Esteemed readers: I'm trying to stretch myself writing-wise and will therefore be willing to entertain suggestions for drabbles. No promises, but I might give it a shot if you have a suggestion for a character/pairing/theme/etc. I need to learn how to write things I'm uncomfortable with.

Promise

Did it ever get cold here? Even in October, even in the rapidly dimming sunlight, the humidity was terrible and the air was sticky (almost as sticky as the time Beast Boy had spilled an entire liter of soda on the kitchen floor). He really wasn't used to it. Snow, he could deal with. But when October seemed like July…it made time blurry, somehow; an inability to assimilate what he knew to be true and what it felt like.

But Starfire didn't seem bothered. Maybe they had perpetual summers on Tamaran. Maybe her skin was more adaptable to heat.

Maybe she was just too delighted with the park to care.

"What a wondrous object!" Purple boots balanced precariously on top of the monkey bars—except it wasn't really precarious, of course, because she'd never fall. Laughing, she executed a sharp turn and began walking backwards the other way, finally placing her foot on air instead of metal and floating down between two of the bars.

He shifted his weight, uncomfortable like he always was in situations when he didn't have a set goal to accomplish, some kind of task. Robin wasn't very good at 'hanging out,' as Cyborg loved to remind him. "I thought you'd like it. Except I'm pretty sure you're supposed to hold the bars with your hands, not walk on top of them." Not that he really had all that much firsthand experience to draw from, even as a child. Sure, most ten-year-olds would be thrilled with tire swings and balance beams—but most ten-year-olds didn't jump off buildings.

Starfire blinked at him in confusion, hovering just inches away from the sand and ducking her head to keep from hitting it on the bars. Right. Obviously. She was at least four inches too tall for that.

"…of course, you can do it any way you want," he amended hurriedly.

"Yes, I believe that I shall," said Starfire, still smiling. One hand on a wooden beam, she yelped when she held it too tightly and it started to bend in a sickening way. Patting the structure apologetically, she turned back to Robin, a blush creeping up her cheeks. "…but perhaps I should exercise more caution with these delicate objects." She paused thoughtfully. "This is a place for children, correct? It seems quite deserted."

He nodded. "It's getting dark." Evening meant mosquitoes… "It would be busier in the daylight, though."

"Is this due to some aversion to darkness?"

"No; not the darkness itself, anyway," said Robin. "It's just…sometimes being outside at night isn't the safest thing." It was almost funny, and yet it wasn't. Robin knew exactly what could happen if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she'd probably never had to worry about that. Why be afraid of guys with guns when you were practically indestructible and could shoot lasers from your hands?

Starfire frowned, realization settling some place behind her eyes. "I see: this is why we fight, I suppose. Why we will always fight." She gestured to two little kids being ushered into a van, their matching red, plastic backpacks contrasting with the shadows cast by the overhanging trees.

He'd always known, of course, ever since the first day he met her—Starfire wasn't an idiot and she certainly wasn't puerile, but with her naiveté, it was so easy to forget… He stared at her, noticing the way she'd let go of the beam and was just standing, one hand on her hip like a challenge, hair grazing against her elbow. Even in the fading daylight, her expression was resolute and unafraid.

At that moment, Robin was sure that Starfire had never been afraid of anything in her life.

And then, like flipping a switch, the smile came back, full and unqualified. "Friend Robin!" She pointed to the slide, jumping up and down. "What purpose does that rounded, cylindrical tube serve?"

"Umm…"

"No matter; I shall find out for myself! Come!" Her hand was gripping his before he could blink and she pulled him along, thankfully not using even half of her strength. As he sidestepped overturned stones and tree roots, he tried to work out what it was about her, how such an ardent person could even exist, let alone drag him up a ladder to a yellow, plastic slide.

Let it be known that slides were bumpy, unpleasant, even stickier than the humidity and probably teeming with bacteria. Let it also be known that it was somehow possible to forget all of these very important facts when Starfire was behind you, laughing into your hair.

Bad

No matter what they said, she wasn't stupid. Sure, more people had said that about her than she could possibly remember, looking down their nose at her or rolling their eyes in that look-she's-clueless-isn't-that-cute way, but they were all wrong. She knew. She'd known since the beginning.

Terra knew what he was like. She knew way more than anyone else, in fact. All of his flaws, his scars, that stuff that was going to destroy him one of these days if he didn't stop. And he wouldn't stop…he'd never stopped anything in his life. Maybe that was how it had started, come to think of it. He was there, she was there, and they just didn't stop. Of course, that wasn't exactly his kind of stubbornness. Maybe it had had more to do with Terra. Because that was what she was good at. Not stopping. In that way. She didn't know why it had happened—'how' was different from 'why.' He wasn't her type. He was mean and serious and bossy and she couldn't remember the last time he'd said anything friendly to her.

She didn't care.

Terra had seen his eyes. It was kind of embarrassing, actually. A few weeks ago, she'd taken the mask off herself without warning, just because she was absolutely sick of not knowing what color his eyes were. He'd stared at her in shocked horror for a split second before grabbing her wrist and twisting it—Terra didn't scream, just bit down on her tongue and silently counted how many seconds it took for him to let her go, cradling her arm to her chest when he did. It was the first time she'd seen his eyes; the only time. They were pretty and blue and haunted by something, something Terra wasn't sure she wanted to know about. Terra didn't mind not seeing his eyes anymore. There was too much there, too much that he didn't know how to hide. Something about his eyes had been too much for Terra—when she watched him sleep, sometimes she wondered if there was something about him that was too much. And anyway, it had really hurt when he'd twisted her arm.

Starfire had been upset. Beast Boy had laughed. Raven had been worried—and had started avoiding both of them because she got too many headaches. Cyborg…well, Cyborg had kind of freaked Terra out, honestly. Right at the start, when everyone first found out, he'd asked to talk to her. Alone. What he'd wanted to tell her became pretty clear, pretty quickly.

"Look, it's not that I think it's a bad idea, just that…Terra…"

"I like him, though," she'd said. "He makes me—he makes me feel better. I feel safe with him. Like everything's taken care of, you know?"

Cyborg had dropped his hands helplessly to his sides and looked at her in a way that made her feel kind of sick inside. "I know, and that's really…great. But, Terra. Robin is…he's…"

"Bad?"

"No," he'd breathed after a long pause. "No, he's not."

At the time, Terra had been confused. Now, she just felt empty.

They didn't put labels on it. Didn't ever use the words 'boyfriend,' and 'girlfriend.' What they had, what they did together—it wasn't boyfriend-and-girlfriend. It wasn't the kind of love that you saw on television, the kind with flowers and movies and dancing and stuff. Maybe it wasn't even love. Maybe it was just…just something.

Something bad.

Standing at the sink in the kitchen, Terra almost forgot where she was, that she was here washing dishes because it was her turn. She scrubbed at the spaghetti stain on the plate, flowered sponge rough in the palm of her hand, watching the water gurgle into the drain. When it all came down to it, she thought that maybe she'd been kind of right that day she talked to Cyborg. Robin made her feel better, made the confusion and the choices and all the lies disappear, made it all go away because he'd take care of it. Like he'd taken care of Terra's arm that one day. But maybe that was bad. Maybe some of those things weren't supposed to be taken care of. Maybe none of it was.

The stain stuck to that plate, holding on for dear life, and no matter how hard Terra tried, she just couldn't get it clean.

Skirt

What she remembered was the skirt.

One of those long, flowing ones with sparkles stitched into the fabric. Black. The kind that Raven couldn't wear because her legs were too short and they made her look about three inches tall. She wouldn't have even noticed her if it hadn't been for the skirt. It drew attention to her where attention wasn't warranted, because Stacy had that kind of face that you forgot as soon as you looked at it. If she were a color, she would have been beige. Shoulder-length, very dirty blonde hair, straight but not shiny. Clean, featureless, unremarkable face. Raven didn't know what color her eyes were—she didn't look closely enough to find out. Raven would never know what color her eyes were.

But the skirt spoke for Stacy, came before her and billowed around her and carried her presence when nothing else would. She was only sitting at a little table outside the café, pencil tucked behind her ear, hair in some style that Raven couldn't recall because it didn't matter, but the skirt was just there. It was that kind of skirt. The kind people bought because they wanted to be somebody. Because they wanted to be noticed.

Well. Stacy got noticed, alright.

A fight, a stupid fight, one that shouldn't have happened, pointless and routine. A fight and that familiar dam breaking inside of Raven, the one she hated because she knew what it was and who it came from and what it made her. Unseen hands dictating where her powers went, daggers sticking into her lungs as she struggled to breathe, struggled to focus, to do anything but what they wanted her to do…and a scream, a scream that got stopped right in the middle and everybody knew why, and a compact car on the sidewalk, smashed into the table, enveloped by Raven's signature. Then she could see again, could breathe and think and speak again, but right when it happened Raven would have given anything to just be dead. To—to switch places so Raven was the one with a compact car on her chest and Stacy was the one falling onto the pavement and screaming and screaming and screaming.

Of course, nothing had happened to Raven. Accidental death. That was what they'd said, anyway. Raven knew the truth. She was a murderer. It was all she was. It had already started. Stacy was just unlucky victim number one. Possibly, she was even lucky victim number one. Because at least Stacy wouldn't be around for when Raven murdered the world.

Raven didn't fight again for a long time. For awhile, she didn't even come out of her room. Going into her mind was almost impossible. Guilt was one of the worst emotions. It was slippery and greasy and foul, like spoiled milk caking the back of your mind, and it whispered to you in a smug, singsong little voice all the evil you had done, the monstrous person you really were deep down. And all the appeals in the world (I'm sorry I'm sorry I'll take it back just let me take it back oh god I'm sorry I didn't mean…) wouldn't erase it.

Eventually they got her out of her room, and then they got her out of the Tower, and finally, finally, they got her back to doing her job. Raven tried, tried to be careful, but how could she when she didn't know which facets of her powers were causing the blackouts, the lapses of control, the blinding rage—how could she? And Stacy's skirt would always be right behind her eyes, superimposed on the crime scene. Stacy's bloody skirt, mutilated and unrecognizable like the rest of her, and it was the first thing she saw when she woke up in the morning and the last thing she saw before closing her eyes.

The shopping bag bounced against Raven's leg in a rhythm that was almost somber. The weather reminded her that she didn't live in a movie: it was spitefully hot and ironically bright, sun beating down on her back as if it dared her to be sad. In a movie, there would have been a dramatic downpour, or a mournful snowstorm for this particular scene as the young heroine (villain…) trudged through the graveyard to make peace with her demons. Right. Please. Try making peace with your demons when you're the demon.

The demon who was going to kill everyone.

Stacy's grave was forgettable. Half-hidden behind a monument and a rusty bench, low and unadorned, simple lettering with too few years between the dates. Commonplace. Unobtrusive. So unremarkable it was remarkable. Like Stacy.

Raven had always wanted to be normal. She supposed Stacy might have dreamed about being like Raven. That was why she wore the skirt—it made her special, dressed her up as something she could never be. Made people look at her. They were only seeing the skirt when they did, of course, and in another life Raven might have rolled her eyes and muttered something about being a slave to fashion, but somehow, it didn't matter when she was staring down at the slab of granite.

Reaching into the bag, Raven clutched at the black fabric like a lifeline, embroidered sparkles iridescent in the sunlight. For a moment, she just held it, staring, wondering how stupid she'd become to think that this would do anything—because hadn't she expected it to somehow elicit a miracle? Like some stupid resurrection spell. Raven couldn't raise the dead. So what did she think this would accomplish when—

Raven only looked back once over her shoulder, burning into her memory the neatly folded skirt at the foot of Stacy's grave, a bitter peace offering that would never be enough.