Distortions
Title: Distortions of an Empty Face
Fandom: DC Comics
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: DC abuses them more than me.
Summary: After being hit by Alexander Luthor, Jr., Dick has the opportunity to change things in Robin's life, though he is thoroughly stuck in his own.
Distortions Chapter 8
.:N:.
“Oh man, I can’t believe these guys got the best of us. Again.”
“If it is at all some consolation, we have recovered the jewels the thieves attempted to steal.”
“It is, but getting back the goods today won’t stop them from taking others tomorrow. And we’re no closer to finding out whom is behind this.”
“Who ever it is, they’ve been making monkeys out of all of us, and not even the good kind, see?”
“We haven’t seen Slade since he attacked Robin. Humanoid robots are his style.”
“True, but I don’t think he’s behind this, Raven. I’d have to catch one without it melting to be positive, but these seem more complex than even Slade’s body doubles. If they are his, they’re second generation.”
“And the robbing of the store of jewels fits neither Slade’s M or his O.”
“And just look at the robots. They’re not even in Slade’s colors, and they all have those spooky red eyes. They‘re like nightmares -- uh, I mean, if I wasn’t a hero they’d be like nightmares.”
“I took another sample of the androids, maybe there’s something traceable that I’ve missed before.”
“Oh, I do wish Robin was here. He’d know how to find the mastermind.”
“We all do, Star, but he’s not. We just need a good plan.”
“Cyborg, Starfire, and I will hold off the fighter. Beast Boy can follow the runner, stealthed.”
“Me? But what if he attacks me?”
“If we don’t hold back the three of us should be sufficient to destroy the robot quickly. We would be right behind you.”
“Right behind, right.”
“Unless we can figure out some other connection, I think this is our best shot. Let’s head back to the Tower, guys. We’ve got a long day tomorrow. While I analyze the remains you should all check out stores in the area which haven’t been hit yet.”
Dick switched off the bug he had place inside the car and headed back to the Tower gym. The others would be back soon and he needed to be sure his deniability was in place. They had banned him from the case, most likely in an effort to keep him from following and inadvertently becoming a liability. He was fairly sure they wouldn’t be pleased to find out that he had been monitoring them and especially not pleased that he had been slipping out of the tower after hours to investigate the crime scenes. His detective abilities had not been affected by his physical condition and Dick saw no reason not to check out the evidence, either at the crime scene or at the police station. And while his fighting abilities weren’t at an android supervillain level, it was at a three thug-two mugger level, as proven by last night’s patrol.
Beginning a light warm up exercise for the night’s excursions, Dick mentally reviewed the case file. Two identical, masked men had hit five jewelry stores in as many nights, this night being the third since the Titans had been called in. The first night, one of the masked figures had escaped while the other stayed behind to distract the Titans. Only after knocking out the robber did they discover it was an android, though any evidence of use was lost when the machine melted. The previous night’s plan to plant a tracking device on the runner failed when the device was knocked offline as soon as it hit its body. Cyborg assumed the robots gave off something akin to a light EMP field; not enough to mess with his circuits but enough to knock out any tracers, lights, and the security cameras. This night’s plan to ignore the first android and follow the runner ended with both androids being destroyed, along with half the city block. True, the merchandise had been recovered, but they were no closer to discovering the source.
And so far, no amount of researching or patrolling could ease Dick’s apprehension for this case. There was something more than the robberies, something familiar, something he should know, but with as much as this world had diverged from his own, he hadn’t identified it.
Dick landed in front of the yellow police taped door with a triple flip for no other reason than he had mastered it earlier in the day. The entire block was littered with broken glass, concrete, and metal. Dick fished a small light from the utility belt he had put on over his black insignia-free clothes, making him feel more like a thief than a detective. The light beam burst though the darkness, revealing the destruction inside the store. Three of the display cases were completely destroyed, the other three had the glass broken in, and the safe had fist sized hole through the door. In addition, the broken racks of stiletto heel boots from the European lingerie boutique next door were visible though the five foot hole in the east wall, while street was visible though the all but demolished west wall.
Looking between the lingerie store and the jewelry store, Dick couldn’t help but wonder about Babs. She visited him in his dreams, as the teenaged girl with a dusting of freckles across his nose. She had called him “munchkin” and “short-stuff” back then, thinking of him as much too young to indulge his childhood crush. Of course, she would’ve realized he was too old for those names had she known he was Batman’s junior partner. Looking inside the empty engagement ring case, Dick knew he had been reminiscing too long and too frequently. Some days he felt like he had lived too many adventures for his twenty-odd years. Batman would’ve berated him for losing focus during an investigation, but Dick couldn’t regret doing so when it came to Barbara.
Dick collected two dark blue fibers, similar to the ones he had found at the previous stores, from where it had been caught on the safe. Investigating near the western wall went slower due to the amount of debris. From his time in Gotham during the ‘Quake, Dick could tell the wall was still unstable, despite the temporary support the emergency crews had built. But other than the work done on the support beams, the area seemed undisturbed.
When he moved his light under a small section of wall, Dick noticed a small patch the light refracted incorrectly off the glass. It could have been a slight imperfection, but he was trained to never assume. He wasn’t strong enough and didn’t have the right tools to lift the wall section, which was why he found himself blindly reaching though the wedge between the wall and the floor. Thanking his smaller arms, his slim fingers were able to locate a slight bump in the mirror. Dick was only slightly surprised to remove a small lens suctioned to the glass. It was two inches across, but only a few millimeters thick. From inside the building, the circle would only look like a reflection of the light, but from the outside, it was a near 200 degree fisheye lens. With the right distance, someone could see almost the entire inside of the store without any electrical equipment. On the roof of the dog accessory boutique across the western street, Dick found evidence of scuff marks from a tripod. A telescopic lens could have been aimed at the store though the fisheye lens, allowing someone to watch or record nearly everything inside the store; it would be a simple solution if Cyborg’s EMP theory was correct.
At the second and fourth robbery sites Dick revisited, he noticed small, two inch, circular marks on the windows. At all sites he was able to locate a building nearby where the tripod had been. And at last site, Dick located a blond hair caught on an old antenna near where the tripod scuff marks were. Dick held the evidence bag up to the dim moonlight, staring at it through squinted eyes before launching himself off the roof and back to the Tower. He didn’t have time to patrol tonight.
It was near 0900 hours when Dick made the breakthrough, though not on the case. He had compared the new fibers to the ones he had collected previously; they matched but Dick had been unable to locate the company which made it. The computer was still running a search for information on the fiber and flat fisheye lenses, and a DNA match from the hair. He was looking for the robbery pattern when someone turned on the music.
Despite the fact that the Tower was probably soundproofed, the contemporary R&B/hip-hop -- which Alfred most assuredly would have described as “noise” -- seemed to flow throughout all the rooms. Dick sighed; Ryeka lacked variety in music choices also. There was only one music folder on his computer with classic rock, thoughtfully named “old stuff”. There were a few songs from The Who, Pink Floyd, and Eric Clapton, and one Zeppelin song, “Stairway to Heaven”. When Dick had been young, he had overheard some kids at school talk about the hidden satanic message in the song. He scratched Bruce’s copy of Zeppelin IV in his attempts to hear it until Alfred indulged him by showing him about backmasking. After many failed attempts to make a hidden backwards message that didn’t require him to speak gibberish, Dick admitted making a subliminal message was hard, even with Alfred’s help. He had always been disappointed he never created his message, which might explain why Ryeka had a music editor in the same directory. Unless Ryeka found another use for it.
Of course, if Ryeka had reversed the so called satanic message in “Stairway to Heaven”, then why would he need the music editor and why not save the file? Curious, Dick opened the list of the files last accessed by the editor. The list was entirely of “Stairway to Heaven”, used at least once a day for the week before Ryeka disappeared. He took the external hard drive out from the hidden drawer he discovered it in two days ago. The files were protected by some sort of passkey, and protected from hacking by a potential virus. The only things accessible were a list of executable files, all named after villains in Gotham. Dick deduced earlier that to unlock the hard drive, he had to run some file through one of the executables, but had not known which. But he could guess now.
It took longer than he expected to isolate the verse and reverse it, though he didn’t hesitate to run it though twoface.exe. The majority of files unlocked were video files, named by their year, month, day, location, and what was probably a camera code number. Dick selected a file at random from the largest cluster of files.
Dick watched himself -- Ryeka-- in a black and orange suit fighting the other Teen Titans on top of a Wayne building. The video had a small S watermark in the lower left hand corner which Dick had come to recognize as Slade’s. With growing dread, Dick moved through the other files, watching what he had only read about. There were files from when Ryeka had created Red X and files of Ryeka fighting Slade. Dick watched excerpts all the files, knowing Ryeka watched them every day at least for a week with the same regiment of self punishment that Batman watched the news of the people he didn’t save every morning after patrol. The same regiment of self punishment he had once used after his betrayal of the Titans.
Long after Dick’s injuries from the torture had healed, long after he detoxed from the drugs Mother Mayhem used, long after he stopped feeling Raven’s presence in his head, long after the rest of the Titans had forgiven him, Dick still had a copy of his speech.
They were wr.. wrong. We -- we attacked before I knew Brother Blood was -- was Holy. The Titans were wrong to attack Brother Blood again, to -- to try to kill him. Brother Blood is good, good for the world. And the Titans deserve excommunication for hurting him! All hail Brother Blood!
Dick would never know how much of his history with the Titans and Bruce would’ve been different had he not been under Brother Blood’s influence for years: his decisions about Terra, getting fired as Robin, his anger about Jason. It would’ve been easy for most anyone else to accept that some of their actions were influenced by the Confessor. Yet so much had changed during that time, from Titan’s betrayal to becoming Nightwing, Dick couldn’t accept that resolution. If he was unaware he was being influenced before, how could he tell the conditioning had truly been broken? Otherwise every time he got angry or made a mistake, how could he know he was himself? So he watched the video when problem arose, to remind himself whom he was not. Dick had only locked away the recording after he returned from chasing Kory to Rio.
Ryeka apparently didn’t share the benefits of his first failed engagement.
If Starfire had knocked a minute before or just walked in, Dick would’ve shown her the files. He would’ve sat her down and explained what they were for and how they had to stop Ryeka when he returned. But she did neither so Dick shut down the hard drive before answering the door.
“What’s up, Star?”
“Robin, I am afraid we have not the time for the hiding or the seeking today.” What Dick had started with Beast Boy had turned into a daily team free for all in the park.
“Got a lead on the robberies?”
“Not as of this moment, but we shall persevere. You would not happen to be working the case by yourself?”
“You know me.” Dick used his best playboy smile, the one that disarmed all the ladies -- except Kory and Barbara.
“That is what worries me, except-” Kory circled closely around him, hovering slightly in the air.
“Except?”
She poked him in the forehead, hard.
“Owe, hey, I’m not a hologram.” She nodded. “Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you tell the others I’d like to have a meeting tonight at 1800 unless you’re out fighting? I’ll get the food.”
“I will tell them. Be well, friend Robin.” She turned back down the hall.
With his back to the closed door, Dick considered his next move. He grabbed a pen and the journal.
Day Six
Ryeka,
I suppose my last few journal entries focus on my training and the case and, though I’m sure you appreciate knowing the condition of your body, could be considered dull. I worried about influencing you with thoughts of my world. But today I accessed your external hard drive, I have watched your recordings, and I know what they are. I understand them.
What I have not been able to understand is your obsession with Slade, even before he attempted to make you his apprentice. I suppose I should share with you some differences between our worlds when I say this. The Slade of my world is known as Deathstroke the Terminator. He is-was-is an assassin, one of the best in the world, and though he lacks morals, he does-did have a code. It wasn’t Deathstroke who accepted the contract on the Teen Titans, but one we watched him inherit, for his code would allow him no less. Yet, as close as he became to destroying us through our own Terra, Deathstroke became an unusual ally, a hired hand, and almost a mission leader. Do not misunderstand, Deathstoke’s loyalty was always to the highest bidder, but I believe we earned a position of respect in his eyes.
Years of hardships changed him, though I had not known how far until the week before I arrived. In many ways I am here because of him as you are not here because of Slade. Deathstroke lost his code and became a far worse threat than you can imagine.
I have not encountered him myself, but Slade seems a middle ground; he neither lives by a code, nor has destroyed civilians without remorse for vengeance. So what was it you encountered that first day that drove you to obsession?
Batman.
The obvious answer. I always hated when everyone so easily pointed to Batman as the root of all my problems. Yet, the obsessive nature and even the target of the obsession reads Batman. Because Slade could almost be Batman without the mission, and yet without the mission there would be no Batman. But if Bruce had simply acquired all the skills, been given meta abilities, and had no mission, could boredom have not turned Bruce into Slade?
Did you sense the familiarity the first time you spoke to the man, the darkness calling out to you? Perhaps it is the tone of voice, the one Batman could always use to snap you into soldier mode, which had you moving to follow the orders before you even thought to protest. Did you just sense his obsession with you?
Or perhaps were you the one reaching out that time? For all your strive to independence, for all your work as a leader, for as much as you wanted Batman to stop telling you what to do -- when you were young, did Batman create a need inside you to have that absolute authority figure in your life? The need to let everything go and fill yourself with that authority, and to prove time and time again your loyalty? Have you felt lost without it since your complete silence with him?
I told Deathstroke’s most recent -- former -- apprentice that she had yet to understand the depth of loyalty, even after she reveled she was the one to stab out her own eye as a sign of fidelity.
I asked myself once: If Bruce had been a bad guy instead of a hero, would I still have tried as hard to please and be like him? How would I have known the difference?
Maybe, from the world you’re in now or the next world I end up in, we will find out.
The computer beep again, signaling the end of one search. Dick read the readout twice before smashing the paper into a ball and hurling it across the room. It confirmed his suspicions. Glancing back at the journal, Dick was tempted to do the same thing with his recent entry, but he had no time to worry. There was too else to figure out before the meeting.
.:N:.
Quotes:
Wolfman, New Teen Titans 29, 1986
Grayson, Nightwing 79, 2003
Fandom: DC Comics
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: DC abuses them more than me.
Summary: After being hit by Alexander Luthor, Jr., Dick has the opportunity to change things in Robin's life, though he is thoroughly stuck in his own.
Distortions Chapter 8
.:N:.
“Oh man, I can’t believe these guys got the best of us. Again.”
“If it is at all some consolation, we have recovered the jewels the thieves attempted to steal.”
“It is, but getting back the goods today won’t stop them from taking others tomorrow. And we’re no closer to finding out whom is behind this.”
“Who ever it is, they’ve been making monkeys out of all of us, and not even the good kind, see?”
“We haven’t seen Slade since he attacked Robin. Humanoid robots are his style.”
“True, but I don’t think he’s behind this, Raven. I’d have to catch one without it melting to be positive, but these seem more complex than even Slade’s body doubles. If they are his, they’re second generation.”
“And the robbing of the store of jewels fits neither Slade’s M or his O.”
“And just look at the robots. They’re not even in Slade’s colors, and they all have those spooky red eyes. They‘re like nightmares -- uh, I mean, if I wasn’t a hero they’d be like nightmares.”
“I took another sample of the androids, maybe there’s something traceable that I’ve missed before.”
“Oh, I do wish Robin was here. He’d know how to find the mastermind.”
“We all do, Star, but he’s not. We just need a good plan.”
“Cyborg, Starfire, and I will hold off the fighter. Beast Boy can follow the runner, stealthed.”
“Me? But what if he attacks me?”
“If we don’t hold back the three of us should be sufficient to destroy the robot quickly. We would be right behind you.”
“Right behind, right.”
“Unless we can figure out some other connection, I think this is our best shot. Let’s head back to the Tower, guys. We’ve got a long day tomorrow. While I analyze the remains you should all check out stores in the area which haven’t been hit yet.”
Dick switched off the bug he had place inside the car and headed back to the Tower gym. The others would be back soon and he needed to be sure his deniability was in place. They had banned him from the case, most likely in an effort to keep him from following and inadvertently becoming a liability. He was fairly sure they wouldn’t be pleased to find out that he had been monitoring them and especially not pleased that he had been slipping out of the tower after hours to investigate the crime scenes. His detective abilities had not been affected by his physical condition and Dick saw no reason not to check out the evidence, either at the crime scene or at the police station. And while his fighting abilities weren’t at an android supervillain level, it was at a three thug-two mugger level, as proven by last night’s patrol.
Beginning a light warm up exercise for the night’s excursions, Dick mentally reviewed the case file. Two identical, masked men had hit five jewelry stores in as many nights, this night being the third since the Titans had been called in. The first night, one of the masked figures had escaped while the other stayed behind to distract the Titans. Only after knocking out the robber did they discover it was an android, though any evidence of use was lost when the machine melted. The previous night’s plan to plant a tracking device on the runner failed when the device was knocked offline as soon as it hit its body. Cyborg assumed the robots gave off something akin to a light EMP field; not enough to mess with his circuits but enough to knock out any tracers, lights, and the security cameras. This night’s plan to ignore the first android and follow the runner ended with both androids being destroyed, along with half the city block. True, the merchandise had been recovered, but they were no closer to discovering the source.
And so far, no amount of researching or patrolling could ease Dick’s apprehension for this case. There was something more than the robberies, something familiar, something he should know, but with as much as this world had diverged from his own, he hadn’t identified it.
Dick landed in front of the yellow police taped door with a triple flip for no other reason than he had mastered it earlier in the day. The entire block was littered with broken glass, concrete, and metal. Dick fished a small light from the utility belt he had put on over his black insignia-free clothes, making him feel more like a thief than a detective. The light beam burst though the darkness, revealing the destruction inside the store. Three of the display cases were completely destroyed, the other three had the glass broken in, and the safe had fist sized hole through the door. In addition, the broken racks of stiletto heel boots from the European lingerie boutique next door were visible though the five foot hole in the east wall, while street was visible though the all but demolished west wall.
Looking between the lingerie store and the jewelry store, Dick couldn’t help but wonder about Babs. She visited him in his dreams, as the teenaged girl with a dusting of freckles across his nose. She had called him “munchkin” and “short-stuff” back then, thinking of him as much too young to indulge his childhood crush. Of course, she would’ve realized he was too old for those names had she known he was Batman’s junior partner. Looking inside the empty engagement ring case, Dick knew he had been reminiscing too long and too frequently. Some days he felt like he had lived too many adventures for his twenty-odd years. Batman would’ve berated him for losing focus during an investigation, but Dick couldn’t regret doing so when it came to Barbara.
Dick collected two dark blue fibers, similar to the ones he had found at the previous stores, from where it had been caught on the safe. Investigating near the western wall went slower due to the amount of debris. From his time in Gotham during the ‘Quake, Dick could tell the wall was still unstable, despite the temporary support the emergency crews had built. But other than the work done on the support beams, the area seemed undisturbed.
When he moved his light under a small section of wall, Dick noticed a small patch the light refracted incorrectly off the glass. It could have been a slight imperfection, but he was trained to never assume. He wasn’t strong enough and didn’t have the right tools to lift the wall section, which was why he found himself blindly reaching though the wedge between the wall and the floor. Thanking his smaller arms, his slim fingers were able to locate a slight bump in the mirror. Dick was only slightly surprised to remove a small lens suctioned to the glass. It was two inches across, but only a few millimeters thick. From inside the building, the circle would only look like a reflection of the light, but from the outside, it was a near 200 degree fisheye lens. With the right distance, someone could see almost the entire inside of the store without any electrical equipment. On the roof of the dog accessory boutique across the western street, Dick found evidence of scuff marks from a tripod. A telescopic lens could have been aimed at the store though the fisheye lens, allowing someone to watch or record nearly everything inside the store; it would be a simple solution if Cyborg’s EMP theory was correct.
At the second and fourth robbery sites Dick revisited, he noticed small, two inch, circular marks on the windows. At all sites he was able to locate a building nearby where the tripod had been. And at last site, Dick located a blond hair caught on an old antenna near where the tripod scuff marks were. Dick held the evidence bag up to the dim moonlight, staring at it through squinted eyes before launching himself off the roof and back to the Tower. He didn’t have time to patrol tonight.
It was near 0900 hours when Dick made the breakthrough, though not on the case. He had compared the new fibers to the ones he had collected previously; they matched but Dick had been unable to locate the company which made it. The computer was still running a search for information on the fiber and flat fisheye lenses, and a DNA match from the hair. He was looking for the robbery pattern when someone turned on the music.
Despite the fact that the Tower was probably soundproofed, the contemporary R&B/hip-hop -- which Alfred most assuredly would have described as “noise” -- seemed to flow throughout all the rooms. Dick sighed; Ryeka lacked variety in music choices also. There was only one music folder on his computer with classic rock, thoughtfully named “old stuff”. There were a few songs from The Who, Pink Floyd, and Eric Clapton, and one Zeppelin song, “Stairway to Heaven”. When Dick had been young, he had overheard some kids at school talk about the hidden satanic message in the song. He scratched Bruce’s copy of Zeppelin IV in his attempts to hear it until Alfred indulged him by showing him about backmasking. After many failed attempts to make a hidden backwards message that didn’t require him to speak gibberish, Dick admitted making a subliminal message was hard, even with Alfred’s help. He had always been disappointed he never created his message, which might explain why Ryeka had a music editor in the same directory. Unless Ryeka found another use for it.
Of course, if Ryeka had reversed the so called satanic message in “Stairway to Heaven”, then why would he need the music editor and why not save the file? Curious, Dick opened the list of the files last accessed by the editor. The list was entirely of “Stairway to Heaven”, used at least once a day for the week before Ryeka disappeared. He took the external hard drive out from the hidden drawer he discovered it in two days ago. The files were protected by some sort of passkey, and protected from hacking by a potential virus. The only things accessible were a list of executable files, all named after villains in Gotham. Dick deduced earlier that to unlock the hard drive, he had to run some file through one of the executables, but had not known which. But he could guess now.
It took longer than he expected to isolate the verse and reverse it, though he didn’t hesitate to run it though twoface.exe. The majority of files unlocked were video files, named by their year, month, day, location, and what was probably a camera code number. Dick selected a file at random from the largest cluster of files.
Dick watched himself -- Ryeka-- in a black and orange suit fighting the other Teen Titans on top of a Wayne building. The video had a small S watermark in the lower left hand corner which Dick had come to recognize as Slade’s. With growing dread, Dick moved through the other files, watching what he had only read about. There were files from when Ryeka had created Red X and files of Ryeka fighting Slade. Dick watched excerpts all the files, knowing Ryeka watched them every day at least for a week with the same regiment of self punishment that Batman watched the news of the people he didn’t save every morning after patrol. The same regiment of self punishment he had once used after his betrayal of the Titans.
Long after Dick’s injuries from the torture had healed, long after he detoxed from the drugs Mother Mayhem used, long after he stopped feeling Raven’s presence in his head, long after the rest of the Titans had forgiven him, Dick still had a copy of his speech.
They were wr.. wrong. We -- we attacked before I knew Brother Blood was -- was Holy. The Titans were wrong to attack Brother Blood again, to -- to try to kill him. Brother Blood is good, good for the world. And the Titans deserve excommunication for hurting him! All hail Brother Blood!
Dick would never know how much of his history with the Titans and Bruce would’ve been different had he not been under Brother Blood’s influence for years: his decisions about Terra, getting fired as Robin, his anger about Jason. It would’ve been easy for most anyone else to accept that some of their actions were influenced by the Confessor. Yet so much had changed during that time, from Titan’s betrayal to becoming Nightwing, Dick couldn’t accept that resolution. If he was unaware he was being influenced before, how could he tell the conditioning had truly been broken? Otherwise every time he got angry or made a mistake, how could he know he was himself? So he watched the video when problem arose, to remind himself whom he was not. Dick had only locked away the recording after he returned from chasing Kory to Rio.
Ryeka apparently didn’t share the benefits of his first failed engagement.
If Starfire had knocked a minute before or just walked in, Dick would’ve shown her the files. He would’ve sat her down and explained what they were for and how they had to stop Ryeka when he returned. But she did neither so Dick shut down the hard drive before answering the door.
“What’s up, Star?”
“Robin, I am afraid we have not the time for the hiding or the seeking today.” What Dick had started with Beast Boy had turned into a daily team free for all in the park.
“Got a lead on the robberies?”
“Not as of this moment, but we shall persevere. You would not happen to be working the case by yourself?”
“You know me.” Dick used his best playboy smile, the one that disarmed all the ladies -- except Kory and Barbara.
“That is what worries me, except-” Kory circled closely around him, hovering slightly in the air.
“Except?”
She poked him in the forehead, hard.
“Owe, hey, I’m not a hologram.” She nodded. “Hey, could you do me a favor? Could you tell the others I’d like to have a meeting tonight at 1800 unless you’re out fighting? I’ll get the food.”
“I will tell them. Be well, friend Robin.” She turned back down the hall.
With his back to the closed door, Dick considered his next move. He grabbed a pen and the journal.
Day Six
Ryeka,
I suppose my last few journal entries focus on my training and the case and, though I’m sure you appreciate knowing the condition of your body, could be considered dull. I worried about influencing you with thoughts of my world. But today I accessed your external hard drive, I have watched your recordings, and I know what they are. I understand them.
What I have not been able to understand is your obsession with Slade, even before he attempted to make you his apprentice. I suppose I should share with you some differences between our worlds when I say this. The Slade of my world is known as Deathstroke the Terminator. He is-was-is an assassin, one of the best in the world, and though he lacks morals, he does-did have a code. It wasn’t Deathstroke who accepted the contract on the Teen Titans, but one we watched him inherit, for his code would allow him no less. Yet, as close as he became to destroying us through our own Terra, Deathstroke became an unusual ally, a hired hand, and almost a mission leader. Do not misunderstand, Deathstoke’s loyalty was always to the highest bidder, but I believe we earned a position of respect in his eyes.
Years of hardships changed him, though I had not known how far until the week before I arrived. In many ways I am here because of him as you are not here because of Slade. Deathstroke lost his code and became a far worse threat than you can imagine.
I have not encountered him myself, but Slade seems a middle ground; he neither lives by a code, nor has destroyed civilians without remorse for vengeance. So what was it you encountered that first day that drove you to obsession?
Batman.
The obvious answer. I always hated when everyone so easily pointed to Batman as the root of all my problems. Yet, the obsessive nature and even the target of the obsession reads Batman. Because Slade could almost be Batman without the mission, and yet without the mission there would be no Batman. But if Bruce had simply acquired all the skills, been given meta abilities, and had no mission, could boredom have not turned Bruce into Slade?
Did you sense the familiarity the first time you spoke to the man, the darkness calling out to you? Perhaps it is the tone of voice, the one Batman could always use to snap you into soldier mode, which had you moving to follow the orders before you even thought to protest. Did you just sense his obsession with you?
Or perhaps were you the one reaching out that time? For all your strive to independence, for all your work as a leader, for as much as you wanted Batman to stop telling you what to do -- when you were young, did Batman create a need inside you to have that absolute authority figure in your life? The need to let everything go and fill yourself with that authority, and to prove time and time again your loyalty? Have you felt lost without it since your complete silence with him?
I told Deathstroke’s most recent -- former -- apprentice that she had yet to understand the depth of loyalty, even after she reveled she was the one to stab out her own eye as a sign of fidelity.
I asked myself once: If Bruce had been a bad guy instead of a hero, would I still have tried as hard to please and be like him? How would I have known the difference?
Maybe, from the world you’re in now or the next world I end up in, we will find out.
The computer beep again, signaling the end of one search. Dick read the readout twice before smashing the paper into a ball and hurling it across the room. It confirmed his suspicions. Glancing back at the journal, Dick was tempted to do the same thing with his recent entry, but he had no time to worry. There was too else to figure out before the meeting.
.:N:.
Quotes:
Wolfman, New Teen Titans 29, 1986
Grayson, Nightwing 79, 2003