I burned the flower.
Raven wrote.
I thought about it while Robin slept. How it was a bribe. A pawn to persuade my involvement. That it-he didn't love me, and I don't love him.
I wrote a note on another piece of paper, on it what I'm releasing and don't want to come back. They were both burned in my burning bowl in my room.
She looked over the bed from where she sat against the side of it on the floor away from her friend.
Robin has no idea that I left, and for now, it's going to stay that way. I don't want him to worry about me, and lately that's all that everyone's been doing.
Hopefully this will be the closure I needed. A final send off and a fuck you.
She closed her journal and held it while she took deep breaths.
'In two, three, four, hold two, three, four, out two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.' She counted in her head.
After a few minutes she climbed back into bed and let the sleep that she very much needed take over.
Robin woke up to the sound of insistent knocking on his door. Dragging himself out of his warm nest and slapping a mask over his eyes, he groggily made his way to the door and opened it with a grumbled greeting.
"You're both still sleeping?" Cyborg said in amazement. "It's like almost noon."
"Huh?" Robin squinted, as if that would help him process the words being spoken to him.
"It's 11:53." Cyborg read off his arm. "How long have you been asleep for?"
"11…53." Robin repeated sleepily, then shot his eyes open in shock. "11:53?! I had no idea! Why didn't someone come wake me up?"
"We called and texted you. Both of you." Cyborg explained, peeking his head in to see a lump on the bed with purple hair spilling out of the blankets. "Is she really still asleep?"
Robin looked back at the sleeping empath, completely dead to the world. "I would say so, yes."
It wasn't like either of them to sleep in at all. The latest they generally slept until was about eight. This was a shock to him that he slept for so long, and that she was still sleeping.
"I guess we needed it." He commented.
"Are you going to wake her?" Cyborg asked. "Her desk and dresser came today. I even went out to get the stuff needed for her bed."
Robin looked back at his friend, peacefully sound asleep. He knew that she wanted to be involved in the making of her room, but this was the first time in days that she seemed to be getting the rest she needed. So he let her sleep and went back to bed himself.
He woke back up a few hours later feeling well rested and ready to tackle the day. Or what remained of it.
Sitting up he noticed that Raven had left. Looking over at the time he was shocked to see how late in the day it was but was glad that he too was able to rest.
Taking a few minutes to get dressed and make himself presentable, he left in search of something to eat. He found what he assumed to be some leftover breakfast, some potatoes and eggs, and made his way to where he knew everyone would be, Raven's room.
He didn't know what to expect walking in, but it certainly wasn't them all peacefully working together. He took a moment to stand and watch them with a smile. Raven had Starfire helping her paint the walls and Starfire was absolutely thrilled to be helping her friend. She would paint hearts and flowers which would be covered by Raven who would shake her head amusedly. Beast Boy and Cyborg were trying to put together the desk, trying being the keyword as they fussed and fought with each other over the directions. They seemed to have gotten the dresser together which stood off to the side.
Raven was the one who spotted him first and offered the slimmest of smiles which he reflected back.
"Friend!" Starfire shouted happily. "Come join the construction! I believe we are almost done!"
"Besides some general decorating, the only thing left is the bed and I still need to check the bathroom." Cyborg spoke.
"That's amazing! You guys did a lot of work today."
They all beamed at the compliment.
Raven sat down her brush and walked to the door. "Will you come with me for a second?" She asked.
"Of course." He nodded and followed her out of the room into the laundry room.
"So, I see you have some helpers with you."
"They just kinda barged in and demanded to help." Raven rolled her eyes, taking some sheets out of the dryer and into a laundry basket.
"That sounds about right." Robin chuckled. "What do you need help with?"
"Nothing," She busied herself with transferring the wet fabrics into the dryer, "I just wanted to thank you for all that you've done to help. I know I don't show it much, but I really appreciate it and am grateful to have a friend like you."
Robin wasn't able to hold back the sentimental smile that shone on his face. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been thinking of his conversation with her last night, afraid that it would cause her to distance further from them, and was so glad to see that it seemed to have done the opposite.
"You're welcome. I may not have the answers to everything, but I can help you through whatever it is you need help with. Including taking this basket."
"I can get it." She tried to make a grab for the basket but it was yoinked away from her reach.
"I know, but I'm going to bring them back to your room for you."
She watched non amusedly while he made his way to her room, there being nowhere to put the sheets yet. "I was going to bring them to your room."
She heard the turning around of his shoes and watched as he walked past the laundry room towards his room. "I knew that." He tried to play off.
Raven shook her head and turned on the dryer, then made her way back to help the three in her room.
They worked long and hard that day. Between building the furniture and painting the walls a second time, as well as the ceiling. Come dinner time and they were all exhausted.
While in passing, Robin mentioned to Raven that he had to file a report on the villain as well as an assault form.
After dinner had ended, Raven decided to put her things back on her bookshelves. The bathroom had not yet been inspected because they were too tired to move everything out, but she was determined to have some kind of normalcy in her now unfamiliar room.
It was dark, the stars peeked through her open window to allow the room to air out the paint smell.
Not wanting it to take longer than it needed to be, Raven levitated everything from the bathroom, books, plants, boxes of crystals, everything, and put them near the two shelves.
There was no order to the stacks of books which was something she was going to do. She first needed to go through them and separate which ones she was keeping and which ones she was going to part with and then separate the ones she was keeping into piles based on their genre, condition, and level of importance. It was a daunting task seeing as there were so many, but it was an easy decision. By the time she had finished there was a decent sized stack by the door to be donated.
When she started putting the books back on her shelf, Robin came to the door with a quiet knock. She turned to see he carried a laptop with him and the nervous smile on his face. It was time.
"Hey," he started, "can I come in?"
She nodded and watched as he made his way to her desk but realized there was no chair yet. Looking around for a place to sit, Raven offered a space of open wall by the shelves since she was on the floor as well.
He nodded in thanks and sat himself down, propped against the wall and opened the laptop. "So, I'm sure you already know what this is going to be about huh?"
She took a deep breath. "Yes."
"Are you ready to do this?"
"Not really, but it has to happen sooner or later."
He nodded in understanding. "We can do this somewhere else if you would like."
"No," she shook her head. She needed the distraction of filling her bookshelf to help ease and ground herself. She knew this wasn't going to be an easy thing to do so she'd rather have something to focus on. "Here's fine."
"Alright. Do you have a preference on which one you would like to do first?"
"The villain report."
"Name and or alias." Robin read off.
"Malchior."
"How is that spelled?"
"M-A-L-C-H-I-O-R." The last few letters were hushed, as if speaking them would summon him.
"Date of first encounter."
"September 30th. The day we fought Cardiac at the playground." She added.
Robin typed as he did the math in his head. He was let out of the book on the 6th, so they had spent almost a whole week together. He tried to keep the force of his typing and his emotions even as he willed the thoughts out of his mind. "Description, first in terms of approximate age."
"Thousands of years old at least."
"Appointment height."
"Probably close to six feet."
"Weight."
She shrugged. "He's paper, I'm not sure."
He nodded, writing N/A in the blank space. "Build."
"Slender, broad shoulders."
"And appearance/costume."
She took a few seconds to take deep breaths, placed a couple books on the bottom shelf and a hand on her knee. "In the book he has white hair and eyes. The page is torn below the bridge of his nose. His body was made of paper, old paper. A tan color. Only his eyes show, no mouth or nose. He looks kind of like a mummy."
Robin had to resist cracking a smirk at that last comment. "Powers?"
"Knowledgeable. He's read basically every spell book and scroll but I'm unsure exactly what kind of power he possesses." She took a breath. "You can do the dragon part on your own?"
Knowing that meant "I'm starting to get overwhelmed, can you do the next part?" He nodded.
"Crime(s) committed."
"Manipulation. Destruction of property." She lowered her voice and felt the edge of the book in her hand. "Assault. But I guess in legal terms it would be sexual assault."
Robin nodded solemnly. "It would. Do you need a break before we do the next form?"
She shook her head and placed the book on the shelf.
"There's two options. One is that you can get an investigation and the other is essentially just putting it on record."
She nodded knowing what he was talking about. They all hadl experience in these kinds of reports and the pros and cons they each contain. And since there was no chance of Malchior escaping, she chose the second.
Robin pulled up the file and handed the laptop to her. "Would you like me to leave?"
She nodded, scrolling through the document briefly.
Standing up, he let her know he'd be in his room when she was done and left her to it.
It wasn't an easy thing for her to do. Not in the slightest.
Raven was one who buried her feelings deep within and didn't revisit them if she could help it. But this form brought everything flooding back as if he was sitting right next to her. She half expected him to be there and couldn't help checking every now and then like he would tell her to stop writing the report. That she was lying.
Some of it was easier. Things about herself and him. Where they were, if she had any injuries or pain, any weapons used, things that didn't happen to her. But when she had to go into detail about what happened, even though she knew it could have been worse, it was still painful to revisit.
She didn't skimp out on anything. She wrote down everything. How when he was still trapped in the book as a measly half face he would verbally express how beautiful she was, which led to light touches when he got out that became carasses, groping, all of which was unwanted, but she thought she should enjoy it. Someone was giving her a kind of attention she had never experienced before. She wanted to like it, wanted to believe it was because there was actually something between the two of them, but there wasn't.
The rubbing on her arms wasn't encouragement like she brushed it off to be. The hands on her stomach acted like they planted the seed of want in her, causing her to not protest when they traveled lower to grip at her thighs and higher to squeeze her breasts.
Many times she had to stop typing before her emotions crumbled the laptop. She had to physically remove herself from the room at one point when she could feel the worn paper hands probe at her body like a phantom pain. But eventually, she finished it. And she knew Robin would read it. And strangely, she was ok with that.
She knew that he had seen everything through the bond that night when they held each other and cried. She could feel the shift in his emotions and picked up on him projecting a few times so intensely that she could see her memories through his mind.
Now all she had to do was give him back the laptop. But she couldn't seem to bring herself to do so.
She stalled at first, wanting to finish shelving the bottom shelf she started on when he came in. That soon turned into one more, which turned into another one, then the whole thing. She was in a constant state of bend down, pick up book, put on shelf.
Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf. Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf. Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf. Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf.
Knock knock.
Raven didn't look away from the shelf. Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf.
"Did you finish the form?" Robin asked, standing in the door frame.
She nodded. Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf.
"Are you doing ok?" Concern lacing his tone seeing her not stopping her shelving.
She hummed in agreement absentmindedly. Bend down, pick up book, put on shelf.
"Hey." Robin started, trying to get her attention. Nothing.
"Can you stop for a second?"
Ignored.
He walked over to her in a few short strides and grabbed the book she was about to place on the shelf. "Raven." He said firmly, the force of his grab turned her to face him slightly revealing her eyes red from earlier tears.
She pulled the book back out of his grip in his moment of surprise and placed it on the shelf, banding down to pick up another one.
"Raven," he sighed, "stop. Please."
She continued picking up books and finding a spot for them.
Patience starting to wane, he grabbed both of her hands and pulled them away from the books. "Please. Are you ok?"
She nodded, looking at where his cape came to lay on his shoulders, but when he gestured for her to meet his eyes, she felt her face heat up and small streams run down her cheeks.
"It's alright to not feel ok." Robin assured. "That was not an easy process and I don't want you to conceal what you're feeling and make it worse. I'm proud of you."
Her lip quivered as she took a deep breath, trying to find her words. "He didn't really love me, did he?"
Robin didn't answer but his silence was unanimous to them both.
"Do you now see why I keep my distance from people?" She spat, chest heaving as she tried to get control of her emotions before they broke her newly repaired room. "Because when I let people get as close as he did, this happens."
"I said this before and I'm going to say it again. His actions and intent don't showcase why you shouldn't let people in. Bad people will do bad things, and you just so happened to be in that wrong place at the wrong time." He gave her hands a squeeze. "Nothing you did deserves what happened. Nothing. But unfortunately it did happen, and all you can do now is work to process it in a healthy way. No isolating, shutting out, but journaling, talking, crying. Anything that's not self destructive."
'I don't self-destruct.' She wanted to argue, but knew that she had self isolating tendencies that in the grand scheme of things don't really help.
"I want you to know that we are all here for you, but if you want, we can find a therapist or someone that isn't us to talk to."
She pulled her hands out of his grip which loosened instantly at the first sign of resistance, slight terror at the mention of a therapist. "I'll think about it."
He nodded, dropping his hands to his side. "Will you be finishing this before bed?"
"Maybe." Her tone was distant-like as she turned back to the shelves.
He bent down to pick up the laptop and nodded again, seeing himself out, sensing she wanted to be alone.
Robin sat down at his desk with a few deep breaths before he opened the laptop. He already knew what laid before the file seeing as he saw the memories through the bond, but it still punched him in the gut as he read over it.
He never thought that any one of them would have had to fill out these kinds of forms for themselves. Scanning through the top portion, he was able to breathe a bit easier seeing that she wasn't physically attacked or harmed but had to refrain from throwing the laptop against the wall when he read her description of events. He only saw the scenes from her point of view, so words like, "...came up behind me and pulled me to him…" , "...would tighten his hold when I tried to move away…", and "...groped at my chest and the inside of my thighs as he told me how good of a job I was doing or how beautiful I was," painted the whole scene as if he was watching the whole things play out.
Looking through it one more time to make sure everything was filled out, he submitted it and immediately went to the gym to beat something up, thoughts of 'I should have tried harder to get her out of her room that day' being his mantra.
Raven finished putting everything back on her bookshelf well into the night. The lights had been dimmed in the hallway signaling it was past 10pm.
She took a moment to step back and admire her work. It looked pretty similar to what it was before, just organized differently.
Her more formal things such as spell books, scrolls, history books, and other academics were on the shelf closest to her door. Most of the plants and herbs she used for her spells were also located on those shelves for convenience. A few candles and crystals appeared here and there and the lights and strands of beads and glass were hung like they were before outlining the bookshelf. The one that faced her bed was for more personal items. Story books from her childhood, pictures of her friends, and some of the books she got while on Earth that she didn't particularly want the others to know that she had. That shelf also had lights and strands of glass and beads hung around it giving the whole area a comforting magical feel to it. She had a hard time finding the right place for her chimes and decided on the window. If it was daytime, small rainbows and streams of light would spot the floors and walls.
Looking around she was met with a side of her room that was now unfamiliar. The only thing normal being her bed which has yet to be inspected.
While she liked the new color on the walls, it was new. Different. She didn't like different. It looked like it did when the tower was first being built. New furniture, questionable smells, different energies. It felt almost wrong being in there. But she knew she would make it her own with time.
Time.
What was the time?
Looking here and there and everywhere for her phone, she was surprised to see it was well into midnight. She was working so intensely that time seemed to have slipped from her.
'That's what trauma does I guess.' She thought broodishly and made her way to Robin's room.
To her surprise, he wasn't there. His desk chair was at an odd angle, as if he was in a hurry to go somewhere. A quick tap into the emotional signatures in the tower and she found him in the gym. She was met with a tsunami of adrenaline, guilt, and pure rage that rolled over her so intensely that she took a few steps back.
'What has him so worked up?' She thought.
Against her better judgment, she opened up her mind to speak with him.
"What's wrong?" She asked through the bond.
She was met with initial confusion then it subsided once he realized she wasn't in the room with him.
"Just blowing off some things." He replied.
She could feel the phantom pain of her knuckles colliding with something. 'Punching bag.' Then came the quick animations of his thoughts. A laptop, a document, familiar whispers and touches. Raven looked over to his desk and saw the laptop in which she filed her report on. Her chest heaved in quicker breaths as she realized he must have read it and sent it off with the rest of their files.
"Are you ok?" She heard him ask worriedly in the back of her mind.
"No." She answered honestly, casting her gaze to her journal on the bedside table. "But I will be."
"Are you sure?" He asked as she grabbed it and sat down at his desk, pushing his laptop aside with a face of disdain.
"I'm sure."
Robin was worried initially, feeling her slight panic and stopped his punching to monitor the spike in her emotions and would be lying if he wasn't surprised when he didn't feel any. He trusted her that she would make the right healthy decision, whatever it may be, and continued his workout.
He only lasted another 40 minutes more, cursing at his human body for not being able to continue, but he worked himself hard.
Begrudgingly, he did some angry stretching to start, not wanting to pull something or hurt himself while he let loose on the bags and sparring dummies. He wanted to do some work on the trapeze but made the smart decision to climb down the ladder before he made a stupid choice while still irrational.
Robin chose to shower in the locker rooms, wanting to give Raven some time and space to do what she needed to do in peace without any disruptions.
And while he was entrusting her to make a healthy choice, he was nervous. Nervous that she would fall back into her old patterns. Nervous that she would fall into a deeper depression than usual. Nervous that she would hurt herself.
'No!' He yelled at himself. 'Give her the time and trust that she will progress. Set the intent that she will choose healing over destruction.'
When he got out of the shower and made his way back to his room, he was met with a sleeping Raven all tucked into bed. A closer look revealed the flush of her cheeks and bags under her eyes showing just how much of a toll the day took on her. As much as it pained him to see her go through this, he was glad that she was letting it out and making an effort to process everything.
A quick change into his pajamas and turning on the soft humm of the noise machine, he joined her in dream land.
