Falling

CHAPTER ONE

"Quothe the raven,

'Nevermore.' "

-Edgar Allen Poe

London Bridge is falling down…

Falling down…

Falling down.

London Bridge is falling down.

My fair birdie…

So it is said, so it shall be. How long has it been since I've seen them without having to battle them, without making them despise me?

All crashed down, threatening to sweep me away in the violent currents.

When at sea during a storm, the waters sway and crash, mercilessly pulling all down into its dark depths. You can't control the raging waters, and cannot hope of getting back to land.

You were forced to bend to its will, forced to drown.

And drowned I did. Forced to bend to the will of my sworn enemy:

Slade.

Day after day, month after month, time after flaming time, I would be dragged down, my mental barriers snapped like any common twig then thrown aside.

Falling down…

Falling down...

Everything is falling down,

My dear birdie…

Down it went, yes. Robin fell down until he, the hero I used to be, became utter nothingness. Nothing but a name used my people he once knew.

How long? How long has it been? The only time I can leave the Haunt is on missions for Slade. He never gives me the chance to check the date. I felt comatose though awake, my mind a drifting sea.

My pride wouldn't allow me to accept Slade's teachings. Good and evil? They were as different as night and day. Sun and moon. Joy and sorrow. I never thought I'd crack. Once the first crack was made, once Slade told me casually after what I estimated to have been about a year of his training that Bruce Wayne had perished in a fire, only more cracks would follow. Like a mirror, once the first crack was made the next step was shattering.

Slade destroyed what I used to be mentally, and rebuilt a new image among the ash-coated foundation of the old.

Richard Grayson?

Robin?

Red X?

Who am I now? Slade's emotionless apprentice, the apprentice who would do as commanded (for the most part), but whose mind was not completely there. The worst times were when I was forced to face the Titans. The sting of betrayal in their eyes, pain dampening their expressions.

I let them down.

Over time, I lost all sense of what those names really meant, as though they were different people I'd been close to long ago, but now barely remembered them.

Everything is falling down,

My fair Robin…

A/N Well, that was pathetically short... R&R, por favor. It would make me SuperJoyfulO'HappinessMacSpazzatron3. (That is a word... in my world...)

Future chapters will have to be longer, I suppose. This is my first fan fiction, though I'm also writing a book to be published once I stop procrastinating.

Procrastinators UNITE... tomorrow.