What I did today...
There was something about him, something too quiet and too calm, too…defeated. He had no idea what lay before him but he was already accepting his fate.
There had to be something more too it. They were all liars, hiding themselves among normal humans when they could and then releasing all kinds of hell when the mood struck them as right. He’d heard about what this one had done, bringing down a store and rendering security and the regular police units ineffective before throwing Static through a loop as well.
Of course they’d brought him down in the end, that’s what they did after all but it just went to show that even a strung out junkie could become a dangerous terror if he had the power.
As if he could hear Barns’ thoughts the teen stirred for the first time, hollow muddy green eyes meeting his own through thick lashes. He was pale, almost ghostly, but his features and thick curly hair hinted at mixed heritage. He wasn’t tall but he was long, legs stretching in front of him nearly to Barns’ side of the van.
Closing Time
Author: Dimitri Aidan
Fandom: DC, which is to say Teen Titans and Justice League more or less.
Universe: First story in a much bigger, vaguely related series.
Pairings: Het, Slash, and Femslash run rampant.
Summary: Once, when Robin couldn’t be Robin, someone else worse the mask. This Robin died and nothing had been the same since, but now someone claiming to be Slade’s last apprentice is making waves.
Notes: Uh. Yeah. Post-series, pre-Justice League, lots of comic stuff strewn in. Could be fun?
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I Wanna Fly Away
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Once Upon A Time Robin wasn’t Robin. Someone else wore his costume, stole his name, and lived his life while he stayed in the shadows, seething. It wasn’t right, not in the least, for some random guy off the street to show up and take over his legacy. It wasn’t Batman’s place to take on a new Robin when he hadn’t created Robin, not really.
He had been Robin before he’d met Batman, had worn the costume and learned to fly without the man’s help. While he’d given him certain tools and made it easier, he’d had his wing’s long before his family had died.
Maybe his anger was misdirected, as it was the Joker who’d clipped his wings, throwing him from a building only to have Harley Quinn waiting at the bottom with her every present mallet. The doctors had been skeptical about whether or not he would ever walk again and that meant he might never be Robin ever again.
In the media they called it the result of a skiing accident. No one needed to know the truth. The Titans were used to his longer absences and Gotham was used to not seeing him for periods and no one really thought anything of it.
A few months later he’d met him, Jason Todd, the son of a prostitute and a low totem mob man, red-haired and freckled with a bad attitude and hands too calloused for a kid. He was two or three years younger than he was but roughly the same height and, at that time, build.
“This is Jason.” Bruce said, tone completely deadpan. The other teen stared at him, arms crossed over his skinny chest and face closed up. “His father was murdered. He’ll be staying with us.”
There was more to it. He knew Bruce well enough, after living and working with him for nearly four years, to be able to see through the mask that most people bought into. He nodded, leaning heavily on his crutches.
“He’s going to be Robin.” He jerked back, nearly losing his footing but quickly regained it. Bruce didn’t show any outward sign that he’d seen it and just plowed along, headless of the bombshell he’d dropped. “I need help, especially on the East End, and he knows it. He’s taking the room across the hall.
Just like that. No questions, no further explanations, no apologies. Cold hard fact and nothing more. He’d been left to get back to his room the best way he could, no help offered. He didn’t expect any, because that wasn’t how Bruce worked and he’d long since become used to that. You either did it yourself or not at all. He’d fought hard to be Batman’s partner, had earned all the rights that came with it, by being able to survive on his own.
With his hair dyed black, makeup to cover the freckles, and a mask on it was impossible to tell them apart in the costume. Over the year that Jason played Robin however he changed and so did the costume. Jason wasn’t a flier like he was, but a fighter. He didn’t like the sky, but the gutters, the dirty grimy, dirt under his nails kind of fighting. He got bulkier and stronger, learned to get up close and personal with his opponent and them destroy them.
The costume got darker, more blended with the shadows, and the weapons changed and adapted to their user. Robin become more than just the sidekick but a feared force of his own, working without Batman in Gotham at times and doing just as well as his mentor. He was cold, relentless, and utterly amazing.
He turned off the TV, some pretty news woman talking animatedly about one of East End’s more infamous pimps being hung from Gotham Clock Tower, brusied, battered, and bloody, with a R spray painted on his chest, as the door of the study creaked open. Jason ambled out, dressed in his regular clothes but still filthy. His knuckles were split and bleeding, his lip busted, and one eye starting to swell. He stopped, blue eyes hovering on him, before he smiled wanly.
“Rough night.”
“Obviously.”
He hated him so much. Hated his smug smile, exaggerated East End accent, knowing eyes calloused fingers and the way he always smelled of fresh earth and blood.
He hated him so much that he no only pushed himself to walk on his own he pushed himself to take back what was his. He re-opened wounds, re-broke and fractured his legs on occasion, and had to be carried from the training rooms and up to his room by Alfred more than once. He became intimate with the way his blood tasted and felt in his own mouth and learned to suppress pain as if it wasn’t there at all. He honed his skills and forced himself to once again become not just good, but the best.
He would always have a slight limp he realized early on, but he would learn to compensate for it. His right hand would never be the same but he would get past that as well. He was not the same, had weaknesses that could never be overcome, but he was still Robin.
He would be Robin again.
He wouldn’t allow anyone to take what was rightfully his.
And then, just as suddenly as he’d come into his life Jason was gone. Used for ransom and bait by Joker only to be viciously beaten and killed. A blast that took out a whole city block and at least forty other people with Jason at the center killed the teen and left nothing behind.
His room was locked up, probably forever, and all other signs of Jason were cleared away, save the costume. It was black and red and seemed to belong in the cave, though it seemed garish locked up in its plastic tube.
While Gotham mourned Jason Wayne, second adopted son of Bruce Wayne, they mourned Robin. Superman stood, out of place in the dank darkness and much larger than life, with Supergirl on one side and a boy who shared his features on the other. Supergirl and Batgirl held hands, Barbra’s eyes wet and red, and Alfred stood behind them, one hand on Batgirl’s shoulder. Selina, Catwoman, and Selina’s daughter Stephanie stood on the other side of the ‘Super’ family.