A/N: Well. As you all failed to talk me out of this, here is my first Rae/Kyr. First one on I think. What can I say? I like Kyrie.

I don't own Teen Titans (but don't ask me who does), and Kyrie is an OC created by Zoicytes-Shadow. If you're looking at the name "Kyrie" and wondering what drug I'm currently using, her profile is at Romanticide forum, under the "Okay... I'm bored..." thread. And if you're still wondering what I'm on, all I can say is: four hours of PreCalc a day plus two extra hours of homework. See what your brain mutates into after that.

Shatter

(It wasn't supposed to happen.)

Not just this specific arrangement, this strange juxtaposition of a thousand different emotions shoved into an encounter of a few minutes—though this, too, is not supposed to be. But they were not supposed to meet, not meant to know that the other even existed. A divide of two continents and almost a thousand years separated them, as if Fate in a rare moment of generosity had decided to keep them apart.

Raven seldom meddles with divination or Seeing, but even she had sensed the indescribable wrongness that surged through the fabric of time when Kyrie first stepped into Titans Tower. It was magnetic, inexorable and yet unintended, impossible to miss, and Raven didn't know what to make of it, or of the mage that caused it.

(She still doesn't, really.)

Kyrie had asked her, politely and calmly but with a determination that worried Raven, to release Rorek. Raven had stalled, saying that she didn't know she had him—which was true, more or less, because she would be very surprised if there was another being in the cursed book, but Kyrie took it to mean that she was unacquainted with the more interesting properties of said book. The conversation meandered, Raven trying desperately to avoid the truth without lying outright.

Inevitably, in the end, the entire story had spilled from her lips. Kyrie absorbed it all quietly, flinching occasionally but still maintaining an understanding demeanor. She bowed her head when Raven spit out the last words, hating herself for needing to disguise the tremble in her voice, and then Kyrie did something that took Raven entirely by surprise:

She hugged her.

(In retrospect, she should have known better than to allow it. In retrospect, of course, she should have known better than to do a great many things, but this one stands out by virtue of its sheer inanity.)

It wasn't spontaneous, and Kyrie seemed to know that Raven wouldn't welcome the gesture. It was almost as if she was deliberately pushing the boundaries of Raven's comfort levels—I know you won't like this, but I think you need it anyways.

She didn't pull away.

(It's scary, sometimes, that Kyrie can read her better than anyone else she has ever met. Scary because she has more to hide from Kyrie than from anyone else.)

Even when she gave in, she refused to talk to Malchior. It was galling, but she couldn't be sure that she wouldn't fall for him again. Standing outside of her own room, she wasn't sure that she had ever stopped falling.

(She thinks that she would have rather kept pining over Malchior than this. It hurt, too, but the pain was remote and almost manageable in a way that this—this—will never be.)

She doesn't know what Malchior said. They've never spoken of it. All she knows is that Kyrie screamed, a half-second of pure, primal agony, and as Raven ran in to see what had happened Kyrie seemed to collapse into herself until the quivering mess of a girl bore no resemblance to the sensitive woman Raven had just met.

Raven caught her just before she hit the floor, staggering under the weight. She noticed a truth charm dangling from Kyrie's limp hand and involuntarily glanced at the book, still propped open to a heartbreakingly familiar page.

(The nuanced irony of the situation wouldn't register until much later, that her last conversation with the dragon came while she was struggling to support Kyrie.)

"Malchior," she said, ignoring the stabs of pain that lanced through her body at the sight of his eyes—crimson now, and somehow the color suited him. "What did you say to her?"

Silence. His gaze seemed to burn into her soul. The truth charm must have worn off partially, if he wasn't being forced to answer a direct question.

Raven could feel Kyrie's tears soaking her shoulder. "What was it?"

When he still didn't answer, Raven found the sudden courage to do something that she had longed to do for years. Grabbing the charm from Kyrie's unresisting fingers, she slammed it against the cover, ignoring the sparks that flared to life at the contact. "What was it?" She didn't know why she was so angry, except maybe the anger had something to do with the fact that he had hurt her, lied to her, and now he was going to tell the truth if she had to kill him to get it out.

(She can't imagine what came over her. Physically touching two charms unless you know that they won't interact is always a bad idea. Touching a charm and a curse—stupidity. But then, she has done many stupid things lately.)

He held out for a long second, until the edges of the paper around the talisman began to char and disintegrate and the magic locked him in its stranglehold. He waited until the compulsion had passed the point of no return, until he could say whatever he wanted without repercussions because there was no way he would be around to deal with them, and then he screamed it.

And then he died.

"I loved you." If it weren't for the charm, she would have thought that he was lying to torment her further.

She couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Had he just… and then he… but… why? Why would he have—why didn't he tell her?

The answer was painfully obvious. She wouldn't have believed him.

Oh, gods.

Kyrie gave a muffled hiccup into her shoulder and Raven, too dazed to feel uncomfortable yet, sank slowly to the floor. They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, clinging to each other with the desperate strength of those who have just had their entire world yanked out from beneath their feet.

It came to her suddenly that Rorek must be dead.

(She decides that she hates the wizard. This entire mess is his fault—and it may not be fair to blame it on him, because he is dead and probably had no idea that it would turn out like this anyways, but she doesn't care. Kyrie's eyes still glaze over at times and Raven knows she's thinking about him, so it's always his fault.)

Later, when Kyrie seemed quieter, Raven asked about Malchior.

She looked faintly surprised, stirred from her melancholy reverie. "The truth charm? I can't see how it would have failed, so yes, he probably meant whatever he said. Why do you a—are you well?"

Raven's hand was tightening convulsively on Kyrie's arm, and her breath came in short, quick gasps. It was one thing to suspect; another to know.

"He loved me." She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice.

(She had thought then that she loved him too, though she knows better now. But guilt can be strong, strong enough to make an ill-fated infatuation seem equal to eternal devotion, and whatever else may have been said of her and Malchior and the short time they knew each other, she was far from faultless.)

Kyrie gave a long, shuddering sigh and pulled Raven closer, her shoulder heaving with the dry sobs that come only when there are no tears left to be shed. Raven let her, unwilling to deny the other girl the sort of comfort that she herself would never be able to indulge in. Even now, she was already restraining her emotions, holding them back before they began to destroy her possessions.

(If she had known how those repressed passions were to mutate and grow, she would have sacrificed a few statuettes for the sake of her sanity.)

They didn't move. Gradually, Kyrie's breath began to even out and she leaned forward until her head was resting in the curve of Raven's neck. Raven still didn't move. Kyrie mumbled something into her skin, and Raven wondered why she hadn't pushed her away yet.

(She still doesn't know, though she has had more than enough time to think about it.)

She didn't even realized that she had closed her eyes until she opened them again to find that hours had passed while they lay on her floor. Kyrie was murmuring against her neck again.

"Rorek I'm sorry I'm sorry sorrylovecomebackwhereareyouneedloveyousorry…"

She began to stir, and when she looked up her eyes were wet with tears and glazed with sleep. "Ror—?"

Raven opened her mouth to remind Kyrie of the previous day's events, but froze when Kyrie stretched up and kissed her. Calmly, naturally, as though this was simply the accepted procedure when someone had cried themselves to sleep in a near-stranger's arms, she kissed her.

And Raven couldn't bring herself to pull away.

(That should have been a warning of what was to come. Really, it should have been. But all Raven could think of was that Malchior was gone—her fault—and Kyrie, who had just lost her own lover, and gods it was insane but it somehow worked.)

Eventually it was Kyrie who stopped, blinking the last vestiges of sleep from her eyes. "Oh!" she gasped. "I'm sorry, I… I thought…" Her eyes began to fill with tears again.

Raven shrugged, tilting her head to indicate the—empty, empty, gods forgive her—book.

You are not the only one who has lost something.

Kyrie somehow understood, both all that was unsaid and all that the unsaying implied, and she nestled closer, letting the tears spill over her face and Raven's clothing again. "Thank you."

Raven didn't know if she should be thanked, because she was using Kyrie every bit as heartlessly as Kyrie was using her, but they both knew and accepted it and didn't that somehow make it right?

(Probably not, but right and wrong are so very far from her thoughts nowadays.)

They fell into a routine, of sorts, over the next month. The others didn't comment when Kyrie chose to stay in Raven's room and Raven allowed it—though she attributed that to fear and not tact.

They slept together, in the purest sense of the word: still clothed, sometimes only an arm or leg or even finger touching because it was enough. Simply to have another warm body next to them that they could pretend was a wizard or dragon—enough.

Sufficient.

Adequate.

Until it wasn't.

(And if she has even the slightest bit of sense she will crush this sensation of emptiness as she had crushed it after Malchior's betrayal, but she can't, won't. Doesn't.)

The first time she had looked at Kyrie and felt something inside her chest knot up, she had ignored it. Her emotions were running rampant anyways, and she had so closely identified Malchior and Kyrie that it made a clinical, psychological sort of sense for her to project what she had felt for the dragon onto the sorceress.

(She had known at the time that it felt like a lie. She had ignored that, too. She wonders if maybe she is too fond of ignoring things that she doesn't want to deal with.)

The second time—and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, until she loses count and the feeling was too obvious to be denied, even by her—was greeted with a sense of dread. Too late to stop, too late to catch herself before she hit the bottom, to late to do anything but feeling the sickening sensation of someone who has stepped out of a plane and realized that their parachute doesn't work.

Too late to stop feeling for her.

(It would all be so much easier to just hate Kyrie, hate her for being weak, hate her for that first kiss, hate her for the madness that has infected Raven's brain. But she can't.)

And that is how it has been and will be, until Kyrie falls in love again—which is inevitable, because that is simply how Kyrie is—and when the pain of Rorek's memory has dulled somewhat she will find another love because loving is as much a part of Kyrie as her name or her magic, and this routine of comfort that has become the most exquisite of tortures will end.

Raven should be relieved.

She isn't.

She finds herself waking earlier and earlier in the mornings; in lieu of sleep, she lies as still as she can and listens to the soft sleep-murmurings that come from her left. Kyrie's voice is soft and partially muffled by the pillow, but Raven still finds a kind of music in the sound, only broken by an occasionally intelligible phrase.

This will kill her in the end; smash her as Malchior never could. She is an idiot and a fool and she should know better and she does, she does, but…

But she thinks that she will die inside anyways, whether she ends this—routine, not a relationship, never a relationship—whether she ends it today or Kyrie does a year from now. She will die anyways, and why should she not take what small comfort she can before the executioner's axe falls?

So she is still and silent in the mornings, and her best friend by daylight rolls over and blindly reaches out to drape an arm over her waist.

"Rorek," she chokes, and Raven's shattered heart breaks once more.

But she doesn't pull away.

First yuri, first (very first, as I said) Rae/Kyr, so... heh, wonder what these reviews will look like. Press the pretty button!