Dedicated to alena-chan, Cherry Jade, The Writer you Fools, and my dear castle in the air …my dear castle in the air who I HOPE updates soon...hint, hint.
-Rei
Thanks for waiting for this chapter! Let me know what you think please!
Glass
Chapter Six: Magic
Pain.
That was her first sensation.
Fear.
That was her first feeling.
Confusion.
That was what was left.
Raven groaned softly and opened her eyes, sleep crusting at the edges as though she'd been dormant for many, many hours. The cold of the marble floor reminded her of what had just transpired and her eyes widened as she pulled herself to a sitting position, all of her body screaming in protest.
She looked around, looked for one particular someone...
"No," she breathed, voice cracking.
Robin lay where she had suspected she saw him right before the darkness claimed her, lay right as she remembered him...and twice as still. She tried to get up, but her knees buckled immediately and she realized she not only felt like she'd just run a particularly brutal gauntlet, but that she also felt insanely weak.
"I am like an invalid," she said angrily, looking at the marks on her skin. They weren't just ordinary scratches, on closer inspection, but...symbols?
Raven frowned and rubbed her forehead, befuddled and irritated with it.
But it didn't stop there. She'd nearly forgotten the slash on her forehead. Now as she accidentally brushed over the 'cut' with her hand, she flinched.
That was not just a scar.
Gingerly she brought her index and middle fingers up to slowly, apprehensively outline the small shape. It was harder than skin...more like glass...
Her eyes fell back upon Robin now though and her hand dropped as she began to use both her arms to drag herself across the wide floor, pushing the many scattered books out of her way until at last she reached the caped man. With difficulty she turned him over.
Raven's heart clenched.
His face was sheet-white and the black of his lashes seemed like death in the way the small curves refused to even hint at the opening of the blue eyes beneath them. Like Raven, he had sustained multiple gashes and there was some dried blood here, there, and everywhere around the rips in his clothes.
"Robin?" she asked as gently as possible.
Nothing.
She couldn't even see the rise and fall of his chest.
"Robin, be brave now. You are master here. None can harm you, surely," Raven did the closest thing she might ever do to babbling and then sighed.
Fearing the worst, she slowly lowered her ear to his chest, right hand resting under his head for support as she'd somehow been able to get him to lie across her lap.
"Thank...I don't know...but thank you," Raven whispered as she discerned the slightest of uneven breaths she could fathom. "But you can't stay like this," she said to his motionless form and then with a sort of wry smile, "I can't stay like this."
This is an enchanted castle, her mind prodded at her and with a shudder, Raven nodded to herself. She remembered.
There was a second of a flash on black howling wind and sharp tiny thorns of glass and Robin waning...
But then it was gone and Raven focused wholly on the one thing they both really needed now, whether they liked it or not.
Help.
"Somebody? Please, the...master of this place is gravely injured! He needs help!" she cried out, the only apparent response being her own voice echoing back at her as if to remind her of how alone they were. I need help too, she thought briefly with a bit of humor, but pushed it aside. Robin was still not moving.
The door creaked and she turned her head.
Roy and...X…
And some other person she'd never seen before.
"What happened here?" X demanded, anger beating off of him like noonday sun.
"It wasn't my fault!" Raven replied, equally irate.
"I suppose it was the almost dead body in your lap that had the foolishness to say the invocation out loud!" X shot back with deadly sarcasm. Raven, for all her boldness, wilted at this statement.
"Invocation?" she asked weakly.
"Child," X spat with contempt and moved over to her.
"X, be reasonable," Roy admonished. "She couldn't have known." Here he slipped Raven a secretive smile and she took comfort in his defense of her, much as she herself was now unable to believe in it.
Was it her fault?
Her eyes clung to Robin's every scrape, scratch, gash and bruise with new fear.
Did I? Her thoughts spun wildly as the unidentified third party spoke up.
"And either way it's no use to any of us, that attitude of yours," he—the person Raven had yet to be introduced to— reprimanded and X glowered but stayed quiet. Sitting on the floor still with Robin across her lap, Raven thought there was something inexplicably familiar about the combination of constant irritation and smugness on the new person's face. She continued thinking this as the person crossed his arms and added, "Besides it shook something in the castle loose. Finally got out of that damn fireplace..."
Raven blinked and remembered her vision the other night at dinner as she looked in the fireplace to distract herself: the smile in the flames.
"That was you?" she asked. The young man nodded. His hair was like flame and even his eyes were two small fires that unsettled Raven greatly and so like when she had looked at the fireplace, she now looked away.
"Hotspot," he introduced himself and she nodded, only half aware of how ludicrously these people named themselves—Speedy, X, Hotspot?
Well, they're not much sillier than 'Beauty' she told herself and that ended that.
"Nice, glad we all know each other. Now let's get him fixed up before he's all gone," X said, edgy. Roy had the gall or the better humor to laugh at the perturbed man.
"You're such a grouch," Speedy teased and X, proving the statement, only grumbled something with a scowl in response.
"Here, let me take him," Hotspot knelt to pick up Robin and though Raven was suddenly loathe to release his custody to another, she let him. He needed help. Thus uninhibited, Raven also tried to stand again, but with the same results as before found herself on the floor again.
"Get her, X," Roy/Speedy ordered cheerily as he sped after Hotspot, already exiting the library. X slapped a hand to his forehead.
"Those jerks," he muttered and eyed Raven who eyed him right back, a similar set to her jaw that said: well, I don't much like it either. Deal with it!
"Why do they call you X?" she asked as he scooped her into his arms. X rolled his eyes.
"It's my name," he said shortly. Raven twisted in his arms. "Hey, quit that!" he said, startled out of his stoic gloominess as she rearranged herself in his arms so she could properly look at the insufferable man.
"I thought Robin was testy but you take the cake," she said and X snorted.
"I hate cake."
"Somehow, I would've guessed," Raven said, amused, and X looked as if he might say something in response to that but stopped short.
"What is that?" he nodded at her forehead. Raven paled.
"Not sure," she said and moved her gaze to the floor where she was in no danger of meeting X's inscrutable staring.
"I see," he said, and she really thought he rather did, even if she had no idea what he meant by it.
Somehow, X managed to get Raven to her room without one of them killing the other...a feat, to be sure.
Granted, neither wore looks of cheer by the time they did get there, but this was to be expected and as X kicked the door open—it seemed to protest with a loud squeak of its hinges—Raven mumbled something incoherent.
"What?" X asked, sitting her on the edge of her bed.
"I said thanks," Raven said and X arched a brow.
"You're welcome. Now sit still," he ordered as he went fishing around in a room Raven hadn't even noticed, and came back out bearing a large basin, some white cloth and other such things. Disappearing back into the same room, he came back once more with a rather large kettle and Raven tilted her head to one side as he poured it into the white basin's center.
"What are you doing and where did you get all that?" she inquired.
"I got it from that room over there you've miraculously failed to explore so far and I'm going to clean you up a bit," X explained as one thoroughly tortured. Raven frowned.
"Might I not do it myself?" she suggested.
"You're a child," X simply said and without asking took her right hand in his and began to pour over it, using one cloth to wipe the crusted blood away and another to wash and then another to wrap it softly.
Surprisingly, he was gentle.
"There are no women folk here," Raven said, uncomfortable with a silence she would normally not even notice.
"Not anymore," X said and Raven simply made a 'hm' noise. "They...disappeared with the curse." Raven sent him an inquiring glance but he said no more and something told her no amount of badgering was about to change that, so she too kept her silence as he continued to clean her multitude of cuts. "These will probably scar," he intoned as one making a completely detached observation.
"I don't think so," she said automatically and it was X's turn to shoot her questions with a tilt of his head.
"What makes you say that?" he asked slowly.
"I don't know," Raven said simply and looked down at her feet to avoid further inquiries. X frowned but didn't press it. Suspicions could be determined later, he told himself as he paused in his ministrations.
"Turn around," X ordered. Amethyst eyes flared a bit.
"What?"
"Your back has a lot of the same markings—cuts, I mean," X said with uncharacteristic haste, only furthering Raven's apprehension.
"Markings?"
"Turn around," X said plainly.
"You can hardly even get at it as it is." Raven tugged pointedly at the remains of her shirt, badly torn but still mostly covering. X shrugged.
"Just turn and slip it down far enough for me to clean the cuts."
There was a distinctly awkward silence.
Well, it was not as awkward for X as it was for Raven who had the sneaking misgiving that X didn't even compute the sheer audacity and inappropriateness of his most recent suggestion.
"Absolutely not," she said flatly. X groaned.
"If they get infected—" he began.
"I'll be fine," Raven said with an inarguable glint to her stare. X rolled his own eyes and would have argued further on what he saw as her lack of sensibility but the doors to Raven's room burst open with amazing speed and force.
"Speedy," X greeted without cheer.
"Beauty," Roy/Speedy turned to Raven. She flinched as if she'd been hit.
That was it, nametag on the door or not, enough was enough.
"Raven," she corrected him and his confused look reminded her of how little her new friends knew of her. "My name is Raven, please," she said more clearly.
"Raven," he tested her name out and then remembering suddenly his purpose, went to her side. "We need your help...I think."
He thinks he needs my help? What kind of a statement is that? Raven frowned, puzzled.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"The keeper, he's...we think he's...dying," the nearly invisible man said as if the words were foreign to him, as though they tasted bitter on his tongue. Raven felt her heart stop for a beat.
One beat, no more.
But it stopped.
"Robin?" she asked dumbly and then said hurriedly, "He can't die!"
"He's not supposed to be able to," X agreed, anger seeping around the edges of his own evident confusion.
"I know!" Roy threw his hands in the air. "But it looks like he is, whatever the reason. Raven, you have to come, please," he asked again. She shook her head wildly.
And she knew there was a truth in that some part of her wanted to run to Robin's side.
But there was a more omniscient knowledge in her that there was some other part of her that just wanted to run.
"I can't do anything!" she cried, alarmed at her voice breaking.
"You don't know that," X said, bringing back into sharp focus for Raven her suspicions that the unsociable man knew more than he would let on. "If Roy says it looks like the keeper is dying, he must be dying and that shouldn't be possible, but it's happening. You may be able to do more than you could possibly know and you have to..." he broke off, looking pained for a second before continuing, "...to trust us."
Raven stared, flabbergasted. "But..." she trailed off, numb with the renewed strangeness of everything.
"It might very well have been your fault that this happened in the first place!" X snapped and Raven recoiled.
Was it? She wondered a second time. The look of anguish translated clearly and Roy floated forward protectively.
"Now X, come on. You know it was probably an accident," Roy argued, trying to be reasonable—for once.
"Your full of it!" X shot back, unfeeling.
"X..." Roy's voice took on warning as Raven's expression fell even more.
For some reason, her heart failed her at the thought that she might be the cause for Robin's injury.
Slowly she raised her eyes to meet X's stare. It was impenetrable, as always, slight tilt of a sardonic smile he didn't mean a constant shield for whatever he was really thinking, and her gaze fell as quickly as it had risen.
Minutes must have passed, minutes that seemed like forever.
And then something she least expected happened.
A sigh, and then... "Please."
"Please at least try." X said with no more feeling than anything else, but the word was symbolic of more than inflection.
"Take me to him," Raven said after a moment's dreadful quiet and X hurriedly rushed her out of the room, down the grand, endless halls until there were so many turns and twists that she felt lost again.
"Here," X snapped her out of her garbled awareness and Raven stepped into a room with doors all gilded in gold.
Her first sense was that it was dark...darker than any other place in the castle she'd seen. Strangely enough, her eyes seemed to adapt with a rapidity she usually did not have and she scoured the room for a certain black-haired man...
"Over here," a familiar voice called. Hotspot. Even he looked worried.
"What's wrong with him?" Raven asked, knowing it was a pointless question but finding need for some pointlessness to take up the space while she gathered her wits about her. Robin lay on a bed, clothes turn much like her own, but worse, little left of his shirt and the cape was nothing but shreds of midnight. His skin was as pale as she recalled it being before she had passed out before...paler even, and his breath...
She lowered her ear to his chest gently.
Barely there.
"What can be done?" she asked Hotspot. The man shook his head.
"I know less than most here, just that he's in trouble and none of us can call him back," he said and Raven surprised herself by not jumping when the man's eyes burst into red flames.
"Angry?" she asked weakly. His eyes smoldered.
"Apologies, miss," he said and turned to leave the room.
"Wait! What should I do? Where are you going?" Raven exclaimed, distressed even as she knelt on her knees at the side of the bed, eyes never leaving her Robin.
There was that phrase again, that thrice dratted phrase...her Robin.
What are you thinking? She pleaded with one of her many selves internally but quieted all of it as she heard the response:
"Only you can help him. The prophecy shall be fulfilled."
It was only when the door closed that she realized it hadn't been Hotspot who had answered her questions, but a whisper that seemed entirely present only in her head.
She shivered.
"Robin?" she looked at him, bleak with misgivings. He did not stir, not even a fluctuation in breath, which seemed also to be dying away swiftly. "Robin," she said a little more firmly and twisted her hands together before tentatively framing his face with her right hand. "You are not very old, but you seem as weighed down as time itself," she mused to the unconscious body. "And you are not a very mean Robin, even if you are horribly disagreeable sometimes," she admitted, as though talking to him might keep him hanging onto this world, keep him from going to the next.
And then she realized she couldn't feel his breathing anymore.
"Robin!" Her voice gained new worry, new fear, new calamity. She shook him with no resulting reaction and called louder, "Get up! Robin, please! Get up!" She was yelling now, and it occurred to her she was talking to an unconscious body but maybe her reason could reach him yet. So she kept talking, frantic, seemingly helpless, but always knowing she had to keep on trying.
"Tell me...tell me what it is that pains you, anything!" her voice broke with unexpected sadness at this verbal splurge and Raven's eyes widened as she realized she was trembling. "Robin, please, I can feel you are still here...we are bonded. You are not gone...I do not think you want to be gone yet..." she trailed off, at a loss.
His skin seemed to be chilling beneath her hands and she now cupped his face with her right hand again as she lowered her face next to his, whispering in his ear as one might whisper the deepest, darkest secret of their life: "Behind that mask of yours…I can tell you're trying to be nice to me...that there's a soul somewhere, the one I'm connecting with. And I think also behind that mask, there's a boy, afraid of everything and nothing...but you don't need to be afraid anymore."
"Rae..." his lips barely moved and Raven's hold on him tightened a little, her body tense with the feeling one gets before one takes a leap without knowing how far it is to the other side, and when Robin did not stir again, when she thought she could positively see his life force dissolving, she said in a tone born of urgency:
"I can help you, but you have to let me."
And then a warm flush carried through her body, coursing like rays of sun and she felt her hand—the one cradling Robin's face—heat up with what felt like light...what looked like light. She gasped in spite of herself as the white energy seemed to pour through her...and into Robin who came to with a choking breath of someone too long deprived of oxygen.
"Raven!" he gasped out and, more confident in what she did not understand than what she did, Raven nodded comfortingly as she could and brought her other hand to Robin's chest to push him gently back down onto the bed as light spread from that hand too until Robin was entirely aglow.
And, for an instant, he looked as transparent as glass.
Briefly, Raven thought he fairly glowed with light...illuminated...holy.
Then the warm feeling seemed to suck itself out of Raven with an abruptness that threw her off and the void that replaced it seemed wrought with a chilling ache in her chest. She inhaled sharply just as Robin ceased to glow and began to prop himself up on his elbows.
"You healed me...you healed me with...Magic," he said, in wonder...in disbelief. Raven could barely nod in affirmation, a weakness coming over her in very sudden and very overwhelming waves. Not knowing she did, she swayed dangerously and just barely caught the look of deepest concern on Robin's face as she collapsed.
Robin gathered her into his lap and stroked her hair softly.
"I don't know...I don't know how I..." it was only a murmur and she couldn't finish, frail as she was now.
But she didn't have to.
"Don't know how you did it," Robin finished her thought, still caressing her and effectively lulling Raven to a much needed rest. He felt her shudder as her eyes fluttered to a close and he sighed. "I don't either actually...I guess there are some things we can't possibly know," he paused, finger now tracing Raven's jaw softly. "But I know when I've received a gift...so, thank you...Raven..." he smiled.
She stirred briefly in his arms as if to ask what for.
"For believing," he answered her unconscious question and her breathing evened out as she fell further into what looked like her own kind of healing slumber.
Peering through a slight opening in the door, X nodded approvingly with a grunt and Hotspot scratched his head while Roy's jaw unhinged about a foot and a half.
"Did you see all that?" Roy poked X in the chest fanatically.
"Ah! Yes, I did you imbecile, stop poking me," X scowled, batting Roy's hand away in exaggerated agitation. "We knew," he drawled, not a hint of his earlier worry showing now. Roy scoffed.
"Yeah right! You were just as concerned as me and Hotspot...we didn't know...we guessed," Roy said.
"Tcha," X said and closed the door to the room with a soft click, but only after casting one last furtive glance at the two mysterious birds inside of it.
Thoughts? Comments? If so, review please. Always good to know what you readers think.
Next chapter: robin and raven have a dialogue about saving people...there are a few more hints to the curse...and the incantation from before is brought back into focus...