A/N: Robin's relationship with Slade fascinates me. And because it fascinates me, I'm taking what canon gave us and running with it.
Title is from a quote about Stockholm syndrome. Make of that what you will.
10 Internet points to anyone who catches my Stranger Things reference. Once the idea hit me, I couldn't resist.
what to a slave is a square (technically it's perfect)
He didn't see Slade escape.
That's what bothers him.
The Haunt was destroyed, collapsed under its own weight of gears, and Robin turned his back on the man he'd lived and trained with for eleven months and told his friends it was time to go home. He looked over his shoulder, once, just as they made it out of the rapidly deteriorating exit, but he didn't see Slade, and Raven pushed his shoulder to get him moving before he could stall long enough to search the dusty shadows for him. They went home.
And a lot has happened since then—a lot of apologies, on both sides; a lot of awkward silences (Robin doesn't know how, but he's sure the others are talking about him with each other, even when he's right there); a lot of peace offerings of waffles and tofu bacon and Tamaranean dishes he can't pronounce and wouldn't eat if he was dying of starvation. It's been… chaotic. Sometimes in a nice way. Sometimes in a not-so-nice way. Robin is readjusting to life in Titans Tower. The Titans are readjusting to Robin.
But he didn't see Slade escape the collapsing Haunt, and he hasn't heard from him since then either, and it keeps him up at night.
One night, tossing and turning, he casts a reluctant look at his alarm clock. As soon as he reads the luminescent red numbers—4:47 a.m.—he knows he's done trying to sleep for the night. He gets out of bed, realizes vaguely that he forgot to take off his boots again, and makes his way to the living room.
Raven is already there, nursing a steaming cup of herbal tea.
Robin is surprised to see her, but he doesn't say anything. He just looks at her for a moment. She looks back. Then, wordlessly, he moves past her and starts making himself some coffee.
"Morning," Raven says then.
"Good morning," Robin responds flatly, automatically. He doesn't turn away from the coffee pot, which hasn't begun to fill yet, but he can hear the machine working and knows it won't be long now. The quiet whirring and droning of the coffee maker reminds him faintly of the omnipresent buzzing and beeping of Slade's computer setup in the Haunt's main room. Robin grips the edge of the counter so hard his fingers hurt.
Slade and Robin never said good morning to each other. They'd just nod, silently, little jerky nods to acknowledge the other's presence and that was it. Coffee and contemplation were what mornings in the Haunt were for. Robin liked it well enough.
Liked it even better when Slade didn't bite his head off for trying to initiate banter (or, on bad days, an argument) first thing in the morning. Slade kept absolutely ungodly hours through sheer force of will and metahuman endurance, but when he actually slept, he was not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.
He feels Raven's greeting to him now as an irritation, and he bites his tongue to stop from scowling. She's just trying to be nice.
"You're up early," Raven says.
Feeling a little defensive—he doesn't really know Raven anymore, not after being gone for so long, but he can tell she's working up to something—he says, "You, too."
"I couldn't sleep." A pause. A very pregnant pause. Then she says, "I could feel your emotions. All night. They kept me awake."
Guilt bites his insides, and the only sign of it that shows is the way his mouth twitches. But his back is turned to Raven, so she doesn't even see that. All she can hear is his flat voice as he says, "Sorry. I'll try to keep it down."
A soft sound reaches him—the sound of Raven sighing through her nose. "I don't want you to keep it down," she says, in a low, dark voice. "I want you to tell me what's wrong."
Robin doesn't say anything for a long while, almost as if he didn't hear her. He watches the coffee pot slowly fill with nearly black liquid. Robin's always taken his coffee black. When Slade found out, he exclaimed, only half joking, "That's disgusting, Robin," sounding amused despite himself. Robin smiles a little at the memory. Then he realizes he's smiling and forces himself to frown.
Slade took—takes, Robin reminds himself harshly—his coffee with a little sugar and a lot of cream, which surprised Robin, though he couldn't (and still can't) say why. He likes cold brew, but he refuses to get a cold brew machine, claiming indignantly that the price of an actually good cold brew maker is highway robbery, and he refuses to settle for a half-assed one. Robin once suggested, only half joking, that Slade just steal a cold brew maker. Slade laughed. Robin thinks he might have laughed, too.
He didn't see Slade get out.
"Robin," Raven says. "You're doing it again."
Robin, Slade said to him more than once, when Robin got it in his head that he needed to be punished, that he ought to make himself suffer. When Robin refused to let himself sleep, no matter how disgusting the hallucinations were after the fourth night. When Robin picked sullenly at the food Wintergreen made, ignoring his howling stomach. When Robin deliberately went too hard in training and injured himself, with just enough plausible deniability that he could say it hadn't been on purpose. Robin. You're doing it again.
Doing what? Robin would respond, sometimes in a snarl, sometimes in a tired murmur.
Slade always looked at him, very steadily. Hitting the self-destruct button.
Slade didn't want him doing that.
He didn't see Slade make it out.
"Doing what?" he murmurs now to Raven.
"Your emotions," Raven says. "They're going haywire. It's like you're feeling everything and nothing all at once. I'm not going to violate your privacy by reading your mind, which means you need to talk to me. Tell me what's got you so worked up. Maybe I can help."
You seem upset, friend. I am most worried, Starfire has said to him.
Dude, did you even sleep last night? You wanna come take a nap on the couch with me? I could turn into a kitten and curl up on your lap, Beast Boy has offered.
Take it easy, little man. I'll update the security logs tonight, you go take a break. You're gettin' too worked up over nothing, Cyborg has gently admonished.
Tell me what's got you so worked up. Maybe I can help, Raven said. But she can't, and Robin doesn't want to get her hopes up. Doesn't want to see those hopes crash and burn. Doesn't want to hurt her—any more than he already has.
He decides to give her a little something, but not enough to make her realize just how ineffectual her help would really be. Enough to satisfy her, but not break her heart. "I didn't see Slade make it out."
Something in Raven's voice is tight and tense when she next speaks, which is odd, because out of all of them, Raven has consistently been the calmest whenever he brings up Slade. "Didn't see Slade make it out of what?"
"The Haunt," Robin says, then, realizing she might not know what that is, elaborates: "His secret base. The place where you guys found me."
Silence. Heavy, like a velvet drape. Raven is about to say something he won't like, that she knows he won't like, but that she feels the need to say anyway. There's a lot of that going around the Tower these days. "Robin," she says, and there's something reproachful in her voice, but something sad, too. Robin wonders if his attempt not to break her heart was unsuccessful, hates himself a little more. "There's no way Slade made it out of there. The entire place was coming down, and he certainly didn't use the front door. He's gone, Robin. You don't need to worry about him anymore."
Oh, so that's it. That's why Raven sounded so tense and tight a minute ago. Normally, ever since he got back ho—back to the Tower, and he brings up Slade, Raven takes it with her usual cool head and unjudging eyes. But this time, she's worried that he's brought up Slade because he's obsessing again, slipping into that half-drunk darkness of wondering and worrying and scheming and planning. Wondering where Slade is, trying to catch a ghost with his bare hands. Last time he got like that, he disappeared for two months, then showed up wearing Slade's colors. Last time he got like that, he was gone for almost a year.
Raven has it all wrong.
He's not worried about Slade.
…Not like that.
"I know," Robin says, and it sounds despondent even to his own ears, which means there's no way Raven won't notice. But she doesn't say anything, maybe too confused. Maybe too concerned.
There's a lot of that going around the Tower these days.
Robin didn't see Slade make it out.
He hasn't slept in a while, and he smiles a grim little smile at the irony of it all as he pours himself a cup of straight caffeine and slams it down his throat like his life depends on it. Hitting the self-destruct button yet again. This time, there's no Slade here to tell him not to.
And whose fault is that?
He holds off on the urge for eight days and seven nights.
On the eighth night, when the Titans are all asleep (Robin has deliberately kept himself quiet so Raven could slip off into slumber), he slips out of the Tower and makes his way downtown.
Past the shipping yard.
Past the slums.
To the place no one thought to look for eleven months, six days, and fourteen hours.
To the Haunt.
Or what's left of it, at any rate.
He stands and stares at the rubble for a long, long time. There's no movement barring a couple of alley cats scrapping with each other a few yards off. No shifting shadows, no disturbed dust. Nothing but a pile of metal, and concrete, and the broken remains of some gears, now still and silent.
The cogs were always going, when the Haunt was still standing. Robin asked about them once. They didn't seem to serve any purpose, so why were they there?
I like the noise, Slade said. Background noise helps me think.
He hadn't considered that someone like Slade needed help concentrating. That maybe he was one of those people who always slept with a fan on, just for the background noise. That maybe he was a person at all.
He started seeing that, then. He confessed that even though they'd been hard to get used to at first, he liked the gears, too.
Robin approaches the mess of destruction before him, gets on his hands and knees. Then he begins to dig.
He didn't see Slade make it out, which means Slade might still be in there.
How immortal is the immortal man when he's buried helplessly under two tons of rubble that he can't push off?
Does he die and revive, die and revive, suffocating under the pressure or bleeding out and then waking up and going through the whole thing all over again once his body painstakingly knits itself back together with absolutely no regard for how he feels about it? Or does he stay alive the whole way through, pinned to the ground under the weight of the gears that once helped him think, breathless and bleeding endlessly?
Robin digs until his fingers start to ache. Then until they start to sting. Then until they start to bleed. He digs until the sun rises, the morning haze burns off, and the city's day-walkers emerge from their homes and hovels and the night-stalkers flee the obnoxious yellow light of a new day.
Then he digs some more.
He hasn't made a dent in the rubble pile. Still no Slade.
Maybe that means he did make it out after all.
Or maybe it means he's buried too deep for Robin to find.
He's gone, Robin. You don't need to worry about him anymore.
Funny. Now that Slade's gone, Robin is worrying way more about him than he ever did when he was still ali—still here.
He wants to keep digging, but he's smart enough and realistic enough to know he's getting nowhere.
He looks down at his gloves. The fingertips are worn through, brown with half-dried blood. His nails are ragged and raw.
He didn't see Slade make it out of the Haunt.
The rest of him feels raw, too.
Terra joins the team.
She didn't know the old Robin, so she doesn't seem to think the new Robin is unusual. For a given value of "not unusual," anyway.
Beast Boy is clearly smitten. Robin can see why. She's pretty. And strong. (Too strong.) And so, so vulnerable.
They get called into the old mines on the outskirts of town. The miners have fled, leaving their industrial equipment running, leaving everything half-finished. Robots are flooding the cavernous space. Robots with black faces and orange marks.
Robin knows exactly what to call the feeling in his chest, the one that feels like sun-warmth after a long winter and buoyancy and the first breath after a crushing hand has released your throat, but he refuses to name it on principle.
He is Robin, leader of the Teen Titans, and there are some things he cannot allow.
He plays at being the old Robin, and Terra helps. The other Titans don't seem to think anything is amiss.
He didn't see Slade make it out of the Haunt, but evidently Slade made it out anyway.
How immortal is the immortal man?
Apparently, just immortal enough.
The Titans go home, battle-weary but ultimately victorious.
There's some drama with Terra. She runs. Beast Boy looks like a kicked puppy. Guilt bites at Robin's insides, and he tries to apologize.
She didn't even say goodbye, Beast Boy laments, skipping rocks unenthusiastically.
Robin didn't say goodbye when he ran away, either. He wonders if that's why Slade didn't even look at him tonight.
More guilt, gnawing at his intestines.
But he goes to bed thinking of Slade, the immortal man still very much alive, and when his head hits the pillow, you know what he does?
He sleeps.
the end