Robin had not been sure what to expect from Raven's explanation. Clouds of mist? Nothing at all? Just Raven standing in the middle of his head, talking to herself? What did emotions look like and how did you go about speaking to one? When Raven closed her eyes and began murmuring quietly, he snuck a quick look around, wondering if any of his were lurking nearby.

He was surprised when, a few minutes after Raven had closed her eyes, six figures began to appear around her, shimmering in as if they were being beamed aboard. Each wore a cloak nearly identical to the one draped across her shoulders, save for the color. His surprise turned to shock when, simultaneously, they all reached up and pulled back their cowls, revealing half a dozen mirror images of his teammate.

As if she could feel his disbelief, Raven turned towards him and he could tell by the line that appeared in the center of her forehead that she was struggling to make a decision on something. After a moment, she motioned him forward with a brief gesture of her hand. The line remained between her eyes, a sure sign of reluctance.

He hesitated. If there was one thing that Robin was sure that he and Raven shared in common, it was a need for privacy. And he prided himself on his ability to give it to her, even when it went against his better judgment, even when he had the inkling she was keeping something important, something vital from him and the rest of the team. Because he knew what it was to have secrets. To need to keep them.

But the world she was offering him a glimpse into was too fascinating to resist.

"These are the 'other' Ravens, as Beast Boy enjoys calling them," she said upon his approach, sounding very much like an older sister reluctantly acknowledging her siblings.

"They look just like you," he said, knowing he was stating the obvious. Though now that he was closer, Robin could see a few differences between Raven and some of her emotions. The yellow cloaked one wore thin framed glasses while the green Raven had a strange mark on the back of her right hand. And though he couldn't be absolutely sure, she seemed smaller than the others.

Raven shrugged. "I guess I don't have much in way of creativity," she replied, with only the barest hint of defensiveness in her voice. He frowned at it.

"I think its ingenious, using different colors to represent different emotions. What made you think of it?" he asked, trying to ignore the odd sensation of being stared at by six identical faces.

She shrugged again, as if indifferent, but he could see a glimmer of satisfaction in her eyes. Those same eyes went serious only a second later.

"While they may look like me and they may be a part of me, but they are not . . . me," she said slowly. "Do you understand?"

He considered it for a moment, and then shook his head. "Not really. How do you mean?"

Raven's brows drew together and her bottom lip slipped between her teeth unconsciously.

Robin shifted his gaze, uncomfortable with the thoughts the small movement managed to put into his head. Now is not the time for errant thoughts.

"I mean that they are pieces of me. Separate pieces. This one," she motioned to the Raven dressed in blood red, "represents my anger. It is not me when I am angry, but my anger alone. In this state, they act as their own. So they may do things and may say things," she shot a dark, almost warning look at a pink—pink?—cloaked Raven, "that I would not."

Her meaning dawned on him as he watched the emotion's face stretched into a wide, beaming grin that was just short of maniacal. "I see." The emotion began to bounce up and down lightly on her toes in a manner reminiscent of a child asked to 'wait.' "Which emotion is this one?" he couldn't help but ask.

It was clear to him that she was debating whether or not to say anything. He never used to be able to tell what she was thinking and he had to wonder if he had just gotten better at reading her nearly expressionless face over the past five years or if her being inside his head gave him some kind of mental advantage.

"Happiness," she said finally.

Happiness giggled, a sound Robin had never in a million years thought he would hear coming from Raven and he couldn't help smiling. "You don't let her out much, do you?" he surmised.

"There are reasons for that."

"Starfire would love her."

"That's one of the reasons."

"What's the other?"

"I hate pink."

He felt a pang of sadness at the flat statement and tried not to think about what it meant that she had modeled that particular emotion in a color that she abhorred.

"So," he started, hoping to change the conversation, "what now?"

Raven shifted. "There are . . . things that need be discussed," she offered vaguely.

Seeing her discomfort, Robin began to step back. Surely there was some place in his mind that he could go for however long it took for her to do what she needed to do. There was no need for him to intrude.

"AHEM."

The noise came from the Raven in dark green, who had her arms folded across her chest and was tapping her foot impatiently. She gave the real Raven a sharp look and then pointedly turned her gaze on him.

Raven sighed.

"We also have something to talk about," she said, meeting his eyes.

Unsure of what to say, Robin nodded and remained where he was.

Taking a deep breath, Raven shifted her attention back to her emotions. Without a word, they each took a step forward so that they joined her in forming a loose circle.

"We are returning to Azarath," she stated simply.

The emotions began to all speak at once.

"The temple's library does exceed our own."

"I hate that place."

"We aren't going to find any answers in books. We need to confront the High Priest."

"Are we going to have to fly the whole way again?"

"Shouldn't . . . couldn't someone come with us?"

"There are no answers. This will be a waste of time."

She waited for them to quiet down with more patience than she had ever displayed at one of their convoluted team discussions, Robin noted. Still, her left foot tapped with the exact same rhythm as the green cloaked emotion and he got the feeling her display of calm was mostly for his benefit. After a few minutes, they grew silent again.

"I have a feeling that there may be something in the temple archives that relates to either Trigon or the prophecy. They never did let me down there," Raven pointed out, directing her comments to the emotion draped in yellow.

"It's possible. The temple has records for nearly every moment of Azarath's existence, which I presume would include the creation of Trigon. But the portal that we used to travel here last time is unlikely to still be there," it replied.

Raven nodded. "I know. We'll have to create our own."

The emotion's eyes widened slightly behind its thin glasses but it said nothing.

"And just what are we supposed to look for? You really think someone wrote down, 'Oh, and by the way, this is how you defeat Trigon the Terrible, just FYI.'?"

Raven's gaze shifted to the green cloaked emotion. "No, but I'm hoping that some insight into how he was created will help us better understand our connection."

"That's easy. We're his daughter," the green emotion's tone suggested it wanted to add the word 'stupid' to the end of its sentence.

"That doesn't explain why he's able to force visions upon us from a completely different dimension," Raven shot back.

"Well, how can we be entirely certain that its Trigon that is giving us these visions? It's not as if these are the only visions we have ever had," the yellow emotion pointed out.

Robin blinked in surprise. Other visions?

Raven was shaking her head. "But those visions came after direct contact with someone. As far as I can tell, we haven't been brushing elbows with our father lately."

Adjusting the glasses on her nose, the yellow Raven shrugged and answered, "Blood is a strong bond."

The green Raven scowled. "Blood or not, we're getting really tired of looking at fiery lakes every time we close our eyes."

"What would you suggest we do about it then?" the yellow emotion countered.

"Something!"

"Like what?"

By this point, the two emotions were in each other's faces, with identical looks of contention on their already mirror countenances. Robin took an involuntarily step forward, instinctively preparing to break up the argument if it came to blows. At the same time, a thoughtful expression suddenly came over both emotions.

In an incredibly eerie movement, all six of the emotions turned to look, first at him, and then at Raven. He wondered if maybe he should have wandered off when he had the chance.

One of Raven's eyebrows shot up. "I'm going to pretend you did not all just suggest that."

Twelve shoulders lifted briefly.

Raven pinched the bridge of her nose. One of the emotions, a trembling figure in grey, timidly stepped towards her, looking all the while as if it were expecting to be scolded for moving. When it was directly in front of her, it stopped and waited silently.

"Do . . . do we . . . do we have to go a-a-alone?" it asked, when Raven lifted her gaze.

Robin was surprised when she gave a smile reminiscent of one she had offered to a child fan who had scuttled up to her once when they had been all been out. Instead of the sarcastic twitch of lips that was most often seen, or the far more rarer, wider upturn, it was a softer expression made more with her eyes than her mouth.

"We know that it becomes more dangerous when we travel between worlds with anyone other than ourselves," she replied gently.

"What does it matter if they die now or die later? There's no escaping the inevitable." The words were spoken by the Raven clothed in red and the disembodied voice that came from within the darkened cowl was scratchier and deeper than the others. Raven's gaze flickered briefly towards it, a warning clearly evident in the violet depths.

The grey cloaked emotion's shoulders sank. "We don't want to go," it stated mournfully.

Raven closed her eyes briefly. "We know." They opened again, and met the stare of each of her emotions. "But we have to."

All six nodded.

She turned to the yellow cloaked Raven. "Do we have everything we need to open the portal?"

"We should, unless Beast Boy has been fooling around with our regents again."

"We did warn him. Repeatedly."

"True, but it is Beast Boy."

"He's funny!" Happiness declared suddenly. "We like him."

Raven rolled her eyes. "That's because 'we' have no taste. And he is not funny."

"That's not true. We also like—"

"Don't." The single word was softly spoken but carried a powerful warning. Happiness fell silent but failed to lose the wide grin that seemed permanently plastered across her face. Raven glanced over at Robin and he tried very, very hard to not have any interest whatsoever in who else it was that her emotions 'liked.'

When her eyes narrowed, he got the impression that he hadn't tried hard enough.

She turned back to her emotions and asked, "Is there anything else that we need to discuss?"

The question was met with silence. And then, the orange cloaked Raven lifted one hand half-heartedly in the air.

"Are we going to eat before we leave? We're hungry."

The sigh that filled the air was magnified by six. Instead of answering, Raven made a short cutting motion with one hand. The emotions shimmered, stretching out briefly before coalescing into one, cloak and uniform a snowy white. It moved swiftly toward Raven, pausing only momentarily when it was less than a foot away, a curious contrast of light and darkness.

Then, in a manner that Robin hoped was not an omen, the two merged and Raven gleamed briefly before returning to her normal hue. He opened his mouth but whatever he had been thinking of saying fell away when she turned to him.

"What's wrong?" was what came out instead.

Raven wasn't sure how she felt about the fact that he always seemed to know when something was bothering her. Then again, it appeared to be a talent he had as none of the others ever managed to escape his perception either.

Or maybe she just wasn't as stoic as she had always believed herself to be. Maybe she liked talking about her problems and her feelings and everything.

She felt a vein in her forehead thrum.

Depressing thought.

But really, how else could she explain the fact that lately, whenever he poised the two little words into a sentence with a question mark at the end, she felt compelled to answer? How could she explain the fact that she was about to horribly embarrass herself by mentioning something she had firmly convinced herself she did not want to talk about? Why did it matter so much?

Azar.

"Raven?"

Unconsciously her hands balled up into fists and she felt her shoulders hunch. "I have to ask you something. And I really, really don't want to," she confessed quietly. She paused, wondering if there was some way she could get out of it. But she could hear the emotions inside of her clamoring and knew if she didn't get it straightened out now, she was liable to find herself smeared across dimensions when one of them distracted her in mid-journey.

Robin remained silent, waiting.

Taking a deep breath, she forced the words out.

"Why did you kiss me?"

When he did not respond right away, she hurriedly added, "Just tell me it had something to do with reassurance in a life-threatening situation."

"I thought that you didn't want to talk about it."

"I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget it ever happened. But I can't. Because they know about it, which means I know about it and while I know it was nothing, they don't and the conflict is making it a little difficult to focus on the important things."

"Like Trigon?"

"Exactly."

Keeping his eyes on her, Robin shrugged, a small movement of his slim shoulders. "Honestly Raven, I'm not sure why I did. It wasn't exactly the best of moments."

"Understatement," she muttered.

"I just . . . wanted to."

"But you never wanted to before," she pressed, hoping for an answer that would finally quiet the constant questioning and wondering that had made it so difficult to focus on the task at hand. One that would put an end to the fluttering feeling she got in her chest whenever she was alone with him for longer than five minutes. That . . . yearning sensation that made her feel ridiculous and weak.

"That's true," he agreed.

Caught up in her own consideration, she did not notice him move.

"But I have several times since."

Her eyes flickered to meet his; he was closer but not uncomfortably so. Far closer, however, than he normally stood. Closer than was warranted. She shifted slightly, wanting to put distance between them without stepping back.

"We don't need to talk about those."

Robin gave one of his rare, but infuriatingly cocky grins. "How about the fact that I want to kiss you right now?"

Raven dropped her eyes to the ground. "I don't think that would help me very much."

"How do you know if you don't try?"

"Because as I recall, we did try and . . ." she trailed off, her shoulders hunching up further. Her face felt like it was on fire.

She almost wished it was.

"And?" he prompted.

She shot him a dark look. "Nothing."

"Because as I recall, the last time we kiss you ended up saving both of our lives, which included healing a number of very painful broken bits in me."

Raven rolled her eyes. "We have no way of knowing that that had anything to do with it," she disagreed, her fingers reaching for the edge of her cloak. The material was soft and reassuring between her hands.

"Well then, how about I liked the way that it made me feel?"

"How did it-" she bit back the question before it could fully leave her lips. But Robin answered anyway.

"Normal."

Raven stared at him, surprise and then doubt completely overwhelming her previous embarrassment. "Kissing a half-demon you're not even sure you like while a building crumbled on top of you, courtesy of a severely unhinged assassin sent to kill said half-demon, made you feel normal?"

"Among other things," he replied, his smile flashing once more. "For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like Robin, Batman's sidekick, or Robin, the Teen Titan. I just felt like Ja . . . like a regular guy who got lucky enough to kiss a hot chick."

One eyebrow quirked up. "Hot . . . chick?"

"I believe that's the term that the youth of today uses."

Raven gave a short "hmph." "Well, unlike so called 'hot chicks' I have inhuman abilities that are intrinsically linked to my emotions, abilities that I would rather not lose control of right now, thank you."

Robin lifted his hands questioningly. "You're in my head. Who's to say that your powers would even work here?" he shot back.

She found herself considering it and did not care for the way her stomach jumped. "What if I just don't want to kiss you?"

He shrugged, apparently unconcerned. "Then don't."

Such a simple answer to a complex question. Because, and she would only half admit it to herself and only under the strictest code of silence, she did want to kiss him again. In fact, she wanted it enough that interspaced between hellish nightmares of the future and twisted memories of Azarath there had been one or two dreams, quickly suppressed of course, that had entertained such a desire.

But she had learned very early on that wanting things you could not have only led to pain and destruction.

And what business did she have being Robin's "link" to normalcy? What did that even mean? She wasn't completely unknowledgeable about the habits of "normal" human girls, many of which would undoubtedly be swooning in her position, but she wasn't a normal human girl, had never been, and would never be nor did she see any reason to feel like something she wasn't.

Nor did she see the point in swooning.

Except . . . she still wanted to kiss him. Still wanted to see if her skin would shiver and her stomach flutter the way it had before.

Not that she really remembered it.

She didn't want to want to. But she did.

Robin watched, fascinated by what looked like an intense debate ripple across her face. And he had to wonder if something as simplistic as a kiss was worth putting her through such apparent anguish. They were teammates after all. And while he stood by what he had said those few weeks earlier – he really wasn't sure how he thought of her exactly- he had come to see her as something very close to a friend. He respected her opinions, even if they were very often the complete opposite of his own, and the more he managed to learn about her, the more he admired her. Her control. Her strength. Her determination to stop her father. He had no idea what reasons she gave herself for struggling against the seemingly impossible but he doubted that even she could guess at the depth of her own compassion.

As he watched her struggle to respond to his flirtations, he realized his mistake. Kissing her might have made him feel like just a guy but she had never been just a girl. From the day she had been born she had been something else, destined to end a world she had never laid eyes on. He suddenly saw the darkness that she constantly surrounded herself with less as an extension of her powers and more as a weight she was forced to carry. How she managed to do so was beyond his comprehension.

It made his heart hurt to think about.

He was probably skirting well over the line that Batman always called the "Don't-Go-There." And so he started to step back, his hands raised.

"If you're not going to kiss me, then at least let me live," he said lightly, hoping to smooth away the sudden intensity that seemed to be squeezing in.

Before he could move, one of her small hands shot out, grabbing hold of his wrist. They both stared at their joined appendages with equal measures of surprise. When Robin shifted his gaze up to her face, he saw the same expression there that she often wore when confronting one of their countless enemies. He wondered if he had unintentionally earned himself that label.

Raven tried to decide which voice to listen to. The one that, very loudly and very clearly, said "don't" or the absent voice, the one that would have said "go for it" had she been a full-blooded human.

Azar.

She threw his wrist aside in disgust. She didn't need this.

While she had intended to turn around to gain distance and put her back to him, she found in reality that she had, mortifyingly, thrown herself forward, her arms wrapping around Robin's neck. And not in the strangling manner they often found themselves grabbing hold of, say, Beast Boy. She would have cursed except her lips were already pressed fervently against his, as if they were trying to prove that the feeling from before, the feeling she sometimes woke up remembering, had just been a fluke.

She was able to hold onto that thought for nearly half a minute, almost long enough to pull back and be confident that nothing had changed. That they were the same people they had been.

But she was caught when Robin's arms slid from her hips, where they had been clutching for balance sake, up her back, where his long fingers spread out, drawing her closer than she thought was possible.

Raven could feel the anger, frustration, confusion, and doubt that had been clawing at each other relentlessly inside of her fall into a pit that seemed to open up inside of her. For a moment she wondered if her brain had followed suit when she swayed dizzily, her head light and fuzzy.

Then a second later clarity returned, sharp and striking. She was, really, plastered up against the leader of her team, a young man that she had always respected, had come to admire, and whose tentative friendship she had just been beginning to value, locking lips as if it were the last few moments of one of those awful teen romance movies Cyborg was always watching when he thought no one else was around.

Even as the rational part of her mind warned her to step back, to preserve the thin line she had once sworn to keep between herself and all others, for safety, both theirs and her own, the overwhelming majority of both her mind and body was deciding that line was completely overrated.

And so when Robin's tongue brushed lightly against her lower lip, playing absolute havoc with her nerves, she resisted the urge to draw back. Instead she squeezed her eyes a little more tightly and let her mouth fall open slightly, like she had seen in the -one and only one- romantic movie she had covertly watched. And only because she had wanted to see what Cyborg had been being so secretive about.

A thrill ran up along her spine and came out as a quiet gasp when Robin responded with a little more pressure, his lips slightly rough against hers as his tongue slid against her teeth. She felt a tremor in her legs and tried to step back.

But Robin followed, their lips never breaking contact, and she suddenly felt her back press against a wall she was certain had not been there before. It afforded him the opportunity to press himself more firmly against her and she abruptly realized that the two hugs they had previously share had only given her an idea of his body. If she had been able to think clearly, she would have been mortified by the quiet noise that escaped from somewhere in the back of her throat.

His tongue pressed against her front teeth and, of its own accord, she felt her mouth open further. When his tongue slid slowly against her, however, the ball of heat that slammed into her had her shuddering hard enough to break the kiss.

Her eyes fluttered open to see him watching her, his own eyes wide and a little wild behind his black mask.

"Jesus Raven."

"What . . . was it bad?" she heard herself ask and the breathlessness of her own voice startled her. Inwardly she winced at the question but consoled herself with the fact that if he said yes, she would probably punch him.

He shook his head. "No, not-" his voice broke and she was shocked to realize that he seemed just as shaken as she felt.

"It definitely was not bad. In fact, I highly recommend that we do it again," he began, flashing a grin as he ran a hand over his hair. "It was like . . . you were inside of me," he finished.

Raven frowned over that for a moment and then chuckled, surprised the sound could make its way up through the twisted knots inside of her chest.

"Oh. I forgot about that," she admitted. "Technically, I am inside of you. You were probably feeling whatever I was feeling." As soon as the words left her mouth, she shut her eyes again, not sure how she felt about that insight. Her hands slid down from around his neck to his chest, where they pushed in an attempt at separation.

Her eyes flew open a second later at the soft touch on the back of her hand. Robin had tugged off one of his heavy gloves. It lay discarded on the floor of his mind while his fingers were slowly tracing a random pattern on her skin. Each brush left behind a sensation that was both tickling and tingling. When his fingers moved over her wrist she felt a shiver run through her and immediately pulled her hand away.

He grinned. "You feel a lot," he pointed out.

She stuck her hands behind her back, partly to keep them out of his reach and partly to keep from rubbing at the now sensitive skin.

"I noticed," she muttered darkly.

His grin only widened.

"Now what?" she challenged, refusing to answer his smile with one of her own.

Robin sobered almost instantly. "Now? We go to Azarath."

"We?"

"Yeah. I'm going with you."

###

RANDOM TITANS THEATER PRESENTS: "You've Lost That Loving Feeling."

Robin: "So, which one is which emotion?" (Points to red cloaked Raven.) "This one has got to be Anger. You look angry."

Anger: "You have no idea."

Robin: "But I have no idea about the rest of them. Like this green one. What's that? Environmental awareness?"

Raven: "Yes Robin, I have an entire emotion devoted to Earth Day.