A/N: Sorry about the lack of updates, guys! I've been insanely busy without and trying to update has been my personal nightmare. Hopefully I can get back on track- Here's chapter six!
Chapter Six: And The Hero Will Drown
Guess it's too bad
That everything we had
is taken away.
The next few weeks passed without much event. Minor villan after minor villan fell at the hands of the Titans, but Robin was still not satisfied. How long will it take? He would ask himself at night. How much longer until I can make Slade take back what he said? How long until I show that I am a true hero and that I'm stronger with her love than without it?
He had found his affection for Raven growing daily. Even if she couldn't phycially show her affection very often for fear of emotional interference, everything she did seemed to endear her to him, from the occassional laugh that would slip from her lips which they were researching together at night to her small, imperfect motions on the training field where she would slip or somehow miss the target and hit something else. However, he could always feel a set of eyes watching them.
Starfire was almost always there, watching them with some envy in her deep green eyes every time she was in the same room as them. Raven always seemed rather flustered and quieter than when they were alone, although her friendship with Starfire didn't appear to be damanged at all by her relationship with Robin.
"Why aren't you two still together? It's kind of obvious she still loves you," Raven had said one night. Robin couldn't even remember what he had said, but for some reason the idea of being with Starfire was no longer an important one to him.
Starfire sat on the couch, staring out the window across the lake in the general direction of the city. Suddenly, the significance of the date she had been searching for all along hit her- She realized that today she and Robin would have been together a number of years, four or five. Blinking so as to avoid crying, she stared out the window at a tree near the tower, trying to make sure no one else could see the tears threatening to spill.
Sadly, the tree was not interesting or capitvating enough to keep her from seeing Robin and Raven, both covered in the mud that had been caused by the earlier rainstorm of the morning. "...Great! I didn't expect you to end up throwing me back into the mud, though."
Raven tried to sustain her emotion and avoid blushing. "I'm sorry about that. I just got so caught up in the moment... And I didn't think I was strong enough to throw you."
They both laughed and Robin gently wiped some of the mud into Raven's hair, who responded by flinging a bit of mud past him and hitting the wall. Starfire tried to remind herself that tree bark made pretty patterns, searching desperatly for something else to stare at, but it was too late, and the tears quietly slid down her face and landed on the top of her shirt, hitting her shoulders and sliding down toward the floor.
"Starfire, I didn't..." Raven's voice came out in a slightly broken tone as she straightened up and stared after the other girl, who was quickly fleeing the room past the two mud-covered teens, loud sobs easily heard retreating down the long hallway. She sighed, and Robin put a hand around her shoulder, which she quickly shoved off and turned to move after her. "Wait!"
"Tough luck, man," Cyborg said, clapping Robin on the back. "I'm sure Rae can sort it out, though."
"Yeah," Beast Boy added, "But I wouldn't recommend acting all lovey-dovey around Starfire again."
"Shut it." With that, the team leader made his way out of the room, mud sliding from his hair. For some reason, though, it was not nearly as inviting as before, and he did his best to shove it away from the eyeholes of his mask as he left, the smile gone from his face as his thoughts came back to him.
The night will come
and rip away,
her wings of innocence through every word we say
maybe it's time,
to spit out the core of our rotting union
hopefully before it chokes
us to our senses.
Guess it's too bad,
that everything we have
is taken away.
The next few days passed quietly. Robin never saw Raven, and, from what he could tell, Starfire was also avoiding him. One night after training, he decided to confront the silent girl, who was standing behind the controls, intently watching Cyborg run a round as if there was nothing wrong with her at all.
"You're avoiding me, aren't you?" Robin asked her quietly. "Did Starfire say something? Because you dont' have to worry about it offending me, I just want to know..."
He recived no response as Raven slammed her fingers into a few more buttons. "I told her that if it would make her feel better, I wouldn't get anymore involved with you. Get back together with her, at least for a while. You and I... Weren't meant to be anyway. Slade was right... Love will never conquer all."
"Raven, how can you be saying that!" He slammed his own hand against the panel, which brought a very abrupt end to Cyborg's training as the small robots knocked him to the ground with a power that was only there for operation abortion training. "You'd really give up all we have for... for nothing?"
"Robin... Starfire is young and innocent. Don't break her by abandoning her. I've fought beside you long enough. You know how muchI wish we could make this work, but after all this time... Her love is strong, and when faced with someone like that, you could never stay with me." The whole time she spoke, she was fiddling with the machine, trying to save Cyborg from his own training droids.
"Raven, why would you think...?"
"HELP! I COULD USE SOME HELP HERE!" Cyborg was lying on his back, and his face was turned upright, toward the sky, which was clearly becoming the night around them. Beast Boy was beside him, trying to aid him in his struggle back to his feet, but he too had fallen. Starfire was blasting valueable equitment, and Raven sighed. I don't want to say goodbye to him...
That was when the alarm went off.
"Slade..." Robin muttered, clentching his left hand into a fist. "We have to stop Slade!" He looked over at his team- Raven had just managed to stop the robots from killing the other three members. "We'll never beat him like this," he whispered to himself. "TITANS, GO!"
"What do you want and why are you doing this!" Robin hollored as they reached the location of the distress cry- A local cafe, the very one where he had taken Raven for their first meeting that year. His mind imidatly began to reel with questions, but for some reason they all began with the word 'Why?"
Why would she abandon me? Why doesn't she seem to care anymore? Why does she act so cold to me? Why would she say that love is forever and then abandon her love? Is there something I don't know yet? He looked over at her, but, hood up, face covered, she looked as inpenitrable as she had seemed earlier. Why won't she answer me? She can't just give up on us yet... The team... I put the pieces back together for her, and yet...
"Why?" Slade asked mockingly. "Dear Robin, you make me laugh to ask me why. Do I need a reason to be evil, any more of a reason than you need to continue to pretend to be a hero?"
"Shut up! Take back everything you said to us!"
"The core of your union is slowly falling to pieces, Robin. You're trying to put back together what you shattered, and failing. If you refuse to give up now, that refusal may hurt the people you're trying your hardest to care about. Is that what you want, Robin? To hurt the people you love?" Slade paced back and forth atop the counter, mocking with every word he said as he smirked at Robin.
Starfire hit him in the chest with a single starbolt. "You will not talk to Robin that way, ever!"
"For someone who has problems with her dear Robin and their relationship falling apart, you certainly are defensive, little Starfire." Slade pulled his bo-staff from his back and leaned against it, surveying the Titans. "You're all far worse for wear than I expected... Too easy to destroy, almost. But, seeing as you're the only heros left to protect Jump City from me, I'm going to have to eliminate your stubborness."
Starfire pulled back with pain written on her face and Raven cast her a sympathtic look from under her hood, moving toward Slade with her usual grace. "You're taunting won't work, Slade. Everything you say are lies."
"We'll see about that, Raven." And with that, he launched forward. Cyborg made a point to aim for his chest as he lept toward Raven, but missed and instead struck the building, the walls on the sides luminated with the blue glow.
That was when Slade's face lit up with an idea. He could feel the match book in his back pocket, and the idea was forming in his head. "Excellent," he whispered, raising his bo-staff to ward off Beast Boy as the rhino came charging toward him in an attempt to knock him backward.
He reached one hand back to pull the matches out. "A glorious blaze is how all heros go out, Robin. You're not a hero, but your friends are... It's almost a shame to end our game so soon." With that, the match fell toward the ground, all eyes upon it. Starfire, eyes wet with tears, looked up in time to see an orange and yellow glow falling, falling toward the ground...
And that was when the rotting wood floor caught fire as Slade sprung off. In three quick, agile movements, he made his way out of the window, leaving the room in a blaze.
"It's not going to end like this! Titans, move for the exits!" Robin hollored as the thick black smoke filled the room, blinding him and causing him to drop to his knees on the ground. How did everything get taken away so quickly...? What... He forced the thoughts to break off, however, and crawled forward on his knees.
Swim in the smoke
The hero will drown
Intoxicating beauty tears everything down
But still our hands are
Bound at the wrist
This romantic tragedy is suffocating from your fist,
In a sea of fire.
Guess it's too bad,
that everything we have
is taken away.
Raven found that she couldn't rise above the smoke in the narrow area between the crates she'd been using as a barrier between herself and Slade and the wall. Somehow, some way, the smoke had managed to trap her, and she found that she felt weak and helpless. The smoke was thick, black, dancing around before her eyes, and there was no way to avoid it- She truly was trapped.
Robin... I have to get out. He... He has a right to know what happened between me and Starfire... He deserves to know the truth... I love him... The emotion itself was almost too strong to control, and she fell off of her knees to the floor as she tried to move again, trying to pull herself out from behind the crate.
Beast Boy could hear scratching from behind a nearby crate, but couldn't be sure if it was indeed a teammate- And he was losing air quickly. Turning around, he tried desperatly to find a crack in the wall where he could escape.
That was when the hole in the wall came to his attention. Quickly becoming a small mouse, he slipped through the crack in the wall to prepare to disappear. Again he heard the scratching and wondered if he should abandon her. However, unable to breath, he decided not to stay.
And slipped away from the spot where Raven was stuck.
Cyborg had already made his way out of the small building and was standing next to Starfire, watching the building burn. "Raven and Robin... BB, did you see either of them?"
They watched the entrance, the doorway, collapse before he answered. "No... I didn't even hear anything."
"Then we must go back for our friends!" Starfire insisited, stomping one foot in the fashion of a spoiled child. "We cannot leave them to die! Friend Robin..."
Cyborg looked at her with a sad eye, the robotic one reflecting the damage in a deep red color. "Robin and Raven probably won't have made it out. They've both inhaled too much smoke from the fire..."
"You cannot say that!" With those yelled words, she flung herself against Beast Boy, the person standing closest to her, and began to cry. He sighed and looked down at her.
"Guess it's too bad everything gets taken away from us in the end, huh?" Cyborg said.
No one answered, but the silence was all the answers he needed, and so Cyborg looked up into the dark sky that had robbed him of so much he cared about, and cursed it silently. Nearby, sobs were coming from Starfire, but nothing could have been done to comfort her. She was bound hand and foot, practically, to do anyhting to save them.
"The fire is almost beautiful," Beast Boy said, holding onto Starfire and trying to ignore her tears. "If it weren't destroying everything..."
If it weren't destroying our lives.
"Raven!" Robin hollored. "Raven!" He coughed on the smoke, choking as if he were falling down into the smoke, but still he moved low to the ground, trying his hardest to find her. His eyes were heavy from the ash that had managed to find him on the floor and worked his way behind his mask, burning his eyes. He could feel the heat on both sides of him, could hear himself choking on the ashes, but he refused to stop. I have to get to her.
I can't let this happen to her. This can't happen to us now. We've come this far, struggled so long just to get to thise point, and now I...
The thought was abruptly cut off by a sound, a desperate, low scraping and what sounded like a voice. Strangled and timid, the one word that came from it's mouth undeniably came from the lips of the person he wanted to talk to the most. "Robin..." The word came again, and then a coughing fit overtook the speaker.
"Raven!" His lungs filling with smoke, fire dancing and threatening to consume him from either side, Robin tried to stand and again fell to his knees, touching the broken pieces of bo-staff at his sides with contempt, as if wondering what he could do with anything shattered or broken.
That was when there was the loud, resonating sound of metal against the side of one of the crates. "Raven..." The strenght came to his muscles even as he coughed harder, this time rising off one knee and listening to the wood as it began to splinter.
That was when he saw her hand dangling over the crate he was hitting and reached behind it, taking her hand and trying his hardest to pull her out from her cramped position, not even fully understanding how she had gotten stuck, forgetting where they were as he held onto her hand.
Hero, Hero, this word you'll never know
Guess it's too bad
that everything we have
is taken away.
Away, away, away. They're taking it away
Raven lay across the floor in front of him now, her violet eyes clouded with the smoke, her voice weak as her movements. Robin slumped down against the crates next to her, hand still in hers. He could feel her struggling with her emotions, fighting to keep her fear down within her as she tried to get to her knees.
"Robin..." She whispered. "You saved me..."
"What am I supposed to do?" He asked, his voice just as weak as hers, looking desperatly for some exit, any exit from the building. "Leave the girl I love in a burning building and rush off to save my own ass?"
"Robin... Slade was wrong about you... You really are..." However, Raven's sentance was interupted by the falling of a nearby piece ceiling. Her breathing was becoming weaker and weaker.
A hero, she finished in her head.
Robin looked desperatly up, around, trying to see more than one way in the thick smoke, eyes still burning. His mind dipped back to the window that he had seen above them in battle, and one hand slipped to his side, toward a rope that he could use to carry them out of the window.
Without stopping to think, picking up the now-unconcious, slightly burned girl in his arms, he shot the end of the rope until he felt it hook against the wall and began to move along it, using it as his zip-line to reach the window.
"I'm going to save you, Raven," he whispered desperatly, finding that it was getting harder and harder to see. The window was quickly coming into sight, and Robin tried his hardest to get his foot onto the edge, still carrying Raven. However, the thick smoke distorted his vision, and his foot missed the ledge.
As his arms came out to steady himself, the body in his arms began to fall away from him. Down toward the dancing fire, away...
That was when Robin was assumed to have passed out and made his own plunge for the ground below him. "Raven..." He whispered, the strenght to yell, to stand and to save her gone.
Cyborg ran toward where the body hit the pavement, but no one dared go back into the burning rubble for the young girl, to even attempt toRaven. "She's probably gone," he found himself whispering.
A single tear ran down the human side of his face in response to that thought as he lifted his friend and made a sprint for the T-car, leaving Beast Boy to gather the motorcycle and Starfire to look back one last time at the collapsing building before following Cyborg with tears running down her own cheeks.
Robin awoke two days later with his head pounding, the word 'hero' ringing in his ears for reasons he could not understand. He was amazed to find that he was not in his own bed but hooked up to several machines in the team's living room, with Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Starfire standing at his bedside.
He lightly touched his face and found his mask still there. His fingertips, even though his gloves, brushed something he had forgotten about- It brushed ash, which could only have come from the fire...
"Where's Raven!" He demanded, trying to sit up, but a strong set of metal hands belonging to his friend Cyborg held him to the bed as Cyborg let out a loud sigh and did his best to utter calming words. "If something has happened, I swear I'll..."
"Rob, chill." Beast Boy's tone was grave and serious, and his eyes were too dark for Raven to be all right. "Robin, Raven... Didnt' make it out of the building. We've searched, but there's no evidence of whether or not she died in that fire..."
Starfire moved over to him and set a hand on his shoulder. "I am most sorry."
Robin looked up at his friends and teammates and found that all words were elusive, stuck in the back of his throat. "She's alive! She's alive and she's fine and... RAVEN! COME IN HERE AND TELL THEM YOU'RE OKAY!"
For the second time, Starfire turned and buried her head into Beast Boy's chest, the tears she had vowed not to let Robin ever see again coming down her face. He sighed and held her against him, letting her cry, because there was nothing else to be done in times like these.
The moments passed, and Robin's shoulders sagged as he fell back. Suddenly, the denial quickly left him, almost as if it had never been there, and he was instead full of anger and rage. He felt the ash-covered mask before ripping it away from his eyes as they began to well over with tears.
And tore it straight into two pieces.
"There is no hero here!" With that, a fist bashed off the side of the bed next to him and let the pieces flutter out of his clentched fists and onto the ground. "I failed! I can't even protect what I care about! Dammit!"
Two halves of a whole idenity. The pieces landed crossing each other in the confusion, as Cyborg tried to calm Robin down and Starfire, now confused and afraid of the angry boy before her, wept against Beast Boy. They rested there despite all of the chaos, as sure as something once broken will always remain so.
In the meantime, Raven lay face-down upon a strange bed, in a dark room, barely alive but mostly dead. She did not move, nor talk, and one that knew nothing about her would have assumed her dead rather than healing the damage done to her body.
The one watching her knew, one side of this face gleaming with a hidious orange gleam that was reflected in the eyes of the man behind the mask. "I was lucky to find you, little bird. You're the hero's weakness."
And whether I drown him in a sea of fire or a sea of emotion, all heros must drown.
His laugh echoed around the low chamber that was his new hiding place, and the night wore it's touch on all those who had been invovled with the fire.
And on all those who knew that even the hero could drown.
Raventhedarkgoddess: I do not own And the Hero Will Drown by Story of the Year or the Teen Titans. R+R, please.