Okay, I said I would update fast, but I didn't, so I'm sorry. This one is longer, and it took longer because I got a bit more descriptive. I think... I hope it's good. Please review and tell me what you think, because I'm really not sure how to feel about this chapter. On with the installment!

Chapter 17

The Touch

When the Titans and Kal El got back to the T Tower, Robin and Kal El practically raced each other to the infirmary to check on Starfire. Kal El reached the door first, but Robin slid between his legs and got to Starfire first. This rivalry was clearly not going to end too soon.

"She's sleeping," said Robin quietly.

Starfire was lying tucked inside the blankets, her eyebrows a bit strained as if she was in pain. The bandage and gauze that Robin had applied earlier were now soaked, and the blood had dyed the bed sheets a deep red.

"It's been what, five hours, and the bleeding still hasn't stopped! She healed from broken ribs in like... a week! How can she still be bleeding?"

Robin was beyond worried. He didn't know what to do. Starfire looked awfully pale, and it was causing him to become pale too.

"I think it's because she's emotionally unstable," said Kal El. "Tamaranians use emotions to control our bodies, and if we become unstable, we cannot function properly."

Robin grimaced. He blamed himself for complicating things. Had he made her emotionally unstable?

"This is all my fault... Wait, you;re Tamaranian too? I thought-"

"Oh, I meant to say something else," Kal El replied quickly.

"Oh... Whatever. I should go get Raven, and see if she can heal her properly. Anything to help her, really."

So Robin ran off to look for Raven, leaving Kal El alone with the resting Starfire.

"You look like you're having one horrible nightmare..."

Beads of cold sweat clung to Starfire's lean figure. She shifted from side to side, shaking violently. Suddenly, her back arched and her chest jerked up. It almost looked as if her heart had stopped, and some invisible being was using a defibrillator to zap her heart back into motion. Her face contorted in pain, and she muttered incoherent words.

"...Blackfire... why..."

This made Kal El jump. He soon realized that she was just talking in her sleep and relaxed.

"Shh... Don't worry princess. Blackfire is gone. It was hard, but I somehow took care of her. Nobody will hurt you again... Nobody."

Starfire visibly relaxed, as if she had heard everything he said.

"Robin..." she seemed to whisper.

"Robin, huh? You both seem quite fond of each other... Is it him you love?"

He sat at the edge of the bed in silence and found it hard to tear his gaze from her bloodied arm.

"Pain. It's one thing we have in common, I guess," he whispered, more to himself than to her.

He drew closer to her, his face less than an inch away from hers...

"What are you doing?"

It was Robin, who was looking more than thoroughly annoyed. His face was glowing red like heated metal, and his body trembled dangerously. Raven, who stood beside him, merely sighed and went over to Starfire's bed.

Kal El's face was full of shock, clearly from being brutally awaken from his own little fantasy world.

"I... I was going to check her temperature," he muttered.

"And do you do that with your lips? Or maybe, you just shove your face as close as possible to feel the heat coming off of her?"

Robin knew all too well that he was acting way too possessive and jealous, but he really didn't care. What happened earlier with the whole "Kal El Saves the Day" marathon wasn't helping him cool down either. He was muttering and standing rather stiffly, unable to stop himself from shutting up. He would have gone on for days if it wasn't for the terrifying glare he was receiving from Raven.

Kal El was left speechless for a little while. He felt like he had committed some terrible felony, and Robin apparently thought he had done something much worse. He just stared blankly at the space between Robin and Raven, trying to formulate a story that would get him out of this mess. 'What exactly is this mess that I've gotten myself into? That boy is freaking out... It's like watching that ruddy old king again! Everybody has to be overprotective of our darling Starfire. Hehe. Ah, but I still have no idea what to say in this situation... I can't look too suspicious. Hmm, maybe I'll just play dumb.'

"Uh..." was the result of his oh-so complex yet brilliant plan.

"Just move aside so I can take a look at her," said a somewhat pissed off Raven.

After freezing up for a minute, he finally registered what she said and moved out of the way. Raven closed her eyes and concentrated her black energy into Starfire, making both of them float in the air. The gentle undulating energy seemed to ease Starfire, as her pained expression dissolved and turned into a relatively tranquil one.

'Hey, that's pretty cool,' thought Kal El. 'I want powers like that...'

Robin just surveyed the process in silence, looking a bit twitchy as blasts of jealousy and anger bombarded his body and soul, a bad combination that rarely plagued him. As his eyes followed the waves of black aura flowing through Starfire, he couldn't help but stare at her seemingly perfect body. A beast that did not exist before suddenly awakened inside him and growled hungrily. It howled and pawed madly, desiring nothing more than to pounce on the vulnerable girl who was literally floating right in front of his eyes. A voice in his head warned him.

'What the hell! Stop it! Have some control over yourself, Robin! This is the wrong place at the wrong time!'

But another voice, the one that usually told him to do things like jump off the bridge on his T Cycle, told him to go for it.

'There's never a right place or right time! It just happens! Come on, man... Look at her floating like that looking all pretty. You know you like her...'

Robin was having a hard time deciding which voice to follow, so he decided to take the middle ground.

Well, sort of...

'Maybe she'll feel better if I touched her...'

And before he realized what he was doing, he reached out with his right hand and touched the soft skin that was revealed between her top and skirt. His fingertips tingled at contact, and the pleasant sensation spread quickly through his whole body, lingering and building up particularly in his chest. He could vaguely sense Kal El staring at him with a look of utter disbelief, but at that moment, he honestly didn't have a care in the world.

'Holy... this... is heaven...'

He desired to savor this feeling of high until his death. What a wonderful thing it was! Robin did not need drugs or alcohol to get high. He had Starfire, and her amazing... magical body. He repeated this statement in his mind once again, and realized it sounded quite... well, perverted. That wasn't what he meant. At least he didn't think so. He just felt the need to touch her, or he might go insane. But when he did touch her, he was something well over insane. He wondered if he was in love.

All of a sudden, it wasn't only a pleasant sensation that filled him. Something seemed to travel from the girl's floating body into his own mind. A happiness and excitement flooded from his head through his soul and body. It was an emotion so powerful that he, the well-disciplined student of various martial arts, could not even control it. It was growing and growing, seeming to feed off of itself... until suddenly it all exploded into painful shards of glass and pierced his insides. Someone or something was stabbing at his heart, crashing down, slashing repeatedly at the same spot. He wanted to fight back and kill whoever was causing him this pain, but he couldn't. He was blinded by this torture, and he was losing the will to fight. '

There's no reason to live anyways... Just give up. Let the pain kill you now,' said a voice in his head. He was about to agree when another voice filled his head. 'No! There's Starfire! You'll never see her again if you die here! Fight you idiot! Stop being such a wuss!"

Suddenly, his will to live had come back. He mustered all his strength and will and lashed at the source of his torture. The pain seemed to be rooted in his mind somewhere, and he nearly killed himself trying to smash the enemy in his mind.

"AGH!" he screamed in a combination of pain and shock. "WHAT THE HELL?" His whole body and mind stung as if someone had just slapped him where he got burnt with boiling oil. He had finally been released from the devil's vice grip."What just happened? AGH! DAMN! ...Ugh! ...that hurts..." It took all his strength and will to calm down and ignore the most horrible pain he had ever experienced. His chest was throbbing, and his head felt as if Batman had run over it in the Bat Mobile. "GAAHH!" he screamed once again, trying to rid himself of the pure frustration, agony, and torture.

"Robin are you okay? What were you thinking, recklessly touching her while I was cleansing her? You're lucky you were in contact for less than 10 seconds, or you'd be seriously traumatized by now!"

Although she was yelling and glaring at Robin, Raven wasn't mad. Well, maybe a bit. But she was mostly worried, then relieved that Robin was okay. She hated it when her powers hurt other people... She hated it when she lost control and lashed out on innocent bystanders. This was why she had to keep to herself and meditate every day. To keep her dark side from taking over.

"Raven, what the hell was that?" and he followed up with a stream of curses too profane for the faint of heart. "It stings!" he finished, eyes tearing up from the pain.

Raven wondered if she should tell him everything, and she remembered what happened the last time she kept secrets from Robin. He had blamed himself for getting Starfire unconscious, which made Raven feel even more guilty, since she knew that Star was in no condition for the obstacle course. And then Robin had gotten mad at her for not telling him.

'That's it. I can't keep lying to Robin. And if Starfire's going to be part of the team, we have a right to know what she's been through, so we can help and support her.'

She hesitated for just a second, and began a very detailed explanation.

"As I said, I was cleansing her body of physical pain, as well as calming her emotions and letting blood circulate properly. In order to make her emotionally stable, I had to access her mind, mainly her unpleasant memories. And she has many of them..." This last bit made Robin worried. Was he one of her unpleasant memories? Kal El, who had remained silently amused throughout all of the events taking place, just stared at the wall with a pensive gaze. Raven briefly looked at the two boys and continued. "With my powers, I channeled her pain out of her body slowly and tried to bring forth her positive emotions and happy memories. It seemed to be working. That's when you touched her." Was that why he felt so insanely happy? "That threw me off and I lost control of her emotions. It got all jumbled up and I unsurfaced her most physically painful memory and made it channel through my energy. Since you were touching her, it went right into your body, and you practically died of shock."

"So that's why this-"

He stopped. He was about to say "that's why this hurts so much," only to realize that he was no longer in any pain. It escaped him how such an agonizing, torturing, painful sensation could just disappear like that.

"... It... doesn't hurt anymore..." he said, squeezing his arm and feeling no mortal pain. He looked to Raven. "How could it just... go away like that?"

Raven looked a bit shocked as well. Then she realized what had happened.

"I get it... It was just a memory. You were connected to it through Starfire. You felt what she felt in that memory, and the pain was all part of it. You're no longer connected to it, so the pain is gone..." This was the farthest she's ever gotten using her powers within the human mind. It was fascinating, and utterly terrifying.

Kal El finally seemed to come out of his reverie, and asked, "That memory... What happened in it?"

Robin suddenly perked up. Now that the torturing sensation was gone, he too was curious as to what Starfire's memory held. What could possibly cause such wretched pangs of torment? Did he want to know? ... Yes. He decided that if he wanted Starfire to open up and be truly happy, he'd have to know the anguish of her past.

Raven's brows furrowed, as she did not want to retell, let alone remember the horrible sight. She sighed, seeing that the two guys were desperate to know, and started her story, or rather Starfire's memory.

"There was this cold, dark room... no doors, just a confined space, with only one big tinted window where a bunch of... scientists could be seen. Starfire was strapped onto a table I think, and she was... she... it just... screaming! It was horrible. Those freaks! They kept hurting her and hurting her... electrocuting her with this green lightning bolt... and on her chest, over and over!" Raven took a breath. It was hard to do this. She felt such rage against those filthy men, and sorrow for her only female friend. She took another deep breath, slowly exhaling and trying to let go of her anger. She continued after feeling a bit more composed.

"She kept screaming... They wouldn't stop. And then, she stopped screaming. She was just... so quiet. I thought she was dead. I would have been. But she suddenly opens her eyes... and there's this blinding green light, and she's flying. She makes this huge ball of energy, and I thought that the scientists were in for a very painful death... but instead, she blasted away the wall of the room and escaped. And then..."

"Then we came," Robin finished for her. "We came when we saw that giant explosion, and I thought it was all Slade's doing..."

He couldn't believe it. The most painful moment in Starfire's life was right before... Right before they met. Could they have saved her? If they were just a little bit faster... Could he have saved her?

"Stop blaming yourself. You couldn't have saved her," said Kal El.

Robin almost jumped. Had he read his mind?

"You didn't even know she was there. It wasn't your fault." Kal El's lips curled into a strange, sad smile. "Nobody could have helped her..."

He stole one last glance at Starfire's limp sleepign form and walked out of the infirmary.

Raven and Robin heard his footsteps echo through the silent corridors.

"Are you sure you're okay?" asked the girl.

Robin just stared at the sleeping Star, captivated, yet horrified by her mysterious past and the memories that slowly unraveled in his mind.

"Yeah."

"Come on, then. Let's let her rest."

He took one more moment to look back at the resting girl, then turned and walked out of the infirmary with Raven. He could only think of one thing. The touch... It was even before Starfire's pleasant memories flooded his mind... He was in a little paradise while he touched her exposed skin. Of course, he had touched girls before, but never had any one of them made him feel like that. This made him wonder what it would feel like to go beyond just touching... He blushed at his own imagination and dismissed the inappropriate images that ceaselessly bombarded his head.

'This is going to be a long day...'

End of Chapter 17

I hope this one was good, because I tried to make it more descriptive and.. well, it did end up longer, didn't it? Must think of juicy plots for upcoming chapters... Your reviews are more than appreciated! Criticism is cool too. Maybe this chapter was too emo? Well, tell me what you thought!