Well, it's been almost two years – one year and ten months, to be precise – since Small Print first made its unspectacular debut onto FFNet under the mantle of a "one-shot", submitted in the early hours of 31st October, 2005.

I think it's fair to say it has come far since that day. What began life as a sideline one-shot that I wrote while I procrastinated updating the long-finished Asylum has become the most popular fanfic on my profile, achieved infamy, spawned AMVs, fan-art and even a shrine, and, most importantly, became a co-written endeavor.

I stress that last part especially, since it is because of Small Print that I am sitting on the floor of Narroch's basement eating saltwater taffy as I type this. Yes, I am indeed Stateside instead of swimming the high street in Britain (it's all flooded over there – worst recorded summer ever…); and yes, that means that, for the first time since Small Print became a tandem-project, Narroch and RobinRocks are actually together in person. Whoo. It's momentous.

It's okay, kids – not everyone on the internet is a creepy stalker…

Anyway, we felt that there was no better time than to draw the final curtain on Small Print than this, so we've pulled it all together into this epic last chapter that will probably make your eyes bleed… eh heh…

Take a deep breath, guys – it's a long one, but, most importantly…

It's the last one.

Endgame

Over the stretched lifeline of human history, science has submitted three major culture shocking blows to the naive self-love of humankind. The first occurred when we learned and accepted that earth was not the center of the universe after all, but only a tiny insignificant mote of dust floating in a scarcely conceivable vastness.

The second blow fell when biological research destroyed mankind's supposedly privileged place in creation, and proved his descent from the animal kingdom and his immovable animal nature.

But the third and most severe blow to human megalomania came from psychology, which proved that the ego is not even master of its own house, and must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in the mind. That there is an entirely hidden realm in our minds that we have no knowledge or power over, but its latent scurrying can control every aspect of our conscious free-willed life. And when we grasp that disturbing insight, the real hard truth comes out:

Humans have no control, not even over their own wills.

A mind is as easy to topple as a sand castle, the once proudly impregnable fortress becomes an indistinguishable pile of grit; worthless dirt. Time and pressure is all it takes, forces that are strong enough to raze mountains and heave valleys. And for us sun circling, animal descended, oblivious minded humans, time and pressure is more than enough to kill.

In more ways than one.

TT

The early morning hospital milieu was eerie. Too cold, too still – everything seemed frozen in the harsh bone white lights. The unnerving silence would occasionally be broken by other patients being admitted in various degrees of criticality, however, as soon as the small medical mob passed by, the disquieting suffocating feeling would reign once more.

It was a sterilized silence. Disinfected and drugged up, just like everything else in the hospital.

The recovery room, decorated solely in toneless white, was barren and uninviting, making the patients contained in their bleached walls seem worse than they actually were. The bleak pallor of the room radiated an air of inflexible pessimism.

This is a room for sick people, the featureless walls seemed to say.

That same discouragement wasn't confined to the room itself either; it crept out into the hallways, through the waiting rooms, seeping right outside Robin's door and whispered to the occupants of that space as well.

But they wouldn't heed the scrapings of guilt and fear. Not when there was such a compelling presence to behold. An inkblot in the white contained world of the hospital, the juxtaposition so obvious it made the air around him pop. They couldn't take their eyes off of him; their savior.

Batman had returned.

---

He entered the room alone, and stepped soundlessly closer to the bed – his masked gaze riveted on the figure lying in it. With each consecutive step, the lump of emotion that had lodged in his throat grew larger - by the time he'd reached the bedside, he was close to choking on it.

There was a mangled left arm thickly coated in a plaster cast lying limply across his stomach, gently being cradled in a loose sling. There were various protruding surgical pins also visible through the cast. His significantly less mangled right arm had two needles injected into it, each minute spike held down with a clear band aid. One needle in the back of the hand dispensed a slow-dripping clear liquid, the other needle stuck into the crook of his elbow dribbled dark blood like an outside vein, a reverse vampire sustaining his leaking and ravaged body.

Batman slowly worked his gaze up to Robin's face; his eyes procrastinating on the wires trailing from under the thin hospital gown, and could not clamp down on the sharp shocked inhalation that gusted through him when he finally saw Robin's face. Save for his untidy nest of sheenless black hair sprouting from the bandages wrapped thickly about his head, Robin was, without any extra effort on his part, doing a remarkably good chameleon imitation. His bleached visage blended in perfectly with his colorless environment.

Pale skin, on pale sheets, in a pale room.

His shockingly thin face was ashen; the only bit of color on his face was a single dark charcoal rim encircling the deep, hollowed socket of his one remaining eye. However, if Batman were to lift the bandages only slightly away, he would see plenty of color from the raw angry red burn marks from a Starbolt, the skin still bleeding and covered in blisters. He would see the vividly colorful bruise from the impact of a proton cannon blotched over most of his chest, turning green and brown in some places, still black and untouchably sensitive in others; fractured ribs floating just beneath the battered flesh. He would be able to see the splintered white bones from a hyena's crushing bite on his left arm, which aside from being attached to his shoulder; the mangled limb was almost unrecognizable as an arm under the cast. He would be able to see the many inflamed lesions and swollen wounds littered over his body from the many falls and telekinetic throws.

And of course all the watermarks of previous pain and torture, both physical and psychological, were still there as well. Hidden away beneath bandages and unconsciousness, but still undeniably lurking on Robin's body and psyche. Even with Slade gone his influences were still evident.

Robin was still bleeding wherever the bandages couldn't reach.

Bending at the waist, hands resting gently on the neutral white sheets, Batman leant forward, carefully scrutinizing the others' face as if waiting to be swatted away.

What did you get yourself into, Robin? He thought, and then shook his head dispelling the thought. No. That wasn't it. Why did he underestimate so badly? How could he have been so wrong?

What option did I leave for you to take?

Bruce couldn't hold back as his patience exploded in a bomb of compassion. As gently as he could from the awkward angle, he gathered Robin's shoulders up in his broad arms, leaning his body forward until they met in a halfway horizontal hug. Bruce gripped him tighter as he placed his chin over Robin's shoulder. He noticed how incredibly cold and limp the boy was, totally unresponsive to his embrace with his head lolled back, his arms uselessly wilted at his side. It was like hugging a fresh corpse, death having yet to steal all body warmth before rigor mortis set in. The small puffs of air wafting gently over his face and the background beep of machines were the only things that reassured him that Robin was still alive.

It was a small comfort. The pins digging into his chest from the cast prodded him with guilty barbs. He could have prevented this. If only he had been more aware. If only he had had more forethought, he could have seen through Slade's plan. If only he had been there, things would have ended differently. But as all the "If only…"s swam through his mind, he knew how futile it was. He hadn't been there for him, and none of his wishing it away would change anything. He would have to swallow the bitter pill of responsibility.

Robin, on the other hand, may already have accepted it. After all, he had lived through it. And Robin's wishing for rescue was much stronger, and much shorter lived, than Bruce's wish for another chance. After a fantastic struggle and monumental denial of his enslavement, Robin had eventually burned out, given up and resigned to his fate. But the guilt that Bruce felt now would never dissipate.

Especially when Robin, for the first time since Bruce had entered the room, trembled slightly and let out a tiny cracked moan. Bruce's heart leapt up for an instant only to be violently spiked down when Robin turned his head slightly and began to softly nuzzle into his neck. Bruce froze, unsure of what to do, halfway tempted to abort the embrace but unable to force himself away from Robin's warmth-seeking contact. He didn't know what to make of it… until he heard Robin give off another minute moan that trailed off to a whispered plea.

"Slade…"

He wouldn't have heard it if he wasn't so close, but it was undeniable. The lump of emotion that had been lodged in his throat the entire time swelled painfully, and he had to breathe hard to stop the prickling tears of sorrow and anger from falling. The guilt solidified itself in his chest and sank claws into his heart. He slowly, gently pulled away from Robin, laying him carefully back on the pillows.

The single blue eye fluttered blearily open, dull and undiscerning for a stretched moment where Bruce struggled to hastily compose himself. Then, in a split second where all the disjointed pieces of reality jarred and slammed into position with a sickening crunch, Robin's eye widened into a bright feverbutton of confusion and fear.

Slade, Titans, shock, fear, betrayal, hatred, pain (so much pain!), complete darkness.

The memories poured in relentlessly, hounding him as he tried desperately to orient himself in the room that was too bright, with nothing to see, and everything blending a single white soup. Only one item was distinct, the stark black outline of a man leaning over his bed.

Not Slade, not Slade, not Slade.

His eyes riveted onto the single shadow in the room, unable to tear his gaze away and get lost in the white nothingness and the domineering memories. He needed something to lock onto. Something to stabilize him.

Not Slade… No! Bruce? No! Batman… no…

Enemy?

"Robin… you're awake."

Shaking, shaking, he is shaking… is he scared? No, he is never scared… Why is he shaking?

"I… We thought we had lost you there for a while. We were all very worried."

The words limped, and staggered, and died. So many things to say…and that was the best he could think of. He knew how lame they sounded, especially when he got no reaction from Robin save his intense stare, pain and confusion, and incomprehension still rampant within it.

"But, things will get better now. You are safe, nothing will ever hurt you again."

Still nothing. All of Robin's attention was fixated on him, but still the words held no meaning for the boy whatsoever. Robin couldn't comprehend what was happening, and the words were just unintelligible white noise. Bruce started to feel the defensive rise of panic twist in his gut when he saw the deaf dismay etched onto Robin's face. He had to get through to him somehow, or else…

Or else he would never get through to him again.

"Robin! It's me!" He didn't dare say his name out loud while in uniform, but Robin had to see him, had to know he was here to help. He had to know that he was free now.

Bruce had wanted to wait until Robin was more stable until he told him of Slade's death, but he was so scared of losing him before he could even begin to heal. So he dropped the carefully guarded information, and let the ramifications grow wild.

"Slade is dead."

That got a reaction. But not quite what Bruce had in mind.

The three words pierced Robin like buckshot, and he visibly jerked back into the bed, his single pupil contracting to a catatonic pinprick. His breath hitched up and one of the machines gave off a casual beep, commenting on the sudden respiratory spike. His one working hand clenched and balled itself into the sheets tightly, desperately groping for something stable to hold. He began looking wildly about the room, as if to check if the man was actually hiding there and this was all a big joke. In a few seconds he would slide out, laugh offhandedly at him, and then rip him out of the bed, and start the whole thing over again.

He would do something like that. Something brusquely evil, a casually trivial thing to amuse him; watching Robin's world break down into tiny pieces even as he was scrambling around trying to gather the shards that had already fallen.

But Slade did not appear, and nothing in the white room changed; the veracity of the words finally sank in.

Slade is dead.

He's dead. He's gone. No more master and apprentice. No more craving or caving in. No more struggle. Nothing.

There is nothing left now.

And for the first time since Bruce stepped into the room, Robin spoke. But not with words. There were no words that could possibly explain or convey his feelings at that very second. No, instead he laughed. At first Bruce thought he was choking, bent over with his right hand clenched tightly across his mouth, spasming in little shocked bursts over the rumpled sheets. Then his head jerked back with a glazed eye and his mouth opened as far as the wiring in his broken jaw would allow and he started laughing. Rusty screaming peals of laughter that echoed and rebounded against the walls, driving right back into him and forcing out even more of the horrible hysterics from his broken body. It was disturbing how such a laugh could convey no happiness whatsoever, and instead only sounded like raw anguish. Mixed feelings escaping in a mixed way.

Bruce did not laugh. He knew what the howls really conveyed; a delirium haze of instability finally showing through. He grabbed Robin's shoulders tightly, pulling the boy forward, and barked out his name, trying to get through to the hysterical boy. Robin only lolled his head back and continued screaming, crying, laughing, scraping out his lungs with every breath until Bruce finally whipped his arm around and smacked Robin squarely across his face. Painful red tinged his cheek as the room was suddenly freakishly silent.

"Hurts…" Robin whispered quietly. His wired jaw made the word sound clenched and unnatural while the rest of him was still shaking and hiccupping as the tears ripened in his left eye. "Why…? Why does it hurt so much?"

Bruce knew he wasn't talking about that last smack. Or any other physical injuries for that matter. But having Robin speaking again was a good sign, even if the message was not. Before Bruce could even think of an answer to the whimpered question, Robin fell back softly into the pillows once again, surrendering himself to the shock and fading away entirely. Bruce watched as his eye glazed back over and he sank away into unconsciousness again. He let out a shaky breath that he didn't even realize he had been holding and stepped back from the bed.

He knew from the start that things would be messy. That there would be anger, resentment, residual emotional scraps that could not be tossed away as easily as the trashed remains of the wretched trigger that had been the catalyst for all of this. But he had also expected some sort of vindication. For himself, but mostly for Robin.

With Slade dead, he had hoped that Robin would also be able to let the apprentice within him die as well. Maybe not be overjoyed with his kidnapper's death, but at the very least be able to move on and look forward.

But that hadn't happened. He hadn't even been able to accept the fact, let alone take comfort in it. As he watched the tears dry over Robin's cold skin, tears shed for Slade, he felt himself asking the same question.

Why does it hurt so much?

TT

The shock had easily driven him under and the potent painkillers had helped him remain there. But the numbness had been slowly draining away, and now it was the unfettered pain that awoke him before anything else. While he still wasn't coherent enough to remember why he was so injured, the reawakening damage was driving Robin into new levels of agony. He groaned softly, still wavering on the border of consciousness. He tried to melt further into the blankets away from the fresh pain, back into the blissfully numb darkness. Where he didn't have to feel anything, as opposed to reality, where he had to feel everything – every exquisitely agonizing detail.

His left arm was on fire – the broken nerves issued spasms as blood attempted to flow through damaged veins; the movement disturbing the repair his body and the surgeons had done while he could feel nothing. It jarred the fractured bones awake, and he could feel the metal piercing through the living marrow. Holding it all together in a giant swollen pain encasing cast.

The rest of him ached terribly; some spots were just a dull throbbing, other places were sharp and piercing. His chest was tight and fought against his breathing, which was painful and difficult to begin with. His head felt like it weighed a ton and kept swimming queasily through pools of cloudiness and feverish fatigue.

But the worst pain of all radiated from the right side of his face. An electrified lance had been jammed into his skull through the right eye socket and it could not be ignored for any longer. But he didn't want to wake up enough to do anything about the pain. Because he knew. There was something in the waking world that he didn't want to face. Some horrible truth that his comatose mind couldn't grasp, but comprehension would rush in like a torrent the second he woke up completely. The pain was getting worse by the second, and he couldn't hold out as it spiked and surged him forcibly into consciousness.

The hospital room was a dull blue, dotted randomly with tiny red and green pinpoints from the lights on the machines he was attached to. The small digital clock at his bedside table read three eighteen AM in blocky red numbers.

There was no one around.

Robin stifled a cry, gripping the sheets and tightly clenching his teeth; noticing for the first time that they didn't quite fit together anymore. Some teeth had chips in them, and his whole jaw just felt off. Not to mention extremely tender, shooting thick shards of pain through the back of his jaw and face when he tried to clamp his teeth together. He relaxed his tightened mouth, relieving some of the pain but still on edge and getting more scared by the second. He didn't like being alone. He rarely was anymore, because Slade was always there.

Slade was always…

Slade was…

Slade is dead.

The recollection hit him suddenly, and without warning. While tears and painkillers had robbed his memory of the details, he did remember those three dangerous words. He remembered, but he didn't accept them. He couldn't. He couldn't possibly believe that the man that had forced him under, nearly drowned him in corruption, and then hauled him back up from those very same depths of wickedness, the man with whom he had shared an infinity of pain and pleasure, the man who he could call Master, enemy, and lover all in the same breath, the man for whom he had sacrificed himself…

No, Slade couldn't be gone. It was impossible.

He drove the thought away angrily. But it returned and sat outside his skull. Like a dog. Waiting.

Unavoidable.

He could deny it all he wanted, but the small intact sane piece of him clearly called him out on his denial.

Slade was dead.

Proof: He was still alive.

Proof: Batman and the Titans were still alive.

Proof: Slade hadn't come bursting into the room to retrieve his lost possession.

If Slade were alive, well, someone else wouldn't be, and he would not be here all alone in a cold hospital room fighting off excruciating pain as the drugs slowly drained away. If Slade were alive, he would already be back in the villain's lair being punished for his disobedience. Or perhaps rewarded? The difference between rewards and punishment had been getting blurred lately.

Gray.

But he wasn't there. There was nothing there. A yawning gaping Slade shaped hole in the world, from where all his fears seeped out like a plague. Anger could easily fill that void which Slade's death had drilled out and stop the flow temporarily, but it was an empty substance that could dissipate as easily as it grew.

Coldness, bitterness, isolation, loneliness… they were the sticking kind.

And memories.

Those of whom he knew. Who he could use. Who could carry the burden of the hurt. And his list was long; there were plenty of people to spread with sticky blame. Darts of condemnation clutched tightly in his sweating palm, Robin aimed without seeing – blinded by his anger, by his fear of a world without Masters.

Any of them, any one he wanted. He could hate one of them; he could hate all of them. Weigh the malevolence against his own physical pain – his own inner tears. Anything he wanted could be justified.

Any of them.

Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy, Starfire…

Slade. Batman.

Robin paused, uncertain, accusation still spiking in his fingers. Who was worse? He who was the knife, the one who caused the tragedy; or he who was the sheath, the one who could've stopped it.

It never would have happened if it hadn't been for them.

Robin gripped the knife between anxious fingers and glared in on himself, contempt twisting in his gut as he stared at the shriveled remains of his malnourished soul.

There was only one person he wanted to blame. Only one person he could really blame for any and all of this.

And he was lying in a hospital bed still hanging around death's door, trying to figure out why he didn't just step through that portal and stop all the hurt inside. All the guilt.

Unable to hold it in and desperate for dark oblivion away from this strange impossible Slade-less world; Robin let out a shaky, pain-tinged wail that echoed eerily through the lonesome, quiet room.

He then heard something (someone)behind him on his right side mutter softly. The noise (voice)was low and unintelligible, but it pierced the silence like a finely-honed blade. The deep murmuring trailed off for an instant, but then returned seconds later even stronger. While the babbling continued to phase in and out, Robin lay rigid with pain and fear, his body caught between the throes of flight or fight, yet unable to do anything but wait.

But he didn't have to wait very long. From no direction in particular came a smooth, hollow laugh – its joyless tone chilling the calm of the silent blue room. Robin shivered as the sound penetrated his skin to his bones, burrowing into his marrow and propagating like gangrene.

It was the laugh of someone who definitely didn't think something was funny.

"There now, it's alright, my dear apprentice. Can't reach the call button? Don't worry, I heard you. I can always hear you."

The heavy drugs which were used to keep him unconscious, and beautifully numb his tired flesh, were no longer being administered and his night's dose of painkillers were wearing off prematurely as the plug that was fitted to the clear plastic bag of the intravenous drip was askew, the liquid dripping gently to the ground. But Robin couldn't have cared less.

Too ill to sleep, too exhausted to stay awake and forced into battling the emotional typhoon that had risen up upon hearing the dead man's voice. His master was alive, and he didn't know what to feel, full to the brim with his own contradictions. Elation, a giddy horse-galloping glee; anger, dark and fierce and unquenchable as a berserker; fear, panicky mind numbing terror of what the dead man had in store for him. Unable to understand or contain any of it, he began yelling out Slade's name, over and over, desperately needing to see him, to have his strong undeniable hands upon him and yet at the same time petrified by his very presence in the room. He started thrashing, trying to move, but restrained by the bed, and the bandages, and his own weakness as he continued to hoarsely call out Slade's name.

His right eye was lanced through again with fiery pain with each movement, but Slade did not step forward into his field of vision. And as the doors clattered open, and the Titans rushed in looking like refugees, and the doctors swarmed over him again he continued to scream, dimly wondering why Slade didn't just come out and take him again, right in front of them all.

Madness slinked in through a chink.

TT

The neurologists had said that it was a discharging lesion in the temporal cortex, caused perhaps by the Starbolt, or one of the other cranial injuries Robin had sustained. But understanding the medical reasoning versus accepting why their friend had gone crazy were two very different things. They had gotten accustomed to it, to a degree. Knowing he was still battling the ghost of Slade where the real one had left off.

On bad days, the voice had hands, and bent over him. Slowly, deliberately, malevolently, squeezing the breath out of him and making him scream out loud. Most of the time, one of the Titans would come running and remind him where he was, that it was all in his head, and that everything would be fine. The hands would loosen their grip, and slink back into his paranoia, but the voice would stay, whispering obscene commands into his ear. Sometimes (when the Titans didn't come) the probing burning hands receded of their own accord, the voice stopped its velvet chanting and the horrifyingly silent room he lay in grew impossibly large, terrorizing him with the specter of his own insignificance. That too made him cry out.

Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant (lighting cigarettes, refilling glasses, subtly begging for tips).

Trapped by geometry, struggling with fear, rage, madness, hopelessness, apathy.

Somehow unable to accept the cheap form of exorcism that his friends constantly tried to use, telling him many times in many different ways that he was not the sinner. He was the sinned against. He had no control. He was the victim, not the perpetrator.

It would have helped if he could have made that crossing, if he could have believed their comforting words. If he could have worn, even temporarily, the tragic shroud of victimhood. But there was still at least one strong faculty that had not left him because of his time with Slade…

He still had his undeniable sense of responsibility, a corrupted form of duty. Feeling accountable for his actions, even when there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. Instead of being the victim, he was the guilty one. The accused, condemned. He had brought this upon himself, not being fast enough, or strong enough, or smart enough to escape Slade's clutches in the first place.

But the inflexible liability was more complicated than that. It ran deeper. Not only did he feel it was his fault for being ensnared, it was also his fault that Slade had to beat him, it was his fault that Slade had to starve him, it was his fault that Slade had to force himself upon him over and over again. But it was even more his fault when those actions became acceptable, even enjoyable. He looked forward to the torture.

And no one could convince him that any of it wasn't his fault. Especially not now when being thrust back into the previous mold, and he could see just how fucked up he was through the reflections in the Titans' eyes. He blamed himself for that too… for his own madness. Even when they were out of danger, he was still hurting them, over and over, and he couldn't make himself stop. He couldn't go back to how it used to be. And that was his fault too.

He left behind a hole in the universe through which darkness poured like liquid tar. The hole through which Slade disappeared, without so much as a backwards glance, and left Robin spinning in the dark, with no mooring, in a place with no foundation.

TT

The first attack after his homecoming was unexpected. When he was suddenly overwhelmed by a nameless fear, a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause.

Robin hovered in an inescapable trance, halfway between a tormented life on Earth and the licking searing flames of Hell. He lay on his bed, tumbled to the floor, clawed his way up the wall to stand on his feet, staggered about the room and fell to the floor again. Threatening voices, monsters, flames and blood exploded and pounded with unimaginable force in his head; he thought his skull would burst. He could feel claws tearing at his throat, creatures squirming and biting inside him, heavy hands around his arms and legs, forcing him down flat on the floor, spreading him apart and violating him.

Or was this Hell? Had he been here before? Surely Hell was familiar to him by now.

Then again, you weren't supposed to enjoy Hell…

He could hear Slade's voice, swirling around him in jumbled waves of sound; nothing distinct, no distinguishable words, just his angry voice pounding into him. His master was angry, and eventually the tumult began to take the shape of a single furious word, repeating end on end without stop "Failed, failed, failed…!".

The chant was parading about his head, and he was unable to stop the hateful torrent; "you have failed, you have failed me, you will die, you will die…".

Did he really hold a knife in his hand? Or was this too another vision from his cracked mind? He could feel a terrible yawning; a strong undeniable impulse to be free of the torment, to break loose from the bodily shell, the prison of pain and flesh that bound him.

"Come apprentice, join me, join me…".

He felt the edge of the knife and blood trickled down his fingers.

The alarm rang.

Time froze. The bedroom registered on his retinas.

The alarm rang.

He was in his bedroom. There was blood on the floor.

The alarm rang.

He was on his knees on the floor of his bedroom. He had cut his finger.

The alarm was still ringing.

But then other voices came to him, real voices, more distinct and vital than the ghost hissing in his ear. They ignored the alarm and crowded around Robin, taking the knife away, examining his dripping finger, all the while talking to him. Anger, fear, relief; he could hear it all, and the alarm continued to ring.

Ignored.

TT

Maybe communication was the problem. The Teen Titans had all noticed it, and frankly, more fool them if they hadn't; because what they had now, all these weeks later, was a creature who looked like Robin, and, technically, was Robin, but the communicative link between this creature and his team-mates had been severed, and that really made all the difference in the world.

Maybe it had happened the moment he had turned off his tracker and own T-insignia-ed comm., but a certain wall had been erected across the small bit of progress they had made, and there was no getting through it.

He'd been out of hospital less than a month; and Raven watched him patter around the kitchen over her tea. Maybe too avid a reader it made her, but she saw a stretch of stagnant water between him and the rest of the team, slicked across with a rainbow film that looked like a solid walkway. Like he was still within their reach, all they had to do was wait for him to walk back over that distance to them. With time, with patience, with understanding. he would be able to close that gap between them.

But solid the bridge was not.

One step too close to the thin layer of scum, and the whole thing – the only thing that made him look sane and stable – would collapse and be pulled downwards, dragging him down into the depths of his own blood-deep insanity, and perhaps anyone else who happened to be too near.

Maybe Raven could see that fragile film clearer than anyone else, and though she and the other Titans begged for him to come back to them, she was afraid that he wouldn't survive the journey even if he wanted to return to the way things were. She could see it in his silence, because of what she was – empathic, among other things – but the other Titans had noticed the lack of communication too. He barely spoke anymore, to anyone at all; and it wasn't just his communication with people that was amiss. It was his nonverbal communication with everything around him – objects, rooms, sounds. The totality of his interactions with his environment was completely off.

Raven watched him, as she had been doing for a while now, going from the fridge to the cupboard with milk and coffee grain, his left hand held at a closer more secure angle to his body since he had been known to drop things from that hand ever since the cast had been taken off. The way he moved was methodical, not careless as it once would have been, since method had been beaten ruthlessly into him. The way he touched things was, though invisible to anyone not watching him as intently or internally as Raven was, slightly flinching, as though he thought it might lash out at him. He moved as if he was made of glass and every movement was consciously thought out. He was acting like he was constantly on stage, constantly being scrutinized and nothing he did was just naturally Robin. It was as if he wasn't really living at all, but just acting, following the script of their expectations.

No, he looked all sewn together on the outside, just as that oily film over the depthless black water looked solid; but beneath he was barely held together at all. Just a few threads, and that was all.

Raven could see it; and so could Batman.

The Dark Knight hadn't left the boy's side even once after he had been rescued. Even now, he was standing right outside the doorway to the kitchen, watching everything. He noticed just as much as Raven, but without the use of any empathic powers. Being classified as the unofficial world's best detective was not just an empty boast, and he could see the invisible forces bearing down on Robin. He could discern the effects of Stockholm Syndrome still holding sway over his actions, stopping him from forming any new attachments to the friends who had rescued him. He could see the fear still tormenting Robin, still making him vulnerable. Because no matter how normal he looked outwardly, he still had the mindset of a victim. He was still expecting to be in some sort of pain, and was surprised each morning to find that he wasn't. Their kindness surprised him at best, and unnerved him at worst.

Batman could see it even now as Robin was pouring the milk into the cup. He was subtly glancing about the room as he did it, his shoulders hunched forward just a bit, with his head down. His stance was fidgety, and he could also see the slightest glistening of sweat on his brow even though the kitchen was quite cool. Every inch of him was silently conveying his true feelings while his mouth remained tightly shut and he went about his normal business. But nothing about it was normal, since he looked like he was about to be slapped.

Batman had seen this type of behavior before, with abused children and battered wives. The way they lived in constant fear, but hid it so well beneath the gauze of normalcy. Their silence useless to the trained eye, since the body gives everything away. The subtlest interactions speak volumes about the state of the person.

For Robin, after watching him for so many days now, he knew just how shaky this entire situation was. He didn't know how much longer it would last until there was another breakdown. He didn't know how to fix him, and didn't know why Robin wasn't able to break free from the oppressed rut he was stuck in.

His uncertainty was partly because he was too close to Robin, and his usual objectivity was hard to come by when all he really wanted to do was scoop him up and dry his tears, take his pain away. But doing something like that would not only be out of character for himself, but would probably scare Robin more than help him.

The other piece that made recovery so dubious was his unique situation. Because Robin wasn't just scared like the textbook described.

There was much more than just fear haunting Robin. A smear of black anger was hidden away beneath the surface; it tarnished every interaction, and coated the few words he spoke voluntarily. He was angry all the time, and his rage would rear up unexpectedly, lashing out at anything and anyone who was in range.

When something reminded him of Slade, or more specifically, Slade's death, the results of his apprenticeship would show through with deadly force. Despite his acting like traumatized glass, Robin was still undeniably lethal and they had acquired more than a few broken pieces of furniture to prove it.

But the final and most looming obstacle hindering Robin, was Slade himself. If he could just get away from him, if he could just be completely free from his influences, things would eventually change for the better. The nightmare would fade, and their patient kindness would replace the cold expecting fear he constantly felt. The hateful words would eventually weaken as their confessions of friendship strengthened. After enough time, there would be a metamorphosis within him, created just the same way as his first transformation. With enough time everything would change.

But there was something stopping that natural flow of positive conversion. The fact that Robin was still trapped within Slade's influences was the killing all their efforts. It was as if the man was still in the room, whispering into Robin's ear at every second, nullifying anything they tried to say or do. Instead of their presence being a comfort to him, it was more like temptation. As if baiting a dog trained to kill, and then expecting it not to bite when its master commands it to. The fact that he hadn't already succumbed to the Slade in his head and gone berserk trying to kill them all was just proof of his own strength of will.

A will that had been broken long ago.

Batman wondered how much of a struggle Robin was going through right then. Hunched over in clandestine fear, with an evil presence in his head commanding him to attack. How much of an effort it was to deny that order, how much of an effort it was to just act normal. As if nothing was wrong. Nothing was happening.

When in reality, Slade was right there behind him.

That presence threw a shadow over everything they tried. It made Robin continually unstable, and unpredictable.

If there was one thing Batman didn't like, it was being uncertain.

But there was one thing he knew for sure. And that was that this little happy house façade couldn't go on forever. Something was going to have to change, and whether it would be Robin or the rest of the Titans remained to be seen.

Although perhaps that was something any of them would rather not see.

Batman got that prickling sensation at the back of his neck; the uncanny indication of someone's gaze settling on him, and glanced up. Raven's violet eyes spoke volumes, and he nodded slightly. Silent secrets between the winged creatures of night; how very poetic…

And music to the ears, perhaps; unlike the shattering of the coffee mug as Robin finally, and predictably, dropped it.

He didn't move at all; merely froze, gazing sorrowfully down at it as it bled on the hard kitchen floor. Both Batman and Raven saw his shoulders tense up ever so slightly, as though bracing himself to be hit in punishment.

Raven stood.

"I'll get it, Robin," she said quietly, employing her powers to lift a dustpan and brush from the sideboard. "Sit down."

He frowned at, but took note of, the imperative, and began to back up as she neared him and the cup. Batman watched his behavior with the same grim interest; Robin's response to someone closing in on his personal space was a mixture of that of predator and prey, in that he sharply and immediately retreated from them, but with a subtle body language that suggested he was ready to pounce at them at any given moment and go right for the throat. His fists had clenched when Raven had addressed him; and his gaze never lifted from her. Batman trusted that Raven could defend herself effortlessly should she need to, but it broke his heart even so to see his own Boy Wonder such a vicious, unstable little time-bomb.

Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg chose to make an unfortunate co-entrance at that point; evidently the TV program they had been watching was over. Raven glanced up as she sensed Robin's heartbeat speed up, a sure sign of his rising stress level. He must have made it apparent on the outside also, for Beast Boy and Cyborg only nodded at him, and did not attempt to close the subtly-increasing gap between the former Boy Wonder and the rest of the team.

Starfire was another matter entirely; elated to simply have him back alive and well, she ignored the new derogatory traits in him, and made excuses in her heart for his changed and often aggressive behavior.

"Greetings, Robin," she said chirpily, as though nothing had changed at all; she floated nearer to him and he quickly backed away from her. She either truly didn't notice, or pretended not to, as she continued; "Cyborg, Beast Boy and I watched a truly interesting program about the effects of explosives on various inanimate objects. It was fascinating."

Robin nodded, watching her warily. He ached to lash out at her, perhaps simply for being so happy; and his hand twitched a little as he flexed his fingers. But he did not raise his hand to her, only backed away a little more.

"Yes," he said blithely, and offered nothing more even when she looked expectantly at him. Truly, he had nothing to say to her; nothing at all. There was nothing she could possibly understand – no, not her. Not Starfire.

And so, not understanding – maybe because she couldn't, or maybe simply because she wouldn't – Starfire again closed the gradually-growing gap between herself and him, and went so far as to grasp his upper arm. He tensed, and gooseflesh rose under the heat of her hand, and for a moment, an intense, enigmatic blackness grasped at him, but failed to pull him away from consciousness. This was not desire, or hormones; this was fear, fear of touch trained into him.

This was damage.

"Then," Starfire went on, not noticing the theatrics, "perhaps you might consider joining Cyborg, Beast Boy and I in the viewing of a movie? I believe there is one being shown in approximately—"

"No," Robin interrupted her suddenly and abruptly, his voice cold.

"But Robin—" Starfire began to protest, unable to keep the waver from her voice; Raven sensed danger in that, and had her suspicions rewarded when Robin snatched his arm from the alien princess' grip as though she was burning him.

"No!" He said again, stress level rising to the point where it was clearly evident in his tone. He pulled right back, glaring at her with narrowed eyes, slightly glazed behind the mask; the glaze being all that was left of the shield that protected him from the rest of them. "No, no, no, no, no!"

"S'okay, man," Cyborg said calmly, close behind him now that Robin had backed up so far from Starfire. "We heard you the first—"

"NO!" Robin screeched, suddenly whirling on the half-robot and swinging out at him. He missed, but Cyborg shrank back even so, his eyes wide.

"Hey, yo," he said softly, his metal hands raised in surrender. "Chill, man."

"He didn't mean to freak you, dude," Beast Boy murmured, keeping his distance. His gaze slid to Raven, who made a slicing motion in the air, signaling for both he and Cyborg to stop digging; Robin had backed against the counter, his eyes narrowed and baleful.

"So," Beast Boy said, getting the message, "movie?"

"Right," Cyborg echoed, taking Beast Boy's arm and leading him towards the Operations Center. "Movie. C'mon, Star."

Starfire nodded, but shot a pleading glance at Robin as she rose a few inches from the floor. She held out her hand towards him.

"Robin, please join us, your friends, in the hanging out," she begged.

He looked from her hand to her tentatively-smiling face and back again, his shifting gaze wary. Then, slowly, he raised his own arm, as though making to reach for her straining fingers. Her smile broadened, and she floated a little closer to him to encourage him.

Which was when he snapped.

"Get away from me!" He screamed. His arm swung out and up with lighting-fast precision, swiping her hand away from him with a blow so jarring it would have dislocated her arm had she not been a Tamaranean warrior princess.

She withdrew her arm, clutching at the wrist where he had smacked it away, tears beginning to swell in her jade eyes.

"Robin," she whispered, her voice crushed and ragged.

"NO!" He yelled, suddenly clutching at his head as though taken with a splitting headache. "Get away! I said get away!"

He fled the kitchen blindly, and Raven rose as he did so; Starfire sank to her knees on the kitchen floor, her shoulders shaking as the tears overcame her. Raven stepped past her, her cloak trailing the tiles as she pulled up her hood.

"You are going to retrieve him?" Batman stated rather than asked; Raven paused, and turned her shadowed face towards him.

"I think that I should," was the extent of her reply.

"May I suggest that you leave him be?" Batman went on emotionlessly.

"I don't think that's a very a good idea."

"I know."

"Then why…?"

"I didn't expect you to agree to it. However…" Batman moved to the doorway to act as a barrier. "I will not insult your intelligence. I know you are aware that he is… damaged. He is Robin, but not your Robin. He has changed. You can see that as clearly as I can. I know that. But I am not sure you understand that he never will be your Robin again. It may cause sacrifice, or change, but you can't treat him the way you once did. Leave him; please, just… leave him alone."

The muffled sound of a motorbike suddenly drifted up from two floors below; and Raven pulled down her hood to turn half-shocked, half-angered violet eyes on the Dark Knight.

"And you think this wise?" She snapped, knowing he had heard it. "He's… leaving the tower. In his state, I don't—"

"This isn't a lesson," Batman interrupted coolly. "This isn't hypothetical. This is something that you… we all have to deal with. His destruction, or his salvation. The decision is his to make."

He suddenly placed a hand on Raven's cloaked shoulder.

"I know it's hard, but you have to let him go."

"And if he doesn't come back?" Raven asked coldly. She raised her chin to look him in the eye. "You know as well as I do that that is…"

"Highly likely," Batman finished for her. "Of course. But know that if you love something, you must let it go. If it comes back, it is yours to keep, but if it does not, it was never meant to be."

"How can you say that?" Raven asked hollowly, shocked by what she considered to be a callous attitude. "He… he was yours. He was at your side longer than ours, you made him, you… how can you say that?"

"Because," said Batman, "I love him most of all."

---

It was going to rain.

He could look up at the sky and see the density of dark blustery storm clouds that were stumbling along before the wind; but moreover, he could taste it, thick and humid in the air. He could feel it, moist and leaden, blowing across his skin. The air was dense enough to swim through.

He didn't care about it.

The streets of Jump City were near-empty; probably because of the foreboding weather. The air was heavy, static. Everyone else could sense it too. Had he truly thought himself different for a second there? Like he could sense it and they could not? Had he thought himself special? That very notion had been wrung right out of him. He was nobody. Nothing. Not worthy of being a hero, and too much of a coward to try and be anything else than that once Slade was gone. The villain had broken the mold and taken it with him.

He shivered. Shook his head.

It reminded him of a dream…

He shook that away too. He had been getting better at it lately, figuring out how to circumvent his own thoughts in a cycle of self-repetitious loops; revealing nothing of himself, to himself. It helped keep the other voices quiet as well.

He knew they were probably worried. They would probably come looking for him. He knew that he would have to go back with them.

He… he wanted to. He wanted to go home. Soon. Because he belonged with them, if only for the fact that they hadn't thrown him out themselves and he had nowhere else to go.

He was a Teen Titan. Or at least…he had been…

So then…

…why had he run away?

He would go back; he would.

Soon.

Standing atop a skyscraper, the newly-restored Boy Wonder looked down at the city he had once sworn to protect; and here he was, back again.

His contract had never truly expired. Not even when he had been…

…away.

That was the small print for you.

Once upon a time – a time before the word apprentice had echoed around and around his head – his geography had been solid, he had known every dip and spike in the skyline of his city; been able to trace a map of the back of his hand at the height of a mission and send his team-mates on their respective ways to apprehend whichever crook they were chasing.

Now it suddenly looked so… strange to him. As though… faded. Both things had happened, it had shrunk, and he had grown.

It was not nearly as familiar as the presence of Slade. As the sound of his voice; or every dip and spike of his body… Robin had been able to trace a map on the smooth, firm skin of Slade's back as he had lain there under the sheets at three in the morning; drowsy and happy, although aching and bleeding at the same time…

The city – his memory of it – had collapsed and faded; been swallowed up by the darkness and turning of gears that had swallowed him up too.

Batman and the Titans appreciated that he had been through a lot. But they did not truly understand. They were frustrated because even with Slade dead, even with all their attempts to heal Robin, and even with all the time Robin had spent away from Slade's manipulations, they were still confronted by his lack of interest in them and the city. Confronted by the way he was so uncharacteristically distant, and the fact that he didn't want to spend any time with them or even talk to them. It upset them because they had saved him (or so they thought) from the fate that they had brought upon him; he had sold himself for them. They therefore assumed that now that they had him back – and had "cancelled out" their debt to him – everything should and would be normal again.

They couldn't understand that he had grown so accustomed to the dark he no longer had any interest in the light; he had been deprived of it so long. He had adapted; grown used to abuse and decadence. His "norm" was no longer playing Gamestation, responding to the Titans Alert and then going for pizza, as they expected it to be restored to; his "norm" was being beaten on in the guise of "combat training", being near-raped and constantly being hungry because Slade practically starved him (and whenever he was given food, he ate it like an animal; with frantic, unchewing desperation). He perhaps preferred the original norm, but human beings are adaptable creatures, the reason being brutal and simple:

They can get used to anything.

But it takes time.

And deep inside, Robin wasn't sure if he was ever going to be able to shift back to his original norm.

The sudden freedom he had – like now; he had gone out by himself and no-one had stopped him – unsettled him somewhat because he had grown to know only captivity.

Their gentle, secure friendship unnerved him because he had grown used to Slade's cruel and dominant manner. He found himself watching them intently for things in their behavior that were like Slade.

He searched for comfort in the very thing that had destroyed him.

So far he had found nothing. They were the exact opposite of Slade; they were kind, they cared about him and his feelings and his health, and they allowed him time to heal. They didn't shout at him, they didn't hit him, they didn't threaten or taunt or terrorize him. They respected him, they asked him things – didn't order him to do things.

It was behavior he remembered; the behavior of his friends. Their confirmed eternal love of him, love that he didn't even have to earn or deserve.

But now he questioned them. Questioned everyone.

Was it because of it that he had fallen so far? Had the terrible juxtaposition of their friendship against Slade's heartless cruelty been the cause of his eventual succumbing? Had the change simply been too much for him and he had… broken down…?

And maybe it was because of that that he distanced himself from them now that they had him back. He was suddenly unnerved by Raven's quiet manner because he was used to Slade shouting at him for getting something wrong; Beast Boy's jokey good nature distracted him to despair because Slade had such a sick sense of humor – nothing like BB's; he shied from Cyborg's in-your-face cheerful attitude and particularly shrank back from Starfire, much to the pretty alien's distress, because he could find nothing of Slade in them at all.

Only when he looked in the mirror; perhaps when he was just out of the shower. His "styled" hair wet over the eye that he – like Slade – no longer had, mirroring his visage, and the "S" scar would stand out on his bare chest.

Only then would he find what he was looking for.

In himself.

It was little comfort; he had known that he and Slade were alike before Slade had taken and corrupted him. It had dawned on him the very second the idea of disguising himself as a thief known as Red X – a ruse designed to reel Slade in – that he and the one-eyed madman were alike.

And not just because they both only had one eye.

The left.

Safely back on the ground – becoming bored up there – he looked up at the darkening, rumbling sky and decided that although he was loath to do so, he should probably start making his way back to Titans Tower.

He didn't really want to go home. He didn't want to be watched and scrutinized by Starfire and Cyborg and Raven and Beast Boy and Batman. Knowing that they were all keeping a close eye on him distressed him immensely.

He had grown to be comfortable with the intimate attention of only one person at a time.

No prizes for guessing where that had come from.

Still, he didn't want to be cold and wet either. At least if he went home he could hide in a closet or something.

The thought of hiding in a closet was comforting to him; and it was not unusual, either. Since returning to the Titans he often shut himself into dark little closets and cupboards and sat down in the blackness, rocking distractedly.

They reminded him of the "cage" Slade had first shut him into. The tiny dark reinforced little room. And he hadn't liked that room… but he had gotten used to it. His own plain room suddenly seemed so… big and empty. Intimidating in its enormity.

The newspaper cuttings on the wall were long gone. Cyborg had informed him that Starfire had torn them all down and incinerated them with her starbolts in a fit of Tamaranean righteous fury a few days after his disappearance.

He hated her for it.

So suddenly the bare walls seemed just that; bare. At night he couldn't sleep in there and had taken to moving; he would pull off his sheets and wrap them around himself and wander down the halls like a pale little ghost, looking restlessly for somewhere to sleep – anywhere but his own bedroom.

Sometimes they would come down in the morning and find him curled up on the semi-circular couch; other times actually under the coffee table. Sometimes they would not find him at all; and those would be the times at which he shut himself into one of the many empty closets in the tower and curled up in his blankets and slept there.

He slept longer and more deeply than he had before he had been taken; the "old" Robin had been restless, suffering near-insomnia, and had been up at the crack of dawn most mornings. The "new" Robin slept fitfully, yes, but overall he slept longer – he was always the last one up now – and was no longer awoken by someone even just entering the room.

Sometimes, when they found him – it was usually Cyborg or Beast Boy who did so – they would notice with mingled pity, weariness and disgust that his pajama pants were wet. It had been a rare occurrence at first, but now it was becoming more frequent as Robin began to dream of Slade in that way more often.

They would shake his hot writhing form awake and clear their throats subtly and he would look down and flush pink and mutter his embarrassed apologies and pull his sheets around him again and stagger out to go clean himself up.

He was obviously mortified every time it happened; and yet, the "new" Robin was not nearly as mortified as the "original" Robin would have been. The "new" Robin had experienced this before; he had had quite a number of wet dreams while with Slade, most often when he was actually wrapped in the madman's arms. So he didn't just wet the sheets; he wet Slade as well.

It had always amazed him how little Slade seemed to mind awaking to find his chest and stomach slick with that milky elixir, product of Robin's sedated teenaged fantasies. In fact, it seemed to highly amuse him – perhaps it was the arrogant realization that he could take Robin and fuck his little brains out and make him come all over the bedsheets, and then could wrap his arms around him and allow him to sleep, barely touching him at all, and could make him come a second time without doing anything.

Slade was a cruel, cold, arrogant and sick-minded individual; Robin didn't love him.

But hell… he missed him.

Being apart from him just suddenly felt… unnatural. Wrong. Like some vital part of him was missing.

Not just his eye.

Oh yes, he could look in the mirror in the bathroom, or he could stare at his reflection in the glass of the huge window in the Operations Center of Titans Tower. He could see how much he had changed.

Appearance-wise, he looked little different from the "original" Robin; the red, yellow and green uniform looked the same on him. His hair was still ebony and his skin was still pale. He was no taller than he had been before being taken, although he was a little skinnier from the weight he had lost and was still putting back on all these weeks later. The mask still covered his eyes – or eye. He didn't wear an eyepatch. He just wore the mask over both eyes and no-one could really tell because of it.

Or rather, wouldn't have been able to. But the jagged asymmetric fringe Slade had cut all those weeks back was still there and so he just let it fall across the right side of his face, so that when he looked in the mirror, the first thing he was not himself.

He saw Slade.

He still ran a little gel through the shorter hair at the back of his head, spiking it up, but the front he allowed to stay natural.

This and the scar were all he had left. His apprentice uniform had been destroyed by the others; burned, he presumed, or blown into oblivion by Starfire in the same fashion as his newspaper cuttings.

He hated her for it.

Did he not hate Slade too? For taking him and destroying him? He found it just as difficult to sort his feelings out even now when he was away from the constant barrage of mind games, though the voices he heard didn't help in the least. There was just too much there, all of it caught up in the whirling tornado that was his mind. Fear, anger, despair, hatred, love, lust, passion, weakness, desire, hopelessness, acceptance, disgust; and anything else that might fall in between were swirled into a dangerous volatile concoction, just waiting for the right catalyst to finally explode.

Somehow, when he had been with Slade, the confusion his feelings produced hadn't mattered; because no-one had ever asked him to sort them out. Slade had just let the chaotic emotions grow and develop and warp on their own, and didn't ask Robin to try and untangle hatred from love, or fear from hope, or wants from needs.

As long as Robin was moaning and bucking underneath him in overall defeat… that was all Slade cared about. That satisfied him. He didn't care if Robin loved him. He didn't care if Robin hated him. He didn't care if Robin feared him.

All he cared about was Robin's realization that he had lost. That Slade had beaten him utterly and ultimately. That he no longer had ownership of himself. That it was over.

Endgame.

Robin hated to lose. That was partly why he had hated Slade in the first place. Partly why Slade had decided to bait and taunt him mercilessly; shining a light on a wall for a kitten and laughing when it pounces and then opens its tiny claws to gaze in confusion at what it has caught.

Nothing.

Robin hated to lose. Robin hated Slade. Or had hated him, anyway. Slade had stolen him away from his friends by threatening their lives; bargaining on Robin's righteous nature that he would accept to save them. And then Slade had pulled out the magnifying glass and shown Robin the small print underneath his signature. He had beaten him, tortured and tormented him, used and abused him; stripped away every last little scrap of "Robin" and torn it up into itty bitty pieces of bloody confetti right in front of him and then scattered the remains and stamped on them for good measure. He had taken what was left and reworked it and forever tainted the canvas.

Surely Robin should hate him?

He came to a sudden stop and looked up; a metal gate stretched above him, a sign crowning it which read "Funfair".

He went in. It was near empty, with just the odd person or couple wandering about. Most of them looked as though they were on their way out of the park. It figured; it was getting late and there was a storm coming…

He wrapped his cape around his shoulders as he made his way through the fair, his face set and sullen, showing nothing of what lay beneath, his head bowed a little. He noticed people nudging each other and nodding in his direction; heard the whispers of "Hey, isn't that…?"; "Yeah, it is… that Robin kid…".

He ignored them.

He wasn't a big fan of funfairs. They reminded him of circuses.

Painfully.

He ended up the entrance to the Chamber of Horrors. It wasn't running but it wasn't locked up either; and suddenly that black tunnel seemed so inviting to him…

"You can't go in there, kid!"

Robin whipped around a little way into the entrance to the ride, finding a small stocky man in orange overalls approaching him. He paused, his eyes narrowed; waiting for the man to recognize him.

Inevitably, it did come;

"Oh!" The man cried, as though surprised. "Robin, right?"

A quick once-over, taking in the bright uniform; the gaze settled on the mask. What he could see of it, anyway.

"Well, superhero or not, you can't go in there after-"

"I'm looking for… someone…" Robin interrupted softly.

The man raised his eyebrows.

"And where are the rest of the Titans?"

"We split up," Robin lied easily – the other Titans were actually all back home watching some cheesy low-budget zombie movie, thinking he was moping around in some other room of the tower.

The man gave a frustrated little groan. He needed to lock up before he could go home; Robin recognized the groan as conveying this and a sudden urge to be spiteful stole across him.

"Do you need to look for him in there?"

"Yes." Lying again, this time out of pure malice.

The guy sighed again and flapped his hands at Robin.

"Fine, fine. I'll leave it open…"

Robin turned away and started to move off.

"Wait!"

Irritated, Robin turned to him again; noticing wearily that the man was going through his pockets now. Eventually he pulled out a sheet of paper with some figures printed on the back and a black pen.

"In return, will you sign an autograph for my kid?"

The absolute last thing Robin wanted to do was sign his name on a piece of scrappy paper for some stupid kid who thought being a superhero was all fun and dandy. He debated refusing; and found himself taking the paper and the pen all the same. He turned the paper over to the plain side and smoothed it out.

"He's eight years old," the man went on unasked, pride evident in his voice. "Love him to pieces. And he loves you."

Robin looked up at him, surprised by that comment.

"Mm-hmm, he thinks you're great," the worker went on. "He loves the Teen Titans, but you're his favorite one. He cuts out all of the newspaper cuttings on the Titans and puts them on his wall. He has a big picture of you on his wall, too."

"Where'd he get that?" Robin was surprised to learn that too.

"Don't know. It's like a poster." The man frowned. "He says you're the coolest; that you never give up and you always win."

"Mm." Robin shrugged.

He always won? He never gave up? If that wasn't a lie…

He handed the paper back. The man took it and examined it, then held it out again.

"Could you put "the Boy Wonder" after your name too?"

Sighing in irritation, Robin snatched the sheet back and scribbled the desired title so that it read, as so many people knew him, Robin the Boy Wonder. He thrust the paper and the pen back at the worker and the man took it, overjoyed.

"Thankyou very much," he gabbled. "Jake will be so thrilled. He never stops talking about you. You're his hero."

"You're welcome." Robin deadpanned it and walked away, unreasonable anger seething within him, but still close to tears on the outside.

If that little boy knew even half of the things he had done, he doubted immensely that he would remain as his hero…

He kept walking, becoming enveloped by a darkness that was both inviting and soothing to him. Above, below and all around him were those tacky plastic ghosts and acetate vampires, slime monsters made of PVC, cotton spider webs.

Rubber bats suspended on strings.

He felt something in him twist and break – something else – and swiped them out of his path angrily, the tears burning his one eye again. One came away in his hand and he looked at in the narrow light for a second or two, feeling its coarse rubbery body and flimsy floppy wings.

Feeling how fake it was.

He threw it aside and broke into a run. Pounding through echoing dark corridors, feeling the track of where the train carts would run during the day beneath his feet. He ducked under and batted aside and leapt over all of the things that seemed to be deliberately getting in his way; things that he couldn't seem to get away from, no matter how hard and fast and far he ran. His cape caught on things, he tripped over something else, bruising his shin – it felt as though he was trying to fight his way through a thicket of thorns, or trying to push through a crowd that was going the opposite way. He kept picking himself up and running again, because it was all he could do.

Run.

He was running to solace. To silence and darkness, peace and loneliness.

He was running away from everything else. His friends. Batman. The innocent man and his hero-worshipping kid.

Slade.

It was okay to run. Running was freedom. He had not been able to run while in Slade's clutches – in any sense or meaning of the word. In Slade's domain… there had been nowhere to run. All of the rooms had been so small, and always locked, so that Robin could neither run in them, nor get out of them and run.

What filled him now was not exuberance; not a feeling of elation as his legs pumped and his feet pounded, echoing in darkness.

He simply ran because it felt right to.

Because Slade was not there to stop him.

Eventually the stitch in his side became too much – although he was obviously in no way unfit after all those years of acrobatic and martial arts training, it had been so long since he had really just… flat-out sprinted like that that his body was unused to it and protested painfully at the strain of it. He slowed up, his heart thudding in his thin chest, and eventually came to slow walk, bending over and gasping, clutching at his side.

He staggered behind a display of three fiberglass vampires and sank down, his back against theirs; he curled up and buried his face in his knees, still gasping for breath. He drew his cape around his shoulders – unconsciously the way Batman did.

Somewhere above, he heard the squeaking and rustling of real bats.

Not rubber. Not a man in a costume.

Nothing fake.

He had drawn up the harsh reality now; his time with Slade, had, if nothing else, given him that. The ability to see that not everything was black and white; that it was not a plastic Barbie world.

Not even Batman had taught him that.

Before Slade… Robin had seen everything as good and bad. It was wrong to steal and hurt and kill people; it was right to help people, to be good and kind and caring. Maybe it had been his youth and naïveté – he had, after all, only been eight years old when Batman had taken him under his wing.

In all senses of the word.

All kids know the difference between good and bad – they learn from fairytales; from faded storybooks and from their parents.

Robin knew that. He always had.

And, throughout all his time as Batman's sidekick and then as a Teen Titan… that was all he had believed.

Good and bad.

Black and white.

No gray blurred lines in the middle.

A plastic Barbie world.

He thought of a Barbie doll now; perfect and plastic. Long blonde hair, ideal body, long legs, flawless skin, big blue eyes and flattering clothes.

How utterly fake.

And the world Barbie lived in; the things you would see in the window of the toy store on your way past – Starfire often liked to stop and croon at the toys, or sometimes Beast Boy, pointing out some kind of expensive remote-control car he fantasized at the havoc he could wreak with.

Barbie's pink car; a convertible with a "three-CD-changer" painted on the tiny plastic dashboard. Barbie's dream house; with its matching pink furniture and wallpaper and little cloth bedspreads.

A plastic reality.

And Barbie herself? What of her? The perfect plastic girl with the perfect plastic guy. Barbie and Ken; and her equally pretty and plastic friends and their plastic boyfriends. Barbie's plastic pony and Barbie's plastic puppy and Barbie's plastic pool and Barbie's plastic picture frame in which was reflected the whole of Barbie's freaking perfect plastic life.

Barbie's perfect plastic organized clear heterosexual abuse-free ideallife.

It was only ironic that he was supposed to be perfect too. The Boy Wonder. A Teen Titan. A superhero.

He was supposed to be flawless and perfect; an ideal.

Another poster. Another fake plastic doll.

Maybe that was all he had been. A hero-Barbie. A Special Edition Boy Wonder Robin doll. Something too beautiful and pristine and perfect to be taken from the box and played with.

Until Slade came along.

Slade, who had taken the box down from the shelf and torn it open; not being at all gentle in the way in which he removed the "doll" from its box.

The box being his secure life as a Teen Titan – and Robin being the doll.

Slade was no collector of these things; he wasn't interested in dolls, their alternate outfits or their accessories.

He just wanted that one. The Special Edition Boy Wonder Robin.

And he was willing to do whatever it took to get it.

And once he had it… he was not gentle with it, in the way a collector would have been. He didn't tenderly examine the workmanship or proudly display it on a shelf to admire it from afar. No, as soon as it was in his hands he began tossing it around like a malicious and destructive boy with his little sister's favorite rag doll; he removed the clothes (literally) and experimented with any and every which way it could be pulled and every shape into which it could be twisted. He restyled it; engraving his insignia into its (not so) plastic flesh and cutting the hair.

Remodeling and reworking it as though a doll-maker himself; until it was barely recognizable as the thing that had come out of the box in the first place

And then, when the doll was finally taken from him, it was so wrecked and destroyed it was no good to anyone. It wasn't worth displaying anymore.

It simply wasn't beautiful anymore.

He sat miserably, contemplating that; the fact that he had been stripped away to nothing. Well, not nothing – but what was left was no good to anyone.

He wasn't beautiful as he had once been; his stunning appearance stolen by months of beatings, starvation and breaks and sprains that hadn't healed correctly. By scars on his skin and by blinding. He wasn't strong; he wasn't smart – Slade's cruel dominance had dulled his analytical and detective skills and overall simply crushed his ability to think rationally and for himself. His voice was hoarse, as he barely used it – he found no reason to talk to them because the power of conversation had fled him too.

He was only left with the dawning that nothing was as clear cut as Barbie's plastic dreamworld.

That things in the real world weren't always so perfect. That things didn't always work out.

That good didn't always prevail.

Did he blame Batman for that illusion? His parents? The Titans?

Or did he blame Slade – for removing the blindfold and forcing him to see beyond the pink plastic he had always known? For leaving him…

…just an empty shell. A hollow plastic doll—

He abruptly stood and slammed his fists against the fiberglass vampires, screaming as long and hard as he could; hearing it echo in the long dark tunnel even as the sound still tore from his lungs.

He took another deep gasping breath as it died off, the echo of it still going; the bats above him shifted and rustling in distraction. Not satisfied, he exhaled and was about to go for another round—

"Well, really, Robin. Anyone would think you were being murdered down here…"

Robin whipped around, slamming himself right up against the vampires, at the sound of that cool, calm, malicious voice he had come to know so well; from the demands, from the angry yelling, and from the suggestive whispering in his ear late at night.

"You're not real… You're just a voice… You're dead… I-I know you're not real…"

"Then why do you still listen to me, my dear apprentice?"

Slade's tall, muscular yet slender form emerged from the shadows beyond the vampires, the darkness slowly giving way to bathe him in the narrow light that again Robin had come to associate with him.

Slade was like a sewer-rat – he tended to lurk in places that were cold, dark, damp and generally unlivable.

Robin couldn't get any words out; he simply pressed himself against the vampires, his mouth open slightly, trying to stammer something intelligible.

His mouth was too dry; his throat was clogged, he simply couldn't say a thing – only stare at his worst enemy.

His brutal lover.

His destroyer.

The voice that had been haunting him for so long had conjured up the body to go with it, and Robin was left wondering just how screwed up he really was. Now there was a visual ghost to join his auditory hallucinations.

"Surprised to see me, Robin?" Slade hissed, languidly approaching him. "Or perhaps… pleased?"

"No, no… You're not real… You can't be real…"

"Really, Robin," Slade whispered, stopping a few inches short of him. He leaned into him, watching the boy flinch and shrink down, turning his head away and closing his eyes (eye) as though he was bracing himself for a punch to the jaw.

Slade instead ran one finger gently along his jawline, watching him grimace at the touch as though it truly hurt, as that single soft touch crushed his quickly crumbling belief.

This couldn't be a hallucination.

It was impossible for his mind to revive a dead man to this level of detail. The way he looked, how he held himself, that soft yet strangely threatening touch, even the smell of him was indescribably real and there, full of life right before him.

"…Not even a hello?" The masked man finished softly, a little laughter tinting his drawl.

He watched, amused, as a slow, steady stream of tears began to run down Robin's one visible cheek from the remaining eye he had, which was still squinched shut.

"Ah, now, Robin…" Slade wiped them away with the heel of his hand. "No tears. It's not very becoming of you…"

Robin opened his eye and turned his face towards Slade a little; the man's hand was still on his left cheek.

"H-how… are you h…? Batman, he—"

"It takes more than a man in a Halloween costume to get rid of me, Robin," Slade interrupted lethally. "Even if he is Gotham's Finest. Even if he is…your teacher…"

Robin was silent for a while.

"How can you… show your face again after… all that you did?" He finally managed to croak out.

"You mean destroying you as I did?" Slade shrugged his broad shoulders offhandedly. "It's what I do. You should know that by now." He tapped his mask. "Oh, and I'm not showing my face…"

Robin sniffled pathetically.

"You took everything from me…"

"And in return I made you mine. When it came right down to it, Robin… wasn't that all you wanted? Under me perhaps you lost yourself. I think it is safe to agree that the only thing that saved you from true insanity… was knowing that you belonged somewhere; in someone's arms. That someone wanted you."

Suddenly angry, Robin wrenched away from his former master.

"The only thing that saved me… was getting away from you!" He shrieked, stepping backwards; clenching his fists. "I am nothing, and it's because of you! You took me, and you took everything out of me… you left me with nothing. How can you come back to me and act like you're proud of it? You're sick!" It was overflowing in one hateful torrent now, all his pent up rage and misdirected abandonment spewing out at the man that he knew wouldn't be affected by it.

He was proven right when Slade gave an amused little laugh.

"Sick?" He repeated. "Proud? Oh, do go on, boy…"

Fiery tears stung at Robin's eye a third time at the sound of Slade's soft laughter; how could anyone possibly find this funny?

"Don't you realize that it was wrong?" Robin whispered, still keeping his distance, acid still hissing in his voice. "What you did? What you have done to me?"

Slade was well and truly smirking behind his mask now.

"Clarify for me, please."

Robin stared at him for a few moments, rendered speechless once more.

"You… you…" He clenched his teeth and fists both, gazing long and hard at the floor. "You… kidnapped me, blackmailed me… you forced me to… to…"

Slade reached across and put his hand under Robin's chin, raising his face up again.

"I forced you to what?" Slade was clearly enjoying this little game.

"You know what you did!" Robin screeched, wrenching back from him. "You… raped me, you… blackmailed me, made me do… horrible things…"

"Oh?" Slade shrugged again. "Well, although that may have been the case at the beginning… you cannot deny that your feelings did most certainly change, hmm? To the point where you were perhaps even a little difficult to control regarding such nightly activities. I distinctly remember the begging, the clinging, the scratching, the crying—"

"Shut up!" Robin screamed as though in pain, his hands at his temples. "It's your fault! Everything is your fault!"

"But is it?" Slade questioned coolly. "I may have laid a trap for you, Robin; but let me assure you… you could quite easily have avoided it. I was just depending on both your duty to protect your friends' welfare and also that obsession you had with me. If only you had not been so desperate to find out more about me… you could have walked around it. None of this would have happened if only you hadn't been so determined to stop me… It's your fault things turned out like this."

"Stop lying to me!" Robin wailed in distress, the tears springing back as he began to crack under the accusation. "I'm sick of your lies to me, I'm sick of the way you treat me like dirt… You promised to make me strong – you said that you would train me if I agreed to your terms – and instead you only broke me! Every single thing you have ever said to me has been a fucking lie!"

"You were too defiant. How can I teach someone who won't listen?"

"I'm not listening to you now!" Robin shrieked, pulling at his hair; his unstable mental state was on a rapid decline into confusion and near-insanity, which Slade sensed. "It's all lies! Just leave me alone!"

"Explain to me why it was so wrong," Slade pushed, indulging further into this little baiting game – it was all the more amusing now that Robin was screaming and ranting, curling in on himself when he had yet to do anything to him.

Robin took a deep shuddering breath and suddenly calmed himself down, gathering more ammo to sling at Slade in desperate need of denial.

"Rape is against the law," he breathed out maliciously. "Kidnapping is against the law. Blackmail is against the law. Having sex with a minor is against the law."

Slade gave a little snort.

"You aren't a minor, dear boy. You're a little slut."

Robin flinched as though he'd been slapped. He couldn't deny it.

Slade didn't feel even a prick of pity. Instead he used Robin's dejected distraction as an opportunity to dip behind him, his large hands slipping over the boy's slim shoulders.

"Oh, but your memory mercifully fails you?" He murmured. "How about I remedy that?" The masked villain was whispering now, his hot breath against the back of Robin's neck.

Robin was frozen in mingled fear, disgust and rapture. This was something he remembered too well…

Oh, but he was far too easily led.

"I seem to remember your little cries," Slade muttered venomously. "Your moans, and your screams. Your begging for release, for mercy… the way you shrieked my name at the height of the climax I would so generously bestow upon you… I remember how small and wriggly you were in my arms, I remember how your body would shimmer with sweat. I remember everything, Robin, even if you choose to ignore it; the way you sobbed, the way you writhed and arched your back and grasped at the sheets. I remember every detail of every single time I took you as my own, and that – remembering all those times – is an impressive feat, you must agree… I did not give you an easy time…"

His grip on the boy's shoulders tightened further.

"Funny, hm? That my mind can conjure up these things? You are quite sure they did not happen? That I raped you every time…?"

Robin was silent; he could not deny those things, because he knew all too well that they had happened. They were firebranded in his mind; tattoos of his own body's betrayal of him. He did remember; of course he did.

How could he forget all those nights in Slade's arms?

All of the different places. Floor. Chair. Bed. Bath. Table. Weapons closet.

All of the different weird angles and positions Slade had found enjoyable to try out; Robin had, more often than not, been in more than a little discomfort.

All of the different items Slade had found it possible to fuck him with – a past-time inspired by the "controller incident". Needless to say, it had amused Slade a great deal more than it had Robin.

"I always wanted you, you know," Slade went on, his voice so low, soft… He slipped his large hands down Robin's back and dipped under his cape, resting them on his slender waist. "From the first moment I saw you, I knew you had to be mine."

He stressed "mine" into Robin's ear and the boy gave a tiny pitiful whine. Looking completely dejected, staring down at the floor, with tears still streaked down his left cheek.

"I remember," Robin whispered softly. "I remember everything you did, I can't stop myself from remembering, and I really wish I could. I wish I could forget you, forget that any of this ever happened."

Robin drew in a shuddering breath, straightening slightly, feeling Slade's fingers press in just a little harder.

"If you made me, and wanted me so badly… If I really was yours and no one else's… then why… why…" Robin's voice cracked, and the small amount of composure he had been able to gather up was snatched away by the flooding emotions within him. He pitched forward, cracking painfully onto his knees, and sank onto the floor, his face in his hands, muffling the heartrending question.

"Why did you leave me?"

He could forgive the kidnapping, the blackmail, the beatings, and the rape. Robin could look at everything objectively as well if he wanted to. He could overlook all the carnal pain and tortures, it was in the past, over and done with. But as soon as he had invested himself in it, seeking refuge within the horror itself… As soon as he started to depend on Slade... and as soon as he began to believe that Slade was also feeling something, even a tiny little something in that cold heart of his… As soon as that obligation became a reality, it wasn't what Slade did to him that Robin couldn't forgive, it was the fact that Slade left him that now filled him with bitter sadness and rage.

He was shaking now, unable to control himself as he slammed his fist onto the hard ground over and over, the fury of abandonment overcoming him.

"How dare you… come back like… nothing's happened… and think that… I will want you back?" Each string of words was ground out through his clenched teeth, cutting and gravelly with anger. He turned around, still on his knees, fists still clenched and shaking, and looked up at his master.

"You left me! After everything you did! You left me all alone… you broke me and left me… H-how was I supposed… supposed to…?"

Slade silently regarded Robin's shaking kneeling form as the boy's wild-tongued words trailed into oblivion, and then without warning viciously backhanded him across the face. Before Robin could recover from the smashing blow, Slade ruthlessly snatched a handful of dark hair and forced his head down. "Since you want me so badly, feel so possessive over me… suck," he ordered savagely.

Robin blinked rapidly, tears smarting his eye, his scalp on fire, and his face going numb from the painful strike. He wasn't surprised at all by the order. Wasn't shocked by the thing that was suddenly thrust before his face. The way it was playing out… it was as if he had never left. As if they were both still back in the lair and he was simply being punished. Before he realized what he was doing, his body jerked to life on its own at the command and moved to grip the thick arousal in front of his face, only to be wrenched back.

"I did not give you permission to touch me. I said suck."

And Robin wasn't surprised by that order either. It was so like him.

So why wasn't he wrenching himself back? Why wasn't he struggling to his feet in order to fight back? If he really could see through Slade, then why was he nervously licking his lips, and dropping his hands obediently to his sides? Why was he leaning forward to take that thing in to his mouth? The taste was so familiar to him, and though he didn't like it, he had never liked it, he still knew what to do when confronted with that musky smell, and that thick salty taste.

He didn't know why he did any of it.

But it felt right…

Slade watched his young apprentice slowly envelope the tip in his mouth. He gripped the dark head tighter and forced more of his cock into that delectable mouth. His other arm came up and he held Robin's face in place.

Hot, it was so very hot and wet. Pulling back, he snapped his hips forward. A muffled cry came from Robin as he choked. Slade pulled out before plunging back in, gagging Robin. He stilled then, and moved the boy's head back and forth over his length.

Slade groaned as his world was reduced to the tactile sensations of Robin's mouth. The sharp scrape of teeth, the ridges and bumps, the sleek cheeks, the soft velvet tongue, the smoothness of a convulsing throat. The sheer heat surrounding him. Gasping, he sped the pace up, tightening his grip and leaving indentations on Robin's skin.

Feeling perilously close to the edge he grunted and pulled out. One hand gripped his erection, his thumb caressing the sensitive flesh, and came with a deep groan. He held Robin's face for a few more seconds as he collected himself and then finally let go, studying his work.

Pools and streaks of opalescent white coated the younger man's face and hair and Slade felt the rest of his aggression and tension bleed away.

Smiling with satisfaction, he tugged Robin's chin up and turned his face from side to side.

Robin just stared back with dull eyes, his mouth still hanging open as if in shock. As usual, the way Slade chose to force himself back into his life was immoral, and cruel, and disgusting… and he accepted it so easily. He hadn't even thought to struggle, just obeyed the command as if no time had passed between them at all.

"Oh yes," Slade purred, his voice so low now that Robin could barely hear him. "If you must know, when I took you… I never intended for certain… feelings to develop. I wanted you in my grasp because to me… you were so perfect. And yet, I knew that you could be more so. And did I not make you that? Didn't I train you, didn't I make you better, faster, stronger? Didn't I teach you how to think in battle? Didn't I teach you… how to kill?"

Robin closed the one eye he had and almost absently leaned his head back against Slade's hand and remembered.

That time, with the Titans; when they had shown up uninvited, at completely the wrong time… When they had seen just how low he had fallen without and because of them. And when he had finished taking the punishment for them – the punishment that Slade felt they deserved – he had fought them.

He had frightened them; hurt them; near beaten them.

All because of what and how Slade taught him – one way or another. Some things had been meticulously demonstrated; other things beaten into him.

Either way, he had had them on the ropes.

But then the tables had turned.

And suddenly the whole damned rancid fairytale had a happy ending again. The Princess was rescued, the Villain defeated, the Hero(es) had won and claimed their prize, with the aid of a mysterious stranger shrouded all in black.

A Dark Knight in all senses of the word.

Oh yes, this entire sorry and tragic story had a bit of a fairytale element to it; Robin could see that. The fair, good and innocent princess was captured by the evil villain, the heroes set out on a quest to find her (or him, as it was in this case; the "princess" was but a character role) and the villain was confronted and defeated.

But this wasn't one of Starfire's beloved Disney movies; the romanticized versions, based upon the Grimm Brothers' nice-ified tales of happy endings.

This was one of those old world fairy stories; where not every fairy was good, not every villain defeated and not every princess so pure.

As it happened, in this story, when the heroes finally got their princess back (s)he was not quite the same. Perhaps, in a fairy story, this would have been the "beyond happy ever after"; a story that the Grimm Brothers just couldn't quite fix. The princess was bewitched, possessed; even impregnated.

And Robin… well, he was not impregnated in that literal sense, because he was not a princess; such things could not happen to him. But his mind… Slade had put something there, something in him.

Not a child; not a living breathing burden.

Perhaps something worse.

Because a baby… that could be aborted; killed or abandoned upon birth. It was something that, after nine months, could be walked away from. It was cruel and heartless and cold to do so, but it could be done – and had been done, infanticide being more common in human history than most would want to admit.

But Robin could not walk away from his mind; he could not walk away from himself.

Slade had taught Robin to be a killer; he had taught him how to destroy.

But he had also taught Robin how to destroy himself.

And now that everything that he had been, all that he had aspired to and every accomplishment, wish and dream that he had ever wanted and hoped for had crumbled down around him; now that the walls of his mind – his very sanity – had cracked and given way, Robin could not even find himself amidst the wreckage and rubble.

It was a painful truth; and yet, if Robin had learned anything, it was that truth was the one thing that did not lie.

It was a juxtaposition too stark.

A world too black and white.

A truth too true.

To Slade, it was the end of the game.

To Robin, it was the end of the world.

And, as usual, there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

Except run.

Slade had let his guard down as Robin relaxed in his grip; and Robin used that opportunity now, tearing himself from Slade's grasp and dashing away into the blackness.

"ROBIN!" Slade roared after him.

Robin ran. Further and further and further into the dark black tunnel, his feet pounding along the tracks as they had the first time.

But now he really was running from something.

He didn't get very far.

Slade dropped down in front of him from the shadows above, landing heavily in a crouch and straightening up.

Suddenly he was more terrifying than Batman had ever been; and Robin scraped to a halt, screaming in shock and fright. He wheeled, nearly falling over, and scrabbled away, pulling himself up as he went and running again.

Slade grabbed his cape and yanked him back; using the momentum to throw him right to the ground. Robin landed on his back and banged his head; his vision swam and his skull ached and suddenly he felt like he was home.

Slade knelt, straddling his waist; and Robin gave a little gasp and held a bated breath as Slade gazed down at him, his single eye icy and scrutinizing.

And then he gave a little laugh.

Tears began to bleed once again from the one set of working tear ducts that Robin had.

"Please… please don't rape me…" he begged, his voice tiny.

Slade laughed harder; and then the laugh snapped to a halt and he swung his fist back and then forwards towards Robin's unprotected face.

Robin flinched.

The blow never came.

Robin opened his eyes; and Slade grasped at the streak of jet black hair across his damaged eye and pulled it upwards off his face, bringing away some of the residue still clinging to it.

"Why, Robin… you're afraid of me…" he hissed, leaning into him so closely that Robin could see himself reflected in the madman's single grey eye. "Just a few seconds ago, you seemed very willing to please me, and now this? You should know better than to beg for such a thing from me. From your master…" As he said it, he dabbed the sticky white liquid between two fingers, showing Robin the remaining evidence of his previous submission.

Silence.

"You aren't my master," Robin said finally, his voice quavering, looking away from the accusing fluid coating Slade's fingers, taken off of his very own face.

Truthfully, he expected Slade to really hit him for that; but it didn't come.

Slade simply laughed again, letting go of Robin's hair. And then it died again and he wrenched Robin's cape off over his and threw it aside.

"NO!" Robin screamed, struggling to free his arms and kicking violently underneath Slade. "Please, don't! I don't want you to! Please…!"

"Be quiet, Robin," Slade snapped, grasping the fastenings of Robin's red shirt. "All that screaming; you'd think you were being raped…"

Slade wrenched his shirt open as Robin started to cry; pausing, Slade slapped a hand over Robin's mouth.

"I told you to be quiet…" he hissed lethally.

Robin shook his head free, tears still streaming down the left side of his face.

"I don't have to do what you tell me anymore… I'm not your property…" he replied shakily.

Slade laughed a third time and looked down lovingly at Robin's pale thin chest.

At the perfect "S"-shaped scar that was forever engraved there.

"Are you quite sure about that?" He traced the shape of the "S" and Robin winced as though Slade's finger was the knife that had first cut it there.

And then he held up his forearm so that Robin could see his reflection in the metal gauntlet buckled over the black leather of his outfit.

"Of course you're mine," he hissed. "Who else do you belong to? You can no longer be a Titan, any more than you can be a sidekick to him… You know that you cannot be anything other than mine."

"That's…" Robin trailed off and looked away, his chest heaving.

"…Not true?" Slade exhaled jadedly. "Of course it is. You know it is. I took you from them and trained you to be without them. You have been taught to need only one person. And that person…"

Slade touched the side of Robin's face very gently; perhaps more gently than he had ever touched him before.

"…Is me."

Robin closed his eye again, terrified.

"All you ever did was… hurt me…"

"I made you."

"You didn't!" Robin screamed, suddenly losing it all over again. "Batman made me, he taught me and trained me, and the Titans—"

"Hindered you," Slade finished sharply. "Held you back, curbed you… Face it, Robin; the skill you have now, you could never have acquired with them. Right now, your weakness rather disgusts me, because I know what you are capable of. I have seen it; and they have seen it. The night I set you upon them… you made a fatal mistake. It cost you your eye, and it cost me… you. But the way you fought, your loyalty, your savagery… Forgive me, Robin, but I had never been proud of you before that night, nor have I since. But that night… you proved what you could do. I knew that you had learned; that you had succumbed, that you had become what I wanted from you. That night… I was proud of you…"

He's manipulating you, he's manipulating you…

Yes, Slade had trained him well. Robin was more often than not in a pitiful state, trailing around listlessly, silent, stricken…

But he knew how to kill; and how to do it quickly and efficiently. Where to strike, how hard, and for how long.

He also knew that he could not kill Slade.

But he could damn well try.

He brought his knees up and smashed Slade in the small of the back, pitching him off-balance; that was all Robin needed to writhe his limber body out from underneath his ex-master's bulk and scramble away. Rolling over, he came back into a crouch and then leapt upwards, the entire motion like the flowing of water into a glass.

The apprentice rarely defeats the master; and this was no exception.

Slade side-stepped when Robin was barely millimeters from him, disallowing him to abort the motion; and then Slade easily tripped him up and sent him sprawling.

Anyone else would have been knocked senseless, unable to evade the attack.

Still moving with the same enthusion, Slade grasped Robin by the back of his shirt and turned him around, throwing him up against the wall of the tunnel.

He grasped the neckline of his shirt and tore the entire front away, leaving him with little more than the green sleeves and the back. Throwing the front of it to the floor, Slade stamped on the "R" and ground it hard with his steel boot.

"You are nothing without me," he hissed, clutching at Robin's throat. "Do you hear me? Nothing! Look at you – you crave the spotlight; you need it, because you have always been in it. You need attention, you need admiration. Oh, don't think I don't know anything about you, little circus boy. I know who you are, I know where you came from. You were born into a world of colour, bright lights, hard work… You were famous at five years old, and then your parents were taken from you, and you were taken under the care of that cursed winged rat. He taught you, nurtured you, gave you all the one-on-one attention you needed to blossom in this line of work. He made you the best. And then you left him, joined your pathetic little friends to make a team, and then you led them, and once again you are the star of the show, hmm? Always in the spotlight; always the best, because how you hate to be anything less than the best, Robin… how you hate it…"

"You've taken all of that from me!" Robin wailed, thrashing in Slade's grip.

"Wrong." Slade tightened his grip on the child's neck. "I made you better. Oh, you were always the best in your league, Robin; I have never seen another child prodigy as highly-skilled as you. Your Batman, for all his presumptuous arrogance, trained you well, there is no denying that. But I took you from the light and stripped away all your idle faults; you have no need for friends, no need for fun or recreation. I deprived you of everything that you had always had, leaving you with only the one thing you craved the most; attention. My attention. And look at what you have become…"

"A monster…" Robin choked. "A worthless empty shell. You didn't make me; you destroyed me."

"I did make you." Slade's eye flashed. "I made you mine."

"You can't keep me forever!" Robin screamed.

Seeing white, both of Slade's hands went around the boy's slender throat as he began to choke the life out of him. Robin clawed at his hands desperately, beginning to see stars and pretty flashing colors and bats.

"I'll never let you go," Slade murmured, his voice low and murderous as Robin began to sag in his arms. "You're mine. You'll always be mine. I took you and made you mine; I vowed when I first saw you that I would have you in my grasp. I took you as mine, taught you as mine, marked you as mine. I'll never let go… and neither will you…"

Something taught by Batman saved him.

Smoke bomb.

Taken by surprise and releasing the boy in his grasp, Slade staggered away, coughing.

Robin ran away.

He ran back the way he had come; and this time, knowing he had a head start on Slade, he didn't stop. He ran all the way back through the ride and out.

The storm had set in; lashing coins of liquid silver to the ground and scattering them to merge into puddles of concrete-coloured spit of godless gods.

Salvation for men of dust who would care to collect it; liquid sun.

To Robin, it was just rain.

Nothing spectacular, metaphoric or breathtaking; just rain.

Just a storm.

Oh, but what a storm…

He ran.

And he fell.

It was all too agonizingly reminiscent of a dream he had once had; and he knew this as he slipped and stumbled and fell face-first into a deep mud-slicked puddle. He lifted his head and closed (both) eyes and slammed his fists down on the concrete and screamed blue murder.

He didn't get up.

What was the point of getting up? Slade would just catch him and knock him down again. And when he did so… maybe he would lay into him. Maybe he would rape him in the rain. Maybe he would drag him away back "home", kicking and screaming.

All this time later, Robin still hated to lose the game.

But he had learned to live with it by now; because he had never beaten Slade, and he never would. In Slade's presence, Robin had not only learned to fight and kill. He had learned to win battles against adversaries, rivals… and he had learned to lose to Slade, time and time again.

It was perhaps the most important thing he had learned.

Inevitably, eventually, the shadow fell across him. Robin quivered and didn't lift his head; waiting for a blow to it instead.

The tall, broad dark figure knelt. Surprisingly gentle gloved hands went underneath his torso and heaved him upright to his knees.

Robin didn't lift his head still; until the cape closed around him, pulling him to a broad chest he recognized.

And not because he had been pinned underneath it every night for over three months.

He burst into tears.

"Why did you run away?" Batman's voice was a low growl, but laced with more worry than anger. "We've been worried sick since the storm set in. Your friends are all out looking for you…"

Caved in the dry darkness of Batman's cape, Robin did not answer him; only sobbed harder.

Suddenly he felt protected; but Slade, in truth, was only half of the problem. The other half lay in Robin's own mind; a torment from which he could not escape no matter what he did, where he went, what he said.

The small print that had seeped all the way into his soul, infallible permanent ink.

Batman sighed deeply and heavily when Robin's only response was tears.

"I think maybe it would be best if I took you home to Gotham with me," he murmured, unsure if Robin was even listening. "If you're going to make a regular habit of this, it would be better if I can keep a close eye on you…"

"You… don't un-understand…!" Robin choked into his chest.

Batman opened his mouth—

"He's right." A watery tap made Slade's arrival obvious. "You don't."

A low, savage, near-animal growl came from deep in Batman's throat and he turned, his entire body stiffening and coiling; he held Robin to his chest with one hand, while his other came behind him, inches from his utility belt.

"I understand that I won't allow you to hurt him again!" The Dark Knight spat savagely.

Slade lazily unfolded his arms; another dark hole cut into the raging, dreary world.

"How touching." He gave a little laugh, his gaze focusing on Robin, who was peeking, frightened, around Batman's shoulder at him. "The poor child; being tugged this way and that by all that would have him. How painful it must be to be so… popular…"

"Slade." Batman rose slowly to his full terrifying height, lightning cracking at just the right moment to give just the right effect; Robin knelt on the ground behind the Dark Knight, quivering, looking from one to the other.

Two strong, powerful, infamous, ruthless, lethal fully-grown men.

Willing to kill each other… for him.

Bruce wanted to protect him; Slade just wanted him.

For a long time, neither of them moved; each studying the other, waiting for an attack, an opening…

And then Batman made a sudden darting movement to the side and Robin lost them in the dark and the rain and the lightning and thunder.

He simply knelt and gripped his own elbows and bowed his head, terrified and confused.

He did not believe that Slade could defeat Batman; but yet he did not believe that Batman could defeat Slade. Maybe once he would have believed in the latter, but now he knew better.

Batman hadn't killed him the first time either.

This was only proved when, less than a minute later, Batman was thrown to the ground a few feet from him in a crumpled heap, a pained grunt issuing from his form. Robin scrambled over to him and knelt next to his head; Batman was not out yet, and not unconscious, although he was bit dazed and was struggling to get up. Forgetting Slade, Robin reached to help his original mentor—

"Away from him, Robin!" Slade snapped, stopping just before Batman's fallen body. "Get away from him, boy! I'm not finished with him yet…"

"Please don't hurt him," Robin pleaded, this familiar to him too. "Please, Slade…"

Slade recognized the game; and smiled behind his mask.

"Would you… take the punishment for him?" He whispered, his eye glittering as he reached into his belt and slowly extricated that glinting silver knife.

Robin nodded earnestly, desperate to protect the Dark Knight in his own twisted little way; he pulled off one of his gloves and offered the exposed wrist up to Slade over Batman. His eye glinting wickedly again, Slade slowly began to lower the blade towards Robin's veins…

Batman threw Robin aside, leapt upwards and sent Slade to the ground with a spinning kick in a single motion so fast that Robin barely followed it. He landed in a wet crumpled heap and looked up again to see that the tables had turned.

Furious by Slade's sick games, the Dark Knight was really laying into the one-eyed madman now, punching and kicking and then jabbing and punching again, not giving him time to recover and block.

Fighting more savagely than Robin had ever seen him fight anyone ever before.

The secret Pandora's Box inside Robin – that which only Slade had been able to open up – cracked open once more.

Rage flew out and seeped into him; possessed him, overtook him, wore him.

Became him.

Getting up, no longer quivering and swaying, he assessed the situation for a moment or two more.

Stockholm Syndrome had been one more thing he had not been able to escape from.

He caught an eyeful of Batman's jugular; the muscles in his neck pushing against the shining wet black fabric of his cape.

And then he lunged.

Batman was named Gotham's Finest for a reason; he sensed Robin – savage, deadly, lethal little Robin – behind him and spun; blocking, reversing the blow and flinging the boy backwards as hard as he could. Robin hit the ground and tumbled over several times before scraping to a halt in the mud.

Batman would find justification for his action later.

Or so he thought.

The edge of Slade's heel caught the side of his head.

It would have killed anyone else; rolling with it, it didn't kill Batman.

It damn well knocked him out, though.

Knowing he wouldn't stay out for long, Slade stepped over the fallen Dark Knight and went to Robin, who was groaning and lifting his head.

The boy's masked eye(s) widened as he saw Slade looming over him instead of Batman; he gave a little gasp.

"I'm sick of playing this ridiculous game, Robin," Slade purred lethally. "Come with me now, without a fuss, and I will allow your Halloween-costumed ex-partner to live…"

Robin shrank back from him.

"No," he squeaked, terrified. "You'll… only hurt me again…"

"And where else will you go, Robin?" Slade sneered. "Who else will take you? I saw you then; you just attacked him. You attacked Batman to protect me. As it happened, it didn't work, but you… You really had every intention of hurting him…"

Slade crouched next to him as Robin recoiled away; grasping him by his wet hair to stop him going any further.

"…You really had every intention of killing him," he finished, his voice a low hiss.

Robin pulled his head away miserably and curled up.

"You belong with me, Robin," Slade lulled, standing up again. "You always have; and you've always known it. And I have changed you; you're unstable, a bomb waiting to go off. You know that if you go back… one day, you're going to break like you did there. One day, Robin… you're going to kill them."

Robin looked up at him, something new slipping out from that sacred secret box and into him.

"It's over, Robin," Slade hissed, looking briefly over at the downed Batman. "The game is long over; and where will you go now? You've lost, and I have won… so tell me, just where will you go…? Will you turn your back on me; on the one and only person who will take you?"

He held out his hand to the boy he had destroyed.

"Come with me. It is over. Come."

Robin hesitated.

And then the last of him shattered.

He reached up and pulled off his mask; and Slade saw that one clear blue eye shining up at him. The other – the destroyed, blinded one – was mercifully covered by his wet hair, plastered to his face.

He reached up, straining; and his wet, muddy gloveless hand grasped Slade's.

Slade smirked as Robin allowed him to help him to his feet.

And he had him; the small, pale, skinny teenaged boy that he had always wanted and needed so badly. The unstable, dangerous and yet frailly broken killer he had created.

The Batman's prodigy.

The Boy Wonder.

Poor broken little Robin.

In the mud and the rain and storm, Slade led him away; and willingly.

Which all along had been the prize.

And now that the prize had been won; that the small print had finally been read—

Robin paused as they passed Batman; who lay like a dead specimen of the creature from which he took his name, his cape sprawled beneath him like the battered wings of such a thing.

Slade tightened his grip, which had moved to Robin's wrist.

But Robin only threw his wet mask to the ground, centimeters from Batman's fingertips.

He said nothing.

"There's my boy," Slade murmured viciously.

I'm not your boy.

It didn't come.

Robin only looked up at him; and Slade saw in him a mirror. The ragged "S" on his chest, and only that one eye—

And that eye suddenly reflected the same icy emotionless serenity that was in Slade's own.

Robin walked away with him; and walked away from everything else.

Batman. The Teen Titans. The life he had led.

The Boy Wonder nevermore.

All that he had been died a second death; drowning in the tears of godless gods and the loss of what he had once been.

The violated perfect plastic Barbie; the demoralized impregnated princess. Prodigy; poster boy; Boy Wonder; leader; god of godless gods.

He was nothing more.

There can be no shadows where there is no light. No shadows where there is only darkness.

It was over.

That was what the small print said.

The score was the same as it had always been.

Robin had lost.

Slade had won.

It was over.

Endgame.

---

…Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that's the end. No jokes, no tricks, no kidding.

I guess it's kind of a bittersweet ending. I'm sure it's not what some of you were expecting or indeed hoping for, but, well… it's been a long time in the works, and all we can say is…

Well, we hope you liked it. We really, really do. :)

OMG, well, we really want to thank all of you who ever reviewed – I wish I could name you all, but there are just too many. Which is a shame, but also a good thing, I think (the fact that there are too many of you…). Everyone, just thankyou SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much! We really appreciate the support and fangirly squees…

Although we do have a few special mentions; to Citrus02honey and Coolteenzz for their spectacular accompanying AMVs (links, as always, remain on my profile). I think there are other music videos too, but those are the mains ones (although thankyou to the creators of any other Small Print vids!). Thanks also to Rocky-White Wolf of Curses for first being the instigator of Small Print becoming more than just a one-shot, and secondly for her work on the Small Print Shrine; thanks to Worren for the wonderful banner she made for the shrine. Thankyou to Phoenix Skyborne and Setsuna Mudo for the Small Print fan-art floating around on DeviantART and LiveJournal (and thanks, Setsuna, for not kicking my ass over our very similar stories…).

Wow. It became more popular than I ever would have believed, and… well… thanks, guys. Thankyou very much. :D

We totally have other projects planned in the future, so… keep your eyes open. Ka ka ka.

Narroch here… One final thing. A lot of you entered our little summary contest, and they were all great! We had an awesome turnout for such an unorthodox request. Unfortunately… all the email addresses on the anonymous reviews were removed. Damn you FFN… Really sorry about that anticlimactic end, but we don't have a winner for the contest because we aren't able to contact anyone who entered. But there were some really good ones on there! Check them out in the reviews.

Alright everybody, it has been chill ficcing with you!

Peace out.

Narroch and RobinRocks

xXx