Summary: Something horrible befalls one of the Titans, but the matter is out of their jurisdiction. Can the Titans hand this one over to the JCPD, or will the call for vengeance cry too loud? Certain Titans may not be able to trust justice to the law, and there's no telling just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Rating: "Mature" for strong language, violence, sexual content and sensitive material.
AN: The real update, for Unfinished Business readers. This is unbetaed, because Em's very, very busy being a real-life lawyer now. :D (congratulate her) So if at some point I rip it down because I've realized it's really awful and in need of much revision, please forgive me for assaulting your eyeballs.
Warning: YOU ARE NOW OFFICIALLY WARNED. DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT read beyond this point if you are of a weak constitution or can't handle reading about any of those subjects listed under the rating.
Disclaimer: They'd never let me own the Titans, because I keep doing awful things to them.
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03: pIeCeS
"And we are so fragile/ And our cracking bones make noise/ And we are just/ Breakable, breakable, breakable/ Girls and boys"
Ingrid Michaelson - Breakable
There were times when darkness and quiet seemed to breathe, to have life. When stillness was only motion in waiting.
Curled tightly in a ball beneath the light weight of sheet and blanket, Raven felt like that now, stifled and oppressed. In the pale green glow of her alarm clock, she stared at the glass of water and pair of small white pills on her night table, trying to convince her hand to reach for the cool water, insisting to her dry mouth and aching body that the drugs would help.
Her mental arguments had fallen on her own deaf ears for the past hour.
She was terrified of unconsciousness. The thought of being unaware of her surroundings closed her throat, the threat of things happening around her—to her—without her knowledge—without her consent—made her nostrils flare and her breath come faster.
The sheets whispered as she pulled her knees tighter up against her abdomen, the hand under the pillow clutching a fistful of fabric-softener scented cotton and her left hand clutching at her ankle.
The smell of familiar detergent on her blankets should have been soothing, the silky caress of her satin pajama set a comfort, but it wasn't. She could smell dirt and sweat in her hair, and the smooth touch of the clothing on her skin was startlingly intimate, like soft palms sliding over limbs and ribcage.
Raven sat bolt upright in the bed, clapping her hand over her mouth, bile splashing in the back of her throat. Swallowing thickly, she forced her hand down to the mattress and deliberately slid her legs over the edge of the bed, setting her feet gently but firmly on the carpet.
Inhaling sharply, she ignored the protests of strained muscles and stood up. Carefully smoothing her hands over the cloth covering her thighs, she took a deep breath, and planted one foot before the other, slow, deliberate steps.
Rounding the bed, she locked her eyes on the door in the far wall by the vanity, watching it draw nearer and nearer. After what seemed a long and tiring journey, she stood in front of the bathroom door, and placed her hand on the cool lock pad. It flashed green under her palm, and the door slid silently open, the automatic lights raising as she edged over the threshold.
The small room flooded with light, and Raven's eyes drew like magnets to the wall mirror over the sink. She flinched. Lowered her eyes. Set her teeth and raised her gaze defiantly again, made herself look.
Wide, dark eyes in sunken hollows, circled by exhaustion and bloodshot from unshed tears. The skin around her left eye was still a little swollen, a yellowing bruise patterning from brow to cheekbone. A seam of scab traced the curve of her lower lip, and a bluer bruise fingered the edges of her jawline, traced in a large, mottled blotch over her throat.
Ugliness. An unsightly mess. But Raven's hands trembled at the mere thought of forcing blue light from them. She just didn't have it left in her to bother with healing the remaining surface damage, however aesthetically unappealing it made her.
"Reminders," she whispered grimly to the haunt-eyed girl in the mirror.
Yes, reminders. Tokens, mementos. A collection of wounds and injuries for remembrance.
As if she could forget.
Turning her head decisively, Raven started across the cold tile floor to the small linen closet and reached inside for a pair of navy bath towels. For just a moment, she pressed the soft cotton to her face and inhaled the clean scent.
She wanted to feel clean again.
Reaching up to touch her fingers to the tangled knots of her hair, Raven decided that the first step was a long, hot shower.
Laying the towel set atop the closed toilet lid, she ignored her trembling fingers as she lifted her nightshirt over her head, pushed pajama bottoms and underwear down past hips and knees and ankles.
Sliding back the opaque glass shower door, she reached in and turned the hot water knob and depressed the shower button, watching the spray gather steam before stepping from her puddle of cloth and over the lip of the tub.
Her breath hissed in as the near-scalding water hit her skin, raising gooseflesh across her shoulders and down her arms. Setting her jaw, she endured the heat and shut the shower door, moving to stand more fully under the spray.
She tilted her face up towards the shower head and closed her eyes, tracking individual beads of water by sensation as they traveled down her skin, followed a droplet as it slid around the inner corner of her eye, sloped down her cheek and curved over her upper lip. As it met the crease of her mouth, her lips parted, and the tip of her tongue shot out to draw the moisture into her mouth.
Opening her eyes, Raven raised her hands to her head and began massaging the water into her tangled, matted hair, carefully working the strands apart and loosening knots. Working round her scalp towards the base of her skull, just a little behind her ear, her probing fingertips encountered a clot of crusted blood and paused.
A shudder rippled down her spine, and for a moment her stomach lurched up towards her mouth, but after a moment of stillness and shallow breathing, Raven swallowed the threat of bile and began ungently picking apart the clot, tugging and pulling till the clump of hair loosened into individual strands.
When she could run her fingers freely through her hair, Raven reached for the peppermint shampoo on the shower shelf, squeezing a generous amount into her palm and inhaling deeply of the sharp, crisp scent. She worked her hair into a thick lather, rinsed until her hair squeaked between her fingers, and repeated the process.
After the last of the lather was rinsed from her scalp, she reached for the rosemary and thyme herbal soap, fingers hesitating on the grainy texture. Curling her hand around the lumpy bar, she held it under the steaming spray until it was slick and sudsy in her grip.
Carefully, gently, almost a whisper of a touch, she began to run the soap over her arms, working in slow circles up to her shoulders, working the lather over collarbones and sternum. As she passed the soap over her breasts, she shoved away the ghost of tenderness and ache, moving on briskly to her ribcage and stomach.
She couldn't stifle her wince or the sharp gasp of pain when she found the bruised lower ribs on her right side, and the sharp stab of pain at even the light slick of the soap over the large, purple-green bruise on her hip drew a small, mewling noise from the back of her throat.
The soap clattered on the floor of the tub when it slipped from her shaking fingers, and she found her legs folding beneath her, her knees buckling like wet paper. Her shins banged against the porcelain with only a dull pain, the sting of her palms slapping against the wall in front of her much sharper. Bowing her head, she sucked in mouthfuls of air, vision spinning and swirling down to a pinprick.
Raven sat like that for what felt like a very long time, and must have been, for when she opened her eyes and began blinking away swirls of neon color, the water had gone almost lukewarm.
There was a fine trembling all over her body, but she focused with single minded determination on the bar of soap resting by the drain, reaching out and securing it in her unsteady grasp. Refusing any and all other thought, she focused on running the soap bar over her feet and legs like it was the most difficult thing she had ever done, the trembling of her hands becoming a pronounced tremor as she guided the bar over and between her splotched and spotted thighs.
Finally, she let the soap slide from between her fingers and merely sat there, letting the water run over her and rinse her off at its own pace. It was all she could do, right then, to stay conscious. Or sane.
When at last the water ran cold and her fingertips were pruny and wrinkled, she gathered enough presence of mind to shut off the spray. Kneeling in the tub, shivering and dripping, she turned her head, heavy like it was lined with lead, and looked at the towels, mentally coached herself to just stand up, to reach out and wrap the cotton around her. Then she could be warm, and dry.
Moving sluggishly, and her hands shaking so badly she dropped one of the towels twice, she at last managed to swaddle herself in the soft cloth.
She sat on the toilet lid for a moment, breathing, staring at the wall, the air drying the damp on her skin and the towel wrapped round her hair weighing down her head, she knew that this wouldn't do.
Now was not the time to come to pieces. She wasn't sure when it would be, but this wasn't it. Not yet.
Having decided this small, important thing, she began to force her breaths to be even and measured, in. Out. In. Out.
"Azarath," inhale, "Metrion," exhale, "Zinthos," inhale.
She held the last breath for thirty seconds, eyes closed, finding her center and coming somewhere to the wobbly left of it, but closer than she had been in the last sixty hours.
Exhale.
When she stood, she was steady, and her hands almost didn't shake at all as she dried herself off properly and ran a brush gently through her hair. Swaddled in a black terrycloth robe, she turned off the bathroom light and stepped back into her bedroom, clicking on the lamp on her desk for just enough light to properly see by.
She stood in front of her closet for a moment, considering another pajama set, surprising herself with how violently she rejected the idea. Instead, she moved past the closet to her dresser and put on her most comfortable, boring pair of white cotton panties, then drew open the bottom left drawer.
Settling on her knees, she rummaged around inside until she found what she wanted, her fingers grasping tight in soft cloth and knotting the clothes in her hands when she drew them into her lap.
Stroking her hand over the well-worn material, Raven lifted the excessively large gray T-shirt to eye level, her mouth twitching at the corner at the faded depiction of Scooby-Doo emblazoned across it. The shirt had been Cyborg's, a long time ago, he said, and she had rescued it from a box of things he had intended to throw out without so much as asking him if she could. It had become one of her favorite shirts to sleep in. Right now, she could use the sentimental comfort. A pair of worn old gray sweatpants completed the frumpy, familiar ensemble.
Dressed in psychological armor, Raven stood in the middle of the room for a long time, staring down the large oval of her bed like it was an adversary determined to overcome her.
She tried to remind herself that she was a hero, the sort of person who was strong and stubborn and faced down dastardly villains and menacing toughs each and every day without quailing or hesitating.
That person was so very far away from the small, wounded, weak girl she had been remade into that Raven found that strength and immovability far out of reach, a sun that burned to bright to see, much less touch.
No. She turned away from the bed, lashes fluttering on her cheeks as the hurt girl urged her to find safe shadows to hide in.
"Robin," she murmured.
She was at her door before she realized, fingertips faltering in the air before they rested on the lockpad. Certainly, Robin was a bastion of safety and security if there was ever such a thing, and he had proven time and time over that he could know her darkness and ugliness and still see past them to her… but she was afraid.
He might ask questions. He was inquisitive by nature, and his thirst for justice had gotten people in his path hurt before, even his friends. He might look at her too closely, a cutting glance from him tearing through her skin like paper, his hard eyes laying on her flesh like fists, and she had too many scrapes and bruises to bear feeling already.
Deep breath.
No. She would not seek Robin out right now. She would only go to the kitchen for some tea. Yes, some chamomile tea, to calm her nerves, old routines to soothe her mind.
Her fingertips brushed over the pad and the door slid open, and her heart seized in her chest, lips pressing together bloodlessly to keep from trembling, the image suddenly in front of her wetting her eyes.
Robin, safe, strong Robin, so fearsome and terribly protective, was slumped in an uncomfortable posture against the wall just across from her door, a blanket draped carelessly over his lap. He still wore his mask, eyes hidden, but the boneless cant of his head and deep, even movements of his chest suggested sleep. He was dressed in his uniform still, rumpled and wrinkled, telling Raven he hadn't moved from this spot since he had brought her home.
He was always so vigilant, the pain he tried not to feel when something escaped his watch so obvious to her, she knew he was trying, somehow, someway, to make up for his powerlessness to help her when she had most needed it, for his ignorance of the horrors she had been facing, while he was all the while unaware.
Her heart resumed its beating, thudding painfully in her chest, that fragile cavity seeming to constrict from the emotion she feared she might drown in. Sorrow, that he had not been able to help her, that he felt the need to make up for that inability. Gratitude that he considered her someone worth saving, even too late. And love, swelling warmth and wonder that this wonderful, flawed human being tried to protect and understand her, even when he couldn't.
Her attacker had broken body and bones and spirit, and Robin threatened to break her heart.
Stepping lightly, soundlessly on the carpeted hall floor, she let her door hush closed behind her and moved beside her sleeping would-be hero, her palm trailing down the painted wall as she lowered herself to sit a few inches beside him. She watched his face for a moment, thinking about cliches and sayings of how sleep granted an illusion of peace, and wondered sadly, wistfully, why they couldn't apply to Robin's troubled, shadowed features.
Even in rest, he couldn't masquerade contentment. Not this caring soul who would take personal responsibility for all of the world's troubles if only he had Atlas's shoulders.
Raven reached out a shaky hand, the tip of her middle finger tracing the upper curve of Robin's high cheekbone like a breath of air, up to his stormy brow, where she lightly brushed aside a lock of dark hair. He never stirred a moment, and she found herself surprised by a small smile that stretched the cut on her lip. In all of this horror and guilt and fear, it gave her some small hope that she could be pleased that her friend was so comfortable with her as to be completely undisturbed by her presence.
He gave her so much he could never know, in these little ways.
Watching him sleep, Raven decided that if, when he woke up, Robin wanted to ask her barbed questions or look at her with eyes like gun barrels, she would swallow the thorns and answer, and accept bullet holes in her façade, all for the sweetness of this one moment.
A temporary blanket of warmth and numbness settled over Raven, separating her from the things she feared to feel, and she laid her cheek on Robin's shoulder. Her eyelids lowered slowly like curtains, and she inhaled Robin's scent of soap and musk and day-old cologne, until her breathing began to match his, and she drifted like falling snow into sleep.
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AN: I kind of meant this to be a bit longer, with a little more after this, but I realized this was the better stopping point. But hey, at least we got Raven's point of view finally, huh?