AHHHHHHHHHH STILL NO THANK-YOU LIST! I'M SORRY!
(PROCEEDS TO BEAT SELF)
Um... (submits chapter up as a peace offering and scampers away promising to do a SUPER SUPER SUPER DUPER LONG thank you list next time...)
Does it help that this one's a little longer? (sheepish smile)
I really am grateful for the reviews! Sometimes I'm such a ninny! Oh well...work calls and after that I'll get straight to work on individual thank-yous which you ALL deserve totally. You're all the driving force behind me!
Thank you for the wonderful encouragement!
-rei
Disclaimer: teen titans is so not mine. DRAT.
Winner Takes All
Chapter Four: White Moves First
Raven shifted uncomfortably. She remembered what had transpired. She remembered a fair amount of pain and then darkness. She knew after such an occurrence, she would need to heal.
So why wasn't she floating and doing her unconscious regeneration thing?
She shifted again only to find that her skin rubbed against some thin, if cottony sheets that wrapped themselves firmly around her form, tucked in at the sides. The electronic sounds and constant whirring alerted that she was in the med room.
Her room rarely had any noise at all, save the movement of pages in a book or her door closing and opening.
Slowly she blinked her eyes open, glad to find a shadowed lighting; it must have been night. She felt more than saw her leader sitting next to her, head limp on his right hand that was stubbornly resting on the arm of the chair, a forced prop as if to keep him awake. It hadn't worked, but the idea was a good once, she admitted as she tugged at the sheets, pulling them down to her waist, folding them back neatly.
Raven liked neatness.
Her dark eyes surveyed the status screen. She would, of course, be fine. Electrocution wasn't terribly life threatening, but she had a feeling Slade hadn't meant it to be anyway. Dead leverage was useless leverage after all. She stretched, wincing as her back made sounds it probably shouldn't make and she grimaced at the bruises that had formed around her wrists and remembered the masked villain's vice grip.
At that thought, the idea of a shower or five appealed to her greatly.
Suppressing a groan—she didn't want to wake Robin—she swung her legs over t he side of the medical bed. Amethyst eyes looked at the ground dubiously as though she wasn't certain she could rely on her legs to hold her up and deciding not to chance it, she simply hovered ever so slightly above it. Something nagged at the back of her mind and whatever that was—she wasn't ready to face exactly what—it made her turn from her silent escape to look back at the sleeping Robin.
His face was not haggard—none of them were old enough to be haggard yet—but it was exhausted without a doubt, angry, worried, vexed beyond reason, and Raven couldn't help but frown upon that. It was in sleep that humans—and even half demons on second thought—should be able to attain something close to 'peace' of mind. Instead, the caped crusader of Jump looked worse off in sleep than he did when he was awake and battling any number of Slade bots or other such idiotic evils.
In dreams and nightmares we face our worst fears the daylight cannot contend with, Raven mused sadly. She knew a thing or two about nightmares.
Some part of her snapped at her in irritation when she reached out to brush some of his unkempt hair out of his face; it was like an unruly and uneven mop without all that gel and she realized for the second time—the first had been on his way out of the shower—why he used the hair product so generously. He didn't stir though, so with a tenderness she didn't dare show while his eyes could delve into her own, she swept a few more stray strands back before turning to leave the infirmary, phasing through the wall in unmatched silence.
Briefly she had noted on passing him that the hand that propped his chin up valiantly was gloveless, the green gauntlet on his lap and she wondered at that as she headed on a mission to the shower.
She didn't know that the sleeping leader had mirrored her kind actions several hours earlier.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It wasn't the first time he had had a dream like this.
A nightmare.
He recognized the set-up and wondered if this was what Raven went through every time she visited the rocky plateau of Nevermore. The image of Slade appeared at his left and he found himself thinking the scarlet cloaked Raven in chains was something to be desired over the emotionless husk at his side.
"Haunted still?" That voice was a rusted knife.
"You're not real. I know I'm dreaming. Back off Slade," he replied flatly, not in the mood to deal with a man he had so recently had to deal with in real life.
"I am very real Robin, but what should concern you more than my intentions," his metal encased hands rested firmly on Robin's shoulders and the boy wonder flinched as though struck. "Is what your own intentions are going to cost you, hm?"
Robin glared into the black nothing ahead as he broke away from Slade, still not sparing him even the tiniest of glances.
"And what would that be Slade?" His brevity must have amused the arch nemesis who let go a laugh that permeated the air like a subtle poison.
"Touchy. Well, I'll only ruffle your feathers a little longer dear Robin," there was a pause and then, "Maybe I should have phrased it, 'who your own intentions are going to cost you'?" Another laugh and he seemed to vanish just as Robin turned to demand further explanation.
Who?
Slade bots surged forth and he fought with the speed and strength of ten Robins, all feisty, all angry, all blinded by a never-ending need to see the maker of those creatures breathe his last...and still they kept coming.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
And then it was over.
Robin's eyes widened from the world of sleep to the world of consciousness to see slightly tussled sheets, partially hanging off the edge of the medical bed, the empty medical bed. Shoving his nightmare away, discouraged at the empty bed and his own inability to puzzle out Slade's infuriating hints, he exited the room.
It had been his intention to be there when she woke, and he had of course. The other part of that plan had been to be awake when she did however. He sighed. When the titans had gotten back to the tower he'd made it clear with practiced tension and silence that when he took Raven to the med room and sat down, he wanted them all to leave him.
And so he had waited there, through the rest of the day and then evening and into night. Starfire had asked if he wanted lunch around mid afternoon, to which he politely said no thank you. Later on Beast Boy asked if he was interested in dinner. Again, he said no. Cyborg before he retired to rest inquired if he had any idea what time it is, to which he said he didn't really care and Cyborg, believing him completely, sighed in resignation and left him to his mental perplexities.
At first, he had let Raven float as she had in times past, knowing she could heal herself and no amount of soothing balm or salve would ease her or help her. Then she had begun to shake and after holding a hand on her forehead, he'd found her feverish. That's when he decided to tuck the sheets around her, having grabbed them from a spare closet, one underneath her as she floated and two over and around her as he gently forced her to lay flat on the bed.
He was surprised at that time that she did not protest, even in her sleep. He imagined she might have.
When her shivers receded his relief did not surprise him but his lagging worry did. Why had Slade singled her out? Maybe just because she was separate from the rest, he reasoned. That was perhaps reason enough, especially from a logical standpoint. What had he used to subdue her powers? That was a confusing one and Robin had then continued to suspect and worry that Slade may have come up with some tool for each of the titans' special abilities.
Robin himself of course, was for once exempt from such thinking since he was only human, a fact he liked to hide from.
Propping his head on his hand, he'd redirected his attention to the sleeping empath. They had been getting along well, in his humble opinion. It occurred to him briefly that Raven would have laughed at him for calling himself humble and he smiled, just a little bit. The scanner and stat machine blinked at him, telling him what he already knew: that Raven would be okay.
Still, as often is the case when someone you care about is not their usual boat of secretly smiling sarcasm, Robin felt unequaled compassion toward her. In sleep she seemed peaceful, calm...but she worked at it, he knew. In dormancy or not, her expression was practiced to be mostly the same, most of the time. From their bond he knew better.
From his own feelings, he intuited even more so.
He stood up from the chair he had dragged to her bedside hours ago, stepped as close to the bed as one could get without being on it and observed her features carefully. Sooty eyelashes laid in graceful curves on her pale skin, some stray sections of hair having fallen over the right side of her face. Her breathing was even, a good improvement over when she was first brought in when it had been shallow and almost nonexistent. He wished he could see her face clearer but that hair was in the way...
Not really thinking—he'd done enough of that for the day or so he felt—he had removed his right glove and then swept the stray strands back, tucking them gently behind her ear. Her breath didn't even hitch, so deep in her sleep of healing, and for that, Robin was glad.
Friendly and witty banter was what worked easiest for them in waking hours, but for now he could show the depth behind the teasing and the challenges. He could show a sleeping Raven what he could not yet show one that was awake and he found himself oddly grateful for the moment.
He had soon after that seated himself back in his chair, hand propping his head up to keep a stubborn vigilance that only lasted until around 2 AM before he unwillingly gave himself to a troubled sleep. He'd woken up to find her gone around 3.
The birds seemed to have a thing for early morning.
And now he made his way quietly to his research area. He had to figure Slade out before Slade had all five of them figured out. He had to be first.
The door opened with a mechanical swoosh as he stepped one foot through.
"You need sleep. Slade can wait until later. He's not going anywhere."
Raven.
"It's the fact that he isn't going anywhere that has me worried," he replied blithely. The empath rolled her eyes. So like him...so stupid, she thought in exasperation.
"Robin, if you're exhausted, and I know you are, so if you become even more exhausted you're not going to be able to help anyone, no matter what you find out between the hour of 4 AM and 8. Four hours isn't enough, but that's what I'm saying you need and you can't begin to tell me that you weren't about to tell me to go to sleep too so don't bother," Raven finished, voice as even as ever but it had underlying frustration laced through its seams.
"You were hurt—" he began.
"I was and now I'm not. You are a sleep deprived hypocrite and should listen to me," she plowed on shamelessly, stubbornly.
"Raven, I'm going to search for a lead no matter what you tell me. I think you know that," he paused, observing her and confirming his assessment as he saw her eyes flicker with a yes-I-know-but-I-thought-I'd-try-anyway scowl. "Just get some rest yourself." She scoffed at him.
"Move out of the way boy blunder," her hand tapped him lightly on the chest as she all but stormed past him into his researching room.
"Raven?" he was a little confused.
"I'll help you. Two's better than one and all that jazz," she threw him a knowing grin—a rarity he'd lock away under his 'good memories'—as she added, "And God knows I read ten times as fast as you." She gestured at the old clippings and files having to do with nothing but Slade and before Robin gave thought to protest, she perched-or would have perched if she wasn't really floating—above the end of the control panel, scanning through a pile of unclipped papers that alluded to Slade-involved incidents.
"You're impossible," Robin grumbled through a begrudging smile as he passed her. He had really hoped she might rest some more. Sighing, he began typing in access codes and search words into one of the other panels, the keys ingrained in his brain since he had used them so many times, and thought she was ignoring him when her voice broke into his already avid search for new information.
"Same as you, boy blunder. Same as you."
His next smile was noticeably less begrudging and they continued into the normal hours of morning in comfortable silence.
----------------------------------------------------------------
His stomach revolted.
"Hungry?" her wry voice carried through the ceiling-high stacks of articles and files.
"...no," he lied futilely. Suddenly, empty file folders whizzed toward him with unexpected speed and he ducked, scrambling to avoid the rapid fire. He waved his arms in surrender, "Okay, okay, maybe a little!" Raven floated over, careful not to knock over any of their precious new research and poked him hard in the chest.
"This is a really bad habit of yours," she scolded. "Lying doesn't become you."
"You're a bad influence," he claimed with a melodramatic flare and she scowled.
"That's gratitude for you. Come on. I want more tea and you," she eyed his stomach plainly, "Want food." He opened his mouth to protest. "Shut it and move it," she ordered and shoved him out the door towards the kitchen.
"Thanks for caring, Rae-Rae," he teased. At this, Raven's anger piqued just a tad. She dropped her arms from forcing him anywhere and floated in mutinous silence past him as she went to get the kettle. Robin, pleased with himself, crossed his arms as he was wont to do and meandered leisurely into the kitchen. The empath, he noted after about five minutes of searching out the makings of a sandwich and a drink for himself, was pointedly ignoring him.
He eyed her thoughtfully, vaguely suspecting it was her steaming and not the kettle on the stove.
"What are you staring at birdbrain?" she asked with a caustic tone only she was capable of.
"My favorite bird," he replied unabashedly. Raven fought down the color that threatened to spread across her face. While she much preferred Robin carefree and full of wit to brooding and obsessive over Slade, she dearly wished he would redirect that self-same indolent wit to someone less... she dared to say to herself, 'susceptible and volatile' to his dogged charms.
"Flatterer," she muttered as she poured the hot water into the mug. Robin watched, amused. He had, by no means, forgotten his intent to track down Slade once more and his plots and schemes, but he had also not forgotten a game he had started earlier, one of far more playful nature. As Raven focused stubbornly on lowering the teabag into the water and then stirring it blandly, she bit her lower lip in surprise as warm arms encircled her waist.
"Only because you're worthy of flattery," he said it so only she could hear, even though Cyborg and Beast Boy were so engrossed in video games they wouldn't have noticed if he used a bull horn. Just stay calm, she told herself.
The mug fairly exploded.
She suspected her leader of fighting back a chuckle as he grabbed a dishrag and went to help clean up the mess he had inadvertently caused. Her hand went out to motion him to not even bother.
"Let me help," he tried the soothing approach, still stooping to clean up the broken ceramics.
"I need your help like I need a hole in my head," she mumbled and grabbing each piece of breakage, from the microscopic to the palm sized, she used her power to easily transfer the shattered mug to the trashcan. Shrugging, Robin ignored her and stooped to mop up the splattered tea.
"There," the boy wonder rinsed the rag and hung it over the side of the sink, an irrepressible grin on his face. Obviously he'd made her feel something.
And well, something was always better than nothing right? He looked at her. She glared back.
"Hello friends! Friend Raven, I am glad to see you are sick no longer," Starfire beamed as she flew into the common area, waving to Beast Boy and Cyborg and giving Robin an air-depriving embrace.
"Star...air please?" he managed to choke out and the Tameranian was quick to release him, apologetic as always. These earthlings certainly were not built as anyone from her planet! Still, Robin had, in ways, the strength of a hundred of her people, and that was one of the things she admired most about him, thought made him best to be the leader of the titans. Her green eyes sparkled innocently at him.
"My apologies friend Robin," she offered and went to give Raven a hug, luckily a much softer hug, as though the redhead was fearful of injuring her dark friend anew.
"Morning Starfire," Raven greeted as amicably as possible, which wasn't very, but wasn't mean either.
"I see you have already had the making of the witches of sand," Starfire noted Robin's untouched sandwich.
"That's sandwiches, Star," Cyborg called over his shoulder.
"Of course!" she nodded, surely to forget by the next time, but meaning to do her best to remember anyway.
"Uh yeah, lunch you know," Robin replied. "Actually, Raven and I were about to go back to researching Slade's next possible move." Starfire, naïve by no real fault of her own, tilted her head to one side, unaware of Robin's indirect attempt to separate him and Raven from the others.
"Could I be of some assistance to you as well, Robin?" she inquired. Robin ran a hand through his hair absently.
"No, it's alright Star. Just get yourself some lunch, hang out you know? Or you all can train," he hinted none too subtly and Beast Boy ducked under a couch pillow while Cyborg tried to be inconspicuous behind a technology brochure. "Or not," Robin relented and Beast Boy dared to peak out from under the couch.
"You are quite certain?" Starfire was not certain, herself. She wondered, confused, why Robin only desired the help of friend Raven but when he turned her away—not unkindly, but definitely—as second time, she nodded and went to get the mustard out for her lunch, whatever it might be, puzzling over his behavior. She offered help to all her friends of course, but especially for Robin who she cared about with a deep affection. Something told her there was a word for it here on earth, but she could not think of it. What she did know was that Robin, for the moment preferred spending time with the quiet empath and for some reason, this gave the Tameranian girl an unpleasant twisting sensation in her chest.
But if that was what Robin wanted, that was it for now and for the moment, Starfire could be distracted with such everyday things as lunch with too much mustard—no such thing to her of course—and placating words.
For now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Back in the researching room, Robin took a bite out of his sandwich. Raven sat next to him silently for a couple minutes and then sighed.
"She likes you, you know," Raven told him.
"I know," he affirmed shortly.
"So...why don't you say something to her?" Raven wasn't very good at talking about these kinds of things, tried often to stay as far away from the word 'relationship' as possible, but the loving waves emanating from Starfire were so intense she felt it would be distinctly wrong to not say anything.
"You know," he said.
"Such a wordsmith," she noted with dark sarcasm. Did she have to wring a reaction or action out of him by force? Robin pushed his plate aside.
"I know you remember the chess game and I know you remember that I kissed you, so what makes you think anything has changed Raven?" he asked, not quiet, but not loud.
"I just..." she trailed off. She had no idea what to say, for once.
"Star is my friend. I love her just like that, and only like that. I'd think I'd made my own affections rather clear," his voice was definitely quieter now as he brushed some of her hair out of her face, behind her ear, much as he had done while she slept. Raven flinched on impulse but also felt heat rise to her face and thanked the room's inherent dimness for covering her blush.
"Starfire is much better for you," she finally said.
It even sounded lame to her and a pink Raven was beating its head on something blunt and painful as the words escaped normal Raven's mouth. How stubborn!
"No, she's not," he disqualified her judgment soundly. "She could not take what is dark in me very well and I, for one, would not want to put that on her because she would never be able to understand, not like you." He paused here, hand caressing her cheek in a bold gesture that, surprisingly, did not result in a power shortage of any kind (yet) but a slight intake of breath on the Raven's part.
"She may not understand," she still fought his logic, "But she has the light to heal what darkness there might be in you, Robin. I don't." Her tone was distractingly bitter and not for the first time, Robin was seeing all of her, all of Raven—how she loathed the weakness of herself, how she was angered by it and by her inability to do what others might.
"I'm not asking for light, Raven. Contrary to what you might think, I'm not that stupid," he joked with seriousness, a strange combination to be sure.
"No, you're just stupid enough to come looking in the dark," she whispered, gaze falling from his masked one. She missed his eyes and, unable to see them, she closed her own. His fingers traced the curve of her face, brushing her closed eyelids softly, lingering on her lips.
"I don't think that's stupid at all where you're concerned," he said to her closed eyes and tilted her blind face up to him to capture her lips. Raven's mind blurred. On normal accounts, the surrounding shadows would have made her feel safer, but at the moment, it made her feel more vulnerable. No one could see in here, and no one else was there, just the two birds, just her and him and the obscurity was a cover over their bodies as they radiated heat with their nearness.
"Is this your rematch?" she asked, between kisses, vaguely recalling his challenge issued after that engagement in the kitchen. His lips traced her chin with a skill she could not ignore and his hands stimulated sensations in her that made her breathing uneven.
"White moves first," he reminded her and she recalled he always chose the white pieces when they played chess as he left butterfly kisses, starting from her mouth and continuing on down her neck. "I did warn you," he added as he suckled gently at the juncture of her neck and collarbone, and heard her gasp.
She wondered when he had taken the moment to so expertly pull the neck of her leotard far enough to do such a thing.
"It wasn't a fair warning," she accused, trying to regain control over the situation as his ministrations made her pulse hammer and her treacherous body respond in primal ways.
"All is fair in—" he was cut off was she pulled him up from his journey down her neck and pressed two fingers to his lips.
"Don't say it," she pleaded. Now, Raven didn't plead, to anyone and it scared him to see that side of her, but at the same time drove Robin on to want to see all of her faces, her feelings and thoughts. He concurred with her request but did not stop his assault on her senses. Raven was only barely aware as he let his fingers trail down her sides expertly, sweeping along just the right curves to the point where when she let slip a moan, she didn't have the attention to spare to be horrified at herself for letting this get so far.
Another kiss and Raven was swearing inside, but only a tiny part of her. When the Hell had he had the time to get this good at...this? They dueled for supremacy now, lips pressed hard against each other as they knocked over a couple piles of their painstakingly organized research. Propped haphazardly against one of those piles, Raven felt it collapse underneath her as their engagement became more heated, Robin's frame settling over hers. Reaching up, she removed his mask and he did not try and stop her, even for a second.
He trusted her.
Blue eyes with fire in them should be illegal, she decided, the remains of her resolve disappearing beneath them.
"We're losing hours of work," she groaned and knew she could not continue to protest when it became clear soon after that Robin, the obsessive and Slade-hating Robin, was quite simply beyond caring about such things, occupied entirely with her. Her hands raked through his hair and over his muscled torso, trying to get some sway, some charge over her wildly spiraling emotions by getting power over him to little avail. So when his hand boldly brushed over her chest, it wasn't just her body responding as she gasped at the sensation, but the electricity responded too.
The tower's electricity.
The panel blinked in a straining whir, and then the screen, and then came pitch blackness. Robin halted in his rematch as Raven tried to pull herself together, wondering if by any luck it has just been this room that shorted.
There still seemed to be light filtering in through the crack underneath the door...
Maybe she was lucky after all...
Reassessing her situation, she slapped herself mentally; on second thought, no.
She was not lucky at all, because here she was, less than inches apart from her opponent in a game she had the distinct feeling she was losing; the flush she could still feel on her face and neck was a dead giveaway, even in the complete darkness of the room. Here she was, emotions and attractions absolutely unbridled and intensely considering how little she really wanted to distance herself from her leader whose heated breath she could still feel occasionally brushing across her nape.
Here she was. And here he was.
Here they were...very alone in a false cloak of night that seemed to incite actions the daylight might not stand for. Here they were, his body against hers, their hands somehow intertwined, fingers interlaced.
And neither dared to move, dared to breathe too loud or speak, for what seemed like years spent in the dark.
more? no more? what say you, glorious readers?
sorry if that seemed to cut off...i worried the chapter might be too long or too dense or something...arghhhhh
anyways, yes, what say you?