Her brain was splitting before she opened her eyes, like the darkness she was accustomed to taking comfort in had taken instead to hammering at her head with Robin's bo staff. She winced and raised one hand to her head, only to have it meet some resistance. She cracked an eye open and found an IV taped to her hand. She glanced at the bag, hoping against all hope that those weren't painkillers because no, had Starfire not told them she was pregnant? Then again, she hadn't remembered it being Starfire who'd handed her off, though she recalled the light consoling brush of her fingers, sweeping the hair out of her eyes. Actually, she didn't remember much at all of the trip to the hospital. Red X attacked, she ran to tell a guard (so the guard could call on the Titans, neither her nor Starfire were fit to fight), and she'd come back to hoist Red X off of the compromising position she'd found him in with Starfire. There'd been a sharp, yet dull pain, like a jagged knife grazing the inside of her womb, and then she'd passed out.

Dread, thick and heavy and so very, very there, lurched in her as she shot upward, one hand at her swollen stomach. Oh Azar, please oh please have let the baby make it, please tell her she hadn't-

"The baby's okay."

Her hand dropped from her stomach; Happy sang in her mind for the first time in months. She turned to see Beast Boy, standing at the door, one hand awkwardly rubbing at his other behind his back. He smiled shyly at her, one pointed tooth jutting out at the corner of his lip. Her mouth fell open despite her inability to speak. Something, probably a cheap flower vase, exploded behind her on the windowsill. Beast Boy laughed, not his usual laugh, something lower. "Yeah, Doctor said you shouldn't do that anymore, at least until you have the baby."

"B-Beast Boy I- I-"

"Raven," He raised one hand, approaching her slowly, considerately... He was still smiling, and Affection tittered at the sight. "Why didn't you tell me?" Ah, of course he wanted to know. Why wouldn't he? She tried to grimace, but she wasn't very convincing, so she turned her head to her lap and folded her hands silently in front of her. Beast Boy drew closer. "Why'd you have to do all of this? Why'd you hide it from me?"

"Because you weren't ready to be a father."

He gripped her wrist, she looked at him. His lips were a straight thin line, but there wasn't anger in his eyes, not in the way his brows furrowed or the drop of his eyes. No, he looked sad. She'd made him sad. "Rae, we both know that's a lie."

She blinked, turned her head to her lap again and prayed that the tears firing against her eyes wouldn't fall. "Beast Boy… I grew up knowing I was nothing to my father, nothing but a portal for him to destroy my world- my friends. I tried…" she choked, and she loathed how weak she felt "so hard… to make him care about me, to be his daughter. But I never got there. I'd never known support and trust and everything else Robin and Starfire are always going on about. I'd never felt…" Raven grit her teeth as the first tear slithered down her cheek "...loved." She raised her other hand to her stomach, rubbing the swell back and forth. She breathed in, then the breath shuddered out. "I didn't want that for my child."

There was a warm hand on hers, and the thumb trailed her stomach, tracing her path. "Our child, Raven. You're not doing this alone." He sounded confused, but it wasn't a question; she just knew he wanted to ask a million of them.

"Beast Boy, I-" She whimpered. Azar, she hated herself right now, hissed internally for Reason to rein Sorrow and Affection in, but she didn't. She didn't have that power anymore. Beast Boy had changed Nevermore, maybe permanently, maybe for the better, but at the moment it felt for the worse. "I can't ask you to do that."

"You might be asking. I'm not."

She opened her eyes again and looked at Beast Boy, and he stood there the same as he had before, though he'd moved to hold her and their maturing child between his arms. He looked back at her, and she didn't need her empathic ability to tell his version of Affection was well in control, that the Reason of his mind, though monumentally weaker than her own, had taken a backseat to sentimentality. It made her heart swing; Happy was dancing on her strings and Affection gifted her the song. But Reason had returned, nagging at them with a stern finger- He feels this way now, but what of Terra? He can father our child and love another woman.

Sorrow tripped Happy off her feet, and Affection's music grew to a hush. "Beast Boy, I don't want you to think that because I'm giving you a child that it means you have to…" she trailed off, but Beast Boy pressed on.

"Doesn't mean I have to what, Rae?"

She breathed in, and breathed out "... You don't have to stay with me if there's somebody else."

He recoiled, and immediately she missed the heat. Doubt crept in, like she had been, constantly, for months- Why'd you have to remind him? We could have stayed like that, now he's changed his mind-

"Okay, you're gonna have to catch me up here, 'cause I'm suuuper confused."

Raven nearly smiled. He was such an idiot, and Azar she loved him. "You talk in your sleep sometimes, ya know."

"Huh?"

Raven shifted, and she could feel him watching her. He wasn't sure what to do with his hands. "You said her name, Beast Boy. You were calling for her, and I just couldn't…" play her role. "I didn't want to place that responsibility on you, make you feel trapped. You'd just end up hating me and" she rubbed her stomach "resenting them. That's why I hid. I had to-"

"Wait wait wait- hold on a second here!" She looked at him and, true to his nature, he looked lost. The kind of lost he was trying to make the connection between video game sequels. His eyes bulged as his hands spoke for him, though it was a different language, and not even he understood it. "Who are we talking about? What does this have to do with our kid?" He ran his hands down his face. "I'm so confused!" He tugged at his hair, making more of a mess of it than it already had been. "It feels like alien monkeys are in my brain and they're trying to make it explode!"

She raised an eyebrow. "I sincerely doubt foreign chimps have anything to do with your brain malfunctioning." She was almost proud of the usual dry monotone she'd managed, but it faded. "Terra, Beast Boy. You were calling out for Terra." She saw him pause with his back turned, going stiff at the mention. Sorrow had taken a pickaxe to her heart now, she could feel her chiseling away. "And I know she's back. I wouldn't want to get in the way of that." You weren't meant for me, Beast Boy. I accepted that a long time ago. It's time I set you free, you weren't supposed to be in my cage to begin with.

He turned to her, but she looked away so she couldn't see his face. She wasn't sure she wanted to. He got closer again, and she forced herself to look out the window, where she could only see his outline in the mugginess of morning dew, squeezing her eyes shut because even the shadow of him was too much right then. She couldn't, wouldn't look for reassurance. She was too scared she'd find nothing, or worse, trick herself into seeing something that wasn't there. Her hands turned to fists in her blankets. "Raven…"

"Don't."

He grew quiet, and that must have meant that he'd processed what she'd said, understood, accepted it. Her heart sank.

He moved, brushed against her arm, trespassed into her personal bubble. "Ya know, you talk in your sleep, too." She hadn't meant to turn her head, and she hadn't even thought about opening her eyes, but his fingers were under her chin, and emerald green as big as his heart was peering into her with such abandon that it must have brushed off. She gasped, she didn't even mean to. His eyes shifted from playful to sultry, and part of her stomach (probably not the baby, though relating to the baby as it'd been made) flipped. "You said some things about Aqualad like a year ago, and I didn't freak out."

He leaned in and kissed her, and all at once Nevermore rejoiced. The pain that'd lingered in her stomach, the faint nausea she'd felt, it dissipated in a snap of a finger. His lips pressed gently to hers, no demand or desperation, but he once again was not asking. She shut her eyes, leaned in, fingers reaching up and dancing across his chest before they twisted around the fabric of his suit and tugged, pulling him closer. He followed, cupping her jaw in his hands, cradling her head to him like a treasure, thumbs brushing over her cheeks. It felt like the first time, all anticipation, joy, uncertainty, but she pulled away and he followed and she knew there was nothing left to be uncertain about. They didn't part until he had to come back for air, and even then he moved so shortly that her lips still tasted the air he breathed, and their noses brushed as two sets of heavy-lidded eyes stared back at each other. His lips brushed hers again, light as a feather, there and yet not, and she huffed. "I was never in love with Aqualad."

"And I've never loved anyone the way I love you," he grinned. "So we're even." She huffed again, but it was more of a laugh. His eyes got bright. "See? I will spend the rest of my life trying to get you to make that sound, wet dreams about exes or not." She smacked him, and he yelped, but snickered and rubbed his sore head nevertheless.

The door slammed open again, and both jumped to see Starfire, alight with her feet off the ground, followed closely by the rest of the team. Her green eyes grew three sizes. "Raven! You are awake!" She dove into her arms, and Raven grunted at the impact. Starfire leaped up and down and squeezed her, giggling with a smile as wide as her eyes. "Oh, thank goodness! I was so worried! You and the snarglpref are both unharmed!"

"We won't be if you keep this up."

Starfire released her, pulling away with orange-tinted cheeks. "Hee hee! Apologies!"

Raven glanced up and down, eyebrow raising. She mumbled to Starfire so that the rest of the room couldn't hear (aside from Beast Boy, but she'd explain everything to him later). "You got your powers back?"

Starfire blinked, as if only now realizing that she'd regained flight before she slowly eased herself to the ground, eyes becoming bashful. "I was relieved that you and your child were all right." She wanted to ask more, but Starfire shook her head. Not here.

Starfire stepped to the side to stand next to Beast Boy, and Robin stepped into the room, the other three following. She and Terra made eye-contact, and Terra gave her a smile and waved. Raven blinked, but smiled back after a moment. She turned to Robin, who looked just as concerned as she would have imagined he'd have been had she and Starfire actually woken him up the night they left. He understood her like few others did, and she'd felt his comfort's absence. "Raven, why did you hide that you were pregnant from us?"

"Yeah!" Cyborg piped up. "I woulda made a killer nursery!"

Starfire's eyes lit up, and her flight had returned to her once more as she squeezed her hands at her chest, as if barely containing her excitement. "Oh! Raven, I had almost forgotten the tradition of the showering of the infant! This will be marvelous!" Robin acknowledged her with his signature half-smirk.

Raven winced, a bead of sweat seeping down her head. "Uhh, maybe we could wait until I'm a little further along to do that?" She pressed a hand to her stomach. "After tonight, I think I need to watch how much excitement I'm involved in."

"Oh don't worry," Robin crossed his arms, still grinning, just at her now. "I'm confining you to three week's bedrest. We can't risk a repeat of what happened tonight."

"Doctor says you're fine, though," Cyborg approached the bed then, holding his arm out for her to see the test results on his arm. She leaned over, into his shoulder, and all at once felt like a little sister to a very concerned, capable big brother. He smiled at her, the way only Cyborg smiled, the way he always had, the way she'd missed. "What set you off was using your powers too near to full capacity. It's not just your mind that takes a toll, your body does, too."

"So…" She raised an eyebrow and glanced at the room full of titans, each smiling at her in some variation. "I'm benched for six months, aren't I?" They all nodded, and she groaned.

Beast Boy and Cyborg had taken Raven home the next morning, after Doctor Thompkins signed the papers, of course. Beast Boy had offered her an arm, and Raven had taken it with a small smile on her lips, though she'd have denied it had any of them asked. Robin asked Starfire where they'd been hiding, offered to follow her back to the motel to collect their things (because they weren't staying another night outside of the tower, he wasn't having it, it was an order). Starfire had smiled at him, waved him off, said, as politely as she could: "I would prefer if Friend Terra assisted me instead."

That'd hurt, Terra could tell, but he'd let her go.

He and Batgirl returned to the tower on his R-Cycle, leaving Starfire and Terra to walk their way back to the motel. Both could fly faster than the T-car could drive, it was fine, but he'd argued that he could send Batgirl back on his bike alone- it didn't work, she refused his help; it upset Starfire more that he'd been willing to let this other woman ride his bike when he never let any of them touch it. He'd waved to them, and Starfire and Terra waved back as they sped off (he'd seen Starfire's face as Batgirl's arms wrapped around his waist, as her head rested on his shoulder. He tried to erase the way her eyes dimmed in his mind, but the more he buried it, the deeper the hole in the pit of him dug).

Starfire and Terra passed the motel's front door, Starfire offering a quick wave to the grumpy waddling man who owned the place, who brushed her off with a disgruntled hand and a sigh. He rolled around at his front desk, rolling chair looking pressed to keep him upright as he leaned back. Terra followed Starfire to the sliding door on the other side of the room, glancing back at the old man with a cocked eyebrow. They set their sights on the rows and rows of motel rooms, and Terra gestured to the lot of them. "So, which one's yours?"

Starfire shrugged at one on the third floor, to which Terra grumbled ("of course it's that one").

They climbed the stairs, spirals, thin and so claustrophobic they had to walk in line and not together. Odd men peered at them from the windows of their dens, between blinds and smoky rooms. Terra pretended not to see them, but she wondered how Raven and Starfire had managed, if they'd ever had any problems here. They could handle themselves, she knew that, but she had a feeling Robin would wanna do a background check on the shady characters on the other side of those blinds; he'd probably find something for the JCPD.

"So this is the place you've been staying?"

"Yes, it is not to your liking?"

Terra took one look at the dirty window and the air conditioning unit attached that was falling apart, then shrugged. "Better than the caves I used t' crash in."

The room was tidy, for the most part, aside from shopping bags that were haphazardly thrown at the end of either bed. Terra could see bras peeking out of the corner of it- dark, purple, lacey. She hadn't pegged Raven as the lace type, but hey, she hadn't known Raven when she was actively having sex! She felt a shiver run down her grossed-out spine, and decided to table the thought for awhile, maybe forever. There were some stray feathers on the floor, as if somebody had torn a pillow in half and cleaned it up, but had missed a few stragglers. A broken lamp sat between the beds in a trashcan; Terra looked to Starfire, then back at it. "Uhh, what happened?"

Starfire paused in her raid of the nightstand drawer, stuffing anything that had been theirs into one of the tote bags she'd bought on a whim. She glanced at the mess of glass and, to Terra's surprise, didn't have much of a response. "Oh, towards the beginning of her pregnancy, Friend Raven had the mood swing, and loss of control over her powers caused her to-"

"- to break your lamp."

"Yes."

Terra stared at it.

"Yeah, I'm gonna give BB a heads up when we get back."

The two continued to pick up belongings- purses, clothing (Starfire took care of the dirty laundry), soaps, and especially the jar labeled "Savings" filled with dollar bills and coins. Terra asked what they were saving up for, and Starfire giggled and said she'd planned on getting a puppy. Terra asked if that's what Raven was saving for, to which Starfire answered: "I do not know." They'd assume the baby.

Starfire had taken to making the beds ("You spent WHAT on this room? We better clean up here, we are NOT paying extra!") and Terra had taken to tossing the food from the mini fridge into a plastic bag. She pulled out some mustard, some rice in a tupperware container, a leftover smoothie… she tossed it all into the plastic bag and wrapped it up. "All right, Star, I think we're good to go."

Starfire nodded.

They grabbed the bags, full to the zipper with everything, everything that had made this space their own for three long months, and carried it to the door. Starfire pulled the key out of her wallet- not something she'd carried before, key nor pocketbook- and took one final look at the room. It looked clean, empty, the way it had been when she and Raven first opened the door at six in the morning one terrible, godforsaken night. She and Raven had warmed it up, thrown blankets over the cheap and thin comforters, filled the drawers with their clothes and underwear and socks, even took the shower curtain down and replaced it with one they'd both settled on. Anything had been better than the semi-transparency of the other curtain. She could still see the smudges from where she'd leave little notes on the fogged up bathroom mirror for Raven before she'd head off to work, and she wondered if she could continue a similar tradition in the tower's bathroom; there'd just be more people to see it, now.

"Uh...Star?" Terra awkwardly shifted from foot to foot, hands not quite sure what to do or where to go. She winced, and set a slow hand on Starfire's shoulder.

Starfire blinked, and Terra drew her hand back, face heavy with concern despite her clumsy comfort. "Sorry, didn't mean to… Starfire, why are you crying?"

Was she? Starfire raised one hand to her cheek. Sure enough, her fingers came away slick, and she frowned. "Apologies," she wiped her eyes with her arm "I am… the correct term is feeling nostalgic, yes?"

Terra smiled at her, set a warm hand on her shoulder. "Yeah, Star, that's right. Do you need a few more minutes?"

Starfire glanced back to the empty room, and she could see everything despite the lights having already been turned off because the sun was rising, and the light was creeping into the shadows of the place Starfire had learned to call home. Or rather, a home away from home. Raven was at their old home, their new home, and they would face whatever came after this together; this motel room, with all its cheap idiosyncrasies and poor plumbing, was a testament to that. She need not fear the next day, because they'd seen plenty together and tackled each like the one before.

Starfire shook her head and smiled, really smiled. "No, Terra, I am quite ready."

They shut the door and locked it, and set forth to return the key.