4
It took far too long, even with the pastor's diplomatic aid, to get the woman alone. Even after her duties as baby caretaker were long since finished, she insisted on chatting at length and loudly with everyone in earshot till Robin's teeth wanted to grind. Hadn't the woman ever heard of promptness? Of wasting people's time? He was a very important hero with very important things to do, and here she was going on and on about tomorrow's supper night plans and Bible study group! The lingering smell of the nursery made him ill, too. But there wasn't nothing to do but lean against the pink flowers and tap his foot increasingly more obviously and hope she took the hint.
She didn't.
Only when practically everyone else had cleared out was Ms. Ashton finally ready to offer some of her time to them, Whittaker excusing himself politely on request. Expecting condescension or smugness for having succeeded in annoying him in such a petty way, Robin was surprised when she only smiled at him and offered to grab a pitcher of tea from the kitchen for them to sip at while they chatted. Feeling that he needed to impose upon her the urgency of the situation she'd stirred up, as well as the value of his time, he firmly refused her increasingly diverse offers of generosity one by one until she was left with no functionally polite option but to talk with him, right now, about exactly what he'd come for and nothing else. This took about five minutes longer than it would have taken with any other human being.
"Oh, alright, I see you're a straight to the point kind of boy. You have plenty of strange mutant robot things to fight, I'm sure. I assume you're here to offer your support to the upcoming Church of Starfire? It always helps to keep these things coordinated! We're still in the planning stages, but Amanda's husband, Amanda was the one in the blue dress, he's an architect, you see, and he's already offering his services free of charge-"
Robin held up a hand, expecting her to come to a halt, and stared in frank disbelief as she simply ignored the hand and kept on talking. About how they really didn't need much financial assistance at all, surprisingly, what with all the husbands of ladies she knew who were contracted, licensed carpenters or electricians and so on. About the surprising amount of support they'd gathered from a project not even a week old yet. About how she had a nephew using all the latest gadgets, like 'Tweeter,' to keep the world at large well-informed on the planning stages of the prospective new church, its values, and its potential membership in the Southern Baptist Convention despite being in a liberal-heavy locale quite far from the Bible Belt.
He grew increasingly horrified with every passing moment, with every word that came out of her mouth. This was a grass roots, blue collar, popular support charity project that would in fact look like a great news story and likely would increase cash flow and attention to the original foundation church as well as the supposed upcoming one. And with her entire life thoroughly seated in the atmosphere of the church, her whole smiling, verbosely enthusiastic, plastic pearl necklaced being completely accustomed to tugging on the strings of religious society to get things done, Ms. Ashton looked like she could actually accomplish it. She knew how to get things done. It was a terrible realization for him. Instead of being hopelessly incompetent, as Robin was only now realizing he'd subconsciously expectd, she actually knew that she needed experts in various fields, and could at best serve as a motivating figurehead. And she was the kind of person who was very EFFECTIVE at being a motivating figurehead! It took a leader to know a leader. He knew a great motivational speaker, a great organizer, a great MANIPULATOR when he saw one. It was over every inch of her, right down to the modest stockings and the shiny black high heels she had absolutely no trouble walking in.
Faced with an unstoppable object, Robin did as was his wont, mentally shrugging and throwing himself in its path. "I think you're operating under several major misconceptions, Ms. Ashton," he finally managed to break in after multiple failed attempts at interrupting. "I admire and respect the work you've put into all this, but as much as we all love Starfire, she doesn't need or want a church. She's not an angel. She's a Tamaranian, an alien humanoid. She's certainly not Christian! Her native religion is polytheistic."
"Oh, sweetheart, God has many names," Ms. Ashton condescended so affectionately that Robin almost enjoyed it by reflex before bristling. What a horrible woman. "And shows Himself in a multitude of ways. Of course we all know she's an alien! If we're calling anything that comes down from the sky an alien, then angels are too. I know this must all seem very spontaneous to you, but the truth is that it's something I and my friends in Christ have talked about for a long time. Only just recently did the Lord place her in my path so I could finally have the courage to share my revelation with the world. Isn't it so obvious, once you admit it? She has the strength to lay waste to cities, the righteousness to win all battles, the incorruptible and inviolate spirit of a truly holy being, the airborne grace of an eagle with God's own wind beneath its wings-"
"Raven can fly too, why don't you worship her?" he snapped irritably. He almost threw in a bit about her father too, but his common sense tackled his annoyance and held it down till the mad urge passed. He did NOT need to deal with a schizophrenic church that simultaneously worshiped Starfire while denouncing Raven as demonic. Plus, Raven would have killed him, and he was perfectly happy with Beast Boy being her default target dummy.
"Christians don't worship angels, honey. Only God is worthy of worship. Angels are messengers of that which is good and just. Don't you think that she's such a being? Isn't every word from her mouth concerned with helping others and caring for other people, even if the name of the loving God she uses happens to have different letters in it?"
This was getting increasingly personal. He knew it was a mistake, but he couldn't help but get angry. Why did she have to be so stupidly NICE about it? Why couldn't she be evil like everything else he had to fight? "You have no right to talk like you know her! I'm her boyfriend, and I'm her leader, and I'm her teammate, and it's taken me YEARS to understand even a portion of who she is and just how beautiful and wonderful she is! But she's a PERSON, not a religious concept, and you don't have the right to use her to prop up your doddering old antiquated barbaric belief system based on a hippie who was nailed to a piece of wood!"
Oops. Okay, that had probably been a bit too much. In fact, he KNEW it had been a bit too much, because out of the corner of his eye, way down the hallway, he saw his teammates peeking out from behind a corner with attempted stealth, Whittaker's head a fifth atop all the rest, barely poking over Cyborg's. As soon as his head twitched in their direction they vanished in perfect sync.
She seemed, if anything, vindicated by his hostility. "A prophet is never respected in his home town," she told him like teaching a child a simple math lesson. "You're too close to her to see her true nature, Robin. We all, of course, appreciate what the Titans as a whole have done for the city, but only Starfire has exhibited the kind of saintly behavior only those touched by God can show. Of course, as her boyfriend, you can't help but be a little selfish, and I'm sure no one will blame you for that. But you have to learn to share her goodness with a struggling world that badly needs her compassion and righteousness."
He deliberately took a moment to breathe, actually practicing a quick mental meditational technique he'd scavenged from Raven. The bubbling anger was pushed back down. There. All better. Had to approach this logically, rationally, no matter how irrational she was being. Ms. Ashton was unexpectedly troublesome but he wouldn't let her have her incredibly destructive and misguided way no matter how much she wanted it. Who knew what else this could snowball into, if left alone? Things always got out of control with religion.
"Clearly what I say doesn't matter to you. What if Starfire told you that you were mistaken, then?"
"Oh, I don't think it's really necessary to KNOW that you're an angel to actually be one, do you? Of course she's humble, as would be any servant of the Lord. She wouldn't ever ask for someone to make a church for her. But I don't think she would ever deny anyone the right to do so, either."
"Let's put that to the test," he said with an 'I'm game' grin, looking back over at the still unoccupied hall corner. "Starfire, could you come over here for a second, please, and tell Ms. Ashton making a church for you is silly?"
Starfire walked a few steps, grumbled at her heels in Tamaranian, and gave up, floating half a foot above the carpet the rest of the way. Ms. Ashton's eyes were about as wide as they could get, the woman's face pure rapture. Robin relaxed, all the tension going out. Star had had the right idea, maybe, in coming here today. She could put a stop to all this madness herself. She was a special girl and a special comrade and a special hero, but she wasn't an angel, no matter what melodramatic song lyrics might say.
"I am sorry, Robin," she told him with genuine regret. "I must refuse."
Robin did not, in fact, have Raven's emotions-fueled telekinesis, but despite this, he could swear he heard glass shattering. "What," he said so flatly that it was barely a question, robotic in his dumbfoundment.
"I do not agree with what Ms. Ashton is doing," she acknowledged with a somewhat regal nod of her head, "however, I feel that I must acknowledge her right to do it. I have lived a long time now in this land of the free and the brave, and I have come to understand that you all value highly the virtue of freedom of expression of beliefs. I do not wish to go against the founding principles of this country. Nor do I desire to meddle as an outsider in the affairs of a religion that is still strange and foreign to me! Their God of love does not sound very unpleasant, even if I do not like how He looks hanging from two bisecting wooden beams! I will not support Ms. Ashton's conclusion that I am an angel. But if she does not wish to alter her opinion, then neither will I abuse my position in her faith to force her into doing that which she does not wish to do! Would that not truly be a thing of great hypocrisy, to use my status as an angel to command her to refrain from acknowledging me as such a being? Let us extend to her the same courtesy and respect that this wonderful planet and wonderful country have extended to us, and offer her even the freedom to make mistakes that are her own."
She had never seemed more beautiful to him than now, floating there with absolute, slightly sad certainty, in that rather awful and itchy-looking black dress.
He had never in his life wanted to just punch her solidly in the face than he did right now.
Batman would find out, and laugh at him for being so whipped.
He WAS whipped. He couldn't say no to her. Even with such high stakes, he just looked at her, and... he melted.
Dammit, Catwoman never did this to Batman!
"I..." He paused, not knowing what he could possibly say in the face of two women who ultimately had him bested at least twice over, if not more, in the battle of wills. "I'm going to take my bike home," he finished in defeat, somewhere between bitter and meek. He glared at Ms. Ashton. "Be careful how you handle this, Ms. Ashton. If you do anything to tarnish the reputation of the Titans or Starfire, you'll have me to deal with. Understand?"
"Oh, boys are so adorable when they're trying to be scary and protect the people they love!" She pinched his cheek, cooing, while he stood there in blushing shock. Somewhere behind him, Cyborg and Beast Boy were snickering. He hated this woman with all his heart and all his (nonexistent because he didn't believe in such superstitions) soul. "Don't worry, Robin. We won't get in the way of your little crime-fighting adventures."
"My... LITTLE..." He choked to a stop in sheer fury. Azarath, metrion, zinthos. He had no idea if Raven forcibly slammed the calm into his mind or if he did it himself, but either way, it happened. "Goodbye, Ms. Ashton." He turned to Starfire. "We are going to have a very long talk about this when we get home, Star."
"I look forward to the debate," she replied with a hungry tigress of a smile that made him nervous. Even her eyes seemed to gleam. He remembered that any long talk was one he was at least as likely to lose as win.
Calling his motorcycle up from the T-Car's trunk by remote, he rode fast and angrily, but in circles several times so that he had extra time to himself. It didn't help. He still couldn't understand why Starfire was being so irrational about a big problem that she could put a stop to in an instant. He couldn't understand why Ms. Ashton thought Starfire was an angel to start with. As always, he thought glumly, anything involving religion was a mystery to him. Transparently stupid, yet it had the power to make perfectly sane, smart people like Starfire do utterly crazy things. Why?
It did occur to him that maybe if he paid a little more attention to what HER faith was and was in, perhaps he would have been less surprised by her decision.