Teen Titans does not belong to Rei.
Rei is rather upset about this.
But never mind.
Last chapter, unless you want an epilogue. Review please if you can. Thank you much, and now, onward.
For those who have so faithfully and generously read and reviewed this somewhat unorthodox story.
But especially for Cherry Jade, who rocks.
For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds
Chapter Nine: for the birds
She waited until the last possible moment. She really did.
Because she had hoped there was another way.
She had hoped and now she knew it was up to them, up to them to hope after all of this was over.
Beast Boy had an unsightly gash that looked like it might leave a sizable scar across his right eye and render him blind in it, while Cyborg had lost an arm and Starfire was all around badly beaten from being hit so many times. Robin and Slade, by way of sheer tenacity at this point that had nothing to do with either man's undeniable skills or quickness of wit were still fighting stronger than ever, but the truth was looming on them. And the truth was, however hard they were all working to beat this monster who called himself Trigon back to where he came from, never to return, they were fading.
They were fading and one by one, they began to drop.
Raven herself threw onslaught after onslaught at her father only to be repelled by one particular blast that sent her through the side of a building; she could swear he'd knocked her eyes loose and that they were rolling around in her head like broken pieces, but she gathered herself up as quickly as she could. Her vision cleared enough and she sped back to the scene of red and ravaging.
She bit back a cry as she saw that in the span of her less than a minute of absence, her friends—and more than friends—had somehow gotten further injured, new wounds bleeding and limbs twisted in directions they weren't meant to twist in. Wincing, she hurried to them.
"Man I don't know how much more of this we can take," Cyborg said through gritted teeth and Beast Boy nodded.
"But we will," Starfire amended gently but firmly. Her Tameranian blood was ringing in her ears, even though her own injuries were substantial too.
"We have to," Robin added with the tone a leader knew he must use. Slade said nothing but seemed to agree in his silence. Raven surveyed them in her own quiet way, not missing a single scratch as she laid it all to memory. Slade must have noticed her scrutiny.
"What is it?" he asked and even Robin could not deny the oddly gentle tone the older man used as he addressed the cloaked sorceress.
"I think I—" she began. An eerie laugh interrupted her though.
"It is pointless," Trigon towered over them and sent the largest blast yet, flames abounding.
They braced themselves for impact, for raging burns, for oblivion...for nothing and for everything...but it was nothing that came and they each opened their eyes tentatively. And then they knew. For Raven stood, in the middle of all of them, one hand raised as imperiously as a Queen's, and from that hand a shield of glowing white had sprung, curving around them in angry white flares.
"The markings..." Robin trailed off.
They glowed the same white as her shield and the sinking feeling Robin had in his heart was mirrored by the sentiments of Slade who had his own realization: the marks were not those of Scath. He had wanted them to believe it, wanted her to believe it so that she would keep from finding their true origin. But Raven had found it and now she stood, clad all in white, power emanating from her fingertips.
And it burned like it was Scath, like he really was hurting her through it and she had to fight with everything in her to keep from breaking down from the pain it caused even as it gave her the power to combat the greater evil. If it was what she must weather to be able to wield the weapon that could defeat Trigon, she would do so and do it with as much control as possible. She did not want her friends, her loved ones, to know it hurt her.
Some fraction of it must have crossed her face though.
"Raven, stop, we can handle this," Slade's voice almost broke her concentration, so deep was his concern, but she shook it off and her face was deceptively blank. "Raven, don't...I know what you are doing, what those marks mean now..." Slade asked of her what she could not give, knowing she could not give it, and fell silent when she gave no response.
She would do what she saw fit, as ever before, and none could stop her. Slade hated her for it.
He loved her for it.
"She is—" Robin began, voice hoarse with sorrow as he too recognized Raven's actions, as he watched her leave the curved shield over them and make herself vulnerable as she flew out of it to face her father anew.
"—sacrificing herself," Slade finished bitterly. He spoke as one who knew what was to come, as one who knew that what was to come was bleaker than anything one could imagine, and knew worse, that he could do nothing to stop it. And he, he who had murdered many and committed other unspeakable crimes, he who had also somehow come to love the resonating empath, turned his gaze from her brilliance. To see it shatter would destroy him.
He looked back.
Destruction was preferable over life without her...destruction was merciful.
"Azarath..." Raven began to chant; Trigon made a deadly swipe at her, but missed.
"...metrion..." she continued and Starfire was watching, open-mouthed even as Beast Boy regained his footing and also stood to stare in horrified wonder. Cyborg could not stand, but watched with a mute solemnity that made him seem much older than he really was. The colorless illumination around Raven was growing and they could feel the heat of it even through the barrier she'd left carefully around them. Trigon yelled in fury and shot at her, clawed at her, did everything, but always seemed to miss.
Slade crushed something in his fist.
Robin held his breath.
"..zinthos." she finished as a whisper, not a cry of war or triumph, but a final word full of power and pre-defined intent.
What happened next, no one would agree on later but what looked to have happened was something like the markings ripping themselves from Raven's skin. They seemed to make an eight pointed star and shoot light in every direction possible. It appeared the light pierced Raven right through her chest but there was no pained cry or scream, so it was hard to tell. Then, and this they would agree on after all, she became her soul self, magnificent and resonant as a silver-white sun, wings spread wide and radiance almost blinding. It became in an instant, entirely a ghostly silver rather than the heavenly white.
And they knew what it must mean, but forced themselves to believe it could be otherwise.
"Raven, we're with you!" Robin shouted and added this mentally too.
"Let us help," Slade yelled, angry that he could not step beyond this pallid barrier of safety Raven had concocted for them. Take my strength, he begged her, use me as you may, just don't leave us...don't leave me, he thought desperately, brokenly, savagely.
Robin was thinking similar things, but he had a priceless gift that the would-be villain at his side did not. He had a bond.
With that bond, he shouted to her:
Don't you leave me Raven!
And he didn't expect a reply so he was more or less surprised to hear her answer him: I will never leave you, Robin.
But then her presence in his mind was gone again and he mourned for the loss, unable to step beyond her white barrier to aid her.
There was a shout of agony: Trigon.
There was blindness: a wave of healing.
There was nothing awry and it looked like any other day with a blue sky in the city of Jump.
Except there was a crumpled figure laying on the roof of Titans' Tower, a figure that five others ran to, two of them ahead of the others by great distance.
"No," one breathed and knelt to cradle the fallen girl, uncaring of the stony glare he received from the other man who settled for kneeling on the other side of Raven's still form. Her skin was as white as her torn cloak and her hair fell in unkempt streams across her face; the man holding her brushed them aside and tucked them behind her ear as he had done before. The other caressed her face, half expecting her to open her eyes and ask him what in Azarath's name he thought he was doing.
But there was nothing, not even a final breath to say good-bye.
She was gone.
The world was safe.
But she was gone.
And it made little difference to either man that the sky began to rain, made little difference that they were so close to each other they could have easily killed one another, made little difference that they would live to see tomorrow.
Because she wouldn't...she hadn't.
And that made all the difference to the two estranged men, feeling nothing short of damned to be stuck in the world of the living.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Her face was wide with her sad, amethyst eyes, watching them hold her body, now lifeless. She wanted very much to go to them, to tell them she was grateful and she was sorry and she loved them.
She wanted to say she was sorry she had lied, even if they had known it in the final moments.
But she could not. With life her bond was severed as easily as if she had simply slipped a ring off of her finger and she was unable to contact them. Raven's chest was heavy and, alarmed, she felt tears trickling down her cheeks in slow rivulets.
At first she tried to claw them away.
But then she looked closer on the scene of the roof top, saw Slade and Robin, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Starfire. She looked and her heart ached so deeply that she let go of her pride and inhibitions and did something she had not done since she could not even remember.
She wept, hard and long, shoulders shaking with the desolation of being parted from the ones she loved most. What was there to this after-life for her except morbid loneliness and an unbearable, holy whiteness, painfully similar to the power she had used to expel herself and her father from the world of the living? What else was there?
Nothing, her soul cried.
Nothing...
And then she thought she sensed slight warmth.
It was soft and subtle, so at first she did not give it any thought, but then it became a distinct pressure on her right arm. Glassy-eyed, Raven looked up.
"Well done, daughter," a kind voice said, and she recognized it, immediately turning to face a beautiful woman in a white, hooded robe.
"Mother?" she gaped in spite of herself. "He destroyed you as well in the end, didn't he?" she whispered, stricken. Arella nodded in her graceful way but eyed her daughter with something Raven slowly realized was not only love, but genuine respect.
"You have done something to be proud of, Raven," Arella told her soothingly and, considering a moment, then pulled her daughter into the warmth only a mother could provide. Raven fell into her Arella's embrace and, to her initial shock, she found she wept even more at this. Arella too was startled at first by her daughter's open reaction, but understanding overcame the older woman and she simply held Raven closer. "In time, daughter, things may not seem so bleak."
"Mother," Raven said and stopped there, letting the rest of what she meant to say hang between them in a short silence. Arella shook her head sadly.
"It was, if you will excuse the phrasing, for the birds, Raven." Her mother said and Raven frowned.
"How do you mean?" she asked.
"It is a cliché—I am surprised you do not know it—and it is to say that it was out of your hands...beyond what you did and believe me my child, you did all that you could," Arella explained patiently and added, "For the birds, up to fate, destined...they are one and the same, if you will, even though none of it was part of any prophecy." Further elucidation had Raven nodding in comprehension dully. For the birds? That reminded her of aliases, which reminded her of Robin. And clichés reminded her of literature—some good and some bad—which reminded her of Slade.
"I can never see them again?" Raven asked brokenly. Arella's heart ached for her daughter's loss and she chose her next words with the utmost care.
"You may, in time, my daughter," she said and though tears continued to fall from her eyes, Raven accepted this, if only because she knew it was the last truth she had to hold onto.
And she would hold on.
And she would wait.
As long as she could...she would hold on and wait...
But she did not know the temporariness of the option at the time.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The burial was private, short, and not religious in any sense except maybe for the seriousness laced in the expressions of those present. A young changeling stood, bleary-eyed, next to a red-eyed Tameranian princess who looked like she had lost her best friend. Their hands were intertwined, a show of support for one another. A bionic man stood to their left, as unmoving as a statue, and he seemed to not see any thing at all, but the truth was he saw more than he ever wanted to, and it hurt him.
Then there were two young men, one clearly a little older than the other, but not by too much. One had jet black hair and an eye-mask that seemed terribly out of place with his white collared shirt, black tie and slacks. The other had sand-white hair that fell slightly over his one visible blue eye; the other had a patch over it; and he wore all black. These last two seemed to have a silent understanding no one could ever hope to analyze but also one that everyone would inevitably notice once they got within a foot of the odd pair.
"It was not your fault," the older one said finally. The other did not look up, but he did respond.
"Or yours," he conceded gruffly.
"I did not think I could love someone again," the older man volunteered one last admission.
"I did not know I could love someone at all...not like that," came the dark and desolate response and they were silent again as cold earth was thrown too hastily over the small grave. At the head was a stone marker but it was not adorned with a raven or the like.
No. She would've hated that. They knew.
Instead, at the top of the arched marker was a rose made of stone; a rose was for love after all, not stupid flings or several weeklong charades of sweethearts and so on. No, the rose was for deeper love, the love that made a person whole or broke them beyond repair...or both. The rose was stopped in time, and as still as the forever that would never come.
And it was a reminder, especially for the two young men standing closest to it, a tangible something that told them to never forget because love, for all that it could not last, was important.
In fact, it was probably the most important thing of all.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Come morning, Slade had disappeared. This was not unexpected and life continued as well or unwell as it might have for the next couple of months.
Robin went more often than the others to visit Raven's grave, well, more than most. Another soul also visited, but he was as elusive as the shadows he hid in and the only proof of him actually ever being there was the fresh and beautiful white rose he left at the base of the marker every day. Robin knew it was Slade. Who else would leave such a poignant gift? Slade also read verses from marked books to the headstone, but Robin could not have known this because the older man was always very careful to only visit his beloved when no one else was remotely around.
It was just as well. The leader of the titans did not know for certain how he would react—or let himself react—if he were to meet face-to-face with Slade again, without Raven between them as a barrier of pleading truce. So whenever he saw the white rose—every day—he did not disturb it; rather, he tried to ignore it.
Robin himself brought violets. He knew it was not her favorite flower, but they reminded him of her, and in that, he found reason to choose them rather than a dozen lilies or a thousand daffodils. There was also the fact that he knew Raven had rather hated daffodils—yellow was far from her favorite color—and at this memory, he smiled on one particular day's visit.
"Three today," he spoke to the grave and laid the trio of flora at the base beside the white rose; Slade had already been there it seemed. Today the ex-nemesis had laced baby's breath in with the rose and Robin arched a brow and then understood. Of course he remembered as well, the day today was.
The exact day in the third month that…she left them. His blue eyes took in the words on her marker like swallowing a rock; it never got any easier but he forced himself to look anyway, fearful lest he delude himself about what had really happened.
Raven, always beloved, always remembered
That was all it said.
He hadn't been able to think of anything else that sat right with him. Robin sighed.
"I miss you," he said.
No answer...like usual.
Some part of him kept hoping for one, even knowing it would likely never come.
He turned to leave.
I miss you too, Richard.
He whirled.
"Raven?" he cried, confused, vexed, losing his grips on reality...or so he thought.
Hey, she greeted too casually and her form was aglow with something he could not name as her ephemeral being materialized before him. He knew what her translucent state meant; this was not Raven come back to life, but it was Raven's heart at least, her soul.
"Come back to me," he pleaded, his broken heart open and vulnerable.
I cannot, she replied sadly, twisting her hands together anxiously. I shouldn't even be here but...I missed you, she repeated now and he tried to embrace her.
He fell through her.
Her eyes clouded.
I am sorry. I should not have come. Forgive me Richard. I had to see you one last time.
"But Raven, we'll be together...one day!" Robin shouted as she began to fade and his heart buried itself in her grave, broken pieces and all, when she shook her head.
That is why I came...I wanted to wait but...Arella has just let me know...I cannot stay in the Heavens. I am Trigon's daughter, after all.
Robin shook his head, eyes wild with anguish.
"No! No! That is not how it is supposed to be! We are supposed to wait, we are supposed to wait for years that will render me nearly emotionless and scarred, for years that will be horrible and almost unbearable, but years that will be worth it when I leave this place and can hold you in my arms again! Raven! You saved the world, twice! How can they refuse you?" His speech was noble and his anger on her behalf heartened her even as she knew it made little difference what she had done for earth.
It was redemption; I will not go...to Hell...again. But I am not able to stay where the holiness is foremost in importance; I am being sent to somewhere in between.
"Then I will go there," Robin replied quickly, shortly, insistently.
You will go where heroes go, she told him sadly; he could barely see her at all anymore, save her gorgeous and heartrending eyes.
"They would leave you to an eternity of solitude after everything you sacrificed?" he asked, still unwilling to believe.
I will not be...alone,
she said carefully, and Robin knew what she meant, immediately
wishing he didn't. Slade has been given salvation as well; he will
not go to the underworld, even if he cannot enter Heaven...well, if he doesn't do anything too awful before his time is come.
"You still love him?" Robin asked, needing to know what it was best to never know.
She was fading into the sunlight spattering down but he could see her nod mutely.
"I love you so much, Rae," he said and his bitterness was not for her but for the absurdly unkind hand fate had dealt them...had dealt him. It was not fair; after all she had done, all they had been through...this was it. "If he does...get to be with you, allow him...for I cannot think of you being alone forever," he said, hoarse with renewed loss and understanding. And in that he gave her what little blessing he could, being only a man, only human, no God or sorcerer who could hope to or dare to promise her more than acceptance of her choice.
But what he offered her now, what he gave to her, was so much more and Raven knew it thus.
I...I shall try to contact you again...though I cannot promise...
She stumbled over her words, voice shaking with the effort to not sob.
His words rang full in her ears and her heart.
And maybe his generosity and full-blown devotion to her was what gave her the courage to tell him the whole truth she would later tell Slade, who would accept what she said for what it was as well because he too loved her just as much, in his own way:
But promises I
cannot keep aside, I now know this, Richard Grayson. For all that I love Slade, and I will not lie to you; I do...
He cringed.
... I love you most of all.
It was a whisper and the last glimmer of her soul disappeared from him, leaving Robin standing, facing a nothing that chilled him like nothing else before.
His eyes fell to the violets and his gaze became achingly tender.
"Thank you."
That was all he had left.
Robin retreated into his room for the remainder of the day and was not seen until the next morning.
On said next morning Cyborg sat, rigid with tension, at the counter, pushing eggs—tofu ones, which were testaments to his hollow state—around his plate. The couch pretended to be a bed, Starfire sleeping on it with a distressed expression on her usually bright and lovely face. Sitting near the window, was Beast Boy, plate of tofu eggs on his lap, untouched and now very cold and unpalatable—not that he would have noticed if he had bothered to lift his fork. The swoosh of a door alerted the entrance of the last remaining titan and eyes turned dully toward Robin as he stepped in.
Except that he wasn't Robin at all.
"Robin?" Beast Boy asked the black clad figure; the stylized silhouette of a bird inked in blue lay itself across his chest, bold and dark as the man behind the eye-mask, which was narrower now.
"Nightwing," he corrected without feeling.
No one questioned him and when Starfire awoke, recognizing Robin's new appearance as that of the Robin from the future she had once been thrust into, was not startled. She was merely accepting and for that he was appreciative.
Everything had become about acceptance lately.
But accept they did. It was what they had to do, after all.
And Robin, now Nightwing, surprised himself when—ten months later—he did not flinch away as Starfire gently laid a hand on his shoulder. It was the first human contact of the physical kind he'd had since...
Well, he couldn't think of that now, much as he thought of her all the time.
It was something of a paradox, but he was used to it.
"It has been over a year now," her voice said, all softness and remorse and, when minutes later her hand had not moved or been moved from Nightwing's shoulder by him or her, she dared to rest her head against it instead. His first instinct was to back away as his heart clenched at the memory of a girl cloaked in white and at first he thought it the fanatical delusions of his despair and heartache that he heard something...but he soon knew it to be very real, at least to him.
It's alright, Richard...you have much life left to give to earth...do not live it alone. Whatever you do, whatever you choose...whatever I have chosen...I love you always...and I know you love me...now…yes, I know it now...and I tell you again: do not live so alone. We both know what happened was...—and here her words seemed to resonate in a wry tone in his mind as she finished—for the birds.
But the rest of your life is not. That is up to you and you alone...and she loves you very much. Let her in…and...—he thought he heard some tears—let me go. This is the last time I may speak with you...so let me go. And I, I will do the same...and hope we will meet again in another life when maybe you will not be the stubborn, style-challenged leader of a group of teenage superheroes and I will not be the spawn of a demon lord...a life when maybe we will just be two people.
Until then though...let go, beloved. For, we are what we are, and this is what we have to square with now. And never forget that somewhere, someone believes in you, even if you never hear her, or see her, never feel her presence, she is there and she believes in you, always. I believe in you.
Always.
He knew the voice even if he could not see the body.
And he understood, even without their bond. He turned his gaze to the considerably more subdued Tameranian princess who returned his look with an incomparable patience that spoke volumes of her growth and more so of her never-wavering adoration for the man beside her.
She offered the slightest of smiles, something she'd been very careful not to do much or at all since the death of their friend.
To her great surprise he returned it, if even slighter than her own, but she was looking for anything at all like it, so she saw it in all its subtle handsomeness. And she was not foolish. There was sorrow deep in the lines around his mouth and a constantly worried quirk of his brow that suggested he never believed what he saw anymore unless he had to...but the smile made it all soften nonetheless.
And then he spoke.
"Over a year," he murmured in agreement and did not pull away as Starfire let go of her respectful reservation and pulled him into an embrace Richard Grayson had the open mind to reciprocate.
Let go.
The words echoed in his mind and though his heart twisted still, he thought because he knew it was what she would want and what on some level, he might one day truly want too: I shall try.
I shall try.
---------------------------------------------------------------
She wept again.
It seemed like only yesterday she had done the same thing in her mother's arms in Heaven. Now she was lone in something they called Purgatory...a void that to Raven was worse than the flames of Hell because they offered no physical pain as a distraction from her mental anguish. Here there was nothing but her solitary self and she wanted oblivion, wanted an end to it all.
Her weeping shook her to her core and she thought: I am glad Robin has someone he may grow to love. For she had heard his promise to make an effort to do as she had asked him...just barely, but it was enough that she heard him at all.
Even as she continued to sob, the alluring and intriguing scent of roses began to permeate her surroundings suddenly, but she was so despondent in her grief, Raven only noticed it on a subconscious level.
It took actual words to stir her much from it at all.
"You are even beautiful when you cry, though it breaks my heart." Arms wrapped around her and she cried all the more. This was a hallucination; it would disappear when she dared to open her eyes all the way and his embrace would be reduced to nothing and she, she would be alone again...alone with the dreadful nothing that was the result of not being evil enough for Hell and not pure or holy enough for Heaven.
"Go away…" she hit at him blindly. "You're only going to leave like everything else, disappear...leave me alone...just go!" Her heartache ripped through him and she continued to try and beat him with her eyes closed in terrified denial until he caught her wrists softly in his hands.
"Please don't. For truly, I cannot bear your tears any longer," he hushed her gently and the deep, solid timbre of his voice reverberated through her like a cat's methodical purr of soothing. But fear took the reins and she still would not open her eyes, though her tears did halt and her attempts to hit him stopped too. She heard him sigh, but instead of feeling his warmth disappear as she had dreaded, she felt it increase as he held her tighter to him, tenderly guiding her arms to wrap around his neck and letting his own hands settle affectionately on her waist. "Raven, I have waited long enough to be here with you...I am not going to leave...not that I have a choice anyway," he added this last part, slightly amused with the idea of trying to hoodwink the greater Gods. It must have been his lighter tone that encouraged her to open one eye, slowly and suspiciously.
"Slade," she said, incredulous. He nodded. She opened her other eye, staring now, and he gathered her fully into his arms, like a child, but more loving.
"Raven," he rejoined almost comically.
"I don't believe it," she finally said after a comfortable silence.
"I do," Slade said resoundingly and she marveled at the role-reversal.
"Then...you won't disappear, will you?" she asked, frightened again.
"Never," he promised.
"Ever?" she persisted.
He rolled his eyes to the Heavens that had rejected them both and quieted her disbelief with a kiss that more than answered her prompt, and any other questions she might have had.
Allow him, she remembered her leader say to her spirit at her grave.
Let go, she remembered telling him as he stood next to the beautiful alien.
"He is still in my heart," she confessed, breaking from the kiss. Slade eyed her thoughtfully.
"Addie resides in mine as well," he said at last and she understood what he meant. She understood he referred not to the forsaking of one love for another, but the ability to have one co-exist with the other, as sometimes love in itself demanded.
And somehow through fate or fortune or what-have-you, balance was regained and as two lovers slowly learned to heal each other on earth, so did two others in a Purgatory that they would not trade for Heaven on any day of the millennium to come.
Okay, that was the end unless I do an epilogue. The epilogue would mainly be for Robin and Raven though—the allusion to another lifetime. It would seem slightly AU but again, it would be an entirely other life time, so maybe not so AU after all. It would be an epilogue though, exploring more of fate and that idea of them meeting again, you know, destined great loves and whatnot.
Let me know what you think. If you want an epilogue/ are interested, it will be of the nature listed above. So um, let me know if you are...interested I mean.
Thank you so much for all the reviews, the support and so on.
Especially thank you to Cherry Jade.
You really do rock...times two. Heh.
-Rei
p.s. castle in the air...you make me so happy. thank you.