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

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Tic Tic Boom

This is a continuation of the X themed fiction from earlier chapters of rebel yell, where Slade captures Red while Dick is still undr his thumb. They break into Red's apartment and make him sorry, so Red X makes sure to get both boys away from Wilson's fighting fists. Read on. Warning for dark threats, abandonment, water torture and mafia references. And maybe some angst in-between?

Red X had been saved by the fear in his lungs. Sionas coming after his stash of Xenothium and stolen data chips was a shocker, sure. It wasn't Roman or Black Mask however that the inglorious Red was afraid to see after a few months of being on the lamb in Steel City.

He was waking up again to chains, water ways below rushing as the X masked enemy groaned with a head full of fog.

"You didn't think you could get your cut, did you?"

Red looked down to see a platform to the side. His chained arms rattled as his legs uselessly dangled.

"Where, is this…"

"Hum, not where is your belt?"

Did he just –

The voice started to become less an echo in the back of X's skull. More so, he remembered the deal with Black Mask. How the coward wanting to bring him out of hiding, was used to crawling around in dark places.

A wharf, a hangout for thugs and Mafioso hounds – the kind that sunk with their loot.

X's eyes popped behind the mask.

"Hey! What gives?? I already gave Sionas –

"It wasn't Roman's desire to have those chips." The face revealed itself from the shadows. Toes tapping in boots of mercurial steel and avarice so very deeply woven…

X looked on, his eyes to slits as the man moved with too much confidence in each of his tapping steps.

"Are you trying to get away to him? My apprentice doesn't want to see you –

"And you are a real pain for caging my older brother." Snapped Jason Todd in voice, in stature.

"You think he was in on that escape plan?" Slade cocked his head sideways was X continued to wriggle, the water ways rushing at high tide.

" No. I talked him into it for his own good." Jason sneered angrily. "You don't deserve to be in the same room as him! He was a flipping prodigy! You…. you screwed with his head, and trust me." Grunted the younger ex – Robin.

"I made it so that he had a chance to realize his faults. I was going to do the same for you, boy. Yet, you defied me once again. So, you were this close…" Hissed the mad man. His arm reached to pull the chains lower, lower as X's limbs would –

"You can't just kill me! Bruce; this is right now the worst

"Too bad, thief." Slade snorted, his hands loosening around the chains. "This might be the best way to go. After all, there is less of a mess for me to clean up. And…My apprentice, can't wait." The chain was slipping. Jay gasped as a fish out of the river between life and death at the merc's one glaring eye.

Never piss off a serial abducting psycho.

Same as the clown, dang it!

"You know how to swim, I assume. Batman must have taught his last pupil that much...oh well." Slade chucked the great anchor as Jay fell far down. His feet hit the water, head still sputtering filth from it. X's mask starting to flood, Slade's boots could be heard in the teen's head as Jay's vision faded over into clear blue and dark nights…

Dark…

"I'll tell my apprentice that you took a trip. And, that you won't be back anytime soon. Not that it will fly by the kid…tell the bat if he finds you, that my time as your caregiver… is up."

/

Dark waters, c- cold and w-w-wet…. Everything, s- s- soaking through. Frozen, Jay shivered madly as the chains couldn't last. A rising tide meant the end, no belt by far was a fate he'd not believed he didn't deserve however.

Slade was going to drown in his own personal chamber in Hell someday.

Jason coughed up more water from the bay. The chill had him seeing spots –

Until….

Lights, and a dark arm….

As it pulled him from the river….

As if…

/

"Jason…...dear god…." Bruce dropped his head. A pulse was there, as he clung to the teen. Head upon his, upon his son's freezing skull. "Let's get you home, you're safe…you're here with me. Stay with me… please, stay with me…"

/

Bruce had only wept, on rare occasions when confronting his own past.

Never, had he wept for his children or even those he knew from his time as the Dark Knight.

Night was still it, and X had lost face.

Slade had shown him death's door.

How, how?

How had Dick still not gotten away??

"Master Jason?"

Jay rose as he sat up, panting in sheets much damper than that wharf side dip.

He shivered, thinking only of what he'd succumbed to.

He'd escaped, yet Dick.

Dick, might be stuck. An apprentice to a murdering psycho.

"Jason!"

He blinked, tears rubbed away just in time to see Bruce Wayne and…Babs…

"Oh, no... Dick…. I…. I f –

"You were about to be drowned." Bruce brought a hand to the kid's shoulder blade.

Green eyes looked deeply into blue (Bruce is blue in this.)

"Who."

The owl eyed boy said nothing, for if he did…

Slade.

"It was, Sionas's off….c- crew." Lied Jay with a shudder. "I…owed them, didn't pay up –

"Then what was this device the Batman confiscated at the scene of the crime?"

Baba crossed her arms and wasn't so sure Jay had even seen Black mask in person.

"You think…?" Jay ground his teeth into a sore lip. "You don't trust me."

" That was water torture." Bruce jumped into the discussion again. "Sionas wasn't in Steel. I went out of my way to get your message; it was sent back in Star city." Bruce told the stunned kid.

"I got out, but you wouldn't know…. there is too much at stake –

"That device, Jason, was a bomb."

/

"You and half of the area would have been raised within a five-mile radius of the city. It would have been more lives of those unable to flee the blast, yet someone was looking out for us."

Bruce's eyes shaded over into a dull navy; his head heavy as Babs did the same.

Brooding. A bat family tradition? When was it ever not

"You, stopped it –

"I had to find you first, but yes." Bruce sighed out, just relieved that five had not been a greater story in every tabloid paper that next morning.

"Was there a clue as to who did…that?" Babs snuck in her question carefully. Batman's session was a grueling time that drained his very soul every time he reflected on too many times, he'd been unsuccessful on a rescue mission.

"It, was the same screw ball..." Jay let out a gulp of air slowly. "That took, my brother…."