Do not own in anyway shape or form...or Robin/Nightwing would be tied to my bedpost (hey a girl can dream can't she)

"Not every fantasy is a pretty one you know. Some are sick and twisted, look at the villains we fight." She gave a shrug and then added, "Okay so some of them are just a little sad and frustrating, but others are the epitome of nightmarish fantasy."

"I don't indulge in nightmares Raven, too little time in life to dwell on that." He gave a shrug of his own.

"Bullshit." She turned to stare at him, her gaze penetrating as she let that one word hang in the air.

His eyes widened, it was unlike Raven to swear, she saw it as a poor use of language skills. "It is not." He said this a bit defensively.

"Robin, all you and I have in our past revolves around nightmares. The only one in this whole tower that has the fantasies of the sort you were asking about is probably Starfire." Raven replied succinctly, returning to answering his question about her fantasies without actually answering it.

"Come on Raven, not everything you think about is a nightmare, is it?" He reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders, effectively keeping her from turning from him. Since her father's defeat they had become close, best friends and confidents. They often held conversations of this sort when insomnia and nightmares drove them from the confines of their beds late at night.

"Perhaps not, not even I am creepy enough to live in nightmares I suppose." She said softly turning her gaze from him even as he held her body in place.

"You aren't creepy," His reply was automatic, but no less true than it had been the millions of times he had said it before. "Tell me one of your fantasies and I will tell you one of mine, come on Raven it's a way to pass the time. We agreed when we first started to hold these conversations that we would take turns with the questions, tonight is my turn." He insisted, stubborn as he always was.

"Fine, let go of me I need to think." She pulled from his grasp and moved to sit on the couch, the only light coming in from the moon outside. He sat beside her a few feet away and waited, as patiently as he could.

She would be honest with him, she always was, lying to him anymore was nearly impossible. "Romance and beauty." She finally said, hoping he would leave it at that.

"What about romance and beauty…what do you mean?" Robin was even more curious now. "Do you mean like roses and Shakespeare?" He asked trying to remember some of the books he had seen her read in the past.

"No," She sighed, she should have known better. "I want to be beautiful and sometimes, rarely, but sometimes I allow myself to dream about what would happen if I met someone who thought I was as beautiful as I want to be." She refused to look at him, "The one time I thought that happened, it didn't exactly work out. See nightmares are in all my fantasies."

"You are beautiful Raven, with your eyes and hair," He paused, but he mouth ran before his brain, as usual when he was with Raven. "You have a great figure too, you just tend to hide it behind that cloak of yours so much no one gets a chance to really see it."

Raven slowly turned her head to look at him; her right eye twitched slightly, the only sign of her shock. "My body?" She asked in a strangled whisper.

"Oh, uh…yeah?" Realizing his mistake, he couldn't figure out how to fix it, so he just started talking. "I want to hear your fantasy Raven, like a story or dream, not three words thrown together just to make me shut up."

Choosing to ignore his comment about her looks, after all she wasn't exactly sure what he meant beyond trying to make her feel better, she began to answer his question the way he wanted.

"Very well, I dream," She held his gaze, which was masked as usual, her eyes holding a sardonic tint at the word dream. "I dream of love Robin, the kind that makes you feel whole. The impossible kind, at least for me. I fantasize about someone loving me, even with my anti-social behavior, my powers, my heritage and my creepiness. I dream of an attractive man with blue eyes, silly to care about eye color I know, but it is just my dream really. He has to be strong, strong enough to stand with me when I need him and for me when I can no longer stand. I don't need someone to rescue me per say, just someone who is willing to help me rescue myself I suppose. This is what I dream of when the nightmares don't close in around me and suffocate it away." She looked over his shoulder, so as not to meet his gaze anymore. Imagine, she, the Ice Queen, dreamed of love, what a laugh. Only, he wasn't laughing.

"That's a great dream Raven and I don't see why it's impossible at all." Robin sat there and tried to figure why his heart raced as she had described this dream man, who ever he was Robin didn't want him here and he couldn't figure out why. He cared greatly for his friend, he should want this 'dream man' to appear and make her happy, but all he could think was that if a man like this appeared he would lose Raven forever.

"I don't want to discuss it anymore Robin, it's your turn anyway. What's your dream?" She put a slightly taunting emphasis on dream as she turned back to look at the boy wonder.