Title: Fight or Flight
Author: Yami no Kaiba
Beta: Cosmicastaway / Greysnyper
Series: Animated Teen Titans
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: light Slade/Robin

Summary: He had been trained, rigorously, to where flight was no longer an option.
Warnings: Underage child molestation and bondage.
Disclaimers: The characters are totally not mine, don’t know who owns the animated versions. DC owned the original characters, I’m sure about that.
Notes: Based on the episode “Haunted”. I’m still unsure of what hallucinogen Slade would have used, but I have tracked down a chemical reagent that fits most of Robin’s symptoms here:

*---*---*---*---*

It was dark, and he was staring up at the ceiling, and wishing that the feeling that made his stomach tighten wasn’t guilt.

He had told a terrible, terrible lie. He’d told his friends that he believed them when they said Slade wasn’t real.

But Slade was. Robin was a trained detective. Chemistry was one of the subjects that he excelled in because chemicals were used far too often in his job. DNA tests, poison analysis, incendiary chemicals; the list went on.

There’d been a reason Cyborg’s initial scan hadn’t revealed anything. The reagent had by then already been absorbed and neutralized by Robin’s own immune system.

After he’d lied to his friends, he’d gone back to the basement, rebreather mask firmly in place and gotten his own sample to test. Cyborg’s analysis had been too oversimplified for Robin’s own comfort. He had wanted, *needed* to know what type of chemicals had been running through his system.

The results had been terrifying in their simplicity. The reagent had been a 70/30 concentration of acetylcholine and a strong, fast acting hallucinogen that he couldn’t quite identify.

Hallucinogen aside, the usage of acetylcholine had been unsettling. The massive influx had triggered the overproduction of epinephrine and norepinephrine on a scale so large that his system had nearly collapsed in self defense.

It was disturbing that his instincts would lead him to fight against his friends under duress. But that, at least, could be excused to his training which had left the option of flight in his sympathetic nervous system by the wayside long before he had started the team.

It was frightening that Slade could work the very chemistry of Robin’s body with such accuracy.

It was absolutely terrifying that the man could enter and leave the Tower undetected at will. Terrifying, not surprising. Slade was just that good.

Robin had been strapped down, Kevlar restraints designed to hold people of Starfire and Cyborg’s strength pressing him against the mattress and encircling his wrists and ankles tightly, leaving him no room to escape. His friends had been but a thick door away, shouting and talking about him in ways that made him angry and hurt and with a new sense of needing to get away.

“Alone again, Robin?” There he’d been, coming around from behind the sick bay’s partition curtain, the hateful man that kept on insisting that they were alike. “As long as I’m around, you’re never alone.”

The thought of shouting for help had passed his mind, only to be quickly tossed out. The others had not seen Slade the first time, nor the second time. Why would the third be any different?

So instead Robin concentrated on trying once again to escape from the restraints. The position his friends had unwittingly put him in was precarious, and even if they had done it with his best interests at heart, it left him wanting to berate them for their stupidity. They’d left him defenseless, open. Vulnerable.

Slade may have been an honorable man on some level, but he was self admittedly ruthless. It wasn’t a question of *if* he’d take advantage, only a question of *how much*.

“Relax, Robin.” The sound of that voice, smooth and calm, so close at the foot of the bed just *demanded* that he still his fruitless struggles and pay attention. “I promise. You won’t feel a thing.” Slade had raised his right hand and there had been a thin, almost straight device no longer then a steak knife in his hand, shaped reminiscently like vernier calipers only the prongs were more hooked inwards like a jagged ‘C’ and the length between the prongs winged back a bit.

As Slade moved forward, an energy arc started up between the prongs, the mattress dipping under Slade’s weight. The man loomed above him, knees planted on either side of his hips, left hand planted squarely on his chest and pushing him even further down into the mattress.

A tense silence transcended as that single slate gray eye narrowed and searched him. It was a familiar, unnerving sensation, so penetrating and utterly focused that Robin couldn’t help be just as intense in his return stare. So much in fact that it took a few seconds to register the feel of textured fabric moving in circles against the flesh of his right pectoral. Slade had slid his hand over to gain access to one of the ripped holes in Robin’s uniform.

He’d swallowed hard. “What-”

Petting turned into sharp pain as Slade pushed down in the center of the blossoming bruise. Robin let out a hiss of air through clenched teeth. “Well, at least not too much.”

Robin wanted to hit him, punch him across the face. The muscles of his arm tensed and coiled, but the movement died shortly after it was born as it was held in check by the restraints.

Slade’s eye strayed to Robin’s wrist. “I see they didn’t believe you.”

“My friends-”

Moving faster then a striking snake, Slade’s mask dominated Robin’s vision and his world was narrowed to the colors of black, copper, and slate. “Are they really your friends? Do friends harm their injured fellows?” Closer, and Robin could feel the breath caress his skin and see that gray eye narrow. “Do people threaten their friends?”

“I-” Guilt twisted his insides at the last question, as his mind raced and tripped and groped for a suitable answer. None came.

Several moments of intense silence passed between them, before Slade slowly leaned back. “How many chances will they give you, Robin, before they wipe their hands of you?”

A question he himself had asked many a night.

A question Robin feared the answer to being ‘no more’.

Gloved fingers caressed bruised skin before moving to brush against Robin’s slightly parted lips. An unknown, yet familiar scent caused him to sneeze.

A female shout from outside the room broke through the silence.

Slade slipped off the bed to stand beside it once more. “As interesting as this conversation is, however, it is not the reason I’m here.” A raised hand and the energy wielding implement was once again in Robin’s line of sight. “Your teammates interrupted our little reunion, Robin. It seems only right to finish it.”

As Slade loomed over him once again, Robin closed his eyes in helpless resignation. Tied down, he could not retaliate against whatever Slade wished to do.

Slade, however evil, however ruthless, was an honorable man on some level. So it should not have been as surprising as it had been for the man to cut through Robin’s restraints. The Kevlar had been sliced through by the bizarre energy weapon like a scalpel easing through skin tissues.

Robin had, of course, thanked Slade by trying to punch him in the face. Slade had, of course, used Robin’s momentum to throw him into the air.

Robin, being the acrobat that he is, had snagged the grill on the cooling/heating vent.

The rest of the encounter had proceeded in a whirlwind hallucination. It figured that the back of Slade’s glove had been carrying a coating of the reagent.

It also figured that he’d have to lie to his friends. Trying to convince them once of what he’d seen had been enough to make sure he didn’t try again.

Telling them he’d seen Slade, when Cyborg had given him an easy out, would most likely result in only more restraints.

And like any other bird, Robin valued freedom most of all.

--Fin.