"Everything you've been through, it'll all be worth it. Pinkie swear! All you gotta do is meet me at the bank with the clock tower on Halloween, at midnight. Then, you'll get to see White, and you can be whole again."

—-

Persuading Black to hang out in the holding cell was the easy part.

The rest of the evening was proving to be a challenge. The Titans and Batman had split up to patrol the city. After dinner time until about 10, children ran through the streets, as businesses had a massive trick or treat event going on. With so many vulnerable people out and about, there were plenty of targets for the scum of the city to prey on.

Plenty of work to keep busy until midnight.

This was easy work for Batman, and kept him alert for what was to come. As he subdued his third pickpocket in an hour, he considered the facts again.

According to Raven, the villain they never captured from the night before was named Kyd Wykkyd. On his own, he posed little to no threat, but he did have the talent for sneaking around and phasing through walls and floors.

But he also couldn't speak, so there wasn't much to guess of his intentions with the white doll.

He just had to assume it wasn't good.

After the children dispersed to get candy-wasted, that left the teenagers ready to prank, and the college kids ready to get drunk. All of these were also in costume.

Finally, around 11:30, Batman made his way to the location, the Jump City Federal Building and Bank, which had a large, very tall clock tower that rivaled the height of even some skyscrapers.

"Master Bruce!" Alfred called across the shared frequency.

Immediately, Batman was on edge. "What happened?"

"Master Richard…he has escaped. He was so well behaved and docile. I turned my back to go make some tea, and then…I woke up on the floor. I don't know how long I've been out. I'm…I am so sorry."

"Are you hurt at all?"

"A small scratch. Doesn't even need a bandage."

"Good. I had a feeling he would try to escape. I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire. Titans, did you hear all that?"

"Roger!" Cyborg called over the coms. "We'll spread out and look for him."

Starfire asked, "where do you think he aims to go?"

"No doubt the same meeting place that Gizmo was given. The federal building clock tower."

"Why would he want to see them again? You'd think he'd want to stay as far away from those psychos as possible!" Said Beast Boy.

"It's not about seeing them, it's about what they have. That white doll is significant here. For what purpose, I don't know. Robin didn't seem to know either. See if you all can find him. I'm en route to the clock tower. I'll call if I need back up."

"Roger!"

Batman couldn't help but release an irritated sigh after he hung up. Not directed at anyone, but the situation.

Well, we was irritated with the Joker and Dent, but that was a given. He'd been pissed at them ever since he figured out what happened to Robin.

He arrived at the clock tower, and scanned the outside for access points.

There was a door in one of the clock faces, and he dropped down to it, and pulled on the handle.

It wasn't locked, thankfully, and he slipped inside.

He could hear voices.

"Oh I like you. You're like…if Batsy had powers, and was evil. You've even got his silent schtick down pat!"

The conversation was down a few levels, as the inside of the tower was made up of winding staircases. Quietly, he attached a grapple line to the railing and leapt over the edge, slowly descending down to get a better look.

"You've done very well, I must say. Not the one I thought was going to get it, though. I thought the talking baby was going to be our winner."

Batman stayed in the shadows, as the room was dark anyway, but could see two figures. One was the villainous teen from yesterday, and the other was very clearly the Joker.

There was no sign of Dent.

"So…are you going to hand it over, or what?"

Kyd Wykkyd held out the doll, and Batman was tempted to snag it before the Joker grabbed it, but he was momentarily distracted by another door on the other side of the room opening and closing.

Joker snatched the doll. "Well well well! Look who it is! Lucky number 8, was it? Or what was that name you were going by now?"

"It's Black."

"Right. Not very creative, are you?"

"Black is infinite, like darkness. It's impenetrable, unknowable—"

"Yeah, yeah, save it for the Psych Ward. I know the whole reason you came here was for this." And he held up the doll.

"White!"

"What's the magic word?"

"Please!"

"'Please' what?"

"Please Master!"

"That's a good little weirdo!" And he tossed the doll to him.

Batman watched as Black ripped the doll's head off and started to eat what was inside the doll.

While Joker was distracted with that, he swung down and nailed him in the chest with both feet, knocking him on his ass and the wind from his lungs.

In the name of self-preservation, Kyd Wykkyd skedaddled.

Batman grabbed Joker by the collar and hauled him to his feet. "Where's Dent?!"

"How should I know?"

Batman shook him. "Don't play dumb. You were working with him!"

"Right right! Yep! That was so long ago I forgot."

"Answer, Joker!"

"Okay okay! Honestly, I don't know. He didn't like the product so he dipped. Said I could keep the little monster as payment. I guess he would be heading back to Gotham, but if he wanted to get away from you, now would certainly be the time. He did seem a little tense. Maybe he went South for a little vacay, hmm?"

Batman dropped him and pinned him to the ground with his foot while he got his cuffs.

"No…" Black moaned. "No no no…"

Batman turned to Black but kept Joker in his periphery. "What's wrong?"

Black held the mostly empty doll, and Batman could now see the contents consisted of dead bugs. "I…I don't feel any different."

Joker started giggling.

"Why are you laughing?!"

"I can't believe you fell for that! 'All your goodness will be put in this little doll, and it'll be waiting for you when your training is over.' Really? I can't save your goodness for later! I reprogrammed your brain! It's gone forever! You're bad, 8. Down to the bone! There's nothing redeemable about you!"

Black dropped the doll and stood ramrod straight, the black veins pulsing under his skin.

"No…no…"

Batman took the opportunity to finish cuffing the Joker.

As the last cuff locked into place, Batman heard another distinctive click, and his heart sank.

He turned around slowly with his hands up.

Black still had his gun, and it was pointing at him.

"Move," he bit.

"No," said Batman. "We don't kill."

"Maybe you don't, but I do!"

"It's not going to make you feel better," Batman urged. "Never has anyone felt better after killing someone."

"That's not true! I'll feel better knowing he won't do this to anyone else!"

"For a little while, maybe. But it won't make everything he did to you go away. You'll never find closure. You'll start to wonder if he got off easy. Then you'll have regrets. Trust me, it's not worth it."

Black didn't respond, but didn't lower his weapon.

"We'll turn him into the police. He'll be locked away to serve his time in isolation. He won't hurt anyone else."

Black shook his head. "That's a lie. He'll get out, and he'll do it again."

"He won't." Batman hissed.

Black shook his head, eyes welling up with tears. When he spoke, his voice was so clear, so sane, Bruce thought it might actually be Richard. "I can't live with that on my conscience." And he raised the gun to his own temple.

Batman lunged for him, but before anything could happen, a bright green light struck Black's back, stunning him. He fell forward, and revealed Starfire floating just behind him.

Batman hadn't even noticed her appearance.

"Apologies. I tracked your location in the event you needed backup."

Batman sighed in relief. "No apologies necessary."

"Awwww that was anticlimactic! You're no fun at all," Joker whined from the floor.

Batman kicked him hard, knocking him on his side.

"I'll take Joker to jail. You take Black back to the tower. Get him strapped in at the med bay and tell Cyborg to prep for an X-ray."

"You fear he has a broken bone?"

"No. Worse."

—-

Setting up a transfer to Arkham had Batman busy for several hours. In the meantime, Starfire did just as he instructed, and took Black to the med bay.

He was sedated, but not fully unconscious.

Alfred worked on synthesizing another batch of the antidote, though dour, skeptical if it would fail again.

Starfire dutifully relayed what had happened, from her perspective, to the other Titans as Cyborg performed the X-ray.

"Truthfully," she confessed. "I would have killed the Joker myself if Batman had not been there. I understood his position, and in Robin's case, I believe he was correct. It would have further diminished his mental state. I, however, have killed many enemies, and only stopped from doing so when I came to Earth. Taking a life does take a toll on the mind, but I am numb to it after all these years."

"Metal," said Beast Boy.

"Yes, I do believe this strength is like iron, or steel."

"That's not—eh, same thing, I guess."

"I'm not seeing anything abnormal with the X-ray, then again, I'm not a radiologist, and I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for."

Black, mostly groggy from the sedative, moaned feebly. "Tinky Star?"

Starfire went to his side and pet his hair back. "Yes, my friend. I am here."

"Am I in trouble?"

"Only slightly."

"You shouldn't have run away," said Raven. "But you did aid in the capture of the Joker. And you solved the mystery of the white doll."

"What did you need that for, anyway?" Beast Boy asked.

Black started to cry, rocking back and forth on the bed. "That was White. When they created me, they took everything good about me, everything that made Robin a hero, out and put it in that doll. At least…that's what they said. All I had to do was get it back, and I'd be normal again. I'd be sane. And you'd all like me." He sobbed. "But it was all a lie. And I should have known, 'cause all they ever did was lie. I'm just as crazy as ever…and now I have a weird taste in my mouth."

"Why didn't you just say so earlier?" Beast Boy again asked. "Even if you didn't know we had the doll, we could have helped you look for it."

"I…I forgot." He cringed. "I didn't remember until you mentioned Halloween. Then I remembered that they promised to give it back to me."

"Sounds like something pretty important to just forget," Raven remarked.

Black shut his eyes tight. "Nothing makes sense to me."

"Pardon me," Alfred popped his head into the room. "I just received a message from Master Bruce. He would like you to forward those X-rays to Dr. Paxton in Gotham. He's already arranged the story."

"Oh, okay. Better idea than having us trying to see what we can't," Cyborg agreed as he went to the computer.

"Do I got broken insides?" Asked Black.

"Batman seems to think so." Raven stood beside him and held her hands out just over his torso. Her hands glowed a soothing white. "I'm going to see if I can see anything out of the ordinary. Starfire, you sure Batman didn't say what he was suspicious of?"

She shook her head. "No, nothing. Perhaps something was said before I arrived."

Raven hovered her hands over his body, up his chest, over his face, down his arms and legs and back again. "Everything looks fine to me. Nothing broken."

"Hey," Beast Boy wondered aloud, "you remember…when Robin was forced to be Slade's apprentice?"

"Yeah? And?" Raven snipped, not fond of the topic.

"Well, we all had those little nano dudes in us. Could you detect them with your magic?"

She gave him a surprised look. "No, I couldn't. So you think there's something small in him like the nanobots?"

Beast Boy shrugged. "Just thinkin'."

"If that's the case," said Cyborg, returning from the other room. "Then we're going to need more than X-rays."

"You mean all those tubes and wires?" Beast Boy shuttered.

"Yep!"

Black moaned from the bed. "I neither like tubes nor wires."

—

It took another several hours to get all the monitors attached to Black and run all the tests.

"I'm tired…" Black moaned, from under a pile of cords and tubes. "I wanna go night-night."

"Yeah, us too, buddy," Said Cyborg, yawning. "I've got 5% left on my battery before one of you will have to push me back into my room to charge."

"Just show me what I need to look at and you can go rest," said Raven. "If the tests are all set to run, we should be okay."

"If you're sure. Don't be afraid to wake me if there's any issues." And he left.

Almost as soon as he did, Batman returned, dropping his cowl onto a nearby chair. "What a night…find anything?"

"Not in the initial X-rays." Raven pulled up the imaging. "We're running more in-depth tests now, though we don't really know what we're looking for."

Bruce zoomed in on the X-rays, until the bone was so big, the screen was white. Then he scrolled through it meticulously.

"You still haven't told us what we're looking for," added Beast Boy. "Do you think there's a break?"

"No," said Batman, loading the next image, of the spinal cord. "But Joker said something that's been nagging me. Perhaps it's just a figure of speech, but I wouldn't feel right if I didn't investigate."

"...and that was…?"

"After Black ate the contents of the white doll," he omitted what it was, "he said he didn't feel any different. Joker laughed and said he was bad to the bone. But the way he said it made me wonder…"

Beast Boy hid his eye roll as he turned away. He didn't want to doubt Batman, but that seemed like grasping at straws.

"It is a figure of speech?" Asked Starfire. "As in, someone is evil to the core of their being?"

Beast Boy hummed. "I guess. The song from the 80's is more about being bad in a cool way. Like wearing leather and riding motorcycles."

"Like…Johnny Rocket?"

"Yeah, like that."

"Except," Bruce explained. "Joker didn't say 'bad to the bone' he said 'you're bad' period 'right down to the bone.' Emphasis on bone."

"...I don't know if—"

"There!" Bruce pointed to the X-ray of the skull. So small, smaller than a grain of rice, a little white chip sat nestled in his head.

"What is that?" Raven wondered aloud.

"GPS tracker, at least." He screenshotted the suspicious object and sent it to the doctor. "Dr. Paxton is my contact at Wayne Memorial Hospital, but he'll put us in contact with a Doctor nearby who can surgically remove it.

"Then can I get out of all of this?" Black asked meekly.

—

Several more hours. It was mid morning now, and the surgery was complete and Black sat with several stitches in his head. He was still sedated as they hadn't administered the antidote yet.

The doctor returned with the little device in a petri dish. "That's it."

"But…what is it?" Batman asked.

"It's very sophisticated for something so small. It's a device that sends out chemical and electrical signals, much like the rest of the communication in the brain, for the sole purpose of overwriting commands from the hypothalamus. So instead of normal functions, it would tell the body to hold onto harmful chemicals and store them in various organs for release at a later time."

"So that's how he kept getting poisoned."

"Exactly."

"Thank you doctor, you've been a huge lifesaver."

"Anytime!" And he left.

Black, still groggy, asked, "am I going to be okay now?"

"Just a little more medicine, and you'll be all better."

—-

It had only been a few days since Starfire had last spent time out on the roof with Robin. But this time, she was confident things were better. Not normal. Things would never be the way they were before after all he had been through, but better, nonetheless.

Robin sat at her side, shamelessly resting his head on her shoulder. "Thanks for sticking by me, through all that."

"You are most welcome, my sweet Robin. You know, I will always come to help you. No matter the peril."

"And you've saved me so many times now. I don't know if I can ever make it up to you."

She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "Just be with me. I am sure you will pay me back in time."

He smiled up at her.

"Your back, where I stunned you, how does that feel?"

"Fine. Less than a sunburn. Don't worry about it."

"I am sorry you could not get your revenge on Joker."

He shook his head. "No, it's alright. While I am angry, I know that Bruce was right, ultimately. Killing him wouldn't have been good for me in the long run. Besides, in our line of work, Death is never the guaranteed end. We saw that with Slade. I will always worry that Joker will get out and do this again. But there's always the chance that he never gets out again."

"You promise to let me know if you ever have to go undercover again, right? I will protect you. I will come for you if things go wrong."

He raised their joined hands and kissed her knuckles. "I promise, Star. No more secrets between you and me."

"It may be presumptuous, but would you allow me to sleep beside you tonight? I have missed you so."

"I don't know if there's anything I want more in this world than that."

She grinned.

"Only if you're okay with me getting grabby. I might cuddle with you, now that I can."

"Oh, it is I who will be doing the cuddling!"

When it grew late, Robin escorted Starfire inside, where she promised to meet in his room when she was ready for bed.

He got ready himself, taking a short shower and brushing his teeth.

He wiped the steam from the mirror, clearing his reflection among the streaks. His eyes bounced with untapped energy, though he felt calm and collected. The makeup covering his scar was washed away, revealing the dark pinks of trauma.

"Hey," he said to his reflection.

"Howdy ho!" His reflection responded.

"We're cool, right? You can handle this arrangement, right?"

"It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be."

Robin exhaled, dropping his shoulders. "I wanted to apologize."

"Whatever for?"

"I said some pretty horrible things about you…but in the end, you allowed me to survive. You kept me alive, and got me out. It wasn't ideal, but…thanks, Black."

"Hmm. Never thought you'd say that. But you're welcome. And uh…I'm not going anywhere. If you need me, I'll take over."

"Sounds like a plan."