Resolution (Breathe 2 AM)
'It's very cold tonight,' Starfire mused as she ascended the stairs to the roof. 'Or perhaps,' pushing open the last door, greeted by a rush of frigid air, 'it is the ice within that prompts such feelings.'
Still, she moved forward, footsteps light and almost wary as she welcomed the night and evening air around her. The moon above her was a wellspring of silver, oozing light softly to drown all below. Coating all, yet somehow still insubstantial, like cigarette smoke on a breeze, hovering – then gone.
So captivated by the sight, it was some minutes before she was aware of the other person on the roof.
2 AM and she calls me cause I'm still awake
"Friend Raven." She stated with some surprise, as the blue form at the edge of the roof could be no one else. Yet the shadows were drawn in closer than she thought they could, even with her powers. Like they were trying to choke her –
"I am glad to see you well." She stopped her last thought rather hastily, before the worry could surface and the empath would sense it. Then moving on to slightly more dangerous waters, "I have not seen much of you lately. Perhaps we should be doing the 'hanging out' sometime, so as to have more assurances that the other is well and-"
"Starfire." Raven's voice finally cut through her babblings, sharp and empty. The alien could not stop the wince; glad now that the other girl's back was turned. Raven was in a foul and dangerous mood, and her temper was not something to test or push when it was this far gone from the start. "It is 2:15 in the morning. What are you doing up here? Normal people sleep at this time."
"Pardon me, Friend, but you are not asleep either."
"No. I said normal people sleep at two in the morning. Neither applies to me."
Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?
I don't love him, winter just wasn't my season
Starfire chose not to go into that one. The first thing you learned as a Titan was not battle tactics, but that it Was Not Possible To Out Argue Raven. Shortly after you learned Where Raven's Personal Space Boundaries Are, When You Should Not Bother Her (this was certain activities ((meditating)) and times ((between the hours of 6 and 8 in the morning, as she was probably meditating))), and Never Enter Ravens Room. (The last was learned after the first three, only because you had to survive to try and get into her room first.)
So arguing would get her nowhere. If even Robin could not talk her out of something, then no one else stood a chance.
Instead, it was probably time to try a different tactic. "It would make me feel better if you were to take better care of yourself, Raven. Perhaps we should venture inside and find something hot to drink?"
"No." The refusal was curt and flat, but underneath was a tremor of …something.
"Why?" Such a small three letter word, but also the embodiment of everything she wished to understand about her friend.
"The boys are downstairs." Came the vague reply.
Tilted head to the right, "What does our friends being there have to do with you staying up here? I do not understand." If one of them said something to her…
The half demon stalled for a time before finally relenting "Beast Boy called me creepy." Again hung between them unspoken.
So we walk through that door, so accusing their eyes
Like they have any right at all to criticize
Hypocrites you're all here for the very same reason
'I'm going to kill him.' She decided pleasantly, while drawing up a politely confused smile and focusing her emotions to naïve bewilderment and concern. "But surely, as you have just said, they are sleeping, and you would not run into them at this time. I am sure that Beast Boy's words were not meant to hurt you," 'If they were, I'd have throttled him sooner', "and if they have upset you so, he will apologize in the morning." 'Even if I have to drag him through it myself.'
As she drew breath for another shot at bringing her off the roof (and away from that edge, it seemed she was getting a little to comfortable so close), she was once again cut off by the sound of her name.
"Koriand'r."
Abruptly, she was aware that the other girl had turned her head, just enough to give her a piercing stare out of the corner of one violet eye.
"Shut up. And stop focusing your emotions; it's giving me a headache."
So she dropped the smile into a more neutral - and slightly concerned - expression, while beginning a chant in her mind, quelling the slight tremor of panic and soothing her emotions, just as Raven herself had taught her.
"I am sorry for hurting you." She murmured quietly. "We can get some tea, and aspirin for your headache." Maybe a more roundabout way…
"Stop trying to manipulate me by talking in circles." Raven snapped, and this time Starfire was sure she caught her wince. "And I'm not going inside, so leave me alone."
"Beast Boy doesn't mean to upset you."
"He never means any of it, but he never learns, it always happens again, and he's never sorry because he doesn't understand!"
But you can't jump the tracks
We're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table
A suspicion began to grow. "Doesn't understand what, Raven? How thoughtless he's being?" Silence. "Or how hypocritical?" Still no words, but a shift in posture, sharp and minute. Starfire knew she'd found it. "They are not judging you, Raven. They'd have no right, even if they were."
"Oh?"
"Of course not." Starfire resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "The reason you are a Titan, is because you can do things a normal person on this planet cannot. That is the same reason that they and I are here as well – because we can do things that people can't. If you are 'creepy' or 'weird', then they are not all that far off, are they?"
"…So you're saying that freaks flock together."
This time she didn't bother resisting the eye-roll. "What I'm saying is that their intention is not to judge – so you should be less sensitive about it."
No one can find the re-wind button girl
So cradle your head in your hand
And breathe, just breathe
Oh, breathe, just breathe
"I'm not being sensitive!" The witch snarled, turning to face her fully for the first time so fast her cloak snapped – twisting and writhing like a living thing – before settling around her again. Once more there was the tremor in her voice, but longer this time – and then Starfire was able to place it.
Fear. "Why are you angry?" Starfire asked instead, filling that away for later use. Then when the other looked away, as if ashamed, "There is nothing wrong with having emotions, my friend."
"It's pointless."
"It's not." She insisted patiently. Rashness got you nothing with Raven. Probably why only Cyborg or Starfire ever really had long conversations with her – Beast Boy didn't have the attention, and Robin was just to impacent (as Slade has so often told him). "Having emotions signifies you're human."
"But I'm not. Haven't we been over this already?" Dark tone, biting sarcasm.
"Part of you is." She hedged stubbornly. "Isn't that reason enough?"
"To what, lie? Pretend?" She was smoldering now, the anger doused by logic, but unwilling to leave fully once finally burning. She was trying, so very hard, to rip holes in Starfire's argument by stating it in ways almost untruthfully blunt. It was, Starfire would decide later, a frightfully effective tactic.
But the alien would see this argument stayed afloat. "To Choose," she responded, "what you want to be."
May he turned 21 on the base of Fort Bliss
Just today he sat down to the flask in his fist
Ain't been sober since maybe October of last year
The last of the anger fled, leaving only the empty, solemn calmness that was Raven. Starfire was unsure if this was a good or bad thing.
"Your birthday was…very bad." Raven's face perfectly reflected her thoughts on that understatement. "But don't you think that all of this is a bit of a delayed reaction? We should be moving forward now, instead of trying to go back to obsess over it, and hope that time will just let us go back and stop."
"I don't obsess."
"I'm sorry. Would you rather I say 'angst to death over with emotions that are pointless'?"
There was a long silence before she got a response. "…that was way to many words." Which she translated into Raven's way of allowing that 'obsess' wasn't so bad after all.
Really, Starfire decided that the bluntness technique was very effective. Perhaps she could adapt it to a naivety technique that would work for her…
Getting off topic, but that thought was also stored away for later.
Another burst of cold wind reminded her of her original goal for this conversation, and decided she wasn't still completely at square one, as Raven had turned around to face her as they talked.
"Well, to many words or not, you've already made the choice to be human, so you may as well try and live with it."
A cynical eyebrow rose at that. "And just what would you know about my choices?"
Starfire recognized her only shot for what it was, and went in for the kill.
Here in town you can tell he's been down for a while
But my God, it's so beautiful when the boy smiles
Wanna hold him, maybe I'll just sing about it.
"I know that you try very hard not to care, when really you do care, probably to much for your own good. I know that we have become very important to you. That this importance is what keeps you from walking away. I realize that you want to save us from whatever you can, no matter how much you suffer in the end." All of these, such human traits. Things only the sentient human life could come up with.
Starfire drew a deep breath, then plunged even deeper. "I know that you want to join society, but don't think the wish is very logically sound. I know that you feel you have to live you're entire life in objective calmness, and the fact that you feel this is yet another contradiction about yourself you don't understand or enjoy.
"I know you don't like yourself much, and have no particular attachment to your own life. I also know that you wish this wasn't so.
"I know that you wish to trust us to protect you, but can't allow that if it will bring us to hurt.
"If these are not the choices of a human, Raven, then I must have the definition all wrong again. Those all sound like human traits to me. But then, I'm just an objective outsider."
For a very long time, Raven didn't move. She could only stand there, with very wide eyes, and the strangest expression on her face. Starfire decided after a while of this that it was the first - and most likely last and only - time that the empath had ever been so completely baffled as to fully stop all progressive thought.
Starfire could tell when Raven's legendary wits finally caught up with her – it was an impressive, and probably record-breaking several minutes – by the slackness of her face disappearing and the shrinking of her eyes. She could tell that the other girl was still somewhat confused, and still a little baffled, as she processed just how spectacularly she had lost that argument. There was a shine of bewilderment in her eyes, and fading irritation, and a trace of amused respect flitting through the violet as her mind finally began deciding where to go now – and all of this was seen by the alien, and appreciated greatly. Starfire had clearly won the argument, so…
She was quite surprised, and yet not very, when that decision was reached.
Raven smiled – a bare upturn of her lips, that wasn't fully suppressed – and turned to the door, sweeping past the other titan, clearly expecting her to follow, yet pretending like she didn't care. "It's getting cold. I think I want some tea, and an Advil."
Starfire was only off-balance for a moment. She regained herself quickly as she let Raven pass her, only saying "Of course." Raven's smiles were so rare, and she found she was quite pleased to find that a properly lost argument could bring one.
(Even when it was slight, it changed her whole look, made her seem so painfully, beautifully human, that the change was almost frightening, unless you knew Raven well enough to fully understand that yes, the witch really was human, and yes, she was fully capable of such worldly things.)
She also didn't do anything to disturb the air that the suggestion of tea hadn't already been made by someone else.
Really, she decided as she hid her own smile and stamped down furiously on her amusement, Raven acted far more human than she realized, or would ever care to allow if she knew.
Saving face was another very human trait.
Cause you can't jump the track
We're like cars on a cable
And life's like a hourglass glued to the table,
No one can find the re-wind button boys
The two of them made their way steadily downwards, using the stairs and being careful to not wake anyone else in the tower. Just because Starfire had gotten her inside didn't mean that the sorceress had forgotten that the people she had originally been avoiding where around, nor her want to not see them lessened any. So they both stayed carefully silent all the way down to the kitchen.
Once the lights had been turned on, Starfire grabbed the tea kettle as Raven pulled down the cups, and in perfect harmony they set everything up. It was Starfire who poured the tea in the cups, and so it was with no small amount of surprise to her when Raven finally reached out for the offered cup that she finally saw the stark white of medical bandages wrapped all over her hand.
A sharp thrill of panic, completely unsuppressed, "Raven! What happened to your hand?" Now looking, she could see splotches of crimson all along the knuckles through the white. Raven realized her mistake far to late, but jerked her hand back nevertheless, hiding it within the depths of her cloak and using her other, uninjured, hand to snatch the still offered cup from the air. She said nothing.
"When did you get hurt?" Starfire asked again, lowering her voice as the flashing 2:45 of the microwave clock just over Ravens shoulder admonished her that their friends (the people Raven was trying to avoid) were still sleeping. "Why haven't you healed it yet? It's still bleeding!"
Raven swallowed her painkillers and averted her eyes, even as she answered. "It's not important." Her voice warning the alien away from the subject, clearly closing it as one that they couldn't talk about at this time, perhaps ever.
But this was something that Starfire was not going to let slide away. Warning bells were going off in her head. Goddess, was Trigon physically hurting her now? "Don't even try to tell me you bleeding isn't important." She spoke firmly, gently prying the now half empty cup from her friends hand. As she expected, her other hand came up to try and stop her, and she latched onto the wrist as she set Ravens cup next to her untouched mug on the counter as she pulled the smaller girl to the bathroom.
Ravens half-hearted struggles and protest was completely ignored.
So cradle your head in your hand
And breathe, just breathe
Whoa breathe, just breathe
With a final tug, she pulled Raven – still complaining – across the threshold and kicked the door shut. A flick of her free wrist had the mirror cabinet open, and the small first aid kit in every bathroom (and most of the other rooms in the tower as well) in front of her.
Never once did she relinquish her hold on the smaller girl, half expecting her to try and vanish the second she did. So it was with one hand that she snipped the dirtied bandage away with the small silver scissors inside the kit.
Raven had fallen strangely silent by now, arm complacent to what Starfire wanted, her face shielded from all her thoughts and her blank eyes staring at some empty point in space.
When the last of the bandage fell away, Starfire couldn't stop the choked gasp or the curse that slipped. "Shit! Raven, did you break something?" The entire area between her knuckles and the first joints on her hand were with deep gashing cuts, a decent amount of them still oozing blood slowly. Star leaned in slightly to see better, but jerked back again soon after, her face even paler. "You didn't even bother to pull most of the glass out!"
She scrambled for the tweezers and antiseptic inside the kit, still ranting. Ravens complete lack of reaction, her total indifference to the entire situation, frightened and infuriated her in a way that she had never quite felt before. "When did this happen?" She demanded again, much harsher than before and probably harsher than she had wanted, but she didn't stop it. "Are you fucking crazy? You could get an infection, or make the wounds worse, or lose your hand, or a million other things!" Her language was also deteriorating, but Raven still hadn't said anything, and now she was desperate for some sort of reaction.
"Why didn't you say anything?" She snapped, the sharp fury in her voice harshly contrasted by the complete gentleness of her hands as she pulled the thin shards out of her wounds. It really wasn't helping her nerves that the other Titan was just watching her poke around in her flesh with a sort of lazy indifference. It was very unnerving that Raven could just watch her pulling things out from under her skin with the same attention she would give a bug on the wall.
There's a light at each end of this tunnel you shout
Cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out
The tiny bits were reflective on one side she noticed, as the blood glided off them onto the edge of the sink. "Did you break a mirror?" She asked gently.
The question garnered more reaction than all of her anger and cursing combined. Ravens lethargic look vanished instantly, being replaced with a baleful glare as she suddenly scowled at her hand as if admonishing it. Starfire's anger dissipated with the look. Raven finally answered her most asked question.
"Three days ago."
The anger came rushing back.
And these mistakes you've made
You'll just make them again
"Three days! You've been walking around with glass in your hand for three whole days?" For some reason Starfire couldn't explain, the anger left as fast as it had come, leaving her feeling tired and drained. "Why?" she asked resignedly, knowing she had to say it, yet also just knowing that Raven was going to ignore the question.
She was more than a little surprised when Raven answered, in prompt honesty.
"I don't know."
If you'll only try turning around
Starfire was silent for a while, carefully gauging her next words as she spread the antiseptic on the open wounds. Then she finally offered, quietly, "Would you like me to help you find out?"
2 AM and I'm still awake writing a song
If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me
Threaten' the life it belongs to.
Raven was still silent for a time, eyes fixed on the small clock on the opposite wall, the minute hand almost at the ten. Finally she looked to Starfire herself, for the first time since her bandage had been discovered. "There isn't any help to give."
For the third time that night, Starfire heard the thrill of fear in the girls voice, and realized that she had somehow stumbled onto it's source. Raven was frightened that there was no hope, no help for her or her problems, and that the best she could achieve was what she had now, the current stalemate of wills.
Starfire looked at Raven briefly before going back to studying her hand. "What you can't do alone, can usually be done with someone else." She told her carefully. Together they watched for a moment as Raven's body began its work. With the glass removed at last, her demon blood was finally able to begin closing the wounds. "Trouble is," She continued conversationally, eyeing one of the larger cuts and deciding if it needed more medicine, then applying it, "I can only bandage the wounds you show me."
Starfire pressed on the cut slightly more than necessary, causing Ravens eyes to instinctively look up and getting caught in the green gaze. "I can only stop the bleeding if I know where it's coming from."
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them however you want to.
The sorceress stared at her for several long moments with wide, venerable eyes, before the gaze finally fell to the small trickles of blood still falling absently from a few cuts.
"Me." She whispered at last, the effort to say them clear. "It's just…coming from me."
And while Starfire could understand what she meant, she could only think of one way to get that horrible, frightened, dependent look off her face. To bring back her old confidence. "That's a little vague. I could put you in a full body cast, if you like."
Raven blinked, and scowled imperiously, and suddenly was deciding whether to cause her benefactor bodily harm with narrowed eyes.
But you can't jump the track
We're like cars on a cable
And life's like and hourglass glued to the table
"If you wanted me to hurt you that badly, all you had to do was ask." The half demon informed her with a dark look. Starfire felt much better, despite the dangerous look that promised retribution. Raven had finally made her return.
"If it's all the same, I'll skip the injuries, thanks." Now she didn't stop the slightly amused smile. "Do you still want me to be your nurse?"
"Not if you don't stop acting as childish as Beast Boy."
And she felt better than she had in over a week as she carefully rewrapped Ravens hand, because that was as close as receiving permission to take care of her as she was going to get from Raven.
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand…yeah breathe
She finished tying the last knot on the bandage, and with as soft, satisfied sigh began cleaning up the mess, putting everything away.
Raven herself didn't help, but was looking at her hand, examining it closely, as if looking for flaws or holes in the bandage.
"Star?" She turned her head slightly, but Raven wasn't looking at her as the alien reached to put the first aid kit away. The demon's eyes strayed to the bloodied shards of glass on the countertop, and her newly bandaged hand.
"Hmm?"
"…What happens now?"
Starfire closed the cabinet thoughtfully before deciding what to say. "Now," she paused until the violet eyes went back to the glass, then – using the scraps of bandage she hadn't put back in the kit – with a meaningful swipe cleared the tainted glass from the countertop into the trash, "We let it heal."
And breathe, just breathe
Oh breathe, just breathe
There was another long pause, as Raven's eyes trailed up to look at her, but then for some reason her gaze slid to the mirror over the sink.
"Let it heal?" she asked her reflection slowly, as if trying the idea out. Then she smirked, and the look was one Starfire recognized. It was the gleam she always got right before she loosed Hell on an opponent.
"Aa." Raven spoke, but Starfire was unsure just who she was talking to now. "Sounds good to me."
((End Resolution))
Only by encounters can we grow. And only through growth can the scars of previous encounters be erased.
"Breathe (2 AM)" Anna Naltik
((End Bleeding Shadows))
God, I am so sorry this took so long. Life and work (and The End Parts I, II, and III) got in the way. But all my wonderful reviewers (all seven of them!) made me so happy and so guilty that I just had to finish. So, cookies and this final chapter of Bleeding Shadows are just for you. Still have any questions, or are confused by something, drop me a line by e-mail or leave a review after the beep. See ya!
-Maiga Ryu
/...Beep/