XI: Seventy-Eight
This is the closest he has ever coming to kissing her, and he does not want to hold back. His training, his upbringing, his conception of a leader, all restrain him. They hide his memory away, they hide away his knowledge.
He knows how to kiss a girl. He knows how to do more than merely kiss a girl. So why can't he seem to remember how to make it begin? Why can't he just close his eyes and go for it?
His hand slides to cover hers. Black gloves over pale skin. Like death, like a bruise, like the yin and the yang. He isn't sure, though, which of them is which.
And she is leaning towards him. He knows that his touch jails her, locks her away, makes her live. She is leaning towards him, her head tilting up.
He leans down. His lips press up against hers. His hand leaves her hand, straying instead to wander through that smooth, silky stream of purple hair. This kiss holds them prisoner. It beats them up, tosses them into the Isolation Cell, slams the door closed and throws away the key.
This kiss is like lightning. It's strange and it's new and it's so goddamn perfect. He doesn't want it to stop. But it has to stop. An average human can only go three minutes without air.
The kiss lasts thirty-two seconds.
When they part, she pulls the glove off his hand. She looks at his hand, at his palm. She traces the lines on his palm, pokes the calluses. Feels for the rough spots that remind the world that he once flew on a trapeze.
And then she looks up at him, that gentle smile curving along her lips. It is a beautiful smile. It is not a beautiful smile. It is a fragile smile, a cold smile, and yet somehow warm. Like somebody carved it out of ice and then put it in the winter sunlight, where it glitters and sparkles and melts.
He wants to kiss that smile. So he puts one finger on her lips, just one. The ungloved finger. And she looks up a little farther, and then they are leaning towards each other again.
The second kiss lasts for forty-six seconds. Time flies by through it. It is fleeting. It is something he saw out of the corner of his eye, there and oh so sweet, but gone when he looks for it.
And then she is sitting in his lap, her hands clenching at his back, nails somehow managing to dig through the multi-layered Robin suit. Their lips are crushing each other. This prison is more than the Isolation Cell. It's like some sort of Sensory Deprivation Room. They are everything and they are nothing. They are one plus one. They are yin and yang, they are yang and yin. One plus one is nothing at all.
This is everything he wanted to find. This is perfection. This is thirty-two plus forty-six equals one plus one, thirty-two plus forty-six equals one plus one, thirty-two plus forty-six equals one plus one.
And all that means is that they are everything.
But all that means is that they are nothing at all.
Isn't it grand?