A/N: Sorry for the delay people, i've got uni essays due, but i thought i'd chip in this chapter after a review from Hotspur prompted me to finish this one and put it up. Hope you like! -
Kid Flash walked down the hallway deep in thought, he'd considered before that Jinx liked him because she tolerated him and was even occasionally nice to him, not of course overlooking the fact the he'd convinced her to turn her life around but she may have done that without him. He stopped when he saw steel toe capped boots entered the top of his vision, Robin was standing just down the hallway from him blocking the passageway.
"Kid Flash." He said flatly, Kid Flash grimaced at this, he and Robin used to be friends.
"Robin." He said less harshly than Robin had greeted him, "Looks like Jinx proved you wrong, huh?" He said staring at his own reflection in the tip of the boots in front of him.
"For now." Robin said turning his head away, silence fell between the two boys.
"She'll betray you you know!" Robin blurted out, Kid Flash scowled.
"You're a jerk sometimes, you know that Robin?" He retorted and turned around to walk off, but a hand on his arm stopped him. He tilted his head slightly to see Robin looking at him imploringly, Kid Flash sighed.
"I know I know, it's only because you care." Kid Flash said holding up his hands, Robin relaxed at this, "that and you're too maladjusted to actually SAY that. You bat-family types really need some therapy." Kid Flash smirked.
"Coming from the boy wearing skin-tight spandex?" Robin asked pinching a fingerful of the stretchy material and pulling it away from the red-head's body and letting it go a moment later with a satisfying snap noise.
"Yowch!" Kid Flash yelped jumping backwards and rubbing where the spandex had pinged him, now he knew what the girls in his school had felt like when they first started getting bra's and he'd do this to them, no wonder he got hit a lot.
"I HAVE to wear this, you know that. Small clothing fires are never fun." Kid Flash pointed out.
"Yeah yeah, you're no better than the guys at the beach who wear Speedos two sizes too small." Robin laughed at him, Kid Flash rolled his eyes and shoved Robin away with a laugh.
"You're awful. How about we work on a friendly conversation? I could give you a hug?" Kid Flash offered open armed.
"You could get lost." Robin retorted rolling his own eyes.
"Aww come on, you're blatantly hug-deprived, I guess the big bat's not one for Kodak moments huh? Come on, hug!" Kid Flash demanded, Robin seemed to consider this before throwing a smoke pellet and legging it in the opposite direction. Kid Flash laughed and gave chase through the smoke shouting 'hug!' after him.
Cyborg looked up just as the yells came charging down the hallway, he saw Robin dashing manically away from an open armed Kid Flash who was trying to laugh and run at the same time, it was obviously slowing him down.
"HUG ME!" Kid Flash shouted between bouts of laughter.
"NEVER!" Robin shouted back and skidded around a corner quickly followed by the yellow and red speedster.
"That was… the oddest thing I've seen in a while." Cyborg muttered thoroughly weirded out, he looked down the hallway to see an equally confused and disturbed Jinx standing at her door open mouthed.
"Hey Jinx." Cyborg greeted her quietly, this was the first time he'd caught her alone since she joined the Titans. The girl seemed to hesitate between ignoring him and returning to her room and talking to him, she eventually chose the latter.
"Cyborg." She nodded and reluctantly walked to his door.
"We've never… you know, talked since HIVE." Cyborg began carefully, Jinx narrowed her eyes slightly at him.
"We talked." She said flatly.
"You knocked me out and buried me up to my neck in sand in the beach! It took me hours to get out!" He said exasperatedly.
"It was at low tide." Jinx pointed out pouting.
"Some small comfort. Look, I was just on a mission, I didn't know I'd make friends and be betraying people." Cyborg sighed in apology.
"Well you did." She scowled and shifted her hands to her hips aggressively, Cyborg held up his hands peacefully at this, he knew Jinx well enough to recognise when she was genuinely mad at someone.
"Technically you've betrayed people, you can't exactly play the betrayal card here." He said pointedly, Jinx turned her head at this.
"At least I'm honest about when I'm switching sides, you just pretended to be someone else, you faked and lied. At least I'm honest." Jinx muttered staring at the opposite wall.
"I didn't fake everything." Cyborg said pulling a picture off of his wall and holding it in front of Jinx. It was the two of them at the HIVE academy's dance, Jinx was in the middle of a graceful pirouette with Cyborg, or rather, Stone holding her hand above her and one hand near her waist.
"You kept yours." Jinx said quietly as she held the glossy photo in her hands gently.
"You didn't?" Cyborg asked curiously.
"It's at the HIVE five headquarters, I didn't exactly pack much before leaving it. Didn't pack sensibly either, just a change of clothes, a few roses, snow globe, sketchpad and some other weird shit." Jinx said with a small laugh and a small smile.
"Well you can keep that one, I've got copies on the computer, I'll just print out another." Cyborg smiled back.
"Yeah, cool. I'll… see you later." Jinx said sounding far away and turned and left. Cyborg smiled tolerantly, Jinx obviously couldn't take over a certain amount of emotion in one conversation, she never could.
Cyborg leant over to his computer and found the file of his photo and selected 'print' the slow machine that was his disused printer whirred into life slowly. A loud yell of Robin's echoed down the corridor, Cyborg guessed that Kid Flash had finally caught his prey and not a moment later Kid Flash blurred into the room and ducked down in the corner of Cyborg's room.
"Shh! I'm not here." Kid Flash hissed and held a finger to his lips.
"Yeah, careful I'm printing something- out." He finished just as the page finished printing and jabbed poor Wally in the eye.
"OW!" He yelped rubbing his eye and grabbing the glossy sheet of paper, as soon as he looked at it he gawped in silence.
"Was? Was this before your accident? You're all… human, but Jinx is… you accident was YEARS ago." Kid Flash stammered looking at the photo.
"It was a holographic projection, I was on a mission to infiltrate HIVE." Cyborg explained, Kid Flash didn't take his eyes off of the photo.
"Jinx mentioned something like that." He said blankly staring at Jinx's happy expression as she was frozen in mid dance. Cyborg felt uncomfortable to say the least.
"It was a friend thing. Honest." Cyborg said flatly but Kid Flash just sat staring at the photo.
"She's dancing." Kid Flash said numbly.
"It was a dance, it's what you're meant to do." Cyborg said irritatedly.
"But she DOESN'T dance, I've…I've tried." Kid Flash said remembering Jinx's flat out refusal to dance with him in the HIVE five hallway.
"Her dancing is like her fighting, pretty aggressive and powerful." Cyborg smiled at the memory, he realised when he looked down at Kid Flash that he'd said the wrong thing, his shoulders had fallen and the poor boy looked crestfallen as he stared at the photo. It was like kicking a puppy.
"Gimme that." Cyborg muttered taking it from him and pinning it to his wall were the other copy had been before.
"I just gave Jinx my copy because she didn't take hers with her." Cyborg sighed, Kid Flash said nothing and Cyborg rolled his eyes, obviously he'd have to spell this out for the boy.
"She brought your roses and not my photo, now shoo." He added begrudgingly and shooing the speedster out of his room.
Kid Flash stood in the empty hallway sadly, the last thought was some comfort, but Jinx said herself she'd not brought all she should have brought with her and she was in a daze when she packed, so it didn't really mean anything. A horrible thought stole over him, had she just joined the Titans to see Cyborg again? She had seemed pretty worried about Cyborg being mad at her. He groaned and slowly dragged himself to the main room and collapsed on the sofa face down.
After a few minutes of Robin poking him without any signs of life he left to find Cyborg.
"Hey Cyborg?" Robin asked poking his head around the door.
"What no- oh. Sorry, I thought you were Kid Flash." Cyborg smiled weakly at his leader.
"No, but I was actually going to ask you if you knew why he looked so depressed and possibly verging on dead." Robin said suspiciously.
"Urgh. He just got the wrong idea about my photo of Jinx at the HIVE dance." Cyborg shrugged indicating the photo on the wall.
"Mmm, wrong idea." Robin said flatly and left the room frowning. He'd never approved of that photo and now it was causing trouble, he realised as he headed back to the kitchen that he was being followed. He snuck a glance over his shoulder to see that it was Jinx following him absorbed entirely on balancing a plate and two mugs precariously in one hand whilst trying to carry a sketchpad and lots of pencils in the other without dropping anything, she probably hadn't even noticed him.
As he entered the living room he saw that Kid Flash had moved and was playing a new, but still somewhat depressing game.
"She loves me," He said plucking a rose petal and blowing it away, Robin quickly calculated the number of petals left on the near bare rose head and worked out that it would come to 'she loves me not'. Jinx had stopped at his side and was also watching this sad display. She walked calmly to the kitchen and set her crockery down in the sink Kid Flash had noticed her entrance but not changed what he was doing, merely the volume.
"She loves me not," he said pulling off another petal sadly, even he could see the way the rose was going to turn out. He reached for the next as Jinx was halfway across the room headed back the way she came.
"She loves me." He muttered pulling the next one off, there was only one petal left after this one. Suddenly the whole flower caught fire in his hand as Jinx walked past and left the room, he yelped and threw it to the floor and sucked his burnt fingers.
"Looks like that's the last petal." Robin smirked and left the room. Slowly Kid Flash's brain kicked in and he stared at the petal in his unburnt hand.
"She loves me?" He asked tentatively.