"You actually came?" Jinx cried in disbelief.
"Well you did call me, did you not?"
Jinx backtracked, hastily offering an apology alongside sheepish grins while she rubbed her palms against her pants, clearly feeling as out of place as the empath did.
Raven waited a moment before sighing and crossed her arms. She cast a glance to the Pizzaria Jinx had decided to meet up at and found herself wondering if it they were having their breadstick special and began contemplating whether or not the other founding members of her Team had anything planned for dinner when the sound of Jinx clearing her throat caught her attention and broke her out of her thoughts.
"Well then, I guess we should get to it then? Why I asked you to meet up with me and all that right? Unless you want anything first?"
The empath nodded and replied, "As lunch was waylaid in lieu of placating the mayor's fears about the rumors of mole people infesting the city's sewers being false for three and a half hours and breakfast being interrupted by Rancid and his mechanical menagerie earlier this morning, I'm quite inclined to the suggestion of anything edible at this point."
Jinx smiled, a little relived that they were getting along so far and led the way inside.
The line for dining-in was long, which was the usual for the establishment, as it was frequented by hard working adults with no spare time to cook for themselves, and an extremely popular spot for teens to hang out. It was in the middle of town and everyone with working television knew it was often graced by the city's team of super heros, which was the precise reason Jinx had chosen it as the meetup spot.
As they made their way further they reached the buffet styled bars where it was pretty much grab-and-go and Raven seized the last four slices of what appeared to Jinx as a heavily loaded meat lovers pizza with a small amount of zeal and slid them in one of the take out boxes on the corner. She scanned the bars quietly in the time it took for Jinx to find a decent looking mac'n'cheese slice and then surprised the hexcaster by teleporting to behind her to stuff a fair amount of breadsticks into her box. She looked up, her eyebrow quirked slightly, as if to dare the hexcaster to comment, and Jinx just shrugged before telling her to grab something to drink unless she preferred cherry kool-aid and grape soda. Mixed.
With a light frown Raven elected to grab an iced tea on their way to the closest checkout counter. Jinx grabbed the boxes for the cashier to ring up pulled out her wallet. She dolled out a pair of twenties and Raven tapped her foot in impatience as the cashier fumbled for the correct amount of change.
With food in tow Raven relaxed, and let Jinx lead them out to the parking lot. They got as far as the sidewalk before curiosity of the situation struck the empath.
"So where are we going?"
Jinx rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck and offered what she hoped was a reassuring and friendly smile before replying.
"Well you know how I asked you for your help on something yeah?"
"Yes, that call you made just a few minutes ago is still within grasp."
"Well in order to help me I'm prolly going to have to explain a lot of shit and I figured that doing it in a place that's not out in public would be best, right? So I figured we'd just hash it all out at my house."
"House?"
"Well, apartment, but that's the gist of it. Unless that's weird or something?"
"Er, no, that's fine," she replied, shaking her head gently, "I just forget that not all of the Titans live in a giant Tower on occasion."
"Understandable, I thought that teachers used to live in their classrooms for like, ever until I broke into the forbidden wing on the first floor back at the H.I.V.E. Took weeks for the Headmistress to speak to me again. I was scrubbing bathrooms for months," Jinx replied absently before grinning; "On the plus side though, I'll never forget the fact that she used to read out of date pulp fiction novels."
The empath didn't quite know how to reply to such a revelation and did a quick double take to see if the hex caster was serious.
"Of course after that I'm sure she flushed them all cause Gizzy couldn't find anything on the vent cams. But I digress."
"You sent Gizmo to spy on your headmistress?"
"What? No, I mean it's not like that I mean," she sputtered, "In the H.I.V.E. we were just, I don't know, encouraged to pull of sneaky shit successfully."
Raven nodded slightly and mulled the thought of the former headmistress over for a few minutes as they came to a crosswalk. Jinx hit the button signaling that they wanted to cross and the empath dug out one of her breadsticks and munched it quietly. The light turned and journeyed across without issue, which was always a nice turn of events for either of them and hopped onto the opposing sidewalk where they walked in silence for some time, until the growing unease rippling off of the hex casters emotions became too much for Raven ignore comfortably.
Breaking the silence, she asked, "So how are they doing, your other teammates I mean, Gizmo and all of them, if I may ask."
Surprised, Jinx slowed, allowing them to walk side by side.
"Well I mean, I haven't really talked to them since we split up. But they're resourceful so they're probably doing ok without me?"
Slightly abashed, Raven offered her apologies for bringing up what she considered sensitive subject material.
"No it's alright, I'm just not used to people talking about them like they're normal, ya know?"
"Normal?"
"Ah, yeah look, um, we're almost to my place so we'll talk about everything there, alright?"
Raven nodded again, noting her companions spike in heartrate. She began munching another breadstick as Jinx led her to the apartment building.
It was relatively plain, and there was an elevator, though Jinx led them to the stairs. She lived on the fourteenth story so it was a bit of a climb, but Raven refrained from complaining.
"Ah here we are," Jinx sang in delight when they reached the correct door; she bent to unlock it and ushered the empath inside.
It was sparkly decorated, and seemed just as plain as the lobby, and was an overall underwhelming color of beige. The sofa, though tired, looked comfortable and there were a few odds and ends strewn about, which made the small room feel more homey and there was a kitchenette father back that was relatively clean looking. To the left of the kitchenette there was what looked like a small hallway with doors to what Raven presumed to be a bedroom and bathroom.
Feeling oddly relaxed, she wandered closer to the couch and waited for Jinx to sit down before seating herself.
Their bags were placed on the coffee table and Raven made no apologies her pulling her box to her lap.
"Alright," she began, her hands slowly unscrewing the bottle of iced tea, "now that we're here, which is a nice place by the way, feel free to elaborate at any time."
Jinx wrung her hands and tried to force herself to relax.
She gulped down a large breath and decided that like pulling off a band-aid, faster was probably better.
"I need your help controlling my powers. Or rather, I need you to help me learn how to control my powers, because well, Wally's been getting upset at me at missions lately and any second now I'm going to screw up big time and the media is going to have a field day and they already hate me anyway and I really can't go back to prison and see Greg's smug ass face telling me 'I told you so' while I rot for good because I'll just fucking loose it again and I'm sorry because I know it's a lot to ask and we aren't even friends or anything but I promise that I'm a fast learner and that I'll try not to piss you off or anything and you're kinda my only hope here cause I don't know what else to do."
With that, the hexcaster exhaled and stared at her hands, which were attempting to wring the life out of her jeans, and forced herself to look back up at the empath, who judging by the looks of statement settled across her features, didn't seem quite prepared for this situation and then looked back at her hands while Raven gathered her bearings.
"Alright," the empath offered to Jinx's surprise, "start at the beginning."
