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title: empathy
author: songbirdjen, aka jen
rating: pg
summary: understanding your enemy could make all the difference, and yet none at the same time. raven/slade (the ambiguity makes up for the coupling, i swear)
spoilers: nonexistent
notes: it just came to me, deliberately ambiguous and vague. semi-abstract? oh, but do critique :) also, still taking requests for unconventional pairings.
Empathy
-songbirdjen-
I don’t understand.
Raven can’t tell where she is for a moment; everything’s fuzzy and disorienting and swimming in her gaze and she groans, weakly, a small sound that still manages to induce hammering lights behind her eyes like gangbusters. Her wrists feel heavy, entirely too heavy, and she pries her eyes open just a crack, just to see, and thinks dimly, Well, the shackles explain the heavy.
“Rise and shine, my dear,” some low voice echoes above her, and she tilts her head up very slowly to look and thank God whoever-it-is isn’t behind her because that would be utter Hell if she had to move any more.
“Sssslade?” she manages in a feeble voice that feels and sounds like it hasn’t been used in months, but it can’t be months, can it, wasn’t it just a few hours ago?
She tries to think and winces at the surge of pain at her temples. No, no thinking. Thinking bad. Thinking hurt. No, bad grammar. Hurts.
“I don’t get it,” she whispers in that same voice through hard, cracked lips. “Why are you—”
“Your friends will be coming for you soon,” he says, and suddenly the weights on her wrists disappear, clatter to the floor, and she squints at him in astonishment, rubbing her bruised forearms with numb fingers.
She’s confused and perplexed and still can’t think straight, and he’s just looming over her and watching her quietly and suddenly he extends a hand like he wants to help her, like he’s her friend, and This isn’t right, she thinks, when did the story get switched around?
But stranger still is how she reaches for it, she needs to get up, needs to think, but she can’t think, still doesn’t understand, what’s going on, there’s a reason for all this but what is it, what is it, what does Slade think he’s doing, what is he doing—
Amidst the chaos in her head she gets up, leaning on his arm for support (what’s going on) and her brain’s going haywire, and then something says, louder and clearer than everything else, FIND OUT WHAT HE’S DOING—
And with total disregard for logic and common sense she struggles through the muddy waters of her mind and focuses on one thing, and one thing only—
One brilliant flash of light, and it’s all so clear and all so vague at the same time, it makes no sense at all and all the sense in the world at once, and the pads of her fingers clench in his warm palm.
“You understand,” he says, and it isn’t a question.
Yes, she doesn’t say. Pulls her hand from his and drapes her hood over her wide eyes to mask the warmth spreading to her face.
The rest of the Titans burst in just then, a flurry of heated green and neon blue blasts that shatter the very foundation of wherever-they-are, and they’re here for him and here for her yet for wholly different reasons, and without thinking but in a state of mind a hundred times clearer than what was just five seconds ago, she yells, “Azarath Metrion Zinthos!”
Black tendrils slam her comrades against the bits of wall that remain, not enough to hurt, just enough to stun.
She turns, and of course he’s gone.
Upon recovering, her teammates rush to her, an unsettled fusion of concern and hesitation and anger. Four voices surround her—Robin outraged, Starfire hurt, Beast Boy confused, Cyborg disbelieving.
What happened what’s wrong what’s he done why you why him why us why everything.
Raven knows exactly where she is and there are no blinding pulsations against her eyelids and nothing is remotely nebulous about anything.
The answer is too obvious, too simple.
“You don’t understand,” she says simply, maybe sadly, and pulls her hood back, clear of face and mind.
-fin-
author: songbirdjen, aka jen
rating: pg
summary: understanding your enemy could make all the difference, and yet none at the same time. raven/slade (the ambiguity makes up for the coupling, i swear)
spoilers: nonexistent
notes: it just came to me, deliberately ambiguous and vague. semi-abstract? oh, but do critique :) also, still taking requests for unconventional pairings.
Empathy
-songbirdjen-
I don’t understand.
Raven can’t tell where she is for a moment; everything’s fuzzy and disorienting and swimming in her gaze and she groans, weakly, a small sound that still manages to induce hammering lights behind her eyes like gangbusters. Her wrists feel heavy, entirely too heavy, and she pries her eyes open just a crack, just to see, and thinks dimly, Well, the shackles explain the heavy.
“Rise and shine, my dear,” some low voice echoes above her, and she tilts her head up very slowly to look and thank God whoever-it-is isn’t behind her because that would be utter Hell if she had to move any more.
“Sssslade?” she manages in a feeble voice that feels and sounds like it hasn’t been used in months, but it can’t be months, can it, wasn’t it just a few hours ago?
She tries to think and winces at the surge of pain at her temples. No, no thinking. Thinking bad. Thinking hurt. No, bad grammar. Hurts.
“I don’t get it,” she whispers in that same voice through hard, cracked lips. “Why are you—”
“Your friends will be coming for you soon,” he says, and suddenly the weights on her wrists disappear, clatter to the floor, and she squints at him in astonishment, rubbing her bruised forearms with numb fingers.
She’s confused and perplexed and still can’t think straight, and he’s just looming over her and watching her quietly and suddenly he extends a hand like he wants to help her, like he’s her friend, and This isn’t right, she thinks, when did the story get switched around?
But stranger still is how she reaches for it, she needs to get up, needs to think, but she can’t think, still doesn’t understand, what’s going on, there’s a reason for all this but what is it, what is it, what does Slade think he’s doing, what is he doing—
Amidst the chaos in her head she gets up, leaning on his arm for support (what’s going on) and her brain’s going haywire, and then something says, louder and clearer than everything else, FIND OUT WHAT HE’S DOING—
And with total disregard for logic and common sense she struggles through the muddy waters of her mind and focuses on one thing, and one thing only—
One brilliant flash of light, and it’s all so clear and all so vague at the same time, it makes no sense at all and all the sense in the world at once, and the pads of her fingers clench in his warm palm.
“You understand,” he says, and it isn’t a question.
Yes, she doesn’t say. Pulls her hand from his and drapes her hood over her wide eyes to mask the warmth spreading to her face.
The rest of the Titans burst in just then, a flurry of heated green and neon blue blasts that shatter the very foundation of wherever-they-are, and they’re here for him and here for her yet for wholly different reasons, and without thinking but in a state of mind a hundred times clearer than what was just five seconds ago, she yells, “Azarath Metrion Zinthos!”
Black tendrils slam her comrades against the bits of wall that remain, not enough to hurt, just enough to stun.
She turns, and of course he’s gone.
Upon recovering, her teammates rush to her, an unsettled fusion of concern and hesitation and anger. Four voices surround her—Robin outraged, Starfire hurt, Beast Boy confused, Cyborg disbelieving.
What happened what’s wrong what’s he done why you why him why us why everything.
Raven knows exactly where she is and there are no blinding pulsations against her eyelids and nothing is remotely nebulous about anything.
The answer is too obvious, too simple.
“You don’t understand,” she says simply, maybe sadly, and pulls her hood back, clear of face and mind.
-fin-
Vague
(Anonymous) 2005-06-09 03:28 am (UTC)(link)