Agh. Writer's block. Die. Die. Die.

First off: STUPID TITLE. But if it wasn't Snapshots, it was going to be One Hundred Writing Prompts. So yeah. Anyway, all this will be is a hundred unrelated chapters, with each chapter based off a one-word prompt. Used mostly to get rid of writer's block and siphon off random ideas. But tons of fun anyway. :)

Second: I'm putting the Seven Deadly Sins on hold for a bit. I'm really sorry. I absolutely despise having more than one story going on at a time, but I'm truly stuck in a rut with it. It's kind of hard to come up with seven whole chapters filled with murderous, angst-ridden, sin-laden thoughts.

So I'm officially starting Snapshots! Wh-hoo! :D

To give credit where credit is due, I got this idea whole writing-prompt-series idea from the absolutely fantastic SushiChica. She's awesome. No one can hope to rival her. :)

And finally, this chapter is more of an actual oneshot, so yay. And the following chapters won't all be like this. Sucky, I mean. I'm sorry that you have to read someone so bad and OOC as this first chapter, but I'm literally pushing the words out in a vain attempt to write through the block. Bleh. :(

Anyway…here goes! The first chapter! :)

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Prompt #1: Jewelry

Maybe it was growing up with the poverty-stricken priests of Azarath. Maybe it was because she was cynical by nature. Maybe it was simply the way that material items had never held any value to her. Or maybe she just didn't like things that twinkled.

Whatever it was, one thing was certain: Raven had never really liked jewelry.

Her logical side was, of course, at odds with it. Jewelry was…irrational. Impractical. Just because something sparkled did not mean you were supposed to hang it around your neck. And just because something happened to be a particular shade of the spectrum did not give you freedom to charge thousands of dollars for it. And earrings? Really, what a barbarian practice—puncturing your own flesh just to glitter a little. Why would you want to wear something so gaudy, anyway? Did people honestly want to walk around, boasting a disgustingly expensive diamond on their wrist? Did they really lust for the attention they received for buying a simple stone?

But even without the painfully analytical side of her brain, there was the softer side of her, the one that inwardly cringed a little every time she saw a public display of affection. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had always known that she was never really good enough for a jewel. She was too dark. Too plain. Too ordinary. She knew deep inside of her, in the black chasm where a heart should be, that no one would ever give her anything beautiful, because she simply wasn't worth it.

And so Raven decided to hate jewels. Because they were beautiful, and impractical, and far too glittery for their own good. Because men gave women jewels, when they made a declaration of love, or just to flatter the lucky girl. Because jewelry was given to people with power, and charisma, and value. Jewelry was given to people who were worth something.

Raven, at fifteen years old, was worth nothing.

And so Raven, at fifteen years old, had no jewelry.

But it all changed the night she turned sixteen.

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Okay. Now the music is really getting to me.

Raven had attended her own birthday party for three hours, and enough was enough. She escaped the over-warm living room as silently as possible, nodding and smiling to everyone as she left.

Three hours ago she'd been blindfolded, commanded by Starfire not to peek, and shown into the living room. Every single Titan, honorary or not, was there. They brought cake and ice cream and tofu and a piñata in the shape of Slade. And then they'd forced her to open presents. All the presents. Every. Last. One.

Sure, it had been nice and all. And Raven appreciated the gesture. But she had the queasy feeling that maybe her teammates were just trying to show up her last, disastrous birthday. And that maybe it was more of a pep rally to convince everyone that Slade was gone than a party. And besides—three hours of rap music had more than exhausted her ability to nod and smile. She was done.

When Raven reached her darkened room, she sagged against the wall, drained. She could still hear the pounding rhythm of the stereo from the farthest corner of the Tower and a dull throb picked up in her head. Raven breathed in and out, trying to calm herself before slipping into her—mercifully—silent room.

All I want is peace…and quiet…and to be left alone. She opened the window, shivering a little as the chill night air streamed into the room, and slid between the cool sheets of her bed. The perpetual twilight of the room was comforting to her aching skull.

And then he spoke.

"Hey, cutie. Mind if I drop in?"

Raven jumped, terrified for a second, and then her eyes narrowed. She scanned the room out of pure instinct before remembering that it was dark. Damn.

"Get the hell out of my room," she spat. He just chuckled, and Raven tried to pinpoint his voice. Behind her? In front of her? Beside her?

"Don't be like that, Rae." His warm breath tickled the back of her neck. "You know you want me." Raven whirled around, but he had already disappeared from behind her. She swatted at the empty air anyway, and gritted her teeth when he laughed.

"If you don't leave me the hell alone, I swear to everything holy in the galaxies, I will blow your brains out, X."

Raven caught the tiniest glimpse of a lean, lanky figure slouching in the corner. He was gone in an invisibly fast movement, but she could swear he looked wounded somehow. Even through the mask.

She felt his fingertips skitter across her spine, and blasted the space behind her with icy black energy. For a second his sinewy body was illuminated—near the far corner of the room, white-edged against the black force-field—and she flung a shadowy black hand towards him. The fingers grasped at nothing.

He was gone.

Again.

Raven closed her eyes against the frustration welling up inside of her. She allowed herself a deep, slow breath, feeling a trickle of calm bleed through the irritation—

—and then she felt his lips brushing lightly against her throat.

Every nerve in her body screamed simultaneously.

Shock.

Horror.

Shame.

And…joy?

She felt paralyzed suddenly. She couldn't move. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. All she felt was his warm breath ghosting across the hollow of her throat, and for a moment it was her entire world.

Struggling, Raven tried to pull her thoughts back to the real world. "Stop doing that," she snapped, but her voice had gone husky—damn that Spandex-wearing freak—and she sounded pretty unconvincing. Why am I not blowing his brains out? Why?

Red X hadn't moved. It would be easy, so easy, just to grab his upper arms, and transport him to the Jump City Jail before any of the fifty-odd Titans a few rooms over decided to come looking for her. So…easy…

"If you didn't like this, Rae-rae, I'm pretty sure you would've locked me up in jail already," he purred, and Raven's skin buzzed deliciously as his lips moved across her throat. "Who knows? Handcuffs, restraints, padded rooms…maybe I'd even like it."

And then his hands found her waist.

Anger flared up in Raven's brain. No one—absolutely no one—touched her without permission.

This had gone on too far.

Power and thoughts and actions crackled back to life in her mind, and without a second thought, Red X was encircled by iron bands of black. To his credit, he didn't scream or anything when he was yanked into the air, like Dr. Light always did. He just looked down at her from his elevated height, expression unreadable behind the sleek mask.

"Don't you dare touch me. Ever. Again." Her fingers were shaking with fury.

"C'mon, dollface. You know you're enjoying this." Raven snarled and tightened the grip of her powers, but Red X flickered out of view before she had the chance to slam him against the wall.

She spun around, eyes straining in the dimness to see where he was—

And by then he had placed his hands on the back of her head, crushing his lips to hers, and suddenly his mouth was moving in strange and unfamiliar ways against her own, and his body was warm, so warm. All Raven could do was wonder why she was so dizzy all of a sudden and why was she clinging to his shoulders like she was actually enjoying this, and who was this strange girl that was fiercely kissing him back as if she was actually attracted to him?

It could have been a second or a minute or a whole day later when she finally placed both hands on his chest and shoved him away, but all he did was give her a smug little smile.

"Did you enjoy that, Rae-babe?"

She slapped him.

It didn't do much.

It didn't do anything, actually. All he did was smile a little wider.

She was shaking—from fury, from shock…and then there was the tiny, long-buried corner of her mind that was quietly elated. Which might have been the actual reason for her quivering shoulders.

"You kissed me," she said numbly, blankly. Trying the words on for size.

"Yup."

"Why?"

She heard his low, raspy chuckle from somewhere to the left of her. "Because, my dear, when a male is faced with a very attractive female, certain hormones are released in the male's brain and the male finds himself suddenly arous—"

"Stop."

Raven closed her eyes, breath ragged in her chest.

He had kissed her. She had kissed him.

It was too much. Too much to think about, to much to try to not think about, too much to replay over and over again in her mind until she had sucked every ounce of meaning from every word they had uttered…

Finally she let out all the breath she didn't realize she had been holding. "Go away, X," she sighed, and her voice just sounded tired.

In a beyond-rare moment of compassion, he seemed to understand that she had been pushed too far and too fast tonight and anything else would drive her over the edge. "Gotcha, Rae-rae." He winked. "Until tomorrow evening, then." Without waiting for a reply, he snatched her hand and kissed it, startlingly softly for someone so reckless.

He was gone in an instant—flickering out of sight, leaving no trace behind—but Raven felt his presence linger on in the room, like the spot on her hand where his lips had touched, which somehow stayed warm even as she crossed to the window and let the cool night air caress her face. She stared out across the city, eyes wandering over the sparse, twinkling lights of people going to bed far too late, and tried to decide what she was feeling. But that was too hard, so instead she looked down to the warm spot on her hand, wondering if the press of his mouth had changed it somehow—and then she saw it.

A necklace.

From him.

For her.

It was a simple thing, really, but maybe that was what made it so lovely. A small, perfect sphere. Blood red—the exact color of the focus stone in her forehead. Hanging from a plain black cord. Heavy, when she weighed it in her hand, and still warm from his skin. And somehow, subtly, it seemed to suck in all of the light from the dim room and release it in a wave of pure beauty.

It was…stunning.

Raven looked at the necklace, which he had so cleverly slipped into her hand, and wondered what made this one gem so wonderful when she despised all others. What set it apart? What made it special; what made it unique? What made her want to look and look and look at it until she had memorized every detail of its loveliness? What strange force made her tie it around her neck? And why was she suddenly smiling, with just one tiny corner of her mouth?

Suddenly exhausted and more confused than she had ever been in her entire life, she closed her eyes and sank onto the bed, but the skin of her lips and the back of her hand seemed to be quietly on fire as they radiated heat from Red X's touch.

There was too much to think of, too much to wonder about. Too much for one night.

It can wait, Raven decided, if only to save me from insanity. It can all wait. At least until morning.

She was almost asleep when she remembered that she could ask him everything she wondered the next night. There was no guarantee, of course, that he would give her any answers, or that she would feel less confused, or that he would even bother telling her why he had picked her, of all people.

But still.

She had a kiss.

She had a necklace.

And Raven had never been one to push fate.

"Tomorrow evening?" she murmured sleepily to herself, and buried her head in the pillow so her next words were muffled.

But maybe—just maybe—he could hear her anyway.

"It's a date."

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WRITER'S BLOCK SUCKS. :O