Title: Don't Think That I Don't Think About You, Too
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,700+
Characters: Kaldur/Raquel
Summary: Out of all of the decisions he's made and will have to make, he thinks this one will be the one he'll always hate himself for.
Prompt: Kaldur and Raquel have a son, and Raquel doesn't know that Kaldur really isn't evil.
For: Echo101. I'm sorry that it seems rushed and leaves a lot to be desired. I was actually floundering with this prompt, but I also really wanted to complete it because I really wanted to write Kaldur/Raquel (: So thank you for the opportunity!
Don't Think That I Don't Think About You, Too
When she finds out that she's pregnant, she's alone in her apartment and there's a storm outside. It's cliché in all the worst ways possible.
Honestly, she just took the test as a precaution because she was two days late and remembered her mother saying that if she's ever had sex and this happens, it's always better to check, just in case. She didn't actually think she may be…
Her life's way too complicated to bring a child into it.
She's graduating high school at the beginning of next month and gets inducted into the League the week after that, and the father is someone who she's been in a relationship with for almost three years up until two weeks ago, when he officially left the Team, and by extension her, because he was upset over the death of a girl that wasn't his girlfriend. Maybe that's shallow of her to be upset about, but he had such an extreme reaction and called Tula the love of his life.
It hurt way too much, and she couldn't even bring herself to attend Tula's funeral, even though they'd fought alongside each other for over two years.
And when Kaldur found out that Orin had been keeping something from him, it tipped him over the edge. He just disappeared after that, and she went looking and actually found him. She's still not sure what her visit was supposed to accomplish, but she was just kind of hoping he would listen if it was her.
Then they slept together and he was gone in the morning, and when she heard about him switching sides a few days later, she did a pathetic thing and spent a whole day just crying.
She feels like crying right now, too.
... ...
Putting on this act with Black Manta—with his father—is entirely tiring, and some nights, he allows himself to hate his friends for putting him in this position. Yes, there were other options, but they all knew this was the best one and he willingly accepted because they need to stop the Light and this Partner of theirs.
It doesn't mean he can't hate it, being on his own and being played as the enemy against his own friends while Dick, Wally, and Artemis remain where they are.
When Dick asks to meet him in private as soon as possible, he pretty much jumps on the chance. Making an excuse for Black Manta isn't very difficult, and he leans against a tall stack of cargo as he waits in the warehouse.
He had no idea what Dick needed to talk about when he'd made the request.
Then his friend is in front of him, sighing and running his fingers through his hair, and he almost misses it when Dick whispers, "Raquel is pregnant."
"What?"
"She's pregnant," Dick says again. It makes his heart feel heavy in his chest that's felt hallow for a while now. Then he adds, "Please tell me it's not yours," and there's a second where he's furious with his friend. He punches a nearby stack of cargo to keep from yelling, and Dick grips his shoulder to hold him back. "Kal?"
"She… we were together two weeks ago, the night before I left for good," he confesses, and Dick mutters something in a different language.
A father. He's going to be a father to a child that he can't be there for because he's away.
And may never be able to be there for so long as Raquel truly believes he left for the reasons he's claimed.
"There are other options," Dick says, mostly to himself, but Kaldur looks at him anyway. His grip loosened so that he's just holding Kaldur's shoulder rather than holding him back, and his eyes are unfocused in thought. "We can make it work if…"
"The plan should commence as expected."
Dick looks at him. "Kal…"
But Kaldur shakes his head. "It is too late to go back without cost."
His voice is tight, though, because he's choosing a mission over Raquel and their child, and out of all of the decisions he's made and will have to make, he thinks this one will be the one he'll always hate himself for.
Dick exhales and nods a little and they just stand there for a moment, not saying anything. It's a long enough pause to make Kaldur reconsider this…
But he says, "Dick," before he can change his mind, and Dick meets his eyes again. "Take care of her, for me. Please."
"Of course, Kal," Dick promises, and even if a small, small part of him feels better a little better, the rest of him is mostly numb.
... ...
When she announces her pregnancy, Dick practically moves her into his and Zatanna's apartment.
Zatanna says that there's more than enough room for her there and that none of them are going to let her go through this alone, and she'd tell everyone to stop worrying so much if she wasn't so scared herself. But she is. It's terrifying to know that there's a child inside her, that she's going to be a mom in nine months.
And, it's probably because she's still really emotional, but there's a part of her that wishes Kaldur was here. It's stupid, because she's pretty sure that she hates him right now for a lot of reasons.
But honestly?
She misses him more than she hates him. It's obvious that her friends and family will be there for her more than ever in the months to come, but this child is half his and he won't be here to go through this with her, and that's enough to make her feel like she's totally alone.
Her first night in Dick and Zatanna's place, she eats dinner with them at the table and the only time her situation gets mentioned is when Dick says they'll make sure she has a new home for the two of them once the baby is born.
She falls asleep with a hand over her stomach like Kaldur always used to do, except the space next to her is empty and she's shivering a little from the cold.
... ...
Dick only talks about Raquel and the pregnancy whenever Kaldur asks for it himself, which isn't very often. Of course he wants to know, of course, but it just emphasizes the fact that he's where he is instead of where he should be, with Raquel and helping her through this. And feeling that way doesn't make his job of convincing Black Manta of his full betrayal any easier.
He keeps asking, though, no matter how much sense it makes for him to just stop. He doesn't want to be in the dark about Raquel and his—their child.
... ...
She gives birth to Austin in late February, with a really rough delivery that ends in an emergency c-section, and she nearly passes out right after. Not before seeing her son, though. His hair is so pale blonde that it almost looks white and his skin is dark and just a little red from just being born.
Then the nurses insisted that she sleep and get her rest, took Austin from her tired arms and promised to have him in the room before she woke up again.
She can feel the stitches when she comes around a few hours later, and it takes both Arnus and Dick to help her up because she can't sit up on her own. Zatanna brings Austin to her and sets her in her arms, wipes the dried sweat from the delivery off her face with a wet towel and tugs a comb through her hair. She must still look like a mess after that, because she feels like it, but no one comments on her appearance.
There are always people visiting her even days after she's discharged from the hospital, until eventually Zatanna shoos them away like the angel she is and says that Raquel needs a break from being crowded. Raquel likes that Zatanna is with her all the time, and when she asks if she has plans or something that Raquel is keeping her from, Zatanna says that she's got rotating League members filling in for her and her nightly magic shows have been on hold since the end of January.
So they spend the entire day just lounging around the apartment with black and white movies playing on the flat screen in the living room as background noise while they sit on the couch and hunt for houses over the internet.
... ...
When Dick tells him that Raquel moved into this house that's right by the coast in California, Kaldur can't help the small smile on his face. When they first started dating (which honestly feels a lot longer ago than it actually is), Raquel told him about how she wanted to live in California, and then laughed and said that it makes a whole lot more sense if they lived right by the ocean. Then it sort of just became a running joke between them, this dream house, whenever they'd talk about the future.
Except, it wasn't really a joke at all.
Even then, so early into their relationship, he could see himself living with her by the ocean, having dinner at some café or restaurant right by the shore so that they could walk with their feet in the water until it got dark. And when he'd told her this, she just kissed him in a way that felt amazing and completely different.
Then Dick asks, "Did you want to see a picture?" in this gentle voice that Kaldur knows is only used on a select few people.
His eyes water almost instantly when he sees the picture of Raquel smiling down at Austin, but he figures it's allowed. He doesn't ask to see any other pictures but that one, and Dick doesn't offer, and they sit together in that warehouse a lot longer than they really need to.
... ...
She sees Artemis and Wally a lot more now that they're less than an hour away, so she's pretty used to having them over for dinner just because.
And it's nice to be able to hang out with them and feel some resemblance of normalcy, which she hasn't really felt since she first became Rocket and convinced Arnus to become Icon. Gosh, that seemed so long ago. She'll come back to the League eventually to be inducted with Zatanna (because she refused to join officially without Raquel), but Batman wants her to take a few more months off to settle down and he usually knows best, so.
Wally's watching TV on the couch with Austin in his arms and their dog, Bolt, sleeping at his feet on the floor while she and Artemis are in the kitchen, her washing dishes and Artemis cutting up the banana cream pie they brought over for dessert.
She's sliding a slice that's practically a third of the whole pie onto a plate, and when Raquel laughs, Artemis shrugs and says, "That's Wally's."
"Of course."
This time they're spending the night, because they had plans Saturday at noon but Artemis wanted to go shopping at these vintage stores right by the house on Sunday, so Raquel figured it was easier if they came for dinner and just stayed in the guest bedroom.
"Gosh, we look so young," Artemis laughs. Raquel looks over her shoulder as she's turning off the faucet and sees Artemis standing in front of the fridge. There're a lot of papers held by magnets all over the fridge, because it's just how Raquel functions best, but there's only one thing she knows that's there that would get this reaction from Artemis.
The Team had gotten the weekend off for the Fourth of July that first year she joined, and Batman let the eight of them spend the day on his private island off the coast of Brazil. They were pretty much at the beach all day, which is kind of weird considering they could go to the beach at the bottom of Mount Justice whenever they wanted, but whatever. It's different when it's on a tropical island with an expensive beach house and you're pretty much the only people there.
Anyway, they set off their own fireworks and then had a huge war of water balloons and silly string and the leftover cupcakes Megan had made and (by some miracle) Wally hadn't eaten yet. Megan made them take a picture as they were, underneath the porch light when it got dark and they went back to the beach house.
"That was a fun day, huh?"
"Yeah."
Except, what Raquel remembers most about that trip was lying on the bed of their room beside Kaldur, their fingers intertwined between them as they talked into the early hours of the morning about the future and living in a house by the water kind of like that one.
She doesn't realize her eyes are watering until Artemis touches her forearm lightly. "I promise it'll be okay," she says in this whisper, and Raquel doesn't really know what her friend is talking about, but she nods and they're both hugging and laughing when Wally asks from the living room what's taking so long with dessert.
... ...
He sees Raquel and Austin once, from a distance, because his father needed him and a few men in California for something. They were in the water, obviously, but he gave his crew an excuse and then came up on land. He wasn't even sure if he would've really gone looking for them. Well, he probably would've, but he was just walking down a busy sidewalk and spotted her through the window of a store across the street, smiling and leaning over to look into a stroller.
Of course he knew he missed her.
He just hadn't realized how hard he'd been suppressing it until he's actually seeing her, watching her smile and mouth things to their son.
There's a brief second where he makes a step towards her, but then she's straightening a little as if someone had called her, looking out onto the street and near his direction, and someone is bumping into him and he's mumbling an apology and disappearing back into the crowd.
He's still thinking about it long after he's underwater and on the ship again, and he's doing that foolish thing where he wonders what would've happened if he hadn't chosen the mission over them.
... ...
Everyone (well, almost everyone) comes over for dinner on Austin's first birthday, and it's probably the best distraction she could ask for. She chats with people she hasn't seen in months and they all crowd into her living room to play games that Megan came up with and open Austin's presents.
At the end of the day, she sets Austin down in his crib and sits in the rocking chair with all of his presents at her feet and a house that is entirely too quiet.
She falls asleep in that chair because she doesn't want to go back into her empty bedroom, and when she wakes up in the morning, she can't help but think that Kaldur would've offered to massage the kinks out of her shoulders.
... ...
It's been over two years since he'd left, and they're not nearly as close to figuring out what they need to about the Light and their Partner.
And he's not sure if having Artemis in deep cover with him will change the odds in their favor all that much.
But he goes along with the plan, anyway, because Dick has always proven in the past to know what he's doing, and because he honestly can't refuse to have a familiar face with him, even if it isn't the one he's been haunted by for the past two years.
... ...
Artemis's death manages to make her hallow chest feel even emptier than before, and she hates herself because her tears don't actually start falling until she's standing in front of Barbara and being told that it was Kaldur that killed her. It makes her feel horrible that she seems more heartbroken over the fact that her ex-boyfriend being capable of something like this than the fact that one of her closest friends is dead.
When she gets home, Arnus hugs her tightly in the middle of her living room like he did a few hours earlier, when he'd come to tell her the news and offered to stay with Austin so she could go to the Cave.
He asks if she wants him to stay longer, but she shakes her head and tells him that she needs to be alone, and he kisses the top of her head before he leaves.
She's not really thinking of how it could wake up Austin just across the hall, but she walks into her room and takes a picture frame and tosses it against the wall, watching it shatter before falling to the floor. Then she does that with another, and then another, until all of her frames are in pieces on the carpet.
She can't hear Austin since he's probably still asleep, so she steps over the glass and sits in the middle of her bed and just cries.
She doesn't hear anyone come in. Actually, she's pretty sure she locked the door behind her or at least Arnus would have, but then Zatanna is standing in her bedroom doorway, her eyes taking in the glass and wood fragments around the bed.
"What…"
Raquel wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and Zatanna doesn't finish her question. She just steps over the glass and throws her arms around Raquel and squeezes tightly, making a fresh set of tears fall.
"I promise it will be okay," Zatanna whispers, and Raquel squeezes her eyes shut and whimpers a little because Artemis said that exact same thing.
... ...
Having Artemis around is a lot more comforting than he thought it could be.
She tells him about Raquel and Austin, and her and Wally, and whatever gossip she picked up from everyone else since he's been gone that Dick hasn't already told him. She's taking the situation a lot better than he expected her to, which doesn't really surprise him considering this is Artemis and it takes a lot to shake her.
"How much do you think they'll hate us after this? You know, when it's all over and everyone finds out that we were behind everything?"
He looks at her.
"Truthfully?" She nods. "I believe that there will be consequences, and that it may take a while for our friends to truly trust us again. But I do not believe they will be angry. Well, most of them, anyway."
"You think that Raquel is mad at you, huh?" she asks, but it's more of a statement than a question.
"She should be. I have done terrible things and made her believe in horrible lies. Her hating me is what I expected going into this. It is easier this way."
"But you still slept with her before you left. You wouldn't have done that if you were really trying to get her to hate you."
"I did it selfishly, because I needed to be with her one last time," he exhales. She tips his head at him and he turns his head away. "It was the only way I could say goodbye. I figured that she would believe I was just taking advantage of her emotional state so I could distract her and make a clean getaway."
"Kal, she doesn't think that. And she doesn't hate you either, no matter how hard she tries. I know it messes with her how you're still under her skin after everything," Artemis tells him, and then gives an empty laugh. "Not everyone has the luxury of thick Atlantean skin."
But he just closes his eyes and feels too tired as he mumbles back, "It is not that thick."
... ...
She's so stupid.
Honestly, she can't believe she… God, she kind of hates herself right now.
She didn't realize that there are two Black Mantas. She didn't, and that's probably because the League never asked her to take on any Black Manta details when she got back because of obvious reasons. She hates herself for letting them baby her like that, and maybe if she hadn't she would've learned this sooner, but…
She knows Black Manta is Kaldur's father, and she knew that he left to join him, but she never thought that they both took on the same mantle.
Not until she's caught in some crossfire between Black Manta henchmen and the Kroloteans against the League and Team and she sees the helmets. It's not even that big of a deal right now and she's just overreacting because they're fighting against each other right now she's just so confused.
What the hell is going on?
She's snapped out of her thoughts, though, because this scream fills the air that's mixed with rage and absolute terror, and Raquel recognizes that voice.
Zatanna.
Lightning lights up the sky and strikes these Black Manta henchmen, sending their bodies limp and motionless onto the ground, and Zatanna is falling to her knees and putting her hands over Nightwing's chest and there's a lot of blood.
Then someone is grasping her elbow and she's twisting around, about to flip them until her movement is blocked. "It's me, Rockie," the person hisses.
Except, Raquel isn't reassured at all. Her eyes widen and she takes a step back and lets out a pathetic, "You're… You're supposed to be dead."
Artemis looks at her like she wishes she could say something, anything, to make up for all of this, but they're just sort of standing there and staring at each other in the middle of a battle and it's all a little too much.
Raquel should've suspected something when they never had a formal funeral for Artemis, or when no one showed them her body. She should've suspected something when Artemis and Zatanna kept promising her things in the exact same words. God, she's so stupid not to have picked up on anything.
Artemis looks past Raquel's shoulder at Zatanna and Dick, and her face flinches into a pained look, like she anticipated the worst and it was all coming true.
But then Artemis is pulling Raquel behind her, knocking an arrow into place and shooting it at Black Manta in one swift motion. He recoils at the shock the arrow sends him, but then he rips it off knocks Artemis away, nearly towering over Raquel.
There's a fraction of a second where she can't move, and she honestly hates herself for being a damsel and just freezing.
Then Black Manta is doubling over, clutching at his chest where a light blue sword that penetrated through his armor is dissolving into water around and mixing in with his blood.
Raquel lets out a shallow breath and flinches when she feels something cold and hard against her back, but someone grabs onto her wrist firmly before she can react. She looks over her shoulder and finds herself staring at the helmet of the second Black Manta, who is staring at the first one falling to his knees on the floor.
"Kal?"
... ...
All it takes is her looking up at him and whispering his name, and suddenly the rest of the island feels miles away.
It isn't right that this is how they're coming face to face again after over two years, in the middle of a battle and with his father a few feet from them and dying from his sword. He loosens his grip on her wrist so that he's not holding her back. He's just holding her, and for a few seconds, she lets him.
Then she's twisting out of his grasp and pushing him back a few steps, and when she looks at him, it's not hostile or angry or even heartbroken.
She just looks upset.
He doesn't stop her when she reaches up and pulls his helmet off, tossing it to the ground with much more force than necessary, and he watches her shake her head absently and wipe at her tears with the back of her hand.
He's too focused on her and wondering where this moment is supposed to be going next that he reacts too late when he feels someone coming at him from behind. Raquel's eyes are widening and he's twisting around and grabbing someone's arm. The shock that follows is excruciating, but honestly? It's nothing compared to hearing the scream Raquel lets out.
He stumbles backwards until he's on his back, and he hears Raquel yelling and the sound of armored weight falling to the ground around him.
Then Garth is hovering somewhere above him and arguing with Raquel, but they both sound too far away and he feels pressure over his chest before everything sort of dissolves into nothing.
... ...
Dinah is the one to volunteer to relieve Austin's babysitter while Raquel stays at the hospital, and she feels like a horrible mother for nearly forgetting. She calls the sitter and apologizes for missing her calls, explains that a friend will come over and pay her for the extra hours, and Raquel must sound even more exhausted than she thought because the sitter's annoyance dissolves quickly and she's telling Raquel not to worry and that she hopes that everything is alright.
Then she gets pulled into an emergency room, because she crosses her arms over her chest and then uncrosses it when she feels something wet, and one of her hands comes up red. She didn't even realize she was feeling lightheaded until then, either.
Arnus comes by when the doctor is finished wrapping up the wound, and she can tell neither of them the energy to feel uncomfortable that her upper torso is stripped down to her bra.
"What did they say?" he asks, pointing to the bandaging around her ribs.
"They said if I lost any more blood, it would've been a lot worse." She shrugs the shoulder on her good side and Arnus sits beside her on the bed. "How are they?"
She learns that Dick is still in surgery, but he's no longer in critical condition, and that he probably would've died on the battlefield if Zatanna hadn't been able to heal a majority of his injuries on sight. Wally took a shot to his left leg, and both Artemis and Barbara wound up with fractured shoulders. Cassie and Jaime both passed out due to overexertion, and Gar was the only other critical wound received, but M'gann was able to keep him alive until they made it to the hospital.
There are still several more injuries and the conditions vary, but he reports that there weren't any deaths on their end and none of the other cases besides Dick and Gar's were fatal enough. Sure, it'll probably put a few of them out of commission, but that's not nearly as scary.
Raquel leans her head against Arnus's arm.
"How is he?" she asks barely above a whisper, and lets out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding when he tells her, "He'll be fine."
... ...
Raquel is in his room when he wakes up, and he only knows this because he can hear her voice as she's talking to one of the nurses. He hasn't opened his eyes yet, and he can feel his wounds and tender muscles as he begins to stir, but he… He really needs to see her.
His vision focuses as the door is shutting closed, and Raquel is standing there in beige shorts and a floral blouse and her hair a little more curled than usual. (In the back of his head, he wonders how long he's been out. It very well could be that she just went home to shower and change and fix herself up from the battle, but he knows that her appearance would be the least of her worries right after a fight.)
She looks mad—rightfully so—but then her tense shoulders relax and her eyes soften just a little, and then she finally exhales, "Hey."
"Hi."
She walks closer to his bedside while slipping her hands into her short pockets, and she tilts her head at him. He looks down at his bare chest and takes in all of his bandaging, and he wonders what's going through her mind right now.
Then she meets his eyes again and tells him softly, "You really scared me out there."
He blinks, and she sits at the edge of his bed and pulls a hand out of her pocket, placing it over the middle of his chest—the exact same spot his sword penetrated through his father's armor. She flattens her palm against his skin, spreading out her fingers and tracing over one of his scars there with her thumb.
"I thought that it'd been you who'd…" She doesn't finish her sentence, and he doesn't need her to. "And then when it really was you on the ground, I just…"
She shakes her head and presses her hand a little harder against his chest, as if she were trying to remind herself that he's really there.
"I hated those few seconds more than anything," she tells him.
"Raquel…"
She begins to pull away, and for a second he thinks about letting her. She deserves to be let go, honestly, as much as he deserves to be left by her.
But he just can't. He places his hand over hers on his chest before she takes it off, and the look she gives him tells him that she wanted him to do that. She looks like she wants him to hold onto her tightly and to not let her go like he did last time, and he thinks that maybe that's all she's wanted from the start.
"More than I hated hearing you call Tula the love of your life," she whispers. He tightens his grip on her hand. "More than I hated waking up in that bed alone. More than I hated that you were able to leave me. More than I hated feeling alone during the pregnancy and raising Austin." A tear rolls down her cheek, and he feels his own eyes sting. "More than I hated that believing you really killed Artemis."
She braces her hand against his pillow to lean over him more, her warm tears splashing onto his chest.
"But do you know what I hated most of all?" she asks, and doesn't wait for him to respond. "I hated myself for still being in love with you. I mean, after everything that happened and everything you made me feel what does that say about me for still wanting you?"
"It says that you are compassionate, Raquel," he tells her. "It says that you far are better than all of this."
"It didn't feel that way."
Her eyes fall onto their joined hands, and he watches her try to steady her breathing.
"Did you really mean what you said about Tula?"
He takes her chin gently between his fingers and makes her meet his eyes. "I could never have loved Tula the way I love you, Raquel," he tells her, never breaking their stare, and she lets out this whimper and makes more tears roll down her face when she lets her eyelids fall closed.
"Dick told Zatanna everything," she whispers. He pauses for a second then combs his fingers into her hair. "She told me that she'd known the whole time and not even you guys knew that she knew, because Dick wasn't supposed to tell her. But he couldn't… he just couldn't keep the secret from her, so he told her anyway."
Somehow, this doesn't surprise him. Their breakup never did make any sense.
She leans her cheek against his palm and sighs. "Kal, I need you to tell me everything, okay?" she asks, opening her eyes to meet his.
So he does.
... ...
She thinks it's kind of crazy that there are still tears left in her after all the crying she's done the past few days. But when they're standing in Austin's nursery and Kaldur is holding their son for the first time, she sees that his eyes are watery and then her own tears are pretty inevitable after that.
Honestly? Now that Kaldur is going to have to stay home for a few weeks, she wouldn't be surprised to come home and find him carrying Austin all the time.
And she heard from Artemis that their punishment is probation, which Raquel thinks has a lot to do with the fact that Dick nearly died and Batman just couldn't bring himself to be any stricter.
It's not like she thought they'd get a harsh punishment to begin with, but she didn't really anticipate it to be that easy, either. She supposes that they're all pretty shaken up, and with a number of them out of commission for a while, it wouldn't make sense to hinder the League's capabilities even further. She knows that it's going to take some time before any of them are fully trustworthy again, but everyone's just glad to have survived this mess like they did.
"You know, I'm not nearly ready to forgive you for everything."
He looks at her nods like he expected this. But there's a smile on his face and yeah, just because she hasn't forgiven him doesn't mean she's still mad at him. Most of that dissolved the second she thought he was dead.
"I did not expect you to," he admits.
She folds one of Austin's blankets and drapes it over the railing of the crib. "Our kids could have kids of their own before I consider forgiving you."
His smile gets a bit wider, and she knows he didn't miss that.
"Kids?"
She's grinning as she puts a hand on his shoulder and kisses him soundly. "I've always wanted four," she says with a shrug, and he chuckles and shakes his head.
And that night, when she wakes up with his hand is over her stomach, it's the first time she's felt warm in that bed instead of cold. She rolls over and straddles his waist, and kisses him a little harder than she had in Austin's room when he puts his hands over her hips and tells her that he was waiting for her.