seeming so badly to me, though I detested the idea and wanted nothing more than to let my heart race with the ideas of what he had done and real comprehension of what was going on as opposed to a flurry of ideas and conceptions thrown hastily together; sleep to me was a light at the end of the tunnel where I could linger in blackness unknowingly until I returned to the evil Slade world once again. And—it was entirely possible that I was beginning not to care very much what was becoming of me—so overloaded with emotions that I would have rather just gotten out of it then stayed and fought a battle Larry's least favorite but depended-on Robin knew was completely pointless. Simply put—though I barely had the largest conception of what was really happening to me, I knew that this thing he wanted me to do, to sleep so that I would not die when my heart became overloaded, was almost unavoidable. After all: he was very persistent, as he had said, so why, for something so benign to those who mattered, put up a fight about it?

So I breathed deeply, in and out, and began to slowly but steadily relax. Like one of Raven's meditations (which the two of us had bonded further over after her birthday, when she'd been so grateful to me she'd insisted that she repay me with the good feelings and strength I had given her), I closed my eyes and focused on my breath; I slowly eased out everything else, first Slade, then the turning cogs and gears, then my own body and the light and isolated the spirit and mind so that they were aligned solely with the breath. Like Raven had taught me, I could have shifted further into the trance—could have taken myself through a journey of my thoughts and my inner-most desires, could have touched the spirit world and lingered there as long as I wanted; but these things would have made my heart race when it was over and done as I thought about what had happened there, because like Raven the rest of the titans, now too, could feel that spirit, the energy she dabbled in everyday, surging through our bodies and could feel the effects of that. Our gifted powers had not run out, which I had realized—and so would Slade, soon.

"Robin?"

Dreams were shrouded by the peaceful incantation—the wonderful and soothing energy that flowed as it was uttered. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." In my dreams I sat beneath the sacred tree on the planet called Azarath and meditated to this incantation as it was whispered throughout the village and carried by the wind to tousle the leaves of the tree and my hair. Across from me Raven sat, her legs folded. Her cape fell at her sides, exposing her slender body wrapped in white. Her hair flowed around her head; her eyes, glowing softly a striking but restful and familiar red in that odd landscape. Her arms were open as she offered up her palms while she meditated, an expression of pure harmony. In that moment she became a goddess—the truest, most undiluted and untouched beauty in all reality. She was comfort and warmth and the very essence of the most at-peace human soul. She was the universe. Harmony. Magnificence.

"Robin."

"Raven," I spoke. The voice was effortless, and I felt disconnected from it—as if it were not mine, as if, considering everything, it did little to represent my true feelings.

"Robin, where are you?"

Her own voice was silken and beautiful; with unending comfort and peace within its threshold. It flowed with the incantation in perfect harmony and seemed to stir her dark hair and mine—seemed to encompass everything I was in that moment, to instill me with the warmth I had once given her. Like a blanket, it caressed me.

I wanted to do the same—to give warmth, to establish that connection, linger in the oneness and completeness. And yet—I could not answer to it. I tried—tried to scream: "I'm with Slade! He's kidnapped me!" but all that would leave my mouth was the word, "Raven." I repeated it over and over, as if to answer her, as she called to me. Stretching out her arms she tried to reach to me; her hair flowed around her and I felt the energy she was giving off slowly making its way to my being, as she said, over and over, "Let me in, Robin, where are you? Show me."

Every time, I answered, "Raven, Raven," because it was all I could say. And her voice was growing more distant and my calling to her slowly fading; slowly the voice was dissolving into the sweet incantation, Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos, Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. As her energy faded and the planet of Azarath drifted back into memory, her voice left me and I was left with that incantation only, and blackness, nothingness. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath—

"Metrion, Zinthos…Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos."

"Robin!"

The voice, such a cold and unfriendly offset of the human spirit, a distinct variation from the beauty that was Raven. This, a human voice, was unpracticed and immoral—filled with fear and terror, anger, hatred, such emotions that Raven could encompass to steal them away from those who would allow it to overtake them—like the owner of the voice that shattered my sweetness and safety. While that voice prodded, invaded the harmony of spirit, meditation became difficult—to manifest the connection, impossible. As if to assure me that it had truthfully been this mortal, Slade, which had kept me away from such feelings all my life.

"Azzz-arath, Metrioonnn…"

"Robin! Stop it! Wake UP!"

It was lost then—totally. My eyes shot open to an image frankly crude in comparison to the beauty I had just laid my eyes on; Slade, in all his violent and uncaring metal, standing over me, the glowing eye wide and twitching in a way I don't think I'd ever witnessed in the entirety of our career battling one another. His strong and violent hands straddled my shoulders and were shaking them, trying to pull me out of the beauty he so badly wanted me to never have or live, because then I couldn't have been his in this world so terribly evil and stained, tainted in its entirety. This world—where the gears turned and cogs clicked and the offensive yellow light warmed me to the point of discomfort and then the cold nostalgia went back and chilled me again to make me sweat bullets. This, a horrid place—where there was no oneness and one would do what one needed to get by whether or not it harmed another.

That world—it made me hate this one even more.

But I wouldn't realize it now—because now I was just trying to figure out how I got to that world in the first place.

Though of course I would have little time for that, now at least. "Robin," Slade breathed out, when he noticed my eyes open and alert, staring down at me again in an awe that was so foreign it also looked as though the person behind the mask was not in fact Slade but some imposter, another villain trying to get at me under the guise of the metal-man with one eye. "Where the hell did you just go?"

I answered him what I could: "I don't know."

0~0 0~0

"Good," he mused softly as he glanced at the screen where my vital signs were displayed. The probes were able to detect these things, he said, without the use of a suit which would have such sensors—and displayed there was everything any doctor would ever need—things that at one point I might have thought impossible to tell; up there I saw not only my heart rate and blood pressure and endorphins and the like but the number of breaths per minute, thought type, fear levels, rate of cell progression and growth, even bodily reactions like arousal, blinking, and a whole analysis of my movements to detect possible emotions. In a sense—everything he could ever want, because he was not a doctor, to do away with me or torture me accordingly. Basically—nothing was private anymore, either.

"Good," he said again, with more conviction, as he looked at my heart rate. It sat at an easy 75 BPM—maybe still a little fast but better than what it had been, he had said. He glanced at the screen as he moved the cool metal device over my exposed back, used to amplify sound and intensity frequencies so that a more accurate reading of my heart rate could be divulged. He found the spot he was looking for on my upper back and placed the device here. "Deep breath, Robin."

Sitting up on the operating table where I'd received my initial injection of the damned "happy probes," I wore nothing but a pair of light blue shorts; my mask, disregarded completely because he'd already perhaps had the time to sketch my eyes if he had wanted; I was slumped over like a wet noodle, exhausted now—feeling little more than a lab rat, considering the circumstances especially, as he checked all my vital signs to make sure everything was properly functioning after my "meeting," if you could call it that, with Raven. I asked him what he believed was so wrong with me when I felt perfectly fine, if more than just an excuse, because in fact I did not feel that fine, to get him to stop asking me where I went because I still didn't know; he said that besides the chanting of Raven's incantation, everything was normal…except for the fact that while lying there, an opposite of the other extremity I had just experienced, I had no heart rate at all. In fact, he would tell me that had my lips not been speaking the words, the sweet incantation, he would have believed me dead. This, he said—something we would have to watch carefully in regards to my safety. But it was more likely that simply to him it was a phenomenon he would be driven to madness did he not investigate, though I could have said otherwise.

This had gone on for an hour now—test after test until I felt like I was back in school again (Mad Mod's, if anyone's). And yet—I went with it, putting up little more than groans of exhaustion and mumbles of protest when he made me get up and move or do anything that required remotely exerting effort as my fight, and even then I did nothing when, rather than ask me tirelessly to move myself again and again after the first few failures, he began simply picking me up to eliminate unnecessary hassle and carrying me where he wanted me to go himself. I don't know where the fire was lost; whether it lie somewhere in Raven's domain or back on the operating table rewound four hours' passage of time, or maybe back in the streets, the lonely pier, the ashes of Cinderblock—but it was not here. I don't know if it was my thoughts which had overloaded me, didn't know if it was the dimming anesthetic, didn't know if it was a peaceful haze brought about by peaceful dreams—but I saw no reason to fight him when I honestly could not have been any weaker had I been run over by a semi-truck. Maybe the dream had made me non-confrontational—made me obedient without the use of his little revamped toy. Maybe overall fatigue had made me not care—that, after having shrieked until my lungs deflated, fought like a cornered animal at least twice tonight, had my heart rate and thoughts taken for roller-coaster-esk spikes and plummets. But either way it did not matter—I was being good for Slade while he did what he wanted and he was pleased.

I groaned but took a deep breath in, held it for a few seconds, and then released it. Each time I did this I felt like I was breathing the very life out of me—breathing out the very spiritual soul of what I had felt with Raven which she'd left with me with each exhale and inhaling the rotting evil that encompassed that place; slowly, it was fading as I fell victim to the tests and analyses, the journey receding so that it could be replaced by Slade's own dark world, this new world he had created. And this night, exhausted, I'd let him. I breathed in and out for him—but wasn't that what my life had become about?

"That's my good boy," he said as I released the breath. Looking to the screen he saw that my heart rate was still at the nice constant, lowering a little as I started to drift into unwilling sleep. The other vital signs had leveled off and were now, similarly, at a steady constant, healthily normal so that the bombardment of tests could end, because thankfully he said, "Alright, little one, you're normal now."

My joy was short-lived, however, because he continued, "Though I would like to know what—"

I countered it with the loudest groan I could utter to let him know that I was done for tonight—whatever time it actually was. Exhaustion had got me and there was nothing more I was willing to do or would do for him, or for myself, for that matter, until I was rested. If he expected me to answer questions now, let alone about something I couldn't answer, then he was even more stupid than I thought. I wanted to know about what had happened just as much as him, but in that moment of drowsiness it wouldn't have mattered if my life had depended on it (being I would rather have just taken death so I could sleep endlessly).

But he took the subtle hint, thankfully. "Alright, I suppose it's time you get back to bed. I assume that your last nap wasn't the most restful. So fine. I'll be patient—after all, I've waited three years, my little one."

He picked me up and carried me to the bedroom I had stayed in when I had first been his apprentice—still, totally intact, yet still shrouded and stained with painful memories. Darkness, encompassing it, but I was too far-gone to notice just yet. Now it was just bedroom where I would rest—but when I woke up it would be a vessel for unrelenting nostalgia to fill until it eventually drown me. When I was awake this place would be alive with memories, and no longer would I be Slade's "good boy;"

When I woke I would be reignited with that passion to protest and be true to myself, the true Robin, Larry's favorite.

And when I woke I would no longer be able to hide behind sleepiness, duck out of the light of reality; when I woke I would be Slade's apprentice yet again, and there was much he wanted from me. I would learn that.

"Robin—if you see that witch in your dreams again, tell her I'd like to have a word with her."