Disclaimer: Don't own the Titans or much else for that matter. You'll know what's mine when you get there…

A/N: Woot! Two updates in two days! I'm so proud of myself. I can't promise this kind of speed all the time, but I really wanted to use my day off to work on the story and I ended up getting through an entire chapter. And why torture everyone by making them wait for something that was ready? Okay, I think that's it for now, but there's another note at the end. Just one more thing that I can't say enough… Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews!

Warnings: Okay, so to clear up the whole relationship question a little, I'm just going to say this. It's not going to be an easy ride for Robin and Raven. He is married after all and with a kid I might add. What I can tell you is that this will not end up to be a Rob/Star fic because I don't exactly support that couple. So just hang in there and prepare for some emotional turbulence for our two love birds!

Oh, and Teya, I definitely wanted to write in Raven's POV and this chapter let me do that. I hope you like it!

Chapter 2: Look What You've Done

Funny how one can learn

To grow numb to the madness

And block it away

I left the worst unsaid

Let it all dissipate

And I try to forget

As I closed my eyes

Steadied my feet on the ground

Raised my head to the sky

And the time rolled by

Still I feel like a child

When I look at the moon

Maybe I grew up

A little too soon

- Mariah Carey, Close My Eyes

Raven sat quietly on her old bed examining the room that had been the only real home she'd ever known. Her books had not been touched; the covers and pages were decorated by layers of dust. Her uniforms still hung in the closet and she briefly wondered how crazy she'd been to only wear a leotard and a cape into battle no matter what the weather was like. Little pieces of the life she'd had at the Tower hid around the room. The darkest corner of her bookshelf held a joke book she'd received from Beastboy one Christmas ("Now you can read and learn how to laugh a little!"). There was also a space in the topmost shelf where she had removed a book, giving it to Cyborg. He had needed it more than she had. Under her mirror at the far end of the room sat a bag of unopened hair ties that Starfire had forced her to buy on their last trip to the mall.

The vase on her nightstand saddened her more than any other object from her past. It held two long dead roses that she'd received from Robin the night before she left him. Her heart ached at the sight of the flowers. Petals, brown and dry, littered the table around the vase. The stems had shriveled leaves and an unnatural color. The water was stagnant and resembled what she would have found had she looked into a pond.

Reaching across the bed, she took one of the lifeless petals and thought how truly it reflected the way her life had turned out. The night he'd given these to her, she'd been happy. The red color had represented the love she had, her passion, her happiness. Now she was without love. She'd forced him to move on and leave her to wither up.

The sound of her door sliding open surprised Raven and she clenched her fists, crushing the used-to-be petal. He was there, just outside her doorway and he was looking around. When his eyes found her, sitting on her bed, framed in moonlight, he came into the room allowing the door to shut behind him. He was wearing the uniform that she'd never had the privilege of seeing him in. At first she was uncomfortable in the presence of this would-be stranger, but the mask that hid his eyes from her was a reassuring familiarity and she relaxed in its presence.

He walked over to where she was and sat down next to her. Examining his long hair, muscles that had finally reached their maturity, and the curved line of his jaw she made an obvious observation. "You've changed." He looked over at her, a smirk on his face. He moved closer to her, so close that she could feel his breath on her lips. She nervously backed away, but he only followed her. He was so close… too close. She needed to be rational, logical… this was no time to go weak at the knees.

Raven placed her hand on his chest, reveling in the sensation the feel of his muscles sent down her spine and regretting it at the same time. Nevertheless, she managed to create a decent space in between them. "We're going to have to set some ground rules."

He offered her his cocky smile. "Really?"

"First," she reached up, removing the mask from his eyes. She was momentarily distracted by the brilliant hunter green that she used to spend hours drowning in, but an amused cough from his side brought her back to reality. "No masks. No more secrets. On both our parts. Second," she stood up and moved to the center of her room where she proceeded to float with her legs crossed under her. "You stay on the bed. I'll stay over here. Distance, I think, will be our ally tonight."

Now it was the time that they both had anticipated since the day she'd left. It was the calm before the storm, and Raven let the silence that passed between them continue. She used the time to let her mind wander into his own. The mind-meld she had created all those years ago was still strong, and she could feel him lurking in her mind, searching for answers that she kept locked up.

Since his silent attempt to gain answers proved to be futile, Nightwing voiced the question that was most important to him. "Why did you leave?" Now he would have the answer to what had plagued him for so long.

"Robin, I…" Raven began, but Nightwing's soft chuckle stopped her in her tracks. "What is so funny?"

"I haven't been Robin for a while…"

Raven looked at him sadly. She had missed so many years. He wasn't the same and she wasn't the same. That was what he was trying to tell her. "I came here tonight to talk to the boy I loved. If Robin is not somewhere in there," she gestured to his body, "then there is no reason for me to be here." Her eyes challenged Nightwing for a response and when none came, she returned to her explanation.

"It was more than one thing that drove me from the Tower. One was my struggle with Trigon. It was getting to a point where I was having trouble maintaining control. I was volatile and a danger to you, to the team, and to myself. And before you say a word," Raven prompted, noticing Nightwing's attempt to argue, "no, you really couldn't have helped me. Trigon is my fight. He is inside me and it is my job to keep him under control. But the other, more pressing matter that forced me to leave…" Her voice trailed off and she sighed. Her eyes chose the view of the water and the moon outside her window instead of meeting his face. She opened her mouth to finish, but he beat her to the confession.

"You were pregnant."

Tentatively Raven looked back at him, slightly surprised. But then could she expect any less of him? "I see you haven't lost any of those detective skills. Well, what could I have done? I wouldn't have been able to fight, it would have endangered her life. I would have been a hindrance, and I knew it. So I left. It was the best thing to do, especially…"

"For me," Robin finished for her. "I read your note." He crossed his arms and glared at her. "So who's the father?"

"What?" Raven said, anger coursing through her veins. The books on her shelf rattled. "What do you mean 'who's the father'?"

"Well, it can't be me. Because I know that you would never leave because you were pregnant with our child and not tell me anything about it."

Raven bit her lip guiltily. "You know good and well that she's yours." Her sad, defeated voice echoed through the room.

"And you thought it was best to keep that from me, did you?" His voice was angry, hurt and the change in his normally calm demeanor assailed the empath who floated across from him.

"We were sixteen, Robin!" She said, attempting to make him see her rationale. "We were heroes covered in the news at least once a day. You were the city's golden boy and I was the shadowy outcast. It was an impossible situation." Raven swallowed back tears, the pain from so long ago attacked her with fresh force. "I didn't know what to do."

"So, as usual, you kept it to yourself. You didn't trust me to protect you." Nightwing did not try to hide the bitterness in his voice.

"No, that's not it at all! Robin, you are one of the few people that I trust completely. But that's why I couldn't tell you. Don't you see? You would have given up everything for me, and I didn't deserve it." She ran her hands through her long violet hair in frustration. "At the time it just seemed like the most logical resolution to the matter." Her eyes never left his, and they begged for his forgiveness. They were lost, broken, desperate… "I am sorry for everything I've done to you, Robin." Finally she'd told him what she'd been whispering to a memory for eighteen years.

Seeing the usually strong and rational Raven defeated shook Nightwing and his anger started to ebb. In a wave of compassion he asked a simple question that required a simple answer. "What's her name?"

"Hm?" Raven asked, dragging herself from the pit of her despair.

"Your… our daughter. What's her name?"

"Alette. But she'll let you know that she prefers Ali."

"Raven, you were pregnant and sixteen. Where on earth did you go?"

Raven gave a somber laugh, remembering how scared she had been as she flew away from the Tower. "Well that was the thing, wasn't it? I couldn't go back to Azarath and I had no family. What was I going to do? That first day I managed to fly until I reached Gotham." She saw his interest at the mention of the city he'd grown up in. "I had some money so I decided to stay in a hotel for the night so I could sort out my situation… figure out something… make a plan. Well, you and I both know that Gotham is not such a safe place after the sun sets. It so happened that there was a bank across from my hotel and that this bank was being robbed on the night I stayed there. I thought I should intervene. But I went to attack and my powers were… off. Now I know it was the pregnancy. My powers were haywire during the next nine months. So I was suddenly helpless facing a bunch of thugs who all had guns. I took a bullet," she instinctively clutched her side where Nightwing assumed she'd been hit. "And damn that's a painful experience. I remember trying to heal myself, but I was losing blood too fast and I was too weak to make much of a difference. I was scared for the baby… for myself...

"I woke up in a place that I'd only heard stories about. Stories you used to tell me when we were alone."

"The Batcave," Robin offered.

Raven nodded in agreement. "Apparently Batman had recognized me as a member of his protégé's team and took me in while I recovered from the wound. He has a way of getting people to spill anything he wants to hear, and I found myself telling him my entire situation. He offered me a place to stay until I could work things out. It actually became a period of about three years, but we- Bruce, Alfred, and I- became close friends and we all helped raise Ali in her first years. I don't know what I would have done without them."

Nightwing had been prepared for almost anything except this. He had been in Gotham, been to Bruce's mansion, many times over the years. And she'd been there the entire time, right under his nose. How did he miss it?

"Actually," Raven offered sheepishly, reading his thoughts, "Alette and I were always conveniently out of town whenever you were in town. It was agreed upon that it wasn't the time to tell you anything."

"So you and Bruce just decided how I should live my life, then?" Anger sparked again inside Nightwing. He stood up, yelling at Raven. "I loved you! And you ran away! I was in despair, and you thought it was best for me that you kept running away?"

Raven did not flinch. She had learned long ago how to handle Robin's explosions. "Love is a tricky thing," she offered when he stopped to take a breath. "You think that our love meant I should have been able to handle anything as long as you were there to help me through it. I thought that I was honoring our love by giving you a chance to lead a normal life. You see, I've always been an outcast. I wasn't going to force the life on you."

In Nightwing's silence Raven continued her story, ignoring the green glare that settled in her direction. "With Bruce's help I changed my name to Raven Davenport and moved into an apartment above an abandoned shop in the city. I turned the shop into a book store and café, and it's actually quite popular. It's where I've been for the last fifteen years.

"Alette and I remain close to Bruce and Alfred. Ali is Bruce's goddaughter and he's taught her everything that he knows. I like to think that by allowing her to spend time with him, I am giving Ali a connection to her father, even if she doesn't know it."

"So she doesn't know about me then?"

"She knows she has a father and that he is a good man, and she's come to peace with only knowing that much."

"I want to meet her."

Raven laughed and rolled her eyes. "I believe you've already had the pleasure, twice if her stories are correct." She watched as the detective put the pieces of the puzzle together in his head and when he looked up at her, he silently asked for conformation of the story that he'd created.

"I know you thought it was me that you saw last night, but I was at home in Gotham until early this morning when I got a phone call from my daughter saying that she'd stumbled across someone in the distant Jump City who seemed to know me. What you walked in on last night was my overzealous teenager doing something she got an hour lecture for this afternoon." Raven paused to place her thumb and her forefinger across the bridge of her nose as if to emphasize the stress that being a parent caused. "Which would explain why she fell asleep in your class this morning."

"Then I wasn't going crazy. God Raven, I saw her eyes this morning and I just…"

"Yes, well, I can't say you've made the best first impression. She thinks that the guy from last night is crazy for thinking she was her mother, and not to mention now she's asking questions about how someone in Jump City would know who I was. Add to that the fact that her psychology professor stared at her for a good two or three minutes in class today, and you get a rough image of the picture she's put together. I guess it's a good thing that she has no idea that both the crazy men aren't the same person." Raven couldn't help but smirk as she remembered her daughter's animated analysis of both the mysterious figure who had saved her and the psychology teacher who'd caught her sleeping.

"Some good has come out of your chance encounters, though. It's stopped my running. Now that she has found a small connection between me and this city, she won't stop until she's found out more about it. In that way she reminds me of you. Ever the detective. Now I have to tell her everything before she finds out on her own, but I thought I owed the truth to you first. I'm just scared that one more piece of information like this might be too much for her. She's in her first week of college, adjusting to life away from home, fighting…" Raven's voice trailed off and her aversion of Nightwing's eyes led him to pry.

"What was she doing in that church last night Raven?"

Raven glanced at him and came down from her floating position. She walked over to the dusty glass of her mirror, placing a hand on each side of the table underneath it. In her dull reflection Nightwing saw a look of self-hatred in Raven's eyes. She spoke to answer his question, but her focus remained on her own image in the mirror.

"Robin, do you remember what I told you about my mother?"

He still sat on the bed, but his arms itched to wrap around her slender waist and comfort her. Resisting that urge, Nightwing responded. "She was a member of a cult and that's how she got involved with Trigon."

"Yes. I've never actually known much about this cult she was in, but about a week ago they showed up on my door step proclaiming that their master had sent them to retrieve his vessels… myself and Alette. If there's one thing I've always had to be honest about with Ali, it's that she's part demon. I taught her control and how to keep the presence of Trigon at bay. Thankfully she has a much easier time because she doesn't have as much of him inside her as I do," she realized she'd side-tracked and returned to the original answer. "We've been fighting them off, and I thought she would get away from it at college, but that didn't work out. She was fighting one of them last night."

"Trigon is still trying to fulfill the prophecy, then?"

"He won't stop until it has come to pass."

A sad silence followed Raven's desolate conclusion. The air was heavy with the load that she had taken off of her shoulders. She remained at the mirror, watching visions of the past dance before her among the dust that clung to the glass. Nightwing sat on the bed, also lost in thought. He was trying to count the number of times he'd huddled in the bed, wishing for Raven's return. Fate had dealt the two tortured lovers a tough hand.

"What's she like?" asked Nightwing, attempting to distract both himself and Raven from their dark past and impossible future.

"What?" she responded, not having understood him. She turned around, leaning against the table for support.

"Tell me about Alette."

Raven smiled with what could only be classified as maternal pride. "She's stubborn to a fault, which I expected given that her parents both have that problem. She's intelligent. She cares a great deal for the people in her life and fights very hard to protect them. She likes to challenge authority, particularly mine. She changed me forever, and I wouldn't trade her for anything."

Nightwing voiced one of the things that had bothered him since Raven had confirmed that they had a daughter. "Then… you don't regret it?"

"How could I?" Raven wished she could hold him, and tell him how much she still loved him. "I'm just sorry that I monopolized her for so long."

"I don't really know if I can forgive you for this, Rae."

"I'm not asking you to."

Then Raven broke her own rule and moved over to sit down next to Nightwing. She took his right hand in her left and held it tight. "Are you happy?" she whispered softly.

Nightwing chose his words carefully. "I'm content." He looked over at Raven to make sure she understood the difference and she nodded. She rested her head on his shoulder, a shoulder she had longed for every night that she lay in bed brooding over her lost love.

"I screwed things up real bad, didn't I?"

Nightwing looked at the hand in his own and felt her hair against his neck. He could feel her desolation, her longing, her self-hate. "Raven, it's in the past. We can't keep looking back."

Raven sighed, turning her attention to the problems of her love. "So you're content are you? What keeps you from happiness?"

Finally he could tell someone. He could share anything with Raven, and he had needed to talk for a long time. "I live in a city where the crime rate drops by the day and being a hero isn't so necessary. I have a wife who is a friend, but I don't love her," he squeezed Raven's hand as he mentioned this, "and I have an eight-year-old that I can't abandon. My life feels like its on auto pilot and I can't take much more of it."

"God… I really screwed up."

"Raven stop taking all the blame. You didn't ask Starfire to marry you. You didn't tell yourself that a child would help heal the wounds. You didn't resign yourself to a life you knew was less than what you wanted."

She lifted her head and took his face in both her hands, reason being replaced by need- need to mend his wounds and her own. Her eyes glistened with tears and he gently wiped the escaped droplets from her face. "What a mess we've made," Raven observed as she drew closer to Nightwing's face. If only she could kiss him… it would make everything bearable. He moved closer to her, following her lead. But just as the two dreamers were about to return to the world they'd both abandoned, reality smacked them in the face.

At the same time Raven's cell phone began to ring, Nightwing's communicator beeped an alarm. They separated quickly, Nightwing putting his mask back on as he moved to stand just outside Raven's door and Raven to stand at the opposite end of the room. He answered the call with a quick "What is it?"

"Mom, I don't know where you are but get to a place where you can see the forest outside the city. They're setting it on fire or something." Raven listened to her frantic daughter.

"Man, we thought it was just a fire, but it's not spreading. It's not spreading because it's people." Nightwing listened to Cyborg's report with one ear and Raven's conversation with the other.

"It's that symbol… the one you told me belonged to Trigon. What are they doing? People are going to get hurt." Raven listened to her daughter, trying to calm Alette down, but to no avail. "They could do a lot of damage," Ali concluded. "I'm going to try and stop them. You can join me if you want."

"Ali, wait!" Raven pleaded, but Ali's end went dead. As she put her phone back in her pocket, Raven listened as Nightwing wrapped up his conversation with a "I'll be there in a minute." He walked back into the room, greeted by the look of worry Raven had on her face. Her world was soon to become a lot smaller if Ali ran into the Titans.

"The Titans are on their way to 'a fire but not really a fire' outside the city," he informed her, directly quoting Cyborg and confirming her worst fears.

"So is Ali." She sighed heavily. "Won't this be a convenient little reunion?" Sarcasm laced her voice.

He offered her a supportive smile. "See you there?"

"Yeah. I'll see you there."

Nightwing ran off to the garage and his motorcycle and Raven transformed into a large black bird, leaving whatever they still needed to say for another day.


Ali got there first. There must be fifty of them, she thought as she made an estimate of how many she was up against. They were all wearing robes the color of blood and all had their arms raised allowing fire to flow freely from their palms. They're in some kind of trance, she concluded. Well, now or never.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

But not only was it Ali who cried the chant, knocking down cult members with her power. She saw her mother hovering above her, taking out some of her own. She smiled up in acknowledgement, missing the sadness in the smile her mother returned to her. The cult members, distracted from their ritual, now focused their attention on the two objects their master wanted them to capture.

Ali was tackled from behind by one and as she struggled to free herself, a wolf pounced on her attacker… Am I seeing things or is that wolf green? she wondered briefly before turning her attention back to her fight.

She was surprised to find, however, that her services might not be so necessary. The green wolf was now a rhinoceros charging at a group of the robed figures. A strange woman with orange skin and red hair was throwing green energy at some of the cult members while dodging their return fire. A blue streak shot passed her and looking for the source she found a robot… or was he a human? Then across the battle she saw the black-uniformed man from the night before in a one-on-one fight with one of the cult members. "Alette pay attention!"

Alette looked up at her mother and then behind her to see a ball of fire coming her way. She deflected it easily and returned the fire with her own blasts of power, sending rocks and trees hurling into the cult members. Someone in the crowd began to plead for Trigon's help and he was soon followed by many others. "Help us, master!" was the cry heard all over the battlefield.

And then they were gone, all consumed by a giant wave of flames. Silence rang through the now almost empty area of the forest. Her mother landed beside her, and when Ali looked over to her, she expected to find a disappointed glare waiting for her. But her mother wasn't even looking at her. Raven's attention was on the four figures who had helped them fight off Trigon's people, all of whom were standing across from her and her mother. They were all staring at Raven, mouths slightly open.

"Raven?" The question came from the green man, who Ali assumed had been the green wolf that had saved her. His attention turned to Ali, who froze as he inspected her. "Little Raven?"

Well, Raven thought sarcastically, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind. She took a deep breath and answered. "Yes, Beastboy, it's me. This is my daughter, Alette." She looked over at her daughter who was giving her a questioning glare. "And I suppose everyone is going to want an explanation."

Hold on

Hold on to yourself

For this is gonna hurt like hell

- Sarah McLachlan, Hold On


A/N: First off, that book thing in the very, very beginning with Cyborg… that's supposed to be the book she gives him at the end of "Cyborg the Barbarian." I know I slipped in a somewhat clichéd pregnancy thing, but it's what my story needs. I think I've added enough of my own twists to it to make it my own pregnancy story and not the pregnancy story. Do I make sense? Okay, the name Alette is not random… I actually chose it because of what it means… any guesses? So, you know what to do now. Thanks for reviewing!

- Ashlyn