A/N: Hey guys! If you stick around just wanna say thanks for putting up with my lateness. Gosh, I haven't updated this fast in so long! It's almost scary! Partly due to all of my classes done for the year and essay/exams finishing this week, I feel creatively rejuvenated! Lol, but seriously I want to finish this fic by the end of this year so I'm trying to put my ass into gear. WHICH brings up this important note of me saying that – because Robin has finally met Raven so quickly already, everything is gonna feel like its speeding along – so sorry if the long, descriptive, boring entrails of the settings and atmosphere are more your thing. They're actually my thing too but like I said ...this story has to get somewhere eventually!

Note: I really wanted to delete this story and start over but instead I've done a rewrite on certain chapters! Thank goodness for the replacement feature.

Updates will probably come quicker, within the next few days. Get comfy!

(We are the caterpillars. Curious and timid.)

That night, after Richard had a small dinner, he retired to bed early – not because he was tired but because he wanted to wait until the hallways were empty. When he was sure all the patients were in their rooms and the staff was gone, he snuck out of his bedroom and went to Rachel's. He knew where her room was and when he reached her door, he knocked softly. She opened the door and let him in. Quickly and quietly, Richard stepped into her room. She closed the door and shuffled over to him.

"How are you?" he whispered hesitantly. He wasn't sure why he was asking but just wanted to make things less awkward. Rachel, he saw, nodded her head, from the moonlight coming from her open window. "Why don't you turn on the lights?" he asked but she shook her head.

"Can't," she whispered back, "They would see from under the door in the hallway and ...I don't have any lights anyway." As she shivered and walked to her bed, Richard followed as his eyebrows stitched together solemnly.

"What do you mean?" Rachel sat down on her sheets and drew her bed sheet over her bare legs. She was wearing a grey nightgown, Richard wore grey pajamas. She rubbed her arms and started hesitantly.

"I'm not allowed to have lights after dark. They think it will provoke me." Richard felt a chill run up his spine. "What?" he asked again, but he lifted his head to look at her high ceiling – sure enough, the sockets where the lightbulbs should've been were empty. Richard wondered mildly why patients were given bulbs in their rooms at all – if they could reach them with a desk or chair (if they had one like he had), they could surely wreak havoc on themselves or others. But he let it go.

"They ...they said it was my fault," she whispered. "I'm the one who set fire to my house ...to my family." She shut her eyes but Richard grew brave and sat on the bed facing her.

"But you don't think you did it," he said softly. She shook her head and looked at him.

"I don't know what to believe. I was eight when it happened. All I remember is crying ...but ever since then I've been having dreams about the night ...and seeing someone who was there that I don't know." Richard nodded his head, understanding how dreams can do that to people. People like them. "They haven't stopped."

Like water, Richard started to paint an image in his head of her ordeal. He kept picturing a small girl with black hair and wet, purple eyes standing outside a house as it incinerated to the ground. His chest felt uncomfortably tight. Hadn't he seen a small boy in his dreams? A boy yelling his name - who looked like him, but he knew wasn't. So many pieces didn't fit together and with Rachel, he was starting to finally realize their existence, and strange ideas he never even considered for the past month.

"So ...you think you might have been ...framed?"

"Maybe," she said softly, "I just have strong feeling that this is all wrong ...I woke up with dead parents one day. And I've always been a quiet person. But by then, everyone had accused me." He nodded - he could see the gentle nature and aura Rachel carried. Whether or not she was lying to herself, she was the second person other than Kory who he quickly believed to not have been a bad person, no matter what was said about her in Arkham - and there was a lot being said about 'Miss Rachel, The Patient Rachel'.

She looked away with a cold look on her face.

"I've been here eight years, and nothing they do is going to help me. I'm still lost. There's no hope and Dr. Wilson is just wasting his time. This life is cruel," she whispered bitterly, "How could someone do this, and why can't I fight back?"

Richard looked away. The thought of their psychiatrist brought up an old, flame burning in his head. "Because someone is holding all the cards," he whispered back and glared at the floor. If he felt sick about himself for nearly six weeks, he couldn't imagine being Rachel trapped here for eight years. Trapped in the dark for so long.

As he continued to glower, Rachel transformed her sitting position into a cross-legged one and placed her hands on her knees over the bed sheet. She breathed deeply in through her nose like she was trying to relax herself. Richard looked back in just time to see her scratch an itch on her forehead. His eyes went to her bruise. It was contrasting against her pale skin in the dark. He rubbed his own carefully and she looked.

"Your bruise..." she echoed from the day they met. He nodded.

"You said that to me," he recalled, "But it must have been from being hit..." He didn't have to end the sentence for her to understand 'when' he meant by it. Rachel huffed.

"We're not going to be saved here, R ...Richard," she said. How she knew his name, he didn't really mind or bother enough to care. "If no one is going to be my hero ...then, I'll be my own."

At this, Richard looked at her and the girl stared sheepishly back. "For ...years, I thought about this. I-I wished I was someone else. Someone braver, with a sense of justice, and who was powerful." Something invigorated Richard from her words. Hadn't that what he'd been wanting since the day he'd been before the court?

"Rachel..." He looked at her seriously.

"I-I ...even made my own persona ...to help me cope."

"Persona?"

"Imagination... is a powerful thing. It can help many people lost in the darkness. But they'll never let a mental patient cope that way - gives us a reason to detach from society altogether when all Dr. Wilson really wants to pulls us out of it. Except..."

"What? Is it?"

"He doesn't know about mine... I've kept it secret. Helps me see the world clearer."

Rachel grew silent and didn't want to continue. Anyone would have laughed at her if they knew a criminally-mental person like her was playing make-believe. But Richard didn't. He sat still and listened, trying to understand, listening. He nodded for her to continue.

"How do you see this ...all of this ...any clearer than it is?"

Her answer was the strangest, yet most wonderful expression of freedom he had touched upon since losing his parents.

"I-I imagine myself living a world, where criminals were villains and I use justice to stop them. And it's always easy to catch them or know their plans because I..." she stopped, unsure and embarrassed to continue. He placed a hand on hers. "Because you what?" he whispered.

Like light, he was being drawn to a new sense of perception. About Arkham, its patients, and himself.

"Because..." she bit her lip and then, finally sighed. "I have powers." Richard waited patiently but his heart was pounding. "I can fly, walk through walls, show up anywhere in the world I wanted and I lift things with my mind. Create things too."

"How?" asked timidly. He painted a picture of a powerful Rachel in his mind, unchained and strong, far away from Arkham.

The girl looked away. "The darkness," she whispered.

"The darkness," Richard echoed. She lifted her eyes to look all around the room but avoided him. "The very thing I'm confined to ...I decided a long time ago ...that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Like energy ...black energy. It helps me catch the villains." As Richard stared at her, the curves of her mouth turned up the tiniest bit and he felt himself become spellbound.

"What..." he whispered slowly still encompassed by her imagination. "...does it look like?"

Richard didn't have to be a psychologist to know how much strength was in her symbolism. He grew more interested. Their hands were still touching but neither noticed.

"Large," she whispered back elated. "Grand ...there are tall buildings, like skyscrapers, and the people who live in it are modern and thank me for protecting them. It's clean, always sunny, and i live in my own watchtower on an island near the city, away from everyone so i can meditate in peace." Richard gave her a small eyebrow raise. "You meditate too?" She nodded, embarrassed about another description of her other self. But then he looked at the way she was sitting on the bed and it connected.

"In that world, I have to meditate because I imagined that my powers were unstable and I always need to control them. They are ...powered by my emotions." Another fact so interesting, Richard grew more anxious but he understood her need to imagine herself like that. Being a mental patient stuck in darkness for so long makes you want to go crazy, makes you feel like you have no control over anything even when the doctors tell you do.

"Wow," he breathed. Rachel stared at Richard waiting for the criticism but it never came as he squeezed her hand.

"And what you do you call it?" he whispered.

"Jump," she breathed back, "Jump City." And despite himself, Richard gave her the first, small smile. Something about that word was more than simple – something extraordinary.

After that, Richard and Rachel talked for a few more minutes about possible theories and when to meet again. When he settled on the promise of meeting her again that next night, Richard left and snuck back into his rom. He found it near impossible to get to sleep that night. The next morning, Richard got up and as he did his routines around the asylum, he and Rachel continued to act like strangers to each other. He had his weekly scheduled appointment with Dr. Slade about his progress but got a good look around the psychiatrist's office and noticed the large cabinet most likely filled with files on every patient in the hospital. 'Maybe something about our past, will tell us more about why we came to Arkham...' Richard thought in the middle of the session. That night he told Rachel after sneaking into her room again.

(We will cocoon ourselves from the danger.)

A/N: Fast enough for you? You must be thinking, 'woah, Jump City reference?' Lol well I told ya this story was twisted. Rachel and Richard may not be the Titans ... but perhaps maybe with Rachel's strong imagination because she's been in darkness for so long so ...well, haters gon' hate! New updates will be soon! If there's any errors please let me know!

SladeRavenFan: Thanks Amy! Lol I know right, it can't get anymore ironic than this. But I've literally been thinking about this story for two weeks straight! But hopefully this update will put both our brains at peace!

xxNightShade12: Chyea, he needs therapy! But don't worry he's gonna get more than that when I'm done with him ...and Slade makes such a good villain it's hard not to mess with him you know? But then again, Robin makes him look like that. Thanks, miss crazy!

crazynerd: Thanks for the review! And you were spot on, Gar=BB and Vic=Cy, but lol sorry about Pamela. She was Poison Ivy, but I severely downplayed her sexy self in this story because Arkham only tailored for mentally sad and starving persons. ...Hopefully if I make more cameos they'll be better referenced but still twisted. ;)

TheDreamChaser: Thanks! I want this to get more sinister wouldn't you agree? It's about time lol.

RxRFannnnn: Thanks! And yup you were right in the guessing (s'okay about Pamela, no one got her lol), but yeah I'm so excited for RavenRobinness to begin too! Although I still wanted Starfire to remain the great character she was - which was why I wanted the perfect filler with Robin to make it work - but now that Raven's here, we can get this story focused. :) Soo ready too! Much love.