Disclaimer: The characters (Titans) in this story? Not mine.

Prologue

Love was never meant to be suppressed, let alone ignored. It is not as if pushing such a strong feeling into some dark corner of your heart will make it go away. Then, when you realized masking your adoration was not going to rid you of your feelings, you tried to tell yourself you didn't love her. Hiding such feelings as you have is one thing, but trying to drown them out is another. Especially if you know; she's the one for you. So here you are. Struggling with yourself; you know you can't just let her go. But you swore never to love again and the people around you always made that easy… until her.

You already know she's broken through those barriers, the lock that guarded your heart. You already know she's stolen your heart and in a way, a very big way at that, you wanted her to. As much as you told yourself you didn't need to feel loved by anyone because you, almighty you, had chosen not to love anyone; you know she proved you wrong.

At the very same time, you've been hurt before. Hurt so deep even she doesn't know…yet. So you always found you could mask your emotions by plunging head first into some task, whether it meant challenging yourself or challenging others didn't matter. And when hiding things didn't work you could always build an immunity to your hurting heart. So why couldn't you do it with her? After all, you had gone through training. Sixteen years of training not to love and how to shut things out because you were not supposed to love. Your job was to enforce rules, laws; anything to keep others from hurting as much as you had. Not loving… that was a law for you; made by you, reinforced by your father figure. She broke that law, and for the first time, you are lost.

You couldn't help but let her break that law. When you masked your emotions and turned to plunging yourself deep into an obsession with Slade, she stayed quietly by your side to pull you out of trouble when you got in too deep. When you shut her out and provoked her, hoping it would make her mad and stop being so damn sweet to you… she wasn't like the others.

She let you hurt her and made excuses for your behavior. And on top of that, when you realized what you had done to such an innocent thing as her, and realized how insanely much you missed her, you couldn't help but run back to her and beg and plead for her forgiveness. Which wasn't really necessary because she'd forgiven you long ago. And then, somewhere in the middle of the two of you sitting in each other's arms on the roof, you'd realize not only that you'd broken your law again but were feeling very certain that holding each other the way you were was not totally an action of friend to friend. But, she didn't know that because she was new and naive to earth's ways. And the fact she didn't love you back only fueled your desire to quell your own affections which were rapidly growing to much more than love; becoming an obsession of a new kind.

But Robin, you didn't count on the fact your thoughts were skewed and that maybe… she did love you back. That maybe, she'd overcome her own hurts and openly let you into her heart and was only waiting for you to willingly do the same. You never counted on the fact she would come to you and simply wait; wait until you were ready to learn to fly.


Author's Notes: ok, I swear I'm working on The Third Quadrant still. I just had to get this out. I have three chappies written so far on this and I'm workin on Chappie 5 for Quadrant... no fear! I would sincerally appreciate your comments and concerns on this chapter. Thank you very, very much! hugs!

Love, Princess Starfire of Tamaran