Whoa, it's been WAY too long! I am so, so sorry about the dead-ness, everyone. I don't know why, but everything in my life got really insane really quickly. I don't think I've checked my email in two weeks, let alone gotten on the Internet for fun. But anyway…I know you guys have been salivating over the cause of Robin's death, so I wrote a super-long chapter this time. C: Enjoy, guys!

Also. I have a poll. You have time. So…Yeah. Two plus two equals three. Hee-hee.

As the gray carpet ground into her cheek, Raven was aware of a babbling above her, but as she could do was shudder with fear and rage and a burning horror until her entire body was consumed with feverish chills and she shook like a child left out in the cold. There was a sparkling haze over the world and she could barely see through the numbed tears that forced their way from her eyes. The pain ravished her five senses—a screeching vortex of wind, a pulsing veil of red, the metallic taste of blood, a stench of rotting meat, the sickly-sweet reek of poisonous fumes…and the way she gouged and tore at the flesh of her arms, keening with pain and grief and wanting above everything to be consumed by the raging storm within her soul.

The worst part, though, was that she remained conscious the whole time. And all she could do was writhe at the floor and shudder in her tears as a wild, feral animal inside of her screamed for release. She was aware of strong, cool hand clutching at her limbs and shouting above her body, but all that existed in her world were the flames that scoured her flesh, prolonging each second into a whirlwind of agony.

And then nothing.

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There was a soft light above her that found its way through her eyelids. Raven murmured a protest, wanting to stay in her deep, warm slumber forever. The light grew stronger and she tried to raise her arm to shield from her eyes, but as soon as she did it zinged with pain. She cried out.

Raven forced her eyes open as she emerged from a deep sleep. There were white, sterile walls surrounding her and a soft bed beneath her. Her head spun as she blurrily tried to catalogue the machines around her: no luck. They probably all had names, but she couldn't give any to them herself. Raven felt a slight tug at her wrist and saw various tubes trailing from her arm to another blinking machine beside her.

There were clean white bandages wrapped around her arms. She closed her eyes, confused. What…?

And then the truth rushed back in all of its barefaced horror.

Raven clutched herself with frail arms and succumbed to tears, tears that shook her frame and left her empty and dry inside even as they soaked her flimsy nightgown. There was a warm body next to hers, giving off an antiseptic smell that made her throat burn. "It's okay," the body whispered. "Let it all out."

She couldn't stop. The tears streamed from her face and she kept uttering weak, plaintive cries that sickened her even as she begged for Robin to come back. The warm frame kept trying to tell her to calm down before she tired herself out but Raven sobbed and shuddered and wailed until the body moved. "Somebody get something to put her down!" The voice blared through her trembling mind until she felt a small prick at her arm, and then the thoughts in her mind turned to soap bubbles, shimmering enticingly in the soft light.

And then nothing. Again.

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It took time for Raven to wake from the sucking pull of drug-induced sleep, and when she did, the thoughts in her mind took a little while to drift back into place. She was…in a hospital…she had bandages on her arms…something…something bad had happened. Something worse than she could comprehend.

But before she could struggle with the final thought, Raven noticed Starfire sitting in the corner of the room, watching her with those brilliant, slanted eyes.

Her face was hidden behind a sheet of fiery hair, and Raven found herself trembling. Starfire could do anything to her. Scream at her. Hurt her. Pummel her and beat her until she was punished for the crimes she had committed.

Raven felt herself paralyzed by fear and tried to draw the power into her mind, but a splitting headache interfered. She cried out and Starfire's head swiveled towards her. The Tamaranian stretched fluidly and drifted over to Raven's bed, eyes burning fire and ice and accusing of everything she had done. Starfire stopped a foot from the bed.

"You lied."

The words were simple enough, but it was the tone that shocked her the most. They sounded…empty. So full that they were empty. There was rage and pain and grief and horror and a tempest of emotion that was channeled towards the one person left to blame. It was a desperate attempt for release from the emotions that ravaged them both. And the one responsible for the entire thing was sitting in a hospital bed, clothed in a disposable paper nightgown decorated with pink and green dinosaurs, trembling like a leaf blown in the wind.

Raven closed her eyes against the pain. "I did," she said, voice barely squeezing from the dismay choking her throat.

Starfire's eyes pinned her to the wall like a dead butterfly. "You lied. You cheated. You kissed someone you should not have."

"Starfire, I am so, so sorry. I—I don't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was thinking. I—"

When Starfire cut through her desperate babble, the words sang with an undertone of cold, cold anger…and above all, the terrible knowledge that nothing could be done. And yet somehow, the words she uttered were the most chilling thing of all.

"The galaxies do not revolve around you, once-friend Raven." Her beautiful features twisted into a terrible frown. "And you would do well to notice someone beyond yourself."

The door slammed and the room's aura tasted of bitterness, but all Raven could hear were Starfire's words echoing around the room.

Echoing…

Echoing…

Echoing.

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Time blurred in the hospital. Sunlight sometimes streamed through her small window, broken up by pouring rain and howling winds. Sleep mingled with consciousness and emotions ran together in a confusing stream. She occasionally drifted off into an uneasy sleep filled with nightmares, only to awake to Starfire's haunting words. Raven escaped for only moments in her dreams before the lingering hatred in the luminous green eyes woke her again, screaming. The nurses whispered as they passed her doorway and she overheard plans to move her to the permanent ward or even the rehab center.

There was no energy to move outside of her bed. Hospital aids came in every few days to bathe her and she felt only a dull shame. They tried to make her eat. She screamed. More tubes were shoved into her arms. Raven sometimes pondered the bleak thought of yanking them all out and letting herself die there, but she couldn't find the will to move her arms. She lay there tiredly instead, thoughts wandering the same well-trodden paths.

Because through it all—through the tangled dreams and disturbing sights and sounds, more virulent than Starfire's terrible words and more potent than her thoughts of death—was one thought that kept her muscles tensed and her eyes rubbed raw from tears. It was killing her as much as it saved her from insanity. It was the one reason she existed: to find the truth. The truth to the question that rang in her ears during every waking moment…

How did he die? How did he die? How did he die?!

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There came a day when hushed whispers drifted through Raven's closed door. She pulled herself from another half-asleep nightmare and pricked her ears. Raven almost found the will to move a foot out of her bed and listen at the door. She twitched her toes.

It was so much easier to lie still, though. So she did.

Muffled whispers. A voice—female, clipped and businesslike—that was barely audible was speaking: "…not a word in three weeks…barely functions…an abnormal lethargy that is punctuated by…sleep patterns irregular…" The voice petered out.

She barely cared. It wasn't like they could make her move or anything. She could stay there the rest of her life.

A murmur now, from a rumbling male voice: "…move her to closed ward…possible delusional beha…yes, self-mutilation as well…uh-huh…I see… Yes, possibly a case of typical insanity…Yes. Yes, we'll move her tomorrow."

A dull shock rang through her senses. They were going to move her? To an insanity ward?

Raven wondered how she felt about it. Nothing would change, would it? She would still be in a bed and she would still be fed through a tube. No one would bother her. No one would care.

Something hurt her, inside. She remembered the moment the words left Starfire's lips and she remembered the pain that had engulfed her. She reminded herself that she still wanted to find out how Robin died. A spark of energy sparked in her veins. The strange longing to never move left her, and she felt frustration welling up in her veins, a desire for action overcoming every shred of lethargy in her body. Yes, she would go find the truth. She would go somewhere and find out how Robin died. And then she would kill herself.

She smiled, just a little. There was a mad glee that came along with choosing her own destruction. For once, she was the one choosing to die. She was the one inflicting pain upon herself. And she was the only one who would do the final deed.

Raven heard the whispers outside move away from her door, and she swung her feet out of the bed. Stars winked in front of her eyes as blood rushed out of her head. When they cleared, Raven saw darkness outside of the window. She gave a lemon-sucking grin. Darkness made her path much, much easier.

She ripped the tubes from her arm and bit back a scream of pain. Blood spurted from her arm as the tubes writhed on the floor, squirting thick orange fluid from the tips. Raven dizzily tore a strip of the white sheet from her bed and wrapped it around her wrist. Blood soaked through in seconds.

The pink and green dinosaurs were gone: the disposable nightgown was now embellished with bright purple clowns. She bared her teeth and ripped it from her body, letting the thin paper crumple to the ground. Better to be naked than to look ridiculous.

As Raven surveyed the window, she noticed a small camera blinking in the top corner of the room. She summoned the icy black energy from her hands and shorted out the machine's power. It died with a high-pitched whine. The window was even less of a problem—it was secured only with a metal bolt that opened from the inside. Raven slid the window up and shivered as chilly night air cut through her bare skin.

Her head fit through the window, but her wider shoulders hit the wood frame. Raven grimaced and tilted her body diagonally, then fell ungracefully onto the pavement below. She yelped in pain as the cement scraped her bare skin.

God was smiling on her that night. The streets around her were empty, and Raven blessed the darkness for shielding her exposed body from curious eyes. She shivered a little—the escape seemed too easy and too unobstructed to be real. All it had cost her was a little blood and a few dead skin cells. Surely there was some kind of alarm. Surely they were sending someone after her.

Raven stood still for a moment, ears straining for any kind of warning bell…But there was nothing. Nothing at all.

She took a deep, steadying breath that nevertheless made her head spin. Blood trickled down her fingers, dropping soundlessly to the street below, and puddle there in a small red pool. She wondered if anyone would notice it in the morning. But she couldn't spare time to mop it up. She had answers to find and suicide to commit.

Raven jogged to the end of the street and peered around the corner, brain strangely calm. Her heart leapt against her rib cage and her hands shook, but her thoughts were clear. She would go to the Tower. She would make someone tell her how Robin died. And then she would throw herself off the roof.

Her feet moved of their own accord, and never once did she look back.

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The Tower's alarms were spun glass beneath her crackling black power. Raven crept up the metal stairs and passed through the living room like a wraith. She averted her eyes from the endless, silly things from her life before corruption—the coffee machine Cyborg was so proud of; Beast Boy's purple sneakers sitting lopsidedly on the couch; a single coppery strand of Starfire's hair, gleaming in the moonlight. Constant, painful reminders. Raven closed her eyes and forced the sorrow from her mind. Emotion would only make it all the harder to kill herself.

Cyborg's door whooshed open. Raven flicked on a light. He looked peaceful—lying on his metal slab of a bed, power cords feeding electricity into his internal sockets. She almost smiled until she remembered why she was there.

Raven steeled herself and brusquely yanked the cables from his arm. He jolted awake, face twisted into a panicked confusion. "What the—"

His round eye took in her complete lack of clothes first, and then focused on the blood dripping down her arm and glazed eyes. Cyborg sat up slowly. She could see the gears working in his head.

He finally took a deep breath, averting his eyes from her bare skin. A faint blush colored his dark cheeks. "D'you…d'you want a shirt or something?"

She gave him a vampire smile and he shuddered a little. "Sure."

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Cyborg massaged his temples. "Why are you here, Raven? You're supposed to be chilling in the hospital."

She drew her knees up to her chest and felt Cyborg's enormous sweat pants slide down a little on her hips. "I…I wanted answers," she said honestly. The crazy energy that had possessed her during her escape had fizzled out, leaving her drained. She put her hands over her eyes, seeing bright bursts of color behind her closed eyes as she pressed down slightly.

He gave a rumbling sigh. "What kind of answers, Rae? It's like three in the morning."

Raven avoided his eyes, breath choked off for a second as she imagined Robin's cold, dead eyes staring into hers. She could see his chalky skin ashy mouth in her mind, could feel his mouth crushed against hers. Her head swam.

Cyborg took her shoulders as she sagged to the left. "Raven. Maybe you should get some sleep." His bright red opti-eye stared into hers worriedly.

"I just…I just want to know how it happened." The words left her mouth, carried on nothing but the faintest of breaths. Her heart constricted painfully.

She pushed herself against the wall and let the tears drip onto the floor. Cyborg settled back on his metal bed and passed a huge hand in front of his eyes. "Do you really want to know?" he asked in his chocolate voice. "You're not going to hurt yourself or anything?"

Raven tasted the lie on her tongue and nodded instead. He looked relieved, and then abruptly grave again.

"He was doing drugs, Raven." Horror strangled her throat and she pressed her forehead against her knees, wanting above everything to block out the sound of Cyborg's voice but knowing that she needed to listen more than anything in the world. "He was dealing out of the Tower for a bit of extra cash, and he was using some himself. Ecstasy. He overdosed one night when you were gone."

Cyborg's voice went on and on, telling her everything, destroying her entire word with his simple words, but the only thing Raven could hear was Robin's voice, echoing over and over in her mind, and she felt the numbing caress of death with every syllable.

We're your friends, Raven. We care about you.

Oh my God, Raven, are you okay?

I'm here for you. You can tell me anything. Anything in the world you want to tell me, I'll listen…

I thought you'd understand, Raven! Can't you see what I'm trying to do? Can't you see what I'm doing for you?

I told you I was okay!

I did it because…I love you.

Raven shuddered in tears that could never express her all-consuming despair, and Cyborg looked at her with pitying eyes. "I'm really sorry, Raven," he said, and his voice was thick with sorrow.

"I know, Cyborg." Her heart squeezed painfully as she struggled for air with lungs encased in ice. But she managed thee more words before she succumbed to the darkness behind her eyes.

"I am too."

Ooh, guess what? I have a poll. You should go answer it.