#quoting quotes

The garden was immense, Raven had to admit, larger even than the botanical gardens outside the City limits of Gotham. The wonders of naturally occurring pocket dimensions liked with the green.

Row after row of square and rectangular raised beds stretched before them. Vines of jasmine and blue flowers intermingled with border constructed of branches woven horizontally in and out of vertical sticks—held the dirt neatly in place. Leaves and other materials gleaned from the forests of earth provided mulch that nourished the herbs even as it smothered and prevented the growth of weeds.

A heady conglomeration of scents shifted and changed with each breath of wind. Lavender, basil, rosemary, mint, sage, and many more.

A kaleidoscope of colours dazzled them. Every shade of green imaginable. Silver. Powdery grey. Purple. Striped. Solid. Spotted. And that was just the leaves.

Some of the herbs still bloomed, preparing to produce the seeds she would use to regenerate them in the spring and work medicinal magic. Ivory, azure, scarlet, saffron, coral, and combinations thereof.

“’This is truly a sanctuary,” he commented at last and seemed to savour the peaceful atmosphere as much as she did.

“All the years I have watched you stock your belt with shrivelled roots or barks, powder, steep leaves for teas, mix some foul-smelling ointment or other…,” he murmured looking around in wonder. “I would never have believed you had you told me your brews came such beauty.”

Beaming, she gave his hand a squeeze. “I am glad it calms you.”

“Tell me about them,” he urged with a happy smile.

Raven led him further in, tall tree shaded smaller plants. Rae, touched her fingers to a shrub, he crouched when she did. “The roots of this ginger may be used to rid of inflammation. Especially down there.”

She laughed when he grimaced. “And this…” She motioned to a plant with vivid leaves. “This is haldi. Used in remedies for coughs and inflammations of the lungs.”

She grabbed his hand in hers, dragging him along, pointing to another. “Calendula aids in healing wounds.”

At his questioning look, she nodded. The ingredients from his tea really had come from this garden.

She pointed out several others she thought he might have heard her mention over the years. Peach tree, Rowen, yewl, sandalwood.

The whole time his eyes would look to her. How is this possible? they’d ask her silently.

Raven just laughed, and began to walk again, arm in arm, as comfortable as if they’d always been together.

Every once in a while, she paused to pluck a leaf, it's dry. she would say better to pluck it then let it use up the plant resources. Or Rae would crush it to release its fragrance,  like lemongrass, holding it up to him with an offer to smell. Explaining the sent and uses.

Her gloves in the back pocket of her overalls, fingers, nails stained with streaks of soil and the green leaves, the yellow of marigold, the pink roses.

The scent of Raven rose up to tease him. Welcoming it with a deep inhale, he walked around to stand before her.

“Thank you!” When Raven raised her hand in a dismissive gesture, he continued. “I know you probably did it for dick. But you did heal me.”

Raven frowned, she shook her head violently, but before she could open her mouth, Jason went on.

“You took my wounds into yourself.”

“’It was the only way to could save you.”

Jason squeezed his eyes shut against the memory of the  wounds marred that had Raven’s porcelain skin. One in her abdomen, seeping blood, partially obscured by the bandages. Dick must have dressed her wounds. The bruises from where his vest had protected him from bullets. All located precisely where his had been, where the tiny pink scars remained.

“But… how?, Jason’s  mind had questioned, as he observed his injuries on her body.

This was why Dick had avoided Raven’s magical healing in the past. Using ointments and stitches instead. Jason had always wondered.

“You made your choice Raven. I am not trying to diminish it. You saw my life hanging by a threat, and you knotted it with yours. Pulling me back to the land of the living. And I am thankful for the choice you made. But let's not pretend it was easy. Or that it was not painful. I remember when I got those wounds. Because you're magical when they transferred to you, I am sure you hurt.”

This morning, he woke from what he thought was a dream. It had that dream like quality, the out of  body experience, like watching something from far away. But then he realised they were memories of Raven.

Fragments filled his mind. Thready, gasping pain filled breaths. Soft and weak beside him in the darkness of the night. Instead of helping the woman who healed him, he trapped in his own body recovering from the lesser woulds leftover.

He looked away, ashamed. Sick to his stomach, thinking of all the wounds that healed on him and opened on her flesh. He would never have asked her to make the sacrifice had he known the pain and scars it would leave. Jason felt as if his heart was skipping beats. He may actually start to hyperventilate. And then she would have to take care of him once again. That thought, antithesis shocked him, and Jason came back to himself.

Raven hand was soft and callused, with graceful stained and dirty fingers capped by glossy, rounded nails, reached for him. Her thouch sooths, Jason thought. He gently uncurled it from his wrists and sized it against his own.

The whole of her hand fit within his palm.

“So small.” He traced the light blue veins on the back of it, the bruises Raven took from him, until her skin was hidden in the rolled up sleeves of her coveralls.

And cold. She was as cold as if she'd taken a blast from the freeze ray.

Jason inched closer to her until only an inch or two separated them from chest to toes, offering her his warmth.

Desperate to hold her close, Jason could not risk making Raven feel uncomfortable, or reopening her wounds.

Instead, he tucked her hands to his chest and, leaning forward to enclose her in his heat, resting his face on shoulder.

“Do not reject my gratitude. Give me the chance to know you. To be the friend you have been to me”

He buried his face in the fragrant hair that swayed with the wind in this place they shared, inhaling deeply as he confronted the truth at last.

His breath hitched, Jason forgave himself for living, and re-assured himself, that so would she.

She stared straight into his chest, looking in his direction but not seeing him.

“Raven.”

She met his gaze.

And while a frown marred her brow, she slowly opened her mouth, and said “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.*"

"Beautiful people do not just happen.* and Jason, you are beautiful."

Slowly, so as to not startle him I sat up, moving away from his personal space where I was all night. Moving back I leaned against a recliner, still facing him as I shuffled back.

Holding my eyes in his, he mirrored my movements, his expression blank, and reclined against the Victorian writing table I’d thrifted last week. Sturdy, it held his weight. 

Jason kept him gaze on Raven, his hands roamed from remembered injury to another. Most healed, some tender, on their way to full recovery in a hour or 3. Raven however, had brushed skin all over her face, swollen, the reddish purple running down to her chest and probably other places hidden by the neckline of polyester clothes. Blood soaked her left abdomen, mirroring his stabbed kidney. 

His heart squeezed in horror. Mirrored injuries and his healed state were dead giveaways. There was a restless stirring of his battered body, indicated that the rest of him was observing more than just the hurt Raven had taken into herself, and letting him know he was still alive.

Jason wanted to thank her, but her eyes snared him. They were huge, almost translucent and awesome colour, indigo fanning out to deep purple. He was just about able to breath, anything else was beyond him while she was before him, looking at him as if nothing but he mattered, holding evidence of her sacrifice for him. 

He realised he was staring, he cleared his throat; it was a dried mess. Shit, his breath was for sure going to give the unflappable Raven the vapours. 

Tentatively, Raven smiled at him. A small reassuring one, it lit her eyes and her lips parted, breathing through her mouth. He couldn’t stop staring at her, while a bruised lung made it difficult to breathe. He felt like a moron, but he  didn’t think he’d ever seen such a symmetrical face, lush lips, full breasts that stretched her top; a major case of bed head.

Raven lifted her hand, pointing to a bottle holding clear liquid. At his blank gaze, she moved her hand, and it floated to him, its cap unscrewed itself as it landed gently on his lap. 

Violet eyes twinkled at his slack jaw, drink her look said. Looking at him and then the bottle of water, now floating in front of his face. 

Jason caught the bottle from thin air, not losing sight of Raven he gulped it down. He’d left thirsty behind, he was a desert with cracked earth and Raven a cool drink of water.

“Thank you,” he managed, a croak more than anything.

Raven nodded in acknowledgment, as Jason’s sea green eyes brimmed with male interest, while he kept a respectable distance. Her eyes skimmed his muscular arms; adorned in nothing but white cotton bandages, flexed as they capped her pink blossom bottle; his mouth and chin moving to create negative space as he gulped down water. His classical nose, broken way too many times to count, healed ever so slightly wrong; stoping him from being to pretty and straight into masculine. Wow!

Her insides stirred, long forgotten and repressed. It was not unpleasant. Just unexpected. But unwanted?

“Your turn,” his voice deep and unused. At his unrelenting gaze Raven took the offered bottle from him, it zipped through the room at me. She didn’t dare get close to him.

Sending my need for distance, Jason remained in his side of the room.

He was beginning to make her nervous, he watched her drink, looking disappointed when she didn’t place her lips on the bottle as he had; let the water flow into her mouth from above. She used this time to look away and focus on the ceiling flooded with slanting sunlight. Jason’s physical presence eating up all the space in the room, shrinking up her airy study.

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Raven felt seen. Seen for herself, even though it was empathic transference that had saved him, it’d been her choice to do so. She didn’t need a thank you, but she felt humbled by his appreciation.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”*

She almost jumped, my how stealthy you are.

Jason stood to the side, a book in his brick sized hand, a thick long finger, flicking pages. Facing her book case, but was he waiting for her. James Baldwin, for her melancholy moods.

He gave her a sideways glance; she got a good look at his square jaw and repeatedly broken nose. His smirk letting her know he’d caught her little jump.

Not sure how to respond, laugh it off, ask him about books he enjoys or say you’re welcome, Raven met his serious gaze, that belied his smirk.

Just then Dick zeroed in on them, took the book from Jason’s hand, and placed it on her kitchen counter, as he pulled Jason from her book shelves towards food.

Dick fussing, calling him little wing, made Raven chuckle. Jason’s long suffering look and consistent eyes rolls, let her into what he felt about being fussed over. Not giving an inch, or Dick would wrap you in bubble wrap.

“You too, Rae.” Dick called over his shoulder. Lightly squeezing her hands in thanks as Raven sat, a guest in her own breakfast nook. He placed a bowl of soup in front of her, napkin and cutlery laid out.

She smiled at Dick, reassuring him; they were okay.

Dick sighed in relief. His emotions finally settling. He left them to eat and went to the sink, cleaning up after himself, setting aside food for his siblings in her rarely used oven to maintain temperature.

There was an empty seat between Jason and her. The breakfast bar sat five. Venue for a many a Titan get togethers. Victor usually cooked and Kori proceeded to hovered over him, suggesting alien options or sides; Garfield yelled for tofu and lounged on the three seater sofa. But even with almost all the Titans present, sometimes Roy and Donna, it never felt this crowded, as it did now with Jason in her breakfast nook, burning brightly, only an empty chairs away.

Jason’s light had almost been snuffed out. She’d had to cup her hands around it, protecting it from the winds of pain and storms of mortality, until his light was strong enough to fight and survive on its own.

That created a bond, a connection between him and her. Fraught with emotions and gratitude. She saved his life and gratitude to being alive.

When he looked at her after awakening. Just now at her book shelf, speaking to her soul, it was all too much.

**********************

Even as he put Jason’s hand in Raven’s, skin to skin; watching wounds stop bleeding, skin knit itself, Dick still couldn’t bring himself to hope.

Raven directed Dick to transport Jason, not by words or any gesture yet he knew. Dick watched Jason slide into the floor mattress in Raven’s study, and then she sat by him and took Jason’s pains and wounds, one after another. Jason was being restored before his very eyes. He’d made the right choice. He watched as Raven got paler and her skin lost its glow.

In the background Damian shut the main door, setting up temporary surveillance and security. Cass had helped him with Jason and she sat hesitantly on her haunches, afraid to touch him, reluctant to leave.

Dick cleared his throat, but Raven was somewhere he couldn’t go. Jason in her capable hands. He just hoped this was not too hard on her. Not that she’d ever tell.

Couldn’t think of anything else to do, so taking in a deep breath he said “we’re going to be here, a while, set up watch rotation and make yourselves at home.”

And Damian and Cassandra did just that. They searched Raven’s home for linen closet, found camping supplies; then the bathrooms, all the exits and points of egress. Finally sleeping on the floor they adapted a light sleep. The kind where you are resting, but even the smallest sound of danger and you instantly up.

But now he could relax Cass and Dami and were finally resting. Jason was away nearly fully recovered. And him and Raven were okay.

********************************************

Jason saw how Raven walked, she carefully sat herself on the stool, she was hurting because she’d put herself in the line of fire for him.

He kept his eyes on his plate, focusing on the food. He needed the fuel after such, aggressive, healing and regeneration. But also to give Raven some space.

Raven was an empath, and amazing, she healed at an exponential rate, but the damage he had taken was easily fatal.

It was unacceptable; this amazing, beautiful, caring woman was harmed. And she did it to take away his pain and injury. His breath hot and tight, he tried to relax. Raven and Dick were ok, but his debt remained.

The initial contact, when raven found him, he had been drowning in a sea of grey. Beyond pain and agony. But she told him to hold on, and he said he would. He would rage against the darkness and leave the limbo with no pain, but also no happiness either. She felt like a partner in his agony fuelled haze, much worse after the limbo of murky nothingness, towards recovery and better things.

She had his back. She encouraged him. She took away the worst of it, so his body could cope.

For the first time in forever, now, Jason could see beyond Red-hood. The anger of his death, the burn in the pit of his stomach at the betrayals. They were there, but now, for the first time he could see his life was more than those thing that happened to him.

His eyes returned to her. It just couldn’t be helped.

Jason remembered reading, “I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalising act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.”**

Yes, a debt was owed; and all other considerations like the softness and warmth of Raven’s eyes, …… that is to say, he’d never seen Raven this way, so alive and warm and vital. Somehow, she was the fire that ran through his body; kept him beating and alive.

*― James Baldwin