Adaptation

by Cyberwraith9

Life is change. Do you have what it takes to change with it?

32. Gestures

Disclaimer

Teen Titans is a registered trademark of DC Comics and Cartoon Network Inc. All trademarked characters, locations, themes and ideas are used without permission in a work of fan-created fiction. The following has been done without profit for purely entertainment purposes. All original concepts, characters, themes and ideas within are the copyrighted property of the author, and are not to be reproduced without his prior consent. Additional information used in creating Teen Titans: Adaptation is courtesy of Titans Tower Online.

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Teen Titans
Adaptation

By Cyberwraith9

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Gestures

The warehouse door burst off of Superboy's knuckles, caving inward on its way to the floor. A wave of dust rolled out from beneath its crashing fall, which rang throughout the reaches of the cavernous interior. The gust of air sparkled in the light spilling through the loading dock door.

Rose Wilson steeled her eyes against the gust, keeping her gaze leveled at the six Titans framed in the empty door. Her thumb brushed one of the hilts strung to her slender waist for reassurance. Anxiety made her heart stumble in her chest. She kept her nerves from reaching her face, meeting their six glares with a cool, haughty expression.

Around her stood five others, all young like her or younger than her, all loyal to her cause through money or promises. The smallest of them, a spindly boy at her side, stepped forward unprompted. He wore a green body suit and matching domino mask, with a question mark emblazoned on his spoon chest.

"Pop Quiz!" cackled Kwiz Kid, Rose's recruited strategist. "My salty legs are fit to burst, and growing soggy! Find me before the fire sinks, and—"

The Titans moved into the warehouse, unperturbed by Kwiz Kid's shrill riddle. Speedy shouldered his bow and produced from his quarrel a crude bomb of dynamite strapped to a black box detonator. Broken wires trailed from the bottom of the box, rendering the bomb inert. "Yeah, yeah," he said, and tossed the dead bomb across the floor. "We already solved your dumbass quiz. You left this under the docks, by the way."

"We actually had to check three or four times," Aqualad piped in. He still dripped of seawater from his underwater check of Steel City's marina. "I mean, just the one bomb? Next time try and make us work for it a little."

"Or better yet, don't," Wonder Girl said. She floated above the rest of them with Superboy. Her lasso trailed from her fist, its noose open and hungry. "We've got more than enough to do without dealing with you morons again."

From Rose's other side came a venomous scoff, emanating from the grille of a bulbous, split helmet. An armored boy of amphibious design crouched beside Rose, his red and orange hues impossible to miss even in the shadows of the warehouse. The fish out of water, Kid Devil Ray, clutched his trident and snarled, "I told you we needed more bombs, Question Dork!"

Behind him, a monstrous creature stood in confused delight. His skin resembled chalky blue-white crystal, with a thousand different facets composing his muscular shape. A black shirt with a reversed Superman shield stretched to encompass his blocky chest. Wiry black hair clung to his scalp and crawled above his eyes as brows, which lifted at Wonder Girl's barking voice. "Me am wanting more bombs!" said Match. "Plan am no working! Wonder Girl am no here!"

"Ugh. Him?" Wonder Girl muttered, and heard Superboy grunt a similar thought.

A lean boy tensed behind Rose. His outline blurred with bottled speed, making his black and green, lightning-striped suit into a dark haze. His yellow goggles, adorned with long hooked bolts from his ears, rested longingly on the golden Kid Flash among the Titans. "C'mon, c'mon!" growled Inertia. "Let's just kill 'em! C'mon!"

"No," Rose snapped. She drew her sabers in a long, deliberate motion, and held them at defensive angles. "Stay together. Lend each other support. I want them kept busy, not dead."

A feral growl emanated from the elegant neck of the creature crouched before Rose. Blue and gold armor wrapped around the creature in feminine curves, accented by the otherworldly beauty of her dark feline features and bountiful hair. Her claws raked the floor, tearing furrows into the concrete. "Busy them yourself. I'm here for blood!" Pantha snarled, and pounced.

Hastily, Rose swung her sword forward, trying to mask the breakdown in command. "Tyrants, terrorize!" she bellowed.

Until the moment of their charge, Robin had waited at the fore, his body cloaked in the scalloped folds of his cape. He threw back the folds, unveiling readied birdarangs beneath his fluttering wings. "Go," he uttered.

Action exploded around him in five parts, flying and running headlong into the fight. "Titans Together!" they bellowed, emboldened by new unity. Even as the chaos of battle separated them, they fought together.

A green haze filled the room, and then converged on the Titans. They recognized the color as Inertia seconds too late to do anything to stop him. But Kid Flash vanished from their ranks, becoming a blur that tinged Inertia's haze with yellow. The speedsters' fight raged on at unfathomable velocity, well beyond the range of any other Titan or Tyrant to intercede.

Rose led the rest of the Tyrants headlong into the charging Titans. She felt an impact against her swords an instant before Robin appeared in front of her. Birdarangs trembled in his grasp, reversed, their winged blades cradling the edges of her sabers. Rose gritted her teeth and tried to force edged death down upon Robin. Her sabers refused to budge, no matter the sweat and muttered curses Rose poured into them.

Implacable calm rendered Robin's face glacial in spite of the tremendous force pressed upon him. He held her blades at bay with his birdarangs. The blank expression surrounding his mask unsettled Rose more than his early entrance had. She leaned into his face, and snarled, "I bet you think you've won, don't you?"

Robin grunted, pressing against her blades. Her sabers' edges glinted, reflecting in the lenses of his mask to make his glare flash.

"Well, you've already lost," she spat. Her arms quivered. Her efforts doubled, fed by apoplectic disgust for the arrogant Titan. Inch by ragged inch, her sabers began their descent toward Robin's stony features. "I won the moment you decided to stop me. You think I care about blowing up some stupid dock? Or about these retards? Forcing you to act, making a big spectacle, that's the kind of thing I need to draw out—"

Robin's arms straightened with a sudden jerk, as though her effort meant nothing. The move forced her back into a stagger just to keep her footing. "Hold that thought," he said. He spun and planted his heel under her rib cage, driving the wind out of her as she skidded onto her back.

Arrows and question marks peppered the air. The arrows sank into concrete and dotted the far wall, their sharp points keeping Kwiz Kid on the run. Kwiz Kid's tumbling, curved grenades bounced wide as a result, their explosions forcing Speedy to sidle and straife.

Overhead, Wonder Girl struggled in a viselike blue grasp. Match pinned her arms to her sides with his, clutching her to his irregular chest. She felt hot laughter stir the hair tucked behind her ear. "Me am hating you never, Wonder Girl!" Match declared, leaning in for a kiss.

A rough, wet sensation clamped onto her neck. She screamed and struggled harder. "Augh! It's like getting a hickey from a geode!" she bawled.

Superboy's fist brushed her cheek as he drove it into Match's distracted face. The cloned clone tumbled free of Wonder Girl, who grasped her wet neck with revulsion. Before Match could recover his flight path, Superboy careened into him. "Hey!" Superboy snapped, "That am my not-girlfriend!"

Fury lit Match's eyes, washing Superboy's surprise with red heat. "You am no real Superboy!" Match bellowed. His hands found Superboy's, and laced into them with crushing force. "Me am real Superboy!"

"Hoo, boy," Superboy muttered, and pushed back in the contest of super-strength.

Speedy felt his hair stir at a questionade's close detonation. Shrapnel stung across his back, most of it absorbed by his body armor. Warmth trickled down his neck beneath a sharp kiss to the back of his scalp. He touched the warmth and saw sticky blood come back on his gloved fingertips. Scowling, he nocked another arrow. "Hold still, Kid Riddle!" he snarled.

Two birdarangs streaked into Speedy's shot. One clipped the questionade from Kwiz Kid's hand, making the deadly punctuation skitter away harmlessly. The other birdarang flew across Kwiz Kid's jaw. He spun, trailing stringy blood from his lip on his way to the ground. His eyes rolled back into his head, which bounced hard, and then fell still.

"Hey!" Speedy cried. "I had him lined up!"

But Robin was on the move. His cape streamed behind his low, determined sprint across the warehouse floor. His eyes remained high on the battle overhead. Between him and the aerial fight stood Aqualad and Kid Devil Ray, both locked in their own standoff.

"You're good, little prince," Kid Devil Ray crowed, his voice reverberating from his helmet as the two combatants circled each other. "But me? I'm a real cold-bloo—Hey!"

Kid Devil Ray staggered as Robin leapt and sprang off the armored Tyrant's shoulder. The push knocked the Tyrant onto his backside, forcing the trident out of his hands. Before he could rise, an electro-disc surreptitiously stuck to his back alighted, filling Kid Devil Ray with a nimbus of crackling light. The disc's stylized "R" blackened into illegibility while Kid Devil Ray convulsed. His powered armor became a three hundred pound prison of smoking components that laid him flat on the ground.

Crystalline blue hands wrapped around Superboy's face, squeezing with pressure enough to turn his head into a bloody diamond of condensed meat and bone. "Little help?" he howled through Match's fingers, pulling at them without effect.

Robin's leap lifted him above the contest between Superboy and Match. He filled his palm with a black sphere from his belt without looking. As he arced over the pair, he hurled the sphere down into their midst. It burst above them with a glowing powder that coated them both.

The glow enveloped Match, who howled in pain. His strength fled from Superboy's face, allowing the brawny Titan to see himself covered and surrounded by an alien glow. "Ah! Kryptonite!" he screamed, and began clawing at the clinging powder.

Then he noticed the color. The powder glowed with the color of faint blue chalk. He didn't feel the sapping, agonizing sensation he associated with kryptonite. But as he watched, Match cratered the floor in a screaming heap, convulsing as though the powder had been kryptonite. He pinched some of the powder out of his hair and rolled it between his fingers. "…the hell?" he muttered.

Wonder Girl touched down a half-second after Match made his meteoric landing. She winced in sympathy. Then a hot pain arched her back, making her wince for real. She whirled, and found Pantha crouched behind her. The feline Tyrant licked her reddened claws with a sneer.

The lasso at Wonder Girl's side swung into her hand, its noose already crackling with her rage. "Oh, you—" Wonder Girl began, widening Pantha's sneer.

Robin came down hard on Pantha, landing from his tremendous leap. His metal soles drove between Pantha's shoulder blades. Pantha crumpled under him, her chin striking the floor hard enough to rattle her eyes. As Robin stepped off, Pantha groaned. Wonder Girl doubted she would rise under her own power any time soon.

She glared at Robin's indifferent glance. "Nice teamwork," she grunted.

The green blur permeating the warehouse coalesced behind Robin. Inertia caught the Teen Wonder by the throat with his arm. A swift jerk drew Robin off-balance as Inertia pressed his other hand's fingertips to Robin's temple. The fingers buzzed against Robin's skull, drawing an instant migraine throughout his head.

"Nobody move!" Inertia howled past Robin's ear. He glared at the remaining Titans, and put as much of Robin as he could between him and them. "Now, you're all gonna turn around and walk away, or I swear I'll vibrate my hand right through birdie's melon and stir his brains into a slushy!"

Kid Flash appeared in front of the others with his hands raised entreatingly. "Hey! Let the slowpoke go, you good-looking son of a bitch," Kid Flash snapped. "Let's keep this between us."

Furious heat welled in Superboy's eyes. "You hurt Robin, and you won't be around to brag about it, skid mark," he barked.

"You think I'm kidding?" Inertia screeched. His hand shook harder, bruising the skin at Robin's temple. "Back the hell off, before I—!"

Robin remained statuesque in the speedster's deadly grasp. His thumb brushed the buckle of his belt. The motion triggered a hidden cache of pink gas that exploded from the belt's canisters and swallowed them both.

Inertia scrambled back out of the pink cloud, coughing it back at Robin. "Ugh! What the fu…" He staggered, swaying violently. His feet danced from side to side, trying to stay under him. He collapsed to the floor, his eyelids heavy beneath the yellow tint of his goggles, his body limp and sprawled.

Kid Flash sped behind Wonder Girl as Robin stepped out of the dissipating pink cloud. He peered over her shoulder, and said in a startled voice, "What the hell is that stuff? Speedonite?"

"A paralytic agent," Robin said. He tapped his nose, and snorted a pair of nasal filters into the palm of his glove.

"Nice," Speedy said, bracing his bow across his shoulders as he examined the motionless speedster. "He won't be moving for a couple of hours." He sniffed, and then backpedaled. Revulsion twisted his features as he added, "Or controlling his bowels."

Blue powder sprayed from Superboy's hands as he brushed though his hair. "Okay. But what the hell is this stuff that knocked Match out so fast?"

Robin turned, surveying the warehouse floor. "Kryptonite," he said.

Superboy screamed and flinched. Then he stared down at his blue hands, and said, "Yeah, but…huh?"

"Kryptonite doesn't usually affect imperfect clones like Match," Wonder Girl said. She swiped her finger across Superboy's forehead and rolled the blue powder between her fingertips. Looking up at Robin, she said, "You altered it. You turned it into some kind of Bizarro kryptonite?"

"More or less," Robin clipped.

"So it's still radioactive? Am I going to get, like, super-cancer, or something?" Superboy asked, eyeing the powder.

Smirking, Wonder Girl said, "Maybe if you ate it. But I don't…" She watched Superboy consider his finger, which drew closer to his open mouth. "Conner! Don't you dare!" she snapped.

He jerked his hand back. "I wasn't gonna!"

Strutting forward, Kid Flash circled around his paralyzed nemesis and traded a high-five with Aqualad. "Sweet and slick! That's six points for the Teen Titans, and a grand total of zip for Tyrants East. Hoo-ah!"

"Five."

The sharp growl spun Kid Flash in place. He looked back. "Muh?"

"There are only five here," Robin said. "Wilson got away."

The rest of the Titans turned, searching the interior of the warehouse. All five of Rose's recruited Tyrants lay in the heaps in which Robin had rendered them. But Rose herself had vanished, leaving behind no trace.

Robin drew his cape about him with a sharp gesture and stalked toward the toppled door. "Secure the rest of them. I'm going try and track her from here."

A long shadow followed Robin out to the loading dock. Aqualad watched him go with a shake of his head, tousling his long, luxurious hair. "He seems kind of grim for a guy who just beat six super villains by himself," he grumbled.

Superboy watched Robin's shadow disappear from the dock before turning back to the remaining Titans. His brow wrinkled in thought. He didn't react when Wonder Girl sighed and said, "Let's wrap these guys up for the Steel City Police. C'mon."

Mirth waggled in Kid Flash's eyebrows as he slapped the uncharacteristically somber Superboy on the shoulder. "Hey, Super Brick, no need to get jealous. Just because my clone is prettier than yours...," he said, and elbowed Speedy with a laugh.

"And twice as smart as the original," Speedy said, elbowing him back.

"Ye—Hey!"

"Now, guys!" Wonder Girl snapped, startling the duo out of their banter.

As the others secured their respective nemeses with steel cord and magic lassos, Superboy stared out the open door. No sign of Robin remained.

But then, Superboy hadn't seen his friend in a long time anyway.

---

Raven leaned back in her seat, savoring relief from the throbbing that made her feet feel fit to burst out of her boots. The dissonance of emotions that swamped the food court rattled against her walls, a hundred different wordless expressions that niggled at her respite. Joining in came their voices, and the sound of their teeth grinding upon fast food.

Even louder, a soft, voiceless babble drifted up from her stomach, which pushed out of her in a black hill that hung over her aching thighs. The babble lurked inside her psychic walls. She couldn't block the babble, but she had learned to ignore it. She kept telling herself it would be excellent practice for when the babble finally came out of her.

Sighing, she let her mind and gaze wander separately. Both came back together when a young couple walked past her table. The couple pushed a stroller ahead of them, their thoughts buried in the bundle blanketed in its seat. A pudgy, glassy-eyed baby burbled softly. His every sound consumed his parents' attention.

They shared a smile that gave Raven pause. She listened to their silence, and felt a pang deep beneath her walls. They radiated selfless joy, and fierce devotion, and shapeless anxiety, and covetous need…a rich, deep, rushing river of emotion that almost knocked Raven out of her seat. She watched them watcher their child, and knew she didn't have a river like that in her.

Raven blinked as she realized that parents had stopped. Their attention drifted nervously to her stare, and then down to her stomach. Not knowing what else to do, Raven tilted her head and lifted her eyebrows. Her silent question embarrassed the parents. Their discomfort rebuffed Raven as they wheeled their baby away from her at a nervous pace.

She sighed again, and turned her eyes to the table, hardening her walls until the only thing she could sense was the babble from her stomach.

A paper cup slid to a stop under her nose. Rich Colombian goodness burped out of the mouth on its plastic lid and dribbled down to its cardboard insulator. She looked up and went blind at the dazzling smile hovering across the table. "One coffee, black, two sugars," Beast Boy said, and took the seat across from her.

"I don't like sugar in my coffee," Raven said. She glanced at the mountain of ice cream and chocolate syrup piled in a bowl in front of him. Her mouth watered as he attacked the sundae with two spoons. She

Beast Boy shrugged between spoonfuls. "I know. But you're always cranky after class, and since you wouldn't eat anything here, I had to sneak you something sweet."

She sipped the coffee. Even as he said it, hunger nipped at the inside of her stomach. Beast Boy's sundae tantalized her with its saccharine wiles.

A knowing glint flashed in his eye as he set his second spoon on the far side of the bowl, nearest to her. "I thought class went really well this week. I'm totally getting the hang of this 'hold their hand' thing. Next week we should swap places, just to shake things up."

"I don't think the other mothers would appreciate that very much," Raven said, and willed her hand away from the second spoon. "Probably about as much as they appreciated their breathing exercises being called 'hippoventilation.'"

Raising his spoon, Beast Boy announced, "I maintain that the hippo is a noble, graceful king of the river. And if they don't buy that, there's always Plan C."

"Plan C? You don't have a Plan B?"

He snorted. "Duh. There's no such animal as a 'beetah,'" he said. Crouching, Beast Boy morphed into a cheetah, drawing gasps and excited shouts from the rest of the mall's traffic. His mouth opened in a catty smile that arched Raven's eyebrow. Then he reverted, pointing and laughing at her. "Ha! I got a Raven-laugh."

Her brow dropped over narrowing eyes. "I didn't laugh."

"No, but you Raven-laughed. You did the Spock thing." He tried to mirror her brow with his own, and had to push it up his forehead. "Deny it all you want, but I can read you like a book."

She sipped her coffee, keeping her face carefully neutral. "I'd be more insulted," she said, "if your simile didn't hinge on you actually reading a book."

Beast Boy clutched the spoon to his chest as though he'd been skewered. "Oh! Cut down in the prime of my life! Tell all my beautiful lady admirers I thought of them in the end." He collapsed backwards, sprawled over the back of his seat. His spoon swung back toward his sundae all on its own, groping blindly for another scoop to bring to his slackened mouth.

Raven rolled her eyes at his antics, which had made them both the center of attention at her Lamaze class, just as they made them the center of attention here. He hovered around her, humiliating her, practically hounding her.

Warmth seeped into her hands. She looked down at the cup of coffee cradled in her hands, the drink Beast Boy had insisted on getting her. When he was around, Raven couldn't want for anything—food, drink, or help, whether she wanted it or not. She slid her hands around the cup, letting the warmth trickle through her cold skin.

The memory of his hand in hers came to her unbidden. He had held her hand through her class's exercises. His encouraging smile never wavered, even for a second, no matter what sarcastic barbs she slung his way.

"Finish your sundae," Raven told him, and pushed out of her seat. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Beast Boy half-rose to follow, but the shake of her head put him back in his seat with a shrug. He watched her disappear into the mall. Then he destroyed the sundae with his full attention. By the time Raven came back, all that remained was a drizzle spread across his smile.

She sat back down and slid a white plastic bag across the table, bumping it into his empty bowl. "Here. You're welcome," she said.

"Uh, thank you?" Beast Boy poked at the package. "What is it?"

"It's my way of saying 'leave me alone for a few hours.' I went to the Electronique down the hall and asked the clerk for the newest, most popular, most idiotic video game they had for the Gamestation X. Take it far away from here and play it."

Scorn whistled out Beast Boy's nose. "Raven, Raven, Raven," he said, shaking his head. "You can't just buy a video game on a whim. There are dozens of different kinds, with different themes, for different tastes. It'd be like me just going out and buying you a new…tea…dongle."

Her eyebrow rose again. "Hmm. My mistake. I thought for sure you'd like it. The girl on the box has enormous—"

"Sold." Beast Boy cackled and snatched up the bag. He made it three steps out of his chair before digging his heels into the tile and screeching to a stop. Turning back, he questioned Raven with a look.

Raven waved him away. "Go. I can take care of myself." At his persistent look, she relented, and added, "I'll call you if I start to hippoventilate."

His question became a grin. "I'll be here, quick like a beetah," he promised.

Beast Boy sank into the crowd with his new game in tow, leaving Raven alone at the table. She sipped her coffee one last time. The face she'd been holding back finally broke through her stoicism. Black ether enveloped the cup, carrying it to the garbage.

Her soul poured into Beast Boy's trash, ready to toss it after the coffee. Then she paused. The second spoon hung against the side of his bowl, still waiting for her. Its stem bumped into her finger as she floated the bowl into her hand.

She ran her finger along the edge of the spoon. A sliver of chocolate syrup stained her fingertip. Setting the bowl down, she popped the chocolate into her mouth, and stared past the spoon at the empty seat across from her.

Raven drew her communicator. Flipping it open, she typed out a brief text. Then she trashed the bowl and stood, resolving herself to find a real cup of coffee after she braved the mall for a few necessities.

---

Cyborg's finger hissed with a tight blue flame. A seam formed in the CUTTER's armor as he drew the flame across the crumpled section. Sparks fell in a curtain beneath his touch until he severed the section of armor, and let it clatter to the floor.

He sighed, silenced his torch, and drew the back of his hand across his brow. The small piece of armor lying at his feet was just a fraction of the ruined hulk that his CUTTER had become. One entire section of treads still needed to be rebuilt, and the roof still had mace imprints he had yet to pound back into shape.

Just looking at the tank made him cringe. But when he looked at the tank, he didn't have to look at the salvaged wreck of the Icarus sitting in pieces behind him. The Bay felt more like a junkyard than a hangar at the moment.

The doors to the Bay brushed open, and Tek entered. The smile she wore eased some of the weariness weighing in his limbs, but the pair of cold drinks she carried made him return her smile in kind. "That is the prettiest sight I've seen all day," he said.

Pink color flushed across Tek's cheeks. She looked down at her blue and white skin suit, and said, "He sees a girl in spandex, and what really gets his motor going is Lightspeed Cola? You need a tune-up."

He accepted the proffered cola, opened it with his thumb, and drained half the can in a single pull. An appreciative belch rattled his chest as he sank back against the CUTTER. "Right now, I would give just about anything to get just one of my motors running. These wrecks won't be going anywhere under their own power for at least a month."

Tek leaned next to him and sipped her soda. "Isn't that the price you pay for being brilliant?"

Cyborg choked on a laugh. He barely swallowed the other half of the can before coughing with laughter. "You and your rotten silver linings. If I had known giving you a real name would make you so damn cheerful, I would've stuck with calling you 'Hey You' from the start. I'd better take it back."

"You do, and I'll pout forever," Tek warned him, her lower lip already aquiver. Resuming her smile, she said, "But if you wanted to share my good mood, I think I know how. Why don't you take a break with me?"

The empty can crumpled in Cyborg's hand. He squeezed it into a ball. Millions of dollars' worth of military hardware and targeting sensors let him sink the tiny ball into the Bay's garbage can a full twenty yards across the room. "Kid, nothing would make me happier than to take off and play. But right now, we have two wrecks and no vehicles. That's two more wrecks and two fewer vehicles than we need to keep kicking ass and taking names. Like you said, 'the price of genius.'"

Disappointment made Tek's lip slide forward again. Her pout pulled a smile back to Cyborg's face, but did not pull him from the CUTTER. She ambled backwards toward the doors as his hands became tools again. "Mmn," she grunted, shaking her head. "Too bad. I, uh…I had bought this whole rack of ribs…"

Cyborg straightened. His torch skittered across the side of the CUTTER, leaving a long black trail. "Ribs?" he uttered.

"I was gonna give your grill a real workout. But if you're too busy, I guess I'll just have to figure it out by myself," she said, and sighed. "I hope I figure out the sauce. They say that's the secret to great ribs."

Tek knew she had him even before she turned around. The telltale ratchet of his tools becoming wringing hands gave him away. "Half an hour, kid. I need to close this thing up and scrub down."

"Oh, no," she said, and teased him with a sashay of her hips. "You're too busy. I can't let you run off and play when you've got so much work to do. Not unless you use the magic word."

"Uh, please?" Cyborg asked.

She looked back, tilting her bangs into her twinkling eyes. "That's not the magic word, genius."

An understanding smile cut through his confusion. "Can I help you with your ribs, 'Allie?'" he said sweetly.

"That's more like it. I'll see you in the Commons. Hustle up, huh?" she called over her shoulder as she disappeared through the doors.

Tek waited until she reached the end of the hall, and then checked her communicator again. She shook her head and closed the yellow device. "Absolutely crazy. You're just lucky I'm agreeable and gullible."

She continued down the hall until she came back to Sector Prime, the sprawling central section of the Compound. The late day in the skylight cast warm color across her corner of the walkway, turning her gold. She leaned over the railing and twisted her gaze to the balcony hung over her head.

"Agreeable, gullible, and crazy," she said to herself, and sighed.

---

Titans Lair echoed with Superboy's whoop. He flew from the entry platform, skimming his fist through the waterfall that streamed from the pumps over their heads to feed the moon pool at the base of the cave. A sheen of water sprayed off his arm, drawing a faint rainbow through the air. "That kicked all kinds of ass!" he cried.

Wonder Girl kicked off the platform, following Superboy with more restraint. Even still, his antics gave her a small, private smirk. "I have to admit, it was kind of nice to have a clean, straightforward win," she said.

Those less aerially inclined Titans gathered at the edge of the platform. Robin punched the face of a keypad. The platform lurched, and then lowered them smoothly to the cave floor. Besides the moon pool, which connected them to the ocean by way of an underground tunnel, the main chamber of the lair stood largely empty. They had yet to add the vehicles and equipment meant for the chamber.

Aqualad pulled at his arm, making his shoulder pop. "Not a bad scrap," he admitted.

"Says you. I didn't even get to beat my bad guy." Kid Flash grumbled. His leg jittered the entire ride to the floor. His glare drilled into the back of Robin's head without effect.

Wry amusement drew Speedy's lips into a smile. "Yeah," he said breezily, "it's getting to where a guy can't even beat on his own evil clone anymore."

"I know, right?" Kid Flash complained. When he saw Speedy's expression, he gave the rest of his glower with the archer. "You're pretty smug for a slowpoke named 'Speedy,' you know that?"

The instant the platform touched ground, Kid Flash sped out of the chamber, leaving a vanishing yellow wake behind him. His vortex ruffled Robin's cape. The Teen Wonder stepped off the platform, letting his cape settle on its own. The wind didn't make him bat an eye.

Superboy and Wonder Girl landed before Robin, the former with a flourish and the latter with a roll of her eyes. Beaming, Superboy said, "What, no words of praise from our fearless leader?"

Robin shouldered past him wordlessly.

The larger boy staggered back at Robin's brusque brush-off. Frowning, he said, "What? Are you mad because we lost the one girl? Oh, come on! Just because one got away—"

"The leader got away, Kon," Robin said without turning. "She'll put another team together and start this whole thing again. That's what they do. We didn't win anything." He disappeared into an opening in the face of the cave wall. The shadows swallowed him whole on his way into the interior of the Lair.

Aqualad grimaced at the empty corridor mouth. "Well, that's one way to kill a victory bash. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find someone with a cheerier disposition than Robin's. Maybe an eel or an anemone." He stepped backwards, spread his arms, and splashed back into the moon pool, disappearing into the dark water in seconds.

"Ditto that," Speedy said with a snort. "I bet the Mess has a head of cabbage with a better personality." He rested his bow across his shoulders and left down a second corridor in the cavern.

Superboy's shoulders sagged. He felt Wonder Girl's hand on his shoulder, and looked back at her apologetic expression. "I don't get it," he said. "I mean, yeah, we lost Snow White. But this was still huge for us. It was our first fight that didn't involve taking it on the chin from the Justice League. Isn't that worth anything?"

She frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I mean, we've been working on this for months. The whole time, has he cracked one smile? Told one joke? Told any of us that we've done a good job?"

"No, I mean the Snow White thing. Were you talking about the Wilson girl?"

"What?" Superboy goggled her. "Her hair was white. Snow White. I thought that was obvious."

Wonder Girl's head tilted. "Snow White was a brunette. She got her name from her complexion."

"Why are you…? Look, that's not the point!" he said. "Why isn't anyone taking this seriously? Robin's acting like a total jerk."

She patted his shoulder again, and said sweetly, "Conner, Robin is a jerk. Everyone he knows thinks he's a jerk. Titans West all thinks he's a jerk. But you saw what he did today. He's the kind of jerk who gets the job done. Isn't that why you wanted him?"

He deflated, dropping his head. "But he wasn't always a jerk. When I met him…"

"People change, Conner." Wonder Girl floated up and ruffled his hair fondly. "Maybe you haven't been around long enough to figure that out."

He folded his arms and tucked his chin into an infuriatingly adorable pout. "It sucks," he decided.

"It sucks more than anything else in the world," she agreed. Offering him one last smile, she flew back up toward the Lair's exit.

Superboy let her go without a look. He stared through the floor of the cave, his mind wandering through the very first of his memories. A bright, colorful Boy Wonder had given him his first smile, and told him his first joke. That cheery sidekick had become his first friend. Now Superboy didn't even recognize the Teen Wonder he had become.

"People change." He grumbled the words. Lifting his gaze out of the stone floor, he set his sights on the shadows that had swallowed Robin. "Well, screw that," he said, and flew into the corridor.

---

Raven eased into her chair at the back of the room. The shadows of the dim room draped themselves comfortably over her cloak as she pushed back her hood and shook her hair free. She caught the eye of a roving barista, who nodded at her, and sidled toward the coffee bar to get Raven her usual.

A sigh wisped from Raven's nose, taking with it a knot of tension Raven hadn't felt until sitting down. This secluded, underground coffee house was her favorite place to go in the city. Literally underground, the business had been built into the basement of a building that had been torn down years ago, and was accessed by a single stairwell in an empty lot. It had no name that Raven knew of, and a clientele that spread its renown by selective word-of-mouth.

A stage stretched across the front of the bar. At the moment, a lone musician and his guitar filled the house with acoustic white noise of a middling quality. Raven let the music wash over her, and decided not to break his guitar's strings with her mind. Noise didn't bother her as much as it once had.

She left her table's lamp off, preferring the dark. On occasion, she came to the coffee house to read with a drink, and to escape the Compound's fervent psychic caterwauling. The coffee house didn't feel like part of the city. It felt quieter, as though its secretive nature kept it apart from the torrential emotions that permeated the rest of the city.

Because of the relative quiet, the emotions she found among the patrons felt more acute, something else she didn't mind. The low lighting and soft music kept emotions softer. Each aspect of the coffee house worked to keep its patrons calm and relaxed, and as a result Raven's psychic walls endured a comparative breeze to the constant hurricane aboveground.

The barista set a cup in front of her, and then disappeared as only baristas can. Raven pulled at the cup's intoxicating aroma with a deep breath. Half-dark, half-decaf. Before the child had come along, she would have had them grind pavement into a cup, caffeinate it, and serve it to her hot enough to crack the ceramic mug. Nowadays Beast Boy monitored her caffeine intake, and she knew his nose could differentiate her favorite dark roast from the decaf-diluted brew in her cup now. It wouldn't be worth his chiding to risk slipping back into old habits.

She sipped, and blew a bemused breath across the steam of her mug. A priestess of Azar worried about being scolded by a fifteen-year-old. Were she not the very priestess in question, such a notion might have possibly made her almost smile.

A mote of bemusement sparked across the room, seemingly echoing hers. It rang with a note familiar enough to draw her eyes from her mug. She nearly dropped the mug when she pierced the gloom and found the source of the bemusement seated at one of the booths lining the wall.

Raven saw him notice her astonished stare. His face flashed with a smile. He nodded, and then turned his attention back to the stage.

She tapped the side of her mug in silent debate. Annoyance drifted through her, riding the gentle eddies of the child's babble. For one beautiful moment, she resolved herself to ignore the surprise completely, and just enjoy her coffee in solitude. Then, with a grunt, she hauled herself from her seat and carried her mug with her to his booth.

Bushido raised his teacup in greeting as Raven squeezed herself opposite him in the booth. "Good evening, Raven," he whispered.

"It figures you would know about this place," Raven grumbled, keeping her voice under the music.

"There are three key components to a fulfilled life," Bushido replied. "Sustenance, sleep, and stimulation. That's why I make it a point to find the best sources of all three wherever I travel. This establishment, for instance, brews one of the finest cups of jasmine oolong on the West Coast." He sipped, and a smile blossomed behind his cup.

"And I suppose murder falls under 'stimulation.' Or would 'sleep' be more appropriate?" Raven asked.

His smile widened as he considered her disgusted look. "You always make a point of raising my past when we speak to one another. Interesting. You truly believe that you hate me that much, don't you?"

She sneered. "You held a sword to my neck," she reminded him. Then she scowled, and echoed, "Believe? What do you mean, I 'believe' I hate you?"

Bushido took another sip. He settled his teacup onto its saucer, careful of the clink it made. "I need no reminder of who I used to be. We both know that. You say such things to remind yourself, not me."

"And why would I need to remind myself of that?" she asked in a mordent whisper.

"Because you don't hate me. You want to, but you don't. Part of you likes me, or at least respects me. And that bothers you a great deal," he told her.

Raven blinked. Her third eye slivered open, sipping at his aura for any taste of duplicity. She sensed smugness, assuredness, and beneath it all a sense of absolute conviction that made her nauseous.

"Listen very carefully," Raven said, and leaned across the table to pin him with her glare. "I tolerate you. I don't believe you're a threat, if only because I or Victor or Garfield could tell otherwise and tear you to pieces before you could become a threat. I believe you see yourself as a real Titan for reasons I can't begin to imagine.

"But I don't trust you. I don't like you. And I wouldn't waste the miniscule effort it would take to hate you, but I honestly, profoundly disdain everything you are. And the day you leave our lives forever can't come soon enough."

She sat back, feeling light and flush. A tingle of adrenal vindication stormed her veins, making her quiver. She gripped her mug to hide it, and kept her cool gaze level with his.

In aura and expression, Bushido remained inscrutable. He held her gaze a moment more with a calm, contemplative look. Then he smiled and shrugged. "As you say," he said.

Disgust puffed from Raven's lips. She slid from the booth, refusing to look at him a moment more. Her coffee abandoned, Raven stalked from the booth, drawing her hood over her head to block the memory of Bushido's infuriating smile.

Halfway to the stairs, Raven's anger got the better of her. She stopped to collect herself. Embers stirred in her soul, fed by the distant hatred that followed her always. She quashed the embers, and concentrated on the hatred, walling it out of her mind alongside the rest of her emotions.

As her mind stilled, her sense of reason resumed. It fixated on the self-satisfied smile she knew waited behind her in the booth. She knew better than to dwell on it. On him.

But her curiosity resurfaced too. It pulled at her, nagging her, pestering her, until she pivoted and stalked back to the booth. The table jostled as she squeezed back in. "You can't read me," she hissed at him. "And you won't beat me with reverse psychology and patronization."

The musician's set ended with a halfhearted flourish. Mild applause smattered throughout the coffee house as Bushido sipped tea through his smile.

---

Impatience tapped a steady rhythm against the Commons' island countertop by way of Cyborg's finger. He leaned across the counter and grumbled at the clock on the wall. The sun sank into the skyline outside the broad bay windows. Orange radiance spilled between buildings, painting the room with a reminder that he had three or four hundred other things he had to do.

He checked the chronometer in his arm for good measure. The holographic clock flickered in front of his scowl. "Better be a prime cut," he muttered to himself. "Give the kid five more minutes. Then…" His frown deepened. Straightening, he said to the ceiling, "Sarah? Where is Tek—er, Allie?"

"Tek is currently in her room. Would you like me to summon her?" Sarah's voice replied sans body.

A sharp affirmative rose in Cyborg's chest when Beast Boy strode through the open doorway. "Hey, Tin Face!" Beast Boy sang, and swung his plastic bag. "Fancy seeing you outside of the Bay. I figured you had welded yourself to the CUTTER by now."

"Hey yourself, Salad Head. Did you run into Allie on your way in? Any idea what he's doing?" Cyborg asked.

"Armor All? Nope, no clue." Beast Boy dug his hand into his bag with a ferocious smile. "But I know what I'm doing."

Cyborg gaped at the box Beast Boy drew from the bag. "Mega Monkey Brawlers? The kung fu super girls versus robot ninja monkey fighting game? How'd you score that?"

The box didn't last long under Beast Boy's claws. He dug through the packaging and drew out a glistening disc that glinted orange in the sunset. "Right? Raven got it for me."

"Raven. Raven, like the one that lives down the hall?" Cyborg glanced from side to side, and felt mildly relieved that the world hadn't fallen apart around him. "Raven got you a gift?" he asked again, and ran an auto-diagnostic on his aural systems, just to be sure.

Beast Boy chuckled. "I'm pretty sure she was just bribing me to leave her alone. She just needs a night in that grim little coffee place she likes, and she'll be back to calling me names in no time. In the meantime, I plan on making the most of it." He held the disc aloft, twisting its reflective glare into Cyborg's face.

Flinching, Cyborg laughed, and blocked the glare with his hand. "Well, good for you." Glancing at the clock, he sobered. Tek still hadn't shown up, and Cyborg had a list of responsibilities that overheated his processor to think about. If she had lost her interest in ribs, he would have to get back to work. "You enjoy your bribe. I'm gonna go put our tank back together. It'd be nice not to have to carry all those groceries home anymore."

As Cyborg walked away, Beast Boy's smile bottomed out. "Dude," he said. "Come on. You're wearing your rib apron. You were gonna goof off anyway. Why not goof off with me?"

Cyborg paused. He had intended to spend an hour prepping Tek's phantom ribs. His bottom lip slipped beneath his teeth as he glanced at the clock in consideration.

Beast Boy waved the game disc at him. "It's got a tournament mode with unlockable characters," he sang. "And this one has ultra-realistic jiggle physics!"

Laughter burst from Cyborg. He raised his hands in defeat, lifting the apron over his head as he did. At his mental command, the bay windows turned opaque, snuffing the sun's glare from the room. "Boot it up, Salad Head. I can't beat photorealistic blood and bouncing. But don't complain when you get your butt kicked. I've got nerves of steel."

"And brains of lead." Beast Boy cackled and cleared the couch in one leap. The shapeshifter's energy cemented Cyborg's smile. They all had too few reasons to smile in their lives. He didn't need to pass up a rare moment of peace for work that could wait another hour.

---

Ops thrummed with the rhythm of an uneventful evening. The holographic city map floated overhead, its streets unmarred by Alerts. Fresh air gushed from the vents lining the bottom edge of the railing wall, keeping the balcony cool and pleasant. Sector Prime's lights had dimmed for the evening, which left Ops' bright lights to crawl across the long, sprawling floor in thin shafts.

Starfire sat at the central console, her posture severe for such a lax duty. Her hands were poised at the ends of her chair's armrests. Her gaze cut through the floating map. She poised her body and her mind at a state of constant vigilance, as though she expected trouble to leap through the map itself and attack her.

As a result, she jerked with a start when she heard Tek's chipper voice call from the edge of Ops, "Hey, Kory! How's monitor duty treating you?"

The Titan on watch turned to see Tek stepping onto the balcony. A small, thatched, open basket swung in Tek's hand. It carried a bouquet of tiny colored bottles mixed in with emery boards and sheets of stickers. Tek hummed a tuneless, tone-deaf ditty as she glided to the console next to Starfire's and plunked herself in the seat.

Terse keystrokes brought the duty roster to Starfire's screen. She skimmed the names on the roster before glancing at Tek. "You do not have monitor duty until tomorrow. Bushido is scheduled to relieve me, and not for another three hours."

"I know," Tek chirped with a shrug. "But I didn't have anything better to do, so I thought I'd come up and keep you company for a little bit."

Starfire's features calcified. "Thank you," she said, utterly devoid of gratitude. "However, I would prefer to stand watch alone."

"I know," Tek said again. "You've been keeping to yourself pretty much all the time lately. What's that word?" She wheeled her hand through the air, trying to chase the right word into her mouth. "I always forget, but then I remember, because it sounds like 'loofah.' Aloof!" She snapped her fingers. "You're aloof."

"I…see." Starfire pivoted her seat away from her beaming neighbor and settled her gaze back on the map. "Nevertheless—"

"So I got to thinking," Tek continued in that same breezy tone, "since you and I never get to talk anymore, I should put more of an effort into it. Right? And where's the one place you can't leave, no matter how annoyed you get or how alone you want to be?" When Starfire failed to provide the answer, she grinned, and said, "Monitor duty!"

Starfire thrust her focus into the map. She imagined herself falling up into its holographic folds, wrapping her attention in her duty to watch over the city.

Slowly, Tek's smile slackened, becoming a pursed line. "Oh. I see." Her chin dipped to her chest. "Y'know, Kory, I used to think we could talk about anything. I really miss that. And I was thinking…I was hoping that maybe you would finally let me know what's been bothering you for so long. But if you don't want to talk, I get it."

Silent relief blossomed in Starfire's chest. Then Tek squelched it with a thoughtful sigh. "On the other hand," Tek said, brightening, "I could just stay here and talk to you. Just talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk enough for the both of us. That way I won't get bored, and you won't be lonely. We both win!"

A groan rattled behind Starfire's teeth as Tek tugged the boots off of her skin suit. The basket rattled with Tek's fumbling grasp until she picked out a color she liked, and drew out a bottle of nail polish.

"Isn't it so weird?" Tek asked as she ran the brush over the end of her littlest toe. "I love painting my toenails, but I hate people seeing my feet. I wish my feet were pretty, like yours. Oh, and your hair! But I could never have hair that long. My suit would chew it up, and I'd look like I'd just lost a fight with a weed whacker every time I came out of it…"

---

The Hangar's hatch hid no secrets from Superboy. He saw through them to the sprawling cavern chamber where they housed their jet. Industrial dehumidifiers hidden among the chamber's stalactites thrummed, keeping the air fresh and dry. It was one of the few completely finished sections of the Lair, and consequently one of the nicest.

Yet the Hangar's sole occupant made Superboy hesitate outside in the corridor. He stared through the metal, tapping his fingers against the wall. His nervousness left a divot in the rock face before he noticed, and pulled his hand away.

"Let's go, Superman," he muttered to himself. "You can do this. You have to do this. Good of the team. So…go and do this."

His feet remained rooted to the cut stone floor. The figure in the Hangar continued to work, unaware of Superboy's presence outside. After several minutes, Superboy snorted and massaged the bridge of his nose. "You suck so, so much," he grumbled to himself. "He's not going to be mad. Just go."

Before he could stop himself, he leaned forward, slapped the hatch control, and strode into the Hangar. The smooth, poured concrete clicked against his sneakers, sending echoes ricocheting past the massive East Wing.

A small motorcycle was parked just beyond the edge of the grand jet's shadow. Comparatively miniscule, the motorcycle still drew Superboy's eye first with its bright red armor. Short, decorative wings swept back from the motorcycle's seat, and bore a stylized "R." Parts of the bike's engine lay strewn across a tarp spread underneath its wheels.

Robin crouched beside the open engine of the bike. He'd removed his cape, and streaks of grease stained his tunic. He didn't glance back as Superboy approached, focusing his attention instead on a stubborn bolt his ratchet couldn't unseat.

"Hey, Tim," Superboy said. He stopped at the edge of the tarp, and waited for some kind of acknowledgement. When Robin's attention remained inside the bike, Superboy coughed, and said, "Heh. Working hard, or hardly…um…working."

"Is there something you need, Conner?" Robin asked.

Superboy's jaw clicked shut. He folded his arms and watched Robin wrestle with the bolt. The ratchet groaned with the effort, but the bolt would not budge. After a long minute of the creaking silence, he snapped, "See, this is what I'm talking about."

Robin lowered the ratchet. "You weren't talking about anything."

"No, I wasn't. And you know why?" Superboy said, leaning down. "It's because you're not listening."

The edge of Robin's mask quirked. He found the rag resting next to his leg and wiped his gloves clean. "I'm fairly sure we're having two different conversations right now. You let me know when we narrow it down into one."

Superboy shook his fist as Robin climbed back onto his feet. "See, you always do this. You start making those really snide, snarky, sneakily mean little comments, and then I start trying to figure out what you're really saying, and then you say something else, and distract me, and then…"

"By then you've forgotten what we were really talking about," Robin said.

"Yeah," Superboy agreed. Then he shook his head. "Hey! Quit it!"

Robin squatted over his boxed ratchet set. He experimented with one of the longer ratchets, swapping the head off of his shorter ratchet. "Conner, what do you want?" he asked impatiently.

"Why did you take on the Tyrants alone?"

Superboy's blurted question made them both stop. A slow, deliberate click resounded from Robin's palm as he twisted his ratchet. Robin swept his eyes across the floor and to his bike, circumnavigating Superboy entirely. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

The black, muscular expanse of Superboy's chest blocked Robin from his bike. Robin stared through the red S-shield as he heard Superboy say, "You charged right in, birdarangs blazing, acting like you were the sheriff of Steel City. That's exactly what you taught us to not do."

Robin jumped and flipped. He landed behind Superboy and walked to his bike, all without a sound of effort. "I analyzed the situation and made a tactical decision," he said.

Whirling, Superboy snapped, "You didn't include us. You didn't even talk to us. That's what you've been harping on this whole time: 'talk to your teammates. Let them know what you're doing. Keeping each other informed will keep you all alive.'"

"If I'm the one that taught you that tactic, then I'm clearly the one who knows when to ignore it," Robin said.

The ratchet strained against the bike's stubborn bolt. Its creaking grated in Superboy's sensitive ears, making his jaw clench until his teeth creaked back at the bolt. "You don't talk to us," Superboy said.

"I talk…when I need…to talk," Robin grunted.

"You don't," Superboy said to the back of Robin's head. "You talk at us. You order us around. You haven't talked to me since Metropolis."

Robin set the ratchet aside and turned. "You brought me into this. You were the one that recruited me. You wanted me for this job, and you yanked me out of retirement to get me."

"Yeah."

Rising, Robin brought his masked glare to meet Superboy's. "You wanted Robin. You got Robin."

Superboy jutted his jaw. "I wanted 'you,'" he insisted. "I don't care what you call yourself. Bat Kid, Nightwing Boy, Amazing Lad…whatever, man. But I wanted 'you,' and you're not here."

"What do you want from me?" Robin snapped. "What more do you want me to do for this team?"

"This isn't about the team!" Superboy shouted, tossing up his hands. "Forget about the stupid team for just one second. Relax. Unclench. Hang out. Tell a joke. Grab a bite to eat with us just one time! You haven't done any of that since…"

The thought hung unfinished between them. Superboy deflated, his anger salved by memory. It wasn't until Robin spoke that he snapped out of his own thoughts.

"Christmas, three years go," Robin murmured. "You and I got together at the Ace o' Clubs down in Suicide Slums for hot chocolate and pie."

"You got me that jacket." A wisp of a smile cracked Superboy's granite jaw.

"You looked good in that jacket.

"Until you blasted it off of me."

Robin's mask dipped a fraction of an inch. A great, unseen weight settled over his shoulders. "I'm sorry," he uttered.

Puffing with exasperation, Superboy said, "Man, I don't care about the stupid jacket. I don't care about your costume, or your codename, or any of that. I wanted you, Tim."

Robin didn't stir. A frown creased Superboy's brow. The clone hesitated, and then said, "Do you know why I wanted to be a Titan? It wasn't because the Justice League is about three seconds from imploding. It wasn't to help people. I mean, don't get me wrong, those are good reasons. But really? I wanted friends.

"Last year, in Jump City, when you went off the red, glowy deep end, I saw your friends pull together and kick the snotty bejesus out of you. It took everything they had, but they stopped you. And then they rallied behind you, waiting for you to get better, like it had never happened in the first place."

A faint rasp haunted Robin's voice. "Yes. They did," he said.

Superboy's voice fell to a whisper that rivaled Robin's. "You know what I am. What half of me is. We both do. And one day, if I go off like you did, I want to know that there's somebody who can do for me what they did for you."

"You want a safety net?" Robin asked with returning strength.

"I want friends. I want friends I can count on, and people I can hang with, who understand what it's like to do what we do," Superboy insisted. "When we first started, there was just you and me. The world's finest teen team, remember? But it doesn't have to be like that anymore. We don't have to be alone, Tim."

"We're not."

"You are," Superboy said. Robin didn't reply for several seconds. Folding his arms, Superboy asked, "Why did you charge the Tyrants? Why are you ducking us whenever you're not barking orders at us?"

Robin's masked eyes rose. The blank white stare chilled Superboy down to his unbreakable bones.

"Take that thing off and answer me," Superboy said.

Slowly, Robin reached up. His gloved fingertips brushed the coal black edge of his mask. A small electric charge from the gloves relaxed the mask's metallic fabric, and made Robin's cheeks twitch. He lowered the mask and met Superboy's stare with cold, blue indifference.

"I'm here because you wanted me here," Tim said. "You wanted me to lead this team."

Superboy's eyes narrowed into a glare. He leaned past Tim toward the gutted red motorcycle. Taking the stubborn bolt between his fingers, he twisted, unseating the bolt with a metallic squeal. Superboy held the bolt's greasy stem at Robin, and said, "Must be hard to be the leader of a team you're not really on."

He flicked the bolt at Robin. The stubborn bolt bounced off the badge on Robin's chest, and then sang as it struck the floor. Robin glanced at the bouncing bolt before he looked up, and watched Superboy walk back toward the Hangar's hatch. "Conner," Tim began.

"I changed my mind. Put the mask back on," Superboy said with an audible sneer. "It's better when I can pretend like the attitude's all part of the costume."

The hatch whisked Superboy away, leaving Tim alone under the gaze of the mask he held.

---

The musician finished his set with a strum and a nod. Applause smattered after him as he left the stage. The lights in the coffee house rose, and conversation grew from the brief silence into a steady background murmur.

Bushido folded his hands back on the table. His attention turned back to the twilight scowl burning him from across the table. Smiling, he said, "Well, it appears I was wrong. You 'could' glare at me through that man's entire performance. Did you blink? I wasn't looking."

"You're always looking," Raven told him.

His eyebrows bounced. "Really?"

The mug in Raven's hands felt cold and clammy. She could have asked any of the baristas for a reheat, but refused to give Bushido the satisfaction of her split attention. "You're always watching us," she said. "You look when no one else is looking. You pick us apart, figuring out what makes us tick, so that one day you can stop us."

His gaze cooled as it pushed through her heated stare. For a moment, they held a battle of wills in the booth. Raven marshaled her suspicion and animosity, and sent it charging across the table to meet his unreadable expression.

Then Bushido escalated the conflict with another brimming smile. "You're right," he said. "I do watch you. This is how I know you do not hate me."

"You know that I like you," Raven said, her words crackling with sarcasm. "And what exactly have you seen that makes you think I can even remotely stand you?"

Bushido raised his cup. His pinkie finger extended out in a teasing salute. "Tea," he said, and took a sip.

Her eye scrunched. "Tea," she said.

His eyes danced above his teacup. Lowering the cup to its saucer, he said, "Tea. Every morning, you make a large pot of herbal tea. You're quite the connoisseur. You heat the water slowly in a kettle, and you brew in a handcrafted teapot with your own special blend. You then proceed to drink half the pot."

"I know what I do every morning," Raven said, tapping her thumb against the handle of her mug. "Is there a point to this?"

Bushido motioned to a barista at the distant coffee bar. "You drink half the pot. You, Raven, are the most economical person I have ever met. You never waste time, or attention, or words, or even, I suspect, thoughts. Yet every morning, after breakfast is done, you pour half a pot of tea down the drain."

"I make too much tea. So?"

"Neither Victor, nor Gar, nor Allie, nor Starfire drinks tea. And I suspect that, being such a connoisseur, you know how to portion your tea much better than that. Yet you never fail to make enough tea for two."

Raven's thumb stopped hard against her mug. Her eyebrows dropped. "You never drink my tea. You never have."

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The tea is there, proof of your consideration."

Denial lit under Raven's tongue, ready to lash into Bushido and set him straight. But as Raven drew a breath to fuel her tirade, her mind dissected the idea. She recalled when Bushido had first moved into the Compound with nothing more than his sword and the clothes on his back. She thought of the boxed, bulk, generic teabags he dipped into a microwaved mug of water each morning. Despite her overwhelming dislike of him, Raven could remember feeling a ghost of a sliver of sympathy for her fellow tea-drinker.

"Let's say you're right," Raven said. "Even if all that were true, how on Earth does that mean I like or respect you?"

He opened his hands, as if releasing the answer to flutter on wings of enlightenment from his grasp. "It's the truest example of all. You did something considerate of me without thinking about it. Until now, you didn't even realize it."

Raven's brows wrapped around his revelation. "That makes no sense."

"Grand overtures of friendship and love are often more selfish than any demand," Bushido said. "Difficult favors, lavish gifts, and other such sacrifices come with an implicit expectation of reciprocation. The giver expects something back in return from the receiver.

"But small overtures?" Bushido grinned. "A tiny gesture, like making tea for someone, can hold far more meaning. It is consideration given without any expectations. You make me tea because you know I like tea. You expect nothing back from me for this tea. In fact, you want nothing from me. You do it simply because some part of you has esteem for me."

Raven stared at Bushido, waiting for falsehood to break through his smile. She combed his feelings, scornful of his trick. Then she blinked at the sincerity behind his words. Bushido believed everything he said to her.

"So no matter what I say, you'll continue believing that I don't despise you because I make tea that may or may not be meant for you."

Bushido spread his hands again. "Speak as you will. Your actions will always speak louder."

She stared a moment more, torn between disbelief and denial. Finally, she shook her head, and slid out of the booth. "Ryuko, you're either the dumbest or the funniest person I've ever met. Either way, thanks for the joke. And don't worry, there won't be any more tea-wasting from now on."

"Thank you," he said, speaking so warmly that she stopped and turned. "That's the first time you've called me by my name."

She stiffened, forcing a scowl across her features. As she left, she felt his smile follow her up the stairs and out into the cool night air.

---

"Booyah!" Cyborg crowed, thrusting his controller into the air. "Three in a row! You didn't even muss my makeup that time, Green Genes!"

His character on the screen, a buxom blonde decked out in military surplus two sizes too small, bounced with victory. Her digitized showboating over the corpse of Beast Boy's dead monkey brawler made the shapeshifter grumble as he sank back into the couch. "Maybe I oughta find an animal that eats button-mashers," he said.

Sitting back down, Cyborg said, "Maybe you should find an animal that's not such a sore loser."

"You haven't seen sore until the poop starts flying, Chrome Dome," Beast Boy said. He shrank into the shape of a monkey, who shrieked and hooted until Cyborg broke down with laughter.

"Okay, okay, no poop," Cyborg pleaded laughingly. He chuckled as Beast Boy reverted into a laughing boy. As their laughter quelled, they sat back, rustling the bags of chips and empty cans that littered the couch. They took up their controllers, ready for the next round.

Beast Boy tilted his head as he thumbed through the game's menu for their next match. "Dude, I just realized. This is, like, the first time you and me have hung out in, what? A year?"

Frowning, Cyborg said, "It can't be that long. What about…? Uh, wait a minute…" His puzzled expression melted into one of guilt. "Really? Damn…"

"Dude, it's not really a big deal," Beast Boy said quickly. "You're the big cheese now. Building a fortress, and keeping the city happy, and rebuilding our jet every two weeks has gotta eat up a lot of time."

"Yeah…" Cyborg uttered, unconvinced.

"Besides," Beast Boy said with a shrug, "I've been pretty busy too. I've been reading a lot. Mostly the classics."

Cyborg shot him a sidelong glance, and raised an eyebrow at Beast Boy's nonchalance. Then he snorted and punched Beast Boy in the arm, eliciting a grin from the shapeshifter. "More like being the world's greenest midwife," he jeered.

"Heh. I don't know what that word means."

As he thought about it, Cyborg's smile slackened. "Dude, you have been spending a lot of time with Raven, haven't you?"

"Huh?" Beast Boy started the game's match. The loading level gave him a second to glance at Cyborg. "Yeah, I guess."

As the fight started, Cyborg asked, "Why?"

"Huh? 'Why' what?"

"Uh, nothing. It's just…" Cyborg considered his words carefully. "Look, I'm in charge, so I guess I'm all about promoting teamwork. But Raven has a history of, um, finding you annoying. Normally I'd tell you to keep out of her way, especially right now. But you guys are really tight. What happened?"

Beast Boy's ears dipped. He hunched toward the screen, his thumbs clicking over the controller in a blur. "I'unno," he muttered. "What's the big deal?"

"It's not a big deal." Cyborg glanced over. "Dude, it's a good thing, really. I think it's cool that you two can hang out like that."

An undertone of wistfulness lay in Cyborg's words. Beast Boy shrugged, and said, "It's not like that. We don't really pal around or anything. I don't think Raven even knows how to pal around. I'm just trying to help out with a lot of this baby stuff, mostly."

"Oh. Okay."

They played in silence a moment longer. Beast Boy kept glancing over, expecting more from Cyborg. When nothing came, he said, "It's just that, Raven would never ask for help. I think it would honestly kill her. So I'm just trying to pitch in. Give her a shoulder to lean on."

"Sure, dude."

A moment more, and then Beast Boy blurted, "Dude, come on. It's not a big deal. Raven just needs someone to—"

"Gar." Cyborg looked over, confused and concerned. "Are you okay?"

Beast Boy sighed and set aside his controller, not bothering to pause the game. He leaned over his knees, scowling in thought. "It really bothers me, y'know? This whole stupid situation. It just burns me up."

"What? Raven being pregnant?" Cyborg asked warily.

"No." Bitter memory steeped Beast Boy's features, weighing upon them until they sank toward the floor. "That kid's life is gonna be hard enough, and his douche bag of a dad isn't even gonna be around to help him through it."

Cyborg knit his brows. "Dominic not being around is gonna be hard, dude, but c'mon. We'll all be there to help. Raven can handle it."

Beast Boy's face twisted. "She shouldn't have to 'handle' anything."

Chagrinned, Cyborg said, "I didn't mean it like that."

"She shouldn't have to handle anything," Beast Boy shot again. "That kid shouldn't have to handle anything. He deserves a mom 'and' a dad. But now he's gonna have to make due with a friend, or an 'uncle,' or a lawyer."

"A lawyer?" Cyborg said, surprised.

Beast Boy twitched, as if awakening from his diatribe. "I didn't find the Doom Patrol right away, dude. I didn't get to grow up with my parents like you…" His ears drooped once more, and he muttered, "Sorry. I…sorry. I didn't mean that."

Under the watch of Cyborg's surprised concern, Beast Boy squirmed. His chest panged with old wounds torn open again. Heaving a sigh, Beast Boy said, "I love being me, gorgeous green skin and all. Being different is hard, but it's worth it. Except, it didn't always feel that way when I was growing up, y'know? And as much as I love you guys, I would trade all of this in a second, powers and everything, just to have my mom and dad back."

Beast Boy's eyes shimmered. He turned his head, unable to look at Cyborg even from the corner of his eye. "And I feel lousy for feeling like that. But I do. And I know the kid's gonna feel the same way. And Raven…"

Cyborg's great metal hand enveloped Beast Boy's shoulder. Cyborg squeezed, and said, "It's okay. I get it, Gar. We all do."

Sobering, Beast Boy nodded, and took a shaky breath. "I know you do. You know exactly what that's like, don't you, Vic? Getting stared at. People whispering about you when you pass them. The whole room getting quiet when you walk in." He shook his head.

The sudden weight between them lessened, drawing both teens upright on the couch. Beast Boy picked up his controller again, and made a halfhearted attempt to resume the fight. Cyborg tapped his own controller, if only to oblige.

With a wry smile, Cyborg said, "You really think Raven's kid will have it as rough as a shapeshifter or a cyborg?"

Beast Boy frowned. "What? Dude, I meant because you're black. What's so hard about being half-robot?"

Cyborg left his controller dangling in his grasp as he stared at Beast Boy. The shapeshifter's gaze remained focused on the video game, thumbs devoted to his character on-screen. But as Cyborg stared, the concentration on Beast Boy's face broke slowly for a sly smile.

Scoffing, Cyborg punched Beast Boy in the arm again, eliciting a laugh from them both. "You're such a dork," Cyborg said with a snort.

The monkey on the screen obliterated Cyborg's brawler with one final burst of banana-related violence. Pumping his fists, Beast Boy said, "Dorky like a fox."

"Gar, seriously," Cyborg said. "What you're doing for Raven is really cool. Even if she never says it, I know she appreciates it. And you know that kid's never gonna go wanting for anything."

A different smile curled in Beast Boy's lips, one of warmth and humor that eased Cyborg's worry. "Yeah. I know," he said. "He'll have all of you guys, too. If you take care of him the way you take care of me, I know he'll be better than okay." Cocking his brow, he added, "Have we gotten all our feelings out of the way? Seriously, any more heartfelt confessions and we'll be doing each other's toenails."

Cyborg chuckled. "There ain't enough money in the world that'd get me to touch your feet, Salad Head. Do you even own more than two socks?"

"Don't you need special permits for that?" Beast Boy asked, and launched them into another round with a tap of his finger.

---

"So I tried on the gold one," Tek said lying propped on her elbows on Ops' floor, "but it was even worse. I looked like a fire pole. I thought about looking for another bra to go with it, but I hate shopping for those alone. Everything looks right in the store mirror, but by the time I get home, it feels like I'm wearing lumpy barbed wire, and then I'm back to wearing sports bras again." She gasped, and looked up from the toenails under her chin. We could go shopping together! Do they wear bras on Tamaran?"

Starfire sat twisted in her seat. Her upper body faced the console and the holographic Alert map, but her chair was turned at an angle, presenting her bare feet to Tek's meticulous brush. Clenching a sigh behind her teeth, Starfire said, "No."

After doing her own nails, Tek had harangued Starfire for well over an hour, until finally dragging Starfire's purple thigh-highs off of her legs without permission, and with only tired, halfhearted protest. Now, nine different colors adorned Starfire's toes, with a tenth being applied to her remaining big toe now. Several painted nails sported tiny, childish stickers of flowers and stars and smiles, which wriggled with Starfire's discomfort.

Tek glanced up at the split metallic straps binding Starfire's chest and shoulders. She blew gently on the blue nail she had just brushed, and said, "Heh. If everybody on your planet looks like you, Victoria's Secret could make a killing there. But you wear them on Earth, right? I mean, not now, obviously. But like that time you dressed up, when you went out with Tim…"

The toes under Tek's care clenched, nearly undoing her work. She looked up and saw Starfire in profile. Even turned, Starfire's face loomed, a glacial wall that chilled Tek with a single look. Her expression brought to Tek the impression of a prison with stone walls that towered, windowless, on a snowcapped cliff side. The gloomy image flitted through Tek, sapping her cheer.

Tek looked down to escape Starfire's stonewall expression. She focused on the golden toes before her, finishing her colorful masterpiece with one last stroke of the nail polish brush. Capping her blue, Tek returned the bottle to her basket and pulled out a bottle of clear polish. "Never mind. We don't need to talk about boys."

She began brushing the clear coat over Starfire's dried nails. Starfire's grave silence gradually broke with the sound of the keyboard. Tek sighed, and painted. As she moved from toe to toe, her brows lowered, eventually crashing together into a frustrated scowl.

Sitting up, Tek said, "I want to be beautiful. I want to look like you did."

Starfire looked up at her admission. Genuine shock broke through her indifference, widening in her eyes. She swiveled her body in her chair to see the defiant perseverance wringing Tek's features.

Tek fought to keep Starfire's gaze without breaking down. Her fists trembled as she said, "When you were with Tim, you had this glow. It was like nothing bad could ever touch you, no matter how heavy things got. Like being in love brought something out of you, something…else. You were beautiful.

"I want to look like that. I want to feel like my heart's a three-ton firecracker that can light up the whole city. I want my smile to fly around the room, just like yours did," Tek said.

Starfire blinked, and shook her head. She twisted her colorful toes back under the console, swiveling around to face her screen fully. "Allie, please," she said. "I do not have time for your foolishness any longer."

"It's not foolish," Tek said, rising to her feet. "I don't know what to look for. Is he interested in me? If I kiss him, will he kiss me back?" Making a face, she added, "I don't even know how to kiss a boy. The mechanics of the whole thing straight-up baffles me. Like, what do I do with my tongue? Or how do I lean in? What was it like when you kissed Tim—?"

Starfire stiffened. She grasped the edges of her console, cracking the plastic casing with the force of her grip. The sharp noise made Tek's questions hiccup, giving way to startled silence.

A slow, cold breath filled Starfire's chest. In a forcibly even tone, she said, "Why would you want to know this? Believe me, you can do without such experiences and maintain a perfectly content existence."

"I don't want to exist," Tek said to the back of her head. "I want to glow. I want to be beautiful.

Starfire's chin tilted down. "You do not know what you want," she murmured.

Tek's voice dropped. "That's how I want you to look again, too. I don't want you to just exist. I want you to be happy. You need to glow again, Kory. Being so cold, so alone…it's hurting you. It hurts all of us."

Starfire stared through her console. For achingly endless seconds, she remained a heavy statue in her seat. But as Tek watched, the golden Tamaranian began to tremble, as though something welled within her. The phantom walls around Starfire cracked under the strain, audible gunshots in Tek's ears that nearly drove her back. Tek stood her ground, waiting, pleading with silence. She saw Starfire begin to turn.

"Good evening," Bushido said, and stepped onto Ops with a ready smile. Both girls jolted at his arrival as he circled the central projector and approached Starfire's console. A capped paper cup hung in his hand, its mouth steaming with the scent of jasmine.

The mounting tension around Starfire stilled. Tek watched her walls rebuild themselves in an instant, even as Bushido walked through them. Glancing at the clock, Starfire stood, looming over Bushido with a cooling expression and hardening eyes. "You are three minutes early," she said.

He bent at the waist in a shallow bow, sweeping his cup in salute. "And you are looking lovely. As are your feet," he said to her bare, painted toes. Tilting his head, he tasted the air with a sniff, and added, "What manner of perfume is that? It is absolutely enchanting."

Starfire rose quickly from her seat. The rough peck of her finger cleared her settings from the central console. "I stand relieved," she said brusquely. She stalked out of Ops without another word. Tek's longing look ricocheted off of the lustrous train of hair that swept in Starfire's wake.

Unknowingly, Starfire carried Bushido's gaze with her all the way to the corner. His twinkling eyes lingered for a moment on her exit. Then he shook his head, and noticed Tek. "Allie, good evening," he said. Glancing down at her bare feet, he asked, "Are we all painting our toes now?"

Tek smiled as he made a show of tightening the belt of fabric at his waist. Retrieving her small basket, she said, "Sorry, Ry. Shop's closed for tonight. You'll have to find some other way of being metrosexual on your own."

"Perhaps a smart haircut, then," he said, and took the central console. His presence triggered a change in the screen, which rearranged itself to suit his preselected preferences.

She ruffled his shaggy hair. "Just don't do it yourself. Big honkin' swords make lousy scissors. G'night."

"Good night."

Tek left Ops with a sigh, sinking into the corridor past Sector Prime's walkway. A sense of fatigue caught up to her halfway to the stairwell, turning her walk into a trudge. The basket weighed heavily in her grasp, and tilted her toward the wall. Disappointment weighed heavier in her chest.

"How did it go?" she heard behind her.

Tek jumped at the soft, rasping voice, and whirled to find Raven's hooded features waiting for her in the corridor's nighttime shadows. Choking down a yelp, Tek grasped her thundering heart, and said, "Sorry. Did you just teleport in?"

Raven's face quirked. "You walked right past me. How did it go?" she asked. She pulled back her hood, opening her cloak with the gesture. An array of shopping bags crinkled in her other hand.

Leaning back against the wall, Tek said, "I managed to get Vic out of the Bay. I can't be sure, but I didn't see him heading back in all night. Far as I can tell, he spent the whole time goofing around with Gar in the Commons."

"Good," Raven said with a nod. "And Starfire?"

Tek's expression soured. "Sorry. No go."

Raven exhaled. "Well," she said, "we'll keep trying. Thank you for your help tonight. I owe you a favor."

As Raven turned, Tek said, "I'll cash that favor now. Why did you text me tonight? Why ask me to trick Vic out of the Bay so he could goof off with Gar? Why ask me to bother Kory? I don't get it."

Raven paused, remembering something. She began digging through one of her shopping bags, and said, "We don't have many quiet nights around here. When we do, it's important to make them count. Victor and Koriand'r are my friends, and it's important to me that they're happy."

"Okay," Tek drawled, watching Raven excavate her purchases. "But why me? You could—"

"I don't make people smile. You do." Straightening, Raven pulled from her larger bags a smaller square bag, which she handed to Tek. "Here."

Taking the bag, Tek pulled back, confused. "Uh, thank you? What's this?"

"Nothing much. I hope you like it," Raven said, and continued down the corridor the way Tek had come.

Tek reached into the bag blindly, her quizzical look planted firmly in Raven's receding cloak. Something cool and metallic pressed into her palm. Pulling it out, Tek found a keychain. "Oh. Uh, thanks. Like I have any keys…" she grumbled.

Attached to the keychain was a miniature version of a California license plate. Tek eyed the plate skeptically. Her snide expression fell when she read the plate's lettering aloud. "Allie," she whispered, and ran her thumb over the tiny plate. She looked up, surprise arresting her lungs. Raven had already left.

"Thank you," she said to the empty corridor.

---

The Teen Titans gathered in Ops around the meeting table with unspoken questions hovering between them.

A long, thick window lined the wall, drilled through the rock of the cliff to overlook the ocean. A warm sunset shimmered across the surface of the water, pouring into Ops and over the table as a shaft of luminescence. It fell across Superboy's frown, painting his confusion red as he waited with the others.

Dust lingered thick in the air still since they had carved Ops out of the rock with heat and speed. Superboy recalled using his eyes to bore through the cliff interior, following Robin's design for their command center. Each console and screen had been placed according to the Teen Wonder's instructions.

Now Robin's instructions had gathered the team, and left them waiting over ten minutes. Most of them had gotten little chance to rest since the morning's fight with Tyrants East. With so much left to do to complete the Lair, they were all tired. Even Superboy felt the long hours.

Speedy sighed and tilted his mask toward the stalactite ceiling. The heavy hung lamps flashed in his lenses. "Is it me," he said at the buzzing lights, "or is this place still really depressing?"

"That's what happens when you live underground," Aqualad said, hunching over the table.

The archer shot him a look. "You live at the bottom of the ocean. Isn't that, like, twelve times as dark and dank?"

Aqualad returned his look in kind. "I lived in a palace. This place is a hole."

Knees jittering, Kid Flash looked around. "Yeah, yeah, prince of the sea. We've heard it all before. Where the hell is he? I've got, like, eighty miles of tunnels to smooth out. How is it he's late to his own meeting?"

Grumbling, Aqualad folded his arms. "Well, I was," he muttered.

Ops' hatch split open, and Robin strode into the room. His cape settled back over his shoulders with a sharp gesture as he stood behind his seat at the table. When the others started to rise, he motioned them back into their seats.

"You all have better things to do, so I'll make this quick," Robin said.

Superboy scrutinized Robin's mask, trying to see underneath. He couldn't find anything there, and not because of the lead lining in the thin domino of fabric. But he could tell that something was different. A flicker of hope awoke in Superboy, pulling him to the edge of his seat.

Leaning forward, Robin met each of their quizzical looks. "When I approached each of you, I told you that this venture would test you beyond any limit you ever thought you had. Each of you has acted as a hero in your own right. I told you that you would have to become more than a hero. That you would have to leave behind something of yourself to be part of something bigger.

"Your preconceptions," he said to Wonder Girl.

"Your insecurities," he said to Superboy.

"Your home," he said to Aqualad.

"Your affiliations," he said to Speedy.

"Your impulsiveness," he said to Kid Flash. A smile ghosted across his lips.

Sobering instantly, he continued, "And you've all accomplished far more in an incredibly short amount of time than I could ever imagine. It's been pointed out to me that I haven't acknowledged that. So here it is.

"Cyborg isn't the only authority on Titans. A piece of paper won't make you a team. You've done that yourselves, together. You've made yourselves into Titans, as good as any who have come before you, and more than worthy of setting an example for those yet to come. I'm proud of you."

Snorting, Speedy tilted his chair back on two legs. He smiled, though, as he said, "Go easy on us, Big Bird. You're making me blush."

"I also wanted to let you know," Robin told them, "that I'm resigning from Teen Titans East, effective immediately."

Speedy's chair legs slammed back on the floor as he collapsed forward alongside the rest of the Titans. Their collective gape pressed upon Robin, trying to force further answers out of him.

"I've already changed the codes and reset my administrator access to the mainframe," Robin continued. "All the Lair plans are available in the database. You know where they are. With a little work, you should have Titans Lair fully operational within the month. If you need anything, you can call Cyborg. There's also a list of active honorary Titans who might be willing to pitch in."

Kid Flash slapped the tabletop. "Whoa, dude! Slow down a minute!"

"You're leaving?" Aqualad said. "You can't leave! You're in charge!"

"Fish Breath is right," Speedy insisted. "You can't just cut and bail on us! Where are you even gonna go? Why are you going?"

Robin stepped back. "This is for the best. And it has nothing to do with any of you. I mean it when I say I'm proud to have been a part of this team. Thank you, all of you."

For a half-second, he watched their reactions. Shock reigned at the table, stealing sense and speech from them all. Four jaws and eight eyes hung wide upon him. Superboy pressed his mouth into a tight line, his glare burrowing through the table, refusing to meet Robin's gaze.

Nodding, Robin left the table. Ops' hatch swept open, and then sealed him from the room. He quickened his pace, refusing to look back, even as he heard the hatch open again behind him.

Drawing his cape around him, he traversed the new Lair's corridors as fast as he could. The corridor gathered up the sound of his pace, echoing it back at him, chasing him down with the sound of his own retreat.

He pushed through to the Hangar. His motorcycle waited in the shadow of the East Wing, completed, gassed, and facing the hangar doors, just as he'd left it. The throttle felt cool to the touch, its texture gripping the palm of Robin's glove. He wrapped his hand around the grip and took a deep breath. It left him slowly and shakily.

The Hangar hatch whooshed. Robin circled the bike, pretending to focus all his attention on an unnecessary inspection. "There's nothing left to say, Conner."

"Then don't talk to Conner," Wonder Girl said, snapping Robin's eyes up with surprise as she approached. "Talk to me. What the hell do you think you're doing?"

His surprise submerged at once. Coolly, he returned back to his bike, and said, "I already told you. This has nothing to do with the team."

"It has everything to do with the team," Wonder Girl said. When he refused to look at her, she huffed, and gravitated toward the workbench. "Gods, what is it with you mysterious macho types? Everything has to be about drama with you. You can never just admit when you're being stupid."

"I have my reasons for leaving," Robin said to the bike.

Wonder Girl snorted. "Yeah. I'll bet you do. Bet you have this long speech prepared, about how it's better for the team, and about how we never really needed you in the first place, and how this is better for everybody."

Robin paused, his hands testing the smooth paint across the bike's armor. "It's not a long speech," he said at last. "That was about it, actually. And it's all true."

"It's all crap," she told him. "None of us are here because we 'need' to be here. We all want to be here. That's the whole point."

He didn't answer her, and tapped his fuel gauge instead. Cooling, Wonder Girl looked at the bench on which she leaned, and saw a red helmet marked with Robin's sigil. She picked it up, examining its enamel exterior, testing its visor with her thumb.

"Aren't you even going to pack up your stuff?" she asked the helmet.

The question made Robin look up. After a moment's consideration, he admitted, "I don't actually have anything to pack."

"Wow. That's kind of sad." She watched him mount the bike, his cape settling against the base of the bike's upswept wings. Cradling his helmet under her arm, she risked a step toward him, and said, "Conner is really pissed at you. I think you really hurt him this time."

"He'll get over it," Robin said.

"And what about the rest of us?" insisted Wonder Girl. "What are we supposed to do without you?"

A tinge of amusement laced his monotone. "Since day one, you've criticized the way I do things. This is your big chance to finally do it your way."

She stepped in front of the dormant bike. "Just because I don't always agree with you, it doesn't mean I think you're doing a bad job. You know how to make hard decisions. You shine like a diamond under that kind of pressure," she said. "How are we supposed to make them now that you're running away?"

Robin considered her carefully. "I think you're the best person to answer that. You'll be making those hard choices from now on."

Wonder Girl staggered. "Me? What? No, I'm not—"

"The team will have to put it to a vote," Robin said, "but I made my recommendation in my last monitor log. I think they'll make the right choice."

"But I can't—" Wonder Girl said.

"You're the best person for the job."

"But I don't know how—"

"You'll learn quickly," Robin told her. "But if you're looking for some advice, I do have one piece for you." To her rapt, shocked attention, Robin said, "Stop stringing Conner along. I've seen the way you look at him when his back is turned. Playing hard to get won't net you anything but regret and lost time. If you want to be with him, be with him. Otherwise, break his heart and get it over with."

Slowly, Wonder Girl's shock settled into a smirk. "You say the things that people don't want to hear, too. You're especially good at that. Are you good at hearing them?"

"No." Robin tapped the small control panel set beneath the bike's gauges. The Redbird hummed, brought to life with a growl that rolled under Robin. He kicked its stand back, leaning it on one leg. As he bent to take its handlebars, his helmet intervened, held in hesitant, rough-knuckle hands.

Wonder Girl waited until he took the helmet from her. "Well, listen anyway. Whatever it is you're looking for, I hope you find it soon. Because you need to get over this and back in the game. And for what it's worth…I'm glad I was wrong about you."

He nodded once, and then ducked into the helmet. "Thank you, Wonder Girl."

She smiled as she stepped aside. "My friends call me Cassie. Remember?"

The Redbird roared, leaping forward into a streak of red. It crossed the long floor of the Hangar in a matter of seconds. The heavy doors of the Hangar slid apart with a rumble, revealing the long, split exit tunnel. The bike's taillights vanished up the ramp leading to the cliffs' surface entrance, a wide-mouth cave connected to the highway by a series of old utility roads. In minutes, Robin would be long gone, with only a few black marks on the floor as evidence he had ever been there.

Wonder Girl stared through the closing Hangar doors. The hatch whooshed behind her, and she heard Superboy's voice barrel through from the corridor. "Okay, that's it! You hold it right there, bird-butt, because I…"

Turning around, Wonder Girl saw Superboy stopped dead in his tracks. Realization dawned on his handsome features, rapidly dwindling into disappointment. "I'm sorry, Conner," she said. "You just missed him."

His gaze tilted up as he squinted through solid stone. "He just…left? He really left?"

Wonder Girl rubbed his shoulder. Leaning in, she rested her head on his arm. "It'll be okay, Conner," she said. Silently, she wished she could convince herself of that, and wrapped her arm around his.

"I can't…I can't believe he's gone," Superboy said.

She pulled him back toward the hatch. "C'mon. We should go check with the others. There's a lot we need to talk about. And after that…" She bit her lip, and then said, "After that, would you like to take a flight with me? There's…well, there's a lot 'we' need to talk about."

He frowned, confused. "A flight? Now?"

Wonder Girl affixed a smile over the anxiety creeping up from her stomach. "Don't tell me that invincible skin of yours gets cold on a little night flight. If it gets too chilly, you could always hold my hand…if you wanted to, I mean."

"I…yeah. I guess," Superboy said, and let her lead him away. "But why…?"

"Because," said Wonder Girl. Her smile became real as he squeezed her hand back. She felt a flight of butterflies rush through her stomach, and sighed, "Just because."

---

Bushido heard her walk into Ops. He recognized her soft, precise steps, and knew without looking up who had come to visit him. "Still awake? Coffee is a poor choice for an evening drink," he said, keeping his smile aimed at his keyboard as he hunted and pecked across the internet. "You should switch to a weaker—"

"Tea." Raven stepped in front of his console, listing to one side to set her heavy bags on the floor. Her cloak parted for her hands, which set something heavy atop Bushido's console.

The clink of the object made Bushido look up. He saw Raven's stern demeanor, and then focused closer on the thick, ceramic mug perched on his console. The mug's cheery teal presence surprised him. Its heft surprised him more as he picked it up. "…yes. Coffee is a harsh mistress to court at night. Tea is—"

"You're letting my tea go to waste. That's unacceptable," Raven snapped. She picked up her bags with a soft grunt. "I know you've never tried it. It's a…unique blend. And maybe you won't ever like it. But you shouldn't let it go to waste. It shows a lack of regard."

Bushido's smirk faded. He grasped the mug, considering its smooth sheen. "I have a history with herbal teas. Plus, I once held a sword to herbal tea's neck. But I don't see the harm in sharing a cup in the morning, if you don't." Running his finger across the mug's handle, he added, "This is my favorite color."

She nodded, somber. "I know."

As she turned to leave, she felt a wave of gratitude roll off of him. That such a small gift, something she had simply seen out of the corner of her eye that reminded her of him, could make him happy…it amazed her.

But as she considered his happiness, she slowed, and then stopped. Turning, she said, "Ryuko? Those larger gestures you were talking about…the ones that require something in return…you don't think that giving somebody a…a nice gift…like a video game…?"

He set the mug aside, pausing in thought. "A video game? Not being an enthusiast on the subject, I—"

"Ryuko," she said impatiently.

His eyebrow rose at the tremor beneath her voice. "No. I don't believe so," he said. Her shoulders lifted with a light breath of relief, but then froze when he said, "But…"

"But?"

"Doting on someone throughout a difficult period? Say, a pregnancy? That is precisely one of those grand gestures."

Raven held her breath, processing the notion. Her lips drew together into a worried pucker. "You don't actually think he—"

"Consciously?" Bushido shook his head. "No. But ultimately, he will expect something. And I suspect that what he expects, he won't receive. The only thing that remains to be seen, then, is how he will react when he does not receive what he expects," he said.

She blinked. Then she turned, and walked from Ops. "Good night, Ryuko," she said.

"Good night," he called cheerily.

Floating down the hall, Raven came to the stairwell, cloaked in the dark and quiet of the late night in the Compound. Her troubled look hid in her hood, and then became surprise when she saw a tall, lithe ghost at the end of the corridor.

Starfire's silhouette lurked against the starry backdrop of the city. The night's lights made the edge of her skin glow orange and turning her hair into a shadowy bonfire. She hardly moved, leaning against the glass, her shoulders rising and falling with pensive respiration.

Loath to break the peace, Raven floated to a stop halfway to the stairwell. She watched Starfire, and listened, and tasted the tight coil of emotion beneath the alien's surface. Starfire had once been a sun of emotions, shining as brightly as anyone Raven had ever met. Now Raven had to make an effort to peer into Starfire's soul, and what she found inside confounded her for explanation.

As Raven watched, Starfire stirred. Raven feared she had broken Starfire's spell, until she saw the Tamaranian look down at her bare feet. Flickers of color played across Starfire's toes as she moved them through the window's light. To Raven's astonishment, a small, ephemeral smile crept into Starfire's lips, hardly there at all, but there nonetheless.

Beast Boy's voice careened from the stairwell a second before he climbed up into the corridor. His greeting stole Starfire's smile and jolted Raven out of her spell. "Hey, Kory! What's up?"

Starfire abandoned the window and stalked toward the nearest exit, which was, to her dismay, the stairwell. "Nothing," she grunted, brushing past Beast Boy.

Shrugging, Beast Boy watched her disappear down the stairs. His slitted eyes spied the colors on her toes. "Okay. I like your nails," he called after her. He tasted the scent in her wake, and rumbled at its allure. "Nice perfume," he added in a murmur.

Following Starfire led his gaze down the corridor to Raven. He brightened, and approached Raven before she could gather her wits. "Hey! Did you just get back? Have a good time at your coffee place?" he asked.

"Yes," she said distractedly.

He sniffed, and smiled. "Decaf. Excellent. Oh, and thanks for the game. Vic says thanks too. I haven't had that much fun since that time I taught myself how to use the blender 'cause I wanted an asparagus smoothie. You know, I bet if we called the Tyrants and asked, they could still find that stain on the —"

Raven's bags dropped to the floor. She stepped forward suddenly. Her arms ensnared him, surprising them both as she drew herself to his chest. Her brow rested on his warm uniform, her head tucked under his chin, as she closed her eyes against the buzz of surprise running through them both.

"Thank you," she murmured.

It took Beast Boy's mouth and brain three tries to properly connect. "You're welcome? You…You're hugging me. You are hugging me, right? This isn't part of some spell where you send me to a dimension made entirely out of elevator music, is it?"

Raven felt the blare of his emotions roiling across her psychic walls. She weathered the silent storm, and said, "It's customary to hug back."

His arms encircled her. She felt her stomach pressed between them, cradled in their embrace. A soft voice stirred her hair. "So, why the hug? Not that I mind or anything, but…"

His pulse quickened under her ear. His fingertips traced faint lines down her back. Deep in the storm, Raven heard a whisper, one she knew Beast Boy couldn't hear, one she knew she could never answer.

Raven suppressed a sigh. "Because," she said. "Just because."

To Be Continued