(A/N)- WHUMPTOBER TIME BITCHES! :D
Y'all know the deal, I hurt the darlings, you moan and curse at me for it, let's get right into it, I'm really happy and proud of my work this year.
Prompts used were: No.3 Set Up For Failure: Fingerprints/Wrongfully Arrested/"I warned you.", and No.28 Denial: CCTV/Exposure/"They caught me red-handed"
Warnings for depiction of a panic attack and vomiting.
Disclaimer: Trouble In Tokyo would have had that juicy juicy Daizo backstory if I owned Teen Titans.
Bloodstained Hands
Robin started to lose control of his breathing once they put him in the Trooper squad car.
The sound of the door shutting was unusually loud and echoing in his ears, reverberating inside his head. His chest tightened like the seatbelt was choking him. He stared straight forward through the glass plane separating him from the driver, eyes fixated on the flashing red and blue lights outside, and started to feel it all crashing down around his head.
His mouth was dry, tongue lodged at the back of his throat—breathe breathe, he had to remember to breathe—and he fought against the rising sense of dread under his sternum—he had only ever been in the back of a patrol car once for a fun day trip with Commissioner Gordon, oh god what would he think—as the car rumbled to life and drove away from the scene—the scene of the crime, they were leaving a crime scene, he was a criminal, he had killed someone—
Robin's shoulders curled in and he hung his head towards the floor, making the handcuffs clink slightly behind him and the sound was another auditory bullet shot of adrenaline spiking through him.
He was no stranger to panic attacks. He'd had plenty.
This one was especially hard to shake.
The dread was a cold lake of heavy ice sitting in his stomach. His chest heaved as he gasped mutely, hardly any sound of breath passing through his mouth. His heart sparked with fire pinpricks of adrenaline and all sound was watery, far away and out of reach, muffled.
He... he couldn't... focus.
He was so lost inside his own head, thoughts still spiraling one after the other that he had killed someone, he was a murderer, he'd been arrested that he was almost numb as the Tokyo Troopers collected him from the squad car. He barely registered that they had returned to the Trooper headquarters. If his head had been clearer he might have questioned why he'd been brought here, why Daizo was allowed to bring him to his personal facility instead of a normal district lockup, but all he could think about was the last few moments of the fight, the rage he had pummeled Saico-tek with, the blood—blood? no no it couldn't be blood it couldn't, he would never—that still stained his gloves as they removed the handcuffs.
He was processed. Belt, weapons, and ruined laces removed. Photographed. Fingerprinted. He thought they would have to take the gloves off for it but apparently the Troopers had the same kinds of micro-beam scanners the Tower had. Robin felt nauseous watching the machine work, the back of his head shrieking at him that he was in the system now, his arrest was in the database, Bruce would see, Batman could see his file pop in the Cave's database any time he turned it on now, could read through it and know what a disappointment and failure he was.
Robin was led to a sparse holding cell and left there. He wondered idly why it was so quiet, surely the Troopers should have been up all hours of the night in a big city like this? Coming and going?
There was nothing but the buzz of the air and lights above him and his racing heart and all the noisy little stinging thoughts that smacked against the insides of his skull and repeated their criticisms, denials, and horrors over and over again.
This wasn't real.
This was real.
He had killed someone.
He couldn't have.
He knew better.
Did he really? Slade had always been so fond of pointing out Robin's little inner rage problem.
No, no it wasn't like that this time.
He replayed the fight in his head again and again, tried to remember how much force he'd used. Tried to remember if it was too much.
The pieces refused to click together and make sense. Saico-tek could regenerate a whole blown off arm, how had Robin's pummeling put him down for good? They'd seen the kaiju monster in the city take the same kind of sonic blast from Cyborg straight through its chest, the perfect circular hole where its heart and lungs should be merely washing over and filling with flashes of color, as if it wasn't even made of flesh.
So how...?
Even his brief conversation with Daizo, when the commander came in, didn't straighten anything out. Daizo was insistent that Brushogun was a myth. Robin was ashamed of the way his voice cracked and shook as he pleaded with the man, argued about how things didn't add up.
"Whatever this Saico-tek was, he was alive," the commander pointed out, voice patient but firm, "And now..."
As if Robin didn't know. As if that wasn't the horrible thought that was digging its claws into him and making his head light, his stomach roil and churn.
After Daizo left, the modicum of control he had over himself started to unravel again. He gulped for breath, sides and lungs heaving, shuddering. His vision narrowed, tunneling, disconnecting from reality. The screeching panic alarms cycled higher and shriller.
He clutched pink-stained gloves to either side of his head and bent over in the seat, nails digging into his skin.
He knew he should get hold of himself and think. He knew how to get hold of himself.
He just... couldn't.
-TT-
Despite the unflappable severity with which he'd told Robin how much trouble he was in, there was a part of Uehara Daizo that was panicking.
The Commander did not panic. He had been a smiling, unshakable face in front of Tokyo's news cameras for decades. He was the one who had saved the city countless times, dodged inquiries, silenced all doubting voices to stand atop them all as its shining hero.
And now he realized there was a chance it could all fall apart. Crumble into dust in his fingers.
The boy could not be given any respite to think. He needed to be transferred. Tonight. Not to the municipal juvenile detention center, that was too public. Too out of his direct control. No. He had friends at a private high-security facility just outside of the division line. He would send the boy there. Emphasize to the mayor and the press how much danger a highly-skilled vigilante superhero who had already killed posed to the pubic safety. Robin could be held there indefinitely. Or at least long enough for Daizo to convince the judge for the family court to put his case on the docket much sooner, and rule for him to be tried as an adult.
A few greased palms to ensure he would be released into general prison pop in an adult prison, a specially printed assassin hidden among them, and he would be rid of the nuisance the child had made of himself for good. He would play it off as a tragic accident. He was so rehearsed at covering his tracks it was almost second nature now, it should be enough to deter the... international attention that would inevitably come.
Even in Japan the Batman's reputation was fearsome. Daizo knew he was playing with fire, detaining the Bat's child.
But those worries could be addressed later. Right now, all that was left to be concerned about was the child's friends.
They would foolishly try to save or help him, he knew. They could not be allowed.
It was probably time to visit Brushogan, sic the reprints of his favorite reoccurring criminals on them, before the late-night news broadcast program broke the story of Robin's arrest.
He glanced up at the cameras and snorted. The boy was curled in an almost fetal-position on his chair in the holding cell, clearly in the throes of a terrible anxiety and panic. If he had a medical episode while in Daizo's custody it would look bad, no matter how much the city liked him.
He supposed he would have to send someone in to go calm him down.
Daizo grabbed his coat and pulled it on, sliding his arms into the sleeves comfortably as he made his way down to the bowels of the facility, accessing via special passcard the platform lift that ran under a tunnel through the city, straight to basement of the derelict Wakamono Shuppan.
He stormed into the control room in a bit of a huff, yanking back the chair and stabbing the button to pipe the CCTV feed of the holding cell to one of the screens.
"Look what you have caused, my friend!" he accused the thin gray shadow stuck in the printing press. He pointed sharply towards the quivering red and green figure. "Look what have you forced me to do!"
A dark, rasping chuckle came from the withered husk that was Brushogan. "I did not do any of this," the weak, dry voice countered, and it could have been a trick of the shadows but he swore the man was smirking. "You should have released me... long ago."
Lip curling, Daizo searched the buttons on the control panel.
"I need a Trooper with a bit more personality. A medical technician," he barked. "Someone who can stop the boy from spiraling himself into a heart attack." He found the button and hovered a finger over it, eyes shooting a glare at his prisoner. "Can you handle that?" he asked, derisive.
Brushogun wore a grim smile. "I shall make him like you once were," he said, the silent admonition a mocking bell in his ears.
Daizo pulled his sidearm, leveling it across the distance towards the man's head. "Do not give him any more autonomy than he needs," he growled. "If you pull another stunt like you did with that Saico-tek..."
He let the warning and the threat hang, ominously.
Brushogun bowed his head grimly, pressing one finger to the paper in the printer.
Daizo pressed the button.
-TT-
They both watched the camera feed as a Trooper opened up the holding cell.
"Hello Robin," the Trooper greeted. "My name is Akira Kaito. I noticed you were feeling unwell."
The boy shuddered, vacant eyes becoming present as he tried to blink and focus on the Trooper.
"Are you all right?" Kaito asked, tilting his head in concern.
Robin's face was gaunt, gaze trembling, as he lifted his head.
"I... I think I'm gonna..."
He curled up again, suddenly, as he gave a loud retch, face turning greenish.
Kaito came alongside him, guiding him quickly by the arm to the sink in the back corner. Robin gagged and doubled over as he hurled into it, face hidden from the camera view as he emptied his stomach into the sink.
He coughed for a long time, gasping, wheezing for breath.
"Here. Let me take those," Kaito offered, sliding Robin's gloves off for him, which let him more easily grip the porcelain sides of the sink.
The Trooper surreptitiously pocketed the gloves, for the moment. Daizo nodded in satisfaction. They would be returned later, after being cleaned off. Any standard lab test would quickly reveal that it was ink, not blood. The department trusted him enough that they let him conduct his own tests, he would simply say he had blood evidence off the gloves that matched Saico-tek's. He could rely on the private prison to destroy both them and the rest of Robin's uniform and belongings when he was booked in.
At least he seemed to have stopped outright panicking, though now it looked like he was crying instead; his shoulders were tightly hitched and he smeared hands under his eyes again and again.
"Why didn't I just stay with her?" he was whispering, so quietly the cameras almost couldn't pick it up. "Why didn't I just kiss her? Why did I have to let myself get so obsessed with things... again..."
The despair in the boy's tone was pity-inducing. Even the cold cockles of Daizo's heart felt a moment's regret.
Then he stirred, shaking off that shred of compassion like a flake of dust. He switched the input to shunt the holding cell footage to a smaller screen and began bringing up his network of cameras to cycle through and find the other Titans.
"The others will be finding out soon," he muttered. He leaned back in his seat to watch, as four large screens began tracking their movements. If they were wise, they would heed the ultimatum to leave Tokyo.
But he expected they would be foolish children, like Robin. Brave, foolish children.
Either way, he thought, only he would emerge the hero in the end.
He could not afford to let it play out otherwise.
(A/N)- *slams fist on table* GIVE ME DAIZO BACKSTORY, IF NO ONE ELSE WILL APPRECIATE HIM AS A VILLAIN I WILL.
