Running a red light—something rarely done if you were in the field of work I was, at least with ill intention. I took the backstreets because the majority of the criminals we encountered fled that way, hoping to avoid typical police who were stationed along the highway. Sometimes to avoid accidents, innocents being hurt, we didn't drive after them but flew or rode with those who could fly—pretty much everyone but me and Cy, but I think he had been working on a jet-pack or something stupid like that) granted that it was a lot harder than just jumping on my motorcycle and speeding down the streets. But for the citizens, it was safer—considering the thousands of people who lived in the city. I didn't want to risk their lives if I didn't have to at the expense of some criminal who probably wasn't, in reality, worth our time (but there I am sounding superior again, because I know how that feels, to be the one in that position) and so I tried my best to avoid the streets at all.

They were all so vulnerable. The Titans knew that. So while trying to get the guy under control and under arrest we were also trying really hard not to harm anyone who was just unluckily happening to pass by. There was so little error and after that night I would learn just how much control, how much power, and how little it took for a fast car and a crazed driver under the influence of adrenalin to end a life. Considering this we had been lucky we'd had as little incidents as we'd had, especially considering that half the morons on the road weren't even right in the head against me. The more I think about it the more I feel scared to think just how much—how much—power criminals like Slade had actually had, how they'd had the upper hand at all times and had made the Titans and police work twice as hard just to accomplish what we needed to. But that was what they strived for, what made crime in a city like this appealing. It was easier to get away and harder to be booked.

Easier to be a villain, I guess I mean—was thinking, but not actually letting myself know I was thinking it (again, I was pretty determined to be brain-dead that night).

That first red light wasn't easy, though, because that red light stood as something in my mind which I actually couldn't ignore, no matter how much I wanted to. What I was about to do, run that fucking red light like there was no tomorrow, was the first thing that would identify me as a real criminal. I mean, yes, okay, I had stolen. I had stolen the thermal blaster and plenty of other fancy gadgets for Slade, but that hadn't hurt anyone. It was calculated and not meant to be reckless, but this was; this was slapdash and for-fun and to get a rise out of me. Slade wanted me to delve into his world and stealing shit just wouldn't do that, not completely. It wouldn't give me the thrill this would; the thrill of knowing so many lives were at risk and that I possessed all the control in the world when I got behind the wheel of the SWK. When I drove the car I shouldn't have had to worry about the death toll, the fallout, the accidents, and I wouldn't have to worry about the damage—all I had to worry about was not getting caught. If I ran over some little kid playing in the street then the Titans could deal with that, right? Well that was what Slade wanted me to think—to think like him. He wanted me to see the beauty of it.

The beauty of being a criminal. The freeness. The unbinding nature.

I could do whatever I wanted. I could have the world without condition.

"Name it, Robin," Slade had said easily on one of the first nights I'd been forced to stay with him. "Whatever you want—anything, you can have it. That's the beauty in this, you see."

"Beauty?" I remember saying, looking at him incredulously. To me this idea was offensive, a clear slap in the face, but more than anything it was ironic. "I don't really see any beauty in taking things from other people and making them unhappy. I don't do that."

The eye, typically, gleamed, narrow, all knowing, conspicuous yet somehow totally unreadable at the same time. "Well, Robin. I'd like to offer you something to consider, though I know you won't be open with me about it, but to consider to yourself honestly: You and I both know how selfless you are. You're such a good boy, Robin—a little angel, frankly, more than any of your so-called friends, who you'd do anything to make happy, wouldn't you? You offer laughter to those two morons even when they make you want to tear your hair out. You put up with that little bitch's pouting and mood-swings. And you painfully put up a nice little façade for the alien girl you love so much even when she's stepped on your heart and crushed it to little pieces." For effect, Slade raised his hand and fisted it dramatically as if to implicate his words.

I wasn't buying into it, and I got defensive at the mention of Starfire especially. "Shut up, Slade," I had hissed, drifting into fighting stance. "You have no idea what our relationship is like so stop pretending like you do."

Sitting in his favorite chair before me, he looked up at me, totally relaxed, not at all threatened by my words. The eye let on amusement more than anything, but it still narrowed. "Ah, here's my little angel again, defending his girl even though he knows she's just bound to crush his heart yet again with her little boots. Tell me Robin, consider this for me: how much does this hurt you? How much are you made happy by what you do for them? What do you get out of this—how about this right here? What have you gotten out of serving me, and, consider, what have your friends gotten?"

Suddenly, abruptly, he stood up, and I saw immediately that he wasn't relaxed anymore, or amused—he was fuming. His eye burned with red rage and his fists were shaking. I remember staggering back, caught off guard and probably really fearful in that one moment of what—what really—lie beneath the metal suit—what soul.

"NOTHING! When will reality kick in, Robin?! How long will you go on believing it's okay to spend your life serving others who just use you?! WHEN WILL YOU LEARN THEY DON'T CARE?!"

I remember shaking, and he had noticed. He calmed with a long pause, his fists lowering and the rage draining from his eyes until they became grey and pale and somber, tired. Then he said after a moment, softly now, "Robin, I want you to think on this for a while: you can have whatever you'd like. I can give you whatever it is you desire. When was the last time someone offered something like this to you?"

I hadn't said anything, because I didn't know what to say, as reality seeped in slowly and painfully, with thoughts still raging then and making me fully process the truth of it all: the truth that Slade was right. Even when my father and I had been together there was seldom a moment when it was about me—actually, now that I think about it, probably none at all. And since when had the Titans really asked me what I wanted?...These, things I would consider for hours as I lay in my bed, in those times forcing myself to stay conscious even though I was exhausted, as I am now cautioned against.

And he told me to consider something else. "Robin," he'd said, looking at me intently. "I want you to think about what you want; not your former friends of course, but something for yourself. What is it that you'd like? I want to show you soon how easily it is with me you can have whatever you want—how easily someone like myself can give that to you. Think on that, Robin."

I did, though I didn't give him an answer, not right away—probably why we'd done so many errands like the one that night, because Slade was determined to show me that beauty of freeness and availability if I wouldn't first open up a very personal part of my heart to him like he was a confidential therapist. The red light—first of many, I might add—was simply icing on the cake, maybe if the cake was filled with blood and organs rather than sweet spongy yellow food, as if to ease me into what my life was about to become, as it became engulfed by that freeness and "open-ended nature."

Because in reality, running a red light would be the least of my problems as the night progressed.

And even as he said it, I was hesitating—because even if things were bound to get worse, this gateway-crime couldn't just be accepted and mindlessly checked off like I was hoping and had planned so sternly. It would be easier, yes, but in that stoplight, that red glow, I remembered the dream of myself fighting Slade and unmasking him only to reveal that it was myself, having destroyed everything I cared about. It was as if if I ran this red light I would become that Robin and pretty soon would probably end up mowing down the Titans in an intersection along the way. Of course that was really illogical considering that I had especially emphasized in my imagination my own maniacal cackle as I did so, and then doing a little double-tap with the car on their bodies to make sure I had got them, or maybe just for fun. I didn't know, but either way my foot was slowly and steadily breaking, almost in a paralyzed fashion that was reacting solely out of fear and instincts—that, when I saw a red light on a normal day, I would have braked and waited like any normal citizen.

Needless to say this didn't please Slade.

Maybe he had used my facial expressions to interpret my vivid imagination, because he said, his eye lowered into an un-amused glare which sent chills through my spine and caressed my body with the cold of that night like an unwelcomed breeze, "Either you run this red light or you'll be running over a toddler at the expense of your friends. Your choice, Robin."

"You're a sick fuck!" I said, and when I saw his hand out of the corner of my eye moving to the button on his wrist, I said, as if to justify or save myself, quickly, "What if I wreck your car?!"

He just continued to glare at me as he said, simply, again, "Run it."

I did. The action was little more than if I'd been a robot and had been following an order mechanically. I actually shut my eyes and didn't think about what I was about to do and all the implications of doing it. My teeth were gritted, my hands tight to the wheel, waiting—knowing that we wouldn't escape that intersection unscathed.

But in reality that actually seemed to be the problem.

No, we didn't have a scratch; the SWK still gleamed beautifully in the low light of that night without even a chip in the pain, like she was back in her heyday with Slade riding around doing something more benign, warm faded sun making her glisten welcomingly. Surprisingly a time like this, a time when this city wasn't forever reminded of its villains because of what their actions had caused; a time when people weren't actually afraid to leave their homes because they didn't think in a million years anyone would ever mug them for money or come racing down the city streets at 200 mph. That didn't happen back then—when the city was untouched.

When I ran away here from my father the people were still friendly—and still unsuspicious. I had come here because of that clean aspect—the fact that I would never have my skills tried and judged and tired day after day because of criminals. I spent my time doing stupid little jobs for people in the city; working at a burger joint, where I always saw this crazy green kid who came in everyday and protested our use of meat. He made me laugh and when I started leaving with him after my shift I got fired because the owner thought I was conspiring with him to take down the meat industry. It was okay though, I can remember him saying. "I got a place you can crash with me." And he did—what would become Titan tower in the coming years.

Still I worked. I found a job at a music store and spent the majority of my time listening to the tracks for free and doing nothing all day. It should have been nice, but I was feeling restless. When a kid much of whose body was replaced by prosthetics came in and tried to steal music, I apprehended him. He had eyes that were really tired and like myself, had been through a lot, and I felt bad for him. I took the music back but gave him my own music player. The store manager was impressed and gave me a raise, and also referred me to the police, saying that I would become an excellent recruit for an officer in the city. Little went on that I'd need to be recruited for. I saw the kid a lot after that and he told me he was a homeless drifter who'd spent the majority of his life in big, progressive cities like this one stealing things to complete his body which had been destroyed in a fire (and which in the coming years would continue to deteriorate until the only thing that was human about him was his face); the CDs he was stealing, he said, could have the memory extracted but the complicated hard drive used within him.

Long story short, I ended up telling him where to crash that night.

During this time a guy would always come into the shop who I made friends with—a guy who called himself Will but wanted me to call him Wolf (much to his angry, I often called him Willy instead). He wanted music but had very little money so I made him a couple of CDs with the songs he liked the best. He was probably twenty, not old at all, with striking grey eyes you couldn't forget if you tried and short locks of black hair framing a thin face; always came in wearing nearly the same outfit, a pair of trashy jeans and a band t-shirt that he'd probably pulled out of the dumpster and ridiculous cowboy boots. He told me every time he came to the shop that he was going to make something of himself—do something important. He said his first priority was getting out of the trashy cars imported into the city from far-away. And he told me when he got a car worthy of him he'd get one for me, too, so I didn't have to walk to and from work every day; and he told me that when he'd made enough money the two of us could jump in a car together and leave the country so we could do something more significant. He was a dreamer—maybe a little creepy, maybe a little too forthcoming, but he was nice. He brought me lunch sometimes and often spent hours in the shop with me listening to songs each of us liked, taking turns and then likewise enjoying the other's choice. Soon he brought in car schematics and said he was onto something—and I humored him to make him happy. But then the war in Vietnam started and I didn't see him again. And to be honest, I missed him—even if he was the type of guy who laughed every time someone called me Richard and would always say "Who you mean, Dick? Dick over here? How can you call him Richard when he's such a Dick?" But then again I probably deserved that.

Throughout Vietnam that was when the city really went to shit. The crime rate rose probably by fifty percent, and during that time a few murders were reported. Too young to be drafted for the war, I quit my job at the music store joined the police force with the prosthetics kid, who I affectionately called Cy, and the green kid who went never actually told me his name but just went by Beast Boy (and needless to say I was pretty amazed by the powers he had that sparked that name, but all at once understood why he had spent the majority of his days protesting animal slaughter). But I was close to all of them, and after evaluation when I was the only one accepted I left with them, and never looked back.

"We don't need to be on the police force to help people," I said confidently—never regretting that decision. "What do they know anyway?"

And they didn't—not anything. They actually never knew about the alien girl with glowing red hair and sparkling green eyes who showed up in the city one day wearing nothing but a torn up and blackened skirt and scuffed boots and a necklace that looked like the metal had been seared—like she'd been through a fire or something similar. We saw her when Cy and I were going to eat something non-vegetarian, of course without BB, and we heard a loud boom from a few blocks down, so we hurried there. At the site there was a good deal of fire, and at first I thought it was a criminal—but it was just this girl, standing there looking around disorientedly. And when I saw her, without anything covering her breasts, and the majority of her long, smooth legs exposed and posed sexily, (and to be honest the skirt didn't hide too much in that area, either), my mouth dropped open and I think I was drooling. Cy wasn't any better, because even though he was mostly a robot he still had one good eye to take it all in and all the hormones of the fourteen-year-old boys we were. And the girl just walked up to us, her breasts bouncing, and said sweetly, "Um, excuse me, but I seem to be lost…could you tell me what solar system this is, please, or direct me to the nearest intergalactic communication device?"

We didn't ask any questions then, being as stunned as we were. But I think we both knew she was an alien the minute we saw her and knowing the way the police were they would have her studied or picked apart like a lab-rat considering the time-period we lived in the city. Collectively we just knew, almost immediately and simultaneously, that we had to keep this girl safe—and not just for her body. She was something special and we both knew it by just looking at her. So I gave her my shirt (and this is embarrassing but I haven't actually washed that shirt since that day, or worn it…I just smell it sometimes…) and we went to our little hideout, slowly evolving to the home we knew it as today. Later she would tell us her name was Starfire and would explain how she'd ended up in our city and where she had come from.

Again, needless to say, she ended up crashing with us at my offering—actually all of ours, especially BB who was just nodding his head, drooling, taking it all in like we had.

Some of the war veterans were coming back after a few years, having been discharged for their injuries. Among them, Sergeant Major Wilson who had lost an eye when he'd been pinned down and knifed by the enemy. There had been an interlude period between this time and the time of the war's beginning when everything had been relatively calm—surprisingly, with crime rate tumbling back down and the city returning to the peace it had once had. It was as if getting some of the soldiers back gradually was easing the minds of the people back home, or maybe the initial shock of the war had worn off. And for a while, as we caught Starfire up on the on-goings of the city and the world we were really hoping for peace for a while—hoping that that terror-inducing rein we'd all come here to escape but seemed to have had followed us was over. And for a while, it actually was. People were quiet and solemn but there was little crime, maybe because most of the criminals had been discharged to replace the wounded. And there was a little progression. Businesses reopening, the like. We built the tower (not the signature T, not yet) and made it really livable for the four of us. We noted almost every day the guy driving back and forth, doing crazy donuts and the like (and then taking notes in a notebook, like he was testing the car, or something) in the desert which is now the enemy territory, which then we could see from the tower before a slew of new buildings were built to resurrect a crime-ridden city or to further that crime. It could go either way. But we watched this guy out there almost every day, always wondering what in the hell he was doing.

And yet we never found out—because we never disturbed him, figuring he wasn't hurting anything.

Then we were introduced to the new car—the Kevorkian, a smash hit among everyone. This would be the heyday I was talking about, when everyone felt everything was okay because our city, a metaphor for the country, still had enough spirit and stamina to prosper—so everyone had one. They were cheap—cheap enough that we could have afforded one, but we never bought one—never found the need, even though Cyborg had wanted at more than one time to dismantle one to see what the "magic" was in it, what had made everyone so crazy. It might have been a good idea, in retrospect, but we never did. We were distracted at the time with the police reports we tapped into explaining that a pale girl dressed in black was showing up in the chapel during mass on Sunday, and apparently disturbing everyone, though she never did a thing up sit there and listen. Simultaniously the church was becoming a gathering place for every crow in the city, which we could see even before we'd arrived. We checked it out, and, peeking into the church where everyone had left, afraid to gather there because they believed there was a demon in the House of God, we saw her laying in one of the vestibules reading a Bible.

"They'll kill you if they think you're evil," I said after we stared at her silently for a few minutes, waiting to see, which of us, would do the talking, and she looked up.

"They're paranoid," her voice was unsurprised, matching her face. "Everyone in this place—paranoid. And prejudiced. I'm not doing anything wrong."

"I know," I said, sitting slowly down onto the seat with her. "But that's the way these people are. They're still stinging from the war and they just don't want to be sucked back into it, you know? It's like what they don't understand is immediately evil—like the "enemy.""

She'd sat up—looked at me, and knew I understood. I asked her if she wanted to crash with us. She didn't, not initially, but showed up a few days later after having been chased out of the church by a mob.

Her name was Raven, and we understood why she thought life was unfair and cruel—because for her, it was.

And soon things escalated into crime again—as if the Kevorkian had only stalled the impending uprising of criminals and thieves. In fact later we'd learn that the car had actually fueled the uprising because the whole process became quickly involved in much black market exchange linked to drug crimes and other up-and-coming crime lords put about by its manufacturer, SWK. An unnamed man who had roped more money and drugs and criminals into the whole thing than the town had had all together in its history. Wilson—a name people feared, respected, traded from ear to ear. People wanted to connect with him because they knew they'd strike it rich with his car venture. And what was once a hopeful, new page in the history of the city became a terrifying and dangerous game controlled by the one person who had like a Trojan horse taken the city by storm.

We were trying to take down Wilson—but we—I—never connected him with the Slade I knew and was also trying to bring to justice.

I never connected him to SM Wilson who'd lost an eye in 'Nam. But he had many faces. And even now as I uncover the truth about Slade's past I won't cease to be amazed. Especially when it came to the easy-going twenty-year-old who worked as a mechanic and come into the shop covered in oil and dirt but always bearing leftover pizza from a restaurant next-door to where he worked where he had been mooching food from the owner since he was probably my age.

There were a lot of things to wonder when it came to those faces—that mask…

There was glass everywhere but it wasn't that of the SWK. Drifting into robotic obedience I'd run the red light without even realizing it. A car pulling out to continue on to the side road to another town—and that was the kicker, that this person wasn't even going to the city and yet they had to deal with the city—hadn't had a second to react when our car even came into their line of vision, especially because the sound hadn't alerted them until Slade thought it would be cool to turn it back on to accent the crash, offset the quiet—maybe he was right. I didn't want to hear their screams and the sound of shattering glass, and twisting and bending and crunching metal and bones, the splatter of blood, as the Kevorkian smashed into the side, and, amazingly, flung it out to the side as if it were a ragdoll and roared forward, totally unscathed and amazingly without even the smallest lag. And when I'd pulled out of my safe-place, drawn by the sound of the engine and the crash muddling together in an all-encompassing terror, I slammed on the break, almost instinctively, but even then we were already yards away from the crash.

Considering the speed of the car, the abruptness at which I'd stopped, and the fact that I wasn't wearing a seatbelt—because really if you're going around running red lights you're probably not going to be the most concerned about safety—I should have been flung out of the car, and so should Slade. But again to further my amazement neither of use moved an inch from where we were sitting—my head didn't even bob forward or anything like that. As if we were totally unaffected by gravity outside—and maybe that was what was going on. Hell, if he could turn the sound of the engine off or do half of the other amazing little tricks he managed, he could probably defy gravity too. I wouldn't be surprised.

But I wished I had been flung from the vehicle and right to my death, so that I never had to think on what I had just done to the people in the car—who I believe I heard in a news report were a father and son traveling to go visit the grandmother in another town, before Slade turned the television off and told me to go to bed. The realization of what I had done even before then creeped up on me like a cold, unfriendly death and I sat there, shaking, my fingers stuck to the wheel like I'd super-glued them on there. I was just staring ahead of me, at the lights of the city, not allowing myself to look back because like a kid I was sure that if I just didn't look then it wouldn't be real, wouldn't be able to hurt me. But of course it did, anyway, because what I had done wasn't some pretend monster my imagination had made up to give me a cheap thrill, to create an unneeded conflict which could fuel some creativity in a kid—what I had done was very real, and very serious. Even if I hadn't looked I'd be damned.

And then it happened—something I hadn't done since the moment my first dad and my mom were taken from me.

I started crying.

And from there a slow progression of thoughts which my defenses couldn't keep from creeping in.

AN:

Hi everyone, I'm sorry I didn't update last night, ate a maraschino-cherry sundae and then found my chow-mien noodles and watched bad grandpa followed by (okay I gave in) the end, then spurred on by a picture I remember seeing of Robin as Christine Daae and Slade as the Phantom, mmm, those pairs are two ménage a trois I'd like to have ;) I watched the phantom of the opera for the twelfth time.

Oh you know what other ménage a trois would be fucking fantastic, I mean, okay, come on, let's have a little Starfire/Raven action, hells ya, I wish I was Robin when he saw her 6_6

But the point of this all is that if you want I'll update tonight. Um, yah, okay, gonna go try not to watch something that's gonna rape my childhood. Um, okay, shit, what is with the new PPG they just made? That's fucking disgusting.

~ILLHAVEABIGGYFRIESANDGIVEMESOMESHIT TODRINK!