Raventhedarkgoddess: I may get a few more chapters in than expected. (hears groaning from reviewers) I know, I know you thought you were rid of me. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews, they inspire me to update quicker.

Chapter Four: Nothing

The Boy Wonder extended his hand to her, green-gloved and calm, unlike her hands, which seemed to shake with every move she attempted to make. She jerked away as he moved forward, as if somehow he repusled her by being both in front of her and near her emotionally. "Raven, what's wrong?" He flashed her a smile, and she felt her heart softening to him. Inwardly, she groaned: This was exactly what she was afraid of.

She couldn't tell where they were. They were obviously somewhere dark, but it was more the fact that they were alone that bothered her, that troubled her between her wildest dreams. Raven shivered: There was something wrong with this situation, but she couldn't peg it.

"You can tell me anything, you know." He reached out his hand for her to take again, no offense showing in his face if he had taken any to her first rejection. Raven stretched her hand forward this time and took it in her own, holding it. Their fingers interlocked in a perfect fashion and she left her hand in his, enjoying feeling safe and secure despire the darkness around them. She tried not to break her eyes away from his as they stood there, his eyes, although hidden, warm and soft against hers.

Raven felt her mouth open, ready to spill the words that burdened her heart, but the acidic taste of her painful secrets rose in her mouth and she shut it, her secrets refusing to come out. She shook her head and mentally slapped herself: Now was no time to get attached to Robin. She couldn't get attached to Robin. She moved to free her hands, and she almost pulled away from him until their hands barely touched anymore.

"Raven..." Robin looked at her with sorrow for a moment, and then his hand released hers. He began to fall away, falling away from her into the surrounding black void, hand still outstretched to her as if in a silent plea for her to come and help him, to save him from his current state of misery and pain for wanting a little bit of trust. "Catch me! Fly!"

Instead, Raven turned her back, feeling an invisible breeze softly play with both her cloak and her hair as she turned away from where Robin had fallen. Voice choked with emotion, she heard herself whisper one word. "Robin..."

A single tear welled up in the corner of her violet eyes and spilled over, the crystal tear falling down the same path Robin had taken, falling away from her.

Falling into nothing, just like anything she ever got up the courage to feel.

Raven's head jerked upright, her breathe coming in quick, harsh gasps that caused pain in her chest, her whole upper body. A mask, presumably one of Slade's, clattered from the dark walls and landed on the floor somewhere in a corner as she struggled to grip her fear and close her heart against feeling anything further.

Quickly she straightened up, her face blushing with a failedattempt at surpressing her embaressment. She looked around, the room, sensing upon waking up confused that this was not her own room. Instead, her eyes caught the small R next to her head and she realized that she lay against Robin's chest. It was an accident, just an accident...

So why did I enjoy laying there like that? The question repeated itself, forcing it's way into the back of her mind and refused to leave her alone.

She sighed to notice that, aside from his shallow breathing, Robin made no sound, nor did he appear to have moved at all. Raven ran her free hands over the cuts she had done a poor job of mending the night before. Please be alright...

She reached up his left hand to smooth back his jet-black hair from his forehead, only to find another gash, long and deep, in the middle of his forehead. Upon her soft contact, the blood began to come forward, and the gothic sat up with a start. As she moved to heal it, reducing it to a narrow cut in just seconds, she did her best to convince herself that the cut had been her main interest from the start, not him. Relucently, she withdrew her hands, trying to ignore the blood on her hands as best she could.

Suddenly, she remembered her friends, who were most likely downstairs waiting for her to come down stairs, to give them some news of what was going on in the small room above their heads. Raven stood slowly, moving away from the edge of the bed where she had sat, with some reluctaince.

"Get well," she whispered in a voice heavy with emotion. Slowly she straightened her cloak and moved away, back to the door, and stood in the frame, one hand braced on either side. The door slammed a bit harder than she'd intended for it to with pent-up emotion as the black aura slammed the door. Raven moved down the hall, feet in perfect sync with no one: She half-expected Robin to walk up behind her, and they would sit up and talk or prepare breakfast.

Only one shadow, however, made it's way down the steps and covered the room's occupents where they sat on their couch. All three teens seemed to note the shadow, Starfire turning upon it covering her and the other two making only a stop long enough to pause the video game they were furiously fighting over. Five eyes (and one robotic one) bore into her.

Raven chose to ignore their obviously eager expressions. When she spoke, her voice held only it's cold, calm monotone, and none of the surpressed emotions from Robin's room came through at all. "Is anyone still in any real pain from their injuries?" She asked, in a tone that any but her friends would have assumed meant she really didn't care about them.

"Well, my head hurts and my arm is still cut a little bit, and my back is killi..." Beast Boy began, but was cut off by a sharp jab and a glare from the cybernetick teenager at his side as a warning that Raven did not mean those kinds of injuries. The two exchanged a brief look, and then it was gone.

"We're fine," Cyborg answered for him. Raven merely nodded at the response, and a light silence fell over the room that was, for once, not broken by video games or yelling, music or the clacking of a keyboard as their leader worked.

It was nothing compared to the painful silence brought on by Starfire's next question. "Friend Raven..." She faltered there, if only for a second. "Friend Raven, I cannot help but notice the blood on both of your hands..." Raven sighed: She had been hoping to keep the blood hidden. "I must know... How is Robin?" Although her voice was weak, the question had about the same heart-stopping effect as if it had been screamed. Raven could feel her pleading for a good answer, but she merely averted the begging emerald eyes and kicked at an invisible spot of dirt on the carpet to avoid looking at anyone as she spoke.

Raven took a breath, trying to keep her Sadness in it's proper hollow in her mind long enough to answer them. "He's... He's still out cold. He doesn't respond to words or touch, and his breathing... Is shallow." She tried not to choke over the last few words.

Starfire turned her head wordlessly, her water-filled eyes away from Raven as she walked to the window. Eachhand gripped the upper of the oppisite arm as if she wanted to protect herself from the cold reality of the words, hovering toward the large bay window and pressing her amber-colored hair-covered forehead to the cold glass.

"Look, Starfire..." Raven moved after the other girl, who had pulled herself up onto the window ledge, and tucked her long blue cloak around her legs as she sat down next to her. She gently lay her left hand against the other girl's shoulder. "I'm sorry." Getting no response but a loud, dramatic sigh, she decided to continue talking. "I know how you feel, and I know this has to be hard for you, but..."

Starfire sprang up from the window ledge, and both of her hands dug inpulsivly into her palms as she shook Raven away, as if afraid that she might bite at any second, almost as if Raven repulsed her in a way she couldn't quite understand. "You obviously do not understand how I feel! You failed to make Robin well! And you cannot understand how I feel because you do not have the Earthen 'feelings' for Robin! You do not even have feelings at all to say those words to me now!"

Starfire did not wait for a reaction. Hands swinging at her sides, face averted and tears sliding down to her shoulders, Starfire left the room. Instead of waiting for a reaction, Raven turned too, and then flew out the large window in front of them, into the air made stagment with the humidity from the departed rainstorm of the night before.

Beast Boy and Cyborg merely shrugged at one another: Who could understand women? They unpaused the game, but neither of them were quite in the game, their minds elsewhere.

Cyborg sighed: When had everything become so messed up, and yet it still meant nothing?

Raven sat on the roof of the Tower, her cloak floating below her and her legs crossed, her eyes open and meditation impossible. "You feel nothing at all!" Raven tried to keep the words from repeating in her head, but it failed and she could hear the words repeating over and over again. Slowly, she lowered herself to the roof and moved toward the edge of the roof, legs dangling over the edge as she felt a slight breeze ruffle her hair.

"You have not the Earthen 'feelings' for Robin!" "You failed to make Robin well!" The sun climbed in the sky, red, red like blood and pain and misery. Red like a heart, a heart that felt so much it could never express.

Red like the blood on her hands, the blood that was there from trying and failing to help. "I tried..." She whispered, and rested her hands in a nearby puddle, washing away all evidence that she had ever tried to help. "I tried."

"No feelings for Robin!" Starfire's voice said aloud in her head. "You have no feelings!"

"Like hell I have no feeling for him." She sighed and openly bask in the blood-red glow, one hand, a tiny clot of blood still in the corner of her hand. "I don't."

I can't feel anything at all anyway.

I'm not supposed to have feelings.

Raventhedarkgoddess: Okay, chapter four. R+R.