Beautiful Stone
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
She didn't reply. Red X sighed and stretched his arms over head, the lines of his stomach going taunt as he bent over backwards, arching his back. He straightened, swinging his arms at his sides like pinwheels and meandering back toward his silent companion. Sometimes, Red X fancied himself a lot like a cat (much to his dismay, seeing how he'd promised himself he'd not be like Selina) and sighed as he sprawled out at the feet of his quiet female colleague.
She didn't bother to look at him as he spoke and she didn't bother to answer.
Red hadn't expected her to and that, he thought, made their relationship so much more natural. He stared up at the cracked ceiling overhead, where the pale evening light cast a dim strip of moon glow across the smooth gray skin of the girl standing over him. Her long, once silky blond hair had acquired a dull, granite color since her time with the Titans, her pale peachy skin gone cold and mineral. When he didn't talk he sometimes stared, the slightly unwilling captive of her sad tableau.
Her face had a beautiful shape, a kind of face that could have once been innocent if life hadn't ground it into the dirt and sullied the purity. She still had a pretty face, despite the anguished expression as she stood, feet apart, arms spread to the ceiling of her stony cave in a final plea of some kind. The halo of hair about her head had gone rigid and cold like everything else about her, frozen in time carried by wind that no longer blew.
Terra.
The Teen Titan.
The traitor.
The friend.
He gazed up at her from the rock platform that she stood on, his hands knitted behind his head, tattered black cape keeping the cold of the underground grotto off his back. He swung his leg idly, heel tapping the side of the rocky dais as he considered her. He remembered from a time before when she'd gripped Jump City in her gloved fist and throttled the hope from it. He remembered watching her from the shadows, the slightly unwilling captive, alone in a deserted city, watching the dreaded apprentice patrol the dead highway for survivors.
He survived, but he didn't run. He never ran. He just watched. Red X wondered if Slade had know about him even then, laughed at him while he flitted in the shadows, silently fascinated by the sheer power of a single skinny girl. He'd wondered what kind master she answered to, not knowing then the identity of Slade back then. He'd wondered what kind of girl could crush a city, turn on her friends and still…just keep going.
"Maybe that's why I'm talking to you know," he speculated aloud. "Do yu' think? Maybe, I'm hoping that you understand what it's like to be on the other side of the law. I'm not sure what kind of person you really were…but I'm betting you were strong. Strong before Slade broke you. He breaks everyone…"
He stared up at her.
"I guess we got him back in the end."
Maybe, she seemed to say. But I'm still stone and you're still afraid to sleep without a weapon under your pillow.
Red X smiled and closed his eyes, picturing that she had said it and nodding. In his mind her hair fell freely about her shoulders, vibrant and pale gold like a little girl's first real caret necklace. Her eyes had no desperation and no limestone grit, but big laughing blue pools of life and independence. She sat here on her platform and greeted him with a grin when he arrived. She didn't see a thief, she just saw another teenager.
"I did a dangerous thing," he confessed. "I robbed a criminal mastermind."
He reached over the edge of the elevated stone and picked up the dark plastic tube, holding it up for her inspection.
"I went home and opened it up. It's a real deal piece of history. Pinnacle of oil painting," he told her informatively, turning his head to look at her from the floor. "A friend of mine tells me what I'm doing is wrong. But does it count when you steal what's already stolen?"
He uncapped the case and slid the precious canvas out into his gloved hands, a whisper of fabric against the material. With a touch so soft, it would have preserved spider silk, the young cat-burglar unrolled the brilliant Italian masterpiece. As he gazed mutely at the beautiful artwork, he wondered for another uncounted time 'Why do I take these things? What am I doing?'
He sighed and rolled it up, turning to look up at Terra again. "What am I doing, Terra?"
Her silence sounded like a shrug and he sighed, flinging an arm across his eyes and simply existed there, laying at Terra's feet with no particular thought running through his brain. He felt bizarrely safe, dangerously comfortable. He let his thoughts drift, floating away to nothing, wandering aimlessly. He didn't want to think about what the new and dangerous crime lord might do if he figured out who took the painting. He didn't really want to think about running from Robin – who would be on the prowl no doubt – when he went home tonight.
He just wanted…to think about the hum. The buzz, the rush as he maneuvered through a maze of lasers, skirted motion sensors, hacked security and ghosted straight through the security of Jump's current, most diabolical criminal mastermind. He wanted to feel the cool sensation of the metal at his finger tips, the tick of the tumblers as they fell into place. You couldn't get any closer to immortality then that first look as he gently unrolled Una Notte Scura and took in the fine brushstroke, genuine smell of ancient oil paints and rustic canvas.
He smiled; a totally contented cat-in-the-cream-with-a-mouse-on-the-side kind of smile and swore to God he'd purr if he could.
He closed his eyes and brought a hand to his masked face, hopeless and amused by it. "Why can't stealing be legal?" he laughed, speaking to his only confidant…well except Shi-Shi, but that cat had ego problems.
She didn't bother to look at him and didn't bother to answer and he liked it when she gave him the cold shoulder. He could imagine that she'd just grinned and waved him off, silently dismissed the estranged cat-burglar. She'd had enough of his weirdness for one night. The crazy, scrambled thoughts that he scribbled out in words across his tongue, in some vain hope that they'd start to make sense once put into a conversation.
Go home, Red X. Go home and be Bannon for a while.
He carefully put the painting back in the case and into the satchel. With a liquid shift of weight he slithered off the platform and slung the priceless treasure across his narrow back, gazing up at the statue girl. He imagined, in that cunning, selfish, totally un-hinged, cat-fearing brain of his, that this stone girl would someday come alive and tell him to go home one night with her real voice. But for tonight…
He crawled up onto the platform beside the girl and gazed up at the ceiling with her a moment, searching the stars through the crevasse overhead for some saving grace for both of them. He looked at Terra. Then at the sky. Then Terra again.
"Good night, dirt-girl," he said, almost fondly.
Then he flickered out of existence and into the night.
-heist-
"So he's very clever, this little thief."
Killer Moth didn't really know what to make of this man, this dark, cruel and terrible man. His many faceted insectoid eyeballs flickering across the dimly lit computer screen before him, the low-watt glow barely reflecting in his giant ocular orbs. He'd heard from his daughter's boyfriend, Fang, that the new and ruthless crime lord speaking to him had literally popped out of nowhere and laid waste to all those who dared oppose him…and then a couple more just to cement the message.
"Yes. I'm not sure what his real name is. The cops call him Phantom because he comes and goes like a ghost, moving through solid walls, or so goes the urban legends," sneered the moth-man.
From the opposite line the criminal – Blockbuster wasn't it? – shifted, a shadowy hand moving to cup a chin he couldn't see through the dark video-feed. The former bug-scientist shifted nervously, his mandibles clicking anxiously as his shady companion mulled over the information, as if somehow digesting it and tasting the flavor of his words for truth and value. His antenna trembled slightly.
Killer Moth did not want to give this man bad information.
"Phantom. He goes by another name doesn't he?" inquired the low, reverberating voice, cavernous and deep.
The shadow on the other end of the lap-top screen looked large. He'd purposely darkened whatever room he transmitted from and the feed had terrible visual. However, the audio projection came across the speakers like the man sat only yards away, dangerous and very, frighteningly real. He shifted, crossing a long leg over his knee and knitting his hands together in the darkness. He peered at Moth through the computer with the rapt attention a cat pays a canary.
"Umm…yeah. I've heard a couple dealers call him X," Moth fumbled, wringing his memory for any idle conversations he'd directed toward the men who fenced his money and lab-equipment.
"Just 'X'?" He didn't sound pleased.
"Red X," he corrected quickly. "Sorry." Moth hated to sound weak, but he also didn't want his wings ripped off.
He man sat back in his seat, seeming pleased. "Red X," he repeated, tasting it. "Tell me more about him. How long has he run in Jump City? New? Veteran? Had much contact with the Titans?"
"Well, if you want to know about Red X I'm the wrong guy to ask," Killer Moth admitted, more than happy to siphon this man's terrible attentions to someone else. "But I know the guy who does. A book-keeper named Peterson, covers for the smuggling at the city docking and marina. He's always going on about some young upstart thief who constantly drops by and harasses him for information, makes fun of him, ridicules him and such."
Blockbuster thought.
"Then he's a younger thief?"
Killer Moth shrugged. "Peterson calls him a brat, but Peterson's no blushing schoolgirl himself."
"Thank you. You've been more then helpful to me."
The screen blacked out and for the first time in months, Killer Moth wanted nothing more than to run upstairs and hug his sweet little girl close. Kitten would probably think he'd had some kind of break through with his new man-eating earthworms, but in fact, the mad scientist just needed to know that he had at least one reason not the abandon Jump City and all the dark and monstrous things that lurked its streets.
I mean, a killer moth can only take so much weirdness.
-heist-
Author's Note: Yes, it's moving along. Not much more to remark upon save that I hope you people are as strange as me. More Red X goodness to come...as long as my brain cooperates with me anyway. Feedback is appreciated. Thank you!
