The run down Motel Gabriel Richard was built in a different day an age, back when the broad street that ran past it had been brimming with traffic and the small, assorted stores that boxed it in, ranging from a hardware vendor, to a large collision repair shop, or the furnishings business with its cheerful bay windows that had once been plastered with deals and sales of all sorts of household trinkets and goods, had been thriving. That was decades ago, and in the wake of the nearby closure of an automotive supplier plant, the rolling mill, and the large office building between them, the stores had become empty dust warehouses, plants slowly but surely thrusting their stalks up through the cracks of their bare and cracked concrete floors, the windows one by one being successively cracked and shattered by a thousand vandals and thunder storms, and the walls becoming stained and fractured with the forces of erosion. One could smell the decay in the air, the smell of rusting, long since abandoned cars in the collision repair enterprise lot, the smell of urine in the alley ways where only the homeless and destitute dared to walk, and the unmistakable scent of the leaves and stalks of a thousand weeds that were slowly reclaiming the shattered pavement of these looted and dilapidated streets and parking lots.

And yet the hotel still stood, a single business that was stubborn enough to proclaim how civilization was able to endure in this urban wasteland on the far East side of Jump City. For those poor souls that had nowhere else to go besides this deplored area, the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown, usually visible even through the early morning smog or gloomy Pacific Ocean rain, promised a life that they could never have.

The hotel itself was a 4 floored, brick structure that was losing every bit of its outside coat of white paint, leaving the façade blotchy as though the building was diseased of some sort. Only the bottom 2 floors were actually used, and it was questionable if they were useable at all. The hallways were dimly lit and painted a surreal shade of grey that became utterly terrifying in the strange, flickering light of the ancient fluorescents, running past the metal doors of the rooms. At least they were nicer inside; 4 walls of battered plaster, painted a cheerful white, leading down to the beaten and stained carpet of a dark rouge color. The furniture was really what showed the age of the place, because right now, their dust and web covered interiors that had not seen the light of day for 30 years or so, were being blown apart by plasma blasts, left and right, throwing up a multitude of air pollutants into the already stuffy air. Thankfully the combatants didn't really need to breathe.

Danny winced as he felt the fist slam into his right eye, unleashing a shock that blurred his vision.

"That's for leaving!"

His sister was pissed. She swept her leg out and tripped Danny, letting him fall harshly on the floor, before she suddenly straddled him and punched him in the nose, hard. The pain was palpable, Danny felt something liquid slime down his nostrils; blood. Too surprised to do anything, he simply stared up with distracted eyes as Jazz wiped some of the blood and rubbed it between her fingers with disgust before showing it not 2 inches away from his bleeding nose.

"You should have freaking told them about this Danny. Now the family is divided, I'm without hope, and you just up and left. Look at this family curse, the ectoplasm which runs in your veins!"

Danny looked in unmasked horror at the streaks of iridescent green in the red blood that glittered with potential. Jazz only saw death.

"There are so many things worse than death to endure, like the living hell you still put this family and your friends too. Sam might have been dead if it hadn't been for Tucker. You could have had it all Danny if you had just freaking listened to me when I told you to tell them!"

"YES!" Danny popped up, sweat glistening on his forehead, eyes glowing green, his voice horse and terrified. But it was only a dream.

The room was empty and dark. The hotel didn't even have many occupants, except for the late night pimps and prostitutes, drug dealers and addicts, and the homeless that frequented the place. They were either too absorbed, too dismissive or too hung-over to take note of his raw throated cry derived from his vivid nightmare. They did wonder why they heard the sound of smashing upstairs.

He groaned as he surveyed the room. Almost everything but the bed was in ruin, burned with scorch marks from his sleep derived blasts. His sheets were in shambles from his tossing and turning.

Slowly he settled back into his bed, tossing and turning the remainder of the night with uneasy sleep. As his eye lids flickered back into the closed position, he murmured 1 thing, his voice small and weak, pleading, begging.

"all I want is a measure of forgiveness"

…

"Hello?"

"Hello, are you Cyborg's roommate"

"Yeah, Tucker Foley standing guard." a voice said cheerfully

"May I speak with him?" Robin replied. He was propped up in the hospital bed

"Sure, just don't set him off, he's in a rather testy mood tonight because the professor was a bit…excuse me, I mean a jerk to him earlier…hey big guy, there's someone on the phone for ya"

A moment later and Robin grimaced as he heard a rather grumpy Cyborg grunt a hello. He could faintly hear the sound of computer keys in the background, the hybrid of human and machine typing something. Probably homework.

"Who are you, what do you want?"

"Umm…Cyborg, how ya doing?"

"Great, peachy actually. So what this about, the grass stain whining that I'm not there anymore?" he was clearly grumpy and Robin winced at the spite within Cyborg's words. This was really not the best night to be calling him.

"Actually, I was wondering if you have any time on Sunday?"

"Nope, face it Robin, you pissed me off back in June and I'm done okay, so there's no need to be cloying and repentant because you're not taking anymore of my life than you already have. I spent 4 years…wasted 4 years with the Teen Titans and I'll be back only when I get my life straightened out, so screw off!"

"Wooah woah Cyborg, calm down, I was just…"

The phone clicked and Cyborg hung up. Short. Vicious. Still Vengeful.

Forgiveness. Robin felt a miserable hole wrench open in his heart, wide and burning. The dull pain of his now treated collar bone was nothing compared to the mental stress that his mind was suddenly under.

These are the times where a person grows old fast, when their sins catch up to their consciousness and then haunt them. The ghosts of Robin's past, all the good times with the Teen Titans, all the events of the last few years, all the success they had met, and within the valleys of his soul, all the true care he had for them. Deep below, he told himself, sometimes unconvincingly that he was honest, virtuous, wise and prudent. But why did he feel like a loser sometimes, why did he feel like he was lying to himself?

Considering that he was a famous superhero with a loving girlfriend, a bed to sleep in and a good home to hearken too, Robin knew that he had too count his blessings lest he become ungrateful to the fates for his lot in life. However materially enriched he was, spiritually he felt stripped of his confidence. On the inside, he considered how he had enraged Cyborg by mandating him to stay home, by hiding his college materials away from him, from ordering him to stay and then coming almost to a fist fight over it. Robin had been too proud and too contriving to truly appreciate Cyborg's seriousness of going to college and moving on with his life.

"Robin, get out of my way! You're not stopping me"

Robin was impassive as he continued to shuffle some police reports. "Cyborg, I ordered you too stay till Mumbo Jumbo is back in prison, Cinderblock is tracked down and we've swept the East side of Jump City clear of crime"

"Hell, my orientation is in 2 hours and you're asking me to stay?"

Robin turned around in his swivel chair and glared angrily at Cyborg. "I have the authority to cancel your scholarship if I please, so get back upstairs and stand by!"

"Well Robin, GET OFF MY REAR END! You have not yet stopped being the mother hen back at the T-Tower have you, just thinking that you are right when everyone else is wrong all the time. You don't get it, you aren't here, after my girlfriend dumped me, my professor insulted me, and I failed a test. You can't imagine, you're just so lost being Peter Pan in Never Never Land that you can't live a real life. You can't relate, you don't understand real life. You just want the world to be a comic book for the rest of your life. Well listen pal, I got a news flash for you, I wasn't raised by Batman and I wasn't some alien or demon that has nothing better to do than go and beat up some psychopathic losers. I was a normal kid that happened to get nearly killed by a lab accident back when I was 15 and became a…scientific experiment. I'm trying to live as normal a life as I possibly can by doing what normal people do by going and getting an education. Now is that too hard to understand for you?"

"Shut up!" Robin was red faced and shaking. "This is a TEAM Cyborg. We can't just unravel, we can't just fall apart with no regard for the community. That would just give a green light for our enemies to go ahead and resume endangering the team. I care about you, and what if you get hurt out there, what if you find yourself alone against Brother Blood? What if you find yourself involved in crime? Consider that as a team, we stand united as one, and divided we will fall don't you get it? All you can talk about is me, well think of Beast Boy and Raven, they need you during our fights, your firepower is invaluable…"

Cyborg changed his expression. He now just looked blankly at Robin, before turning around and walking off.

"I'll cancel your scholarship, I have files on you, I can withhold information!" Robin shouted after him.

"Yeah, you and your self righteousness can rot here for all I care. You think this whole world revolves around you and your team, well Robin…news for you. It doesn't" Cyborg didn't even turn around, but he just walked out.

Robin never did cancel the scholarship or do any of the things he threatened to do, but he was tempted to. He was that close to demanding that the city take Cyborg off financial aid. But he didn't. He was too upright, too moral to give into his own demands.

What bothered Robin was that he had been capable of such threats at all. That The Boy Wonder had indeed been a adversary and a obstacle to a positive good, and that unintentionally, he had lost a friend. He hadn't meant for that to happen. Really, he hadn't meant for a lot of things to happen that did; often on his watch. Terra's death and betrayal, Raven's near destruction at the hands of her father, Cyborg's occasional moments of extreme frustration with the team; these were things that in retrospect, Robin knew had been preventable had he made a few more choices and gone the extra mile. But he didn't. Only his pride and arrogance that had lasted as a blind, concealing such obvious facts of shortfall and negligence on his fault to his own eyes and the view of others.

Only now was he realizing that evil was a reticent facet of the soul, those quiet sinister whispers of greed and concupiscence that lay buried within them, flaws that were hidden and hidden well. However, there was also great silent fear that existed to magnify those darker angels of a person's nature and Robin was feeling the full impact of that. It left him blunted, his usually sharp mind disengaged.

Usually, Robin would have been up and at em', ready to challenge the world, but not today. He simply sat in bed, reflecting on how he had more or less been a fool to be so discouraging to Cyborg, how he had lost Terra, how he had nearly lost every member on his team more than once. He missed the glory days, and wondered how they had slipped through his fingers. He was in a mood that was a lot of various dispositions, each one falling and competing with each other in a swirl of self reflection.

From the room adjacent to the medical ward, Raven looked on astonished at Robin, particularly at the dark aura that was emanating from him. Never before had she, with her empathy powers, seen Robin thinking quite so deeply, or depressingly. She wasn't sure what was causing this episode of internal turmoil, but it most likely was a subconscious reaction of denial to the reality of the situation; how weak the Teen Titans had become and how weak he felt. She knew, that the entire team was in danger of splitting, and had been for years, but she seemed to be along in realizing that the Teen Titans were also in grave jeopardy of attack, and that true, malevolent will was set against them by an unknown foe. Phantom, she had a hunch, was the mere tip of the ice burg. There was something ominous convalescing on the horizon, she could feel it, and Robin was seemingly too buried in his own thoughts to realize it.

"I don't like this" a voice startled her and she snapped, reaching out a defensive hand, only to have it caught by…

"we're all ill at ease" Beast Boy said in a unusually grim voice as he lowered Raven's fist. Raven sighed in relief and closed the ajar door to the medical ward so that Robin was shut out from their conversing. She looked at him with a sense of relief that someone, at least someone remained sane within the team. Despite her rather callous and cynical attitude that she displayed flagrantly towards the team, she was none the less concerned for the Titan's welfare, and now that Robin was facing his own internal battles, Beast Boy seemed to be the last Titans she could really depend on.

3 years ago Raven would have perhaps given a amused smile (rare for her) if someone had told her that she would be looking towards Beast Boy with anything more than a affectionate derision, but that was 3 years ago and back when Beast Boy was still somewhat shorter than her. The boy had grown handsomely in the past few years, remaining thin but growing tall so that he now held a few inches of height over her own. He still had that same old, mischievous, boyish look to him, after all, anyone with a fang sticking through the button lip with lime green skin and hair was bound to cause some sort of impish trouble, but his broader jaw and straighter posture was certainly doing wonders for his image of becoming something more than a pre-pubescent teen. His character had changed certainly; he was even more impish than ever before, but also when the time called for it, much more serious.

And those were one of those times. His eyes were dead set and focused, his expression both thoughtful and watchful at the same time. It was a expression that Raven could trust…

"we are in danger Beast Boy, and Robin doesn't seem to notice. It's so unlike him, and that doesn't sit right with me"

"What's wrong?"

"I think this is perhaps a product of missing Starfire, but also getting roughed up last night, and getting chewed out by Cyborg"

"Ouch" Beast Boy said gravely "that bites, no pun intended"

"For him I suppose it does" Raven said, ignoring the sly grin that flashed across Beast Boy's face at his rather crude pun. She was still aloof towards him. They both paused for a moment, thinking.

"So…now what?" he asked.

"We wait…Robin won't let us down, he'll pull himself out of this" Raven said grimly, through she didn't sound convincing. "and if he doesn't, I guess it's just you and me"

"and Cyborg…Starfire" Beast Boy replied. "if we can get them to come back. We just need a week and a plan. That's not too hard is it?"

Raven only gave Beast Boy a glance in response before peering back into the medical ward. Robin was still sitting up in bed, eyes focused elsewhere. He was thinking. That was a good sign. She retracted her gaze and pondered the situation. "We must be cautious. At this point Beast Boy, before we go on, can you promise me something?"

"Sure"

"You won't ever forget that beyond being a team, we are good friends and depend on each other. If I'm ever in trouble don't…" she hesitated, choosing her words carefully "…give away your values, of me, of Robin, of the team. A Titan begins in the heart, and that's all I want you to remain true too"

"What are you saying?" Beast Boy said nonplussed.

"This is going to be a trial by fire. Don't be surprised if we all shall face the crucible sooner or later" Raven said ominously, her eyes flashing darkly. She wasn't quite sure why she felt so…unsettled on the inside, but she knew that this time, luck and unity were two virtues that were not going to be on their side.

Beast Boy only shivered. Raven's foresight was unnaturally accurate and was more than just educated guessing, Raven could literally feel the future and if Raven said that things were going to hell in a hand basket, than he better take care.

Without warning, Robin emerged.

Both of his comrades looked at him with blank expressions.

"I am moving the team from the Green to Orange Status. We meet in the conference room in 20 minutes"

Revised Chapter 6.

Thank you too specifically Book phan44 for the kick in the pants.