Intro: I tried to cover a lot of bases with this one. Having wrung myself out on science fiction and action, dabbling in a little drama and angst seemed like a good idea. However, this is where my confidence in my own writing ability peters out… I can't say it's my favorite subject to write on, and I fear that may reflect somewhat on the quality. Then again, I actually wrote this and realized it wasn't half bad… so hey, maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. Anyway, review and send me an opinion other than my own, I'd appreciate it.
Chapter 21 (Section 5, part 2): Confrontations
Raven's Room
Raven opened her eyes. For a moment, she was incredibly disoriented, the familiar accoutrements of her room doing little to counter the odd angle she'd slept in and the disgusting clinging sensation of the plethora of filth coating her body. Her mind raced for something solid to grasp onto, some anchor of memory or thought, dream or nightmare, anything that would give her some clue as to how much time had passed since she'd faded from waking consciousness, but there was nothing.
After a frantic, heart-racing moment of panic, she finally found the last moment of memory from the night before, and the world began to coalesce in her mind. Cyborg had helped her to her room, and after shoveling him out again she'd locked her door, stumbled to her bed, and passed out face first across it without even removing her cape, much less anything else. She'd slept the sleep of the dead, a dreamless instant of darkness connecting the moment she'd closed her eyes with the moment she opened them, and now her mind was finally overcoming the disorientation this caused to be left fresh and renewed. There was no sleep to rub from her eyes and no urge to roll over and return to the cradle of oblivion. In fact, there was a long and extremely pleasant moment where there was no urge to do anything at all. Then of course her night caught up with her.
The flood of memories hit her harshly, consuming her mind in chaos as all half dozen hours of it cried out for her attention and analysis at the same time. Groaning with the effort, she pressed all those memories, doubts, fears, pains, pleasures, and uncertainties into a box within her mind, shielding herself from the experiences as though they hadn't happened. The chaos was replaced by a nagging in the back of her head that would prevent her from disregarding them permanently, and suddenly she was clear to turn her concentration to her immediate and vital concerns.
She felt filthy. As she got up from her bed, a sickening peeling sound and sensation confirmed that she was indeed quite coated in grime and… other things. When she'd managed to get up to her knees on top of her bed, she waved a hand at the room in general and muttered something in an arcane language, compelling various lanterns and orbs in the space to light with a soft, ethereal glow. Scrupulously avoiding looking down at herself, she got her feet under herself and slid off her bed, making her way over to her vanity table. She wanted to take in the whole picture at once… it would save time.
When she finally got into view from the mirror, she realized it might have been a better idea to take it piece by piece. She felt her heart drop as she was overtaken by a variety of emotions that manifested by, ironically, cracking her mirror quite viciously down the middle. It didn't matter though, because she'd already had her own awful visage burned into her memory. As she stumbled over the horror of what she looked like, she rather morbidly tried to relate each marring to some event behind that shield in her mind.
For example, her own hair, always meticulously trimmed in the style she'd worn since her childhood in Azarath, was now a complete mess. Utterly caked with dirt and muck, it bloomed in every direction due to a combination of the heavy sweating and her having fallen asleep with her hood on. In her own opinion, she looked like a heard of cattle had mistaken her head for a salt lick.
Moving down to her face, she couldn't quite handle what she saw. The layers upon layers of grime she'd accumulated by running through dust clouds of a fallen building and hiding in piles of rubble had congealed into a panoply of scum which had enjoyed several hours of her rubbing it against her sheets in her sleep. The result was a swirling mess of gray, orange, black, and every imaginable intermediary all spread around her face. What really got to her, what sent harsh feelings scratching against the cage she'd placed them in, were the tiny etched pathways of clean skin in the dirt layers, the ones trailing from her eyes and down her cheeks.
She quickly shifted her focus to her cape and leotard, the blue and black combo having taken quite the beating over the course of the night. Severe exertion was what the material it was made from was designed for, but what it had faced the night before had been beyond extreme, and it showed this quite clearly. Her cape was ruined, the multitude of stains telling a story of industrial chemicals, construction materials, and copious bleeding (none of which she'd contributed). Her leotard was almost rigid with the meshing of sweat with grime, the whole thing gone to a sort of gray dappled with brown and black from the dust that had settled on her after the building fell. As she moved, there was a grinding and grating sound accompanying the multitude of rough patches against her skin, and so she tried her best to remain still as she looked down at her legs.
It turned out that every drop of blood she'd lost the night before had come from a series of bad scratches sustained during her duel with the robot assassin dogging Skye. The markings had all scabbed over now, crusted red trails dug dully into the gray grimy layers covering her legs. Her boots were also a complete loss, the trip she'd taken through that disaster site leaving them so coated in scratches, dust, and grime that she pretty well decided to ditch them the second she laid eyes on them.
In disgust, she flipped off her cloak, dropping it to the ground as she realized something was wrong with her hands as well. Despite moderate efforts on her part earlier to remove it, she still had deep red stains on her flesh where Skye's blood had seeped into her skin. She was disgusted, the red stains trailing up to the still-encrusted coating of red that crowded around each of the gems buckling her sleeves down and so on up her wrists. Frantic to get it off, she unbuckled her wrists and began trying to pull of the leotard, the crusted, clinging, stiff material completely refusing to comply. Figuring the give room in the back was clogged with something, Raven resorted to desperate measures, so much was her stomach turned by the sensation against her skin.
Charging her body with her power, she shifted her flesh sideways through reality, sliding out of her cloths in an instant and leaving them behind on the floor, almost standing on their own in a pile. Moments later she was in her bathrobe, brushing some of the grime out of her hair as her mind moved on to other things.
Terra. Now that the immediate crisis of her being was past, her terror for what had happened to the other woman resurfaced with a vengeance. As soon as she'd separated enough clumped grime out of her hair to get it all going in the same general direction, she threw her brush onto the vanity with its shattered mirror and phased herself through space.
In a flash of black energy she was standing on the medical floor, barefoot and wearing nothing but a bathrobe. This somehow failed to imprint on her as her heart continued to race with concern, the total lack of anyone around being more of an unappreciated boon than a circumstance to give her pause. Traveling immediately over to the only room with any occupants, the room radiating Skye's energy like an intangible breeze, Raven advanced without the slightest thought until she was standing at the door. Finally, she was given pause by the play of that silver power across her aura.
For some reason, she couldn't resist the urge to answer that call with power of her own, the almost tantalizing waves of energy sifting through space evicting a strong reaction from her aura. As she felt her own power raise in response to his, coating her body in a black cloak with fizzing white edges, pulling forth the white glow from her eyes and focusing in dark pools around her hands, she stopped only momentarily before phasing through the door and floating right into the room. Hovering inches over the floor, she began to take in her surroundings.
Terra lay peacefully on the hospital bed, Skye's power radiating off of her like heat off a baked highway. Skye himself was passed out in a chair next to the door, and it took her only a moment's examination to recognize that his body was vacant. Freed from the subconscious but powerful fear of being confronted by him looking like she did right now, her focus returned fully to satisfying the terror plaguing her heart.
Hovering over to the side of the bed, still cloaked in her black energy, Raven turned fluorescent eyes down to examine what Skye had done so far. The radiance was a throbbing vessel of his energy centered in Terra's skull, and as she looked closer Raven felt her breath stolen by the striking construction nestled between Terra's ears. It was the single most complex psychic structure she'd ever laid senses on, and it throbbed with such a healing force that her mere proximity to it was a soothing presence in her mind. Pulling her senses away from it, Raven looked back at Skye, a terrible uncertainty planted in her, even as her fear for Terra evaporated.
Raven had only to look at Terra's face, a single glance telling her that her friend was far better than before, despite her ongoing lack of a sentient consciousness. This was so certain because, replacing the dead, empty, and slack visage of the previous night, the one Raven had feared would haunt her (blessedly absent) nightmares, was the slightest, but oh so meaningful, smile. It was this that eased her fear, and she whispered a silent thanks to Skye's empty shell as she felt that pain dissipate.
However, at the same time, she felt a new uncertainty blossom. Skye had done something Raven hadn't even considered possible, performing the kind of high-level telepathic surgery that surpassed anything in her experience. Spiritual healers and their ilk were a dime a dozen in this cosmos, the talent as natural as any other manifestation of psychic ability. However, this time Skye had done something unique, something utterly special, and it frankly put Raven off harshly. It made her question once more just who the hell they were dealing with.
Granted this was no longer a question of trustworthiness, he'd proven in blood and fire just how dedicated he was to maintaining the trust they'd vested in him after all. Nor, really, was it a matter of frightened distancing as it had been when she couldn't get herself to stop panting over him, when she'd thought she was loosing her mind. None the less her questions persisted, her suspicions refused to rest, and slight fears flared unavoidably when she thought of him.
What exactly did they have in his mysterious young man from space? Where did he learn all these abilities, all these languages, so very much more than it seemed possible for anyone to learn in a few years of life? What was his mysterious connection to her, and why did he seem like so very much more than what he presented himself as? Considering how very much he surpassed what seemed humanly possible, was he even Terran like he claimed?
By all accounts he seemed like a human from Earth, but he hid so very much that Raven, a past master of concealing personal information, couldn't help but feel concern over it. After all, 90 of what she hid from others was a tissue of horrors so extreme that she herself couldn't quite handle them. What did that say about this guy? How might his secrets come back to make them all suffer like hers threatened to?
It was this last question more than any other that motivated what she did next. Hovering over to him, she descended until she was directly next to him. So close that she could smell the persisting odor of blood and sweat on his body, noticing the way it mingled with the same smell on her own, she looked into him with every shred of ESP she could muster.
Unlike the night before, this most recent effort of his had drained him to the point that his soul had dimmed, so much power had he expended. Now, when she looked at his aura, she did not see a blinding silhouette of utter masculinity, but rather the very surface and structure of his being. Much as her soul was twisted by the taint of her father's influence, mutilated far from anything a mortal person should possess, he too was deviant. Skye's spirit was all wrong from every angle Raven's mind could tackle it from. Her ability to tell such things was not as practiced as Skye's, but she was well read on what constituted the true aura of a human being, and Skye… well he didn't seem to qualify.
He had no demon's mark, no distortion that would give him up as child of either the upper or lower planes, but none the less he was not possessed of anything describable as normal. Rather than the enhancement of human form that would represent the spirit of any given hero, or the twisted form that would describe a monster, Skye had a sort of… slanted soul. On his left there was a normal spirit, pristine in its organization and magnificent in its purity, but otherwise not out of the ordinary. On his right… his right defied Raven's ability to understand.
It was as though the right side of his soul was an empty vessel filled by a swirling silver energy. There was a soft white edge to it, but it was otherwise transparent, Raven able to pick up the dull blank lifelessness of the chair behind him right through his soul in those places where that swirling power parted in its extensive dance through his body. The chain-like starbursts of energy spun in almost serpentine chaos throughout the blank right side, twirling about one another in a symphony of continual motion that was almost entrancing. Raven had never even imagined a soul like that, and she snapped back from him in confusion and uncertainty as her curiosity threatened to transform once more into mistrust.
"Skye, I owe you so much now, but… there will have to be a reckoning," she whispered out loud into the empty room, her voice echoing oddly as the power still surrounding her body interfered. As though in response, Skye began to stir, and Raven could feel his consciousness reentering his body. Deciding discretion was still very much what she desired, she retreated through space, evaporating back up to her room in a cloud of black energy.
Outside of that cloud of his power, her energy calmed down again, and she was once more a dark young woman in a powder-blue bathrobe. Her mind abuzz with new thoughts, not to mention the nagging sensation of all the things from the night before still demanding her attention, Raven grabbed a towel and some various other toiletries. It would be no use thinking about anything before she'd showered.
Titans Tower Common Room, some minutes later
Starfire glided gently into the Tower's main room, sleep still burdening her eyes, a blanket clenched tightly about herself. At some point during the haze of sleep she'd been drifting in and out of, a certain new urge had become far more prominent than her exhaustion. Now she made a direct, if rather sluggish, flight line for the refrigerator and dining alcove. The blanket billowed around her like a drapery as she shifted slowly across the room's airspace, oblivious to anything but a lethargic urge to fill her stomach. Considering her exhaustion then, it was perfectly understandable that she didn't notice the room's other occupant.
"Good morning!" snapped a rather chipper, if simultaneously quite exhausted, voice. Starfire nearly fell out of the air, so utter was her surprise, and while she caught herself before even almost hitting the ground, her startled jerk was more than enough to shred her blanket with her super strength. She twisted around in midair to get a face to go with the unfamiliar voice, and when she finally did catch sight of him, she drew a complete blank.
"Or rather… good afternoon," he continued, Starfire's mind too muddled with sleep to even make a decision on weather to be wary of this guy or not. He certainly didn't seem threatening, sitting at the kitchen table bent over multiple small metal pieces of something he'd been working on. Starfire got the distinct impression that she knew him from somewhere, and she searched her mind for some answer as she landed next to the table, determined to meet his ongoing pleasantries in kind. "I'm sorry if I startled you, I'm still a little frazzled myself, so I can understand your surprise."
"Ah… yes, harek'tor narat," she began, unthinkingly greeting him in Tamaranean as he stood up from what he was doing and turned to her. She realized her mistake and made to repeat herself in English when he cut her off.
"M'tar buseth," he came back with the tradition response to her greeting, then utterly stunned her by continuing with, "apant miran chel'kit narat un ginbar tisif?"
"Uhh… I believe I could be feeling better on this morning friend, but it is quite kind of you to inquire," she replied in English, her head pierced by an unexpected ache as she began to recall some of what had been going on the past two days. Hearing him speak her tongue in that odd accent of his brought back phantoms of memory from a strange land she didn't recognize, but those were quickly overcome by the flood of true memories, and she got her head back in order quickly after this.
"Yes… Yes, new friend Skye, I apologize for my distance," she told him as she tried to blink the sleep from her eyes and run her fingers through her long, disheveled hair, "my endeavors of the previous night have left me, as you said, 'frazzled.' I am impressed, you speak my language quite well."
"Oh, I speak a lot of languages, though I could never seem to get my r and k sounds right for that one. Naught the vocal cords for it. Anyway… are you alright? Your spirit's a little off-kilter."
"Alright? I am—NO!" and Starfire nearly choked as his inquiry reminded her of something she was terribly concerned about. "Please, you must tell me—" and there was evident panic in her disturbingly weak voice, "how is Terra? Is she—" but Skye cut her off with an upraised palm as he leaned back in his chair and rested his back.
"I have already taken care of Terra. You have nothing to worry about on her part, she's doing as well as anyone with that much damage to her mind can possibly ever do. I'm much more concerned about you, your soul is displaying a dangerous energy depression. What's the matter?" Starfire put a hand to her head to try and bestill the throbbing her panic had brought with it, but felt an incredible amount of relief at Skye's assurances
"Uh, I did the 'overdoing' of my power in the previous night's operations," she responded sluggishly through the haze of pain in her head. "I was suffering from mistraska for some time. I feel I have recovered somewhat…" and she paused to catch her breath and balance on the ground, "but I awoke quite hungry…" and she wobbled badly once more before coming to a better balance, "and that's why I am here—ohh!" As she finished talking, she was overcome by a wave of fatigue that literally took her off her feet, dropping her backward. Rather than a stinging impact with the floor, Starfire witnessed an incredible blur of motion pass before her, and there was suddenly a supporting arm holding her up from the ground. Skye had cleared the table and caught her before she'd gotten halfway to the floor.
"I see, that would explain the depression in your life force, mistraska is a very serious affliction you know," he said nonchalantly, as though he wasn't the only thing supporting her weight just then. With reserved flare, he helped her into a chair at the kitchenette's table, then walked over toward the fridge while she tried to comprehend what had just happened to her.
"Just sit tight, I'll whip up something that'll make you feel better," Skye said calmly, placing his hands against the fridge mysteriously. "If I'm not mistaken, you're in need of… hmm… reaction mass and catalysts for type 31894-C organic cold fusion. So… sodium, chlorine, acetic acid, carbohydrates, protein, sugar, aluminum, tin, iron… and… chocolate."
"My but that sounds wondrous!" Starfire squealed, exhilaration overcoming exhaustion momentarily as he described it, and that was all the cue Skye needed to make it happen.
Grabbing a plate out of a cabinet and some spoons out of a drawer, Skye began to rush around the kitchen area like he'd been cooking there for years. Raiding the fridge, he nabbed some chocolate ice cream, raw potatoes, fresh horseradish, leftover roast, and a big bottle of mustard, then poured them out in a heap on the counter while Starfire looked on. In a blur of confident motion, Skye scraped ice-cream out over the roast beef and began slicing potatoes and horseradish over the mess with a tiny pairing knife from a drawer. Next he flipped out a bottle of straight vinegar and ran it over the top as, with his other hand, he popped the top off the salt shaker and dumped it out over the middle. Discarding both now-empty vessels, he hefted the laden plate around to the dining table and set it in front of the still rather bewildered young woman, placing the mustard next to it in turn.
"That should do for the reaction mass," he commented offhandedly, oblivious to the ravenous hunger gleaming in her eyes and the trail of drool tracing its way down her chin as she stared slack-jawed at what he'd served her, "but we're still going to need some catalysts for the organometallic matrices."
There was no verbal response from Starfire as Skye turned back and began examining the kitchen area again. Instead there was a snarling, chomping, slobbering sound not unlike a pack of wild cats tearing apart a freshly slain antelope. The sound hardly seemed to bother Skye as he rummaged through drawers and cabinets, collecting a rather odd assortment of everyday items in a new heap on the counter. When Starfire finally pulled her head away from the completely, utterly clean plate, she turned to see Skye hard at work again as she began to wipe her face clean with the back of her hand and lick up the remains of her meal from there. It was only after she finished washing it all down with several long pulls straight from the mustard bottle that she finally took a break.
"That was truly a delightful dish friend Skye!" She exclaimed unreservedly as she stared curiously at his back. It was odd how much better she felt after that meal, but he was certainly right that it didn't feel quite complete. Resigned to go along with the ride this guy had so brusquely pressed her onto, Starfire sat in silence, drinking down the last of the mustard as she shifted nervously in her seat, trying in vain to determine what the heck he was doing now.
To the best she was able to determine, he had gotten together all kinds of metal and an empty glass, and was now doing something that was causing bright flashing lights to dance on the wall in front of him. It sounded like the buzzing of machine tools that was always screaming out of Cyborg's workshop, and there was the faintest odor of ionizing metal, as though he were grinding down a piece of steel. It turned out that she wasn't that far from being correct.
"Okay, here you go," and Skye turned around to present a glass a quarter of the way full of metallic powder which he proceeded to top off with water. When he moved aside to get the water, she spotted the debris of what looked like aluminum cans, a sheet of tin foil, and an old frying pan that had been rusting in a corner somewhere, all partially destroyed. Turning back, he drew attention again as he placed a hand over the top shook it fiercely until the powder actually began to dissolve into the water in a swirling sparkling mass, so finely ground it was. "This should get you restarted with a real kick. Personally, I prefer my heavy metals in moderation, but then again, I don't have a multi-purpose metallurgical plant in my intestines, so I guess I shouldn't comment."
"Is that?" she tried to ask, but he anticipated her question and nodded it silently away. "Because if it is…" she persisted as she rolled her eyes, "I truly don't enjoy that particular remedy…" and she trailed off as she blanched at memories of downing the sparkling water in her youth, placing her face in her hands to fend off the visions. Her spirits were dropping faster than mercury in dry ice, and Skye didn't seem to even notice, much less care.
"It's just a little homemade Tamaranean fire water, and I'm sorry but it's exactly what you need to feel better. Agreed it's got quite a kick to it, I mean, approximately 20 of the reaction catalyst goes straight into the bloodstream. I believe the condition is called—"
"Yes, I know it well," Starfire muttered with unusual dismay, peeking out from behind her hands at the glass that awaited her. Her good mood from brunch was definitely evaporating as he waved the hated medicine around in front of her. "It is called pramorchet hrat'nal."
"ha hahah ahah!" he shocked her with a blast of subdued laughter, "you really call it that?" Skye practically burst with humor at her words, and she gave him an appropriately bitter glare to express what she thought of him being able to laugh considering the situation she was in. He met her frumpy look with a calm smile and a slight sigh of exasperation.
"Please now Starfire, let's not be childish about this," he begged her patience in a voice suspended oddly between indifference and compassion. "I know these things are far from pleasant, but you wont get truly better anytime soon without replacing the metals your body needs to catalyze the star-energy effect and rebuild lost muscle mass. I mean, what if the man of your dreams walked in and asked you to go out on a date with him tomorrow? In your condition, you'd probably pass out halfway through dinner."
As he said this, Starfire caught her breath in shock, her hands reaching up to clamp over her mouth and cut off any further exclamation as her mind was pierced by the memories still blurring and swarming in her head. Behind her eyes, a scene played itself back through a rose colored mist, a scene so magnificently significant that she couldn't conceive of how she'd managed to avoid thinking about it until now, a scene of Robin asking her out after that strange dream that had connected their hearts at long last. The date had been set for Friday… the next day. Though the past day's many trials had given her little time to put thought into this, it was out of the bag now, and it had quite a pronounced effect.
As she sighed in helpless abandon, her pulse began to race, new warmth permeated her whole body and culled the last remnants of last night's deep-core cold, spreading upward into a blush that doused her face under her hands. Utterly distracted, she stared directly through Skye's head as he came to sit across the table from her, basking in the inner heat as everything outside became beside the point.
A drink was placed discreetly in front of her, and she picked it up and downed it in two long gulps without even glancing at it. Sliding the glass away from her as she returned to her star-struck reverie, there was at first no reaction. Now, love may conquer all, but chemistry has this annoying habit of happening no matter what, and it can be assumed that the pause was due to the inherent delay in metal particles passing through blood vessels and into cells. In any case, the kick hit the next moment, and her distant eyes lit with green fire like two flood lamps screaming out their harsh glare.
When the stinging pain burst forth all along her throat and stomach, she winced away from her pleasant fantasies and brought a harsh fist down on the table, coughing violently a few times as her blow splintered the table down the middle. Coughing some more, she was overcome by the rush of power to her head, beams bursting out from her eyes to blast a smoking crater in the floor. She continued to cough for some moments before the fit settled, and as she began to gasp heavily in an attempt to cool her throat, she noticed a casual hand on her back rubbing expertly to aid her breathing.
She had no concept of how long Skye had been standing there helping her through the fit, but the circumstance did not go unappreciated. It was just about enough for her to forgive him for slipping her the medicine, at least when combined with the fact that, as she'd known she would, she now felt nearly 100 better (besides the burning pain), all the fatigue and dizziness completely gone. As the vicious heat in her throat began to cool, Skye chimed in with some solemn words.
"Well, that was really something. I've read all about it, but I've never seen it actually happen to someone before. I guess that's why you call it, pramorchet hrat'nal… thermonuclear heartburn."
"It matters little, the worst is past… thank you," Starfire whispered coldly, her voice still slightly hoarse. She felt oddly uncomfortable, the entire exchange seeming to have been in some way manipulated by the young man next to her, even though there wasn't the slightest indication that he'd had anything but her best interest in mind. It left her more than a little confused, not to mention upset, and she enjoyed the sensation of her body beginning to pulse with energy again as she mulled it over in silence.
Skye accepted her thanks in similar silence and began to clean up the wreckage of the table, lifting the crumpled halves up and doing something to the bottom. There was that flashing light again, and when he got out from under it, it stood in place as sturdy as it had ever been. Comfortable in the enduring silence, he placed the tool he'd used into his belt and bent over again to pick pieces of what he'd been working on off the floor. In moments he was seated again and quietly working as he'd been before Starfire entered, making Starfire exceptionally uncomfortable.
No one had ever ignored her in her entire life, and she found Skye's sudden, utter, and enduring lack of interest extremely disturbing. Everywhere she'd ever been, every humanoid she'd met had either been anxious to get to know her or intolerably rude, nasty, and cold. It wasn't that she expected him to come on to her or something (her mind just didn't work that way) but having never known anything different, his politely distant attitude was unsettling, if refreshingly out of the ordinary. Shocked out of her dark contemplations, she decided that for once in her life, she'd have to be the one to initiate dialogue with a member of the opposite gender.
"Umm, friend Skye, might I ask how everyone is? I have been sleeping quite soundly and was not capable of discovering the health of all before my own injuries overtook me this morning." She smiled warmly as she spoke, giving him her best and most open expression in the hopes of interesting him in a conversation. He didn't look up from the mechanical bits he was tinkering with, but he did pause in his work to place his index finger against his temple and frown in concentration for a moment.
"It would seem that Robin and Beast Boy are asleep in their rooms as I requested. Neither had had a single wink of rest until I myself got up and insisted, but they were more than willing to pass out once I started my preliminary reconstructive work on Terra. Cyborg is a little more difficult to track, all those synthetic body parts mask his aura, but I'm rather certain it's him down in the machine shop working on something or other. Raven is… ah, she's in the shower down the hall. As for health status, now that you're feeling better, everyone should be fine and ready for action again by dinner time tonight."
His comprehensive and specific answer complete, he rolled a kink out of his neck and went back to work. Starfire blinked a few times as she absorbed both what he said and the fact that he was so casually able to locate everyone and know what they were up to. She made a small sound of curiosity when she was done considering that one, and Skye perked an ear up, once again failing to look away from his task.
"Might I inquire as to what you are working on so seriously friend Skye?" she asked, more and more trying to locate some common ground on which to expand the budding kinship she felt for this mysterious fellow. The distrust and resentment that had threatened to rear up and isolate her from him had evaporated as she returned to normal, healthy feeling and got back to her usual state of mind. Her record of interaction with him so far had been quite poor considering the constant medical aid he provided, and she was determined to make him understand her gratitude, even though he insisted that she owed him none. If this one didn't work, she'd play her trump and talk with him about space travel and other planets, something that was guaranteed to be as much of an interest to her as to him. The others weren't much company when she felt like discussing the swamp moons of Caladan III, the pleasure satellites (read: moon-sized theme parks) orbiting Mislan, or any of the other worlds she'd visited, and Skye definitely seemed well-traveled enough to appreciate such conversation.
"Oh, this? This is nothing really," Skye disclaimed coolly in response to her question, continuing to poke at the unrecognizable metal bits as he went on. "I filched this firearm and its twin off of Slade after I put out his lights earlier. Unfortunately, the man had quite an ingenious security failsafe built into them, and I'm currently trying to disarm it. Are you really interested in this?"
His question was polite in the extreme, and Starfire realized that he was giving her a chance to back out before he started bombarding her with technical details and a full demonstration. Her desire to show a friendly interest conflicted momentarily with her complete ignorance of mechanical devices, and in the end it was her friendly nature that won out. Well aware of his penchant for lecture, she still nodded for him to detail what he was working on, beaming at him in genuine attentiveness.
Without delay he launched into an explanation of the security device built into Slade's fantastically fine firearms. He explained that powerful sensors in the grip could determine the exact identity of whoever was holding it by taking constant biorhythm readings. He told her that the act of pulling the trigger before the gun recognized your biorhythms was liable to be the last use one ever made of one's fingers on that hand. When she asked how this could be, he flashed her the slightest smile and flipped out the intact twin to the gun he'd pulled the guts out of.
Holding it delicately by the revolving chambers, he wordlessly obtained a brace of teaspoons from a nearby drawer and placed one between each of his fingers, so that they stuck out like claws when he made a fist. Three spoons extending, he passed the top one through the trigger guard and placed the other two along the grip where the rest of the fingers would be.
"Sit back, and remember that the carpal bones of the human hand aren't comparable in durability to stainless steel." His calm warning piqued her interest, and she found herself quite focused on the spoons he'd put forth for his demonstration. Without further explanation, he used the spoon to depress the trigger with a pronounced CLICK!
Nothing happened, and Starfire had a surreal moment of confusion as she listened to a whirring sound from the gun. The uncommon afternoon silence was so pristine that she was able to hear the mechanisms prep as the trap's one second delay took place. The next instant there was a crack so like a gunshot that Starfire blasted reflexively backward into the air with a squeal of surprise, knocking over her chair in a clattering jumble that masked the sound of the gun rattling on its side where Skye had lost his grip and dropped it. After that spree of blazing action, the room was completely still again, and there was only a faint noxious smell and Skye's fixed grin to indicate that anything had happened at all.
As the world began to come out of the freeze frame her blast of adrenaline had prompted, Starfire noticed where Skye's gaze was focused the same moment she heard three separate, distinct metallic tones, as though huge coins had been dropped one at a time to rattle to a stop on the ground. The headless spoons in Skye's hand then were equally a testament to the power of the booby trap as the hang time the severed pieces had achieved.
"Oh wow…" Starfire was quite honestly in awe of the display as she floated back down to the ground and righted her chair, then joined Skye in sifting through the aftermath.
Her eyes were drawn first to the cleanly sheared spoons, which might as well have been cut on a precision laser considering how perfect the slices were. The gun lay on its side on the table, the grip had split cleanly down the middle and ejected two long blades in twin, cleaving arcs. The first blade had stopped when it struck the main section of gun, flush against the barrel, perfect position to ensure a clean cleavage of all four fingers. The second blade came out immediately opposite, had stopped at the horizontal with the other blade, and would definitely have taken care of the thumb, a good chunk of palm, and possibly even could have split the wrist right open. Starfire felt herself become a little pale at the thought, even during the wars she hadn't been fond of witnessing extreme mutilations.
"The trap triggers with invalid depression of the firing mechanism," Skye explained as he disassembled this one too, moving over it with quick and precise applications of that tool of his that had it into pieces in moments. "It takes just over one second for the gun grip to prime, splitting open exactly .47 SU (lets say… 1/10 of an inch) along a perfect seam with over 200psi of force. The blades are launched by the firing of a tiny blasting cap of the special chemical propellant common to everything I pulled off of Slade. That's what caused the distinctive explosive noise, and that's why the blades strike with such force. On the other hand, that's also why it only has a single discharge before requiring an obnoxiously long reload. In all, it sacrifices the reusability and convenience of springloading for extreme miniaturization, a whole lotta bang, and a hell of a delivery. The customization on this thing is really epic, and this modification is consistent…"
On and on Skye went, talking in a lively tone, as though there was nothing more interesting in the world than what he was doing. As he began to become highly technical, Starfire lost the thread of what he was saying, focusing instead on the deft manipulations of that mysterious little tool that he used to work the guns. Though apparently just old-fashioned mechanical solid slug weapons, the guns turned out to have dozens of pieces, many of them ridiculously small, all of which fit inside the handle around the explosion driven trap. Because she was wondering about this, one snippet she did catch was his comment on the advantages, disadvantages, and demonstrative technical superiority of the components this type of trap showed, but that was about the last thing she was able to follow. She was quickly about as lost as she'd ever been during Cyborg's new tech demonstrations, and there was really no way for her to hide this.
"…And that's why the explosive caps don't interfere with the sensitive electronics or the micro power source. Really these are the finest examples of solid-slug hardware I've ever laid hands on… and I'm boring you out of you skull." Skye shocked her out of her mesmerized focus on his hands with his sudden, neutral accusation. She sputtered a denial, but stalled in the face of his knowing smile. Blushing in embarrassment, she let the silence express her apology as he finished up his tinkering, placing a final locking rod into place with a distinctive snap.
"Well, thanks for being an ear anyway, you'd be shocked at how few and far between even someone to fake an interest can be in my line of work. You'd figure spending so much time alone in space would have tempered my tongue, but everyone I know tells me I talk too much." Skye didn't seem at all bothered by Starfire's gaff, and she allowed herself to calm down a little as she realized this. Skye, rather than perusing that line of conversation any further, he stood up, picked up the two guns, spun them through a few dozen spectacular loops, juggled them spinning from one hand to the other, then holstered them with practiced ease. Or at least, he slid them into his belt without too much obvious discomfort.
"Oh but that was wonderful!" Starfire exclaimed, and the silent room was filled with the sound of clapping and the brilliant laughter of a beautiful young woman, Starfire expressing what she felt without reservation. Most men would have been daunted by those sparkling eyes and the sheer blinding force of that much concentrated feminine charm, but Skye weathered it like a mountain in a stiff breeze, growing a new and different slight smile under those all-concealing sunglasses.
"Oh, that was nothing, just a little basic gunplay. You should see what I can do once I get some real holsters. Anyway, I've been wondering—" but Starfire would never find out what he was wondering about, because he held his tongue suddenly and looked over to one of the room's two hallway access entrances. She reflexively turned to follow his gaze, but there was absolutely nothing there, and she turned again to look at him in confusion.
"Skye?" she probed innocently, "might I inquire at to the cause of this unusual interruption?"
(Skye)
"Hello Raven… good afternoon," Skye 'pathed her as soon as his senses made him aware that she was listening in on his chat with Starfire. He'd been using his power to keep track of her, as well as all the others, in the back of his mind, something he did reflexively whenever he wasn't working alone (admittedly not that often).
"…'lo," she eventually transmitted back, the sheer mental walls she threw up after his surprise message blanking out anything he might have gleaned with his powers. Apparently she'd gotten a much better feel for him, because these walls left no leakage he could exploit for inroads to her mind like the rather sorry versions she'd made during her upset period last night on the roof. She was stationary just behind the edge of the hallway and out of sight, exactly where she'd been since she'd heard the two of them talking. Though he was certain she'd never admit it, he knew she'd been trying, for whatever reason, to eavesdrop.
"Are you going to stand in the hallway all day, or are you going to come and check up on your friends? Starfire here will be overjoyed to see you y'know." He made sure to keep his mental tone uncolored by any emotion lest she suspect him upset over catching her like that. He had a feeling that he'd need everything to be as neutral as possible when the storm he could sense brewing between them finally broke.
Rather than respond, she simply strode into the main room as though she'd intended to all along, and Skye was able to answer Starfire's hanging inquiry with a nod in that direction. The other woman turned around a second time and spotted Raven, then was off in a shot that echoed with her scream of delight.
"Oh Raven, it is so good to see you well!" she screeched, and Skye continued to marvel at the change restoring her biochemistry had brought about. "Please, have you heard? Terra is going to be well also, isn't that wondrous news?" Starfire flew around Raven in ecstatic circles as the darker woman stood in expressionless silence and endured the storm of emotion. To Skye's senses, it was a whirlwind of energy buffeting hopelessly against a titan of blackly neutral power, and he admired the view unabashedly. As Starfire continued to babble in an unbelievably cheery voice, Raven managed to project a claw of solid ice just by glaring at him, attempting to make him pay for daring to even observe her discomfort.
"Yes Starfire, it's terrific news," Raven answered, cutting through Starfire's rendition of the afternoon's activities with an icy tone that slashed her tirade to an end. "I actually saw her a little earlier. She looks much better."
"Oh you have?" Starfire was unbearably interested, almost jealous, and Skye actually felt a little bad for Raven as the ordeal wore on. "I must be sure to visit her myself. But I am being rude, what brings you to us my dear friend?"
"Book," Raven muttered unpleasantly, her body language screaming out her desire to be alone, "Going to read while I wait for everyone to get up so we can discuss what our next steps should be. Okay?"
The last was said with such a tangible viciousness that Starfire quailed, backed off, and looked over to Skye for support. Skye had begun to pretend to examine one of the pistols again some time ago, having no interest whatsoever in becoming a player in that personality conflict. Stranded without aid, Starfire made herself scarce.
"Very well, in that case I shall… I shall make use off the showering facilities myself! I am in need of a cleansing after my previous exertions… I will see you… later yes?" and she retreated in extreme haste from the fuming mystic without waiting for an answer.
That left Raven and Skye alone in the common room. Skye continued to fiddle with his gun, twirling it through expert loops that he would punctuate every so often with a swirling pitch high into the air before catching it in his other hand. Raven took a moment to settle herself after her dismissal of Starfire, then found a spot on the couch where she could read by the light of the afternoon sun pouring through the huge windows. An outside observer wouldn't have been able to miss the tension in the air between them if he or she had been wearing a blindfold, earmuffs, nose plugs, and... oh yeah, was dead. Strain like that couldn't last, it was merely a question of who would break first.
"Starfire was looking… energetic," Raven stated emotionlessly, and there was a choking sound and a thump of impact from Skye's side of the room. He'd been certain that she would wait him out, and the unexpected mistake left him off balance, so that it was a moment before he even recognized the stinging in his toe and cursed.
"Ouch!—Damn… yeah, I took care of her," Skye responded with an equally emotionless tone as he bent over and recovered his gun, and it sounded like two computers were talking to one another in the deathly quiet room.
"You seem to be making a habit of that. Taking care of us I mean." Raven never looked up from her book, and her tone was so meticulously expressionless that he could glean nothing of what she meant by that. It was a perfectly calculating probe, and Skye knew he was in for a game of darting inquiries.
"I know better than to squander my resources in times of strife. My talents lie in healing as much as combat, and so I implement them to the fullest whenever possible." He matched her expressionless comment with an equally oblique statement that could mean anything or nothing.
"Resources? Is that how you see us then?" …touché.
"I didn't say that. You said that. Is that how you think I see you?" Bingo! Major score on the rebound. Raven closed her book and gave him an unreadable sidelong glace over her shoulder. After a mild sigh, she looked away again and began to talk without quite as much evasive emptiness in her tone.
"I can't honestly say that I have any clue what to think of you. There is every indication that you can be trusted, last night was certainly quite the poignant demonstration of that. However, weathering the trial by fire is only so much…" and now she became particularly grave and Skye was once again clueless of how to interpret it, "we still have a great deal to discuss, you and I."
"I've tried to make my intentions as clear as possible," Skye began with the conceited dismissal that no one had ever challenged before. "If you still have something to say, something to discuss…"
"Oh drop it!" she snapped at him, the sudden flare of anger taking the wind out of his sails like a punch in the kidneys. "Just listen to me for a minute, and them maybe you'll drop that act and really deal with me."
"The only thing you've made clear is your intention to use us against your opponents. You put on a great show of being a pleasant person, stringing us along with enough half-truths and clever omissions to make the appearance of free disclosure, but I know that you're hiding so very much more than you share. That's none of my business of course—I couldn't care less what you choose to hide or share with others, you've been as open as possible on matters that could affect us, so I can't really complain. My problem is pretty close to what it's always been Skye: you're dangerous, your powers are dangerous, and that counts for both friends and foes."
"Raven—" Skye choked his protest through a whirlwind of shock, he didn't know how many more direct hits he'd be able to take, but Raven wasn't about to let him get a word in edgewise.
"I know this," she cut him off effortlessly, "because I know myself. My powers are the same way, and it takes constant effort to keep them from tearing everyone and everything around me into little pieces. I can barely tolerate exposing my friends to myself, so if you think I'm just going to sit by while you thoughtlessly manipulate and feed off of them, you'd better think again."
"Now just hold on—"
"Please! Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think I don't notice? You have more faces than a hell changeling, you switch between them at will to get the response you need from people. You read emotions and surface thoughts like manipulation roadmaps, you drain feelings at will to pacify detractors, and you apply your compulsions and telepathic alterations shamelessly to arrange things just the way you want them."
"Come now, just let me—"
"And the only reason I tolerate ANY of it, is because… when the bottom line comes… I believe you genuinely do have everyone's best interests at heart." Raven trailed off, slumping forward slightly where she sat. The entire time she hadn't even bothered to turn around, and as she studied the carpeting, Skye's mind raced with surprise at what was happening. She picked up again before he could even almost come to terms with it.
"Skye, I don't like your methods, I don't like your attitude, and, in lieu of these two things, I find it very difficult to like you. That said… you've given me back Terra… and you've dragged Starfire and Robin from the brink of oblivion… and you're instrumental to us all surviving the mess you drudged out of hiding… so I'm going to go against my instincts and give you a chance to say your part. Please, help me understand why you're such a heartless, manipulative bastard."
Her tone left no room for argument, and Skye wiped every notion he'd conceived about this woman from his mind as he prepared to deal with her fresh. She'd stopped him cold, cut him off at the knees, and knocked the wind out of him, all without ever turning around, and so he had no trouble admitting to himself that she required every bit of his ability to deal with. Girding his spine with his powers, he drew his gun and began to twirl it nervously while processing all she'd said.
"I've never really tried to hide what I am," Skye began after a full two minutes of utter silence in the room, his voice dead and empty of everything, every mask he'd ever worn stripped away to create a tone she wouldn't be able to doubt. "I won't deny that I've been freely manipulating you and your friends, arranging everything so as best to combat my opponents and allow us all to survive what's coming. It's not like I was being secretive about it, so I should hardly be surprised that you've noticed. It's just that, most people I've dealt with, including your friends, tend to simply choose to not see, and so this particular confrontation is something of a new thing for me. I suppose the simple heart of the matter is that I've been sewing the seeds of our survival as best as I can see, because that's just it… I do 'see.'"
"I get feelings, I get hunches, I have visions of what may come and what might be, and I act on them. Every action I take is guided by perceptions so acute that I don't even process them on a conscious level, I act as I feel I must when I must because that's simply how I've always worked. I've… I've never had… 'friends,' before—only allies, subordinates, and superiors since my sisters were stolen away from me and I was inducted into this empty hell of a life."
"This being the case, I hope you can understand that my every instinct is geared to operating alone, to working in a state where everyone is either an enemy or a tool for me to implement for the common survival. I've never had to go outside a paradigm of isolation, so I've become used to lining up everything around me until everything I want to protect is positioned as best as I know how. Never in the past have the feelings and cares of those who I'm working with been a major, or hell, even a minor concern, not when my chances of ever seeing or working with them again are never worth even mentioning. Heartless? What does it even mean to have heart? Really?"
"Yes, I do wear masks. I told you once, my special disabilities leave me sadly lacking in the natural personality department, and so I practice the manufacture of various persona to compensate. If I seem to change between them erratically at times, it's just my instincts working me, pushing me to act the way I need to if I'm to get what I want. Before you start choking on that statement, I'm going to remind you that the survival of all of you is currently my major priority, believe it or not. Otherwise I just try to blend in and avoid disturbing people."
"Draining… well, I'm a PV Raven, what do you want? When someone's out of whack emotions get in the way of me doing what I need to do, why should I stay my hand from sucking them dry? After weighing the sanctity of emotion versus the principal upon which I always, always act, 'protecting the integrity and perpetuation of sentient consciousness,' I've come to determine that the latter is more important by far. If you think I use it too often and without consideration of what exactly I'm robbing people of, well, I'm sorry but that's a lifestyle choice I made a long time ago."
Skye finished talking abruptly, his tone never having altered or shifted once the entire time, and thus nothing indicating that he was nearly finished until he shut up. He continued to twirl his revolver periodically, catch it, then twirl it again, mixing in a spinning toss ever now and again for variety. He was empty inside, having taken a big chance in expressing himself as he had, and now he was concentrating very hard on a specific portion of the wall as he waited for how it all fell out. Unable to read Raven's reactions, he was sadly out of the loop, and living a life of constant information, this was never a situation he appreciated. Not knowing made him nervous, and thus only his powers kept his pulse from racing and his breath from baiting while he waited.
"Is that really the creed you follow?" She asked suddenly after a very pregnant pause, and Skye could have died from the jolt of adrenaline that shot through him. Quelling it all with a deep pull of his power, he made himself perfectly calm before he answered, knowing that the future was twisting and shaping based on his actions right now.
"Some years ago, after searching for an explanation as to why I had such a shitty lot in existence, I came to the conclusion that I was the victim of a vicious system of control perpetuated by uncaring extra-planar forces. As I looked around at all the other beings in the same situation, I attempted to find some grounds upon which I could feel kinship for the plethora of utterly alien beings that shared the same suffering as me. After a while, I found that the common thread among us all was the advanced state of mind known as consciousness. Consciousness, the ability to perceive the nature of time's progression, the ability to communicate ideas, the ability to form plans, to possess hopes and dreams, and all those things that separate people from animals."
"In time I came to believe that this was the ultimate sacrosanct feature that should be treasured and nurtured throughout existence, mostly because it was the thing most defaced and tramped upon by all the beings I'd grown to hate. Those that respect sentient life deserve respect and protection in turn. Those that threaten or demean, the ones that deface minds and grind independent egos into dust, they deserve to die or otherwise be removed from interaction with real people before they can plague the rest of us further than they already have. In the end, life is cheap, but consciousness and intelligent thought are the ultimate miracle of our common existence. Or at least that's the way I see it."
Skye was no longer empty then. Describing the core of his personal philosophy out loud like that had an odd effect on him, and it was all he could do to stave off the draining as he treasured the momentary sensation, grasping desperately at it as it inevitably slipped away from him. Raven was silent, then changed position for the first time since she'd given him that ambiguous glare, turning in her seat until she kneeled on the couch and looked back at him.
He could feel her gaze taking him in, the violet eyes focused until they seemed to peer into his soul… something that wasn't entirely out of the question. He felt a mild curiosity for what she'd think of his soul, which was a good thing because it meant the grip of fear brought on by the flux of reality was ending, and he was once again able to taste approaching events. He wondered if she noticed the way his body loosened as his uncertainty came to a close, wondered if she realized that he already knew she was going to give him a shot, and once again felt a sting of annoyance that he was unable to read her as he could the others.
That too faded away, and he felt himself equalized again. He'd weathered the storm, and he celebrated by sliding his gun back into his belt and walking over toward the woman now sizing him with cold eyes. Raven remained silent, her hard gaze gaining an edge as she watched his change in stance and subsequent approach. Otherwise motionless, she was following him with her full attention as he approached the furthest part of the couch from her and hopped over into an expressive lounge. She continued to study him for some time as he wallowed in complete neutrality of spirit and mind.
"Skye…" she began slowly as her gaze softened perceptibly and she turned away, hiding what almost could have been a smile. "I'm willing to give you a chance here, god knows I'll probably regret it. Just promise me a little inclusion for the rest of us from now on… we're supposed to be your friends, not 'tools to be arranged for optimization of mutual survival.' That means, before you tinker with a Titan's mind, you get permission, and enough with the manipulations. With friends… you just ask." Skye was silent in the face of this ultimatum, considering every angle of how he'd been acting so far and beginning to lay foundations for how he'd have to change if this was going to work out. After a while…
"…You know Raven… that actually sounds kind of nice," Skye answered pleasantly, if ever so slightly hesitantly, as he felt the last vestiges of doubt and stress in his soul melt away. When he really thought about it, he was so damn tired of being alone, maybe this could be his chance…
"I think… if you can promise to help keep me from succumbing to old habits… it shouldn't be a problem to… 'tweak' my methods. I've never really tried before… but then again… no one's ever asked me to before either." Skye let that hang as he began to systematically relax his muscles, sinking ever deeper into a full trance as he prepared to slip into the astral plane.
"Oh, trust me Skye. If I catch you messing around with one of my friends without permission… it'll be hard to miss my intervention." This time she did smile, and it gave Skye a weird shock of feeling even through the numbness of the trance he was falling into. He savored the fleeting sensation, gaining a smile of his own. Somewhere, quite a ways down, Skye knew they had a great deal left to discuss, but he sincerely hoped the next round wouldn't involve triple-reinforced mental shields icing away all of the extra dynamics that made speaking with another sensitive such a treat.
"I'm going to crash for a while… wake me when the others are up and around… I can give you all a full brief on Terra… then we can all grab a meal together… all of us…" Skye pressed these last phrases through the deepening haze around him then slipped his mind into another plane of existence, retreating from the prime material before something else could go explosively wrong.
As he followed a randomly winding route through the ether of the astral plane, meandering without haste toward his beacon, as always intensely careful of being tailed, he went over that last, spectacular interaction once more. Raven had done something unique among all the independent conscious beings he'd dealt with since his family had disintegrated all those years ago—she'd challenged his self-imposed isolation. He was still slightly rocked from the implications slipping and sliding into place in his mind, and the new conundrum became a consuming force for his formidable intellect to process.
Never before had anyone thought to call him out of the solitude he existed in, the utterly closed world he'd backed into to protect himself from the pitfalls and shooting sticks of the sociopolitical hell that was the IDP hierarchy. Starfire and those like her, innocents that failed to see the walls he placed around himself, they often tried to make some headway, but they always spoke to the congenial facades that he constructed, and inevitably failed to comprehend what was really going on with him. Raven had sliced directly to the heart of his solitude, and he was still reeling.
People he'd dealt with in the past were always more than willing to accept the aid he granted without much more than gratitude and a willingness to grant him the autonomy to work his creeping manipulations without comment. Results were all they ever really cared about, and the ends always seemed to justify the means, so much so that people never asked him how he achieved what he did, nor ever failed to ignore the most blatantly objectionable methods he implemented if it meant not having to deal with him. He'd never know if it was that they feared he would retaliate if challenged or if they simply didn't care enough to wonder why he worked the way he did, or even if it was something he himself did to them without thinking about it, but he'd never once been invited out of the solitude he inevitably worked from by a person who knew his core personality. Until now.
He'd known for quite some time that he'd found a kindred spirit of a sort, he could sense it the way he could sense a rock, and he could analyze it the way he could analyze a soul, but he'd never considered that it could get to this point. Granted there had been hints of it last night, but he knew better than to place any faith in behavior exhibited in extreme circumstances, not considering the fact that people were inevitably at either their best or worst in such situations and never the same in everyday life. But now… if he was reading the signals right (a big if—he was familiar in reading psychic signals she denied him, and he was clueless of the more mundane signals she might be granting) he had stumbled across a woman who might actually understand the void his existence had steadily devolved into over these years. Going over some of the more confusing and unexpected things he'd found himself doing last night, he couldn't help but be extremely nervous about just how well they seemed to connect.
(Raven)
When she felt that he was completely gone again, Raven let out a suppressed tension that left her shaking slightly in the aftermath. She had had no idea how that was going to go, and the uncertainty had been killing her. For all she'd really known, he'd been hiding a monster under all those masks, a monster that would explode when called out so directly. There hadn't been one, and she'd been certain… somehow… that there wasn't one, but the possibility had kept her on a knife's edge.
However, unwilling to sit by and watch that guy act in the asinine and apparently uncaring way he'd so obnoxiously trounced about with, maneuvering people like chess pieces then covering it with a perfect façade of pleasantness, she hadn't been able to put it off any longer. It hadn't seemed threatening to her, clearly he'd been more than naturally certain that he was doing what was best for them all, but she wasn't going to stand for the condescension such treatment represented, even if he himself didn't realize that was part of what he was doing. At the same time… she couldn't stand to see such a powerful person reduced to the utterly lonely existence that same behavior described. It was too much like what she herself suffered through.
She'd seen him tense, and that had definitely been the effect she'd been going for, she hoped a little cardiac stress drove this lesson home and altered his behavior somewhat. If he could get those weird notions of interaction out of his system and loose the almost automatic drive to manipulate his surroundings, he might actually be a pleasant and acceptable person to be around. That he seemed perfectly willing to try, well, she couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The thing she knew was that she really, really hoped he would, because they still had a lot to talk about, and she'd regret having to reject him out of general principal.
Deep down, she actually did want to talk with him again, really talk with him, the way only sensitive beings can communicate. There was something in him, some incredible echo of herself that was simultaneously extremely frightening and utterly enticing, and she knew she'd never be able to forgive herself is she just shut this one out like she had all the others. As that little box of last night's troubles and terrors she'd shut away continued to itch in her mind, chaffing with the need to be dealt with, certain of the more confusing and unexpected things they'd been doing leaked out to haunt her, and she couldn't help but feel extremely nervous about how well they seemed to connect.
Preview:
Next time we'll see the dark side of being the leader of the Titans… POLITICS! Beyond that I feel an introduction to how Terra's healing process is going to be handled would be appropriate, and perhaps an initial probe into the crazy, messed up situation Skye and Raven are being caught up in could also make a show. Once again, the title eludes me as of right now, but I can't imagine it'll be too snappy anyway.