A one-shot in honor of the one year anniversary of 'Haunted' in which the birds had their mind meld or whatever...I know I'm a few days late and it has nothing to do really with the bond or you know, so on, but it is for THEM and so I like to think I'm justified in using some artistic license.
And even if I'm not, I use it anyway. Apologies.
Review if you have time to tell me what you think.
All thanks,
-Rei
Something Else Important
She wondered why he wore that expression, the one that went intermittently from the look of one who was disgusted by some unnamed stench to one who was trying almost fruitlessly not to laugh.
It was an odd combination.
"That's quite the face you've got there," she remarked and her companion vigilante blew some hair out of his face mirthlessly. He'd foregone the cheap hair gel for the day and his bangs fell in messy, uneven sections that obscured his vision unfairly.
And he didn't respond, but she was used to such singular remarks going unacknowledged by now and the Boy Wonder, no longer a boy really, knew it.
He studied her while doing his own best imitation of being inscrutable.
She'd grown; her face had thinned out just slightly, the last edges of baby fat having disappeared forever—they'd been nearly gone when she'd left anyway— and her eyes seemed larger—if possible—giving her a look that could have been described as doe-eyed if they weren't perpetually threatening sarcastic remarks.
But like they said: old habits die hard.
"It's been a while," he said at last and there was the rub.
It had been...a while.
"Not so long," she said in return and his hands, previously resting carelessly on his knees, went a little rigid.
"It's been two years," he said, loathing the way his voice threatened to break at her unforgiving austerity.
"The blink of an eye," she nodded.
"For an immortal," he replied listlessly. She eyed him, a little wretchedly, he thought, but maybe he was making it up.
He'd made a lot of things up over the past twenty-four months.
"Like me," she affirmed yet again and finally he sighed.
"Why are you here?" he asked, attempts at platitudes gone out the window like an uncomfortable draft.
"Two years may be a wink in existence for me, but for...others I know it is much longer," she said evasively and he stood now in anger, tension radiating from his every fiber, the sleepless nights of the past 730 days crashing down on the present.
It might be his only chance to...he didn't know what...but the pivotal feeling of the moment refused to be denied so he plowed on, heedless and headlong all at once.
"Damn it Raven, where have you been? How could you do it, huh? Just leave us like that!" he yelled and he knew his rage hurt her but he would not restrain himself.
No, he'd done that before.
And she'd gone...she'd gone thinking they'd all be just fine without her.
He wouldn't let her get away with such forced insistence again...never again.
"I left you a note," she said, still vexingly cool in tone, and his temper flared even more.
"A note? A note? A note..." He repeated the phrase like a madman, lapsing eventually from questioning to a jumbled muttering and then he whirled to face her again. His face strung resentment and confusion, frustration and hurt, fear and disbelief...all things she could empathize with...all things she dared not empathize with as he raged on. "You think a note did everything you should have done yourself?" he demanded and now she showed some vulnerability.
She looked away, jaw clenched.
"No," she whispered.
"Then what? You think you can just—" But he didn't finish. She'd had enough and Raven, for all her quiet ways, had never been passive, never ever.
"Robin! I had no choice. Just shut up and listen to yourself. You know why I left and I sure as Hell didn't have to leave some note under your door to remind you! Stop doing this! I didn't come back for this!" she cried angrily, her own years creeping into her face with the lines of sadness, loss, and separation's many, many tolls.
"No choice?" he echoed savagely and she forced herself not to wince. He was not being fair.
"No choice," she reiterated.
"So why'd you come back, or wasn't that a choice of yours either? Did you have to? Is something making you come back—?" He left out the 'to me' part. But she heard it anyway.
She heard it in the same bad, broken way she'd heard it when she'd left their bad, broken situation two years ago, and she heard it now, loud and clear.
"I came back because I wanted to!" she retorted, eyes aflame.
"Don't lie to me!" he shouted, and there was thunder in his voice.
"I never have!" she matched him decibel for decibel but now it was her loathing the way her own voice seemed to sprout with hairline fractures under the emotional weight of everything that had happened, and everything that lay before her now. "I never have," she repeated plainly and felt her knees give out as she collapsed vacantly to the floor.
And like always, no matter what the case, he ran to stand worriedly beside her.
"Rae?" he intoned, anxious in spite of his attempt and even in spite of his desire to be upset with her, to be cold to her, to be unforgiving. And he desired it, that cool air off a stranger who didn't give a damn what happened to the woman on the ground next to him.
But also like always, it was something the grown Boy Wonder could not achieve, for whatever reason.
He laid a hand on her shoulder, tentatively, reluctantly even...as imperceptible almost as a ghost's touch. In her following expressive upheaval, she reverted to his name of old, just another sign of the breaking point she'd reached and a little guiltily, he realized he at least had had others to help him over his...she hadn't.
"I'm sorry Robin, I'm sorry, but I had to leave! I had to. And don't you dare think it didn't kill me to leave either; I've died a hundred times over since that day and I remember that day like no other. I remember the way the sun beat down and the kind of clouds that filtered over it and I remember the way your hair was more uneven than usual because you'd run out of that stupid hair gel you've been obsessed with since you were ten and I remember how it felt to have to walk out of this tower and not look back without even telling you—" and here she thought blearily: telling you I love you, but it had been so long and she could not say it.
A part of her thought he might have guessed it anyway after their months of being together up until then, but neither had ever declared it as such so the rest had been left up to speculation and she regretted that—among other things—very sorely now. Still, she picked up quickly, still distressed:
She sighed.
"I remember Robin and I'm sorry but I can't change it! I'm sorry," she said again and she was shaking with that shattered sentiment. He kneeled and, asking for whatever grace there might be for him and the other dark bird, gathered her in his arms.
Like old times. She still smelled the same too, warm vanilla and cold winter—it was only after he'd first gotten close to her that first time that he'd been able to admit a season could have a scent.
Dully, he felt her sobbing against his chest.
"This is not you," he said, all gentleness now because he admitted after all this time what he'd almost lost to the years of absence. His hand turned her face to him and she glanced up at his masked face through dark lashes, mysterious and alluring as ever. "And I remember that day too—the sun and the clouds, my hair and that...that feeling of watching you...leave. I remember everything." She bit her lip.
Everything was such an absolute. Absolutes were what had gotten them into such trouble in the first place, what with the impending doom of earth anew with no exit to them via salvation, and with her the only one who could stop it…because once again, she had been the one who would trigger it.
But not as a gateway.
As the grim-reaper himself—or herself, as it were.
So she'd gone, gone far, far away where such things could be dealt with in ways Earthlings could never understand, in ways even Tameranians or bionic men or green changelings could never understand. And she'd dealt with it, every painful inch of every pace toward defeating the evils that threatened to never give her peace. Raven Roth had even vanquished it in the end.
But that had taken two years, a little more if truth be known and it had cost her.
It had cost her so much...the home she'd been—in her mind—foolish enough to adopt as her own, cost her the family she'd been—again, in her mind—selfish enough to drag into her continuously ominous state of existence...cost her the blindly faithful boy blunder who had insisted they could find a way...
That he could find a way for her.
And she'd wanted to believe he could. Oh how she had wanted that. But her pragmatic and stubborn ways—not unlike his—would not let her and it was her leaving that day that told him—in his mind—that clearly she didn't believe in him enough to stay.
It was that that had broken two hearts, that final note that had ended it all.
Well, it was that...and everything.
And she wondered why she'd come back.
Just because she could?
No.
She'd told the truth; she'd come because she wanted to.
But now she wasn't so sure, wasn't sure of anything...much less everything.
Perhaps it is not meant to be, she mused with a familiar sense of one who knows a lot but never quite enough and took in a shuddering breath as she stood to leave...again.
And Robin—now Nightwing—let his hold on her dissipate with painstaking slowness, like a lingering breeze.
"I am glad you remember," she said. "And I am sorry for all of this, Ro—Nightwing. Be safe," she echoed her words from even longer than two years ago and something in him snapped as she reached the threshold of the tower.
Raven started, surprised, as she felt a hand wrap firmly around her wrist, whirling her to face two masked eyes.
"I remembered something just now, something else important...something I almost forgot," he said in a whisper that wasn't necessary. There wasn't anyone else around, for better or for worse.
"Tell me as you are," she commanded with her last shred of dignity. He complied; mask peeling away under the fingers of his free hand to fall between their feet like a shroud of the past.
In a way, it was.
And now she dared to hear the answer to her question, whatever it might be, because with those oceanic orbs barreling down on her, she knew whatever he spoke could be nothing but his deepest truth.
So she latched her amethyst with his sapphire with the feeling of one who is about to jump over an abyss with no visible other side and asked him:
"What is it you almost forgot...Robin?" And here his third part came into play, his third and final part as she reverted to his name out of a new emotional tide, this one curving over them in storms of colorless night and in all of that, heartbreaking but in a way much different from the first.
"Almost forgot I love you," he choked out and tilted her face up to his for what they'd both been haunted by for years before they'd come together, and the years after that had forced them apart.
They didn't have to wait any longer.
So, what'd you think?
-Rei