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The lights in the lab came back up too bright.
One second the world was nothing but Slade’s mask and the edge of the tower and the steady, suffocating certainty that he was going to die. The next, harsh white light flooded the room, and Robin was on the med table with electrodes on his skin and the other Titans leaning over him.
Cyborg’s voice cut through the static in his head, explaining about reagent, about hallucinations, about chemicals. Beast Boy made a face and a joke about “creepy invisible villains” and got hit with a spray of leftover gas that made him sneeze green for a solid minute. Everyone laughed.
Robin laughed, too.
It came out almost right, sharp and quick and leader-shaped. His mask hid the worst of the tremor. He pushed himself upright when Cyborg said he should rest, swung his legs off the table with a shrug that pretended his ribs didn’t hurt.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Seriously. I just need some sleep.”
He could feel Raven’s eyes on him, flat and unreadable. Starfire hovered a little closer than usual, hands tightening at her sides. Cyborg hesitated.
“Brain chemistry like that takes time to clear, man,” he said. “You sure you don’t want me to keep you for observation?”
“I’ve been observed enough for one night,” Robin said lightly. “Really. Tower’s secure, Slade’s gone, you all need rest, too.”
He slid off the table before anyone could argue, landing on his feet with the kind of practiced ease that didn’t leave room for wobbling. His side throbbed; he didn’t let it touch his stride.
“Call me if anything blows up,” he added, halfway to the door.
“Dude, it’s three in the morning,” Beast Boy groaned. “Nothing’s blowing up.”
“Good,” Robin said. “Let’s keep it that way.”
The automatic doors hissed open. The laughter and low murmur of voices behind him faded when they shut again. The lab’s sterile brightness gave way to the softer, blue-tinged wash of the Tower’s night lighting.
He let his shoulders drop once he was alone in the hall.
Only a little.
The walk back to his room should have been muscle memory: corridor, turn, elevator, corridor, door. He’d done it exhausted, bruised, half-asleep after patrols so many nights that his feet could’ve found the route without a brain attached.
Tonight, every step felt wrong.
He kept catching glimpses of his own reflection in the darkened windows—tall, lean, masked, the city lights smearing his silhouette. Each time, some animal part of his brain braced to see another shape there too. A taller figure at his shoulder. A flash of orange and black.
Nothing. Just glass. Just his own stupid mask and the bandage visible at the edge of his tunic where it didn’t quite sit right across his ribs.
It wasn’t real, he told himself. Cyborg showed you. Chemical. Hallucination. You know how that works. You’ve read the files.
Apparently his nervous system hadn’t gotten the memo.
The hair at the back of his neck refused to lie flat. The shadows between the pools of light from the ceiling fixtures looked too deep. The low hum of the Tower’s ventilation sounded, for an irrational heartbeat, like someone breathing behind him.
By the time he reached his door, his hands were damp inside his gloves.
He stood there for a second, staring at the panel like it was a problem he needed to solve instead of just a button to press. The little LED glowed patiently in the dark.
“Get it together,” he muttered under his breath, and thumbed the control.
The door sighed open. The familiar dimensions of his room unfolded: bed, desk, shelves, the faint outline of his bike under its cover in the corner. The city glowed through the slats of the blinds, thin stripes of orange and white and red across the floor.
When the door closed behind him, the sound was softer than the lab’s—but the silence that fell after it felt harder.
No voices. No machines. No Slade.
Relief should have shown up by now.
Instead, his heart was still slamming against his ribs like it hadn’t noticed the difference.
Robin crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge, elbows on his knees. The mattress gave under his weight with a quiet creak. Pain flared in his side, sharp and hot where Cyborg had wrapped his ribs.
Good. Pain was real. Pain meant his body existed in the same universe as the bed and the walls and the bland Tower art on the wall.
He focused on his breathing.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Bruce had hammered that into him years ago, in Gotham rooftops and cold training rooms and the backseat of the Batmobile after their first too-close call. When your head goes sideways, anchor in your breath. Count. Control the only thing you can.
In. One, two, three, four.
His lungs ached. He held the breath, felt it throb behind his sternum.
Hold. One, two, three—
On three, his vision flickered.
For a second the bed wasn’t under him; it was the tower roof, concrete slick with rain. The wall opposite wasn’t his own; it was the black drop of empty air. There was a hand at his throat again, invisible fingers closing, the weight of Slade’s gaze on him as if the mask were inches from his face.
His chest seized. The air he’d been holding left on a startled, ragged exhale.
He squeezed his eyes shut. That only made it worse. In the darkness behind his lids, the images got sharper. The mask on the floor. The way his lungs had burned, calling for oxygen that wasn’t coming. The way he’d known, in that cold, clean place under the panic, that this was it.
His hands shook.
He reached up and tore at the edge of his mask with clumsy fingers, ripping it away from the skin around his eyes. The elastic snapped back against his knuckles. The domino landed on the nightstand with a hard, plastic click and lay there, black shape stark against pale wood.
He stared at it, breathing too fast.
Without the lenses, the room blurred. Tears didn’t help. The sting behind his eyes went from threat to reality.
Not now.
He pressed his palms over his face. The gesture dragged at the healing cuts along his cheekbones; pain spiked, brief and bright. His shoulders hunched on reflex.
The first shudder tore through him before he could clamp down on it. A full-body tremor, starting in his chest and rippling out to his hands, his knees. His breath hitched, then hitched again.
He’d seen other people do this, after. Witnesses on curbs after car crashes. Civilians dragged out of burning buildings. New cops after their first foot chase, still shaking with their guns out and hearts racing.
He’d never really let himself.
Not as Robin.
His body apparently didn’t care what name he was using tonight.
He slid sideways off the bed before it could knock him flat. The floor was cold through his boots. He turned and wedged himself into the narrow space between the bed and the nightstand, tucking his back into the corner where the wall met the frame.
It was a tight fit, awkward with his height and the bandages, but that was the point. Small space. Solid surfaces at his back and side. The door in front of him, clear line of sight. No angles anyone could come from that he couldn’t see.
Control. As much as he could fake, anyway.
His knees came up to his chest. He wrapped his arms around them, more to stop the shaking than anything else. His fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt, bunching it in white-knuckled fists.
He tried another breath. It broke apart halfway, splintered by a noise in his throat he didn’t recognize.
A soft, broken sound escaped. Not quite a sob, too raw to be anything else.
“No,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes even tighter shut. “No, no, no…”
Images wouldn’t stop. Slade’s hand on the back of his neck, pushing him to his knees. The smell of ozone and metal. The steady, unhurried voice outlining exactly what would happen to the others if he said no.
The rooftop, again and again, the edge under his boots, the empty air.
His shoulders hitched. His grip on his own shirt tightened until the seams creaked.
“I don’t—” His throat closed around the words. He forced them out anyway, barely louder than the Tower’s hum. “I don’t want to be alone…”
The admission scraped something raw on its way up. It felt less like saying it out loud and more like confessing it to the room, to the city, to the shadows.
“Help,” he heard himself say, to nobody. It came out thin and hoarse, more unsteady than he wanted it to be. “Please… help…”
The Tower did not answer. It kept humming gently, as though nothing had changed.
Across the hall, Raven’s meditation snapped like a rubber band.
She’d been hovering at the edge of trance, feet folded under her on her own bed, hands resting palms-up on her knees. The usual chorus of emotions washed around the edges of her awareness: Beast Boy’s restless dreams, Cyborg’s background hum of calculations even asleep, Starfire’s bright, steady warmth.
Robin had been a jagged flare all evening. Fear and determination and that brittle, grinding edge of someone dragging themselves through one more crisis on willpower alone. She’d gone into his head earlier, when Slade’s phantom had him in its grip. She’d seen enough there that his emotional signature felt burned into her for the night.
When the panic hit now, it wasn’t a gentle ripple. It was a spike.
White-hot terror, and underneath it a flare of shame. Then a sharp, collapsing sensation, like a building giving way from the inside.
Raven’s eyes flew open. Her heart kicked.
“…Robin,” she said under her breath.
She slid off the bed in one practiced motion, cloak falling around her shoulders. The floor was cool under her bare feet as she crossed the room and palmed her door open.
The hallway beyond was mostly dark. Little strips of emergency light lined the baseboards, washing the corridor in faint blue. Robin’s door glowed with its own soft indicator across the way.
She could feel it more strongly, now that she was closer—the emotional noise bleeding through the walls. Fear, yes, but also something softer and more plaintive underneath. That quiet, desperate don’t leave me that she almost never heard from him, awake or asleep.
She stopped in front of his door and rested her thumb on the panel, hesitating for a beat.
Then she pressed it and leaned toward the small grille of the intercom.
“Robin,” she said, voice steady. It came out in her usual deadpan, but she didn’t bother hiding the rough edge of concern under it. “You okay in there?”
There was a pause.
Then a sound crackled back through the tiny speaker. It started as the beginning of a yes—“mm”—and broke halfway, disintegrating into a strangled, ragged gasp. The microphone picked up the sharp little inhale that followed, like he’d tried to swallow it back down.
Raven closed her eyes briefly.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
Silence stretched.
On the other side of the door, she felt him hesitate. Pride and instinct screamed no; something much younger whispered please. The two tangled hard enough that it made her teeth ache.
“…yeah,” he managed finally. The word was wrecked and thin, but it was there.
The door slid open with a soft shhk.
Robin’s room was dim. The blinds were mostly closed, city light striping the far wall in pale bands. The bed was rumpled. The desk lamp was off. His mask lay on the nightstand, stark and face-down, a black shape against light wood.
The bed was empty.
“Robin?” she said, already knowing.
Her gaze tracked down.
He was wedged into the corner beside the bed, half-hidden by the frame. Knees pulled up, arms locked around them, head bowed. Without the mask, his face looked even younger than his age, the bruises and tape stark against pale skin. His eyes were red, lashes clumped with the tears he’d already shed.
He flinched when the light from the hall brushed across him, then forced himself to look up. The apology was already formed in his mouth.
“I’m—”
“Don’t,” Raven said quietly.
She stepped inside and let the door slide closed behind her, cutting off the hall. The room shrank around them, but in a way that felt contained, not trapped.
Instead of staying over him, she dropped to a knee in front of him, cloak pooling on the floor. It put their eyes level. Up close, she could see the fine tremor still running through his shoulders, the way his hands had bunched his shirt so tightly that the fabric strained.
“You’re not okay,” she said, matter-of-fact. “And that’s allowed.”
He let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t broken halfway through.
“I should—” He swallowed. The words tangled on his tongue. “I’m supposed to have it together. The team—”
“Is asleep,” she said. “And doesn’t need you to pretend for them right now.”
She lifted her hand, fingers hovering a few inches from his arm.
“Can I put my hand on you?” she asked. “Just here.”
His gaze dropped to her fingers, then back to her face. Shame and fear were a loud static in her head; under them, something fragile and hopeful flickered like the last bit of candleflame.
He nodded. A short, jerky motion.
Her hand settled lightly on his forearm, above his glove, warm through the fabric. Not gripping. Just there.
His emotions jerked at the contact. The fear spiked—touch, closeness, too much—but then recognized her, recognized the calm she was deliberately wrapping around the edges of herself, and bent toward it like a plant toward light.
His breathing was still ragged. She could feel the way each inhale scraped against his bruised ribs.
“He hurt me,” he said suddenly.
It came out in a rush, the dam broken, the words stripped raw. His eyes weren’t on her anymore; they were somewhere else, seeing something behind her, beyond her.
“Back then,” Robin rasped. “When I was… when I was his apprentice. You don’t—”
His throat closed. He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing, and tried again.
“You don’t know what he did.”
Raven could have told him she knew enough. That the glimpses she’d caught in his head earlier, when Slade’s phantom had him, had already told her more than she’d ever wanted to see.
But “enough” wasn’t going to cut through this.
“You’re right,” she said instead. “I don’t. Not all of it.”
She shifted her weight, keeping her hand steady on his arm.
“Let me see,” she said.
His reaction was immediate. He flinched away like she’d hit him, shoulders curling tighter, head shaking.
“No,” he said, hoarse. “No, you can’t, I can’t— it’s— it’s awful, Raven, it’s—”
Her fingers tightened just enough to be felt, not enough to trap.
“I know it’s awful,” she said. “That’s why it’s eating you alive.”
His breathing picked up again, teetering on the edge of another spiral. Shame flashed hot in his chest; she winced at the intensity of it.
“I’m not asking because I’m curious,” she went on, softer. “I’m asking because you’re in here fighting something I can’t see, and you’re losing. If I see it, I can help you carry it. I can help turn the volume down.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Tears leaked out anyway, hot and unwanted, tracking over the bruising on his cheeks.
“I don’t want you to see me like that,” he whispered. “He— he did things, and I… I broke. I did what he wanted. I—”
“Hey.” The word came out sharper than she intended; not at him, at the script twisting like barbed wire through his thoughts. “No. You don’t apologize for being tortured.”
He went still.
“You were tortured,” she said, spelling it out like he’d forced himself not to. “By a psychopath who knew exactly how to hurt you. He tailored it. He pushed until the only way you could see to keep us safe was to do what he said. That’s not you choosing him. That’s you surviving a game he rigged.”
Another tear slipped free. He didn’t move to wipe it away.
“If you say no,” she said, dropping her voice again, “that’s it. I don’t go in. I stay here, and you shake, and we breathe, and we get through it the slow way. I’m not leaving either way.”
She let that settle.
“But if you let me,” she added, “I can tell you it was real. I can tell you you’re not overreacting. And I can give your brain somewhere else to stand, instead of in the middle of it alone.”
The corner of his mouth trembled. His lashes clumped with fresh tears.
He looked at her, really looked, like he was trying to find the trick in her words and couldn’t.
His right hand uncurled from his shirt with obvious effort. He turned it over, palm up, fingers shaking, and slid it under hers.
His grip was almost desperate.
“O-okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
Raven nodded once.
“Look at me,” she said.
He dragged his gaze up to hers. His eyes were wide and wet and exhausted.
She lifted her free hand and, with a last flicker of warning in her expression, touched two fingers gently to his temple.
The room blurred.
It wasn’t the deep dive she’d done earlier. She didn’t force her way in. She followed the line he’d given her, the hand in hers and the raw, open place in his mind where Slade’s presence still echoed.
Memory came at her in shards.
Metal under his knees, the chill of it biting through thin fabric. Wrists bound to something behind his back, shoulders aching with the angle. The air thick with the smell of ozone and singed skin.
Lights. A control panel blinking in the dark.
Slade’s voice. Not shouting. Never shouting. Calm, patient, clinical.
Again.
Pain. Not as a series of injuries, but as a constant, grinding fact of the world. Muscles locking under an electric current. Teeth gritted so hard the jaw creaked. A sound forced out of his throat anyway, strangled and half-swallowed.
The taste of copper.
Time blurring. Hours or days evaporating into a smear of hurt and orders and the low, steady drip of threats. Not at him. At the others.
They won’t last as long as you do.
His own thoughts, mantra-thin: I can take it. I can take it. Just keep it on me.
The moment that cracked. Not the worst blow, not the deepest bruise. A gloved hand closing around the back of his neck, hauling him in close, mask scraping against mask.
This is who you are now, Slade murmured in that calm, dead voice. My apprentice. You will do what I tell you to do, because you know what happens if you don’t.
The image of Starfire on her knees. Beast Boy in chains. Raven broken open in ways that had nothing to do with flesh. Cyborg shut down on a table like parts.
The first time he said “yes” to something he should have refused, because he couldn’t see any way to say “no” that didn’t end with their bodies at his feet.
Raven yanked herself back.
She landed in the corner of his room again, stomach flipping, heart pounding as if she were the one who’d been shocked. Her fingers were still at his temple; his hand was still clamped around hers.
A tear slid, traitorous and hot, down her own cheek.
He was shaking harder now. The memories had stirred everything up, but there was something different in the tremor—less aimless, more like a reaction with a direction.
“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m sorry, I— I did what he wanted, I hurt you, I—”
“Stop,” she said, not unkind and not gently. “You don’t get to apologize for the things he did to you.”
He blinked at her through the tears, thrown off-script.
“He broke you on purpose,” she said, each word clipped, deliberate. “He twisted everything he knew about you until obedience looked like the only way to keep us alive. That’s not consent. That’s not choice. That’s you stuck in a no-win scenario and surviving it.”
His face crumpled. A wrecked little sound escaped.
“You shouldn’t have had to survive that,” she added, softer.
For a moment he just stared at her, breathing hard. Like nobody had ever actually said those words out loud to him before—like he’d only ever let himself frame it as his failure.
The corner between bed and nightstand, which had felt containable at first, now felt cramped and sharp-edged even to her.
“Can we get you somewhere less awful?” she asked. “Is it okay if we move to the bed?”
He hesitated, then nodded, exhausted.
She rose carefully, keeping their hands linked, and offered him her other hand as leverage.
“Easy,” she said.
The act of standing sent a lance of pain through his side. He hissed, knees nearly buckling. Before he could fall, she stepped in closer, bracing her shoulder under his arm so he could lean his weight on her.
“Sorry,” he muttered automatically.
“Don’t apologize for gravity, either,” she said. “It’s been a long night.”
They shuffled the two steps to the bed together, slow and unsteady. She eased him down to sit, then to stretch out on his side facing her. He curled instinctively, one arm wrapping around his ribs, using the pillow as a brace for his head.
She sat on the edge, close but not pressed against him yet.
“Do you want me to stay here?” she asked. “Or would you rather I sit on the floor, or—”
He reached for her before his brain could interfere.
His fingers caught the edge of her cloak, clutching it like a man grabbing a lifeline.
“Stay,” he said, raw. “Please.”
That settled that.
She slid up onto the bed, turning so they were facing each other, and let the cloak fall in a dark arc around them, blurring the rest of the room.
“Is this all right if I…?” she asked, lifting her arm in small offering.
He nodded, throat too tight for words this time.
She wrapped an arm around his back, careful of bruises and bandages, hand settling flat between his shoulder blades. With the other, she touched the back of his head, fingers threading lightly into his hair. His forehead found the hollow between her collarbone and shoulder almost on its own.
He went rigid for half a heartbeat, every muscle bracing, old instincts screaming about vulnerability and proximity and what happened when someone got this close.
Then, slowly, his body recognized the reality: the scent of candle wax and old books and something faintly metallic that was just her, the steady, unhurried beat of her heart under his ear, the absolute absence of threat.
His weight sagged into her.
“I can do more than this,” she murmured into his hair. “If you want.”
He made a small questioning sound.
“Not erase anything,” she added quickly. “I’m not touching the memories. But I can give your mind something else to look at while you rest. Turn the volume down so you can breathe. Only if you want.”
She felt the flinch at the idea of anyone in his head again. The echo of Slade’s hand at the back of his neck. Then the way it met the reality of her, the way she’d just pulled away from that same place instead of digging deeper, the way she’d told him no and stop when his guilt tried to rewrite the scene.
“Only you,” he whispered. “If it’s… you.”
Her chest tightened.
“Only me,” she said. “Nothing happens without you wanting it. If it feels wrong, you pull back. Understood?”
His fingers, still curled in her cloak, tightened briefly.
“Okay,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
This wasn’t a plunge. This was a thread, a gentle extension of the contact they already had—his forehead against her, her hand at his neck, their breathing slowly starting to sync.
“Focus on me,” she said quietly, in his ear and just behind it. “Not on him. Just here.”
The darkness behind his closed eyes shifted.
Instead of the rooftop and the edge and the mask, a new shape drew itself out of the dark: huge, familiar, and usually terrifying.
The Raven.
He’d seen it so many times in battle—her soul-self, a giant bird of shadow and power, eyes burning, wings spread wide as it screamed down on monsters and robots and villains. It had always been something unleashed, weaponized.
Here, in the space she shaped for him, it was still.
The massive black bird loomed in front of him, feathers swallowing light, eyes glowing like twin amethysts in the dark. The air around it hummed faintly, not with threat but with something like static waiting to discharge.
He stood before it as he was now: bandages wrapped around his ribs, bruises visible, shoulders slumped.
For a heartbeat, old reflex insisted he should be afraid.
He wasn’t.
The giant Raven tilted its head, regarding him. There was no judgment in its gaze, just a deep, unblinking attention that felt almost physical.
He lifted a hand, half-expecting his fingers to pass through smoke or hit cold, hard nothing.
They met feathers.
Warm feathers. Softer than they looked, dense and comforting under his hand. The hum in the air shifted, dropping an octave into something low and soothing.
The Raven moved.
One huge wing extended, the shift of it stirring the air. It curved inward, slow and deliberate, until it was resting lightly against his back. The other wing followed, wrapping from the other side.
Wings folded around him, enclosing him in a cocoon of dark, cool-shadowed feathers. The outside world—the rooftop, the lab, the Tower’s halls—fell away. Sound dulled. The only thing left was the faint drumbeat of a heart somewhere deep in the Raven’s chest and the soft rush of its steady breathing.
He realized he was breathing with it.
On the bed, in the real world, his chest rose and fell against Raven’s, the rhythm slowly matching hers.
In the mindscape, he let his forehead drop against the Raven’s chest, fingers curling into feathers like they’d curled into his own shirt earlier. The fabric there didn’t bite back. It held.
I should be scared of this, he thought, dimly. This form had come out when things were going very, very wrong before.
Instead, for the first time all night, his shoulders started to come down from around his ears.
Outside the wings, Slade did not exist. There was no rooftop edge, no invisible hands. Inside, there was only warmth and the weight of the Raven’s attention, steady and unwavering.
You’re safe, the impression came. Not a voice in his ear, but a conviction pressed warmly against his thoughts.
His throat tightened. Tears pricked again, but the panic that had ridden them before was gone. These were quiet. They slipped out and soaked into feathers, and nothing bad happened when he didn’t wipe them away.
On the bed, Raven felt his body finally start to unclench. The tiny tremors faded. His grip on her cloak loosened a fraction, turning from desperate clamp to tired hold.
“There you go,” she murmured, half into his hair, half along the connection between them. “Just stay with me. You’re not back there. You’re here.”
The static in his mind dropped down another notch. The roar became a buzz, then a background hiss. The images of Slade and control panels and the rooftop slid further away, still there but no longer right in his face.
He’s not here, Robin realized.
The thought didn’t bounce off something cold and sarcastic this time. It landed. It stuck.
No Slade. No masked figure in the doorway. Just the Raven and the wings and the quiet.
His eyelids grew heavy.
“Rest, Robin,” Raven’s voice said, from everywhere and right next to him. “I’ll keep watch.”
He believed her.
For the first time since the rooftop, the idea of sleep didn’t feel like handing his throat over. It felt like letting go of a weight he’d been holding too long.
In the mindscape, under the shelter of the Raven’s beak and wings, he let his eyes close all the way. His breathing smoothed out, deep and slow.
On the bed, curled against Raven’s chest, his body finally went loose in her arms. The last tension bled from his jaw. His grip on her cloak slackened into something that looked almost like a child hanging onto a blanket in sleep, but without any of the condescension that word sometimes carried in other mouths.
Raven tightened her arm around him just slightly, thumb brushing the back of his neck in a slow, steady line.
“I’ve got you,” she said, so quietly it barely stirred the air. “You’re not alone.”
She stayed awake, eyes half-lidded, watching the shadows move on his wall and the steady rise and fall of his shoulders. Hours blurred; at some point, the first gray hint of dawn seeped through the blinds, softening the city lights, and she still didn’t move.
Inside, the giant Raven kept its wings wrapped around him, eyes unblinking in the dark.
Nothing was fixed. Slade was still out there. The memories hadn’t gone anywhere.
But for this one night, at least, Robin slept, and someone else kept watch for the ghosts.