Shooting Up In Vain

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans.

Author's Note: This is actually the companion piece to a one-shot I did a while ago, Death Defied by Will. I promise that you don't have to read that to understand this, but it wouldn't hurt either. As far as I'm concerned actually, Death Defied was actually the better read. I guess you could call this one the sequel (once again, don't be intimidated, sequel is a loose word – this can stand alone). Please read and review!

Now he swears he's going to stop
Shooting up in vain…

She was like a drug, and he was the addict begging for more.

She intoxicated him with her scent, and a wisp of her cloak brushing past left him breathless. He wanted, no, needed more, but she refused him every time. She broke his heart time and time again with her cold silences and hidden emotions.

"Robin," she said in her signature monotone, "You're doing it again."

"Huh?" he said dumbly.

The slightest hint of frustration slipped through the mask of impassiveness she always wore. "You're staring. I told you I didn't like it."

"Sorry," Robin muttered, casting his eyes away. He didn't bother denying it anymore. He had been caught one too many times for that.

A heavy silence followed. He knew it would only be a matter of moments before a blue cloak would flash out of the corner of his eye, and she would be gone. He had long since resigned himself to Raven's distant manner. She never changed.

Therefore, it came as a great surprise to Robin when Raven did not make any effort to lift herself off the couch she was curled upon with a book she had already read to tatters. He risked a glance in her direction to see her purple gaze regarding him carefully.

"Something wrong?" he said cautiously. His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

Raven pursed her lips and returned her eyes to her book. It was another few minutes before she spoke again.

"Why do you do it?"

Robin cocked a brow. "Do what?"

She fixed a scrutinizing glare on him, one that conveyed how little patience she had for foolish questions. "Why do you stare at me?" she said in a manner that people often used with infants.

Robin felt a flush rise on his cheeks. He hadn't been expecting that. "I'm a detective," he defended himself. "It's in my nature to observe things."

"You don't watch Starfire like you watch me," Raven said quietly.

A tight ball twisted in Robin's throat. He swallowed uneasily. "You're different," he said hoarsely.

Raven looked away. "I think you should watch Starfire," she said. Her voice was back to its usual monotone. Robin looked down at the ground and, seconds later, saw a familiar blue cloak flash out of the corner of his eye. He didn't have to look up to know she was gone.

Raven did things like that to him. She would surprise him with an extra word or gesture and send him shooting up on a breathtaking high. He would float in bliss for a matter of moments before she set the record straight and brought him crashing back down to reality. Sometimes, he doubted whether the high was worth the pain, but he always went running back for more anyway.

He doubted he'd ever be able to break the cycle. She was his kind of cigarette. He knew she was bad for him. He knew that she could very well send him to an early grave. It didn't change the fact that he would give anything to have her.

Lately, he had been pushing things farther and farther without any regard for the consequences. She was once the wisp of smoke curling from the end of the stick, but he had refused to let her slip through his fingers. She had then taken on a more tangible form, one that struggled and fought against the hands clutching onto her.

"Here's the plan," Robin would say, placing a casual hand on her shoulder as he stood by the computer in the Control Room. Moments later, his hand would fall to his side as she rolled her chair away.

"You get more power if you aim higher," Robin would instruct, catching her ankle mid-kick and moving it so it pointed at his chest. She gave him a dirty glare and twisted her body into a back-flip. Her foot yanked out of his hold.

"Are you with me?" he would ask her before a battle, entwining his fingers with hers.

"I work alone," she said coolly before slipping out of his grasp and shooting up to send the villain sprawling.

It didn't matter that Raven was part of a team. She really did work alone.

She was the outcast, the dark shroud in the corner. She didn't want Starfire, or Beast Boy, or Cyborg. She didn't want him. All she wanted was to live her life in uninterrupted solitude.

He was ruining everything for her.

"Raven," he rapped on her door with his knuckles. "Raven, open the door."

"I'm meditating," she replied in clipped tones.

"Raven," he said imperiously. "I need you to come out."

"Is Starfire making pudding?"

Robin made a face. "Um, no."

"Then I'm sure you can handle it."

"Haha, Raven," Robin said dryly. "Come out now."

There was silence. Robin strained for a strain of something when the door creaked open. "This better be good, Boy Blunder," she muttered.

Robin grimaced. She had a way of even making casual threats sound menacing.

"I wanted to talk to you."

A sculpted brow shot up on her face. Robin suddenly felt apprehensive. He froze.

Robin never froze. But this time, he did. A cold flame erupted in his stomach, licking up his esophagus and choking him painfully. His head hurt trying to think through the freeze, and he was vaguely aware of Raven tapping her foot impatiently.

"Well?"

"Um…"

He knew she was about to slam the door in his face. He could sense it. Even through the fog in his mind, he had no trouble seeing the open curiosity in her eyes shuttering and her fingers curling around the edge of her door. He could see her cloak swishing around her ankles in anticipation and her mouth setting itself in a firm line. Her wrist twitched, and he finally blurted out, "Don't forget training!"

"Training?" Raven repeated dumbly. It was a slip-up, and Robin knew she was hating herself for the word escaping her mouth so uncouthly. This time, her voice was laced with condescension and scorn when she said, "Training isn't till Thursday, Bird Brain."

"Thought you knew better than to use the bird thing as an insult, Raven," Robin said, leaning casually against her doorway in an attempt to prolong the conversation.

She looked annoyed. "Robins are plebian creatures. Disgustingly common and stupid. Ravens are in an entirely separate, higher class." She sent a sweeping, violet gaze over his figure, and Robin felt a shiver rising inside of him that he knew he couldn't let her see. "I suppose it mirrors our lives in a way," she added caustically. A black tendril of her powers nudged him out of her doorway before he could protest, and Raven was finally able to shut her door and retreat back into the solitude of her room.

Robin stared at the closed door for a long time. He saw nothing of importance and heard nothing of consequence, but still his eyes and ears strained harder than they had ever before. It was a futile attempt to recapture the high of her presence, to try and pretend through rare glimpses or creaking noises that she was still in front of him, slitting her eyes and thinning her lips.

Robin realized he was suffering from the worst kind of addiction. But, as with most others who endured an addiction of any kind, he simply could not bring himself to care. He only wanted to indulge in his tormenter more. He wanted to drink in her scathing remarks and inject her cold impatience into his blood. He wanted her to consume him in a purple haze that obscured everything and everyone else. He just wanted her.

"Raven." The name bubbled from his lips in incomprehensible ravings of hooded eyes and silvery skin and a manner composed of ice and pain. She caused him pain too. Maybe they could share their pain and compare their scars. He doubted his would ever measure up to hers. But at least it would give her a reason to speak to him that wasn't superficial or contrived, a result of his frantic attempts to keep her from leaving him like she always did.

"Raven," he whispered again. He wondered if she knew just how hooked on her he was. He wondered if she knew that he was still outside her door, that he was always outside her door, waiting for her to let him in. He wondered if she knew…

She was the worst thing for him.

She was everything he ever wanted or needed.

"Raven."

He heard a tentative footfall just on the other side of door. A broken smile twisted on his face. She was there; he knew she was there. He pressed his ear against the door, and his eyes slid shut. Robin was floating again. It was a euphoric feeling. He was floating, and Raven was there, and everything in the world was just as it should be.

He nearly lost his footing when the door hissed open. Stumbling forward, his trained reflexes were all that saved him from a painful fall. Raven stood in front of him, watching impassively. Robin's breath hitched when he realized just how close she was. Just a few inches and he could…

"You need to stop this, Robin."

Her sharp words sliced through the fog in his brain, and Robin could only stare in shock.

"Pardon?"

"You need to stop. This…this thing you have…it's not healthy."

"I'm not obsessed with you, Rae," Robin said quietly. He supposed his voice ought to be firmer, that he should play the role of the leader he was, but he had even questioned his own words in the dark of his room, where everything reminded him of her.

Raven faltered. Robin wordlessly filed away this new side of her that she was showing him in the back of his mind for future viewing. "Maybe not," she said, choosing her words carefully, "but I'm an empath, Robin. I can sense feelings. I can sense you."

"You can't ask me to stop feeling," Robin said, staring at her steadily through his mask. "I can't do that."

"Why not?" Raven demanded, frustrated. "Why is it me? Why can't it be Starfire? I have nothing to offer you, Robin. I can't feel back."

Robin felt a warm coil of excitement twirling in his stomach. This was the confrontation he had been waiting for. The confrontation he had practiced, and rehearsed, and dreamed. "But you can, Raven. Your father's gone. You can feel."

Raven's face was drawn tight, and Robin knew that this meant she was struggling with herself. The addict in him chose to take it positively. "I can't, Robin," she choked out. "I don't know how."

Robin stepped boldly forward and reached for her hand. "I can teach you."

She skirted his grasp, per usual. "No," she said. "I—I'm not ready. And you…you make me scared, Robin. I don't want this. Not yet."

Robin swallowed, hard. "Yet?" he repeated hoarsely.

Raven glanced away. "Maybe never," she said gently. "I don't know if I can ever have something like that. You shouldn't wait for me because chances are, it won't happen."

"I can wait," Robin said, "however long it takes."

"No!" Raven cried in a sudden burst of devastating emotion that nearly made his heart break. "You fool! You should be with Starfire. She's beautiful, Robin. Don't waste your time wanting somebody who doesn't want you back."

Robin remained silent for a while, and he could feel Raven slowly edging away from him. Finally, he opened his dry mouth to speak words that made him feel incredibly childish. "Do you want anybody, Raven? Is it just me you don't want or…"

Raven set a calculating gaze on him. "It's not just you," she said slowly.

Robin felt his spirits lift.

"But that doesn't mean you ever have a chance," Raven said. She burned a serious purple stare into him that he knew would haunt him later that night. "Go to Starfire, Robin."

The door shut, and he was alone again.

She had told him to go, to leave her forever. She had told him to stop feeling, to stop obsessing over her. Even considering the idea stopped his breathing and made his stomach curl. Robin had long since accepted one thing, one fact, and he hoped in time, Raven might be able to as well:

She was the addiction he would never be able to shake.

Notes and References…

1. Lyrics at the beginning are from Eagle Eye Cherry's song "Shooting Up in Vain."

2. The ending at the end isn't happy, I know. But it is sort of open-ended.

3. Please read and review!