B'shert

Rebirth

Chapter Fifteen

READ THE WARNING? MENTIONS OF WELL...STUFF NOT SUITABLE FOR PEOPLE BELOW 15!

(A/N: *nervous laughter * um so yeah I'm alive! Hi! It's not my fault!!! I was kidnapped by pirates and then that ship was abducted by aliens!! ........ok fine so that's a total lie... He he.... I have no excuse...again I'm posting with my phone so the formatting is off so just remember the '...' is all with the mental link. thanks for reading and I'm so so sorry for not updating.)

OH BTW THIS CHAPTER HAS SOME UHHH STUFF LEADING TO STUFF (SMUT) BUT NO ACTUAL SMUT BUT YEAH I FIGURE I SHOULD PUT THIS WARNING HERE????

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She doesn't see Damian again till midnight, when he knocks on her door. She lets him in and closes the doors, leaving them in darkness save for the moonlight.

"Are you ok?"

And that's a pretty pathetic question she knows, because obviously he's not okay. But that's the question that people ask when they don't know how to fit in everything they want to ask into one sentence. Sometimes people don't understand this question because sometimes the answer is seemingly so obvious they wonder why someone bothered asking it. But Damian doesn't have this problem because he knows what his Raven means.

"I'm fine,"

Raven knows he's not, "thank you for making me come." And 'I'm fine' is also one of those answers in which you have to rely more on the tone than the words to understand the meaning. He says he's fine, but he's not. Not really because he just lost a brother. But he will be fine because he has people to help him cope, he'll be fine because he has to be strong for the rest of his family too. Raven wraps her hands around his waist and leans her head on his chest; he hugs her back before pulling away and pressing his lips to hers. She's not surprised at the desperation behind the kiss.

They kiss desperate when someone nearly dies. When missions go wrong when heroes they know fall. It's happened over the years. They kiss like this when it hits them in different ways how fickle their lives are and how time could be stolen from them at any moment. These kisses have his hands holding her close, afraid to let go and are actually quite short. Because in these moment, moments where they're afraid, they just want to hold and be held and know that for now at least their safe.

The next day it's the funeral and it doesn't rain. Stephanie says that it's good because rain would have been cliché and Tim would have hated that.

*****

A month later the fourth Robin dies.

Because Tim has left him his mantle of Red Robin, should he want it and Damian decides that he does. Because he can't be Robin forever. (And also Selina's pregnant.)

The month of Damian's birthday is hectic. Because of course Nightwing and Bat girl decide that they should do a few team rotations so that members from their respective teams can learn from the other. The roster will eventually circle all the members of both teams and Damian wouldn't normally have much of a problem with it except it's his birthday this month. His eighteenth birthday. If getting the mark means having their bond go haywire again, he's much rather have Raven with him so that they can fix it soon. The other option was blocking the bond, like they'd done after Raven had gotten her mark. That itself had been weird, think of it like losing an arm. (He'd also much rather be around people he trusts than complete strangers when he isn't at 100%) But as it turns out, it's neither he nor Raven who are sent to Mt.Justice on the week of his eighteenth but Conner and Gar. He locks himself in his room as his birth hour draws near, somewhere during the mid afternoon when the sun is high in the sky. And... Raven really wasn't kidding about the pain.