Italics are thoughts

Robins POV

He hadn't seen her walking towards him. He was just as lost in thought as she was, but for a much different reason. The Titans had finally settled into a routine at their high-school, and their famed faces, while still highly recognized, were no longer drawing nearly as many stares.

Starfire was awash with admiring guys who would have died for her to ask them out. And while her understanding of earthly ways was a long way from being standard, she was at least learning to rely more on her own instincts in society, rather than constantly waiting for one of the other Titans to explain things to her. Raven had found her own group of friends, and now had membership at a highly exclusive night-club downtown, where poetry and cappuccinos were the norm. Cyborg had joined the automotive club and enjoyed basking in the glow of his fellow student's adoration of the T-car. Beast Boy had finally found success with the ladies. His natural ability to make certain girls laugh, and his caring nature made him a girl magnet.

Robin had found his own place, though he wasn't nearly as popular as he could have been. He wasn't an out and out jock, and he hadn't gone out for the football team because the injuries that came with football would have seriously put his crime-fighting capabilities in danger. It would have been hard to take a hit from Cinderblock while already sporting a wounded shoulder from slamming someone on the fifty yard line. Still, he had enough friends to be known, and the crime-rate had settled so much that he was even beginning to take an interest in the looks some of the girls were sending his way.

When he felt the smaller body crash against his own, his first reaction was to reach out and catch the person that he had erringly knocked back. He heard a girl's voice, dulcet yet deceivingly gentle, speak out

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He recognized her from around school, though her name didn't leap to the front of his mind. She didn't seem to be part of a permanent group, but drifted from place to place, an eccentric child who could slip in and out of the crowd at her own pleasure. She also seemed to stay in town a lot. Often when the Titans went to the mall they saw her or passed her by, talking to one of her friends, but more often than naught alone, wandering about as though lost in a sea of monotony. I wonder when she ever goes home. She had a pair of eyes that were, to him, a deep maroon with swirls of golden yellow, and hair of such a dark forest green that whenever light shone on it, you were made to think of a forest caught in shadow.

"No." He smiled winningly at her, reluctantly letting go of her shoulders. "It wasn't your fault. I wasn't really watching were I was going."

"That makes two of us." She laughed easily, as if laughing were the most natural thing in the world to her.

"Wow. She has a beautiful voice. I wonder if she sings with the school choir." He nodded, and then cursed himself for remembering where he was supposed to be going. "I have to go now. I'm delivering messages for the office, and I need to get this to Mrs.Morrison. Maybe I'll seeya around?" He finished his sentence with a roguish wink and inclined his head towards her. She leaned back with a smile and nodded.

"Sure Robin. That'd be cool."

His eyes widened.

"You know my name. But I don't know yours."

She walked past him with a jounce in her step. "Of course I know your name. Everyone knows the Teen Titans." Before he could catch her name, she was around the corner and gone. Shrugging, he reapplied himself to his original task. He would see her again. There was no doubt in his mind of that. And next time, he wouldn't let her slip past without her name fixed firmly in his mind.

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She stepped into the office, eyes bright. Of all the guys to bump into, it had been Robin of the Teen Titans! She nodded at the office official, who in turn gestured her towards the principal's office door. Her heart once again sank. What had she done? But she lifted her chin, determined to show no weakness in front of the people that claimed to be her parents. She no longer acknowledged them as such, but that hardly mattered to the school.

As she walked into the office, a strange picture was portrayed from the door frame. The message she had received from her teacher was that her parents wanted to see her in the principal's office. But she saw only one parent, and it was the last one she would have expected to see.

"Melissa? What are you doing here?" Setsuna walked in and shut the heavy door behind her, an uneasy feeling starting to build up in her stomach. "Where's dad?"

Melissa looked up at her with a blank face, and Setsuna's stomach was ice, with a ball of lead at the bottom.

"Our house is gone." Melissa sighed. "There was a fire. We managed to put it out before it got too much of our stuff, but the house isn't really safe to live in anymore. Your father and I can stay in a hotel in town for free, compliments of his job. But we don't have enough money to keep you at the hotel with us. We decided that, at least until we find a new house, we could put you at a boarding school. That's why I'm here. I need to check on your grades, to see if they're good enough for you to get in. You need to pull your math and English up."

Setsuna stared at the woman in front of her, as the anger and hurt built up inside her. They were trying to get rid of her. As much as Melissa pretended to be grieved about this, several weeks in a fancy hotel without a kid to worry about at all would be a blessing. She jumped to her feet, resisting the urge to clench her slender fingers into fists that would effectively beat the smug look out of her enemies eyes.

Her voice was distant, as if the matters at hand did not concern her. But behind that distance, was a blood chilling lack of emotion. Not emotions buried, but emotions nonexistent.

"It would cost more to send me to a boarding school than to rent a hotel room for me. And I'm not transferring schools. I'll board somewhere in town. I'll stay with one of my friends." She looked into Melissa's eyes, which had become increasingly irritated. "But there is no way you're sending me away. Whether you like it or not, my father belongs to both of us. If you think that you'll get rid of me without getting slapped around a bit yourself, you're out of your mind. Just because you can brainwash my dad, doesn't mean I'm that gullible." She stood, and without a backward glance, opened the door and left, sweeping past the school councilor on her way out. Her eyes revealed nothing of what she was feeling. They were mirrors meant to reflect the emotions of others; never her own. Her skin had gone pale, and she looked like someone who had been standing in the sun too long, and was about to get heatstroke.

Slowly she trudged to her locker and pulled out her backpack. Her parents gave her fifty dollars every week, ostensibly for an allowance, but in all actuality it was to keep her out of the house so that they could go about their actions without worrying for the sensibilities of a 15 year old girl. Looking around, she pulled a small black box out of the largest pocket. A silver lock hung from the outside, and she pulled the key from a chain around her neck and unlocked it, making sure to catch it before it fell. She opened the box and took a quick look to make sure that everything was as she had left it. Sure that there was no one about, she dropped to a sitting position, with the box resting securely in her lap. She counted out what she had been saving up, and found a little over four hundred dollars. Maybe she could get a job, and rent a room in town. Or she could ask one of her friends to let her stay, on the condition that she pay her own way in groceries. There didn't seem to be any alternative. Her father had abandoned her, and her surrogate mother was trying to remove her from the picture. She wasn't about to let that happen. But she would consider it after school. Carefully she replaced the lock, then the box, then the bag. After straightening herself up, she returned to class with a small grin on her face, as though nothing had happened.