"Happy Birthday to you-"

Dick's face burned, and he lowered his head to block out the sound of his classmates' singing. Why were they doing this to him? He never asked for this strange and slightly terrifying song to be sung to him on the anniversary of his birth. If he knew when he was a fetus that this would happen annually, he might have self destructed. Well, if that was possible.

Why did Alfred make him go to school today, again? Oh right, it was because he was pure evil.

"Happy birthday to you," Barbara sang significantly louder than the others, grinning cheekily as she elbowed her embarrassed friend. Dick peeked out from his sanctuary and sent her a weak glare. Not cool.

"Happy birthday dear Richard! Happy birthday to you!"

"Cheer up, birthday boy," Barbara told him once the class ended their awful chanting. "This is tradition."

"Humans are weird," he grumbled, emerging from his hiding spot. "I completely forgot about the birthday song. Never will I ever come to school on my birthday again."

"Hey, you're human too," Barbara pointed out with a roll of her eyes. "So embrace our strange rituals. And besides, it's a good thing you came to school today because I have to talk to you about something."

Dick rose his eyebrows. "Yeah? Is this about our science project again? 'Cause if you hound me about my half one more time, I'm finding a new partner."

"Haha, very funny," Barb said with a mock glare. "But no, I was wondering about the Winter Formal that's in January. Bruce is funding it again this year, isn't he?"

"I think so." Their teacher gave them a stern look and he smiled at her apologetically, finally jotting down the notes she had on the board. "Since Bruce likes to throw money at this school like no one's business, I doubt he won't be funding the dance," he said this last part in a whisper, eyeing the teacher so that they wouldn't get caught and moved away from each other.

"Then that means that you're going, right?" Barbara asked in a low voice, pretending to be paying attention to whatever the teacher was rambling about. "I mean, Bruce would want you to go, so I assumed..."

He shrugged lightly, a movement that Barbara was able to pick up on, but the teacher wouldn't be able to recognize. "I'm not a dancing kind of person, but if Bruce wants me to go then I probably don't have much of a choice. Why?"

"My dad is forcing me to go." From the corner of his eye, Dick saw Barbara wrinkle her nose. "And I figured that if you were going, then we might as well go together."

Dick's pencil hovered over his paper as he paused, the gears in his brain turning slower than usual. "Wait, like a date?" He asked, flushing as he turned to face her.

She didn't look up from her paper, but Dick caught sight of a slightly embarrassed grin. "Why not?"

"Uh, s-sure. Sounds like fun," he stammered, turning back to his own work while Barbara snickered at his response. "Happy Birthday to me," he muttered to himself with a mental fist pump, a radiant grin on his face.

xXx

When Dick returned to the Manor after school, he knew that there was a present waiting for him. Bruce had been ecstatic for days now, going on and on and about how excited he was that they would be able to celebrate Dick's birthday with him this year. So yeah, Dick was expecting Bruce to shove a gift into his hands the second he walked through the door.

What he didn't expect was to be led to a mountain of gifts in the living room.

"Um..." He stared at the assortment of colorfully wrapped presents, unsure of what to say. "Bruce, this is a lot."

The man smiled somewhat sheepishly, an action that was completely out of character. "I thought it might be too much, but this all has meaning to it. Come here, I'll show you what I mean," he brought Dick over to the center of the chaos and had him sit down, before handing him a present with an animal paw print wrapping paper on it. "Take a look."

Dick turned the box over a few times, before finally finding a label. "Richard's ninth birthday," he read out loud, confusion evident in his voice. He lowered the gift and frowned at his mentor speechlessly. What did that mean?

Bruce joined him on the carpet, smiling almost sadly. "I'm sure you've figured out by now that I knew you before your disappearance, right?"

Dick nodded. "Yeah, it was all over the news after I came back. They said that after I disappeared, you searched for me for years." He shrugged. "And I assumed that that was one of the reasons why Batman decided to take in a protege."

"Smart. Well, you're right, that is part of the reason." He picked up another one of the boxes, studying the childish design of the paper. "I was there during the performance that your parents died in," he said quietly, and Dick nodded. He had gathered that information a long time ago. "I saw how you were that night, completely helpless and full of despair. I saw a bit of myself in you, that night, and after I spoke with you I knew that we had a connection that I couldn't ignore."

"You... spoke with me?" Dick repeated, surprised by this bit of information. "I don't remember that."

Bruce sighed. "I didn't think you would, not with how your memories are right now. But yes, you and I had a conversation, and by the end of it I asked if you would like to live with me. You said yes, and I left to start the process of adopting you."

This certainly was news to him. "You wanted to adopt me just like that? I barely knew you!"

"I know, I know. Trust me, I was confused by it just as much as you are. But I went through with it and when I was ready, I went to pick you up..." He scowled at the floor, a sudden flash of fury passing through his eyes. "That's when I found out you were being held in a Juvenile Detention Center. You obviously had no purpose of being there, but everywhere else was full..."

"... I remember that," Dick said after a moment of silence. "They didn't tell me what I was there for, they simply took away all of my things and stuck me in a cell. I've never been so confused in my life." He was suddenly hit with a realization, one that made his fingers dig into the carpet beneath him. "That is the last thing I remember before Cadmus. The Detention Center is where they kidnapped me, wasn't it?"

The anger drained out of Bruce, and he nodded solemnly. "When I came to the Center, there were police cars everywhere. I had a bad feeling that this had something to do with you in some way, and my fears were confirmed when Commissioner Gordon came to my car to speak with me."

"..." Dick searched Bruce's face, surprised by the grief he found there. "... Bruce?"

His guardian didn't face him. "Jim told me what happened. Every child under the age of fifteen was missing, and there was absolutely no clue to where they had gone. The security cameras had been successfully hacked, every guard had been slaughtered on the spot, and there wasn't even a sign of a struggle in any of the cells. There was nothing. Not even Batman could find a clue to what happened to them."

Dick suddenly understood something. "When our world split into two dimensions, one for adults and one for children, you were reminded of the day I went missing, weren't you?"

"Yes," Bruce admitted, looking disgruntled. "You were reminded of the failsafe on that day, but I also experienced losing you before. But my experience was real, and it seemed impossible that I would ever have the chance to see you again. But like the softy you insist I am, I still hoped that I would." He gestured to the present in Dick's hands. "Every year, I got you a present for your birthday and Christmas because I hoped that there would be a day that I could actually give them to you. It may seem perfectly out of character for me, but-"

"It's great, Bruce," Dick interrupted, looking down at the box he held. The object the wrapping paper contained seemed much more precious than he originally thought, now that he realized how much meaning was behind it. Never did he believe that while he was in Cadmus, there was someone hoping against hope that he was still alive, or buying him gifts that he might not have ever seen. To put that much effort into something like that showed just how wrong the public was about Bruce. He wasn't cold hearted, he was actually the very opposite. "Bruce, I don't know what to say," he said truthfully, feeling quite emotional now that he heard just how much his adopted parent cared about him, how much he always cared about him.

"Just open it," Bruce mumbled, sounding embarrassed over his display of emotions.

Dick carefully unwrapped his present, making sure to not tear the paper. He definitely wanted to save all of this, especially since these gifts would mean so much to both of them. He then did the same thing with the box, halting in his tracks when he caught sight of what was inside. "A Flying Grayson Poster," he breathed, gently pulling the laminated paper out of its container. "It's my parents," he murmured, tracing the outline of the three figures on the cartoon trapeze. Even on the poster, Dick could see the graceful way they flew through the air. It was amazing.

"I got quite a few things from the circus after I told them I planned to continue searching for you. They figured that if I found you, then you would want a few things that you had to leave behind." He handed him another box. "This was one of the more important things, or so they said."

Dick carefully set his poster down besides him and took the next gift, going through the same careful process he went through before. Soon, he held a stuffed elephant in his hands. "What is this?" He asked, his puzzlement distancing his mind from the significance of the first gift.

"You tell me," Bruce said simply. "I think you might be able to remember this one."

The blue toned fur was patted down as Dick ran his fingers through it, trying to place why this was so important to him. There was something about the toy that made him feel safe and warm, but he couldn't explain why. After a few seconds of puzzling it over, he found a sloppy name written on the elephant's tag. "Peanut," he read, but the name didn't do anything to jostle his memory. "I don't think I can remember this one."

Bruce looked slightly disappointed that he couldn't remember, but he went ahead and explained anyways, "Haly told me that you had Peanut since you were a toddler, and she seemed to help you with your nightmares." His eyes drifted down to the worn out animal. "Maybe she can work her magic now, too."

Dick bit back his reluctance of owning a stuffed animal, because he couldn't deny Bruce's logic. So instead, he set Peanut down and moved onto the next present.

Several meaningful gifts later, Dick found himself holding one last box, the one Bruce just recently got for him. The wrapping paper of this gift made him snort; it was covered in an abundance of Robin symbols. "I didn't know I was popular enough to become wrapping paper," he joked as he removed it.

"As the youngest kid hero, the public absolutely adores you. I think it took a week after your first sighting in Gotham for Robin to start having merchandise."

Dick's next comment died in his throat when he saw his last present. "Bruce, how did you get this?" He asked, holding up a picture frame. In the photograph was the Team, all of them in their civilian outfits and goofing around in the Cave. The Team was hanging out in the common room, just talking with each other. It was a rare sight, seeing everyone look perfectly content with no arguments being made. Dick remembered this day well; it was a couple of days before the failsafe permanently scarred them. They all wanted to hang out outside of costume,and while they have done so many times, this had been the greatest.

"It doesn't matter how I got it. Do you like it?"

"Yes," he said immediately, though his voice faltered when his eyes lingered on Miss Martian and Superboy. Just a few days ago, he went to the Cave while Batman went to another JLA meeting, and the second he walked through the Zeta Tube he felt tension rising between him and the alien couple. Dick had stubbornly refrained from bolting, and tried to start a conversation, but that did nothing to cure his teammates from their sudden problem with him.

The hardest part about it was that instead of ignoring him like M'gann, Connor openly glared at him. What did he do to make this happen?! He would do anything to set things right, but neither of them gave him a single chance to do so.

Bruce gently tapped his arm to snap him out of his thoughts. "Are they still ignoring you?"

He sighed. "Yes, but don't do anything about it." Dick set the frame down next to his poster. "I don't want them to talk to me only because you'll force them to."

There was a pause as Bruce's hand ghosted over the white lines on his arms. "If you're safety is on the line-"

"It's not on the line. I've kept my promise," he reminded him, pulling away. He was started to feel smothered. It was his fault that they were ignoring him, not theirs. If Batman stormed into the Cave and demanded that they stopped, then they would only hate him even more. "Just leave it alone, please."

Bruce looked absolutely discontent with his words. Dick mentally laughed, he was way too protective sometimes. "... Fine, but if this gets in the way of your teamwork then I will have to intervene." He growled. "If you get hurt during a mission because they were ignoring you in the field, then there is no way in hell I will let it slide."

"Fair enough," Dick consented. "Good to know that you'll raise hell if I so much as scrape my knee because they ignored me."

"It's more serious than you think, Dick," Bruce said quietly, his expression more serious than Dick has ever seen out of costume. He felt uneasy about it, and Bruce seemed to notice, for he forcefully relaxed. "Let's stop talking about this. It's your birthday, and it should be happy." He stood, being careful to avoid accidentally stepping on any of the objects Dick had just unwrapped. "Oh, and Haly called while you were in school. He wanted me to wish you a happy birthday, and to tell you that you're welcome to visit the circus at any time... They really miss you."

Dick's eyes softened. "Yeah? Maybe I'll do that..." He looked down at Peanut, the sense of familiarity strengthening. "I think I'll surprise them by going to a performance the next time they come through Gotham."

"...Or maybe you don't have to wait that long," Bruce said thoughtfully. "I didn't want to tell you just yet, but I have a case you'll want to get involved in."

Dick rose his eyebrows, coming up to his feet as well. "Oh?"

"It's about Haly. He just told me today while I was on the phone with him... He wanted me to keep you out of this, but he mentioned that he might not he able to run the circus much longer." He met Dick's startled gaze. "The circus is being held responsible for crimes they didn't commit."

xXx (Five Days Later; Elsewhere) xXx

Artemis stared at her bedroom ceiling, her bones heavy with dread from what she has done. She slowly turned onto her side and glared at the orange and black communicator on her nightstand. When she had found her father lurking inside of her bedroom, she was startled, but when she spotted the man who accompanied him, she was absolutely pissed.

But then Deathstroke had to make her life a living hell, and after he and her father had left the only thing she could do was lay in her bed like the useless teenager she was. The villains' visit was still fresh on her mind...

[FLASHBACK]

"I want you to be the factor that pushes Renegade over the edge," Deathstroke said softly, leaning against a wall nonchalantly. It was like he thought he owned the place.

"No way," She ground out, her hand itching toward her bow. "He wasn't even here tonight when I failed, and he's still my friend. Leave him out of this."

Deathstroke looked almost bored as he stared her down. "Sportsmaster recorded his conversation with you and snapped a photo of you speaking with me when you weren't looking." Artemis tensed and spun around to face her father, who only shrugged. "If you don't do exactly what I tell you, the League will anonymously receive both the recording and the photo."

Artemis snarled. "Do you really think I'm that selfish?! That I would listen to you and hurt Robin just because you have some dirt on me?!"

"Yes I do believe that, and more importantly, so do you." Deathstroke pushed himself away from the wall and walked towards her, and she automatically took a step backwards, shivers going down her spine. She couldn't explain it, but she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. Maybe it was the way he towered over her, or maybe it was how unnervingly calm he was. Either way, Artemis just wanted him to leave.

"No matter what you say, I won't hurt him," she said hotly, her thoughts going back to the day the two of them had to save the rest of their friends from the Reds. She and him bonded, and even though he was more annoying than that Richard Grayson kid, she wouldn't do anything to hurt him intentionally. Never.

And why did Deathstroke want her to be mean to him anyways? That was such an odd request.

"Shame. Let me put it this way..." He suddenly produced a remote controller, and held his thumb right above a crimson button. Artemis narrowed her eyes at it; villains and red buttons never mixed well. "You are aware that Renegade has a computer chip in his head, yes?"

"It's Robin, and yeah." She didn't dare to remove her gaze from the remote. "So?"

"Well back when he was under my care, I used this remote to... adjust his behavior, so to speak. Pressing this button sends a controlled amount of electricity through Renegade's brain. It was perfect for punishments, and it will suffice as a form of execution."

Artemis grit her teeth, a burning hatred for Deathstroke igniting in her veins. This man just spoke about torturing her friend like one would talk about the weather. What the hell was wrong with this guy?! "You wouldn't go through all of this effort just to kill him off in the end," she snapped, trying to keep herself as calm as possible.

"Oh, you think? Then you don't know me at all." His thumb lowered, just barely brushing the button. "I have long since decided that if I can't have him, no one can. So if you don't help me with my plan, then I have no reason to keep him alive."

"Stop." She stumbled towards him as he moved to press the button down, and that's when she felt it: pure and utter helplessness. What could she even do in this situation to get the outcome she wanted? If she didn't obey, Robin would die, and these two villains would make sure that her friends wouldn't trust her every again. If she did obey, then she would only be helping Deathstroke kidnap Robin, and for all she knew, that was a fate far worse than death.

There was no winning.

"Will you listen?" Deathstroke asked smugly, already knowing her answer.

"...Only until I find a way out of this," she spat, though she recoiled when the assassin's eyes narrowed in warning. But she wouldn't let herself look weak, especially not in front of her father. "As soon as Robin is safe, you better watch your back. Because as soon as I know that you can't hurt him, I'll come after you with everything I have." She squared her shoulders. "And I won't exclude my lethal arrows."

"I look forward to it," Deathstroke said with a soft chuckle.

[End Flashback]

Now, Artemis continued to stare at her bedroom walls, feeling helpless against Deathstroke. Not only was she now technically working for her father, someone she swore that she would never speak to ever again, but she was also a pawn in Deathstroke's game now. She could deal with her dad, but being forced to participate in Robin's capture made her feel all sorts of wrong. There had to be a way to warn Robin about the danger he was in without alerting Deathstroke, but how? If Deathstroke caught wind that she told anyone, then her youngest teammate would most certainly die.

"Some family we turned out to be," she muttered darkly, turning over to press her face into her pillow. "The Team said we were siblings not too long ago, and I betrayed them all." She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. This was a strange feeling, being so worried about someone else's well-being. It was taking all of her willpower to not rush to the Cave and demand to speak with Robin to make sure he was okay. "Stay safe, little brother..."

xXx

AN: Like you all probably guessed, the next episode this story will cover is "Performance." From this point on, we start climbing up to the conclusion. So be prepared for lots of angst!

But anyways, thank you all for your reviews! I appreciate your kind, and sometimes hilarious comments, and I look forward to hearing more from you guys in future chapters. ^^

See you next chapter!