What happened to me could have, really, happened to anyone. I was strong and I was human, and that was, prominently, what he wanted—someone like him. He lingered in my life for years, and when I would not do as he asked he turned to someone else—but when that did not work out, again I found myself the object of his obsession. Not that that obsession had ever really left, because I found everything he did was centered around me and that cause in regards to what he wanted, and in the coming days, there would be no deviation to make me question his standards.

Slade Wilson was a war hungry assassin before coming to Jump City; a quietness loomed over the city like an anticipatory calm before the storm when he was not around, and up until then things had been pretty easy for us Titans. We threw petty criminals in jail for robbery but had never faced enemies like the one anticipated in that calm, who was bent on splitting apart and ruining lives and seemed, really, not to care. More than an anti-hero, Slade was a villain and he was, arguably, the first we had ever really seen when it came to our careers as crime fighters.

Mostly I remember in those early days with Slade, fresh out of the war in Vietnam, a practiced nature about him that was really not to be expected, though I only found that he practiced it around me. Hesitant to harm me and not willing to let me perish, even going so far as to save me on more than one occasion, Slade became the object of my brain in the years even after he'd met his end, and has been, and probably always will be, as I continue to wonder just what it is about me that makes him put aside all of those villainous qualities and strive for something less black and white—just what is it that, ultimately, makes me any different from my friends? Terra, the poor, stupid teenager who fell into his trap only to be ultimately rejected and regretted as a replacement apprentice, as Slade would tell me later? What made me special? Again, I suppose it could have been anyone who fell into his line of sight and stayed there, but what, honestly, drove me into a state of almost insanity was the idea that I appeared to be some "good little boy" as Professor Chang had taken to calling me—the perfect apprentice. Not defying modesty, yet, I realized I was the object of almost every villain and hero's intentions.

Slade was not the first, and he was not the last, and again—probably will not be. From early offers to join HIVE academy to summons to join the Brotherhood of Evil before everyone started to hate me for my meddling, it seemed that I appeared fresh on the market and was quite popular throughout the city, but the world, also; how the Brotherhood of Evil found out about me, I will probably never know, and don't care much. Of course I can't say that it isn't flattering, sometimes, to be called the "King" when your enemies are out for your entire team, and I can't deny that I liked the idea of all these villains begging me to join them, wanting me—but of course, it never has ceased to anger me. I like recognition but hate, more than anything, the idea that some people can't seem to grasp I don't work for people anymore, and never will. My fight for independence is ever-lasting, it seems some days, and if it truly ever ends it will be solely thanks to some tactical partnership I make just to shut everyone up. It also might be due to the fact that out of all people, I like working with my friends—and I don't need a mentor or someone older to help me along, or at least that is what I've convinced myself ultimately after years of fighting.

This is probably what made Slade very grotesque to me, looking back, in those early days when he was at his most gentle and probably spent more time talking to me when we met than he did throwing punches my way; I didn't like how, unlike me, my friends were a commodity and a reassurance for my existence with him, something he could use against me. I didn't like how, unlike me, their lives were so easily thrown away—how, my best friend, Beast Boy, would become Slade's urging to affirm Terra's commitment to him by driving a spike of rock through his heart and ultimately ending him. This was where the line is drawn and I don't any longer begin to enjoy secretly the favoritism; if it gets others in trouble or is so blatant and uncaring then it is something I want no part in, and I think that if Terra had driven that stake through his body it would have been the last the world had seen of any of the three of us in the cavern: I could have gone down fighting the two of them and would have been content to do so to make them pay. Because ultimately, my friends are the only family I have and they are the only things I love in this world—and just like if a bully on the playground were to beat up your brother or sister but leave you alone or ask if you wanted to play football with them, you'd say, "Hell no!" and probably beat their ass if it was convenient.

Terra, looking back, probably embodied that mentality of sibling/family betrayal, and became one of the reasons that I began to dislike her as much as I did. The Titans and I were good for joking but I often felt angered when Cyborg would tease me about how I was "jealous" of her, even though I knew he didn't understand how I really felt, especially when it came to Slade and what she had done in his name. Beast Boy one day told him to shut it when he was insinuating that was probably why I was able to beat her as hard as I did, and I knew that he, too, really understood this mentality. The fact was, Terra had betrayed us; she had allowed Slade to single her out because of some quality that was appealing to him and use it against us. Raven, Starfire, and Cyborg might not understand, but Beast Boy and I did, and we were really bonded in that way.

Beast Boy and I really did become best friends after the incident with Terra. While we did not talk about her much, we spent a lot of time together and tended to gravitate toward one another, especially in battle—and I realized that we both really had the other's back. It was odd and sometimes it was hard to understand how something so strange and so unfortunate could bring us together the way it did, but I guess it helps to see past her betrayal and onto something brighter. Never explicitly stated, again, but we both knew we had formed this bond and that it set us apart from everyone else; and I was well aware that, no matter the issue of time, to break it would be impressive. I felt that Slade and Terra's memory would always linger in our lives, and I knew he felt it, too.

In the earliest stages, I think there had always been at least a little animosity remaining within our relationship; I think that, while we were still always so close, being of course the first and founding members of the Titans, and having ties that went back into the days when he was still with the Doom Patrol being similarly connected in this way, the Red X incident seemed to set him thoroughly off course in his thinking and beliefs; he spent the next few days looking at me coldly, but not necessarily meanly, just without understanding, as his eyes repeated the question they had all voiced but he had nagged furiously, with a much more personal adaption—why didn't you tell me? I'm your best friend!

I would apologize to him, and by the next weekend he had once again warmed up to me and invited me to go to a video game convention with he and Cyborg (bro-time, as they were accustomed to calling it); and of course I was still brooding over my failure to capture Slade but was willing to do anything to regain Beast Boy's love.

However it would seem we would get even very quickly after this brief period of time where Slade was not seen and mostly the only criminals we faced were petty thieves—one of the most pathetic was robbing a fast-food joint—and vandalists, like the one we had caught spray painting his name beneath the cement bridge at the pier, who, when we reprimanded him, apologized and asked that we take him to jail so that he could have a nice place to sleep—and frankly these types of "missions," if they could even be called that, never failed to wear us down, even more so than the regular criminals who actually posed some threat because we felt bad for them. If it had been any other criminal I might have actually been glad that we had something else to deal with than homeless people who more than anything wanted a bed and a hot meal or thieves who risked their freedom for forty-five dollars—but this criminal, Slade, was equally as troubling, and what he did was, also, equally troubling in its nature.

Being Slade's apprentice was a very odd thing for me to experience. And something that once began as a simple temptation during our earliest, brightest times became a dark, grotesque thing which neither the Titans or I wanted ever again to revisit—this thing ultimately became a sort of equalizer of emotions between Beast Boy and I, because it would be lying if I were to say it didn't hurt me when he looked at me with narrowed eyes when we fought, cracked his knuckles and exclaimed that there was nothing to talk about between us. I had wondered, briefly when I returned to Slade's hideout, if the Titans had given up on me as I recalled this and Starfire's words about how I had become evil. The progression of emotions became strange because when I returned to the fort I was met with a quite soft side of Slade, almost compassionate and adoring in the way he was gushing—of course not so strongly acted as it is put—about how I had made him proud. It made me feel uncertain because ultimately, these words he gave me were the softest I had heard in a while and they almost proved to be comforting.

I remember it like it was yesterday:

Walking back into the darkness of that place I was feeling shaken and strange; I had, for the briefest period of time, and would be further assured by his words in this, fallen into a period of passiveness where it did not matter whether or not I worked for him, or hurt my friends. I remembered as he called me his boy and it had, strangely, lulled me into a state of total obedience wherein I was so far-gone that I was easily able to take down the remaining four Titans like I did, and I lingered here, still, briefly as I entered. Like Terra, perhaps shaping her future image, in those few moments I lingered in a state of uncaringness—and yet I would never, never fall into an attitude of enjoyment about what I did—but it would not be fair to say that ultimately, I didn't feel some odd security about it; the idea of working for Slade had seemed in those moments to be perhaps the best thing for me and maybe in those moments I wasn't totally thinking about getting out anymore. I presented the device I had stolen after I left the roof to him passively, tiredly.

He was proud of me, and I could tell that immediately, just by the way he looked at me; the glimmer of that one white sliver inside the mask shone with the hopefulness, dimmed in his own special way of interpreting emotions, of our future together that he seemed to be assured by by my most recent actions against my friends; and I was almost certain that he, too, was nothing less than completely anticipating my servitude to him forever, for years, decades, as long as it took, like I seemed to be then. When he took the device out of my hands I felt his gloves smooth over my fingers, caressing them, in an almost thankful fashion which might have allowed me to linger here in this strange and unlikely, totally unfitting state much longer.

"You've made me proud, my apprentice," he said to me. "You see that it is not so hard to please me."

"Yes," I said, simply, looking not at him but at the screens behind him. They loomed like ominous shadows upon a haunted and creaking wall.

"That's my boy." Again, possessive—and again we were both sharing reassurance, his perhaps more comforting than my own would be, that I now belonged to him and would be his forever, until the day I died. I tried to block out images of my life as it progressed by his side and blurred my eyes so that I looked into dull and uncaring grayness, a willful protest and denial. And what might have once threw me into a fit of rage if it had been spoken upon me in any other time now slipped in one ear and out the other as I adapted this tone of passive nothingness—and even the looming shadows could do nothing. But I think it was only when the initial shock of what I had done shrunk into calmness, the knowledge gaining as adrenaline relapsed, that I was thrown back into reality and fighting wakefulness, and he gave it the perfect opportunity: "Now why don't you go rest, Robin?—You've earned it, and I'm sure you must be tired. I'll wake you up in a few hours when it's night again."

I would go to the bedroom—a simple thing he had conceived up for me, with only a bed, a closet, and a few stray chairs and bolted lights to the wall—and I would, in fact, lay down with the intent to do what he said and to rest; I would remove my boots and my utility belt and armor and would get under the covers and I would almost fall asleep. But the words hit me, suddenly and out of nowhere to make my eyes jerk open and stare wildly into darkness, pulsating with the new energy of this knowledge. The words "night" and "hours" stood out prominently in my mind and I still do not, to be honest, completely understand why, but they agitated me beyond any comprehension. Maybe it was the understanding of what that implicated—night being our time for crime and thieving—but what it did mainly was fill me with a seemingly unquenchable urge to rebel, the words becoming literal images inside my mind and seeming to shock me awake and back into the present, looming with the reality of my life and what would inevitably become of me if I were to be the good boy he wanted me to be. So this is when I would attack him—of course almost hopelessly, because ultimately it would accomplish so little—but he seemed resigned, to say the least—as if the remembrance of my previous obedience now clashed so harshly with the new demeanor I presented to him he became overcome with the fatigue of simply trying to understand where, exactly, I stood.

"Why do you fight me?" he would ask in an interlude after he had managed to kick me off of him and we balanced upon turning cogs and gears and our fighting was cloaked by an eerie and frankly frightening fog which only seemed to prolong the horror of hopelessness of it all, the looming knowledge and revoked rebellion denying the prevalent darkness. He walked up to me, where I had shifted into a ready fighting stance, my expression pulled into a pouty scowl, stubbornness reigning. "Is it that you don't understand what I have done for you, Robin?"

Threaten to kill my friends if I don't obey? In the cogs and gears my words became like a cry through a stereo, auto-tuned in this far away, desperate and hazy quality; they were words that encompassed everything I felt and they were expressive in my pain but seemed almost not to belong to my body, somehow. I had probably, in that moment, to further the angst and agony I felt prevalently, and to drive that strange tune further on, been thinking of Starfire, and what she had said to me—which upon reflection, he might have sensed.

"They're not your friends anymore," he said to me, again, which ignited more horrid images within my mind to further fuel rebellion. I might have been wondering how he could have said something like that—something so insensitive and stupid. How could a person just forget the people they'd known and lived with for years? How could anyone forget a bond like that—Beast Boy? Raven? Starfire? Cyborg? We weren't far into our travels together, no, not yet—but I think that I could sense, above everything else, these connections which were to be formed—that, I had now a new idea of the future which only included by friends and I together in our tower doing what we loved. Slade was nowhere in that daydream and his presence now stoked a fire of anger burning within me, especially considering the fact that, as I would remember then, I had actually been complacent and obedient at the expense of my friends—and never again did I want any part of that, either.

"You don't know anything, Slade."

He approached me and unconsciously I was stepping away from him even in my anger, because what he represented seemed to be greater or more powerful than however I'd been riled up—into a place where the cogs seemed to loom and their sound was so loud and booming that they seemed inescapable until Slade spoke, like the whole experience was encompassed entirely by his entity. I felt high and confused, felt like I was wandering through Mad Mod's fun house or being seduced by Starfire's unforgettable sister. It was the first time I had, since arriving at Slade's, actually felt totally uncertain about everything I stood for, signaled only by that one single eye as it looked at me, narrowed and gleaming, seeming to say everything he would voice all in its all-knowing gaze. I think he fed off that confusion, ultimately; I think it really fueled him into the confidence I did not have and helped him to regain any dominance he might have lost in the fight. I was weak and like an animal he loomed over me; gripping my face with his hands, a post-Terra apprentice, the same fool, I was helpless again—and like Terra with confusion and uncertainty that would always assure this. Like Terra anger swiftly left me here, and did not turn back.

"Dear child, I know more than you think." The thick and strong fingers caressed my skin and wandered through my hair, briefly. "I know more about your friends, and I know more about you than you think."

—Let go

"I know what they've done—and I know what you've done."

—Stop

"I know how they judge you. I know the weight you carry—and how you're judged if you drop anything."

—STOP

"Your drive to save them becomes what they damn you for!"

—SHUT UP

"And even now they'd rather just drag you off to jail than try to save you!"

—Stop—Please stop Slade!

"They don't care, Robin!"

These words, ultimately, were refereeing—and suddenly I knew how betrayal felt. I knew how Beast Boy had felt when I had posed as the Red X and done what I had, at the time, thought was right, and thought would save my team, ultimately—but then, I seemed little to care, but sadly these words were ringing true within my mind and that, in itself, was crippling. I sunk into Slade's arms, on the verge of tears but not yet crying, and my eyes dry, slumped over and looking at my boots, which gleamed at me like the eye or the gears in the low light, where everything seemed to shine and take on a new life and personality, wicked animation. I felt his arms begin to slightly tighten around me, and I remember thinking, vaguely, dizzily Is he hugging me? Thoughts of forever-ness where he was looming like the screens, and simultaneously, returned to my mind and stayed there as I felt his hands going around to the back of my head and sort of caressing there, with the fingers only very slightly pushing through the locks of hair as if to soothe me, but it only furthered my confusion and I felt myself growing dizzier, felt myself relating and remembering how a sparring session with Blackfire lead to her against me, rubbing her body on mine and kissing me—and how I had kissed back. Betrayal seemed to reign then, in all forms, and nothing was certain so—why shouldn't I give into Slade?

I might have, but the Titans burst in through the door then and I found myself reinstilled with the belief and overly prevalent need to rebel and to do what I had convinced myself I believed in so thoroughly, doing what was right and pushing aside the feelings of upset and ignoring the pain that came from the realization that what Slade had said rang true; the fact was, I still couldn't tell you how, exactly, I ended up getting out of his grasp because when it comes down to it, confusion had pushed me into a state of vacuity of uncertainty that might have pushed me either way, but I can affirm that, ultimately, had the Titans not come in through that door, there might never had been a Terra, and there might never have been an end. Who knew?—but that's a hard realization too, upon present reflection.

Did it matter?—I would ask myself this frequently in the coming days. To push away remembrance of what Slade had said I would tell myself that what I had done, to disobey Slade and escape his grasp, was ultimately right because nothing could justify my being a criminal. I used this realization to help repair the relationship between the Titans and myself in the coming weeks after the incident, but found myself somehow overly cold towards Starfire and Beast Boy, who, in my eyes, seemed to be the worst offenders upon judging my character during that strange dark time. I gravitated towards Cyborg, who had been so completely unwilling to hurt me that for a while we seemed to become best friends, and I talked very seldom to any of the others, feeling that, of all of them, he had not betrayed me. This was a painful time, and so here's where I thank Slade, and Terra: if it were not for their stupid façade and corresponding actions, I probably would not feel the way I do about my teammates now. I would not love Starfire the way I did; would not love Raven the way I did; and I would not love Beast Boy the way I did. True love and obsession, devotion and passion (because my unfaithfulness to Starfire did not end with Blackfire), and brotherhood, respectively. Fighting her together to bring her back to our side, the world of good, and pouring out all of our energy into the same solid and holy cause, seemed to similarly bring us back together, as well. I think ultimately, we realized after meeting the girl Terra that when it came to something like betrayal, things were not so cut and dried and to bring about hatred when it came to those instances could only resolve to create pain—so we moved on, and left all animosity at the base of Terra's statue.

It's probably fair to say that our dabbling in the evils of Raven's past was where, really, we all realized just how important we were to one another and where, ultimately, we realized that no matter the challenges that came about for each of our fellow friends, there would be no separating us. Ideas of Nightwing, a caged circus animal, the insane asylum, and the outlet-dependent robot faded. We were more motivated than ever to stick together because we knew that if we had been meant to be broken up, it would have happened—that, if we could survive Slade, Brother Blood, Satan's equal Trigon, and the Brotherhood of Evil and still be best friends over everything else, then it seemed fates favored our group's completeness. We all spent more time with one another and made more of an effort to understand the lives that each of us led—and while simplicity was standard for Cyborg and Beast Boy, it could not be said for Raven and Starfire, who became the very conflict of my life especially in the aftermath of Raven's father's coming: this, what ended the era of unity within us and which began the times of secrecy and deception, uncertainty, and ideas of betrayal, all shrouded in mystery of what was right and wrong and further encouraged the line might be stepped over. These were strange and unfortunate times.

Raven and I spent many a time meditating in her bedroom, where candles set a mood used to slip into trances or worlds through mirrors. We read spell books by their light and in an effort to understand her I often participated in the rituals included in their thickness. On one night, it was very dark outside and the only lights were, as typically, cast from dripping white candles decorating her dresser. The smell of pine, copal, tobacco, musk, sage, and balsam dominated the room, spreading from the small dishes in which she burned the incense, and we were made lightheaded by its quantity and its invasive presence which we could not ignore. She laid down within a circle of candles outlining a pentacle, meaning to repeat words for a ritual we had planned to participate which would supposedly cleanse any negative energy from the body, which she was especially concerned about in the aftermath of the end—and yet the ritual would never actually happen.

"Okay, Robin," she had murmured, her eyes closed. "The incantation, go ahead."

But I didn't. I was staring at her half naked body and I was trembling; the pale skin glowed like the eye in the darkness and called to me in the low, romantic light, seeming to beg me to run my hands along it, and to then be lost in beautiful stupor with her and her body all to myself. I could see every detail, every curve, just exposed enough to arouse me—enough to make this ritual, one perhaps more important than we could imagine, seem irrelevant. Instincts would take over as this stupor consumed my mind; adrenalin and arousal drew me into a compliance with what was not right just as they had to Slade. Instead of repeating the incantation to cleanse her of impurities brought about by evil, I made us dabble in it further when I crawled into the pentacle. Candles flared around us as I sat down beside her and looked down upon her, and she opened her eyes to meet my gaze.

For a moment, we stayed like this, speaking through our eyes; in hers I understood everything and she understood it all in mine. We knew what we wanted and did not hesitate. We fell into a kiss which progressed swiftly into something much worse, something I regret today solely because of my morals, because of this looming idea of betrayal we had tried so hard to dispel, because of Starfire—even though, to this day, I dream of that night and realize that the pleasure of that night will most likely never be felt again, which draws the life from my very soul and makes me crave it that much more. It was unfortunate, for both of us—because we both had people we were not supposed to so easily let down in the theme of the lingering idea we little understood but hated all the same.

One day Beast Boy and I (trying to escape these who we seemed to need to avoid, about betrayal), only a few weeks after returning from Paris, were walking about the city in a rather removed fashion. Beast Boy's tale of the Slade robot had us all, undoubtedly, on edge and we were very hesitant to let our guard down (even though it was rumored that Slade had been jailed outside America [in France, was what I was told] for selling deadly highly illegal weapons on the black market, but of course we didn't quite believe this), and maybe it seemed to us that if we were seen patrolling the streets Slade would be less likely to strike if he did, indeed, have that intention because he saw we were ready for him—but somehow we seemed to know that if he wanted to act, he would, whether we were there or not. The issue was, however—we could never have, in a million years, guessed how we would meet him this time. We were only driven by the knowledge that Slade was still out there and that things were too quiet, and that, if Beast Boy was any indication, he had us on his mind; and it would be a lie to say we weren't concerned for what he might do, or be doing in the brief period of silence between the Brotherhood of Evil and Slade's reentering of our lives. We were on the lookout for the sleek metal suit and the mask in all its glory, shining at us in the bright sunlight of that day that encompassed Jump City. We expected to see him lurking within the half-done structure of the new office complexes, watching us from afar, but we didn't.

We couldn't have guessed in a million years.

It could have happened to anyone, of course. It be courted by a persistent suitor is more common of a happening than one might think. But Slade's drive to have me as his own, the perfect apprentice, would reach new levels of determinedness and insanity which were almost inconceivable—that is, the things he did to get what he wanted further went beyond implanting my friends with probes or constantly sending villains to come and try their hand at us; in this day and age, what he would do would be so new and unpredictable that even I could not protect myself from it, because no longer was this the Slade that wouldn't be caught dead doing this or that—this was the Slade who seemed not to care any longer what image he presented and did what he could to gain what he so desperately needed. He felt his time was running out and he had little left to lose, but with needs that were far greater than a normal, sane human's and coordinating opportunities just dangling easily before his eyes, there was so much to be had, and I would realize this in the coming days.

Half of the office complexes had been completed. One of the buildings served solely as a structure for a boring and computer-oriented workplace, but the other building that had been resurrected, the one on the end, hosted a variety of new shops that were already open for business. When the streets were still very quiet and without criminal activity and it was midday, when there was the bustling of workers and citizens going about their daily routines and the opportunity for crime was less prevalent because of witnesses and unwanted casualties, Beast Boy and I decided to take a look around in the office complexes. He wanted badly to see if there was a new candy store because he was still missing his peanut butter squares, and I wanted nothing more than to participate in an activity that could encompass the majority of our conversations because I was still left in cold, regretful pain at what I had done to the girl he had admitted to me on one of our outings to liking—after she had comforted him when Terra refused to acknowledge him or their past together. I felt awful and in turn was hesitant to speak much to him, but—I felt, somehow, that Beast Boy was uneasy, too, because he was not himself and hadn't been lately, and he seemed to want more than anything to steer away from Cyborg and Starfire and Raven, though he had adapted an odd tone with me, too, not one that was necessarily cold but which was regretful, sad, and skirting. He seemed uncertain about everything and I wondered if like myself, there wasn't something he was also hiding that he regretted; but in these silly activities that we made encompass our lives we resided in this denial and secrecy together and let it boil between us seemingly unnoticed: a façade, we did what we needed to to keep Nightwing, the caged circus animal, outlet-dependent robot, and asylum Raven from surfacing for real.

But what was more—we never talked of Slade. Never. Our understanding of what we did, like that day, was never spoken. We wanted to avoid him but seemed, always, to dabble in the remembrance of what he had done and trippy ideas about what he might do to push us into paranoia—as if, ultimately, it all came back to keeping the team together and what we did was little more than a façade to pretend we still stood for something. We were weak again and we were hardly crime fighters any longer, but ultimately everything we would do came back to Slade and his image, the lingering eye that haunted our existence. And I would realize that, when it came down to it, Slade's presence in our lives, as it would come also, was more deeply rooted and internal than we believed, and that we were weaker than we had convinced ourselves.

We couldn't keep out of evil for long; and having all dabbled, the line between betrayal and the simple idea of life choices was more blurred than ever, and would, in the coming days become even more blurred, especially for myself—almost erased.

A shaky start. A stronger center—a beautiful exertion of power in unity. A beautiful start to the crumbling era. Now—Slade.

"You think there's a candy store in here?" I asked, looking at one of the kiosks where there was a map of the mini-mall that had been established in the structure. It was dimly lit, dark, and there were no windows. It was depressing, really, more than anything.

"There's a food court," he said, and grinned. "Maybe they have tofu."

"You just ate," I said, and returned the grin. Façade.

"Yeah, but I'm always in the mood for more tofu, dude. Come on," he said, laughing, and ran off in the direction of the food court. The mall (though it looked more like a parking garage) was surprisingly empty, and his boots echoed as they tapped down the hallway rapidly with the promise of fake meat. I followed him, with what I'm sure was a sad smile taking my face—faced with what I had betrayed, again and again.

When I caught up to him I saw that he had stopped in front of one of the stores on the way to the food court. It was an antique store; the windows, what had caught Beast Boy's eye, were filled with some of the various junk-offerings it held. Musty looking and dark like the rest of the mall, the sign above the store simply said ANTIQUES. It was obviously very makeshift and did not, under any circumstances, look like a place where one might want to enter in such a state of desertion especially; especially considering that what had caught Beast Boy's eyes, upon closer inspection, was the morbid memorabilia that served as those junk offerings: a coffin, various things in a jar which might have once been alive, weapons, grotesque pictures, and horrible carved statues of demons.

"Dude, cool!" he said, looking at the windows of the store. "This is like the place Cyborg got that pie!"

I tilted my head at him, because not under any circumstances did I expect Beast Boy to be interested in place like this, but was smiling. "Um, yeah, don't think we need any more of that pie, Beast Boy."

"Well then let's go see what's in those jars—maybe they got the Brain!" He laughed grabbed my arm and was already pulling me into the antique store. I was suddenly filled with the notion that he was drawn to it, because his eyes were wide and wild, staring at the letters above the store as he pulled me inside—and I didn't understand, until I looked where he did, too. It was very strange. ANTIQUES called to me, its letters standing out in my mind like "dark" and "hours." Judgment seemed to falter and fail again; a place which, under any normal circumstances, might have looked shady, a place for crime, quickly became the entirety of my life in that moment as the concept spelled itself out in front of my eyes repeatedly. ANTIQUES. What was so hypnotic about the sign, I don't know; and yet that word would linger in my mind even when we were gone and things were learned, knowledge gained. I seemed to become lost in those strong letters, like I would within the store; and soon like the letters this would become a place of stupor and denial, eraser of the line.

Inside there were two men standing at the counter. They were both smoking thick cigars. One of them, the one in front of the counter, a customer, probably, looked almost like a mobster, even though he was very thin, lanky almost. He wore a large hat and a coat that was long and concealing even in the heat of that day and within the mall, with polished shoes and long black pants. The other, behind the counter, looked like a Civil War general and a Patriot and a CIA-style assassin all at once. His coat had a lot of silver buttons down its length (which went almost all the way down to his knees), but it was unbuttoned and hung open to reveal a dull colored vest and a navy undershirt; his arms were covered with long black gloves, and he wore plain black jeans and boots. A gleaming silver utility belt like my own defined a thin waist, and a silver strap, meant to hold a gun, became a sash around his muscled torso.

"Enjoy that," he said, a voice deep and calm and just very slightly accented. His brown hair fell away from his face as he looked away from the small bag he pushed in the direction of the mobster. His striking gray eye gleamed in the low lighting. Over the place where the other should have been, there was a scarf tied across his face to cover it.

"Thanks, brother," said the mobster quietly, and left so quickly he bumped into me on his way out, and he was gone before I could question what I had just witnessed, let alone get a good look at the mobster, but it wouldn't have mattered.

The eye—while Beast Boy was examining the jar, I stared into that one eye and my gaze did not leave. It was met, also, and quickly. A smile took up the man's face, and made the eye gleam further.

"Hello, Robin. Long time no see."

Author's note:

Coke on her black skin make her striped like a zebra-I call that jungle fever. Uh. Girl your loooooooveeeeeeeeee is my scripture. Oh my god, I can't stop listening to this song. It's so freaking amazing.

ANYWAY, ahem, I don't know about this one, I wrote it I guess to see if I could be more light on paragraph length and I think I did pretty good, but I don't know about the story. Hells yeah though, it's Friday and I am so high. Oh my god. Seriously like I listened to that song the whole freaking time I wrote this.

THERE'S NO CHURCH IN THE WILD, and if you haven't heard this song, then you are truly depraving your ears.

ANYWAY ahem, I hope you enjoyed this, let me know what you think if you want, or don't, whatever works, JUST LISTEN TO THIS DAMN SONG, GODDAMMIT!

~Rick

Oh wait I made up some lyrics on what I think about Terra and Slade in regards to Robin. This is another freaking cool song cause there's two hot girls (troll face insert) Only way it could be better is if Zak Bagans from ghost adventures showed up (troll face)

Ahem

Robin's nicki m weezey f baby man fuck Slade and his lady gunbutta cause she shady now which bitch want it, cause that bitch get it, Robin gave him to you bitch, don't fucking forget it! Robin just went through a break up but it's okay he got his cake up.

Not even hama' can touch this!

OH SHA-ZING! WASNT THAT AWESOME? (go listen to that song it is so fucking awesome especially if you ever want to beat up Terra after like watching season two (troll face))

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOD

Oh by the way, quote of the day ahem "A sh-t. It's like if Alex TrebeK, had a picture of a giraffe, in his ass, during an earthquake."

~RICKMORANIS