The show is not mine, eh, you win some you lose some.
Thank you for all the reviews. I REALLY was surprised to see people like this story at all and here I am at chapter...whatever chapter this is. Bonsai! Anyway, thanks again and let me know if you liked this installment or not. It took me forever I think; I rewrote it twelve times and this one seemed the best, whatever that means...er…haha.
For those who reviewed but especially for: GrayDove, The Writer you Fools, sekai no yakusoku, and alena-chan
Waste Not, Want Not
Chapter Six: Breakthrough
Her lips were just as soft as promised, he decided and forewent all pretense of saying 'no' or thinking of Star when he knew he wanted this, for whatever reason; he was starved for her that in itself was, perhaps, beyond any explanation. He gently took her lower lip between his, suckling on it drawing a soft moan from her and he knew he had never felt so alive before from just a kiss, not with Star, not with anyone.
Not with anyone he could remember.
He drew her closer to him and it was his own groan escaping as she ran her fingers through his hair. And he could feel her crying, but he would not stop in his exploration of her, not that she asked him to; in fact, her actions seemed to ask for the opposite and he was all too ready to comply. Somehow he had turned her around and now worked to prop her against the trunk of the cherry blossom tree, never ceasing in kissing her, in feeling her, in getting to know every idyllic inch of the young woman named Raven. Her scent mixed with the cherry blossom tree in this wild blend of vanilla and petals and something else exotic and beyond naming. And still, he could feel the trickle of her tears against his own skin, and he wondered what broke her heart so much to make her like this even as he continued to find heaven in the nape of her neck and at the base of her throat with his lips. He was not hurting her; he knew somehow he would be able to tell instantly if he was, physically doing her harm, but what was hurting her seemed to stem from the inside.
"Why do you cry?" he asked her, bringing his face to hers again, noses touching ever so slightly.
"For what was lost," she was vague but sincere.
"You can tell me nothing else?" he asked sadly, knowingly. She shook her head.
"I'm sorry Robin," she repeated and added, "Star doesn't have to know about this." She made as if to escape him. He pinned her with his arms against the tree.
"Like Hell she doesn't. I've never felt this...this way about anyone but you!" He was shouting at the end of the sentence but he didn't care who heard. "And, and, I don't care if you can't tell me how you know I was Robin or anything, but don't run away from me, not like you run away from...from him. Don't run from me, ever," Richard both ordered and pleaded. "Don't you run from me," he repeated. His breath was short and his eyes had a glaze of passion in them incited by his closeness to her and his suddenly overwhelming urge to make her his own...as he somehow knew she ought to be. Raven traced a finger along his jaw, her own look of want and need a much sadder version.
"Listen to me, you can't help. I can't tell you what's going on or why, but you have to understand," she whispered desperately to him even though they seemed alone in the park; always she felt ears listening, eyes watching. Richard frowned deeply.
"I don't accept that," he said and she sighed.
"Robin, I know what I know and in this case it's more than you. Go back to Star," and it was something both cold and admirable in her that kept her voice from breaking with her heart.
"You don't mean that," Richard's own voice dropped to match her quiet, her vulnerability, and he searched her eyes for the truth. But Raven was a master of pretending; she needed to be. And so he found nothing like the love he sought and she, in reality, felt; he found nothing like the unending desire she felt for him that was on a short leash to keep her from kissing him again.
He found nothing at all.
"Go, Richard; forget," she told him softly and the hand that had framed his face dropped to her side. And she closed her eyes because she knew she could not bear the sight of him walking away from her forever, of losing him again, possibly forever, as she thought bleakly: you've done it before.
She opened her eyes, not feeling his presence there any longer and was startled by two very blue eyes being very close to her own amethyst ones...he hadn't left after all.
"I can't!" he replied fiercely and did what words failed to express: he brought his lips down on hers, hard and sensual. He felt like he'd been waiting years for this.
He did not know on some level, he really had.
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Star ran across the silver picture frame. The picture was from last summer. Richard had his arm draped casually about her shoulders and he had his eyes closed, caught in mid laugh. She was smiling too.
Star was not smiling outside of the picture though.
Did he love her anymore, really love her? Did he ever love her? She had her doubts now. Her brow furrowed. Something wasn't right and that something wasn't that Richard probably did not love her, much as it pained her to admit it. No, that was not it. It was something else, something that had begun to stir that night at the gala when she first saw 'Rae' and that strange man, her partner Star presumed. She had only just remembered she had seen her there at all and now the violet-eyed girl was running circles in the redhead's mind. Star had the short thought of: Rae hates running.
And there was part of the problem too.
How did she, Star Anders, know that? She didn't even know the girl...right?
Green eyes shut themselves against the photograph of a far more blissful time in her remembered life as Star continued to struggle to recall what she was not meant to.
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In a dusty bookshop, silver-white eyes widened, first in shock and then fury. There was the rustling of pages as if a severe wind blew through the room and the swinging of a door on hinges, and then nothing except scattered books on the shadowed floor.
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Raven sensed him before he got there and she didn't take the precious time to ask herself how she knew; she was just glad she did. Richard's lips devoured her, starving for her, and she wanted for him to continue, very badly she did. But at the first inkling of Malchior's approach she was on defense and her resolve to keep her friends safe, whether they remembered anything really or not, strengthened tenfold. She pushed Richard back, holding him by his shoulders.
"Richard, he's coming, get out of here, please," she asked of him, pleaded even and her eyes all but demanded it. His heart was in his mouth.
"No, I won't leave you, we can't be apart, not ever again," he gestured wildly. To lose her again, to never know the perfect fit of her against him, the endlessness of her eyes, the mysteriousness of her voice...it would be too horrible.
"He will just separate us again, please, go, go to Star and live safely. I can live now at least, knowing you are safe," Raven's voice shook and she hated herself for the weakness. Richard felt his heart breaking into pieces.
"No Raven, I can't. I won't," he insisted. Raven felt Malchior's presence drawing closer very quickly.
"You must!" she cried and when she tried to push him further away he grasped her wrists in his hands.
"Stop it! Stop making me leave. This time it's not your choice Rae. It is mine." He stopped short, realizing his words and looked dumbstruck as she felt.
He remembered. One look at him and Raven knew he did. One tap into their bond and she was positively certain. One shared gaze between them and they remembered together, which was more powerful than just one of them, for Raven's constant memory fed Richard's newly recovered one...through their bond.
"The titans...oh God...Star..." he trailed off, hollow with the realization of what was going on now, what had been going on for the past two years, and the gravity of it, the consequences.
"And Vic and Gar," Raven added softly and then her mind flashed on silver-white eyes, head shooting up, alarmed.
"Malchior?" Richard sensed and she nodded.
"If you don't go and he finds you here, with me, he may..." she trailed off miserably. Richard's eyes widened.
"He would not," he said, appalled. His blue eyes flashed angrily at the very thought...if that bastard of a dragon-magician whatever the Hell he was ever hurt Raven again...
"He might," she said, cutting into his thoughts, and she let her chin drop down on her chest as she did her best to avoid Richard's direct stare. It was a bit much for her to fall into those pools of blue while impending doom in the form of Malchior was just around the corner. "He cannot stand the thought of me loving anyone else and it has not mattered because it has not been a real issue to him...until now."
"What can I do?" Richard beseeched of her. Her first instinct was that he could do nothing but she knew the outcome of using that answer; he would not budge. She forced her mind to work overtime in speeds that Kid Flash would admire if he was around, and it came to her, what to say.
"Hide, now!" she ordered him and pointed at the thick foliage of the tree above them. Without a word, he obeyed and disappeared into the petals and leaves. She felt his blue eyes stuck out sorely, but maybe it was only to her that they did so.
"Rae!" It was Malchior and she hated him for using the name that had started as an endearment from the one she loved and turned into an alias for a girl who thought she might never know love again.
But also, Raven suppressed a relieved sigh as she realized she stood alone and that Richard was staying put. For that, she was grateful.
Richard could not be seen and if Malchior did not expressly seek him out, he might well remain hidden.
"Malchior," she nodded with stiffness; no need to cause suspicion, she mused. It was lucky she was never very friendly with him.
"Where have you been?" he asked and she knew he was only pretending to be ignorant of much of what was slowly unraveling.
"Here," she replied truthfully. Wrap it in truth, she reminded herself. Those were the best kinds of lies.
"Is that so?" He leaned over her and brushed a finger under her chin. Above them, Richard seethed in the branches of the cherry blossom tree, but held his ground—or branch—and adhered to Raven's mental plea, always the same: stay where you are Robin. Stay where you are.
He stayed.
"Yes," she said and looked away sharply. At this, Malchior's expression darkened and he forced her to look back at him, cupping her face with his hands.
"Look at me and tell me what you've been up to sweet Raven. I know you are hiding something from me. I felt it," he hissed at her and she had a moment when she saw a large and fearsome dragon barreling down at her before she snapped back to reality—which wasn't much better—and glared at him, mutinous.
"You're so smart, why don't you just figure it out for yourself," she spat, scathingly.
"If you betray me..." Malchior let the threat hang in front of her eyes for a moment as he sent her graphic images of her ex-teammates possible deaths. Her mind reeled and she collapsed, her knees giving out on her as he nodded, satisfied. "We understand each other then." She felt simultaneously disgusted by her fragility and fearful for her unknowing comrades. Richard wanted to jump down and tell the formidable sorcerer to get away from Raven, to never talk to her again, to disappear, to die even.
He wanted to keep her safe.
But her voice through their bond, shaking as her physical form now did, kept telling him: no, please don't.
Please don't.
What could he do but obey? He felt his heart grow leaden as Malchior pulled Raven into his arms, lifted her from the ground, and walked away. How dare he touch you, Richard fumed, making a snap-decision, and jumped down from the tree. He looked around. Where had they gone?
No, Robin! He heard her warn wildly in his mind.
But he had already jumped. It was too late.
"Hello, Grayson." Blue eyes widened as he felt more than saw the insidious curse barreling down on him in angry green waves, but he was still Nightwing.
He was still Robin.
And spryly dodging the lethal blast, he now turned to face Malchior who was—to his great displeasure—still holding Raven and at this, Richard's expression hardened with unforgiving shades. Malchior's hand was pressed firmly over her mouth to keep her silent, but still plagued with the visions of her friends' destruction, she had paled and her frame still shook visibly.
I tried...I tried to...to warn...you, her mind said weakly, fragmented.
A trap.
"What did you do to her?" he demanded, frightened by the trembling and vacant look in his beloved's eyes. Truly this was a different Raven than he remembered.
But he loved her as much as the memory, more so having found her again, and he took a step toward the man he hated and the woman he would die for if it came down to that.
"I simply gave her a warning. You shouldn't have come out. If you had stayed I was willing to let you live, you and your Star, your Kori," Malchior sneered and added the old alias of the old Starfire in for kicks. Richard bristled noticeably.
"Release her!" Richard yelled.
"Or you'll do what, send me to jail?" the sorcerer mocked dryly.
"Jail's too good for you," Richard's voice dropped to a loathing whisper and added, "So is Hell come to think of it, but I'm afraid they might be the only ones who'd take you."
"Fighting words, how quaint," Malchior's stare was a frozen one of no regrets and unspeakable deeds and Richard wanted those eyes to shut forever but his anger was interrupted by Raven who seemed to have broken from her terrified trance. She all but leapt out of Malchior's arms—to Richard's pleasure—and stood, defensive, backing away from him. "I wouldn't go too far, sweet Raven...someone might get hurt," Malchior drawled, nodding carelessly at Richard, and she halted.
"Malchior, just leave him. We...we can go away and..." she paused and looked at Richard, feeling his heart scream 'no' at her. She turned away and steeled herself as Malchior considered her next words, "And I will be yours, forever, just leave my friends be."
"Raven, no!" Richard cried, outraged and fearful all at once.
"An interesting proposal, sweet Raven and I hate to throw it away—waste not, want not, you know— but how would I bind you to it? You seem to have quite the knack for getting around even the trickiest and most complicated of deals and spells I have at my disposal," Malchior smiled falsely.
It was doubtful that Malchior would have agreed—though some part of his piecemeal heart might have—but no one would ever really know because before Raven could respond, Richard snapped at the impending possibility of Raven's absence in his life and worse, her presence in that…that monster's. He shouted something, probably just yelled something incoherent in anger really—not unlike he did once as the leader of a group of teenaged superheroes—to catch their attentions; it worked.
And heedless, he lunged. Malchior knocked him away with some indecipherable words and, enraged now herself, Raven went to aid the man she loved, to protect the friend she had so sorely missed, but Malchior was not a master sorcerer for nothing.
"No, sweet Raven, this is not your fight anymore," he said coldly. "In fact," he clicked his tongue at her, "It has nothing to do with you at all," he bit out and that broke something in her all over again; he reduced her to a pawn, to nothing once more, and as much as she hated him, part of that hate was for the fact that he could still make her ache in her heart with such words. She struggled only to find he had cast her in some invisible spell that held her where she was; it was like she was chained on a wall that didn't exist, arms above her head and wrists bound by nothing the eye could find, but they felt like heavy iron rings to her; she also felt an icy cold begin to spread through her but didn't think much of it at the moment. She watched, riveted on a scene she could not intrude on. Richard had gotten up by now and was squaring off with Malchior again like someone who knew he was outmatched but was too proud to go down without a fight, which he was and Raven wanted very much to help but she was powerless still.
But maybe not as powerless as Malchior wants me to think, she mused hopefully and she thought of the only thing she could that might help him, might even make him win.
Help. That was maybe, just maybe, the answer she sought.
Trouble, Raven screamed mentally and struggled to free herself from Malchior's spell. Trouble!
Titans, trouble!
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There was a voice in her head and it wasn't welcome at the moment; Star Anders had enough troubles on her mind. The picture kept changing...or so she thought. And she tried to concentrate on it, tried very hard, but that voice kept yelling in her mind, kept crying out something she couldn't quite get...
Trouble?
...—ans, trouble!
She angrily turned on her heel and faced the picture again, blocking out the voice as best she could.
First things first...or whatever, she thought, frowning.
Now then...
What was wrong with it, the picture?
It was that same one of her and of Richard...what was wrong with it? The more she looked at it the more it looked pieced together and glued over and pasted and...unreal. The more she examined it, it seemed it wasn't her there at all, but someone of slighter frame and shorter hair. The more she scrutinized it looked like the picture should be larger and like someone, or several someones had been cut out and off of it...
"What is wrong with you?" she cried in fury and none were so shocked as Star Anders herself when she felt an amazingly intense heat build behind her eyes and saw everything in a hot green. The picture exploded, incinerated, and Star leapt...and stayed there. "Wha—?" she gasped, looking at her hands, now glowing that same green, and watching with stricken amazement as the floor moved below her, only to realize it was she moving above the floor, and then she eyed the picture frame. It was definitely busted but on closer inspection, for some reason, the picture was not...in fact it seemed to be...reforming itself?
It was like it had been...enchanted.
Or cursed.
Slowly, so slowly, it filled out to be a longer picture, wider too, and Richard now had an odd eye mask on and what Star must concede was one of the most fashionably disinclined get-ups she'd ever laid eyes on. And she'd seen quite a few, living in the city. But it didn't stop there...oh no. He had his arm around someone still, but she had been right in her earlier suspicions. It was someone slighter and with shorter hair—though the girl was still smiling. It was Rae...no, it was Raven, Star realized with the softest of heartbreak as she began to remember what was real and what had cruelly been forced upon all of them.
Now memories of who she was and the markings on her face were coming back and she saw Tameran and remembered Blackfire and many others, the Titans East and so on...and as the picture finished she saw herself with an arm nearly choking poor Beast Boy—who she knew also to be Garfield—as she seemed to be gleefully encouraging him to eat unsightly amounts of mustard. Cyborg stood watching, amused with an arched brow and a meat sandwich in one hand and the other hand helping Starfire hold Beast Boy down. Victor, she recognized thoughtfully and then a jolt went through her.
She remembered everything, the last of the memories a breakthrough hastened by her suspicion of late and that voice in her head that was getting more and more familiar...Raven's voice, Star realized with a pang.
And for an instant she hesitated; a part of her was angry that Raven had come back into their lives, angry that she could not truly have Richard for herself, that he could never love her as he indubitably loved the empath. But then Starfire, alias of Kori Anders, felt decently chastened by herself alone. How could she think such things?
She would make her friend the pudding of apology later...but wait, what?
Trouble, the voice from before came back, more desperate this time, more clearly, and filled her mind, screaming helplessly. After an experimental turn in the air, Star—now recalled to be Starfire—flew to the sliding doors, threw them open, and veritably shot out of the small apartment she had shared with Richard Grayson for the past two years.
She had to leave that behind for now.
Her friends were in danger. She must assist.
She didn't know how she sensed this but she didn't care.
Trouble, Raven cried repeatedly now.
Setting any bitterness aside and disposing of useless jealousy in the face of need, Starfire focused on her honest love of her friend and the team they'd all almost forgotten forever, and plowed on faster.
Some things, it seemed, didn't change after all.
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On the other side of the city, Victor Stone and Garfield Logan argued vehemently over what game station game to play next.
"Look, tofu boy we played your game last time, it's my turn!" Stone glared and Logan shrugged impishly.
"But your games are so lame, dude," he shook his head.
"Not as lame as you!" the bigger man said.
"Want to say that again?" Garfield punched his palm emphatically.
"Yeah, I think I might!" he replied, irritated beyond belief now.
"I'm starting to think I'd be better off asking Raven to play! At least she doesn't make me play this crap!" Gar shouted finally and the two exchanged deadpanned looks.
"Raven? Who..." Stone didn't finish as he held his head in his hands and he felt what seemed to be the titanic of all sudden migraines...except that he wasn't prone to migraines, so it had to be something else. His mind blurred though and he couldn't tell what was what for the next moment but suddenly one eye could see schematics and when he flexed his hands they had a kind of metal sound as cybernetics slowly began to reappear on the young man.
"Raven...ah..." Garfield dropped to his knees as he shut his eyes. It was like there was some bright light...a very bright light, and it was dragging him every which way...he thought he was small, small as a mouse for a second...but that couldn't be because next he thought he broke the ceiling by becoming an elephant...and then maybe he hadn't because he was having a hard time breathing as he flopped on the floor like a fish out of water...and then he was him again, but as he looked at his hands, they were green...just like all of him.
And neither would ever agree on which of them was surprised the most when the strange mental onslaught and physical transformations stopped abruptly and something else entirely coursed through them both. It wasn't painful though, this...it was like...
It was like something had been purged from them.
And when they opened their eyes, they knew something had: some mental warp. It had been a dreadful and wily spell of illusion, planted in them—not unlike it had been in Kori and Richard—but now it lay broken. For now they too remembered. On top of that, they could feel they were needed.
The teen titans were needed...no...now, titans.
They could not discount the years that had passed, after all, though in a well-orchestrated charade.
But it mattered little, age...or how all this had happened.
They would go and they would fight, together. They were a team.
A shared nod and the pair shot off to grab Cyborg's ride and jet to the direction they felt they were being called in...and now they knew by who.
She had a dark way about her and a love of books and herbal tea. Her favorite color was blue and she did think Beast Boy had his funny moments, even if they were only the ones he didn't mean to be funny in. She was Raven.
And she was calling them.
They hurried to answer.
So things are escalating now.
Nex time: there's only one titan who hasn't remembered EVERYTHING yet...and he's got no sense of fashion but he loves Raven, so we forgive him just a little. Heh.
Review if you have time, thanks!
-castle in the air
p.s. thank you sekai no yakusoku