Gwen West

Part One - Network

…

My name isn't the kind that sounds good when it's called out in passion, so I tell all the girls I bed to call me Flash. But she's different. When she says my name, moaning it between those thin, sweet lips, it falls off her tongue like pearls of honey. She's the only girl I've ever taken more than once and it had more to do than my being her first time. I've left virgins before, no longer as virgins mind you, but there was something desperate in the way she held onto me when she reached her climax that told me I could not let her go. It might have been the way she tensed up when I removed her clothes, how she gasped as my lips touched skin that had never been seen by any eyes but her own. Maybe it was the way she had pleaded, when I thought to stop and turn away: "You can do anything you want to me, but don't tease me." She needed this, but maybe more than that she needed me. Maybe she thought I was the first person to ever think she was beautiful. Maybe I'm the only person who's ever approached her with nothing other than my true intentions: she's been used, played the fool and hurt the way no girl should ever have been. Maybe that's why I couldn't let her go… maybe that's why this was all a mistake.

…

He moved. She moved. Their moves were just barely out of sync. They didn't know each other that well, to know their bodies and fighter's spirit so personally, but it was good enough. He moved. She moved. The ground gave way as their pointed toes made contact with the bared pine surface of their training room.

She was making the air thin; that and the layer of sweat he couldn't control. There were few things that the Boy Wonder couldn't control: his sweat was one, she was the other.

Robin turned and she turned, the energy of the universe was concentrated there, in their bodies and no where else. In the tower, other things were happening: Wonder Girl and Starfire were beating the hell out of each other in their Amazonian battle training. Cyborg was working on one of the Titans' transport units and Changeling was up to his knees in some of the miscellaneous oddities that occupied his time. They were all doing these things with no souls, because all their spirits, their warrior parts, their intelligences, their curious habits, were locked in the room with Robin as he moved and she moved.

They had done this before: moved without speaking. Like before, it made Robin sick to his stomach. They were great communicators, the two of them, but as of late, there were less and less words for them to say and even less of those that either of them was going to communicate.

Lately, more and more of their conversations had been like the dialog bubbles in comic strips: the words were there, but they were flat, meaningless and in someone else's handwriting.

Robin knew it was because she had made up her mind… what she hadn't done was convince him that she was doing to right thing.

He turned fiercely with something definitive in his mind. He needed more; he needed to know something more, he had to prove to himself that he could trust her to grow up. He had trained his body for years to do moves so efficiently, he had beat his body until his mentors forbade him to train, then he would do it all over again. There were few people in the world who could evade his sweep kicks, his body could get impossibly low to the ground, his leg could swing out fast and sharp and take an opponent from standing to sitting as fast as .33 seconds. He had timed it once. He constantly made mental notes on things like that.

When he spun his leg for such a decisive kick, he estimated that given the height from her backend to the ground was about three feet, it would take her .41 seconds to hit the floor solidly and validate his suspicions. He hadn't expected her to prove competent and he surely hadn't expected her to be retaliatory. She leapt over his sweep kick, turning as she did, to put her leg in position to collide solidly with his chest. That failed too. Robin evaded, switching into the defensive and executing an evasive back flip, moving his body from immediate danger. She followed, her legs flicking forward in three alternating kicks, all of which he blocked with one cycling forearm.

He wasn't exactly sure how it happened. He remembered turning to the offensive. The next thing he became aware of was his back meeting the wall and her boot pinning him there. Her eyes were firm, her body angles tight: one slender foot remained on the ground as the other was pressed into his sternum. She turned her face to him, her body rigid in profile as she waited for him to give conceit. She knew what had happened; she wanted him to accept it.

His masked eyes stayed on hers, trying to find some trace of doubt, some instance of weakness. He found neither so his eyes found the floor. She knew it was as close as an admission of defeat as she was going to get and because it was her nature, she decided not to push it. She retracted her foot by pivoting her hips and nothing else, the joints slowly pulled that graceful leg back until it dropped to the floor to meet the other one.

"So you're sure there's nothing I can say to change your mind?" He asked.

She shook her head in the negative. "Robin, you knew this day was going to come. You need to accept it. Eventually we're all going to move on. We all have to."

"Not you… I didn't think you'd… At least, I thought you'd be the last."

"You thought wrong." Raven replied.

She had told him, in no uncertain terms that she was leaving the Titans. Robin hadn't liked it at all. What made it worse than her unshakeable determination to break her bond to the Titans were her reasons. There were two reasons: one had brown hair, the other had black.

Robin had figured that with the Brotherhood of Evil dismantled that the Titans would find some sense of normalcy: as much as there could be for teenage crime fighters who lived in a giant T. But things… changed. The dynamic of the Titans, when it expanded from five, to six, to upwards of two dozen, had shifted and their relationships were changed as well. No one expected Beast Boy to grow up so fast, sliding into Changeling almost over night. No one had thought Jinx would make such a thorough heroine and no one thought that Kid Flash would stay…

At least they had been right about the last one.

The Titans' network was established linking the Teen Titans to Titans East to the world sphere of other gifted young heroes. For the most part those that didn't belong to a tower went their separate ways. There were two exceptions: "Wonder Girl" Donna Troy and "Kid Flash" Wally West. Those exceptions were the reason why Robin found himself in the situation he was in.

That night that she came to him, he was in the evidence room compiling a record on "The Elemental" who had managed to escape from Jump City's answer to Arkham "Impermeable". It turned it out it was the wrong answer: Impermeable was easier to get out of than Titans' Tower was to get into. They really needed to work on that. He heard the door slide open, saw a shadow on the floor and knew it was Raven.

Her hood was up. Her cloak was wrapped a bit tighter than normally around her body. She had grown a bit, her hips were fuller and some time ago she left behind her leotard for a dress with a slit cut high enough that if you looked up it just right you could see the angle of her black panties: not that the honorable Boy Wonder had, but he had heard from multiple credible sources.

The door slid behind her and she walked forward, her unique eyes surveying the room to verify for her visual senses that she was truly alone with him. Robin sat back and waited; she stepped forward and demanded his attention. She certainly got it.

"I'm leaving the Titans."

Robin was the master of many things, many skills and many talents; but hiding his surprise was something that he could be bested at when it came to what Raven could, would and did say.

"Can you repeat that? I think I had something crazy in my ear."

"You heard me. I'm leaving the Titans."

"Raven, you can't be serious."

"Have you ever known me to be anything but serious?" Raven asked.

"No." He replied sombrely.

"Then why did you think this would be different?" She crossed her arms just a bit tighter. Her cloak moved, he noticed her body again; he tried not to think about it.

"What's… this about Raven?"

She pulled her hood down as if taking off a mask or a grand façade. Everything she did was either theatrical or graceful. The way she was breathing and looking away just so was a little bit of both. "For the good of the team… I think its best if someone goes… I don't have the authority to volunteer anyone but myself… so, I'm leaving."

"Raven. This isn't about what I think it is? I'm sure with time you can get used to Wonder Girl. You two bump heads, but everyone bumps heads from time to time. It's not a good enough reason to leave."

"It isn't her, not specifically. The Titans always worked best when we were a five piece. We know from experience that the number six is a poor fit."

Robin thought to say something to the contrary, Raven was being too hard and too truthful, but she wasn't right. She stopped him from calling her on it. "I feel crowded." She said simply.

"You didn't feel crowded when there were seven of us."

Raven's huge doe eyes blinked once, twice. "Richard…"

Robin sighed, running his hands through his highly stylized hair. Whenever anyone used real names, it was something serious. Because Raven had no alias, every conversation with her was dealt with a great amount of seriousness.

"Does this have something to do with Kid Flash leaving?"

"I came to Jump City a long time ago looking for a group of heroes to help me fight Trigon. I didn't want to get emotionally attached, but I did… Now that Trigon is gone and the Titans Network is set up, my reasons aren't…"

"Stop… either your next words are going to be you don't need us or you don't think we need you. If I can help it, I'm not going to let you lie. Our bond…"

"Means more to you than it does to me and we both know that isn't a lie." Raven replied.

Robin's knuckles cracked. Raven's breathing remained even. Nothing else was stable.

"Are you going to tell me next that you used us and nothing more? That we really don't mean anything to you except as armor and flashy distractions?"

"If you want me to get angry, I can do this easily." Raven replied.

"Then that makes two of us." He stared, she stared. Nothing got done.

Feet were moving outside that room. Peoples' lives were going on. Gar was entertaining thoughts of food, Kori was doing something ridiculous that would be excused because she was cute and strong and resilient to everything except name calling. Victor was probably waiting on Sarah Simms and Donna was more than less likely doing something that would eventually push Raven's buttons.

Inside that room, feet were still. Eyes were angry and at least one of them was categorically pissed.

"I want you to reconsider."

"I want you to let me go."

"I can't." Robin said definitively.

"Why not?" She removed herself from the desk, standing up as tall as she could as she looked down at him with those unique eyes.

"Because I know what this is about. This isn't about the Titans or even Donna. This is about you and Kid Flash." Robin didn't see anything in her face to tell him he had gone too far, so be continued to push. "If it were anyone else, I'd trust them… but I can't with…"

"What?"

Robin signed and stood up, leaning against the desk for the tiniest bit of support. "This is a matter of your feelings… we've all see how dangerous and undeveloped those are." Her face became a little tight, but it wasn't enough to shut him up. So he kept going. "You fall in love with anyone who's nice to you. Aqualad, Changeling, Malchior, Kid Flash, me, probably Cyborg and Speedy too. You don't know what love is and you keep following anything that smells a little bit like---"

He had to stop. She stopped him. He'd remember the sting of her hand over his cheek for years, probably all the way to the grave… which appeared to be where he was going immediately from the murderous glare in Raven's face.

"Because I believe in that angry monster I'm looking at lies my friend, I'll write all the things you just said in invisible ink for my memory."

"Raven, I'm sorry." She said nothing, but didn't look away. "Raven, talk to me."

"I'm not sure I want to talk to you right now, Richard. We may say things we regret."

He had to think. His proverbial feet were already cut to shreds from the glass he had just noisily trampled across. He felt a little sick and in that nausea was curiosity, it would take all his talents as a man to cure himself of both.

"As long as we're honest, we can't hurt each other. You're my friend, I'd never do anything to hurt you."

She wasn't buying it. Robin became aware that he might have ruined a very fragile thing. Robin made a decision and pulled off his mask, revealing adulterated blue eyes. He leaned forward, in a very intimate way, trapping Raven's body against the desk, one hand on the table on either side of her hips. He could tell by her face that she didn't know what to think and had no clue about what to do.

"I've done things I regret." He said, keeping a few inches between her unsure face and his determined one. "We all have. I've hurt you before and I'm hurting you now, but it was never intentional. I care about you."

"There was a time when you didn't." Her whispers were more sinister than most curses or spells of damnation. She was so good with her tone, even after years of telling himself he wasn't afraid of her, she could still cut right through him.

"I'm not going to tell you that I've always felt the way I do now. Things are different than they were in the past. In the past, I didn't always treat you the way you deserved."

"In the past, you didn't respect me."

"That isn't---"

"Don't. We both know that is the truth. I saw it back then, but I never said anything about it. When you were Slade's apprentice… you could hurt us all, but you choose not to hurt Starfire and you constantly choose to hurt me."

"That was different Raven. I was under Slade's control."

"Slade didn't make you avoid Starfire to fight me. Slade didn't make me just a target to you."

"Raven, you're not being fair."

"I know that. That's why I didn't want to talk to you right now. Because I'm being honest, and I'm still hurting you. I came in here to tell you the truth, not to fight and not to unseed everything I've managed to bury for the last few years."

"You have to understand…"

"That you think I have the emotional capacity of a small child? Yeah, I got it. But I'm not listening. I've never stopped you from doing what you believed you needed to do. Be that much a friend and do the same for me."

"You're different."

"I've heard that before." Raven replied. She was still aware of how close he was to her and how angry she was and if he was lucky or if she was particularly merciful, nothing consequential would become of it. "You can be worried about me without being judgemental."

He thought to sigh, she misread him and pushed him away from her. They stood a good few feet apart, uneasy in a manner they hadn't been in a very long time. This was very serious.

"I feel something for Wally… I can't put words to it, maybe it's because I'm inexperienced or maybe because it's too delicate to be touched with labels… whatever the reason… the last time I checked, it wasn't a crime for me to feel something for others."

"Prove to me that I'm wrong to doubt you."

"I don't have to prove anything to you." Raven replied.

"Then why did you come here?"

"Because I wanted to do this the right way… and to let you know that you're wrong. I never loved you."

"I know that. You've never loved anyone and I'm afraid you don't know how."

"How old are you, Richard?"

"Seventeen."

"Good. Then there's hope that when you're a man you'll stop saying stupid, hateful things."

"Raven."

"Don't apologize anymore." Raven rose her hand to make sure he listened to her. He wove his arms around his chest and got a real close look at her. There were a lot of things about her that he would never appreciate. One of those things was her capacity for control. "We've never been honest with each other… it's not our style."

"Tell me something truthful for once. Why Wally?"

"If I asked you why Kori, could you answer me?"

Richard Grayson had nothing to say.

That had been two nights ago, last night he went to her room and demanded that she give him something to believe in, if she was really going to leave. That morning he interrupted her Tai Chi and continued to attack her and that evening she was leaving the Titans.

Richard Grayson would be the one who palmed her communicator as she walked away towards the sun. He would be the only one who watched her go; she choose to walk, he knew she was a drama queen. He told himself he knew a lot about Raven and that in a few weeks, months tops, that she'd be back, ready to live the life she knew, that she was accustomed to, that fit in with her style and sensitivity.

She never came back.

Four years later, he found her.

End of Part

AN:

My word choice might be a bit misleading in this part. There was no previous Rob/Rae relationship. The instances of their feelings are totally platonic from Robin's angle. However, he did know that she had a crush on him.