The Albino Telepath Saga

by DBAinsw

Discontinued: I keep this long, long story around as an example of what NOT to do. Once this was my superfantasy played out in a forum others might read it in. Now I see it as typing practice with an embarrasing garystu focus.

13. Awakenings and Confessions Part 2

Intro: Another long absence, but well worth it. Those with no interest in the psychic abilities portions of my story so far should feel free to skip down to the end, which is quite a steamy little romance scene between everyone's favorite couple (the confessions part of these chapters, actually). Of course, such people would miss the unfolding dynamics between Skye and Raven (as magnificently foul as those are shaping up to be) and some mild humor as Skye gives the equivalent of a psychic power point presentation. Also of note is my continuing attempt to reconcile the classic Titans backstories with the more PC cartoon versions that the animated series introduced. Anyway, read on!
Awakenings and Confessions—Part II

When we last left Titans Tower, our heroes were rushing into Starfire's med-bay room to be present for her unexpected awakening. For no reason that they could comprehend, Skye sensed her regaining consciousness days ahead of the most optimistic predictions, even considering a healing job from both Raven and Skye.

Titans Tower Med-bay, Starfire's Room

"Hey Cy, is it just me, or does she look a little flushed?" asked Beast Boy as he leaned against the edge of her bed and looked to see if there was any sign of her coming to.

"I don't know man—and back up some! I know the last thing she wants to see when she wakes up is your ugly green mug three inches from her face." The metal man was on the opposite side of the bed, taking up a large portion of that side of the room that hadn't already been filled with get-well gifts.

The room was pungent from the dozens upon dozens of flowers, even considering all those that had been blown to bits when Skye and Raven had had their little scuffle in here. In fact, the room had been rather ill-treated over the last twenty four hours, with a blood stain on the floor from Robin, a missing wall panel from Raven, and potting soil in the tiles where they'd yet to finish cleaning after Skye stopped those projectiles in midair. As it was, the doctors had been considering moving her elsewhere, but hadn't really had time to do more than tidy up her current space a little.

Beast Boy was giving Cyborg a particularly nasty look when Robin, Skye, and Raven entered the room together, the chair-bound acrobat looking much worse for wear than he had before pigheadedly insisting on moving so soon after surgery. For that matter, the mismatched light and dark figures behind him had some seriously unpleasant expressions of their own, and looked for all the world like they were each pretending the other wasn't there.

As they came into the room then, Skye wheeled Robin up to where Beast Boy was standing, stopping just in front of him and giving him a look. A stare that was quickly reproduced by all the others, each of them glaring at the green one as he remained exactly where he'd been, in the perfect spot for seeing Starfire awaken. Unable to remain oblivious under that much concentrated disapproval, he got a nervous expression and asked, "What?"

"C'mon man, let Robin have that spot, the guy's in a wheelchair for cryin out loud!" snapped Cyborg, usually the one to deal with Beast Boy's cluelessness (if not Raven).

"Hey, he can get his own spot! I got here first, I get first pick on spots, that's how it works!" shouted the changeling, swinging his arms around for emphasis. The stony silence that followed pretty well told him that he had no support whatsoever on the "first come first serve" claim he'd invoked, and he reluctantly vacated his spot, muttering all the way. "Sure, always pick on the green one... no one ever asks Cyborg to give up his spot... I oughtta get myself busted up a little, get some VIP treatment around here..."

That little dispute done with, Robin was quickly placed in the choice position next to Starfire, where he promptly took up her hand and sat much as he had the night before. The startling similarity was lost on neither him nor Skye, and both recalled memories of the particular spectacle that had taken place a surprisingly short time ago. Robin cast his mind back to what he thought were near-death hallucinations, the shadow of that absolute certainty of his and Star's mutual affection haunting his mind even now. Skye pulled his photographic memory of that moment, admiring once more the ultimately rare interaction of harmonic souls, taking in every ebb and flow of sparkling spiritual energy that that instant had painted across the ether. A stirring in the object of their contemplation broke the mutual reverie of the two young men then, the young woman on the bed groaning softly and moving fitfully where she lay.

"I still don't get it," wondered Skye out loud as he stood just to the side of Robin and looked down on the woman he'd just finished healing an hour ago. He'd set her up to regenerate almost insurmountable spiritual and nervous damage over the course of something like a month, hoping that her tissue damage wouldn't kill her in the meantime. Raven had pretty well covered that contingency, and had moved her ETA to something like a week, but even now Skye could feel that she was projecting classic mental reinitialization energy. A quick glaze over her physical status showed that she still had all kinds of damage everywhere, but she was coming to, and there simply was no explanation. Yet.

With the stirring then came something else, a kind of flavor to her energy that Skye could not help but notice. His senses showed her gorgeous aura taking on a spectacular gray tinge, and from sounds of amazement all around him, it wasn't just her aura. His eyes weren't exactly suited to functioning by anything brighter than candle light, and he never really had much use for visible light anyway (clairvoyance is so much better), but he was pretty sure her body itself was surrounded by a distinct gray glow too. As he focused his senses on her then, he watched with no small amazement as she went through weeks of recovery in a few seconds.

As he looked into her body, he could sense the tattered muscle and tissue in her stomach knitting back together, traumatized and punctured organs becoming whole, and even the complete regrowth of a bank of obliterated brain cells that had really been making Skye sweat earlier (neurons are HARD to heal). Other of his senses detected her soul regenerating at a similarly stupendous rate, holes that he'd plugged with his own essence growing closed as her spirit responded to the irresistible impetuous of the gray energy that had infested her being. The flare of healing power was spectacular, but the brilliance was short-lived, and only seconds from its beginning, the light, both spectral and physical, died away to nothing. You could have cut the silence with a butter knife.

"Oooohhh," Starfire herself broke the oppressive quiet, stirring further until she'd made it quite clear that her body was no longer devoid of a guiding consciousness. After a long, heart-stopping moment of suspense, her eyes fluttered open...

(Starfire)

With a fluttering of her eyes, Starfire awoke to a vaguely familiar blank ceiling and no idea whatsoever where she was, what she'd been doing, or how she'd arrived on her back wherever it was that she was. After a moment of quiet panic, she gasped weekly and recalled a muddled image of fighting, explosions, and flying rock. There was a vivid memory of intense pain, then nothing, and she fought against rising terror as she clawed franticly at the confining sheets. She suddenly became aware of voices shouting and a heavy weight in her hand, her mind recoiling back to the present as her brain got used to the process of working again.

"Starfire!" a clear voice rang out, and her heart suddenly skipped two beats, all confusion driven from her mind by that oh so wonderful sound. Her eyes finished their frantic and sightless journey around the room to focus on the source of that voice, and the sudden appearance of her very favorite visage in the whole world brought a splendid pause to her panic.

"Robin," she managed to whisper weekly, gazing deeply into masked eyes that seemed to pull her in with their intense stare. She reveled in the warm compassion he pressed onto her with his eyes, forgetting countless discomforts of her own as a blush of happiness spread through her body. Suddenly however, her happiness was staggered by the state of her heart's desire.

A twinge around the eyes and a pale patina to his normally robust skin tone spoke of things she didn't care to think about, and concern filled her heart as a face that was currently her whole world was besmirched by unknown aches. Summoning her strength from where it lay sluggish and dormant within her, she awoke her numb arms and grasped at his hand with both of hers.

Looking ever deeper into his eyes, she asked simply, "Robin? ...Are you well? ... You seem... a little pale... perhaps... you should lie down?" Her voice failed her even as she tried to comfort him, and she blushed again, this time with embarrassment at her own weakness, even as she was heartened by the lift of amusement across his face. Finally, an explosion of laughter clued her in to the fact that something other than Robin existed in this world.

(Skye)

Skye allowed himself a discreet chuckle or two to accompany the raucous laughter that Starfire's comment had elicited from her relieved friends. The light show had been more than a little disconcerting, so hearing something so perfectly normal (for Starfire) released all kinds of subconscious stress in a very loud way. He watched in cool amusement as Cyborg struggled to breathe from where he was keeled over in the corner and Beast Boy pounded against the wall and began to tear up a little. He could sense nothing of Raven's mood, but a quick glance showed her grumpy expression had softened perceptibly. Robin projected a heated feeling of deeply loving concern and exceptional relief, continuing to quietly stare at Starfire as she gazed around the room in pleasant bewilderment, smile growing ever wider as she recognized all her friends. Her mind still wasn't working perfectly, new brain cells and physical exhaustion working together to keep her functioning at way below standard, but she was recovering from this too at an exponential rate, her body adjusting to its repaired state beautifully.

"Hey, Robin, you know you must look bad when someone who just came out of a coma thinks you should lie down!" commented Cyborg breathlessly from the corner. "Anyway, I kinda figure that question means she's feeling all right, but does someone mind telling me what the heck that weird light was? You guys said you'd used some healing powers on her but damn!"

Skye saw the question as the perfect cue to get back to work, so, taking a deep breath, he placed a hand on the frame of Star's bed and vaulted from Robin's side to Cyborg's side, seeking more room for his examination. Pretty well ignoring looks of confusion from all present, he proceeded to sharpen his senses and train them successively on everything from the status of her tissues and bones to the speed of electromagnetic impulses firing across her synapses. The odd glares he got were most likely because he had his shaded eyes barely a foot from her body as he swept his senses over her and catalogued her condition.

"What the hell are you doin' man?" asked Cyborg, who'd clearly been the most mystified by Skye's sudden change of position. Skye guessed from the aggression he was putting off that he didn't appreciate that a complete stranger had taken the liberty of leaning over Starfire and practically sticking his face to her, and that he was about ready to revoke all that he'd said in Skye's defense. All this he knew, but still, getting interrupted while he was concentrating on his senses really baked his cookie something terrible.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" he snapped coolly at the huge presence behind him without bothering to move from his contested position.

"Do you really want me to answer that Mr. Attitude?" Cyborg snapped right back, crossing his arms over his chest as his face darkened with a seriously unpleasant glower. Skye could feel his discontent flowing out of him, wave after wave of threat screaming into Skye's mind, only intense concentration keeping him from loosing the last of the information he pulled out of her.

Now, normally, a person would be a little ticked at Cyborg after they way he nearly fucked over such a delicate operation, but Skye is not your average person. Once he was no longer deeply involved in use of his power, he realized that there was only one person in the room who could even possibly have the slightest clue what he was doing, and that he himself was totally in the wrong. Of course, though he knew it intellectually, this realization did little to calm him down. Fortunately, and as per normal for Skye, his intense anger had already faded to the utterly cool nothing he forever existed within.

"Sorry," he began calmly as he stood and turned back to the much larger man, a huge smile fixedly in place. He could read surprise in spades from the guy before him, apparently his shift from moody to pleasant had taken him off guard. From the rest of the room he sensed a stratum of silent interest in what could be learned from his actions with the big man, and with a start, Skye realized he'd been expertly baited. It was a test, only the still-staggered eyes of Starfire not hiding a heated curiosity for what he had to say now (though he actually had to guess on this for Raven, her mind as always projecting nothing from behind her sleek shield).

"I got a little snappish there because it was pretty delicate work," Skye continued, hoping no one noticed his split-second pause. "That kind of thing is hard to pull off when people are blasting their emotions on high gear right behind you, so I sort of overreacted when you started getting on my case there. Please let me apologize for getting testy, I really should have explained myself beforehand. Anyway, as for what I was doing, it'd be easier to show you. With permission from all of you, of course?" and the last was phrased as a question to the whole room.

"What do you mean, show us?" Cyborg shot back, clearly still point man for this latest dissection of Skye.

"I was using ESP to diagnose any side effects or possible causes related to that freaky light you just asked about. Rather than trying to explain it to you, I could just send what I've learned directly into you minds via telepathy. I think I've finally gotten the fact that you lot don't care for those who take liberties with telepathic contact (and he didn't so much as indicate Raven as he did implicate her by the very fact that he hadn't indicated her) so I figured I'd go ahead and ask this time. Besides, I wouldn't be able to let Raven there in on this one without her permission anyway, not with shields like those."

There was an enticingly (to Skye) icy distance to repay his compliment, and Skye was once again struck by how great she looked. That however, was pretty well beside the point after Cyborg, collecting nods from his teammates, gave Skye the go ahead. Apparently even Raven now was willing to take this first step of trust.

Taking their agreement in stride, Skye prepped himself for some really smooth work; it wouldn't do to mess up on his big chance to counter the crappy first impression he'd made. Getting a feel for each of their minds, he gathered a bit of telepathic energy and began extending tendrils of thought around the room. After a moment's indecision, he went ahead and included Starfire, figuring it would go a little ways to helping her regain her full senses. In any case, he soon had a light contact with each of them, the notable exception being Raven.

Despite her assent, his questing mental contact still landed softly on her implacable mind shield like a fly on a windshield, a solid wall of expertly organized energy keeping him decidedly out. Carefully, really hoping not to aggravate her, he went ahead and gave the telepathic equivalent of a polite knock, affecting her shield in such a way as to sound a soft inquiring sensation into her mind. Apparently, he'd finally managed to do something right, because the next moment, a small gap opened. Rather than allowing him entry, however, a black telepathic link shot out and rushed directly toward his own mind. His danger sense wasn't tripped, but he had little patience for funny business, so was not terribly pleased when she was speaking to him rather than the other way around.

"I'll take care of the linking, okay?" she 'pathed simply when she'd established a contact with his mind, a smug note in her mental tone, probably from the way she'd jacked his links to the others' minds and used them to press past his own outer shield. His flash of annoyance faded quickly as he decided she could play at showing off all she wanted, secure in the knowledge that when push came to shove, he could take her mind to mind. He just didn't relish trying to take her on in an actual fight where neither of them held back. In any case, he could understand her reluctance to let him control the link, so he didn't take up any complaint on the issue. These thoughts he kept close to his core to prevent accidentally transmitting them, then moved on to what he was supposed to be doing.

"Can everybody hear this?" he sent down the links, knowing that they could but wanting them to get used to the fact that he was speaking in their heads before he started beaming images into their minds.

He received a chorus of simple and nonchalant responses, though each of them did jump a little at the first sound of his telepathic voice. Skye found it mildly perplexing that they took it so well, as if voices started talking inside their heads on a regular basis. In fact, only Starfire seemed confused as to where his voice had come from. Of course, she was confused about a lot of things right now.

"Who said that?" she asked weakly, prying her eyes off Robin long enough to give another look around the room.

"Oh, yes, Miss Starfire. I don't believe we've had the chance to be formally introduced. My name is Skye, I'm the pale gentleman standing next to Cyborg. I'm a psychic, and I'm using telepathy to speak directly into your mind." Skye projected his introduction down every link allowing all to hear and grow further acclimated to his mental touch. It was his rather fanciful hope that they'd be good with his telepathy and he'd get to use it often—audible words were such a damn burden.

Starfire's response was a confused silence, her eyes finally finding him on the other side of the bed and widening as though she'd missed him on her first few passes. He could feel a question slowly forming in her muddled mind, and out of habit, he answered it for her before she could ask it.

"I'm sorry for confusing you. Yes, I am a stranger, but circumstances have conspired to lead me into the company of the Titans. I made a rather desperate move in keeping that large man from complicating things bloodily downtown, and when I woke I was here, in this medical facility. Sort of as an apology for not arriving sooner and doing more to help, I went ahead and used some of my powers to speed the recovery of Beast Boy and you. I believe that about covers the important parts." Once again he spoke down every link, simultaneously straining his senses to pick up their reactions. It was not lost on him that this was the most he'd even hinted at as far as his motivations were concerned, and was pleased to note that the others snapped it up with excitement. At least he knew he interested them.

"Oh, um, thank you..." began Starfire, sounding somewhat more lucid that she had a moment ago. "I know now that I suffered some kind of injury. Please, I believe you said something about explaining my condition. I would like to hear how I am doing now."

"Great. Really, that's just wonderful. I'll have you all up and in on this in just a sec. Get ready, cause you're all about to feel quite a rush." With that, Skye slid quickly and smoothly from light contacts to a heavier fare, pushing open the links to allow the much more complicated information he was about to start flinging about room to transmit. For Raven's benefit, he put the epicenter of his sending in a very clear part of his forebrain and pinched her contact with his mind shield until it was the only thing she had access to. He could feel a sting of annoyance from the direct link to her mind, and appreciated the fact that it was the first emotion he'd been able to sense of hers. Dropping that line of thought however, Skye began.

"Alright, everyone close your eyes."

(Raven)

"Does he really think I don't know to close my eyes?" thought Raven, but discretely, so it didn't make it out of her head. Of course, the next moment she had to admit to herself that it was a rather petty thought. The stranger was doing an admirable job of being charming and non-threatening, which of course made her feel all the more alarmed. Ever since Terra, not even counting that whole Melchior fiasco, she'd had it out for people trying to ingratiate themselves to her or her friends. Something about Skye just didn't sit right with her, and it wasn't the fact that her heartbeat rose every time she thought about how great he looked.

That was about as far as she got before the show started, and more or less everything else fled her mind. With a swirling of colors in the black under her eyelids, an image appeared as clearly as though she'd imagined it herself, transmitted through the air from where her telepathic link to Skye was focused. The overall resolution was not that great, but anyone would have known it for a 3D silhouette of Starfire done completely in twirled bands of green and orange. Raven had a good guess as to what it was, but kept it to herself and listened to hear how Skye put it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if I may present my findings? Here we have a live image of Miss Starfire's aura, the unique patterning of energy that surrounds her and all other living things."

"Ooh, that's me?" came a new thought-voice, this one light and fluttery rather than the cheerfully cool tone Skye had been using. Immediately Raven knew it was Starfire, and wondered at this new phenomenon.

"Hey, how come I just heard Starfire?" asked Beast Boy, and there was a crazy echo as the words came through as thoughts and sounds both. That set it off, and suddenly the thought network exploded with the noise of speech echoes and subvocalizations as everyone started to try out sending their thoughts through the air at the same time. Beast Boy and Cyborg quickly fell into a shouting match over whose thought-voice sounded cooler and Robin began bitching about his headache the next moment. Starfire continued to comment obliviously about how beautiful the world must be through ESP, showing just how quickly she was regaining her regular self. The cacophony was head-splitting.

"EVERYBODY SHUT UP," Raven thought forcefully, putting an edge on her tone that cut through the other thoughts. Instantly there was silence, every eye in the room wide and staring directly at her. Beast Boy slipped and fell from his precarious balance on Cyborg's shoulder where he'd been dealing major nuggie to his rival, and the sound of him hitting the floor was the room's only for a long moment.

"Thanks. I was seriously considering just sucking the enthusiasm out of the room and dealing with the fallout when I could think clearly again," and a change to his tone told her that Skye was sending to only her.

"Consider yourself lucky that you didn't (she tagged a wave of threat to the words). Can we get this going now?" and Raven reveled in the fact that she'd managed to totally disregard the weird feelings she'd had earlier and treat Skye with exactly the tone she felt he deserved. Maybe this would be a passing thing after all.

"Fine, fine (he changes back to everyone, all of whom still stand stunned from Raven's cutting telepathic shout) Alright, close your eyes guys, and this time keep the thoughts down until the presentation comes to an end, alright?"

With that, Raven once again slid her eyes shut and observed the image Skye had never stopped projecting, even through what must have been an exceptionally painful sit at the center of all those loud thoughts. The noise had nearly blown Raven's senses, so she could only imagine what it must have felt like to his, from the center of it all, and she reluctantly upped her opinion of his talents another notch. The next moment, he began sending thoughts again, and it turned out to actually be rather interesting.

"Okay, please listen up. As I said earlier, this is a live image of Starfire's aura, transmitted directly from my senses to your minds. If you'll observe here," silver arrows pointed at several slightly smudged areas on the otherwise pristinely twined colors, "you can see where the damage to her spirit has healed. At the rate she's going, even these will be completely gone within an hour or two. This doesn't sound too impressive until you consider that the same spots looked like this only one hour ago," and now the image changed to a drastically different one.

This new image was unrecognizable, the vague outline of a humanoid form done in green and orange defaced with gaping slashes of red and black and wide broken swathes with jagged edges. Raven was forced to catch her breath, her limited experience with spiritual damage more than enough to understand that what she was looking at was fatal. It was a miracle Starfire had lived a single heartbeat past the beatdown she'd suffered, if that was what her soul had looked like, and Raven marveled at Tamaranean durability as she once again felt the sting of the near loss. She concentrated to sweep that away and listened to the next portion.

"What I did was quite simple. Using a telepathic resonance field, I mended what areas I could and patched the larger holes with my own energy," and as he spoke the image changed as a transparent envelope of silver surrounded the mangled silhouette, the holes growing closed and patching over with silver in the most severely damaged places. "Normally, the spirit will heal itself much like the body, the health of the mind and body being intrinsically linked to the state of the spirit's repair, and vicea versa. Like the body, some damage is too great to recover from, and will kill or paralyze the mind and the body in turn, no matter what the state of the physical tissues' repair. Even if all the great doctors and healers of this world were to work their powers of recovery on her, she would never have awakened as long as her spirit was too damaged to heal itself. "

"Quick question," broke in Robin vocally, his detective's soul smelling a hole in the story, "you said yourself she was comatose... how did you help that? I assume it takes more than a little spirit-patching to get the mind back up and running, right?"

"How nice of you to ask," and Raven thought she caught a passing flash of annoyance through the link, as though he'd been avoiding the subject, "I was attending to that while my resonance field fixed her spirit up. Basically I traced the connection between her physical body and her psychic core, the central portion of her personality comprised of her memories, hopes, fears, and desires. I followed it to the corner of the dreamscape it had fled to and initiated its return, then came back and finished cleansing her spirit."

"Ummm... dreamscape?... psychic core?" asked Beast Boy, who had only recently bothered to peel himself off the floor and was now alternating listening with bugging Cyborg.

"I... do not recall any of that..." followed Starfire, who seemed bothered by something, a mild headache or other annoyance causing her to grimace. The grimace passed, but not before Skye had let a strange sense of interest slip his own shields, Raven growing suspicious over a possible connection.

"Just chill out guys, this is a presentation of my diagnosis, not a class on psychic theory. I'll have time to answer all kinds of questions later, but now I'm going on, alright?" Though he had seemed annoyed before, now he was back to being cool, and Raven didn't know if he'd put up better shields or really gone cold. The uncertainty bugged the crap out of her, as did the thought that he was better at being neutral than her, and the aggravation of course made more work for her besides. It was intolerable, but she managed to keep it all down anyway.

"So anyway, I cleansed her spirit of damaged and decaying energy using surgical telepathic incisions." As he spoke, the imaged changed again, this time showing silver ribbons striking through the red and black areas that still scarred the patched aura. After a few moments of passing through them, the ribbons completely removed the bad spots, leaving faint but properly colored aura in their places.

"After that, I did a little post-surgical cleaning up and crossed my fingers. Unfortunately, the inverse of what I said earlier is also true, and no matter what the state of the spirit, the body can still die, and rarely hesitates to when the damage is as bad as it was here. Sucking out the pain and psychic dissonance can only do so much for internal bleeding and non-neurological trauma, I'm afraid."

"That's where Raven came in, Right? She used her powers to keep Star's body alive once you'd gotten her brain and soul on the right track?" asked Cyborg, who'd been as intent on the explanation as Robin, despite having to give Beast Boy the occasional smack to get the little dweeb off him.

"Yes," said Raven simply, subtly subverting Skye's link just to prove she could, projecting her own 'voice' to supercede his and snap up the answer. "I used my powers to take the worst of her injuries into myself. As I've told you before, by sharing the injury empathetically, I can help it to heal."

She had gotten under Skye's skin again, and so he sniped back again, altering the image completely to show the same figure done in a full color model of the muscle and tissue structure. It was impressive, showing off an entirely new side of his senses, and Raven realized that a game of one-upmanship could on for a long time between the two of them. The view was about as detailed as possible, like an illustration out of an anatomy book except it looked completely real, as though an actually flayed Starfire was standing in front of her, and the sight was a little disturbing.

"Hey, what happened? I thought we were looking at her aura?" asked Beast Boy, who opened his eyes to dispel the image (somewhat, it was still in his forebrain, but input from his actual eyes helped dull it down) and made some faces of disgust.

"Yeah, that was my senses attuned to the spectral, how I normally view the world. This is my senses attuned to the physical, kind of like super-vision. It's called active clairvoyance, otherwise known as the sense of perception. My eyes barely work, but I can still see everything, all around me, all the time, not walls nor skin nor dark of night can obstruct it. I changed the view to examine her physical recovery. If you don't care to see it, just say so."

"Well it is somewhat PERSONAL!" shouted Starfire, face burning where she lay on the bed, holding the covers tightly over her body as the image of her own skinless body rested statically in her mind.

"Oh... right," and Skye zoomed the image in quickly so close that only the stomach could be seen, nothing of the breasts or genitalia even suggested anymore. Though Raven could think of no one sane who would find that enticing or sexual, she could still understand Starfire's embarrassment, and had to cut off another wave of anger at Skye's habit of taking things for granted.

"I'm out Skye, anatomy has always made me queasy," answered Beast Boy, looking, if possible, a bit more green than usual. Without responding, Skye shrunk the link to B.B.'s mind, Raven sensing the shift in energies through the entire web as a result. She was actually getting a little tired now, her telepathic senses having been worked harder today than pretty well any time in her memory. She was really much better at magic.

"Anyway, Miss Raven's contribution was also quite significant, exactly as Cyborg stated earlier. If you'd look here," and the image changed to a sort of sickeningly realistic view of Starfire's internal organs, "all of the trauma has been completely removed. An hour ago, I looked in and saw this," and now the image showed areas of puncturing and tearing, Skye adding silver arrows again to point out the places where vascular damage had resulted in internal bleeding. "After Raven's beautiful work on it, it looked like this," and the same image was quickly replaced with one that looked much better. Raven remembered the healing job well, able to feel where all these injuries had been from her own physical experiencing of them, even if she hadn't been able to 'see' them as Skye so clearly could. The other thing she remembered was... "However, the experienced eye would note that the damage was only mended, not removed, and there is no way in hell that a Tamaranean, Terran, or pretty well anyone else could recover from what damage remained in only an hour," and Skye finished her own thought quite exceptionally.

"Okay, so you've told us what you were doing, and that Starfire is fine now. So how about getting to that part about the gray light?" Robin was evidently even more anxious to find out about it than everyone else, and Raven speculated as to what exactly was getting him so uppity all of a sudden. Maybe he just didn't like the idea of Skye poking around in Starfire's soul and mind—she certainly didn't.

"What is this gray light you speak of? Did something else strange happen to me? Oh—um... not that I do not appreciate all your help friends. I know now that I would not be speaking to everyone without help from both of you!" and her radiant smile was enough to make the whole room brighten. Raven felt undeniable warmth encompass her heart as that smile lit the room, and it was a small struggle to keep her power from gripping that emotion and riding it into some kind of destructive expression.

"Yes, but please, you owe me nothing at all. It was my clear responsibility to help you recover. Now, about the gray light... Starfire, you were completely stable after Raven and I did our stuff, but you had at least a week or two of recovery ahead of you before either of us expected you to awake. That you regained your senses so soon... well... it came as something of a surprise. Especially since it was accompanied by a gray luminescence," and now a new image, one of a highly detailed but otherwise normal view of Starfire in her bed surrounded by a gray aurora, replaced the anatomical exposition, "that none of us have any explanation for, unfortunately including me. I did every kind of scan and search I know of, and there simply isn't any trace of whatever force accelerated your recovery like that. The only thing I can think of... nah."

"What is it?" Raven snapped directly to his mind and no other, feeling something of what he was thinking about and latching on to the leaked thought immediately. The implication was clear, especially considering what had happened earlier when they touched.

"Ah, I was waiting for you to come to the same conclusion as me," and he was also speaking only to her mind. "It would seem that, though strangers we certainly be, our powers have a rather unique ability to interact. Neither of us could have caused her recovery so quickly, but..."

"Our powers combined, did something weird, and managed to heal things neither of us could even dream of. Shit."

"Yeah. So, you want to let them in on this? I'd just keep it mum myself, out of habit if nothing else, but it's your secret too, so I figure I'd let you decide."

Raven was struck by this offer from him, mostly because of what went unspoken. He knew she didn't want the others to know about it, the last thing she needed just then was something else for them to think weird about her, or that she was somehow connected to this oddball. As surely as he knew that, he also knew that she didn't trust him enough for him to make an offer of sharing a secret like that. She'd been cool with the two of them just not talking about the way they'd shocked each other, that was just some weird shit of the regularly private variety, way less that what they were talking about now. It was almost as though the bastard was blackmailing her into giving him more trust than she'd even begun to consider. Fucking Shit.

"Okay, lets just keep this between us shall we? There is just one more person we should let in on it, but what the others don't know about me won't hurt them."

"My thoughts exactly. Just let me talk these others out of here and we'll cover that angle too." It wasn't until he said this that Raven realized that Skye had been talking to everyone else audibly while he'd been speaking with her mentally. Considering what a stunt he'd just pulled on her had absorbed her concentration, but apparently he'd still had enough left over to chat along with the others.

"So really, I don't think it's anything to worry about. Most likely the light was just a fluke side effect of all the healing energy used on her. My best guess as to why she recovered so quickly is misprognosis on my part. I suppose I just underestimated her ability heal. You know those Tamaraneans—they've got constitution."

"Okay man, whatever you say," responded Cyborg cheerfully as he continued to smack around with Beast Boy. Now that all danger and mystery was past, the two were completely back to their old antics. They might as well have handed Skye a free ticket to distracting them from what she wanted him to conceal.

"Great. So, tell you what: I'll stay here with Raven and make some last checks on Starfire's head while she patches up Robin. You guys can go tell the doctors to pack it up and scram, and then we'll all meet upstairs and we can talk while these two finish recovering."

"Sounds perfect man. You definitely have one hell of a lot of explaining to do, but I've got a feeling it'll be a great story."

"Yeah, definitely," added Beast Boy rather redundantly, but then he was already changing into a monkey and using Cyborg's head as a bongo drum, laughing an apish laugh the whole way out of the room as Cy swatted at him.

"Hehehehe," an angelic giggling erupted from the bed next to Raven as Skye finished herding the two oblivious lugs out of the room. "It is good to see that everyone is doing so well after that terrible battle," said Starfire sweetly as she held her hands together near her face in an empty-armed hug and smiled ever more brilliantly. A sudden coughing from beside her made her face drop dramatically, a distraught expression blooming where her smile had been as remembrance of Robin's condition crushed her momentary joy. "Oh, Robin! I am so sorry, I forgot your pain in my happiness at everyone else's safety..." and she looked truly and deeply repentant, almost to tears, "how can you ever forgive my transgression?"

"Star..." and Robin spoke through a thick veneer of pain, "please don't worry about me. I'm just so happy... so happy to see you well. This... is nothing... really," and his voice gave out completely.

"That's enough chitchat out of you buddy," admonished Skye with a laugh under his words, "I just took a peek inside you, and you've really done it this time..." after a moment of thought, he appends himself, "Or we've done it, or whatever. Anyway, you've reopened your surgical scars something dreadful. Under different circumstances, you'd have to go under the knife again."

A powerful gasp from the bed alerted them to Starfire's continued concern. "You don't mean he may still be in danger? Oh Robin, please don't mistreat yourself like this, not for me. It would ehalak nre ginbrab renalb prisnor to see you in such pain because of me!"

"Uh... I can guess what she just said, I think," commented Raven, who had never gotten used to her habit of slipping into Tamaranean whenever she was upset.

"It translates very roughly to 'break my heart,' much as you'd expect, yes," filled in Skye, who was now moving back over to the far side of the bed he'd just evicted Cyborg from.

"You speak Tamaranean?" asked Starfire with deep wonder, her concern for Robin interrupted by this particularly unprecedented situation, though she still cradled his pale hand in her own from where she lay.

"I speak a lot of languages, but that isn't important right now. You, Miss Starfire, are, in my professional opinion, still in need of some sleep before you'll be fully healed."

"But I cannot sleep now! Robin needs me; I must stay by his side until he recovers. Besides this, I am not sleepy either, so I must refuse your professional opinion," this last she said with a huff, turning her nose up and away from him as she shifted her attention to her injured 'friend.' Raven noticed a determined expression on her face, as though she'd not give up on watching over him should the entire universe try to stop her. Unfortunately, Raven needed her to follow Skye's advice.

"Isn't there anything you can do? I'm afraid she really wont follow anyone else's advice when she gets like this," Raven 'pathed to him reluctantly, knowing that she'd regret it but equally knowing that she was committed to this new course now.

"So you're asking me to use some of my powers on her? Very well, I promise to be gentle, not that I have the heart to do anything serious to someone like her. Also please note that she really does need some sleep, I wasn't lying about that." This of course only made Raven wonder what he had been lying about, and much as she expected, she regretted asking him to do something right away.

"Miss Starfire, I really must insist. Raven and I will take care of Robin, you get some sleep." With a tilt of his head, he used some kind of power or other, Raven able to sense the force as it moved through the air. The mental contact brushed gently against Starfire's mind, and suddenly, her eyes were drooping unstoppably toward sleep.

"You... are forcing... me to... sleep?" was all she managed to get out before she was gone, swept away by needed rest and a soft, almost delicate snore.

"Why did you do that?" asked Robin, who'd apparently found a new source of strength to counter the pain that ground incessantly at his abdomen.

"Hey, I don't like forcing people to do things any more than the next guy, but she needed the sleep more than you needed her batting those pretty eyes at you, plus, Raven had something she wanted to talk with you about."

"Raven?" and Robin attempted futilely to turn in his chair and look at the sorceress behind him.

"It's nothing much, really, just something I'd rather the others didn't know." She said, preparing herself for the always-difficult task of sharing what she'd rather not.

"About your and Skye's powers having some kind of effect on one another, right?" and Raven was forced to squash her sudden panic, terrified that it had been that obvious, that anyone could already know it, and that she'd made those devil's deals with the stranger for nothing at all.

"Heh, calm down, I doubt the others even suspect. I'm the only one here who knows that Skye's power looks silvery-white, and it doesn't really take a detective to guess why gray light came out of someone pumped full of black and white energy. But really, is it such a big thing?" Privately, Raven hoped it wouldn't be such a big thing, but she couldn't let herself take that chance, not with something as weird as this.

"Robin, knowledge is power," stated Skye calmly as he walked back around the bed and stood near Raven. She really wished he'd stand further away from her, but dared not make any complaint. "You can never really tell how something like this, something really out of the ordinary, can be used, or how it can be used against you. The fewer people who know, the fewer people who can find a way to hurt us with it, you see? It's just precautionary really."

"Wow Raven, are all psychics as paranoid as you two?" and he meant it in the purest of humor. It fell a little flat however, when a trickle of blood leaked from the side of his mouth and he turned a particularly pathetic shade of green under his pale white.

"Damn. Okay, let's get this guy back on his feet. Would you like to start, or should I?"

"You did last time, you should again. I don't feel like experimenting with this right now," or ever, she added to herself, but then Skye was already beginning his work on Robin.

"I'll take care of that headache of yours, considering that there really isn't anything else for me to do on you. I'm not one hundred percent sure why, but your spirit just wasn't as badly damaged as Starfire's considering that you came equally close to the reaper last night." As he spoke, silver ribbons bled forth from the gems on his gloves, wrapping with incredible speed into a sphere around Robin's head and sparkling magnificently for a long moment. When they withdrew, Robin looked to be in about half as much pain as before, though he still hadn't regained his color.

(Robin)

"That really feels much better—Ouuuucccch... Except now that... I'm not so distracted... by the headache... its easier to concentrate... on the searing agony in my guts," thought Robin as the swirling silver lights faded from his eyes.

"Good, that was the idea, now Raven will have to help you with the rest," Skye's voice shot into his newly cleared head, and he realized that he'd been thinking loud enough for it to travel back over that link Skye'd formed with his mind. It was odd, because he couldn't feel anything, not the slightest difference. Robin's past experiences with telepathy had involved a sense of presence, a feeling of there being someone in his mind when the thought voice beamed in, but there was none of that with Skye. It was something he'd have to ask Raven about later.

"Just sit still Robin, and I'll have this done in a moment," Raven said from the other side of him, the most mysterious note of nervousness in her voice. Hearing that from such an unexpected source immediately made Robin nervous too.

"Hey, is there something I should be worried about here?" he asked breathlessly, the grinding pains in his stomach taking a back seat to the hard panic caused by Raven sounding nervous.

"No," both of them said simultaneously, using the exact same blankly calm tone that he'd come to associate with Raven hiding something. Apparently Skye also subscribed to that particular evasion tactic. Robin was fading quickly into a mire of crippling pain, but he still noticed Raven's eyes flickering slightly as she hesitated from where she'd been approaching to use her powers on him. They were speaking telepathically.

"Come on already... Just do it, I don't care about any risks!" he snapped, the force in his tone causing a burn of agony up his chest, so that he keeled over helplessly in his chair. From amid this blinding hurt then, a cool hand suddenly settled on his back.

"Ready or not..." Raven whispered cryptically, then followed with those magic words of hers, and the process started the next moment. A warm soothing sensation spread from that spot on his back until it had covered his entire abdomen, removing the pain and replacing it with a glorious numbness. When he looked down at his stomach, it was covered in Raven's mysterious white-edged black magical energy, or telepathic energy, or whatever. Robin bemusedly noted that he had a bunch of other stuff to ask about when the time for asking came, then blanked as he glorified in the lack of agony.

"Oohhh," he moaned softly, drooping forward to lean against Starfire's bed in relief. After a moment, he noticed that he wasn't the only one who'd moaned, and a quick glance caught the sight of Raven slowly loosing her balance from where she stood beside him. A flash of movement that he was way to dulled out to properly track swished by his ear, and Skye was behind Raven the next instant, pulling a chair out of a corner with his leg and flipping it into place to catch her before she fell.

"Wha—ugg!" Robin managed, but then stopped, realizing that moving his lungs too quickly made shooting pains resurface in his only partially healed guts. Skye's head never swiveled from where he pointed it sedately at Raven, but he answered Robin nonetheless.

"I heard you, don't try to talk. Raven is fine, she just took in a little too much of your injury. She'll probably feel the pain of your internal damage for days now, rather than the light, couple-hour job I proposed she do. I guess this is what I get for trying to make a helpful suggestion—but I digress. How are you feeling?" and he turned his head finally back toward Robin.

Robin guessed that it must not make much of a difference to Skye where his eyes were facing when he had senses that went every way at once, but dropped his jumbled musings as he registered the explanation and question. He chided himself for letting his mind wander then, his flash of concern for Raven still strong in his mind, despite his detective's penchant for analyzing people.

"I-ahh!"

"I said don't talk," Skye calmly reminded Robin, who had the presence of mind now to blush slightly at what a fool he'd just made of himself. He put it down to all the injuries and moved on, thinking really loud to make sure Skye could 'hear' it.

"The pain is gone, but the injury is only partly healed. That's about par for Raven, though this is the worst injury I've ever seen her try to heal."
"I'm willing to bet she knows better than to take a crack at stuff like this, empathic healing isn't exactly safe. The Spirit harmonics I use on souls and minds is harmless, if draining, for me, but what she does could kill her if she doesn't learn to let up. I repeat, you're really damn lucky to have a friend like her."

"Yeah," and Robin felt gratitude he was completely unable to express, not that he needed to, with these two.

"It's impolite to talk over someone's head, you know," Raven broken in verbally when she'd recovered from her disorientation and raised her head again, hot gravel of pain and annoyance cooking her tone. She clutched one hand over the pain and ethereal injury she'd removed from Robin into herself and gripped so tightly to the chair's arm with the other that her knuckles turned white.

"Just chill," and now Skye switched back to words as well, rubbing his forehead with one hand as though stung. Robin quickly guessed that Raven's generous streak of mind-to-mind contact had run completely dry with her new pain.

"Back away," was all Raven said in response, the intense concentration on her face clear as she fought down the pain masterfully, subduing it to her will much as she did her emotions.

"I could remove that pain from your system, if you want. I didn't do it to Robin cause it might have made it difficult for you to find and remove the full extent of his injuries during your healing job, but—"

"If you touch one wisp of vampiric energy to any portion of my mind, body, or spirit, I will personally torture you to within an inch of death, then wait for you to recover and do it again. Do I make myself clear?" and she cast a sudden black glare at the floor in front of her, apparently confident that he could get every ounce of it's force from behind her and not feeling like turning to face the stranger.

"No prob'," he came back coolly, but Robin could detect a hint of nervousness in his body language, one that actually faded away to nothing as he watched. It was damn weird, but he had other things on his mind just then.

"If you two lovers are done quarreling now," and he got great satisfaction from the undisguiseable flinches each made at that comment, almost enough to counter the searing in his intestines that talking caused, "I'd kind of like to know when this thing is going to happen?"

"Don't look at me," Skye was the first to recover his composure after Robin's stabbing remark, "I've never tried to do this before. It took an hour for Star, which counts from when I added my power, ten-ish minutes after which Raven added hers. If you extrapolate the time gap, it should happen for you right about..." a sudden and unexpected force gripped every nerve in Robin's body, "now."

"AHHHAHAHA," screamed Robin, pained guts forgotten as pained everything flared to life in his body. It felt for the entire world like his blood had been replaced with quicksilver, fire and searing cold chasing each other through every nerve in his being as the process began. There was a rushing in his ears and flares of gray blanking out his vision, leaving him alone with the sensation of being ripped to shreds by a thousand tiny swords thrust mercilessly through him. His agony-fueled hold on the wheelchair threatened to tear the flimsy vehicle apart as his muscle's tensed and relaxed spasmodically. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped, utterly and fully, without preamble or epilogue.

"Aaahh...haaa...ah?" his scream died out in confusion, no longer needed but not quite sure why. "Hey..." and Robin said this only because he had been totally wiped out by the gray light, "I feel really good!"

"Great, but to me, you feel really tired. Take a nap and we can all get together for a nice long chat a little later," and Skye said it with the tone of one who talks to an idiot or someone with a concussion.

"Wait—"but Robin was too slow, and Skye had swept through his mind like a cool breeze the next instant, a sudden deep fatigue pulling Robin from his wakefulness without any hope of his resisting. He had a fading vision of Starfire's soft hospital bed speeding toward his face, then velvety black consumed him.

(Skye)

"And that's that. All the Titans are now fully recovered and fighting fit... just about, anyway," Skye commented blithely as Robin's head hit the mattress. The young man's messy hair just brushed Starfire's thigh where it lay under the sheets, his hands drooping down the sides of the bed limply where he'd collapsed forward.

"Yeah, and it was a lot quicker than anyone could have hoped, thanks to you," and Raven's voice held an inexplicable accusatory tone, as though he'd just eaten a baby rather than helped to keep her friends from dying.

"What, there some law against being helpful?" and Skye was once again neutral, his blithe act dumped the moment he realized the game Raven had switched to.

"Let's just say I don't trust people who are too helpful without any apparent reason. You've been trying like hell to get on our good side since you fell out of the sky and conveniently interceded to stop that unstoppable killer." Raven was working up a damn good head of steam now, and Skye was far from ready to deal with it.

"To save all your lives, and, I might add, nearly loosing my own life in the process. Damn, it's not like what I did was all that mysteriously convenient and coincidental anyway!"

"And how do you mean that? You came out of nowhere and somehow laid out an enemy we couldn't scratch, and how do we even know you were injured in all that?"

"Come on! My powers drew me to the city. Why? I don't know, I've just learned to follow them where they lead me! I heard the battle from the other side of town and knew that was what my powers had tipped me off about. I show up, and a big blue guy is trying to turn some beautiful unconscious damsels into so much crushed person-jelly. I hop in and can't even faze the big motherfucker with any power I hold, so I go the desperate route and try to drain his rage, which I pegged as his power source. I underestimated him and nearly blew my mind trying to ditch all the energy the huge fuck was packing, then passed out from the strain and had to put humpty-dumpty a.k.a. my mind back together again from the beacon I maintain on the astral plane. I came just as close to dying as any of you, so just drop the suspicious bullshit and give me a fucking chance, okay?"

The story spilled from his lips almost involuntarily, and he immediately regretted not editing parts of it. She wasn't Robin, but any sufficiently sharp mind could come up with all kinds of difficult questions from what he'd just let slip. Instead she seemed a little taken aback, as though she hadn't expected such heated honesty out of him any more than he'd expected to give it. As the anger quickly drained away to nothing then, he waited in silence for her to respond, the only sound in the room the soft breathing of the sweetly sleeping couple next to them.

"So that's your story?" she asked quietly, rubbing the aching spot on her stomach and staring fixedly at some distant point on the floor behind him. She seemed deep in thought, and Skye prepared a number of defenses in his mind as he waited for her counterstrike. She asked at long last then, "Where are you from?"

"Ah, ah, ah Raven, questions will be answered later, in the company of all," Skye switched gears back to playful to see if she was willing to put this off for a while. She wasn't.

"Where are you from?" she asked heatedly, her gaze rising to stare daggers at him, distrust written all over her face at his reluctance to answer her.

"Please Raven," he tried pleading, "there are good reasons I can't answer you now, very, very good reasons, so just sit tight and I'll do my explaining a little later?" and the begging note in his tone was completely pathetic.

"Fine," and she turned away from him once more, wincing involuntarily at the ever-present ache in her intestines.

"My offer to drain that pain away still stands you know," he said as he turned toward the young couple in repose, once again recalling the image of the resonant souls. While Raven was distracted by her pain and his question, he discreetly ran an extremely fine connection between their minds, hoping to all hope that the hyper-paranoid (you know it's bad when Skye calls you this) woman he found himself so inexplicably attracted to (he had found her to be distinctly not his type over the past few minutes) didn't catch him with his mind in the cookie jar. The two deserved each other, and there was nothing like a shared dream to help slice through teenage awkwardness.

"And my threat still stands as well," Raven snapped back disinterestedly, and Skye pulled his attention back to her with mixed reluctance and happiness.

"Okay, then at least let me help you back to your room, you're not going to want to walk with that particular injury, you know," and he moved to grab this room's wheelchair from the corner behind them.

"Don't bother," she mumbled, "I can take care of this myself." With that she muttered something else, then rose slowly off the chair and suspended herself in midair. Skye sensed it happening behind him, but it took him a moment to believe it.

"You can levitate?" he asked, mixed awe and jealousy in his tone. It was nothing he hadn't seen before, but it was something he'd always wanted to try.

"Naturally," was her quiet response, sounding quite happy indeed to have impressed him so much.

"Well fine," his emotions had drained away again, and he sensed the incremental frown that told him his flip-flop had ticked her off, "I guess that's one less thing for me to do. How about you rustle up Starfire some clean cloths and I'll go get the guys to do the same for Robin? These two should be back up within the hour, and I doubt very much their desire to walk around in hospital gowns."

"Whatever," and she fled the room, melting through the ceiling like it wasn't there and once again catching Skye completely off guard. He could sense her as she moved upward, and she quickly advanced to one of the much larger rooms above him before getting out of his range and fading into the background of psychic interference.

He shook his head and muttered, "Sorceress, eh?" before leaving the room in his own conventional means, one last glance over his shoulder at the pair he was leaving behind. One hour of sleep would give them quite a little bit of fully lucid dreaming together. He hoped they appreciated the favor, not that he'd ever cop to having done it.

A Little Corner of the Dreamscape

Robin became aware that instead of blackness, the world around him had form and measure. As he gazed from one end of the panoramic landscape to the other, he took in the pristine emptiness of an endless snowfield, the blank white screen proceeding to the horizon broken only by the occasional towering spire of red stone. The night sky was completely clear, dotted with stars beyond numbering in clusters and sheets that threatened to overwhelm his senses with the sheer multitude of individual twinkling lights. It was only when he looked around at the tower of darkly colored stone upon which he stood that he realized where he was.

"Tamaran?" he asked himself out loud, hearing his voice echo ominously around the empty balcony he occupied.

"Yes, it is beautiful, is it not?" asked a familiar female voice, and Robin started as he realized that he wasn't alone here.

"Starfire?" he asked, and turned to look at the young beauty that leaned against the thick stone barrier between the balcony and a thousand-foot drop. Besides the fact that she was up and about in this mysterious place, she'd somehow changed into her Titans uniform, and so, for that matter, had he! She looked wistful to Robin, as though gazing out at the landscape of her homeworld struck some deep chord in her soul and took her on a ride through the kind of complex emotions no one could really enjoy.

"I often dream of my home, when I feel sad or when bad things have happened. It is a comfort," she continued as though she hadn't heard his confusion, as though she didn't even really know he was there.

"A dream?" Robin took a long look at the icy plain below him, "I'm dreaming that I'm on your homeworld?"

"Actually, I am dreaming I am home again, and I believe I am also dreaming that you are here with me, though that is not a regular part of my dreams of home." She gained a deeply confused look, then continued, "I don't usually dream of Robin until..." and she trailed off, turning her face away from Robin as a deep blush bloomed out of his sight. Even if he wasn't real, she didn't want him to know about those dreams.

"I'm your dream?" and Robin was sounding like a real fool, not quite able to get a grip on the situation. "I don't feel like a dream, though I admit I'm not an expert on these things. Are you sure?"

"I don't see why you would be dreaming of Tamaran, you have hardly been there long enough, and your experience of my favorite view from the palace was not a pleasant one, if I recall. This dream is familiar to me, though you have never been here before. Perhaps... we are both dreaming?"

"You mean we're in the same dream?" another question from Robin.

"Yes, of course," and a real enthusiasm lifted her voice and face, "it would explain why neither of us feels like a dream! Isn't it wonderful Robin? Shared dreaming—it is like a dream come true! ... Oh wait..."

"Right, whatever's going on, it can hardly surprise me after all the weird crap that's happened these past two days," and Robin took another long look at the landscape. "So you really love this view back on your world, huh?" he asked, completely altering the direction he was going in before he got caught in brooding, something he knew could only to trouble now. Speculation was useless, and a night this beautiful was too perfect to waste. He had some things he was far overdue for getting off his chest, be this a dream or whatever else.

"Yes, it was here that I would always come when my elder sister was tormenting me, or when I felt lonely from the isolation of being princess. Somehow, gazing at the beautiful simpleness of my home always soothed my hurting," and Robin could detect the scars of very old wounds here, if from nothing else than from the way her eyes began to tear fitfully in the brilliant starlight.

"Starfire, why did you leave your home?" he asked her out of the blue, an old curiosity of his resurfacing as he moved over and leaned against the guard rail about a foot from her. He was determined to get that sadness out of her eyes before he tempted fate with the questions he really wanted to ask, the ones that made his warrior's heart turn to jello in his chest. She seemed caught off guard by his sudden inquiry, but after a moment's wide-eyed surprise, she nodded her head and wiped a small tear from the corner of her eye.

"It is funny, I believed for a while that none cared to know because none of you had asked me that before. I asked Raven about it one day, and she told me that it was an 'unspoken rule' that we did not ask for details about one another's past that the one does not personally volunteer. Do you violate that rule now?" and a quick bat of those enormous eyes quickly had Robin's pulse racing in a very frightening way.

"Uh—hey, you don't have to answer if you don't want to!" he offered quickly, trying to save himself from looking like a prying fool for breaking that rule or conversely like a condescending fuck for assuming she didn't know about it. This was off to a bad start already.

"Hehehe," her brilliant giggle made his heart leap and muscles all through his legs and back shiver imperceptibly, "It is not a problem at all. I was, 'pulling your arm?'"

"My arm? Do you mean my leg?" and a smile crept onto his face as she did that cute thing with the idioms again. He could swear she faked the trouble because she knew it made her look even more beautiful.

"Oh, yes—"and she blushed a creeping crimson across her cheeks and neck, magnifying her beauty once again, "my mistake. I was only trying to be funnier as Beast Boy advised. He also said I need to 'lighten up,' and 'get with the program,' though I do not think he believed me overweight or computerized," and a look of genuine confusion replaced her embarrassment as she once again poured over what the green one had meant by these comments.

"Heh heh," Robin gave a small chuckle at the magnificently cute look of consideration she held, "I wouldn't worry about it Star, you know he doesn't really know what he's talking about himself, so you certainly shouldn't loose too much sleep over trying to understand it."

This time they shared a laugh, each of them slightly guilty for joking at their short friend's expense, but both equally caught up in the moment. As their mutual laughter died down, an unpleasant silence took it's place, each suddenly acutely aware of the other, and each becoming awkward and uncomfortable instantly as this overcame them. At the same moment then, Robin lifted his hand up to scratch at his hair and Starfire folded her hands together near her face, each beginning to speak at the exact same moment, then stopping suddenly when they realized that the other had spoken. Another short silence persisted before Robin fairly forced Starfire to go first.

"You asked me a question, and I was rude to you, for which I am truly sorry. Now please, if you still care to hear, it would be a simple matter to tell you of my history before I joined the Titans." When he simply nodded and smiled, she smiled back, then turned to look out over the landscape once again as she began.

"Tamaran has always been a planet of proud warriors and a great fighting tradition, stretching back as far as our history goes. In time, our society reached a peaceful state and began to create and learn on an incredible scale, discovering new powers hidden within ourselves, always keeping our fighting tradition alive as sacred arts of our history. Soon, we trained our natural abilities to allow for interplanetary and, with the discovery of the secret to faster than light travel, interstellar movement, allowing us to reach contact with our many neighbor stars and the powerful and intelligent aliens living on them. Unfortunately, virtually all of our neighbors also had interstellar capabilities and power hungry leaders with large armies."

"So Tamaran found itself surrounded on all sides by enemies, without so much as a single ship to fight back with?" asked Robin, urging her along as he listened in deep interest, admiring her intense expression as she built up her story.

"Yes, and an age of war followed. Because of our fighting spirit, none could dominate Tamaran, and never did a single enemy bring us to our knees or set a foot on our world in aggression, until the Gordanians. They attacked with evil weapons, the Ha'gack Na Gur'nd, what you would call weapons of terror, meant to break our spirit with our world's desiccation. You see, Tamaran was not always this icy wonderland you now see..."

"What? You mean...!?" and Robin could hardly contain his shock and disgust, simply unable to comprehend such barbaric battle tactics.

"It was once a planet of lush jungles and endless oceans, hotter than your Earth and by far the most beautiful jewel in our sector of space. It was the Ha'gack Na Gur'nd that ended this in the first coming of the Gordanians, and forever after they were the nemesis of our people. Now the beauty our planet held lives on only in legends of that long ago time, almost all art and solid documentation of it lost in the chaos of that age, because the wars still raged on, even as we slowly adapted to the ice-ball our world had been so foully transmuted into... and..."

Her voice began to falter, then completely broke, slow tears dripping down her cheeks to fall softly on the uncaring stone of the tower. Robin advanced without hesitation, placing his hand over hers where it lay against the stone barrier and looking to her face with warm concern. She glanced in panic at his hand on hers, then to his face, then looked away with a blush, her tears stolen by his supportive gesture, warmth seeming to spread through her whole body from where his gloved hand lay over hers.

"Please, go on," Robin offered after a long moment, his hand never moving from where it lay, though the cold sweat on his brow and the quaking in his guts screamed at him to back away and apologize, anything to prevent what was coming.

"So that was the first coming of the Gordanians. After that came years and years more of warfare, the rise and fall of planetary governments and alliances, and the reduction of Tamaran's population to tiny, nearly unimaginably small numbers. The new environment could hardly support us, poisoned as it was by warfare and stripped of nearly all life. Those of us that survived often faced changes, both physical and mental, some going mad and others mutating terribly. My powers, the power of Tamaran's Royal family to use starbolts, is not natural to Tamaraneans, but rather a mutation that arose in this period. It was also what made my caretaker and all in his family line so very enormous. Still we lived on, always free despite our hardships, until an old scourge returned again, back when I was but a child, barely old enough to learn the sacred combat arts of my people." She paused here, catching her breath and gathering herself once again as she scrounged up bad memories. He couldn't really tell, but she seemed to have leaned closer to him as she talked, and every instinct in his body protested what was coming, even as he fought against them for control.

"The Gordanians returned after all those generations of silence," she continued, "bearing with them new alliances and more powerful weapons than ever before. Even with our own allies, we never really stood a chance, and Tamaran finally fell after some weeks of horrible fighting. The skies were lit with the fires of ships exploding, even as the very snow burned with spilt fuel and crimson blood."

"Starfire, I never knew you'd seen actual war," Robin said, when it seemed as though she was about to be overcome by the memories. The last thing Robin wanted was for her to suffer terrifying flashbacks because he couldn't keep his mouth shut about idle curiosity.

"I never care to again," she said quietly, and left it at that before continuing. "The Gordanians had no real use for Tamaran, the population so small at this point that we would not even be valuable as slaves. They attacked only to settle old scores and humiliate a proud people, so demanded nothing in the surrender treaty other than the heads of our leaders and the permanent disbanding of our army. My parents gave themselves up peacefully to spare us all annihilation, and went to their ends as only proud Tamaranean warriors can."

"My god, so that's how you lost your parents? I also lost mine at an early age, I know it's hard to cope after that kind of thing," and Robin had a flash of blood on the stinking straw under the Big Top before he could push that old pain away. He could certainly appreciate what it took for her to bear her soul like this, and gripped her hand slightly to show it. She looked up and smiled at him, and his center instantly melted, all nerves and instincts pushed aside by that look.

"I know something of your circumstances, it was why I chose to speak of these things to you. I knew that you would understand me," and she too felt quite gooey inside, heat still blasting through her body from where he gripped her hand and soothing compassion radiating from his face to touch her heart where bad memories had tormented it. The heated silence became almost unbearable, so Starfire hurried to fill it with her story's conclusion.

"Things simply were never the same on my world again. Even after a new alliance rose up and drove back the Gordanians, forcing them into an armistice to forestall bloody stalemate, even after the surrender of Tamaran was repudiated and we were allowed to form our defense forces once more, still things never improved for me there. Once my parents were gone, the position of princess became full of pressures and responsibilities that I never adjusted to. It was worse on Blackfire, who was expected to take the throne, and I fear it was those years after our parents died that made her into the bitter criminal and betrayer that she now is, though I foolishly never noticed the change happening. She was quite kind once, and I thought her to still be so until it was nearly too late. She fled the planet to live free, and I waited only a short time before doing the same. It was simply never possible for me to be comfortable there, my own home becoming not my home, so I left to find another. With time I found Earth, and the Titans. My new home." As she finished, she turned her gaze slowly from the snowfields to the stars, searching in vain for the one that represented that place which had supplanted her planet of birth as her heart's true home.

"Your new home with your new family," added Robin, whose gaze never left Starfire's softly curving face, drinking in the generous draughts of her beauty that he rarely allowed himself to taste, for fear of what might happen.

"Yes, my new family..." and she turned her gaze to his masked face, those strong features guarded by the mystique of a single black strip, and felt herself overcome by an indescribable sensation. "My family... and perhaps... something more?" she managed to squeak out before any of the usual fears and uncertainties could silence her. The night was magical, and all inhibitions seemed to be running on low, though once the words had escaped her lips she immediately wished she could bite them back, prevent them from reaching his ears, anything to forestall the terrible shadow of rejection that even now reared it's hideous features.

"Starfire?" and the single question spoke volumes, Robin expressing a massive range of shock and surprise with that lone utterance. He simply had not been prepared for her to say something like that, not when he himself was searching fruitlessly for some method of saying much the same thing. In his shock however, he'd screwed up again, Starfire interpreting his surprise as disgust or some other clearly negative response, her whole face and body crumbling under an embarrassment and humiliation that threatened to break her at the middle and work it's way out.

"It is not—I didn't mean—please, don't—"she stammered in a panic as she tried to pull away from him, to flee his rejection and escape her humiliation as her deepest and most secret fear was brought to life in luminous Technicolor detail. Robin moved decisively at last then, unable to bear the sight of such misplaced pain for a second longer, heart leaping from surprise to joy in a single transition of unfathomable speed that slipped his nimble form inside her staggering guard and wrapped his arms around her back. Head suddenly next to hers, ear to ear, he felt her body go stiff from fear and her own new shock, then melt into his embrace even as he began to heat up uncontrollably from every point his body touched hers now.

"Star, don't worry, I... I feel the same as you—I always have, I just couldn't admit it to myself."

"Robin—"

"Please, just let me talk for now. From the moment I first laid eyes on you, I knew there was something different about you, something special. For the longest time, I was afraid to say it, afraid to admit to myself that I had feelings for you, afraid of what it would mean for me, for you, for the Titans. You see, when I was very young, just getting into crimefighting, I saw what happened to my mentor, Batman, whenever he became involved with women: tragedy, pure and simple. He came to believe that no woman he ever loved could be safe, no matter what he did to protect them, and I took that fear into myself, promising myself that I would never admit to love, lest I destroy the one I love. It was the path I chose, but until I met you, I thought it would be an easy path, the one less likely to bring pain and suffering. I... was wrong."

"Oh Robin, I... I never knew. You always seemed so strong, so far away. I always wanted to approach you, to speak with you, to somehow share the enormous burden you always take upon yourself, but I never could. You always pushed me away, pushed us all away—I thought it was because, no matter how much we were ever friends, you had no interest in anything more. I thought it was because I am not human."

"Star, please, don't say that! You may not have been born on Earth, but to me, you're just as human as any of us, more human than people like Slade and Brother Blood by far! Your kindness, your loyalty, it's things like those that make a person human, not petty physical features and eccentricities of culture and language! The only reason I wouldn't let you near was because I was afraid. Afraid and arrogant, believing that I was the only one who could bear what I have and terrified that I might cause another harm by seeking help with it. You taught me to share my burden, and it has saved my life, my sanity, and my heart from destruction. It was then that I learned... that I knew... Starfire—I love you."

The Words were out now, and there was no retracting them. But suddenly, Robin didn't care, didn't want to retract them. For the first time, he'd said them out loud, and in their expression, their complete truth was revealed. In that moment, all concerns melted away, all fears became mere phantoms to vanish with the sunlight of the burning heat now raging in his chest, the woman in his embrace fueling the fire by her mere presence.

Suddenly, she moved, pushing against his embrace with irresistible strength until she'd pulled her head away and could look him in the face. Her eyes searched his features for several long moments, and Robin could only wait with baited breath for what she had to say. He'd borne all, and now was exposed, his complete acceptance of what he felt threatened now only by the unknowable position of this other party. Without warning, tears began to well up in the green jewels of her eyes, dripping quick and hot down her face to fall between them. A heated panic gripped Robin as his mind raced for what could cause her tears now, nothing at all pleasant coming to mind.

"Starfire, what's the matter, please!" he begged, putting a gloved hand to her face to wipe away a tear before it could fall to the ground. She merely shook her head away from his hand and pulled him into an embrace of her own, a desperate and wild action that was nearly painful. She buried her face in his stunned shoulder as she began to squeeze him with all her strength, as though fearing he might vanish if she should loosen her grip on him. To his great surprise, he could still breathe, and even talk.

"What is it Starfire? Please let me help, don't shut me out, not now!" he continued to plead with her, and this time got a response.

"Why? Why must these wondrous things always come in dreams? Such happiness as I have never felt, such joy, only dreams! Phantoms, ghosts, lies of my own desires! I squeeze and squeeze, but still you speak as though I do not grip you at all! It is a dream, a lie, a false hope to haunt my nightmares, it is awful!" and she cried freely, her very heart bleeding out her eyes and onto to his shoulder, crushed by a fear that Robin could barely understand, much less comfort. He was sure as hell going to try though.

"Starfire, listen to me! We may be dreaming, but that doesn't make this any less true! I love you, I will always love you, and I'll definitely still love you when we both wake up! Please Starfire, believe me! I mean, even if this is only your dream, is that a reason not to enjoy it?" this last he tried in a desperate effort to get her to stop, to calm down, and to let go of him, her grip still completely immobilizing him despite the fact that it failed to crush the life from him. To his great surprise, it worked, and she pulled back to look at him once more before slipping into a more relaxed embrace with him.

"You are right, there is no reason not to enjoy this dream, it is a good one, after all," and a smile slowly spread across her face as her eyes dried out. She looked once more at Robin, who smiled mysteriously, a look of deep and wild amusement on his face.

"I think you'll sing a different tune when we both wake up," he said simply, the mischievous grin never leaving his face. She merely gave him a sideways glance, as though she was completely unwilling to let this 'Dream Robin' bait her with his pleasant lies. Robin decided to wipe that look off her face and do something he'd wanted to do for longer than he could properly account for. Without saying another word or giving her any more time to think, Robin slipped forward once again and pulled Starfire tight to his chest, his face only inches from hers.

"I truly hope this is something that won't always be only in your dreams," he whispered, then tilted his head slightly and pressed his lips against hers. The effect was of an electric circuit being completed, a switch closing and letting millions of volts of brilliant energy pass between the two in an endless loop of bliss. The kiss deepened, and suddenly they were no longer on the ground, Starfire tightening her grip on Robin as she began to rise fitfully from the ground. In moments they were rotating slowly up into the air, not that either of them really cared, considering they each had all they truly needed wrapped in a lover's embrace already, the outside world hardly seemed important.

As the pure joy of the moment continued to pulse through Starfire, they rose faster, beginning to spin slowly, her hair and his cape rising to flutter in the wind as they spiraled through the sky, completely lost in one another. The endless starfield above them was their backdrop then as they floated so many thousands of feet in the air, nothing below them but the white snow and towering stone spires, nothing between them but the warmth of one another's bodies, each the other's entire universe. The kiss ended, and both opened their eyes, one gazing deeply into the other's as they savored the moment.

"Robin," Starfire whispered, as she carried the two of them across the sky in slow gyrations, "I love you too." He just smiled, lost in his attempt to memorize every individual nuance of her face, the words she'd uttered already communicated long ago, their actual admission no longer necessary for Robin to know them in his heart.

Suddenly however, as all great things must, the dream began to fade, their surroundings sliding away slowly into blackness, until it was only the two of them suspended in an empty void. As the two held each other in silence then, there was only the quiet warmth between them to fill their empty universe, neither able to see or feel the other's touch in the supreme absence of everything. Starfire took comfort in the warmth, even as it too faded, leaving her alone in the void, alone with the unshakeable fear that it had all been a figment of her imagination and desires, but also with the secret hope that it was real. Robin had no such worries, and would make that quite clear momentarily.

Titans Tower Med-bay, Starfire's Room

When he opened his eyes, Robin was lying on his arms leaned over in his wheelchair, exactly where he'd been when Skye had forced that nap on him. He was now quite a bit less inclined to anger at the other man's actions, and if his suspicions about the origins of that crazy wonderful shared dream were accurate, owed the nosy bastard his utmost gratitude. This was what passed through his mind then as he lifted his head to gaze up at the woman he loved, seeking to confront her about the dream and confirm it's truth, or otherwise to spill his guts all over again now that his course had been so firmly set. However, as he turned his gaze toward his love, he was greeted with something of a peculiar sight.

Starfire's bed was empty, or rather, she wasn't in it anymore. Instead, to look upon her, he was forced to tilt his head back and back, following several long trailing bed sheets up to the ceiling, where she floated serenely under her covers, as though she'd simply lifted off her bed in her sleep. That pretty well answered his question about what she'd just dreamt of, and he smiled as he stood, noting with pleasure that all the pain had gone from his body, leaving only a slight stiffness where near-mortal injury had once been.

Even as he got to his feet, Starfire made some small sounds of awakening, the bundle of sheets and brilliant hair that hung near the ceiling rustling as she moved about. In the muddle of her wake up, she must have lost the thread of what had joyed her into the air, because she dropped suddenly like a stone, shrieking abruptly at the sensation of falling. With an agile motion, Robin was there, catching her in his arms and cradling her to him, wrapped as she was in her white hospital covers. Starfire quickly struggled out of the bundle, flipping the sheets out of her eyes and looking up in rather stunned amazement at the figure that now held her.

"Good morning Starfire, fancy meeting you here," he said jauntily as he hefted her in his arms, wallowing in the look of amazement on her face. He decided to press the advantage while he had the chance.

"You know Star," he said, a grin on his face and confusion on hers, "I had the weirdest dream a minute ago. I went to sleep in the room here—Skye's orders after the healing job, which worked perfectly—and whom should I happen to dream of but you? It was just you and I, and we were on a balcony on Tamaran of all places. Isn't that something?" and now he held his smile ever wider and waited in exquisite anticipation for her to fully waken and hopefully catch on to what he was saying. He didn't have to wait long.

"Robin?" she asked, a thread of the realization in her tone blooming upward as something she could hardly believe smashed it's way into her mind. "Oh Robin!" and now it was true, she remembered, and she knew what all it entailed. With a small effort, she managed to lean forward and wrap her arms around his neck as he held her up, each of them reenacting their staring contest from the dream, allowing their eyes to consume one another's features as if to cement the birth of this beautiful new relationship. The happiness that flowed through Starfire at this moment made her much lighter in Robin's arms, and he took the opportunity to pull her closer to him, until their faces were only inches apart once more. Here we see the difference between dreams and reality.

Their sudden closeness found one of the few things that could possibly have distracted Robin from the kiss that he hungered to share with Starfire in reality. Without getting too graphic here, let's just say that certain extremely wonderful female body parts were pressed into Robin's chest with only the drastically thin barrier of hospital gowns to mask the sensation, Robin reacting in a perfectly natural way that was nonetheless put a damper on his sociability quite quickly. This was because, of course, in a hospital gown, there is no way in hell for a man to mask being that happy to see a woman. Recovering as gracefully as possible, he set Starfire down and collapsed to the floor, turning away quickly before she noticed and started asking difficult questions. Besides being way away from that stage of the relationship, Robin was utterly certain that he would have to explain all kinds of awkward things should she ask, and that was definitely no task for a guy to do for a girl like Starfire.

When she asked him what the matter was, he assured her he had simply overestimated how recovered he was, and when she panicked about him being hurt again over her, he kicked himself and assured her that wasn't the case either. Things were just about to go totally south when a sudden knock and shout from outside the door announced the presence of Skye. Lord if that guy didn't have the timing of a saint, or so thought Robin anyway.

(Skye)

Standing outside the room, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven at his back (they'd picked up and followed him down when he announced the recovering pair's awakening), Skye knocked once more when his first shout had no clear response. He could 'see' into the room, and the scene was one that assured him his actions had been a brilliant move, though his desire to let the two take it at their own pace from here kept him silent on their rather flagrantly indecent status inside. Completely outside his normal modus opperandi, he waited while Robin's ninja-like movements straightened the bed sheets to prevent any illicit suspicions on their parts and whispered a quickly and eagerly accepted offer of dinner and a movie this Friday. So it was that in no indecent time, he advanced to the door and opened it for them, none of the others the wiser to their new relationship just yet.

Then of course, the guys got Robin into the next room and handed him a new costume, cape, and body armor package to get changed with, Raven doing much the same for Starfire in her room. When everyone was decent again, they proceeded upstairs, the topic of the moment shifting quickly from Robin's miraculous recovery under Raven's ministrations to Skye, and all the biting questions the Titans harbored over him. As they walked, Robin and Starfire managed to remain inconspicuously close together, while Raven and Skye managed to stay as far apart as possible. It was simple really, Raven taking a sudden and unexpected interest in Cyborg's new T-Car modifications (much to the big guy's ecstatic pleasure), and Skye answering some of Beast Boy's simple questions about what all you can do with clairvoyance (yes you can see through cloths, but a guy gets over that pretty quick, really, it looses it's allure so fast as to be completely beside the point). Hell, it would seem that they were all already getting along, which was a damn good thing for the universe.

Preview: Where there is light, there is also darkness, and now the birth of a new love must also signal the birth of a new nightmare. The next story arc will be coated in so much undiluted evil that I may temporarily raise the rating to R, but I'm not quite sure. You see, a certain blond bombshell known for betrayal will find herself trapped in a nightmare within a nightmare (figuratively this time, I'm not doing another dream sequence) as the devil she sold her soul to comes back to collect. The villain of Jump City is not happy that outsiders are muscling in on his territory, after all, and will not hesitate to use every tool at his disposal to remove this competition. Stay tuned here for: Gang Wars