A/N: This story has not been discontinued despite what my updating habits may have you thinking. I've simply been ….on a journey. Yes, that sounds about right. In the figurative sense of course. Many interesting things have happened, some very good, some very bad. I have my regrets but in comparison with what I have gained they are very small and insignificant.

Since I've last written I've managed to get myself into college (Dartmouth to be precise… my god, what's a Florida girl going to do with all that cold weather?!). I have also found myself a boyfriend, something new and rather unexpected, and we've been dating for about 7 months (have I honestly left this story unattended for THAT long?). As a result of the relationship however, I've learned to differentiate between fact and fiction when it comes to love. This…is both good and bad.

First of all, I find it harder to write romance scenes with the exaggerated conviction I once possessed. Literature and media blow passion completely out of proportion, however I think that if the story is written properly you can be sucked in to believe anything (I still fall for the heavy romance scenes in all the books I've read despite the fact that my better opinion and experience tells me it doesn't work that way). But it's also given me a deeper understanding of what it means to love someone and to be loved in return.

Now I'm sure there are some of you out there protesting that it's simply a matter of meeting the right guy and when you do BOOM the passion just explodes and everything is fire and romance and heated touches the way we've always imagined and hoped. But while you sit there at your computer reading this and forming your own opinion, I'd like you to remember that love is not merely a physical and hormonal response, but something in our hearts and minds that convinces us to be both selfless and selfish at once. I can only hope that my writing still reflects the romantic I am at heart.

Which brings me to one of my regrets: I have been neglecting my writing. It simply fell out of habit and for months and months I wrote nothing that wasn't assigned to me by a teacher. My apologies to everyone. I hope this chapter does not disappoint. And so we go.

Session #5

It always came back to childhood didn't it?

As much as the cliché pained her, Raven couldn't help but feel that her past was somehow contributing to her current situation. But she wasn't the type to complain how she wasn't hugged enough as a child. Instead she carried those hidden griefs and burdens with her, and kept them out of the sight of others.

It wasn't so much a matter of shame or embarrassment but rather a fear that this would somehow give outsiders insight into her personality. Her past included the missing pieces necessary to define her. It explained a lot of things: her strange looks, her cold attitude, her affinity for old books… every little mannerism and odd habit that had stuck with her from her childhood.

Showing that to people would take away the Raven theory, the uncertainty principle, and instead turn her into a person with a past. They would no longer think she popped out of the womb with a scowl on her face, spewing sarcasm from her infant lips. Instead they would see that once she had been young and naïve and hopeful. That once she had longed for human company, longed to laugh and play and dream of a future for herself.

But circumstances had robbed her of all of those longings, until one day she just stopped wishing for anything. The cold empty space surrounding her was as familiar as a mother's embrace and the emotionless void filled her, emptied her, and became her. After that there was nothing in her world for a long time.

Just a date.

Her death date.

Her prophecy date.

And she walked towards it hand in hand with time. But then something happened along her journey, something unexpected that never should have happened. She found people and in those people found friends and suddenly the cold empty space around her wasn't so cold and empty anymore, and suddenly time was walking too fast.

The experiences were new and awkward and often times offending to her mind which had sat at rest for much too long. Now there were these ripples in her subconscious, faint brushes of emotion, of anger, happiness, pride, sadness, affection, and she flinched away from them because they were foreign and definitely not a part of herself. They came from these people she called friends. And despite everything, she feared them. She did not fear death for she had come to accept it, nor did she fear the dark which she had lived in for so long. She did not fear the thought of loneliness, for it had been her only friend for a long, long time.

What she did fear was this growing need of dependency, this sudden feeling of "I want" and "I need" when it came to things that she had lived without for an eternity. And when she caught herself in those moments, where the consequences of her past were almost entirely erased, she immediately balked, sunk, and in her drowning state searched desperately for the solid ground that was her past.

Garfield was nothing but a raging, bottomless sea. Simply by touching her he was defying the physics of her world.

--

Someone had put flowers in the center of the table.

They were yellow… daisies? Buttercups? Weeds? She could never tell the difference, but they were new and different and attracted the eye.

The serving plates had to be positioned around them because nobody wanted to take them off the table and they had been put in an old drinking cup, because the Titans did not own vases. Vases were for housewives and Martha Stewart and people who gave a damn about having a real home. Or maybe those types just didn't like too many stretches of open space. Open space meant empty, which seemed to seep into every aspect of your life if you weren't careful. Instead the flowers, in their makeshift vase, distracted the eye, the mind, and the conscious from the void.

They also had the very convenient purpose of blocking Garfield's face from Raven's line of sight. Now when she looked up from her plate she no longer got a face full of smug shame, heated memories, and weakness, but a flash of yellow perched precariously on long green stems.

She liked these flowers.

They still didn't stop her from watching those long green arms which slowly narrowed down at the wrists until her eyes travelled over his hands, veins and knuckles, fingers, clenched around a fork, her own fingers clenching in her lap. Then the yellow winking in her peripheral vision would inevitably draw her back to the flowers.

"Thanks for cooking tonight Robin." She said as his food burned her mouth.

"Gar did most of the work." It figured. They were having pasta and veggies. There was a beat of silence all around the table, a settling of hush and wait for the words to follow, which as none came, morphed into something oppressive but empty all at once. One could almost hear the echo of the missing words as every ear strained to hear them, strained towards Raven and the steady lisp of air made by her breathing. But she would not thank him for dinner, not even as she felt every mind in the room slowly try to compress the acknowledgement from her throat.

She admired the flowers.

Out of the corner of her eye, Raven saw Robin fidget. She knew the divided atmosphere had set off some kind of alarm in his brain. Right then she could see him trying to assess the situation, to find the pipe in the plumbing that was causing this buildup of pressure. She wasn't the one responsible. She had nothing to hide, but even so she felt her hand shake ever so slightly as it lifted the fork to her mouth. It was when Garfield did the unexpected that she completely lost her cool, if only for a second, but that was enough to bring Robin's attention zeroing in on her.

"I'm sorry Starfire. The flowers are lovely but I can't see Raven's face."

Her jaws locked, and her eyes peered up carefully to watch those green hands shift the vase to the right. Then there was the edge of his hair, a pointed ear, an eyebrow, a nose, and finally two eyes staring her in the face with a pleasant expression, while six other eyes shifted curiously between the two of them. She felt it as each glance hit her and ricocheted off her expression to land on Gar's face.

"Thank you Garfield. I saw them at the supermarket." Starfire responded politely. Raven vaguely heard the other murmurs of approval around the table. She was turning a pretty pink color right about now. She felt the blooming heat on her face, felt the stares, felt the indignity of the entire situation all working against her, when the only thing she guilty of doing was enjoying her goddamn dinner.

"Oh for christsakes…" she muttered pushing her chair back with a noise that made everyone wince.

She seemed to be doing that a lot. Getting irritated or confused or overwhelmed and then pushing her chair back to tell the world she had had enough and wasn't going to take it anymore. But in the end it was petulant, and in the end she was only running from the situation she had helped create. She had made a place for herself in the world but it no longer offered her the comfort she wanted.

So now, with the chair pushed back from the table and her half standing figure trembling from restraint, she closed her eyes, and sat back down, and decided that she better learn to damn well deal with the way things were. Was it a turning point in her life? Hardly. But she had chosen to stay instead of run which, in everyone's eyes, was a very very unRaven-like thing to do.

--

Robin always made them wash dishes by hand. Something about bonding and teamwork and all the usual nonsense he was trying to push on them… A relationship with everybody was required in other words. Not that Robin expected them all to sit around and braid each others' hair while divulging their deepest secrets. But he made them team up to do the little things, like laundry, grocery shopping and dishes. Sometimes it was nice, more of a pleasure than a requirement. Other times however…

"Gar, use a different towel to dry them please. That one's sopping wet." She ordered after pausing to sigh at the whole situation.

The tense atmosphere at dinner had sent off a warning signal in Robin's brain much to Raven's disappointment and as always he seemed to think that shoving the conflicting ends of a magnet together was the best way to dissolve the resistance. So after a few of the Titans had risen from the dinner table he was quick to assign dishes to both Garfield and herself.

Gar was rather pleased at the notion and wasn't afraid to let his face show it. Raven however, had froze and swallowed down a firestorm of profanity, trying to act as nonchalant as she could about the entire thing. But the main source of her misery came from the fact that all the others, sensing a potentially dangerous situation, had left the common room immediately leaving both of them alone…. together.

She closed her eyes as she ran the sponge over the dish she was holding and tried to remember a time, which seemed so long ago, when there didn't seem to be this confusing knot of emotion in her body. She focused on her irritation, the unjust feeling in her heart, and the flow of water over the plate as she rinsed it.

Gar, meanwhile, stood besides her humming rather cheerfully as he dried the dishes with unneeded flourishes. It wasn't until the repetitive tune became irritating that she chose to speak.

"Could you at least pretend to be miserable, just for my sake?" She snapped. The humming stopped abruptly and out of the corner of her eye she saw him give her a quizzical look.

"Why on Earth would I do that? Besides, you're doing a pretty good job making enough misery for the both of us." He smiled at her as he talked, serving only to irritate her more.

Cocky bastard.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm just looking for a little compassion and understanding after all you've put me through." She seethed.

It might have occurred to her at this point that she had dared to speak more of her mind than she had originally intended, but at this point desperation and anger had made her tongue loose. He pursed his lips at this and seemed to focus on the dish he was drying.

"You…." He began slowly, uncertainly, as if slowly realizing the words as they formed in his mind.

"…confuse me."

Raven's hand stopped scrubbing for a fraction of a second as something new took a hold of her mind. It was a spark of curiosity, a twinge of interest. However, she managed to maintain the sound of irritation in her voice as she spoke. She'd sooner be damned than allow him to know she was interested.

"So in order to appease some sort of weird curiosity about me, you decide to torture me." She concluded for him.

"What? No!"

"And why do I confuse you? I assure you it's not something I consciously do."

Having hardly recovered from the previous accusation, Gar paused and scratched his head while he seemed to consider her question. The hair was tousled and damp where his hand had been she noted.

"I'm not so sure if I can answer that. Well, not in a way that would make either of us happy I guess. Because I know if I'm not careful you'll get angry, which usually leads to me getting beat up and shunned for a few days. So you see…" He trailed off as if hoping that his situation made sense to her with the vague words he had spoken.

"I'm not a plaything." She told him coldly.

"I don't consider you one, my dear." The end of that sentence made her flinch slightly and Gar took notice.

"You're very funny about those things…" He noted cautiously. Raven picked up the next dish and rubbed at it hard, suddenly irritated again now that Gar's empty answer had failed to satisfy the strange, burning curiosity he had instilled in her.

"What things?" She asked, playing ignorant.

"Terms of endearment, anything that comes with a close relationship."

"From what I can see, the close relationship is pretty one-sided."

This seemed to ruffle him a bit, and as he spoke he gave her an indignant look.

"Well now, whose fault is that?" He accused.

Raven felt the question slide right off her. She was busy rejoicing in the fact that she had made him angry. And it was so much better than that grin and confident tone he was always giving her. She was soothed for a moment knowing he was irritated with her, knowing she wasn't the only one suffering. The simple shrug she gave in response was enough to make him frown in anger.

"Godamnit, it's stuff like this that makes me wonder why I even bother with you." He muttered. The bitterness in his voice thrilled her, filled her with a satisfaction she hadn't felt in a long time. She was suddenly reckless with her words and didn't care.

"Good. Maybe you shouldn't bother." She retorted smartly while simultaneously handing him a new dish to dry.

He took it from her gently and she watched is the droplets trailed down the shiny, white circular surface, watched as he set it down on the counter and how the droplets came together to form small puddles on it. He didn't dry it, just stood there, staring off at something she couldn't see, while all the irritation she had caused him drained from his face.

Then suddenly his warm, green hands were taking the sponge from her fingers and setting it down beside the plate. She watched him cautiously, suddenly frightened at his calmness, a protest already building up in her throat. He turned her to face him, not roughly but with gentle guiding hands on her shoulder, each individual finger giving off a soft pressure that turned her towards him.

Her mind panicked and her body lost resistance. She became a prisoner of his regard, a captive audience.

He watched her closely, never blinking as he lowered his face towards hers, not a trace of hesitation in those eyes or in that slow swooping motion.

The fear was incredible.

She was sure it would kill her with the way it was bubbling out of her stomach and filling her throat, her nostrils, and her lungs. It pulsed in her blood, infected the air she breathed until she could think of nothing but her slowly dying body.

Her eyes saw his lips and she found herself hating them, then hating herself for wanting them on her. She had completely ceased to breathe when he was within inches of her face, her eyes locked with his which were much too inquisitive and round and… and beautiful, in a way that made her wits betray her.

But he had paused she realized, paused to stare into her eyes, and she knew he was watching the shadows of her soul shift beneath them. The terror rose as she felt her body shift towards him. She felt it yearn for the touch of something separate from herself, felt it want and need and ache for the removal of that small rift between them. But the fear was her poison and her protection.

She could not close the gap.

"I see now." He whispered. The words and the scent of the breath they were carried on made her tremble. She felt it like a gentle caress on her face.

"You are a child."

The tone was not condescending or bitter. But it flowed with a beauty and simplicity which could only be found in truth.

--

The seasons changed, as they must, bringing the first snowfall of the year and along with it the rough contrast between the warmth of the indoors and the biting chill of the outside air. It was now rare to look outside without seeing patches of white somewhere on the landscape. The snow, when it fell, was beautiful and the chill at night had gotten to the point where the warmest and softest of blankets had to be used.

This was always a wonderful time for Raven. She loved the crisp air, loved the how the warmth inside the tower made everything feel safer and everyone feel closer, and loved the way the snow looked as she watched it fall silently in the night outside her bedroom window. Generally, she would be cheerier than usual, doling out small smiles like favors to her friends, and even going so far as to join in almost every evening for small talk and company comfort in the common room. The change in her attitude was always welcomed by her friends and she had lived with them for so many years that it had simply become synonymous with the arrival of winter.

But even after the snow came, and the chill settled over the city, and the blankets were dug out of the closet, Raven still didn't change. She didn't feel it all like she normally did. The warmth was evasive and the cold penetrated her right down into her core so that it felt like she was always a little bit frozen on the inside. The white of the snow only seemed to make her world feel barren and empty and for the first time in her life she wished for warmer days.

Of course, it had absolutely nothing to do with the way Garfield had been avoiding her. Well, perhaps the word "avoiding" was incorrect because he wasn't exactly going out of his way to stay away from her. He was often with her, sometimes even alone with her. But he might have been on a different plane of existence for all the communication he had with her. She could sense some kind of wide space between them. The space of strangers or of relatives who were united only by blood and nothing more.

Was that it then? She wondered. Was she only bound to this man by the alliance she had formed with the team? These thoughts were frequent and rampant in her mind, and served only to chill her on the sleepless nights they often produced. Her life lacked a vigor she had taken for granted. It had all the appearance of what she had ever wanted, but none of the satisfaction or happiness she thought it would bring. Instead it was….lonely. And to call it boring would definitely not be an exaggeration of any degree.

But because of her pride she pined away in silence over the weeks that passed, feeling herself grow dull and seeing her world turn muted shades of gray. She lost herself to a monotony which was managing to both kill her and protect her with its thoughtless patterns of motion. She didn't have to think in order to function, which meant she didn't need to feel anything to survive. She felt her childhood closer than ever at that moment.

Her only amusement these days was the irony.

End Session #5

A/N: Summertime generally equals frequent updates. If not, I beg you to flame me. Frequent means weekly of course. I'm open to critique, suggestions, compliments, complaints, and anything you feel compelled to tell me. It doesn't even have to relate to the story. You can call me fat or whatnot, I'm open to all opinions.

Thanks for reading and as always, I apologize for typos. I'm also a bit comma-happy today…