Intro: My, my, my but I outdid myself this time. The eddy and flow of these paragraphs mesmerizes me even now, after I've read it at least seven or eight times. Having been so absorbed in writing them the first time, it didn't occur to me just what I'd produced until quite a bit later. I generally feel that I have not a single drop of poetry in my soul, having no talent to speak of for writing actual poetry. Read this and then you decide, because prose, it would seem, is the outlet for poetry I didn't even know I contained. The appended symposium at the end is a rather abrupt change of pace, but it's integral to the continuing plot, so pay attention and see if you can tell what all I allude to.
An Interlude in the Regular Plot
Chapter 9: Starfire's Ordeal
Eddited by: Attara
After the surprisingly brief pain of being struck by an undeniable force and flung through the air, then impacting over and over again with the harsh stone, Starfire was gone from the world of the conscious for quite a while. It was incredibly easy, with the initial blow causing such an all-encompassing numbness that the later lacerations didn't even register to her already overloaded nervous system. In the end, it would seem that the blow to her body, though it nearly killed her, saved her from suffering the road rash and impact mauling.
Eventually, the sickeningly soft grip of oblivion lost its hold on her mind and she floated gently back to lucidity. "Oh my aching plishtar," she mumbled to herself as she scraped her body from the ground. The darkness had enveloped her for some unknowable amount of time, and even as she came to, everything was still jumbled by a mysterious haze that had settled on her mind while it lay unwillingly dormant. She finally managed to open her eyes, and as her vision cleared and everything slowly entered into focus, Starfire was greeted by a world very different than the one she had left behind.
All around her she could see endless meadows of fanciful watercolor landscape. Stretching toward every horizon was a green expanse of incredible and surreal beauty, as if she were sitting in a masterwork of spectacularly colorful impressionist expression, light and warmth reflected in the exaggerated smattering of blurred grasses over the hills. White birds done up with the same blurred color effect flew in small groups from place to place, and every so often an erratic boulder would stand out starkly on the landscape with its deep, forlorn grays and browns. Fluffy clouds meandered through the serene blue skies like mountainous marbled white cotton puffs suspended in the air.
"What a wondrous place..." Starfire said slowly as she took in the incredible beauty of her surroundings. Gazing open-mouthed at the gorgeous landscape, she took quite a while to notice anything else at all. When the enchanting nature of her surroundings finally wore off and she was able to turn her mind to other things, it quickly became clear that something was very wrong.
First off on the list of things she found lacking in this mysterious place she had awoken in was her dress. She was no longer wearing the extremely skimpy (comfortable was the word she used) purple mini-skirt, top, and thigh-high boot combination she'd chosen as her Titan's uniform. Rather, her brilliant golden-orange skin was unaccustomedly constrained by a beautiful, but highly conservative, long-sleeved dress. With flowing skirts and a large persistence of frills, the amazingly expensive-looking dress was still highly functional as far as range of movement and ventilation were concerned. In Starfire's eyes however, the dress's only saving grace from total intolerability was the fact that it was the same shade of vibrant purple as her old clothes had been (she felt it was her color).
Next up for things that didn't sit right with her was the fact that, although her memories of what had been going on before the darkness had overcome her were fuzzy at best, she distinctly remembered being with her friends and that they needed her. Her friends were nowhere to be seen here, nor was any other familiar thing at all. Nothing but washed out plains as far as her eyes could see.
"FRIEEENNNNDS!" she called experimentally across the grassland, then shuddered when the sound, rather than carrying endlessly on the apparently windy expanses, died almost immediately, as if the very grass sucked her words from the air, displeased that some intruder would try to interrupt the eternal serenity of the untouched wilderness. Thoroughly disturbed ("err... I mean... 'creeped out?'" she thought to herself out of habit), Starfire stood uncertainly in the vast emptiness, totally alone.
Alone had never been Starfire's strong suit, and now was no exception. Fear quickly became the principal sensation in her chest as she worried dreadfully about what could have happened to her friends, whether they were hurt or scared wherever they were, if they needed her in some essential way that she was now failing them, if somehow there was something she should be doing that she simply didn't know, and if this was causing her friends sadness, fear, or pain. Worse though, was the thought that had been sneaking up on her since she first gazed upon the wavering landscape.
Starfire may have been naive, overly trusting, and in possession of only modest command of the English language, but she was not a stupid girl. She understood almost immediately (though she tried to deny it) the dire implications of waking to find herself in a surreal and unfamiliar place, Tamaranians having more or less the same beliefs about the afterlife as every other culture. As the thought that she might be dead, gone forever from the company of her friends and loved ones, banished to a place from which she could never reach them again, as this terrible thought sunk in, tears flooded her eyes and wracking sobs built slowly in her chest.
The painful fear overwhelmed her effortlessly, and she fell to her knees in the water color grass, clutching at her chest and gritting her teeth against the terrible ache of loss and failure, an implacable succession of agonized sobs beginning their cacophony of misery. Even still, however, one fear prevailed over every other, drawing out the most bitter and painful sobs of all. She had left the world without confessing the one frightening secret that had consumed her heart for months. The one man who made her feel safe, who made her feel welcomed and appreciated in a mysterious foreign land, who was always there with a kind word and a smile to cheer her when she was sad, and who supported her even in her most troubled and uncertain times, this man was now beyond her reach. She had passed away from him without ever telling him how she truly felt, and the horrifying gravity of this bitter, soul-consuming truth threatened to tear her soul apart at the seams. "Robin..." she whispered between gasps of pain, "I love you."
Lost in heartbreak, she crouched miserably among the wavering green strands, stinging tears dropping freely to the ground. All concerns and worries were gone; all thoughts had been pushed from her consciousness by the pain; she was now alone with her misery, a single despairing soul in an afterlife of empty beauty. However, it would turn out, to her continuing shock and pain, that a kindred spirit was closer than she could ever have imagined...or feared.
As she cried her bitter tears, a change rippled through the serene landscape, grasses turning a wintry brown as the sky took on a red glare, clouds darkening and blowing hastily across the suddenly stratified horizon. Jagged strands of harsh orange cut across the red of dusk, turning the sky into a scarred and bloody mess of alternating painful colors. The birds fled and the stones transformed suddenly from forlorn to menacing while everywhere the gentle winds kicked up to an angry gale. To culminate the change, the few teardrops that had fallen to the earth began to expand, slowly at first, but then faster and faster into a large puddle of strikingly dead-still water.
Starfire noticed none of this, too wrapped up in her own grieving to know anything of the world around her. It was not until a sudden familiar feeling filled her mind that she was startled out of her reverie of pain, the one single presence that truly mattered to her at this very instant appearing so unexpectedly that no amount of pain would have annulled her to its arrival.
"R...Robin...?" She asked quietly, turning her head left and right quickly, frantically searching for the face with which this feeling always went. Seeing nothing but the frightening change in the landscape, she almost gave in to despair again before some mysterious force drew her eyes downward to the puddle that had not been there before.
When she glanced at the puddle, she was struck with the sense of a sadness and despair both like and somehow different than the one she herself harbored. It felt as though these feelings were flowing out of the mirror-clear pool like mist off a morning lake, climbing right out of the water and into her skin, mixing with her own to form a throbbing well of misery that only lost love can produce. Staggered by how much deeper the sense of loss was for its combination with this other, Starfire faltered and fell forward slightly, gazing into her reflection on the still water. For a moment, she saw her own finely clad, teary-eyed image returned, but that faded almost instantly into a view much like a video feed.
This view looked out and up at a ceiling, as though the camera was lying on its back facing up, and Starfire was startled to see none other than the familiar ceiling tiles used everywhere in Titans Tower. Urgently searching for more in the pool, she grabbed at the ground to both sides and held her face close, even as the throbbing ache of despair continued to beat in her chest.
As she moved closer, it turned out that the pool was more like a window than a video, and from very near the surface of the water she could see all around a room of bare walls and stark sterility. Various medical paraphernalia she was familiar with gave it away as a hospital room, and a look from a very uncomfortable upside-down angle showed her an image that shook her to her core. Sitting at the side of the bed, very near to where her point of view was based, was the unmistakable figure of the very man from whom she'd been railing against the universe for separating her. At the same time that her heart leapt with joy at seeing him, she realized with mystical and undeniable certainty that it was from him that this twin to her own despair was emanating, and even now the pulsing of the mated losses throbbed on ever harder within her.
At first she merely gazed in awe at the look of pain and loss on his masked face, terrified by such a despondent visage on one she always counted on for strength and support. He seemed deep in some mire of stinging thoughts, tortured by demons she couldn't know, but somehow that she felt were the same as those that tormented her even now. Even as she watched, his face reached a moment of emotional peak unlike any she'd ever seen, and in the next moment, his lips formed words she couldn't hear, but that nonetheless seared her soul.
Understanding without needing to hear that he had just returned her declaration of love, that somehow this was a vision of him standing over her body this very moment, her heart leapt with a joy that threatened to pull her from the ground. Being so unrestrained, the flash of life-redeeming happiness blasted back all the despair, all the hopeless loss that had doubled up to affect her so, and for an instant, the throb was stopped, and Starfire existed in a state of utter happiness undisturbed by any worry. Not even the knowledge that her own love was unknown to her lover could bring her down from this high of emotion she felt. All that was... all that existed in her world for this instant... was a joyful love more powerful by far even than the combined throbbing despairs of star-crossed lovers.
With a cruelty that defied all reason, vicious fate moved at this very moment to defile this purity in an act tantamount to the rape of the entire world's goodness. To Starfire's startled eyes, Robin's pain mutated hideously from an ache of the heart to an ache of the body, the change being written across his face in the annoyance and surprise that competed with the initial grimace of pain. As he reached for something behind his back, the surprise changed to shock, and he gripped his side as his face contorted in agony. Like being flung from a warm bed into a winter lake, Starfire's boundless joy was flushed away by an icy fear in one mighty sweep of panic.
Panic turned to horror as Robin tried to stand, only to fall back down to his knees next to her, pain etched into his pale features like a grim relief from some demented artist's twisted mind. Frozen in unbelieving terror, Starfire watched unflinchingly as his attempts to cry out for help were stifled by a strangled gagging that painted the sheets covering her with flecks of bright red blood. She was transfixed by the unbelievable horror of the scene, like a deer in the headlights, a mouse staring down a cat, or any other living thing faced with an incomprehensibly terrible happening.
She unfroze at long last when her love's weakened flailing came to a stop, and he slumped slowly forward onto her bed, head lying near her stomach as a slow trickle of blood crept from his mouth to her sheets. With an incoherent sob of raging despair that not even the sound-consuming grasses of this barren and dying wonderland could quell, Starfire felt her heart shatter into a billion serrated shards, lacerating her mind and soul with burning agony as they exploded outward from her chest, creating a pain that knew no accurate description. The stark unfairness of it riddled her psyche with holes just as quickly as her disintegrating heart, and question after beseeching question blurred together as they raced though her perforated mind.
How could such a terrible thing happen to two people that loved one another? What universe could allow such injustice, such terrible pain to befall young lovers at the very inception of their infatuation? Wasn't there anything anyone could do, any intervention that could avert this tragedy? Where was her deus ex machina? Where was her cavalry? Who rescued the rescuers, or watched over those who watched over everyone else? And above all else, echoing through her mind without end was: why does Robin have to die?
She felt that, knowing his love requited her own, she might just have been able to bear being separated from him during his full and happy life, even should he deign to love another with her gone. The thought that he would die too, so soon after she had come to this realm of non-life, never knowing that his love was returned by her a thousand-fold, future stolen thoughtlessly by a villain's rage and his own noble decision to place his life between innocent people and those that would steal away their freedom and happiness, this thought cut through her remaining sanity and pressed her mercilessly into a state of numbness that quickly consumed her being.
Her pain was not gone, her despair far from quiet, but her mind simply couldn't comprehend these twin feelings any longer, and her consciousness began to fade even as she welcomed the saving respite offered by oblivion. In a fit of burnt out emotion, her body stiffened as if petrified and her eyes glazed over like those of a taxidermist's pet project. To her wracked spirit, anything was preferable to another instant of knowing the miserable fate of her first and only love and life. The feelings weren't done with her, however, and managed to drag her back in a most merciless manner.
Flooding out of the pool like a geyser, the liquid shot a blast of despair, pain, and rage at injustice that dwarfed the trickling mist of moments ago. The blast flooded over her body as she arched suspended in taut agony over the pool so that her streaming eyes gazed upon the pale countenance of her dying love. As it passed through her, around her, and into her, it combined with her own comparably sized feelings to create an unstoppable pillar of raw emotion that melted away her savior the numbness like morning dew before the sun. Instantly it replaced it with a new throbbing of pain that pounded through her body like the entire Moldovian Slarg Drive was riding across her soul. The throbbing heightened until it felt as though her whole body was one huge heart of pain, beating out over and over again with the combined sorrows of two loves dying in spectacular flair.
The throbbing continued to worsen incessantly, denying Starfire unconsciousness even as it ripped her spirit a little bit closer to complete self-destruction with every rhythmic blast of overwhelming agony. Just when she felt that she could take it no more, that the next blast would tear her mind apart and dash the tattered remains upon the stones, a new feeling flooded her totally with another unstoppable sensation.
Rage. Rage at the injustice, at the unfairness, at the staggering and insurmountable waste of it all finally had its say in this matter of uncontrollable emotions purging Starfire's soul of all happiness and love. With a white-hot searing that blanked out every iota of emotional pain, the rage ripped through her body and wrenched at her spirit. A howl of raw fury that dwarfed any heard before and any likely ever to be heard again burst forth from her lips, describing a pain that was as boundless as the vastness of space and deeper than the event horizon of a black hole. Screeching her fury to the world, she flung her hands into the air with a jerk that stiffened her whole body except her still kneeling legs, holding her hands to the sky as if to beseech some higher power for recourse to quell the unending fury that consumed her being. A slow green glow bled into her eyes.
With the sound of a thermonuclear explosion, twin supernovas of emerald energy blossomed forth from her outstretched hands and flashed out to consume her surroundings in the purifying flames of righteous fury. Stripping away the dead phantasmal landscape, shockwaves of super-heated air fled the straining spires of light as they licked up toward the clouds, until those too were forced to part away from the undeniable melting heat. By the time her initial scream of rage had finally tapered off, her lungs simply no longer capable of expelling another puff of air, the destruction had already claimed a mile-radius circle around her, leaving nothing but melted slag and scorched earth where the green death had passed.
Her rage nearly exhausted, Starfire had only one thing left in her soul. With tears that fairly shot from her iridescent eyes, bitterness consumed her at last, all else having been slaked by the ravaging of her psyche and the purging of her surroundings. Bringing the two green solar flares in her hands together, she smashed them down into the pool beneath her with every last vestige of strength she had left, expressing the combined frustration of two once shining souls in the most eloquent and concise gesture ever conceived for the purpose. The instant the shining fury touched the water everything froze.
What should have happened included earth shattering explosions and the opening of hundred-mile deep volcanic clefts in a swirling apocalypse of green destruction. Instead, Starfire was left empty and aware as the world around her was caught in a freeze frame. She could feel the barest trickle of moisture on her clenched fists where they had just started to enter the water—because instead of vaporizing at the merest thought of touching the jade anger of suns still clenched in her fists and towering up into the sky above her, the water passed by the flares as though they weren't there.
Caught in this frozen world, Starfire was suddenly granted a mind clear of controlling emotions, and the sudden lack was disorienting in the extreme. Lightheaded to the point of tipsiness, Starfire bemusedly noticed the gentle trickling of water across her hands, realizing detachedly that it, along with her thoughts, were the only two things not caught in eternal relief.
Even as she realized this, the new emptiness within Starfire was filled with something, a kind of resonance that vibrated in an indescribable place between her mind and soul. The revitalizing tones of pure sensation were neither painful nor pleasurable, but instead energizing and uplifting without any apparent reason. As they flowed and fluttered though her being, she felt herself letting go, allowing all emotion and tension still caught in her body to flow away on the soothing melody that was played on her soul.
When she had been emptied of strife and pain, then it was her mind that began to flow away. Slowly but surely, her consciousness seeped out of her body through the tiny tickling area where the water touched her hands, everything left within the quickly draining vessel of her form in this place flooding out to the scene where her love lay desiccated upon her corporeal shell.
With the sensation of doing a back flip underwater, Starfire found herself opening her eyes to look at the same ceiling she had first glimpsed in the pool of her own tears. Sitting up, she found that she felt very light, and a quick look down confirmed that this was because she had sat up right out of her body, leaving it lying on the med-bay bed. Her being was now a swirling silhouette of her former body done in a mixture of green and orange light, beautiful beyond description.
Looking to her lap, she spotted the muscular stature of her heart's desire sprawled in defeat near her side. The blood flowing from his lips had begun to pool on her sheets, and was even now dripping off the side of the bed and onto the white tiles below. Staring lovingly down at him, she admired the still noble gleam of the faded blue energy that enveloped him even as she pulled herself out of her body and leaned over herself to get close to him. The sight of him consumed her being, absorbing all of her attention, even closing out the insistent silver flashing that persisted at the corner of her vision.
Leaning down slowly, savoring every instant of what was likely to be her last pleasure, Starfire pressed her ghostly lips against his bloody ones. With the unification of the two matched souls, a slowly building flare flashed out from the two, barely noticed by Starfire, who was possessed of no feeling but love. Love bathed her heart, her mind, her soul, her spirit, and every other distinguishable part of her whole, enveloping her in warmth that soothed. Joy more pure than freshly fallen snow inundated her as she was granted this one solitary chance at expressing her love before both she and her love passed to whatever awaited them beyond.
Interlude in the Interlude
A quick treatise on the Nature of Heroes and the Duality of Fate and Chance
(Narrator)
Starfire had, while in the throes of despair, asked: who rescues the rescuer? Generally, the rescuer, the hero, the altruist, these people are forced to be responsible for themselves, facing their challenges alone by the very nature of their decisions to challenge in the first place. An act of heroism is inherently a solitary act, a hero being an outlier among those without that special spark of bravery, caring, foolhardiness, or bravado necessary to do what others won't. Unfortunately, when one dances along the knife's edge of ridiculous danger, risking life and limb for another, only someone willing to go to similar lengths of risk could possibly be able to 'rescue' you. This of course is why hero teams originated.
Now you see, when these beings who act alone to tread where others dare not band together, they suddenly become capable of watching out for each other. To someone who acts out in more than a totally spontaneous manner (i.e. a rash act of a normal person to save others on a one time basis), having someone similarly willing to go up against all odds around to 'cover your six' is one of the greatest comforts imaginable. The endless tale of the hero shows that only an act of heroism can help one acting heroically, so the lone wolf is very often the dead one. The odds don't like to be messed about with, and heroes never learn that before they try to beat the odds: they need to be sure they can survive the odds beating them. Thus being the odds, it is the fate of all who continually act heroically, no matter how much support these people garner, to die in the act.
The point is, Robin had placed the well-being of his friends and his duty to repay their trust with his concern before the threat to his own life, and for this he was fated to pay the ultimate price. Starfire acted to save the millions that Blue would have killed, as well as to protect her friends that faced this challenge with her and the secret desire of her heart that she could not bear to see destroyed, and for this she was fated to lie comatose for the rest of her natural life, stranded on the in-between realms among life, death, and dream.
Fate, however, is not as ironclad as some would have you believe. In the great accounting that traces our lives and tracks what has happened and what may yet happen, there is in fact a great deal of room for variability. Even though it seems that the course of events has reached such a head that only this or that end can result, and even though the Powers That Be have already acted in expectation of this end, shoring up loose bits in the fabric of existence, still some unexpected happening can waltz in and throw a wrench into the march of Fate. Because Fate may map out the course of all that happens, has happened, and has yet to happen, but blind Chance is a cheating bastard, and just loves to throw fate a curveball and a big whopping Fuck You every now and then.
So it was that we have our current situation. Robin and Starfire were fated to die lonely deaths after suffering for the impudence of thinking they could love one another in this cruel universe of ours and challenging the odds by being heroes. Pity being granted where it was due, the Powers That Be allowed a fluke of spiritual resonance to bring them together for a single instant of pure fulfillment before the end. Then of course, as we all know, Chance had a few choice rude words and gestures for the plan, and allowed his ever-vigilant agent of Fate-busting, Skye, to make a strikingly poetic end into a spectacularly romantic beginning.
It should be noted that when Fate and Chance make a stand like this, it's only in connection with the future of the multiverse as a whole, with the two in eternal opposition over whether things should go with what is most likely to happen or whether the long shot will win out. In a universe moving toward constant entropy, it is always the destroyers, the takers, and the killers that are most likely to succeed, that have Fate behind them, which, of course, makes Chance the perennial patron of the superhero.
Fate had the more or less unstoppably likely success of the Color Syndicate all lined up, maneuvering things for one of its best apocalypse (the ultimate end of all fate) routes ever, as shown by prophesy in every dimension by every being sensitive to such things. In this particularly multiverse-shaking conflict, Chance had outdone itself however, and all the prophesies of Fate wouldn't stop the pure unpredictability that one set of matched souls, two sets of wildcard pairs, and the ultimate rarity, a set of souls in polar opposition, could wrought upon the best-laid plans of Fate.
Now enough of this tirade on the underlying forces of the fabric of the universe and on with the story.
Preview: Starfire's odyssey out of the hinterlands of psychic existence (which all comatose people are subject to before they awaken) was supposed to have lasted forever. With a nudge from Skye and a helping hand from Raven, plus a little something unexpected to all parties, yet another of Fate's dire circumstances will be thwarted most amusingly. Stay tuned, because it's sweet, but far from short. Up Next: The Journey.