Water was pouring down Robin's face, obscuring his vision as the rain streamed down his mask and into his eyes. His hair was limp with the wetness, completely soaked and sticking to his skin and falling into his eyes.
He bit his lip until the taste of blood filled his mouth, started dripping down from the corner of his lip. Only to have the rain was the red droplets away from him.
"I know you're going to come back," he whispered to the air between them. "You have to. You're strong, and you've survived worse."
But Starfire made no response.
A drugged haze clouded her mind, forcing her thoughts back deep within her to fade away and lose purpose. Everything seemed blue, a grayish blue color that was dark and murky, just like being deep underwater.
People were there, but not there at the same time. Silhouettes of people, and she could place a certain feeling to them. She specifically knew each shadowy figure that appeared within her mind, but how she would not be able to know.
And a faraway sound reached her, an echoing sound that was like some vague music.
"Robin," called a voice, distant to Robin's ears.
He didn't turn, even as he heard the others approaching, the thump of their feet and the slight squish of mud clinging to their shoes. Gripping Starfire's arms tighter, he pulled her closer to him, taking her under his cape to shield her from the cold rain.
"Robin," said the voice again, and a hand was on his shoulder.
There was a loud clap of thunder, and the entire sky lit with blinding white light. And the rain, ceaselessly falling from the thick black clouds, falling in thick cold curtains down onto them. Beast Boy was shivering, hard, trying to keep himself warm. His hands were rubbing up and down his arms, trying to keep himself warm.
"We need to get out of this storm," Cyborg said.
Looking down at Robin, all their hearts seemed to sink. They knew what had happened, knew it just as well as they could know anything else. Robin might have shielded her from the rain, but they could still see how it had played out. An unconscious Starfire, her head lulled back and completely unresponsive, and Robin nearly out of his wits.
Cyborg put his hand back onto Robin, and pulled. Robin shook him off, not wanting to move at all. To do so would seem to break the trance he had found himself in. Staring down at Starfire's face, he was convinced that if he waited, she would come back.
Cyborg could not stand for it. Grabbing onto Robin, he pulled Robin to his feet just as Robin pulled Starfire up along with him, clutching at her body and keeping the cape wrapped around her. Together, the rest of the team ushered the two of them out of the rain, trying to get them shelter by the thick leaves of the surrounding trees. The ones that hadn't been broken or completely destroyed in their fight with Slade.
"She's going to be okay," Raven said to Robin, though she knew that the words never truly reached him. "If she weren't, I would feel it. But I don't."
Robin made no response.
Neither did Starfire.
"We need to get back to the tower," Cyborg said to Raven and Beast Boy.
Since they were the only two listening, they were the only ones who could help him out. Robin had lost himself in his grief, and Starfire would not be awaking any time soon. Raven and Beast Boy nodded, noting the saddened and tired expression Cyborg wore.
They all loved Starfire, loved her so much.
Seeing her life being sapped from her wore down on all of them, their emotions seeming to stab into them and make it hard to walk, or to breathe, or to think. It would be hard to move, to do nothing but stay as Robin was, clinging to them.
"Robin," Raven said, placing her hands on him.
Too many hands were on him. Cyborg's hands and Raven's hands, and Beast Boy was sure to come around to him as well. All of them pulling him from his trance. Robin tried to shake them off, but they held fast to him, not letting him out of their grip.
The cape Robin had on was thick, slick with rainwater, and their nails were biting into the hard fabric painfully. Their fingers ached from the cold and the pressure, but they pulled Robin from the trunks of the tree.
Robin carried Starfire in his arms.
His cape was still slung over her, the best as he could sling it over her. Raven and Cyborg walked behind him, making sure that he didn't collapse to the ground again, start pining for Starfire to awaken from sheer power of hope.
But still, looking over their shoulder, painful stabs to their cores were felt with each step. They forced the air in and out of their lungs, having to remind themselves to breathe normally, and not have their breath catch looking at the sight in front of them.
Even Beast Boy, who walked in front, leading them back away to somewhere safe and somewhere warm, could not help but sneak glances back at his friends.
He regretted it each time he did, but he couldn't help himself.
He needed to see how things were.
Not improving, that was for certain. Beast Boy chewed his lip and forced his eyes in front of him again, working his way through the tangle of trees and boulders and broken and overturned foliage. The remnants of the battle,
a battle that would have to be continued another day, another time, until Starfire awakened. Slade had gotten away, and no one knew where he went or what he was planning.
But no one cared, not now.
Even Robin, who had obsessed over Slade day and night until his mind was raw and pounding, thought nothing of Slade. He was nothing more than an inkling in the back of his mind, but the word revenge floated through, near him.
He would take revenge on Slade, one day.
One day when Starfire was well again, and she was walking and talking and flying and acting like herself again. When Cyborg could monitor her vital signs and say with certainty that she was in good health, that Slade had not damaged her beyond repair.
Robin fell to his knees.
Cyborg and Raven were at his side at once, their hands on his shoulders, clawing at his cape, trying to pull him back up and keep him moving.
"Robin, please," Raven said desperately.
"Robin, we have to get somewhere safe. We can't stay out in this mess," Cyborg said, backing Raven up.
That was when the pain finally hit Starfire. Yet again, within the drugged, thick haze of her fogged and incoherent mind, a bright flashing stab of pain hit her. It was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, nothing but a pain so total and so complete that nothing could help.
Every thought, every vague shadow and drugged feeling and every hazy sound of music was shot from her mind, scattered like ashes as the bolts of pain seared into her, filling her mind with stabs of bright light. Her body ached, all over her was a burning pain that sunk into her nerves and made her muscles tremble.
And a strange feeling all over her body, like static starching over her skin, or a tingling feeling that was like pokes of needles all around.
With another bang of thunder over head, Starfire's pain increased, the sound driving a mental spike into her. Flashing lights from outside, the crashing noise of thunder that made her head throb. Opening up her eyes, she screamed, her body tensing before falling limp again, her voice dying away in her raw throat.
Her voice crackling away to a nothing, she still mumbled, trying to say something that had become lost to her once more.
"Starfire…?" Robin's voice was nothing more than a whisper, forced through a dry throat.
He leaned his head in close to her, trying to make out the words she thought she was saying. Half of them were in Tamaranian, the other half were semi-conscious blurbs of pain that she was in, still within the hazed mazes of her mind.
Despite everything, despite the horrible grief everyone shared, despite the hard rain that was driving down upon them, despite the brokenness of the forest around them, and despite Slade winning the battle, Robin smiled.
He did not even know he was smiling, but he smiled all the same, though awkward and bloody as it was.
Raven and Cyborg ran up to him, and Beast Boy had spun around, seemingly planted to the spot. Unable to believe his own eyes and his own ears, he stood awestruck at the limp but conscious Starfire with gurgled sounds escaping her throat.
Cyborg and Raven were by Starfire, smiling down at her through their tears and their own blood that trickled down from their raw and bitten lips.
Starfire.
"Starfire," their voices were all mixed together, running into one another seamlessly, all talking till they seemed like one voice with different tones. They all spoke to her, flocking around her, crying and desperate to have her well again.
But she was awake, and that was a good sign.
A vital sign that Cyborg would not have to measure with computers and monitors.
"Starfire," came the voices, "you're going to be okay."
"I know that," she said, or mumbled, or perhaps even thought. "I know that, I have survived worse. I will be okay. Just get me to some place soft."
She would be okay.