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5:04 A.M.

After their coffee supply had dwindled, the three retired to the couch to watch whatever television they could keep on a low volume and to speculate on the coming day. Sage nodded off but awoke screaming as the nightmare returned in a flood. After that she refused to sit in a comfortable position.

There was a long silence after this, in which all three of the couch's occupants rolled in their own heads. Then Raven dimly remembered something...

"Didn't he...what did he do after it happened?"

Beast Boy perked up. "What? Who?"

Raven shuddered. "Robin...after it happened, didn't he...?"

Comprehension dawned on the others' faces. It had been on the first anniversary, after they had gone to the memorial...

His cape was draped over his hunched shoulders, his head in his hands...after everything they'd been through, all the dates and the engagement...

He looked in pain...his face was distorted, he was shaking in unbidden sobs...and suddenly, so quickly they never saw it coming, the knife was in his hand and aimed at his chest....

"NO! ROBIN STOP!"

His body crumpled...her broken promise bleeding through the wound...

"ROBIN, IT WASN'T HER FAULT, STOP!"

Sage gave an enormous shudder. "He still hurts..."

"I don't understand what drove him to that," Raven murmured.

"She was his one true love," Beast Boy explained. "He was...broken."

His unspoken words rang through the room: Just like I was.

Suddenly Raven was pouring words like a fountain: "I can understand why he would do it; she broke his heart, but that heartless b*****d who took her is to blame! Why Robin tried that rather than track him down--"

"Because he's never suffered like that before," tried Sage.

Raven bit back her heated answer before she screamed at the stupid sprite. She, of all people, knew Robin best at this point; she'd been inside his mind, had seen countless horrors in his life...Sage had no idea what she was talking about...

But Robin's attempted suicide had brought to reality things the Titans hadn't had to deal with in almost eight years: the same loss that occured with Terra, only on a much larger scale. Terra had died, there was no other explanation, and they understood. But...

This had merely left a hole, never to be mended until they found the body or brought her back to them, safe and sound but probably missing her virginity.

Sage dug her nails into the couch and changed the subject. "Does anyone besides me have a dream about her?"

Beast Boy nodded; Raven shook her head.

"I never dream," she explained. "I haven't slept since it happened..."

"Impossible," spat Sage. "It's been three years, how could you--" She fell silent at the look on Raven's face.

"I have a dream that I'm experiencing what must have happened, through her eyes," Beast Boy said. Sage lit up.

"That's exactly what happens with me!" she cried. "You don't suppose it's a prophetic dream, do you?"

"Doubt it," Raven muttered.


5:42 A.M.

Robin tossed and turned in his bed, his sheets strangling him, his mask loose from sweat. He jerked awake, gasping for air as his sheets smothered him further.

September 17, 2013. Three years.

Robin stumbled out of bed and into the hallway, nearly running into a wide-awake Cyborg as he went downstairs. The robot let him lean on his shoulder, and together they got to the kitchen.

"Welcome," Sage rasped. "Now that we're all here, I'd--"

Robin gave a pronounced cough. "We're not all here."

Sage's eyes widened for a moment in thought, then Raven jumped in.

"Right, of course...Star still needs to come," she said, giving a falsely apologetic smile. She ushered Robin and Cyborg onto the couch. "But since she's a bear in the morning if we wake her up, let's just continue without her."

Robin fingered the ring he had never taken off. "All right."

Sage glanced curiously at Raven before continuing with her original thought. "So...Breakfast, Cy, BB?"

The two jumped up and began to grab eggs and milk out of the fridge. Sage's stomach rumbled again. She was so tired...she never got up this early on weekends...

Robin shivered, the image of a broken man. The three years since the incident had left him with a roll of fat around his middle, his Spandex suits stretched to the limit, and there were premature gray hairs from stress and depression. His face was taut in the shadow, his mind always somewhere other than Titans Tower. He hadn't cared about anything except living in his own memories...memories of her and thoughts of what might have been....

Sage felt so sorry...but there was nothing she could do. Raven insisted on keeping the truth from him, for fear of another suicide, one that would go through.

They all cared too much...was that ever a problem?

"Breakfast!" said Cyborg, sliding heaping plates of eggs onto the table. Sage took her place, sliding in next to Raven and making room for Robin. She began to shovel food in her mouth, but it was more for the sake of eating than anything else.

Robin ate with less gusto and preferred to stay silent, imagining that she was right across from him, beaming as she ate whatever odd dish she had cooked for herself...

The team ate in a thick silence until Beast Boy slammed his fists on the table in an uncharacteristic act of temper.

"I hate scum like that!" he yelled. "I hope he goes to Hell for all he put her through!"

Sage laid a hand on his arm. "Peace...she will return."

Robin was perplexed. "Return? But she's right upstairs, sleeping in."

No one answered, and he knew something was wrong.

-sigh- I gotta go, but like I said, NO speculating. PLEASE.

Gaia's all ******** up now and it pisses me off...it deleted all my latest topics and it took me forever to find this again.

5:53 A.M.

Sage leaned over, whispering in Raven's ear, "We locked the door, right?"

Raven gave a reassuring nod. "I changed the code ages ago."

Sage sighed in relief and glanced at Robin, who was tense and rolling his ring around his green-Spandex-clad finger. The disaster hurt him more than anyone...

His eyes were dancing beneath his mask. The moment was so close; even an Earth-illiterate girl couldn't mistake his reasonings...

He got down on one knee, reaching in his pocket for the ring he'd purchased eight days before, with Cyborg's help. Above his head, her breath caught in her throat.

"Will you marry me?"

She gave an unearthly shriek and jumped up and down, laughing hysterically. "Yes! Yes, I shall marry you!"

He would give anything to make her that happy again...

Sage shoved her plate into the middle of the table. "Thanks for breakfast, Cy." She gave a big grin at the end of it.

Beast Boy shoved his own plate of tofu eggs away uneaten. Raven did the same.

Robin hadn't eaten a single bite. Instead, as he slid out of the booth so Raven and Sage could leave, he bolted for the hallway, running faster than anyone thought a fat man was capable of.

"We locked it, right?" Sage asked again. Raven didn't answer; she was already after Robin.

"We have to stop him!" she yelled.

He was too far ahead. When the old keycode didn't work on her door, he hurriedly punched any code he could think of until the door suddenly opened.

"Was I that predictable?" Sage queried. She flew in after Robin and nearly hit his broad back.

Her head flew up at the sound of the knock, her red hair swishing around her head. "Come in!" she cheerfully called.

Robin shuffled inside, a bouquet of flowers clutched in his hand. "Hey, Star." He handed her the flowers and smiled serenely as she breathed in deeply, savoring the scent.

"Oh, Robin, they're beautiful," she sighed, filling a jar with water and adding the preserve powder that had come with the arrangement. "I love them; they're just what this room needs."

He hung onto her every word, not just because it was her, but because she was speaking in contractions, a major accomplishment in her English lessons. She placed the jar onto her bedside table, arranged the blossoms, and stood back to admire the effect.

Robin walked forward and embraced her from behind, laying his head in her hair.

"Four more months," he reminded her, speaking into her long mane of hair.

She smiled, her eyelids lowered in serenity.

Where was she? The bed was empty.

She should be here.

But she wasn't.

It was as if he was thinking clearly for the first time. Something was being dragged from the back of his mind...a scream...Sage and Beast Boy telling him something...

What? What had happened?

The room had been untouched for three years. The bed was messy, left from when she had last emerged from it and hadn't made it back up. A dust-coated vase of wilted flowers stayed on the nightstand beside her bed, the water turned yellow from years of neglect. The curtains were thrown open in her attempt to welcome the daylight, but now the autumn's clouds had gathered and rain was pouring.

Robin walked tentatively forward, his footsteps making as little noise as possible. Sage gave a short moan.

He stood in the center, staring at the outline of her body in the sheets. His fists were clenched.

Raven began to sweat and mentally prepared to restrain her leader if the dreaded suicide took place.

"Where is she." He stated it rather than asked it.

No one answered because no one knew. Without turning around, he tried again.

"I said, where is she."

Cyborg laid a hand on Robin's shoulder, but he shrugged it off. "I don't need your sympathy! I need to know where she's gone!"

"Robin!"

He whipped around at the sound of his name. Two members of his team were rushing towards him...

"Robin, we've got to--"

"No! We can't tell!"

Sage was bursting at the seams with the news; Beast Boy was having difficulty keeping the fact to himself.

"What is it?" he asked.

Sage took a deep breath. "Er..." And then everything came out in a rush.

But where did she go? He couldn't remember...couldn't remember...

When Raven was greeted with such awful news, she felt her insides recoil. She'd heard about people like this...people who preyed on the defenseless and used them for their own sick purposes...

Those kinds of perverts had never done anything to her...or related to her...

What if Starfire wasn't enough, and he came back for herself?

"Robin..." It was Raven.

"Robin, we don't know where she's gone. It's been three years and by now we have to assume the worst..."

All five Titans felt their stomachs clench, their hearts stop, all functions shutting down...three years. It was over.

Suddenly Raven couldn't speak...a sob caught in her throat and she buried her head in Beast Boy's shoulder. Sage took over.

"Robin, we have to assume she's dead. Gone for good. Unless that perv's into necrophilia..."

He could feel his face heat up, turn red...his fists grew tighter...he could see her smiling face, illuminated by the sunlight, could hear her laughter...

"Four months, Robin, and then we'll be married."

"Can you wait, Robin? Raven and Sage are taking me to find a dress; it's like shopping at the mall when we were younger!"

"Two months; can you wait?"

"Can you wait?"

And two months till the wedding, she'd disappeared...

He unconsciously removed their engagement ring and let it fall to the floor, its clank muted by the carpet. One tear fell with it.

"Robin, we went to the grocery store and she went inside alone and never came out...I'll bet it was one of the clerks...She couldn't subdue him, she was scared, she couldn't fly..."

"We tried to follow them, I'm sorry, they dodged us and they're long gone now...I'm sorry....I'm really sorry..."

And her bright, shining face lit up the room...

"Two months, Robin."

"I love you Robin."

Vague, but...I believe, for the most part, it's done. I tried to keep it short as a one-shot.