A/N: Uh…true to Echoes form, I don't know what to say about this. It didn't come out exactly the way I had planned, and I have a feeling there's something different about my writing style in it, too, but I don't know. I said I wouldn't question these anymore, so here you go. (Initially the idea popped into my head while listening to "The Dolphin's Cry" by Live. The rest of the song-list is at the end.)
WARNING: This is slightly limey--or, insinuated as such. Nothing completely obvious or in your face, but yeah...not for the kiddies. Rating upped accordingly.
Thanks: I really do apologize for the last one…thanks for sticking around…Individual responses on emsscraps.
Words
(15: Silent Night)
"Silence is also speech."
- Proverb
It did not escape his notice that every moment of any significance in his relationship with Raven came at him abruptly and, usually, silently.
At thirteen, she was suddenly there, appearing serene and composed right smack in the middle of the path of his life. Sure, he could have walked around her, she probably expected him to, but that wasn't what he did. He took one look at her, saw how small and alone she looked, and led her somewhere safe, where he could protect her, because that was what he knew he had to do.
Instinctively.
He never doubted or stopped to ask himself what it was about her that made him leave the only life he'd known since the moment his parents had died and walk off into an unknown future to fight an as yet unknown enemy.
She didn't speak then, but he thought he could read the suspicion, doubt, and eventual gratitude in her eyes.
At fifteen, she was snatched out from under his protection, unexpectedly. He acted without thought, jumping into the unknown yet again, clasping her hand and refusing to let go, heedless of the consequences to following her into a mad magician's hat of tricks and heedless of the fact he was bringing their friends into it as well.
That he followed her wasn't nearly as surprising, however, as the realization he came to as he held onto her hand, more worried about not loosing his grip than of actually keeping her from the inside of Mumbo's hat. (He never really tried to keep her out of the hat.)
He didn't understand the realization until much later, after they'd emerged from the hat and everything was as back to normal as things got for them in the Tower. It wasn't until then that he was able to dissect the feelings that flooded him as he held on to her tiny hand and stared into her scared eyes.
'Don'tgocan'tloseyou...'
They never really had to talk. He knew from a gesture, a hesitation, a glance what she was thinking. He knew the meaning of her stillness and implications in each breath. He could translate her silence into something more precious than words, like an interpreter, he knew the feeling behind them.
But the translation of the look in her eyes that day would haunt him, like a shadow, ever present and always out of reach, always just barely shy of discernment.
She hadn't called out. Not to him, not to anyone. She hadn't said a word, or uttered a sound.
At nineteen, on the day she left the Titans, he finally, finally understood the look, although it was an understanding that came too late to do him any good. The look was there again that day, sans the fear, the moment their gazes touched before she turned, without a word, and got into the back of the car waiting to take her away. And he, older, more mature, not in a state of nearly incomprehensible panic himself, could finally read it. Like a picture once fuzzy, suddenly clear.
It was goodbye.
The realization shot through his chest, extending into his arms, tingling like electricity in his fingers, his palm, with the need to reach out and take her hand, to stop her from going or being pulled with her, whichever the fates had in store, but to not be parted, not to be left behind.
Not to watch the chasm grow between them and have to stay and watch her leave.
In the end, he didn't reach out. He didn't move.
He didn't say a word.
Words weren't necessary between them after all.
In the end, Nightwing hardly spoke anymore at all. Words were useless. So that the moment he thought surely meant his death, he hadn't called out, had no words he wished to say. How could he put into words his regrets? His desires?
At twenty-four, she was suddenly there, and he was reminded of the first time he saw her, but then she had seemed small and scared, and the sun had gleamed on her short purple locks (he had thought them so strange then) and he had wanted so much to protect her. Now, she stood before him, bathed in moonlight, uncertain, but unafraid, hair grown past her shoulders and down her back, blowing gently in the breeze from his opened window, eyes wise, and open, and he was surprised, more than anything else, with how easy it still was to read her, to understand her.
They came together without a word, hands reaching and touching, grasping and caressing, lips meeting and tasting, giving and taking. Neither made any audible sound, the press of his lips on her hipbone substituting for a moan, the press of her teeth on his shoulder for a gasp, his fingers pressing into her waist telling of his want, the nail marks on his back betraying her need.
When he entered her for the first time, it was the look in her eyes that told him in the softness of her expression, the tenderness in her eyes, what he'd waited all these years for, what had been missing in his life all of his life. She apologized for running away by wrapping her legs around him, holding him close, bearing his weight, and when he kissed her forehead, and her hands relaxed in his hair, he knew she accepted his for not calling after her.
When finally, some time later, she inhaled sharply and sighed as she tipped over the edge of pleasure, a small sound strangled in her throat broke the spell of silence around them and he was unable to hold the gasp as he followed her climax almost immediately after.
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Notes: The song list is below.
1. The Dolphin's Cry – Live
2. Beautiful Goodbye – Amanda Marshall
3. Gravity – John Mayer
4. Frozen – Within Temptation