"I want tofu bacon!"
"Well that's too damn bad! Cuz I'm not gonna make that crap!"
Robin heard Beast Boy gasp dramatically and tried to tune them out as he rolled over on the couch and groaned.
Last night was not an easy one for the fearless leader. Although the couch was comfy and all, he had a very rough sleep. He just couldn't stop thinking about what had happened earlier that day, about Raven. Every time he thought about his purple haired friend, thoughts and feelings swarmed his mind. Most were about what had happened, some were ones where he kicked himself for not intervening sooner. But the most overpowering was the urge to go and comfort her. To help her talk about the whole incident, to be there for her while he knew she was alone in his room. He could feel it through the bond. She tried to block her feelings off from him but some managed to seep through the barrier. He knew she was upset. She felt used, distraught, alone, and above all guilty for Malchior's betrayal. He knew that she felt like it was all her fault. And it killed him to respect her wishes of being alone because no matter how well she tried to play it off, she wasn't fine. She played that game so well and it killed him that she wouldn't talk to them about it. Talk to him about it. That she would suffer in silence because that's the only way she knew how to process her feelings.
There were a few times throughout the night where he had to stop himself from going to her and check up on her. One of the times he actually did make his way to his room to check up on her but ran into Cyborg coming back from dropping her stuff off. When he asked how she was doing, Cyborg just gave a somber shake of his head and said she was doing the best she could right now. When asked what he was doing in the hall Robin said he was making his way to the bathroom. They bid each other good night and went their separate ways down the hall.
Robin did decide to go to the bathroom after coming up with his excuse. After all, he had to pass by his room to get to it which helped ease his nerves. All seemed normal on his way to, but when he was going back he stumbled as he felt a wave of utter sadness and despair come over him. He had to stop and touch his wet cheeks in confusion, not understanding where those feelings and tears were coming from until he heard a quiet sob coming from behind his door. It took him a second to put two and two together when he realized that those feelings and the soft cries were coming from Raven.
It took every ounce of restraint he had to not open the door and comfort her. To hold her and assure her that everything was alright, that he was there for her.
Robin wanted nothing more than to be with her in that moment, but instead he put his back to the wall and slowly sank to the floor, listening and waiting for her cries to stop as he let the tears drip from his eyes in solidarity. If she didn't want company, then he would keep himself far enough to give her space but close enough if anything happened.
He waited until all was still in the room. No more cries were heard after a while when he decided he was comfortable with leaving her. Taking a deep breath before he stood up and walked away, in the back of his mind he realized that he didn't hear anything break or shatter when Raven cried.
He didn't get much sleep for the rest of the night, worries of his friend plagued his mind. So when he did finally manage to doze for a bit, of course the breakfast feud had to start at that moment.
"For the last time," Cyborg boomed, "I'm not cooking that!"
"I'm not asking you to cook it!" Beast Boy hallored back, "I'll gladly do that! What I need is a pan!"
"Oh. Sorry dude." Cyborg reached below the stove to find his friend a suitable sized pan. "Here. Sorry, I'm a bit on edge. Didn't mean to blow up on you."
"It's ok." Beast Boy said as he accepted both the pan and the apology. "I know what you mean. I didn't mean to yell at you either."
Robin turned some more on the couch and sighed. Finally that's over.
"Good morning friends!" Starfire gleamed cheerfully as she flew into the room.
And there goes trying to go back to sleep.
Robin gave up figuring that if he wanted to try to sleep, he was in the absolute worst place for that, and sat up, braving what the day had to throw at him.
Raven awoke confused and startled. She wasn't in her room. These weren't her clothes. Where was she?!
While being bound to the mattress for a moment more she took that moment to observe her surroundings, like Robin taught them to do.
'Robin. That's right,' she remembered, 'I'm in Robin's room.'
It took a minute of breath control to help dull the pain before she slowly sat up. Everything still hurt. She groaned and carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed and winced when she saw the state of the darkened bruises on her legs. If that's only what her legs looked like, then she couldn't imagine what shape the rest of her was in.
"Should have asked Cyborg for pain meds when I had the chance." Raven grumbled as she slowly rose to her feet and slowly stumbled to the bathroom, not wanting to topple over if she exerted too much and preferring to not have somewhere else that would be in pain.
Overall, she was shocked that she didn't look half bad. Sure, she felt like she got hit by a bus and then shaken around in a concrete box, but she didn't look too much different than yesterday. She must have been able to heal herself at some point during the night because her abdomen looked slightly better. Everything still hurt, but it didn't look as severe as what it had previously, which she took as a good sign.
It took her a while to get ready due to her pains, seeing as the only clothes she brought with her was her uniform which was quite tricky to put on at that moment, but she managed to pull it on and covered herself securely with her cloak. She just hoped no one noticed her bruised thighs. She scoffed at herself. Yeah right, like they wouldn't notice the stark contrast of purple and blue on her pale skin. But she was missing her room and wanted to see the damage in the sunlight. She hoped it wasn't as bad as what it seemed last night.
"Ok, so we're going to need one, two…three, three windows," Cyborg counted with his finger at the sad remains of glass shards and broken wall in Raven's room.
"Didn't she just have one big pane like in the common room?" Robin questioned.
"I thought she had a few grouped together." Cyborg mused aloud.
Both boys were doing the official damage report and were trying to get an estimate of what all needed to be fixed or replaced and how much it would cost. Since the city would often cover damages from attacks on the tower, they weren't sure if most of the damage would be covered or not since it technically wasn't an attack to the tower itself, but who knows. Maybe they'd be surprised.
They had both only been in her room a handful of times and were having a hard time remembering things like what her window configuration was or how deep the windowsill was.
"There seems to be definite divided parts so I think there was more than one." Cyborg observed as he looked on what remained of the windowsill. "Although it could just be the supports of the foundation."
"More than one what?"
Cyborg turned around with an ungrateful gasp upon Raven's silent entrance while Robin turned with a soft smile, the bond letting her presence known to him when she neared.
"Oh, my. We need to put a bell on you." Cyborg gave a short chuckle at his surprise.
Raven smirked at the fright she gave her fellow metal friend and looked at the clipboard in his hands. "What are you doing?"
"Oh, we're doing the uh, damage write up." Cyborg lowered his voice towards the end of the sentence seeing Raven's face go from its playful smirk back to its rock solid exterior.
"Oh." Raven said quietly and looked around. For some reason she was hoping that when she walked in her room would just magically be restored back to its original state. It's non hole-y, Swiss cheese-like, demolished state. As she took it in with the daylight, she was surprised to see some of the rubble had been cleaned up. It made her a bit uncomfortable, meaning they came into her room and touched her stuff, but who was she kidding, it was all destroyed anyway.
The boys watched as Raven looked around, Cyborg giving Robin a gesture to say something.
"We uh, were talking about how many windows you had." Robin started. "Do you know how many-"
"One." Raven interrupted, back turned to the boys.
"One." Cyborg said aloud as he marked the window section of his paper. "When we put in a new one, would you still like one?"
Raven sighed and shook her head, still not facing them. "I don't know."
"Alright. You don't have to decide now, but you will have to at some point." Cyborg assured seeing her unease. "On the plus side, we can put in that ledge you've always wanted on your windowsill so you can sit there and read." He suggested, trying to brighten the mood.
"Maybe." Raven murmured, not really paying attention but mention of the reading ledge she's lusted over for a while brought her focus back to the boys, finally facing them. "How long will it take until I can be back in here?"
"Is my room not pleasing to her highness?" Robin teased, earning another small smirk from his cloaked clad friend.
"Oh it's been awful." She teased back, the slimmest of smiles showing as she threw the back of her hand against her forehead in mock distress. "The bathroom was so clean that the white tile practically blinded me when I turned the light on. Everything was so pristine that I felt like a mere commoner being invited into a palace. And the bed, oh the horror. It was so neatly made up that it was like playing tug of war trying to get the sheets untucked."
"Why, I can't possibly sleep with a wrinkle in my sheet. It gets freshly pressed every morning. And I bet you just carelessly got in and made a wreck of it without appreciating how neat I left it for you." Robin grinned as he made a reference to a movie he hoped Raven understood. His grin only got bigger when a tug at the bond told him she got it.
"I sure did. And guess what? I didn't even use your sheets." She paused for effect and lowered her voice to a whisper as she moved slightly closer to her leader. "I put them on the floor."
Robin gasped dramatically and placed a hand to his chest. "On the floor?! Oh, your non respect towards bed sheets wounds me so."
Cyborg gave a light chuckle at the two bantering birds and went to finish the write up to give them some time together. It's been hard for her, so he was glad to see her smiling, even if it was in the form of making fun of Robin's room. Whatever got her out and as social as she was able to get, that was alright with him.
As he walked around her bed and looked up at the sun shining through the hole in the ceiling, he descretly looked over to Raven when he noticed her cloak was a bit open exposing her bruised legs. He tried to look away before she would notice, but he wasn't quick enough. And once their eyes locked, she adjusted her shoulders so her cloak covered her and her face fell once more.
Robin, seeing and sensing the shift in her demeanor, turned to see what she was looking at and saw Cyborg who looked away.
"Alright," Robin drew out, not knowing what that was about but deciding to not address it just yet, "to answer your earlier question, I- oh I'm sorry, we," he corrected at Cyborgs throat clear, "don't feel comfortable with having you stay in here until at least the walls, floor, and ceiling are fixed."
Raven nodded and clasped her hands together, hidden under her cloak as she squeezed them upon hearing the news she didn't want to hear. "Ok."
"I know this isn't what you want to hear," Robin interjected, "but you really can't be in here until it's structurally sound. We don't want the floor or ceiling to give out with you in here."
"I understand." Raven confirmed. "It's just not really what I was wanting to hear."
"I know this must feel very overwhelming and probably pretty upsetting," Robin started and noticed a small nod from her, "but we are going to make this work for you. Anything you say goes. Within reason of course." He added to lighten the mood a bit.
"Raven offered a small smile in response and looked around her room once more. "Maybe I should just start on a new page, something fresh."
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Robin asked, feeling like he did but was surprised as well.
"It sounds like the girl wants to redo her room." Cyborg stated, also slightly surprised, but offered a smile. "Am I right?"
Raven thought about it for a moment as she looked at their faces. Slowly she nodded. "Yeah." She said. She nodded her head again, this time more confident. "Yeah, that's what I want. I want a fresh start."
"Well then, whenever you're ready to look at some stuff just come and find me." Cyborg said cheerfully. "I'm going to be putting in a claim for the damage in the meantime. Let me know of any ideas that you might have." He gave one last glance to Raven and made his way to the door and left, leaving the two birds alone in what used to be a safe haven.
The rest of the day was spent excitedly talking about Ravens new room. Well, Starfire and Beast Boy were thrilled at the idea of a new look for the previous dark and gloomy room. They were coming up with ideas that she thought she would like such as a meditation corner, a plant shelf, and some others that they liked like glow in the dark stickers and fairy lights. Raven had to admit, even though the stars didn't quite seem like her style, maybe she could make it work. It would after all remind her of the starry skies of Azarath she so dearly missed.
They heard back from insurance fairly quickly. Perks of being heroes, insurance responds as soon as possible. Later that afternoon they got an email stating that the building repairs will be covered such as the windows and materials to fix the walls and such, but the furniture would have to be paid out of pocket. Cyborg, earlier in the day, said he figured they would have said that but it never hurt to see what else could be covered.
Cyborg and Robin went to work on the computer as soon as they read the email to order what they could online or request to pick it up in store whenever they could. Even though they didn't exchange any words, they both had the same understanding, get what they can now so they can get Raven in her room as soon as possible.
Raven spent most of the day on the roof. She did make an appearance at breakfast when it was announced that she would be redoing her room but that quickly became too overwhelming, so she escaped to the roof.
She was careful in where she stepped to avoid falling through multiple stories in the tower from holes not yet taped off or fixed as she situated herself at the edge of the roof. She cast a somber glance down one of the bigger holes that gave a peak of her room. It was an odd feeling, all of it really. How one small seemingly insignificant thing like picking up that cursed book could cause this amount of damage.
It was getting chilly where she sat on the edge as the sun started to set. Just over the city line she could see the tops of the mighty oak trees starting to turn a light orange, signaling fall was on its way. She pulled her cloak tight around her upper body as she sat there in thought. Just like the night before with her emotions, she let all the thoughts come forward with no restrictions.
Would she paint her room a different color? It was a dark purple now, maybe a light purple would look nice. Or maybe blue? Maybe she'll get the reading nook she's always wanted. When would they start repairs on her room? How long would it take? Will she continue staying in Robin's room? If so, where will Robin stay? Will he stay in the main room? She didn't think that was fair. He was sacrificing his comfort for hers. But there was nowhere in the tower for them to both comfortably stay in. Maybe they could both share his room. No. They both value their privacy too much. But Raven knows his identity. She knows who he is. Everything. She saw it all just a few weeks ago. And he saw some of her in return, but she was careful and kept many things guarded. Maybe they could make it work. It's not like it's Beast Boy.
She gave an exhale in amusement to that thought.
Then something else came to mind.
If they shared the room, who would get the bed?
An image of them together on his bed blipped in her mind against her control. She immediately flushed and put her hands on her face, shaking her head as if that would wash the image away.
'No, one of us would use the floor,' she reasoned to herself. She would offer to take the floor, if they were in that situation that is, but she knew that Robin would refuse and insist she use the bed and sleep on the floor himself. He was just thoughtful like that. And stubborn.
She continued to sit and just think, watching the world go by until she felt his presence become closer.
"Hey," Robin greeted with a smile even though her back was turned to him. She knew that he'd come to her anyway, so she didn't bother turning to face him. "Aren't you cold?" He asked as he sat down next to her after almost putting his foot through one of the smaller holes and falling through the roof.
"Not really." Raven shrugged and loosened her grip on her cloak, the tightness more for comfort than for warmth. "It feels nice."
Robin nodded in agreement. Early evenings in the late summer/early fall was something they shared a liking for. It was warm enough to not need a light jacket, but cool enough that they weren't sweating their asses off. It was a bit cooler this time as the sun had started to set, but he sat with her regardless.
"Cyborg got a response from insurance earlier." He started, watching for any reactions on if he should drop the topic but got a nod encouraging him to go on. "The cost of repairs and materials for the room itself will be covered, but anything else like furniture or clothes will have to be paid from our accounts."
Raven continued to look ahead at the turning trees gently swaying in the horizon and gave a short nod. "That's good that the repairs will be covered."
"Yeah. We ordered some things already, just a matter of time until we actually get them."
Raven nodded again and continued to keep her gaze on the swaying trees. It was good news, but it wasn't what she wanted to hear. She still wanted to just wake up and have this been all but a dream and she can go back to her normal routine and semi happily be in her room. But realistically, she knew the damage of her actions, and it couldn't be undone.
So for now, she sat. This time with company. Sure, she wanted to be by herself and stew in her own pity for a while more, but in that moment, she found his company comforting.
Robin didn't want to push his luck with Raven, so he too kept quiet and used the opportunity to think as well.
His thoughts were similar to hers. When could they start repairs? When could they get Raven back in her room? What were they going to do in the meantime? How is she going to handle this? Will she just lock herself away like normal? Would she let them help her? Let him help her? She saved him just a few weeks ago from Slade's mental attack, would she let him return the favor, help save her from herself?
His thoughts were interrupted when Raven chose to speak.
"What are we going to do about your room?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm in it, but now you don't have a place to be in. For a day, sure, whatever. But this seems like it's going to take a while."
Robin took a deep breath in and let it out loudly. "I don't know. I don't mind staying in the common room."
"But can you for another few days? A week?"
His silence was her answer.
"Yeah, exactly."
"Well," Robin thought for a few seconds, "I don't mind staying out there if it means you can have a place of refuge."
"But what about your place of refuge?"
He shrugged, turning his head to face her. "I'll manage."
Raven held his gaze for a moment before she turned to look away, shaking her head slightly.
The movement did not go unnoticed by Robin. "What?"
"It's not fair."
"What's not?"
"Me taking your space. You need a place to be alone too."
"I have my office."
Raven made a noise between a scoff and a laugh. "That's not the same."
"You deserve a place of solitude too. It's not like you kicked me out of my room. And like you said, it's only for a little bit. I can find a place that no one visits."
"But it's your room." Raven turned back to look at him but couldn't manage to look into his masked eyes, so she looked back to the trees. "It makes me feel weird…bad…guilty, I don't know, that I'm taking everything of yours."
"You're not taking anything from me." Robin countered. "I offered my room because I know that this is hard, and that having a place to decompress is important to you. You're more than welcome to trade, but I can't guarantee silence in the main room." He added with a slight smile.
Raven rolled her eyes, not letting the smirk he brought out show.
"Yeah, exactly." He repeated what she said earlier and looked out at the trees himself, letting the silence laps for a few minutes. "I hope you realize that I don't mind you being in my room. I'm more than happy being able to help you."
She didn't react, not knowing what to say, but sighed softly showing that she heard him.
Knowing that she was done with the conversation, he decided to sit with her for a little while longer before they made their way down. Robin for dinner, and Raven to be alone.
