A bit of oddity. Rob's twenty-one, so it's all legal. This is a story spawned from a ridiculous (but persistant) idea that turned into something that will hopefully be meaningful, or at least worthwhile in some way. Enjoy.

It had been a long night and an even longer morning.

"No...I don't wanna go home, the party's just getting started!"

Raven sighed, stumbling against the wall as his weight shifted dangerously. "No, Robin. The party was over three hours ago, when everyone in their right mind went home." The things she did for her friends.

Robin laughed loudly, making Raven wince and glance towards the door, hoping none of the other Titans would wake up. She wanted to save what dignity her leader had left. "Ah, you're no fun, Rae. How come, Rae? How come you're no fun anymore?"

Raven sighed patiently, stumbling over to the couch as Robin did his best to drag them both to the ground and easing him down on the cushion. "Because, Robin, if I was "fun" we never would have made it home in the first place. I shudder to think what condition we'd be in right now if you were the designated driver." That was the strangest part. Robin usually was the designated driver, the dutiful one who made sure everyone got home in one peice and never had a drop of alcohol. Tonight had gone a bit differently.

"Ah, it's not that bad, Rae. I only had a little bit...just a couple beers." He hiccuped, staring at her blearily.

Raven raised an eyebrow, suppressing a laugh as he struggled to regain some tiny part of his usual calm and collected attitude. "Oh, of course. Wow, Robin, you have a very different definition of "a couple". In my world that means two, and you certainly had more than that." She stood and made her way over to the kitchen to get a glass of water. "And, though beer may be the last thing you remember drinking, you dabbled in a wide variety of beverages." It was sad, seeing him like this. He was so unlike himself...or maybe the Robin they were used to was just the tip of the iceberg.

Robin laughed again, hiccuping and coughing in between ragged breaths. "You sure use a lot of big words, Rae. Don't you speak Normal?" He squinted up at her as she offered the glass. "Whoa...that's weird..."

"It's called water, best when used before Raven's arm falls off." When he made no move to take it, she sighed quietly and brought the glass to his lips, tipping it slowly. Most of the water ended up on his shirt, but she was pretty sure he had gotten some of it. "Why tonight, Robin? Why when I'm with you? Why not get smashed when Beast Boy or Cyborg are there to deal with you?" She laughed quietly, realizing that if that had been the case, they would have been of little help, except maybe to encourage him to keep on drinking. The Titans didn't party very often, but when they did, BB and Cy went all out.

The drunken smile plastered to his lips suddenly died, a strange expression washing over his face as he looked up at her with unfocused eyes. "I...I was..."

"Robin!" Without any warning, without so much as a word, he leaned over the couch and threw up his entire world. Raven's quick reflexes got her out of the line of fire in time, but she cursed silently, a mixture of sympathy and irration flooding through her as he wretched. As soon as there was a lull in the action, she would get him to a more suitable place, but for now there was nothing to do but wait for it to stop.

There was obviously nothing left, but he continued to heave, coughing and gasping. Raven awkwardly rubbed his back, unsure and hesitant and wondering how on earth she had gotten herself into this mess. Eventually it stopped, and he dragged a shaking hand over his mouth, breathing heavily. "I'm sorry, Raven. I'm sorry, I'll clean it up." He attempted to stand, but immediately swayed, the ground leaping up at him. Raven jumped to her feet, catching him awkwardly and easing him back onto the couch. "It's fine, Robin. Don't worry about it."

"No...I'm sorry...it's all my fault. I shouldn't have...I'm so stupid!" He gripped his head in his hands, his voice booming through the quiet room, each word slurring into the next. Raven gasped in surprise as she saw something small and glistening streak down his cheek. "Everything's my fault."

Raven eased herself down on the couch beside him, more than a little apprehensive about where this was going. "Robin...you aren't...yourself. I think you should get some re--"

"I did it, Raven." Tears streamed down his cheeks freely, nothing to stop them, nothing to shut them away. "It's my fault, always my fault. They're gone, can't change it...can't fix it. But I didn't mean to," he sobbed, the words barely distinguishable. "I tried...I didn't want them to go! Why did they leave me?" He pounded the couch with his fist, fixing her with a gaze full of desperation and pain. "What did I do wrong?"

What was he talking about? "Robin, you need sleep." She reached for his arm, but he jerked away violently, springing to his feet and stumbling away from her.

"No! I won't sleep, I don't get to sleep anymore, Raven! I don't care! It's my fault!" He was sobbing, shaking, and screaming, anger and pain pulsing from him in unbearable waves. "You don't know! You don't know anything, no one knows anything!" He took an unsteady step toward her, fists clenched and teeth bared. "You don't know what it's like! You don't know me, leave me alone 'cause you don't know me! You're not my friend, none of you...you hate me!"

Raven leaned away from him, the look on his face striking something like fear into her. Things were getting very ugly very fast. "Robin, you don't mean that. Please listen to me, just let me--"

"No!" He shrunk away from her, stumbling and crashing against the wall. "You don't...I know what I'm saying! I'm not stupid! Don't treat me like I'm stupid, Raven!" He drew a shuddering breath, fists clenched and shaking violently. "You don't know. You don't know anything."

Swallowing her fear, Raven stood and approached him slowly. The gentle, caring method was obviously not going to work, so she would just have to pretend he was coherent. "What don't I know, Robin?"

"You...you've never...I saw it, Raven! I...I saw them..." The anger left him as suddenly as it had come, and he fell weakly to the ground, tears running in never-ending rivers down his cheeks. He drew his legs up against his chest, burying his face in his knees like a child hiding from imaginary monsters. He mumbled something, but the combination of fabric and impaired speech made it completely incomprehensible.

What the heck? There was more behind this than a little too much alcohol. Who was gone? What was his fault?

"Lets go somewhere. I can't stand being here anymore...there's nothing to do anyway."

"Well, where do you suggest we go?" Raven shut her book with a snap and looked up at Robin for the first time since he entered the room. She frowned slightly, taking in his slightly mussed hair, wrinkled clothes, and the way he was clenching and unclenching his fists, as though torn between hitting something and falling over dead.

"I don't care where we go, just as long as we go somewhere. I need to get out, I'm not staying here any longer, so are you coming or not?"

"Well, since you asked so nicely..."

Things pretty much went down-hill from there. He was quiet, sullen, almost indifferent. At least, for the first couple of beers. He had said something, something that she had shrugged off as jibberish at the time, but now seemed to be fitting into the puzzle...

"Kinda weird...almost like it's happening all over again." He stared blankly ahead, mask concealing anything and everything. A bitter chuckle escaped him as he raised the glass to his lips. "Well, this is one way to deal with it, right?"

"It". "They". None of this made any sense. Was today some sort of...aniversary? Something happened on this day...something that cut Robin to the bone. A frown creased her brow, her dark purple eyes boring into the wall just above his head. A mix of emotions had her head reeling; part of her felt a deep and desperately ignored pity; another part was wondering just how much her leader had managed to conceal from the world, even his best friends; yet another was incredibly frustrated and annoyed. This was hardly her area of expertise. Why not someone else? Why not Starfire, for heavens sake! She was something like Robin's best friend, surely she should be the one to handle this situation! But no. Here she was, there he sat, tears soaking his clothes and muffled sobs emerging from his huddled figure. Like it or not, she had to do something. She hated seeing him like this; somehow it made her feel unsafe, uneasy. If Robin was such a mess...

Raven knelt silently beside him, placing a gentle hand on his shuddering shoulder, using all of her energy to place some form of comfort within his misery. The tears slowly subsided, though his head remained buried in his knees, short breathes shivering through his body. The sound tore at Raven's heart.

"I was eight. Kid...just a kid...only a kid. I...I didn't know what to do." He raised his head slowly, facing away from her though she could still see the pain in his face. "Not fair...never fair. Nothing's ever fair, not for me. What did I do, Raven?" He turned to face her, face wet with cold tears and cold regrets. Raven froze as she saw it more than felt it: he was asking her, begging her, for release. He wanted her to tell him everything was ok, to make it all better. He was asking her to save him.

"Nothing. You did nothing, Robin. It wasn't your fault, it never was, and it never will be." As she said those words, an image, a thought, a feeling, envoloped her mind, washing her away with its intensity. Even as it all coursed through her, she knew what it was, knew the name for that feeling: Mama, Papa. The center of that little boy's universe, even after all these years. Ripped away. Stolen. Gone forever. Why? The thoughts were not her own, and yet she knew she was right, she knew what this was all about, and the pain of realization was difficult to bear.

His eyes were cast downward, almost in shame, shame of what he had never given himself the right to feel. The more you ignore the pain, the stronger it becomes, growing and pushing, slowly killing you from the inside. Nothing can change what happened, nothing can make it just go away. Robin had never allowed himself to grieve, never given himself the right to mourn his parents, to cry, to be human. Without that, he could never heal.

Gentle yet firm, Raven took his head in her hands, tilting it up until her gaze met his. "They loved you, Robin. They still love you, and they would never leave you." A small, sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth ever-so-slightly, though it was contradicted by the tell-tale tear on her pale cheek. "They never left you, Robin. Don't shut them away. Don't shut yourself away, you don't deserve this punishment. They would never want you to be so sad."

Tears welled up from beneath the mask, leaving fresh trails on his white skin, his chin shook slightly as bitter-sweet emotion swelled in his chest, horror and pain and beauty in every breath he took. His mind was yelling at him, the voice distorted and muddled. "No. You can't. Protect yourself, protect them, protect her. Do Not Become Weak!" But he was not going to listen to it. Not today.

Unsteady arms reached forward, catching her shoulders and pulling her with surprising gentleness into an embrace unlike any other Raven had ever felt. Words seemed so utterly pointless in his arms; so many things were said without a sound, so many feelings and emotions shared and returned as though his arms around her were a link between their souls. True, there was pain, there was sorrow, but it was not nearly so large and powerful as it had seemed only moments before. Somewhere inside him there was a seed, tiny and vulnerable and lost in a storm of chaos, but that seed could grow, if only it was given the proper care. There was hope still, and somehow in that moment, both knew that nothing had been wasted. Pain was growth, pain was experience, pain was developement. Somehow in the deep, dark masses of earth there is a seed, small yet powerful, just waiting to sprout into something more beautiful and powerful than anything that came before. Find that seed, help it grow, discover the beauty in the darkest corners of life...

And find someone to weather the storm with.

Ok...well that was actually a lot of fun to write, hope you enjoyed it. It was somewhat inspired by something I said to Furubafun24 (or Mina :)...maybe she will recall what it was. Now I'm afraid to announce that I am more or less on...a break from fanfic. Don't be alarmed (lol I'm so vain), it's just till the end of school, which is in two weeks. Just have to wrap things up. Seeyou soon, I hope! -Dusty