Chapter Text
It happens quickly. So quickly. Not even a flap of a bird's wings.
One moment, Robin is soothing a terrified child's cries. She's singing softly to him, some aimless song that she doesn't think about. She wipes away his tears, trying to ignore the sounds of gunshots and screams. The boy turns, looking up at her. “Ms. Robin…?” He asks, and Robin smiles gently down at him, ready to answer him, deliberately shielding him from the carnage behind her.
The next, there's the crack of a gun, closer than before. Robin doesn't perceive it as anything but background noise. The battle field has so many guns and explosions, and she absently prays that whoever that bullet hits is alright.
Then there's exploding pain in her throat.
Robin jerks a bit at the impact, but not knocked off her feet. Her throat burns. The boy’s eyes are suddenly wide with horror.
She reaches up dully to touch at her throat, and her hand comes away red.
What…?
Her senses are dulled, everything narrowed and focused on the bright red staining her hand, the bright burning pain in her throat, right where her windpipe rests.
Iron rises in her throat.
It hurts to breathe. Robin coughs, hacks, and scarlet pours out of her mouth like a gory, unsightly waterfall.
Oh. Robin thinks as black scatters across her vision, little blackholes not unlike the one at the center of the galaxy threatening to swallow her whole. Oh dear.
The boy stumbles back, away from Robin with pale skin and tears flowing freely down his face. Robin tries to stand, to follow him, hand tightly pressed over the wound on her throat to prevent more blood from spilling out. She wants to...what? Apologies? Comfort him? Her mind is getting fuzzy all of a sudden, like someone's put a filter on reality.
Blood still spills out of the wound on her neck, traveling down her arm. The burning blazes down her throat. She tries to talk, and more metallic scarlet rises up and spills out.
Someone slams into Robin, holding her down–hands around her throat, choking and constricting and killing her. Robin's wings flap as she claws desperately at the arms holding her down as she tries to shout and all that comes out in a wheeze that's excruciating to get out.
The blackholes expand, sucking in light and sound and everything Robin knows. Robin can feel herself growing weaker, her lifeforce spilling out onto those constricting hands and her lungs screaming, begging for air.
I'm going to die here. Robin realizes distantly. It feels surreal, like an impossibility coming true. A dream, like the ones in Penacony. But the Dreams in Penacony don't have crushing hands and choking breaths and screaming children that suddenly go silent.
“I'm so glad I'm gonna be the one to silence your little song, birdie.” Her killer hisses right next to her ear. Everything feels faint now. Colours are blending. Sound is fading into the background. Nihility encroaches onto the back of Robin's mind, and it gets more promising with each choked wheeze Robin forces out of her agonizing, burning throat. "I've waited everyday, just to see if somebody finally did you in." They grin, malicious. Robin's heart stutters weakly with terror. "Now I'll know for sure."
Robin hears her killer’s words clearly, over even her own death that’s ringing in her ears. And all Robin can think, can wonder, is why the Harmony is letting her die surrounded by hatred.
Robin had done everything for the Harmony. She had spread their word. She went from planet to planet, just for them.
She was dying here for them.
A songbird having its life snuffed out by a bigger, stronger predator, its throat crushed by powerful claws. And there was some form of Harmony in that.
The Harmony of the natural order of things. A cycle. Robin had bore witness to it several times over. Now, she was a part of it. The losing end of it.
A choked wheeze, a horrific noise akin to a sob, escaped her.
Hatred-filled eyes crinkled as if to smile. They were the only thing that Nihility hadn't taken. They were gold, and furious, and filled with so much anger that Robin could only feel pity for those eyes, because there was no Harmony in them.
Even as they were thrown off of her by an unseen force.
Even as she watched a bullet get put between their eyes, their body so close that their blood mixed with her own.
Even as she was lifted into somebody's arms, staining their clothes bright red with Robin’s very being that was spilling out of her like a cup of water tipped over on a table. It was a simple comparison, because it was simple what was happening to Robin. She was dying.
Robin was dying at twenty years old. There was something poetic there. Something somebody should write a song about. A good campfire song. Robin thought deliriously. A cautionary tale.
But Robin couldn’t write any songs about her dying, as everything finally, finally went black, and Robin gave into Nihility, and suddenly Robin wasn't anything at all.
Just a songbird who ventured out of her safe, gilded cage, and was now paying the price for it.