tw: death and grief is a major plot here, it's a minor character but I thought I'd add it just in case

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/bereavement/useful-contacts/

https://www.joincake.com/blog/grief-support-hotline/

https://www.helpguide.org/find-help.htm

thought I'd tag JordynAdams1 because they like my teen titans stuff and i told them this would come out the 23rd but turns out i finished it sooner than i thought :)

It was too good to be true that in their time as a team, they hadn't dealt with casualties. They had a few close calls but ultimately, it wasn't until today that they had seen someone they failed to save. Beast Boy was the first to find them. He tried CPR but the body was already cold and Robin had to step in to say there wasn't a pulse and they couldn't do anything more. He sent the team home and dealt with it himself. He could've kept them on, that's what Batman would do, so they could learn what to do if they came across a body without him but he couldn't. Maybe he wasn't as strong of a leader but the moment he saw their devastated faces, he knew they needed to go home. 

He found out the name of the deceased if his team wanted to know it. Sometimes it made things easier, other times it made things harder. He got a little about their personal life, two cats who would now either be moved into a shelter or move in with the parents. The parents said they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and thanked him for trying his best. Somewhere deep down, they would hold a natural resentment that he hadn't saved her but it was blanketed with the knowledge that the team were teenagers much younger than their kid. Police suggested he get home to his own parents before correcting themselves and saying his team. It would be funny in a couple of days but right now he pretended it didn't happen. 

He got back in the early hours of the morning expecting the titans to be in the rooms. He doubted any of them would be asleep but he thought they'd pretend to be for the sake of each other. That's not what he walked in on. Instead, his teammates were sitting around the table each with a mug of something warm. Probably tea since coffee wouldn't do much good. They were talking lowly, clearly exhausted but unable to sleep. Robin couldn't help but feel like he could've prevented this had he been more like his mentor. He'd let them have too many wins without knowing the gravity of their jobs. 

Quietly, he walked to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. After what happened tonight, he needed to put in a tonne of work writing up reports and risk assessing what happened. The last thing he wanted to do was nitpick his friends' work but it was part of the job and he'd feel better with the knowledge that they truly did everything they could. If he found more could be done, he'd work out how to make sure it did happen the next time. They didn't need to know what they could've done better, it would do nothing to help with the grief. 

Behind him, the whispers paused before continuing on. He hoped they were talking. Bruce never really did the talking part. He always told him what he could've done better but struggled when he tried to make Robin feel better. By his second year as Robin, he stopped asking for comfort and went elsewhere usually diving into the next case or training until the skin on his knuckles broke. He might do that after writing the reports. 

He didn't see much point in him joining the chat, honestly, he wouldn't know whether he'd be able to do it or not. He was so out of practice talking about his feelings that he'd probably come across as intentionally closed off or unintentionally blunt. It was better to stay out of it and let them work throughout since he didn't have much to offer.

"Hey, Robin, where you heading off to?" Cyborg called. Busted. He paused and turned around, his team watching him with worry. Maybe they thought he was upset with them because he didn't say hi but he just didn't want to interrupt them. 

"The office," he replied. He was careful of his tone, mindful that one wrong inflexion would have them on edge. He hoped they'd take the hint but their worried expressions seemed to deepen like they were frightened he was locking himself away to breakdown. 

"Could you sit with us? We wanna talk about what happened today."

"Oh, I don't really do good at the whole chatting about feelings. It's really better that I go do work instead."

"We won't judge you for that but I think it's important we talk about this," Cyborg insisted. He glanced to the hallway to his office and tensed slightly before sighing and taking a seat beside Starfire. There was a moment of silence and everyone stared at him, prompting him to say something but he didn't understand what he was supposed to say. Should he try and perk up the mood? Should he tell them what he learned about the victim or would that only make them feel worse? Should he apologize for not preparing them?

"Oh you really don't know how to talk about feelings do you?" Beast Boy asked, getting a little nudge from Cyborg to be more respectful. He smiled softly. 

"Yeah, we don't really do this in Gotham."

"What do you do?"

"Figure out everything you did wrong, punch something and move on," he explained. "I suppose it's my fault you guys are taking it to heart. I've been in the game so long I've sort of forgotten they're people."

"When did you see your first body?" Beast Boy asked. He had a morbid curiosity about him, pushing his own horror at seeing the body behind him to hear more stories from Gotham. He was thirteen so it came as no surprise that he was getting more interested in edgy topics. 

"Uh I don't know if that's what we should talk about right now."

"Are you uncomfortable talking about it?" Raven inquired, shooting a look at the younger member. 

"No, it's just uhm. I was nine and it was my parents." There was a long pause that he longed to fill but he found that all he could do was dig himself into a hole. "It was years ago, I've seen loads since then. It's why I feel like I didn't prepare you because Batman used to show me photos of dead bodies to desensitize me and it kind of worked. The youngest I saw was this kid who...why are you looking at me like that?"

Everyone was staring at him like he'd just said he kicked puppies for fun. Was he not supposed to answer honestly? Was he making this tragedy about himself? He sipped on his coffee to give his hands something to do as he waited for one of them to say something. 

"Batman prepared you to see dead bodies by showing you them? How old were you?" Raven asked. Maybe this was an issue in logistics. Maybe they couldn't understand when it happened so they were confused why it was needed at all. Perhaps they were concerned why he didn't do the same for them. 

"When I first started so like nine."

"Let me get this straight," Cyborg began. "You were nine when you saw your parents dead."

"Well, I saw them die then I saw my parents were dead if we're talking specifics."

"So, to prepare you to be a vigilante, the same year they died, he showed you dead bodies." He nodded and took another swig of coffee. "Did he talk with you about how to process those feelings?"

"No, mostly to point out background evidence and how to identify how someone died. We didn't do feelings."

"What? You were just expected to understand how to react?"

"The whole point is so I wouldn't react," Robin clarified. "People die every day, especially in Gotham. I had to learn how to handle myself. I should've done the same for you."

"Robin, I do not think that would have helped at all. It would just make us upset," Starfire assured him, patting him on the shoulder. 

"But it helped."

"I think it just helped you develop some issues. You just said you don't know how to talk about your feelings, your response is to punch something and work through it and you forget they're people."

"Yeah! That's how you're supposed to do it so you can still do your job. The world doesn't stop because you're upset."

"You sent us home and handled this yourself. You know that's not how you're supposed to react otherwise you would tell us to suck it up and get on with it," Cyborg pointed out. "You've prepared us for so many scenarios but you didn't prepare us for this one. Don't you think that's because you knew something was wrong with that?" Robin leaned back in thought.

"Nah," he replied. 

"Robin."

"I just thought I was being a little soft."

"Dude," Beast Boy muttered. "So you didn't feel anything when you saw them?"

"I'm not as good as Batman was. I feel stuff but I find it hard to feel it. It's like when you go to the grocery store and there's meat packaged up. You can poke it and you can feel its meat, hell you can see what it is but you can't feel it right. There's something stopping you." Saying it out loud, he realised how bad that was. "Oh, that's not good is it?" They nodded. "You know, I think I'm beginning to think I had a bad childhood."

"You seriously didn't think that before?" Beast Boy asked, earning a glare from his teammates. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Maybe B prepared me for a lot but not this part," he said, gesturing to them.

"That is something we can prepare you for," Starfire assured him. "We all feel much better talking about it. You could talk about it too."

"I don't know where to start."

"We do. We'll help," Raven told him. "We're a team, right?"