Innocence Lost by CidGregor.

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans.


Chapter 1

Robin parked the R-Cycle in the Tower's garage and ran upstairs as fast as he could. He had to get to Starfire…he had to know she was okay.

At the top of the stairs he found Raven waiting for him. "Any change?" Robin asked.

Raven shook her head. "Still in her room, crying her eyes out, and we have no clue why. It's starting to scare me…she's such a happy person, Robin…what could happen to her to make her this upset?"

Thousands of possibilities were swimming in his mind, but Robin refused to think about any of them. There was no way he could know until he talked to her. "Give me some time with her…I'll see what I can do."

Raven nodded agreement. "Good luck," she added, and floated away to her own room. Robin hurried down the hall to Starfire's room, and immediately he could hear her muffled sobs through the door. Raven wasn't exaggerating, it seemed.

Tentatively, Robin raised a fist and knocked on the door. "Starfire? It's me, Robin…can I come in?"

A muffled cry answered him, and a second later the door flew open, and Robin's eyes widened in shock. Starfire looked terrible. Her cheeks were stained with tears, her normally sparkling eyes were dimmed and reddened, her hair was an absolute mess, and she seemed to have a cut somewhere on her upper thigh that he couldn't see, because there was blood on her leg.

"Star…?" Robin whispered.

Starfire suddenly threw her arms around the Boy Wonder and began crying all over again. Robin held her silently in the doorway, utterly terrified. The normally happy, cheerful, girl he knew had gone entirely. In her place was a lost, scared girl that had clearly been through something terrible.

Had someone attacked her? His terror vanished in an instant and gave way to blinding rage at that thought. If that was the case, he was going to find whoever did it and personally beat them to death. Then another thought; perhaps she'd received a message from home that someone close to her - a family member, perhaps – had died recently. The rage was gone as quickly as it had come and was replaced by intense pity; he was no stranger to that particular heartbreak.

"Starfire…" Robin whispered after a few minutes. "What's wrong? Why won't you talk to the others? What…what happened, Star?"

But Starfire only cried harder at Robin's words, and Robin realized that she was not ready to talk about it, not yet. So Robin fell silent and continued to hold her while she wept. Slowly he guided her inside her room and closed the door, and led her to sit down on her bed. "Listen, Star," Robin said, "it's late; you should try to get some sleep. Maybe you'll feel better in the morning."

Starfire nodded. Robin pulled back her bed-sheets as she lay down, and threw them back over her. "If you need anything at all, just call me, okay? Now try to get some sleep." Robin stood up to go, but the moment he turned to the door he felt her hand grab him tightly around the wrist. He spun back and was startled to she her face frozen with fear.

"Please stay…" she begged. " Don't…don't leave me alone…"

Not once since his own parents died had Robin cried. But those words tore at his heart, and he felt his own tears stinging his eyes. "Okay," Robin whispered. So he pulled up a chair and sat beside her bed, holding her hand until she drifted off into a fitful sleep.


"What could be wrong with her?" Cyborg wondered aloud. "This isn't like her at all."

"She's actually making me depressed," Raven said. "Starfire. Depressing me. That is not normal."

It was the next morning. Robin had stayed awake all through the night at Starfire's bedside, and he could tell from her expressions she had had nightmares. When she woke up she didn't seem any better than the night before, still refused to talk about the events of the night before, and had locked herself in her bathroom under the shower ever since.

"Whatever it is, it's bad. I've never seen Starfire this sad…or this scared," Robin added.

"Raven, can't you do your mind-reading thing? Find out what's up?" Beast Boy suggested.

"She fought me when I tried," Raven admitted. "I could've kept digging but that could've damaged her mind. And I don't really want to push her if she doesn't want to talk about it."

"We should let her tell us on her own terms," Robin agreed. "Give her whatever time she needs. I'm sure she'll talk to us sooner or later."

As it turned out, it was not sooner, but later. Much later.


Knock, knock.

Starfire glanced over at her door. Did she really feel like talking to anybody right now? Even Robin? Surely they would question her about last night, and that was the absolute last thing she wanted to discuss.

"Starfire, please open the door." It was Raven. Starfire sighed, and turned away. She felt close to Raven, but at the moment she was not happy with the dark girl. She had tried to pry the knowledge of last night without permission, and even though she had backed off when Starfire had fought, it still was not sitting well with her. But even then, it seemed Raven could hear her thoughts anyway.

"Listen, Star…I'm sorry I tried to dig things out of your mind before. I should've respected your privacy, the way you've always respected mine, and I apologize. I just want to let you know that we're here for you when you're ready to talk. All of us."

Starfire could hear Raven standing there waiting for an answer, but when none came for a handful of minutes, she heard the dark girl's footsteps moving away. Starfire was grateful for her friend's apology, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment.

Talk…talk about what had happened to her…that was the very last thing she wanted to do. Not to Raven, not to Robin, not to anybody. It was too terrible a story to relieve, even to her most trusted friends…even to the man she loved.

So Starfire kept her secret, bottled up in the depths of her heart, and for three long months, it stayed there. Starfire never spoke of that night, and the other Titans, though they were bursting with curiosity, did not ask her about it. Over those three months, Starfire slowly seemed to regain her old glow, but none of the Titans were fooled, least of all Robin; memories of that night still haunted her, and it hurt Robin that she couldn't share her pain with her friends…with him. She rarely smiled now, and many nights Robin could still hear her crying herself to sleep.

Still, Starfire was recovering, and given more time, she might have eventually regained her old happy self. But there was no more time to be had; for it was three months to the day after that fateful night that Starfire discovered that her secret could not be kept any longer.

And it all started with a simple, harmless question.