The storm was still wrecking its havoc on Gotham long after the fire and smoke from the explosion was washed away by the rain. The heavy, lonely clouds watched as as the battered sidekicks and junior heroes recovered the broken body of the Boy Terror known as Robin from the ruins of his motorcycle. Drawn by the noise and lights, police sirens and ambulance lights flashed and wailed in the distance.

The sidekicks grouped together in a loose circle, battered and humbled. Miss Martian held her speared arm by her side, blood still trickling from the arrowhead buried in the flesh. Artemis leaned on her shoulder wearily, clutching her temples. Kid Flash smelled slightly like burnt hair- his red locks and the edges of his costume were singed. Beast Boy whimpered and flinched at every little sound, Starfire and Raven rubbed at their burning, watering eyes. Cyborg limped like an old, kicked dog.

They all gathered around the limp form of Robin, laid out on the pavement.
"Well...that...sucked." Kid Flash stated, finally breaking the silence. Artemis sighed and nodded. "Totally..."
Starfire dropped to her knees beside the still boy, touching his hand gently. Her eyes filled with green tears. "What will we do with you, Robin?" she whispered. Cyborg growled. "Star..."

"I am sorry, friend Cyborg." she said. "He makes me feel...sadness. None of this is really his fault." She pouted and fell silent, her wet hair falling into her eyes as she brushed his away from his forehead. Pity and longing were written on her face.

Raven drifted over from out of the alley where the bike had been destroyed. Her hood was down and her face was more grim than usual. "There is no sign of the Kryptonite or of Wren." she reported bleakly. Beast Boy shifted uneasily. "D'ya think she escaped with it?" he asked. It was Super Boy who answered him. The clone's back was to everyone else, face turned into the rain, and his voice was ragged and rough with pain. "No. She wouldn't have left him." Raven pulled her hood back up and stared blankly at him. "Is he dead?"

"No."

"So what do we do with him?" That was Artemis. Cyborg crossed his arms over his metal plated chest. "We should turn his ass over to the cops. Let him wake up in a Jump City jail cell."

"We can't do that, Cy. He'd be out of there as soon as he woke up and leave a double digit body count behind him. Plus, we need information."
"Well, we can't keep him in the Tower."
"We could-"

"We will take him to Mount Justice." Miss Martian broke in, stepping forward. "He can recover there under the Leauge's watch, and we will extract the information we need from him." No one argued with her, although Starfire's mouth turned down at the corners. "I do not think that is-"

"He's here." Conner spoke up again. Everyone shut up. Sleek and silent as a shadow, the Batmobile pulled out of the darkness and rolled to a gentle stop a few feet away. Gotham's dark Knight and his female protege got out. The look on Batman's face made Raven's expression look like a sunny clown smile. Conner moved to meet them. "Batman, we-"

"Quiet." Batman ordered. He observed the gray and red markings on his skin that bubbled and sizzled as the rain hit them. Behind his cowl, his eyes widened fractionally. "We will talk about this later. For now, get back to Mount Justice and have someone take a look at that. ASAP." Super Boy tightened his jaw, but be didn't fight it. He strode over to the Batmobile and slid into the backseat, either too proud or too much in pain to disagree. The others gasped when they saw the damage the Kryptonite had done.
"What in the..."
"I don't know..."
"Maybe Superman can tell us..."

Batman loomed over Robin like a statue. "Is he dead?" Kid Flash shook his head. "No..." Miss Martian cleared her throat. "Batman, sir, what do we do?"
"Take him to Mount Justice." He eyed her injured arm and raised an eyebrow. "Can you handle the flight back?" She nodded, and both her and Robin began to levitate. She flew away with him in tow, headed back to the mountain. Kid Flash grinned weakly at Batgirl. "Hey, Bat-Chick. You're a little late, ya know. We could'a used some help." Batgirl smiled back. "It looked like you were getting your butt kicked just fine without a me, K.F."

"Enough. Batgirl, start on the explosion sight. You know what to do. The rest of you had better get out of here." Cyborg frowned. "What about the cops?"

"I'll handle them, too." Batman assured him. "Go back to your tower." He didn't say 'Good work', and Beast Boy said as much when he was out of earshot. Before Raven could respond , Batman called back after the Titans. "That's because you didn't do good work. I don't reward failures."

Batgirl retired to the crash sight and began to inspect it. She recovered the remains of the joker card and the fragments of the container, then showed them to her mentor. He turned the burned card over in his hand and scowled. "There's no sign of the girl?" "No. But the Joker was here. If she was in the same shape as Robin, he might have taken her." Batman nodded. "It's almost a certainty. There's too much blood here for all of it to be from the boy." Batgirl rubbed at her cheek. "So...are we going to try and recover her?"

"After we interrogate the boy. We use her rescue as a bargaining chip for information. Once he tells us about Deathstrike, and why he wanted that Kryptonite so badly he'd sacrifice his precious apprentices, then we move in for the girl."

"But...the Joker might hurt her before that." Batman glared at her. "I've seen the way they fight. The only thing they care about is each other. He'll talk once he knows where she is."

«»«»«»«»

Thousands of miles away, a violet haired villain in training sat in her dorm room alone, damp with sweat and shuddering with convulsions. Her mismatched eyes were milky and blank. A vision of sickness, death, destruction, and pain flickered in her mind. Buildings disintegrated like wet toilet paper, crumbling into the ground and burying the screams of those trapped inside. Skeletal bodies, grey and wasted and covered with throbbing, oozing veins, coughed and moaned in the streets.

And death. Inescapable, unchanging death, hurtling towards her like a freight train.

Her mouth formed two names, soundlessly, over and over... "Robin...Wren...Robin...Wren..."

A short blonde boy by the name of ToxStream pounded his fist on her door impatiently. "Come on, Cross! You know what the penalty is for missing dinner!"

Bailey Cross, Clairvoyance, shivered and clutched at her head. "Something...coming...something bad."

«»«»«»«»

She had fallen asleep in Robin's room again. A body was pressed against her, and someone's hair tickled her cheek. Their nose was ice cold- Slade must have been disappointed in their scores and turned off the heat in the compound. It was freezing...an echo of laughter slid in and out of her ears, strange and out of place.
Wren smelled blood, and felt it drying on the side of her face. One of Robin's old cuts probably reopened. That happened sometimes- he was a wild sleeper. He fought even when he slumbered.
It really was cold...
Wren snuggled closer to her brother, not opening her eyes. She marveled at how still he was. He wasn't moving at all, and his skin was so chilly, and he didn't smell like her Robin. He was always warmer than her and he had always smelled like green apples and warm boy musk for as long as she could remember...but now he was corpse cold, and he smelled like must and decay.

Cold. Must. Decay.

Corpse.

The words collided like a car crash in her mind. Wren's eyes flew open, and she found herself face to face with a grinning, rotting skull. Only her upbringing kept her from screaming- barely. She gagged and kicked out wildly. The skeleton held her in a mockery of a loving embrace, its slimy arms coiled stiffly around her body. Bones splintered as she kicked her way free of them, shuddering violently and choking back sour bile. 'Oh God oh God oh God...' Her stomach rolled, and she looked around frantically. There was nothing but dark, and her eyes refused to adjust. Her breath created misty clouds around her head. Her face felt cold and naked...Her mask was gone.

Her chest tightened as fear set in. Wren tried to stand up, but her arm was secured to the floor. She scrabbled at the thing that held her arm, and broke her nails on hard, musty cloth. Her gasps sounded large and echoing in the pitch black. She tried not to panic, but she was alone, it was cold, she ached all over, and her brother was gone...

"No..." she mumbled, closing her eyes. "No...I won't do this. I won't do this..." She had been in situations like this before. Those had been survival training sessions- this was real life. But she was not going to go to pieces. 'Get it together, Wyllow.' She inhaled shakily and brushed her loose hair out of her eyes, peering around again. She shivered, but forced herself to look at the skeleton again. She had to be sure it wasn't...him. Immediately she realized the body wasn't her brother. It was too small, for one. The few hairs that clung to the wasted skull were brown and curly, not straight and black. And the body was dressed in a bright, tattered costume that she recognised with a cold chill. This had to be the original Robin, Batman's young sidekick. Slade had named Richard after the boy to taunt the Dark Knight with his death.

And the original Robin had been abducted and killed by-

"The Joker." she whispered, staring into the deathly grin. As if the name had been a trigger word, the lights flashed on with a sudden brightness that blinded her and made her eyes water painfully. When they cleared, she found herself in a mockery of a child's playground. Footsteps made her blink and look up at the tall figure hovering over her, and the bloody grin beaming down into her face.

"Correctamundo, little birdie!" The Joker chortled. "Oh, I'm so so glad you're awake! Harley's been waiting to meet you, and we've got a lot to talk about!"

«»«»«»«»

It was warmer than it ever had been in the compound, and that was what woke him up. If it would have been about twenty degrees colder, he would have stayed asleep. But he was warmer than he'd ever been in his life, even on the nights he'd shared his bed with Wren.

He opened his eyes- or tried to. They were nearly swollen shut, and his eyelashes were crusted together. Robin blinked at the bright lighting and coughed, wrenching his sore chest. His head throbbed like a bass drum. He looked down, and saw that he was stripped of his uniform and mask, and that he was clean scrubbed. His hands were secured behind his back, and they didn't budge when he pulled them. He was by no means super human, but he knew that he and Wren had somehow been made stronger than a normal human. Strong enough to break basic handcuffs, at least. Which meant these weren't basic handcuffs, and he wasn't in a basic jail.

Robin coughed again and licked at his dry lips, blinking to clear his eyes. He was in a holding cell, and it didn't take a genius to figure out WHICH holding cell. He looked down, and grinned at the JLA insignia on the floor under his feet. Oh, great.

He shook his head and chuckled, feeling stitches pull at his hairline. The door outside his cell hissed open, and in strode Metropolis's golden boy alien himself, cape, curl, and all. Of course. "Good, you're awake." Superman thundered, crossing his arms over his massive chest. "Robin, is it?" He disregarded the obvious hateful scorn in Robin's pale blue-grey eyes. "We've got a lot to talk about."