A take on a part of Homecoming Part II—well, a fanfiction, which means it didn't happen but hey, artistic license or whatever.

We've got some hinted at potential RobinxRaven and I don't know what I'm thinking with Negative Man except that I just watched parts I and II and I thought there was a connection there...or there would be if we had more than a thirty-minute block of time to have it happen in—reduced more to twenty something because of commercials of course.

More on my other stories soon I hope. For now, here's this...whatever it is.

Curious

It seemed she had an affliction of sorts.

She wasn't harmed and she wasn't ill. She wasn't annoyed—at the moment—and she wasn't sad.

What she was, once again, was afflicted.

Maybe that was a strong word but there were other stronger ones and that was one of the kinder choices, so she stuck with it.

"You're impossible," she said, staring at the puddle on the ground. A way's away the Doom Patrol and the rest of the Titans were arguing about something. She wasn't sure what. It hardly mattered. As soon as that one ended, another dispute would begin and they'd be back to butting heads.

Damn Mentos, she scowled at what she saw as boisterous posturing that bordered on idiocy and on the note of idiocy quickly she reverted to her self-scrutiny: damn you.

She splashed the puddle with her boot, marring the perfect reflection.

A furtive glance over her shoulder ascertained what was going on and she settled into her meditative position. Maybe that would help both pass the time and in doing so help her stop.

Stop thinking about him...

She looked again, but her hood kept the exact point of her stare from being disclosed and for that she was doubly grateful. Her point of interest stood a little off to one side from everyone. After his initial comment of 'you'd better not' he'd silenced down to just watch with an equal look of suffering—well, Raven assumed it would be a look of at least a little bit of dismay, but it was hard to tell since he was entirely wrapped in those special bandages. Perhaps one of the last things she had ever expected was to meet someone who fought in a similar way to her, and she knew for all the likeness there were severe differences.

One, he was a human at the core, and she was not...much as she wished it sometimes. Two, he seemed almost grudging of his powers, whereas she, Raven, reveled in hers.

But for all of that...she couldn't help but be intrigued and she might have thought more on it except that he turned his blank stare to meet her hooded one and startled, she looked sharply away, closing her eyes tightly and began to chant her trademark mantra.

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos...azarath, metrion, zinthos…azarath, metrion, zinth—"

There was a shifting noise at her right and she stopped her chant abruptly, knowing who it was without even seeing him.

They remained in quiet side-by-side for a while in which they could each clearly hear the middle of a new fight about something between Titans and Doom Patrol—just as Raven had predicted. Under her hood, she rolled her eyes. They would never get anywhere at this rate.

"Please do not stop on my account," the even voice said, all courteousness and she snapped back to attention.

"I can meditate later," she replied quickly, monotone holding up miraculously as now that she was faced with actually interacting with the one called Negative Man on her own, she didn't know what to say or do. So she simply resigned herself to the silence she was used to.

"It is to help control your power," he stated, a query in non-interrogative form.

"It is," she said and when he did not reply, she frowned at herself. Say something, her mind tapped her and poked her in the side. "Does it hurt?" she asked suddenly and wanted to clasp her hands over her traitorous mouth but could not quite let herself do so. Raven wasn't one to sacrifice composure for honesty...not if she could help it anyway.

"No," he answered her and she cursed her earlier shortness with him. Had she lost the chance to talk with him already? "It is so much a part of me now," he clarified and she nodded before lowering her hood in one fluid motion as she turned to look at him directly now. He returned the gaze, though she could hardly tell and again she had to admit to her 'affliction'...the kind that had to do with being intrigued by people whose eyes she could never see.

Briefly she wondered if having seen one's soul, the eyes were obsolete as the window and found she had no answer.

"I admire your skill," she complimented with a genuine simplicity. He inclined his head.

"As I admire yours, Raven is it?" he asked and it was her turn to nod...and to her own surprise, smile. Bandaged and blank-eyed or not, she read his expression well enough as matching her own surprise to a T.

"I feel something of a connection with you," she admitted at last, smile faltering.

"We are not so different," he agreed and her smile strengthened at that.

"No, not so different," she repeated and they talked more on those things and other things until the Doom Patrol set off to leave—Beast Boy included—to stop the Brotherhood. On leaving to return to the group before the final decision though, Negative Man paused obviously and Raven paused too, beside him, eyeing him thoughtfully. "What?" she asked. He looked at her.

"It is times like these I wish I were not confined to negative space," he said sadly and in his words she found some of her own feelings—a strange kinship and yes, maybe even attraction that could not be fulfilled, for one reason or ten.

"It is times like these I wish I were not so inhuman," she granted him and her eyes, for all their practice at being inscrutable, had sadness there, as plain as day...a rainy day perhaps, for it had begun to storm slightly. Negative Man seemed to hesitate on something and she tilted her head to one side even as he reached out a hand to rest on her shoulder.

She found it comforting.

"Perhaps under other circumstances, we will meet again, Raven," he said quietly.

"It is not impossible," she allowed truth and no delusion otherwise and then Mentos hailed him over and Negative Man's touch was gone with him as he reported to his leader. At that, Raven's thoughts turned over to her own leader...that other man whose eyes she could not see and she let her eyes wander to him with no real purpose or reason only to find they were already hardily locked on her.

And he didn't look happy.

What? Her mind tangled itself.

But as their irises locked the Boy Wonder seemed to clench his jaw at being caught staring and steered his attentions back to the debate at hand.

Raven joined them shortly, standing beside him, intending fully to ask him later what that look was for.

Of course later came much later than she'd expected.

They'd ended up going after Beast Boy—he was on their team now, not the Doom Patrol's as Cyborg had pointed out testily—and successfully thwarting the Brotherhood...for the time being anyway and then it had taken a while before Mentos had taken off with the rest of his team. So it was very late when Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Raven and Beast Boy—or Garfield as Raven allowed herself to snicker a couple times on the way back to the tower—returned home.

And late as it was, she still couldn't sleep.

Groaning, knowing full well the consequences of no sleep, Raven trudged out of her bed around 3 in the AM, no cloak this time, and wandered into the common living area. She stood at the window. It was still raining even now and she felt her mind run back to the other resident bird. Why had he looked so displeased earlier? The nagging feeling hadn't left her all day and so she was certain he'd had his reasons, but time was scarce that day and she hadn't had the time to inquire.

"Can't sleep?" a familiar voice asked and she found it uncanny that her thoughts and his presence coincided so often, but pushed that notion away for the moment.

"Apparently I'm not the only one," she replied smoothly and Robin made something of a mix between a forced laugh and a scoffing noise as he joined her, staring out at the misty bay.

"Still raining," he commented needlessly and Raven who had never found much use for idle conversation decided for lack of a better phrase to bite the bullet—much as she found the actual idea highly unappealing. Without facing him, she asked:

"Why were you watching me today?"

She felt him tense beside her.

"I watch all of my team, all the time," he replied properly and she sent him a glare via her peripheral-vision. "And I was...curious." He mumbled the last part as one who might be ashamed or embarrassed, or both maybe. She arched a brow.

"Curious? Well I don't blame you. He is an interesting ally to add to the records," she said, assuming he referred to her interest in Negative Man...and he did, but not in the way she thought he did.

"He is," Robin agreed and leaned an arm against the glass of the window. "But he wasn't what I was curious about," he added. Amethyst eyes turned to him.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean...you looked troubled earlier and I thought to come over—I know I don't do it nearly often enough, but you like your space," he said this in defense and rushed on in a very un-Robin like manner, "—but he beat me to it and I was curious."

"How?" Her inquiries just kept getting shorter, though no less honest.

"Curious as to how he made you smile," Robin said quietly and Raven read the word 'jealous' in 'curious' like the image of a boulder superimposed over a flower field.

"Oh," she said and Robin, seeming to have expected a similar reaction, said nothing else for a time. If she wanted more, she would have to work at this too, he thought stubbornly. He did not like the feeling of being left open for scrutiny alone. A quarter of an hour passed and the rain did not lighten; neither did the mood of their incremental conversations. "I admire him and he is something like me and understands me better than I expected, more than most," she said slowly and Robin listened very, very closely for the words 'more than you' in between her lines.

But they never came and the odd tightening in his chest relaxed a little.

"Maybe we will meet with the Doom Patrol again yet," Robin offered and was vaguely aware of dawn waking across the bay through the rain. There was no rainbow, but that didn't bother him. The sun was enough.

"Maybe," she echoed. "Thanks for watching us, boy blunder. I don't think I care for the tactics of Mentos," she said at last and this earned her the cocky grin he liked to flash when he was particularly pleased or amused.

"If I ever get like that, you know what to do," he said, joking of course. A mischievous glint formed in the violet of her eyes and Raven let slip her second smile in little over 24 hours—a record to be sure—as she replied:

"Make you listen to Starfire's poem of Friendship and eat the Pudding of Forgiveness of course."

And Robin blanched just slightly, knowing she at least was only half joking. He laughed a little nervously.

"Uh well maybe not so drastic," he amended quickly. She shot him a caustic look.

"Measures must be taken," she insisted in mock seriousness, but her deadpan expression did not change so Robin found some reason to still be a little apprehensive.

"Now Raven—"

"Of course you'll never be that way," she finished and her smile softened from teasing to kind, another rarity.

"I hope not," the leader of the titans worried just a bit. He was only human after all.

"Look, morning, you like morning," Raven waved his last trepidations away with a slight gesture at the view out the window.

"When I have someone like you to share it with," Robin said automatically, feeling Raven's surprise more than he saw it and his characteristic smirk morphed to a strange and sweet smile that the empath locked away in her mind for the days when it would rain without the sun, grateful and confessing—though only to herself—that maybe her affliction was not so very bad after all. At the same time, the caped vigilante at her side thought something similar, that his jealousy he labeled as curiosity was not so awful...it had gotten him another span of time with the sorceress after all, another cherished exchange with the one person he felt connected to. Not that he could tell her that. Not yet anyway, but that was alright for Raven was only just figuring some things out for herself too: one, the mask was only skin deep, as was Negative Man's bandages; two, both he and Robin understood some part of her, or parts of her unlike the others. That was a gift and she recognized it as such, being wise enough at least to do so.

And three, the respective masks did not matter so much, not even the fleetingness of whatever moments she had had or would have with either young hero.

No, no.

Rather, it was everything else that counted when the morning came around.

Reviews? Thoughts? Comments? Anything's fine really. I'm interested to know what anyone has to say. Thank you for reading in any case!

-Rei