The Justice League called him Robin. The Young Justice, their little bird. Dick Grayson, ward of Batman, they said. Strong. Cunning. He cracked jokes, hid a bad childhood behind a smirk, but he *was* strong. Always.
Now, three years after it went wrong, after the mission where everything shattered, they thought he was gone. They’d been told he was a casualty, a failure. They’d searched, of course. For three years, they’d torn through every shadow, every lead, every whisper of a rumor. Then, they’d stopped. Accepted the silence. Accepted he was dead.
Except he wasn’t.
He’d woken up to a cold steel table, the acrid tang of chemicals burning in his lungs. He’d woken up to Deathstroke. Not as a prisoner, not as a threat to be neutralized. As a project. A failure to be *fixed*.
The first few weeks were just… tests. Endurance. Reflexes. How far he could push his body before it broke. Then came the serum. A cocktail of rage and desperation, tailored to amplify every skill, every instinct, every buried trauma. It made him faster, stronger, more lethal. It also made him compliant.
He hadn’t realized how far he'd fallen until the first time he tasted his own blood, the metallic tang of it mixing with the chemical burn. The pain had been a dull throb at first, but it escalated quickly, until he was screaming and begging Deathstroke to stop. He had been forced to undergo rigorous training sessions, the serum coursing through his veins. He was no longer a bird soaring in the sky, but a caged one, with broken wings.
He escaped, eventually. Not through skill or cunning, but through sheer, animalistic desperation. The last dose of serum had overloaded his system, sending him spiraling into a fugue state. He’d stumbled through the corridors, fueled by adrenaline and blind terror, until he found a maintenance hatch leading to the outside. He didn’t remember much after that. Just the cold night air, the taste of freedom, and the gnawing realization that something fundamental had been taken from him.
Now, he walked through the halls of the Mountain, guided by a memory that wasn’t his own, a memory that throbbed with a cold, internal light. He hadn’t told them about the blindness. Not yet. He didn’t want to see their faces when they realized what Deathstroke had done to him.
He felt his way to the common room, his fingers tracing the familiar contours of the furniture. The scent of stale pizza and teenage angst filled his nostrils. He stopped near the couch, his fingers hovering just above the worn fabric.
“Dick?” Superboy’s voice was rough, laced with disbelief. “Is that… you?”
He didn’t answer. Not yet. He just let them see him, let them see the shadow of a boy they’d mourned for three years, a boy who had been broken and rebuilt into something… else.
He felt Superboy’s arms wrap around him, clumsy and hesitant. He felt the tremor of his touch. He didn’t respond, just stood there, letting the boy hold him. He was a stranger now, a ghost.
“What did he do to you?” Superboy whispered, his voice choked with emotion.
He finally spoke, his voice raspy and unfamiliar, like a rusted hinge. “He made me into a weapon.”
He felt Superboy stiffen in his embrace. He could feel the boy's confusion, the fear that was building up.
“He’s coming,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless. “Deathstroke wants me back. And he doesn't care how much he has to destroy to get Renegade.”