Warning: this will be a robin x raven story of some fashion, but not perhaps the way one might expect—or maybe exactly as you might expect, whichever. But I warn anyone who doesn't know already, just in case this isn't your kind of thing. On that note even if they are not your favorite coupling or whatever, I appreciate you clicking in to read this for however long you choose.
Thank you to all those who have reviewed thus far, especially: Gray Dove, Cherry Jade and The Writer you Fools
And now, chapter two:
Accidental
Chapter Two: the importance of being on time
She cursed. It didn't happen often, and when it did it was never very bad, but today she cursed.
And it was bad.
It was so bad, in fact, that her words need not be repeated. One may simply trust that bad was as bad could get. But why, you might inquire. See, Raven Roth was late to school the morning that followed her rescue of the class rep and while on any other day this could be easily excused with a mumbling and meaningless apology to the professor, this was not any other day. She didn't have a spot of luck, it seemed.
See, today was the day her new professor decided to assign partners for the semester projects and as stated before she was late. That wasn't the whole problem though, oh no. What it was, was the fact that a certain someone else was also late that morning, on her heels by maybe three seconds, nine tops. So it was that when their instructor had to quirk his otherwise motionless brow a second time in the span of a minute, he felt it suiting that the two late arrivals should be paired.
She cursed again.
Richard politely pretended he hadn't heard the onslaught of obscenities that he had no doubt he was the reason for and settled for uncomfortably scratching the back of his head in thoughtful resignation. As she uttered a particularly colorful oath, he had the good sense to conceal his inward wince. No matter that she was probably smarter than him, that they would be the supposedly fine match to make the best scoring final, no matter, because the long and short of it was that Raven had made it quite clear she did not wish to be within two yards of him for more than two seconds.
Then something occurred to him. This situation should not have been possible at all...
"Wait a second. What are you doing in my class?" he asked her without care for his own well-being, momentarily forgetting her current state of temper. At the deepest and darkest glare he had ever encountered, frosty with lots of extra frost, he remembered and bit his tongue. Too late, but what could he do? He waited for an answer.
After another unsettling moment of unfavorable scrutiny, she clicked her tongue thoughtfully before replying: "I switched because my schedule said I was missing this as a prerequisite; it was the only opening for the right time block." This was delivered in her consistently disinterested tone that only seemed to fluctuate with varying amounts of sarcasm or animosity. Richard was not surprised when she turned hard on her heel and all but marched to a seat in the back.
"Ms. Roth, you may take seat in the empty space behind Mr. Grayson," the professor said with a tenor that insinuated long hours of boring lecture and it was only because the professor was just that boring and bored with it himself that he failed to notice Raven bristle at the instruction.
"Yes, professor," she was clenching her teeth; Richard suspected she had fangs but wiped the silly thought away. They were canines; they all had them...it's just Raven's seemed a little more demonic in light of her downward spiral of moodiness so far that morning.
As for Raven herself?
She was certain she was going to get kicked out. In fact, she knew it. After all, killing a professor had to be under the lines of 'what not to do' in their high school handbook. It had to be. That bloody man, she thought darkly and sat with a graceful silence behind Richard's desk, soon filled by Richard himself. He felt more than saw the intense scowl burning two holes into his back and sighed.
At least things couldn't possibly get any worse...right? He and she both thought with equable feelings of the need for self-preservation and the need for self-destruction, respectively. They couldn't possibly get any worse...
A minute passed.
Right, they both thought with the same amount of skepticism and that was probably the beginning of them agreeing on anything at all, even if they didn't know it.
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To their collective credit, neither directly blamed the other for having to stand outside the classroom, each holding a chair above their head for the remainder of the class, exiled to the hallway. To Richard's credit, he did not eye Raven with the curiosity and more than slight vexation he wished to express. To Raven's credit, she did not tell Richard how much she despised him in that moment.
It was insinuated pretty nicely though.
The class had been given about ten minutes to meet with their respective partners concerning the basic outline or premise of their projects; in that ten minutes Raven and Richard had made an admirable attempt to get along; well, Richard tiptoed verbally around the gothic girl and she in turn verbally ignored him. That was the first two minutes. The next two were filled with similarly forced and awkward phrases such as the infamous So and Yeah and an arched eyebrow here and there. Minutes five through seven were spent then with Richard now trying to reign in his irritation with R. Roth while she did likewise for a reason he would not entirely understand since he was not privy to her alias. Eight through ten escalated into an intense bout of annoyed accusation and exclamation that gained the two the attention of the class and their professor, at which point they were banned under the reasoning of 'disturbing the peace' and sent out to the hallway with punishment in the weight of chairs in their arms.
And here they were. Raven glowered. Richard matched it.
"So..." Raven initiated the necessary talk with one of the self-same suppositions that had gotten them out there in the first place. Here we go again, they both thought blandly.
"Yeah..." he gave a grudging smile. She'd made it clear to him that her words of the day before still held strong, but he'd made it clear they'd have to take back seat to the importance of their grades. Raven seriously considered telling him just because he was class rep and had a reputation to maintain didn't mean she had to care and that she would gladly fail if it meant not having to spend concentrated time in his company. Aside from the fact that that seemed unduly harsh, she refrained also because she couldn't risk his suspicion. It wasn't natural for a person to have such aversion for a near stranger; surely he'd suspect, and then would come those pesky questions and then she'd be that much closer to having her secret identity found out and then...then...well...
Grimacing, she heard herself say tonelessly, "As long as we get top scores, I guess it's fine." She recognized the small nodes of what Richard believed to be understanding in his eyes and what Raven herself knew it to be false understanding, even if he didn't as he surmised part of her standoffish nature was due to sheer competitiveness.
"Great," he accepted her temporary white flag with more friendliness than perhaps he should have because her expression darkened slightly, if noticeably. "I mean, top scores, right. I'm sure we'll think of something." There, that was as lame as it got pretty much, but it seemed to suit the girl beside him who nodded slowly, as if some great weight was pushing her to incline her head by force. Richard shrugged it off and figured to himself that any reaction from her seemed to be the thing to hope for and he was batting a not-too-shabby percentage in the favor of indifference.
"So..." she stated again and her moment of wry humor by use of the word of the hour did not go unnoticed by her company who threw her an unabashed grin, which she answered with the slightest upward twitch at the corner of her mouth.
For all that it was not, it was at least enough.
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Lunch hour was always an odd time for him. He sat, blue eyes taking in a washed blue sky as his classmates all but flocked around him, jittering and chatting about this or that or these or those; he wasn't really interested, but nodded his head at the appropriate time so as not to offend. It was some time near the end of the lunchtime that the boys got up a game of soccer. For once, he stayed behind, eyes still glued to the sky, as though expecting some miraculous spectacle—a rainbow perhaps, made miraculous by the absence of rain. His limpid musing was interrupted by upset voices.
"I have asked you kindly to leave me to myself!" a light and feminine voice breached the quiet around Richard's otherwise empty lunch table and he looked over to see a ravishing girl with red hair facing some guy. Her arms were crossed and her face showed the tension between tears and fury.
"Babe, calm down. Just let it go," the guy said and proceeded to drape his arm around her shoulders. She smacked his arm away and whirled in the opposite direction, stalking away, red tendrils flowing behind her. The guy—still nameless, since such male scum was beneath a name—pursued her. Richard frowned. Obviously the girl wanted the guy to leave her be. Why wouldn't he listen? His expression hardened when the guy caught up to her and grabbed her arm harshly, causing the girl to exclaim in a cross between a whimper and a cry. Enough was enough. He went to help.
He had a thing for helping people who needed it, throughout his whole life he had had it in fact. Perhaps the superhero complex was just the more general level of his Clark Kent one.
Perhaps it stemmed from something deeper, something fated.
Perhaps not.
"I think you should do as she asks," Richard warned coolly and the guy cocked his head as if in challenge.
"Oh yeah?" So eloquent.
"Oh yeah," Richard replied both caustically and pointedly. His cynical use of the guy's own words was not lost on said guy and it got the rise out of him that Richard had predicted.
He had also had a thing for analyzing people for their weaknesses throughout his whole life, but back to the present...
"Get your hands off of her," a familiarly monotone voice came from behind Richard who glanced over his shoulder. When did she get here?
"Raven Roth. It's been a long time," the guy sneered. Raven's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Sure it has," she replied in a way that said it hadn't been long at all, but before questions could be raised, she did something rather unexpected. Raven stepped forward and delivered a resounding punch to the guy's gut. He fell to one knee but the point lay more in the fact that his hold on the redhead was relinquished and she stepped quickly away toward Richard. Raven turned to the stunned pair. "Stay away from him, Anders," Raven said, still monotone. When the Anders girl looked as if she might say she had been trying, Raven waved a hand dismissively and added, "Consciously, always, stay away from him." And with that she began walking away.
"I'll call you?" Richard yelled after her. She waved a hand again, a little less dismissively, as if to say 'whatever' and he rolled his eyes. So difficult...he turned to the redhead. "Are you alright?" he asked her and she nodded.
"I am. Thank you very much, Richard, isn't it?" she gave him a dazzling smile that seemed to pour from her emerald green eyes and Richard smiled back; she was infectious.
"You got it right. And you are...?" he left a gap for her to fill.
"Kori, Kori Anders, I'm new here," she filled it.
They looked around; lunch had passed it seemed and the courtyard was as empty as it could be. He tossed her a sheepish look. She laughed lightly and shrugged. He was blue sky and she was sunshine.
"What's your next class?" It was pleasantry, if a little more heartfelt than normal.
"Room 307-A?" she offered and closed her eyes, a little embarrassed at not really knowing what it was, only where.
"That's mine too. We can walk together," he replied, a little happier about the prospect of a boring lecture with the lively girl beside him to join in. They walked.
"Some girlfriend you've got there," Kori said carefully, but not meanly.
"She's not my girlfriend," he said automatically, missing the elated look Kori wore because he was looking straight ahead the whole time.
"Sister?" she ventured, more than a little skeptical. Richard let out a fast and thick exhale of amused derision.
"Er," he coughed politely. "No, she's not...she's just...she's Raven," he lamely summed up.
"Oh," Kori said softly and offered him a brighter smile.
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She chewed on the end of her pencil, a bad habit to be sure but she couldn't help herself—as often is the case with bad habits in general. This last sentence of her essay was driving her to the extreme borders of her intellect and she frowned more deeply as the words of old philosophers—most of them dead of course—and well-educated figures of a more contemporary nature failed to assist her academic endeavor. It had to be perfect, or nearly so. After all, she couldn't let him get top marks.
At this thought, her mind was kindly set to seething.
He was so damnably confident. So are you, a voice cheekily reminded her and she brushed it off, annoyed at herself now. Closing her amethyst eyes, she allowed herself a moment to collect her thoughts and rather uncooperative emotions before opening them again to the scene of her peers filtering out of the buildings, headed home for the day. A laugh made her turn her head and she took in the picture fully as it presented itself to her: Richard walked beside the girl from earlier—her name was Kori if Raven's memory served her properly—and he too was smiling. She rolled her eyes at the pair. They were perfect for each other, deserved each other, she told herself sarcastically as she stabbed at her essay with her pencil, making stray marks rather than a coherent sentence. Her frown changed to an unreadable mask as Richard caught sight of her and started over, Kori in tow and she defiantly asked herself: why should I care if they're getting all cozy?
It occurred to her she might be trying too desperately to prove something to no one but herself, but her pride—and possibly fear—effectively and rapidly buried that notion.
"Hey Raven," he greeted congenially and she mocked him in her head to distract herself from how his eyes were a little kinder when he turned to glance at Kori. Hey Raven, she refrained from scowling and settled for no emotion at all as she thought darkly to herself: what does he think we are, friends?
Tcha, right.
"Hello," she said tersely, twisting her pencil between the fingers of her right hand absently. She tended to fidget when she was agitated or unhappy. Why did he have to be so courteous? Most people who 'knew' her did her a favor and just walked on by.
"This is—" he began.
"Kori Anders," Raven interrupted and nodded at the redhead.
"You know each other?" Richard turned to Kori who shook her head, making her perfect head of hair reflect the sunlight in waves of gold-red.
"Aside from the fact that I called her by her last name earlier in your presence, it should be obvious to you that I know of most people here, Richard," Raven said coolly and he had the grace to allow a bit of an awkward pause before continuing amicably.
"I should have remembred that," he paused and Raven thought: yes you should, and then he said, "Anyway, Kori and I were going to get something to eat. You want to come?" To her credit, Raven did not show her surprise. Of all the things she might have expected, this was not one of them. His next sentence was just as unpredictable, "We're meeting Garfield Logan and Victor Stone. They know you, I think." They sure do, she thought wryly and only just stopped herself from rubbing her temples in a thoroughly vexed manner. It was not a secret in the school that the first was less dissuaded by her coldness than most and that the second was for all essential purposes, her surrogate older brother. It was okay that people knew, because having friends—even just two—made her seem less suspicious. That aside, if she actually took the time to think on it, she did care for the two peers, much as she tried to distance herself from them the majority of the time.
"No," she said bluntly. The flash of relief in Kori's eyes was so brief that Raven hardly noticed it and Richard didn't recognize it for what it was and as such, both pushed the look unimportantly to one side.
"Aw come on," he encouraged. She let her eyes slit a little.
"No!" she took the liberty of sending him a withering glare and then turned on her heel, as it seemed was her preference to do, and speedily began to march away from them. If she had turned around she would have seen Kori eyeing her speculatively and Richard grinning like a madman. He found getting under her skin to be quite...thrilling. Part of him wondered at that. Probably it was just because she didn't show much of any emotion, so when he could get a rise out of her, it was fun. That was probably all.
Probably.
"I'll call you...around 11," he said for the second time, voice following after her. She flinched and waved a hand to let him know she'd heard him, even if she didn't look back. He won't call, she thought impassively as her peripheral vision showed Kori placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, a gesture Raven herself would have never even thought to initiate. What was it with these touchy feely people, these...friendly—her mind winced at the word—people trying to cajole her into their company? She bit her tongue to keep from screaming vexation. If she had no interest, she had no interest and felt firmly that that should be enough reason for anyone to leave her in peace.
Of course, Richard Grayson wasn't just anyone and it disturbed her, this thought. Beyond that, what she found more disturbing was that his attempts were less coldly received by her, for all her pretense. She dared in one moment to suppose she even liked the attention and then squashed the idea flat.
How ridiculous. How utterly, absolutely, and also completely ridiculous...
She would never...and even if she did...but...
Raven cut the thought off with a mental knife and scowled the way one scowls at a speck of a problem that just won't go away, a speck that was big enough to see but not big enough to pry off your cotton jacket—or synthetic cloak—and toss casually to one side. She was a little soothed by this train of thought though: a problem. Yes, that's what he was, just a problem and her odd lapse of feeling—was it feeling? She had her doubts—was exactly as she assumed before.
Ridiculous, that's what it was, nothing more or less.
And she told herself as much all the way home that day and throughout most of the night as she swept through the city, cloak fluttering behind her like a shadow of justice. It is likely that it was so similar to a shadow not so much because of how the edges of cloth silhouetted themselves against the moonbeams, but more so because a shadow of justice was all that was left in the ever-dimming light of the gray-blue City of Jump.
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It was late, as always, when she returned to her apartment that night and the message light blinked in red at her as she tossed her cloak onto the small sofa where it slid down onto the floor. She frowned and hit the button.
"Raven, it's Richard, guess you're not there...didn't I say I'd call you at 11?—"
"Sure you did, but my world doesn't revolve around you Mr. Grayson," she scowled at the machine and then had to consciously restrain herself from hitting her head on the wall. Now she was talking to his message like it was him. Fantastic, she intoned mentally as she rolled her eyes heavenward, but she listened a little closer as her classmate proceeded to ramble on.
"Never mind. Listen, I was thinking since it's Friday tomorrow you and I could meet after I get off of work and outline our project, or at least get a few ideas. I mean I get off kind of late and—m"
A crackle and the message machine cut him off. She pressed the next button.
"Sorry, I think your machine cut me off—" She rolled her eyes again and thought: good message machine, as if though it were an obedient pet. "—anyways, like I was saying, I get off late, but it's Friday so I thought maybe...yeah, give me a call or...wait, we have class together. Never mind. Haha," She groaned. He laughs at himself and I talk to his message. Fabulous, she thought with deeply intensifying sarcasm. "And listen, don't be a stranger. I know you don't like me but we've got to do this so uh, I guess I'll—" It cut him off again. Rubbing her temples, she pressed the next button for her last message and didn't need to guess who it was, but hoped maybe against all odds, it was someone else.
"Uh, sorry again, anyway, I wanted to say have a good night and I'll see you tomorrow...um, bye Rae," and there was a final click. She eyed the message box and whether or not she knew it, her expression softened. 'Rae'? 'Have a good night'?
That was sweet of him...
Her mind closed around that thought and choked it as she reverted mutinously to the reaction she was comfortable with: irritation. Only one person was allowed to call her that and again she thought somewhat pained, what makes him think he can get all familiar like that so soon? It was a defense mechanism to protect herself that she was so unreceptive to such harmless things as him calling her by a nickname or inviting her out to afternoon eats with the others, but it was a very well-built one and so it won out most of the time.
She sighed. There was no way she could meet him after work if it was late. Night meant one thing: patrolling the city. Coming up with an excuse for that would be...interesting, she mused and realized that for the second time that day that being late had caused her quite a sizable mess of trouble, all of it dealing with keen blue eyes behind silver frames and a smart mouth.
And just what was she doing thinking about his mouth or his eyes anyway?
Frustrated, she punched the delete button to get rid of any trace of him and headed for the shower. She could feel the streets in her skin still and felt a need for hot water and a heady amount of steam, and while she was at it, maybe she could pointedly scald out her circular train of thought concerning the class representative too.
Not likely, but maybe.
Thank you SO, SO much for the great reviews. I'm really glad some people have taken a liking to this story. Thanks to sekai no yakusoku for swapping stories with me to check and edit, and just so you know, I really hope you dabble in the AU area this once too. It's fun. I promise.
Again, castle thanks all of you who have reviewed and hopes maybe you can do so again, just two words or a word of encouragement is always nice. Take care.
-castle in the air