A Simple Game of Truth
A/N: This isn't really an original plot line here. I was reading Sarah Dessen's 'The Truth about Forever' and a certain game played throughout the book inspired this. Some aspects about the histories of these characters have been altered ever so slightly. Yes I know it may not all be correct,but I do not care. Soback off. Hope you like it.
They'd been playing the game for days now. Back and forth and back again. One would ask a question, to which the other had to reply with nothing but the truth. Hence the name of the game: Truth. No Dares, no consequences. The only rules were that they had to tell the truth. No lying. If they chose to pass on answering, they had lost. That is unless both chose not to answer. Then they just moved on to the next question.
It had begun as a simple game. A quick and easy way to pass the time, one rainy day when they had been left alone in the Tower. It was never meant to be anything more than an amusement. Funny how things can change so quickly. One simple question and the whole meaning of the game had been flipped upside down.
They'd begun with the small questions, asking about each other's favorite colors, favorite foods, and favorite books. They were trying to ease themselves into the idea of what exactly they were doing. Slowly but surely the questions progressed. They began to ask about each other's personal lives; slowly chipping away at the outer shell's they showed to the world.
Soon she knew all there was to know about him. She knew that the first time his powers had come into use he'd used them to save his mother. She knew that he had lost his parents when he was about six in a tragic boating accident, and that for a while life had been anything but happy and easy. She knew that the Doom Patrol, while not the best family in the world, meant the world to him. Through a series of questions she'd learned that his joining the Titans had been a slight accident, and that he was afraid of clowns (an incident involving a popped balloon in his face had traumatized him for life), that even he got down in the dumps and that yes he could be mean, could be sarcastic and that honestly he really didn't know what the hell lived in his room besides him. She knew that while he had loved before, he'd never been inLove.And those were just questions from the first week and half of playing.
In return he learned that her first experience with her powers involved rice pudding and a small Azarathian boy who had insisted on taunting her. He soon learned his lesson. He learned of Azar, Arella and the home she'd lost not too long ago. He discovered that underneath the icy-leave me alone before I kill you- shell, lay a girl none too different from the rest of the girls populating the Earth, a girl who got lonely and from time to time, needed a friend, a shoulder to cry on. He knew that besides Trigon she was most scared of spiders, (too many legs for her comfort; he vowed instantlynever again to change into one of the many-legged arachnids if in her presence.) He also knew that her second favorite color was astonishingly, green (he would've gone with indigo).
And then it happened. And everything changed.
One question and the game changed. Now it was no longer a game about nothing. Now it had meaning. They were heading towards something big, using each question as a catalyst for that final question, that game-ender.
And then they reached it. The game-ending question. And surprisingly he wasn't the one who asked it. She did. It seemed so innocent "What's the one thing you would if you could do anything, right now?" She'd been expecting some clichéd answer about reviving Terra, bringing back his parents or being able to beat Cyborg at Gamestation. Instead he surprised her, as had become the norm during this game. He looked at her, not speaking for what felt like forever and then simply said "Pass." That was it. No explanations about why he was clearly setting himself up to lose. No whining about how the question was a trick. No…nothing. It was unnerving to say the least. But she didn't push him to answer. Instead she waited patiently as he thought about his question, the one she knew she would answer.
Once again he surprised her. He didn't give her a question right away. He made her wait for days, telling her all the while that it would be worth it in the end. So she waited. Patiently, never complaining about the fact that the game she'd secretly been enjoying had been put unceremoniously on hold.
And then one day it happened. Again. Another rainy day, similar to the day they'd begun the game. They were sitting on the roof, watching as the rain fell in gentle drops around them. And then it came. The question. The final Truth. And it too was simple in it's own way. "What do you want more than anything, right now?" Somehow she wondered if he already knew the answer. Wondered if maybe he'd been leading up to this moment the whole time.
Looking at him she thought for a moment, one fleeting second of time, if she could Lie to him and get away with it. But they'd been truthful up till now. Never once had they broken the main rule of always telling the Truth. She knew that to start doing so now would ruin all they had built up over the past few weeks. So she swallowed her fear, gathered her courage and told him exactly what she wanted. And she knew that from the small smile on his face, from the joyful look in his eyes that she'd done the right thing, having chosen to tell the Truth.
Amazing, isn't it? A simple game, some silly questions and slowly but surely relationships began to change. It's crazy what telling the Truth can do. It can change the way you view a person, change the way a person views you. It can propel you to do amazing things like tell the person you care for more than anything exactly how you feel. And it can, in turn,propel that person to look at you, smile and reply in exactly the same way.
A/N: So what did you think? Is it too odd, too fragmented, too anything? Any comments at all are welcome. You know this may actually be the longest one-shot I've written to date. Also to those of you who read my Thanksgiving story, let me just say that I haven't forgotten it, I am working on it (even though Thanksgiving is wayyyy over) but my chapter on Starfire never came out right and seems way too fake. So it's taking me a while. But it'll be done before Christmas (I hope.) And for those of you who don't know this is a BB/Rae story. Don' think it can happen? Then go out buy the Teen Titans issue # 30 and look at page ten. See that? See it?Ha! So there.
