Novocaine
Chapter Two

The greasy diner had flickering lights and decor that looked like it hadn't been updated since 1963. Next to the front door were framed pictures of Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Eclectic. Out of the warbly speakers, an old crooning song rained down on her, and it felt like the complete antithesis of the hard, off-key rock of the bar Raven had just come from. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring at a worn spot on the melamine tabletop, half-wondering if H. A. and K. Q. were still together. Had they been soulmates, or just unfortunate ships passing in the night?

Based on her few and shoddy experiences with love so far, she was inclined to think the latter.

"Here."

She flicked her eyes up and looked around the space again, watching as Jason came back to the table, holding two trays with greasy smash burgers, surrounded by a mountain of thin, extra-crispy french fries.

"Here." He set one down in front of her. "I hope you're not vegetarian or anything."

"Not in this universe." She shrugged and grabbed the food from his hands, surprised at how famished she suddenly was. This day had been hanging over her for so long, that she couldn't even remember the last time she had actually eaten a meal. She took a comically huge bite of the burger, feeling grease and butter fill her body. Heaven.

"What, do they not feed you in Titan Tower?"

After a few bites, she realized she hadn't looked up from her burger. Heat filled her face as she realized how ravenous she must have seemed to him. She knew that her disregard for her health was simply the anticipation that made her feel so… helpless. So, out of control. Knowing that her soulmate was Red X was an annoyance, for sure. But, it was an answer to something that had been hovering over her head since she was born. It was something tangible, something she could see and touch, rather than just some nebulous idea of a soulmate that she had been contending with for years. At least with an answer, she had direction, and with that direction she could fix this.

Chewing slowly, she flicked her eyes up to look at Jason's profile as he turned away, eyes scanning an old tube-TV in the corner of the restaurant. She didn't want to admit it, but there was something stupidly handsome about him. His jaw was chiseled, lips full, and his once-perfect nose had clearly been broken more than a few times, but it somehow added to his charm. And his eyes - gods, his eyes -

He glanced back at her, lifting an eyebrow.

Raven quickly dug back into her burger, ignoring his curious expression. It wouldn't do her any good to think about his eyes, and she had to remember that he was absolutely not going to stay her soulmate. Not Jason Todd. Not Red X. Nobody. She wasn't beholden to this bizarre idea of destiny. It was stupid. There was another long stretch of silence as they both took a few more bites of food, avoiding the obvious elephant that was sitting at the table with them, glaring. Jason flicked his hair out of his eyes and looked away from her.

"So… let's talk."

Raven swallowed and shifted. "What do you want to know?"

"How do we undo this?" He tapped at the inside of his right wrist. "How do we make it so that you and I… go back to whatever we were before. Forget each other exists, and exchange a few snarky comments during battle." He took a long drag of soda and crossed his arms over his chest. "I liked things the way they were."

She did too. Change was an unknown, and sometimes it produced results like… like this. "I… I don't know. I don't know if there is a way to undo this, or to unravel this… whatever this is between us." Raven blinked and looked back up into his eyes, taking a napkin to wipe at her mouth. "Honestly. Azarath was destroyed years ago, if there was a way to undo anything, it would be with the monks."

"Who no longer exist. Great." Jason took a big bite of his burger and glared at nothing in particular. That tense, awkward silence settled over them both again, and he purposely let it weigh her down. "And you don't have any way of researching this? Like don't you have any contacts with Zatanna or Constantine?"

"Don't you?" She felt a sharp point of anger and frustration spear her, and she leaned forward, meeting his stare with one of her own. "You have just as much connection with them as I do, and you could go running to them if you wanted to undo this, but - oh, right. You're supposed to be dead. Wouldn't want the rest of you disaster of a family suddenly knowing you're alive again." She bit back an urge to gnash her teeth at him, and forced herself to take a deep breath, trying to reel her emotions back in.

A weighted silence settled between them, and Jason lifted an eyebrow as a near-smirk played on his lips. "Jeeze, you really don't like pulling your punches, do you?" He sounded almost impressed, and Raven felt her spike of anger disappear as he watched her from under his thick, dark lashes.

Something inside her chest twisted and burned, and she shifted in her seat. The last thing she needed was Jason's approval. She took a deep breath, held it for three seconds, and let it out slowly. This was a mess. This was a mess, and she was going to have to work with Jason to figure it out.

"Look, Zatanna hates my guts because of my father, and Constantine is… less than reliable when it comes to… well, anything really." That was putting it mildly. He'd left her high and dry in more than just a few sticky situations, to the point where Raven was half-certain she was going to banish his ass to another dimension the next time she saw him. Constantine was definitely out of the picture. "I might have some things I can research in the few books I kept from Azarath, but… I don't know." She huffed. "I just don't know."

"Yeah, you've said." He leaned back in his chair and sighed. "You've said I don't know about ten times tonight. So, tell me. Is there anything you do know?"

Raven quickly retracted her earlier thought that he was ruggedly handsome. He wasn't handsome, he was a goddamned dick. She glared at him and shoved the rest of her burger in her mouth, ignoring the obvious jab, and letting him stew in the weight of his question. Jason shifted, but if he was repentant for what he said, he didn't show it on his face.

"If you think I haven't been trying to undo this since the beginning of my life, then you're sorely wrong." Raven shoved a few fries into her mouth, maintaining eye-contact with him in some kind of ridiculous power move. She swallowed and took a drink of her soda before looking away. "And, trust me, if I knew it was someone like you, I would have worked even harder to avoid any of this ever happening in the first place."

Jason scoffed and flicked his hair out of his face again, as if her words didn't affect him. "Yeah. I can tell." He finished his burger and watched her again, lips twitching as he thought. "So, do you at least have any ideas on how to undo this?"

"I mean… some." She sighed and leaned forward, pointing a fry at his chest. "But I'm not the only one with the power to change this, you know. You can work just as hard as I can. You have your own connections, and you could fix this too if you wanted to."

"I could fix this, you're right. But this isn't exactly my area of expertise and I don't even know where to begin if I did get started." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and for once he let a small sliver of vulnerability peek through. "Okay, look. I can tell you don't want this as much as I don't want this, and while I can definitely tell that you wouldn't have intentionally done this to me, it doesn't negate the fact that we're… stuck together. It doesn't change anything."

"We could ignore it." Raven lifted her eyes to his and shrugged. "The mark doesn't just cancel out our free will. It doesn't make us fall hopelessly in love with each other where we both lose all thought and reason. And, it doesn't make us slaves to each other-"

"Oh, trust me." He smirked, his eyes growing dark. "You might actually enjoy being my slave."

Raven jerked back and felt her stomach both roil and burn at the same time. Heat crawled up her neck and she glared at him, hoping her confusion didn't spark across her face. What in the world was he doing to her? And why was she letting him? She huffed out a breathy curse and shoved the rest of her fries into her mouth, letting the silence settle between them, just so he could stew in his own words for a bit longer. Jason finally shifted uncomfortably, and Raven looked back up at him.

"As I was saying." She finished her soda and leaned back in her chair. "We're soulmates, it doesn't mean we miraculously like each other, or even tolerate each other. It just means that we have a… connection. An unfortunate one. So, my suggestion would be that we simply ignore it for the time being. We just go back to our normal lives and forget that any of this ever happened."

"Just… forget?" He snorted and glanced away again. "I mean, sure. It's got to be just that easy."

Raven's lips tightened, antagonizing him. "Do you have a better idea?"

His silence told her everything she needed to know. With a soft sigh, she leaned back in her chair and met his stare. This was a cosmic joke, and they were now the punchline. They had no leads, no idea on how to reverse this, and so the only option they really did have, was to just ignore it. Even if it was only for a little while. Raven waited for him to say anything to contradict what she suggested, but he kept surprisingly quiet, his eyes searching her face, until-

"Okay."

She blinked, surprised. "What?"

"Okay." Jason shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair, avoiding looking into her face. "If you think that this is something we can just… ignore for the time being, then let's do that. Let's just go back to our normally scheduled programming and forget that this ever happened."

"Fine." Raven finished her soda and placed it back on the tray. "Fine. We'll forget that this ever happened and we'll go back to our normal lives and pretend we don't exist."

Jason nodded and stood up, shoving his hands into his pockets. He gave her another weighted stare, letting it settle slowly over her skin. It felt like he was sinking into her, becoming part of her, until they were joined by more than just this stupid mark on their arms. He shifted and made his way to the door. "Then I guess I'll be going. I hope I never see you again."

She snorted. "The feeling is mutual."

Of course ignoring it was never going to work. She knew better than to expect it would, but it got Jason out of her hair, for a little bit at least. It was another two weeks before she saw him again. Or, rather, Red X.

Red X, who was currently perched on a half-broken gargoyle atop the Metropolitan Natural History Museum, his mask saying absolutely nothing to her. It felt like he was barely containing a storm of anger and disappointment, and the only thing he could do was simply sit there and stare. Raven's lips twitched, trying not to think about what they had talked about just a few weeks ago. It should have been easy to ignore this, but somehow… somehow it wasn't.

Of course it wasn't.

She had spent the entirety of their separation trying to think that the fates had been wrong. They had to have been wrong. How in the world could this have been right? They were complete opposites, and not just on different sides of the law. Jason was crass and rude, he drank heavily, and glared at her from beneath too-dark lashes, his eyes the frightening, verdant green - residual magic from the Pit. He was the kind of person she would have avoided at all costs, and now he was thrust into every personal aspect of her life, just as she was thrust into his.

Red X continued to stare at her, his mask just as stoic as it had been the day she met him. It was… disconcerting. He didn't move, didn't say anything - just stared at her. It was as if there were a hundred secrets he was keeping just out of her reach, and she wasn't sure if he was trying to protect her or himself.

Raven's feet landed silently on the tar roof, and she tried to read him with her powers, but he was a steel trap. What few emotions she managed to glean from him were a jumbled mess, as if he wasn't quite sure what parts of were true and what parts were lies.

Red X finally tilted his head and watched her as she approached, unapologetic. "You're not going to find answers by digging into my mind without my permission, Little Bird. Some secrets need to be secrets."

She scoffed and stood next to him, crossing her arms over her chest. "Trust me, I am not looking to go digging into your thoughts and emotions, Jason." She specifically used his name just to get a rise out of him, but if he was upset, he didn't let it show on his face. "In fact, I can't think of a scene more gruesome and horrifying than what's going on in your head."

"Mm. I see you're still not holding your punches." He huffed out an annoyed breath as he reached into his pocket and dangled a necklace dripping with diamonds the size of coins in front of her. "I take it you're after this?"

She glared. "You're making it seem like that's all I'm here for." Her powers snatched it easily out of his fingers, as if he didn't really want to fight her. "But that is the main reason."

"Oh?" He turned and peeled off his mask off, a tilted, knowing smirk tainting his otherwise attractive face. He could be such a smarmy asshole sometimes, like he knew something secretive about her, and he didn't want to share. "If not just the crown jewels of Markovia, then what? What else could possibly drag you out of your solitude to come track me down?"

"I… we should talk." Raven pocketed the necklace and finally sat next to him, her stare mapping out the familiar skyline of the city before she looked down at the mark on her wrist, still annoyed by it. She pulled the sleeve down over the old date and ignored the strange, roiling feeling in the pit of her stomach. It had been appearing with more and more frequency, and that made her feel even more like she had no control over her own life.

She had felt… upended these last few weeks, like everything she knew in her life was suddenly transforming into something else. She knew it was because she was fighting against this mark on her arm with more ferocity than she did anything else, but she didn't want to admit it. She didn't want to admit that she felt like a string that was fraying with each passing day, and that there was something about being around him was calming. Ugh. She definitely didn't want to think about that, and realizing that only irritated her more. She wanted nothing to do with him.

Raven let go of a short, harsh sigh, and lifted her eyes to the purple dome of light pollution above her. "We should talk about… about whatever this is between us. About the fact that ignoring this isn't going to make anything better."

"I absolutely agree." Jason leaned back, kicking his feet out in front of him, his eyes trained on her. "I think we should talk about that. I think we should talk about how we clearly hate each other, how the universe made a very apparent mistake, and what we need to do to fix this. Because, I can tell you that I have a type, and you're certainly not it." He scratched at his wrist, where his matching mark - date and time - sat against his skin. "I like big tits and a better ass."

Raven ground her teeth together, her anger flaring up so sharply that she heard the pop and sizzle of streetlights below her. She turned and glared at him. "And that is how I know the universe made a mistake, because you are absolutely not the person I should be bound to for eternity." She yanked her sleeve down further and sighed. "We should keep trying to ignore it. Date other people-" Raven wasn't exactly sure who would want to date her, but there was a person for everyone, right? "-try to forget that we-"

"Here's the problem with that, Little Bird. It's not working. It doesn't work. It's not even going to remotely work, so stop trying to shove that half-assed response down my throat, because it's fucking bullshit." Jason whipped his head around to stare at her, the heat in his words flaring up like a wildfire about to burn the city down. "In the two weeks we've been apart, I've tried everything. Ignoring it, checking out other girls, even getting rough with a couple of guys I've been chatting up. I've been dating other people, or at least I'm trying."

Raven swallowed, suddenly unsure about where this conversation was going. Her heart felt like it was racing in her chest, pounding blood to every hidden hollow in her body so that she didn't know anything anymore. Heat filled her face, and she watched as he leaned a few inches towards her, his hands nearly shaking at his sides.

"I've gone on plenty of dates before this stupid date on my arm - before I officially met you, and everything was fine. I could be with people, and I could get it up and it was okay, but now-" His eyes narrowed, that vibrant green of The Pit filling his stare with something akin to poison. "-now I can't even get close to another girl without suffering from limp dick. I can't even masturbate unless it's to-" He stopped and snapped his mouth shut, a faint flush darkening his cheeks. "Forget it. The point is, I didn't want any part of it, and now I'm stuck with this stupid feeling that we should be together. And you know what? It's fucking bullshit."

"Are you done?" Raven snarled at him, her voice a low warning. That tightness in her chest felt like it was about to snap, and she could feel magic gathering in every vein in her body. He knew exactly how to drive her mad, and she was stuck here, letting him walk all over her because somehow he thought this was her fault. He was an asshole, and he needed to be reminded that she certainly didn't want this either. "Because, in case you forgot, you're preaching to the choir." She finally looked away, ignoring the way his stare darkened. "We don't even like each other."

"I definitely don't like you." He growled and fished a cigarette out of his belt, shoving it between his lips but not lighting it. "So… Here's what I suggest."

Raven snorted, giving him a flat stare. This was going to be rich.

"I propose we figure out how to break this curse between us, even if it means I have to come clean with my family and you have to beg Constantine for help. And then, after this whole fucking ordeal is over, we both go on our merry way and forget this ever happened." He pulled the cigarette out from between his lips and spun it between his fingers, more as a bad habit than something he wanted to smoke. "I think that's the best use of our time and resources, and offers the most limited contact. Because, like I said, I can't stand you, and you're definitely not my type."

"So you've repeated several times. And just in case you forgot - same." Raven pushed at her hair, turning her stare back out into the city. She weighed his offer, her fingers tightening around the jeweled links of the necklace in her hand.

Working with him wasn't an ideal situation, but it was at least a way for them to try to break this curse. She didn't want to think about reaching out to Constantine, but… Jason was also willing to make his own sacrifices. Going back to his family was no small feat, and she was surprised he even suggested it. It meant he was willing to take this seriously. Raven had her resources, and Jason had his, and together they should have been able to find something that would work. Anything was better than this. She wanted nothing to do with him, and he wanted nothing to do with her. The sooner they fixed this, the better.

"Alright." Raven let go of a deep breath and glanced back at him from the corner of her eye, standing up and dusting herself off. "We'll work together to fix this, and when we break whatever binds us together, we'll pretend we don't know each other and go our separate ways."

"Good." Jason shoved the cigarette between his lips again, still not lighting it. He lifted his eyes to her own, the heat in his stare softening as he looked at her. There was a long moment when it felt like the tension between them finally had a few inches of slack, and Raven watched as his shoulders eased just a little. A teasing smile played across his lips, and he leaned back on his hands, his eyes searching his face. "Of course, this means you can't bring me in what we're still researching. We can't have half of this curse behind bars, now can we?"

Raven's stomach dropped and her eyes widened as she realized he was right. The sly bastard.

Jason just grinned. Honestly. This was her soulmate?