Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans, the British Museum or the ROM.
Chapter 8 - In Two Weeks Time
A slim, black figure slipped into the room silently. A man, so nimble and agile his footsteps could not be heard. His face covered with a mask. His gloved hand turned the doorknob and entered the room adjacent.
"Where have you been?" The voice came from behind a back-turned chair, loud and booming.
"Around." The thief shrugged, leaned his shoulder against a wall, defiantly crossing his arms and legs.
"You were to see me 2 hours ago; I don't like to be kept waiting." The voice was altered, the thief could tell, whoever was behind the tall back of the chair did not want to be known.
"Chill, besides, I come bearing gifts." The thief reached into the pouch slung over his shoulder and brought out a series of folded papers and pushed it across the desk that divided them.
"Hmmm, yes, an offering to the gods." An arm jutted out from the side of the chair, full-length sleeved, hands gloved, and grabbed the papers on the desk, the chair never faltering.
"I think you'd like this." The thief heard the shuffling of papers and slight, maniacal chuckles.
"Yes, yes. Well done, Kinyago."
"Good, then can I leave? This whole creepy meeting at night thing isn't exactly my scene." His voice was bold and joking, as if he didn't care how powerful the man behind the chair was. He got off the wall and had begun to head out when the voice called back.
"Remember our deal, don't fuck this up."
The papers just kept coming. Raven sighed and she signed another form and placed it on the output pile, sullenly she glanced at the input pile. Twice as high as the fucking output. Dammit when is this all going to end? She leered as she drew out another from the input and read through it. This one had come directly from the director at the British Museum.
Security measures blah blah blah. Insurance policies blah blah. Contract agreements blah. Her eyes scanned down the page and saw two signatures already at the bottom, both in faded black due to the fax machine: Richard Grayson and Garfield Logan. Dick's signature had been in long, slim letters and curved at the ends, elegant and refined. Gar's on the other hand was the complete opposite, his letters were short and fat, the G in Gar had gone around the entire name, it came off as jovial, almost like a child's signature. Raven smiled at the difference in the two signatures, amazed at how one signs a paper can define so much of their character. Like Dick and Gar themselves, their signatures were at opposite sides of the spectrum.
A blank line with an x awaited her signature below Gar's. Her own signature had grown messy and illegible over the many years and many contracts. She paused, pen poised over the paper and elegantly signed her own name, not her usual chicken scratch, but the nice formal signature she saved for public documents. The R's intertwined beneath her name, the end of the H coming over the top to cross the T. She pulled back, lookedat her handiwork and smiled, her other hand fingering the edge of the paper. She put the pen down and lightly ran her fingers over Gar's name.Raven caught herself mid act and scolded herself.
As she turned the paper over to place it in the output pile, she noticed a small green post-it attached to the back. Raven saw Kori's familiar writing and read:
Can't wait to see you…
Two weeks cannot go by any slower.
G.L.
Her smile widened as she realised whom the note was from and she blushed realising Kori now knows. She removed the post it, opened her drawer and stuck it in her black notebook. As she closed the drawer, turning back to her work, she sighed. Any slower indeed.
Gar watched as the rain fell and splattered against the window. The current state of the weather confirmed the myth; it was always raining in London. Behind him, Victor and Dick were consolidating with the director of the British Museum. They had just gotten him to sign the transport approval of artefacts to Toronto and immediately faxed it to Raven and the ROM. Now they were reassuring him that all safety precautions were going to be taken to insure the security of the artefacts during transport. He should have been there right along with them talking to the old man, but his mindwas still in Toronto.
He smiled and thought; Wonder if she got my little message. The woman had been on his mind for the past two weeks. As he attended to business at Chicago and the entire duration of his stay at London, she was constantly in his mind. Her and what he had denied her the last time he saw her. He certainlysaw the anticipation in her eyes as she had leaned up to him but he, always the flirt, had to pull back, denying himself and herof the pleasure. Now he regretted it, finding himself thinking of how she good would taste or how her lips would feel against his. Like now…
"Garfield! Come here," the voice of Victor snapped him out of his thoughts. He turned around, a mask of questioning on his face hiding what he was just thinking.
"Yeah?"
"We're leaving, come on." Dick was already out the door, Vic stood at the doorway jacket and hat in hand. Gar rushed over to the coat rack, snatched his coat and nodded to the director in a goodbye. The director smiled back and he headed out the door.
Garfield hurried to Vic side.
"You were thinking about her again weren't you?" Gar smiled up at the smirk on Vic's face.
"Yeah."
Vic chuckled, "Man, you got it bad."
"No." His quick response only made Vic laugh again.
"And brotha, you're swimmin' in that river alone." Gar swayed his head side to side in mock laughter. Ha ha, the Nile, I get it.
"Well what about you? Don't tell me you haven't thought about Jinx once since we got here."
"Man, there's a difference, I just came from Toronto and I'm headed back tomorrow. You got another two agonizing weeks ahead of you."
Gar sighed knowingly, "I know." Vic laughed again and rubbed his head as one would do with a child. They stood inside the doors leading to the streets.
"Don't worry man; two weeks will go by like that." He snapped his fingers for added effect as Gar pulled up the lapel of his coat, bracing himself for the onslaught of rain.
A dark figure was hunched over a coffee table of papers. Profiles, cut out newspaper articles, blueprints, stats. Everything. The figure went underneath the table and pulled out a manila envelope, inside were her statistics. everything about her, from what time she wakes up in the morning to how she took her coffee on the morning. A person's life in 20 pages, soup to nuts.
He emptied the remaining contents of the folder on the table, candid pictures of her. Her walking down the street, buying a croissant in the morning, even her on the phone in her office. He out a black felt tip marker and drew a circle around her face, beside it he wrote:
THREAT : to be eradicated
A/N: