Forgotten Bonds

Five - A Senior Moment

September 18th, 2008. Thursday, 9:21 pm. 

Robin slammed against the floor; stars bursting in his eyes. He struggled against the hold on his arm that had it twisted behind his back. After a moment, his arm was released. Robin curled his hurting arm beneath his stomach, allowing himself to rest his sweaty face against the cold, hard concrete floor. 

"How many times do I have to tell you?" demanded Slade, his voice filled with tired, yet angry exasperation. "Control your emotions!" 

"I'm trying!" cried Robin in protest; pushing himself up on his knees, before standing up all the way to face Slade. He wiped a hand over his sweating brow. 

He was tired – tired of it all. 

Slade had to have been a drill sergeant in a previous lifetime – Robin was sure of it – or obviously in this lifetime, since the man's training schedule was absolute agony; not to mention Wintergreen had said that they were in the army together. Robin was going crazy underneath the rigid schedule. And he thought Bruce had been bad – this was nuts! 

But, while Slade was strict with his training, it was not without praise. Robin did receive compliments and praise often when he did things right – Robin could feel the man's pleasure emanate from him when he did. 

Unlike Bruce, who drilled endlessly with him without any comments on his progress besides critique. Robin had learned to understand when Bruce was satisfied with him or displeased by watching his eyes. They would seem to glitter when he did things right. When he didn't; well... That was a bit more frightening. 

Slade's displeasure was simply a backhand across the cheek or a fiercer spar. 

A week had passed and Robin was still getting used to the situation. Slade kept him on a strict schedule of physical training, sparring, and studying whatever the man chose that day in engineering. While he was scheduled for 'free time', Robin almost always spent most of it collapsed in bed, exhausted from the rigid physical regime Slade had him on. 

Slade also had Robin start with the basics in engineering. He was also learning multiple things in computer programming. Robin held his tongue back over the fact of studying how to hack into different types of computers and mainframes. He was saving his major fight over gun education, which he was sure to come sometime. That was one fight he would not lose – he couldn't lose. But he knew there would be a fight over it. 

The man, after all, was a mercenary. 

And that was the major thing Robin had learned over the past week. Slade wasn't just any normal psychopathic criminal in Jump City. He was also a mercenary, an assassin who was contracted to kill. And his name to the criminal world? 

Deathstroke the Terminator. 

Of all the people that Robin had to have as his arch enemy, it had to be him. Robin had no idea that Slade had been Deathstroke. If he had known, Robin wouldn't have touched the man with a ten foot pole. He would've swallowed his pride and appealed to Batman or even to the Justice League. 

Deathstroke was that dangerous. The Teen Titans were complete bugs to the man – Deathstroke's power was that well known. How arrogant Robin had been to even think that he had a chance against the man with his friends as backup – they had to have been toys, playthings to this man. 

That knowledge had almost brought feared tears to his dry eyes. He wasn't just going to be forced to be the apprentice of a common criminal – no, he was going to be forced to be the apprentice of Deathstroke, the most feared assassin, mercenary in all the world.