Title: And fragrant from the feast, behold (Reference) Series: Three red words Story #9 Fandom: DCU (AU from Nightwing #93 and mid-Robin: Unmasked, spoilers in an AU way for Identity Crisis and Under the Hood) Summary: He does not invite the kiss as he once might have, with open smile and open heart, but it is the same quick-kindling heat she remembers from years spent in his company. Pairing: Dick/Kory Rating: Content some readers may find disturbing. Notes: I posted a teaser weeks ago and the feedback on it was most helpful when I had time to finish it. Thanks to everyone who replied. She does not believe the first report she hears, nor the second. Hearsay in the hero community is often the worst kind of gossip, at least as dubious as that among the models she has known. It is not until Roy calls her and says, "You talked to Dick lately?" that Kory knows something must truly have changed. "No," she says, and she does not add that she's taking her mobile phone with her off the balcony and heading for Blüdhaven. "Ollie says, no shit, he's beating the crap out of people in that armpit town of his. And Batman's pissed." Roy laughs, once. "Never thought he had it in him." "Neither did I," Kory says. "You're breaking up," she adds, although it's entirely her fault. Crossing state lines tends to cause that kind of interference. "Sorry," Roy says, "you want me to call back later?" "That would be fine. Goodbye," Kory says, and hangs up. She's not sure where in Blüdhaven their base of operations is, exactly, and she doesn't have Dick's present phone number, but if half the rumors about his allies are true, it ought not to be too much trouble for them to find her. She's been following the main highway over the city for ten minutes, increasingly slowly, when she sees someone in dark blue on a rooftop, waving. She lands nearby. "May I visit?" "That depends," Dick says, and he has his weapons in his hands. "What brings you here?" Kory thinks of how easily she could turn his simple wooden sticks into ash and smiles at him. "It is said you've become a true warrior." "Yeah?" His smile is slower than it once was, but present just the same. "Says who?" "Roy, among other people." Kory takes a step towards him and he raises his eyebrows. "And you believed him?" She spreads her hands, not in submission -- she is never weaponless -- but in a gesture she has learned from humans that means she has little to say on the matter. "Who would know you better?" Dick puts his weapons away. "Point." He tilts his head a little, giving her a searching look. "So you're here because --" "I wished to congratulate you." She closes the distance between them, and now she can see that what had seemed an entirely blue suit has different shading, subtle but present. "You are your own man." Dick runs a hand through his hair and looks at his boots for a moment before he looks at her. "Mostly -- god, you're not mad?" It has been an effort not to embrace him, and now she lifts him off of his feet, off of the roof, and into the sky with her. "I have never been prouder of you." He says, "Kory," against her neck and embraces her. "X'hal, Dick, you are doing everything right." She kisses his forehead, and when he looks up, his mouth. He shivers in her arms and clings to her as though he fears she will drop him. "I -- not everybody thinks so." She kisses him again, more fully, and he wraps his leg around her waist. "He's wrong," she tells him. He smiles far too sadly to be himself. "I really hope so." Another kiss will not convince him, but perhaps it will soothe him so that he may smile. "I know so. On Tamaran, no one is so foolish as to think that justice can survive without some force behind it." She kisses him again before he can object, then again because his mouth is sweet and he is warm against her. "We haven't -- I haven't killed anybody," Dick says, as if the lack is itself some sort of transgression. "But you are not preserving them, either." She touches his face lightly as though that will soothe away his doubts. "Do you have a safe place?" Dick glances down toward the city. "Go north seven blocks --" She glances toward the stars for orientation and takes his directions. "Okay, east four -- second floor -- around the corner, there, third window --" he takes off his glove and presses his finger to a small black box and the window opens. He enters and says, "Starfire is here, an invited guest, trust -- seventy percent." Then he looks out the window and says, "Come on in." She comes in and looks around. It is not quite a place Dick should live. There is not enough color, nothing that makes it seem as though it is his space. "You and your teammates share this apartment?" "Well, the building, but yeah." Dick picks up a magazine that someone has left splayed open on a chair and tosses it onto a coffee table. "Have a seat if you want." "You ought to have a far more elegant space," Kory says, and she hugs him again. "Should I bring you gifts?" He strokes her hair with his bare hand and shrugs. "It works. They'd just break stuff on me, anyway." "Robin?" Kory asks. Dick takes off his mask and laughs. "No. No Robins here, Kory. Flamebird and Jay." That, too, was a part of the rumors, but she has long since learned not to trust Garfield's chatter. "Ah." She runs her fingers over the design on his chest. "So you are all birds together, now. But not birds of prey, and not Robin." "More or less, yeah." Dick leans back a little. "I guess it's stupid to try to do the code name thing with you, huh?" Kory smiles. "I know that Tim has left the Titans, if that is what you mean, and I am sure that I would recognize him in most contexts." She puts her hands on Dick's shoulders. "But I would know you anywhere." He shakes his head, smiling quickly for anyone else. There is pain in his eyes. "I should never have -- god, I was such an asshole, Kory." It is impossible to avoid embracing him more tightly. "We learn." "I hope so." He leans on her shoulder. "I'm not crazy in love with you." Kory runs her hand down his side, feeling the edges and lines of the armor he wears. "Good." He does not invite the kiss as he once might have, with open smile and open heart, but it is the same quick-kindling heat she remembers from years spent in his company. His hands on her sides are strange in their gloves only because she has forgotten what it is to hold him. Dick is not wearing a mask, but that does not mean that he is fully here, or that he is fully hers. Some things have not changed, but at least this time, he is honest about his detachment. He takes the gloves off a moment later, and his hands are damp and hot from wearing them. "I should really be out there," he says, and mouths her neck. "You have teammates." "Yes, but --" Kory pulls him down with her onto the couch and kisses him again. "Do you trust them?" Dick's mouth twitches. "Yes, but --" She runs her fingers through his hair and misses the length he once wore. "Let them do the work. I will help -- later." "Well, in that case --" He shakes his head, grinning. "I guess I can take a break." * Kory is entirely accustomed to the way men stare at her. It works to her advantage when no one expects to see her in the city, let alone approaching them. "Holy --" is all most of them manage to say. There is an elementary school whose fence will need to be repaired from a starbolt that went slightly astray, but Dick assures her that under the circumstances, they will be grateful for the departure of the drug dealers. Even with the advent of a new sort of crime fighting force, Blüdhaven does not seem a comfortable place to walk alone at night. Kory takes a pair of scantily clad girls home at speed, to their profuse thanks. One of them kisses her on the cheek when they reach the dormitory and says, "We should've had enough for a cab, but you know how it is." "Next time, set it aside," Kory says, frowning at her. The girl backs away. "Yeah. Yeah, we will. Sorry." Kory nods and takes off again. A gout of flame in a dark alley catches her eye. Arson -- or -- Tim. The orange and red of his costume matches his weaponry all too well, but it is insufficient protection against ten men. Starbolts, on the other hand, strike them all down in moments. Tim looks up and gives her a tight smile. "Starfire. You make me feel quite inadequate." Kory smiles. "It was not my intent." A youth in a different colored costume comes out of the shadows and says, "We had 'em, you know." Tim nods to him. "Yes." Kory studies him for a moment -- he is familiar, so familiar -- and frowns. "We have met." She lands beside him and tries to place the scent of him, but it is heavily overlain with smoke and the dirt of this city. He grins. "Not for long enough." "Ah -- I see." The habit of diminutive names and codenames had confused her. "Jay, yes?" "If you gotta call me that, yeah." Tim makes a small, exasperated noise that he once saved for those moments when none of his agemates on the Teen Titans would heed him. "I'll just leave you two to chat." Jay tosses Tim a quick salute as he heads off on whatever patrol route he is assigned -- they are assigned? -- for the night, then tilts his head and grins at Kory. "So. You finally made it to the 'haven." "After hearing many reports, yes." She narrows her eyes and looks at him again. "Why do I know you?" He sidles up to her, as though there is not room to walk normally in the alley, and says behind his hand, "'cause you probably thought I was dead." Kory embraces him, laughing with recognition. "Jason! X'hal, how is this true?" He gives her a squeeze and a wink. "Long damn story. Maybe some other time -- N's hitting the comm, wants us all at the mall ASAP." She shifts her grip to hold him more firmly. "Does -- Flamebird -- need assistance as well?" Jay taps his ear. "F, you need a lift -- nah, he's good." He shifts a little -- wriggles his hips, or nearly so -- and Kory carries him into the sky. "Okay, we gotta head for about two-o'clock, a coupla miles." "Easily done." She hugs him more tightly yet as she accelerates. "How did you find your way here?" "Wasn't that bad," Jay says. "But you -- I thought you were on the other side." Kory shakes her head. "There were times when I would argue with my teammates about the very thing that makes 'sides' in this case. I agreed with you." "Huh," Jay says. The vast parking lots of the mall are coming into view. Kory slows. "Okay -- N, what's your twenty -- by the BonTon, Starfire --" She knows that Nightwing, like Robin, would want a quiet entrance. "Can you pick the lock?" Jay laughs and leaps out of her arms the last ten feet to the ground. "Like I was born to it." Inside, her powers seem too much for the place, the vast racks of nearly identical clothing and the corridors with their delicate false and captive trees and silenced fountains full of coins. Jay's camouflage is much better suited than her own bright strength, and she trails him. They find Dick around a corner and Kory lands, dampening her light as much as possible. "The thieves are in a jewelry store," Dick explains, "heavily armed. And -- they're part of that mess we dealt with on the tenth, Jay." "Shit," Jason says. "Yeah. Hyped up on angel dust and meta-strength drugs." Dick makes a face. Tim comes up behind him and says, "Perhaps the fire department should be excluded in this case." Dick gives him a wry look. "Sorry about that, little brother, but --" Tim holds up a hand. "I have other skills." The first thief they find is treated to some of Tim's skills -- quick bo work, quick unconsciousness, quick disposal until the perpetrator staggers to his feet again. "Damn," Jason says, and throws some sort of long-distance weapon at the man. Another hit in the same place as Tim had hit, at the base of the skull, and now he's down again. "Just a lookout," Dick says, and then the rest of the thieves come. They look like metahumans, move like metahumans, but do not have any more than human resistance to heat from starbolts, or to carefully placed nervestrikes. Kory takes out two of them, remembering how fragile humans can be and that the other three she fights with are no more powered than most of their fellows. Nevertheless, they hold their own. She catches the thief she's knocked unconscious by the ankle and holds him up while Dick delivers the last blow -- and breaks a thief's leg. "Better," Tim says. "Shall we deliver them?" Jason kicks one of the unconscious men. "These yahoos? Why bother? The rent-a-pigs will do a sweep sometime tonight and find them." Tim looks to Dick, who shrugs and says, "That one's not going anywhere with broken metatarsals." He looks at the one Kory incapacitated. "Or burns. Let's go." Kory clasps his shoulder. "I should return to my home -- Nightwing." He smiles at her and hugs her tightly. "We can get home fine from here." He kisses her cheek and says, "Thanks for the help. And the --" "You can visit anytime," Jason says, patting Kory's shoulder -- and running his hand down her back. She lets Dick go and turns to face Jason. "Thank you." Jason has his thumbs hooked in his belt loops. "Anytime, seriously." His grin has the sort of angle she associates with men who want something from her. He shakes his head a little. "Damn, you guys. Where do I send my personal to get an alien fuckbuddy?" Tim glares at him -- she can see it in the creases of his mouth, though not in his eyes. "Perhaps if you improved your personal habits --" Jason gets him in a headlock in half a second. "You never bitched, Flamer." Dick rolls his eyes at them, and for a moment, it is as if they are all Titans and he is merely tired, waiting to go home to Gotham. But this is his home, now, and these are his partners. "Thanks for helping out, anyway, Starfire." She kisses his cheek again and breathes in the complex, familiar scent of him. "It was my pleasure. I'll be back -- perhaps Tuesday?" Dick smiles. "Sure. That'd be fine." Kory smiles back at him and leaves them there, tussling and chasing each other around the darkened mall like puppies, but with the true hearts and souls of warriors.
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