A/N: I like Mirela. I like her more every time I write her. Unlike some of the other characters I write, she doesn't question me or make my life difficult. I ask her for something and she gives it to me, what more can I ask? Plus, I think she handles both Robin and Raven superbly...what do you guys think?

Thanks: If you've asked me something, I'll respond through ff.n's review response feature. But generally, thanks to everyone.

Special A/N: PenguinPop on fanfiction net (Kiwifairy on deviantArt) did a picture of Raven in her outfit from this story. You can find it here: www . deviantart . com / deviation / 38635901 / (remove the spaces, you know, like usual). Raven looked hot in my head, but boy, the way she drew her in the outfit is like perfect! I love it. Please go and let her know that you love it too. (Well, obviously only if you love it too...but at least go and check it out, yeah? Or you won't know if you like it or not.)

Home: Chapter 7
Readings
by Em

"Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms."
- William J. Bennett

Robin very much wanted to follow Mirela and Raven as they disappeared behind the colorful flaps of Mirela's tent, but his plan was foiled by the hand that clamped onto his shoulder.

"Rick, you bastard, where've you been all this time?"

Robin stopped and turned to look at the tallish brunette who was waiting for a sign of his recognition.

"Skip," Robin greeted.

They hugged in that half-upper body-quick-pat-on-the-back way that men had when a handshake wasn't enough. Skip grinned at him, ignoring Robin's look of impending doom. "I heard you were here with some really cute girl, where'd she go or did you lose her already?" Skip asked teasingly, looking around.

Robin turned around to find that Raven had stopped at the mouth of the flap and was looking at him and waiting. When their eyes met, Raven started to walk back toward him, but a hand on her arm stopped her. Raven turned a curious eye to Mirela.

"You don't need to be with him for this meeting, little Raven," Mirela said, a smile on her face. "He can handle this one alone."

"Perhaps, but he shouldn't have to," Raven said, not wanting to explain that being alongside him, in case he needed her, was the reason she was there.

Skip turned to find what Robin was looking at and smiled brilliantly at Raven when he caught sight of her. He waved, and when Raven offered a small wave back he turned to Robin, whistling under his breath. "She is hot!" Skip neared him in an obvious conspiratorial way, "So, you two serious or what?"

Robin glared at him and then turned back to Raven who was still waiting. He smiled lopsidedly at her and shrugged.

Raven, correctly understanding his meaning, turned on her heel and motioned Mirela to lead her on.

Mirela pulled aside the flap and motioned for Raven to enter first but when Raven walked into the tent without a backward glance, she turned to meet Robin's eyes with a knowing smile of her own.

Before Raven could ask or even think to ask what to do, Mirela motioned to a chair on one side of a smallish square table draped in a dark green cloth and breezed past it toward the back of the tent, where a compact electric burner waited on a table. Raven sat and watched as the woman went about the makings of putting on a pot of tea and waited. She had never been 'read' before and although she herself knew a small bit about some of the divination tools at peoples' disposal, she had never even thought of using them on herself.

After all, it wasn't as if she had ever needed to. Up until just recently, she had known exactly what the future had in store for her.

Of course, that hadn't turned out like she had thought it would, but she knew that most foretelling was about a general feeling, one possibility that is more probable than the dozen other possibilities.

So, Raven waited, wondering what to say, if anything. Mirela put a delicate looking white china cup and saucer before her on the table, and one in front of the other chair then calmly sat waiting for the water to boil.

"So," Mirela began conversationally, "What do you want to ask me?"

Raven noticed that she hadn't asked what Raven wanted to know, like most of those of her profession tended to ask. There really wasn't anything she wanted to ask. Instead, she raised a brow, "You brought me here, Lady," Raven said respectfully.

Mirela smiled knowingly. "No, little one," she shook her head. "Richard brought you here," she said. "But that is neither here nor there." She leaned in toward Raven. "You have many questions in your soul, I can feel them, I simply want to know which you think I can answer."

Raven nodded, "I appreciate the offer, but I have lived most of my life with the knowledge of a future hanging over me," she admitted. "Now that the future is blessedly unknown, I wish to keep it so."

Mirela smiled brightly, showing teeth so perfect they could only be fake. "Then why not ask about the past?" she wondered, "Or the present?"

Raven though, "The past is unimportant and the present resolves itself."

Mirela narrowed her eyes, "You do not believe that." There was absolutely no doubt in her voice, no question, only a bit of surprise and amusement.

There was a moment, a beat, where both looked at each other, and then Raven smiled. Not a brilliant one, not even a half smile, just a relaxation of her lips, a slight curve to the edges of her mouth, but for Raven, it was a smile and for Mirela, it was more than enough.

"No, I don't," Raven answered.

Mirela laughed, loudly and fully.

Before she could say anything else however, the kettle boiled and Mirela stood to tend to it. "Does Richard still detest the taste of tea?" Mirela asked seemingly out of the blue.

Raven was a bit taken aback by the question, not because she didn't know the answer to it, but because she was surprised someone else did. "Most definitely."

Mirela chuckled and shook her head. "I'm afraid that might have been my fault," Mirela admitted.

"How so?" Raven asked.

Mirela turned, the matching teapot in her hands. "He grew to associate tea with upset stomach because I would give him tea to drink when he felt ill."

"He's such a boy."

Mirela chuckled. "Ever since he was born," she agreed.

Raven watches as Mirela poured the tea, straining the leaves only out of her own cup. "Have you known Richard long?" Raven asked.

"From before he was born."

Raven took a moment to think about that and the implications it might suggest.

Mirela smiled, "I told Esmeralda Richard was coming before even she knew."

Raven looked down at her tea, taking a moment to breathe the sweet chai blend.

"But enough about this," Mirela announced suddenly. She motioned the tea in Raven's hand. "If you will not ask a specific question of me, then drink, little one," she nodded encouragingly at her, "clear your mind of all thoughts and we shall see what the gods wish to tell you."

Raven was skeptical for a moment, not about the fact that the gods would tell her something or in the validity of the process itself, but in wanting to know what the gods might want to tell her in the first place.

Still, she closed her eyes and exhaled, clearing her mind in much the same way she did when she went into a light state of meditation and when she had that moment when it felt as if she were not really a part of her own consciousness, she drank.

Mirela's hand on hers around the teacup stopped her and snapped her out of her light trance. "You are familiar with meditation and trances," she said approvingly.

"I meditate a lot," was all Raven answered.

Mirela smiled and when Raven put the cup down in front of her, only a small amount of tea left at the bottom of the cup, Mirela reached out with her left hand to take the handle. A look of deep concentration came over Mirela's features as she ritualistically swirled the tea in the cup counterclockwise three times. Then, with a flick of the wrist, she dumped out the remaining tea into a trash container of some sort at her feet and set the cup down in front of her. Raven could see the dark smallish blobs of tea leaves stuck to the bottom and sides of the cup so she waited.

"Hmmm," Mirela said, leaning over the cup, concentrating on the symbols she saw there. She turned her head this way and that and, finally seeming to decide, took up the cup from the left, turning it around and up to her face. "Mmm," she mumbled, turning the cup. "Yes, yes," she said under her breath. "Yes, I see..." she continued to speak to herself. "That's to be expected..." she nodded. "And that goes without saying..." she added, laughter in her voice and in her expression.

Raven, meanwhile, was watching with a mixture between amusement and consideration.

"Wait, what?" Mirela asked, louder than she had been speaking. She frowned and turned the cup another way, then turned it back the original way. She looked away from the cup to Raven and blinked, then back at the cup, nearing it and frowning some more.

Now Raven was really wondering what the woman was seeing in the leaves because that wasn't exactly a good reaction.

"Is that...well, I"ll be..." Mirela mused, sighing heavily. She put the cup down with considerable determination and seemed to glare at Raven, although not really angrily, but almost frustrated. She extended her hand before Raven and Raven had a moment of complete confusion. "Your hand, child," Mirela demanded.

Raven extended her left hand and Mirela cocked her head to the side, "Come now..." Mirela chided.

Raven blushed at the mild reproof and took back her left hand, offering Mirela her right instead. Raven did, in fact, know that most palmists read the person's dominant hand generally.

Mirela took it and pulled so that Raven had to lean forward almost halfway across the table while Mirela tried to get a look at her palm in the right light and the right angle. She trailed the tip of a well manicured nail down the middle of her palm, tracing one of the lines there, then shifted the perspective and gazed at another line. Finally, she kept her finger on a part of the line and exhaled. "Yes, here," she moved it and nodded, as if she had just received confirmation of what she had thought all along. "And here, so..." she looked up and met Raven's expression inquiringly. "Why do you still doubt him, child?" she asked her directly.

Raven blinked in total confusion for a few moments, glancing down at her hand which Mirela still held and back at the tea cup she had set aside as if trying to figure out what exactly Mirela was asking about. "Pardon?" she asked, finally deciding she couldn't figure it out on her own.

Mirela sighed and let her hand go. "When Richard's dear parents (may they rest in peace) left this earth, I read for him," she said in that no-nonsense way only those of a certain age could ever manage. "He was certain that he would never love or be loved again, you see," she explained. She shrugged with one shoulder and crossed her arms across her ample bosom. "He was a child, very young, of course, and confused about this new life he was going into, for the rich man from Gotham was to take him away the next day." She smiled reminiscently. "He did not understand there were other forms of love then," she said knowingly. "But I read for him and because that was what he was worried about the most, I saw his future in that context." She leaned back, "You will find someone who you will go through hell for, I told him." She locked her knowing gaze with Raven's. "You will find someone for whom you will join hands with your worst enemy merely for the chance to find her again."

Raven leaned back as if the woman's words were physical and could hurt her if she sat too close. No one knew what the Titans had done after Trigon's brief release on this dimension. For the people of Jump City, it had seemed as if nothing had happened, none of their time had been interrupted and those few hours while Trigon had reigned were regained by Raven's power so the denizens of Jump had never been any wiser of how close they had come to being annihilated. And even the Titans themselves didn't know what Robin had had to go through to find Raven. They had never spoken of it. She herself might not have known that Robin had joined with Slade to find her had not Starfire told her of it months later. How could this woman know of such things?

"He didn't believe me at the time," Mirela went on, paying very close attention to the reaction her words was causing in Raven. "But you are she, are you not?" Mirela asked. "And I see that this thing has already come to pass, I see that clear as day on your palm," she motioned to the guilty appendage. "And yet your leaves tell me that you still doubt his feelings for you." She cocked her head to the side, considering Raven closely. "Did he not brave the fires of hell itself to bring you back from the demon's clutches?" she asked. "Did he not carry you when you could not walk? Protect you when you would have been harmed? Believed in you when you doubted?" She leaned closer, "Was he not the one who brought you back, child?"

Raven was having a hard time stopping her emotions from reacting inside her. It was all she could do to whisper a rough, "He was."

"Then why do you doubt?" Mirela pressed.

Raven swallowed passed the lump in her throat and exhaled, "He did no more than he would have done for any of us." She shook her head, determined. "I do not doubt his friendship, Lady, or even his love for me as a friend," Raven said, her voice gaining strength as she gained conviction. "But if it is a romantic sort of love you are insinuating he feels for me, then it is that I doubt."

Mirela shook her head and leaned back. "I can only tell you what I saw and what I felt when I read for him, little one," she admitted. "And what these long years have taught me," she added, "is that Richard loves you, as a friend, and as someone he cannot imagine his life without," she shrugged that one shoulder gallic shrug again. "However you interpret that, of course, is up to you."

Before Raven could further comment, Mirela reached into a concealed pocket in the side of her colorful skirt and removed a silk wrapped square. Raven knew it must be a deck of cards and so she waited.

With gentle calm, Mirela pulled aside the folds of the silk to reveal the square deck of cards held inside. She picked up the cards and caressed the top of them with her thumb for a moment before placing them before Raven. "Shuffle please."

Raven knew it would be rude or pointless to argue, so she did as the older woman requested. She also knew she didn't have to shuffle so very much, so she shuffled the strange deck once or twice and then placed it back in front of herself.

"Now, we answer a question of mine, shall we?" Mirela asked, taking the cards in her hands expertly. "Such as why you don't believe he's capable of loving you in a romantic way."

Raven frowned and watched and wondered why she was getting that sense she got when she knew that things were about to change.

And everyone knew how she felt about change.