Her eyes are brighter than honesty should allow, and yet that doesn't stop the pair from shimmering like green funeral flames during her ascent into the cosmic ceiling. She stops at the mouth of the stairwell and stands aghast—a pixie spat out onto the gravel shore by some concrete whale. A petite, fuchsia backpack hangs off her shoulders, and she's undoubtedly spent the last three hours stuffing the entire world inside it.
"I am rather s-surprised to see you," she stutters. Maybe it's an accusation. Maybe it's not. You don't really care.
"I'm the team leader," you vibrate. You flip a loose flap of black-and-yellow cape behind your shoulder before leaning further into the metal folds of an a/c unit atop the Tower. You vibrate again: "I'm responsible for you as long as you're part of the Titans. Even unto the end."
"Unto the end…," she murmurs for melodramatic redundancy. It only manages to filter off into the empty recesses of the night. The nightly stars and city skyline flicker like mirrored lantern bugs across a sea of ice. Cold and frigid: everything in between is glossed over like gravestone marble, and you can feel it sucking the breath out of her with a vengeance.
You don't move an inch.
"… …you have always been one t-to faithfully administer to me, Robin," she murmurs. It is a murmuring accompanied by a shy smile and that ever-trademark twirl of the scarlet lock behind an alien ear. "For as long as my memories on Terra Firma serve, you have been a priceless guide in a world of confusion."
You gaze at her. You gaze beyond her. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
"I-I do not know where I would be without your c-counsel," she continues on her own. Always on her own. A pacing and a shuffling, and she's suddenly positioned herself upon the center point of the rooftop helipad. You can't decide whether or not that frightens you or makes you proud. "I would have forever remained the beguiled prisoner who happened upon this fateful planet."
"Perhaps you would have," you murmur, breath…something. Or perhaps she wouldn't have.
She looks over her backpack'd shoulder at you. A raise of the Tamaranian eyebrow. "That would have been such a terrible fate for me, yes?" A pause. A blinking and a half-hearted eyelash fluttering: "For the both of us?"
You open your mouth.. …just for a second. And then—with a nostril-sigh—you retreat to the far corners of your eyemask as your arms fold and…and…and…--
"Hmmm?" Her voice. Sweet. Warm. A purring kitten. Snake skin in the afternoon sunlight. Microwaved bile in the esophagus. "Would you agree?"
"I dunno.. …"
"Oh… …"
"It's not important, Star," you shrug.
She tilts her head towards the granite horizon. Away from you. But her voice homing-missiles its way to your distant ears: "N-Not important, Robin?"
Silence. A healthy helping of it. Slightly seasoned, but dry as a bone.
"What's important is that you make this trip a safe one," you vibrate once more. "Tamaran needs you, Star. With Galfore ill, they need the princess more now than ever bef—"
"Affirmative, dearest Robin. I am aware of that."
"And from what you've told us, it's a long voyage through the cold recesses of space. Even for someone as versatile and strong as you… … …you must keep your concentration."
She hears you. Or maybe not. The previous three seconds of her countenance prior to your last words repeats itself in a lonesome squeak: "D-Dearest Robin…?" It sounds like an orphan cub. A lone dove. An emergency broadcast squabble mixed in with garden gloves.
You don't respond.
She folds her arms and shuffles off across the helipad. Away from you. Beautifully alone. Ten seconds pass, and just as you residually realize that the entire time she has been shivering--she suddenly tilts her head cosmically and utters with a mechanical smile of bitter subtlety: "It took me an exuberant amount of time composing myself to bid farewell to the rest of our-… ..to m-my friends. And as saddening as it is to confess, I fear that the last thing on their mind was conducting a traditional Earthling 'sending of the off' in my regards… …"
"You didn't ask for one, Star."
"Truly, I am aware of that, Robin. But it would have been… …'nice'."
Your words come out like a sandpaper swish: "We have never tried to be anything but nice to you, Starfire."
"Was that truly a trying thing for you to do, Robin?" she again thrusts you into the center with those eyes of hers. Those warm, orphan emeralds. "On a regular basis?"
"It's just like anything else I am trained to do," you speak with the wind.
"T-Trained?"
"Like I said," you rewind time and show it nude. "I'm the team leader. I am responsible—"
"Indeed." It is the shortest you've ever heard her speak. Her arms tremble in the night. She forcibly looks away from you and even more forcibly folds her upper limbs to steady….steady… …steady….
"As soon as the sun rises, I'll be hunting down a lead to the Brotherhood," you speak. "I may recruit some of the other Titans. It will be difficult without your strength and finesse, but we'll have to manage."
"You are so certain about assimilating fair mission tactics without my participation?"
"Life changes, Star. You move on."
"Tamaran is very important to me, but—"
"But what?"
"S-Surely my duties will be needed back here on Earth once more in the future!"
You look at her again. Finally. But she cannot tell. The mask: "Only you can judge that, Star."
She bites her lip. You gaze away just in time to avoid the visual accompaniment to that venomously sorrowful fringe of a 'squeak': "B-But what is it that you j-judge, dearest Robin?"
Silence…
"Wh-What has been your judgment over the past few weeks?"
Silence.. ….the stars… …
"… …these horribly… … …horribly quiet weeks of ours.. …. …."
The City.. ….the waters… …
You start to lean your weight from one side to another. You're suddenly aware of how stiff your knees are. This Tower. This concrete speck on the Ocean Shore. The edge of life and all its tresses of hope and despair. Something that months ago waited outside your door, hugging her knees to her chest and chirping for the bloodied ears of an apprentice to embrace and weep with her. That warm hand, upside down in zero-g. Impossibly interlocking. The January jigsaw melting at the mere suggestion of a breath.
And all the months that passed. And all the crises averted. And all your wounds reopened and resealed. And that warm breath you once sobbed over has remained the same old child. The wounded deer. The beggar returning to the bottle with every donation of sixpence.
You have an answer. And that answer is no answer. A scarecrow with its burlap lips shut.
Which is probably why it comes as no surprise that—milliseconds after the offsight, moist huff of a feminine, disgruntled breath—you tilt your head up to see her and she is gone. Exploding silently into the sky. An alien torpedo headed home to her people. To where evolution is just as foreign to the tongue as the redundant reality of 'niceness' and 'chivalry' and 'trust'.
Trust... …the date rape drug of common sense. You know it. You cling to it. A dog to its hydrant and a republican to his magnum. You swivel around with your cape like an inverted halo and swiftly escape the scant shadows of her against the granite horizon. The smell of lavender. Feminine fatality.
You march down the whale's mouth and enter the Tower. A routine spelunking through the stairwell drags you helplessly past Cyborg's laboratory. The black man leans his head out and utters: "Did she really leave, man?"
"Yeah."
"Jeez… …that's a bummer."
"She has duties at home. She's no longer a Titan for the time-being."
"But.. …I-I was kinda hoping that—well, ya know—somebody would talk her out of it."
"Like who?"
He doesn't answer that.
Neither do you.
"Are you okay, man?" he points at you with his cerebral cortex.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Want to talk about anything--?"
"I'm fine, Cyborg. Besides, I need to plan for our Brotherhood hunt tomorrow."
"Oh, right. That."
"Get ready to round up Titans East in the morning. In the meantime—recharge. Get some rest."
"You sure there ain't nothing on your mind, Robby?"
"… … … …Cyborg, do you recall exactly how Hemingway died?"
"Hemingway-who?"
"Never mind," you half-wave a hand and sail away on a sigh. "It's not important anyhow."
"Heh, what is these days?"
His words stay lodged in your heart muscles longer than you'd give them credit for. A half-hour and a shower later, you sit half-naked on your bed with a laptop and the mirrored lantern bugs glittering lonesomely beyond the dark windows and you simply rest your chin in your hand and gaze… …gaze…. … ….gaze….
"What is important? And what is right?"
You never bother to answer yourself. For your sake's, for the Titan's, for the world's. You cram your brain with the sins of this world and paint bulls eyes on their hydra heads. Then when your eyes can no longer handle this facsimile of fire, you shut it off and cover yourself in the covers of darkness. Soon you will be sleeping. Even when you're awake, you will be sleeping. Without that warm voice hugging its knees and waiting for your bleeding ears outside the bedroom door.
You learn to live life dying without it.