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

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RICOCHET

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As Slade's apprentice, Richard Grayson used to adore the crowds while swinging off of the the trapeze. He used to adore sky diving to save the day. Now. His only use for it is to disappear.

Warning on a subtly described suicide attempt in this. Not similar to the Kori – Dick fic from ReBeL Yell before, because he's lost it in this one. After he attacked his friends and the probes weakened the heroes, Slade kept his word and Dick stayed yet it's only been a short time afte, and they are in a new city. He still feels like he's in Jump, but that is the loss only talking.

Based on Ricochet by Starset. Lovely song. Sigh…

/

He gained speed. The chase was imminent. The guards posed, directing at his back their fired shots, no Titans in range as they licked their wounds back at the tower from the last time Dick had played the enemy's hand.

Slade had told him to vanish once the object was in hand. The objective, a retrial of stealing from Mr. Wayne. Now that Dick's scarring of their lives in the haunt that night was official, he could move on. That was what Slade had wanted. For the heroes to part, to forget about him to save themselves and it had almost worked.

Dick was no daredevil, no explosive kid killer as he'd been thrown up as on a wanted poster at the JCPD. He just…. needed to fly out of there.

The city was bright. Brighter than Gotham as he let his feet kick up debris from a shot by some laser at his back. They didn't trust him; one man was screaming behind the helmet for the kid not to jump.

Sir, you had better stay in the edge of your seat. Get ready….

Dick let his arms go out, his gripped on the grapnel anytime he was ready to flee. The wind tasted of dust and pure memory.

Memories of flying that only drove his body to sway and turning, he looked up at them. A cloud not below to catch him. His eyes shut as he smiled and welcomed that warmth back into his world, as he fell down …

Down.

How fast was he falling?

Why wasn't Slade going to stop him like the last time?

Another meter down.

A WOOSH, as the sky got darker, lower.

The ground, was so close…

INTRODUCING the amazing FLYING GRAYSONS!!

THE CROWD IS GOING WILD TO SEE WHST THEY'LL DO IN THEIR FINAL ACT THIS EVENING, WILL THEY BE USING A NET, FOLKS? NO! NO! THEY ARE GOING TO RISK IT ALL – UNBELIEVABLE!

MOM?

"We'll do great, Dick. Wait until the big climax and you can join us. It's going to be an amazing feat. Just us three this time."

"No…

But…

How could they?

He was too young, it was bad parenting, right?

Tears leaked up and seemed to stay put in midair. His eyes shot open as time suddenly froze. Dick tugged out the grapple, hands remembering the scene of blood and screams. Coming from the crowd, and how he shouted for no one to leave him all alone. His grip shook as his exhaled and shot.

One day, that too might be a reality.

~ Deathstroke is an obvious criminal, Robin. You are not to engage no matter what. If you sense you're in danger, stay out of the way and hide until help arrives.~

"B? How strong is this guy? I can't just do nothing! Innocent people could get hurt. I'm a hero, just like you. An –

"That's a direct order, Dick. Do. Not. Engage, or your position won't be the only thing we lose by your refusal to follow orders. You could end up hurt or worse, and then no one would be safe. Especially if your help isn't quick enough. You have to keep patient. That's all I can tell you."

They only Ricochet for me now, those memories.

Look at me now, B. Look what waiting did to my friends. To your son….

Dick shot off the grapple, and he saw how close he had gotten this time. By a standing rooftop, Slade was there. Hands behind his back in the moonlight, head Jenkins to the side as if to user the boy to land properly. Only once Dick was on the ground shakily to follow him back; as if off a ride meant to disorient at a carnival, he wobbled along after.

/

Somehow.

Neither spoke.

The shuffling of steel toed boots was all that spoke on its own until Slade opened up a man hold cover and directed Dick to go in. His voice, was still mute to the fact that he'd known where to look. How to recover his apprentice to keep their deal aloft.

In the sewer, he still rubbed his arm as they walked on down the dank tunnels; scarred walls of his fights that were still under construction by the Slade bots, were not the problem. His fractured trust was. His desire to end it, if only to feel free in, other ways was why Slade didn't even look at the boy.

A few presses of secret hatch, the turning gears returning to his ears and voila.

Home sweet, new haunt.

Slade moved to walk up towards the brand new dias as Dick stood before it. He didn't try to apologize. It was futile. He'd made poor choices before; Slade would argue to him that if he broke that promise to his former friends even miles away, they would never recover after a second blow. They hated him now, that was surely how much he'd decided to keep trying anyway.

"Where is the weapon."

The piece had been relocated to Central City after Jump's sister cite had failed to keep it from enemy hands. A wise choice, for any amateur. The thing the Titans had protected once, was no longer kept from the villains' clutches. He was just a criminal. That's all this was, a heist to see them cry about it later.

Dick looked on his person, pulling out the scuffed device as Slade moved his hand to beckon the boy to climb up the dais steps. There were five more than than the first haunt. And that bothered him. "Bring it here. Now."

A command.

Dick did, and his master's catch was snatched up quickly as the mad man examined the minor flaws in his plan. In the tech, it looked undamaged. Just the surface, a similar metaphor left in place, he wondered.

Slade looked at the device, top, to side and front. Then, at Dick as he placed it onto his chair's arm. "You disobeyed my orders and took matters too far, apprentice." His malice was constant like wafting smoke from the night air. "This isn't the first time you'll attempt to run amuck in some unknown city and push those walls aside," he continued to chastise, "You want nothing more than to prove what you can't become, yet I see potential below the agony you felt back then. And, I think, you may just be ready to endure more added into your training regimen." Slade pressed a button on the arm of the dais as a lone screen popped up atop the opposing wall. The minor showed the status of the Titans on it.

Doors opened, a total of three, on the first floor down but it wasn't that that brought Dick to turn from his master's eye. "Through one of these doorways, is what I intend to teach you. Choose one, and we will advance as planned. You cannot undo your choices, and if you try, that will also cost you. One life, for every door…."

Dick wanted to attack but he knew the cost of that the most. "Retaliation is not an option," Slade continued, "As you now know." His single eye narrowed down onto the boy who nodded with a grave swallow. "Yes, sir." Dick mustered to say. "I do."

"Then do what has been expected on you, child. Pick a door. Surprise yourself a little."

Dick's hairs bristled.

"It was a thrill, thinking you'd hit the bottom with a hard " splat ."

The man hissed, smirking below his mask of a steadfast warrior. He wasn't. Just a snake.

"Tell me. The thrill of it, was that you didn't die. How is this then going to be any different? Gambling away your hours here and thinking that nothing can ever touch you. That you have freedom in your palm if you get another chance to prove yourself. Maybe?" The man chuckled, seeming amused by this new mind game he was playing. "It's only when I say you've earned the right. Now, choose." The tone hardened again, the glee in the mad man's voice, vanishing like smoke. He pointed to three, no. Four options. A new door?

As many as there were still Titans.

Dick froze up, his feet stuck. Yet his heart pounded to want to find out what was behind those doors.

"Choose. It's not that difficult."

Dick rigidly got his legs to buckle before the gears in them went as clockwork, forwards. He moved down the stone steps, each feeling like he could fall and break something tender. A red light flashed, the sirens in his mind his future self as he stared into the abysmal gaps in his own logic. The doorways were a metaphor for that abyss.

"Any one will do, and then we may finally see you at your most ruthless for once."

Slade leaned into his fist and watched, anticipation leaking from that gaze as the boy didn't try to see it in time. Nor the soundless steps of Slade right behind him as Dick reached for the darkness. Between his gloved fingertips and the first door, his mind conjured images if his friends welcoming him home. His smile; still tense as the pulling at his lips that made it bearable was a blessing, was interrupted as he was shoved from behind to continue falling forward into darker places.

/

He clung to the sides of the metal and stone shaft with a spare rang from the mission. His feet dangling before he tugged them up and gasped into his lungs at the outcome. Now, down below, his mind saw spikes as sharp as ever, electrocuted ones. A narrow chute as wide as a chimney, he coughed, tasting real soot and hating every second of it. He flailed, grunting to make his way up walls if the chute. Legs clambered in tandem, thanks to his gloves made to get him out of ducts and ventilation shafts. But never going up. A bottomless pit trap. Slade was a bad liar.

Slade was standing back a few feet from the ordeal as if he'd not been the culprit. Seated on to the steps, he waited. "Any luck?"

"What…. was that??" Dick panted, as he snarled at the man, yet the stone did not move no matter how angry he was.

"Keeping you on your toes." Slade answered almost cryptically and casually." There is danger at every turn. Try the others." Slade nonchalantly pointed his masked chin to the next doorway.

Dick moved as if a mechanical dummy wound to do nothing else. He peered over, inside, and opened his eyes, squinting to see - as the light…. there was all red, then neon, flashing wild.

A sensory box?

His spine felt a jolt as he lost his footing and screamed at how the senses reeled inside that box. He was shut into it as the doorway narrowed. He could only groan and cover his eyes while bolting them shut until…. he was let out of it. The boy's hair was tousled, heart racing. Dizzied by the torture method, Dick was still panting to stay alive. "No….no more games!"

"Is that retaliation I hear in your tone, young man?"

Dick seethed and pulled back, using caution as his back was to the third doorway. The fourth however, remained removed from the equation. No, he wouldn't!

"You earned a chance to prove what you can do. Now, do it. Or need I remind you –

"Don't." Dick swallowed. "I'll…I- I'll do it, just. Don't hurt them. Please, sir…"

A pause, and rub of his masked chin had Dick sterling himself for a big fat no.

"Good, then last door."

He nearly exhaled in relief, yet held it in."

I'm being lenient enough by wasting time on you with this experience. So, hop to it."

He shooed the with kid to continue, Dick seeing himself as a mouse in an experiment more than it being an, experience.

Dick walked up to the third and final door nothing off here. The walls were solid as he felt it, the space had room to walk, until the door shut behind him. The volume of cold came from below as the walls shattered, the rest being a panel of sliding glass to replace it as he rushed to bang on the surface. It was unbreakable, as the peeking light revealed Slade's glinting cat's eye from behind the structure. A rectangular prism, a long one beneath the metal?? It rose, like a tower and in that scare of a reckless moment, sometime touched the boy's feet, coating up to his ankles at it poured over, making him grip the slippery walls for supper. The base if this "tank" was filling with water!

He was going to be drowned, he really was the man's experiment….

Dick panted; his vision still blurred a bit by the light torture from before as he fought away the desperation. He clawed at the sides, looking for a knob, a weak spot. He banged on the false prison as Slade's entire firm showed up, and he, was rising, floating upwards while there was no air. How was he still –

The man was a man of genius and strategic planning. He had planned this punishment so why would it be to kill him?? Right? He tried to get free, only a joke! He was scared, no! He was…

Dick tool in a gulp and kicked his legs like Bruce had taught him. How he'd been trained to live, not die …God…he never wanted to lose his mind or his life! This was crazy. Slade knew that, right? Dick pounded his palms at the glass as the man only watched standing up, finally –

The water got higher and the ceiling was closer, his legs losing faith as he did. He wasn't…going …. down! It was a test, he had to crack it. He gripped his rang, but the currents up pushed and the stupid thing was sent to the bottom, he couldn't go back. Only Ricocheted up. Up higher, as the last big breath came….

He coughed, the experience like a whirlpool as he was dragged back down, Slade pressing a button and before long the one wall appeared and he gushed out with a good few gallon of that torrent of waves in his face and clothing. Coughing, sputtering and gasping as his eyes widened, mask and eyes coated by too much to see past, they'd never been this close since the last haunt. Since his last fight to put the man away for good had failed.

"You flew too close to the sun, look what happens when you think that for a second, the thrill is all you need to have to forget your place. It's a privilege, and you broke it when you tried to kill yourself, Dick." Slade moved to grip the boy's chin as for the second time since the day he'd quoted on the Bat. Robin's mask was ripped from over his wetted lashes, a lash to the face as the spiked reminder was kept limply between Slade's thumb and forefinger, inches away. A tease of what he was , how he had to be if this ever amounted to much for his future to be certain. "You can't hide it from me, Richard. We know each other so very well," The man partly purred. "After all. You enjoyed that gust of wind pulling you down. But sinking; losing your limbs, burning in the light for your next mission?" The hero shook his head as Slade's eye only crinkled in amusement "You'll get your wish yet, if you are so inclined to disobey me, apprentice..." The man hissed back and Dick ducked his shivering scalp before that raven mane was again tugged to look into the face of his one demise.

"You know what you did, and time and again I won't have my apprentice pulling the trigger on himself. Your disregard for their lives, for your own. Do you understand?? If you die, they won't get to live due to your selfishness."

Dick knew even as he tried to keep his eyesvfrom staring into the mam's single orb.

"I told you that I'd show you just how ruthless you could be, and well." Slade let the boy drop to his knees to carry his dripping self upright as best he could. The water from Dick's hair now had made a messy puddle, while the water in other spots on the floor only seeped back into hidden cracks meant to work exactly as Slade had intended of this minor trial.

A site meant to measure any prisoner, for he'd never be the man's exact equal. Copy, or even son. He didn't want to be reminded of who he'd betrayed. Not now, anyway.

Dick's eyes partly slighted wkth tears over his lashes trying not to form. He was too weak and...

"I….I'm so –

"You're not." Slade shot at the teenager, cutting off the bedraggled boy's forced apology. "You're just sorry that you got caught. That is a foolish beginner's error, Richard. Learn from it." Slade chastised. "Now, get up and clean yourself up off of the floor if my domain before your next mission. And anyway, It's gotten late." Slade looked at his wrist and then at the space by his dais.

William Wintergreen, Slade's other man servant was there with towels. A good assortment too, as Dick turned to the glass while it was now reverting into sinking back into the metal package for another soul - one dumb enough to give it a go. Not a ride he'd attempt, again, but to train…

Slade had uses for this devilish contraption for sure.

"Risks are a part of the job. You'll get that thrill again, when it's permitted, by me. For now, rest and dry off. Then, go straight to bed. I've still got sone time remaining to fix your mistakes for today as well." The man huffed and was excused, possibly takking about the leap or the scuffed device. Now in the dreary room, Will stood by. Dick found his feet, though shaky, and the first towel felt like something he could dry his eyes with in his room later once it was around his neck.

If he was permitted at all to cry over his loss of confidence, he would do it before bedtime. He was not weak, Slade had cheated and lied. It was as if his truths were warped realities of a lie.

"You gave us all quite a shock, dear boy." Will said partway to the walk-in bathroom, pulling Richard out of his convoluted thoughts. "He cares in a way that you are, safe." The elder man took a pause as Dick scoffed internally to himself over the compliment made to a mad man by a man servant.

Dick looked at the floor; tiles as grey as the stone work to this entire underground base. It was somehow similar to the last haunt. Good riddence he supposed...

"If he cared, why do it at all? Trick me, make me doubt what I want."

"You need to be taught a lesson in risk; when you desire something too...great...it can easily backfire." Will cleared his throat to say. "It is only a cry for help that pulls one from their fantasy of "noble" death. I've seen it in many a soldier, yet your Master Slade believes you to hold a greater potential than any fighter ekther of us has seen in a very long time as soldiers in nameless battles." Wintergreen continued, not wanting to reminisce. "It would be best I believe, by understanding what this current reality can be if I were in those boots you wear, rather than what it is not..You may in fact see the man behind the mask as not being a conplete enemy. Maybe even a mentor as he wants for you both."

Dick ground his fist to his side, his other hand caught onto the doorframe. They'd had this discussion once before. He'dnearly run his mouth and Slade had stepped in. Will waited for the boy confront him like back then.

Will had been used to Grant and Slade and even Addie telling him about how things were so peaches and cream for the family, while he knew the old "them." The real Wilson clan's history and better than them all. Tragedy had made a mess of what Slade was now, and yet he still had friends in high places to anyone's shock. Even killers needed aagood man at the pub to set them straight from time to time.

Dick bit his lower lip; his words coming out chipped. As easily as Bruce detecting to show emotion during a case, Dick was purely exhibiting the exact same dynamic stance to protect his dignity. Dismissing to get by his anger, to settle it as he'd been taught. "Did he order any clothes for me. Or am I enduring what he want still."

The boy might have sneered about that, his treatment here not worse for wear.

Yet Wintergreen recognized the same tension in Dick's stance, and only shrugged to conclude his offering of any advice. Not until the boy was completely settled down a bit more in his room fir the night.

"There should be some pajamas your exact size set aside on top of your bedroom dresser, young –

"Thanks then, good night." Dick clicked the door shut to the hall bathroom as it kept that way and would for not hours. Minutes, not before someone returned to break the boy from his melancholic daze and march him to his temporary cell.

Will walked away and didn't look too much into what he had gotten himself into. If the boy had always been so willing to self destruct, was Wilson trying to harness that child's raw potential until he knew for himself what had to be done?

/

He, Richard John Grayson looked into the mirror and imagined that those eyes were a different color and not the shade of his tears beaming back in the darkness.

Dick's eyes lowered, his brows scrunched wjth teafs prockling through. "I'm sorry." Head held shakily in one palm, the towel stayed up while over his shoulders as Robin slumped into the counter and to his knees, and weeded out as much focus as he had bottled up since that battle - and those days when he'd remembered his parent's laughter.

Kori's smiling face and her sunny disposition. All of his friends could...die...because of him.

All because he was the worst person alive right now to expect that all to change. She was going to keep looking and he was going to vanish. That was always the plan. Always what he thought would tick Slade off the most.

After showering off any remaining bit if grime he could muster, the door slipped open and the path was clear. Dick moved behind a Slade Bot this time, glad for the silence as well.

It was late, and he needed to calm down again. It wasn't his room at the tower and they had only been at this location for four days, not even one week. He was still getting used to moving all too quickly. Snuffling up his last remainder of wetness, the door to his room came into view as it opened automatically. A hidden panel in the wall before shutting and sliding back in place to keep him locked up tight inside. Like some super weapon meant for molding…

The door clicked and a single crackle of light indicated that Dick could dress in his tank and boxers to keep things simple. Instead, he had actual pajamas as Will had insinuated. The solid navy set was laid out as if to make this call seem innocent, so he just thought over his options before growling and grabbing the damned peace offering. He was fifteen, in spring he would be sixteen and ready to ….to…

Anyway, two piece sets were meant for the holidays. Unless Slade had banned all peace on earth as well ...Ho ho back at em.

Dick jumped into the bottoms and kept the top unbuttoned. Slade had some nerve, embroidered onto it was his ensignia... He wasn't a father to anyone, let alone a mastermind... He was, just a sociopathic version of ….

Dick's lip wobbled. He missed Bruce terribly, even if he had been the one to have rejected the idea of Dick leaving the cave to fly out west.

Dick's head hit the pillows as he didn't wait for the flicker to die, for the room to go completely dark. This was a mourning time, or was it a beginning…. Like Will had said, was Slade not his enemy….?

Was Slade really that worried about Dick's mental health state when he had been the one who'd literally caused it in the first place?

He'd enticed Dick to the dark side like Red X had done, not really. Like his failed persona had unintentionally caused a rift between Robin and his friends. . .

And to him. To, B.

"He isn't capable of empathy. No." Dick muttered to himself. Nice try, Slade. The nice guy routine didn't suit him. Bb was right. But no, Slade was no enigma. Just, confused, maybe. Like he was still human…or trying to seem like it.

Dick chewed the inside of his cheek. His eyes didn't droop until a few hours later. His breath had quieted and no Slade had pierced his nightmares yet.

Dick then, blissfully shut his eyes far too slowly while silently imagining the lights of Haley's circus right above his bed, the ceiling becoming a vortex into the past that he could never reach up high enough to grasp. The bright glow, pulling him back into the safest place he'd ever been.

Home.

He wasn't there, he decided. His friends, his bed...his freedom?

Not yet.