Jinx lay on her back, looking up at the dark ceiling of the spare bedroom in Titans' Tower. She tried not to think about the circumstances that led to her being here, tried to keep her mind blank for a while, to have some sort of peace. It never worked.
The Brotherhood of Evil had been defeated. They were all cryogenicly frozen in their own hidden base. The federal authorities of France had been kind enough to take over control of the facility, while allowing the heroes to all disperse to their varying homes. In truth, many of the new Titans had come to the tower, as Jinx had.
Jinx stopped herself there. A new Titan? Is that what she was? She reached down to her belt, pulling the circular communicator off the latch and looking at it in the darkness. She pressed a switch, and her name showed on the small screen, identifying it as her communicator. J-I-N-X, flashing in the darkness. Apparently, she was a new Titan. She didn't feel like one.
She could hear the partying from here, even though she was over a hundred feet from the large operations room where everyone was. "Everyone" was a lot of people. The five Titans, who Jinx had tried desperately to avoid, as well as many of the new Titans from around the world. Kid Flash, and all the confusion he caused for Jinx, was still there as well. She didn't recognize many of the others. She knew Bumblebee from HIVE academy, and she'd heard of the rest of the Titans East from when they'd held order in Jump City for a time. Jinx thought she may have seen the large, muscular, hirsute woman on television before, maybe when Gizmo had been watching the Spanish networks. Most of the others, particularly the little kids that Raven seemed so fond of, were completely unknown to her. They all acted as if they were old friends, however, and it all led to her feeling like a complete outcast.
So she had come here. It was her assigned lodging for the night, this smallish, cell-like room. To be honest, it was comfortable enough, similar to a hotel. A single, twin-sized bed, a small dresser, a closet, the typical sort of accommodation. Still, it wasn't really her room. Her room was probably still in tatters in the Hive underground base, since she doubted that her old teammates would have seen fit to repair the place.
She wondered how they were. They'd escaped being frozen, during the chaos of that final battle. Jinx had been friends with Gizmo and Mammoth since freshman year of HIVE Academy. Jinx smiled. They'd been selected as a team by a board of advisors that looked only at powers and abilities. Her speed, her energy blasts, coupled with Gizmo's technical knowledge and Mammoth's strength... they were gauged as one of the best teams at the school. They'd lived up to the expectations. All the combat training, the sparring, the classwork, there had been nothing that they couldn't defeat as a team. Gizmo had overcome the teasing about his size during freshman year, with the help of his nine foot tall bruiser of a teammate being around him. Jinx had a few male admirers in the school, but since she hadn't been interested, the same bruiser kept them away. A few rumors spread about Jinx and Mammoth dating, and no guys even looked at her that way again.
But now that was over. Jinx sighed. At the urging and flirtation of Kid Flash, she'd thrown away whatever friendship that she'd taken years to build with the rest of her team. Even the new additions, Seemore, Billy Numerous, and Kyd Wykkyd... they'd never trust her again. She was just using Kid Flash. At least, that had been what she'd told herself. She wanted revenge on Madame Rouge, and what better way to get it than to join the Titans and help defeat her?
Well, Jinx had helped defeat the woman, and yet here she was, still a Titan. She frowned, tossing the communicator across the room, being slightly disappointed when, instead of breaking, it simply bounced off the opposing wall, and fell to the floor.
A soft knock on the door broke her thoughtful mood. For whatever reason, she didn't really have one in mind, she decided to let whoever it was in. "I'm in here. It's not locked."
The door opened on it's hydraulic treads, and exposed the mostly-metallic man behind it. Jinx wondered if 'man' was more correct than 'boy', but didn't really want to get into semantics at the moment. She supposed he was old enough to be called a man.
Cyborg smiled at her, with his disarming attitude. "Mind telling me why you're in here instead of out there with the rest of us?"
Jinx sat up, not wanting to lay around in bed while talking to someone she didn't know very well. "Because I'm not like the rest of you. You guys are all... I don't know. I'm not the same."
"Hey, come on. You're not that different. Everyone's got problems with their past." Cyborg was, as Stone had been, entirely oblivious to the idea that anyone's problems made any real difference. He didn't understand.
Jinx stood, turning away from Cyborg and looking out the small window, over the bay. It was a nice view of the city skyline. "I don't know anyone out there anyway. I'd just be sitting somewhere sipping punch and trying not to draw attention."
Cyborg shrugged, as Jinx watched him on the reflection in the window. "You know me. The other original Titans are out there too. Bumblebee said she had a few classes with you at the HIVE, and I know that you know Wally."
Jinx turned slightly, raising an eyebrow. "Wally?"
Cyborg put his closed hand to his mouth, coughing slightly, as if clearing his throat. "Uh, Kid Flash. I guess he didn't tell you his name."
"We're not dating, you know."
"I know. He's in there flirting it up with Argent anyway. No one seems to have told him that she doesn't like American men. Or, uh, foreign men, for that matter." Cyborg grinned.
Why had she told him that she wasn't dating Kid Flash? Why would he even care? Jinx hardened her face again, not wanting to be swayed into friendship with Cyborg. His calm and casually nice demeanor aside, she knew that he was capable of deception. "Besides, I don't know you. I knew Stone."
Cyborg sighed, a strange sound with the mildly electronic edge that his voice simulators put on it. "Yeah, look, I wanted to talk to you about that."
"Nothing to talk about." Jinx's voice was a bit sharper than she'd intended, but maybe he deserved it.
"Yes, there is. I know what I did was kinda wrong, but we had to find out what Brother Blood was plannin'. I didn't mean to... we got closer than... I didn't mean to hurt you."
Jinx smiled slightly at his discomfort, hoping that the reflection in the window didn't show it. She didn't say anything though, wanting to hear him squirm some more.
"Jinx? Look, we were close, not exactly dating, but you know. For a while there, I wasn't Cyborg. I was Stone. I meant everything I said at the dance." Cyborg was watching her in the window reflection also. His tone was quiet and serious.
"No, you didn't. If you'd meant it, you would have stayed." She didn't want to think about the dance. Sadie Hawkins' dance, so she'd asked Stone to it. They'd had fun, even if he seemed as if he was hiding something all night. She had asked him, in a moment of trust and thus vulnerability, if he would always be there for her. She reassured herself that it was because it was the end of a long slow dance, and that she had been feeling girlish and romantic at the time. She still felt a bit ashamed of the weird question, but he'd assured her that he would be there. Well, a few days later, he wasn't.
Cyborg didn't respond at first, and Jinx felt a bit guilty, knowing that she'd hit a soft spot, as well as knowing that he couldn't possibly have stayed. When he spoke, his voice was quiet again. "I thought about it."
Jinx turned, looking at him suspiciously. "Thought about what?"
"Staying. Quitting the Titans and just staying as Stone." Cyborg looked her in the eyes, and she didn't sense that he was lying.
Jinx hesitated a moment, out of shock as much as anything else. "... How? Your disguise would have failed eventually. We would have found out. Brother Blood would have."
"Brother Blood already knew. I think he knew from the start. Telepathy and mind-reading are what he does, Jinx. He tried to tell me that he could fix me, that he could remove... all this." Cyborg gestured towards his hands, but Jinx assumed he meant all of his metallic parts. "Almost had me believing it too, but he couldn't control the electronic part of my mind."
Jinx sat down on her bed again, sighing. "So you meant that you were thinking of staying, in case he could fix you."
Cyborg stepped into the room, the door hissing shut behind him. He sat down on the small chair included with the room, and seemed to gather his thoughts for a moment before answering. "No. No, I never thought he could actually fix me. I was thinking of staying because... well, with you, Mammoth, Gizmo... I felt like I was back in school again. I felt almost normal. It's been a long time since I felt that way. Plus, with how we were... I didn't want to hurt you... and the others. I didn't know how human you were."
There was some kind of sincerity in his voice that cracked through Jinx's forced indifference. To be honest, while she'd been surprised that Stone had actually been Cyborg, she had been more surprised that Cyborg had been so... human as well. He'd always been a superhero. An opponent, a robot, some obstacle to overcome. She'd never thought that the opposite might also be true. That to Robin, Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy... she was just some criminal. Maybe a particularly powerful one, but still just another villain to face. Not a girl whose parents had sent her away because of her metahuman nature, not a girl with her own hopes for the future, her own heroes and heroines, however misguided she was to choose them. Maybe he hadn't meant to hurt her like he did. "That doesn't change what happened."
"No, but it can change what will. Come back to the party. I'll introduce you to the other Titans, they're good people. You can talk magic with Raven, or maybe go smack Wally for flirting. Don't just sit in here alone all night." Cyborg stood up, holding out his hand to her.
Jinx looked at his hand, considering. She felt stupid, agreeing to his offer, but she reached out and put her small hand in his. He smiled at her, and she couldn't really help but smile back. She could still feel some of what she'd felt for stone, despite the different look to Cyborg. She tried to keep herself objective, however.
They walked out of the room, still holding hands, which struck Jinx as a little grade-schoolish and silly. Still, she didn't pull away. They walked down the hallway in silence, and stopped just outside the door to operations. Cyborg turned to her, and held out her communicator, still flashing her name. "Take it, Jinx. Even a few people who aren't actually Titans have these. You might as well keep it, just in case. You did well fightin' Doctor Light earlier, and we'd like to have you on the team, but it's up to you."
Jinx looked down at the small communicator, and, making her decision, reached out and took it, clicking the button to stop the flashing name, and reattaching it to her belt. She stopped Cyborg's hand, however, before he pressed the switch for the door. "One last thing. I know you aren't... maybe you aren't Stone, and maybe there's someone else, but..."
Jinx pressed her hands against Cyborg's chest, and stood on her toes to reach, kissing him gently on the lips. She smiled as she pulled away. "For old time's sake."
Cyborg grinned. "Hey, we'll always have Paris."
Jinx smiled. "Dork."
Cyborg pressed the switch, and the door opened. The pair walked into the party, and Jinx smiled, as she took the first step into her future life.
A/N: What is this? I dunno. It was a random inspiration that I decided to write out as I heard it happening in my head. So here you go. A little (short) one-shot. Hope it was at least fun to read. Review it if you like, and see you next fic!