Chapter Five: Word Knifes

The sunset had long since faded to blackness in the sky by the time Raven Roth decided to make herself known of the realm of the living beneith the roof she had sat upon for what felt like immessurable time. Her hood over her face, hiding the emotional after-effects of the few tears that had slipped from behind her eyes, she silently slipped into the heavy front door of the place she could call home.

A heavy, metalic hand on her left shoulder caused her to let out a small, slightly startled gasp. "Rae, you want something to eat?" The voice attached to the hand asked quietly, and Raven let out a slight sigh of relif to realize it was only Cyborg. "You don't have to take the hood off," he added, and Raven realized that she had made a subconcious gesture out of fingering the fabric of the hood's wide brim around her face. "Just come with me."

Raven followed his lead in moving toward the kitchen, trying to act as if this were any ordinary day and nothing had happened, that nothing was different. He sat a plate of reheated food (presumably food of his own cooking) in front of her and then, keeping his head turned slightly to look at her, turned to the sink of dishes that towered before him, making no noise as she ate.

"Really good, Cy," she complimented, her own cooking skills being almost non-existent, trying to break the silence that was broken only by the bubbles that came from the sink as they ran into the ceiling and the lights, the lapsing of the water the only other sound in the room.

"Thanks, Rae," he said loosely watching the bubbles assult the light with his back to Raven so that she would not guess that he was studying her, making sure she was alright and trying to figure out exactly what was bothering her. She lifted a forkful of rice to her lips and ate, and slowly she brought the hood down from her face.

The tear tracks on the sides, the slightly red apperence of the veins, told him that Starfire's earlier comments had stung her far more than she'd been letting on. "Listen, Rae, about Starfire..." He stumbled, watching her as she set the fork down against the plate and turned her attention to him.

"What about her, Cyborg?" She asked, watching him pretend to fumble with the last dishes and letting the water out of the sink, watching him pretend to be disgusted by the tofu on the remaining plate. When he didn't answer, she let out a sigh and raised her fork: No one had words to say about the truth anyway, not when it came out like the truth had come from Starfire.

You act as if you feel nothing at all!

"She didn't mean that stuff," he said, no longer pretending to be having problems scraping the tofu from the plate in his hands. "She was just upset, and she's so close to Robin that she just kinda blew up... She likes you, Rae, and I know Star would never say anything like that on purpose."

Raven finished the last bite of chicken, trying her hardest to swallow it without gagging, feeling her throat closing over it with her emotion. "...That may be true, but she was right..." Raven sighed softly. "I spent too much time feeling sorry for myself today instead of helping him, and he may die, and it's my fault I didn't do anything for him..." She sighed again. "I just got too wrapped up in my own emotions."

"You needed a break. It's not your fault." He paused, waiting for her to say something, but she mutely got up and discared her plate into the sink. "Robin wouldn't want you to think so much about him anyway."

Cyborg's words hit her harder than he could ever have understood as having more than one meaning, but she tried her best to look grateful and accept them as the words of a friend who didn't quite realize what he had said. Of course he wouldn't want me thinking about him so much, a bitter voice in her head pointed out. He has other, more suited people to care about him than me.

"Thanks, Cy," she managed to say vaugly, trying to avoid showing any emotion and fighting to keep her voice from straining or breaking over those two words as she started the faucet to clean her plate, her hands resting against the worn pattern of the plate.

Cyborg removed the plate from her hands. "You just go take care of Rob," he said quietly. "I'll stay down here and get this place cleaned up." Raven gave him a grateful nod, then slipped out of the room, both feet hitting the carpet outside of the room, the light resting against her back and then fading into almost nothing, the comfort of being with a friend forgotten as she began to move away from the kitchen.

"Robin wouldn't want you to think so much about him anyway." For some reason, the words stayed in her mind as she continued her way through the tower toward the Boy Wonder's room.

For no reason, the sight of her own reflection caused her to stop and glance at it. The backdrop for the reflection was moonlight, and her skin hardly showed up at all, so that her violet eyes appeared to rise out of the black-lit drop of the sky, full of sorrow and an inexpressable form of pain. Her purple hair fell around them in a mysterious way, and the small gem set into her forehead glowed in the faint light, glowing red.

She looked at the reflection for only a moment, but then blinked hard and swallowed. You're only going up there to heal him, and then you're going to leave him alone. You're nothing but a teammate to him. And with that, the emotion, the sorrow that had plauged her face was gone, and it became an emotionless mask.

One that she turned away from. She couldn't stand looking at herself without emotion, not now, not ever again. "Is it fair to feel so much when you can't express it...?"

Her feetbegan to move, cloak flying around them as she left the dim hallway, moving away from her reflection as if somehow wishing she could leave that part of her existence behind. The door flew open with pent-up energy as she reached it, and slammed again as her tired body discarded itself, spent, on the bed. She looked around for something, anything, to distract her from crying, but found nothing.

And so she stood up and walked quickly over to his desk, sitting down away from him to avoid disturbing him, and that was when the tips of her fingers felt something hard and cold laying down on the desk. The picture frame was old, but the tattered print inside of it was older.

His parents? She questioned to herself, eyes no longer full of pained tears as she looked over at him. There's a likeness there...

A loud cough resonated through the room, making Raven jump up, her surprise sending something else clanking down, the noise masking the the noise that dropping the picture frame had made. "Raven... What happened?"

"You were injured during our fight with Past, Present, and Future." She ran over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder as he tried to sit up. "Don't. You'll hurt yourself further."

"How long have I been like this?" He asked in disgust, running a hand through his hair, over his face, still wishing he could just sit up. Instead, however, he tried his hardest not to stare up at Raven, who handed him his mask and tried not to gawk as his beautiful electric blue eyes. Look away until he's got it on...

"Only a day. You're going to have to rest a few more days before we make any attempts to move back into battle, though." Hearing him finish struggling with his mask and fall back, Raven turned to him and sighed: The damage to his body had been something even she wasn't going to be able to remove unless he was willing to rest.

"What happened to everyone else?" He asked, his face tight with worry for the answer. "And are you alright? You must have been so busy tending everyone else... Did you treat youself?"

"Everyone, myself included, is fine." She lay her hand on his forehead. "You, on the other hand, are burning with fever and still cut in a few spots. Repairing it all would have been a bad idea. Please, Robin, you've got to just stay in bed. If you don't, you're never going to make it through a battle, and then we won't be able to attack for weeks." Relucently, she removed it, her hand burning. "You're burning up, Robin."

"Fine, I'll stay here." He sighed.

"I'm going to go get Starfire," Raven told him, her face suddenly remasking itself. "She's been wanting to see you since you were knocked out the other day." Without giving him a chance to respond, she left the small room, leaving Robin alone.

But what if I only really want to talk to you? He questioned in his mind as the gothic left, the door shutting with a loud thud behind her as if she were irritated.

Raven hesitated outside Starfire's door upon hearing the soft noises of someone rolling around restlessly in bed: What if the already-angry alien girl was asleep? Softly, so as not to disturb her if she truly was asleep, Raven rapped her fist three times against the bedroom door, then brought the hand back under her cloak and waited.

Starfire sighed: If this was another attempt to cheer her up by Beast Boy or Cyborg over her fight with Raven, she knew she wouldn't be able to put up with it much longer. "I am coming," she called, getting up off her bed where she'd been making a futile attempt at napping and moving toward the door.

Raven swallowed, hoping that her voice would not fail her and that she would find the words to say. "Starfire..." She began as the door opened, and the other girl's face hardened instently.

"What do you want?" Starfire asked her coldly, with more venom to her voice than Raven had ever heard directed at anyone.

"Listen, Starfire, it's Robin... He's awake, and I know how much you want to see him..." That was when Raven's body hit the doorframe, her headsmacking against the hard metal as a small blur, presumably Starfire, went tearing past her down the hall in excitment.

Gradually regaining her breath, Raven made a move to follow her, feeling more and more hollow and alone with each move she made toward the room where Starfire and Robin were now located.

You're always alone, she made a point of reminding herself. Always.

By the time she walked into the room, Robin seemed to be depleted of the ability to breath, so tight was Starfire's embrace around him. He looked over at Raven for a little help, and she came a bit further into the room, out of the shadows,causing Starfire to let go of Robin at the sight of her.

"I have missed you so much, friend Robin!" She gushed. "This is not a home without you, and we have all been most worried about you!" Her eyes said it all, though, the emerald in them gleaming: Me most of all.

Robin tried to keep his focus on what she was saying, but he found his eyes slipping from side to side: First to the alien girl on his bed, then over to the gothic in his doorway, her arms hugged around her body, her eyes cold as if she had been forsaken too many times to show him any emotion at all now. Part of him wished that Raven would come over and talk to him, but she was quiet as ever, waiting for the pair of them to be done speaking.

"Starfire," he said finally, right in the middle of a sentance, "I'm feeling pretty weak. Could you leave so that I could... You know, sleep?" He tried to look tired and worn, when really he just wanted some time to be by himself and figure out why, when Starfire had been sitting on his bed and Raven had been away from him, he had wanted her closer to him.

"Of course, friend Robin!" Starfire said, rising, and kissed him on the cheek. At that moment, for no real obvious reason, he wished she wouldn't have. "Pleasent dreams."

Suddenly, she stopped next to Raven. "Friend Raven, our fight earlier was my fault, and the things I said..." Robin stopped listening: Whatever had happened between the girls was their business. However, as they spoke, he got a good look at them both in the light and was stunned at how different they were in reality.

Starfire hugged Raven once and then left the room, leaving him alone to stare at the gothic, who looked up uncomfortably as she felt his eyes in her back. "Since you need to sleep, I'm going to go look for something in my books that could help you."

"Um, Raven, wait..."

"What?" She asked, hugging her cloak around her body and doing her best to hold the feeling of neglect and rejection in until she could get into her room and meditate safely.

"Just... thanks." He groaned inwardly. Why are you so afraid to ask her to just stay here with you?

Because she'll reject you. A scared voice in the back of his mind pointed out, and he could not force it away. "And night, I guess," he added when she failed to acknolwedge him and coldly shut the door behind her.

"Why do I always mess up!" He fumed. Head spinning slightly, he lay back against his pillow with a long, loud sigh. "Why!"

Raven simply lay across her bed, her face turned to the ceiling, face twisted downward in a hopeless frown. "I should have said something to him."

But I can't.

Because I'm not supposed to feel anything.

With a loud, fustrated sigh, she threw the small mirror containing her emotions at the wall. It fell, as unscarthed as always, and landed on the floor without a sound. Crossing her arms over her legs, shutting her eyes, she moved into the proper position to meditate.

Trying to find peace that refused to come to her while she was haunted by all the words everyone had said that day. If words were knifes, she would have been cut and bleeding. Robin... She thought.

The worst of all things she could have thought. A name.

Raventhedarkgoddess: Longer chapter, at least in my opinion, hope you've all enjoyed the senselessness of the angst. I'm moving a bit faster than I expected to on this one, but I hope you enjoy it none the less. Reviews appricated.