Teen Titans; ReBeL Yell; If I had Stayed a Renegade

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SICK DAY OFF

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LUCIA CHLORIS WANTED SADISM, SO HERE IS SLADE BEING HIS WORST. DICK GETS SICK, TITANS ARE NOT HAPPY EVEN AFTER SLADE IS IMMOBILIZED. READ TO SEE.

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The weight on his chest is infectious.

Cuts. Bruises. They don't exist past the pain of not being able to feel. Skin's crawling, so he coughs. He crawls. He looks war torn and so much so, that Starfire cannot stop shouting.

"We're takin' Slade in for questioning."

They caught…. was he saved just –

A racking fell of bronchial symptoms arose as Dick felt the fever persisting. Raven flew herself over, a hand to his beaten brow.

"It's a virus." She however, was not convinced that it was an average cold.

"How do we stop it…."

SO far away, he sounded underwater…her echo as he winced and shut his masked eyed. Falling into a deeper time. The void being no real comfort, he was recused, only to be the one that had to see no light of day left. Slade cackled in his head. His eyes rested. Body wasting away…

"The cure, Titans...Is me."

Dick sighed and felt his head grow to heavy to keep upright, just as everything had begun to sway.

" Robin!"

Her words…. where did….

/

"TALK." Raven brought a palm up to Slade's one eye. He snorted and had no power. His hold was far from broken, yet his goal was still ahead. The kid he'd taken had yet to fulfill his role.

"That virus is high contagious." The mastermind told the heroes as Beast boy circled the man as a full sized tiger, tail swishing. Roaring and growling at his feet. Waiting to tear the man apart as he had their leader. "You experimented on his with a harmful drug; one you know the details about. Then, you infected him with a man-made virus that is right now one of the deadliest on the planet." Raven was mad, but that desire to act just fueled Slade to make her unleash hell upon him.

"He's going to survive, but in that seventy-two-hour trial, the boy won't be able to prevent the spread. The only cure is the one I know from my time as a soldier. You know my file. Why my apprentice has to share a similar quality to truly be mine…"

"It's taken the entire year ta' pull ya outta hidin." Cy snarled at the creeper. "Rob's condition, and the fact that you did what you did, even if you help us save a lotta people's lives? You're still gonna get the cell of a lifetime. No one sees you as the good guy, Slade."

"Why wouldn't I try not to be? You confuse my assistance in your dilemma as pity. I only am helping you brats to prove a point. That he will NEVER be the boy wonder you want to see –

"He shall heal!" Starfire shouted and let her fists grip the man's collar roughly. "You were foolish to not face us with honorable intent as Robin shall heal and forget of your treatment of him." She nearly boasted to Slade, to have him angry? Could such words pose that great a threat to the mighty Deathstroke?

He'd been infected with plenty of nasty bugs before, Dick would survive. Yet, he was hoping Beast boy might infect his pack…

Humph. What a way to wait on a rescue.

"GO." Slade said in an emotionless command of voice. "He won't be long. And if I can't provide a proper cure in time, your little "hero" will all but cease to be himself."

/

The bickering of his team persisted as Dick stayed quarantined in a different room within the tower.

Slade had beaten him for his insubordination before the Titans had arrived. The probes were on lock as Dick imagined their faces.

Shocked.

As pained as his was; the kind you couldn't ignore, the kind you had to pity constantly to make yourself feel better.

They were his friends; he'd been given the serum after the episode where the heroes had taken the initiative – when Dick had broken Slade's mask…. they went off, he was given a contract…to….it was all so fuzzy…

He raised a palm up. His arm was bound back with gauze, bandages as long as his frame and just as tall, and of course, he was given that black eye for resisting.

Slade…what was the drug doing if the serum countered it? He had a fever, sure. Star and Raven had tried to down the effects since, but was….

Dick clung to his skull with that wrapped set of fingers.

Was his head, supposed to hurt this much?

/

"What did that evil man mean by "ceasing to be our Robin?" Starfire had no idea, nor did her friends. The drug was a replicated serum, but the virus was also man made, fashioned to work with or against the healing factor.

"Slade wasn't even trying to leave!" Gar exclaimed and raised his arms exasperatedly. "Did we call the authorities to book him, yet? Cy? Are we the ones who can even get the cure if he won't talk?"

"He said he can tell us, if we let em' see Robin." Cy explained with a grumble down at the controls. Slade would speak in Russian before he ever gave up his many secrets to his sworn enemies.

One set of many.

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There was only them, his master had dictated that; the details were off, all of those jumbled bits could drive a man to commit some utter atrocity –

Until his voice rung out.

Slade smiled and looked at the faces behind that glass of the interrogations room.

"Too late." He chuckled to the empath and her big brother, while Starfire swished by to return the favor with Slade's newest black eye.

/

Dick bit his wrist as it let droplets fall onto the bed sheet below him.

He swam in a sea of screams, dead ones and still kicking while Raven had made her way inside the teen's drifting unconscious.

~ Robin! The virus…what happened?? You have to speak up or Slade is going –

" Master…" Dick panted, body going limp a second before h let his hand fall. "Where…. where did you bring him…. Rah!"

Raven fell back as Slade snorted. She just gave him a dirty look, while Bb and Star gripped the ugly soul by his arms and legs – not literally, to spill anything they could drag from that nauseating pussy cat.

"Why is Robin eager to start fighting us??? Why does he ask for you to be –

"Don't you get it??" Slade burst out to add, eye gone full wide with his many plans to rule the tri state area.

"Robin is as useless to you, but to me he makes a fine soldier or will. Once the madness wears off, his memories of any prior history but his with me, will be lost forever."

"You…what sort of cursed treatment is this??? How dare –

"Star!" Cy pushed her back with a reprimand. "Slade's gonna tell us how ta stop the virus, an' I can bet you don't have any problem if we brought Robin in to answer a few questions?"

"Questions…you're joking." Shrugging, the crime lord was being twisted in a way that felt like an ulterior motive from the oldest of the heroes' group.

"He isn't, and you can tell us if you have a way to trigger Robin. We'll see it, because you can't get away."

"He's not a machine that I programed, Titans." Purred the older enemy. "Not yet… You can have him, but what about the quarantine?"

"You both are immune." Raven crossed her arms and frowned down at the mastermind; now under the Titans' control.

"We might be, child." Slade didn't disagree that they had at least done some homework. Maybe the heroes had it in them to finally bring Deathstroke down with them, after all.

"He's speaking in different person." Starfire told the empath, knowing she had seen the same.

"He's more possessive over that virus's comeback, aren't ya?"

"And the result?" Slade raised an eye to the cocky brat up in his face. "Would you like to know, Cyborg? How compati-

"Robin is very ill!" Starfire shouted in the madman's face, spitting fire as she went on with her demands.

"If you say that you treasure him even more than we have, then I believe you are nothing but a crooked being without a real conscience as Robin once believed – yet, he could not learn to hate the very monster that took his self worth and crushed it! I shall never forgive what you plan to, or have done to our dear friend…. You will fix this!! Or I shall teach you the meaning of one that bows lowest to the ground…"

"Do you also wish to know the answer; why he is sick at all, girl?" Slade had…. she was able to grit her fists for only so long, as star fire forced back a nod.

"I would, very much." She seethed out of her gnashing jaw, as Slade relayed more than the heroes were expecting to discover.