A/N: 4K VIEWS?! Thank you guys so much! That really means a lot to me.
....
03:27 PDT
December 1st
Titans Tower
The heroes had found a disturbing number of cameras spread throughout the city, making everyone feel unease, and none of them were completely sure they got them all.
They had been searching the city and surrounding countryside for hours, until one by one they had to stop and sleep before they crashed, literally and figuratively. The only one still awake was the Dark Knight himself.
He hadn't left his post at the Titans' giant computer except to investigate potential crime scenes or the occasional cup of coffee. He refused to stop, knowing that every second he delayed was a second longer that his son had to spend with a ruthless psychopath.
Batman curled one of his hands into a fist. Of course, he understood why Robin hadn't told him about his deep rivalry with Deathstroke. He was the Joker to Robin's Batman, his arch nemesis, but there were stark differences. Slade was sane and intelligent on a terrifying level that rivaled his own skill. A mere whisper on the tongues of the underworld, Deathstroke was sometimes considered to be Batman's evil reflection.
But the mercenary's reputation wasn't what he needed to understand. It was his fascination with his protégé. Why did Slade take such a strong interest in Dick? The Titans had said he was once blackmailed into being the man's apprentice, and Batman found the files Robin had stowed away to prove it. He was mildly surprised by the levels of encryption the teen had placed on them, and he suspected it was to keep his teammates from coming across them. However, even after he was able to hack the file, he could tell that many details from the event had been omitted.
Deathstroke wanted to turn Dick to his side, mold him into a carbon copy of himself. It would deal a heavy blow to, not only Batman, but the Justice League as a whole. Robin was the light to his darkness and a beam of hope in a despairing city, as well as the surrogate nephew to many of the founding members of the League. If Robin could be turned, it would deal a huge blow to heroes everywhere. Most would believe that such a thing would be impossible, but Batman knew better.
Robin had built his own reputation during his years in Gotham. Tricks he had learned in the circus had followed him into the vigilante life, the most infamous yet least broadcasted being his ability to knife-throw.
Robin was loyal to a fault, which brought out a ruthless streak should someone ever deal an especially heavy blow to Batman. He may have saved Tony Zucco from falling all those years ago, but that didn't mean he would go easy on anyone threatening his family. He literally had to drag the boy kicking and screaming from the still body of Joker after he killed Ja—.
Batman shook his head and continued deftly typing at the computer. He didn't have time to recall how Robin almost broke the oath he swore when he first became a hero, or how tense things grew between them during the following months.
He had to focus on the problem at hand. The trackers in his suit didn't work because he hadn't been wearing it when he was taken, yet his belt was missing. However, the GPS transmitter built into it had somehow been either turned off or destroyed. That left only one other option.
Batman opened up another window and activated a sequence he had hoped he would never have to.
"What're you doin'?" Beast Boy slurred as he stumbled into the main room.
"I could ask you the same question," he retorted, cowled eyes never leaving the screen. He was sure that no one would be up before dawn.
"Couldn't sleep," the shapeshifter and yawned, "What's all those numbers and maps?"
"A next-to-last resort to finding Robin. Before he left Gotham, he consented to having a tracker implanted in case anything should happen or if a certain sequence was triggered."
Beast Boy shuffled his feet nervously, "Uh, it wouldn't have happened to have been in his spinal column, would it?"
Red flags went up everywhere in Batman's mind, especially when after a few seconds, the tracker wasn't pinging.
"How do you know about that?"
"That was my fault," a second voice joined in as Cyborg walked into the room, fully charged and ready to go, even if it was only a little past three in the morning. He had skipped the dreaming process, and wasn't expecting to find people already awake.
Batman's eyes narrowed, "Explain."
"Do you know how Robin got out of the apprenticeship? Or how Slade was able to blackmail him in the first place?"
Beast Boy piped up before he could even answer, "Probes! Little bitty ones that attached to our blood cells. Slade could've killed us any time he wanted to, almost did too."
"We had broken into Slade's base in an attempt to free Robin after we found them," Cyborg continued, "And we thought we were just in time. But then Slade activated them, and all four of us were down for the count. Robin had tried to warn us, but we didn't listen, so he did something crazy in order to save us. He injected himself with the probes."
Batman secretly took in a deep breath as he silently fumed. He understood the action, but it was still idiotic. Was there really no other option?
"Dude! It was the coolest thing I've ever seen!" Beast Boy exclaimed, picking up where his best friend left off, "I mean, we were all on the floor thinking it was the end of the line, but Robin marched right up to Slade and said," he lowered his voice to a growl that sounded suspiciously like the Bat himself, "If I lose my friends, you lose your apprentice. And I know how much you hate to lose."
"Slade immediately disabled the control and freed us."
"Then we kicked his butt!"
"We started removing the probes once we got back to the Tower," Cyborg continued, this time a little more calmly, "But when I was extracting them from Robin, the scanners picked up the tracker. Thought Slade had put it into him, so I removed it while I was removing the probes. I'm really sorry."
Batman sighed but refused the instinct to let his shoulders sag in defeat. This just meant he would have to try harder in order to find Dick, and a new idea was already beginning to form. He turned back to the computer and began linking all of the cameras they had found throughout the city into the database. The large screen divided into several smaller windows, each replaying what had been recorded.
"If I can go back to the date and time of Robin's abduction, I could track the path Deathstroke took," he explained in a low, determined growl.
"Dude, so cool..."
Batman grunted but said nothing as the footage replayed. Soon enough, an orange and black figure carrying someone much smaller flickered on the screen, and the three heroes watched as Slade vanished from camera to camera until he reached a warehouse by the docks.
"Hey! I searched that place like three times!"
They soon saw why no one was found there. It appeared that after approximately thirty minutes had passed on the screen, a black nondescript helicopter took off from somewhere out of the camera's view.
Slade knew they couldn't stay in Jump City if he didn't want a repeat of last time, and at this point, almost two days later, they would be long gone. And with Robin too sick to do much, he knew Dick wouldn't have put up enough of a fight to leave substantial evidence or any clues subtle enough to miss Slade's eye. That didn't stop Batman from trying every possible way he could think of to try to find the chopper.
"We'll find him," Cyborg said, more to himself than anyone else in the room, "We'll bring him home."
"Yeah," Beast Boy nodded solemnly as he thought of his missing friend, the one who was like an older brother to him, "Hey, Cy, do you remember that time when Rob flipped over Star getting married?"
Batman quirked an eyebrow at that, listening to the change in conversation even though his back was turned to them. It reminded him of when he once learned that Dick got in a fight at school because another boy was flirting with the Commissioner's daughter.
Cyborg chuckled, "Yeah. Thought for sure the little man would have aneurysm over that. I'm pretty sure he would've started an intergalactic war if Star hadn't of found a way out of that. Remember when we all got turned into animals and you got turned into a lamp? Robin looked hilarious as a monkey, but somehow, it suited him."
An image of an eight year old Romani boy swinging from a chandelier emerged in the mind of the Dark Knight.
"You looked ridiculous as a bear with a tutu."
"Says the guy who literally had a screw loose half the time."
"Ouch," BB grumbled. The shapeshifter paused for a moment, and his ears slowly fell, "Y'know, I never told anybody this, but Robin really helped me out after Terra died."
Batman recalled glancing through that file. A geokinetic and Markovian princess who betrayed them yet in the end sacrificed herself to stop Slade. There had been a small footnote stating that she and Beast Boy were rather close.
Cyborg turned his gaze away from the screen to look at his small, green friend, "How'd he do that?"
Beast Boy laughed half-heartedly, "I was hurting, a lot, balling my eyes out in my room. I was so sure that I'd locked the door, but somehow, the next thing I noticed was him sitting on the bed next to me. He never said anything, just rubbed my back and brushed my hair with his hand. I unloaded so much baggage on him right then," he sniffed, eyes closed to tears, "I told him everything, not just what I felt about Terra but about what happened to my family too, and I think he knew what I was feeling. It was like he understood what it was like to lose someone close to you."
If only they knew, Batman inwardly sighed. For a boy with so much light and joy in his heart and in his eyes, he knew what it was like to lose everything in a single swoop.
Beast Boy pressed on, even though his eyes were starting to tinge red from unshed tears, "You couldn't really tell, but it felt like he really tried to look after me more after that."
"Like what?" Cyborg asked.
"Little things, but touches mostly. A pat on the shoulder, a side hug, or rubbing my hair. He'd pet me whenever I shifted into another animal, and I swear he must be some sort of animal whisperer because he knew the sweet spot in any form I tried so that I'd relax."
Cyborg wasn't quite sure what to say in reply to his little buddy's confession. He had one thing straight though, he had never noticed Robin taking the extra care. That made him realize something.
Robin had a different kind of power from the rest of the Team. He read people and understood them and did little things to help them when they needed it most.
"After Titans East was founded, I really struggled," he admitted, "I wanted to be leader so badly. Have my own team, do my own thing, and I think Robin saw that. I didn't think of it then, but now I remember how he started giving me a little more responsibility after we came back from Steel City. He would sometimes come down and listen to my ideas while I was fixing the T-car, and while back then I thought he was just critiquing what I thought was a good plan, I can see he was actually trying to teach me."
Beast Boy rubbed his nose and smiled, "Yeah, Robin's cool like that."
It seemed as though the two teens had forgotten the Dark Knight was even there to listen to them, and he didn't mind. In the beginning, Batman had been afraid for Robin when he made his own team, fearful that he would draw the attention of the very ones he was running from or that those inexperienced metas would harm his little bird. But now he saw the truth.
They weren't just a team anymore; Robin had turned them into a family. And he was the glue that held them all together. He cared for them, and it was obvious that they returned the sentiment.
Which made finding Robin even more urgent, for the team wouldn't last long if their leader did not return safely, and if it did last, it wouldn't be the same.
Don't worry, Dick, Bruce swore, I'll find you and bring you back to both of your families, as my son and as the Titans' brother.
I will never give up.....