Forgotten Bonds

Eleven - A Change in Discipline

October 12th, 2008. Sunday, 7:45 pm. 

The wait was terrible. Dick was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands clasped nervously in his lap; his iPod nearly crushed in between them. He couldn't hold his legs still as he waited. 

And waited. 

Why couldn't Slade just hurry it up? Just beat the crap out of him and be done with it already. This was a whole new level of torture – the waiting, the uncertainty, the silence. 

Dick was going insane. 

Why can't he just hurry up? Why did Wintergreen stop him? What was so important that it couldn't wait until after Slade battered me around? 

Dick fidgeted on the edge of his bed, his hands wringing and pulling the skin. 

Hopelessness began to settle in the pit of Dick's stomach. It washed over him in a terribly powerful wave. He clenched his teeth and swallowed hard; trying to hold back his emotions. He couldn't cry. He wouldn't cry. Not until after Slade was done with him. He refused to cry in front of Slade any more. He was tired of crying – tired showing his weakness before his most hated enemy. He had cried in front of Slade twice now. No more. No matter how much pain the man inflicted on him; he would remain strong. 

Before all this nonsense with Slade, Dick hadn't cried in two years. Not since he fought with Bruce and then ran away to go out on his own – prove that he was strong enough for the job of a vigilante. But, after he had arrived in Jump City, after one week had passed, he cried. 

Cried for the fact that Bruce wasn't going to come after him. 

No, his pride had been too strong for that – just like Dick's. So, Dick accepted it, swallowed his tears, and moved on. There was nothing else he could do. He abandoned his dual identity and fully assumed the role of Robin. 

He never cried again after that. 

But ever since Slade unmasked him, Dick found his emotions far more uncontrollable. Was it because Dick was far more vulnerable than the strong, powerful Robin? It was as if all the tears he had collected during the two dry years wanted to spring forth and flood everything. 

He was beginning to drown in his emotions. 

While the capture itself was horrible and the beatings painful, what was unbearable was the solitude. Dick was lonely – painfully, utterly lonely. The silence was terrible – although it had gotten better ever since Slade let him have his iPod. But the human silence was weird to him. He had grown so used to Titans Tower. Cyborg and Beast Boy fighting over the TV remote, Raven demanding that they shut up, or Starfire humming happily while cooking her awful alien foods in the kitchen. 

There was something always going on; never a quiet or dull moment in the Tower. 

But the solitude and silence in Slade's haunt were making Dick lonely beyond anything he could have ever imagined. He missed Cyborg and Beast Boy's fighting. He missed Raven's monotone, sarcastic talking. He missed Starfire's kind and uplifting, yet backwards English. 

Dick lifted his iPod up and turned it on; swiping his passcode in with his fingers. He quickly brought up his favorite photo of the group of them. Dick was in the middle as Robin with Cyborg on the right; his hand ruffling his hair. Beast Boy was sprawled at their feet on his side with a cocky smirk on his face, holding up two fingers in a peace sign. Starfire was squeezed on the other side of Robin, looking extremely happy while Raven was next to her looking bored out of her wits, although Dick could see a slight lift of her lips in the attempt to smile.