Flipping the Coin

By: Xmarksthespot

Disclaimer: I don't own YJ

Notes: Takes place before YJ: Invasion

"Well?"

His voice was deep, but also a little groggy. It was as if he had just woken up, which considering his lifestyle, was plausible. Mixed with curiousness and impatience, the tone of voice Jade had heard her sister use when they were younger. It was completely unexpected, and yet a little expected at the same time. Something that she wasn't used to hearing while she drank her coffee, but then again, should've came out of his impatient mouth a long time ago.

She gradually turned to face him, slow as an admirer studying their muse, just to test his tolerance that afternoon. Her hair moved with her body swiftly, and she reminded herself to get it cut soon, even though she never does what she reminds herself. With her thumb resting on its side, four other fingers tapped onto the table in a consecutive motion.

"Well, what?" She retorted, a freckle of a smile appearing at the edges of her pale rose lips. Her dark eyes looked up to read him, to watch his reaction and come up with the next few words to let loose from her mouth. Her hint of amusement remained printed on her face.

It was like a ritual with them, the way they communicated: fragmented sentences, bouncing back and forth between the two like a tennis ball, only hitting the net every once in a while when they bicker about their nighttime jobs. Then again, that was a part of what this was about. Jade wonders when the ball would hit the net.

"Did you think about it?" Roy sat down next to her, spacing a decent amount of distance between him and her, a gap that signified a speck of a relationship, but wasn't close enough to indicate true feelings. An arm propped up onto the table, resting flatly; his stare at her lingered with a twinkle in his eye, a shine of appreciation – of adoration. He should've grinned at that point, to tease her into responding, to make her feel warm and comfortable around him, but he didn't. He wasn't the type of person, after all, and he knew she knew that. It's why she chose him.

There were few things that Jade called her own. There were even fewer things that Roy called his. Like two jig-saw puzzle pieces that didn't fit in their own puzzle set that found one another. They still hadn't fit each other, but the mutual understanding of being the odd one amongst the pieces they came with had kept them around.

Her mouth hanged open slightly, and she remained still enough for a person to have mistaken her as a mannequin. Then she looked up at him, back into his eyes and the never ending sea of blue. She used to love the ocean, because it meant that the world was a lot bigger than she was used to, and that meant she had a chance to escape her small dungeon her family called home. But then she realized outside of her cage was an even bigger cage and she could never really escape.

"Was I supposed to have thought about it, Red?" She reached out her hand, extending it towards him, only to miss his arm by a few hairs. There was a rusty, old penny sitting atop of the table, alone as she was. She pressed onto it with her index finger, and pulled it back to her; it cried out an eerie screech as it was being dragged.

Roy didn't flinch at her movements, because after watching a ballerina preform the same moves over and over again, the pirouettes and pliés begin to all look alike; it becomes repetitive, and the audience is no longer enchanted. He also didn't mind it when she starts to play with the penny, seemingly more fascinated by the coin than by him. She had the attention span of a child, after all, purposely appearing and disappearing when she felt like it, when Cheshire felt like it. It kept their conversations short, their arguments even shorter. Twisting the conversation into something else entirely irrelevant was one of her talents. Twisting his feelings around like a plaything was another one.

If Jade Nguyen was truly a cat, then Roy must have been a ball of yarn. Only sought after by if the cat was bored and chased after by the cat if rolled away.

The curve on Jade's lips disappears and she looked at him for what seems to be the first time in a long time, because she had never noticed his decrease in muscle mass before, the frown lines blemishing his face, the worry in his eyes. And as she's doing this, her fingers continued to twist and turn with the penny in its grasp. Now, the question returned to her mind, asking if she wants to place the penny next to another penny. Two pennies: an unfathomable thought at first, but this was the second thought, or perhaps the third; Jade didn't know.

And that was it. She just didn't know. But stalling a conversation with Roy was just teasing a lion with a piece of meat; it would only last for so long until the wild animal jumped at you.

"You told me you would," Roy said, the emotion in his voice unwavering. He still stared at her with compassion, with ferocity, and with ten other feelings Jade didn't know could blend together in a single look. Finally, he extended his arm, reaching out for the coffee mug in her one hand, preventing the rim from kissing her lips. He stole it from her, without spilling a drop, and took a sip from it himself.

Roy stuck his tongue out in disgust and placed the mug down; it's too sweet for his liking as he usually preferred it to be as bitter as he was – as she was. He earned a laugh with that face from Jade herself and it made his chest tingle – it made the muscles in his face tremor into a rare position. He's done this before, taking the coffee from her hands and complaining about her taste in energy drinks, but he continued to do so because her laugh was almost as difficult to find as his genetic donor.

Just hearing that sound from her, seeing that slight quiver from her shoulders when she did it, the musical notes that play out like a serenade, was one of the many reasons why Roy asked her the question, one of the many reasons why he's trying to be patient for the answer, and why he was dealing with her so early in the day when he had barely slept the night before.

Jade rested her cheek onto the palm of her hand, with the other still fastened onto the coin; her face didn't spell anything. Roy couldn't tell if she's thinking about what he said, and Jade didn't know what to think.

"Do you want an answer now?" She asked with a tint of hope in her voice that he'll tell her no, but she knew for certain he isn't like that. She always knew what to expect from him, whether he said something or not. He was almost as easy to read as Alice in Wonderland, a worn out item that she had owned since she was old enough to put a, b, and c together.

When she was a child, her father had told her that once she's hooked onto something, once she's hooked onto the game, she would never get out. Not because it was impossible (though it nearly was), but because she wouldn't want to. Lawrence Crock must have known from experience, because his wife's fall into a wheelchair and his baby's jump to the opposite side of the chessboard hadn't deterred him like it should have. But what Sportsmaster hadn't accounted for was another fisherman – another hook – to lure Jade to the other side of the sea, away from her tiny dungeon called home. It may have taken her into a bigger cage, but she had more freedom, more swimming space away from the big, bad sharks. Most of all, when the fisherman reeled her in, he wouldn't have killed her.

Roy Harper was that fisherman, that hook. All Jade had to do was take the bait.

"Maybe," he teased her like she does to him. His actual answer was still quite clear behind that ambiguous reply; her unpreparedness is just as clear. With a hesitant thought, but confident move, he held onto her hand with both of his, and she stopped fidgeting with the penny between her fingers.

His thumb didn't run circles on her hand to calm her down like most men do in the romance movies. It just so happened that her hand was touching both of his. His calloused fingertips grazing her incredibly scarred palm, skin on skin contact – nothing new between them.

Roy pressed his lips together, and they form a line. His brows arched into a furrow, showing a man deep in thought, hypothesizing his ideas, trying to see the future with his brain. But no man can see the future unless he was made of magic, so all he got were a bunch of delusions derived from his fantasies. Sometime later, Roy's tongue pokes out, licking his dry lips before opening them to speak: "I don't care what you say, Jade. Just answer me, please."

She cocked her head to the side, seemingly indifferent to his pleas. There was a contrast between what he is asking of her and what Jade was used to. In her profession, each mission was delivered like a death sentence, and each time, Jade accepted them compliantly. Whenever she made herself invisible like the character she's named after, she had to make the drumming of her heart quiet down, made each movement as swift as possible. Each word, punch, and kick were thoroughly thought out before said or done, like walking on a tightrope above a pit of lava; one slip, and you lose.

But suddenly, Roy's question took away all that. Her heartstrings could be played with a bow as many times as it wanted to, in staccatos and legatos, loud enough to match that of an orchestra's symphony. Bumping into chairs and dropping dishes by accident were alright, as well as cursing out loud, speaking her mind, and even crying and screaming if she wanted to. Jade is essentially given a key to her cage.

The question was: did she want it? Jade wasn't sure – she's too lost out at sea with no ship to rescue her from her thoughts. She tried not to entice the bigger fish or drown herself in the pools of alcohol and blood, only remembering what her father told her when she was a kid, that once she was hooked onto the game, she would never get out.

But then she found another hook.

"Alright," Jade said and gently budged her hand free from his hold, raising it so that if there is a line connecting from her eyes to his, the penny pinched between her thumb and index finger would be in the middle. Its dull and aged appearance didn't shine much, even when the sunlight from the window had embraced it. All in all, it was an ordinary American penny, with Lincoln on one side, and his memorial on the other. It was as normal as the two people on either side of it.

It was a saying that Jade once heard as Cheshire on one of her travels. An old beggar had tried to teach her the value of a rusty old coin, in hopes that she would be kind enough to spare some. She had felt no pity talking to him, no remorse in leaving him there to starve to death, but that one particular lesson stuck in her head for some reason, probably waiting to be used in a time like this. The old man's words were glued to her memory like every word, comma, and period in her Wonderland book; that once you flip a coin, your decision can be made when it's enveloped in air, and only in air, because you would know exactly which face you wanted it to land on.

"Then I'll answer," she said calmly, but he's unresponsive. Maybe he's expecting her to pull this type of stunt, or maybe he's just a ticking bomb, not yet ready to explode. She gulped, and it's obvious that he saw her do it, but he's seen her expressed more emotions than she knew she had, so it didn't bother her on the slightest bit.

"Heads, it's a yes. Tails, it's a no," she explained before positioning the penny onto her thumb.

Roy nodded and waits for her move.

Cheshire and Red Arrow were hard-core gamblers, taking risks even when it wasn't necessary. They placed bets on important details in their lives, and only gambled away more if they lost. Together, they were addicts. No man in his right mind would bet his wedding ring, but here they were, in a game of chance to determine their future. He's pushed all of his poker chips to the middle of the table, and now he's just waiting to see if she'll meet his wager.

Jade flipped the coin into the air.

It was after the initial second when she looked up, chest heavy with worry, mind completely scattered and barely responsive. But the moment Jade laid her eyes on the bronze coin, effortlessly soaring through the air, winding in summersaults and all sorts of twists and turns in a timeless period, every muscle in her body loosened. And in that moment, the moment when time stood still just long enough for her mind to make its decision, when the coin stayed in the air for just a while longer than it's supposed to, Jade made her choice. She knew her answer.

It fell into her grasp, and its face was hidden from the world as she placed it flat onto her opposite palm. The penny was sandwiched in between both hands, waiting for its debut into the open air for everyone in the room to see. Jade pressed it down tight enough for the former president's face to be temporarily imprinted onto her skin.

"Well?" Roy asked again with his deep, yet tired voice. It was reasonable, given his work, but it was also something Jade wasn't expecting to hear from him, at that time of the day when she should be relaxing with a cup of coffee in her hands without a care in the world. But then again, she should've known he'd ask her that eventually; it was in his character, after all.

Jade didn't look at the coin in her hand, didn't bother revealing the answer to the world. She merely smiled a soft, freckle of a smile and told him her answer.

When she was a child, her father had told her that once she's hooked onto something, once she's hooked onto the game, she would never get out. Not because it was impossible (though it nearly was), but because she wouldn't want to. Lawrence Crock must have known from experience, because Jade's rebellion against the Shadows hadn't deterred him like it should have. But what Sportsmaster hadn't accounted for was another fisherman – another hook – to lure Jade to the other side of the sea, away from her tiny dungeon called home. It may have taken her into a bigger cage, but she had more freedom, more swimming space away from the big, bad sharks. Most of all, when the fisherman reeled her in, he wouldn't have killed her. Rather, he would have fallen in love with her.

Roy Harper was that fisherman, that hook. All Jade had to do was take the bait.

"It's heads."

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.

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Fin.