Hey, I'm back with Chapter Four, which is WAY more exciting than Chapter Three, trust me. And longer. This is my longest chapter yet. Perhaps a good omen? Sorry if I took some liberties with the canon TT, by the way, but I have to make this work some way! ^.^ I'm more worried about keeping my boys and girls in character.

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. But don't worry, Ciaran comes back later! *creeper*

Chapter 4: Fragile

Raven trekked to the treasury with one-minded determination. There was only one place she was going to find what she needed, and it was going to be among the piles of booty her father and his clan had appropriated through trade, theft, or murder.

After Trigon's brutal rape and eventual murder of Arella, Raven had been lonely in her prison-like home. To ease that loneliness, she visited the treasury, where Trigon had placed Arella's things. Raven's feet followed an invisible path through the horde of gold and jewels with ease, no longer awed by so much wealth in one area. Nothing in any of those piles was more valuable than what she sought at that moment.

Reverently, Raven slowed and bowed before a modest altar. Four items were on the silver surface, looking as though they'd been used only the day before.

The first was a long, silver comb inlaid with sapphires. Raven remembered her mother brushing her hair with the lovely thing. While it was beautiful, it held no actual purpose other than being valuable and useful all at once.

Another was a musty book that Trigon had never trusted in the library with all of Arella's notes on dimension travel. Without Arella's help, Trigon would have never been able to fortify Hell as well as he did, making it impossible for Raven to leave through her usual means.

The third item was a neatly folded cloak. Raven let her fingers trail softly across the fabric, a small smile tugging at her lips. It was the exact same shade as her own, if longer and of a slimmer fit. Raven, by some curse of genetics, hadn't been gifted with her mother's willowy frame. Rather, she'd inherited a demonic trait of being sensuously curvy. Such was life, she supposed.

The last item, which she was the most interested in, was a mirror. It was white and plain, with a long, unadorned handle that fit comfortably into Raven's palm. This had been her mother's meditating mirror. She ran a finger along the side, feeling how smooth the ivory was, before tucking it into the waistband of her jeans and pressing the silvery surface flush against her back, shivering at the coolness of the glass as she covered the brilliant white with her shirt. A bit of quiet rummaging produced a mirror that was almost identical, though wouldn't pass any close inspections. Not even members of the royal family could take things from the treasury. After looking around to make sure everything was in place, she walked back to her bedroom.

As soon as she reached the room, she closed the door and locked it. It wouldn't do for someone to walk in on her with a valuable piece of the royal treasury in her hands. She pulled the mirror from her jeans and sat cross-legged on her bed, staring at her own reflection. Deep shadows circled her eyes, making her look even worse than she felt, and her hair desperately cried out for a shower. It wasn't her ideal homecoming image, but it would have to do.

Suddenly, her doorknob rattled and a giant fist pounded on the wood.

"Raven. I demand your presence," her father said crossly through the door. Raven's eyes widened. Surely he couldn't have known about the mirror already? Hurriedly, she shoved the artifact beneath her pillow and rose, smoothly wiping guilt from her face. She pulled her shirt over her head and dropped her bra next to it on the floor before unlocking the door and opening it a crack, making a point to try and cover her exposed chest.

"What? I'm changing," she said shortly. Trigon frowned lightly down at her before pushing the door, knocking Raven aside and revealing her to Trigon's full glare.

"You will join me for dinner. Immediately," he ordered. Raven rolled her eyes and turned her back on her father to clip on her bra carelessly.

"I'm not hungry," she responded as she pulled her shirt over her head. Then, a cry of surprise and pain burst from her lips as Trigon's red fingers closed around her hair and yanked her towards the door.

"It is not a request," he told her, slamming her door behind him and dragging her to the Dining Hall, his hand ruthlessly yanking her hair the entire way.

Once within, he threw her to the marble floor, bumping her hip painfully. She fought to control her anger, then was surprised. Without the consequences of her powers blowing things to the moon, her emotional control was slipping. She immediately resolved to meditate for several hours that night to remedy the situation. It wouldn't do to be out of practice when she was back in control of her full capabilities.

"A fine way to treat your daughter," she said blandly, as though her head weren't on fire.

"I've had enough of this. You will be eating dinner with me every night for the foreseeable future," he said coolly. Raven rose to her feet and calmly dusted herself off.

"I don't think so," she replied. His scowl deepened, and he held out his hand. A glass orb materialized within it, and he threw it to the floor at Raven's feet. It shattered, sending thick, white smoke into her face and making her cough.

Her eyes widened as she focused on the steam in front of her.

The broken, twisting picture showed her friends in Titan's Tower. But that wasn't what worried her. It was the ten or twenty small, semi-transparent demons crawling over the windows, keeping wide eyes trained on each of the four Titans. Raven knew this particular breed of demon, and only those with demon blood could even see them, let alone detect and destroy them. They were a key component in Trigon's dynasty maintaining power.

"I trust you'll change your mind," Trigon said coldly. Raven was willing to bet that over one hundred were milling about on the Tower, ready to report any suspicious activity or strike her friends down with ease should she cross him too badly. Raven frowned at the picture before crossing her arms.

"What are we waiting for?"

***

Dinner was a strained affair. Only she and Trigon were seated at the high table once again, and Raven refused to speak a word. Trigon didn't attempt conversation, which confused her. Why else force dinner than to talk to her or yell at her or try and coerce her into making dangerous promises? Confused and suspicious, she finished her meal and left the Dining Hall without a word. He was up to something. Trigon never did whimsical things. However, there was nothing she could do about him that night. If she was lucky, it was all she would have to do with him ever again.

In her room once more, Raven changed into casual clothes and sat on the bed, ready to try her little stunt with her mother's mirror. Hesitation and nervousness pulled at her heart. Nevermore was a very, very personal place, and once an Azarian was attuned to a mirror, no other was supposed to ever use it. Best-case scenarios usually ended with the user being a vegetable. But Raven was desperate, and this was her mother's mirror. Raven was biologically related to Arella, and it was through this bond of blood that she hoped would allow her access into her own Nevermore through another's mirror unscathed. She would have preferred to merely attune another mirror to herself to get there, but unfortunately, without her powers, that simply wasn't possible. She merely had to hope that her mother's magic would deliver her to Nevermore safely.

With a calming sigh that did little to stop her pounding heart, Raven let herself sink into a familiar place that she never needed magic to get to. She allowed her eyes to flutter closed and her fingers began to roam the mirror, feeling every physical aspect of it. Warmth surrounded her, making her mouth relax into a lazy smile. She felt like she was sunbathing on the beach. In fact, she could almost hear Beast Boy in the distance…

Suddenly, a bird cawed wildly. Raven jumped and opened her eyes.

She was in her Nevermore.

Raven scrambled to her feet, hardly able to believe that her wild, ridiculous plan had actually worked. However, as soon as she took a single step, the image around her shook violently, knocking her off of her feet again. Raven pressed her palms flat against the stone ground, brow furrowed. The magic was fragile here. Her mother's magic had allowed Raven to teleport herself into her own mind rather than Arella's, probably because Arella was dead, but it was an unstable maneuver at best. Arella's magic wasn't strong enough to withstand such treatment for long. Carefully and with great concentration on holding her environment together, Raven rose again and started walking. Her emotions, as she expected, were absent, no doubt tending to her body to keep her fingers from falling off and other such little things. Raven hardly minded. The last thing she needed was Joy bouncing around like an idiot when she was trying to concentrate.

When Raven arrived at the exit portal at the end of Nevermore, she stopped a fair distance away so she wouldn't get sucked in. This was where things would get really tricky. With a calming sigh, she raised her hands and tried to reach out to the magic around her, wielding it clumsily. The power that her mother had was nothing like her own. Raven's was precise and under strict control, snapping into a solid shape at Raven's whim. Arella's, however, was fluid and free-flowing, shifting around without a care as to its shape. When Raven tried to confine it, it merely slipped through the cracks of her control. She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath, grabbing the magic and ruthlessly folding it into the spell she needed. Obviously, a different form of control than Raven's was needed to wield this strange power, but Raven didn't have the time to learn what that control was.

The image around her shook violently, but after a timeless moment where Raven feared she'd pushed too hard, the exit portal changed from the soft, pulsing white that it had been into a black hole shot through with brilliant streaks of red.

Excitement rose in her as she entered the portal, feeling a familiar magic pick her up and whisk her away.

She was going home.

Around her, the darkness began to blur into splotches of color that spilled like ink around her, mixing and swirling in indefinable patterns. Then, definite shapes took form and settled in one space, and finally, her room emerged around her. She didn't dare move as her eyes darted from one end of the room to the other before her eyes lit. She was home. This was her home.

Relief washed over her as she walked to her door. Her body was still in the hospital ward, and until her spirit entered it, the two pieces of her whole would remain separate. She reached for the door handle…and suddenly felt herself literally falling apart, melting into the carpeting. With a cry of surprise, she leaped backwards and watched as sparks of white snapped where she was missing pieces of her limbs, making her whole again. Her eyebrows came together as she looked behind her and found herself connected to a white cord of magic that streamed through the glass in her mirror. When Raven went to grab the mirror to take it with her, her hand phased right through it. Only then did she realize that she was mostly intangible and semi-transparent. Her feet were actually two inches off of the floor.

Raven sighed and let all of her weight fall on one leg in disappointment. She was so close, but there was nothing she could do. Magic was magic, and this magic was clearly telling her that this was not an appropriate back door. It was ironic, really; even cheating death had rules. Unbidden, an image of a man wrapped in paper, presenting her a rose with words printed on the petals sprung into her mind. She could not leave her mirror, and her mirror couldn't leave her room. Which was probably for the best; no doubt one of her father's spies would have noticed Raven walking around the Tower before she could be completely restored to her body.

With a sigh, she took in the familiar sight of her own room. Even if she couldn't leave just yet, it didn't matter. Just being back in the Tower took a big weight off of her shoulders. She walked around her room, dragging ghostly fingertips against objects she couldn't really feel but imagined that she could. She smiled down at the picture of her mother on her desk, still unframed from when she'd broken the glass. A glance at her clock told her it was early morning. No doubt Cyborg or Beast Boy was making breakfast this very second, unaware of her presence in their midst. She wished she could safely talk to one of her team members. The book was her only hope.

Suddenly, her back erupted in fiery agony, and she gave a strangled shout of pain. Her hand clamped down against the small of her back, trying to relieve the intensity of the burning. She dropped to a knee, breathing heavily, and heard a noise.

She raised her head just before her mother's magic dragged her back into Hell, and gasped as she vanished from existence.

***

Robin stopped dead in the hallway as he passed Raven's room.

Someone was in there.

Quick as lightning, Robin pulled a birdrang from his belt and entered the keycode to get into the room. The door whooshed back and he leaped inside, ready for battle, but only saw a sight that made his blood run cold.

Raven was kneeling in the middle of the floor, a hand pressed against her back, and a look of shock on her face at his entrance.

And then she was gone. Her mirror flashed once with pristinely white light before fading back into a regular reflection. Robin shook his head and opened his eyes wider, but there was nothing else to see. He dropped the birdrang, crossed to the mirror, and inspected it closely with no results. She simply wasn't there.

With a troubled sigh, he sank onto Raven's bed. It'd been so long…he thought he was moving on, but his brief hallucination told him otherwise. He held his head in his hands, staring at the door that had closed behind him before shifting his gaze to the innocent, if creepy, mirror again. If he wasn't mistaken, that was the mirror into her mind. He'd always meant to ask her about it…

Suddenly, he started and looked around him. Raven's bed. He was sitting on Raven's bed. Guilt settled over his shoulders, so misplaced because she was gone but so natural because he knew how she would react, and he leaped to his feet. He was unable to believe how easily he'd broken an age-old taboo in Titan's Tower. Even being in her room was taboo!

However, when Robin looked back down at the navy blue comforter and the spot where his weight had rumpled it, the guilt gave way to curiosity. No one was watching. No one would notice. And what was a little weakness every now and then? After all, it wasn't as though Raven was going to come back and give him an earful.

He turned around so that he was facing the door and before he could change his mind, fell back into Raven's bed, her downy soft pillows letting his head sink down to the mattress beneath. Her unique smell assaulted his nose, giving him comfort and pain all at once, neither of which he felt obliged to stop. A smile touched his lips as he rearranged the pillows to prop his head up and breathed deeply, imprinting her smell into his memory. He felt like a naughty child getting away with cussing.

Robin wasn't sure how long he lay there, encompassing himself into Raven's world. It felt nice to be in a place that was so…her. He and everyone else had avoided this room, not wanting to deal with the pain of being in her space, but it was a surprisingly comforting experience. He closed his eyes, content to merely exist.

***

Raven grunted as she was thrown back onto her bed in the palace with so much force that the wind was knocked from her. Arella's magic had found supporting Raven in such a setting as too much and had rejected her violently. It took Raven precious minutes to regain her wind, for there had been someone in her room that could aid in the search of her book, and she didn't want him to leave before she could talk to him.

Once she could breathe, she went about the laborious process of engulfing herself in her mother's magic once more and reentering the mirror. It was harder this time around; her mental strength was seriously drained. Nevertheless, she pushed her way through the barriers and sprinted to the end of Nevermore. Forcing the portal nearly made her lose the magic a second time, but she persevered through sheer willpower and stepped through to her bedroom. Slowly, painfully slowly, her room materialized again with one major difference.

A certain Boy Wonder was flopped languorously across her bed, as easily as if he belonged there. She crossed her arms and shook her head in a sort of tolerant affection. Any other person, she would have shouted out of sheer reflex, but this person in her bed just made her heart beat faster. Irritably, she pushed the feelings down. She never asked to be attracted to Robin. It just…happened. And she wished it would unhappen. It made her life more difficult than it needed to be. Pushing as many thoughts about how handsome he was flopped all over her blankets out of her head, she cleared her throat.

"Dare I ask how this happened?" she asked. Robin started and sat straight up in her bed, staring at her in shock. Then, to her surprise, he lowered his head into his hands and shook it.

"I need serious help," he muttered. Raven raised an eyebrow.

"I promise I'm not a hallucination."

"That's what you would say even if you were," Robin replied, trying to avoid looking at her. Raven sighed.

"I realize this is unconventional, but truly, it was a failed attempt at getting around my father's hold on me," she said, sitting on the edge of her bed. How funny it was that she felt like she was invading his personal space when he was the one in her room.

"Wait, what?" Robin asked, his face puzzled as he looked up at her. Raven explained the situation calmly, but Robin only looked more frazzled when she reached the end of her tale.

"No, this is not happening," he said, scrambling off the bed. "You're…you're dead. Nothing changes that! People don't just…come back when they please!"

"'People' aren't the Princess of Hell. I have certain advantages," Raven replied, a little amused by his outburst. Then, to her surprise, he took a step forward and reached a hand out to her. Raven held very still as he tried to touch her shoulder, only to have his hand slip through her collarbones and out the other shoulder. A look of dismay crossed his face before he met her eyes again.

"This is…unbelievable," he said, almost to himself. Then he smiled at her. "Maybe now Starfire will stop obsessing over your body."

"No," Raven said firmly. "No one else can know."

"What? Why?" Robin asked, his smile disappearing. "Your friends have a right—"

"You're all under watch," Raven warned him. "My father has spies crawling all outside this building. Spies from Hell that no Titan is a match for. If he thinks something is suspicious, he'll kill you. All of you. The fewer people involved, the better." Robin shook his head and sat on the floor. Raven knelt in front of him.

"I need your help," she said to him, hoping to break through his reverie. He looked up at her.

"Of course, anything," he said quickly, as though surprised this were happening. Raven figured that he'd think he dreamed it up in the morning.

"There was a book downstairs, a big one. I was going to read it the day I died. I need you to bring it here. It's very important," she said. Robin's eyes went wide, and he stood. Raven didn't take that as a good sign. "You do still have it, don't you?" she asked.

"Well…" he muttered. "Things were sort of hectic. Starfire took it when she saw it and I have a bit of a feeling it might be…well, I don't know." Raven sighed, massaging her temples. Starfire had thinking places on other planets. For all she knew, it was halfway across the galaxy by now.

"I need it," she told him. "Get it back, or I'm stuck here." Robin nodded and rose to his feet.

"I'll talk to her about it today," he said. Raven rose and smiled at him.

"Thank you, Robin," she said softly.

"Will you be back soon?" he inquired. Raven shrugged.

"This is fragile magic. I don't want to break the connection before I get the book. I'll be back next week," she told him. "Exactly. Good luck."

Even though that would have been an adequate good-bye, Raven couldn't bring herself to leave. So she stood her ground, merely staring into Robin's masked eyes, wishing she could tell him something more, something meaningful, but thinking of nothing that he wouldn't find strange. He stood before her, so near, so casual in jeans and a band T-shirt with that damn mask he always wore, yet so unmistakably untouchable. She couldn't remember the last time they'd been alone together, and now, life itself separated them. He was also silent as the grave, staring back at her, tangibly there, not gone forever.

Finally, she took a deep breath and nodded, back towards the mirror.

"Good luck," she said again, laying a hand against the cold glass, the only thing in her room she could feel, and trying to keep her voice from shaking.

"We miss you," he told her. She could tell he meant it. She only looked at him, not trusting herself to speak, before nodding once and pressing her fingers through the mirror.

The magic pulled her back within Nevermore, ready to give her up to Hell once more.

***

All she could do was stare. Robin couldn't help doing the same. There she was, honestly there, not a hallucination but really there. An arm's length away, even. He would have loved nothing more than to just touch her to ensure that she was real, but a soul had no tangibility. She wasn't tall, but her majesty and poise were unmistakable. Robin felt like he was looking at a queen of a realm he didn't understand rather than a friend he'd known for years and years. It was almost as though he should drop to his knees and kiss the ground before her feet.

"Good luck," she finally said, backing to the mirror.

"We missed you," he blurted out. Robin wished he could express just how much they missed her, how hard it'd been on everyone that she was gone, but words wouldn't describe it. By the look in her eyes after the statement, he knew she understood. It didn't escape his notice that her hair was getting lifeless, her eyes were deep in shadow, and her collarbones jutted out sharply. She nodded once before pressing her fingers into the mirror, and then she was gone.

It nearly broke his heart again to see her go.

But she was okay. She was coming back. No matter what happened, Raven was coming home. They would be a team again, and everything would go back to normal. He could push away the guilt he felt over her death, because she would tell him with a voice that would make him feel stupid that it obviously wasn't his fault. Starfire would stop crying, Beast Boy would stop moping, Cyborg would stop working, and he would stop hating himself, and everything would be okay.

He turned after a moment and left the room to go and look for Starfire, but found quickly that she wasn't there. With a sigh, he threw himself down on the couch and began to aimlessly flip through channels, waiting for her to return.

***
Starfire, however, had no intention of returning for quite some time.

After Beast Boy had made her cry and Robin had let him, Star had flown from her home to the ocean to have herself a good cry alone. Everything had changed when Raven had died, just like everything had changed when she'd been thrown into the future and the team had been ripped apart. It seemed that without one member, everything fell apart.

And Robin. He'd proven time and again that he was reliable, but when push came to shove, he just didn't know what to do. Hell, Starfire didn't know what to do to make herself feel better. She hadn't even been this devastated when her pet zlorfglat had passed away a day before she was due to have babies. But Robin, who had always known what to do, just ignored her, now.

She looked up at the stars above her, idly naming which ones were planets. She'd flown to the ocean to the east and was curled on a rock, chin on her knees. The night was soothing, as was the sound of the ocean.

Tears rolled down her face anew as an image of Raven lying in a pool of her own blood suddenly leaped into her mind. Her nightmares were getting worse, but she just couldn't tell anyone. They were too personal. They hurt her too much to verbalize, and everyone else was already too devastated about Raven's death to hear about the ghastly images her mind created. Quiet sobs worked their way out of her throat as she tried and failed to push the pictures away when a hand suddenly came down on her shoulder.

"Starfire?"

A/N: Who's touching Starfire?!?! WAH! *giggles* Kidding, you'll like it. R&R, as always, and thanks so much to all of my readers who aren't reviewing but are devoted to the story, anyway! I appreciate all of you just as much. We'll maybe see Chapter Five by the end of next week. Peace out!