Teen Titans is not mine. This is my first.
Waste Not Want Not
Prologue: Whether you like it or not...
The beautiful redhead leaned against a very tidy shoulder of black silk. She really liked how she felt like she actually fit against him, beside him, with him. One of her hands intertwined its fingers with his, which naturally reciprocated the action. He didn't look at her, but he rarely did at these functions.
The handsome black-haired youth stood like a stone wall, solid and still, clothed in a very typical and very attractive black tuxedo made of silk and stopped a sigh before it could escape. These functions bored him and he was grateful for the soft presence at his right, reassuring and always there, yielding if somewhat naïve, and never unkind. He had met her somewhere; he didn't remember exactly where but it hardly mattered. She brought him some degree of stability that he could not provide for himself and throughout it all, she would usually do it with an otherworldly smile. This was all he knew for certain and it was enough. History did not much intrigue him. In fact, he'd rather it stay hidden away from him, shadowed in the eaves of winter ice outside the shining manor.
He would rather not remember.
So he dwelled obsessively in the present, subconsciously of course. He had done a swell job of brainwashing even himself that he was alright...that everything was alright as it was. Leave well enough alone, that was the saying, right?
His blue eyes surveyed the room.
Anyone who had looked even once into those eyes knew their depths even if they did not know the depths of the person himself and many gazed into them anyway, well-knowing the result: drowning. Endless like night sky with an inner glow that radiated like crystal sun, while it wasn't merely his eyes that made him a very attractive man, they certainly made a nice beacon for the rest of him.
"Richard," an older man nodded his brief hello-goodbye, a raise of a martini glass in his direction and a half-smile and then the black back of another tuxedo, just like his. Such was the usual.
"Let's get out of here," he whispered to the redhead and brushed a very gentle, almost invisible kiss against the golden tan of his date's cheek. He could feel her smile at him and sensed her nod. He was already leading her to the coat area during her agreement to leave, hands still together, each just barely touching the other with shoulders...well, his shoulder and her head, but same difference. "Here," he handed the attendant his ticket stub with the number on it that would bring back his black wool trench and her white and pink one.
"Rae, stop that," a male voice all but whispered and the young man turned his head, as did his date, in the general direction. A young woman, presumably named Rae, closer to his age than his date's, stood next to a handsome man maybe a couple years his senior. The woman did not turn to face the man but her eyes traveled sideways in an exasperated and annoyed glare of vivid violet, like twilight. His silver-white ones glimmered back at her like he was speaking to her even though he didn't utter a word.
"I don't want to be here," she said out of the corner of her mouth, lips pressed into a firm line of irritation.
"It doesn't matter," was the short response and when the man hooked his arm forcefully with the woman's, she did not resist, though she certainly looked like she dearly wanted to. Blue eyes followed her and as though she felt them, the woman turned as she walked past Richard Grayson and his date Star Anders. Hers met his and while some moments are hours long and feel like minutes, this one was seconds and felt like years.
Then the man said something curt and slowly, as though to prove her turning her head was of her own accord and not due to any order of her escort's, the woman's eyes left Richard's in a slow stroll, briefly noting the pretty girl at his side and the glow that resonated from her. Love, the woman thought with a hollow pang and entered the main room, leaving blue eyes and red hair behind her.
"Richard?" Star's voice was tender and patient, as always. Apparently in her youth she had been…perhaps the expression to best describe it would be over-enthused. About everything. A little older now, a little more mature too—if no less naïve—, Star was the picture of beautiful composure, a docile lady.
"Sorry Star," he smiled down at her and placed a quick but definite kiss on her mouth, warm and fond, as he took the proffered coats from the attendant and helped Star put hers on, holding it out for her. Then, slinging his own on, they walked out of the manor.
So Richard Grayson, once Robin the boy-wonder, left his twenty-second birthday behind him, covered in snow and glittering with the life he had not asked for.
Two weeks later...
Raven perched on top of one of the many book shelves of the little shop. Shadows fell more places than light did but she found it mostly unneeded. Her vision in the dark was—for her own reasons—rather better than it was in the light. In her lap lay a first-edition copy of poetry of someone she had never run across and so far it was only love poetry, but for some reason it struck her as something different. Her tapered fingers turning the page, she fell into this next one. It was about a secret journey, about an adventure of a girl that no one else knew about, but that changed her life.
She was foolish, reading such things. She knew. But read them she did. Sighing, she swung her legs over the side of the long shelf, placing the book to one side. Just as she was about to get down, the jingling bell on the door alerted her of a new customer and instead, she turned to face them from her perch.
Blue eyes met violet.
I remember you, each said in their minds as the young man looked up at the young woman in a strangely Shakespearean sort of composition, his face in light, hers mildly shadowed.
A sudden pain seared through her head and she shifted, trying not to let on anything to the man in front of her, knocking the poetry book off the shelf, onto the floor where it landed with a clamor. It had the desired effect and the headache left her immediately as she glanced back at the young man with eyes so blue they seemed transparent, unawares of the silver-white ones watching the scene before him. Shaking off the residue of whatever moment the two had just experienced, Raven slid comfortably off the shelf, landing lightly on the floor, plucking the book up and putting it back on the shelf, probably in the wrong place too since she wasn't looking when she did it.
"Um, hi," Richard Grayson was not awkward most of the time. Most of the time he was suave and as collected as the young woman in front of him, but something was amiss that he could not identify. Hence the unusual pauses and stuttering continued. "Were you...did you...have we—" he tried. She cut him off with a quizzical stare that was carefully and controllably blank, though not unfriendly.
"Can I help you?" her voice rang clear, calm, composed and formal.
Maybe it's not you, his blue eyes dimmed for reasons beyond his wish to comprehend and Richard responded, "Yes, I'm looking for a book."
"We've quite a few," her voice expressed amusement even if her face did not. "Come with me," she all but ordered and his lithe form did as told, disappearing after her into the great number of shelves and old parchment pages.
How was that? Let me know by way of a review please. +
-so and so
