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“Dude!”
Beast Boy excitedly turns into a monkey and jumps onto Dick from behind and begins loosely hugging Dick’s neck. It was almost enough to choke him. Chuckling awkwardly, he tries to hide the fact that his brow is furrowing deeply. Dick closes his laptop with a snap and turns to the team.
“Wanna go to the pool?”
Starfire is in a glimmery purple one-piece swimsuit. Beast Boy is wearing what looks like… regular underwear. Cyborg, despite the fact he doesn’t even wear clothes, is comedically in a tiny speedo.
“Get off, Beast Boy.” Raven groans, grabbing Gar with some purplish-black energy and floating him off of Robin.
Dick did a few dramatic takes of the team.
“What about you, Raven?” Dick asks in as friendly a way as possible.
“This is my swimsuit.”
“Got it.” Dick turns his chair back to face his laptop once again.
“Robin,” Starfire begins cautiously, “you have been back for only a week. It would do you good to rest. Enjoy some time with us?”
A week in comparison to the two months with Slade is nothing. Dick is tired, sure, but Slade got away. It’s been keeping him up at night. Because of Slade Dick isn’t normal anymore. He’s been back a week, in that time he’s almost attacked one of his teammates and has flinched at every sudden movement. As if he expects Cyborg to backhand him or Starfire to kick him in the ribs.
Capturing Slade is the only way to fix that.
“Sorry, Star, I’m just a little busy. I’ll join you some other time.”
Slade is still out there. He’s been completely off the grid, hasn’t made a single move. Who knows, maybe the moment Dick steps out of the tower Slade will be waiting to pounce. Dick definitely wouldn’t want to be shirtless if that happened.
Starfire bows her head in a small and jittery movement. She floats out of Dick’s room slowly, Cyborg following just behind with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Buzzkill.” Beast Boy murmurs, leaving the room with his head held high.
Raven didn’t move an inch. Dick turns and looks at her with a raised brow. The two teens stare at each other for maybe a few minutes before Raven finally speaks up. “I get it, Dick. But you’re letting him win doing this.”
The worst part is that he knows it. All Slade wanted was for Dick to have nobody but him. He knows he's submitting to that by keeping himself away from the team. After spending two months with a psychopathic murderer, it’s hard to just go back to normal. It’s like the apprenticeship put a line in his life. There’s the Robin before… and the Dick after.
His friends don’t really like the new Dick.
Maybe if they had picked any other activity he would participate. The others want to forget Slade and move on. The apprenticeship is over and done with. They wouldn’t think that if they saw the mark over his heart. The mark belonging to a man who genuinely believed Dick was his. It makes him sick to his stomach just to think about it.
“I know.”
The suit is almost a perfect fit. Almost. It’s looser in some places than his Robin suit, tighter in others. Like Slade was so close to understanding Dick but couldn’t quite make it. The large S on the suit is large and stupidly clunky. Made with a heavy metal so that Dick can’t forget it’s there. It feels like a scalding iron, pressing directly into his skin. A permanent mark.
Slade can be deceptively quiet for his size, but Dick can instinctually feel him crossing the room from behind. Dick can physically feel Slade’s hands clutch onto his both shoulders. His brow furrows in anger.
“You’ll learn to like it.”
“The suit,” Dick begins,” or you?”
Slade finally lets go of his shoulders and circles Dick until he’s directly in front of Robin. Slade pokes him on the S insignia. “I can always change the suit, my boy. It’s better if you change your attitude towards me. For the both of us.”
“You know I won’t make this easy.”
A dark chuckle escapes the man, the same one he used right after he revealed his master plan. It’s disgusting how much Slade seems to be enjoying this. “I’ll accept that challenge.”
Dick isn’t sure how long it’s been since Raven left. Long enough that his neck is aching from hunching over his desk. It might have been aching before that, Dick really isn't sure. In the end, Slade did win. Robin lost everything for months, and just to sprinkle some salt on the wound, he was forever changed.
His hands press hard into the side of his head. He can feel a pounding headache coming on. Not a single lead, nobody knows where Slade is. Why is he going after Slade? Revenge? Justice? Fear? Maybe Slade is looking into Dick right now. Maybe they’re both back at square one with how this all started.
Dick gets up and paces his room for a few minutes, doing light stretches and jumping jacks. After getting bored of that, he finally decides to rummage around his dresser. It didn’t take long for him to find his swimming trunks. Dick was an organized person even before Slade beat militaristic habits into him.
The fabric scrunched in his hands. He wants to hang out with them. He really does. He wishes he could just push the apprenticeship from his mind and just move on. At least, the little of the apprenticeship he actually remembers. There's too many gaps in his memory.
In between the training and beatings and sleeping in some corner on the cold floor, most of it has vanished from his mind. He was certain he had only been missing for a week or two at most. But two months. And he doesn’t remember even half of it. In theory that should make it easier to get over, right?
Dick spots the half orange and black heap in the corner of his room. He should have thrown it away by now, burned it and threw its ashes in the ocean. Give it some sort of bittersweet farewell. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to do it yet.
He walks over to it and leans down, touching it for the first time since he's tossed it away. He pushes away the folds and tears off the silver S, holding it between his fingers delicately. Even now it feels like it’s burning the tips of his fingers right off.
“I only wish I’d done it sooner.”
Dick shakes his head from the memory. He’s not there anymore and he knows that. Why is he still thinking about it? The clang of the S stabbing into the floor beside Slade is still present in his mind. It was one of the best and worst feelings he has ever felt in his life. The satisfaction of finally bringing Slade down a peg, that all so familiar feeling of foreboding knowing Slade wouldn’t let that slide.
Something like a sizzle echoes in his mind… Screaming, maybe? It had to have been painful. He was branded- it was painful. It’s just forgotten like so much of the apprenticeship. It’s probably better that he doesn’t remember getting it.
Dick throws the old suit to the corner of the room, it hits the wall and slides down into a heap on the floor. He did it with all of his force, hoping that somehow the act would shatter the fabric into tiny shards the moment it made impact. He stands there huffing furiously, his fists clenching and unclenching into tight fists and his teeth grinding.
What is he so angry for? He escaped. And yet, when he touches the brand on his bare chest, feeling the raised flesh, he can’t help but feel like he still lost. He slides his fingers over the brand repeatedly, the same feeling of needing to feel the gums where a tooth was lost, a bug bite, a scab. It’s different. An unfamiliar feeling that shouldn’t be there.
He doesn’t remember when he got it- he doesn’t even remember if he knew it was here until now. It figures since he apparently remembers nothing about the whole ordeal.
He growls to nobody but himself, stomping over to his bathroom. He can’t believe any of it, it’s all just absurd. He stares at himself in his mirror, hatred radiating off of him. He can hear the muffled cheering of his friends. They’re officially probe-free.
His mask peels off, a mask he hasn’t taken off since he first put it on in Slade’s haunt, it falls to his counter with a snap. He’s seen worse things in the mirror plenty of times, he doesn’t understand why his eyes are startling him now.
Finally mustering up the courage, he actually looks at the brand. It’s the exact same size as where the logo was on his chest. Right over his heart. It looks so… so much larger than how he imagined. And with every passing second it looks like it's getting worse, growing and spreading while still keeping that S shape.
His head snaps away from it, desperate to take the image out of his eyes. He almost trips over his feet in his rush to get to the closet and get a fresh shirt to cover the scar.
Slade is winning. He has been since the start. Dick lays in bed every night thinking that tomorrow will be different, he won’t be afraid to go out and enjoy life. But the moment he faces it, he’d rather stay inside. And he knows he's wasting his time.
Dick’s steps out of his door for what feels like the first time in months. A towel resting over his shoulder and draped over the brand. It's darker than Dick expected, goes to show how well he’s been keeping up with time as of late. The sun is soon to set, casting the whole pool area in an orange hue. Dick watches for a few minutes, seeing the other Titan’s enjoying themselves.
He thinks of how close he was to losing them. Raven was floating above the water, her cloak just barely missing the reflective surface below. Cyborg and Starfire are splashing water at each other. Lastly, Beast Boy is jumping in and out repeatedly, turning into a different animal each time.
It’s Starfire who notices Robin first… he's pretty much leering at them from the shadows like a creep. She smiles wide and waves him over, Dick responds with a lopsided one and walks to the edge of the pool.
Slowly, he removes the towel and lays it down against one of the many poolside loungers. He takes a deep breath in and finally turns to fully face them.
And their faces don’t change.
Dick’s confused, he can admit. He expected Beast Boy to rush to point it out. Or Starfire to gasp in shock and sly over to him, but they all just stared at him expectantly. Did they… did they want him to explain it? His masked eyes widen for a moment, and he looks down at his chest. It's still there. As large and noticeable as ever.
He dips his feet into the water, it’s a little cold but he quickly gets used to it, and he walks in until he's waist deep. The others cheer him on as if he were a baby taking his first steps. And right now he feels like one. In the rippling reflection he can faintly make out himself, wobbling with the water's surface.
And he can see his chest. The only scars visible being the ones he's had for years. He raises his hand out of the water to feel it again. It’s still there. Raised flesh and slightly smooth to the touch. But in his reflection his reflection tells a different story. His friends tell a different story.
It’s something, he now realizes, that he doesn’t want to think hard about. To admit that this whole time he was imagining things.