A/N: This is the last one that I have written. It's NOT the end, folks, but it's getting there. I already know what's going to happen and have a lot of the chapter after the next outlined dialogue-wise. But it's in the works. I promise, so this psuedo-cliffie will not be long in being resolved.
Thanks: Individually: On emsscraps. Tonight. (For both chapters 6 AND 7)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Estranged
Part VII: Raven
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"It's in this moment / Hold on / When everything has come apart / It's in this moment / Right now / When it can come together"
- Fall In The Light, Lori Carson
For a moment, her lips responded to the urgent press of his, opening for him and taking in his taste like air, like she would suffocate without his breath. From somewhere inside her, however, came the understanding that this wasn't right, that she couldn't allow this, no matter how much she had wanted it, no matter how much she had thought of it, and wondered about it, it wasn't right. She didn't know this person who was kissing her with such bruising abandon, how could she allow it?
So, with a gasp, she broke the kiss, and somehow found the strength to push him away from her so that only his hands still on her arms and her hands on the blue bird that so resembled her soul self etched onto his uniform touched. She was out of breath, her lungs, traitors that they were, apparently still under the impression that she couldn't breathe if she wasn't kissing him instead of the other way around. Before she knew that she had intended to do anything at all except fight for her next breath, her right hand moved entirely of its own accord.
Robin took the slap with barely a flinch, the only sign that she had done anything at all to him being the blossoming handprint on his cheek.
And while her hand still tingled in that near-pain sensation one always imagine will be less than it actually is, he remained inscrutable, his eyes unreadable as he stared at her and waited for something she couldn't figure out. He didn't even look affected by the kiss he had initiated and that made her seethe.
She hated that she couldn't make him react, even by physical pain. Hated it so much, so completely, and suddenly that whereas the first slap had been instinctual and unplanned, the second slap was deliberate and purposeful. She wanted to make him hurt – react – something, but what she got instead was his hand gripping her wrist mere inches from his face.
For what seemed like ages, they stared at each other, and although she tried to summon up the anger she had felt initially, it was giving way to something else she didn't even want to name. How could he be so unaffected? Even she, who had been known as the Ice Queen for so many years had been affected by things, even if she couldn't show them, but from him, she felt nothing.
She pulled at her hand, but his grip only tightened and she knew she would have a bruise there. For a moment, she struggled. But when she realized he was barely exerting even a smidgen of effort to keep his hand wrapped so securely around her tiny wrist, she stopped. Struggling always had been beneath her and she hadn't changed that much. She stopped moving and made her face go empty as she said, "Let me go."
"No."
"You told me to leave," she reminded him. "To run away." She glared at him. "Then you kiss me. You push me away but you kiss me, all after you made it clear that you wanted me to go," she sighed audibly, and looked beyond frustrated. "I don't understand what you want from me!" If she had use of her arms, she might have shrugged or made some physical show of her confusion, but as he still held onto her right hand, she could only glare expectantly at him.
And just like that, the cold mask finally broke and the steel blue of his eyes softened into some emotion like pain but she was too unsure of herself to name it with any certainty. And suddenly, as if a wall that even she hadn't known was there had caved in, the feel of their bond flared to startling life and she knew, without any doubts the way she never knew anything else, that he had loved her and needed her—perhaps as much as she had needed him. She felt the tears well in her eyes at the realization, she felt her heart – her lungs constrict painfully and had to gasp for air.
She had never felt so much like weeping as she did in that moment, never felt so much like her world had crashed down since she thought she had locked away all of her emotions and hopes regarding what they could have been...not since the last time she allowed herself to wonder if he'd be there waiting for her one day when she came home.
She struggled to get out of his reach, needing to put distance between them before every reserve she had tapped out and she broke down at his feet, but he wouldn't let her go. In her desperation, she actively fought him until he brought the hand she was fighting so hard to free to lay flat against his chest and she felt the thump of his heart even through the suit. As if some switch had been pulled, she stilled immediately.
"Don't."
His word, softly spoken, brought her eyes from the contrast of her pale hand sandwiched between the dark glove of his hand and the midnight blue of the standard on his chest back to his face. "Don't what?" she asked, her voice so soft, she wasn't sure he could hear her.
"Don't go," he answered.
"I thought you wanted--"
"--I don't want you to go," he interrupted before she could finish.
When had he gotten so close to her, she wondered? She hadn't realized how close she actually still was to him until she reached out with her other hand and touched his face. Until with the gentlest of tugs, she was pressed against him and her face was raised for his kiss, her suddenly free hand tangling in the so soft hair at his nape.
Now that she had seen how he wasn't really as cold as he seemed, now that she felt his need, she hated herself for her cruelty. She had wanted to make him feel, but she had never wanted to see that pain on his face, not that emptiness...not when she had seen his face lit up with joy and amusement and happiness instead. And although she welcomed his kiss, he hesitated and didn't close the distance between them, his eyes on her unsure and searching. She wanted to erase that look away, so she attempted to do that the only way she knew how.
She raised her other hand at the back of his neck and pulled him down the rest of the way until their lips met once again.
In response, his arms pressed her close, his fingers pressing into the bare flesh of her back above the towel that had miraculously held on...
Until with a sharp pull, it came away in his hand.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A/N: Damn towel...had to get rid of it somehow...