Chapter 21

Disclaimer: Look in Chapter 1

Beep

Beep

The steady pinging of the heart monitor echoed across the quiet room, ignorant of the heavy uncomfortable tension. Ice blue eyes wandered across the room, taking in the sole occupant of the small hospital bed in the corner.
The white bandage that wound around her neck stood out starkly against her grey skin…but she seemed too pale. It was obvious she had lost a lot of blood. He looked at the IV bags hanging on the side of her bed, one containing a clear saline solution, the other housed blood. How many transfusions had been necessary to stabilize her?

Clenched in his shaking hands was a piece of paper…a medical report. The words blurred in and out of focus, and with a heavy sigh of exasperation, he tossed it onto the table. Robin didn't need to read it anymore…he'd stared at it long enough to commit it to memory. The doors whooshed open quietly and he glanced at the Tameranian as she passed through the doors and came to a stop in front of the occupied bed. A loud sigh left her lips and he watched the alien curl her fingers around the rails of the bed. "What a dilemma indeed."

Robin could sense the sadness in her voice...and for a brief moment, a stab of guilt passed through him. Why did he feel…so responsible for this whole situation? Was it his fault that that Raven ended up like this, unconscious and currently strapped to the hospital bed?

"Robin."

He looks up into Starfire's face, trying very hard to read the look in her jade green eyes. Was she sad, furious? Why couldn't he tell? It used to be so…easy to read Starfire's emotions. He could always pinpoint when her frowning eyebrows meant anger or confusion, or the difference between her sorrowful look and the one that signified hunger (though they were usually one and the same). Now, Starfire could probably lie…to his face. And he would be none the wiser.

"Red X has requested to see Raven."

The Boy Wonder closed his eyes, trying to push down the sudden swell of anger that flooded his veins. The sting of Raven's deception had yet to dissipate...it was almost unforgivable! How many times did that man come amongst them...he became a good friend; they allowed him to enter the tower...more than once.
All of Cyborg's state-of-the-art security systems...useless. Robin clenches his jaw as remembers the first time that thief entered the tower...and Raven's vision. Had than been Derek too? Or were there other lies...secrets that hadn't been uncovered? Could Raven have been right about the Justice League?

He didn't want to believe it...didn't want to acknowledge that his mentors...the people that trained him, taught him right from wrong...employed petty delinquents to do their dirty work.

Starfire's voice cut across his thoughts, her words enunciated slowly as if she was speaking to a child. "This is his sixteenth request. How much longer will you ignore him? He too has…injuries that need to be treated."

Robin bristled at the thinly veiled accusation that coated her words. Clenching his fists, the young man stared back at the alien, hoping he could convey a stern expression through his mask. "Not yet…when Raven awakens. When I've had the chance to…talk to her." He hoped the quiver in his voice couldn't be noticed. But what would he say? Letters, words flew through his mind combining into a speech, something he could use to have a conversation with Raven and not...'flip out' as Cyborg put it. He pondered the small paragraph he'd put together in his mind's eye, scrolling through it...and then scattering the words into the ether.

What could he say? Robin wanted to believe that Raven had been duped, that Derek had tricked her as well...lied to her like Malchior did all those years ago. He could forgive that...could over look it. Even have sympathy...But she knew...Raven knew and continued to see him. She continued to talk to him, to date him...and even sleep with him.

How could he not be angry?

Starfire was silent for several moments, her feet shifting awkwardly on the tiled floor. She draws in several breaths, almost as if she wants to say something, but can't find the words.

Everyone seems to be...treading on thin ice around him. At first Robin relished in the quiet it brought, he couldn't help but delight in the solitude that resulted from his anxious teammates. The silence gave him time to think, to ponder... to examine what went wrong. Could this whole thing have been prevented? What was it that made Raven...lose trust in them, distance herself...fall in love with the enemy?

Now, the silence was unbearable...it smothered him like the fog on a humid day. Robin wondered if this sense of suffocation was his guilt...his sense of responsibility for the whole situation. After all, didn't all this hostility between them start the day he began to sleep with Raven? Or was this outcome...simply inevitable?

Shaking fingers run through already tousled hair, tensing every time the steady beep of the heart monitor increased in frequency. His eyes are locked on the floor, he doesn't want to look, to see his friend lying on the bed...close to death. The sight only served to increase his guilt.

Until he remembered running through those blasted hallways, hearing that infuriating music over and over again. The worry and the fear that gripped his chest, blocked out all other thoughts in his mind. The sheer terror that invaded his mind when Beastboy ran up to him, green face ashen with despair as he stumbled over the words 'Raven', 'too much blood' and 'Red X'.

Stumbling into the room, his freshly polished dress shoes coming to rest in a pool of Raven's blood. The flashes of light, the smell of smoke and burning flesh...the glowing rage in Derek's strangely colored eyes and the familiar shaped shurikens dangling from his fingertips.

He knew those weapons...the sleek black shurikens he'd fashioned in the shape of an' X' and painted the centers red. And Robin remembered thinking, why did Derek have them? Why was he so...skilled in their use? What was so familiar about his stance, the way he aimed the small weapons, and the expert footwork?

And Robin's rage would flare up, cursing Raven for everything...meeting Derek, falling in love with him. That had been bad enough...but, falling in love was easily managed, a problem that could be mended without much fuss. It could be fixed, people could eventually fall out of love... Raven could eventually forget she ever knew someone by the name of Derek Beaulieu.

Raven didn't like making problems easy to mend. No, her mistakes were complicated, steeped in mystery and intrigue. The sorceress not only fell in love with the greatest enemy of the Teen Titans, she had the audacity to sleep with him...to get pregnant with his child.

Forgetting would be difficult now...especially with a child in the picture.

Robin wasn't sure what to do except sit here and wait for Raven to wake up, to look him in the eye and explain... Explain why she learned of Red X's identity and kept it a secret, how she could fall in love with someone and yet fight him with righteous rage on the rooftops and streets of Jump City. Help him understand why she choose him over the team...

Over me...

Robin didn't know what to do with the twinge of jealousy that festered deep within his mind. And with Red X still here...still locked up in the tower, Robin was unsure how much more he could take. Perhaps it would be best to quietly take the thief away...send him back to the Justice League and let them decide his fate?

Robin looks up at Starfire then, taking in the furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips. Whatever she wants to say…Robin isn't sure that he wants to listen.

"You can't scheme your way out of this, Robin. "

Those words haunt him long after Starfire has left the room.

oOoOo

Derek perches nervously on the small chair resting beside the hospital bed, his hazel eyes locked in a duel with Raven's glassy purple orbs. She's still very ill, her skin a pallid grey color that only dregs up more anxiety.
"Why didn't you tell me, Princess?" He whispers, mindful of the other inhabitants in the room; it was a conversation Derek didn't really want to have with company, however, he wasn't in a position to make demands.

Raven stares at him, her eyes moving rapidly and gaze still out of focus. Her lips, chapped and drained of their beautiful rose-red color, open and close for several silent minutes.

He was beginning to wonder if she even had the strength to talk when suddenly she blurts out, "You're not dead…" Her cold fingers clench his palms tightly. "I didn't know…not supposed to be possible." She closes her eyes and lets out a slow breath. "Erik, he-when I first met him- he did something to me…said I couldn't get pregnant…" Raven's voice drops to a whisper. "Unless he wanted me to…"

Derek drops his head heavily against the mattress of the bead. He cannot stop the cold chill that settles over him, feels powerless against the tremors of fury that descends over him. "God." He exhales, blocking out the harried footsteps that patter in agitation on the other side of the room. He feels Raven's hand, still suffering from light tremors, rest lightly against his dark tresses.

"Derek, don't…" She pauses and slowly shifts her position in the warm bed. "I wasn't gone that long…"

Hazel eyes dart up, blazing with ire. Why was she so…calm about the whole issue? "He's done this before though, hasn't he!" He reaches out, cupping her cheeks with his hands, noting with worry the chill on her skin. She was so cold…

"Princess…" His thumbs brush down the sloping bridge of her nose, and his fingers softly caress the nape of her neck. Derek brushes his lips against her forehead, plants soft kisses on her dry and cold lips, "He almost killed you…" He kisses her again, "...both of you…" feeling her hands clamp onto his wrists, and the movement of her lips against his own: slow and tentative.

"Derek." Raven pulls back slightly, drawing in a shaky breath. "I swear, if I'd known…I wouldn't have…planned it this way. I would have told you."

A somber silence descends over the room, punctuated only by the steady pinging of the machine, and the scraping sound of the small chair on which Derek is anxiously perched. The young man doesn't know what will happen; he can't help but dread the future. Under arrest, held in custody by his arch-nemesis…there probably wasn't much hope of being freed. Derek wrings his hands, where they rest, curling them around the soft blanket that rests lightly over Raven's legs.

The muscles in his shoulder burn, and there is a dull ache in his chest...the only symptoms of the injury he sustained, of the bullet that tore through his shoulder and exited out the middle of his back. When he'd awoken, Cyborg told him he was lucky to be alive...that the bullet punctured his lung and barely missed his heart. It was Raven, she had done something...healed him perhaps...used the last dregs of her strengthen to move that bullet.

He questioned Cyborg relentlessly each time the cybernetic came in to change the bandages, probed Beastboy when he came in with a small tray of food, (the titan seemed to think the tofu sandwiches constituted some kind of punishment...Derek decided the least he could do was play along) and implored Starfire when she entered the small cell and just sat there, her jade green eyes blank and emotionless.

Finally the Tameranian told him that, yes, Raven did heal him...and that her heart stopped twice on the operating table. She was rather forth coming with the information, and at the time he wondered if she'd been sent...but her mission had been unclear. Starfire told him rather quietly that Raven was pregnant, her voice wavering when she mentioned that they were unsure if the child would survive.

Her emotions had been roller coaster...and she switched from uncertainty, to thinly veiled irritation, and a rather confusing scientific fascination when she revealed how they managed to find the antidote to Erik's poison. (Derek was appalled as she told him how she arrived at a solution after reading an entry about postmortem saliva coagulation of severed heads in a 'wonderful' blog called 'The Science of Deduction'.)

She waxed poetic as she explained, in explicit details, how she and Cyborg extracted the venom from his fangs(vampires and snakes have a lot in common, it seems)...and it unnerved him that somewhere in this tower, in a fridge...was Erik Greyson's severed head. His body had apparently been too scorched to be of any use.

Raven was safe ...but a cloud of uncertainty now hung over his shoulders. His only hope of freedom…the only way to escape without paying for his crimes was resting in the hands of the Justice League. They would never admit to commissioning him…at least, not publicly. Not on an official record.

It was such a fucked up situation.

"Derek." Raven's whisper pulls him from his musings.

He stares at the love of his life, a thousand questions running through his mind. They shriek, clamoring for his attention…begging to be heard. He let out a slow sigh, pushing back the thoughts as he lifted his hazel eyes. The sound of the heart monitor echoes in his mind, and the faint taste of antiseptic linger on his tongue.

"How did you…? Raven's voice is quiet, hushed, and her eyes dart occasionally to the other occupants of the room. The need for secrecy is written plainly on her face as she struggles into a sitting position.

Derek leans forward, feeling Raven's cold fingers brush against his forehead. His eyes close, remembering the nauseating sensation, the disorientation that comes with an invasion of the mind. He didn't want Raven to rifle through his thoughts as she'd done before, pulling out his fears and rewinding through his memories. Derek was afraid of what he would see…didn't want to know what was locked within the vaults of Raven's mind. Last time he saw murder…blood.

What would he see this time?

A shaky breath leaves his tightly clenched jaw as that tugging sensation tingles in the back of his mind. He can feel her threading through his thoughts and memories softly, ever so carefully. But all he can see is darkness. The dimness behind closed eyelids-floating colors- flashes of red, yellow, orange. No memories…no flashes of Erik. No blood.

When the feeling of her fingers slips from his forehead, Derek's eyes snap open, and he gazes at the look of awe on her features with trepidation.

Raven's mouth twitches into a soft smile. "Have you always been able to…what are you?"

Derek rests his head against the warmth of her lap. The words are slow to form in his mind…and he struggles uncharacteristically to put together a coherent sentence. "It-sometimes…I-I-don't… " Why did he feel so nervous? His heart is beating rapidly in his chest, and his hands feel moist and clammy against the cold metal bars of the hospital bed. The young man takes in a slow breath. "Randomly. It just-happens…"

Suddenly he sits up, Raven's fingers dropping from their tangled position in his hair to the bed with a soft thud. Derek stares into her eyes, trying to place the odd twinkle of emotion. "I can't control it…if I get angry enough-one time I nearly destroyed my high school…" A wry smile tugs the corners of his lips. "What am I?"

Raven shrugs, pulling him back into her arms. "I don't care…don't care."

Derek closes his eyes, reveling in the warmth of her skin, thankful that her arms no longer tremble…that she's alive. He feels her breath, warm against his neck, inhales her scent, hidden beneath the smell of bandages and antiseptic, as he presses his nose behind her ear.

"Promise me something." Raven whispers, her hands tracing unrecognizable patterns into the cold fabric of the prison garb Robin forced him into.

"Anything, Princess."

"I'm tired…Just be here when I wake up…please?" Her voice is tinged with desperation, and her body trembles with apprehension.

"I promise."

"Swear…"

"I swear, Princess. I won't leave you-the two of you- alone again."

oOoOo

He wasn't there…Derek couldn't keep his promise.

But I should have known. I knew better than to put my trust in promises, assurances that can easily be broken. Why did it hurt so much then? Why was I so…angry when Starfire told me three days later that Derek had been sent off to Arkham City's Maximum Security Prison…with little to no chance at release?

'All freedom comes with a price'.

It was a motto that had been drilled into my head since the day I began to think, to reason... to understand. My freedom to use my powers were gained at the expense of my mother...and Giselle. I lost Jeremy before I gained the ability to leave Azarath. Alice lost her mother, Gabe lost his wife; because of my attempts to gain freedom. Whether it was successful or not…the price had been paid. Those few minutes of independence…came at an unbearable cost.

It was a lesson that I thought I learned. It was why I gave in, refused to fight Erik…allowed him to erode my mind, to steal my sanity. I was content to self-destruct…until Derek came into my life. Until his life was threatened. My freedom from Erik, at the cost of my soul mate.

Now Erik is no longer a problem in my life…but Derek is gone. How can I cope without him? How can I raise this…child alone? There are so many worries…so many concerns. So many things that are…wrong, out of place…that just don't fit.

But I'll find a way. I will get Derek back to me…absolve him of all his crimes. Bruce owes me that much…and I'll do whatever it takes to make him see that.
I can't stay in this tower…languishing within the confines of my room under house arrest. Nothing will get accomplished by sitting here and playing my memories over and over, trying to find out what went wrong, reminiscing about my mistakes…berating myself for falling asleep…hating the fact that I woke up alone…

Despite everything, I don't wish to go back and change things. I don't wish to 'start over' or 'get a second chance'. What good would that do? Everything might change again...and perhaps if I hadn't made so many, mistakes, blunders and errors in judgement, I wouldn't have met Derek.

So yes, I fell in love with Robin's greatest enemy. Yes, I am pregnant with his child. Yes, I am now on 'house arrest', on probation...for who knows how long. Robin won't be able to trust me anymore...none of them might. But I don't blame them. I'm actually quite surprised they put up with me for so long, after all the trouble I put them through.

Starfire would be devastated...perhaps I'll write her a note, tell her not to worry, that I'll be fine. She will understand. Starfire was always such a stickler for happy endings...too many Disney movies I suppose. Perhaps this isn't a happy ending...but that's alright.

I have no regrets.

Fin

Yep...this story is done.

I might end up editing the earlier chapters, moving things around and removing stuff so the story flows better. I've never written a story before...so this was an interesting little project, as long as it lasted.

Please review!

~heartless16