Intro: Like I said, I had an urge to go horror for a bit, and this upcoming sequence is something of a call back to one of my own experiences doped up in the hospital. Let's just say I didn't enjoy the first night on morphine that much and leave it at that. The rest is just the ever onward march of my story, with a few more threads of the grand tapestry of events weaving into place.

On a special note, this is the first chapter I post as a first-year student at the University of Virginia. After a hectic two days of packing and unpacking, I am now the proud resident of my very own dorm room, along with my roommate (a great guy) and without my parents or obnoxious younger brother. Any comments about a college guy who still watches cartoons and writes for will be met with extreme prejudice, so keep them to yourselves. Enjoy.

Chapter 8: Awakenings and Confessions part 1

Titans Tower Med-Bay, Robin's Room

Robin's awakening, for one, was not a startled leap away from a terrifying prophesy or dream of the future. It was, in fact, far more involved than this, not that that made it any less a welcome relief than Raven's or Skye's had been. Doped up on painkillers, his sleep was a fitful and miserable trudge through a mire of confusing nightmares about him and Starfire.

Some were tame. In one Star was swept off her feet by a Tamaranean prince, dumping all thought of him like a bad habit. In another, Slade had captured both Star and him and would torture him unless Starfire behaved as his apprentice. In still another, Star never awoke from her coma, and Robin saw himself as a withered skeleton sitting by her bedside. With an injection of surreal quirkiness, one had him on Jerry Springer with the episode's theme being: people who marry the comatose and have sex with them too.

As the hours of painful surgery and added chemicals wore on, horrors like none he'd ever imagined before visited him in scene after scene of macabre torture. Fist, Kitten had somehow captured Star, murdered her, carved off her face, and now wore it like a mask as he waltzed with her at the prom. The whole time she kept saying "I changed for you Robie-pooh," and he could only respond "Yes, my love," meanwhile Star's bleeding, faceless corpse hung from the prom chandelier, her blood filling the punchbowl, from which kitten made a point of forcing Robin to drink. It tasted of cherries.

Later, Robin and Starfire sat across one another at a romantic restaurant, dressed up much as they had been at Kitten's Junior Prom. "Starfire, I love you so much, I just can't hold back anymore. I want you to see the man behind the mask," Robin said to her, pulling away the black strip that stood between his identity and the world. When it was gone, a look of shock, then terror, contorted Starfire's face, and she fled the table screaming bloody murder while ignoring his desperate pleas for her to wait. Rushing to the men's room, he looked at his reflection to see what was wrong, only to find that under his mask, he had no eyes. There was only blank flesh where his mask had covered, and screaming with nausea and misery he clawed at the blank flesh until fistfuls of his own red meat filled the bathroom sink and bloody caverns leaked red tears down his face.

Later still, Starfire sat at the table in the Titan's tower common room, Robin standing nearby watching her lovingly. "My love," she began, fluttering her gorgeous alien eyes at him, "It is a tradition on my planet for young women to remove and consume the heads of their dearly beloved boyfriends, so that we may enjoy years of happiness as we slowly digest their mortal souls as embodied in their brains. Might I remove and consume your head?"

"Sure, anything for you Star," he said, leaning over close to her, never even considering denying her what she asked. She grabbed his head and wrenched it off with a quick twist, bathing luxuriously in the fountain of hot blood from his falling corpse. Declaring her love for him once more, she took the first bite out of his skull. He could still feel it, and smiled in adoring happiness as each bite was ripped free.

This went on in what seemed like a never-ending procession, each new scene more grisly than the one before, until finally, at long last, something different happened. He was partway through being forced to watch Slade dissect Starfire searching for the secret of starbolts when an unexpected and unfamiliar presence filled the area. Robin felt as though he should see someone, but he was too disoriented to know where to look. The mere existence of this presence caused the nightmare scene to fade somewhat, and Robin was granted some small amount of clarity that let him hear voices, real voices from outside the dream world he was struggling through.

"His name is Robin, and he's kind of our leader. He doesn't have any super powers, but he makes up for that in but-kicking gadgets, martial arts, and reckless streak a mile wide," said Cyborg's voice as it approached from Robin's left, punctuated by huge metal footsteps. There was the sound of others entering the room in turn, and he soon felt as though he was surrounded on all sides.

"YEOW! Whoa, I don't know if the doctors gave him some acid or what, but he is SERIOUSLY freaking out in there," said the somewhat quaky voice of a male stranger from just above his head and to the right. "I hate nightmares—they always leave this funkified disturbance in the air that's more unsettling and annoying than nails on chalkboard and bagpipes combined."

"Get a hold of yourself," came Raven's unmistakable monotone from the foot of the bed. "I know your powers are more sensitive to thought than mine, but that's no excuse for bugging me with your petty complaints."

"DUDE! Raven? That's seriously no way to talk to a guy who totally saved all our butts," said Beast Boy, in a clear tone that spoke of an injury-free head, mystifying Robin.

"I didn't see him save me, and even if I had, it takes more than that to prove oneself worthy of trust or respect," Raven retorted with the quietly sour tone she used when she felt people were wasting her time.

"Robin told me all about it last night, and it sounds to me like we all owe him a pizza or five after what he went through for us!" Cyborg argued passionately, probably having gotten a good sense of the stranger's personality since Robin went under. "I know you've been hurting since that whole messed up thing with Terra but—"

"DON'T GO THERE!" shouted Beast Boy and Raven simultaneously, surprising everyone as well as each other into silence. Apparently realizing what a nerve he'd touched, Cyborg lost his angry tone before continuing.

"I'm sorry...I'm just saying that we owe Skye the benefit of the doubt. We can't go around refusing to trust every new face that stops by."

"Right on, you tell them Cy," thought Robin in agreement, the scene of extreme gore and horror before him forgotten as he focused on the disembodied voices. Despite only being in partial possession of his wits, he noted that he now knew the stranger's name: Skye.

"I agree with Cyborg, but don't worry about that right now," came Beast Boy from Robin's left. "Skye said he was having nightmares right? Heh, I didn't know Mr. 'I'm So Cool, Look at my Sculpted Hair' even did nightmares."

"Hah, yeah, I'll bet that hyper competitive pretty boy practices having nightmares so he can be the best at that too!" added Cyborg, getting into the joking spirit the moment Beast Boy started off. Robin was getting ticked, and would have given almost anything to have a chance to snipe back at them.

"You two are so immature—don't you even have sense enough to not talk bad about injured people?" Raven asked miserably, fed up with their total lack of maturity, even in bad times like this. Robin suspected that she was also still upset with memories of Terra.

"Raven, seriously, CALM DOWN. We're just trying to lighten the mood a little, we don't mean anything by it," complained Beast Boy, getting fed up with Raven's nasty attitude. Robin got the impression she'd been like that for a while, and wondered what had so unsettled the usually unfazeable sorceress. "And besides," B.B. continued with a wave of his hand, "The doctor said he'd make a full recovery with rest, so it's not like I'll never get another chance to talk to him."

"I wouldn't worry about it so much either Raven," broke in Skye from Robin's right side, a note of humor in his voice as well, "it's not like Robin can't hear us."

"What do you mean?" she asked sharply, suspicion flaring.

"HE HEARD THAT?" broke in Beast Boy far more conspicuously, drowning out Raven's query as he stumbled to Robin's side. Shouting at the top of his lungs into Robin's ear, he said, "DUDE! YOU KNOW I DIDN'T MEAN THAT! I'VE ALWAYS ADMIRED YOUR HAIR!"

The enormously loud shouting made Robin's eye's bulge behind his mask in the faded nightmare, an insistent ringing and the echo of the word 'Hair' in his head dazing him from what little clarity he'd gathered.

"Beast Boy...CHILL!" commanded Skye, even as he suppressed a chuckle. Cyborg was laughing aloud while Raven emitted a sigh of annoyance as she watched the antics. "He's not deaf...or at least he wasn't deaf... he's just semi-conscious and in the throes of terrifying nightmares. I think he must have started to hear us when I began a preliminary probing of the thoughts his mind was shooting off, because I felt distinct anger after those cracks about him as well as general happiness to hear that you're all alive and well."

"Awww, he does care," mocked Cyborg, prompting another flash of anger from Robin.

"Okay..." Skye said, concentration in his tone, "we have anger again, and... what seems like... uhh... oh!—a threat to sell you for scrap metal."

"That's Robin all right, good to know you're still in there dawg," said Cyborg happily, making a toning sound as he smacked Robin's bed frame. Robin was a little bit disturbed, much as he had been all along, because he could hear the tone but he couldn't see or feel anything but the now-faded nightmare. He flinched away from the sight of Slade removing Star's...something... and turned his attention back to the voices, which had begun to argue again.

"I'm telling you, if Skye can bring him out of that nightmare then he should!" shouted Beast Boy passionately.

"And I'm telling you that there's no way we can trust him to go digging around in Robin's mind. We barely know him and he was acting suspiciously this morning," Raven said, not shouting, but nonetheless overpowering Beast Boy's voice with the calmly angry tone she used. Beast Boy was cowed into silence, but Cyborg backed him up.

"Raven," began Cyborg calmly, "I can't believe I'm saying this but you just ain't being rational. You told me yourself that he's a great telepath, and if that's true then the options for him to backstab us are all pretty well moot. If the guy wanted us dead, he could have let that muscle-freak finish us off. If he wanted our secrets, he could read them right out of our minds weather or not we let him. If he wanted us to do something we wouldn't want to do, I'll bet he could even go into our heads and control our bodies. So, I think we can go ahead and at least kind of trust him, just because he's been real polite and cooperative, as well as doing a little something called SAVING OUR LIVES!"

"Cyborg is on a roll today," thinks Robin, who had realized much of the same things the tin man had about Skye's trustworthiness as he considered taking the telepath's help. Deciding to try something, Robin gathered all the concentration he could in the half-dream and made ready to be heard.

(Skye)

HEY

Skye's eyebrows came together as he started with surprise. Having become absorbed in the argument, he was only dimly aware of Robin's mind for now, and the sudden and very clear thought seemed at first like his imagination.

CAN U HEAR ME

After the second set, Skye was sure of what he sensed, and discreetly turned to look down at Robin. Lying under the covers in his surgery recovery bed, he looked as pale and drawn as the sheets, a look highly at odds with his hair and mask. More than a little surprised by such clear thoughts from a person using only half his mind, Skye still responded quickly and politely.

"Can I help you with something Robin?" he thought, projecting the thought into the injured young man's mind.

WANT U 2 WAKE ME

"I understand. I feel obligated to warn you that there is a little pain and disorientation involved in the process. Also, Raven will be extremely displeased, probably insisting that I did it to spite her and forced you to think it was your own idea with telepathy." Skye expressed his concerns as clearly as he could, knowing it was difficult for Robin to think in his halfway state.

I HANDLE U WAKE

"Can't argue with that," Skye mumbled to himself, gathering his concentration for the somewhat complicated task ahead of him. Thrusting a small spear of pure telepathic energy directly from his mind to Robin's, Skye entered the peripheral areas of his consciousness. Once inside, Skye oriented himself to where all the pieces and parts were, knowing from experience that they were rarely in exactly the same place from species to species (it had been a while since he'd done delicate work on human minds).

Tracking down the section of the brain responsible for sleep, Skye exerted a minor mental force to energize it, allowing it to overcome the effect of the drugs keeping Robin under. As he began to withdraw, a sudden searing pain along his jaw snapped him back out of Robin's mind with a bungee-jerk even as he felt the floor rushing quickly up to meet him. "I didn't feel it coming..." Skye wondered in shock, as his head smacked against the floor and the lights went out.

The lights came back on again fitfully, and to the sound of arguing.

"How could you have asked him to do that?" came Raven's frustrated, but still not shouting, monotone voice, along with the sound of cabinets blasting open and their contents venting into the hospital room.

"I knew the danger, and I knew what I was doing Raven," spoke what must have been Robin's voice from on the bed. Skye began to get up and shake the aching from his jaw, knowing in retrospect that Raven had hit him while his concentration was on the delicate work in Robin's brain. Still, his powers could always detect every act of aggression directed his way...so why hadn't he sensed it coming? It simply wasn't possible... unless...?

"You knew nothing," Raven retorted with deadly calm (lighting fixtures cracked and fizzled out) while Skye pondered on the floor. "If you had any idea of what that guy could do to your mind (bedside lamp explodes), what he could find out (foot of bed frame twists into pretzel), what he might have changed or planted—"

"RAVEN! I knew, so calm down and hear me out!" Robin shouted, finally stopping Raven's furious rant, just in time to keep the ceiling from falling in. "I realized Skye was a telepath immediately after the battle yesterday. Knowing that, I took the liberty of pulling out a little something the Justice League dropped off on their last visit."

That said, Robin slowly reached up and grabbed at something just behind his right ear. Fiddling there for a moment, he had gained the rapt attention of everyone in the room. Soon, he pulled his hand away and brought with it a small device of no obvious purpose.

"Umm, we're supposed to be impressed by a hearing aid?" Beast Boy summed up the Titans' confusion aptly. By now Skye had peeled himself off the floor, and gazing over at what Robin was showing his friends, promptly shouted:

"HOLY SHIT!!"

"Watch your tongue or I'll knock you out again," Raven snapped out mercilessly.

"No, Raven, he has a right to use language like that considering what I just did to him," Robin assured her and the others.

"No FUCKING kidding," Skye said angrily as he turned from the others and gripped at his chest, as if trying to get his heartbeat under control. "You are one devious FUCK Robin, inviting me in to wake you up with that... thing on. I'm lucky to still be here!"

"You're only still here because you didn't try to read my thoughts," Robin explained for the benefit of the others. "According to the Martian Manhunter, who gave it to me, it will only trap the minds of telepaths that take an aggressive action in the wearer's mind. You passed my test."

"I don't find that terribly consoling here." Skye began, taking on a bitter tone as he was forced to remember all kinds of awful things. "Do you have ANY IDEA what it's LIKE to be trapped in one of those? How could you (he chuckles mirthlessly), you've never been in position to face that kind of thing. Well, let me just tell you, if you miss your last-ditch chance to slip out of one of those things—and it's damn hard to manage it, with construction that advanced, hurts like hell either way—then getting caught in it will probably be the worst thing that ever happened to you. It's like being in a box, a really tiny box for your brain, completely black, and no sensations at all, only you and the constant trapped feeling slowly eating away at your mind. After a while, you begin to loose your sense of self, your mind begins to melt away oh so slowly into a puddle of simpering madness and shattered ego. It's... terrible."

All around the Titans sported wide eyes at Skye's description and the incredible sincerity and pain in his voice and manner. Watching him gaze out the window, they all felt more than a little ashamed for having subjected him to the things he seemed to be going through just then.

"I'm sorry..." Robin began slowly, staring at the small device in his hand with new respect, "I just wanted to make sure you were trustworthy—we really can't afford to take any chances."

"If you guys test loyalty with hidden mind traps," Skye responded as he returned to a normal tone, the pain leaking from his posture and back to wherever he kept it permanently iced, "I don't even want to know how you were betrayed in the past. Stories as messed up as that's likely to be always get me down," Skye said, sounding much calmer with that whole episode behind him.

"I still think you were foolish and overconfident to ask him in like you did," Raven continued implacably, putting the pity she'd felt for Skye behind her out of an undying sense of necessity she couldn't shake. "I watched him sense all of my attacks coming earlier, when it looked like he'd been trying to soul-rape Starfire in her hospital bed—"

"WHAT?" screamed the other Titans simultaneously, eyes all going wide in shock.

"I was HEALING her," said Skye irritably.

"That's not what it looked like," Raven went on with grim determination. "Anyway, how do we know he didn't just sense the mind trap there and avoid using anything aggressive to dodge it and keep our trust?"

"I'll tell you why—"began Robin and Skye at the same time, stopping when they realized they'd both said the same thing.

"You first," acceded Skye with a nod. Robin accepted with a matching nod before beginning.

"The Martians had great psychic technology on their planet before the civilization collapsed. It's only natural considering they all had telepathy and other powers from birth, but that's beside the point. The thing is, they made psychic traps like this out of material that's invisible to ESP. Skye could sense till his brain exploded from the stress and he'd never find this without laying eyes on it."

Once he had finished Beast Boy and Cyborg nodded at the sensibility of what he'd said, admiring their spiky-haired leader's talent for deviousness even as they gazed warily at the device he sported. Raven looked skeptical—Skye figured that she couldn't sense it with her limited ESP and wondered if his, which she knew was much more advanced, could sniff it out.

"My turn," Skye said calmly as he turned to look out the room's large windows. "I couldn't tell it was there because A- I wasn't looking for it. I never expected Robin to pull something so serious so soon. B- It really is invisible to ESP, as far as my sixth sense is concerned, his hand is empty. And C- my seventh sense, my danger sense, only works on aggressive things."

At the general confusion this statement caused, Skye figured he'd have to explain himself further. In fact, only Raven seemed to understand what he meant even slightly, and her eyes widened in anticipation of what Skye was about to reveal.

"What I mean is, I can sense when people are about to try and commit some kind of harm against me, or when something bad is about to happen. The way I figure it, my senses are attuned so finely to the energy emitted when people have angry or malicious thoughts, or when the energy of an area is coming to a violent head (bad vibes accumulate before disaster and violence), that I can pick them up before they even finish happening. All I have to do then is get out of the line of fire."

"Sounds useful," quipped Cyborg, "If I could do that, I'd never have to worry about another Beast Boy prank ever again."

"Heh, right on," Skye appreciated the great dynamics the Titans had. He knew it was hard to get friends like that. "The point I was trying to make however, was that a defensive device like that would never trip my senses."

"But hey... I just saw Raven lay a stinger to your jaw not two minutes ago dude," cut in Beast Boy, setting up Skye's next comment perfectly.

"Yeah, well," Skye was clearly chagrined, "there you have an example of the exception to the rule. Raven didn't strike out in aggression."

"What do you mean?" asked Robin, half confused and half expecting what was coming.

"Raven attacked me purely out of fear that I was harming you man. There wasn't one drop of aggression in her actions, just undiluted concern for your well-being."

"Really?" B.B. cut in again, "Wow Raven, I didn't know you had it in you!" he shouted tactlessly at this news.

"I don't have to listen to this," Raven muttered foully, flipping up her hood and leaving the room before anyone else could start making wisecracks. The others watched her leave, still a bit stunned by Skye's news and besides knowing when NOT to mess with Raven. When Skye raised his eyebrows in concern about her reaction, Cyborg noticed and took charge of reassuring him (and changing the subject).

"Man, don't worry about Raven, she just can't take a compliment. She'll be fine, no doubt about it. Anyway, you said the two of you got off on a major wrong foot this morning. Something about a big fight when she dropped in on you doing who knows what to help out Starfire, right?"

"Uh, Yeah," Skye responded, grateful that the metal man gave him an easy out from embarrassing that mysterious sorceress. "It's an interesting thing," he continued, getting into the explanation, "because when she caught me at that, it didn't scare her. Apparently, whatever her relationship with Starfire is, the thought that I was doing something to her just pissed her off royally. My senses caught that wave of malicious thought like a bad cold, but it clearly shows just as much friendship, if not more, as her fear for Robin's safety did. I guess all I can say is that you're all lucky to have an ally like her."

"We are indeed," said Robin, lying back in his bed again. He held his hand up to his head and rubbed his aching skull just above his mask, feeling as though something were trying to smack its way out from inside his brain. "You weren't kidding about that pain were you Skye?" he asked as his head began to hurt even more.

With a slight laugh, Skye grinned widely and shook his head. "You really ought to have given that a little more thought. The procedure I used is for allowing people under the influence of sleep drugs and other involuntary slumber to get up before they'd normally be able to. Direct stimulation to that part of the brain causes—"Skye's head snaps around and he looks straight at the room's right wall, "—Woah!"

"Uh...It causes whiplash and gasping?" asked B.B. in confusion.

"What is it Skye?" asked Robin, ignoring the green one's unintentional joke.

"I... I mean I fixed up her head... and Raven used her healing powers... but already?" Skye mumbled cryptically to himself.

"Cm'on Skye, drop the suspense and tell us what's up already!" commanded Cyborg, growing concerned that there might be a serious problem.

"Calm down," Skye commanded right back, looking down and rubbing his head much as Robin had moments ago. His posture caused the others more nervousness than his command stopped, but then he looked up and smiled widely, easing their fears immediately with, "I don't know how, but it looks like Starfire is about to wake up."

"What?" "NO WAY!" "Really?" were the simultaneous shocked answers of the Titan boys.

"Seriously, I don't understand it, but that doesn't mean we can't all celebrate!"

"SWEET! Let's get over there!" shouted Beast Boy, rushing for the door. He was out of it before the others could get a word in edgewise, and Cyborg was out immediately on his tail, calling for him to wait up. Skye was a tad more reserved, looking over to where Robin lay before doing anything else. Having tried to sit up in bed WAY too fast, Robin overpowered his painkillers and was now laid out by serious agony through his cut up chest.

"Would you like a hand man?" asked Skye quietly, already moving over to a folded wheelchair sitting in the corner.

"That...would...be...nice," Robin managed to respond through the haze of splitting headache and burning chest pain. Knowing that Robin shouldn't be moving so soon after major surgery, but equally knowing that nothing would stop the young fighter from being there when Starfire woke up, Skye decided it was best to just try and be helpful. He could still vividly remember the resonance of sympathetic souls he had beheld only last night, and the thought of what feelings a phenomenon like that must root from was more than enough to motivate him.

"Hop on," Skye offered, wheeling the chair up to Robin's side. It quickly became clear that Robin hadn't recovered enough from all the stitching and setting the doctor's had done for him to manage the movement by himself. Sweating and straining through the pain, he scooted himself a little tad over then collapsed in pain.

"Giving up already?" Skye asked with mock confusion. After Robin's answering glower, a silent agreement passed between the two, Skye leaning over and offering Robin a shoulder. With the added leverage from an arm around Skye's neck and a gentle tug from Skye, Robin slid gently into the chair, nonetheless fairly shouting in pain as he gritted his teeth.

"Let's go," he finally said, when he could almost see straight after everything from nausea to light-headedness had finished chasing pain through his chest and skull. Silently, knowing that for some inexplicable reason (though he suspected huge concern for Starfire) a man with more pride than the average samurai had taken his help, Skye wheeled the hospital gown-clad masked hero out of the room.

Raven, who had apparently been looking out at the bay though the Tower's huge windows since leaving Robin's room, turned at last to glare at them from under her hood. Her mind shield kept him from getting any sense of what she was feeling, but Skye was willing to bet it was something really deep.

"Why is everyone running around...and why is Robin out of bed?" she asked the two as they wheeled slowly toward Starfire's room. The second part was asked with a particularly annoyed tone, as if she couldn't believe that Robin was so doggedly determined to destroy his body.

"Skye thinks Starfire is about to wake up," was Robin's pained response, "Considering how close she came to never waking up again... I wouldn't miss that for the world."

"What? I just finished patching her internal injuries an hour ago... there's no way she could be ready to wake up already," Raven wondered aloud, finally pulling her hood back as these new events snapped her out of her brooding.

She raised an eyebrow at Skye, questioning his motives no doubt, and Skye was helpless but to note for about the millionth time how beautiful she was. Possessing a noble and spectacularly strong set to the jaw as well as spirited eyes and spectacular skin, she was by far one of the best looking women Skye had ever run across. In her own quiet way (at least in Skye's eyes), she even outshone the gorgeous alien that his spiky-haired passenger in the wheelchair had fallen for so unreservedly. His admiration was cut short suddenly by the realization that she had been talking to him.

"What?" he asked, mildly embarrassed.

"I said," she began again, the sound of real aggravation creeping into her monotone voice, "are you sure? Do you really think she could wake up already?"

"Anything is possible... and energy forms like the ones she's venting right now tend not to lie." From his tone, it was clear that Skye was trying play something off, but everyone had more pressing concerns—concerns about Starfire.

"Can we get a move on here?" Robin sniped irritably as the pain ate at his patience. Exchanging glances, Raven and Skye accompanied Robin into Starfire's room, careful not to touch as they passed close through the door.

Preview: Up next we flip tones once more, swinging to the dramatic side as we examine what's been going on with Starfire this whole time. Being such a great character, it's pained me to leave her out so long, and the next big block of the story is going to be my way of making up for that. It's a really long block of story.

All reviews are answered with e-mails to whatever address you posted on , so go ahead and give me your opinion and I'll be glad to get back to you direct. Really, review, and never ever stop.