Deadman

Dead: adjective 1) no longer alive. 2) (of a part of the body) numb. 3) displaying no emotion. 4) no longer relevant or important. 5) lacking activity or excitement. 6) devoid of living things. 7) (of equipment) not functioning. 8) complete; absolute: dead silence.

I guess you could say it started when they took her. I mean, really it had been going on long before that. But when the phone call came, I felt the rage welling up into my heart from the pit of my stomach. How dare they touch her.

While Cyborg and Beast Boy worked on tracing her via a tracking device implanted in her communicator, I worked out my aggressions in the training room. Or so I said. Really, I was preparing to rip off their heads. Kicking a dead bag of stuffing does little but release endorphins and adrenalin. Revenge satisfies the lust for blood.

I'd never really felt it so strongly before. I'd often been told by many wiser than myself that my obsessions could get in the way of my judgement. I'd never really cared. I still don't, to be honest. I sure as hell didn't then. All I wanted was to see them suffer for hurting her. No one loved her as I did.

I didn't notice it then, but as I recall it, I remember Raven watching me distinctly as I trained, her expression inscrutable as always. Perhaps that was how she knew to follow me the instant Cyborg relayed the news to me.

"Warehouse, corner of 62 and 3rd, second pier."

Warehouses, I thought as I road down the streets of Jump City on my bike. What the hell is it about warehouses these guys love so much?

I guess in the back of my mind I could sense her, following me, watching me. But it only served to heighten my fury. I was a volcano ready to erupt. And I was going to take this whole city down with me.

By the time I got to the warehouse, they all had bolted. All but one. He was standing over Starfire's limp and bloody form, doing God knows what. There was a gun in his back pocket.

"Get away from her," I said through gritted teeth, my chest heaving.

Immediately, the guy turned, looking surprised to see me. "Well, well, well, what took you so long?"

"I told you to step away from her," I said, trying to keep calm.

"Where're your buddies, buddy?" the guy asked, ignoring me again. My eyes narrowed.

"They'll be here," I said. I didn't know if it were true or not. Beast Boy had a busted arm after a particularly harsh wrestling match with a villain, so he couldn't fly over here, and Cyborg still needed to replace a flat on the T-Car. Which means if he was driving it, it wouldn't be here for a while.

"So, you bring the cash?"

"All this is about money..." I muttered, shaking my head as I fingered my bo staff. "All this trouble... for a lousy couple a thousand bucks. Listen carefully. I'm going to ask you one last time. Step away from my friend."

The man smiled foolishly as he scoffed my requests. "Come on, kid, all I want is the cash. Give it over, or... or the girl gets it." His hand reached behind him, probably to the gun in his back pocket.

My eyes narrowed as I glared at him. It was clear to me now that we were on two separate planets, in two totally different galaxies. "I warned you," I said, before leaping out at him, bo staff extended and quicker than a cheetah on steroids, I knocked him off his feet. Just as quick, I snatched the gun out of his pocket.

We stood there a moment, frozen. His eyes were wide and I was panting, but not from exhaustion, from all the anger. He knew the tables were turned. If I hadn't had the power before, I definitely had it then. I held it in the cold steely palm of my hand.

It wasn't that hard, really. People always say how they could never do it, but I don't understand what they mean. It was so easy. And no morals stood in my way. Somehow, though, I felt that they should have. For some reason, they weren't there. Maybe it was the rage. Damn emotion. And they wonder why Raven keeps it locked up. But once you do away with all the morals, thoughts of repercussions really don't mean anything anymore. I was just doing my job. Cleaning the streets of scum. It's what I did.

Besides, they hurt Star.

He'd only brought it upon himself. Never mess with the Titans. Moreover, never mess with me.

It was loud and silent at the same time. I mean, there was the shot itself, that obviously made some sort of ruckus, but it was more like a snap than a boom to my ears. He didn't scream. Just a short intake of breath as his mouth formed a small 'o' of surprise. He slumped against the wall and slowly slid down it, his fingers tangled in the blood from his stomach as he clutched it, thinking that perhaps holding it would make it all better.

I walked over to him, my eyes as cold as a killer's should be. He stared at me with bulging desperate eyes as his mouth began to fill with blood. He spluttered and coughed, gasping for breath. He fell over on his side and coughed some more, crimson staining the floor as it poured from his mouth and stomach. I stared at him, unmoving, for fifteen minutes while he was poisoned with the toxins of his own stomach and intestines. I stared at him and he stared right back, until he stopped seeing, glass eyes of a porcelain doll, the blood still burbling forth from his corrupted lips.

It was then that I felt her full presence. Probably because she was standing right behind me. And I hate it when people stand right behind me. I knew she'd seen the whole thing. I knew she'd waited there, with me, for fifteen minutes while he twisted and writhed on the floor in his own blood. I hadn't moved and neither had she.

"Hey, Raven, how's it going?" I said flatly, still staring at the deadman.

She didn't speak. Perhaps she hoped that with her silence she could make me think that I had imagined her presence. But then again, Raven knew better.

I sighed and glanced at Starfire, still unconscious, somewhat cut up like she'd been dragged through bushes or something, but she'd be fine. Then I looked back to the bloody heap at my feet.

"The others will be here soon," Raven said at last in her low dry voice. "They'll want to know why they have a corpse on their hands."

"Self defense," I said evenly, throwing down the gun. "He left me no choice." The words came out in such bitter coldness that even I didn't recognize them as coming from my mouth. I turned away and began to walk towards Starfire. I kneeled down and pushed a strand of her hair away from her face and brushed her cheek with my fingers. Yes, she was going to be just fine.

"Do you know what you have done?" Raven asked me across the empty warehouse. I put my hand on Starfire's forearm.

"Not really," I answered. "I know I did right."

I heard Raven inhale to reply, but before she could, Cyborg was in the doorway to the warehouse.

"Holy... What the hell went on in here, Rob?"

Raven and I turned around, mirror images of inscrutability. I looked to Raven to reply for me. But she only shrugged.

"Self defense," she said simply.

I frowned at her, but said nothing. She didn't even look at me.

Cyborg shrugged. "Whatever. We better call the cops to clean up this mess. I know I'm not." He looked around and saw Starfire and his mouth opened. His tongue shot out and licked his lips as he shook his head. "Damn... What'd they do to her?"

"She'll live," I said dully, looking at her intently.

All of a sudden, Beast Boy appeared in the doorway, out of breath. "What'd I miss?" he panted. Then, his eyes widened as he surveyed the scene. "Wow, I missed a lot."

"Where were you?" I asked.

Beast Boy smiled. "Chasing down the fools I saw running away from this shack. You best believe I caught 'em, too."

Cyborg hit him. "With a little help from the cops. I figured I'd stop by here to see how you and Rae were holding up."

"We held up fine," Raven said coldly. There was an odd silence as her voice echoed off the tin walls of the warehouse.

Finally, awkwardly, Cyborg said, "Well, uh, let's get Star home and into bed, yeah?"

I avoided her for only a day by sequestering myself in the training room. They were all afraid to approach me. Except her.

"Did you see this?" she asked me as I let out my aggressions on the dummy, aiming low but kicking too high. When I didn't respond, I heard a rustling of paper as she read out the headline aloud. "'Boy Wonder, Killing Crime,' it says. Subtitle: 'The Controversy of the Mason Murder.' This editor thinks you did the right thing. She says the guy was wanted for kidnap, larceny and possible rape and that you did the city a favor by shooting him." She turned the page. "A reader begs to differ. She claims to have lost a son to a sentence of life in prison after an unfair trial where he was falsely accused. She's glad Jump City doesn't support the death penalty. She says that the whole eye for an eye thing is barbaric and out of date, and that yes, he should have been punished, but not by your hand. She finishes saying 'turn the other cheek, like Jesus.' It's like OJ, only it wasn't your wife you killed." Raven put down the paper and I felt her eyes burning into the back of my skull.

"I know you haven't been looking at me," said Raven. "At least not in the eye. You knew I was there. Watching you. But never once did you turn around and ask for my help. Not then, and not since."

I stopped hitting the dummy and my arms dropped to my side. I stared at it a moment, its marker drawn eyes and pressure points, the gray color of the material that covered it. "It's not like you did anything to stop me," I said quietly.

I heard her sigh. "I was hoping you would stop yourself."

"The game of 'who's gonna do the right thing first' never works with me, Rae. I always win."

"You win everything, don't you?" Raven said. "No matter the consequence."

"That editor said it, I saved lives!" I cried in my defense, turning on my heal to face her at last.

"By completely shattering another!" I knew then why I had refused to look her in the eye ever since it had happened. The power of her stare made me falter. And I hated faltering.

She sneered at me with all the disgust she could muster and it hurt me more than I'd ever admit. "You don't know how lucky you are. They treated you like a police shooting an uncooperative criminal because he had no alternative. You got off scot free and you don't even show any remorse at what you have done. That guy had a kid, you know. A son named Alex. He's seven years old. His mother died of breast cancer two years ago and his dad's been trying to make ends meat ever since any way he could. That newspaper editor was wrong. There were instances of thievery, that's been proven, and one or two quick ransom attempts. He never raped a girl in his life. And he definitely never shot anyone."

"Not that they can prove," I hissed.

"You don't get it, do you?" Raven said.

"No, you don't get it!" I snapped at her, eyes wide. "I don't care!"

Raven stood, cold and stoic like a statue in a graveyard. "You fool," she said in an arctic whisper. "I... I'm sorry, Robin. I felt bad for you before. The guilt of having killed a man... but now, I feel worse, because you're lost. You've fallen so deep that I can't find you anymore. Not until you find yourself."

And with a sweep of her cape, she turned to leave.

After I heard the door slam and her footsteps echoing down the hall, I slumped against the wall and cried.

I didn't speak for days after that. Occasionally, Raven would look up at me over her breakfast. I could feel her gaze, but I'd never meet it. Sometimes I'd look up and catch her dark eyes a moment, but then she'd look away and mechanically eat her food again. But I saw into her long enough to know there was something else there other than disgust.

Starfire was up and about. She was so cheerful no one wanted to tell her what I did. Eventually she found out. She looked at me with different eyes after that. Mixed with... flattery and disappointment. She knew I did it for her, but she'd always hoped I'd never do anything like that, even if it was in her defense. She cornered me in the hall once and tried to speak, but no words came out so she left me alone, looking defeated.

It was then that I truly regretted my actions. Their looks of estrangement, the newspaper debates, even Raven's harsh words could never make me feel as bad as Starfire's hurt eyes.

I knew what I had done. I had killed a man. It wasn't jail people feared when they contemplated murder, it was this. The hell your conscience throws you into without a second glance. I was left there, alone to burn and writhe in a dark pit of loneliness, always isolated because no one could understand.

For a while I had tried to escape it by shrouding it in a cloud of apathy. But Raven could see through that, because she has the same defense mechanism. And I suppose she knows what it can do to you. Bottled energy, if not let out, escapes by slowly gnawing away at your soul until you're hollow with nothing but the apathy and that merciless energy you tried to hide from. It always finds you.

And so does she.

Beast Boy had suggested a club they could go to just to get out of the Tower which felt a little dark lately. Cyborg and Starfire eagerly agreed, but I opted to stay home. Raven looked at our friends then at me and told them that she had some meditating to do. Shrugging it off, they left, and Raven and I were alone in the black empty Tower.

It was raining that night. After they left, I walked over to the couch and turned on the TV, listening to the rain outside drizzling down, trickling down the windows. She sat down beside me and we blindly stared at the TV a while. I don't even know what we were watching.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

"I know," she replied, eyes on the TV. I looked over at her, sitting there beside me on the couch, staring unseeing at the TV and her eyes reminded me of the deadman I had left in the warehouse for the police to take care of. I never even knew his name. I couldn't stand it; I looked away.

"I... When they took Starfire, it made me so angry. How anyone could... You'd think Starfire'd have been able to blow them to bits but who'd have anticipated the E they slipped into her... God, the thought of it made me want to vomit. I felt so cold and nothing mattered but getting her back and seeing those responsible rightfully punished. I went in there... intending on killing him. Hell, I would have killed them all if they'd been there. And that thought chills me to the bone."

Only the sound of the chattering TV shot through the strange silence her gaze left behind.

I looked out the window at the small rivulets of water and beyond that, blackness, darkness into infinity where there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope, no soul, no redemption, just an empty void of black where I was lost and never would be found again because I was dead and rotting, my carcass being eaten by roaches and worms, the blood– his blood– pouring from my veins, my eyes, my mouth, staining my teeth, staining my coffin, staining my life, and– did I care?– not a damn bit or so I said to her and to all of them, the reporters, nothing mattered because nothing was alive to begin with, not really, we were all dead, always, all of us, and it didn't matter if one man stopped walking, breathing, talking, I was just the same as him and he was just the same as me, birds of a feather, flocking together like good ducklings should, following the mother hen, leading us into empty space where the vultures waited– no, nothing waited, because that's what Hell is– an empty void of nothingness.

There's nothing worse inside this world or out of it than being alone, than having it all for nothing, being afraid of nothing, working, living, loving for nothing. Man's greatest fear. That's what religion was really for, I realized. It was to sooth man's fear of the nothingness that comes with everything we do, live, work, love, and die. Yes, even death is nothing, nothing, because nothing is what rules us, nothing is what becomes us, and nothing is what kills us.

We're afraid of the dark because it represents our most primal fear. The absence of light, which in turn leads to the absence of life, the absence of everything except the nothingness.

Luckily, before my mind could ramble further into the depths of the void, she reached out a hand, turned on the night light, closed the closet and brought the little boy out.

"I know, Robin."

The words were so simple, so succinct yet so full of everything I needed to hear. My mind had been gone for so long I wasn't even sure what she was referring to, what she knew, what she didn't know, but in that moment it felt like she knew everything, like she knew the world, like she knew me, and like she knew the nothingness like it was nothing new. And as I turned to face her I realized, No, there couldn't just be nothing, because there was Raven. And there would always be Raven. And there would be Starfire and Cyborg and Beast Boy. Life was not gone. But that meant that neither was death. Nothing really was nothing anymore. Everything was something. Including what I'd done.

"I've been dead a while," I whispered.

She simply nodded. "I know," she said again. She kept saying it and all it did was egg me on to find out if she really did know me better than I knew myself. I realized then that I didn't need someone to tell me I was wrong for killing him, to scold me or to give me advice. I just needed someone to tell me that they understood, and that's all. To know there was someone there, listening, understanding. That's all I needed.

"I've been trying to sort things out without really sorting it out. I was hiding from it for a long time, I didn't know who he was, I didn't want to know and all I knew was that it didn't matter. But Raven, Starfire, she changed something in me and I knew I had to be like I used to be, return to life, be myself again, and I knew you were right. I was lost, Rae, but I found myself again."

She turned to me and smiled. "I know," she said. "And I'm glad."

I returned the smile. "Will you help me? I... I look back on it and it doesn't feel like me. I was a man possessed, I have been for days, and... I just want to make things right again. With me, with us, and with that little boy of his."

"You can't make it right for the boy," Raven said. "And nothing you can say will quell his pain. But you can make things better here. I'm sorry for what you've done, Robin, but I'm glad that at last you admit that you are too. I know what it's like, to keep these things bottled up inside, and it's hard. You did wrong, you know that, but what's done is done, and now that it's over, we have to continue living for those who aren't. That's the best you can do. Just live."

"Right," I said, watching her blankly as she rose to her feet and turned off the TV. "Live for those who can't." It was a little cliche, and somewhat cheesy for Raven, but somehow it made a lot of the blackness melt away. It wasn't a quick answer, there was no quick answer, but it was a step and she was right.

She began to walk away towards her bedroom when she paused and looked back at me. "Edward Fisher."

"Come again?" I said, looking at her from the couch. Her face was expressionless.

"His name. Edward Fisher."

And with that, she walked out and left me staring blankly at an empty black screen.