Disclaimer - I do not own Teen Titans...but I wish I did...

Chapter 10: Cursed

He knew he had affections for her, but he didn't know what kind. It wasn't love, that was for sure. But it was so natural and drawing that he couldn't pull himself away from it. It was unearthly and definitly not natureal. But that was just it. If it wasn't love, what was it? She was the one that occupied his dreams at night, she was the one he thought about so often, she was the one that he wanted to be with. There was nothing sexual, but something was there. He just didn't know what it was.

Scorpio was in the West Gym, training with Robin. The East Gym was under repairs ever since her little ice craking incident, and so the West Gym would have to do. The best thing about the West Gym was that it was much larger and it had a pool in the center, which gave Scorpio the real advantage, but Robin didn't mind. He had gotten better, and Scorpio could barely beat him. When she did, he wouldn't mention it to the others. But they could tell.

Scorpio was on the tethers on the ceiling, staring down at the boywonder who was throwing those horrid ice bombs at her. She squinted in his direction and jumped off the tethers, flying down into the pool and splashing Robin. The ice bombs would soon fall in the water, they were heat sensitive, but at least in there she had a better chance of dodging them. They followed her into the water and froze part of the pool. Silence.

First, Robin smiled broadly, but then he began to worry. When the time elapsed 1 minute, he ran towards the pool.

"Scorpio! Scorpio, are you OK!" Still nothing.

A flash of ice and cold water shot from the pool like a gyser and fell ontop of Robin, chilling him to the bone.

Scorpio came out some time after, smirking at the soaking Robin and giggling secretly inside herself. The water only made his tight close stick on tighter and his hair flop down like a mop. She wasn't wet, though she had been in the water. She was able to seperate it from her clothes.

"That wasn't funny," Robin said, shivering. "I thought you were hurt."

Scorpio furrowed her eye brows and walked towards him as her smirk disappeared. "...Sorry. But if you keep using those ice things, that's what's going to happen." Her eyes glowed in blue and the ice water that was on Robin's clothes flowed off down to his feet, following the motion of her hands. He was dry, but his hair still stayed the way it was.

She pulled her left hand to her forehead. "Can we stop training now? My head is killing me." She didn't like to fess up to Robin, who had enough pride for all the Titans put together. But there was a stinging pain in her head, right behind her eyes. She looked up only to see Robin staring at her. "What?"

"You're...red..." He managed to say. "Are you feeling...OK...?"

Scorpio looked down at her skin, which had gotten redder though it felt freezing cold and was covered in goose-bumps. She lifted her arm to her face and moved it around, examining it. She sighed heavily and put her arm down. "I'll be fine..."

She headed towards the door but Robin caught her shoulder. "Anything you want to talk about?" He asked her.

She blushed at his touch, but she knew he couldn't tell. "No, really. In Saphiria...this is...normal, if that's what you want to call it." She pulled away from his gaze and his grasp and continued out the door.

He watched her back blankly, realizing that her lower back was oozing with a black, lighted mist. She could feel it stinging and she could feel Robin's gaze. She turned around abruptly, breaking his trance and saving him from the curse of her people.

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The red color, Scorpio knew, was due to her contact with chlorine. Her body was not used to entering water with chemicals in it, and really she had never been in the West Gym's pool to escape Robin. But today had been her best defeat yet, and she smiled broadly as she changed into her khakis and white tank top.

Her mark was stinging like crazy, it felt as if it were burning and crisping under her clothes. This wasn't due to the chlorine, it was because her birthday was coming soon...it always did this.

Saphirian remedies were impossible to get, and Raven had already risked her life once to get her journal. Scorpio wouldn't dare ask her again. The best thing to do for it right now was put ice on it. She wrapped her waist heavily and tightly in a red scarf and headed for the kitchen.

To her relief, no one was there. It was as vacant as she had ever seen it, but she was glad. Carefully she slipped 3 ice cubes from the freezer and placed them between her clothes and her aching body, wincing as she did. She jumped when she heard the doors hiss open. She spun around wildly to find Beast Boy's confused face in the doorway.

"Hey Beast Boy...um...you want me to make you anything?" She asked as humbly as she could, feeling the ice water run down the side of her leg. She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes tight.

Beast Boy could feel his sweat tingle in the back of his neck and his tongue grow to fill his mouth. He searched for the right words in what was left of his mind. "Um...no...yes...No! I mean...I was jus..just...I'll make myself something...thanks." He smiled when he saw that she had sat on the table, careful to make sure that her mark would face the other way. "You do enough work around her already," he said, surprised that he had gotten it right.

Scorpio swore that the pain was going to kill her, but she knew Beast Boy was too tongue twisted to ask her about the scarf, and too tranced to get her to say any thing about her birthday. If she played her cards right, no one would know and the day would go by as normal. She smiled faintly at him, and he felt another drop of sweat go down his forehead. Please turn around!...Pleeezzz...

"Are you OK Beast Boy?" Why am I lying to myself? I know what's wrong with him. She sighed. And I know the only thing that can snap him out of it. She squinted at the thought. She had figured it out, his constant staring, his presperation. All the symptoms led to the day he had seen her mark.

"I'm...fine...Ugh..." He let out a small laugh. "Is it hot in here or is it just me."

It's just you. "Yeah, it is. You wanna open up a window or something?"

Glad she had asked him to do something, he smiled broadly and ran to the window nearest to her back, disappointed that she had gotten up and moved when he had came. The weather was cold and sharp, but it would help his...condition. He sat down across from her and drank the juice he had poured himself. Say something...

"You should have never seen my mark," she told him suddenly, as if she had planned the conversation. "It's dangerous."

"I don't think it's dangerous," he told her, calming himself but sweating all the same.

"It is. You can't run away from who you are." She wanted to get up and leave, but that would mean she'd turn around. And under Beast Boy's current urge to see her back, she knew, would only make his condition worse.

He felt uncomfortable, the same way he had felt when Raven was around him and he was thinking about something. Something personal, mostly. He felt open, uncovered, unsheilded, quivering in his very spot. "Then tell me how it was dangerous...and maybe I can fix it."

"Don't be stupid, Beast Boy," she said, rather coldly, surprising herself at her bluntness. But she was angry. Beast Boy, one of the 5 she could trust, had fallen under that damned curse. "You can't erase what you saw. And the only way--" She stopped herself before she went anyfurther.

"The only way what?" He asked, ignoring the remark.

"Nothing." I have to get out of here...

Without thinking, it happened.