Life sucked.

The metal thing sucked.

Robin sucked.

Everything sucked.

She growled, pacing her rom.

She was a Titan. A goddamn superhero. But still, she couldn't figure out how to heal her wounds or fix her stupid dislocated shoulder.

Damn life.

Damn Robin.

She summarily dismissed the fact that he had, technically, saved her life. He dislocated her shoulder; that's all that mattered.

Growling again, she focused on the problem at hand. Frowning, she prodded experimentally at the shoulder. A strangled-sounding noise erupted from her throat as the dull throbbing became a raw burning.

As if in response, the door slid open and a furious Robin stood in the doorway. She immediately wiped off her grimace and glared right back, straightening her back to appear taller. He had a good head of height over her, but she wasn't going to let that intimidate her.

He stalked towards her, their furious gazes never breaking. It wasn't until he reached out to grasp her arm and shoulder that her eyes twitched for a brief moment. With that, he quickly pushed her shoulder back in place. Her body jerked, but she managed to keep her eyes on him, the only other sign of the indescribable pain being the low keening that escaped for a moment before she cut it short.

"Goddamn it! What the hell is your problem?" He yelled suddenly, dropping her arm angrily.

"What are you on about now?" She smirked inwardly; her voice was perfectly monotone, no signs of pain.

"Could you just show some emotion for once?" As if. "Maybe be human?" That stung. "I know that hurt like hell, but you couldn't even show it! You're so goddamn stubborn all the time!"

"Well, excuse me," she hissed back, abruptly infuriated. "Maybe you haven't realized, but I grew up training myself to keep my emotions under control. I'm not going to cry and bemoan my fate to all of you."

"I know that, Raven! This is only part of it!" His hands twitched at his sides, as if he wanted to punch something. "You couldn't even tell us that you lost your powers! You're so afraid to show weakness or something, it's ridiculous -"

"What, do you want me to be like Starfire? Rave about my life story, everything that I'm feeling until I might as well be an open book? That's not who I am, sorry to disappoint you.

"I'm not asking you to be like Starfire -"

"You sure? You seem to enjoy her company all of the time."

"Stop changing the subject!"

"Stop being an idiot."

"Could you just be serious for a minute?"

"Are you honestly telling the girl who never cracks a smile to be serious? If I got any more serious, I'd be dead."

"You might as well be! You could have died today!"

"I would've been fine."

"You fell off the building!"

"Obviously not, I seem to be fine."

"You're bleeding, and I just had to pop your shoulder back into place."

"But that was your fault in the first place, anyways."

"You seem to think you're some sort of genius, but right now you're acting like a brainless, stuck-up, insolent, ridiculous, spineless, halfwit, self-important -"

"Don't you dare judge me. You don't know anything about me!"

"Maybe I don't, because you never talk, never open up, never tell us anything -"

"Because you don't need me anymore!"

There was a pause.

"What?" His voice was nearly a whisper.

"You, none of you – the Titans – you don't need me anymore. I could just not show up and it wouldn't matter. I'm practically not even part of the team, I'm useless!"

"Raven…" His voice was so soft now, as if he were afraid to hurt her. "You are anything but useless. We'd all be dead three times over if not for you." He smiled grimly, and she could almost see him imagining the close calls they'd had. "I swear to you, no one ever thinks of you as worthless. If you ever left, you can bet that we'd be after you in a second."

She remained silent.

"I promise, Raven. We'll always want you around; even Beast Boy, no matter how much you scare him."

"Who said I wanted him around?" she muttered.

He laughed. "See, everything's normal again. No need to cry."

"I did no such thing! You're delusional."

He rolled his eyes exasperatedly, but he seemed more amused than frustrated. "Fine, fine. Just promise you'll let us do some tests to see what's going on?"

"…am I going to regret this at all?"

"Just promise, Raven."

"…I promise."

~x~

"If you don't get me out of this shit in two seconds I'm going to break into your room and kill you in your sleep."

"I'm sure you'd love to watch me sleep, Raven, but you promised to let us figure out what was wrong." Robin grinned at her cheekily.

"I didn't promise to be treated like some common guinea pig."

"Of course not. You're a very special guinea pig. Now shut up and let me finish connecting the electrodes."

She glared at him as he stuck another one onto her skin, his gaze flickering between her and the monitors. There were probably at least fifty of them over her body; there were so many wires hanging off of her she was practically begging to die from accidental electrocution. Her gaze moved to shoot daggers at Beast Boy when he snickered. At her gaze, he held up his hands defensively.

"No way, you can't kill me!" The changeling grinned. "I'm your psychiatrist. Just call me Dr. Awesome. So," he began to speak in a deep, unnatural voice, pretending to stroke his non-existent beard thoughtfully. "Tell me. What seems to be the problem?"

"I lost my powers, you dimwit."

"Maybe you could be a bit more helpful, Beast Boy?" Robin muttered.

"Don't judge the psychiatrist! And I told you," he glared at Robin's back, "my name is Dr. Awesome."

"Right, Dr. Awesome," Robin spoke without looking up. "Well, maybe you could stop goofing off and try to be useful?"

Beast Boy snorted. "The disrespect one has to endure from the clients these days -"

"Beast Boy!"

"Fine!" he huffed. "So besides not being able to pick things up and throw them around and stuff, and grow all those red eyes and tentacly stuff – really scary, by the way -"

Robin growled.

"I'm getting to it! Gees, I'm the animal here, don't growl at me! Like I was saying, besides all of that, what's changed?" He grinned triumphantly at Robin.

"Well," she frowned, not expecting an actual question from the changeling, "I can't access my emotions anymore, my aura. My soul, whatever you want to call it. My mind."

"…what?" Intelligent response.

"My mind, Beast Boy. Remember when you and Cyborg got yourselves sucked into my mirror? There. It's different, empty. The aspects of my personality aren't there anymore."

"Oh, right. That place was hella creepy, dude. With all the different colored Ravens? They were actually pretty cool, Robin, you should've seen 'em! There was this Green one, who totally kicked ass! Definitely fits me, with the green, you know. That grey one was kind of annoying, though. Crying and moaning. 'You don't like me, he doesn't like me, blah blah blah.'"

"My emotions, Beast Boy. Don't insult them, you're insulting me."

"Err…sorry. Okay, so what do you mean by you can't access them? They're your emotions, they just…happen."

She sighed, irritated. "I've always controlled my emotions. Without control, things would explode constantly around me; they affect my powers. But now, they're loose. It's like everything's opened up, changed. I can't sense them anymore; since I can't control my powers anymore, I can't control my emotions either."

"Why not?"

She glared at him pointedly, before snapping at Robin, "Why, of all people, did you have him pretend to be the psychiatrist?"

He looked up at her from where he was connecting the last electrode below her collarbone, a smirk pulling at his lips. "You tend to talk more when you're annoyed, so I figured he'd be the best bet. We wouldn't have gotten any of that if I'd just asked you."

She opened her mouth to snap as her eyes flashed warningly, but it was Beast Boy who spoke first. "Hey, you said it was 'cause you thought I'd be a good doctor!" he said indignantly. When Raven snorted from her position on the medi-lab table, he gave them a sad pout. "Why do you hurt me so?" he wailed.

"Cut the act, Beast Boy, you can leave now." Robin rolled his eyes, and the green boy slid out of the room with a thumbs up and his signature grin.

"All right, done! Let's get this thing running." He pressed a few buttons, and quickly the monitors began to spurt out information, the printer spitting out the pages, the ink still shining.

Quickly picking up the pages, he scanned them, his facial features morphing into a frown, before the contours of the mask widened in shock. She felt her heart pound.

"Robin," she whispered. "What's the matter?"

"That thing, that metal thing that attacked you in the city. It was an alien."

"You've reverted to Beast Boy's standards of explanation."

He was too anxious to continue with the banter. "No, you don't understand. That thing, the shards in your back -"

"The glass?"

"No -"

"Metal, then."

"No! Listen to me, Raven, it's not anything from Earth!" The papers crumpled in his hands.

She stared at him, confused. "What is it, then?"

"That's the thing," he began to pace, always a sure sign that something was seriously bothering him. "It's something so complex, so…so foreign that the computer doesn't recognize it, even with all of the information we have now. It's alien!"

"I get that it's alien, Robin!" She snapped, sitting up. She ignored the wires pulling at her skin slightly. "Explain why you look so worried!"

He ran a hand through his hair, making it messier than it already was. "When we took the shards out, we didn't realize it's some sort of living organism. It's spreading within your body. I don't know what it is, Raven, but whatever it is, it's draining you somehow."

Understanding dawned. "It's keeping me from using my powers."

"No," he mumbled. "Well, yes it is, but that's not all."

"What? Robin, look at me and explain!" Some of the electrodes had been pulled from her skin, she was leaning so far forwards as her heart pounded faster. What was it that had him so off edge?

He finally looked up to stare her in the eyes; she could practically see the emotion behind the mask. "Raven, it's draining you of your demon nature, somehow. Raven…" He shouted suddenly and threw the papers in anger. They fell to the floor around the table, except for one that landed at the edge of the table by her feet. Yanking off the rest of the wires, she grabbed it. Her eyes scanned it; a graph. Before and after. The balance of her demon and human DNA nucleotides as of last year, compared to now.

The graphs had changed.

"When it's done, Raven…you'll be entirely human."

The paper slid from her hands, floating to the floor silently.

EDIT: With a reviewer's comment on the impossibility of this situation, I decided to clarify a bit. The, virus, shall we call it, is not literally ripping her DNA apart and removing the demonic side, which would, understandably, result in her death. The virus is acting as a type of parasite; it's spreading through her cells and using the host DNA to replicate off of, like a template. The result is not destroying her DNA, but altering it, as a mutation. This, of course, would be impossible for multiple reasons: if something really had changed her DNA in such a way, she would most likely not become a full human, and seeing as demons don't exist, the entire situation is completely impossible. However, for the purposes of this fanfiction, I have made it possible. If demons and aliens are possible...I think organisms should be able to mutate DNA to change the phenotypic genome.
Additionally, while some of her powers are a result of the teachings of the monks of Azarath, as a full human, she wouldn't be able to control them. Her ability to even have powers comes from the fact that she is not human.
The section about her mind is rather confusing, and I do apologize for that as well. I viewed her mind as a sort of vessel, somewhat mutated by the effect of Trigon's use of her and invading inhabitation of her mind. With her change, this "vessel", per se, is changing along with her; it's no longer the place where she can hide all of her emotions, keep them contained. With the danger leaving, her mind no longer acts as a containing chamber.
I hope that makes a bit more sense for all of you, and if you have any other questions, let me know! Just keep in mind that this is a fanfiction, and is in no way based in any sort of scientific fact. :)

Hey, guys!

So, this chapter is a bit different from my others, but let me know if you still like it. Hopefully you guys understand what is happening.

Thanks for all the reviews for the last chapter! I can't begin to convey how much I appreciated them, so keep them coming!

As to the lateness of this chapter…I'm extremely sorry. Technological issues, namely there being no computer for me to type this on, nor to upload it on. Can't say I'm gifted with the technology these days.

As always, the Teen Titans do not belong to me.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy!

- Nadine