A Blank Canvas
By Ms. Kinnikufan
Disclaimer: I own no one.
You were like an worn and hole-filled blank canvas, always painting yourself as one thing and then repainting yourself to hide your fatally flawed true self.
I should have known the side you showed me wasn't the real one.
None of them probably were. The "video game queen", "the alien martial arts expert", "the baker of sweet delicacies", none of them could have been your true self. Why did I believe that the "secretly sad angsty poet" was real?
I fell in love with someone who wasn't real. You said that everyone on your home planet thought you were a freak too, because of your rare purple eyes and satiny black hair.
I thought we had something in common. I was happy to have something in common with you. For maybe the third or fourth time in my life, I really, really, wanted someone to like me instead of just wanting them to stop making fun of me behind my back.
I guess I mistook your many identities for complexity.
The artist, the fighter, the poet, I thought they were many different parts of the same person. But they were the same person playing many different parts. Just playing, probably not O'Riley being any of them.
I was wowed by your dark, romantic poetry of black birds stealing crimson hearts bleeding crimson blood. I know now that they weren't your words, they were just another thing you stole.
You said you never met anyone like me. You said that was a good thing. You said I was 'special', not weird, but very special.
If I was allowed to truly feel the way everyone else the universe is allowed to feel, I would have been overjoyed.
I thought you sincerely wanted to get to know me. I thought you wanted to care for me. All of me: my many frowns, my very few smiles, both of good and exceedingly bad poetry. I thought I had conquered the 1/10000 odds that I would have someone who O'Riley wanted to be me, even despite my horrible history.
It turned out to be a lie. I had not overcame the 1/10000 odds. Now I know I will never overcome the 1/10000 odds. You didn't care if I really liked you. You just wanted me to like me better then your sister, so I would choose her doing a jail sentence that you earned.
Things didn't turn out the way either of us hoped. You went to jail. I secretly got hurt.
None of my fellow Titans know that I liked you "that" way. It's better that they never find out. They already too many walls between me and the rest of the Titans. Walls that are necessary to keep everyone safe. I don't need another wall that makes me "weird".
In a strange way, I almost pity you. You had no one to turn too, no true friends to hide with, so you tried to steal your sister's friends and place in the Titans like they were the Alpha Centauri diamonds that Starfire were around her neck.
And I truly blame and pity myself. I have some minor telepathic abilities and major empathy powers. I should have seen through your disguise, your mask.
But I fell in love with them instead.