Chapter 18
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"Garfield?" she called, and it was almost embarrassing how much he enjoyed hearing her speak his name. He stared at her as she walked towards him, caught between rushing over and staying cautious. "I don't believe it."
Was she smiling?
She had to be.
Her subtle, almost non-existent Raven smile.
He wanted to leap across and catch her in his arms, to finally feel her hair through his fingers, to kiss her because he was selfish and it wasn't fair how long he had gone without doing so.
He wanted to…
She was walking up to the edge now and he could see the colorless pallor of her face, the hollowness of her cheeks, the prominence of her collarbone. She had gone days without sustenance, without sunlight, existing as mental projection of herself and not the real thing. She looked so tired and worn, and he wanted to help her, to care for her, to cross the trench that separated them and just be there for her because he hadn't been for so long.
He wanted to…
"How did you…?" She was standing at the very threshold of the chasm, and all he had to do was cross it.
"Raven," he said, standing straight and forcing himself to keep his hands at his sides. A shiver of adrenaline travelled up his spine, but he breathed deeply and remained still.
"How is this possible?" she asked, amazed but subtly so. "How are you here?"
"Where's here?" he questioned, hoping he didn't look like he was battling with himself even though he was. "This doesn't look like your normal mindscape." He glanced around them before his eyes fell onto Raven's quietly perplexed expression.
"Gar." She sounded unsure of herself. "Is this real?" she asked, even quieter this time. Beast Boy tried to smile.
Tried.
"It's real," he said.
"It can't be."
"I promise you, I'm real."
"That's hard to believe." She reached out a hand. "Let me touch you."
He wanted her to touch him, to hold his hand, to run her fingers over his face.
He took a step back.
"I…I can't."
"Why not?"
He was hesitant to tell her. Considering the circumstances, the truth could have sounded frightening and overwhelming. "I don't know what this place is," he said instead, reaching for any excuse he could find. "I don't know what this chasm separating us is. Maybe I was put on this side for a reason." He watched her look down into the stretch of blackness that divided their rocks. She breathed and shook her head.
"There is no reason," she said dully, looking back up at him. "No reason for any of it, especially for you being here." He could see that she was starting to second-guess herself, to doubt what her eyes and ears were seeing and hearing as logic and context began to snake their way into her perception. "There is no way you can be here."
He felt his whole demeanor sag with her disbelief. "I'm here, Rae."
"You might not be real. I could I know otherwise?"
He almost wanted to laugh at her deadpan absurdity. "I'm real," he repeated.
"You could be a trick."
"It's me, Raven. Garfield Logan, the guy who used to switch out your tea leaves with dried pine needles and bark chips." The token Raven scowl crossed her pale face then, and he couldn't help but grin just a little bit and the long forgotten memory. Why was that the first thing he thought of? He wasn't sure. Maybe because it had been such a childish prank from years before, and the ridiculousness of the action was a protest to the bleakness of their meeting.
"I could have killed you over that, you know," she said darkly. He shrugged.
"If I remember, you almost did."
Her expression softened. "I can't believe you're actually here," she consented, and there was so much relief in her tone.
"Neither can I, to be honest."
"How?" She took a step closer to the edge. "Tell me how you did it."
"I don't even know where to begin," he said distractedly, still caught up in just looking at her. "So many things happened." He rubbed at his temple in an attempt to concentrate. "We've been trying to break into your mind for days now-,"
"What?"
"Ah, sorry. Maybe I should backtrack-,"
"No," she said sharply, staring at him. "You said 'we'. Who's 'we'?"
"The team." He watched her reaction. Her face was unmoving stone.
"The whole team?"
"Yes. Robin included," he said, knowing the answer she was looking for. The smallest hitch in her breathing was his only indication of her terror and fear. "I had to tell him the truth, Raven. I had to tell him as much as I could."
She laid her hands over her stomach and closed her eyes. "I think I'm going to be sick," she whispered. Gar sighed.
"I know it sounds bad, but he wants you back just like the rest of us. Above all else, you know that Robin wouldn't let you go without a fight. It was his plan to force our way into your psyche." She opened her eyes and there was a startling moment where Beast Boy noticed the dark circles around her lashes. She looked so emaciated. Like a corpse.
"What plan?" she asked hoarsely.
"A mixture of far-fetched ideas," he admitted, crossing his arms. Looking at her weak state made him want to punch a crater into the ground. "Cyborg showed him the serum you two had been working on, and I knew the spell you used to switch personalities, so Robin tried pairing them. If it hadn't been for your guidance we wouldn't have been able to come together at the right moment, when everything just-,"
Raven frowned. "Wait, guidance? What do you mean by guidance?"
"You called to me. I heard your voice coming through the mirror. If I didn't come looking for you then I wouldn't have been there when Starfire was administering the serum, and when your mind would be the most susceptible to the spell." He watched her frown deepen with confusion.
"That wasn't my voice," Raven corrected, turning over her shoulder to look behind her. Beast Boy started, for he hadn't noticed that they weren't alone. There was another Raven, and emoticlone dressed in her exact same clothes, sitting quietly in the distance and watching the pair with a graceful stare. Beast Boy tilted his head to the side, unnerved. "There's no way my voice could have reached out to you."
"Who is that?" he asked tentatively. She shifted her gaze to look directly into his and Gar felt the hairs on his neck stand on end.
"She's safe," Raven said right away, still looking at her. "I think she's the reason I'm still okay. And the reason why you're here." Gar pressed a hand to his chest. The emotion's stare somehow made his heart feel heavy and weighted.
"It was her voice?" he asked. "Are you sure?"
"Maybe." Rae paused, thoughtful. "Yes, it was. It had to be. I think she's still connected to my conscious body, or maybe she's something completely separate that the normal rules just don't apply." She blinked and looked down at her hands. "She is patient, she is kind," she whispered under her breath. "That would explain how she knew that if she waited, then the right time would present itself. " She sounded wistful. "She knew exactly how to bring you here." When she turned back around her hand reached out languidly for him again. "Would you like to meet her?" she asked softly.
It seemed important. The way Raven was looking at him made it seem like the most important thing in the world. But when he looked at her open palm he took another step back. He couldn't take her hand and close the distance between them. He had to stay away.
She saw his falter, and without a word or a change of expression she lowered her arm and crossed it back over her chest, unfazed by the rejection.
"I don't think we have a lot of time. We need to get you out of here," he said, talking through the awkwardness. "How do we-…um, do that exactly?"
"We don't. I've tried. I've failed."
"But it's your mind," he insisted. "Not Depravity's."
"Doesn't mean I know everything about it." She looked directly up into the blackness above her. "All I know is that we're somewhere deep in my subconscious. It's detached from the rest of me; a completely independent sanctuary." She looked down at the chasm between them yet again. "A safe haven, I think."
"So what does that mean?" he pressed. "Being buried here, hidden away…do you have any tie to your body? Has…has Depravity let you see anything she's done?" She shook her head.
"The exact opposite. I've been so isolated from everything that I'm losing sense of time and awareness. I have no idea what's been happening." She took in a deep breath. "I can only imagine what sort of rampage she's been on."
"Absolutely no idea?" Beast Boy tried to confirm. She nodded, swift and curt.
"I'm disconnected." She flexed her fingers and looked at him. "Severed. No tangible hold on my mind whatsoever. It's her form of punishment, I suppose. Do unto others."
"I'm glad then."
"That makes one of us."
He dropped his gaze. "Not for the detachment, but for your separation from her actions. It means everything she's done in the last couple of days hasn't been in any way your doing."
"That bad?" She held her breath.
"Worse."
"Oh god…" She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands, horrified. Beast Boy started to reach for her, but then pulled back almost instantaneously. He inexplicably looked to the emoticlone who simply titled her head to the side and continued to stare. "What happened?"
He didn't want to tell her because he knew it would only add to her guilt. But he also knew that Rae wouldn't appreciate being spared the news.
"She…um. She attacked us. Starfire first and then Robin. And then me." He explained, as vaguely as he could, what had transpired in the last seventy-two hours and watched as Raven's hands gripped her cardigan and the muscles in her jaw twitched from being clenched so hard. She closed her eyes when he finished and turned away, her shoulders shaking with either undiluted anger or overwhelming shame.
"You should have put her down," she said bleakly. "You should have put her down when you had the chance."
"I did a good job in shattering the left side of your body," he said humorlessly, remembering how it had felt to have Depravity crumbled beneath his fist. Raven shook her head.
"That wasn't permanent."
"You're an idiot if you think any of us, especially me, would have done more than that," he told her bluntly. "There's no more use in blaming yourself. Seriously Rae." He hesitated and then added, "I'm just glad you're okay." He looked her in the eye and she stared back. He knew that asking her to shed her guilt was fruitless, but he didn't want her to associate herself with the monster that had taken over her body. He wanted to say so much more, to tell her that seeing the real her had replenished his fire to find a solution to their problem. He wanted to tell her that he never once saw Depravity as Raven, and that he missed her eyes and how they could seem so guarded and yet so revealing at the same time. He wanted to go to her, to hold her hand, to apologize for everything.
He wanted to…
"Will you come to this side, Gar?" she asked again, her brow furrowing the tiniest bit. "I don't like talking with you when you're so far away." He took in a sharp breath and shook his head, cursing himself. He was such an open book when it came to his intentions, and it must have been obvious to Raven that he wanted nothing more than to be near her.
"No," he said right away, and took a step back. "I don't know what will happen if I cross."
"Nothing will happen," she said wearily. "You'll just be on this side instead of that side."
He sighed, feeling bad for ignoring her request for the third time. "If we can't get you out of here then we have to find a way to stop her," he went back to saying, diverging in such an obvious way.
"I already did," she automatically replied. If she felt any irritation to his constant declining then she didn't show it. "It was part of the research I was working on with Cyborg."
"The lobotomy?" Gar asked, his tone saying the word with apparent dislike. Rae frowned.
"I guess that means you've already seen our work."
"A lobotomy isn't the answer, Raven."
"It's not a lobotomy," she said.
"Yes, it is," he protested, and he felt the same anger he had felt when Cyborg had first shown him the files. "It might as well be, and it's too extreme, even for you."
"After everything she's put you through, you can still say all that?"
"Because it's your memory," he insisted, amazed that she was defending her position with such stoicism. "Amnesia is a big deal, and most people don't volunteer for it."
"It's not exactly voluntary at this juncture. I don't have a choice, Gar."
"There's always a choice," he mumbled, and that sparked a glimpse of impatience in her eyes.
"Is there really?" she demanded, and he could see an old argument preparing to resurface if he continued to press her on the legitimacy of having a choice. He just exhaled deeply and tired to calm his own rising impatience.
"You know what I mean. I'm only saying that we can't be at the last resort already."
"Then what's your alternative?" she asked deliberately. Almost challengingly. He looked away, shaking his head.
"It's just that this whole thing is…"
"I know exactly what it is."
"I know that you know," he almost snapped, but there was no bite to the retort. He started to inch closer towards her, teetering over the gap separating them again, but then he pulled back like he did before. "How much then?" he asked instead. He looked her in the eye again. "How much of your memory are you going to take?" She didn't answer right away. "That was the one thing you left out of your notes. I skimmed through your scrapbooks and saw that you had recorded memories from over a year ago. You're planning on using those books to help fill in the blanks afterwards, right?"
"Yes," she answered obediently. "I don't want the memories we've made as a family to suffer for the mistakes I've made as…I don't know. A person."
"Memories from over a year ago," he repeated, trying to catch her eyes again. She kept refusing to look at him. "I didn't see the other books. I don't know how far back you went. How much of your memory are you planning to erase, Raven?"
She tightened her jaw and then relaxed it. She started to say the words and then stopped. She looked behind her and then at the ground before wrapping her cardigan tighter around her body and folding her arms.
"I didn't want to tell you this way," she started to say. "I had it planned out, talking with the team and letting them know the extent of what I intended. And then I wanted to talk to you later on, just the two of us, with nothing getting in the way." She rubbed her forehead. "I just wanted time."
But time was no longer a luxury any of them could afford.
"I would have liked that," Gar said quietly, but he wasn't sure if Raven even heard him.
"My past has fashioned Depravity into what she is now," she went on, speaking with complete, unguarded fatigue. "Every memory ingrained in me and in my fractured emotions has culminated in her manic state. The only way to fix it is to start over. Not completely over, but enough so that I can rebuild her into something less…evil. Understand her more and learn that accepting her isn't the same as acting on her impulses." She glanced back at her still quiet emotion. "I've done enough research to find the spell and ritual that I need, and Cyborg helped me create that serum as a scientific counterpart to target the right areas of my brain." She tried looking at him. And failed. "But something that drastic can't be contained to only a few months, let alone a few weeks. It's too involved, too powerful to be restricted by so little time." Beast Boy stepped closer to the edge again, his fingers unconsciously flexing at his sides.
"Raven. How much of your memory?"
"Like I said, it's not a choice, Gar. It's not a number I had the freedom to pick." She closed her eyes and Gar nearly pitched himself right over the edge.
"How much?" he asked again. She hugged her arms closer to her body.
"Seven years."
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"Raven!"
"I know-,"
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" His arms were going wild and Raven reached out and tried to catch his wrist, hoping to stop him from flailing into the darkness.
"Gar, be careful-,"
"No!" He pulled back and paced away from her, upset and outraged. "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me! That's practically a decade, Rae! That's too much!"
"It's an estimated figure. It might not even be seven years."
"Really? So what, it could be longer?" he snapped, glaring at her. Her face went grim.
"Yes."
"I don't believe this!" He clawed at his hair again, too frustrated with the seemingly endless wave of one bad thing after another.
"It's the best option I have," she tried to explain calmly. "The figure isn't set because the spell is too powerful to contain. Seven years is the best case scenario."
"And you're willing to do that?" he asked, glaring at her over his shoulder. "Wipe out the last seven years of your life? Completely forget almost everything you've gone through with the Titans? With me-!"
"Willing is not the same as wanting," she said forcibly, her own grip tightening. "And you know, better than anyone, that wanting has never been easy for me. Wanting has never been enough."
Beast Boy growled and turned away again, tugging so forcibly at his clothes that he threatened to shred the fabric between his fingers. He started to wander away from her, far away, but then he suddenly turned on his heel and rushed right back to the edge, leaning towards her. "What are our other options?" he demanded for the umpteenth time. She closed her eyes.
"We're going around in circles again."
"Did you ever think that maybe it's not in your books? Maybe it's something else. Something more scientific. We could ask KF, or even Virgil*. I could ask the Patrol. Hell, we could even go as high as the JL*-,"
"For what?" she demanded, and she cursed the inkling of desperation that had crept into her voice. "What other alternative would they give other than to permanentlyeradicate me? Because that's what would happen, Garfield. The easiest way to fix this is to get rid of the problem, and they would do what the Titans aren't able to."
"You don't know that," he tried to say, but there was no confidence in his words. Raven just let out a tired breath, shaking her head. How could she explain to him that she had already gone through every possibility for hours on end, hoping that there was someone—anyone—who could fix the mess he had created? How could she portray to him the desperation she had already had to feel when she was sitting at her worktable, staring at her papers, and knowing that no one was going to come and make things better?
"We both know that," she insisted. "If they had even the slightest idea how dangerous I could be then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."
"But Raven…it's seven years. You're throwing away seven whole years." He was desperate and she knew it. He wasn't trying to hide how utterly horrified he was at the entire ordeal, but then again he wasn't very good at ever hiding anything about his feelings. "I can't go back to the way it was before," he said out loud. Raven stared stoically into his eyes even though she had been surprised by his words. "I don't want to. And yeah, that's really greedy of me, but whatever. I'm allowed to be selfish once in a while."
"What can't you go back to?" she asked slowly, and her question was sincere. "You can't go back to when things were normal and I wasn't attacking everyone I've allowed myself to care about? You can't go back to when I could sit in a room with you and not try to rip you apart in so many different ways?" She was getting upset even as she spoke, and he could tell.
"No, I'm not talking about any of that-,"
"Then what are you talking about?" she demanded, although her tone never rose above it's normal cadence. She knew it was pointless to feel irritated with him, that he never meant to cause an argument, but she was tired and her fuse was short.
"It's just….you don't know what it was like all those years ago. You were so different and I couldn't-,"
"Oh." She couldn't hide the offense in her words. "Was I that horrible?"
"I didn't say that."
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm trying to tell you that it was difficult."
"More difficult than it is now?" she pressed, truly astonished that he was trying to defend their current state of being. "So difficult that you'd rather continue this toxic way of living?" He dropped his gaze.
"Think about it Raven," he said, rubbing at his face in frustration. "We were so distant back then. No intimacy. No connection. Back then you wouldn't give me the time of day, let alone drag me into your room-." He cut his sentence off short and dropped his hand. "I didn't mean it like that. That's not what I wanted to say."
"Then what are you trying to say?" she insisted, her temper running out. "Whatever it was that we had back then cannot be worse then right now. How can you even try and ask me to live with how things are?"
"I'm not asking you to live with this, I'm just being selfish..." he trailed off, unable to put into words what he wanted to portray. He scratched at his head forcibly and squeezed his eyes shut, unable to deal with the stress of it all. It made Raven antsy, watching him crumble under the weight of their problems. "I mean, do you know why I won't come over there?" he suddenly asked.
Her brow furrowed.
He dropped to a squat, too tired to hold himself up anymore.
She shrugged, wondering why they had been talking for so long and he hadn't once tried to touch her. And why she hadn't been insistent to touch him.
"Think about it Rae," he said, waving his hands around lazily. "If I went over to you, do you think I'd want to do anything else? Do you really think I'd be disciplined enough to fulfill any sort of responsibility?" He smiled a very disappointed looking smile. "Because the answer is no. I'm not that disciplined. I know it and you know it." He gestured lazily to the stretch of darkness separating them. "If I cross this thing then I'd never want to go back, because then I'd be with you and I wouldn't really care about anything else." He rolled his eyes, as if the whole idea of him abandoning his duties was just so bloody annoying. "But even though I know that staying away from you is the right thing to do…I absolutely hate it.
"I'm doing what I know is right, but it burns. I'm looking at you and I want to be near you, but I'm staying away and I feel like I want to break something in half." He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. "And this is what it will be like if you erase your memory. I'm going to have to just stand there next you without being able to hold you, and that just sounds so terrible. After everything we've been through together, after Terra and Malchior, after the Beast and the coming of Trigon, after all our rooftops talks and our afternoons playing chess by the window, we'd suddenly go back to being strangers again." He grumbled like an old man and Raven unconsciously took a half step forward. "Why would I want that?"
"No one would," she agreed softly. "I don't want to lose those memories any more than you do, but if that's my payment to end Depravity's rage then I'd give them up." She paused a moment and then added, "I'd gladly give them up." He stared at her, his head resting in his hand. Miserable wasn't a suitable description for the look on his face.
"Gladly?"
"Yes."
"You didn't have to add that part."
She exhaled deeply. "It's the truth."
"Then tell me that you want me," he said suddenly, closing his eyes. Her brow creased in confusion.
"What? Why?"
"Because I want to hear it. I don't want to hear that you'd gladly trade our memories for anything. I want to hear that you want me, because all I've been saying is how much I want you."
"I want you," she said without hesitation, but the monotonous way she said it made the remark seem unfeeling and insincere. "But I won't have you if it'll break you, and that's exactly what's happening." He opened his eyes.
"So you're leaving."
"I'm not going anywhere, Garfield."
"You are. You're going back to the past while I have to stay in this present." He stood back up and turned away, shoulders slumped. "That's a lifetime away."
"Not a lifetime."
"It won't be the same," he said. She shrugged, tired of their conversation.
"That's what I'm counting on, remember?"
"You hated me seven years ago."
She rubbed at the space between her eyes, grimacing. "I never hated you."
"Maybe it wasn't hate-,"
"It wasn't, Garfield."
"But it was different from now."
"It wasn't hate."
"But it wasn't love either."
Then they went silent.
Gar's entire body turned to rock. Raven's eyes went wide.
They froze.
Neither seemed to be breathing.
She hadn't expected him to actually say it, and judging by the rigid way he was standing he hadn't expected to say it either. Behind her she heard her silent emoticlone shift her position, but she remained silent.
It was one thing to have his emotions burn themselves silently into her heart. It was quite another thing to hear the word 'love' leave his lips.
"I never said this was love," Raven spoke carefully, her words measured. She felt scared, more scared than she had in a long time. And angry. But her voice was calm and her body still.
"But I did," he answered, his back still turned to her. "You just never knew."
If the world seemed bleak before then now it was doused in a sickly grey. Raven felt like wilting to the ground and going to sleep in the hopes that everything was just a very long, drawn out dream. She stared at the back of Beast Boy's head and thought about the day they had spent alone in the Tower, watching old movies and trying to experience some semblance of normality in one another's presence. She remembered staring at the back of his head then too, wondering if she could be a leading lady in a Cary Grant film and be as beautiful and romantic and delicate and strong and feminine. She had tried it, tried to touch him in one of those movie moment ways where a simple caress of the fingers was enough to portray all the passion and devotion one person could have for someone else. But when she had reached for his shoulder all she had thought about doing was ripping the clothes off his back, and then ripping the flesh from his bones, and then breaking him from the inside out until he screamed for her to stop.
And nothing, not even him loving her, could erase that kind of evil.
"I knew," she said to him, and he turned around to face her. She tugged her sleeves over her hands. "I knew."
The length of their silence pulled itself taut before Garfield broke the tension.
"And?" he asked, somewhat hopeful, somewhat cynical. She stared at him.
"And I'm not going to say it back to you," she said evenly. "You know I'm not going to say it." He was so still that it was frightening.
"Because you can't."
"No." She shook her head. "Because I don't want to."
"Ouch," he whispered, and instead of the word sounding like an ill-conceived joke, it just came out as a very sad and pathetic response. "Have I ever told you you're cruel, Rae? Like, sadistically so."
She already knew that.
"I already know that," she said. She walked to the very edge of the chasm carefully and stared into the darkness. "Gar."
"What?" He spat the word out to hide the embarrassment radiating off of him. She rolled her shoulder, trying to take away the ache in her neck from carrying so much stress and anxiety.
"The reason I won't say it is because…." She faltered, trying to find the right words to explain herself. "Because I don't want this to be our love story."
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He was confused. His valiant failure of a love confession had just been flung back in his face, but then her words had blind-sided him completely. He didn't know if the words had been a figment of his imagination or not.
"What?" he asked again, knowing that he sounded more than a little dumb. She continued to stare into the space separating them, reaching a hand out as if she could feel the darkness rising up to meet her.
"I don't want this to be our love story," she repeated, more certain this time. They were words that could have been said in breathy whispers, with lovers in each other's arms and silence surrounding them. Instead they were words said with purpose and resilience; words that came out as a declaration of defiance. "If I said it," she went on, speaking so calmly and clearly, using the same voice she would use during a debriefing, "if I told you that I loved you, then it would make everything we've gone through—every twisted turn—the events that would make up our love story, and that's not what I want. I don't want to justify anything we've put ourselves through." She frowned. "If there's a 'happily ever after' then that makes this a fairy tale. And this is not a fairy tale. This isn't something that deserves to be tied up with a pretty bow and called a gift." She sighed. "Can't we be entitled to more than this?" she whispered, her question directed to the chasm before her.
Garfield huffed a breath and ran a hand through his hair again. He felt like he'd just been running and his lungs were about to burst open. He wanted to pitch himself over the edge and feel the wind in his face.
She loved him.
And she had said it in the only way Raven could: with contempt and distrust and a forlorn sense of hopelessness.
But she had said it.
And she was right.
He didn't want their journey to finding true love to be littered with agony. He didn't want their story to have brutal moments of self-inflicted pain in a safe room, or a battle in a forest with a fist crushing bone. He didn't want their reason for loving each other to be born from desperate nights of physical release, or lies hidden in the shadows of their bedrooms.
There had never been white curtains and rose petals, but that didn't mean they didn't want them. Or didn't deserve them.
"I don't want this to be our love story either," he agreed, and then he looked over to the emoticlone sitting in the distance. She nodded to him and then turned her head to look into the black. "So then what happens if I agree to help you?" he asked slowly, carefully. "If I agree to help with…erasing your memory…what would I need to do?" He grimaced at the words. In front of him Raven looked back up.
"You being here is how we'll be able to do this," she answered, suddenly and instantaneously business-like. "You were able to pass through my portal mirror because everything happened at the right moment, and you knew it was the right moment because of her," she said, gesturing languidly behind her. "Which means she has a connection to the outside world. And if she has a connection then that means the ritual can still be done." She breathed. "We just need to split it between two different planes."
"Cy does his part out there while you do your part in here?" he finished. She nodded. "Are you strong enough for that? To perform that much magic?"
"Not on my own. But there are still some of my clones that are untouched, like her. Maybe together we can do it." She dragged her sleeve across her cheek and it made her look very childlike. "We just need to time it right."
"How?"
"Luck."
Gar shook his head. "We don't have luck."
"That's never stopped us before." She looked around and then back at him. "You know," she started to say, and her tone had softened considerably. "I could…take you back with me."
He knew exactly what she meant without asking her to elaborate.
Take him back.
Erase his memory too.
Make it so they could both start over.
And if he did that then he wouldn't have to suffer on his own. He wouldn't have to stand there, loving her, while she stared at him without a clue to who he was or what they had been through together. They would start fresh, maybe find their way back to each other again or else follow different paths. Maybe they'd be happier with other people, or perhaps they'd find a way to come together without all the secrets and lies and manipulative toxins. Maybe it would be better.
So much better.
"No," he said simply, and said nothing more. She understood and nodded once.
"I didn't think so."
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There was so much more that needed to be said, so many more circles they both wanted to run around over and over again just to kill time. But they were both fully aware that the world stopped for no one, and time had finally caught up to their safe little haven.
It started with a sound, like a hiss of air coming from a far off distance. The darkness around them started to change and they both looked up at the dome of black that surrounded their rocks.
"What's happening?" Gar asked, the ground beneath his feet growing unsteady even though nothing was moving.
"What else? We've run out of time," Raven said, her calm exterior marred by the death grip she had on her cardigan. "Maybe she's found us. Maybe we've reached our limit." They both looked at each other at the same time, their expressions torn between fear and regret. "Maybe I'm dying?"
"You're not dying," he snapped, angry if she was joking and furious if she was sincere.
"Maybe." The world shuddered violently around them and they braced themselves at the shock. "I don't know what's going to happen," she said, and it was one of the rare times when Raven sounded truly at a loss of options. "I don't know if you'll go back after this. You might be stuck here forever."
"So could you," he said, and he didn't do a very good job at hiding the terror in his voice. "I could try using the spell again-,"
"You could try." She breathed deeply. "But I doubt it would work." Gar staggered a bit and threw out his arms for balance, his eyes darting around for some sort of support.
"But I could go back," he said. She nodded.
"You could."
"And if I do…"
"Tell the others. Perform the ritual."
"What if it's not timed right? We won't know."
And then she smiled at him, laughing silently at a joke that had no humor. "No. We won't know."
So much uncertainty. Everything had so much uncertainty.
He gazed at her as the blackness around them swirled with power and the ground beneath their feet began to quake. He wanted to soak up her image, to remember that everything that would happen from this point on would be because he never wanted to see her look so downtrodden. He wanted to remember not because the sight was sentimental, but because it made him angry. And if he were angry then he'd never return to this moment ever again.
Before he could say anything Raven was leaping over the chasm that still separated them, landing nimbly on her feet right in front of him. He didn't even have time to be surprised before her arms were linking around his neck and she was embracing him so tightly that it almost hurt. It threw his mind back to a time before, when she had come striding out of her room and had hugged him then, all of her trust seeping into him from such an unexpected action.
"I am sorry," she said in his ear and she squeezed him tighter. Despite his abstinence in their distance Garfield felt himself wrap his arms around her as well, holding her close and relishing in the touch.
They fit so perfectly together.
"So am I," he said, burying his face into her shoulder. "Damnit Rae, I told you I wouldn't want to leave if I got near you," he groaned. "Why do you never listen?"
"I'm sorry for that too."
He pulled back and kissed her gently on the cheek, the feel of her skin on his lips so miserably blissful that he felt like crying. It wasn't exactly a proud feeling, but he couldn't stop the wave of emotional baggage.
If they succeeded in their plan, when would he be able to do something like this again?
She cupped his face with her hands and kissed him fully on the mouth, rising on her toes like she had done so many times before. He let out a surprised sound and the air around them seemed to tighten like a vacuum.
They did not ravish each other and they did not consume each other in heat. There was no spark of sexual ferocity or painful stab of needs gone unmet, because there was no room for such trivial things. All that was there were two people in love saying goodbye, and something of such profundity wasn't filled with cheap, wonton desires. As Garfield held her close and relished in the slow taste of her mouth, all that went through his mind was how he was going to get her back.
No matter what, he was going to get his Rae back.
They broke apart slowly, reluctant to separate. He held her fast and she didn't fight out of his arms.
"You won't remember anything at all?" he whispered, leaning his forehead against hers. She dropped her hands to his shirt and lightly laid them over his chest, too scared to put more pressure, too hesitant to not touch him at all.
"I won't," she said. "But maybe she will. She's different. Stronger than the others." She didn't need to say whom she was talking about.
"So she might remember me."
"Perhaps."
Their surroundings continued to wane.
"How much?"
"Not much," she said. "Maybe a game of chess. Or a book borrowed in the middle of the night." He touched her hair and she closed her eyes sleepily. "A fight in the hallway. A ball falling into the pool."
Gar kissed her once, and then twice, and then slowly again even though time wanted them to rush. "That's not anything," he moaned. She shook her head.
"It's not."
The ground beneath them cracked and they jerked downward. She rose up and met his lips one last time, trying to pull from him as much as she could as her mindscape fell apart. It was truly astonishing how potent her kisses were, how they made Gar tremble and his head feel light and dizzy. He splayed his hands along her back, trying to imprint her slender frame into his touch.
In the distance the emoticlone vanished.
"Don't wait for me," she suddenly said, pulling back and making him look her in the eye. "I know you, I know how you are, and you're stubborn and you won't listen to me."
"You never do, so why should I?"
"Putting me back together will take a long time," she said. "And it has to be done the way Cyborg and I planned it, or else everything will just fall back on the same path." The ground sank another foot and they gripped each other harder. "You can't wait that long."
"Not your choice." He kissed her neck and then buried his face in her shoulder. He leaned his weight into her and she held him fast. "What's your best memory of us?" he asked, speaking fast against the adrenaline in his chest. "Your favorite. Tell me."
"I don't know."
"Just pick one. Hurry."
A harsh wind blew and whipped at their entangled bodies.
"The first time we met," she said, her breath against his collarbone. "You made me laugh when I didn't mean to." She felt him smile against her shoulder.
"Huh. That's my favorite too." Something far away cracked and the sound hit them with the blast of a sonic boom. "We'll fix this," he said because he needed to speak against the panic he was feeling. "We'll fix this. Say it with me."
"Say what?"
"What we always say when we rush into the impossible."
The ground gave away and they went tumbling into the oblivion of Raven's mind, not knowing if they were headed for salvation or for an uncertain and unprecedented end.
"Titans together," Raven whispered, and then they plunged into the frigid cold of nothingness.
.
.
.
*Virgil = Static Shock
*JL = Justice League (I refrained from calling them the 'League' so as not to confuse them with the League of Shadows).