Hey guys sorry for the delay... had to get it approved by my friend. I was nervous about this chapter for some reason. Anyway. Enjoy.
Robin looked around his cramped room and sighed. It was furnished with only a double bed and a cardboard box filled with simple black clothes. Raven had sent him away with a promise to explain everything later.
Part of him wanted to search all of the rooms, look for hidden cameras, decide who he could trust and who might pose a threat to the mission. The other part of him wanted to lie down and sleep for a thousand years. Dammit Bruce, he mentally growled. What have you gotten me into?
Robin was no stranger to field work; all of the young trainees had gone out on minor missions with their mentors to gain experience. However, tracking drug dealers through Gotham was very different from a solo infiltration. To add to his isolation the nearly invisible comm located just inside his ear reported only static.
He was stuck in this hell alone.
After giving his room one final, detached glance he slipped out the door. The hallway was one of two (the other being the path to the infirmary) and was, for lack of a better term, the dormitory. There were five bedrooms, the owners of which had been rattled off by Beast Boy as he led Robin to his living quarters. The sole bathroom was located second door on the left.
Directly across the hall from Robin's new home was the room belonging to Starfire. If the redhead was anything like Raven, knocking on her door would be courting death. (He had already been warned away from the purple-haired girl's room.)
Something, however, told Robin that Starfire was unlike any girl he had ever met.
Besides, he was used to courting death.
He knocked lightly.
"You may enter," a soft voice answered. As soon as he opened the door, Robin quickly took in the room with a practiced eye. It was the same size as his, though the bed was oriented differently and a second battery-powered lamp hung from the ceiling. The now-familiar girl sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed, watching as he hovered in the entrance. "You may come and do the sitting down if you wish," she said with a small grin, patting the space beside her. "My name is Starfire. And you are?"
"Robin," the boy spy supplied. It was thanks to his training that he was able to adjust to the new name without incident. The mattress squeaked under his added weight.
"Robin," she repeated, trying out the strange word. "What is a Robin?"
He frowned slightly. "A robin is a type of bird. It has a red belly and is said to signify the coming of spring."
"You have a bird name too? Raven chose hers based off a story. Does yours have a story? I have heard much about this 'spring'. Tell me, what are flowers truly like?" She spoke with a rapid-fire tongue, and he held up his hand against her eager expression.
"Actually, there is a story. Robin Redbreast," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and smiling embarrassedly. "Remind me to tell you it sometime." Then the last of her questions registered and confusion dashed across his face. "You've never seen a flower?"
"No," she answered sadly, looking down at her lap. "Beast Boy, Raven and Cyborg have described them to me, though. They said they were like bursts of color, and had the sweetest of fragrances."
Because of her upbeat and excited attitude, Robin had forgotten that this version of hell belonged to her long before he stumbled across it. He paused and studied her, reading defeat in the hunch of her back and way her slender hands played with-
"Is that a book?"
She looked up, startled, and he watched as her expression went from sad to eager in less than a second. "Yes, I got it for Raven," she grinned. "Can you believe it? A whole room filled with books! I would have gotten her more but this was the thinnest one I could find and the easiest to hide and-"
Once again Robin stopped her tirade. "You stole a book?"
"Were they not for the taking?" she asked, her voice suddenly small. Immediately, Robin's incredulous and righteous anger melted away.
"Well, no," he explained, once again rubbing his neck. How long has she been stuck here? he wondered.
"Oh. I am truly sorry."
"It's ok. Just don't... steal." There was an awkward silence as he mentally beat himself up for killing her mood. In an attempt to bring back the previous lightness, he asked, "What book did you get?"
Once again her face brightened and she hastily shoved the thin novel into his lap. "The Old Man and the Sea," he read out loud. "God, I hated that book."
Once again her smile dimmed.
"Should I have gotten another? Would she not be pleased with it?"
"What? No!" he exclaimed, aghast at his ability to say the wrong thing. "No, I think she'd really like it. I had to read it for school, and the teacher kinda ruined it for me."
Her face scrunched up in concentration as he spoke of school and assignments and essays. She remembered the stories Cyborg and Beast Boy told her, but it was hard to reconcile that image with her version of school. All the same, she listened with rapt attention as he explained the premise of the book, biting her tongue to keep from blurting out questions
"So yeah, I think she'd really like it," he concluded. Starfire squealed and threw her arms around him in a bone-crushing hug. He was caught so off guard that by the time he went to hug her back she was already pulling away.
"Thank you, Friend Robin, I will go do the giving of it to her," she gushed, and then flew out of the room. Robin blinked.
Flew?
He need to talk to Raven about getting those answers.
Yeah so sorry I made Robin hate Old Man and the Sea. Personally I loved it (interesting backstory there- it was my bedtime story for like a year) but school kinda ruined it. So yeah.
Anyway, tell me what you think. Reviews are better than week long vacations!