…..

Weight. Crushing her lungs.

No way to draw them in.

Cool hands.

"…don't… …do ...this… … … ."

Soft. Oh so soft and hot meeting her mouth. Warm bursts of air passing into her throat, filling her chest. Swelling, ballooning.

…..

Ethereal. Ghosts touching her face. Sleepy whereabouts.

"It's all a dream, isn't it?"

Emerald green fingers brushed over her indigo wristband. A sight for sore eyes, that color of a rare stone, that color of jade admiration as they glowed their affection. "Shorty, what are you talking about?"

Sand between her toes. Coating her hands as her fingernails dug into the Earth.

"I hate it when you call me that."

He laughed at the wryness of her tone, firmly clasping her shoulder to keep himself upright. The sun setting in the distance. Outside. They sat on an isolated beach, the lukewarm waves lapping at their bare feet.

"Tell me why I'm here."

He could have made hundreds of humorous remarks to her question but instead chose to shrug at her statement, his once lank boy shoulders tensing. He faced the ocean, doing so with an impression of meaning, watching devotedly as the water breathed.

Breath.

"Why couldn't you sleep?"

Garfield peered over at her bleak shadow on the white sand and asked tentatively, the blood red sun rays brightened the side of his face, a face never touched by hair. "What'd you mean?"

"You said earlier you couldn't sleep. You broke my teacup and a plate."

He smiled broadly, his mouth opening in recognition. "Ahhh. Rae-Rae can't resist snooping into other people's business, am I right or am I right?" His joking more or less present.

"I'm that nosy to you?"

He shook her shoulder playfully, his loose, blond locks falling over his eyes. "Naw. I'm just funnin' with ya. It was just some bad dreams, nothing to talk about."

"They were painful… haunt-your-day painful."

A weak smile replaced the broader. "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you? I must have hid it well if you're asking me this now. I'm not a confess-your-deepest-darkest secret kinda guy." The sky overhead darkened, storm clouds gathering. The winds picked up, blowing their hair and clothes furiously.

"That bad?"

Garfield sighed, blinking the airborne sea water out of his eyes. "… yeah."

"Why won't you tell me?"

An upset stare he yielded as he let go of her shoulder to squeeze her lifeless hand draped over his leg. "Because they're not yours to know. Raven, sometimes you have to accept the stuff that happens. Everyone's got things that scare them. It doesn't mean those fears have to control you, let them go." He shook his head sadly. "Just let it go."

"Let what go?"

A real frown tugged the corners of his lips. "Don't… you know what I mean."

"Why couldn't I save you? Why did I screw up?"

His jade eyes sparkled. "I don't want to talk about this right now," he said. The clouds lowered themselves over their heads, lightning crackled.

"I killed my own child. Robin's baby. I aborted it. I'm a monster. I killed you."

Garfield bit his lip quietly. With a fierce jerk, he took hold of her white arms and shook her unkindly, as if to get his point across with a good startle. He growled, "Stop it! Just stop or I swear I'll-!"

Marbles for jade. It was getting darker. He was fading. Impossible to distinguish the shadows from existence. The ghost protested, "You didn't kill anyone, Rae… … Slade did."

Blood.

"But it was on my hands."

He was gone. Surrounded by the comfort of dark. Matching her past belief that she hadn't a soul. Or a care.

Alone.

"But it wasn't your fault."

A light in total darkness. Shining in an array of reds, yellows, and greens.

Robin, not the melancholy Nightwing, but the young Teen Titans walked up to her in the vacuum of space she had been left in, floating on invisible ground. Solid, not ghastly. His face the image of calm knowing, of subtle arrogance, of understanding love. His eyes unmasked. Soul blue flaring.

His hands reached out to her, like an offering, ungloved. Crimson dripping, pooling from the center of his palms.

"It was meant to be."

…..

Mess of colors mixed together. White. Off yellow. Grays.

Itchy blankets up to her neck.

Systematic bleeps coming from a heart monitor.

Her immediate sense was the sweaty handhold on her cold, papery fingers. Not sturdy with a grip laced, it would most likely slip. But there. Human contact.

Then came a twinkling. Annoying. Repetitive.

Her limp hand came to rest of her side. A shadow trickled over her. More of her senses cleared as the medical sector's doors click shut. A bass rasp from behind the thick, wavy glass pane, attaching itself to the distorted shadow person. "She's stabilized."

Another voice, sounding more like fizzes from a dying transmission, asked, "Good, that's good."

Slowly, turquoise eyes opened. Her head turned to her right to see her arm hanging off the sheet in what looked like an uncomfortable position. She could hardly feel it.

"I'll be there in an hour tops. Traffic sucks coming out. Give her med until I get there," the transmission added.

With some trouble, she sat up, barely aware of her shallow breathing and listened. Waited. Her knees curled up to her chest.

The shadow said harshly, alarming the sound barrier, "That's if she wakes up."

"Come on, don't-"

"Look, you weren't there. After fifteen minutes, I was ready to give up. I couldn't call an ambulance. They would have never made it."

'Who knew, he's still good at spewing bullshit… …why would he even care what happens to me… '

She folded her arms, crossing them over her knees. The shards of last time she was conscious made her wonder just how sane she was. At the least she expected some tears, rejection, something resembling unconditional hatred from either of them. But after meeting the man who left her… she nearly… ..did the unthinkable. The very unthinkable. But why? Why this? Something old in her told her she needed a serious reality check.

"And if you had stopped CPR, she would have died. She's breathing now, isn't she? Dark Girl's gonna be okay. Don't bust your ass over something you didn't have any control over. I'll be there soon… …and if she does wake up, just… go easy on her. Don't… Just be patient with her. You two keep a neutral ground."

"You make it sound like we're just itching to kill each other."

"Guuuhhh….there's a tunnel coming up! Gotta go!"

The hallway became bizarrely quiet.

Click.

Nightwing closed the medical sector door behind him with an elbow, concentrating on tugging his wrist-level glove over his knuckles. For a moment she thought she glimpsed at a deep, pink scar winding from the joint between his thumb and index finger to center of his palm. Forgetfully, he swiped his forehead with the back of his form-fitting glove.

In the fluorescent ceiling lighting, his face appeared thoroughly drained. A dusting of stubble clung to his chin and jaw line. His unbelievably long hair disheveled. He walked around her cot to return to his original chair he sat in for six straight hours.

He tucked away his communicator into his utility belt, addressing her in a vague fashion, "How long have you been awake?"

"Since it rang," Raven replied, sucking in difficult breathes. "Is Cyborg… your secret source… giver?" Her lungs refused to budge, the walls of her throat tightening into a thin string. Her hands strayed across her neck. Before panic could set in, he leaned in to fix a mask device over her face.

Nightwing ordered, faintly, "Inhale." She obeyed, several times in fact. "Why would you say that?" He didn't act very interested in knowing, so she gave him a reason to linger. Not intentionally of course; it came flying out of her mouth before she could stop it.

"I've been told… I have a knack for getting into other people's business."

His V-shaped mask leveled with her eyes. Cautiously, Nightwing removed his large hands from the back of her head to reach for a file on a metal tray. As he shuffled through it wordlessly, she fingered the oxygen mask capping her nose and wondered again why she was letting her pests of impulses steer her to continued conversations, one even had the grits to suggest mentioning her dream. And to that, she knew... No way in hell.

"I haven't wore one of these in… a long time."

She cursed herself in her mind.

'Goddamn impulses.'

His deep, grainy voice perked up her hearing, "Your records say that you suffered a critical respiratory infection. Cyborg wrote that your body was under too much stress to battle it and treated you with antibiotics to get rid of the infection. But today, you knew you were coming down with something and didn't bother telling anyone."

He shut the file in his hand with a snap, saying almost nastily, "Gee…why does not that sound so familiar?"

"You know what." Raven nodded earnestly."I think I've got an answer to that little question of yours. Ready?" She flipped him her middle finger emotionlessly, doing a fabulous impression of her seventeen-year-old counterpart. Nightwing threw down the papers, leaving no word in his defense.

Silence. Dead and unwanted. Only to be broken with an "Aaarghh!"

She knocked an IV line aside wildly, too agitated to use her powers, and ripped the mask off her nose. Raven wiped her burning face angrily, burying it into her lap. After a few minutes of deep breathing, she straightened up dry-eyed to find the shot Nightwing forgot to administer still sitting on the metal tray. She stuck it in her left arm without a grimace and hunched into a ball onto her side in the hospital cot, gradually drifting into anesthetized state in her habitual fetal position.

'Good. Maybe it will kill me.'

…..

Sixty minutes passed up. Forty past five was the estimated time. It was six ten.

The darkly clad man stared blankly at the computer screen, glove under his tan chin. The clock on the screen didn't tell him the time. He couldn't read that. His specially designed watch beeped a certain amount of times, signaling to his memory what time it was. His stomach gurgled curtly at him. His first instinct told him to head for a refrigerator but a different, more maddening, instinct pestered him, demanding that he check up on his old teammate. It had been a while.

After all, Raven was sick. And he did care, whether he wanted to believe it or not.

Dejectedly, Nightwing pushed back the rolling chair and started a slacken trudge towards the staircase.

The proximity alert went nuts. The double doors of Titans Tower threw themselves open, flooding with the late sunshine and creating a halo around the figure standing in the middle of it.

"Spikehead."

Nightwing lowered his balled up fists.

"Tin-man."

They stood in front of each other, giving their signature guy handshake. Cyborg chuckled, his age lines scrunching as he clapped the other man's back. "You got taller."

"You got older," Nightwing countered with a slight smirk. "What happened to an hour, buddy?"

Cy's human eye glittered with mischief. "I had to pick up a hitchhiker on the way in."

The half robot gestured back to the doors.

Nightwing closed his somewhat unhinged jaw. The dizzying scent of strawberries melted his unasked question from certainty. He knew that smell… .from somewhere… … …

Blinding daylight dulled from behind the stranger in the doorway. Shortly cropped, dark red hair. Silver arm clasps. Light purple boots traveling up lean, feminine legs. The same flexible silver encased them and every other inch of her body minus her shoulders up, including the slim, heavy bodice. Bottle green eyes.

"Star?"

The woman approaching Cyborg's left tilted her head, straight layers trembling against her high cheekbones. "Do you know him?" Her voice was not girly or sweet but powerfully calculating. Nightwing felt as if his heart would explode out his ribcage. He went forward, closer to her, eager to know if this was really happening, "Starfire… it's me."

Her jaw fastened. She did not speak.

"Why aren't… ..it's me, Star."

Suddenly, purple boots took a step backwards.

The perfect, bow mouth gasped.

"Robin?"

She stared at him as if he was some kind of terrifying creature. But he didn't care, or didn't notice it. In his excitement, Nightwing had shouted her name and scooped her into his embrace, giving her a big, wet smack on the cheek, going on about how great it was to see her again. He lifted her off her feet and swung her in a circle only to give her another smack.

The older alien woman smiled at first politely, her smile never holding a megawatt, and stiffened in his hold at the second kiss. "Yes. You are here, too. I'm surprised to see you, friend."

There was no compassion in the word 'friend'.

Starfire untangled his arms from around her and composed herself regally, favoring him with even lesser of a smile than before.

Something was wrong. Never mind the weird copycat outfit of her sister, but she was speaking proper English. Her poise was strange, her language was unfriendly, her attitude all together seemed dead to him.

She… ..wasn't the Starfire he knew before.

Bottle green focused on something behind him, something that caught her off guard. He looked over his shoulder to see his 'patient' out of the medical sector in her wrinkled jeans and windbreaker half zipped, watching the scene unfolding with reserved apathy. When her clear turquoise landed on Star, her rosy lips parted in awe.

Without saying anything, the empath extended her slender arm; a rope of dark blue emerged from her fingertips. It purposely missed Nightwing to wrap around Starfire's wrist. The energy floated the alien forthwith to her where the two women hugged.

Starfire's body slackened as she absently touched the tangled disarray of brunette waves, her white smile true this time, stretching to reveal unwavering tenderness towards the female friend in her arms. A connection beyond anything, forged intensely, magnified ten fold to those who felt it from the start. Raven pulled away only to have her cheek pinched. Starfire giggled a woman's fancy, "You look far better." The empath slapped the orange hand away dryly to laugh along with her.

Cyborg shrugged at Nightwing. Evidently they were out of the conversation.

Starfire said, dully, "It feels like it's been forever."

"It really has. You'll have to tell us what you've been up to," Raven agreed, somberly.

The alien woman suggested, "At dinner perhaps-" Her sentence gave out on her lips when Raven doubled up to let out a serious of fierce, uncontrollable coughs rack her diaphragm. Starfire bent down to catch her shoulders, eyes wide with worry. "Raven, are you ill?"

Cyborg intervened, coming out of the background, "She shouldn't even be down here. C'ere, Rae. Let's get you back to bed." As he took her away, Raven sounded like she was trying to argue, but her infection and his scolding prevented it. Nightwing perceived the amber-skinned woman still staring at the hallway where the pair disappeared into.

He spoke up, lowly, "She'll be fine."

Her jaw tightened, again.

Starfire inquired, "And how would you know that?" Bow mouth a hard, cruel line. Her bright green eyes unlocked themselves and glared at him.

Unapologetic.

"Whoa, Star, what did I do?"

Her mouth dropped, incredulously. "What…did you… … .do?" she said, slowly.

Anger burned deep within her core, smoldering through the glowing corners of her eyes. "What haven't you done? You betrayed what stood for love! You betrayed Raven, that's what you've done! Do not stand here and act like you're an innocent person, because you are NOT!"

The Tamaranean threw her arm out to the side and a starbolt erupted on the wall, specks of plaster and piping flying. Nightwing didn't duck. Her voice became ugly with resentment.

"You are more heartless than Slade ever was. You don't even know the extent of the damage you've caused when you left on your selfish conquest to find meaning. I am beyond forgiveness and you cannot hide from what you've done behind that new mask. She needed you. More than anything she needed Robin."

Letting her words sink, he murmured, "And this hasn't got anything to do with what I've done to you?" Nightwing knew what he said would piss her off.

Maybe enough to send his battered carcass to the nearest morgue. But he wasn't going to admit defeat, not now, not when he had been right so many times.

She towered over him, seeing how Starfire was always a few inches taller than him. Her glowing green slit.

"Nothing you can say anymore can hurt me. I will not do the same to you you. Hurting you would only bring more grief and we've made plenty," she said, glowering. "I had that opportunity at Sato." Spinning at the heel in her fury, the rubber soles of light purple boots mutely padded into the distance.

In five years, Nightwing never had a reason to lose his composure to any emotion. But as the royal Tamaranean fumed down into the lobby, a bubbling of total frustration and lack of control drove him to violently smash his closed fists against the opposite wall, not once but twice.

…..

Contemplation. He didn't get a lot of it these days.

Actions didn't make him contemplate, thankfully. He didn't like it disrupting the calm so he was always on the move, always focusing intently on something else. Running away from what was. He was good at dodging; if it managed to outdo him, memories returned. Ones that made him cringe. His nauseous stomach would twist into hard knots.

His bedroom, stripped clean of the engulfing magazine clippings, felt solitary with redwood desk in the center of his room and plain cot.

Contemplation won this round.

Nightwing traced with the tips of his glove the years of dust.

His desk.

Sleepless nights of criminal surveillance. Paranoia sweats. Early morning reflection. At sixteen, he almost made love to Starfire on it once.

Caught between the raging heat of need and his formidable conscience, he realized as the Tamaranean princess nibbled on his earlobe who he really wanted on his desk. And initially, it freaked him out. He was already seeing an attractive girl, why would he desire something more? He soon learned he didn't an effortless attraction, he wanted complex beauty. Tempting beauty.

A beauty that promised to feed his need to solve a mystery and the unspoken future of a stable companionship.

His bed.

Even more sleepless nights, plagued with tormenting nightmares of Slade, seductive ones of a nude half-demonness beneath him. Phantoms of her rare perfume would fill his nose, the feel of her body shakily meaning to. Fis face cracked into an old, warm smile, allowing the alias 'Nightwing' to slip away for a few minutes, along with other distracting thoughts.

He could just see the nights he spent laying with Raven in his bed. They had a sacred sort of bedtime schedule.

Around eleven or so on most nights, when he was finished showering after training for long hours or stressed from a day at the crime-fighting office, there seated on mattress already making herself at home was Raven either watching him enter or reading to herself. If it was the latter, he would snatch the book right out of her hands and tease about heaving it across the room. Poe would have to find another Raven to sidetrack.

In reprisal, she would either get infuriated and beat him in the arm for being the jackass he was or succumb to his attention.

They wouldn't talk, not every night.

Sometimes they were so tired that Raven would simply curl against his torso and quietly listen to his heartbeat as gentle kisses were placed carefully in her hair. Sometimes she was mischievous and teased his body, just to get a rouse out of him. By blowing hotly into his ear canal or raspberries on his firm, shirtless stomach or chest. Her teeth might scrape a nipple accidentally, which were surprisingly sensitive.

When lust was at its peak, when his lover was wrapped in his sturdy arms and it would have taken a slight hand movement to unzip her costume, he would never force her to anything. And she knew it… at least he thought she did.

Because he cared for her, because he had loved her. Openly, he had admitted it with no fear.

Every little fucking thing she did and was, the kissable curve of her palm, her sarcastic quirks that never ceased to amuse him, the way she stretched out like a lazy cat first thing in the morning. The small of her back arched in, eyes screwed up, sallow arms at her sides and clenched with tension.

There was a flawless picture in his head. He hadn't thought about her for five years… well, tried not to. He couldn't quite get the image of her smile out of his dreams.

What the hell happened? How did reality get this way? That was the bigger question. What perversion of a tragic plot reeked its havoc on their happy home?

But who was he trying to kid... they never had a happy home, not all the way. There was always something; that something revealed its intentions, breaking through the canopy of affections. Fate wouldn't let them have what they wanted, if it was spiteful then, it was spiteful now.

A fist slammed in silent defeat against the desktop, startling the person connected to it when the force caused a small, hidden compartment to pop open promptly. He was all too ready to shove it back into place but a glint within the dark crevice intrigued his focus. Something clicked that brought this moment to an unreal standing point. Small and cold, it spooned into his glove.

His titanium door vanished. Flutter of a cloak.

"I'm not as cruel as you think I am," came a faraway protest. He let the engagement ring drop onto the desktop.

"You aren't as cruel as you think you are," she spoke, her dark hair free and messy, her eyes cutting into the insecure hole exposed here in this dwelling of memory, blocked his exit. Dammit, he would have to jump a window to escape her.

"Any particular reason why you are here. This is contradicting what five years separated us from."

A slow awkward smirk graced her pale face. "Whose spirit are you channeling, mine?" she asked.

Nightwing responded on purpose, "Hell if I know anymore," and put his hand over the object in reassurance. Raven didn't get a chance to spot what he was hiding.

Her stupid smirk wouldn't go away. "Want to know something really amazing?"

"Do I have to?"

"A part of me believes that there's a part of Robin in you that hasn't died yet," Raven said, stepping away from the doorway, almost certain he would take the chance to leave (surprisingly he remained in place) and tapped her fingertips on the primed, grimy white wall.

"What I mean by Robin is... the one I knew before. It was the one who saved Gabriel Bendson in exchange for his sight, who was patient with me, who gave Bruce Wayne a taste of his medicine, who was willing to leave behind Earth and his duty to chase after me. Even though he might have regretted it. No one ever had done that for me. You have to understand... those people don't come along in your everyday life.

"They are rare. Robin was rare."

"He was the part of you that saved me from Jinx, that kept me alive with CPR, that sat in the section of the Tower that probably still haunted him until this day just to make sure I was still breathing."

"You're welcome, by the way," Nightwing replied, dimly.

Her eyebrows rose at his comment and she began shaking her head in disbelief, saying to herself, "I don't understand it. I don't understand any of this. What possessed you to come here? You couldn't have missed us all that much."

A hollow laugh.

"I missed your insults." Raven continued to shake her head agitated even as he said, heatedly, "I'm not the same person I was when I was eighteen or twenty-one. You are living in impracticality if you believe that. You don't know the things I've seen or done outside this city."

"So what, you have your own little dark corner of your heart? Everyone has. I chose to share mine. What about you?" She spat when he didn't make a comeback, "Exactly. I wasn't the only one living in impracticality. This wasn't a picture perfect relationship to begin with. And it just got worse over time."

The restraints he worked so hard to piece together over time…bit by bit… ..started to give out.

"All I wanted from you was trust, Raven. That's all I ever asked from you was for you to trust me, and you obviously didn't." He threw his hands up, yelling, "This entire thing has been built up on dishonesty, hasn't it?" Her turquoise eyes flickered.

"You certainly asked for more than trust. I know you wanted more than that from me!" She jammed a finger on his breast. "Do you want me to apologize? Fine, since I'm the only person here with the guts to say it. I'm sorry I couldn't be who you wanted… well, actually, I'm not sorry for that... what I am sorry for is for you running out on our lives. Maybe you would have been better off with someone who wouldn't mind getting abandoned because I clearly couldn't live up to your standards!"

Restraints shattered.

With a curt ram, Nightwing had her arms pinned back against the bedroom wall.

She winced from the impact, but the coldness of her glare and anger never left her. With a whisper, she encouraged him, "Hit me, you coward. You always wanted to. Finish what you started." She prepared for something, anything involving a broken nose. Once the first punch was thrown, she'd be ready. Reality was already fucked. They might as well waste each other, too. What she was not expecting…was for something to break in him instead.

Not physically, though it certainly looked that way as his broad chest gave way to startling and noiseless heaves, as his face crumpled, as he fell to his knees as if crushed down by his shoulders. He hugged her around the waist and clung there like a lost child, sobbing into her black spandex.

She thought her crying at Nation Infirmary had been awful.

Much too shocked to push him away, not positive if she could get out of his unmovable grip in any case, her small, white hands touched his hair doubtfully.

"I'm sorry…"

No.

No… he couldn't… … was… …apologizing?

Who was this man claiming to be Robin?

Her dry lips parted, her voice issuing automatically, "Dic… Nightwing, it's okay."

He jerked his head from side to side in a form of objection, then pressed his forehead into her stomach, tears slowing. She suppressed a gasp from a warm twinge below her waistline, a good twinge. Forever must have passed before his arms withdrew and he tilted his head against the wall, regaining some sort of control. Nightwing fiercely rubbed his face into his gloves. "I never wanted you to know. I didn't let anyone know. I couldn't tell anyone."

Unsure of where this was going, Raven joined him on the carpet, cross-legged.

"I couldn't even tell Bruce. He would have kicked me out at the time. I had just gotten there. How could I make him understand when he couldn't see him? He haunted me at the Manor, he haunted me when I was awake, using that tone on me, like I was stupid, like nothing happened."

He cupped his face from sight, and she waited. For him to start talking again, for further unexpected tears, for someone to walk past the open doorway to gawk at them sitting on the floor as if they were out of their minds. At that point, she wouldn't care.

Something was happening, a chain of events were looming, intending to proceed to the next.

She couldn't stop it even if she just walked out of this ludicrous moment. It felt…..preordained.

When he didn't make any signs of going on, she asked, "Who?"

"I was just a kid. A eight-year-old kid. What did I know about relationships?" he murmured. "I just knew they were mad at each other."

"When it happened I was in the tent. The performance for the night ended and the clowns were celebrating in the next tent. I could smell the cigarette smoke through the tent window. The news spread quick that we were headed for New York in the morning, that meant more pay, but I couldn't concentrate on anything but the hostility between my parents. I heard the words 'slept' 'man' 'whore' and then my mom's words, your words."

He stopped speaking to lift his face and unsteadily inhale. "He did it. And my mom went blind in her left eye. When they found me hiding under the bed, they were afraid. They didn't want this little secret to get out. My mom held me, blood dripping down her cheek. I wiped it with my sleeve and she smiled and kissed me. She ignored my dad as he talked to me, trying to explain himself. I only remember staring at him."

A tinge in her mind beacon her query. "Did he say something?"

Not looking at the empath, he whispered, "There was one phrase. Crystal clear in my head for 18 years. "Don't sing Robin, don't sing." That's all he said to me. I might have imagined it, it makes no sense, but he would say it in my nightmares. The ones with Slade are cupcakes compared to those. Both of my parents were murdered in a month. At the Manor, I was already a professional insomniac. I couldn't close my eyes for a second. But they were good people, Raven. My dad remembered their anniversary and my mom's birthday. He knew her favorite color and flower. Purple and irises. They did their taxes, they watched out for me, they risked their lives out of love."

"But I couldn't make the other things go away," he said. "Sure, like my fear of the dark, the nightmares faded but someone made me remember."

She didn't ask. It was in the way he glanced at her.

"Me?"

"You're similar to her. She was brave, she thought bad things about herself, but she could only do good. She wore her heart on her sleeve and he tore at it. She wasn't happy with their relationship either, a thirty-something-year-old wife with a son. When you and I used to fight, I thought I saw her in your eyes, all of that misery and the doubt. Through your eyes, I saw my father and I was standing where he was standing. I can't be like him. I can't do it."

"Was Robin a way to escape yourself?"

"A little," he explained. "I was given a new life with Bruce and I wasn't going to let those demons follow me for the rest of my life. When I thought of goodness, I thought of my mother, where the name originated after I saved her. Then it meant something else when my dad used it. Suddenly, it had two meanings, a dark and a light."

"It balances out," she mused. He nodded, wiping the wet tear trails on his chin.

"And you're telling me you've never told anyone this story?"

Another mute nod.

"Not a soul?"

"Just you."

At that moment, tension around them lessened somewhat.

She began talking to him as if he were a kind stranger, freely expressing what was on her thoughts. Her head leaned back to stare up at the ceiling as well. "We've all got our sob stories, don't we? You… me… Kori… Gar… …hell, if Vic was willing to he might share his." Her face shifted to gaze at his up-tilted. "Feel free to call me a wet blanket, but… I still don't understand how we switched from an all-out to share your darkest bedtime story. Why are you telling me this?"

He simply stated, "Honesty is the cure to the disease we have. Not just in the relationship we had, but it invaded everything else."

Had.

She let the word sink.

Her features softened, her eyebrows dropped.

Not much was spoken after that. They sat on the bedroom floor for a long time, to lose themselves in the graceless presence of each other.

Quick A/N: Okay, so I thought I could squeeze everything in one chapter. WRONG. There was too much information to fit into one chapter so there's two. Apparently, I am nowhere near finished with getting everything in so hang on tight. There's ONE more chapter to go. Yes, I'm aware that Robin's parents in reality probably never acted like that but in my story, they did. Please don't kill me for taking so long to update but please do review me. Miss Val loves hearing how she's doing and what you think so far. Till the next chapter darlings!