Don't own teen titans.
Pairings: raven and robin, when you get down to it...
Reason for rating: to be safe
Genre: not quite AU, but almost
Waste Not, Want Not
Chapter 3: background
Raven pulled the books from the ramshackle cart, several at a time. Taking care to push each one onto the right shelf no further in than the surrounding ones, her tapered fingers were quick and efficient. The smell of aging parchment and various bindings permeated this bookshop.
She wasn't the only one with a fondness for old literature, as Malchior had pointed out once.
Last night she had tried her best to sleep after tossing her soaked garments in the laundry basket and throwing on loose black pajama pants and a dark blue tank top. Unable to do so, she'd found a corner of the shop that suited her mood—the darkest one—and settled down with the book she had once again forgotten to give to one Richard Grayson.
The City in which I Love You, by Li-young Lee was a small poetry collection and the empath was aware of the rareness of the hardcover she had held that night, like something made of glass.
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
and I mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
The poem had been striking and she could see what any person might find attractive about it, man or woman. The man, Lee, spoke of his backbreaking search, scouring every feasible place for his love, and some unfeasible, while communicating that even when he was near and she might not hear him, he continued to love, to pursue, to feel her with every beat of his estranged soul.
In a moment of what she would later call weakness, she'd fancied she herself might be a little like him as she had read on, into the night...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
drag my extinction in search of you...
He went through trials so strange they could not be described by normal words, she had noted, some being made up entirely, but it worked for him. Not all wordsmiths used orthodox means after all.
Malchior had come out during her third time through the lengthy poem, which continued admirably on for another thirty-three stanzas of anguish, loss, renewal and understanding. He had eyed the book with disdain but not stooped to taking it away. He knew the harm a book could do, the power it could instill, but his magician's eye told him everything he needed to assess about the old bound thing in her hands: it was no danger to him.
And now here she was, as if nothing had transpired that night, that day, that other night, any time really. Here she was and she was sorely miserable. Why had he had to come into her shop?
The idea was he would forget her, that all the titans would forget her, and that foolishly she would tell herself she could handle that...and pretend as long as she lived...but she had not accounted for running into any of them again personally, least of all him.
She had not accounted for so much more...
Losing her temper—a common habit of hers nowadays—she sent nearly the entire row of books scattering to the floor with one blind, sweeping motion.
The dark girl sighed.
A deceptively gentle hand brushed her cheek and she cringed. Silver white eyes frowned at this.
"Raven...why do you fear me?"
She wanted to believe he was being sincere, believe he cared...but she had done that once.
Once was enough for her.
"I don't 'fear' you. I hate you," she corrected indifferently. The gentleness disappeared and Malchior's hand forced her to face him, holding her chin possessively between his thumb and forefinger.
"Hate is not far from love, Raven," Malchior all but taunted.
"But love is far from what I feel for you," she spat, eyes glaring mutinously.
"That's too bad," he admitted and then said, "But it makes little difference considering the situation you've gotten yourself into, isn't that so my dark one?" It was a cruel whisper of magic spells and old parchment pages, the dull warning before he brought his lips harshly down upon hers.
She did not struggle, did not deny him...could not deny him.
It wasn't his undeniable skill as her traitorous body might have made people think, nor was it that she harbored feelings for him—not even him technically, she brooded—no. It was all a part of that awful vow, that promise, that deal.
Their deal.
Raven trembled as Malchior let his breath caress the nape of her neck in a disconcerting rhythm.
"It's too bad he doesn't remember you."
Ouch.
The empath only barely repressed the cry of indignant outrage beating wildly around in her chest. Barely.
"That was the idea," she said curtly. His lips lingered over her cheekbone and she closed her eyes as she felt him press them over her eyelids, like a promise of never-ending blindness, a curse.
"It's better for you, Raven. He would only have hurt you, you know...though why he ever favored the Tameranian over you I shall never understand," Malchior was honest in this. He had never seen what drew others so to Starfire.
Raven supposed that the dark magician would not understand the alien girl's affable ways and beauteous kindness, the endless forgiveness and humbleness that resided in her rather bubbly shell.
She supposed he wouldn't understand how Starfire, being happiness incarnate, or at least purity, would bring those qualities to everyone else's life she was in.
Except Raven's of course, but there was that deal again...
"That doesn't concern me," she lied to him as his left hand traveled dangerously down her side, almost careless, but too pointed to be something so uncalculated. His eyes rose to meet her now open gaze, raising an eyebrow quizzically at her as he let out an empty laugh.
"Such insolent pretense," he murmured into the crook of her neck as he brought his face to rest there. "How does it feel, Raven? How does it feel to be a character in a book full of many wondrous things and years of trial...and not have anyone you loved even so much as recognize you?" His voice had become a hiss into her ear. She flinched. "How does it feel when he tells you he's forgotten your name?"
"Stop," she tried to order him but could only beg. She hated this strange humanity that came along with the absence of her powers. It made her so mortal, so pathetic, so powerless. How she hated it.
"How," he pressed on mercilessly, "Does it feel to have the one you loved turn his back on you?" He was angry, beyond ever being morose about the subject for many years now, all he had left was rage.
"Please," she pleaded for his silence. To her surprise, he granted it with one last disparaging look into her eyes before pushing her roughly away into the bookshelf and disappearing into one of the back rooms.
Sad, angry amethyst eyes stared after him, plagued by what once almost was, what would never be, and what seemed inevitable from the very beginning.
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He slammed his fists down, sending scrolls rolling off his untidy desk and setting his many strange artifacts to rattling like shaken teeth. Running a tired hand through his hair, Malchior glowered in the dimness that sheathed his room like a metal blade cover. He treated her badly, he knew.
It wasn't really what he wanted, but it was exactly that—knowing he would never have what he really wanted—that made him act this way.
He would never have her love again, her trust. Not after the book and the confusion with Rorek and his own ungrateful and manipulative ways, his insidious nature that was both his birthright and default behavior. Malchior had not been blessed with the kindness or valiance or steadfast purity of Rorek.
His was not the path of any great virtue or quest, no noble intent or journey of redemption. No, he had simply found himself needlessly and wordlessly falling in love with the growing Raven, or at least infatuated.
Maybe if he was kinder, more—dare he even think it?—human, he scowled at the very thought, it might have been love.
It might.
But he was not. He was a dragon in a body he had gone through nameless and unnamable things to obtain and to keep, nameless and unnamable things just to get close enough to her to wrap his arms around her tiny frame and draw her close, bury his face in her hair, taste her lips...he was a man infatuated, a dangerous and powerful man of uncounted years and uncertain priorities.
Some part of him hated himself.
He wasn't all bad after all, just mostly. And that wasn't humorous in the slightest to him. If he was all evil it wouldn't be half so hard to keep up this half truth, half charade. It was true he would not release her from their deal, true he had lured her into it, tricked and then blackmailed her with something awful. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, not the end of humanity or the end of the planet even, not the destruction of anything general or worldly. No. Not that bad.
But much worse, as far as Raven was concerned.
He had, two years after the defeat of Trigon, finally found a way to manifest himself by his own means, to free himself from the spellbound pages of that accursed book. He had done it!
A sliver of a smile crept onto his lips.
That had been something worth being proud of.
Too bad he had to kill what was left of Rorek to do it.
On the up side, he had gained all of the sorcerer's power, added it to his own and pushed himself into the world of Jump City and one dangerous, gorgeous, dark Raven Roth.
He had then managed to take her friends, one by one.
Robin had been convinced it was Slade—who it might be noted would have been furiously upset he did not do what Malchior did first—which it wasn't of course. As each of the titans had gone missing it got down to just her and Robin.
The twisted dragon, now a man, had played secret witness to a scene he harbored inside him as something of a source of his hate of the boy wonder and his hate of himself. The event he saw had shown him both what Robin was capable of, what he could offer, and what he—Malchior—subsequently, could not, ever. He had made it impossible for the silver white eyed man from the get-go and Malchior despised Richard Grayson for it with an intensity only equaled by his unfathomable infatuation with Raven.
He remembered watching the two birds on top of their beloved T Tower, alone...
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Raven pulled her arms closely around herself underneath her cloak while Robin paced furiously. First Star, then Beast Boy, then Cyborg...all of them, gone…and to where? He had no idea and it ate away at him like acid rain, slow, soft, stinging drops of it.
"Relax Robin," she warned him more than asked. He turned on his heel to face her, anger evident in the tight way he clenched his jaw, the frown etched in the way his mask twisted at her. Timid wanted to shrink away but Courage would have none of it and Wisdom looked down its nose while Lazy slept and Rage raged—not that that ever changed—and Happiness, or Love really it depended, shook her head. Raven, all of her together, just stared at him evenly.
"'RELAX'?" his shout echoed through what had become a ghostly part of town.
"Yes," she said shortly, brushing an unruly section of hair behind her ear, annoyed.
"It's just is, Raven, doesn't mean anything to you? The others could be hurt, worse, dead! We don't know who has been taking them. We don't know anything...I almost wish it was Slade," Robin fumed, livid with his anger at the absence of the other titans and the fact that his lead on Slade had led them not only to a dead end but to an end-all, be-all fact: Slade had not at all been the one capturing their friends.
"You don't mean that," she whispered, worried suddenly. The last thing she needed was a psychotic Robin with the rest of them in God knows whose clutches. Sighing, she stepped toward him and frowned deeply when he stepped backward. She took another step. He took another step. "Stop it Robin," she ordered and flew straight for him and before he could protest she had his face cradled in her hands and she murmured, "I told you to relax." Her forehead leant against his gently and he felt a warmth emanate from her hands. Robin's blood stopped boiling and he felt a clearer head on his shoulders; it was like waking up from a bad dream or getting out of a really long, hot shower. Or both.
"Raven?" The leader wondered what he was asking with only her name. She withdrew her hands only to have him take them in his own.
"Robin?" The empath wondered much what he just had as she felt more than saw their hands clasped together between their two now rapidly beating hearts.
"Raven...if..."he almost couldn't continue but plowed onward after a moment's hesitation, "If we get separated, I just want to..." he groaned. How cowardly could a superhero possibly get?
"You're welcome," she said.
"What?"
"You were going to thank me, I think," she intuited and Robin nodded dumbly...he was going to thank her...but was that all?
She turned away from him, hands slipping out of his like water. Her cloak billowed away from her as she held her arms around herself again, as though to shield herself from a nonexistent cold and suddenly Robin knew exactly what he meant to say.
He wasn't sure if it was the vulnerable look on her face that pushed him to know, or something in the way she had assumed what he meant as if to avoid hearing the truth, but whatever it was, it showed him she didn't know everything.
Even if she was an empath.
Raven felt heat flood her cheeks as arms wrapped firmly around her and breath tickled her right ear.
"That wasn't everything though, Rae," he whispered. He didn't have time to think about tomorrow anymore, like had been in his most solitary moments, moments when her face would hover gently in his mind where he had once been certain Starfire's belonged. He had tried to ignore those feelings he knew rested him concerning Raven, but he could not deny them with so much happening, so much uncertainty.
"Robin—" she began but caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye and shouted loudly this time, "Robin!" and shoved him to the side. She felt white heat course through her and heard a pained scream only to realize as it died on her lips that it had been her. The next feeling was one of her body hitting cold concrete of the titan's tower roughly, her limbs limp and her breathing barely there.
"RAVEN!" Robin ran to her.
"That was meant for you," a voice as calm as Slade's but oddly musical, floated towards them. Robin cradled Raven's still frame in his arms.
"You have bad aim," Robin said icily.
"And you have something I want," Malchior had been confident back then, even knowing he might not succeed. He had circled the birds and sneered at the more conscious of the two.
"You took the others," Robin said plainly, not an accusation, but a statement.
"Smart too, I can see why she likes you," Malchior admitted grudgingly with sincerity in his head even if his voice was pure mockery. He approached them and reached down to touch the now unconscious empath, at which point her protector jumped backward ten feet, her still in his arms. Malchior had then laughed. Robin had bristled.
"Stay away from her."
"But she is mine," Malchior reasoned in a falsely pleasant tone, as if to a three year old.
"She is not yours," Robin seethed.
"Well, she isn't yours," Malchior returned and his lips curved upward at the crestfallen expression that laced the young warrior's features, if only for a second.
"Bring the others back," he tried to deter the attention.
"I will, if you give me her," Malchior had gestured grandly at Raven. Robin's face hardened.
"I'll find them."
"No, I'm afraid you won't."
"She'll never love you," Robin bit out, "Not after what you did to her."
"You being in love with her doesn't mean she's in love with you," Malchior echoed Robin's unvoiced fears. He would have said something too, if only to distract, if Raven hadn't stirred in his arms. His face lightened considerably, if still creased with worry.
"Rae," he said softly. "Can you hear me?" Her eyes opened to look at him; Robin noted how very exhausted she seemed suddenly, how beyond her years.
"Robin...how did he get out?" She already knew. Of course she knew. She was Raven.
"I don't know," he said.
"I won't let him hurt you, or the others," Raven resolved gently and fazed out of his arms, leaving Robin with nothing but air. Robin's eyes widened behind his mask as Raven reappeared in her similarly crumpled heap at Malchior's feet.
"I won't let you take her!" Robin yelled, bow staff at hand, running toward the dark sorcerer.
"It is not up to you," was the unkind hiss as Malchior placed a hand on a trembling Raven's shoulder and they both disappeared.
"No!" Robin cried out.
But they were gone, and the next day he did not remember Raven at all.
He did not remember Raven, or Starfire, nor Cyborg and Beast Boy...least of all Malchior. For, Richard Grayson had been a fine young executive for several years now, if a reluctant one who hated paperwork like the devil. He had a girlfriend named Star with otherworldly green eyes and an alias of Nightwing under which he fought crime in the city of Jump.
This was how it had always been, or so he woke up thinking, never questioning the singularly vexing headache he woke with, chalking it up to stress...or something.
Raven was gone forever from him, in the way he had almost let her be on that roof before she was stolen into nothingness.
And Malchior had been the one to do it.
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That same man paced about his cluttered room. It still burned him to remember that scene on the rooftop, their closeness, the reminder of what had not been said but what hadn't needed to be said between those two.
How much she loved him, Robin...him and no one else...Malchior's heart would have broken if there was enough of one left to break. As it was, he felt a dull throb but nothing more.
It wasn't that though. No he had gotten what he asked for. Raven had yielded her powers and her friends' memories.
Essentially she had given up her life in a worse way than death…Malchior knew something about fates worse than death.
He stopped pacing and crossed his arms, leaning on the edge of his table.
"Raven," he sighed to the nothing around him and of course, it did not answer.
He had even set about to placing in their memories relationships like that of Richard and Star, a perfect couple, just in case Raven ever ran into the old leader of the titans. He hadn't actually taken into account the possibility of it actually happening, not realistically, but one could never be too safe.
Star and Richard, he had made sure when doing all his cursing and casting, were what seemed the perfect couple. How could Raven think of matching that? The idea was that she couldn't and Malchior counted on that fact.
Another sigh and he sat in the hole that was his room, buried to above his head in books and scrolls.
Sometimes life was complicated, even for him.
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Star paced restlessly outside Richard's door. He hadn't come out all day; he only said very, very briefly that he'd called in sick to work and didn't feel well. That was fine in the way that least he was taking time off, but what wasn't fine was the way he kept his door shut to her.
How long had they been dating, involved? She could scarcely recall a time that they weren't and this had never happened.
Inside his room, Richard's slate blue eyes scanned the many files he was extracting from various unknown sources concerning the background and persona of a Miss Raven Roth—the girl from the bookshop, the girl he had rescued last night, the girl who had called him a name he had wished to never hear again.
Robin.
The name had been so soft he had almost not heard it at all, disappearing off her lips like a wish and he had wondered at that. She said his name like she missed him.
Like she knew him.
And that was why he had called in sick, why he had sat all day in front of various screens of computers and other technology, trying to track down a basic founding line on this girl with eyes the color of amethysts. That was why he had not spoken to anyone, save the person at work and Star, and why he had kept both conversations to about two sentences at most.
She was why and he couldn't remember a time he had been more fixated. This was odd, because the obsessive nature felt familiar, but without the sinister edge he found himself expecting, without the cold mystery of an austere and potential villain, because she, she was just a stranger.
A beautiful, complicated stranger.
So far he hadn't been able to track much on her. She was inordinately elusive. He couldn't find a blood type, or a date of birth, history of familial relations, evidence of family at all...he couldn't even find any hint of the bookshop she worked at. But that was so strange...he had seen her that night at the gala, Malchior ordering her around—his blood boiled at that but he fought it down stubbornly. He had seen her there, so they must have each been
"Richard?" Star knocked softly at his door. He sighed and deftly closed several things that looked like laptops, but were not, and hid them carefully away in his closet, which he closed before answering his door. His girlfriend's worried green eyes bore into his with a sad intensity and he felt immediately guilty for making her feel that way. She was very precious to him, but he did not show it when he got this way and one might get the distinct impression of the opposite if one didn't watch how he held her close and whispered apologies into her ear, face buried in the comfort of her long red tendrils.
"Sorry," he mumbled and felt himself relax into her arms. Star Anders was a wonder to him, beautiful and patient. She was everything a man might hope for as, on top of her virtuous qualities, she was extremely attractive. However, Richard knew, for all that she was and all that he was not, she could not fill that hole in his chest where one might save room for 'the love of a lifetime.'
For some reason, he'd never been able to bring himself to that, or allow himself that with her and he'd never been able to figure out what that reason was.
"It's okay," she replied, running her hands through his hair the way of comforting.
Star was what it was to be safe and in these days Richard found he didn't dare seek more than that. Between his secret outings as Nightwing and day job as an executive, he might have gone mad, but the comfort of her soothing gestures and seemingly endless patience kept him sane, kept him as normal as he could ever hope to be; he owed her.
Yes, he owed her...but that was not all. He liked her. He cared for her. He even loved her.
But he did not love her the precise way he suspected he should, the precise way he suspected she loved him.
And he wondered briefly if she was at all aware of the imbalance between them.
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Eh, more robin and raven next time. Thank you for the reviews!