Teen Titans – ReBeL Yell- If I had Stayed a Renegade-
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GUN SHOT WOUNDED
THIS CAME TO ME WHEN I RELOOKED UP ANA_WRITES PIECE AND I'VE DONE SIMILAR ONES.
/
Today could have looked as comical in the eyes of the assassin as red did to Bambi's mother.
Fickle, a mess.
"Damn, kid…"
Slade slumped as the shot had him in a heap, maybe an hour before his heart started up. He should never had slipped off his neck guard. Should never have shown Dick how to use a pistol this soon while the deranged child was desperate. He was there through a clouded lens, stealing away for the nanobots' controller. The boy was losing his mind; it wasn't there as the kid wrestled Slade over to see his wrist …
Bare.
"I wasn't….going to let you win, because…you know how much…I hate to lose." The man coughed with a weak smirk in his masked face, as Richard's hands worked to find his mask. And to yell at it, scowling.
He no sooner, dropped it.
He saw his reflection in the metal, and bolted.
The walls opened up as the boy had memorized the haunt's codes. Somehow, that wasn't the biggest shock. The boy did not take the gun with him. Slade could come after him, find him and kill him if he were this mad with power. He'd just left himself without a weapon. It was very stupid indeed.
Had he only wished never to remind himself that Slade was very proud, pleased that Robin was no longer Batman's protégé.
Not anymore, as the boy left the haunt and his future partner on the cold, cold ground.
/
Eating things left by strangers after they were done at a fast-food joint, he dragged his butt onwards to stave off the hunger, yet vomited the stuff up. Out of guilt. Out of what Batman could never condone or understand.
The probes still worked. Slade was still alive. He'd failed. Hard rain fell as Richard forced his body to walk, holding a wall while biting his lip to not cry.
Starfire would ask him , why.
Raven would try to weight the pros and cons of his decision. WHY.
Beastboy would use comic relief and eventually, he'd take the side id those against guns. Maybe. In truth, the Doom Patrol was not so PG when it came to their methods.
WHY
Cy was…
Dick sighed and ran a hand over his face. "I'm so dead now, I don't wanna go back…"
He remembered bouncing all over the manor as a younger kid. Refusing his medication when he was sick like any other kid. Avoiding lessons when he wanted to hang around, being from a family of acrobats…
He then felt the waterworks grossly spew from his eyes as he slid down the wall and cried right there. Rain touched his skin, yet he wanted to think he had someplace they would take him from his pain. Blackmail was a trap, he knew he'd walked into selling his friends short. Slade would recover, Will must have been alerted and Slade…
Nothing could touch him for that long, Dick had realized. ( Not the Deathstroke thing. He thinks Slade may have that type of healing but not as that person yet in this.)
Slade HAD healed, he almost didn't get to see him eat either. The man was a secretive person who would put Bruce's methods to shame.
By wiping his tears back, he could move on. He had to commit one more crime, and in two thousand and three, there were still one or two payphones left in Cali. Right?
He'd wished it had come to that.
The new laws had taken them all out two years before. Before losing the Bat's trust in him, and before finding that he'd ever be a solo hero on a team of misfit teens.
Dick saw a stylish woman at the table of an outdoor restaurant, as she went to hand someone the check inside. Her phone. His luck, her stupidity. He decided not to let this drag on before he was a wet mess again.
/
Rain, an umbrella away as the awning wasn't that bad, but the air wasn't unclear either. She looked to be a hipster. Nature lovers. Twenties.
Materialistic, either way.
He scoffed and fished through her Nepalese fair trade bag with a dig of one handed attack, crouching beside it as a dog at its master's feet.
He got a wave of nausea and had to swallow that down. She was flirting with the staff inside. Good.
The phone was in his grip as Richard gripped it tightly, flipped it open and dialed the only number he could think of.
/
College, about a year. The red headed daughter groaned as she heard the ringtone and rose from her bed. "Why…Hello, this is –
~ Barbie….~
She pulled the phone back, her eyes scanning the wall in front of her. She let the phone catch her ear again, turning on the speakers.
"Who….wait …Dick? Dick! Is that you? It is!?? Where –
~ I'm in some…look. Talk to Bruce. I can't let him know yet but I'm in a bind…. Robin, is. ~
"Is…You up and left us! I haven't seen you in months." Her protests were sharp, quarrelsome. Same old Babs.
"Dick, you know that's over between us, but Robin is still-
~ I know and, I was the one in the wrong to tell you. It wasn't very mature of me, but I'm running out of time. Tell Bruce to contact the Teen Titans. Tell him I'm on the run. They'll understand.~
( THIS WAS WELL AFTER THE WAYNE BUILDING THING AND THE BREAK IN TO SLADE'S LAIR NEVER HAPPENED IN THIS.)
/
She didn't, yet she did one even better and called the Titans herself, spurring an all-out manhunt for the boy wonder. They believed her roads and even reached out to the private line of the cave she'd provided.
Cy was ecstatic as the test now knew what they were up against.
Until….
Slade made it clear that he would go after the kid, that it was his apprentice and not a rescue mission suspect they were after.
He'd even spilled the beans to Starfire of the boy shooting his master in the heart and making the mastermind go down for a whole day.
~ When I came to, he was long gone. Lost from my sensors. The bat trained your ex-comrade well, yet the probes are still at my command.~
"Deactivate them and we'll finish what you never could. Getting our leader back." Bb growled over the main screens' crackle.
~ Changeling, that child won't get very far. I can remember the exact rhythm of his heartbeat for miles...~ The man lied, yet Raven was too quick to be cheated through his tactics.
" He's not in this city." She spoke in a gravelly voice. "You drove him away, but we can find him before you ever will."
~ You can't craft a bond that was never there before, Raven.~
She shivered as her name was said. ~Robin will return, but not for my sake. To spare all of his teammates. Unless his moral compass slips, you had better count down that fortuitous return, for when he does reclaim his better… composure. ~
/
Starfire paced on the roof that night, her eyes wet and her heart full. Robin would come home to them. Batman…he had to be as great a detective as Beastboy had said earlier.
~ If he can't find our boy, then we're all doomed!!~
She didn't laugh, it was not going to happen. Robin was running as sge had to escape capture. Her family was betrayed by Blackfire, who was also betrayed by her allies of the Citadel. Karma was what Raven had called this phenomenon. That what went round to spiral, always found the exact source that had directed the attack onto the ordering person.
"Starfire?" Raven wasn't one to find herself being so emotional, yet Kori and she had bonded while fighting the Puppet King. She had that much to believe that they could certainly bond over grieving for those they cared for.
~ Anything to avoid Star's pudding of sadness! ~
"Robin, why did he run? Is it true what Slade told us, that Robin fired an automatic weapon at his captor? This should not be –
"To your people, surviving is what's important. To the people of this, country, guns can hurt more than help in the wrong hands." Raven explained. "Guns, are a tool and a weapon like any sword or magic tome from my library. You know how to fight with hand-to-hand combat, yet guns, never leave you without some sort of pain in mind."
"Mind? He was directly "shot" in the chest, Raven."
"Slade survived, and Robin knew it was to buy himself time. He didn't want to do that, Starfire. Batman never used guns, Robin never has."
"I see, he is then…very afraid of being in the wrong?"
"Yes." Raven sighed, glad that had made perfect sense. "He thinks he is a criminal because, it was meant for killing. Not saving lives."
"Yet our lives…" Starfire stopped. "Why has he not done what he sought to in disposing of us, then? Slade wishes us to be destroyed, then why must he hesitate re and cause our dear friend to….to…" Starfire shook her head. "He uses the games of the mind to harm us all! Slade MUST not find him, Raven?? Your powers-
"I, have never tried going through the self that –
"Raven." Starfire turned to the empath on her heels and leaned down to grip the other's shoulders, squeezing gently.
"You must also try, for I know you are very linked to him as I have been."
She took at pause as Kori spoke, her words far from dishonest. Raven knew how to connect, yet not by way if invading the mind on her own. There had to BE a bond, and Robin was far too guarded as their leader because of Slade's plans. Because of Red X. She could by all means, try. Yet…Slade was right.
She couldn't succeed if he wasn't already close enough to her.
"I will never ever stop, nor shall my dear friends. Robin is out in this world, hiding and afraid. Just as we all were, once…"
Raven envied Kori sometimes for her optimistic nature. Despite being a slave in a war wrought by her own elder sibling, losing her parents to grief, Starfire still made her regret being here, a Titan among such amazing people.
"I'm…"
"Oh, you must not give in, Raven! I do believe you are more powerful than you may realize. We too, did the bonding? Do you not remember?"
"I, do. "Raven sighed, her arms lax under her cloak. "I do, and I'll try. As hard as I can."
Even when Slade may have been correct, Raven was known to perform her own set of miracles. As if the power of solidified friendship were stronger than a prophecy, she wanted to believe it in another time.
Kori cheered softly as Raven began to chant and seated herself.
This, was her focal point in time, as a radar for a Robin.
/
A day, two days. He stole. Never had he taken that to his limit, but it was for a ticket back home. Hacking the wealthiest , so he tried to do that instead if take from those working on a paycheck.
It felt wrong either way. He could take from Bruce through a backdoor option, but then Babs's please would have gone off for nothing. Days, abd the Titans were there thinking he wasn't in the city. Slade had to know he was on the outskirts. The parts no one traveled outside if their pack.
California was a larger state than good old NYC or even Haven back north ; Dick was sure he'd seen Chicago at least one or twice as a Flying Grayson. Maybe even Berlin as a twinkle in his parent –
The alert to move was there as he finished up and didn't bother to clean up another mess.
He'd gotten scratch enough to pull an outfit swap. Slade didn't lock him in his suit, thank God he wasn't that crazy. Duck pulled on a sweater with a line of Nordic print and a set of jeans on this cold a restless evening. It was, chilly. Rain was usually more a spring than a fall, though he sneezed. The sensation was muffled by the clothing bag as he shivered abd pulled on a woolen coat to go over it. "No, can't happen…" He groaned and went to the nearest diner in town ( Terra.)
Who knew the desert was this chilly? The us took him halfway and he'd probably look up an inn to throw his feet up in by that night. The pie there at this place, he had two slices. Being on his own, it was lonely. Pretty much a day by day clock that didn't end at zero. He put his head down and somehow, his appetite was lower than earlier.
He coughed again.
Not good, time to sleep off the remnants of rain.
The inn he found wasn't grand and it asked for his I.D. He made sure to forget some info in the nick through a source in an internet café back in the city. It cost him a few bucks, but he needed to sleep.
He slept in a water bed since they'd run out of open spaces for the underage. That was alright, he could. ..
Another sneeze, a groan later and a yawn lastly.
Dick fought through a fever that night as he dreamed of his parents dragging him into a train box car with a lot of noisy figures.
All caged up.
Red X.
Beastboy.
The man he'd hurt when dragging out his Slade episode at the pier.
Even Cinderblock, whom he'd beaten to the ground.
Despite that being the plan, Dick was guilty.
The people he stole goods from to get a free phone call.
The internet cafe staff he mooched off of to stay a few hours extra.
The person he'd hacked out of a few spare bills that worked in finance.
It went on and on as the cages lined up, and the last one was, for him.
Slade was right beside it, keeping the door ajar. "It's time to end this, child. Come here."
/
Dick woke to a dense weight on his body, a scared boy with the monsters sinking back. No. No…
"You have a high fever, Robin. Calm yourself, there is no one else."
A hand, a gloved one over his brows was too much. "You didn't even say goodbye, but I'm not angry." The man carded through the kid's hair as he had a small injector air gun in his other hand, holding the kid's mane at an angle while he was too weak to fight back. "Nn…"
"Rest, we don't have long to wait now." The man moved to scoop up the boy as he drifted off, feverish and the slight streak of tears falling from his two bloodshot, blue eyes.
/
"I'm sorry." Raven waited for Batman to speak. For Cy to reprimand someone. Or for Kori, to yell at her.
"There was a chance that he could have allowed Robin a head start. Slade is a hunter by nature, Wilson was."
"The guy who took our Robin is an ex – Team Seven title?" Cy gawked. "I mean, you fought Deathstroke-
"Don't tell him, if he comes home, I will." Bruce said to the heroes. "I haven't given up. There is one thing we can do, one thing we haven't tried."
Raven was stated at again. "Raven, you gave this a try. This time, think of Richard Grayson. The boy behind the mask."
/
So? It's a bit of a cut off. I might use it later in the way of a flashback scene to Pandora arc. Find out! In the end , he was still just a kid running away. The cages represent the victims of his survivalist mentality and what Slade is doing by rewiring his want for that survival into becoming less like a person he can trust. A thief, a com man, a murderer. Those things that made them alike in the first place or why the cage or prison is why Slade is the one who's made Richard into less of a person, even. Slade is the tamer and Dick is just the assistant. At the end of the day, he goes back to staying right by the man while joining one speaks back about it. All locked away.
Kind of subservient dark one shot but it's his fever mind doing that. Find out. Next chapter is midwinter blues. Home with flu and aunt flo and chronic gut stiff . Rain today made it wake up. It was not a fun holiday. Anything? Let me know!