Hello all! I hope you like this chapter. I'm still not crazy about it, but I wasn't making any real changes to it either so...here it is. I'm still meaning to respond to last chapter's reviews (thanks so much!), but between writing this and starting a new quarter at school and other responsibilities I just haven't had the time. Until I do, please know that I still really appreciate the support!
Please enjoy :)
Chapter 11
Alice stared at Robin. She couldn't be sure, but the young hero seemed to be somewhere between blood-boiling furious and nauseously heartbroken. Either way, he wouldn't look at her. Not that she cared. He wasn't here to be her friend.
She had heard Batman's orders. They made sense. Red Tornado, the only other German-speaking Cave resident (excluding her, apparently), was away on personal business, and she had already been exposed to everything in Robin's mind, so who better to keep an eye on her while her collar was being renovated? She could go crazy again and Robin would just take her down, no sweat. Only another bruise, another headache.
Sigh. Add them to the collection.
Robin shifted, still frozen at the end of her bed. He was staring at something on the floor slightly to his right. She was looking at him. Neither spoke. Alice didn't care.
Distantly, she wondered if the League would ever let her go. Or perhaps she would grow old in this secret non-prison, alone in the center of a glorified landfill. Or perhaps she would kill herself and be spared the whole mess. Hmm.
She had stopped crying, which was probably good. She had also started scratching at that chapped spot high on her left bicep, which was probably not good. It was bleeding, but it still itched. It didn't hurt, but it still itched. She felt her nails bite deeper.
She gulped. The action was uncomfortably restricted by the metal collar still wrapped around her neck, and she silently retched, her right hand instinctively traveling from her arm to her throat.
The movement caught Robin's attention, and Alice froze. He was looking at her now, his body tense, ready, waiting. His weight was balanced on the balls of his feet, his arms slightly (hesitantly?) extended toward her. They stayed like that for a few moments until Alice carefully moved her hand away from the collar's latch and Robin breathed a tiny sigh of relief.
But they were still looking at each other. Alice knew she should probably break the contact, and that she was probably acting strangely by not doing so. But her mind and body were like mismatched cogs; everything she should be doing was theoretical, as meaningless as fantasies, and so she did nothing.
Robin didn't look away either, which Alice guessed was probably also weird. His expression was odd too, like a toddler staring into the eye of a giant blue whale at the aquarium. Scared, curious, and…seemingly at a loss? Or maybe she was more like a circus freak, and he was the awed, intimidated observer. Either way, she didn't really care. Either way, it didn't really matter.
But then it mattered, because his hands were no longer reaching toward her; they were on his face, wedging themselves between skin and mask, pulling it away, rubbing off the adhesive goo still stubbornly stuck around his eyes.
Her heart did a funny little jump, like an old car grazing the edge of a pothole. He always covered his eyes. Always, always, always…
Robin coughed, his crystal blue gaze finally shifting away. "I, uh… I've got a headache," he justified awkwardly, "and I figured that it doesn't really matter since you already know…everything…" He cleared his throat, winding his limp mask between his fingers.
"Doesn't…matter," Alice repeated weakly, because it didn't anymore.
"*Genau," Robin muttered. Alice didn't ask what that meant. It didn't matter either.
"We don't hate you," Dick lied suddenly. She could tell it was a lie. Or maybe it was more like an invention. That would make Dick an inventor, and she liked the sound of that more.
"Mmm," Alice responded, watching the domino mask continue to slither through his fingers. She could feel his gaze on her again, settling on her shoulders like a soggy blanket. Uncomfortable. Consuming.
Hmm.
"We are just trying to be careful, you know?" Dick continued. "So that no one gets hurt."
Alice crouched closer into her knees, raking her fingers over the raw spot on her arm. It was warm to the touch. And sticky, like the remaining bits of glue still clinging to Dick's cheek. "M'gann," she whispered hoarsely.
Alice heard Dick take a deep breath through his nose, and his mask suddenly snagged in his rigid fingers. "Yes," he confirmed, and Alice could hear the hatred seething in his voice.
"Angry," Alice pointed out. She was apparently down to single-word sentences now, not that it mattered. She could be Shakespeare and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. Except that she would be long dead. Hmm.
There was a long pause, and Dick stiffly wrung his mask in his hands. "Yes."
"Okay," Alice accepted. "Okay."
Dick moved, leaving Alice staring at empty air. The chair beside her squeaked. She expected silence then. Instead, words seemed to explode from someone on her right. Someone? Dick, of course.
"An old villain of Batman's once asked him the difference between a murderer using his car to run down innocent people and a seizure victim crashing and killing a family," Dick recalled quickly, as if he was desperate to prolong the inevitable return of silence. "After all, they were both technically killers. He figured that, at the end of the day, the difference didn't matter much to anyone.
"But it matters!" he insisted in the same breath, a fisted glove coming down hard on his knee. "It has to, or else everything we work for is for nothing. Because people can be innocent and guilty at the same time." Dick shifted in his seat, possibly from craning his neck to see Alice's face around her boney knees. "In the gray, that's where we have to look sometimes. Because it isn't always black and white."
Alice looked at him from beneath knotted locks of caramel. "But I'm…still guilty."
Dick nodded, clenching his fists on his thighs. "But you're still innocent."
She pursed her lips, her eyes stinging with invisible tears. "But you're still angry."
Dick leaned forward, his polar eyes stabbing into her own. "Yes. But you're still innocent."
l-l-l
Her German was getting worse. At first Robin thought that she might've been using some sort of dialect he was unused to, or that she was just limited due to the damage done to her throat, but now he was sure. Her grammar and vocabulary were deteriorating, which left only one question:
If she fully forgot how to speak German…what would happen?
Gun to his head (an expression Robin hated from experience), Robin would put his money on her English returning. After all, her grammar was showing traces of some English sentence structures, and she had started to use literally translated English phrases instead of their correct German counterparts. Still, there was a chance she would simply switch to a completely different language, or even go silent altogether. As much as he hated to admit it, it was simply too early to tell.
Not to mention this sort of thing shouldn't even be possible in the first place! Sure, there were cases of people suddenly adopting a foreign accent after a bad hit to the head, but spontaneously utilizing a whole other language without realizing it? It was like her brain was translating her English without her permission or acknowledgement before it ever got to her mouth.
Robin sighed. Another mystery needing a solution. This girl…
He looked at her then, eyes bare. She seemed to be taking his words into consideration, her brow furrowed from some sort of internal discussion. He was thankful for that; she had obviously been careening through some kind of emotional tailspin. And as angry as he was, he didn't want her feeling like that. It simply wasn't in his nature, not when she quickly seemed to be more victim than culprit.
But boy, was he angry. She had hurt his friends, put their secrets at risk, wedged divisions between the Team. Things had been going so smoothly (or as smoothly as could be expected) before she showed up, but now everything was spinning out of control. Bruce was constantly on edge, Aqualad was now struggling to keep the Team from shattering, M'gann was desperately trying to hold herself together, Superboy was a bad comment away from going off the rails, and God only knew where Artimis and Wally were! Not to mention Robin himself had just crumpled under another wave of crippling self-doubt in front of his leader, a theoretically therapeutic experience that instead only left him feeling guiltier for adding to Kaldur's already lofty burden.
And this girl was the reason for it all. He wanted so badly to hate her, if not just for simplicity's sake. But try as he might, he couldn't see her as just another enemy. Enemies weren't so lost, guilt-ridden, or fragile. They didn't screech apologies or graciously follow rules. They weren't so open with their lives, their trust, their hearts.
"*Mein…Name ist Alice," the girl whispered, jarring Robin from his mental monologue.
Robin looked at her for a long minute, trying to suppress the hope budding in his chest. Could it be possible? Could she have actually remembered her real name? Or maybe, he thought as a sliver of fear pierced his gut, she never really forgot it in the first place. Despite Robin's inclination toward the contrary, she could still be a spy, strategically biding her time, doling out crumbs of information to regain his trust…
He resisted the urge to lick his lips. "Really?
"*Echt," she confirmed hoarsely. "Mein Geburtsname...ist mir entfallen, so ich wähle Alice."
Robin forced a small smile, his hope evaporating. She still had no idea was her actual name was; Alice was just her choice as a substitute. Which was great, really. He just had to make his anger and frustration get with the program and stop wrestling in his gut.
He looked up just in time to see her face fall. "Sorry," she murmured, hunching so deeply that her nose became wedged between his knees. "*Er macht nichts."
Guilt wormed into the emotional cocktail already simmering in his gut. "No, it –it does matter," he responded, his voice unconvincing and drained. "Congrats."
Alice didn't respond, making Robin rub his forehead in quiet exasperation. Where the hell was Red Tornado? He couldn't handle this for much longer.
"Alice, I know it seems bad right now," he offered reluctantly, trying to ignore the irrational sense of betrayal lining his throat and whispering Judas in his ear. "But it's going to get better, okay?"
"*Das ist Kuhscheiße," she swore bitterly. Robin stared at her, his lips slightly parted in surprise. The girl –Alice, he reminded himself– was typically so polite. He had only ever heard her swear on accident, and even then she immediately apologized. Her blatantly calling his assurances bullshit was obviously a whole different game. "Kennst du warum?"
"Do I know why it's bullshit?" Robin repeated dumbly. "It's not-"
She unfolded herself angrily, spinning to face him. "Ich habe keine Problem, Robin!" she shrieked, her voice splintering under the force. "Ich bin das Problem!"
l-l-l
"I don't have a problem, Robin! I am the problem!"
Robin continued to stare at her. She wanted to apologize, but the distress whirling within her kept it from reaching her lips.
"I attacked Superboy and I hurt M'gann!" She scoffed sarcastically, feigning sudden remembrance. "Oh! And let's not forget; I attacked you too!" She wheezed, trying to breathe through the mounting pain all over her body.
"And you can't fix me," she concluded crisply, her eyes burning as much as her throat. "And I can't fix me. So don't tell me it's going to be okay."
Silence.
Then:
"You know, that's pretty selfish."
Alice's mouth dropped open and she felt her anger whoosh out of her. "What?"
Robin shifted back in his seat, looking exhausted. "This ability of yours, you keep talking about it like it's some sort of disease that needs to be cured." She watched his glacial eyes study her. "Are you completely blind to the amazing things you can do?"
She stared at him, completely taken aback. "I hurt people, Robin."
"I haven't forgotten," he retorted dryly, taking a deep breath. "But you could do a lot of good if you wanted to, with some help and practice. But that'll never happen if you don't stop treating every skill you discover like a new demon to exorcise."
She bit her lip. Robin's words were offering her a rosy future to strive for, one with friends and purpose and people she could help. It was beautiful –painfully, heart-wrenchingly, overpoweringly beautiful.
She shook her head, casting the image away. "You don't get it," she rasped. "I'm a time bomb. This time it was Conner, but who knows who's next?" She loosely drew her legs in once more, her arms crossed in front of her. Her right index finger impulsively found the raw spot on her arm again and began to scratch. "I could turn on anyone," she confessed, her voice audibly straining. "I could hurt M'gann again, you again, with my mind or who knows how else!" She met his eyes, steely and cool. "And you want me to be okay with that?"
Robin opened his mouth, but no words emerged.
She shook her head again, cutting his silence off at the root. "Call it selfish or wasteful or shortsighted or whatever you want, but until tonight…" She sighed tiredly, her lips tensing. "You guys were the only people I can remember calling friends, you know?" She felt her cheeks grow warm and she rolled her shoulders in embarrassment, her eyes casting off to the side. "And while the feeling might not go both ways anymore, I still think of you guys as my friends. And I won't let myself –or my demons– hurt any of you, no matter what."
I hope you enjoyed it, and as always I appreciate any feedback. Just in case the translations aren't clear enough in the story (and if this is the case please let me know), here they are:
1) "Genau" is a very German word, if that makes any sense. It means something along the lines of "clearly" or "right" and Germans (at least the ones I've talked to) say it all the time. It's very conversational, so Robin accidentally slips and response to Alice in German (since that is what he's hearing).
2) "Mein Name ist Alice" means "My name is Alice." Typically one would say "Ich bin Alice" or "Ich heiße Alice" (I am called Alice), but her German is deteriorating into English a bit. This phrasing might be more right than I know, but it is also more like English, which is what I was going for anyway.
3) "Echt. Mein Geburtsname...ist mir entfallen, so ich wähle Alice." = "Really. My birth name escapes me, so I choose Alice."
4) "Er macht nichts." In this case, "er" is referring to the masculine word "Name," so it means "it" instead of "he." The full sentence translates literally as "It makes nothing" and correctly as "It doesn't matter."
5) "Das ist Kuhscheiße. Kennst du warum?" = "That is bullshit. Do you know why?"
And that's all! Message me with any questions or (if you know German) corrections. Although her German is not supposed to be perfect at this point, so keep that in mind!
