Work Text:
The sky is blue.
He’s in the kitchen, getting something, breakfast and a cup of coffee maybe, when he notices it.
There’s small things now, like his insides are different, like something about his molecules is different now. He doesn’t know if it’s trauma, if it is, then it’s not the worst he’s ever been through; he can easily count up enough worse times to fill up more than one hand’s worth.
The air is different too, the weight of the impending doom has lifted, ever so slightly. There’s room to breathe.
To live, for once.
Robin can’t imagine how Raven must feel.
She’s dreaded, feared this moment for her entire life, and somehow it has passed them over like a hurricane.
And there’s not even that much damage left behind in its wake. All the worst things, water turned into fire, skin and bone into stone, the air into ash, those things were reversed immediately, all through the power of Raven’s will.
All of the more visible signs of Trigon’s admittedly brief rule have been undone. But Robin, the natural worrier that he is, has kept his eyes out for the more subtle, lingering signs that all is not well.
Maybe he does worry too much.
After all, the sky has been blue nearly every day since, and even Raven’s face has lifted slightly, her eyes lighter without that weight bogging them downwards to the depths.
They’ve all been cheerful in the past week; and it’s only been a week since the end, since, he thinks privately, it all began again.
And so he lets himself relax into the brighter mood that fills the tower, ever so slightly, because, he thinks, after all this, they’ve really earned it.
And so he goes into the kitchen, stepping carefully around Raven who’s also standing at the counter, busy with fixing herself a cup of tea. “Excuse me.” he says without thinking about it, moving around her to the other side of the counter.
“Hmm.” she says, not really listening to him either way.
He glances at her out of the corner of his eye (mask, really). Raven is busy with her mug, focused on stirring sugar into her green, green tea, thoughtful expression on her face.
Her cloak is that same comfortingly familiar purple, though Robin thinks that it might be a shade or two lighter than it was just a couple weeks ago. Her lavender hair is short again, hanging just a little past her chin.
It’s the same Raven he knows, (that he cares so so much about, more than he’s actually really ready to admit to) but there’s something different, something that he just can’t quite put his finger on.
He pauses in what he’s doing, just looking at her, when it hits him.
He’s actually a little bit disappointed he didn’t notice it sooner; but now that they’re standing here nearly shoulder to shoulder, it’s obvious.
He smiles faintly to himself.
Raven notices him staring, and looks up. “What?” she asks, face blank, but her big eyes are wide, and actually, she’s really cute.
He shrugs, still smiling.
Robin’s not entirely sure how to break it to her.
“Rae- I think you’ve shrunk.” he tells her, a smile in his voice.
She blinks, then wrinkles her nose. “-no. You’ve just...grown, or something.” she says mildly. He shakes his head, grinning now.
“Uhuh. I don’t think I’ve grown any.” he says, realizing that he has to actually look down now slightly to look her in the face. “You’re just shorter.”
Raven looks at him, actually looking genuinely slightly upset about it, but she hides it pretty well. He can tell that she does believe him now though, and he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. But still, he couldn’t not.
The air is too loose for secrets, and this one isn’t even all that important.
“That’s stupid.” Raven mumbles, looking away.
“What?” Cyborg says, coming into the kitchen. Beast Boy and Starfire are leaning back over the sofa, where they’ve been watching tv. Raven says nothing, just stares into her tea cup, and so Robin decides to be the one to answer their friend.
“Raven’s gotten smaller.” Robin announces. Cyborg makes a face, hands on his hips. “C’mon, that’s not a thing.”
He looks at Robin, then Raven, like they’re going to announce the whole thing as a joke.
Robin shrugs.
Cyborg goes over to Raven, looking at her, and Raven just stares up at him. Slowly a sort of acknowledgement passes over the metal teen’s face.
“...I mean. She does kinda look smaller. You do kinda look smaller.” he says to Raven.
Raven makes a face.
“I wanna see.” Beast Boy says, jumping over the back of the sofa. “Don’t-” Robin begins, before deciding not to bother.
Starfire follows the green teen into the kitchen. Raven rolls her eyes as Beast Boy leans against her, and sure enough, they’re almost the same height now, Beast Boy might even have an inch or so on her, but he’s moving around so much that Robin can’t tell.
A month ago Raven was a good two inches taller than him, a source of near constant whining and complaining from the green boy.
“Wow, I’m definitely taller than you!” Beast Boy says, crowing ever so slightly. Raven scowls.
“That’s not much of an accomplishment.” she tells him, and Cyborg laughs. “She’s got you there, B.” he tells his friend, and Beast Boy just sticks his tongue out at him.
“Let me seee!!” Starfire says, pretty much shoving Beast Boy out of the way to go stand by Raven. “Ow!” he says, but they all ignore him. Starfire is much taller than Raven, but that’s nothing new, not really.
Raven looks up at her friend, and Starfire grins back at her. Raven smiles faintly, and although she may be fed up with all the attention, it’s all kind attention, and Robin hopes at least that she knows that they really just mean well.
He thinks she does.
Starfire nods towards Robin, then looks back down at Raven. “You are most definitely smaller than you were before.” she says, matter-of-factly, and Raven just sighs.
Cyborg throws up his hands, generally being a man of science and moans, “But why, how are you shorter? It doesn’t make any sense!”
“Things are different now, Cy.” Robin tells his friend quietly, and it’s the truth.
The soft thing, that they’ve all been wondering for the past week, is: what is different now, now that Raven died and came back to life, white and alive, but different, different surely. It would be impossible to be exactly the same again, like no two snowflakes being just alike, surely.
And they, or maybe, once again, maybe it’s only been him, have been wondering, if Raven will be the same as before, the same groaning grumpiness, the moaning tiredness, the sharp comments and kind eyes and gentle smile that only comes out on the rarest of occasions.
He, they, whatever, don’t want her to be different.
But it’s okay too though, even if she is. Because she’s alive, she’s here, and that’s what matters.
Raven looks up at all of them, clearly very unamused. “Clearly all of you just grew.”
Robin smiles faintly. “All at once?”
Raven nods in his direction, face still stoic. “All at once.” she says crisply.
He grins faintly. The same old Raven.
Beast Boy grins too, throwing an arm over her cloaked shoulders. “You know what this means though, right?” She arches an eyebrow. “You’re now the shortest!” he says, nothing short of gleeful.
Raven’s expression is anything but amused.
“Hm.” she says, and Robin thinks that if Beast Boy continues to push his luck like this, (and he will, he always does) they’re going to need a new game system and probably a new tv by the end of the day.
She shoves Beast Boy off of her shoulder and goes back into the kitchen. The others drift back to what they were doing before, but Robin follows her back into the kitchen.
She’s at the counter, and she’s not as upset looking as Robin was afraid that she would be. Raven just looks at him, and takes a sip of tea.
“Troublemaker.” she says softly, knowing that he’ll hear her. He just grins.
He steps around her, and finishes making his forgotten, unfinished sandwich that had been left behind from earlier. “You’d tell me, if you weren’t okay, right?” he says, voice low to keep the others just a footstep and a shout away in the living room, from hearing.
Star and B are playing video games, and Starfire is busy creaming him. Cyborg is trying to give Beast Boy some useless pointers, slowing his defeat at Star’s hands by not at all. Raven looks at him, up at him, and smiles faintly, tiredly.
“I’d tell you, Robin.”
He nods, smiling, but it’s just a little tight. He goes to get his plate, and pauses when Raven speaks once more.
“I’m fine, Robin.” she says, voice quiet but flooded with emotion, exasperated emotion. But she smiles when she says it. He nods, smiling for real now. He moves to leave the kitchen and let her finally drink her tea in peace when he pauses.
“Just so you know. I think you're cute.” he tells her, voice low, before bolting from the kitchen, not willing to stick around to see her reaction.
If he had, he might’ve seen her slightly pinkened cheeks, flushing in the summer sunlight.