TRANSITION

(Good grief. I admitted I didn't own the Titans. You'd think that would be enough for them. Now they want me to make it clear that I have no connection AT ALL to DC or any of its properties. So, I don't. Zilch. Zip. Nada. -Concolor44)

CHAPTER 11

… elsewhere …

Rachel had been awake for a little while, but hadn't moved yet. Her head pillowed on Jinx's chest, she watched the slow rise and fall with a contemplative relish. Jinx had a dancer's build, lean and tight; her breasts were high, firm, and compact, the nipples peaked a little even when relaxed. Rachel thought they were the most adorable such items ever. My Jinx. My lovely, silly, sarcastic little cotton-candy doll. Reaching up to the taller girl's neck, she gently probed until she found an artery, laying soft fingers across the rhythmically pulsing spot. Sighing in happiness, she closed her eyes again.

Some half-a-minute later, Jinx said, "Mind if I ask what you're doing?"

Rachel looked up, meeting the pink cat-eyes with a smile. "Hello, Jinx."

Jinx had never realized what a beautiful name she had until she started hearing it on Rachel's tongue. "D'you know that you've got a really musical voice?"

"No. I never really had occasion to find out before."

"Oh. Right. That whole suppressed-emotions thing?"

"Right."

Jinx propped herself up on one elbow; Rachel scooted just a shade closer so she could still snuggle against her. "That reminds me, Rae. I wanted to ask you about that."

"About what?"

"Well … rumor was that you couldn't just let go. You had good reasons for keeping your emotions on a short leash. Something about losing control of your power or some such."

"Ah. That's true, as far as it goes. My power is tied to my emotional state, and I could lose control over it if I get too emotional." Her smile grew. "That's how it used to be. And it wasn't just that I'd lose control. See, my soul-self …"

"That's that shadow-thingy, right?"

Rachel raised a hand and spread her fingers wide. A lightless fog enveloped them, and tendrils spun slowly off, wreathing her arm. Jinx eyed the darkness with slight alarm. "This is my soul-self. You ran afoul of it on several occasions."

"Oh, hells, yes. Never been so damn cold in my life."

"I'm half demon, Jinx." The blackness sucked quickly back into her skin, and she met the pink eyes with a frank gaze. "The reason that my father sired me was so that I could be a portal into this universe. My soul-self can become an opening into the Eighth Hell. If I lose control of it."

Jinx just blinked at her. "… Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh'. Can you see why I wasn't too concerned about the odd bit of minor property damage?"

"Uh-huh."

"I tend to be rather hard on electronics. Cyborg always stocks several magnetrons at the Tower because I keep blowing up the microwave."

Jinx giggled and then quickly shut it off, composing her face into neutral lines. "I see. So then are you sayin' that your face will stop a watch?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." Her lips quirked in a smile. "But the problem was that I couldn't allow myself to feel. If my emotions – any emotions – got too intense, my soul-self would start to break free. It needed to be contained, and the only way I knew how to do that was not to feel anything. The monks of Azarath raised me and …"

"Who?"

"Uh … Okay, my mother, um, got herself into a bad situation. She was used by this demon-worshiping cult to summon Trigon – that's my father – and he impregnated her with me."

"Oh. So it wasn't, like, voluntary?"

Rachel tossed her head back, rolling her eyes with a quick, "Hah!"

"Right. Okay, so who's … Azathar?"

"Azarath. They were a monastic order. They knew about Trigon and knew what I was and what I was capable of. They were pretty sure that killing me would just release the portal, so I was kept alive and …"

"Whoa! Hold on! They were actually considering killing an innocent baby?"

"… You, ah, need to understand something. When the choice is between the death of one child and the destruction of an entire dimension, it doesn't really present as a choice, as such. And besides, I was half demon. Not exactly innocent."

"Well … um … yeah, okay … I guess." She frowned darkly and then said, "But still! I mean, how heartless can you get? Who would be able to kill a cute little, gurgling newborn?"

"I may have been cute, but there wasn't much gurgling going on. I was aware and conscious of my surroundings practically from birth. I started talking at six weeks, and walked at nine."

"… You're shitting me."

"Half demon, remember? Demons are born, if you want to call it that, fully sentient. If anything, I had some developmental delays due to my human side."

"Wow. I bet you did okay in school!"

"I never had any 'school' in the sense you mean it. My instruction consisted of techniques in self-control and meditation, the containment and later the use of my soul-self, and some basic training in magic. I only know as much math as I do because it is useful to know it when performing certain spells. They weren't interested in making me well-rounded; they wanted me to be safe. Everything I was taught – and I mean everything – was geared toward control. I had to suppress my emotion, learn not to feel anything. I had to learn even not to regret not feeling anything. It was the only way I could survive, and I fear it may have … twisted me. A little."

Jinx's lower lip started trembling. She reached down and gathered Rachel close, laying her cheek against the other girl's hair. "And I was so mean to you! I'm so sorry!"

"Mean to me?"

"Every time we fought. I'd taunt you and …"

Rachel tapped her on the nose. "Shh. None of that now. What's past is past." She reached down and clasped Jinx's hand, bringing it up for a kiss. "What's important is what's happening now."

Jinx blinked away her tears and gave Rachel a watery smile. "You're too perfect, you know that?"

"Am not."

"Are, too. I can't get over … I mean, how could you …"

"There sure is a lot of confusion going on in that cute little pink head."

"You're telling me!"

"Anything I can clear up?"

Jinx nibbled her lip for a moment and then scooted them both up until they were leaning against the side of a near hummock. It sort of shifted a little, forming slightly to their bodies, and Jinx gave it a look. Then she shrugged and said, "Thanks."

Both girls were washed briefly by a gentle wave of love that left them sighing.

"… Wow." Jinx gave Rachel a squeeze and said, "I really, really like it here."

"So do I." She leaned in close, insinuated her face into Jinx's hair, and took a long sniff. "Particularly … right … here."

"Rae …"

"Mmhmm?"

"How can you love me?"

Rachel sighed in mild exasperation. "Jinx, why …"

"No, no, that's not what I mean. Please don't think I think you don't, okay? I'm not sayin' that. I just … don't really understand how you can."

"Why not?"

"We started to get into this earlier, before we fell asleep. Seriously, a few days ago we were at each other's throats, and now … now I … you …"

"You're over-thinking this. Take a deep breath and stop and calm down."

Jinx did. "Okay. Thanks. That helped." She took another quick breath. "See, now is a lot different from then, and then wasn't too long ago. Now, I can't … Rae, I can't imagine being anywhere else but here, or with anyone else but you. And I know, 'cuz I can feel it here …" she touched her chest over her heart, and then put a finger to her forehead, "… and here, that you feel the same." A sense of wonder permeated her voice. "I know it. I know it the same way I know a rock will fall if I drop it. But what I don't understand is the how and the why."

"Why does anyone fall in love? There are so many qualities about you that are admirable. I recognized those qualities practically from our first encounter. Jinx, I have admired you for years. I just wasn't free to love you the way I wanted to." Jinx's expression telegraphed her incredulity so remarkably well that Rachel had to laugh. She tousled the fluffy, pink hair and said, "What, you don't believe me?"

"You admired me? While I was trying to kick your butt, and sometimes succeeding?"

"Well, I'm not going to imply that what you did wasn't wrong." She thought about her answer while staring at the object of her affections. "But Jinx, listen … you may have been a thief, but you were always an honest thief. Very straightforward in your motives, and – I comprehend now – simply carrying out the various missions you'd been given in the beginning, when you were with the H.I.V.E., and then trying to keep body and soul together during later times."

Jinx snorted. "Not a great track record on that last one, there, Rae. We were hungry more often than I like to remember."

"Did no one ever suggest that you try a different line of work?"

"Like what? All we were good at was stealing and busting heads."

"I think your team would have made terrific mercenaries. Seriously, I never could figure out why you didn't just skip town and hire yourselves out. Could've made a bundle."

The pink eyes widened; her mouth dropped open and worked up and down a few times.

"Or you could have hired out your services as bodyguards to corporate bigwigs; they'd eat that up. Or you could have done what I did when I organized the Titans: pick a likely city and offer to set yourselves up as its protectors. Jump City pays all the Titans' bills, and you know how much Vic and Gar eat. Or you …"

Jinx clamped her lips together and held up a hand. "Okay. Stop. Please. That's enough. I now officially feel like the biggest idiot in the history of Western Civilization."

Raven giggled.

Pointing a slim finger at Rachel's nose, Jinx said, "That's another thing! You just said, not five minutes ago, that you had to learn how not to feel anything. Yet here you are, drizzling emotion all over me like icing on a fresh doughnut, and giggling like a fan-girl at an anime convention. Are you just putting up a front?"

"You know better than that."

"Then what's the deal?"

"The deal, Dear Heart, is this place." She rolled gracefully to her feet and held her arms wide. "I thought for nineteen years that the only way I could keep things under control was through repression. But she showed me another way." She floated up about half a meter. Her soul-self flowed out then, pooling around her feet and gradually building up until it covered her to her waist. It split into two spiraling columns and climbed higher, to meet over her head. Then it bulged out some on both sides, firming up into a classic valentine's heart shape, with her head and torso a cameo in the center. Jinx watched, fascinated. Then Rachel floated out of it, leaving it in place behind her. "See, the way I always understood it before, my soul-self had to be contained in my physical form. That's what the monks of Azarath taught me, and since I could make it work that way I had no reason to think it could be done any other way."

"And now you're saying it can?"

"Absolutely." She pointed at the big, shadowy heart. "That's my soul-self. The whole thing. She taught me how to … um, I guess a reasonable analogy would be 'sew it up'. Before, it was always struggling to break free, to get out of my body and seep into the rest of reality and set itself up as a portal. That, after all, is what it was designed to do. But now, working with her, I figured out how to redirect its boundaries inward. It's fully self-contained now, and it no longer tries to escape. There's a feeling of contentment, of completeness that was never there before. And it's not necessary that it stay inside me, and since I've separated it from my spirit, we both experience a level of freedom we've never known before."

"Rae? You're talking about it like it's a different … being."

"In many respects it is. Oh, I realize that in the final analysis it's really nothing more than one aspect of my being, but the internal struggle has been going on so long that the soul-self has taken on something of a life of its own."

"And … you're not afraid it'll … I dunno, go off on its own and create havoc somewhere?"

"No. It would have, had I given it this much leeway before. But now it has boundaries. It knows where all of it is." She frowned and gave a frustrated huff. "It's really difficult to put into words. The soul-self isn't searching for anything anymore. It has reached a sort of nirvana, a balance that it needed and was lacking." Floating back over to the smoky heart, she extended her hand and the shadow quickly flowed into her. Jinx could swear she heard a small, satisfied sigh as it disappeared. "And as an added perk, this makes it easier for me to use. I don't have to coerce it into forming a shield, or telekinetically lifting something, or forming a ram when I need something pounded. It responds almost eagerly now."

"That's pretty sweet."

Rachel turned and gave her a brilliant smile that made quick fire run all over her. "No, Dear. You are pretty sweet. Pretty and sweet."

A furious blush raced across her face, and Jinx felt a silly and quite involuntary smile grow there. "You know … I never really thought of myself as 'pretty'. I'm too lean – too skinny, really – to be …"

"Oh, hush." Rachel's smile grew mischievous. "I say you're pretty, and that means you are pretty."

Her features turning, if possible, even redder, Jinx stammered out, "S-so you're the qu-queen of reality now? What you say goes?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Then, taking pity on the poor, flame-faced girl, Rachel laughed and bounded over to her, kneeling in front of her. "I'm not picking on you, Hon. Well, not much. But in all honesty, you're selling yourself short." She ran a soft hand down the length of Jinx's arm, drawing a subdued shiver from the metahuman. "You aren't skinny. You're svelte."

"Oh, please!"

"For real. Your muscle development is much too good to be called skinny. And you are unfailingly graceful." She chuckled. "As many times as you succeeded in jumping out of my grasp when we fought, how could you think otherwise?"

"I'm not winning this argument, am I?"

"Nope."

She grinned. "Okay. Then I guess there's only one thing left I can do."

"Really? What's that?"

She jumped on Rachel, knocking the smaller girl onto her back with a happy shriek. "Tickle time!"

The tickling only lasted a few seconds, though. A net of shadow appeared under her and lifted her off of her helplessly laughing target.

"Hey! No fair!"

It took Rachel a moment to get her breathing under control. She rolled over and stood next to her captive, smirking and wagging a finger back and forth. "Talk about fair! You shouldn't start what you can't finish." Cocking her head from one side to the other, she observed, "You know, trussed up like you are, your flanks are completely exposed." A slim hand reached over and menaced Jinx's shortribs.

"EEEEEEEE! Stoppit! Don't! Lemme go!"

Rachel's hand stopped, but Jinx could feel the slight heat from her, she was so close. "Let you go? No, I don't think so. I think you should get out of that on your own." And so saying, she backed off a few steps and assumed the lotus position.

"Whaddaya mean, do it on my own? I can't bust out of this!"

"Oh, really? You mean, just like you can't fly, either?"

"What … how do … waitaminnit! That wasn't me flying, that was her letting me! You said so yourself!"

"And do you know how she let you? Precisely?"

"… uhhh … not, um …" Her brows drew together. "Now that you mention it … no."

"You will please notice I said at the time that she was letting you fly. Not making you fly or helping you fly or anything like that."

"So what's the diff?"

"Jinx, tell me about your hex energy."

"This is uncomfortable, Rae!"

"Then you should start working on getting out of it. Tell me about your hex energy."

"I dunno! What about it?"

"What is it, exactly?"

"It alters probability on a local level. It makes things go wrong, or break, or dissolve, or shatter. It busts 'em up." She squirmed a little. "But I don't want to throw a hex at you!"

"Neither do I want you to."

"So? Let me go!"

"You can get out by yourself."

"How?"

"Jinx, listen to what you're saying! You hex energy alters probability. The only reason that you use it simply to break things is that you've never tried using it any other way."

"… What?"

"You flew. By yourself. How do think that happened?"

"I wasn't by myself! You were holding my hand and helping me!"

"Holding your hand, yes … helping you, no. You flew. You, Jinx. You utilized your hex energy to propel yourself. You 'altered probability locally' and you flew."

"… Serious?"

"Dead serious. And you can do the same thing now. What needs to happen to get you out of that net?"

"You need to make it go away."

"Ah, but you see, that's not going to happen. The soul-self is separate now. It likes you. It wants to huuuuuuug you! I'm not making it do anything right now. But you can."

"But I don't know how I flew!" Her voice was a plaintive cry.

"And that's the secret. It's not as difficult as the old 'don't think of a blue camel' shtick, but all you have to do is realize that you can do this, and then want to."

"That's stupid! Don't you think I would've figured that out before now if that's the way it worked?"

"But you never tried, did you?"

"No, because … because … oh, just because! Okay?"

"Nope. Not okay. You can do this. Think about the net."

"I can't barely think about anything else! Stupid thing is tight!"

"Would you like it to be looser?"

"Don't ask stupid questions!"

"Then make it happen."

"I. Don't. Know. How. Rachel!"

"Concentrate on the substance of the net. Feel it. I know you've got at least enough training in basic magic to be able to trace down ley lines. This isn't that different. Feel the net. Trace the net."

Doing her best to bank her rising frustration, Jinx let the hex energy flow within her, then directed it at the adamantine strands of shadow. "Feel the net. Trace the net." For fuck's sake, Raven! Or Rachel or whatever. How am I supposed to …

The pink flux made hesitant contact with the net. Jinx startled and gasped, her eyes growing round. She could feel it! With mounting excitement, she directed her hex energy along one of the strands, enveloped it, and … squeezed. The line of blackness whiffed into vapor and vanished. Like a matrix of zippers, the rest of them fell apart and disappeared, and Jinx was shortly dumped on the ground.

She didn't even have time to get herself righted before she was caught in a joyous hug. "You did it! You did it! You did it!" Rachel kissed her, upside-down as she was, which did little to help her balance. "I knew you could! She said you were ready!" And she kissed her again, lingering a bit this time.

Jinx finally got herself – between increasingly passionate kisses – turned around right, and when she could she took Rachel in her arms. Gasping for air at one point, she said, "I did, didn't I? Yay, me!"

Rachel was staring at her, smiling at her, love and admiration and pride holding a pitched battle for preeminence on her face. "You are so much more than you know. So much more than anyone has ever thought." Pulling her as close as she could, she laid her cheek against Jinx's neck. "My Jinx."

"… Am I your Jinx? Like, for good?"

"As it is within my power, we shall never be parted. This I swear."

"Whoa. Don't need to go all formal on me. I just … y'know … wondered."

Rachel pulled back far enough to meet those incredible, cat-like eyes. "That's not all you're wondering, girl."

Jinx could feel how hard her nipples were, and knew that what Rachel said was as true as truth gets. She had the grace to blush. "You blame me? I'm being hugged to death by an insanely hot girl who just declared her love to me forever. How d'ya think I ought to react?"

"About like you are." She let her gaze wander downward. "You are so beautiful."

"Yeah, right."

"Well, you're beautiful to me. And my opinion is the only one I care about, where that's concerned." She raised a hand and gently cupped Jinx's left breast, making the girl draw a hissed breath. An exploratory thumb gently brushed across the areola just under the nipple, and was rewarded with an inarticulate squeak.

"Damn. Damn, Rae." She grabbed Rachel's wrist with a shaky hand. "You're gonna make me come right here and now."

"Is that a bad thing?"

Jinx gave her a look as if she'd grown a second head. "Don't be playin' now, Rae! I mean … if you wanna go ahead … well sign me up. I just … we only just …"

Rachel laid a finger across her lips. "I would love to. But you'll have to show me how."

A couple of deliberate blinks followed that statement. "Show you how what?"

"How to make love. Oh, I know the theory and all, but I lack experience."

"… Wait … You mean … You mean you've never done this with a girl before?"

"I've never done it before, period. I'm a virgin."

Holy Fucking Shit On A Crutch! Jinx cleared her throat. "Oh. Wow. Uh … wow. Okay. I've never, ah, been with a virgin before."

Rachel dimpled, which Jinx thought was ungodly cute. "Then I guess you have a lot to teach me."

"… I guess so."

"No time like the present."