Raven knotted her fingers together and studied the interplay of shadow across her knuckles. Light was touching the edge of the carpet, spilling onto and over the windowsill. The hospital wing was quiet save for the beeping of monitors and her own jagged breathing. The others had come and gone in varying states of shock. Only Cyborg had remained calm, for which Raven had been grateful, given her own frayed nerves. He had told her to go to bed, to which she had responded with a deadly look aimed from her place at Robin's bedside.

Dawn was breaking now, and each blink weighed on her eyelids; sleep threatening her consciousness no matter how hard she tried to push it away. She had been awake all night, and she had no intention of retreating to her bedroom. A sudden change in the rhythmic beeping of Robin's heart monitor made her look up sharply, but it regulated within seconds and she lowered her gaze, feeling tears prickling her corneas. Please wake up. A headache was making itself known in her temples, and nausea fought itself in her stomach, products of her excessive drinking the night before. This was her fault, all of it. She didn't look at Robin. He was too still, his face too shadowed, bruises too raw on his cheekbone.

Instead, she looked at the floor.

Robin looked at her.

She occupied am uncomfortable-looking chair just to the left of his bed. Her hair hung lank and unkempt around her face, which was pale and marred by dark circles and a cut on her cheek. Her feet were planted on the carpet, forearms resting on the tops of her knees. Her hands were moving slowly, knotting and unknotting, which was the only betrayal of the tension in her body. He didn't say anything, choosing instead to assess the extent of his injuries as the sun crept into the room and dyed the carpet a warm golden color.

Still, she wouldn't look up, and Robin eventually spoke, voice harsh from disuse and weak with pain.

"How's the hangover?"

Raven's head shot up so quickly it was almost alarming, eyes wide as she looked at him. In an instant, she was at his side, looking at his monitors, one hand at his wrist, checking his pulse. Once she was satisfied he was all right, she sank to her knees by the bed, hand still clasped around his forearm.

"Oh thank god. You…oh god."

He struggled to sit up, and was rewarded with blinding pain in his chest. He waited for it to subside, cringing, then propped himself up on his elbows so that he could look at her. His bed was low, he noticed, as Raven was about level with him, even kneeling. He guessed that she had needed to hover lift him onto it.

"How bad is it?"

She was more expressive than Robin had ever seen her, face taut with worry and eyes clouded with guilt. It shook him; Raven could always be counted on for stoicism, if nothing else.

"I tried to heal you…but…I couldn't…"

She shook her head and pushed her hair roughly behind her ears, clearing her throat.

"You had a lot of broken bones. I didn't have enough energy to deal with everything, so I had to heal the internal injuries first."

He watched her closely, frowning as it occurred to him.

"Raven – how serious was it?"

She cleared her throat again, arms wrapped around herself, hands tight at her elbows. She would not meet his gaze.

"Your heart stopped."

He let out a slow breath, trying not to react in extremes, but she felt his panic anyway and reached out to grip his arm again, pulling herself together enough to give the unflinching report he had been looking for.

"I'm sorry. It's been a long night," she met his gaze again, hands reassuringly steady on his wrist. "You weren't breathing when I got here. I performed CPR. You responded well. Once I got your heart beating, I got you onto the bed. Had to lower it though. You're surprisingly heavy."

A shadow of a smile flickered across her face as Robin rolled his eyes.

"I'll try to lose some weight…make this easier on you."

"Thanks," she said sarcastically.

"You're welcome," he winced as his ribs gave another pang. Everything seemed to be getting worse, maybe the drugs leeching from his system.

"What else?"

There was a pregnant pause during which Raven looked down at her hands, wondering how much to tell him.

"There was a lot of internal bleeding and some swelling in your brain. I had to repair all of that. By the time I did, I was too tired to deal with the rest of it. I raised the alarm. Cyborg gave you some morphine but – " Her gaze sharpened as she felt pain pushing out at her, an echo of the redness she had seen the night before. She stood abruptly. Robin felt something probe briefly at his mind as she glanced at the monitors. "Where does it hurt?"

Everywhere was the answer to that, but Robin, alarmed at her worry and her obvious exhaustion, tugged at her arm until she sat down again.

"It's not that bad."

She shot him one of her deadpan looks.

"Now is not the time to be macho, Robin."

He gave a laugh that was more of a wheeze and tilted his head back against the pillows.

"Everywhere, but you don't…I don't want you to overexert yourself."

She scowled at that, and he heard her mutter something about this being her fault in the first place before she gripped his arm more tightly with one hand and placed the other over his chest, shutting her eyes. Robin felt an almost immediate cessation of pain as his ribs knit themselves back together, and sighed with relief as her hand moved over his wrist, then his legs. When she opened her eyes, she was visibly paler.

"Better?"

He pushed himself up, leaning back against the headboard so that he could look at her properly.

"Much, thanks."

She shook her head.

"Don't thank me. This was my fault."

Robin gave her a sharp look. There was anguish he was not used to seeing on her face.

"You know better than that."

He winced as he shifted the wrong way and pain lanced up his half-healed leg.

"People attack at the wrong time. That doesn't make it our fault."

Raven let out a shaky breath and put both her hands over his.

"You're right. I just…you scared me there for a second."

A smile tugged at his lips.

"You never answered my question."

She looked at him, confusion written on her face.

"How's the hangover?"

A choked laugh escaped her lips at that.

"Brutal."

From the doorway, Cyborg's voice sounded, amusement evident in his tone.

"I'll bet. You look like crap."

Raven shot him a dirty look.

"Thanks."

He raised his hands in mock surrender as he crossed the room to look through Robin's vitals.

"I tell it like it is. You really gotta get some sleep."

He punched some numbers into his arm, causing it to fold back on itself and reveal a frankly alarming needle. Raven glared at him.

"I'm not leaving."

Cyborg flicked the tip of the syringe as his arm closed back up, choosing to look at the IV bag rather than Raven.

"All right, suit yourself. Pass out. But don't come cryin' to me when Beast Boy draws penises all over your face."

Raven maintained her glare for a minute, then sighed and turned her gaze on Robin, who was grinning tiredly at their exchange.

"Are you all right now?"

Her concern was unusual – and Robin didn't like to admit it, but also somewhat warming. She cared, enough that she had stayed up all night at his bedside.

"I'm fine."

When she hovered for another minute, eyes flickering nervously from Robin's vital signs to his face, Cyborg rolled his eyes.

"He'll be out cold in a second, I'm about to give him enough morphine to knock out a horse."

A final squeeze of his hand, and she was gone, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands as she headed for the door, where she paused and glanced back at him.

"You'll let me know if you need healing, right?"

Cyborg, having plunged the syringe into the IV bag, gave her an exasperated look.

"If you don't get to bed this minute, you're going to be the one who needs healing."

She lifted her hands to chest height and backed into the hallway.

"Fine. Going."

Robin watched her walk away, feeling a strange mixture of gratitude, pain, and something else in his chest. Cyborg gave him a knowing look.

"Someone's got a crush."

Robin gave him a dirty look, resenting, suddenly, his inability to fight or stalk out of the room.

"Oh shut up."

Her room was as she'd left it, comforting and quiet. She'd done some redecorating since Trigon's defeat, but the mood of the space hadn't changed much. She had traded her dark grey walls for softer off-white ones, and her curtains were now open most of the time, allowing the sun entry, though she was careful to protect her books from its rays. Where her dresser had used to be, she had hung several plants from the ceiling; ferns and mosses mostly, but also a few creeping vines that bloomed in the sun. They were useful for a great deal of her witchcraft and their scents helped with meditation. Her bookshelves, she had simply pushed out of the way of the window. She had also replaced her carpet and, in a very recent move, purchased a low mahogany table that sat in the center of several cushions. She was, slowly but surely, building a collection of worry stones, and the table housed a bowl of them. Her favorites were at her bedside.

Now, when she walked in, eyes aching with tiredness, the sun felt again like an assault. She crossed the room and twitched the curtains closed, leaving the space considerably dimmer, but still infused with light by virtue of the candles she had perched in odd places. She fell rather than climbed onto her bed, and was asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

I mean...I was never going to kill anyone.

Thank you so much for reading + reviews are always helpful!

xxx