Chapter 9

That night Ellie lay on her bed in the tower and stared at the ceiling. She reflected on how mad she had been at Red X punching Robin. She had never gotten mad like that before. When he had gotten hit in the face, something inside her just... snapped. She couldn't remember anything after that. It became a blur and the next thing she knew, her heart was being squeezed. "hmmm." She said to herself, and settled back into her pillows.

She closed her eyes. With a soft smile on her lips, she started to doze off, but suddenly snapped her eyes open and sat up. "This happened to me before!" she said rather loudly to herself. "I remember when they first brought me here, and something hurt my heart when I was on the bed!" she stopped talking and made a funny face before flopping back against the pillows once more. I wonder why that happens whenever I use or am going to use my powers. She thought.

Her mind traveled all the way back to the building with her dad. She felt her spirits drop when she thought about her dad. The titans had told her what happed to him when she had been with them for a few days.

FLASHBACK

Robin looked up to see Ellie walking towards them. The titans gave each other worried looks. "We might as well tell her." Cyborg told them. "Tell me what?" she asked coming up from behind them. "Well, friend Ellie, we were trying to do the finding of the way to tell you that your father is dead." Star fire said. All the titans glared at her and she shrank back. Ellie looked at them, numb. The news finally sank in and she whispered "dead, as in pushing up daisies, dead as a doornail, never coming back again, dead?"

The titans nodded, thinking she would start bawling, storm out of the room, or something. But she just looked down and her hair covered her eyes. She looked up again after a few minutes with a bright smile on her face and in an overly cheery voice, said "well, it's okay! I didn't really know him anyway! Hey, I'm really craving ice cream right now, so I'm going to go and buy some okay?" beast boy was about to point out that they're freezer was full of ice cream, but Robin slapped his hand over the green boys mouth to stop those words from escaping.

They all nodded their consent and Ellie glided out of the room silently. "She's really hurting." Cyborg pointed out. They all nodded again and went back to what they were doing. They didn't notice when Robin snuck out to check on Ellie. When he found her she was sitting on her bed with a whole tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Her eyes were red from obvious crying, but he didn't say anything. "Want company?" he asked. She nodded. He sat in silence.

"Are you okay?" he asked slowly. She nodded again and smiled brightly and asked "why wouldn't I be?" he frowned slightly but didn't say anything more.

END OF FLASHBACK

Right now, as she lay in her bed, she cried quietly as she did every night and thought about the fun times she had with her dad. It was him who helped her learn her numbers when she was having trouble. It was him who had told her to wait for the boy who told her that she was beautiful instead of hot. She hadn't found him yet. And she was going to be 17 tomorrow. Not wanting to bring more sad thought to mind, she pushed them to the back of her mind. She had to do her best to forget him, yet not forget him.

It was her birthday tomorrow. She had decided to keep this little fact to herself because she didn't want to cause a bother. And it happened to be a few weeks after her father's death. She wasn't in the mood to celebrate. Not wanting to be a bother was also the reason she hid her feelings. Come on, who wanted an overly emotional girl on their hands? No one. So she stayed overly happy. Which was, of course fake, but she hoped that they couldn't see through it. How wrong she was.

Robin could see right through her and knew the awful pain she was going through. Even though she smiled brightly every time she saw a titan, the smile didn't reach her eyes. After defeating Red X, he saw a bit of life return to her eyes, but that extinguished quickly. Every night, she retired early, and when he passed her room to get to his own, he could hear the soft sobs.

Dr. Emily Nazra had been hiding in her small, secluded apartment in a rundown part of town for a few weeks now, only leaving her hovel to get food. So far, her plan had been executed perfectly, except that the daughter had been there. And she escaped. That meant that she could find out about how she had planted a device under the building to make it seem like it was a natural accident. Now, all she had to do to complete her revenge was to find the girl, and do away with her.

She walked over to her tiny living room, and sat on the only chair there and read the paper. In the headlines, there was a girl in a green and black super hero suit, with red X entangled in vines. Emily was about to turn the page, when she suddenly turned back and saw the face and realized who the girl was. A sadistic smile crept across her face as she now knew where she could find Ellie Patricia Wing.