Not That Girl
Couple(s): Robin/Starfire
Raven/Robin
POV: Raven
One-shot
Song: Not That Girl- Wicked
Hands touch, eyes meet
Sudden silence, sudden heat
Hearts leap in giddy whirl
He could be that boy
But I'm not that girl.
Last month, I was yours and you were mine. You may not remember it well; you may have been playing a game with me, but I was not playing the game. I was happy. I was content. I enjoyed being with you.
Every time you entered a room, I was prone to leaping up to see how you were doing. Every time you left a room, I was bound to become quiet and thoughtful because I missed you.
You took me everywhere with you. You let me ride on the back of your motorcycle. You took me to dinner. At midnight you took me up to see the stars. In the morning we got out of the same bed and went to see the sun rise. We could spend hours on the roof watching the stars.
Most of the time though, I did not watch the stars. I watched you. I watched the way your chest rose and fell, the way you smiled and nodded at me every time I would pass you. I watched you fix your hair after I messed it up every day.
Mostly, I watched the way you would smile at me when you thought I wasn't watching you.
I heard the words that left your lips. I felt the way your heart hammered when you said them. "I love you," you said to me.
I could not say it back, but I felt it. I struggled with it. I struggled with you; in my mind, you were perfection, and I was not meant to touch perfection. Still, I touched you. Everything in me wanted to touch you, and nothing in me wanted to stop.
So I didn't stop.
We were everything an aspiring young couple should be. We were crazy for each other. You were completely reckless and I was reckless within the confines of this body, of this emotional minefield.
I'll never know if the fact that I could not tell you I loved you was what drove you away, or if it was just that you figured out you couldn't love me. But it hurt all the same.
Perhaps you simply figured out I wasn't who you thought I was. Then again, maybe you weren't who I thought you were either.
We'll probably never know. I probably shouldn't care. But I do. To the point where everything hurts a little more every time I see you.
Now hurts. Watching you two curl up on the couch to watch a movie, watching you twirl that oh-so-bright hair around your finger kills me. There is a list of things that kill me, and you are the factor in all of them.
But I'll stay behind this book and pretend it doesn't hurt. Because that's what I'm meant to do.
Don't dream too far
Don't lose sight of who you are
Don't remember that rush of joy
He could be that boy
But I'm not that girl.
I'm trying to read, but I can't focus on the story. Everything seems boring and out of touch with reality. Then again, who am I to judge reality? I feel as though I'm in a haze all the time, a haze that stems from the unhappiness you can only find in being with a person, then having them vanish from your side forever.
I've started feeling older lately. I wouldn't say I've felt more mature by any means. Rather, I've felt like that bitter, stooped old lady. The kind who beats young couples with her purse for cuddling. I've considered throwing the book at the pair of them, but I know in my heart it wouldn't do anything, so I haven't. Rather, I've just sat here, staring blankly into the pages of my book.
Every laugh of hers is enough to set me off the edge. I ignored that the way I ignored everything else, but just because you ignore something doesn't mean its not there, now does it?
Lately everything seems like an insult. Her smile, your laugh, everything. I can't focus, I can't breathe, I can't even read this book. I am falling apart. I am falling apart because I fell for you.
I feel like maybe then, I was dreaming. The problem is, I can't dream anymore. I already did that. I overstayed my welcome in dream-land and in the process hurt everyone and everything around me. I know I hurt Starfire. Part of me would like to believe she's just getting back what's hers, but you two weren't dating when you first came to me.
You weren't with her the night you first came to my room. That night, you were your own person. You seemed more clear-headed and free of thought than I'd ever seen you, and everything in you screamed 'happiness'. Maybe I imagined that, the way I imagined you caring for me.
I blame myself more than I blame you though. I lost control. I lost sight of the fact that I am Raven Roth, daughter of Trigon. I am, after all, not meant for love, only for destruction.
I often think that, had things been different, you would have been the boy I was meant to love. But its not your place to be that boy for me. You are everything she wants. I can see that as clearly as I can see the two of you now.
She is the girl for you. And I, well, I'm not much of anything, am I?
Every so often we long to steal
To the land of what might have been
But that doesn't soften the ache we feel
When reality sets back in.
Don't think for a minute that stops me from thinking of you. Don't think for a second I don't replay every second of the last three weeks in my head, trying to figure out what went wrong. Don't think I don't spend every waking second missing waking up next to you.
In a way, I even miss the shocked look on her face when she saw us together. I shouldn't. She's one of the only real friends I ever had, and I should be happy that she has you, someone who is also wonderful and so important to me.
But how can I be happy when just a few weeks ago, I was what made you happy?
"It's just not going to work," you told me that night. You had no explanations. I had not expected one. Part of me had always expected you to drop me; I just hadn't expected it to be so soon.
Had you not said that, would I have been able to admit to you that I loved you before you left me? Because right now, here, in my mind, I can already admit how much I love you.
I just couldn't tell you. Had I told you, would things be different?
Would we have continued to walk late-nights together through a sleeping city? Would you have held my hand every time we were called into battle? Would you have told me you loved me? Would you have lain in my bed with your eyes open late into the night, watching me when you didn't think I was watching you?
I wish you could hear all these thoughts in my head. I wish you could feel the way my heart is hammering. Then maybe you would know I always loved you, under everything that I was.
Somehow, thinking about how it could've been just makes it more depressing when I look into your eyes and see that you aren't looking back at me. You have eyes only for her.
The pain in me is almost greater than the love was.
Blithe smile, lithe limb
She who's winsome
She wins him
Gold hair and a gentle curl
That's the girl he chose
And heaven knows
I'm not that girl.
I tend to find myself examining Starfire, in spite of myself. She's beautiful, everything I could not be. She has long arms and slender legs, a figure that rivals that of the most beautiful girl on earth. She is curious, open, and naïve.
Your choice seems so obvious when I stack that up to my own character. I am a curvy, melancholy woman, afraid of the world, afraid of my own shadow. I guard my emotions and my heart, although not by choice. I am not an open book for you to read.
I realize that everything was of your choosing. I just wish I could figure out why, for that little bit of time, you chose me.
I see what your kind of girl is. Heaven knows, I'll never be that girl.
Don't wish, don't start.
Wishing only wounds the heart
I wasn't born for the rose and pearl
There's a girl I know
He loves her so
I'm not that girl…
Raven got up and bolted from the room as Robin leaned down to kiss Starfire. Despite himself, he got up, excusing himself from Starfire, and made to follow her up the stairs.
His mind was racing. He knew he should stay downstairs. He knew he should do what he'd forced himself to do and stick with it, but he could not. Somewhere along the way, he knew he'd fallen out of love with Starfire, but every time he saw her cry, he had known it was his fault.
Guilt had driven him back to her.
Behind the closed door, he could hear loud crashes, followed by a sound he was fairly certain was inhuman. That was when he realized the empath behind the door was crying, loud, gasping sobs that almost broke his heart.
He had never assumed she could cry. He had not known that she had loved him as much as he'd loved her, the emotional boundary forever between them, part of his decision to leave her. He had made assumptions. He had assumed she could never return his love. It had broken him to turn away, but he had turned away.
"Robin?" He heard Starfire call. Looking over his shoulder once, full of a desire to cry and run to Raven's side and ask her to take him back, he headed downstairs. He felt the choice was his to live with, even if it hurt him.
He had to stop, wiping his eyes, so that Starfire would not see.
"I'm not that girl," Raven whispered. "I was never born to be that girl."
-END-