A/N: This is based on a dream I had last night. I haven't seen any Teen Titans in an age, so please forgive any fact/character failure. D: I'm working off faint memories and a fading dream. (:

Set in an AU future, where the Teen Titans have expanded and subsequently disbanded. The main character is no one in particular, merely someone invented for the story. I make no claim to any characters I did not create.

---

The face of the old public library—not so much a building as a storefront shoved between a raucous music shop and a boarded up Mexican restaurant—radiated such a forbidding air that she didn't doubt why it had been so unpopular. Dank and dingy swarmed around her in an almost tangible cloud before she even reached the door.

It occurred to her to wonder at the choice. Why here, of all places, for this?

Then again, Titans Tower'd been closed out for ages. It's not like they could have met there; the whole place would likely have collapsed.

Well, maybe they couldn't find any other abandoned places that would let them in. Although that restaurant next door looked slightly larger.

After glancing up and down the empty street, she stepped forward and pressed her fingers against the splintery, soft wood of the door. A rusted bell clattered faintly as the door swung open, reminding her more of an old bookstore than a library. Vacant shelves provided homes to layered cakes of dust and cobwebs rather than books, and she would have left footprints in the grime on the floor had so many people not already been there.

Following a murmur of sound, she moved through a doorway beside the former checkout desk, now forlorn and foreboding as a sacrificial stone. Finally, she found the people.

There were—wow, a lot of them. All crowded around one table, it seemed, crushed together to give everyone room. Some were talking animatedly, some apparently reminiscing quietly. Some just sat in silence, looking sad. It was strange; it didn't seem so long ago. Hell, they were almost all still teenagers; it wasn't that long ago.

She recognized maybe two people in this crowd—no, three. But none of the original members were here—these were all those who had come after, who had 'joined the club' later. All these kids just trying to save the world. She didn't know them; she'd come before. Not that she'd been around from the beginning—no, she just signed up early on, and left too soon to meet anyone new.

Only a few people noticed her come in, standing there decked out in dark hair and apparent normality. It was funny: Most of them had come back in costume. Here she was in jeans, slinking in like a girl who'd gotten lost, or hadn't gotten the notice that the library had packed up and moved away.

A couple disengaged themselves from their conversations to get up and welcome her; one or two just waved her over to join the reunion. Nobody recognized her, of course. But half these kids didn't even know who the five original members were—the Teen Titans had spread that far.

Not that they'd lasted.

"I'm—from the original group," she told the couple when they asked which 'generation' she hailed from—though once the teen superheroes started streaming in, generation breaks grew blurry and uncertain. They looked excited, eyes alight—these two were younger, she could tell by their glowing faces and unbroken hope—and tugged her back to the table. The news spread—not quite a lie and not quite the truth, but she'd been of a time before generations anyway—around the group, so no one else asked her.

Actually, no one even asked her name, so buoyed were they by news of an original member in their tagalong follow-up crowd. Or maybe they were playing guessing games, trying to deduce her name from her appearance. She would have liked that one, had this been a cheerier time. Had she a friend here to play it with.

After the brief flurry of excitement dulled, she extracted herself from the mob and slunk toward the wall. Pressing herself between two grey-streaked bookshelves as if she could blend in—not her power—she just watched. Watched, and tried not to cry.

Why cry? There was nothing to cry for.

Ten minutes passed before someone walked toward her, black-haired and apparently blind, though he walked toward her with ease. Halting, he stared at her for a second with blank eyes, then, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, said, "The original members congregate in the back room. Maybe that is where you want to be."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned around and strode away. She watched a moment, then followed the direction of his thumb with her gaze. A dark hole of a doorway, looking more like it led to a tunnel than a room, gaped at her from beyond the teeming round table.

Well—what the hell. Maybe she did want to be there. Maybe she needed to be there. Edging past the shelves, streaking her clothes with thick grey dust as she pressed up against them, she set her sights on the door. Maybe she'd find—

What, closure? Isn't that what people usually wanted when they came to these things? That, or a return to the past. That was what most of the kids back at the table wanted. They hoped this would be enough to bring the Teen Titans back.

Well, not today.

Glancing back at the halfway happy mob in the dank dusty room, she slipped into the back room.

It looked more like an unused barroom than anything else, and she speculated again, idly, how this had ever been a library. Maybe it'd been a reading room, then; now it only had one table, small and round and darkened with age until it was just grey. It looked on the verge of falling apart.

And there they were. Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy—everyone except Raven. They slouched around the table like weary drunks, and she started to wish she hadn't come. Only Starfire tried to engage her friends in conversation, but she received one-word answers at best, though Beast Boy did offer one feeble joke. Eventually, green eyes flashing with worry and dejection, the alien girl subsided.

"Hey, guys," the intruder managed in a quiet, almost inaudible voice. She inspired an actual reaction; they all four roused themselves to respond with a greeting—"good to see you" and "long time, no see."

But after that, it was almost as if they forgot she was there. So overcome by the weight of losing their purpose, they probably hadn't even really recognized her.

She stood there and tried to say something. The words stuck in her throat like vomit, thick and sour. Her mouth twitched, soundless, lips open and closed without success.

Struck by the utter desolation of the cluster before her, the oh-so-happy reunion in this dingy deserted room, she turned and fled. She needed to find Raven now.