(A/N)- This, ah... this started to hurt a little bit halfway through writing it. Set during "How Long Is Forever?" because apparently I like pain.
Disclaimer: Stiiiiiil not owning the Teen Titans here. Drat, bummer, and all that jazz.
RobStar Week 2023, Day 4 - Missing
The gears near the ceiling rumbled as he stepped into the dimly lit room. Nightwing didn't blink, his eyes already adjusting.
He made a clinical sweep, glancing in each of the corners of the room to check for hidden threats. Satisfied for the moment that nothing had gotten past his security system, he made his way to the computer control on the far wall.
His boots echoed emptily in the hollow space, dull echoes bouncing off the surfaces. Aside from his footsteps and the occasional hiss of steam, it was oppressively quiet.
With a flick of a hand on the console the system booted rapidly to life, cool blue artificial light falling across his face. The camera feeds arrayed themselves on the topmost bank of screens, showing silent snow-covered angles of Jump City. His OS waited for his input, blinking green cursor in the DOS window that had auto-opened on the screen.
Nightwing reached for the keyboard. He happened to glance at the other icons on the desktop.
His hand stilled, hovering over the space bar.
He stared, confused, at the small red circle imposed over the shortcut for the messaging app.
The little dot stared back at him for a long moment as his mind blanked out, bewildered.
He had a message?
He never got messages.
Cyborg was the only one who still had his contact info and in all the years he'd been set up here he had never...
He was frozen for a portent minute. Warily, he moved the cursor to hover over the icon.
He hesitated for one second longer before he clicked it.
The message opened. It was from Cyborg, like he'd thought, and consisted of a single line:
You were right. She's back.
Nightwing gaped at the words, uncomprehending for a tense eternity. His eyes widened abruptly, the dawning realization of what Cyborg meant hitting him like a bowling ball.
Yanking out his desk chair, he sat down and flipped through camera feeds, flashes of the city blipping one by one in rapid succession as he searched.
Downtown business district, nothing. Central Park, nothing. The abandoned factory section, nothing.
Finally, he found an angle that showed a flying streak floating over the city. Breath hitching, he adjusted the programming of his surveillance system, directing it to track the anomaly.
The system filed through a few different cameras before one caught a close enough glimpse.
The air left his lungs like his breath had been punched out of him. His back hit the chair solidly as he sat, gaping, a vice of emotion squeezing around his throat.
Vibrant red hair. Orange skin. Purple garments accented with metal bracers.
His heart was sputtering, like it had forgotten how to beat. He could hear his pulse loud in his ears.
It couldn't be...
Starfire.
His head spun, sitting there dumbly, just watching her as the cameras tracked her across the city. With a rush, he hurled forward, typing out a reply to Cyborg.
When? was all he managed to get out, before his impatience made him smack the button to send.
The wait between the response seemed interminable.
A new message blipped.
She's looking for Warp. She's trying to set things right. She needs help.
Frantic fragmented disjointed thoughts collided in his head, but his body was moving automatically, sliding to another panel, scanning for chronol distortions. Within minutes he was on Warp's trail.
Long buried emotion threatened his composure, rising up like heat in his face, stinging his eyes. He clamped down on the surge, shoving it back under the lid he kept all his feelings under.
Focus, he told himself.
Cold professionalism dropped over him again, as he leapt from the seat and stalked back out. Though his body was charged up with adrenaline he kept it controlled, his face as expressionless as ever.
The biting chill of the outside air clawed at his face, scraped his lungs as he moved silently across rooftops. Nothing slowed him down. He didn't stop to think. If he stopped moving, he would start to double-guess, question himself. He had to keep going fast enough that the grief couldn't reach him.
At the same time, he pushed back against the warm spark starting to pop inside his chest, the faint flickerings of hope. He was just going to check this out, that was all. Investigate Cyborg's claim. He couldn't afford not to. He'd promised he would never stop looking.
He made it to the last location his scanner had pinged Warp's tech at. It was an open boulevard, and there were two figures there, unusual since these roads were usually empty and abandoned these days.
One wore gold-plated armor. Encased helmet, black slacks. Nightwing would know him anywhere. Warp. The other...
A sharp splinter of hot iron felt like it stabbed up through his stomach, piercing his heart and lungs. His limbs pumped faster; he leapt from the roof to the street below, his only goal to reach her before the blast charging in Warp's weapon did.
Robotically, he flung himself at Warp, anger burning under his sternum that the man would dare raise his hand against her again. The villain weighed practically nothing to the surge of strength flowing through him; as soon as he found his feet he was throwing Warp down an alleyway.
Warp hit the wall so hard it cracked, but Nightwing wasn't done, hurling a handful of explosive disks.
They popped off in the empty silence like thunderclaps, smoke and fire filling the alleyway. Nightwing punched through the smoke with a yell but the villain was already gone, slipped away like mist.
One long slow inhale and he calmed himself, the hot fury inside him siphoning away. Control. He wasn't fifteen anymore.
But he stood and turned around and she was. She was small and wide-eyed and so young; it was boggling to be looking down at her. She seemed so much tinier and thinner, standing timidly at the entrance to the alley, green eyes like wide plates, astonished, fearful, and a bit uncertain.
She was breathtaking, stepping from the shadows of the past unchanged like some kind of immortal fae... and he couldn't touch her.
A somber shroud darkened over him. She couldn't stay. She was trying to go back, of course she was trying to go back. She didn't belong here, in this bleak, hopeless future. The damage was done. His timeline would never go back to the way it was.
She couldn't stay.
He steeled himself firmly, posture somber, shuttering away his heart, and all the things he wanted to tell her.
I love you. I missed you. Please don't go away again.
Instead he said:
"It's good to see you again."
-TT-
There was some part of him that felt lightened, free of some heavy weight, even though he knew she would only be here temporarily.
"Watch your step," he told her, leading the way down the stairs. "The third stair from the bottom is a little warped."
It squeaked under her foot as she put weight on it and she gawped, yelping a little, startled.
He turned his face so she wouldn't see him smile.
"We can track Warp through the chronol distortion he causes around him," he told her, pressing a button on his gauntlet and bringing up his personal HUD, which showed a little holographic map of the scans his supercomputer up in the main room were running on the city. "Temporal anomalies cause vibrations in the air molecules that the scanners can pick up."
Switching off the display he went for the weapons rack, loading his utility belt back up with all the basics. He'd left with a severely depleted supply when he'd gotten Cyborg's message, and he wanted to be prepared for anything in the upcoming fight.
"We hit him hard, but carefully. Chances are the tech in his suit is the only thing that can send you home. We don't want to damage it," he was rambling absently, loading up freeze discs and wingdings. "Hopefully the others will come help, but I think we can still take him if they don't."
"Robin?"
For some reason, this time, her voice froze him in place like ice, a lasso looping tight around his throat and squeezing, rendering him incapable of speech for a moment.
Nightwing's mind strained for control, his adam's apple bobbing harshly as he swallowed.
"Have... have I done something... wrong?" she asked.
His head whipped around, against his better judgement. "What?" he blurted. "No! No of course not, Star," he rushed to assure her, the rest of him turning around to face her. "Why would you think that?" he asked in dismay, cracks showing in his unflappable expression, unable to hide the distress that pinched his eyes.
She ducked her head, softly, some kind of awful sadness in her eyes. "It is just..." she began, then fiddled with her hands a long moment, wringing them. "You... you have not touched me once since we were reunited," she said, her voice so quiet he could barely hear it. "You have barely even looked at me."
Screams scraped against the sides of his head and it was all Nightwing could do to keep his expressionless mask in place.
Starfire clutched her hands tighter around the edge of the blanket, the only display of affection he had allowed himself to give her, shrinking in on herself like a wilting wildflower.
"I... I know that it is... different now," she strained out, "and you cannot reassure me in the way you might have when we were younger..." She was almost biting her lip, eyes watery and welling. "But I... you feel so distant and strange and I—I cannot help but feel like you don't want—"
He broke.
In an instant his arms were wrapped around her, and he was fifteen and terrified again, his face buried in her hair, embracing her with all his might and shuddering, silent sobs rattling up through him.
"You were gone," he whispered. "You were gone, Starfire. You disappeared." His throat was clogged, snot and inelegant emotion choking him. "I never stopped looking. I couldn't. But you were gone for so so long that I just—"
A strangled hiccup escaped him.
"—It—It hurt too much, I—"
Her hands pressed on either side of his face, pulling his head firmly back in front of hers, so she could look him directly in the face.
"I am sorry," she whispered tremulously, voice wavering. "I am sorry you had to go through that. I am sorry I was not there. I am here now," she told him.
Nightwing sniffed back his breath, senses tingling, struggling to regain his calm. "It's okay," he said, even though it wasn't, even though everything in him wanted to shatter. He forced himself to take a step back, distance himself from her warm touch.
He inhaled and exhaled, getting himself back under control. She watched him with concern, familiar and touching, her gaze like a soothing balm on his soul.
She can't stay, he reminded himself. He had to send her back. To her time, her Robin.
He wouldn't let himself go through this again.
A firm, burning determination shone in his eyes as locked eyes with her.
"Let's get you home," he said fiercely, conviction ringing out through every part of him as she ignited fire in his bones.
They would set this right.
(A/N)- Ow ow ow ow my heart.