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

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Dreamcatcher

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Based on A Secret Garden's eerie hit; and for this, we shall see! And also, highlighting Slade being g Renegade's master. Look and tell me if you find the connection. Hoping to make this a full arc. Also, dark depictions so do keep a look out for spoiler .

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"Have you brushed those teeth yet tonight, champ?"

"I did, dad." The giddy and rowdy nature of the youngest Flying Grayson smiled back in his Superman themed pajamas and gave his biggest smile to show to his parents, that he had indeed gone over his sugar – loving chompers not once, but twice.

"Get to bed then, Dick." His mother clung by the arm of their patriarch of the Grayson's family of three. Her blue eyes glanced over, hopeful for what the day would surely bring.

The young nine-year-old boy's eyes stilled, his hands to his sides as he turned to his comfy spot near the wall. "Can…can I sleep with you tonight?" His owlish gaze might not freeze your heart, yet to melt.

Surely, it was a true super power.

"Why, Dick. At your age, you shouldn't have to come to bed with us." Crooned his mother just a bit. Dick didn't care for telling them why. Almost as much as the strange and weird vibes he had gotten from a fortune teller's tent only a day or two ago telling him to "Let the dreamcatcher, catch you."

It terrified him so much, that for tonight and the night before, he'd been sleeping with one eye open until his fatigue wove webs round him to rest on the side of the floor by his bed.

His mother wondered what had come over young Richard; maybe he had a bad experience or a joke went too far in one of the tents? Made him nervous?

"Would you like me to stay by your side again, just until you fall asleep?"

His mother was the most compassionate soul, and as Dick's father knew all too well, he planted a kiss on both heads of both Dick's mother and his boy.

"Don't stay up too late. We have a big show tomorrow, and Haley wants everyone in top condition. You'll be a part of the act real soon, son." The smile he gave as Dick nodded back to his papa spoke of a longing not to let Dick fight this bout for days, or maybe more.

Haley had received notices since coming to Gotham and this was only their first time coming back in a while. The big wig Wayne would be showing that week, and Haley had ignored the ominous, unsigned threat letters to better work his team up into that circus ring.

"We won't John." Smirked this witty mother, as Mary waved her husband off, both behaving as they had once upon a time ago.

Once he was gone, Dick felt reason to open up as he tried to form some words on the tip of his tongue.

"There was…I don't know how to explain."

"Up on the bed and then we can talk about what you saw, ok?"

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"A witch, you say?" Mary hummed as Dick tightly pulled the comforter covers up to his young nine-year-old chin.

"She said something creepy and even told me to be careful, like… a curse!"

"Not a curse, Dick. Do you remember our Romani heritage correctly?"

Dick nodded to his mother. "Mom? What is a Dreamcatcher?? She said to let it…. catch me. I don't want to end up –

"A dreamcatcher is a good thing, Dick." His mother carded through his hair with her delicate fingertips.

"Is…is it a person? Like, the Sand Man?"

"Not exactly." His mother tried to explain to her son. "A dreamcatcher was an object made by the first people of the Americas who used to hang a "dreamcatcher" over their child's bed to help them have pleasant dreams. The dreamcatcher looks just like a spider's web in the center and that part, was what caught and trapped children's bad dreams so that they could sleep soundly."

"A, spider, web?"

"Spiders will eat other insects like mosquitos and usually like to keep themselves away from most humans. All creatures even to the Romani, should be kept sacred and protected, and spiders in some cultures also have another meaning; like an angry mother who eats her mate. The widow spider is the reason it's called that." She chuckled while Dick had to cover himself a bit better.

"Are…any spiders like that here? In Gotham?"

"No, sweetie. Only in places where they live normally, but most spiders help and harm us - so the warning you were given by that fortune teller had to have been very important." She did not believe in curses and magic, yet those words had frightened her son. She'd talk to the teller before the show.

"Madam Enigma is quite old." She explained to her child, softly petting his ebony locks. "I want you to know, that we won't let anything happen to you, my little Robin…Want me to sing you a lullaby?" She calmly offered, seeing Dick poke his head out of the covers.

"But I'm too old for those, I'm nine. Even dad would laugh if you told him that you sang me to sleep." He huffed, yet Mary had a way about her that made it all so different.

"I'll sing something different this time, to keep the bad dreams away."

"Like a dreamcatcher?" Dick wondered; her smile so very soft as his mother let out a small sigh. "Yes, just until you are fast asleep, my little Robin…

~ Hear my silent prayer

Heed my quiet call

When the dark and blue surround you

Step into my sigh

Look inside the light

You will know that I have found you

Hear my silent prayer

Heed my quiet call

When the dark and blue surround you

Mary hummed a hauntingly beautiful tune before each pause, then went along with its lyrics. Near a whisper, as cold as any moonlit dusk.

~ Step into my sigh

Look inside the light

You will know that I have found you…. ~

She hummed the tune to go along with it, a musical group from her travels before Dick was ever conceived. And the song tonight was a fitting one, as the little boy under her magic touch, soon left himself to the arms of a mystical dream world of his own creation…
Had it been anything so pleasant as his mother might have left, she being the catcher to keep the nightmares from lasting.
His eyes opened to see that it was dark outside now. The face of the crowds cheering out and cast in dark fog, while his parents were nowhere to be seen.
A laugh rang out and the boy went after what looked to be a masked figure, a strage one without a face as the blurry dream world brought him to a new opening –
A tower and a sky of smoke and tears.
~DON'T JUMP!!~
Someone was talking, telling this dream self to be careful as the shadow faded and Dick barreled after it –
The next thing he knew, he'd woken to a new room, a room full of things scribbled out as if off limits to boys his age.
Torture, guns…And mostly, that would be true.
~Come here, Dick…. ~
The boy saw this, yet the figure was not like his running shadow from the last reel; not a shadow, yet a demon with a cold, dark fire holding to its body. There, one eye prodding forth as he kept still and silent.
Watching, there was another frame entering in, his hands coated in red and his face so pale and sad.
Somber, as he brought himself before the one-eyed specter.
~You have done well; I wish to reward you for your good behavior –
The scene ended and the boy off in his sheets was flung to a new scene, an even darker outcome of explosions and crying people in the dirt, begging the one-eyed demon to let go of the boy he'd called to his side in the previous reel.
Dick blinked and the boy, the strangely familiar face of a person, soon swapped to that of an armored menace. No longer a boy, and blades of copper to his sides, like a bundle of fangs to his imposing armor.
A show of power as he glared back to where Dick trembled, from this vision.
~Let the dreamcatcher…catch you. Rid us from the nightmares. We can't go back to sleep…. none of us may….so, can we wake up now? Richard –
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A crying, screaming, bawling Dick Grayson awoke his family as both Mary and John rushed to the rescue.
"Son??" Dick's father saw only a small owl on the window ledge as his mother gasped.
It was too soon…
"How did it get in here? Shoo!"
John was as frantic as Mary while she ran to cup her boy's crying face and hug him close to her breast.
"Oh…. did you have another night terror, my little –
"I saw…my future! She was –
"Dick, it was only a bad dream." His mother saw how upset the man of her many years spent was.
John held back a cuss below his breath.
"I need to go and make a quick phone call –
"John, this late?"
"It can't wait, dear." The male stood and tried to remember nothing of Cobb's silly riddles and expectations. He'd escaped it, yet this web…this vision….
Mary cooed words of calm understanding into Dick's ears as he whimpered softly and hugged his mother even tighter.
"Don't…. uhg…...let…. them…t- t- take m- m- me away! I'm a good boy, I'll b – b- be! I p- p - promise!"
Pleading wouldn't change the future his heart had granted the boy. His mother wouldn't hold such a power into a lifetime.
The dream was prophetic, highlighting the stage in which Dick Grayson was to rise and fall.
The owl at his windowsill was in fact a very dangerous symbol. Of the future, and of the pain seeing it again might cause…Once the curtain fell and the ambulance came that next night to pull the child away from his lifeless parents; blood spilled onto a ground not so innocent, he became a someone he could not recognize.
Even his benefactor, days later after the incident was keen on knowing the truth. Just as Dick would one day discover that same hidden reason for Wayne being beside him.
The owls, were still there. Still waiting in the shadows for…
Time, to fall unto their favor.
For another to join their flock.
For a boy to understand his destiny, working dark magic in even darker places.