Raventhedarkgoddess: Thanks once again to my reviewers. You guys are great. Anyway, I don't actually have much to say except that this story may actually fall by the wayside for a bit come the fall, and for that I'm sorry. I do enjoy writing it, but I'm getting wrapped up in marching band and won't have much time. Expect at least one more update this summer, though. Now, since I've wasted enough of your time babbling, here's the next chapter of At a Feather's Touch. Enjoy, if possible.

Chapter Three: Remember the Old Scars

Raven sighed openly as she looked down at the eagle-spread alien girl, her white, pale skin covered in blood and bruises, her face turned to one side and the tips of her hair reddening with a sick form of blood. She could see the bruises and the rubbing where Starfire had hit the wall, and then the ground, almost cracking her hip against the pavement. Raven could see it to be only a hairline fracture, though, and breathed another sigh, this one of releif. She placed one long, slender gray hand to the skin and willed the blue power to her fingertips.

Almost imediatly she longed to recoil, to pull away from the blood, but did not. She could feel herself weakening, weakening... She shut her eyes and pressed on. This was no time to give up, not after they had come so far just to get back here, to make it away from the girls who called themselves Past, Present, and Future. Names of time, of the passage of things both tangible and intangible.

What do they know about time? What do they know about pain and suffering, about lost time and time gained? What do they know about fearing the day when their life will go up in flames forever and they'll die, unable to protect even the ones they love?

And how were they able to defeat people who do?

Cyborg sat outside the screen he had errected for the privacy of the girls, although he had barely had the strenght left, sloutched down in his seat on the couch, eye closed, the mechanical eye staring ahead at the room around him anyway, a reminder to him that he was still his mechanical self. Even his mechanical being had been stretched to it's limits, all just to survive. Beast Boy sat next to him, his arm in a sling and a few bandages around his head. Neither spoke, and neither would have had anything to say even if they had. The words hung around them though, ugly words full of hate and spite, anger and rage.

The words: We are defeated. The Teen Titans are defeated.

"Friend Raven?" A voice suddenly said, thin and stretched. "You are uninjured?" The emerald eyes sparkled with concern as she looked up toward Raven. She pulled her shirt back down from where it lay around her shoulders and placed her arms through both armholes, sitting herself upright to face Raven, looking over at her from her spot on the table.

Raven decided not to tell her about the large gash on her chest that slowly bled with each thud of her heart: She would deal with that later, when she was alone and able to properly deal with the sight of her own blood. She was terrified that Starfire would force her to visit a doctor, someone who might discover the long scars down her back and the even deeper scars within her mind, the injuries of her past... "I'm fine." She searched her friend on more time for major, life-threatening cuts on both the surface and under it, wrapping her right arm in a white peice of cloth and then lightly tapping her on the shoulder, having problems standing up.

"Please take care of him." The emerald eyes were averted from the figure Raven picked up with her mind, bringing over to her side and laying him on the table in place of Starfire. Black hair caked with a nasty look of both blood and mud, he lay there, unmoving, probably even perfectly unfeeling. Raven lay him out flat: Had his form not been so mangled, he would have looked as though he merely slept instead of having been knocked into a state of literal concinous loss.

Raven could only nod. It was hard enough to stand there bleeding, the strenght almost gone from her form, but to smile and tell her friend everything would be okay would have been too much altogether. Starfire moved around to join the boys on the couch, looking down at the few wounds on her body: Was it really fair that Robin had taken so many of the blows himself when they sat there almost completely unharmed?

Raven looked him over once and felt her legs almost give out at the knees: She hardely knew what to consider focusing her energy on healing. Many large, sinister paths of blood seemed to mock her, confusing her. It all looked so much worse than it probably was, but the real problem was that the boy was not awake.

If only I knew how to make him wake up... She lay her hands in the middle of the mess, almost throwing up as she looked down at him, but she was strangely determined, unwilling to give up on him without a fight. She could feel herself slumping forward, falling forward...

The blood caked under her nails seemed to be one of the only traces left, save his broken left arm and his still unconcious state. She lifted him gently with her mind, pushing him up so that he levetated just above her head, and brought him along with her, folding the screen with her free right hand and tossing it toward the wall. The three remaining Titans followed the gothic girl and the leader to the steps.

Raven sighed as she came to Robin's door, forcing herself to make the door to his room slide open as she moved in, laying him across her bed. Exastion overtook her as she forced herself to sit upright on the corner of his bed, telling herself she only wanted to montior changes in his condition to see what needed to be done for the boy.

She almost felt a jolt of affection in her gesture as she reached out and smoothed his bloody hair away from his still-masked eyes, noting, for some reason, the perfection of his shoulders, the way his mask made him look heroic and warm...

"Rae?" Cyborg's voice cut through her as she quickly sat back, pretending to be murmering to herself about the low state of his pulse. "You look really beat-up. Want me to take over Rob's bedside for you, since I kinda don't really need to rest and you do?" It was a friendly gesture, but there was something imporling in his voice, as if he knew that her body needed the rest in order for her to even be able to move again.

"I'll be fine. I need to be around in case he wakes up. Everything wrong with him is serious, and he needs immidate help when he wakes up." Although she had intended for that to bea clever lie, it was actually very close to the truth: Robin would probably die if she couldn't find some way to help him.

And that was a truth that stabbed her heart worse than any scar of time from her past.

"Okay, then. Night, Rae, and thanks." The half-man, half-robot slowly made his way out of the room and down the hall, quietly shutting the door behind him as he went. His feet padded away down the hall, and Raven once again looked over at Robin. His face was relaxed, but at the same time it was torrmented, as if his sleep was troubled by something.

"Wish I could help you." And with those words, she collapsed across his chest, laying against him, her head resting just under his. Normally, she would have tried to move, but the sleep was already moving in on her, and she quickly made a move to lay her hands over her wound, to heal it. That was when it all went black, blood over her hands, laying across Robin, feeling nothing.

That was the last thing she remembered, his face. It gradually began to blend into her dreams, and then the blackness covered even her dreams. She became nothing, unconcious laying there. Her scars were under wraps for now, but her mind was reeling in pain and misery of scars and broken dreams, her power all but lost.

The rain came down loudly as it had in the past. The Titans were defeated, but some things would never change.

Raventhedarkgoddess: Well, that was rather short, but I hope you enjoyed it. I hope to get back to you with a new chapter soon, I really do enjoy writing it. Thanks to all the nice reviewers who keep me going. (hands you virtual cookies)