I have no ownership of Teen Titans, sadly.
Thank you for all the reviews and I hope this chapter starts to elucidate better on the triangle I've got going here, as well as the outcome. It's hinted at, but I can't just give it away either. Gotta warn you though, in all fairness, I like Robin and Slade equably for different reasons. I tried to give them more depth here. We'll see how that goes.
Review if you have time, if not, tis quite alright; I'm really very glad you're reading this either way. Thank you much!
-Rei
For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds
Chapter Seven: For Everything
Raven groaned. The phrase 'hit by a truck' passed through her mind and it occurred to her that she might have been. But that didn't make any sense. The last thing she remembered was...
She sat bolt upright, eyes widening in a way not unlike Starfire's tended to when amused or what Raven would refer to as overly joyous, and looked around. Before she'd even finished her vague scan of her surroundings, she knew he was there, before she even heard his voice.
"I thought you might not wake," he worked to be unreadable, even now. She shifted uncomfortably and, throwing the soft sheets off, swung her legs over the side of the small metal bed.
"Where are my things?" she asked, wincing at the dryness in her throat, and he gestured behind him. Her cloak was hung on a hook on the wall with her boots sitting placidly beneath them against the base of the wall. So focused on ascertaining the whereabouts of her stuffs, Raven did not notice the terribly passing look of what could have been disappointment on the unmasked villain's face.
But was he really a villain? She knew the answer, even if she didn't say it.
"You are leaving, then," he said more than questioned and stood from his chair as if to leave.
"Wait, why? This isn't a trick...is it?" She was grasping for straws and she knew it, but she had to ask. Even though her own defense of Slade against Robin earlier seemed to prove she knew already, she had a sudden need to hear it from the man's own mouth, to understand...even a little of what may not be meant to be understood at all.
In that respect, she reflected, they were overwhelmingly alike.
"I should think the reason would be painfully obvious by now...Raven," he said, and it was soft. Cold austerity was gone; forced malice had left the building; even necessary strangeness seemed to have disappeared into nothing. For here was all the odd and incomprehensible and intolerably beautiful things in his tone now; here was his reason.
"But you are...and I am..." she had no real defense and that was evident in the silence that lapped over the two of them as her feeble words whispered themselves away. Slade shrugged.
"I am well aware of who you are," he paused and she thought the pause to be a bitter one. "...well aware of who...of who I am," he finished after said pause and ran a hand through his hair. The gesture reminded her of Robin with a sudden stab of anguish and she turned her gaze to her feet. And it wasn't anguish caused for the lack of her leader or the fact that what had failed to pass between the birds seemed inevitably impossible. It was anguish rather, for an unexpected capability she found stirring in her: the ability to feel for someone on a level she would never normally allow herself, the ability to feel...for Slade.
She did not know what to do with herself, did not know what had become of her and most frighteningly of all, perhaps was that she did not know what to do with him.
In his own way, he had all but said he at least...cared for her. Coming from Slade, she properly deduced that to mean he liked her a great deal, even if he couldn't bring himself to say it outright—not that she wanted that.
Not exactly.
"I," her books failed her. Sophocles and Euripides, Browning and Poe, Hemingway and a thousand other well-written artists of word fled from her mind and left her with absolutely nothing to combat her fearsome truth with. She was exposed now more so than ever with no pretty lies to cover up her speechlessness and the vulnerabilities that huddled inside of the hush. So, wordless, she dared to raise her eyes to him again and if Lust poked her in the side to remind her he was rakishly handsome despite the scar, she brushed past her; and if Timid did the closest thing that Timid would ever do to shouting at her to get her to flee that instant, she tuned her out; and if Happy said this might not be so bad, she ignored her.
Raven did, however, notice something: Wisdom had nothing to say, nothing at all.
"Your leader, I think, was rescued by the Tameranian," Slade interrupted her mental scourge. Her eyes flashed speculatively, though not hurt.
"They did not...look for me?" she asked and then couldn't believe she asked at all, but also trusted Slade to tell her the truth. Slade rolled his eyes at her, something he would have never done in the company of anyone else—it betrayed his true age and lingering spots of humanity after all.
"They did of course," he replied brusquely and Raven felt, if possible, equably stupid as she did bad for questioning her friends. "But luck does not suit the titans and it seemed dear Robin had to be whisked away for immediate care and the other two were needed at the south part of the city," here he stopped and when she threw him a probing stare he added, "Trouble with the Hive, I believe." She nodded dumbly.
"They will be concerned," she said quietly. It was his turn to nod. She sighed. At this, he arched a brow.
"You need not worry that I'll try to keep you here." He misinterpreted her sigh for something it was not.
"I am not worried," she said carefully and maybe it was the ease of her words that invited him closer to her, or maybe it was the graceful fashion in which she tilted her head as if to examine him like something under a microscope. Whatever it was, it drew him to cross the room to stand before her.
"You aren't," he said and there was a wonder in his voice she had not heard before either. She closed her eyes and felt his on her, but focused instead on Robin: was he truly alright? Despite their words, stubborn and regrettable as usual, her care for him had not lessened.
"Azarath, metrion, zinthos," she breathed almost imperceptibly, but Slade heard it and watched as Raven's eyes glowed white and her presence seemed to disappear from the room entirely. She sought Robin's conscious and on finding it, landed in his mind without him knowing, blocking herself from him, wishing only to see through his eyes to make certain he was okay.
In her vision, or rather, Robin's, she could see two familiar green eyes, anxious and loving—Starfire—and at first, when the green eyes seemed to lean in, Raven thought nothing of it. Then she felt something on her lips—no, on Robin's lip—, like pressure...and then with a shock she could not hide, she knew exactly what was happening as Robin's eyes closed and her own sight was cut off as such. Silent as ever, she withdrew from his mind and opened her own eyes to find herself back in the mostly empty room, her once subjugator standing at her side. To her dismay she felt hurt begin to show itself in her heart and she quelled it with deep focus on Wisdom and Indifference. She reminded herself she had all but rejected him a while back and that she had no claim on his heart, reminded herself she could not and when it came, her laugh was a hollow one.
"He is alive," Slade ventured and admirably kept the dissatisfaction from his voice.
"And well," Raven added in a non-committal way that made present company frown.
"You are unhappy with such news?" he asked, perplexed in spite of himself, and she only shook her head.
"I am never happy," she corrected him, but her voice did not have the self-pity or self-absorption such a statement should have contained; instead it was a humble truth, murmured from pale lips like the last words of a horrible curse.
It might have been.
"Perhaps, you have never been given a chance," Slade suggested and if he was surprised at his words and bordering on appalled to find his hand lay itself on the dark girl's shoulder, both feelings intensified tenfold when she covered it with her own. His vacant stare turned full as he considered her return of the gesture, her stillness, and most pressingly the fact that she had not yet left. The appalled feeling subsided and the surprise gave way, as often surprise does, to acceptance at what was just another realization in the onslaught: he found he did not want her to leave.
Meanwhile, Raven was thinking along similar lines but now Wisdom voiced displeasure and Rage thrashed incoherently but it was often that Rage did this, so she was at least ignorable. Wisdom on the other hand went so far as to do more than look down her nose at Raven, went so far as to raise her usually more toneless than toneless voice to one of insult and reproach. Happy was shrugging and Sad was tracing the shape of an eye-mask in the sand of Nevermore while Timid hugged herself in the shadow of a precipice. Courage muttered to herself, for once unable to decide on what to support and the others were too muddled to identify.
She pushed them away as best she could, all of them.
"Tell me why," she said. "Tell me."
"It is difficult to say," he answered truthfully and Raven could not fault him for an evasiveness she herself would take on if she found the roles reversed.
"I see," she said, and moved noiselessly away from him one fluid motion, her standing and slipping out from underneath his hand something of a dance because of the poise...or because of the sadness...or both.
"Raven," he said her name with care, like it were a glass piece of the greatest fragility, like it would break under the tiniest intended force, whatever it might be. She paused at the door but her back remained to him and he found this angered him. Would she refuse to even face him on her leave? He went to her and stopped just behind her frame, daring for the first time to indulge a whim of his; he trailed his fingers softly through her hair. She leaned into his touch. "Just as I shall not keep you in this cage, there is not a soul here who would, conversely, make you leave it either." He waited for her to meet his eyes, to glance up at him through dark violet irises, but when she finally did he found himself turning to stare at the ceiling needlessly.
There was another thin pause and then her voice edged into it.
"...I know," was her response and he did not move throughout the length of her silence that then swallowed the two of them up like one great and blurry shadow.
But eventually she returned to the bed in the center of the room and sat down. Eventually he paused beside her until she gestured with her hand as if to tell him it was okay to join her. Eventually he did.
And so they sat, one leaning lightly on the other in the bare room, metal bed creaking under their combined weight; they leaned, her shoulder against his, for support against what scared them both more than anything else had for years now.
"I know this probably won't work," she told him gently and Slade, in spite of the aching disappointment, was simultaneously heartened by her ability and choice to use a gentle tone at all. No one had been gentle toward him for so many years. He'd forgotten what it felt like to be cared about.
"Wouldn't," he corrected her and she gave an echoless laugh, short and bitter.
"Wouldn't," she agreed.
"It doesn't stop you from wondering though," Slade brought her own thoughts to word and she felt him turn; she let herself relax into his embrace.
"No, it doesn't." She rested her head against his chest, listening for the heartbeat she'd been all too sure didn't exist in the man who, years ago, all but delivered them all to near oblivion. The world works in strange ways, she thought wryly and wondered at it just a little as she felt his fingers run lazily through her hair, tucking some of it behind her ear. Slade himself was astounded he could remember how to be this way with someone, and he bordered on disbelieving at how easy it came to him with her nearness.
Wasn't the idea of a super villain to be beyond such things? This was not the first time he'd had this triangularly glorified thought, and still it troubled him. What was becoming of him?
He supposed his next words answered him as much as they surprised him, even as he heard his own voice forming the sounds of truth, alien and strangely beautiful.
"I have loved you long, though I did not realize it at first," he said and he said it slowly, thoughtfully. Raven took this moment to lift her face to better look at his and here he continued. "But I knew when you left and I feared I would never see you again, for I had planned to leave Jump. And I knew it when I met with Robin on the rooftop and I was angry—no, envious—that he was a hero and could do as he pleased, live in sunlight and tell the girl he loved he loved her, and have her return it." He stopped when she shook her head sadly.
"He does not." Her claim was soft so that he could not outright dispute it, even though he did not believe her. He knew what he saw and heard from the leader of the titans to be protectiveness, possessiveness, and jealousy, and fear above all things. Slade knew they didn't stem from some fleeting emotion the troubled boy harbored. He did love her. But that Raven did not know he did made the older man pensive. Some part of him whispered that she did not deny her own love for the masked boy, but he shut it off, not wanting to listen.
"In that case, he is more a fool than I am, perhaps." He offered her a terribly wonderful and terribly vulnerable gift in the form of a tentative smile; she thought him handsomer for it.
"He tried, I think. But we are a stubborn kind of people, he and I," she said almost wistfully and shook her head in a doleful manner. "It took you a few weeks, hardly a month, to tell me what he has had years to figure. If it were true, he would have said it," Raven added and told herself she wasn't reasoning or trying to prove anything to anyone, least of all herself. She had a particularly bad moment when her mind flashed on what she knew to be Starfire kissing Robin while Raven had been searching for his bond to her, and froze in thought on that moment. He loved her, perhaps. It would not have been unfeasible; the pretty alien had at least made her own intentions clear time and again. Their leader had been sketchy with all of that as to a response but...those two together made some sort of sense at least, she argued with herself and was dismayed to still feel her heart breaking the smallest bit.
"I knew even before that possibly," Slade admitted with some reluctance, but there was no sullenness, only honesty. He avoided mention of Robin again; he didn't like the empty and shaded look his present companion took on when his ex-apprentice came up in conversation so far.
"You could have said something." She eyed him considerately, but not in rejection, and he felt relief even if he did not show it.
"No, I couldn't." She waited for him to further explain. Slade sighed. "I stole you away, imprisoned you; I am your team's most hated adversary. I couldn't tell you. Your love of them might make you hate me for taking you from them...from him," he paused and broke their shared gaze before finishing, "if you did not already hate me of your own accord, which would also be expected I gather." Shifting in his arms, she moved away a little bit and Slade was alarmed at how cold he felt without her pressed against him, but he did not hold her back. She seemed to assess him like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit, like a black chess piece in the midst of white ones at the start of the game, like oil on water.
"You are trying to remind me of what I already know," she said, a little taken aback. He was afraid she would make the wrong choice, she realized with some gratitude.
"Only because it is sometimes what we know best that we hide from best as well," he cautioned and she laughed at him, a quiet laugh, but a real one for all its quietness. He arched a brow at her. "What?"
"You said before you thought you were a fool, but I am beginning to think it is I who is the fool here." He threw her a questioning look and she said with a smile that said she didn't quite believe her own ears, "I seem to have fallen in love with you as well..." Her smile faltered here though and Slade read it like words on a page.
"But you have feelings also for...him," he decided to put it cryptically even though both knew who he referred to. She nodded and he noted some amount of shame in her gesture.
"I know it is strange, and wrong," she began and bit her lower lip in a pensive pause before saying, "Yet I know this is how I feel. Still, I also know you probably..." she trailed off again.
"I probably what, Raven?" he prompted her, though not unkindly.
"Probably, with present knowledge, do not want me?" It was a frail question.
"You are incredibly foolish," he agreed and now he drew her to him like something precious, which she was. No longer an obsession, he realized that somehow she had become the most intense of his affections and more than that: he didn't mind.
"I do not know what to do," she confessed with such a depth of bitterness that Slade empathized with her; he couldn't remember the last time he had even considered empathy to be an option.
"Do what you must," he offered her no ultimatum, nothing too final, just a fork in the road she didn't really feel like dealing with...not yet anyway. And there were no more words for some time as she settled against him again and allowed his arms to surround her.
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A while before...
Robin had pushed Starfire away at the jolt he felt in his mind. Raven. She was there, he was certain and now he was even more certain that she was gone. Starfire for her part had been confused and Robin couldn't really blame her; signals always seemed to get mixed pretty badly between the two of them, especially in the eyes of the press. She'd only been acting on her feelings, not knowing he did not return them similarly.
"Robin?" she asked and moved back to her seat at his side in the med lab unhappily.
"Star," he began and sighed before he could continue. "I'm sorry, I just don't..." he tried to find the right words. He failed. The gentle Tameranian was emotional by nature but she did her best to force back the tears she felt pushing to surface; she did not want to be a burden, much as she wanted the boy in front of her, much as she loved him. Maybe it was because she loved him that she accepted his non-verbalized rejection.
"No, I am sorry, friend Robin," she pasted a smile on her tanned features and though the boy wonder could see right through it, he acknowledged the acceptance she offered him. "If you will excuse me," she said more quietly and the smile had already gone before she turned to leave him to his own devices, alone in the med lab. He rubbed his head, frowning. Raven. She had been there, in his head...he was sure of it. Why had he only noticed her just then though? He could tell from that one glimpse that she'd been there a while and this confused him; he'd only been aware of her, and suddenly, when...
With a hollow pang he remembered: he'd only been aware of her when Star kissed him. And the feelings he'd been made aware of were hurt, and misunderstanding, and surrender, and...other things. His mind flashed on his unkind words to her before the building came down around them and Robin cursed. He would probably be lucky if she ever spoke to him again...and then there was her odd behavior concerning Slade. Something inside him twisted at the thought that the older man might actually walk away with her in the end. The door to the lab swished open minutes later as he strapped on his utility belt again and adjusted his green gauntlets. He turned to go, but Beast Boy blocked his way.
"Dude, you can't go out like that," the changeling's voice admonished uncharacteristically. "Half the building we pulled off of you!"
"I've got to find her again; there's been...a misunderstanding," Robin said, careful to be cryptic yet final. Beast Boy exhaled, exasperated.
"Look, we only just got you out of that building. We couldn't find her anywhere. Dude, how do you even know..." he trailed off at a withering glare from his leader.
"I know," he said shortly and Beast Boy shook his head but stepped back to let Robin pass, knowing he'd do so by force if necessary.
Robin sped off via R-cycle with more speed and recklessness than he ever had before, but it hardly mattered. Without her, it seemed little did.
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"He just went off, again!" Beast Boy shouted, irritated with Robin but also concerned. This was beyond becoming ridiculous and more than a little frightening a cycle.
"We must follow," Starfire decided for them and Cyborg agreed with a silent nod. His thoughts were not only on Robin but on Raven; the titans had gotten to the adjoining rooftop before the building collapsed in time to see her stop Robin from pursuing Slade and it was for that reason, among others, that he worried also for her sake. If things were as he theorized they might be—for the bionic man was very smart, loudness and meat-loving aside and so on, and he was at least decent at observation—he knew there was some pain in store for all involved, particularly two dark birds. But he would think more on that later.
Now they had to follow their leader, as the phrase might be, and hope to whatever God might be listening that he didn't become increasingly foolish with his anger and pride. It was too dangerous to consider might happen if he did.
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Raven was in a dark place.
Of course, this wasn't unusual, but this was a different kind of dark and that was unusual to be sure. How could one darkness be different from another, after all? This one, she decided upon scrutiny, was a hollow kind, not the filled in gap of chasm's black but the emptiness of a large and intensifying void.
She had only been in this kind of place once before.
"Daughter," a sneer greeted her and she felt her skin burn. She looked down and her face paled more than one thought possible. It couldn't be. She'd been through this already. The portal, the end of the world, the revival, all of it, she'd been through it and it was over. It had to be. There was his laughter then and she knew against all reason, it was not over at all. "You thought to escape me forever, dear daughter?" It was rhetorical but her spitfire required an answer and drew it from her lips.
"No, I thought to destroy you." There, that was pretty good, she thought wryly but her eyes maintained the severe worry from before as she examined the familiar red markings all over her skin, angry and Hellish...demonic.
"Well met, spawn of mine," he mocked and she despised him for that weird echoing effect his voice had in this empty space, in this space where it seemed all there was, was her and him, and more of him than her to be specific. He seemed to overwhelm the place with the Hell he endeavored to spread across worlds.
"Not so well if you're here, what is it you want?" she said, icy in the face of flames.
"Nothing you don't already know," her father's voice boomed around her with obvious ridicule and she crossed her arms defiantly.
"Then you might as well pack up and back off. Nothing has changed," she challenged him; she'd done it before. This time would be no different. She swore upon it then and there for the planet that had allowed her, for the friends who had raised her, and the home that had been given her. It was a silent vow, but no less sincere or binding.
And she knew a lot about the solidarity of a vow—one of hope, particularly—and the threads that wrapped around her fate now were of a ghostly silver that foretold of that fate she had tied herself to. She did not blink an eye at it though. Her father could not be allowed success; she would not allow it.
"I think not," he replied, amused by her vagrant show of continuous mutiny. She dared still, when he returned now more powerful than ever? She went so far as to question him and his abilities? She defied him? Amusing indeed, the entity of Trigon let scorn trickle through the area in reverberating chuckles of malice and cynicism.
"Leave!" she cried angrily but her cry turned to one of indescribable hurt as her birthmarks not only flared but felt as if they were being torn from her again; she knew they weren't, but the sensation of immense pain did not waver from the knowing.
"World will bow before Trigon, dear daughter and this time, even your precious 'hope' cannot save you."
His words echoed through the pain as Raven felt herself consumed by the Hellfire.
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Raven's eyes shot open and she jumped, levitating into the air about five feet, whirling around as though she was surrounded by enemies...she felt she was and then when a hand gently touched her ankle, remembered where she was, and with whom. Slade eyed her quizzically and with equal gentleness, tugged almost childishly at her cloak's corner; she came down to sit beside him again.
"Nightmares," he said knowingly and she nodded, numb.
"Trigon," she smiled emptily and Slade's expression darkened considerably.
"What? But you—" he began.
"I know," she cut him off.
"So how..." Slade started.
"I don't know," again she cut him off and he sighed, vexed. No answers were available to her apparently and as such, none would be to him either. He accepted this, but not the way she seemed to have closed herself off now, not just from him but from the world; it was as if she was pretending as if she had no ties to this plane of existence at all and it struck some measure of fear in him.
"I do not like the look of you," he told her in softness that belied what he meant and she gave him a more heartfelt smile.
"Neither do I," was her rejoinder and he sighed again.
"You know what I mean," he said. She nodded.
"And I know what I must do but..."
"We need them...you need them...him," Slade guessed correctly.
"I do." There was a quiet in which Raven had the sinking feeling she had made a mistake in all of this, but then the older man spoke and he said it with a consideration that made her grateful that she had, even if it was a mistake in the end.
"Then I shall bring him to you." It wasn't that she was going to agree to this, but that he would offer it without being asked was a greater gift, perhaps.
"I shall seek him," she said and added, "I do not think he would be as receptive were it to be you who found him first." Slade nodded in understanding.
"You will return?" he asked, fearing brutal honesty now more than ever.
"I will," she promised and disappeared into her soul-self.
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A short hour or two after he had been gone, some part of the leader in Robin allowed himself to be led back instead of dragged back to the tower by his teammates. He had caused them enough worry and as they all gave him cursory glances as they entered the tower before him, he waved a hand to tell them to go ahead. He'd follow and they needn't worry he'd lie. This was where he needed to be, whether Raven was there or not and it was with a heavy burden and sense of duty that he yielded to this truth. Clouds were gathering, amassed in a gigantic gray tumult and he watched, somewhat fascinated at its speed; was this a natural storm? Thunder rumbled in the nearby vicinity and he was about to go in the tower when a familiar shadow surfaced in front of him and became the even more familiar shape of one dark and beautiful sorceress.
"Raven?" he almost didn't believe she was there. It began to rain but neither titan took notice. The weather was the last thing on their minds, the least of their problems and worries.
"Robin," she nodded curtly. He had an awful feeling in his stomach and no feeling at all in his chest where he knew his heartbeat was probably pounding furiously. The rain was pounding too, sudden and strong.
"You're okay." He breathed relief but in an instant forgot his grand plans to apologize, to explain the situation with Starfire, and most importantly and crucially he forgot to tell her what she needed to hear the most. Instead his expression hardened and his posture became stiff with defensiveness. "Where's Slade?" His voice was very, very cold, but Raven didn't even blink, didn't flinch, didn't give any indication she'd heard his accusatory question at all. He yelled this time. "Where's Slade?"
Somewhere nearby thunder reverberated through the earth and lightning flashed down, making the whites of her downcast eyes glimmer suspiciously.
But they couldn't be tears...this was Raven after all. He took a step toward her and stopped abruptly when she made her first motion in the whole of their encounter so far. She kicked at some rubble on the ground and a few stray rocks and pebbles rolled to hit against his boot.
"I have to tell you something," she said after what seemed an eternity. Her own voice was devastatingly calm to Robin and some of his madness toyed with what he knew to be real and what he feared might be real and what he knew wasn't real at all, but feared all the same.
"Answer my question, Raven," he ground out like a bad taste in his mouth.
"Robin just listen to me, this is more important," Raven said, her own anger flaring a little at his obstinacy. This was hard enough for her, couldn't he see that? Didn't he know? Clenching and unclenching her fists at her sides, Raven exhaled slowly and told herself to concentrate. He had a right to be angry...not stupid, some part of her mind told her, but angry maybe yes.
"No, stop evading my question!" he shouted into the storm and closed the gap between them, looking down at her with a knit brow that belied his confusion and his anger equally.
"Robin!" she yelled back now and something might have exploded behind them or near them, but they couldn't hear past the raging wind and rain and their own beleaguered voices. "Stop! Listen to me," she lowered her voice a little here. "You're not making this any easier for me," she added, sad and Robin thought he might have detected some disappointment there too. Disappointment? What did she have to be disappointed about? He wasn't the one who had gone off and practically betrayed the team to Slade, wasn't the one who'd gone off and protected the thrice blasted villain...so why? He couldn't bear the directness of her gaze suddenly and turned his back to her.
Because of this, he did not see her face fall and her eyes dim in veiled defeat, did not see her mask crumble like dust and disappear with the rain now plastering their clothes to their bodies like second skins, cape and cloak included.
Because of this, he did not see what he most needed to see.
"Now, will you listen?" she asked with a sigh that sounded like she was resigned to fate for the second time in her life. Robin only had one guess as to what she was going to tell him and the convoluted pain in his chest kept tightening, kept distracting him from knowing what to do to stop it, to make her take back the words she hadn't even said yet.
He didn't know if he could take it, the truth. All this turmoil wrapped itself in a clever fashion inside his mind, but outside he was an impassive wall and he shrugged indifference without turning to meet her stare.
"Fine," she breathed in and out. "First...there are two things but you have to know one first: I love you," she said in a somewhat guarded tone, but the storm blocked it out. He turned.
"What?" he frowned and she took a step back as though frightened. This was truly odd...Raven, afraid? "Raven, what did you say?" he prompted her again, irritation still high in his voice.
"I said I love you," she said and here her voice broke into pieces. "Idiot," she added half-heartedly and dropped her gaze to the gray rocks underneath their feet. Robin stared for a moment, dumbfounded. Hadn't she come to tell him she was leaving? Hadn't she come to tell him she—he winced internally—had fallen for Slade? Hadn't she come to tell him...anything but what she now told him?
He shook his head. "But I thought—" he began but she shook her head too.
"No, you didn't! You didn't think at all, not even a little!" He was rightly reproved because of course she was right. "I've loved you all this time. I just couldn't let it happen. I practically told you, months ago!" Her voice escalated in varying emotions—sadness, frustration, relief. "I would never betray you or the others. You are my family. I love you all," she bared her soul in the night and didn't care anymore that she did so.
"Raven..." he had had more angry words, more painful ones; he had had more of everything ready to say, everything except an answer to what she had just told him. So he stood there, facing her, speechless—for once. It was just as well, she had more to say.
"But you should know the truth, that you are not the only one I hold dear to me in that way," and there was the fine print. Robin could not keep the hurt from showing on his face, even if he had been trying, which he wasn't anymore. He had been hiding too long already, it seemed.
"Slade," his voice got caught in the wind and sounded very distorted when it made its way to Raven's ears, but she heard it and nodded.
"I know it makes little sense, none at all even," she spoke as if sheepish about something, as if embarrassed. "But it is what I know to be true, Robin," she whispered. It was a wonder he could hear her through the pelting rain and booming thunder but her words reached him fully.
"You are right, it doesn't make any sense," he was frustrated. Why? How could she even consider Slade? And...her voice interrupted his mental tirade, a tirade which the empath had felt mentally and winced at the edge of madness and vexation.
"I know...I know you like Starfire now, but I just thought you deserved to know how I felt about you...and him," she said then and he remembered she had been in his mind when the innocent Tameranian had kissed him. He waved his hands in a wildly negative gesture.
"No, no, I don't. I don't. I only like you," he affirmed and when she gave him a skeptical look, he took her hands in his and held them to where she could feel the heavy pulse of his heart. "I only love you."
"The kiss?" she wavered in her disbelief.
"A misunderstanding," he insisted and she searched his face for the truth. He wasn't sure that she could find it without being able to see his eyes but she must have found something because he could see her posture relax ever so slightly. She tucked some hair behind her ear, and dropped her scrutiny to the earth again, but he didn't want her to look at the ground anymore; he wanted her to look at him. To his pleasure, she did not shrink back or blow something up when he delicately took her chin between his fingers and directed her eyes back up to meet his. "That's all."
"That's all?" she echoed. This was more complicated than she had expected. She had expected him to say yes, he did love the alien girl after all and she had expected more pain for her heart would break in a sense, having loved him for so long. She had expected all of that, none of which had come, except maybe the heartbreak, but now it was for a different reason. It was for the plight now at hand. Now not only did she love two living souls entirely, but both returned—on some level—her feelings and on top of that, there was Trigon's return...
"That's...everything," he promised and brought her close, close enough that he could wrap his arms around her petite frame and hold her; against the rain, against his own blindness, against the world, and he realized he felt alone in their togetherness. It was a comfortable kind of solitude though, the kind that contradicted itself because how could two people claim to be solitary while standing so near that their twisting auras merged into one? How indeed, for it was not at all reasonable, but feelings, he mused briefly, seemed to fall outside of that category altogether. And that aside, he wasn't quite certain he cared anymore for typical reason anymore. So thinking, he let his anger ebb and reduce until it drifted away like irksome flotsam and focused instead on holding Raven, something he thought he would never be allowed to do.
It wasn't to last of course. She pushed him away, gently, but surely.
"This must wait...I cannot tell you I love you alone and so...we cannot," she gave him a tragic and delicate half-smile as she added, seconds later, without any smile at all, "I told you there were two things, though I suppose you didn't hear that either..." she trailed off and then when Robin threw her a probing gaze, finished, "There is also the matter of my father." At this Robin's expression of rejection dissipated and was replaced by one of horrified disbelief. That...creature...that demon...still alive, still able to get to this place...to her? His mind reeled.
"Trigon?" he asked weakly. She nodded and a shiver rippled through her.
"Come home," he gestured at the entrance to the T-Tower and then held out his hand. "Please Rae, just for now...I'm...I'm not asking for an answer," he clarified with some trouble. He did want an answer; he had wanted one as soon as she confirmed his suspicions about her feelings for Slade.
But now was not the time and here Robin regained some of that wise sanity that made him fit to be leader of the titans and more significantly, their friend. He could sense Raven's fear and her longing, her shame and her disbelief, her confusion and frustration; they had a bond. That aside though, he could see the exhaustion in her and the truth was that really she was no thinner or slighter, not injured outwardly visible to the eye, but in spite of that, the image she made was like a lost psyche, one ravaged and deeply shadowed, and it made him ache for her. Here was Robin, the one that clung to virtue and worked to be what he could and he was resilient as Raven took his hand after another moment of consideration, and ushered her as gently into the tower as he might have brought in a bird with broken wings.
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Back in his own dwelling, Slade rolled two silver rings in his right hand absently and thought on the return of the empath and with some apprehension, then thought on the chance of losing her before she did.
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This thought troubled him to the point of no sleep that night and he did not know that, likewise, the empath of his thoughts and the rival of her affections did not sleep either, if for different reasons, and the three staved off night. One did so while doing some useless pacing as he held the curious rings, while the other held her mug of herbal tea in two hands as she questioned the reflection she found in its steaming center, and the last stood still with his back against the wall of his room, trying desperately to think of something to give them hope to fend off the antithesis of hope itself, for the second time.
When this last one came up with nothing, he left his room to stand by the second, who smiled over her shoulder at him gratefully, and his heart cringed at the thought that that smile might be given to somebody else in the end. But he kept his words silent. Such things had to take a back seat to what they now faced, by duty and by necessity both. Still, having her look at him like that as dawn broke over them gently was something he had missed dreadfully in her absence and, pushing thoughts of the other man aside, settled to thinking that for now her smile was everything to him, and a man who had everything could not complain.
Even with the second seemingly inevitable end of the world edging its way around the corner.
As for the first man, holding the rings, he too watched the morning come and, finding himself restless without the company he had grown accustomed to, picked a book from his extensive library only to find it was one of his missing company's favorites, dog-eared and written on in neat, finite penmanship. Slade paused, thinking to close it, but thought better of it and sat with his back against the bookcase, reading line after line of poetic license.
So...thoughts? Sorry, school and all this other stuff and the complexity of this story's development have been keeping me slower than usual. But I had to figure out how best to introduce the definiteness of the triangle AND Trigon's return so um...forgiveness?
-Rei, apologetic