It was the early hours of the morning, long before the sun would rise, and Raven hung suspended in the air next to Beast Boy's bed meditating calmly.

Technically, Robin hadn't asked her to stay up with their injured teammate.

Technically, he hadn't asked anyone to.

Raven thought that was because he just didn't need to.

"Azarath, Meterion, Zinthos," she hummed quietly, fighting her own inner turmoil. She might never admit it to Beast Boy's face but she was deeply concerned for him.

His emotions were traumatizing.

His fear penetrated every corner of the tower and threatened her fragile control.

But just as she'd been heading to find Cyborg, intent on imploring him to put Beast Boy under, she'd been intercepted by Robin.

Face a little bit flush he'd taken one look at her and said, "I'm taking care of it." Waves of grief had been rolling off him so thickly Raven had been in momentary awe of his outwards stoicism.

Then something too intense to just be fear had punched her in the chest. The feeling was white hot and blinding - like someone had bottled up her worry, sadness, self-loathing – and poured it into a volumetric flask.

The thought hadn't even finished crossing her mind before Raven found herself pooling across the infirmary floor and then rising from the inky mass of shadows like her teleportation was nothing more than a particularly slow elevator. Consequently, she startled poor Starfire right out of her wits. The extraterrestrial was already a little put off about something but Raven didn't have the energy to deal with it.

Beast Boy lay supinely in his bed, twitching and writhing weakly. He was still sweating, slurring words between English and gibberish that almost sounded like a language. Though still sick and wounded, his heart monitor kept its quick, thready beat.

Coming to the realization that Beast Boy was, in fact, still alive and that he had not, in fact, died as Robin's emotions had implied, she realized how silly she must have looked.

Giving poor Starfire no explanation at all she swept up her cape and disappeared again.

Needless to say it had been a rather eventful afternoon until Cyborg finally administered enough morphine to get Beast Boy to settle down.

It had to have been at least an hour after Raven had taken over for Starfire when a change in the atmosphere tore her fragile sense of peace and the strangled sound of Beast Boy's voice broke more than just the silence.

"K-ku-" he swallowed a lump in his throat and coughed, both sounds feeble, "Kuk-o-mez-hah."

At first she thought it was just the randomized garble from before.

"O-ooko …wa-…-api?"

And like before, his words almost- almost – came together to sound like a language.

Patiently, Raven waited for the moment to pass and for her friend to settle. She'd come to expect little, brief rises to feverish consciousness like this every once and a while. The empath was thankful they didn't last too long.

The wheezy whispers of air entering Beast Boy's trachea filled the silence of the room for a few minutes and Raven thought he was falling back into the depths of his dreamless sleep when he called out.

"R-..av-…," he coughed, "-en…?"

It might have been callous and selfish but it wasn't the first time he'd called her name so she kept her eyes closed and mumbled; "Go back to sleep Beast Boy."

"R-Rae…?" he tried again, voice quavering.

The empath took a deep breath, but found herself unable to disregard him a second time. She opened her eyes and turned to the prone figure she safeguarded through the night.

"What?" Raven asked.

A white cloth had been draped over his eyes, catching beads of sweat and helpfully keeping him calm throughout his fever-induced fits. It felt so strange to be unable to see those big green eyes.

It took a long time before Beast Boy had enough air and energy to speak again. "Wh'rz…," he took a deep breath, "R-rob-pin?"

"He's sleeping. Do you need him?" Raven set her feet on the ground, ready to fetch their leader. Or better yet, Cyborg. She wasn't too great at this sort of thing.

A cloudy blast of fear billowed out of Beast Boy like a sudden gale. "No!"

Raven recalled Cyborg saying something about BB calling out to Robin, begging him to stop doing something but never explaining what. Robin himself had looked tormented later that night when she'd caught him taking out his pent-up emotions on a practice dummy. His face had been lined with the open horrors of a grief-stricken veteran.

He'd looked so confused and angry with himself but she just hadn't known what to say so she'd left him alone.

Thinking back to earlier the day before, she had noticed that Beast Boy's fear lessened when Robin wasn't in the room with him.

It was almost like-

"Beast Boy, are you afraid of Robin?"

A pale green fist clenched around the sheets it lay on but Raven wasn't given a verbal response. The changeling held a torrent of emotions; fear, grief, betrayal, and crushing defeat among them. That was all the answer the empath really needed.

Unsure of what to make of this revelation Raven came closer to his bed.

"You know he would never hurt you." She tried to keep her voice gentle and soft but instead it sounded more like her usual apathetic droll, like she didn't actually care either way.

Again Beast Boy didn't reply.

In silence, Raven watched him. His mouth was slack and open. The movement of every breath he took reminded her of a bellow slowly breathing into a fire. Looking at all the monitors he was hooked up to coupled with the wheeze of his trachea fighting for air, Beast Boy looked more machine than animal. His skin reminded her of an odd kind of mint paste; sickly and so, so pale. Under the bright lights of the infirmary he looked sweatier than before.

Of all the ways to find out her healing art had a specific weakness against metals used to make bullets, this was the worst by far.

She realized he hadn't spoken for a while.

"Beast Boy?"

Raven was answered only by the steady labor of his rasps.

The demoness stepped even closer to his bed, reaching out before she could stop herself. Pale gray hands hovered over his chest for a moment but did nothing more while she deliberated. After about a minute, she made her decision, and her hands ghosted up to land on either temple.

"Sleep," her voice was laced with a powerful spell, one that gently dragged her friend away from consciousness.

(Swahili) kukomezhah = Kukomesha: stop

(Swahili) Ooko wapi? = Uko wapi?: where are you?