Raventhedarkgoddess: I don't have much to say except here's your update, people... School's been hectic, sorry about lack of updating...
Chapter Three: Here By Me
I hope you're doing fine out there without me
'Cause I'm not doing so good without you
The things I thought you'd never know about me
Were the things I guess you always understood
So how could I have been so blind for all these years?
Guess I only see the truth through all this fear,
Of living without you…
She walked slowly up toward the building, it's empty windows filing the glare back toward her face in the setting sun as she stared at the enormous T-shaped building, almost awestruck at the home she had not seen for a year. It's empty windows were shockingly large now, and the higher up on the hill she went from where she had landed on the water's edge, the more she came to enjoy the thought that somehow, someway, the Titans might all be able to live there together again in harmony. For some reason, as this thought filled her head, so did the thought of spending more time with Robin, being at his side when he finally remembered why he was not cut out to do anything but fight crime.
She blinked once, reminding herself that it didn't matter what Robin thought. I'm only grateful to him for trying to bring us back together as a team, she told herself. Nothing else. She decided that there was no point in questioning herself: It wasn't going to get her anywhere, after all. That was when she caught the others out of the corner of her eye and drew a sharp breath as she began to walk toward them, hesitation taking her mind. This is stupid, she told herself. They're my friends.
They were my friends, she corrected herself in the back of her mind, watching them. They all seemed so tense that it hurt her to look, and so she moved slowly, looking only at the giant structure that they all stood in the shadow of, and sighed when she saw the blood-red look of the sun off the windows. And for a second there, she thought she saw a face in them. Robin?
She squinted her eyes and forced herself to look closer, but saw nothing: Whatever had been there, Robin, reflection, or otherwise, was gone. See, nothing. Nothing except you and your adverse fear of absoultely nothing. She took another step toward the group: Nothing to be afraid of, nothing to fear, and yet part of her couldn't stop trembling, couldn't stop being afraid inside.
Somehow, without shaking, without betraying herself of how afraid she really was of this meeting, of seeing them all, she made her way over to the group. "...Will even show up. I know how much she hated the idea of the break-up, of losing someone she cared about... We were like a family, and we lost that feeling because of Robin, so I can understand if she's turned against all of us..." The metal man suddenly felt something; Eyes, maybe? "Rae!"
"Hello Cyborg, Beast Boy, Starfire," she greeted them all quietly. She could feel them sizing her up, looking over the loose black skirt and the slightly tighter dark shirt she wore. She was sizing them up too in her mind, comparing them to the here and now images and the ones within her mind. "How have you been?"
Cyborg took it as a direct opportunity for him to talk and began to speak. "I got bounced around a lot, it took me four months to even find a job as a mechanic, and everyone I work with hates me... The world just doesn't seem to have a place for people who are trapped inside a hunk of metal." He looked down at his own hand with disgust and anger, rage in his face at both what he was and at a world that refused those who were different from themselves. "You?"
"My job doesn't pay very much and my apartment is too small for a person who never leaves their own safehold, but other than that the last year has been normal." What she didn't say, though, was about the long hours she spent typing thankless papers and the people that stared at her as they passed, about the people that wondered about the unfriendly girl with purple hair. I just don't want him to know I'm as alone as he is.
"What about you?" She asked, eyeing Beast Boy, who seemed well-dressed, leather jacket gleaming in the fading light, denim jeans fitting his frame nicly, a Moped parked nearby that could only be for show. "You seem to be doing very well without the team."
"I just play comedy gigs. People there think I'm funny. But everyone thinks this green skin is just a part of my act. The truth is, I hate being like this, always joking and laughing and playing around. It's not like I want to act my whole life." This Beast Boy was so unlike the other one she had known: Bitter and serious, slightly worn-on by the way of the world.
Starfire only nodded. "I am fine." In her mismatched green sweater and blue sweatpants, she appered someone younger, but looked much, much older somehow, her emerald eyes not sparkling anymore, her hair falling straight down her back in a neat, almost orderly-looking way. Unwanted.
No one spoke: Raven instead looked at Cyborg, and Beast Boy at Starfire, and the four of them began to move: Left leg, then right leg, then left again, moving toward the door that they had left with their lives in peices and their hearts shattered in their chest.
But can they ever be put back together?
And everything I had in this world
And all that I'll ever be
It could all fall down around me.
Just as long as I have you,
Right here by me.
I didn't mean to scare her, Robin said to himself as he looked out the large bay window, pulling away from him before he could really get a good look at the faces of his friends, at the face of the girl that was haunting him from the kiss they had shared.
He had wanted to see her again, and part of him was having a hard time accepting it. If anything, Starfire and I are going to hook back up. That's it. That's all I want. I don't care about Raven, I don't care about how lonely or how upset she's been, I didn't mean to kiss her and give her the wrong idea, that's not how I am...
Or did I? He shook his head and looked over at his shadow, which seemed to have been keeping him company just by being there, assuring him that rejection from them wouldn't be the end of his world. 'After all,' it seemed to say, 'you rejected them once too.'
He could hear them coming closer and closer, approching the door, knew they would be here any minute, and so he tried to make himself stand tall and strong, tried to fortify his mind against what they might say, but something inside of him couldn't quite make the cut, and he felt the doubts rushing back to meet him.
But then, for no reason, a thought of Raven, of standing beside her, rushed through his mind, and he knew he had to at least try. If nothing else, even if this all fell down behind him, at least he would get to see her.
Not that I care, he added to himself.
'I'm sure you don't,' his shadow seemed to say. 'I'm sure you don't.'
I can't take another day without you
'Cause baby, I could never make it on my own
I've been waiting so long just to hold you
And be back in your arms where I belong
Sorry I can't always find the words to say
But everything I've ever know gets swept away
Inside of your love…
The door opened slowly and with a loud creak that sent a slight chill through the four group memebers that stood there, looking into the long-forgotten main room of what had once been their home. Cyborg sharply drew breath in spite of himself: Being back here opened all of the memories, the memories of Raven and Robin fighting, the memories of goodbyes both painful and uneeded.
Part of him wanted to tell Robin no, wanted to see him suffer as Cyborg, the unwanted man of half metal, had suffered for the past year, but the other part of him was just alone and afraid and wanted to be back in the home where he belonged. That was when he realized that the person standing there in the middle of the room was Robin.
"You all came?" He sounded slightly increndous, as if he couldn't believe that they would come after his cruelty, as if he knew that what he had done was wrong. "You guys would really give reforming the team another chance?"
"Robin, the team is a family. Are families supposed to abandon one another? Are we just supposed to abandon people who are actually willing to accept us?" Beast Boy asked, saying one of the only serious things he would ever say in his life. "I'm not like you.I don't just turn my back on the people I care about!"
Robin sighed: Beast Boy was making this much, much harder than it had to be, but somehow he knew he deserved it. "You're right. I was stupid. Everything I did was stupid. It doesn't make you happy to live out there in a world where no one trusts everyone and everybody needs a hero. I'm sorry I even tried to make a new idenity for myself. I hurt you guys. I didn't mean to do that."
"Friend Robin, it is alright." Although her voice was very thin and weak, as if she rarely talked for fear that the words would come out of her mouth wrong, Starfire spoke with enough volume to instill confidence in him. She moved slowly to his side. "I will join you, if no one else will."
While this might have made him comfortable before, his eyes were on Raven and only on Raven, on the person he tried to deny he was doing this for. "Thanks, Star."
Cyborg and Beast Boy stepped forward together, slowly. "We can always back out if this doesn't work, right?" Beast Boy whispered nervously to Cyborg, who only shrugged. Raven came to join them, her eyes locked on Robin's face, studying it for several seconds. He tried not to stare back, tried not to apper happy that she would pay him a second glance like that.
"Robin, can I talk to you outside?" Part of her, the part of her that was afraid of the answer, tried to jumble the words, tried to make her tounge-tied, but there was no denying it: She had to know wether or not he really loved her or if he had just been playing games that night they had met back up on that cold, lonely street corner.
"Sure."
And everything I had in this world
And all that I'll ever be
It could all fall down around me.
Just as long as I have you,
Right here by me.
As the days grow long I see
That time is standing still for me
When you're not here
Sorry I can't always find the words to say
Everything I've ever known gets swept away
Inside of your love
"What'd you want, Raven?" They stood along the shore, the place he had proposed they go: He loved the calming noise of the rocks and the water, slapping together and spalshing around their ankles where they stood. He tried to see past her calm violet eyes, but they held no prose in the very last of the dying sunlight. "We should really get back inside soon," he added in an edgy voice.
"Do you think you and I could ever be together? Or have you reconnected with Starfire now that you've seen her?" She hadn't meant to sound so straight-forward, so cold, but that was what ended up happening: Her voice came out dark and hard, straight to the point. Exactly as she hadn't wanted it to. "You two always were close, after all."
"Rae... The truth is, I don't know. Every time I see you, I tell myself I don't like you, and then I end up liking you even more for some stupid thing I say that you overlook or something you do. I was just so afraid back there that you'd reject me and you'd leave the team, and I'd be all alone... Not alone, but without you the team would have just felt so empty..." Robin stopped his empty babbling; He had no idea what he was trying to tell her anymore. Somehow, though, one of his arms snaked around her waist and she let him stand there next to him.
"It's not safe for me to return that kind of affection outwardly, you know. Do you want to be with someone who hides from you all the time, who can't even show the slightest bit of affection? I know I'm not the easiest to get along with to begin with... Will you be like everyone else and push me away again?" Her skirt beat heavily in an unseen wind and she groaned inwardly, knowing that she had ended up causing that wind with the unease in her head, the unease at using her heart again.
"It doesn't matter to me. What is important is that you feel it and that you're not like everyone else, who just likes me because... Well, because I have the namesake of Robin. You're not like that, are you?"
"Do I look that shallow?" He knew at once he must have offended her.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it's just... I've been alone for so long, and..."
"We've all been alone too long." She leaned against him. "We don't know what to say or do around each other anymore. The team will be destroyed if everyone doesn't learn to trust each other again."
Robin smiled, feeling his own face flush. "Can that be our next task, then?"
"We'll worry about that when the time comes." And after that, she could say no more, because his lips came to hers and, hearing the rocks around her crumble from the pain of containing everything, she kissed him back, doing her best to enjoy the moment.
And everything I had in this world
And all that I'll ever be
It could all fall down around me.
Just as long as I have you,
Right here by me.
Starfire glared out the window into the darkness: Raven and Robin, Raven and Robin was all she could think. She watched the two boys playing video games, but it no longer mattered to her. What mattered was that they were outside, growing closer, and she had no one friend or boyfriend to comfort her, to let her know she meant something.
All alone again. She could see them coming closer now.
Hands linked. Hands linked as if they would never let go, as if it were just Raven and Robin against the world. She had been there first, hadn't she? Hadn't she always been there for him?
Fury welled up inside her, but she let it die away as they came in. "Did you have a nice walk, friends?"
Both smiled and said that they had. All she could do was sigh: How could she stay where she was no longer wanted?