When they arrive home, to the television blaring and a small shape huddled on the couch, staring at a book with wide eyes, they are broken. They are bent and exhausted, with Raven collapsing against Cyborg's arm, an angry red ring around Robin's throat and dust clinging to their clothes.
Beastboy bounces towards them and his smile only falters when he notices the worn and torn bodies of his team mates. Raven all but collapses into his arms when he comes forth, and he collects her gentle to his chest. Cyborg stretches, but his eyes are already slotting shut as he moves towards the couch at the other end of the room. Robin and Starfire are dragging each other along and once they reach the couch, Starfire curls into Robin's side, his arms clutching her towards him, and they are both suddenly comatose in their conjoined sleep. Esper stares in bewilderment from over the papered lips of her book.
When Cyborg collapses beside her, she jumps in shock as the sudden weight of the man causes her to drop her book. In the background she vaguely hears Beastboy scoop Raven gingerly into his arms from behind her.
As the mountain of a man folds into a pillow, Beastboy moves into Esper's eye line, raven fit easily against his chest. Brown eyes fit against green, but his smile is gone and his eyes are worried as he surveys the damage that has been caused to his friends. "I'm gonna go hook Rae up with a shower, can you get out the first aid kit? It's in the cupboard under the sink."
As Beastboy disappeared with Raven in his arms, as Esper shifts to follow the soft orders. She's quick to find a box, clasping both hands around the handle and pulling it, clattering to the floor. She struggles with the weight, due to her lack of muscle, and finally pulls the box over to the couch, sitting herself in the middle of the three titans.
Her fingers unrolled a curl of gauze, and she started her work on Cyborg's neck, considering both Robin and Starfire were curled tightly around one another. The blood beaded to the top, and she pressed the gauze there carefully, securing it with medical tape before disappearing once more. She came back with a bowl full of water and a towel, and after a few minutes, proceeded to pull the gauze from his neck and start to clean the wound of any blood.
A few stray bits of gravel and metal littered his skin, and Esper felt a shudder pull across her skin as her fingers rolled across the metal. The scent filters back her memories of a cramped room and a boy with silver eyes.
She's ripped out of a scream from a memory long forgotten when she hears the smooth squeal of the mechanical door behind her. Beastboy tosses her a soft smile, one that never seems to leave his face, but it grows weaker as his eyes search across his friends faces. Bruises and dust mark their skin, and Starfire's leg has a long but shallow cut down the calf, the blood drying into the torn material of her boot.
He dropped down beside her, fishing out the scissors from the first aid box and carefully cutting away the useless and torn material of the purple boot. It slipped away easily, and considering the other boot useless as well, slipped it off, chuckling as her toes wiggled in the free air.
The changeling wrapped her cut with gauze gently, with a softness that Esper had never seen him display; she'd only ever seen firecracker excitement or mischief from the boy. But those thoughts were banished as Beastboy peeled back the corner of Robin's mask, a deep, jagged cut pressed into his temple, causing her to shudder. She had never been a fan of blood.
Beastboy was quick to patch up the few cuts and bruises his friends held, and as Esper stood beside him, he ran a hand across his face tiredly. All excitement had dropped from his features as he stretched next to her, a few bones cracking across his back. "I hate it when they come home like this, you know?"
Suddenly, his armour cracked, and Esper caught sight of a vulnerable child behind unruly green locks and wide eyes. So, her fingers sought his out in the haze on the midnight, and caught them tightly, as if to keep him rooted in reality. Beastboy's body jumped in surprise at the sudden contact, his eyes found hers and he gave her a soft smile, squeezing her own fingers in reply. The silence between them filled more than words ever could.
Then, Esper's body is moving after Beastboy's, hands clasped together, and a questioning gaze is sent to the changeling. "Usually, when we come back from a fight, yeah we're a little tired, but never this much," he sighed, pulling through the doors with fast paced steps. "So, I'm sorta gonna break a law and look on Robin's computer for Cyborg's camera, to see what knocked them out so bad."
When the air shifts, to a slightly colder temperature, she knows that the doors that have slid open for them open to Robin's room, and Beastboy releases her hand. The room is practically a newspaper, with clippings and pictures from various ones cluttering the walls, with others littering the floors, with the cool crunch of crisp paper beneath their feet.
The boy seemingly rushes towards the computer opposite Robin's bed, all bottled excitement and energy dripping from his skin as he cracked his knuckles, which made the girl flinch at the sharp sound, and his fingers sped across the keyboard, tapping out a rhythm that hardly seemed recognizable in the crescendo of clicking keys.
The screen flickered to life sleepily, before a familiar sound of ragged breaths caught their ears, and a grainy image of a steering wheel and a windshield blinks on the screen. "We usually use these videos to study our enemies tactics and movements," explains Beastboy, but shrugs as he continues, "or at least that's what Robin says."
Suddenly, a sharp yell splits the silence, and the camera shifts, to the image of a boy in red, green and yellow floating in mid-air, with a flickering ball of silver curled around his flailing figure. As Cyborg lifts himself from the pit of the car, she notices how Beastboy's fingers curl in anger, and feels a stab of guilt in her lungs as she realizes he's angry he hadn't been there. Because of her, and how she had been propelled backwards into a memory so harshly, she'd only resurfaced moments before she drowned beneath the harsh waves. But the best she can do now, is lay a hand against his arm, a feat for her as she is usually adverting human touch.
He hardly feels it against the rising heat of his anger, as Robin's fingers curl around his throat, mouth gaping wide as he searches for air. He watches how Raven's fingers clench, how Starfire's eyes round in horror at the sight of her distressed boyfriend. Then, Cyborg's head snaps, and a shape can be found, toes grazing the ground behind a graveyard of rubble.
The image zooms in, and the boy is dark skinned, with silver eyes and silver hair. His skin has been cut from the sheer strength of his powers, deep red ribbons in his skin, but he smiles.
She doesn't look up from the troubled gaze of her friend until the image has zoomed in, and her chest is suddenly collapsing in on itself. The boy is familiar, far too familiar to her mind, to her memories. Her hand leaves Beastboy's arm and her legs buckle. Her fingers clasp over her mouth, muffling a scream.
Beastboy vaguely remembers it sounding like 'brother'.