Cyborg's mechanical red eye glowed dully as he stood before the mirror in his room, emotionlessly examining his imposing half-flesh, half-mechanical figure. His other eye narrowed in concentration as he lost himself in thoughts, glaring at the night sky outside.
He gazed at the clock as the numbers reached 3:00. He waited a few more seconds until there was a quiet knock at the door. "Come in." He said without turning around.
The door slid open and a grumpy Beast Boy stepped in the room, rubbing his tired, bloodshot eyes. He let out a huge yawn.
"Dude. It's fricken three in the morning. What is it this time?"
"Close the door." Cyborg said, not even turning around to acknowledge his green-skinned friend as he entered the room.
"Come on Cy. You know I don't do well on less than ten hours of sleep!" Beast Boy pouted, folding his arms across his thin chest.
"CLOSE IT. NOW." Cyborg turned around, jaw and fists clenched. Beast Boy rolled his eyes and slammed it shut. Cyborg growled under his breath, but didn't chastise his friend. Beast Boy leaned against it, pouting and muttering under his breath. Cyborg continued glaring at him. Beast Boy saw his friend's stony expression and kicked the ground in exasperation, hands on his hips.
"Dude. Seriously. What is it about? I promise didn't take the veggie burgers."
"I don't give a damn if you take a hundred. That's not what I called you here to talk about." Cyborg sighed and looked out the window at the glittering lights of the city below. Beast Boy threw up his hands in exasperation and paced across the room.
"Don't tell me it's about Robin. Dude, you've babbled about this a million times and I don't know what you want to hear."
"Listen, Beast Boy!" Cyborg whirled around and stormed over to his younger friend, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him roughly. "Just for once in your life, stop and listen! This isn't just about Robin! It's about everybody!" He looked around abruptly, anxious that his raised voice might have woken the others. Taking in a deep breath, he looked at Beast Boy's now worried and confused face and slowly took off his metallic hands.
"Think about it! Hasn't anyone stopped to think that we have been a team for almost four years and he still hasn't shown us his face? The fact that aside from having worked with Batman before coming here, we know almost nothing about him? We don't even know the kid's real name. Nobody is hiding their identities, BB. Even Raven doesn't anymore. What kind of leader can't even trust his own people, the only people he has been associated with for the past three years, to show us what he looks like? I mean, ninety percent of the dude's face is uncovered. Why does he hide his eyes behind that white mask? Is he seriously afraid we're somehow going to turn on him by exposing his identity?"
"And what are you trying to say?" Beast Boy frowned in confusion.
"All I'm saying is!" Cyborg stopped and took a deep breath again. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know him if I can trust him anymore." He paced over to a crumpled newspaper laying on his desk and spread it out, revealing a photograph showing him and Robin smiling before a group of laughing children. "I don't know if I ever did sometimes."
Beast Boy scratched his head. "Uh, well. Maybe he doesn't want us to pity him? Maybe he's afraid deep down he'll never be as…." Beast Boy stopped himself midsentence, not liking where this conversation was leading.
"That he'll never be as good as the Batman. Why?! What more does he have to prove? What is he so afraid of? Have we ever compared him to Batman? It's not like we snooped around and tried to find out whatever it was that happened between them."
"Dude. I hear what you're saying. I'd have more luck learning computer programming than figuring out how boy genius's mind works. Who knows why he never really fully trusts anyone? Maybe he really thinks he is smarter than everybody like you said."
"I didn't say that, man."
"Uh…" Beast Boy ran a hand through his short hair. "Then maybe he doesn't' like talking about his past before moving here and thinks we will think less of him if we knew about it. Old man Bats isn't the kind of person to chat and gossip over a cup of steaming caramel macchiato."
"You know, just because he trained under Batman doesn't mean he has to act like him! Isn't that the reason why he left him in the first place?" Cyborg snapped, growing increasingly impatient at the younger teen's inability to see things from his point of view. Beast Boy gave the older teenager a deadpan look.
"Did you seriously wake me up at three am to talk about why you don't like Robin? Should we hold a vote on who wants him to leave?" Beast Boy's voice took on a biting, sarcastic tone.
Cyborg opened his mouth to say something nasty when a black shadow materialized in front of them and a familiar pale-skin in a blue cloak and hood stepped out of it, eyes trained on the two boys in a dangerous, authoritative glare.
"Yes, Cyborg. Why won't you tell us just exactly what is going on?" Raven's voice was its usual monotone but Cyborg knew a loaded question when he heard one. He shifted away from her slowly, wary of being close to her as the tension in the room's atmosphere grew thicker.
"How long have you been eavesdropping on us?" Cyborg demanded, quickly regaining his composure.
"I heard enough to deduce you seem to have a problem with him. Well?"
"Raven, it's not what it looks like." Beast Boy tried to cut the tension but she silenced him with another stony look.
"You're damn right. I do have a problem with him." Cyborg interrupted as he stood up to his full six foot six inch height, dwarfing his much smaller companions as he aggressively stepped forward with his fists clenched. "None of us are hiding anything here. We don't have secret civilian identities to protect. We walk around in public everyday with our faces held high. But spiky-haired, nitpicker little boy genius is willing to masquerade as a criminal without telling us just to find out who is behind the mask of everyone's favorite one-eyed psycho! When he's too afraid to even show his own teammates his real face or tell us his name!"
"And are you forgetting about your infiltration of the Hive academy and then fought us on the side of the Hive students?" Raven raised an eyebrow, but kept her face otherwise expressionless. She hit a nerve as Cyborg gritted his teeth in anger at her logical, defiant contradiction of him.
"I'm not the one who threatened to attack his own team because he thought he was seeing someone who wasn't there!" Cyborg bellowed back. "I'm not the one who went emo, cut himself on a mirror the other night, and just went AWOL on the rest of us without a hint as to where in the hell he is!"
Beast Boy heard enough. The confrontation was escalating far higher than he was comfortable with. He stepped between them, arms held out.
"Cy, seriously dude. You'll wake up the whole city if you keep this up."
"I'm not the one who threatened to throw his own teammate in jail when he lost control of animal instincts!" He bellowed, getting right up in Beast Boy's shocked face. "I'm not the one who gave up on him when we all thought he hit rock bottom and had turned Benedict Arnold to work for Slade!"
"YOU didn't give up on him?" Raven challenged loudly in an interrogative tone, black energy suddenly spreading behind. "Are you implying we would have turned on him if not for you?"
Beast Boy edged towards the door out of the line of sight, unwilling to be caught in this explosive standoff between two of the strongest titans. Cyborg and Raven had never fought before. Ever.
"And how did things turn out when you left us for Titans East?"
"Robin only tried to talk me out of it because he feels he can keep everyone under his thumb and can't stand anyone being better than him."
"Yet we eventually had to come riding to the rescue."
"I pull just as much weight as Robin and that's more than any of you! The tower's critical systems would collapse overnight if it wasn't for me! Until the two of you actually learn coding and math for a change instead of lounging around playing video games or reading creepy fantasy books, don't talk to me about how to lead a team!"
"Yet that technical brilliance didn't stop Brother Blood from hijacking your new team and almost dissecting you."
"You know what, Raven? It is times like this I think you are in league with Robin. You and he were always the least trusting of us. You hide that bleached mug behind that hood every day and keep to yourself reading those creepy books like a gothic vampire. It's only natural that you gravitate towards him. What do you two listen to when you think we are all out of earshot?" Cyborg's furious snarl turned into a mocking sneer, an expression none of them had seen before. "Read the latest vampire romance? Write steamy lemon stories? Listen to emo? Practice self-mutilation?"
Something snapped within Beast Boy. He could deal with any number of Cyborg's insults directed at him but no one disrespected Raven on his watch. Putting himself between them once again he gave Cyborg a surprisingly hard shove back, nearly causing his bigger teammate to fall.
"DON'T TALK TO HER LIKE THAT!"
"I'll talk to her about it because it's what you and she need to hear! Think about how she and Robin treated Terra! They were the first to turn on her when she turned out to be an inside job. They didn't even care that you supposedly saw her one day because deep down, they were glad she died. I guarantee it."
Beast Boy shut up and stood wide-eyed in shock as if he had been slapped. Cyborg immediately regretted saying those words as soon as they leaped from his mouth. Raven said nothing as she fought to stay in control. Cyborg hadn't been entirely untruthful in his assertions. She and Robin had been the least trusting of the blond teenager (if not the least welcoming members of the team in general) and had doubts about her ulterior motives from the beginning. On more than one occasion, she found herself gritting her teeth in jealousy when she saw Beast Boy's smile and affection directed at her.
But Cyborg's regretful expression hardened again, hiding the pain he felt. "I thought so. You are very fond of him aren't you? You must have been there when he broke the mirror the other night. You had to be."
Beast Boy turned away and slumped against the wall, head down. Raven looked away, trying to collect her thoughts as Cyborg relentlessly pressed the situation. How had a personal discontent against Robin come to this?
"What did he say to you? Did he confess his secret love for our gothic enchantress?" Cyborg's voice once again turned mocking. "Recite a few emo poems and then cut himself for dramatic effect?" He snickered derisively.
Raven didn't lash out in terrible rage as they expected. Instead, she looked up with a defeated, mournful look in her dark blue eyes. Internal, repressed tensions between them ran hotter than ever. How much longer could they be kept bottled up? Would she dare say spill the secret now? Would she truly risk destroying everything by speaking the name of the one teammate blissfully innocent to it all yet the root cause of everything?
"He needs help." She said weakly. "He is really suffering."
She never got the chance to finish before Cyborg laughed loudly. "Is it Slade again?" He laughed louder, a sneer stamped on his face. Beast Boy and Raven had never seen such a vicious side of him before. "I wonder has the kid ever had a real father? If not, I can see why he'd be so obsessed after his time with one-eye. It must be very confusing to have three different men in his life. Tell the two to make out and have a beer together. I'd love to watch the show so I can record them pour out their most heartfelt feelings and post it on Youtube."
Shocked at the flippancy with which Cyborg spoke of Robin's time with their greatest nemesis but too tired to fight anymore, she teleported out of the room. Beast Boy took one last long look at his cybernetic friend as he walked past them into the hallway restroom, still laughing and commenting derisively to himself. Turning into a fly, he buzzed back to his room, hoping vainly all would be forgotten in the dawning of the new morning.
It was only the beginning of many nights to come.