Watching him struggle to lift the weight was hard.
Hard on her, hard on her emotions, hard on everything.
Raven sighs and leans back on the bench.
"Raaae- I'm gonna do it, I swear! Just, uh, just uhhh, one minute-"
He heaves upward, straining hard, frail legs shaking and skinny arms trembling, and the weight remains firmly attached to the floor.
He flops back down with a groan, rubbing the back of his neck.
"I'll, I'll do it, Rae, you don't have to, to look so sad…"
"Don't hurt yourself, Garfield."
He leaps back up- or tries to.
"Raven, I can DO it! I did it- uhh, yesterday! I SWEAR!"
She sighs again and walks over to him, him and his lined face and his veined hands and shriveled self.
She traces a wrinkle on his face.
"Gar… you're only forty-five…"
He winces and looks away, at the floor, at the wall, anything but her relatively young stature. She correctly looks forty-six. He looks seventy.
He grasps her fingers in his own shaky hand and holds it, and she feels his calloused skin and brittle bones working hard to move.
"It'll be uh, ok, Rae… you know I hate it when you look so morbid…"
His status was something that was unavoidable. His animal genes were to blame. He aged faster, disindegrated sooner. His head had started losing it's hair in his twenties. He had started to slow down at thirty. By forty, he wasn't going out anymore. While the rest of the team, now just called the Titans, trounced bank robbers and super villains, he stayed home and tried to work out. To halt the vigorous decline of his health and his body.
And his mind.
He stumbled forward for a hug, and she let him.
"It'll be- uh, it'll be fine Raven. I'm gonna last a while. I'm still, uh, still going strong…"
She lets him say it because she knows that to say anything else would crush him.
She lets him kiss her cheek, and then he shuffles back to the weight and bends down to grasp it with a moan.
"Back's hurting today…"
"Don't do this to yourself, Garfield."
He pauses, still holding onto the bar, widening his stance and planting his feet firmly against the training mat.
"I uh, I have to."
"You're being ridiculous."
He straightens up with a flinch, and grins weakly at her.
"That's what you love about me, right?"
Raven looks at the floor, fiddling with the hem of her shirt.
"Yes, Garfield."
His smile falters, his eyes cloud.
She looks up quickly and says, "Gar, you know what we agreed."
He grunts. "I know."
"… … Do you?"
"Yes, Raven! I'm not- I'm not senile!"
He stretches a sad excuse for a stretch, and bends over again.
"You're going to kill yourself," She says quietly.
"Fine."
He grunts, flaps his arms, and HEAVES-
The weight moves, but doesn't lift more than a few inches.
He drops it with a moan, a groan, a hiss of pain. Raven hurries forward, for once allowing her worry to show through.
"Garfield, stop it- I'm serious, I'll get Nightwing, I'll get Cyborg-"
"I'm- I'm fine! Get OFF!"
He pushes her. It's so weak against her fit self that she doesn't even step back, but it's the action that hurts the most.
"Garfield-"
"No, no I'm sorry, Rae, I'm sorry, I know you do it because you care- I'm uh, I'm trying, but it's it's it's-"
He stops talking and concentrates, trying to string his words together.
She sighs and puts her arm around his shoulder.
"It's fine Gar. I understand."
He shifts closer to her and buries his bald, wrinkled head in her shoulder.
"M'sorry." He mumbles.
"I know."