A/N - 425 hits and five reviews? A girl could get a complex about something like that.

6. Robin

Once upon a time there was a team called the Teen Titans. They had a brave and fearless leader who looked after them, and an alien princess who stood by his side to help. Then one day, when the two of them were away from home, the leader woke up and he wasn't the same, and the princess had to leave his side. She cried a lot, because she was very sad and missed him very much.

They still saw him, but he was not quite right anymore. He didn't say "Hello," or ask them how they were doing, or do anything he'd always done. He growled a bit, roared sometimes, and his clothes had stopped fitting properly. His mask stayed in place, though, so they could always recognise him when he came up to them in the street. Sometimes he brought his new friends with him, but they weren't as nice as he'd been. The new friends and the old friends didn't get on. Sometimes they argued. Many times they fought. The princess was always very upset when that happened, because it meant that the brave and fearless leader was going to go away again.

They let him go, time after time, because he was their friend.

They let her cry, time after time, until one day she finally ran out of tears and never cried again.

Speedy didn't like being leader. It was obvious. Still, he did it. He gave them orders and covered their backs and charged into battle alongside them. He planned raids and stacked up defences and saved lives just as well as any of them – perhaps better.

But it was obvious he didn't like doing it.

Raven hadn't put up an argument when Cyborg suggested Speedy take over. She could have. He'd even offered her the position, citing his continued lack of a recharge pack for his own refusal. She'd said no. Terra couldn't quite understand why, but she'd said it very firmly, and stood behind Cy when he took the matter to everyone else. Beast Boy and Terra didn't have the tactical know-how to make good leaders, and Starfire had said very little since Robin left, which left only one real choice.

Speedy accepted with a kind of weary concurrence, as if he'd predicted just this sort of thing, and prayed to every available deity that it wouldn't come down to it. He even went through the motions of shaking each of their hands in turn, and saying what an honour it was they thought him worthy.

When he came to Raven, Terra noted the tiny tightening of his grip before he shook. Raven slipped her hand back under her cloak without comment.

"Titans, go!"

The words were right, but the voice was all wrong.

"Robin!"

The Misshapen in the eye-mask snarled. He still looked humanoid – bipedal with opposable thumbs – but his snout had lengthened, and his ears were sharper now. He looked like something from a Hammer Horror flick, but with better make-up, and there was enough hair on him to power at least three Austin Powers movies.

Starfire had recognised him from far off, and bulleted right through what had once been Moll's Diner to get to him before he disappeared. Now they stood opposite each other, both aliens in different senses of the word.

The other Titans jogged and flew and geokinetically slid up, on the lookout for other creatures. Robin rarely hung out alone anymore, and his 'pals' were more than happy to rip his old friends a new one. Last time they'd nearly taken Terra's hand off at the wrist before BB gorillaed them aside.

"Please, Robin," Starfire pleaded, "do you not recognise me?"

It was a ridiculous question. No other Misshapen had retained even a semblance of old-self.

Still, this was Robin. Nobody, even those who'd only known him after things went bad, could bring themselves to just up and fire on the urban myth without at least trying to help him first. There was always a first time for everything. Maybe they could still get through to him, make him come back to himself. They knew so very little about why people became Misshapens, or why it happened when it did. Cyborg had theories, but they were just theories…

Terra winced. She remembered Cy; so low on power he couldn't even leave the caves now. He was conserving energy, making a last ditch attempt to replicate his recharge system from some semi-mangled machinery Raven had brought in.

"Robin - " said Star, cutting across Terra's thoughts.

The Misshapen that had once been Robin crouched low and then lunged to one side. Terra, being the closest, was the target of his lunge. Without thinking, she responded by kicking upward, sending a flurry of grit into his face. He yelped when some got in his eyes, reaching for her blindly. His claws grazed her lower leg as she leapt backwards.

Speedy yelled something. Beast Boy got behind Robin, shifted to gorilla, and pinned his arms to his sides.

"Raven!" Starfire cried, pointing. "Use your powers to bring him back! Summon him back from that dark place to which he has departed!"

It was a ludicrous request. Terra half expected Raven to refuse. After all, she was an empath, not a true telepath – and it wasn't as if they had any evidence to suggest Misshapens were still human on the inside any more than they were on the outside.

She looked to Speedy, but he had his back to them and was firing at a trio of Misshapens heading for them from the opposite direction. "Incoming!" he yelled over the crack-hiss of a cryo-arrow being deployed.

Beast Boy bellowed against the claws digging at his gut from Robin's awkward position.

"Raven!" Starfire shrieked. There was something approaching terror in her voice – terror at losing this opportunity, terror at losing Robin again, terror at just losing. Life brought all sorts of new surprises, but it wasn't too hot on second chances.

Raven's cloak fanned out around her. Her eyes glowed white, like molten sunlight, and excess energy spilled down her cheeks like tears. It was the closest Terra had ever come to seeing her cry – or at least looking like she was crying. It was a horrible, fascinating sight, like seeing a tiger tap-dance in a hula skirt: it simply wasn't meant to happen.

Neither was Raven supposed to scream like that.

Terra didn't even think what she was doing. While the end of Raven's terrible screech rolled across the ground, she put on a burst of speed and caught the other girl before she hit the floor. Raven was breathing hard. Her hood had flopped back, and beads of sweat dribbled down her brow and temples. It wasn't possible for her to be any more ashen, but she suddenly looked very, very sick, and she was trembling like she had the mother of all chills.

Robin went stiff in Beast Boy's arms, and then flopped forward. Such was the abruptness of the movement that for a second it was easy to believe he was dead.

Terra barely noticed. "Raven? Ray, you okay?"

Raven shivered uncontrollably. Her eyes were wide – impossibly so – and was that Terra's imagination, or were those lines of red appearing on her forehead?

"Too much…" she mumbled. "Can't… Robin… too little left…"

No, not lines. Eyes. There were freakin' eyes opening, right in her forehead.

Terra felt panic welling inside her. She'd heard stories about this happening before, sure, but she'd always assumed they were as much of the past as Titans Tower. Raven was composed. She was self-contained. She had such control of herself that to think she would ever not was absurd. What Beast Boy and Cyborg said about magic mirrors and disjointed individuality and going into her head to find a demonic anger… it was all just so much fiction. It didn't match what she'd seen of Raven, the real Raven; the Raven who argued with Robin and Speedy behind closed doors, who refused leadership even though she was offered it, who wouldn't eat meat and read her books near the ceiling with that snotty look on her face.

The tap-dancing hula-skirted tiger was on fire.

"Raven! Snap out of it!"

Four slits. Two of them, the top two, cracked open. Pupil-less pits of red focussed on her. They sat in Raven's skin, on Raven's face, but what looked through them was not Raven. At least, not the Raven Terra knew.

Which, if she'd had time to think it, begged the question: how well did she actually know her?

"Raven!" Terra shook Raven as hard as she dared. Raven's neck was like a wet piece of noodle.

She could hear BB bellowing in pain. Starfire was yelling something, but it was muffled by the incessant noises from Speedy's end of the fight. Bedlam percolated around them, but Terra was struck by the conviction that she couldn't let go, couldn't get up and go help the others until she'd first helped Raven. If the stories BB and Cy had told her were true, then it was imperative Raven go back to normal or they were all finished. You couldn't help anyone if you were dead.

But how did you help when you didn't understand what was going on? BB and Cy were inside her head when they helped her. Terra was on the outside, and there was no handy magic mirror for her to use. In her mind, this translated roughly to 'scream very loud and maybe that'll get through to her'. "Ra-ven!" she shouted, punctuating each syllable with a hard shake. "Fight it, Raven. Don't do this!"

The upper two eyes were wide. Thin curls of mist crept into the normal eyeballs, staining them red. Terra felt Raven stiffen in her arms, and then a tugging sensation, as if something were trying to lift her into the air. Gritting her teeth, she summoned manacles of earth to tie both of them down. Earth was her element. In the air she'd be at a disadvantage.

"Oh no you don't. We're staying right here until you come the hell down and start being normal-style-weird again."

In another life she might have laughed: her, the one whose greatest strength was smashing stuff, trying to talk down the ice queen.

"Ray! Raven!"

The middle pair of eyes snapped open, and a burst of black energy erupted around the two girls in a funnel. It buffeted against Terra, trying to pluck her loose, shifting around to place her in the eye of the growing tempest. Instinctively, Terra held tighter. Coils of air and black energy swirled around her ankles, prying at the manacles, slapping at her bare skin and streaming into her ears and mouth and nose. The darkness touched her. It consumed her. It invaded her.

And she screamed.

She hurtled forward, not propelled from behind but dragged, suddenly and painfully, into a black abyss. It was so disconcerting that she felt as though her face had been torn off and thrown ahead of the rest of her, leaving her body far behind on the fringes of some dark chasm. She had the feeling that it, too, was shooting forward, but at a much slower pace. All that sluggish, heavy flesh; the weight all that blood and bone added to the image she held of herself.

What was she?

Mind and heart and soul.

Memories.

Face.

Eyes and ears and mouth.

Words.

­Help…

White whirlpools interrupted the endless black, flashing past like single frames from a strip of film. A handful of stars scraped her field of vision. A thick, malevolent shadow pulsed in the darkest reaches of the void.

Terra didn't understand what was happening. She didn't have time to try, either. She felt her mind slipping away, could feel herself beginning to shut down. There was no up, no down, nothing but this everlasting gloom. She was falling, but not falling down, just … falling. It was soft and warm and comforting, in a morbid sort of way. She was lulled into a kind of hibernation as she was drawn… and drawn… and drawn… aware, yet unresponsive to her surroundings. They bled into her, smudging the boundaries between self and not self, allowing one to cross over into the other and mingle. Boundaries, restrictions, limitations – they were familiar to this place, and yet… and yet… so unwelcome. Over familiar. Unwanted.

What was she?

Who cared?

Mind and heart and soul.

Nothingness.

Memories.

Worthless.

Face.

Irrelevant.

Eyes and ears and mouth.

Darkness.

Words.

Silence.

Help me…

Then suddenly, a sense that the void was not totally empty, the dark not so impenetrable, the solitude not so absolute. Somewhere ahead was a barrier - a wall - and in front of it was a presence: a ball of thought and feeling that fizzed and effervesced like a lidded pot left too long to simmer. She careered uncontrollably towards it, bound for collision. Though she was all but blind now she could still feel it, could perceive its proximity as she was whipped along. There was no doubt about it. She was going to hit. And on the other side of that wall… what then?

Self and not self and everything in between didn't know.

Didn't care.

Meaningless.

And then – impact.

Cushioning.

Her outline snapped back into focus as self was forcibly reasserted. Something shoved it back into place. Her and the dark – separate again. That same something pushed them still further apart, pulling and tugging and heaving her backwards along the path she'd just taken. She was still blind, but the presence bolstered her, kept her inside her own boundaries.

The wall was still whole.

The pulsing shadow faded.

The stars swept past.

The whirlpools snatched at her, but she sped on.

A sense of nearness again, of the oblivion's end. Or maybe its beginning.

A pair of hands pressed either side of her skull.

Her skull…

Terra fell back into her own head with such force that, had she not already been on the ground, she might have fallen over. Gravel pressed into her cheek. There was dust in her eyes and up her nose. She confirmed she was really back in herself when she had to sneeze and blink, and her nose replied by warning her it was just sore enough to jump off her face if she did that again.

"…rra?" asked a muffled voice.

"Hm?"

Someone was helping her to sit upright. Her stomach gurgled in protest, and she lay back down again before she threw up.

"Gfwuh," she managed when she could speak with semi-decent coherence. "Mrrf… anyone get the license plate of that dream sequence?"

Someone stroked her forehead. She was lying on her side, one palm flat against the ground. Very carefully she rolled over and concentrated on the owner of that stroking hand.

Beast Boy looked down at her with eyes full of concern, relief and bewilderment – in that order. She reckoned she was experiencing pretty much that same gamut right now, just with extra retching. She tried a smile.

"So… did we win?"

Beast Boy exhaled. "You," he said solemnly, "are so incredibly lucky, it's not even funny." He gestured behind him, and for the first time Terra noticed an unconscious Raven. She had her eyes closed, head in Starfire's lap, breath rasping through slightly parted lips. "Raven's shadows are, like, mega bad news. When she went all out of control, one of them ate you – frikkin' ate you, Terra. Like, right up. One big chomp and it was like some sort of Terra-shaped shadow where you should've been."

Terra nodded and then regretted it. Yeah, that would account for the freaky-deaky nightmare thing. Although, if quizzed, she probably would have suggested hallucinatory drugs before man-eating shadows.

"But… wow. Man. I mean just… man. Wow."

"Huh?"

Beast Boy paused, then bent down and pecked her on the forehead, as if to verify she was really there. "Raven went even more psycho after you got eaten. Like, there are different levels of psycho we didn't even know about, and she switched from one to another and totally flipped out. Jumped into the shadow - right into it – and next thing we know, there's some sort of explosion and you're both lying on the floor looking all dead and stuff." His voice was strange. He sounded like Goofball Garfield Logan trying to do an impression of Beast Boy and failing. He shook his head. "But you're alive, which is great. Better than great – it's mondolicious. But… I mean… crap. I mean – how you feeling?"

"Not exactly double-dip, Rocky Road, end-of-the-sale frenzy. But close." Her smile was lopsided and wan, but it was a smile. "I know my arms and legs are still mine. They hurt too much not to be. And my head's about to split apart and spew lava, but hey, still on my shoulders, right?"

"Right."

Her toenails and fingernails ached. Her teeth pinged. The roots of her hair felt alive and prickly, as though charged with static electricity. Even her eyelashes seemed to sizzle.

"Did… where's Speedy? Are the Misshapens…? Did Robin…?" She left the questions hanging, but Beast Boy's expression told her all she needed to know. "Oh, hell on a stick."

"That's one way of putting it. We nailed one of the other Misshapens before it took Speedy out – sitting on his chest with his head in its mouth, no less. His bow needs some repairs, though. The others escaped. Rob's out cold. Tried to take a chunk out of me in all the excitement. Speedy's got him on lockdown, but unless we find a way to hold him without hurting him, we're back to square one."

Terra peered at an awkward angle, reaching up a hand to hover above the sticky dark stains streaking his costume from the shoulder. There was a hole there, deep and ragged at the edges. "Oh, BB…"

"Hey, it's just a scratch."

"Yeah, and I'm the Queen of Sheba."

"Um, ixnay on the oyaltyray entioningmay. Arfiresay, ememberray?"

"Hitsay. Ightray." Terra blinked. "Although, I think she's got other things on her mind right now…"

Starfire's expression was non-existent. Her face was a complete blank. And for her, that was very unusual, and potentially very bad indeed. She tended to Raven, but kept looking to where Terra could only assume Speedy and Robin were.

Terra's head felt light. She closed her eyes, not caring that they were in the middle of a war zone and pretty much all their big hitters were impaired. "We've got to figure something out," she mumbled. "Before he wakes up." If he gets away again, he could hurt people, she thought. Or maybe she'd said it aloud. She wasn't certain. She really was very tired…

She thought Beast Boy answered, but she couldn't be sure it wasn't her imagination heralding her back into oblivion.

There was a general consensus that however bad things were yesterday, they were better than today. What they were like two days ago was even better than yesterday. The farther you went back, the more beautiful and desirable the world became, until you crashed through the barrier of Before They Came. The world back then hadn't been a paradise, but now it took on the spectre of one.

You dragged yourself from sleep each morning to face something that was always worse than the day before, but by remembering the world that existed before you went to sleep, you could delude yourself into thinking that the present day was just an apparition, no more or less than the memories of all the other days you carried inside you. Tomorrow you would love today. It worked for some people, less so for others, but there was a feeling amongst all that the future was potentially a very dark place.

Terra woke up in the caves, rubbing at her head and tasting crud in her mouth. Her entire head was wet with perspiration, but that was to be expected. Loss of self in the terrifying dreamscape of another person was bound to cause a few nightmares.

She wobbled out for a drink, met Speedy, and wished they had another bottle of Famous Grouse.

Robin had got away again.

Starfire and BB were with Cyborg.

Raven was still unconscious.

He told her the news in that order, as she stood against the wall sipping at a canteen of water made pure by Cy's distilling device. When he was done she took it from her lips and stared at it until he became uncomfortable. He didn't show it, naturally, but the air thickened a little.

"I wish the monsters would go back under the bed," she said softly.

Speedy went quiet – which is a ridiculous thing to say until you experience quiet and quiet. Only he could have understood that reference. "I - I … I wish the bay were filled with strawberry cordial," he replied.

"I wish lollipops grew on trees."

"I wish unicorns were real."

"I wish I could fly away and live in the clouds with the Care Bears."

"I wish the grass would grow purple, and leaves were made of solid gold."

She leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. "I wish…"

Raven's personal area was disturbingly familiar. Stalactites played peek-a-boo on the ceiling. Terra crouched near the doorway, examining the place without really wanting to. There were the three books next to the hand-mirror, and right there were the two ceramic spheres. The black throw had been tossed over the sleeping figure on the cot, and was wrapped tightly around her. Raven seemed impossibly small in the airy space.

She stirred slightly. Terra froze, muscles cramping in their odd position. Raven mumbled, cracking open an eye that took half a second to spot her in the gloom.

"How long have you been here?"

"An hour." Terra shrugged. "Or four. How you feeling?"

"I'm alive."

"That's a very cynical way of being positive."

Raven grunted, sat up and winced, pressing the heel of one hand against her left eye. She didn't have her cloak on, and when the throw pooled at her waist Terra was struck by how tiny she actually was. She blinked, wondering how she could not have noticed that before. This time it was no visual trickery created by a large empty space, but a compelling realisation.

Really, it was quite remarkable, but in that unguarded moment Raven seemed undeniably tiny, as though a stiff breeze could blow her right on her butt. The slightly wasted muscles were to be expected, but that cape had a lot to answer for; the smallness hidden beneath it suggesting something not yet completed – something that needed protecting.

Raven looked up at her. Terra felt an odd tingle at the back of her head. A temptation blossomed to visualise something really obscene with a strong side of Read this, but she refrained.

Or at least, she thought she'd refrained. The strange look Raven gave her made her think she maybe hadn't been quick enough.

She coughed, diffusing the moment. "So… you're awake."

"Your powers of deduction are astounding." Raven swung her legs over the side of the cot and got stiffly to her feet. She wobbled a little. On instinct Terra twitched to catch her, but she stayed upright and began poking around her things.

"Are you … okay?"

"I still possess all my faculties, and I can think clearly enough to know that there's no lasting damage in my cerebral cortex."

"Oh. But how about, y'know, physical injuries and stuff."

"You mean do I have any, or are they serious?"

"So you do have some."

"No."

"You can heal yourself that fast?"

Raven said nothing. The silence was stifling. The air in the smaller caves was often muggy and dank, but this was a different sort of oppressive. It made Terra think of suffocating under the bedclothes so the monsters wouldn't see you.

She shifted her feet. "I… Raven…"

"Yes?"

"Is it always like that?"

"Like what?"

"In… where I went. Is it always like that in there?" She couldn't bring herself to say 'in your head'. While she could think it, giving it verbal form sounded just too weird, even for her.

Raven paused, hand flush against one of her books. "You remember that place?"

"Of course I remember it. Kinda hard to forget, y'know, being eaten by a shadow monster."

"Is that what you think happened?"

"That's what BB told me happened."

"Oh. I see."

"Why? Isn't that right?"

"It's a fair assumption."

"Excuse me?"

"Given the visual display, I suppose it's easy to see why he would think that."

"You make it sound like he added two plus two and got three."

Raven said nothing for a long moment. She picked up her book and flipped through the first few pages, scanned a few lines of text, then slammed it shut loud enough to make Terra jump. In her awkward position, it had the adverse consequence that she then fell on her butt.

"Ow! I already had a bruised tush. That's why I wasn't sitting on it."

"I hope you didn't come here expecting me to heal that."

She blushed.

Raven sighed and said quietly, "It's not always like that."

"Really?" Man, was that note in her voice really there? Terra hoped she sounded positive rather than just pathetic.

"Sometimes it gets better. Sometimes it gets worse. Same as everyone. Same as you."

Same as me. Yeah, right. Except I don't have soul-sucking monsters living in my head. She instantly chastised herself for such a cruel thought.

Raven appeared not to notice. She just looked at the book in her hands, ran her fingers along the edges and in between the pages. Her eyes were difficult to look at – huge and bleak and obvious, even in the gloom.

"You pulled me out, didn't you?" Terra swallowed. "You pulled me out before I got… too far in."

She nodded.

"What would've happened if… y'know."

"In all honesty? I'm not really sure."

"Nothing good?"

"That goes without saying."

"Oh. Well." Terra got to her feet and brushed herself off. The empty canteen dangled from her wrist. "Right. I'll be… I'll just fuck off, then."

She was half a dozen steps away when Raven called out, "Wait."

Terra turned, all her weight balanced on one foot. "Yu-huh?"

"What did you see?"

"What, in there?" She tapped the side of her skull. "You're the psychic-whatsit. You tell me."

Raven frowned.

Terra wondered at the fact that this was the most civilised conversation they'd ever had. She raised her hands, patting the air up and down in a gesture of truce. "Okay, okay. Um, not much that I can remember. A big dark tunnel, possibly experiencing a budget cut for electricity, because the light at the end was out."

Raven didn't smile. Yet somehow, it didn't take the wind out of Terra's sails as much as it might once have done. She was getting used to responses through non-response.

"That all?"

"No, I… yes. That's all." Raven turned around and walked back into her personal area.

Terra watched her retreating form until the shadows swallowed it and even her outline was lost.

"I couldn't do anything," Raven told Starfire evenly. "It wasn't a case of he's too far absorbed in his own psyche. There's nothing of him left. His mind's been wiped clean and replaced. Re. Placed."

Terra sat next to BB and wished her head didn't pound so much. He shot her a sidelong look and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. It didn't help, but it was a nice gesture.

Starfire's hands curled into fists. Her elbows locked by her sides. "I do not believe you."

"Believe what you want. It won't make any difference."

"How can you articulate that? Robin is your friend. How can you abandon him?"

"You think this is any easier for me to accept?"

"I think that your previous misfortune is hindering your judgment. I think you do not wish to try again because you are afraid to but you do not wish to admit it. That is what I think."

They faced each other, seemingly oblivious there was anyone else in the room, despite the bleeping from Cyborg's remaining backup systems. He was running completely on auxiliary power now, and even that was so low he couldn't move anything below his neckline. He was a cripple all over again, a man-boy nearer death than not.

Still, he had enough energy to ask, "When y'all say wiped clan, Raven, do you mean…?"

"I mean there's nothing left of the Robin we knew inside that body. It's… it's like he was a host for some parasite that's now displaced him. Where to, I couldn't say. But he's not in there. When I tried going deeper into the new mind to look for him, I all but destroyed it because the mental structure is so radically different to human. My techniques just bounce off or choke on themselves. I doubt any human intellect without strong psychic abilities could even survive in that environment."

"So you're saying Robin's dead?"

"I'm saying I don't know. What I do know is that the Misshapen we keep meeting isn't him. He's gone, and that's the best I can tell you."

Starfire's fists clenched so hard her knuckles cracked. Terra watched her warily, not sure if she'd need to call up a shield of earth as protection. She hoped not. Her head hurt and it was too much to process, this new side of Starfire. Star was famous for being soft, but sometimes, when Terra looked at her these days, it seemed like softness was just a word in the dictionary. She looked like something that could snap with sufficient pressure – like something that maybe wanted to snap. It was both a saddening and a terrifying notion.

Raven bowed her head, hair flopping in front of her face, shielding her expression. "I'm sorry. But that's the way it is." There was a time Terra would have thought her incapable of apologising, but the situation was too sombre to make note of it.

Starfire stared at her for a long moment. Then she turned away. "I am going on patrol."

"Do you want me to go with - " Speedy started.

"Thank you, but no. I will be fine. Excuse me."

To Be Continued….

And now time for some Review Replies!

Eep. I guess this chapter didn't do much to lighten the depressing mood, did it, Raven's Girlfriend? Hope the Raven-Terra interactions mean you'll keep with us despite it.

What indeed, Jefepato? I've grown quite attached to you.

Cheesy Monkey! I have the strong urge to clutch you to myself and hug the stuffing from you, but I'll refrain and sprinkle sparkles of yayness over you instead. Feel the yayness at your presence!

Indeed I have, Howie. Gateway to the Gods, to be specific. It's listed in the very first chapter. Credit where credit is due. That passage was just so very Robin, though, that I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it than Applegate's.

And I like that you like my take on the TT universe, Jose Reynaldo. Was this chapter twisty enough for you?