It's kind of hard to enjoy a road trip when you helped summon your Demon Dad and almost ended the world.
Rachel Roth
It was quiet. Rachel closed her eyes and basked in the silence, letting the side of her head lean against the warming glass of the window.
Slowly, she reached up to touch the jewel on her forehead. The feeling of crystalline solid in her forehead almost didn't feel real. It didn't feel like her forehead.
Suddenly, the back door was thrown open and slammed shut. Gar threw himself down, looking only marginally better than he had outside.
At least he wasn't green anymore. It had looked really strange when he had been cycling between transformations, and his skin had been turning from dark green to pale, and back to green again.
She offered him a smile, looking at his eyes instead of his bruises.
"Where's Dick?"
Almost immediately, Rachel realized that had been entirely the wrong thing to ask. Her best friend's eyes seemed to dull, and he gave an angry shrug.
She frowned, confused, and glanced outside, where Dick was still kneeling on the side of the road.
Jason let out a ridiculous sigh, complete with puffed cheeks and a roll of his eyes. Rachel had actually forgotten that he had been in the back area.
"I'll go get him," the older boy vaulted over the seats and was out the door before either she or Gar could react.
Instead, she turned so she could look at Gar properly. Her chest hitched painfully, but then the ache was gone, as if it had never been there.
"So how are your bruises?" Rachel asked awkwardly after a second.
Gar let out a small laugh, a bit of the old humor returning to his eyes.
"They hurt," he grinned at her, "But I probably got more when you guys dragged me out of the car."
Rachel winced. "I can heal them if you want," she offered, feeling exhausted even at the idea of it, then feeling ashamed for feeling tired. She owed Gar so much. There was no way she could refuse to heal him.
Instead, he shook his head, rubbing the back of his hair uncomfortably. "I'd better not, thanks."
Rachel leaned back quickly. "Oh. Sorry." She understood, really. If she was Gar, she wouldn't want to demon girl to touch her either.
"No, it's not like that, Rach," he reassured quickly, "We'll take a day at a time. When you feel up to it, you can heal me, but not right now."
He took a deep breath and shook his head. "They're just bruises."
Rachel looked up sharply and met his eyes. "No, they aren't."
She reached over the headrest and placed her hand on his arm. He didn't pull away, but instead gave her a quick nod and tensed himself up. Rachel took that as a good sign. Closing her eyes, she concentrated and plunged herself into her mind. Her power was a swirling mass of darkness, and it occurred to her that maybe healing Gar with what hurt him wasn't the best thing.
Then, rapidly, the power rushed through her fingers like water through a burst pipe, rushing over the car. She gasped, and peeled open her dry eyes. Gar froze under the sphere of darkness, and she could hear voices. She couldn't tell if they were coming from outside the car or from the cloud of black. The gem in her forehead seemed to light up, searing her head with heat. In that short time, her forehead felt like it was burning up.
Rachel reflexively clenched her fist, and the darkness congealed into a smaller ball above them and disappeared. Her forehead cooled a bit, but something still felt uncertain and feverish.
They were both left breathing hard, staring at the empty ceiling.
"Sorry," Rachel whispered after a moment, pressing her hand down on her chest below her left shoulder. Her chest hurt, and Gar's bruises hadn't really faded at all.
Gar nodded and tried for a smile, but it was weak. He leaned forward in his seat, burying his face in his hands, and Rachel felt much like doing the same.
The car door opened at that exact second, and suddenly Rachel was hit with such a wall of emotion that she gasped out loud. A mixture of worry, guilt, and pain wormed itself into her mind before she could realize it wasn't her own.
"You two okay?" Dick asked hoarsely, and she couldn't get out a word, because of the weight pressing down on her chest.
Gar snorted and said, "Of course, we're fine."
A wave of pain floated through her skull, and she couldn't decide if she wanted to scream or climb under a rock and hide for a hundred years.
Dick was still watching the both of them and Rachel wanted to shrink under his gaze. She still managed to meet his eyes and nod uncertainly.
As quickly as it came, the emotions melted away, and she was left with an aching head and heart. She barely heard Jason get into the car. He was talking non-stop about something that didn't matter, and Rachel's head was splitting open, so she couldn't help turning around and saying, "Jason, can you shut up for once?"
Hurt eyes met with hers for a second, but before she could mumble some sort of half-hearted apology, he gave her a rude hand gesture and ducked behind the back seat, settling down angrily.
She turned back in a huff, expecting Dick to give her an expression of reproach. Instead, though, his face was entirely blank. It was almost as if someone had made a really good mask of his face and pulled it into the most neutral mask they could.
"Uh... Dick?" she started, "Are we just going to stay here?"
Dick let out a shallow breath and nodded. "Everyone ready to go?"
There was only silence from the back. Jason was still out of sight and Gar had his face pressed against the window, eyes closed. Something in his posture told her that he wasn't asleep, but she got why he didn't want to talk. She didn't feel much like doing it herself.
After the awkward quiet dragged on for a second more, Rachel realized Dick was waiting for an answer.
"Let's just go," she muttered. She copied Gar's posture, leaning against the door. Strangely, she didn't feel that sleepy. Somehow, it felt deeper, a bone tired exhaustion that a nap in the car couldn't fix. She felt her chest twinge violently, just as the car jolted into motion, thankfully masking her gasp of pain.
She hated feeling like this. Feeling like there was something wrong with her, something wrong inside her. She had felt like that all her life, before she met Dick, Kory, and Gar. They had accepted her, and now, there was something new, something that she didn't recognize in herself.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the side mirror and couldn't hold back her gasp. She could see herself in the mirror. For a second, she couldn't help but gape at her own reflection. It was the first time in a long, long time she had seen herself in a reflection where her eyes weren't bleeding black and her lips were curled into a bloodless smirk. Instead, she was met with clear blue eyes, a pale face, and the gem, smoldering in her forehead. Even her hair seemed to have changed, becoming lighter and more curled. Her hand reached up, almost of its own volition, brushed over the gemstone, tugged at her hair.
"We're almost at the next town," Dick whispered, breaking the silence, "I don't know if we should wake up the boys."
She dropped her hands to her lap and twisted them together. Glancing in the back, she noticed Gar sprawled awkwardly against the car door, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. She still couldn't see Jason. "Where are we going?" she asked, leaning forward to look at the road. She didn't want to look at the mask on Dick's face anymore, "Are we just going to keep driving till we reach the coast?"
Dick moved his right shoulder up in a half-shrug. "There's a pit stop we have to make before that."
"Wait," Rachel paused, "We're actually driving all the way to the coast? Are we just going to keep driving until we find some place to stay?"
Dick took one hand off the wheel to run a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face.
"We're going to San Francisco," he said after a moment. For some reason, the way he said the city sounded pained.
"What's in San Francisco?" she immediately asked, turning to the left.
Dick swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and turned to her. "Rachel, I-"
"Dick, watch the road!" Jason popped up from the back seat, looking furious. Dick's eyes widened and he whipped his head back towards the road, swerving just barely to avoid a car that had been coming in the opposite direction. Rachel screamed as the car careened towards the side of the road, coming to a stop just before it could hit a sturdy wooden fence. Gar, who had woken up, immediately turned green, and growled, his teeth lengthening into long canines. Once the car had stopped moving, though, his teeth shifted back inward, and he winced, rubbing at his jaw. He opened and closed it experimentally a few times, but didn't seem to be capable of speaking yet.
On the other hand, Jason was.
"What the hell was that?" he demanded from behind them, popping up from the trunk. Dick took a shaky breath of air and lowered his hands from the wheel, clenching them together to avoid them from shaking.
"I'm sorry," Dick breathed, "I'm sorry, I don't-"
His eyes flicked to the rear view mirror, eyes flicking between things only he could see.
"Gar, Jason, you two okay back there?"
Gar let out a laugh, slightly hysterical. "You almost crashed the car, and you're asking us if we're okay?"
Rachel just stared into her lap, chest growing tighter and tighter. Jason just snorted in disgust and slid back down to his position where they couldn't see him. Gar patted himself down and nodded to himself, as if categorizing all his injuries. He caught her watching him and raised an eyebrow, clearly asking if she was okay. She nodded, and smiled, trying to shake the horrible feeling that this was all her fault.
Dick just closed his eyes, took a deep breath in, and pulled the car back on the road. His hands were wrapped tightly around the wheel,and his eyes were locked on the road.
Needless to say, she stopped asking questions after that. They whizzed past the town as the sun dipped lower in the sky. It was hard to remember what life was like yesterday, or even a few hours ago. Yesterday felt so long ago. Even now felt so long ago. She felt like she was watching herself from somewhere above.
The sky blossomed into beautiful oranges and pinks, painting the sky in brightness, as if to make up for the darkness of earlier. She remembered watching sunsets like these with Melissa, camped out on the front porch, waiting for the stars to come out.
Melissa was gone now, though. So was her mother, and Trigon. She was an orphan now, actually, for the first time in her life. No mom, no parents. Everything she had done in the first thirteen years of her life had basically been erased. No one at her school would remember her. Her house would probably be sold, along with whatever things she hadn't taken when she had ran from home.
She'd never get to see it again. Her life hadn't been all bad, so far. When she was living with her mo-Melissa, there had been days where they had been afraid of the demon inside of her, but there had also been days where they had been happy. Happy, and at home.
She wasn't sure how things would be now. She still had Gar and Dick, but Kory was gone, and they would probably leave her, too.
Just like everyone else did.
Light fingers tapped against her shoulder gently, snapping her out of her thoughts.
"You okay?" Dick whispers, his hand returning to the wheel as his eyes flicked between the road and Rachel.
She just nodded, and forced a smile. "Of course." She kept her eyes firmly in front of her.
Dick turned to look at her again and stared for so long she started to squirm. For some reason, his gaze was completely indecipherable to her, and she couldn't read his emotions with or without her powers.
"Dick, just watch the road, it's even darker now," she sighed and turned back to the window.
"Okay," he said softly, "I just want to let you know that I know how it feels."
Rachel scoffed, a strange disconnected anger filling her. "Really? Do you actually?" she glared at him, not even bothering to keep her voice down, "How many times have you almost ended the world and gotten all of your friends possessed?"
The words tumbled out in a hurry, tripping to get out of her mouth, and she can feel her power storming inside of her. She feels exhausted, like a sand wall battered by the tides.
Dick's grip on the steering wheel tightened a little bit more, and he muttered something she couldn't hear. Then he spoke louder, though still in a whisper,
"I meant having to watch your parents die in front of you. That-"
"They weren't my parents," she forced out, voice cracking on the last syllable, "Don't ever say that again."
She turned back to the window and opened it, the soft whirring drowning out his response. She didn't even notice when the gem on her forehead lit up to a dim glow, as the air rushed in to soothe their wounds.
Next chapter: Jason's fears catch up with him
Also, I watched the most recent episode of Titans and I am not okay. D:
Thanks for reading!