××
Wally turned to Robin just as Shadow and Batman went through the Zeta-Beams. 'What was that about?'
The bird shrugged. 'She owes me.'
KidFlash's eyes widened till they were the size of moons. 'Dude, and you wasted it on that?'
'She owes me a couple more.' Robin smirked but didn't elaborate.
'How?' The ginger stared at his best friend curiously.
'Yeah, Robin,' M'gann joined in, 'didn't you meet her two years ago, or were you lying?'
Conner looked at him as well.
'I'm sure Robin has an explanation for this.' Aqualad spoke up.
'I'm her best friend?' The youngest team member answered with a shrug, evading the question.
'Bro, I can't believe you. I thought we were friends.' Wally said, sounding hurt.
'Guys, do we have to do this?' The boy wonder said, ignoring the disappointment on everyone's face. 'Batman is not going to cut me any slack for this. If this mission didn't come up I was going to be grounded till further notice.'
He told the half lie. Like it wasn't Bruce who forced him to be here. Like his mentor hadn't bribed him to take part in this mission with the chance of seeing Shadow one last time.
'Maybe you deserved it,' Artemis scoffed, 'you took the side of a villain.'
'It's not something you'd expect from The Batman's apprentice.' Aqualad admitted.
'You let us down.' Conner didn't bother mincing his words, he said outright how he felt.
'M'gann.' Robin turned to the Martian.
'You shouldn't have kept secrets.' She mumbled, not looking him in eyes.
'Wally?'
'I. . . I don't want to talk to you right now.' The speedster didn't even look at him.
Robin clenched his fists. 'If that's how you guys feel then. . .'
Recognized Batman: 02
His shoulders fell as he turned to his mentor.
'Follow me.' The older hero said almost apathetically.
The hacking genius sighed, wishing he could just vanish into thin air, but reluctantly obeyed.
××
The walk was painfully silent, at least that was what Robin thought.
But at last Batman stopped at the door to Black Canary's office.
Robin stared at The Dark Knight. 'You're not serious.'
'Get in,' Batman wasn't in the mood for negotiations.
The groaning boy stepped into the room and his mentor locked the door behind him.
This it, the boy couldn't help but think. This is when he kills me for being such a nuisance.
'Shadow has opened up to me on a lot of things but I never expected that you wouldn't be able to.' Dinah said softly.
Dick sighed, taking a seat on the couch. 'I'm in trouble, aren't I?'
'No.'
'Yes.'
BC glared at Batman and Gotham's hero didn't hesitate to glare back, their opposing views clear to see.
'It's up to Bruce.' Canary decided to say, her voice gentle. 'You could have gotten hurt.'
'Shadow wouldn't hurt me.' Robin defended her almost immediately but regretted it soon after because it did no good.
'How do you know that?' His mentor yelled.
Robin flinched.
Black Canary gave Batman a pointed look. 'What he's trying to say is, Shadow has a very complicated personality, you can't know what she's thinking. She might have just kept you as a distraction, and gotten rid of you when she got bored. You couldn't have known.'
'I don't want to talk about this.' Robin said quietly, running his hand through his hair.
'You're not leaving until you do.' Canary said.
'What about—'
Batman cut him off. 'It'll proceed without you.'
Robin sunk into the chair, silent. 'It's unfair. I didn't even do anything wrong.'
Batman's gaze softened. 'I know Robin but I can't trust you to carry out a mission if you can't trust me enough to tell me things.'
'You know, that's funny,' The boy wonder let out a low laugh, 'that you can't trust me because I don't tell you everything that happens in my life.'
At this point, he got up and started walking to the door. A figure blocked his way.
Robin glared at his mentor. 'Move.'
'No.'
'It's a simple question, Robin.'
'No it's not,' He turned back to Canary with a pointed look. 'Don't force me.'
'Sit down.' She asked softly.
Dick sighed, but did what she said.
They thought he had calmed down, but really, he was about to snap.
All he needed was to be pushed to the limit.
'Is Shadow forcing you to be her friend?'
The whites of Robin's mask widened as he stared at Canary in shock.
'Is that why you didn't tell us?'
There went his limit. . .
'You think that's the reason?' he asked incredulously. 'I knew none of you wouldn't understand.'
'She was there when you were too busy running a company, or being Gotham's hero and taking care everybody's problems. You don't care if I'm constantly being bullied in classes. Or if I won the interschool gymnastic tournament, but she does. . . she did.'
His anger had faded away and at last he came out with the truth. 'I met her on my third mission as Robin. You were fighting Deathstroke but I wasn't involved, neither was she. We fought; she won. She could have killed me then, but she didn't. That left me wondering why. It's not that I didn't want to tell you. I was just a nuisance and you were too busy. . . always busy.'
'So I stopped trying to tell you and we became friends. I was scared to tell you because I knew this would happen. So I pretended like we barely knew each other when she got here and she played along.'
Dick stared at his hands. 'I'm sorry for not telling you—both of you—I just didn't feel the need—. . . I never thought that she'd hurt me, I—'
Before he could finish, Batman stormed out of the room.
As his mentor left the room, Robin spotted a blur of red and yellow whiz by the door.
He turned to Canary. 'Both of you must hate me now. I never do anything right.'
'We don't hate you. We're just. . .shocked.' She stood up. 'Regardless, you should have said something. If not about Shadow, then how about you felt. He does care, he. . . just doesn't know how to manage his time.'
'I know.' Robin whispered as he was left alone in the room.
The thirteen year old ripped off his mask and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
He really wished Shadow was here right now. . . to throw some bullshit answer at Batman.
Gritting his teeth, he let out his signature cackle, putting his mask back on.
Robin was not weak. He didn't cry.
Dick Grayson might have needed his father to hug him and tell him everything was alright. But Robin was fearless, ready for a mission.
××
Batman had briefed the team halfway through when Robin got there.
But the boy wonder didn't care, he took his place in line, barely able to pay any attention.
Luthor had a secret weapon and they were supposed to find out more information regarding it.
His mentor left immediately, not even sparing him a glance at him.
Robin didn't bother looking at his teammates, letting them get ready.
He walked alone to the hangar and stepped into the bioship.
Dick didn't sit down. He just stared at his feet. The sooner this ended the better.
No one said a word.
Not M'gann.
Not even Wally.
The silence was unpleasant.
××
The bioship landed on a roof a few blocks away from LexCorp, the aircraft set to camouflage as they set out.
Aqualad gave the orders. 'Our target is a restricted elevator on the seventh floor. Directly to our right on the eighth, would be the record room.'
He turned to Robin, 'You are to infiltrate the building and let us in through the access point on the roof'
Robin turned to leave, thinking the pep talk was over, but the Atlantain continued. 'This is an easy mission compared to the past ones, I expect it to end a success.'
Robin took a deep breath, throwing down a smoke bomb. That was obviously meant for him.
He tried to ignore Aqualad's words and focus on the mission, but everything that had happened today kept repeating in his head.
Dick was not feeling the aster.
He was not feeling traught.
He was feeling sad, empty and alone.
So when he slid down the maintenance duct on the seventh floor and hacked into the roof access to let the team in, he already started overriding the security on the record room.
As Aqualad and co reached the seventh floor, Robin was breaking into the record room.
'You could have waited for us.' Artemis snapped.
'No time.' Dick said with a lazy smile, pushing the door open.
He waited for them to enter the room before replacing the alarms on the elevator's system.
He walked in, closing the door behind him.
In a couple of minutes they had managed to search the entire drawer-filled room, top to bottom without finding a thing related to a secret weapon.
'Guys you have to check to out.' Wally announced suddenly, holding up a file, Project Shadow pasted on the cover.
Robin fingers paused on the keyboard of the computer he decided to check out, subconsciously typing Shadow's name.
No subject found by this name.
He typed again.
Project Shadow.
His eyes scanned every line of the page.
Name: Unknown.
Gender: Female.
Age: Unknown.
Origin: Unknown.
Parentage: Unknown.
Mother Tongue: Romani (suggested).
Blood type: O
Rhesus Factor: Unidentified.
Genotype: Unidentified.
Lethality: Do not approach. Certain death imminent.
Discovered: 23/ 09/ 2002. The Foundation.
Acquired: 17/ 02/ 2003. League Of Assassins.
'Aw, it's blank.' KidFlash whined, flipping the pages before rushing to Robin.
'What?' His eyes widened as he stared at the screen.
Soon, everybody was crowed around Robin.
The bird skipped anxiously to the next page which only had one sentence.
Log: 1
Subject shows promise of being the secret weapon The Light has been searching for, with the possible future of destroying it's greatest enemy, The Justice League.
The heroes stared blankly at the screen.
'Shadow is the secret weapon.' Robin whispered almost inaudibly, afraid to say it too loud.
'We should—' Aqualad started.
At that moment, alarms started blaring. They all turned to Robin and he paled, hacking into the video feed of LexCorp.
'We're surrounded.' M'gann stared at the armed figures coming up the elevator on the screen.
'There's a service elevator behind that shelf.' Robin said, pointing behind them. 'You guys should go.'
'What do you mean?' Conner asked, narrowing his eyes.
The teen sighed. 'I have to download the file.'
But they weren't convinced. He showed them the screen.
85%________86% _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 100%.
'There's only 14% left of the file to be downloaded, I'll catch up,' he laughed, 'I don't want to be the one to screw up this mission. I'll be fine.'
Aqualad nodded, pushing the shelf away. 'Let's go.'
The team, with the exception of Robin, left the room.
Dick locked the entrances to the record room, buying his friends time as what he assumed were security personnel pounded the doors.
He looked at glaring numbers on the screen.
Just four percent left.
Gunshots rang out as bullets were fired on the door.
Soon enough it gave in, the men filling the now empty room.
The computer was blank, no sign that anyone was ever there.
They searched the room thoroughly and found nothing missing.
××
Ground Floor
Aqualad, Artemis, Conner, M'gann and KidFlash thought they were going to be safe once they left the records. But now they were drowning in an endless wave of opponents.
Robin and his team were separated, and no matter how many enemies he defeated, more came up to replace them.
There was no way they could regroup and plan a way to leave. They couldn't even find the exit in this swarm of black.
None of them could keep this up forever.
And Robin was in the worst position of all. He could barely dodge the simultaneous attacks from all sides, much less dish out those of his own.
At the rate this fight was going the young heroes were going to loose. . . badly.
This could end up being their graves.
××