It was one second. One painful, excruciating second in the darkened alley. One bullet from one small handgun. The moment was a second.
The shock was forever.
She had fallen slowly, as if gravity began to regain its pull. Auburn hair floating in a soft halo, eyes wide in an uncomprehending expression of pain.
The tortured scream had escaped his lips. Didn't know what he was yelling, who was screaming to.
The rage was inhuman. The grief in his chest ripping his lungs apart, his heart in two.
He took the gunman out so fast it was assasin like, deadly in its purpose.
The onyx haired boy reached her just as she touched the ground. A green cheetah was fighting his way through the crime army, alongside a half robot, alerted by their leader's scream. The pale, lavendar haired empath had felt his pain the very second he had; through her power it had shattered two nearby windows. She glided over the battle as fast as she could, trying to control her own anger as it welled up in her.
Starfire couldn't die.
It was impossible, unthinkable.
She held them together.
In orbit, in alignment with her warmth and light.
She was their sun.
Her eccentric food tastes, the way her sweetly scented words made him smile like no one else.
Robin couldn't lose her.
Not now, not ever.
He knelt beside her, as she lay on the ground, putting her delicate head in his hand, elevating it towards him.
The blood began to soak his costume, blood from her stomach. It was red. Nothing that betrayed her unearthly orgins.
Her eyes still open, blinking once, before the boy wonder came into focus.
"…Robin," she breathed softly, as if some weigh had been lifted off her shoulders. As if it was ok with her if her life ended there, in his arms. Maybe it was for her.
But not for Robin. He needed her. Her needed everyone of his family that clustered solemnly around her in that dark alley.
Starfire was everything he wasn't, everything he couldn't supply himself. Laughter, optimism, always a smile on her radiant face.
"Robin, we need to get her to the Tower. Now," Raven said from behind him. He looked up at her. His mask had fallen off with something no one had ever seen in his blue eyes. Tears. Tears running down each cheek, begging the universe not to take anyone else he loved away from him.
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The green eyes started to open six hours after, under long lashed lids that he had watched every minute of those six hours. He had cried himself out a long time ago, given up the mask of being a herof ro the scared boy he had been at the circus so many years ago.
But the opening of those emerald eyes gave him hope. Through a combination of Raven's empath healing and the advanced medical equipment, she seemed to be fully conscious for the time.
He breathed out for what seemed like the first time since the gunshot.
Even in a hospital bed, hair tousled and hooked up to an IV, she still looked beautiful.
She closed her eyes again, content he was there with her.
He took her soft warm hand hanging off the bed in his, and leaned over to plant the most tender kiss on her soft lips.
"You are my sun."