Dedicated to: The Writer you Fools, alena-chan, Cherry Jade, and everyone who reviewed my most recent chapter of 'Hush'...that was completely unexpected and I'm beyond-words grateful for your awesome support. You help me ignore the petty flames! Special thank you to realfanficts for your amazing, open-minded, and extremely kind pm. It made me feel a lot better after reading that one review/comment/whatever it was.
Now, on to the mediocre chapter 11, with the promise of a MUCH better chapter 12 in the works as we speak, I promise!
Glass
Chapter XI: Mistake
It was a strange sensation, his mouth upon hers, but not unpleasant.
Not at all.
The way their lips met seemed almost ritualistic as he was not as harsh with her as his words had suggested he might. Rather, they were firm, demanding, sensual and...starved...that was the word. Starved...for what? Her mind reeled as Raven felt herself pushed against one of the majestic hall's columns, cold marble pressing into her back as the one known as X accosted her in a most unexpected way.
But something was wrong.
Something began to ache in her and as the ache became more and more present, less and less ignorable, Raven felt it in her heart—a rend was happening, a slow, small tear down the center. The smoothness of X's hand caressing her jaw began to elicit a peculiar burn along with the shudder of something Raven wasn't certain she wanted to understand and his kiss emitted the same threatening heat.
Something was wrong.
And she could not place just what, but it felt like part of her was being stolen, part of her was being erased to nothingness, like part of her was dying in the fiery moment, reduced to ash and then stale air.
"Stop," her voice was a whisper as she forced her eyes open. They felt so very heavy.
"You don't want me to stop," X said, but Raven would not be caught this time, true as his statement may have been...partially. She shook her head and pressed her hands against his chest: away. He simply lowered his face directly in front of hers once more, stared into her, past her, through her. Reaching out one hand, he trailed it gently, amorously even, through her hair. Raven shut her eyes and turned away.
"Don't do that," she said, voice firmer this time. This was not right…something was off.
"Raven," he whispered, and the timbre of his voice expressed all the human desire and need that could possibly be conveyed by simply saying her name as he leaned in to disobey her request.
Suddenly a hot, white light, an inhuman heat of blinding saturation burst around the heliotrope haired beauty and X found himself unceremoniously thrown against the opposite wall. He slid down and for a moment, lay there, unmoving.
Raven didn't know exactly what had happened. A flush had come over her...no...a rush. That was it, a rush, a sending of and purging of emotion and a distinct image in her mind for distance...and then she'd somehow conjured a half-spherical shield of black and white light. She didn't know exactly what had happened.
But X's body on the other side of the hall gave her a decent idea.
Tentative from both her show of power and the result, Raven crept catlike over to the prone body of X, hoping somewhere in her heart she had not hurt him too badly. She knelt at his side, leaning over him.
"What am I becoming?" she whispered, frightened of herself even as she moved to disentangle X's various limbs from each other. What was left of her sense of humor voiced somewhere in her mind that she'd have to learn to control that someday...whatever 'that' was.
Right.
Relaxing with each passing second, she found herself rolling her eyes at nothing in particular as she sat next to the motionless body of one of the most perplexing creatures she had ever had the pleasure or displeasure of meeting. Granted, she wasn't certain he was even human, but was creature going too far? She let her eyes examine his silent form as one might scrutinize a piece of art—thoroughly, carefully, and thoughtfully, all of which could be mistaken for one another if one wasn't aware of their finer than fine distinctions.
For better or for worse, it was one of the distinctions someone like Raven would always notice.
"What happened?" a voice came and she jumped. Roy floated near her shoulder, materializing from invisibility in trademark glows, eyeing the motionless X with curiosity more than concern.
Now, it certainly wasn't that she hadn't yet become accustomed to images being semi-transparent, people walking on air and fires becoming servants and wicked enchantments.
But sometimes even the things one got used to could startle one, and engrossed in her examination, she'd found herself alone in the world with the unconscious body beside her. It was somewhat of a shock to be reminded that there were other souls in the vicinity.
"Well," she began.
There was a pause in which Roy pretended to take seat beside her, really floating a few careless inches above the velvet carpet. In this pause, Raven took personal care to remove her hand from X's face, where it had been framing it in a way that could have been perceived as caring...affectionate...loving even.
This, Roy saw but only turned his focus on Raven instead, rather than her action. Her discomfort was wildly obvious, sitting like an animal caught in a trap, lost in the dark...lost in the wood. She turned her face away, hair falling like a curtain of violet.
"He's going to be sour," Roy said with gentle humor, typical lilt softened by a desire to comfort she who could not be comforted.
"No change then," Raven replied softly and began to fiddle with the edges of her cloak. It was a deep blue, almost indigo and the folds had shadows that made her seem almost one with the darkness when she wore the hood up as well. Hood down now, she felt entirely exposed and as see-through as her patient friend.
"What happened?" Roy asked again and at Raven's cringe, he added, "I'm just curious."
"I lost control of my..." she trailed off shortly. What did one call it? It felt less like magic, more like power, but it was magic, wasn't it? But she hadn't even had to say those words. A shudder ran through her, the same as that which a cold and sharp wind might induce. If she had used those words...azarath, metrion...those strange words...azarath, metrion, zinth—she cut herself off mentally—...if she had used those words...it would have been so much worse...she might have...he might have...
Her thoughts fell apart and she pulled her knees to her chest, burying her face in her arms. Roy though to comfort her but it seemed nothing could be kept quiet in the castle.
"What happened?" It was, if anything, the question of the hour. Raven froze, opting for stock-stillness and shutting down her quaking heart.
It was him.
"What happened to him?" He sounded worried. She felt the brush of his cape against her leg as he knelt to examine X. "X?" No answer. She felt him shift beside her—checking for X's heartbeat, certainly. She felt him turn...to her.
Him...Robin, master of the castle and all surrounding it.
His expression must have said a thousand things but her eyes were closed and face still buried in her arms as some alarming things began happening with her pulse.
"Master, it was a mistake," Roy said and she sensed him hovering between her and the castle's keeper. She'd never heard Roy sound quite so worried.
And Raven intuited, unhappily, that this was the darkest fear.
"Look at me."
She did not look.
"Look at me!"
She could not look.
"Have some courage after what you have done!"
And something snapped.
"Dare to say that I have no courage?" She stood abruptly, her cloak billowing out behind her with movement and her increasing aura of white and black. A white heat flooded her eyes. "After what I've done? You have done no less than I! And my actions were accidental, unlike some!" Her monotone had taken on a deeper quality, a darker one if voices could have shades but she felt no fear from her captor. Contrarily, his eyes did not glow but they burned the brightest blue Raven had ever seen, like marbles of blue diamond, swirling with white clouds. His mouth set itself firm in something crossing stoic and livid.
"You have no idea what you could have done!" he yelled above the roar that Raven was vaguely beginning to understand, was coming from the swirling magic around her—now glowing white, black, and violet.
"Maybe, if you would tell me something! Anything!" she yelled back, competing for leverage as she realized she was looking down at Robin. Funny, how even in her anger, she could see he was beautiful, her magic making his ebony hair blow back, his own power making him seem to emanate his own sorcery aura. And she could, in her anger, see and understand his own, even if she was still very much uncertain of what he inferred—not so much because she could not figure it out, for Raven was smart, but more so because it seemed too hardily unbelievable.
Impossible, even.
"There are rules that must be followed! You cannot just go around doing and reacting as you please! No one may do that! It is not allowed!" he yelled and Raven felt the heat in her eyes run through her blood right down into her fingertips.
"You are!" she retorted, hands encircled with glows that might have been white stars.
"Raven!" Roy tried to get her attention. He had a bad feeling about this. But she did not hear him and the intangible man realized that neither his master nor his new friend even knew he was there, not as a personal affront to him...more because of a strange connection.
This castle, it seemed, was full of those.
"I am not!" Robin shouted and leapt higher than any normal human should have been able to, and tackled her to the ground. Enraged to find herself underneath him and even more so to realize her own hesitancy to blast him harder into the wall than X, Raven struggled. But physically, truth was on Robin's side as his strength began to prevail.
"You are master of the castle!" Raven replied hotly, voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that had her on the list of do-not-invite-these-people for social gatherings back in town. Robin leaned in until his nose was nearly touching Raven's and she found herself thinking this was far too close in timely proximity to a similar encounter with his servant.
And well, he'd seen what had befallen him.
"I am its slave," he whispered and his breath, feathery and heated lingered against her face as she thought he might complete the nearness with a kiss. But he pulled back, standing, and dusting himself off like someone far more stately than she would ever have expected him to act.
"That tells me nothing," she said, glowing gone and magic dormant again as she readjusted her cloak. The moment was decidedly awkward, leaving her feeling like she'd fallen a long way without ever hitting the ground. Robin did not answer but knelt at X's side again and shook his head. His eyes were cloudy, storming with something not quite fear and not quite anger, a fair mix.
"Speedy," Robin said, tone colder than anything, save the glass garden that had brought Raven here to start. Roy appeared at his shoulder with some misgiving.
"Master?"
"Take her to her room and make certain she stays there." And with that Robin lifted X into his arms and disappeared into nothing. Raven stared at where he once was.
How dare he seek to confine her further, she thought overtop of the notion that she had really had no actual idea of his true power.
It took a vastly gifted sorcerer to be able to simply vanish to another place—no smoke, no light, just shadows.
Raven barely refrained from a sigh.
She longed for a dark place, far from there, just to be with herself. It was a cold longing, a strange pulling sensation at the edges of her heart. But a warm smile soon took concern and contradicted the cold.
Roy knelt in front of the still awakening sorceress.
Her eyes rose to meet his.
"No shackles?" she said before she could think. Roy did nothing to hide his surprise at her ability to make light of this increasingly discomfited and enigmatic situation and Raven found she felt equally as surprised with herself.
"Not necessary," he said gently but his eyes seemed distant.
"Did I do something that horrible?" she whispered, not wanting to be the cause of the confusion she saw in he who could be her only friend remaining. Her eyes implored an honest answer if nothing else but Roy did not have to think about it too hard. His answers came easily for Raven, for whatever reason.
"You could not have realized," was his answer and Raven nodded a little dully, hands clenching the corners of her cloak into wretched twists. Her current company arched a brow and opened his mouth to say one thing, only to close it again, deciding to say something else.
"Come on then," he said and gestured for her to follow. Raven tucked some messy strands of hair behind her ear, only half noticing how they fell right back into place as soon as she stood up.
"Why was he so angry?" she asked, padding almost silently behind the calm and spectral Speedy. She could just barely detect a shrug.
"The master is powerful, but X has always been his weakest flank," Roy replied smoothly—so smoothly that Raven received the rather distinct impression he was edging around her question.
"Then why does he keep him here? X does not appear so ill-cursed as you, nor as Hotspot," Raven said after a moment, trying not to sound too eager. She'd learned at some point in her stay here that the key to garnering more from her situation was to not seem to zealous for the demystification of it all.
Which of course, she was.
But Raven wore her masks well and her tone betrayed none of this.
"X is as cursed as I am, perhaps worse," Roy said as they turned down the corridor with Raven's room at the end. Raven increased her pace a fraction to walk along side the floating man.
"How so?" This was her most direct question yet and she found to her own wry amusement that she did not truly expect her friend to give her a direct answer.
"He is both the master's weakest flank and his most important one."
It wasn't exactly direct, and Raven's mind tangoed with the concept, placing X and Robin in their respective places in the dance...as to what it all might mean. For Roy had told her more than she'd ever been told before, something made clear by the pensive silence that followed his reply, if not by the words themselves.
Silence was an incomparable indicator of something's significance.
"Oh," was all she managed as she opened the door to her room. Standing on the threshold, she offered the tiniest of smiles to Roy who gave her one in return, though his was, by nature, much brighter. "Thank you for your help," she said after a few seconds of silence. Absently she began to fiddle with the edges of her cloak again. Roy simply shook his head with a soft smile and turned to leave, but as though remembering something important, whirled back around, eliciting a surprised exclamation from Raven.
"Sorry, but I just wanted to say..." he trailed off. Raven arched a brow and crossed her arms.
"Say...?" she prompted, but not unkindly.
"I know he seems a little strange, Robin that is. He tries to be kind, but sometimes it is not so easy..." Speedy frowned, as if struggling with his words. Raven waved dismissively with her hand.
"He's kind and sympathetic with me and then he's distant and elusive, and then he's wildly enraged over a person I can't seem to find one likable thing about when it was a mistake in the first place! A mistake! He makes no sense...It's like he's two completely different people," she scowled.
A moment passed as Speedy stood with his mouth agape.
"What?" Raven approached her friend. "Speedy?"
"Ah...nothing, that is...you'll figure it out. In the meantime, just try and keep an open mind about Robin, is all I ask, would you do that Raven?" he asked and Raven had the distinct impression of being asked two questions inside of one. She shook her head almost hopelessly.
"I don't see that I have any other option," she said simply and Speedy nodded a little dully.
"Yes, I feared you might see it that way," he sighed and turned to leave, pausing at the door, hand on the knob. "But you know, Raven..."
She stared at his back, rather than through it.
"What?"
"We all have two sides, you know."
And he slipped out the door, closing it with a metallic click behind him. Raven's confusion increased as she sat in a small huff on the edge of the bed.
"I don't suppose he's going to explain that one, is he?" she asked the air and let herself fall back onto the soft blankets of her bed. They felt cool and smooth against her neck and she closed her eyes, at ease. Well, if all people planned to do was to drop hints, then she would have to find her own answers, it seemed.
She'd waited long enough, trying to do it the way the castle seemed to advise...living as the majestic structure seemed.
But now she was done. Raven curled on her side.
She wanted to go home.
And I will, she thought furiously. I'll break their godforsaken curse and I'll go home.
I'll never have to see him again.
...Robin.
Suddenly exhausted, Raven felt her breathing even as she slipped off into the dream world and no one was there to see the odd crimson glow that surrounded her body like a shell of fire. Slowly it faded into her skin in the shapes of the cuts she had received that day in the library...and slowly those faded into invisibility.
Home...
But was that really all she wanted?
Later that night, in her sleep Raven tossed and turned until she was twisted in the sheets and somewhere, in the subconscious of her mind something woke.
Okay, sorry it's kind of short but I struggled like Hell through this chapter and had to end the chapter there since the next segment can't be cut in half and it's about thirteen pages long all on its own xX Anyways, that does mean the next part should be up way soon. Sooo thank you for reading this...if you're still reading this and hope it wasn't abominable.
Probably most of you have gotten the idea/ have the idea of what's going on with a big part of the curse now.
-Rei