The earlier fic about the older heroes coming to grips with the death of their family members made me angry, wanting them to rise up to their full glory to do some payback.
This one made me cry. I swear. I don't cry easily. Maybe it's because my reading the New Teen Titans in the 80s was a treasured part of my adolescence when Dick's transformation from Robin to Nightwing was an inspiration. Maybe it's because I can still identify with those youngsters finding their place in the world than the giants that are the Justice League.
I read this after I read "Nightmares and Pancakes", and I must say it is more poignant. Seeing how Dick has become integrated into a family of assassins becomes even more tragic now that I read this about how the Titans are wanting not just for their brother, their leader, the paragan of who they wanted to be. Or of Tim living up to a legacy that his brother had disowned.
It makes me remember that confrontation between the entire Teen Titans family and Dr. Light and the latter turnng to Nightwing, taunting him, "I know you want to say it (Titans Together!)" It might have been a mockery but it was an acknowledgment of Nightwing's irreplaceable role in Titan history.
Which Slade knocked out.
Now here's a bone I'm throwing you.
Dick knew he was gonna kill people when he joined Slade. He's not interested in world domination, he's just interested in fulfilling a contract. He knows he'll face Batman and even Tim eventually...but what happens when he faces a team that he practically built, not with cold-blooded professionalism like the Outsiders, but one who has his heart, and soul, and spirit? Who loved him as much as he loved them?
Let the Titans come against him the way they did against Superboy-Prime and I'd like to see him react at the *ideal* that that all-out attack represents and embodies.
Would his new family matter as much?
Can he still say that it's better to be alive, if life means damaging and destroying people you once mentored and considered your younger siblings, your disciples, and violating the living principle that you once stood for?
Fighting Bruce with all his issues stacked high against the Bats. But this - facing off the Titans - is another.
And he won't always have the luxury of making it a "clean fight". It would probably tear at his heart and soul and do the one thing that Slade is afraid of - break him.
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The earlier fic about the older heroes coming to grips with the death of their family members made me angry, wanting them to rise up to their full glory to do some payback.
This one made me cry. I swear. I don't cry easily. Maybe it's because my reading the New Teen Titans in the 80s was a treasured part of my adolescence when Dick's transformation from Robin to Nightwing was an inspiration. Maybe it's because I can still identify with those youngsters finding their place in the world than the giants that are the Justice League.
I read this after I read "Nightmares and Pancakes", and I must say it is more poignant. Seeing how Dick has become integrated into a family of assassins becomes even more tragic now that I read this about how the Titans are wanting not just for their brother, their leader, the paragan of who they wanted to be. Or of Tim living up to a legacy that his brother had disowned.
It makes me remember that confrontation between the entire Teen Titans family and Dr. Light and the latter turnng to Nightwing, taunting him, "I know you want to say it (Titans Together!)" It might have been a mockery but it was an acknowledgment of Nightwing's irreplaceable role in Titan history.
Which Slade knocked out.
Now here's a bone I'm throwing you.
Dick knew he was gonna kill people when he joined Slade. He's not interested in world domination, he's just interested in fulfilling a contract. He knows he'll face Batman and even Tim eventually...but what happens when he faces a team that he practically built, not with cold-blooded professionalism like the Outsiders, but one who has his heart, and soul, and spirit? Who loved him as much as he loved them?
Let the Titans come against him the way they did against Superboy-Prime and I'd like to see him react at the *ideal* that that all-out attack represents and embodies.
Would his new family matter as much?
Can he still say that it's better to be alive, if life means damaging and destroying people you once mentored and considered your younger siblings, your disciples, and violating the living principle that you once stood for?
Fighting Bruce with all his issues stacked high against the Bats. But this - facing off the Titans - is another.
And he won't always have the luxury of making it a "clean fight". It would probably tear at his heart and soul and do the one thing that Slade is afraid of - break him.