Chapter 2

Jade sat with her leg crossed over the other as she sat out near the front entrance to the restaurant Robin had told her to be at. She had come early, of course. She didn't want Robin to think she stood him up. She picked up the menu in front of her.

"Darrel's Crab Trap" the menu said with big blue letters. The font was obnoxious, as was the names of the items available. Marshmallow Madness was definitely superior as a breakfast place. However, Darrel's Crab Trap appeared to offer a verity of breakfast items.

She pulled the menu up to her face to examine the smaller fonts closer, scratching a non-existent itch on her cheek. Momentarily, her finger strayed to the small pink scar over her right eye. She forced her own hand away. She didn't want to think about Slade now.

"Hey."

Jade looked up, startled. When she saw Robin looking back at her, she put her menu down and greeted him with a smile.

"Hey. Here to interrogate me again?" She tried not to sound too friendly. But not too sarcastic either. She didn't want to tick him off and get herself put in jail again.

"Haha... No, actually." Robin looked sheepish as he sat down. Jade realized all of a sudden that she had never seen him without his mask before. He had blue eyes, just a few shades darker than hers. "I wanted to know how you were. So I thought we should talk."

Jade blinked in surprise. "Really? Just talk?" That had seemed the exact opposite of what had happened yesterday.

"Yes. I thought a lot about it last night, Wilson. I think that you really are trying to change for the better. So, I thought, maybe I could uh..." he fiddled with his hands as he tried to come up with a few words to finish the sentence.

"...Be your friend?" Jade asked, crossing her arms across her chest. Typical hero! Wants me to convert and be his ally! The villain in her screamed.

"Oh... well, that wasn't what I was going to say, but... uh... maybe I could find some way to... be your friend, yeah," Robin said, sort of tripping over his words.

Oh? So he didn't want to ask to be friends? Jade felt only a little bit of hurt. Of course he wouldn't actually want to be my friend on his own. He's a hero, and I was his villain. It must be so hard to trust me right now. Heck, I don't even trust me. It was true that sometimes she just wanted to say screw it all and don her villain wear again and wield her sword and take over the city. But, she never did that. Logic said that she needed people for that. Help. She couldn't do that on her own. Then logic also said You're trying to redo your whole life idiot! Don't go back now! As was the life of Jade Wilson.

"Mm... I'll... I'll think about it. And uh, you should think about it too! Because... well..." Jade paused to gesture at herself. "I'm kind of boring now. Ya know, not a villain for you to fight, not a fellow superhero for you to... fight bad guys with." She wanted to slap herself to make herself stop rambling. She was making it awkward as hell.

Deep breaths, Jade. He wants to talk. Let's talk.

"So..." the word was said with caution. "What is it that a superhero does on a day like this?" Jade had been curious about the Titan's workload for a while now. It seemed like they just waited around for bad guys to appear.

Robin shrugged. "Oh, nothing much. I'm hanging out with you. My friends are back at the tower." He paused, then his cheeks were painted a pretty pink. "Oh, you meant in general didn't you?"

Jade grinned when she saw that Robin was still very much a dork, much like the person he was 2 years ago.

"I always see you guys like... fighting huge monsters and evil villains but like... what else do you do? Hang out?" Jade placed her hands under her chin, with her elbows rested on the table.

Jade quickly learned that Robin was always delighted to share that he had graduated online high school when he turned 18, and didn't need to worry about it anymore. Beast Boy, being 16, still had school and he hated it, even if the said online school only took out two hours out of the day. Raven was 17, still going through her last year of schooling and seemed to be doing pretty well, but preferred learning magic spells more than math equations.

Speaking of math, Starfire had entered some crazy online extra-curricular course that had a crap ton of math that boggled even Cyborg, the self-acclaimed math genius of the group. Starfire had taken upon herself to try and solve every math problem her online teachers threw at her.

Robin talked like he was very proud of his team and their drive for knowledge. (Well, except Beast Boy, obviously.)

The conversation was about to steer into how Robin had to fight with them to do their exercise sometimes, so he made "fun" obstacle courses that he made mandatory ("as the Titan leader!"), and got called "The No Fun Guy". Jade found herself giggling at the anecdote. That sounded like such a "Robin" thing to do. Before they could talk about anything else, though, a waiter finally came to serve them.

They were asked (rather too enthusiastically for it to be real) what they wanted. Robin ordered salmon for brunch. Jade decided to get pancakes with fries. That was her brunch. Robin rolled his eyes.

When the waiter had walked away with his notepad, Robin started up a conversation again. "Alright, enough about me, what about you? What do you do on days like today?"

Jade suddenly felt really shy. She didn't have any school to do, being that she already had several "people person" degrees. (Movie making, sword swinging, art doing, hand shaking, giant evil machine building... the list went on.) She mostly lived a normal life as a civilian now, working at Marshmallow Madness and also had a part-time job at a junkyard.

"Not much... just working and trying to be normal. I'm trying to get by, ya know? I'm not too exciting," Jade explained. "Not as exciting as you anyway."

"What makes you say that?" Robin looked genuinely curious as he sipped his cherry drink. Jade had just gotten water.

"Well, you're, you know, you? And I'm just me. Jasmine Miller, normal person civilian here. Work at a desert shop and a junkyard too sometimes. You get to punch bad guys and look super cool." Jade had started to gesture vaguely with her hands as she spoke.

Robin ran a hand through his hair. "Hm..."

Jade felt herself get a little intrigued. "What?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry, it's nothing."

The conversation went on, mostly it was mundane stuff like how Jade came across a cafe job and her supposed junkyard job as well. She lied, hella lied, on her resumes. She covered her tracks, ("Computer science degree!" She said. "How many degrees do you even have?" Robin had replied.) and got hired by the cafe. The junkyard was way less thorough in their background searching as the job was mostly ran by ex-criminals anyway. As long as you could fix stuff, weld some, and press a button that makes the smashy-smashy machine work you're good to go.

Jade was honestly trying her hardest not to talk to anyone. "I'm paranoid... someone will find out who I am and I'll get fired or... ya know. The slammer for me again."

Robin surprised her and placed a hand on hers. "You're doing a great job, Wilson. Don't worry, I'm sure you won't be found out."

Jade suddenly felt the need to take her hand away from his at the fluttering of her stomach and fix her hair. He's so genuine. He wants to see me succeed! Typical hero... She thought this with measured affection.

When food came, Jade found that she was suddenly very hungry. Even as they were eating, conversation flowed naturally, as if they were old friends. Maybe we are old friends. Maybe we were friends in Hollywood. Maybe we could be friends again? The optimist in her said.

You were never friends with him and you never will be again! You shattered his trust and screwed yourself over tenfold in the process! A voice that sounded eerily similar to her niece, Rose, said. Blunt, harsh, unfriendly.

Just face it, sis, a voice that sounded like Slade chuckled along with his daughter. You're a villain. I raised you. You're untrustworthy and a scoundrel! As you should be.

"Are you okay?" Robin asked, bringing her out of it. Jade thanked him internally a million times. She did not want to go to dark places in the middle of a brunch.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just... nervous." It wasn't a lie at all. Her insides were less fluttery than before, but she still felt a bit on edge.

"I'm nervous too. What do you say to taking a walk to the... the park? If you want, of course," Robin suggested. They would just need to pay the bill. Jade assumed they were going to pay for what they ate individually.

"Okay, yeah... that sounds nice. Let me just get my wallet out-"

"Ah, oh no! I'm going to pay, don't worry."

Jade looked up in astonishment. "Huh? No, I'm going to pay."

"I'm loaded like a baked potato. You are working two minimum wage jobs and one of them is a junkyard."

"So? I can still pay for my own meal. You shouldn't have to!"

"I invited you. It was implied!"

And an impromptu disagreement happened on who should pay the bill happened, but then Jade realized with utter dismay that she had forgotten her wallet at home anyway, alone with her stupid key to get into her house. Robin assured her that she didn't need to worry about that now. He knew how to pick locks. Jade assumed it was from his training under Batman.

"No actually. I learned it from you." This completely shocked her.

"Me?!" She asked, nearly choking on the remainder of her water. "How? What? When?"

Robin found her reaction quite funny, she could tell, even through her disbelieving sputtering. "I saw you do it once, remember? Someone got locked out of their room so you had to un-click it for them. I was standing right next to you and figured it out. I have to say, I usually just blow doors open or go in through windows. Can't believe I didn't think of learning lock picking."

"Can't believe Batman didn't teach you. Isn't it superhero 101 to know how to pick locks to enter places quietly?" Jade asked.

"No, that's villain 101," Robin replied, playful sarcasm in his voice.

"Touché."

The waiter came out with Robin's credit card and they were set to go.

...

Jade still felt kind of bad that Robin had paid everything. "Don't feel bad," Robin said. "I'm rich, I get to spoil you."

Jade flushed. "I used to be rich too," She said quite sadly. "I'm not used to other people needing to buy things for me."

Robin looked at her sympathetically. "I know. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you." His voice held no irony.

They were walking in the park now, watching ducks play in the pond. The small animals ignored them, taking kindly to playing in the lily pads instead.

"It was hard. Jail was hard, defeat was hard, becoming someone else was hard," Jade admitted. "But, I got something good out of it, at least?"

"And what is that?" Robin asked, ever the good listening ear.

"Morals. And an escape from... being evil I guess. Sorry, this sounded better in my head."

"No, I get it. I wish most villains could do what you did. But, it doesn't work that way a lot of the time," Robin replied. He resorted to playing with the hem of his hoodie. "Uh... I've been thinking about something..."

Jade turned to look at him, encouraging him with her eyes to continue.

"... Just... I dunno, looking at you now, with some jobs, not doing bad guy things... you really have changed. And that's never happened to any villain I've fought, even ones who I hoped would turn their lives around..." He started explaining. Jade had a few ideas of where this was going, but she couldn't prepare herself for the blush that came to her face when he continued.

"I'm just so proud of you. I'm so happy for you, Wilson."

Oh. Oh.

"You are?" She asked, sitting up straight.

"Of course. How could I not be?"

If being friends with him was going to make butterflies flutter around her stomach constantly, she wasn't sure what she was going to do with it.

...

It had been nice of Robin to walk her home when he had offered. He didn't have any of his superhero gear, so he couldn't grappling hook her away with him. Jade had been carried by many superheroes before, and even Robin once, back at Hollywood, so it wasn't a strange predicament to her.

"Hey, maybe you could do it next time? Assuming you bring your hook," Jade said, shrugging.

"I'll make sure to," Robin chuckled, unlocking her door quite easily.

Jade stepped into her apartment, smiling. "Thank you for today. I actually had fun."

"Anytime. Are you free next Tuesday?"

Jade felt butterflies once again, filling her tummy warmly and uncomfortably. "Yeah. Text me."

"Goodnight, Wilson."

"Goodnight, Robin."