Again, TEEN TITANS is not mine...sadly. Ah well. Review onegai? Please? yep, not beyond begging. haha.
Thank you to me whoever you are! Your review made me very happy. It motivated me to write this. One person makes all the difference!
More is appreciated...dunno if that's a bad thing that I care if people review...hope not. I just like to know what people think+
Waste Not, Want Not
Chapter One: Familiar
The purple-haired girl thumbed through a very haphazard stack of handwritten files.
"What title are you looking for?" she asked.
"The City in which I Love You by Li-Young Lee," he supplied.
"That's not usually something a guy asks about," amethyst eyes stared at him as she paused in her search, scrutinizing him. When he did not respond, she went back to looking and one, Richard Grayson took in every detail of the young woman standing before him as best he could. Slight build, pale, slender, shapely but not ridiculous, short hair of the most peculiar shade—he wondered if it was natural and then decided that it was, not knowing where he got the answer from—and wide luminous eyes of a similar color. Something though...something about this person clicked with something in his mind and it nagged at him as she moved from the files to an equally messy shelving system, back to him. He was about to try once more to ask her if he knew her from somewhere but a new voice broke his thoughts.
"Rae," a man nodded to her as he came out of the backroom, white-silver eyes glimmering with something otherworldly, off-setting his whitish hair nicely. The two seemed to have a thing for monochromatic schemes.
"Hello," Richard greeted in an effort to be polite. The other man's smile was more a smirk and that disconcerted the blue-eyed one.
"Malchior," the moonlit eyes watched him carefully before turning to assist Rae. Shouldn't her name be longer? Richard wondered and then snapped himself away from such thoughts. How would he know, after all?
"We do have it. Sorry for the wait, come with me," Raven motioned to him and he followed wordlessly, completely aware of the burning stare her coworker was sending his way. He noted how her hair kept falling into her eyes and how she therefore kept brushing it back with her fingers, trying to tuck it futilely behind her ears. As she angled her head a certain way to scan the book titles, the light caught them just so and without thinking, he reached out to her and turned her head in his direction, holding her chin in his hand with a strange gentleness. Bewildered, her eyes looked into his as they had one evening two weeks ago and even before that...
"RAE!" Malchior seemed to loom over the two and Richard retracted his hand as if burned, his face belying none of the confusion he felt, a mask to the world and present company.
"Here's your book," her voice floated over his shoulder, and he noticed with amusement how unfazed she was by Malchior's scolding and somewhat warning tone.
"Thanks, um, sorry, I just thought you—"
"Will that be all?" Malchior's voice was worse than ice and as impassive with a great degree of foreboding laced in it.
"Is there a problem with me speaking to your coworker?" Richard asked, finally getting irritated.
"She is my employee, and yes, there is. If that's all then it would be best that you just take the book and leave," he said and though he stood leaning against a bookshelf as though without a care in the world, Richard could feel his tension.
"I'd hope you would treat your 'employee' better than that," Richard said coolly and walked past Malchior without a glance. Then, as if remembering something, he tossed the book to Raven without looking back. She caught it, perplexed.
"Didn't you..." she began.
"I'll come back some other day."
"I'm sorry, the shop will be closed indefinitely after today," Malchior's voice cut in and when Raven started to protest with more derision than anything else, he placed a hand firmly on her arm and squeezed as a caution that she well understood. Her words died on her lips. Richard's blue gaze turned to them again and not missing a beat, suddenly Malchior's hand was at his own side again.
"Fine I'll get it elsewhere then. It's a good book. You might like it, Rae," he said with a softness not common between strangers and unconsciously, she held it closer to her. And then he was out the door, bell clanging against the glass. As his form moved into nothingness away from the window, Raven whirled on her 'boss.'
"What is your problem?" she demanded, voice as close to a yell as it ever got with him.
"You know," he said without sympathy.
"He sure as Hell doesn't!" she spat, eyes raging like purple waves on a beachfront.
"I know you saw each other at the gala," his quiet statement silenced her for a few breaths but she was quick to pick up again.
"We didn't say a word, Malchior. It was a look, not even!" Raven was clutching the book fiercely without meaning to. "Must you control me so?" This last one was more pitiful than she had expected and she cursed herself for even asking.
"It was what we agreed upon, was it not?" he deftly evaded her emotional question if only to get out of showing any emotion himself.
"We agreed that they, none of them, would remember. They don't. What harm is there in this?" she knew she was pleading. Her inner self seethed. The old Raven would never do such a thing. Never.
"I don't believe in taking chances," he said plainly.
"That's obvious," her retort was cold and angry and inside, Malchior recoiled. Not all love was like that of Star Anders' and Richard Grayson's. Some love, he thought sadly, was twisted. Some love was almost so unsightly and beyond recognition that it was hate. Some love was almost invisible, but he did love Raven Roth, once the dark sorceress of the unbeatable Teen Titans. He loved her and he felt an incurable need to own her entirely. That could never be had she stayed with the titans and while how this all came about was another story completely, this was where they now stood. Instead of showing love as the one once known as Robin and now known as Nightwing might, he showed nothing at all.
"I'll see you for dinner. Don't be late," he said with a curtness that made Raven's blood simmer with upset as he strode away without a single backward glance. When she heard the door click shut Raven took the moment to notice her clenched hands and in her haste to release them, dropped the book. She cursed but her irritation subsided as she noted something sticking out of the book. Pinching it from the pages she read it over; it was a card of some sort:
Richard Grayson
9th and Evernia
10 p.m. tomorrow
Puzzled, it took the dark girl a couple minutes to digest his meaning. Exactly when he had had the chance to scrawl this so neatly and stuff it into the book, but her heart stopped in mid-fall, beginning to rise again.
With my luck, the renowned Nightwing will have to tie up some low-life jewelry thief at 9:59, she thought wryly but this did not diminish what for the first time in a long time felt like hope to Raven Roth. So what if the boy-blunder remembered nothing of her?
All she wanted to do was spend a little time with him. She would keep her promise to Malchior, her vow. Nothing remotely like the word 'teen' or 'titan' in singular or plural form would escape her mouth. He would know the moment she did because of the invocation laid upon her. Aside from that, she was not one for breaking a promise to anyone. It simply wasn't her style. No, she'd just go and maybe have a cup of coffee and talk about books. If he was still the Robin—no, the Richard, she amended—she remembered that he probably liked similar things she thought with a soft smile.
This was one thing she was slowly getting accustomed to. While the old Raven would not have caved beneath Malchior's order or demands, the old Raven did not smile so much either. With no power she could feel as anyone else could and her smiles, though still rare, were less so. It was still a strange feeling, that odd upward curve of the lips, but she had an idea that she knew what made it just that appealing. After the initial strangeness, it did in fact, feel quite nice. Scooping the book into her arms, she heaved it up onto the top of the book shelf and clambered onto it next, swinging her legs up after her, perched once again.
Tomorrow at 10...it's been a while, Robin, she mused as she flipped the book of poetry open and began to read.
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Star Anders watched her boyfriend dubiously. He'd been acting strange ever since he came back to the apartment. It wasn't anything special—the apartment—but it was enough. Two bedrooms, a kitchenette, a living area, a bathroom and a very, very small balcony sufficed for the couple. Her boyfriend tapped a pencil absently against his head, a blank piece of paper in front of him as he sat, legs bent at the knee on a stool at the counter.
He never sat at the counter.
Except tonight, he did and this was what started Star Anders worrying in the first place. Once she had been a very bubbly girl, painfully alien and equally squeamish with green eyes that had a tendency to widen to the size of saucers at everything remotely amusing, and some things that were not even remotely so.
Then she met Richard and her very teenage ways eased into an even grace that one might suspect she had been purposefully hiding. After all, being over-enthused was easier than being elegant and while both were acceptable, the first came more naturally to Star. Now she carried herself with a lush dignity that prompted men to tell Richard how fortunate he was and for other men to attempt to court her until they discovered that Richard was just that fortunate.
Richard still sat at the counter and Star sighed.
"It's one o'clock, Rich," she rested her chin on his shoulder gently. A half-smile gracing his face, he moved to kiss her softly and then with a squeeze of her hand, stretched.
"Sorry, I hadn't noticed," he said affably and put the paper away but not before Star had seen what she had suspected: a completely blank page.
"Something wrong?" she asked innocently. His blue eyes seemed to weigh odds against each other; he cared for Star and trusted her a great deal but for reasons not readily explainable, he felt his 10 o'clock rendezvous with a near-perfect stranger was not one of those things to trust his redheaded girlfriend with. So deciding, he shook his head.
"Nothing," he lied and Star knew, but left it alone. He only talked when he chose to and nothing would ever change that, she was certain. Releasing another sigh, she laid her hands on his arm and they shared a warm embrace. It was definitely loving but if anyone had been watching—and no one was of course—they would have all agreed that there was not much passion. A docile lip lock at best before they parted into separate rooms like an old married couple, but this was how it had been for quite some time and so if there was any question on either one's half, it disappeared with the next morning.
Running a hand through his ebony locks, Richard sat on the edge of his bed until he heard the usual click of Star's last light going out. He pushed the ever-pressing thoughts of a certain amethyst-eyed bookworm out of his head as he softly opened his door to reaffirm that Star had in fact gone to sleep.
A few more minutes for certainty since even he was off sometimes and then he moved soundlessly to his closet, slid the door open and up above where anyone else would bother to look, pulled down a pile of black with a faint hint of blue.
Maybe two minutes later the city protector known as Nightwing fairly soared through the metropolitan air by way of a well latched grappling gun.
And it was just like every other night.
Eh, more? Please let me know. I'm floundering a bit.
-so and so