Teen Titans; ReBeL Yell – If I Had Stayed a Renegade-

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Dark dream memory so, do be forewarned! It will be a bit messy! Also; talks about death in broader dimensions, ensue.

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SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THESE

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It must have been after midnight when he'd washed up, gone to bed.

Dreaming of a time he'd since longed to bury.

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A cotton candy themed scape; balloon animals, children's smiles and lively, upbeat music swam through the world that lived within his very heart and soul.

A true circus, and as the main attraction of it all…

The Flying Graysons took center stage while Pop Hailey, the proprietor, was up and bounding about the ring like a ball on two stocky legs joyfully at the turn out.

Dick was in his trailer or tent in this case, readying to jump along, bounding through the air as a trapeze caught his young two, blue eyes from down below. He came out, parents already departed as the young acrobat stared at the pole.

Bathed in the spotlight, as he should be.

And he feared for it. That tonight would be his very last performance.

In dreams, the unconscious mind may reveal many warnings, even truths we ourselves may have no recollection of upon waking, so he too would forget this night entirely.

He didn't get as far as the ladder up, when a rattle sounded as loud as a freight train. He let go. He didn't go up –

That wasn't right?? He was –

His troupe. Not just his parents. Pop Haley too, they all climbed up the ladder. He couldn't move, he couldn't try to stop or stall as the crowds grew louder and louder.

Spinning and spinning, drums all around the ring, crowds all aghast as the moment arose from the still awe these performers had birthed.

Drum rolling as the first jumped off, right into the hard ground.

SPLAT . *

"No!" The boy acrobat's voice was so small; he was too young to do anything! He shouted for the next to not jump to their death. That this had to be some matter of –

Another went.

KERPLAT! *

He stood shaking his fists, both wrapped in tape, both –

"STOP! DON'T DO IT!"

A co – worker, his family from the animal tamer tent. They'd grown up together. He had a crush on her…

"Stop!!" He ran, but elephant after elephant came out to block the way, circling round the big inner tent's ring as if this were a part of their own act.

Another.

SPLURCH . *

AND AGAIN.

SQUELCH . *

Cartoon sound effects that no child should ever have to hear.

To the boy's left as he cried tears so thick, were the last to go up.

His parents. John and Mary Grayson.

"Aren't you going too, Dick?" His mother turned to ask, but instead Dick backed away, the weight in his right hand too heavy as he lifted it.

Her sad eyes not changing as the item in his grip only grew to end them, saving them from this lack of mercy.

Zucco…. Zucco would –

BAM ! *

He fired, and the world finally vanished in a beam of light.

/

" Mom!"

Dick Grayson threw the sheets off of himself, struggling to breathe. A nightmare. A nightmare that involved, their deaths! He growled a guttural sound out and covered his face with his unclad fingers, digging his hands into that scalp of black hair with such anguish and remorse.

"I…. lost…. no… no no !"

He shouted and pounded a pillow at his side, feathers going all over the floor until the door to his room flew open, the eye of another coming too close.

"I killed them! No! Go away! –

" Robin!"

The bawling brat crawled back, teeth gnashing angrily as he tried to wrestle his grip from the one soon holding his wrists hostage.

"Don-

"I thought we'd been over this, apprentice; you come to me when the nightmares get to you. You Do Not rip apart my good linens with your problems! Is that understood?"

"I don't care." Dick sniffled, seeing that masked enigma close up, knowing he'd already taken enough privileges from the teen so far. What was another bruise compared to his…

Dick's lip wobbled and a snarl again covered back those tears. He couldn't cry, not with his Master still watching.

"Those tears will dry, Richard."

The kid hiccupped at hearing his own name spoken. Why did his keeper bother with keeping Dick this close? This man was the reason his sleep was so disturbed every night, anyway.

"Would you rather I stay here? Wintergreen will bring you a new set of pillows, if you promise not to tear those up. Along with the bed spread."

Humor.

How droll…Dick had only gotten one pillow….

But, since the serum, since the madness had abated…. he wasn't going to take a chance, right?

"This is all a phase. You're healing." The man loosened his grip on the kid, reassuring the boy and knowing it wouldn't hurt to have him in one piece by tomorrow. "The serum is a delicate replica of the original. If the least you got was a few bad dreams, imagine insects climbing all over your body for months." The man must have been a comedian in a past life. Dick huffed and turned away. "I just want to sleep, that's all."

"And you will." Slade told him softly. " When you are calm. For right now, why don't I bore you with one of my stories. Up." He commanded the kid to sit on a side chair while Wintergreen remade the boy's messy bed.

"What about your life isn't a tragic tale of love and loss?" Dick frowned. "Won't I get more bad dreams from hearing about them?"

"Good point there, but no." Slade shook his head. "That's only if you were to empathize with what the big bad villain has done. You're good to go." He pointed to the kid's cot. "In it, and I'll take my time with this story."

/

Fire rained down from the heavens.

Such a line that's been used a dozen times, yet you've been there, right. Me too. In the darkest parts of these forests, you can hear everything. Bells, warbling. Roars. Even crying babies alive and awake in their cradles.

I've heard too much, said too much as the god-awful heat could roast a man alive. A desert would seem an oasis next to so much moisture in the air. We trudge through neck deep waters. They picked me, yeah. I was the best you ever saw on your platoon. I'm worth a lot more than being a corpse, so what gives?

Money, war. Could it get any simpler? Am I the idiot who was looking for a thrill that never ends, or did I have to have a clean slate to work with.

Always, I'm sure Cambodia is better in winter. It's summer. Hot and breezy. Nothing stirs as I sweat, letting it plaster me. Becomes my second skin.

I'm here to make things simple for her, a Lili. She has a problem that I can't find unattractive. No. She'd rather I stay with my guns, teach her just how lethal that Eagle is. I tell you, when you know a person…

The fire still falls, so I crawl. Get up. Get out. Go home.

There is only one, and she's going to be pissed when she sees my face. That I dared to show it to anyone else.

Fire, like the forth of July.

Only, no one is a fan of their independence. Just, to survive, as I continue to crawl.

And I sink, down down down…

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I met the universe once, not in a dream. But before I was supposed to die. It told me to cling to what I never was again. That was what I thought, the only time, as if it was testing a mortal; gifted meta – abilities through a special drug. If I'm supposed to be human, what's that all got to mean? Family? Love? No time.

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I met the universe again, this time it was clad in silver and gold.

I told it I wasn't sure what the last thing it said even meant. It didn't have a face, so it didn't know how to chuckle. I swam in its body, returning to myself. Death; averted.

Love?

Lost.

/

"After that, I'd heard she was with chil-

Slade stopped at the sound of a whistle, not from his masked nose.

In Richard's bed, was that sleeping bird. Slade chuckled and saw Will beckoning the other man from the doorway. "He'll need his rest for tomorrow, sir?" The male whispered to his younger ally.

"He might." Slade nodded and shut the door with a slide behind them, locking it tightly with an unbreakable combination of zeros and ones.

"Did you have to make that story seem poetic, Slade?" Will cocked a brow as he bunched the boy's sheets into his arms. Feathers aside, he was handling this as pretty well. Almost as the man had Grant's sudden rages.

"He'll need to control that temper better." Slade adjusted his gauntlets. They'd been cramping for some time, yet Richard was also due for a fitting. Only a year ago, he'd been a Titan. He'd lived with the anchor of life and death on his shoulders, until he'd nearly fallen too far from seeming invincible.

He now, was. Or would be, with the proper mentor to guide him. "His adrenaline and endorphins are leveling out since the previous injection. He'd be right to be angry, but not at his master –

"He sees you as his jailer." Wintergreen interjected thoughtfully. " That may always perhaps be his greatest folly. Yet, you've changed him; molded him to fit a profile – set only at the highest bar that any young, trained acrobat might not be willing to reach for."

"He's going to get over this stage in his life." Shrugged the crime lord, it being past his bed time at the very least…

"It would be a miracle if he did, sir."

Slade swerved round to face his elder ally; one masked eye as tired as the boy's had been. He raised his mask off and up, clips falling loose. The weight gone, but the burden still there, Slade's lips moved as his now un-muffled tone was all but human. "I did see it, Will." The wonder of that time still graced him and he believed that the universe, was actually a death reaper. A god that allowed him to come back from being in limbo.

Again, and again.

"A near death experience, and yet you claim to have met fate itself." Sighed the butler.

"Will." Smirked the cocky git standing in his ten-ton armor.

"Go back to bed, please."