Teen Titans – ReBeL Yell; If I Had Stayed a Renegade
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Diseased Soul
Takes place during the End part two and three and stems into How long is forever – while there is a twist while comparing Slade to a tapeworm…or roach. Cause he's hard to kill! Dark…for ye hath been warned.
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~ Decrepit figures lurk in the state of being that is our own. Figures that shine a light on what we are, who where we belong and for what purpose we fight the sickness inside our very selves. ~
/
Seeking the light, there was a very steep chance that there was nothing to seek. No one to cling to in this world painted red and grey. Stone faces, walls of fire. Lakes of bone and blood.
Forever, he had been here. Forever, he'd had one foot through the door to their world.
Yet one soul had bothered to keep his soul intact. One had decided to face the fate and fires that be- for he was left to go and search for a soul that was as lost as he had become on this path to redemption.
That boy, that man was surely lost. Faces of stone angled in the dim darkness, and not sun to speak did rain down across his path to show the way.
But no, his feet moved, though dirtied with holes in his soles, he walked. Passing wailing folk, those who did not become as sick as all the rest.
Sickness, no. It was torment, torture that had done this to the human race. A bubbe pooling round the feet of the city's very stretched limits as time could never pass. There was only the moment when this "sickness" had won.
And he too, was to blame.
The man kept moving, groaning for life to be restored to this dead and dying place. A space he'd left to one other, and he too had been overcome by the sickness. He too had tried to be a hero once again.
Slade. The man everyone wanted dead or hired for a job, but never this. No.
The end of the world was his sin, and to it he'd lost all he'd wanted recovered.
Including his protégé, who was now all to stone and horror across his dark brows. Widened gaze on the way out, the way from his sickness as it slept and awoke to consume.
To feed, and so…
Slade; the man with a plan, decided to stop. For this world was full of such sorrows as death, but never of loneliness as he had already known.
This, was murder in the first degree. They slept in cocoons of their former selves, and he too wished to join while he had no way of doing so. Immortals you see…
Could only rise, and so he did.
Slade; a man with a plan to bury the one responsible, even if he were to lose his limbs in battle. The character and king known as the demon Trigon sat atop his throne of bones and marrow, gnashing his chompers in sheer delight by what he had wrought unto the mortal plane. With Slade's help, the one who could put the demon to rest was no more.
Yet, Slade knew. He knew for he had read the texts of many monks to the creature's surprise. And he too knew of countermeasures to destroy it. To send it back to the land of the suffering souls in which is should only govern.
Dreams beyond dreams, it existed, and yet…it could not.
Slade followed his feet as he came to the gates of a place of fire and boney creatures. If he ever lived to tell that boy…
He shook his head and walked through those gates with his head held high.
He'd make sure to keep the kid close.
/
She was small, timid and unsure of her reason for being alive and alone. He took to his face, his face was too scary to show her so his hand would do, it still had some flesh on it. No bone. So, he let her take his hand as the one he needed was willing to ask with a child's whispered tone.
"Who…. who are you?"
"I, need your help. And you, are the hero who can save the world. You are Raven of the Titans, and I…. want to help you to defeat your father, Trigon. Child."
/
She blinked, his back too hard as her legs stayed wrapped round to have her body from falling far down into the pools of lava below them.
"I… remember a boy, then…you know him! –
"He's also in trouble, my dear." The man said, a bit vaguely put. "You will see him again, once we've stopped Trigon from harming this world."
/
The light that came from the crown of her head had the child to the age of her original soul. She branched out her arms and the bodies of her friends, her very allies awoke! Slade nodded with arms crossed over his chest, satisfied as Dick Grayson blinked and saw the man. Head turning away, he still had a promise or two left to keep.
/
"We did it!" Cyborg high fived BB and Raven looked round…. not seeing….
"Where, is Robin?"
"Raven." Starfire came to the white clad empath with a face so very depressed, not of the time she'd been gone from them, yet another trauma and loss to their little family.
"Robin, has sworn his true allegiance to Slade." She said, making Raven's cloak turn to the color of white embers, even brighter as she soon vanished into star - light.
To go and find her lost friend.
/
Slade felt his arms twist, his spine snapping as a twig to the great hurricane gusts.
"You…. took his… life!!"
She was furious, thinking that the boy was only dead because he'd been made to die for a cause that was the cause of her woes. "Trigon came because you let him in!! I should banish you to the same realm as my father. You would never hurt another one of my friends…. Ever again…"
Eyes white – hot, she was blinded by the fact, the very gall he'd had to pull her from her little shell. That Robin was alive, and had also died at his hands. Terra had died, she had gotten out for a price. Robin would be fated to do the same, so she had to stop the cycle.
"I…. was wron…"
"NO!" She spat in his arrogant face. The man was a menace, she would be right to kill him off. Get him away from the Titans. Save –
"RAVEN! STOP!" He swung out his arms, blocking the blow as she cried out. He was spared but so too…
Was this boy's tormentor.
"You can't finish him, not now…I won't let it happen."
"You are not powerless, just… look at him!" She pointed with a glowing set of fingers at the man with his cracked body and mask. "You can leave, you can come home." She pleaded it, hoped his mind wasn't washed dry by this criminal.
"I, am not going back to be a Titan." Robin, the boy finally spoke. "You don't remember, but Slade promised to not harm you or any of the Titans…as long as I stayed. As long as I didn't break our deal."
"You…. you were killed! I saw him kill you…Robin!" She shouted. "You are not acting like yourself! This, is wrong and I won't let you leave without turning yourself in…Slade…. I will hunt you down. Robin isn't –
"Star…didn't tell you?" Robin frowned up at Raven, eyes tired of fighting with a voice so unclear.
"What?"
"You don't know." Slade scoffed and dusted off his arms, body falling to stay down. A cockroach in Raven's bleary eyes.
Robin too in a breath. "I killed, myself. To keep my promise. For him."
"WHAT?" Raven lifted a bit of heavy rubble with her palms in all their power; she was unable to cope, to come to the conclusion….
"Why…" She gripped it, could not drop the heavy burden to crush her foe. "You…. you didn't…." Her head spun as the rocky structure struck the ground.
No casualties as Slade walked to be beside his protégé.
"Renegade." Slade said in a calm voice, an impassive one as Robin nodded right beside the older male.
"Raven…you have to go. I still can keep my promise. But you can't save me. You won't have to…" He smiled. No, he was so pitying her in this moment that Raven's eyes began to turn dark as her old ability.
"No….no...no this….is…." She panted. Her powers were wild, whipping in dark tendrils as her old leader until Slade had her by the neck. Squeezing the life left from her worn out, now useless body.
"You'll wake and this, will all be over. Robin is Renegade, now. Accept it." His grip had her as she blacked out.
Out of time.
The disease had spread.
The disease, known as Deathstroke.
It had taken her from her home.
Her friends, all away.
And her last trust in anyone who had ever cared, was dead.
/
Years later, there was news of a new vigilante being spotted in the city.
Her city, as she'd left her trust in no one.
She was alone. Truly, and utterly without friends to seek out to know what she had been through.
And yet…
A vigilante was here; a new one, with blue and black bruise colored armor and a face so serious, so carefree in form as he slipped across rooftops like a dancer on a lake. With grace and while awing the crowds below.
She rose and left her room, her only room. Her home was gone, but she was still here. She still knew this city, and what it craved most of all.
/
The streets were dark, very. She scouted the area, in search of this mystery person who could help save it with her. Who had justice in their bones, and who seemed to hurt equally as she had. She'd lost so many memories, all alone.
Maybe, just maybe…
He leaped and she followed, a male's shadow that made her heart beat. She followed and levitated over rooftops, their dance to unite. To understand.
"Stop!" She commanded the shadow to halt, but it did no such. She sent her projectile arms to grip it close, yet it escaped with the gadgets it kept and SHE.
SHE, had reason to follow it. Though it was limber and strong all at once, she finally cornered the creature with a series of swerves. Finally, finally…
"It's been a long time…. hasn't it?"
The face, the boy she knew was gone. Gone was his smile.
He smiled at her, a hand up in an airy salute.
Gone was the charm of a hero, a great soldier to look at the horizon and say as she wept…
"Raven, I'm glad you didn't leave this city. I'm glad, that you're still a Titan."
She had no idea what it meant to care, she had discarded love once before, yet it crept back into her heart.
A friend. Her lost…. comrade?
"R….is it really you?"
He smiled, a grin beyond that masked glance her way.
That shadow soon showed off its suit. And to her surprise, a bird graced its chest.
Her eyes and heart, overflowed.
He reached out a hand as she was reluctant to take it, but had her heart not heard those words…
I'm home. Raven, for good this time."
Maybe, she wouldn't have to worry if she did.
Not anymore.
"Welcome home, Robin."
With a virus, sometimes there was no true cure. All one could hope to do was heal and recover. To find strength in a brand-new day.
"Glad to be back."
While the disease was shifted to one last case…
She'd need to find out what her team wanted to do, with their newest house guest.
/
After he'd been given a place to stay, the man took to his unit and plugged it into his device; a palm sized computer - this was the future after all.
The face that shown up on it was quiet. It surveyed this younger male's features as the mask was pulled back. Grayson was there to steal the show.
"Master. I've infiltrated the tower."
~ As I knew you would. ~
"All I need now..." The man bit his lip, emotions withered and lost to his ebbing sickness.
"Is to regain their trust."
~ As I know you will, and I know also that Raven…won't be far off from discovering our plan. ~
"Yes, master."
~Well done so far, Renegade. Keep up the act, I'm counting on you this time to finish things, properly....~ The screen's face's eye narrowed. Just one steely grey, for it had a plan involving the tearing of fragile things.
"As you wish…." The room grew quiet as the man let the call die, rushing to the toilet to heave as he should. The guilt had hurt him for years, yet years it had taken. Taken to break up the heroes one by one.
And to prevent more Titans from being "born." He heaved one last time. Wiping his bottom lip, shivering full of that fever; the desire to spew out his guts and be done with it, the once famous masked hero made his way to the bed, they'd given to him. His tower, still standing as the man pulled the covers over his head and continued to shiver.
Very soon, very…it would be no more. The parasite's meal was this. The last of his hope. And the last of those who had prayed for Robin's recovery as the man drifted into a sleep that he'd almost never wished for.
Deep, down where his diseased side was waiting.
Waiting to take him away forever.
An aspect known as...
Betrayal; for he was Renegade.
