Chapter Text
Vic is the scrapbooker, who likes to reminisce on the dead, the missing, and the gone, and it is only because of him that Kory looks back (instead of constantly forward). On nights that he stays in Bludhaven, they sit together at the kitchen bar glueing his printed photos into a battered scrapbook. They find similarities between Red Star and Ryand’r, mull over the new scars that were not always on Vic’s nose and the chip that did not always exist in his left incisor, laugh at the breakneck speed of Gar’s growth spurt over the last few years, which is documented through stick-like limbs and oversized feet that do not balance out until December 2007.
The albums begin in June of 2003, with construction equipment and cardboard boxes scattered throughout the empty, fresh-painted walls of the Tower and end in the summer of 2009, with Ikea furniture and cardboard boxes throughout the water stained Bludhaven apartment. It is six years of storylines in the span of thin plastic rectangles. Raven’s hood is omnipresent in photos until 2004, and Dick’s mask does not disappear until January 2008. The first photo of blue eyes is a screenshot from Vic’s robotic eye in the Arizona desert, stood in the smoking remains of the T-car and sunset, and Dick tries to make them scrap it (for security reasons).
“I’m serious. It’s a liability.”
Vic pulls Dick forward by the waist, close enough to kiss him, and holds the photo up to the dangling overhead light so that it is very much out of his reach. “I’m scrapbooking it anyway.”
“We can keep it in the vault,” Kory suggests, admiring the shape of them squished together, because it has taken them the longest to lose the veneer of platonic. Because she has only seen glimpses of their domesticity, because she has talked to them both separately about the importance of romance outside of work, outside of paperwork especially, and they are so stubbornly awkward about casual flirtations and honest declarations of love.
Petulantly, Dick bats at Vic’s distant hands and misses them by multiple inches. “Bruce will kill me. You know how much shit he gave me about taking off the mask in the first place?”
“I’ll kill you for ruining my scrapbook. It’s therapeutic.”
They begin to fight over that tiny rectangle of plastic, wrestling each other with arms and elbows, grabbing too hard at wrists until Vic has pushed Dick against the fridge and attacked him with distracting, pointed kisses. The photograph is still held high over both their heads, until Kory flies over to retrieve it. Dick does not seem to notice, and so while he is otherwise occupied, she glues it to a sheet of orange scrapbooking paper that matches the ombre of the picture’s sunset. It looks incomplete, so she decorates the corners with several domino mask stickers for effect, then a pair of blue googly eyes, and lastly stamps a briefcase in the left margin.
Vic is the scrapbooker, who likes to reminisce on the dead, the missing, and the gone, and it is only because of him that Kory looks back (instead of constantly forward). Perhaps she was wrong for wanting to forget this turning point in time, or for always avoiding the retrospection that Vic prefers. It is nice to have a reminder of the first night their names fell deadweight into the arid air, and in this photo especially, Dick looks as young as he is. On the counter next to it, there is a photo of herself with angry eyes and crossed arms, which reminds her uncomfortably of the distance between them during the Brotherhood. Distance measured in miles and emotional space.
It is different now. Now, she is stably in love, committed in love, and listening to Vic and Dick trade increasingly explicit insults in their strangest love language. Kory does not wholly understand it except for the truth that it is not mean-spirited. They treat it like flirting.
“Bitch,” Dick says breathlessly, fully suspended with legs wrapped around Vic’s waist, arms straining upwards, but he does not seem to mean it. “Give it back.”
“Can't. Kory took it.”
Kory squeals when they both turn on her, and she is unceremoniously double tackled, spilling the entire envelope of photos with her. They spiral into the air and slide across the fake wooden floors, too many smears of purple hair and green skin and her own metallic bracers, immortalized by Vic’s professional camera and sometimes her own amateur shots. She has fallen into a series of orange and gray bodies in dark bedrooms, taken on Polaroid back in April for first anniversaries, and she can feel the crumple of too many memories beneath her.
“You are ruining the photos!”
“I’d rather ruin you,” Dick tells her coquettishly, which is rich when he is still wrapped around Vic's waist.
The moment is interrupted by the audible click of Vic’s robotic eye, capturing the flush of his cheeks and bright blue eyes, which Kory will never tire of seeing.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Dick snaps, and more photos are ruined in the following fight about whether or not Vic should delete candid shots taken without permission, especially candid shots that have recognizable, silver chrome forearms wrapped around Bruce Wayne’s ward.
“What will the Gotham Gazette say?” Vic teases about the lewdness of it all. “Dick Grayson and Cyborg together in Bludhaven? Good friends or—”
Dick cuts him off with an aggressive kiss, which is when Kory decides that they need this moment of intimacy without her. Laughing to herself, she grabs as many crumpled photos as she can and pushes them both toward the too-small bedroom with its too-thin walls, ignoring their playful protests. They do not seem too upset when she shuts the door behind their intertwined limbs, or at least she assumes this based on the subtle thuds and the unzipping of Vic’s suitcase.
Vic is the scrapbooker, who likes to reminisce on the dead, the missing, and the gone, but Kory immerses herself (without him) in the six-year history of it. Memories are outlined in Vic’s loving gaze, the angle at which he takes photos, the backgrounds he chooses to include, the quietest moments he wanted to document. The linked pinkie fingers of Gar and Raven at brunch last week, the vegetarian meal that Dick spent all morning making, the ocean sunrise of Jump City behind their overlapped shoulders. Kory glues down the photo of herself and Vic on the common room couch, slumped together in their midmorning nap, with Gar holding bunny ears behind their stacked heads.
There is an entire novel contained in these. The bedroom-exclusives in April 2009 while caught up in the euphoria of new partners with higher sex drives, then the compensatory May photos that are shopping dates with Vic and Raven on the streets of Bludhaven, a summer of theater venues for Gar, too many aerial view photos from several hundred feet above Jump City. Mostly it is mundane, but there is the occasional photo of bruised jawlines and new stitches, with the healing process documented across weeks. There are hospital beds and slumped bodies, their expressions delirious from painkillers and Raven’s magic. Still, perhaps Vic has a point that it is nice to remember.
Kory so rarely looks back, but she is starting to see the appeal of it in comparison to whatever comes next. It is hard to imagine next, because she and Dick live together in Bludhaven, and the others are based in Jump City, and part of her has started to worry about the longevity of five-way relationships long-distance, especially when there is no way to predict the next superhero crisis. It is hard to imagine next, when her daily routine revolves around being Starfire with Nightwing here, when her last mission took them to space for nearly half a year and almost killed Vic and Gar. Next, when Slade is still out there. Next, when Vic and Raven have started mentoring younger superheroes consistently, like the kind of role model that Bruce and Steve should have been to Dick and Gar, and she is unsure where that might relocate them eventually.
Kory does not know what is next, because she prefers to take these things a day at a time, and this is how she chafes against Dick and Vic and Raven, who like to schedule dates out months in advance. They like to plan plane tickets and dinner locations and even bedroom schedules because Vic is obsessed with fairness, and Raven likes forethought, and Dick loves in the form of logistics, which is all sorts of too regimented for Kory.
She thinks they might drive her crazy by the end of August.
In the week leading up to September, the week that Gar returns to college and his second semester of classes, Kory decides to verbalize this to the one person who understands impulsive love in the moment. They are dressed incognito in baseball caps and civvies, sipping decaf coffees outdoors while the others double-check hidden cameras and security software in Gar’s new dorm room. It is dusk, which means that the sky hangs over them in a grayish blue, and the shadows stretch longer across the campus grass for every minute they linger. She aches to grab him by the torso and fly them to some other state for the night, somewhere with a national park and hiking trails, and she aches to do it without planning where it fits on their predetermined calendar of dates.
“I worry that our lives will lead us to crossroads,” she tells him, tucking her head to avoid the curious looks of other college students (she hopes they do not recognize her from Kory Anders photoshoots). “And that our daily routine will become so disparate or boring that we decide the effort of our relationship is not worth it.”
Gar does a comedic spit-take, which might have made her giggle if not for the gravity of the conversation. “Okay, morbid. Have you been reading too many sad romance novels again?”
“I like spontaneity. I like to not always know what my day will hold.” She allows their wrists to rub together, then dips her head to press a kiss against his cheek and feels vindicated that he leans into it. This coffee moment was not planned beforehand, which she misses the ease of. “Like this. This is nice.”
Worry lines immediately furrow his forehead. “It’s also the reason it took us so long to make this work, though. Like, that is a very significant reason we didn’t stick the first time. Or me and Dick.”
“I do not mind intentionality, but now every day is another calendar slot that has been organized months in advance, and Dick does not understand how much I hate it. Always the same weekly routine without deviation, and then I am the bad person for wanting otherwise.” Her voice has raised in pitch unintentionally. A few students have swiveled their necks and are staring too intensely, but she does not care when it has been a month of sameness and repetition and too many cancelled weekends because of last-minute crises with crime rings and supervillains.
“We don’t want to draw attention from the normies,” Gar says beneath his breath. “You want to go back to my dorm room?”
“I can fly to Jump City in less than an hour, but we must always visit together so that he can also have date night with Raven, or you, or Vic, and the airplanes are terrible. The airport is terrible. Raven cannot teleport so many people at once, not that far of a distance, and I lose so many hours every week to logistics, and then I worry that I will not be in Bludhaven when I am needed.”
Pink lips press into a singular line; tanned hands reach for her. “How long have you been feeling like this?”
Maybe her breath has gone reedy and thin, and the navy sky around them has blurred at the edges. “I thought at least you would understand, because you also like to just decide to do things, sometimes, but the most spontaneous thing we have done in the last month is get coffee together. I could take us to a national park right now, if you would just let me.”
In between breaths, Gar takes her face in his hands and brings their noses tip-to-tip, so that she can only focus on the freckled sweep of his holo-ringed cheekbones, the yellow-green of his dilated eyes. “Slow down. Talk me through it.”
“You are returning to college and acting, and Vic and Raven would like to mentor the Young Justice team that the League has put together, and—”
“No one is leaving you.” His thumbs have decided on a slow caress of her temples, but they press in enough to ground her. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. This isn’t like it was in the Amazon, or Gotham.”
Kory breathes out, though her exhalation is shaky. Her nails have found refuge in the meat of his forearm. “I am sorry for this. I did not think—”
“Nothing to say sorry for,” Gar interrupts, stroking the sweep of her hair behind one ear. His pinkish face is cast in sharp blue shadows, and this is somehow what reminds Kory that they are in public, that they are seated on a campus bench with two melting iced coffees, that others have noticed her loudness. Gar shifts his shoulders slightly so that she is more shrouded from curious onlookers. He repeats, “How long have you been feeling this way?”
“It did not fully settle until you began packing for college.”
“Because I’m not at the Tower anymore?”
She shrugs self-consciously, somewhat lost for words.
“It’s easy for me to come back to the Tower for weekends, and I’m not going to stop visiting Bludhaven just because I’ve got homework. I’m not going anywhere.”
“If your acting career goes somewhere—”
“I haven’t acted in anything yet, except for a few short plays last year. It’s a really big if. And we’ll take it one day at a time. I'm not making big decisions without talking to you first.”
“We broke up the last time our lives diverged. We both prefer spontaneity, and we do not know how to plan the dates consistently. If I am not in your daily routine, then I do not know how you will continue to care for me.” Kory considers her hands instead of his face, the pale crescent scars and pink-painted nails. “There is a history of it.”
Perhaps they have never talked in-depth about the ghostly break-up that was South America and then nothing, because Gar was so deeply invested in his last pseudo family that it left no time for her. Mostly because he did not trust the Brotherhood with the knowledge of her importance to him, because she was not confident enough to pursue him in that mind state, because it was bad timing.
On Tamaran, Kory decided there is never good timing.
Both of them startle at the gentle tongue tut of Raven suddenly behind them. Her empathy link did not forewarn them, but now that Kory is aware, she senses the lavender undercurrent of it.
“I came to tell you that Vic and Dick are done setting up Gar’s room,” Raven says matter-of-factly, though the subtle uplift of her tone is concerned. “Then I realized you’re both broadcasting and got worried.”
“We’re about halfway through processing. You mind if Raven joins us, Kor?”
The nickname is new, nice even, spontaneous somehow. She does a half-shrug, half-nod, too self-conscious to look Raven directly in the eyes. “If you must.”
“What’s wrong?”
Gar nudges Kory with his elbow as Raven takes a seat on the bench. He raises an eyebrow that communicates too much in not enough words. “Kory thinks it takes too much planning to maintain our relationship and that the constant scheduling is killing the romance. Or that I’ll quit if it gets too hard.”
“Ah,” says Raven, grabbing Kory’s hand to plant a kiss against the love lines of her palm. “You are the reason we decided to make it work in the first place. Even though it was bad timing. Even though it was the wrong place. None of us are giving up because it’s difficult.”
“I miss spontaneity.” Kory misses even the simpleness of dating Raven alone last year, or Gar alone in 2007, but it is a foolish thought, an insecure one, that stems mostly from late-night obsessions in Bludhaven. Mostly, she misses the ease of living together and does not know how their lives will reroute back to one location. (It is a premature thought, most definitely.)
Raven connects their three minds together, as she always does when complicated feelings are better communicated nonverbally. Dusk has shifted into nightfall fully now, so that Raven’s holo-ringed black hair matches the clouded sky.
Gar says, “I’m not planning on breaking up with you. None of us are.”
“I know,” says Kory, because rationally she does. Rationally she understands that the Brotherhood was a strange mental state for everyone involved, the context unsustainable, and Gar regrets his actions under stress. These are conversations they’ve had before, even if they have never circled back to premature break-ups. “I still worry.”
“Kory, darling, dearest, light of my life—” Gar tends to exaggerate pet names in moments of tension, and he rattles off too many in a strangled tone. “We can be spontaneous any time we want. If you want to fly to Jump City in the middle of the night because you missed me, I’m not going to stop you. Neither is Dick.”
“What if we never all live together again?”
The ripple of their three minds echoes this for a long moment of silence. The sentiment bounces around, when Raven breaks it: “We’ll figure it out. Day by day, right?”
Gar hums his own agreement. “Doesn’t mean we’re going to give up on you and Dick for living on the other side of the country. You really hate the scheduling calendar that much?”
It is more complicated than that. Of course it is more complicated than that. “I think that it works well for most of us, but I hate that the routine is not simpler. It was simpler when we were all on Tamaran.” She was the busy one in Tamaran, while the others waited for her, and that is no longer the case on Earth.
Kory so rarely looks back, but she is starting to see the appeal of it in comparison to whatever comes next. It is hard to imagine next, because she and Dick live together but not in Jump City, and part of her has started to worry about the longevity of five-way relationships long-distance. It is hard to imagine next, when Vic and Raven started mentoring younger superheroes consistently, and she is unsure where that might relocate him eventually. Next, when Gar’s career might take him elsewhere regularly.
Gar hums low in his throat. “You think you could ever teleport five people that far, Rae?”
“I’ve been working on that, actually," says a new voice.
All three startle, the proximity of Vic’s mind link thudding through them. His holo-ringed body is casual in basketball shorts and a sleeveless hoodie and quickly approaching the back of the bench. He looks like a student athlete, perfectly matched to this college campus, but Kory is more comforted by the familiar coldness of his metal fingers settling against her shoulder to squeeze.
“Hey, Vic,” says Gar, tilting his neck upwards to accept a brief greeting kiss. “Working on what?”
“Didn’t mention it because the trial runs aren't quite done, but the League’s figured out fast travel.”
Dick is only a few steps behind Vic, baseball cap pulled low over his face and sunglasses. “Zeta tubes. There has to be a system set up in each location, but it could save us a shitload of travel time. I've been talking with Bruce about getting one set up in Bludhaven and Jump. You guys okay? Felt Raven ping.”
“Mostly okay,” Raven says with another squeeze of Kory’s hand. “Talking through it.”
Oh, the mortification of being perceived by all four of them at once, pinned beneath their synchronized concerned stares and comforting hands. It is so much to look back at how far they have come, the growth spurt changes of their bodies in six years, the new memories that have ingrained their faces with crow’s feet and sun-tanned freckles. “I am being dramatic.”
“You’re not,” says Gar smoothly. “She’s a little freaked because I’m moving out of the Tower again, and Vic and Raven are thinking about mentoring the new Young Justice team. It’s like—how do we make it keep working, when the location sucks?”
Bent over the back of the bench, Dick murmurs in her ear. “I didn't realize. You never said anything."
“I love living with you in Bludhaven, but I miss the spontaneity of having date nights whenever I feel like it. I miss not knowing what I am doing every weekend. I am tired of the same routines, but I worry that once we are all in different locations, we will…”
“Fizzle?” Vic fills in.
Dick kisses her cheek, lingering. “It won’t fizzle. You made this happen, so we’re here to keep it going. Think maybe we haven’t surprised you with anything fun in a while, though. And that’ll get a lot easier with Zeta tubes.”
Vic is the scrapbooker, who likes to reminisce on the dead, the missing, and the gone, and it is only because of him that Kory looks back (instead of constantly forward). She admits, “You surprised me for my birthday this year. That was nice.”
Kory still has the photos of her glitter-streaked skin, her wrists crammed with glowstick bracelets. They surprised her at the location of her late evening photoshoot, which was not a photographer’s studio but a bar, crowded with a few dozen heroes from the Titans' extended network. She had almost forgotten, because she does not like to look back, but the others are so good at reminding her.
“We can do that more often, you know," says Vic. "If you’d like us to?”
She feels ridiculous with her warm cheeks and half-wet eyes, surrounded by their gentle smiles and reassuring voices. The sun has completely set, leaving them all shrouded in darkness. Her own hands are still clutched tight around her half-finished coffee. “I would like that very much.”
Dick's voice is apologetic. "Didn't mean to be so anal about the schedule. I can work on it."
"Sometimes it is nice, but I like impromptu dates also."
“We can start by doing something really impromptu right now,” Gar tells her, because he is her partner in impulsive moments, who also likes to decide in the moment what happens next. Next, because there is nothing stopping Raven from teleporting them somewhere spontaneously, and nothing to stop Vic from documenting it with photos, and nothing to stop Dick from calling Wally to watch over Bludhaven for the weekend. "You want to go camping?"
"I would like that very much," she repeats breathlessly. "You mean now?"
"I mean right now."
Next, because they’ll photograph tomorrow together, and in a few years they'll reminisce on August 2009 when they scrapbook it. There will be too many pictures saved in their heavy-duty security vault, too many photos of Bruce Wayne's ward laying in sleeping bags with Raven, and Cyborg kissing famous model Kory Anders in the woods, and Nightwing skinny dipping with some college kid named Gar Logan. In ten years, they will look back at this photo of JCU's campus and remember the weekend they impulsively fucked off to the Redwood National Forest. Next, so that one day they can look back and remember.