I'm Still Here

Raven/Robin
One-shot
Song: I'm Still Here – Vertical Horizon

Raven

I found the pieces in my hand
They were always there
It just took some time for me to understand

Raven stood alone on the street corner, her head hunched, her eyes drawn shut in an expression of pain and solitude. Around her, people chattered, walking around her rather than near her. She often wondered if they were avoiding her for her dress, her mannerisms, or if somehow they could tell she was marked by tragedy. Nothing in her outward appearance suggested abandonment, but she supposed everything in her bowed head, in the way she repeatedly checked to see if her purse was on her shoulder, could suggest it.

Often, people would associate her with the hero she was supposed to be. She could see it in their eyes, on their lips. She would ignore this, tell them they were mistaken, and move on. She found herself almost wishing at these times that the internal cloud of sadness and pain would jump out at them, would declare that it was there.

She pushed these thoughts back. Time had passed, but the need for control, the need to be in control, always remained. Lately her control had been weak; twice she had caused small accidents at work, both times because of a lapse in thinking, the memory of a smile.

She crossed at the green light, on auto-pilot. She spent many days on auto-pilot. It was what got her through her mundane job at the Jump City Newspaper Office, what helped her to fight through days of type-setting and arguing with big-headed authors who asked too many questions about her past. Had she ever really listened to them, she might have lost control.

Because she was the one holding the pieces, however, control was easy to keep, hidden behind a mask. Only when she was alone would that mask come down, and even then she refused to let herself examine them too carefully, lest she come detached from the life she'd been leading.

Her apartment was a block away, on Fifth Avenue. Her black dress pants had no pockets, and she found that she had a very limited idea of what to do with her hands. So she again checked to see if her purse was there; part of the paranoia that had set in, she supposed.

She understood perfectly well what had happened to her over the course of six months. She understood her own actions and her own words, why it hurt every time she thought of them, why she was living for control and only control.

After all, she reminded herself, it doesn't take anything special to understand why things fell apart. Special would be putting them back together.

In her mind she saw a smile, a hint of white teeth and the most beautiful black hair…

She gave herself a mental smack and bit her lower lip, hard. She tried to remind herself that the name was control, focus. The whole time, however, the thought of that smile wrenched its way into her mind.

She sighed. Tonight was going to have to be a confrontational night with the memories that still haunted her. She jerked the door open harder than she intended, causing her to almost spill over in her too-high heeled shoes.

The dank smell of her tiny apartment greeted her and she looked around; everything was as she'd left it, only a small part of her felt different; less able to cope with the reality of this separation than when she'd left this morning.

She sank down into the room's dusty, forest-green couch, looking at the too-white walls and her tiny dining room table, with only two chairs at its sides. Everything in the room was minimal; atop an old cherry-wood desk sat an aged computer, and the kitchen contained only a spare set of counter-tops. One tiny door led to a bathroom where the water only ran cold, and the other to her bedroom, through which a tiny single bed, pushed to a wall, was visible.

Raven sighed. Suddenly she was not content. Pain ran through her, sharp and thick, and she fell to her knees.

I understand now, she found herself thinking.

Families just aren't something you can let go of.

You gave me words I just can't say
So if nothing else
I'll just hold on while you drift away

"Dammit," she said, the pain coursing through her. She eased her body the whole way to the floor, crossing her legs, struggling for the facade of control she'd always had. Control. Everything is about control. You need that control.

A dangerous flash of mischief in the eyes of the boy on the front of a bike flashed into her mind. You needed him too, once.

She shut this out. She crossed her legs, biting her lips bitterly. Lately there were words always in her mind; questions that always seemed to start with the word 'Why?' She played them over and over in her head, like a favorite soundtrack that had worn itself out and gotten stuck in her head.

It was a soundtrack she now hated every second of.

The reasons were all there. Those were part of public knowledge, something that she had allowed herself to consider without any serious emotional impact. The reason that was most widely known and considered was the failed mission that had resulted in the destruction of a fire hall. The city then believed them disbanded over that fire.

The lies and fighting that had gone on after that day, the real reason for the separation on a cold, rainy day full of long thunderstorms were as of yet unknown to the public, but swirled through Raven's mind. She clenched her teeth, fighting against all the things she longed to say to their leader who had been the one, inevitably, to lock the door.

I hate you. I love you. I needed you. I tried to have your back. And you let me go.

The words became a bitter chant. Within minutes, she was able to separate the pain from them, and began to use them as her focal point for the chanting she was doing. Gradually they became rhythmic, gradually she focused on nothing but the space in her mind, the empty pure space that had become the one way she could assure that she was not losing what little presence of mind she had left.

As she opened them, however, the wave of sadness hit her. I hate you, she thought bitterly. Her hands grabbed at her knees and she tried, without success, to restrain a bitter, low hiss, which came through her teeth in place of words.

"I h…"

But the words would not escape her lips. Instead she was left to lean her head back on the armchair and take deep, shuddering breaths to avoid her tears. Sitting there on her apartment floor, she suddenly realized just how small and alone she was.

I miss you, she thought sadly. I miss my family so much…

Her thoughts drifted to sitting astride a motor cycle in the sunlight. Her arm was around the slender waist of the Boy Wonder, who smiled at her as though he might never stop smiling, before throwing the bike into gear and speeding down the street with her laughing behind him, both in their street clothes…

Something inside her broke. The chair she had been leaning her head on levitated and smacked off the opposite wall with a force hard enough to shake the bare white walls and a gasp, little more than a whimper yet full of force and pain, flew from her mouth.

With a start, she realized that the words in her, the thoughts and memories, were leaking out, with nothing she could do to prevent them. Each kitchen chair landed with a smack in a pile, the drastic amount of emotion working its way through her system.

Never before had she felt so truly alone. Never before had she longed so powerfully for a release. Never before had she missed someone the way she missed him.

"I hate you," she whispered, but the words were hollow, sounds without any of the deep emotions she felt behind them. "I hate you for leaving me all of these ugly feelings and nothing I can say."

And I hate myself for losing control. I hate you because this is as much my fault as it is yours. I hate everything about this. I hate it!

Suddenly the pain got the best of Raven's tiny body. Shaking, she fell to the floor, and all, including her shaking shoulders, were still. The sobs still shook her chest although she had fallen into some place between a sleep and waking state that could contain all of her pain.

In this state, she could say no words, but she could not be wrecked by them either.

Robin

The cities grow
The rivers flow
Where you are I'll never know
But I'm still here.
If you were right
And I was wrong
Why are you the one who's gone
And I'm still here?

Robin was out on duty. He'd never considered himself fit for anything other than a life of crime-fighting; he just never expected to go into a uniform to do it. Every time he passed a window, he saw the mirrored image of a lanky young police officer with his head held high and his eyes full of something dark. Most people would have expected luster or swagger, a sort of private pride in his work, but there was none.

At his belt he carried a gun. He despised the very idea of it, but that was how the police fought their battles. He had not fired or even removed it from its holster except for during his range training. Firing a weapon seemed, to him, to be the ultimate defamation of who he had been, he who had fought with his body, risked his life without hiding behind a piece of steel, to save the city.

Not that we did save it, he thought to himself. Every bone in his body seemed to have turned bitter lately, and his thoughts were constantly on the last few days he had spent with a team. He remembered the tension all too well; the uneasy way the room had felt, the way all of his muscles had been constantly tensed up, and the way he had screamed the night they'd failed at their duty.

He remembered every word that had come from his mouth. He remembered the way he'd looked Cyborg in the face and accused him of failing at his duty. The way he'd screamed at Beast Boy to stop joking around at a time when they could be losing their contract with the city. The way he'd told Starfire to stop acting like there were no damn problems left.

But Raven… He had lashed out the worst of all at Raven.

"Robin… This isn't something you should take out on them."

Cyborg stood with his hand on Raven's shoulder, a look of quiet hurt on his face, as Robin rounded on his heel to face her. Her skin was pale, her eyes worn; she had been sleeping the least out of the entire team, had been up since the night before trying to help him find a solution.

"Don't talk to me like you know everything! You don't know how hard it is trying to keep this team together!" He had snapped, his fist striking the table that separated them, a narrow, low-lying piece of oak between the normally quiet gothic girl and the angry teenager.

"You're going to tear it apart if you keep talking like that," she hissed, standing to face him, shrugging Cyborg's hand off her shoulder, which, they all noticed, was shaking. "Attacking your friends isn't going to solve anything."

"Maybe if they'd help me…!"

"I haven't helped you?" Her tone was sarcastic. "I haven't been up the past day with you, trying to figure out how to field the questions and the reporters? I haven't tried to organize everyone, to make sure we're all eating and keeping our moral up? I haven't…"

"Shut up!" Robin yelled. He had no clue where the sudden frustration came from. "Shut up! I don't need your help! I am the leader and we're going to do what I say."

"Bad move, man," said Beast Boy, going over to grab Raven's wrist as she raised her hand. Never before had any of them seen her furious enough to actually attempt to slap someone, and the sight, under other circumstances, might have been comical. "Raven's just as important as you are here."

"Friend Robin, we are all most upset, but that is no reason for…"

"Starfire, I don't want to hear anymore! I don't! We're done and you're all too busy taking her side to realize that without me, this team would be nothing! Nothing!"

"So why don't you leave?" Cyborg suggested, his voice deadly quiet, walking over to Raven. "If I'm worthless and Beast Boy is annoying and Raven is bossy and Starfire annoys you, then just go. We can figure this out on our own."

"I can't believe you! Any of you!" He punched the table. "I've done nothing but try to help you!"

"We could do without your kind of help," Raven said, and then turned, without another word, and ran out of the room, restraining emotion unlike any the Titans had ever seen.

"Way to pull us apart when we needed you, man. Some leader."

Everyone else seemed to silently agree with Beast Boy's words. As he sprinted away, Robin saw Starfire pat Cyborg once on the shoulder and walk out of the room.

"You blew it," Cyborg told him softly. "Any real leader would have tried to hold us together. I thought we were more than a team to you."

"Well what did you think we were?"

"A family," he said, and turned to follow the path that everyone else had taken. Upstairs, Robin heard the sounds of bumping, scraping, shuffling, and packing.

He alone would stay.

He sighed. His patrol shift was over, and so he made his way along a dark and narrow street back to the motorcycle he had managed to salvage. It was a memory for him of a different, happier time, when a passenger sat behind him with her arms around his waist and he felt as if he had control over everything.

These days, he felt he had control over nothing. Which, in his mind, was just as well, because he now feared having any kind of control over anything for fear he would destroy it as he had destroyed his teammates.

It was not the expressions of the others that had hurt him so much as the flight of the girl that had used to run to him for comfort. He knew he had hurt her; he had at last let her see how large his ego could be, with results that were less than desirable. He had pushed her away, practically destroying her.

He wanted so badly to find them, the shattered pieces of his team, and bring them back together, but he could not even find her to bring her back to him. In his mind he heard her laughing as they would drive away together.

Lost in this train of thought, he had come upon the old tower. The bottom three levels were in the process of conversion into a museum, a project which he oversaw during the mornings. The top two rooms, however, were left to him, a kind of small, private apartment where the last Teen Titan to stay in the public eye could live.

He wondered what the others would think if they knew he insisted on being a one-man band. In some ways, this thought stirred anger in him. It wasn't their place, after all, to think anything of it. If he wanted to live there, he could live there.

After all, if I'm the one who was wrong, why am I the only one who stayed?

The quarters greeted him with a sort of gloomy hello, the embrace of rooms once traversed with laughter. As if to torment himself, he had taken up residence in Raven's room, sleeping in her bed. He had not touched a single thing there, but longed for the days they had spent there together.

Especially the last night, when she'd taken his hand. Her eyes had been honest and earnest as she promised to help him, as she reminded him that Slade wanted them to look responsible for the deaths of those people, but that they never had to be.

"I'll be here when everything comes crashing down," she had promised.

Then where are you?

Raven

I see the ashes in my heart
I smile the widest
When I cry inside and my insides blow apart

I tried to wear another face
Just to make you proud
Just to make you put me in my place
'Cause everything you wanted from me
Is everything that I could never be…

She awoke on the floor several hours later. Her neck hurt, her eyes were unfocused, and she felt the salt of her tears where it had dried on her cheeks. She found that she was leaning against the underside of the ancient chair, and that her furniture had rearranged itself in a variety of piles and much of it had flipped. One chair sat near her outstretched right arm, which was pinned under the broken leg. She shoved the piece of cheap wood off herself and sat up.

I finally lost control, she realized with a start. Standing in the middle of the wreckage, Raven surveyed what she had done. Her neat, if not numerous possessions, were strewn across the room in chaotic patterns, drawers torn open, clothes around her. She sat back down in the midst of it, crossed her legs, and began to chant.

Within a few minutes, the mess had righted itself, minus the broken chair, which remained where it was in the middle of the floor. This Raven stood and lifted, taking it down three flights of stairs to dump it into the alley with the other garbage. She had no doubt it would never make it to the trash men; hobos in her neighborhood were known for taking anything that looked even slightly useful.

She looked around her apartment in distain. Suddenly she couldn't believe the life she'd been living for six months. Six months under the mantra 'Control' had given her nothing but a deep sense of depression and a deeper sense of not dealing with the problems in her life. She was acutely aware that everything she was pretending to be had its roots in fabrication, from the time she woke and dressed to the time she laid down at night.

The longer she thought on this, the more amazed she was that she could have held it together as long as she had. She questioned why she was bothering momentarily, then remembered the heavy weight that came with having powers with no outlet. Her power only seemed to grow with her sorrow, and this realization only made everything more impossible to deal with.

She stood before a mirror and looked at herself, forcing a smile. It was the same smile she used at work, the same smile that she had originally tried to flash to people on the streets; she now knew it to be the smile of a person trying to hide how much they are suffering.

She also knew that the mask was broken. She could not wear it until she had some kind of closure. She looked down at her dress pants and fitted jacket, both rumpled from the time she spend on the floor, and sighed. There was no point in changing now; the only person there to greet her would be the moon.

I just have to retrace the steps to figure out where this all went wrong, she thought to herself, reaching for a pair of low, dark walking shoes. She would not fly, nor use her powers to get there. Tonight would be about the journey, about sorting through her past so that when the time came, she had nothing to hide anymore.

With one last glance over her shoulder into the mirror, she pulled up the hood on her jacket and prepared to go. For a minute she looked more like her old self; like the person she was rather than the person she'd been forced to invent.

Time to stop being who I'm not, she told herself quietly. She walked out into the sleeping city, the hour late, the shadows engulfing the tiny woman in the black wardrobe walking a fine line between two lives.

She no longer smiled. She no longer felt she had to smile. She slowly felt the safety, the stability, the mantra of 'Control' slipping away.

Dangerous or not, she felt that she had to close one chapter before she could walk into a new one. The trick, she told herself, was to stop living a lie.

The cities grow
The rivers flow
Where you are I'll never know
But I'm still here
If you were right
And I was wrong
Why you are the one who's gone
And I'm still here?

Raven walked through the city slowly. She could see that the metropolis was ever-growing, buildings springing up where there had been just a shell only weeks before. The area had been shifting, in transit, when she moved in, and was continuing to grow. The feeling this created in her life was one of constant disorientation, which added to her discomfort ten-fold.

She knew where she was going without thinking about it. She'd considered this trek before in her mind, every turn, every mile that separated her from the life she'd used to have. The only thing that had stopped her then was a need for control.

Or, she supposed if she was honest with herself, the only thing that had stopped her was a fear that she could not find what she was looking for at the end.

The journey was a solitary one on which she tried not to think much. Instead, she focused on suppression. She managed to keep her entire mind under wraps, forcing her soul down inside of her. She knew that the monster she had already seen, the woman who had wrecked her apartment, would be back. Somehow, though, risk felt as though it was worth it.

The ocean seemed vast before her as she looked up at the tower. She was not conscious that she had reached the island; the route had been highly automatic. She could only assume she had flown in, but could not remember the act of flight. All she knew was that she now stood before what had been her home once.

The wind blew. The ocean lapped at the rocks, her hair whipped at her face, and the world seemed silent and somehow sadder than it had ever seemed before. She was struck by the solitude in which she lived her life. This place had been the home of her family, the home where she'd laughed and cried…

This home had been where she thought she'd fallen in love.

The words that she longed to say boiled in her chest, but she could find no way to let them escape her lips, no sense in shouting her secrets to the rocks and trees and the old, deserted tower.

Why am I still here if you're gone?

Suddenly something diverted her attentions. The light in the topmost room of the tower, in a location she pinpointed to be her own, had gone on. Overcome with a strange sense of need and a variety of fanatical thoughts about what was going on inside, the longing for an answer became stronger until she finally stepped forward.

The door gave surprisingly easily, and the darkness and a smell like new carpet engulfed her as she entered to investigate.

Robin

Maybe tonight it's gonna be all right
I will get better
Maybe today it's gonna be okay

I will remember…

Robin held an old map of the city in his hands as he sat across Raven's bed, erasing some of his lighter pencil marks and doodles from the margins so that he could donate it to the museum tomorrow. He had been doing this often lately; he would find an object, clean anything that might have incriminated him, or his teammates, and then turn it over to the men to set in one of their glass display cases.

He often felt that the process was causing him personal pain, which he had just confirmed by erasing a side note in his margin, not in his handwriting. 'Don't worry too hard, Boy Wonder,' said the words in the corner of the map. This had appeared on several of his documents in their last weeks as a team, a sort of reminder that he had someone standing over his shoulder, should he need them.

Until I told you I didn't need you, he thought bitterly to himself, remembering all the times Raven had taken him in her arms when things had gotten too hard, or simply taken his work supplies off of him and let him vent to her while she figured out what he had not been able to.

He realized how simple all the answers had been. But that had been before he had decided that he did not need her help; that choice had ended in disaster.

He finished erasing the marking and put his pencil down, rolling the map up and carefully setting it down on Raven's small, oak dresser. He had no idea why he did not sleep in his own room. He had not intended to stay in her room the first night he'd come into it to check for something for the museum people, but had found a kind of ease here. Even if his mind was still in pain, he found it easier to sleep.

Now, looking at the roll of paper next to her hairbrush, which she had obviously not found fit to take, he felt another wave of sadness. He imagined her the way she'd looked the few nights they'd spent together, brushing her hair slowly before sliding into bed next to him and wrapping her arm around his waist. He lay down quietly, imagining the soft sound of her breathing, the whispered promise that she loved him, and felt himself slowly coming unglued.

His eyes were uncovered these days all of the time. They were a startling blue, which he had revealed to Raven only when she cuddled into his side late at night and removed his mask herself. 'You're like a different person,' she had said.

He had told her he was the person he wanted to be. Then, he'd meant it as a way of being cute. Now he realized how very true it was. Tears now shone in his eyes, giving them the effect of a clear pond on a cloudy day. He bit his lip, determined not to cry any longer.

A noise startled him out of his deep thoughts. He heard at first only a quiet creaking noise, then a slightly louder noise. He realized there was rhythm to the noises he was hearing. He wondered who would be desperate enough to break into his home. Maybe a worker forgot something, he told himself.

"Who's there?" He said. "Anyone?" He had moved to the door to peer out into the dark hallway, but was unable to see. He hesitated, the door half-closed, half-open, in his hand.

Suddenly the door flew back into his chest. "What do you think you're doing?" asked a cold female voice. Standing in the doorway, wearing rumpled street clothes, with hair slightly longer than he remembered, was the image of his dreams and nightmares, the voice always in his dreams that accused him harshly of everything.

"Raven!" He shouted, reaching for her.

I held the pieces of my soul
I was shattered and I wanted you to come and make me whole
Then I saw you yesterday
But you didn't notice
You just walked away.

Although it caused him pain, the way she jerked away from him was not unexpected. What was unexpected was the edge of cold, hard hatred in her voice. "What do you think you're doing in my room?" She said, her arms folded across her chest.

"I… I sleep here," he said, feeling stupid, vulnerable. He became aware that he was dressed for sleep, his boxers plain, his shirt ratty and worn. Although she looked vulnerable in her rumpled clothing, her level of preparedness, and of left-over hatred, obviously far exceeded his.

I look like an idiot, he thought in his panic.

"Why?" The question had a simple, direct feeling that caused the skin on Robin's neck to crawl, but not in the way her voice had before. She was unsympathetic, her eyes narrow, her voice deep and crackling.

"It's just easier," he said.

"Easier how?" She pressed. There was something intense in her voice, in her face, and in her speech that was begging to be identified. Suddenly it occurred to Robin that maybe she, like him, was on a search for answers.

"Easier for me to sleep. Listen, Raven, I…"

"Don't tell me you're sorry," she said coldly. "That's not what I came here to hear."

"Then why did you come here?"

"For closure. Because I can't forget. Why are you still here?"

"Because everything I ever had was here. Raven, you were…"

"Robin, please, don't make this any harder than it is. I just want to forget this. I just want to forget you."

"Forget…"

"I was wrong to feel the way I did about you because it wasn't the way you thought about me."

"But Raven, I swear to you it was!"

"Then why did you treat me like that? Why was my help worth nothing to you?" There was real anger in her voice now, and a sense of danger flew around her like rain flew during a heavy storm. He could tell that she was more upset than he had ever expected her to be.

"It was."

"Then why'd you treat me the way you did?" She asked him loudly, her voice rising as she became gradually more upset. "Why did you throw away everything we had here?"

"I was upset."

"And we weren't? You were supposed to be our leader! We were looking to you! I was counting on you… Robin, do you even remember how much I was counting on you?"

"I was counting on you not to leave me when everything fell apart!"

"I was standing right there," she reminded him in a low voice that was somehow scarier than the way she'd almost yelled. "I was standing right there and you pushed me away."

"I didn't…"

Suddenly she slumped down, her knees weak, onto the edge of the bed. "Robin… Please don't try to make excuses anymore." The world-weary look in her eyes caught him by surprise and suddenly he longed to comfort her. His hand went out to rest on her shoulder, and she did not brush him off.

He knelt down so that his eyes were level with hers, blue locked on the deep amethyst clouds of pain that were before him. "Raven," he said in a slow, clear voice, what he had to do appealing to him, "I'm so, so sorry I hurt you. I did need you, and I do need you now."

"I… I don't know if I can accept that," she said softly. "Robin, everything is already gone. I don't think we can go back to the way we were."

Acting on impulse, the Boy Wonder stood. He reached for her, his arms going around her thin waist as he crawled behind her into the bed. He kissed her neck gently and pulled her back against him. Rather than begging, he simply said, "Remember that day when you told me you'd be there for me through everything?"

"But you didn't want my help," she reminded him, squirming against him gently, unsure whether to pull away or accept his full embrace.

"I now know I need it," he said, leaning forward over her shoulder in an attempt to catch her eyes. She turned her head towards him and smiled in spite of herself.

"You're like a different person," she said softly.

"You make me a different person."

They sat there like that for a second before Raven gently pecked him on the lips. Robin felt a deep sense of something that he had lost flooding back into him, the line between heroism and a broken shell slowly righting itself.

"Let's go downstairs," he said softly, taking her hand. There was no resolution yet; she still hesitated before she took his hand. At least it's a start, he reminded himself.

'Cause everything you wanted me to hide
Is everything that makes me feel alive.

Robin flipped on the heavy light switch and looked hatefully around at his project of six months. He heard Raven gasp as they looked at the display cases. She saw pages that she and Robin had poured over in one case, a display of Cyborg's tools in the other. Next to that stood a series of photographs in frames; one of her and Starfire on a cloudy day, a group shot taken at a press conference, and one of the three boys making faces at one another.

All of the cases bore plaques with descriptions and explainations. Before the papers, the sign simply read 'Important Documents.' The photos, however, were what caught Raven directly in the chest. 'Undated photos of the teammates,' it read.

"Did you have anything to do with this?" She asked Robin seriously, her eyes burning into his.

"I did allow them to set it up, but I haven't had any say on the arrangement or anything," he said, looking slowly around for the first time. The living room that had once been alive with laughter was empty and stagnate, and the cases seemed to him a garnish, fake recreation of their lives.

"We were more than teammates," she said softly, and her hand went towards his without a second thought for comfort. He squeezed it once, then reached to the floor where a pile of weaponry lay and picked up, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, his bo-staff.

"Raven, I'm tired of living this way."

"So am I, Robin, but… We can't start over. We aren't those people anymore."

"I am still Robin," he said softly. "I'm only pretending. Don't you feel like you're only pretending to be someone else, Raven?"

"Yes, but…"

Robin shocked her by letting go of her hand. He reached out with the bo-staff and tapped the glass once. "Then why are we hiding who we are?"

"Robin, don't…"

"I'm showing you that I'm as here for you as you were for me." Without another word, he raised the staff to his shoulder and Raven shrunk back from him, clamoring for safety, just in time to see glass shatter. Out of the case he took three things; a map, the team photo, and the photo of her and Starfire. The last of these things he handed to her.

"Robin… Robin, you're bleeding," said Raven, moving forward to take the picture and guide him to the couch. He bled freely, the red liquid coming from his hand. He bled onto the piece of fabric he'd broken in to free; Raven saw his mask in his hand.

She held his hand under hers and healed him without thinking. The process of her power seemed so basic and logical that she could not believe she'd lost all her control earlier. Perhaps now, she reasoned, she had control because she had the people who had brought her control.

Robin looked down at Raven. "Do you forgive me?"

The lights go out the bridges burnt
Once you go, you can't returnBut I'm still here
Remember how you used to sayYou'd be the one to run away?
But I'm still here…

Raven's heart hammered in her chest. "I don't see how I can say I'll stay with you. This chapter of our lives is over. I fear I'll fall apart, or that we'll let it fall apart again."

"Raven, you never did anything wrong," Robin said, shocked that she would think that any part of this was her fault. "You tried to be there for me and I let you go."

"I just didn't stick around long enough," she said, still holding his hand tightly.

"You're here now," Robin whispered, and leaned in to kiss Raven. She did not resist him but rather pulled him forward, into her.

"Where can we go from here?"

"Back to wherever you've been living to clean it out. You're moving back in here with me."

"What about everyone else?" She asked. "Robin, I want to start over."

"I don't know if things will ever be what they were," Robin whispered in her ear. "But Raven, we'll try. We're going to try…"

"What makes you think it's going to work?" She said quietly, her head resting on his shoulder.

"You're still here." His words sounded confident and sure, and she moved closer to him where they sat on the old couch, his wrist still covered in the blood of a wound that no longer exisited.

Kind of like all of this, he thought. We'll get through this like we got through everything else.

Robin helped Raven astride his motorcycle and the two of them took off into the night. Behind him, the laughter that had plagued his memory came back to his ears, and put a certain amount of joy into him that he couldn't even describe. He felt Raven holding him as though she'd never let go from behind.

"Thank you for still being here," he whispered into the wind as he drove, and even though she couldn't have heard him, Raven's palm opened on his chest, directly above his heart, and she clung to him more tightly.

I'm still here…

END

(Thank you for reading. All of you, as before, are wonderful. Thus ends another one-shot for the birds. Reviews always appreciated. I apologize for any mild grammatical errors; this was written alongside my large English paper over the course of several days.)

-The Goddess Rises-