This is… oh no. This is… no… I just… no. I mean, when you've finished with something this great, what can you really say except, "go read it!"? I can honestly say "it's so good I considered making it the end" because I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to write this story better than this. The start is a tad dull, but the climax… my good God… just get started already.
Chapter 7 (6-2): Heart to Heart to Heart part 2
Titan's Tower Med-bay
"That would be the understatement of the century."
Robin didn't bother to answer Raven's little wisecrack, and the expressively exhausted stare he turned on her the next moment made her regret making it more than any reprimand he could have spoken. Starfire just looked happy for him to have his attention elsewhere, as until that moment he'd been staring at her with so much unspoken emotion that it had almost been painful. As the emotions twisted and rippled around the devastated hospital room then, Robin ended the silence before it could become any more uncomfortable.
"Well!" he snapped, causing both women to jerk in shock at the sudden noise. Without elaborating, he sprang backwards off of the bed frame, executing a neat backflip that brushed his boot toes along the ceiling, then sticking the landing with Olympic precision. The motion drew admiring glances from both women, and Robin was gratified that neither were the naked hunger that'd caused so many problems just a day past. "Come on, this mess isn't going to sort itself out." At the mention of messes, something seemed to occur to him, and he glanced quickly from Starfire to Raven and a few times. "And… uh… come to think of it… how is it that Starfire is…?"
"Normal?" Raven supplied an adjective as she answered his question, though even as she said it she knew why Robin hadn't. There was nothing normal about the grief-stricken, red-eyed, painfully subdued creature languishing withdrawn as a shriveled blossom under Robin's questioning gaze. "Some… weird stuff happened Robin. I guess you could probably tell that much," she caught herself as she recalled how utterly blasted the room was, "but I don't think either of us really wants to say a lot more than that. You're going to have to make due with 'magic,' for the time being… she's cured, and she won't be freaking out on you anymore."
"Well, that's a relief!"
"Freaking out?"
Robin and Starfire made their comments at the same moment, the difference in their tones almost comical. Starfire looked a question at Raven, the woman shying away from eye-contact with a frown, then tried again with Robin, who flushed and glanced down at the floor. The alien's face twisted into a mild panic as both her friends evaded the unspoken question, and then spoke it outright with mounting fear as more blank spots in her memory came to her attention.
"Why… what is this… 'freaking out' that I am accused of?"
"Ahh…" Robin shook his head as he intensified his examination of the floor, then he sighed and lifted his eyes again. "You didn't give her those memories back?" he evaded Starfire's question and shot his comment, not quite accusingly but definitely not happily, over to Raven.
"It seemed like a good idea to do this in moderation," Raven answered without shame, obviously disgusted by Robin's sudden cowardice, even as she felt the same gutlessness chill her own spine at the thought of filling in Star on everything she'd done while out of her mind. "I didn't want to overwhelm her by hitting her with everything all at once."
"Please friends… you are frightening me. What is it… what is it that I have been doing? Why can't I remember what happened before I passed into dreams?"
"No… Star… please don't worry," Robin responded predictably to seeing such hurt in Starfire, and treacherous sting of jealousy right away, "It was nothing… really. Tell me… what's the last thing you can remember?"
"The last thing…" Starfire took the question into deep consideration, a part of her, a miserably small part, shouting with joy at this break in Robin's icy attitude toward her. After some time creasing her brow over the question, Star looked up with her huge green eyes struck with realization. "I remember going out for tea with Raven. A charming stranger gifted us with free drinks… and I thought it only proper to accept the gifts in good grace as is only polite. Raven was saying something about 'assholes' and 'cheap pickups,' but I had already finished mine by then. She refused her own, and so I helped her show good manners by compelling her to drink as well, lest we provide offense to the stranger kind enough to grant us the gift. I… I don't really remember… I can't remember anything after that…" and her voice filled with fear again, "It all goes black."
"That wasn't the end of it… not by far." Robin crossed his arms and frowned in distaste at the memories he was running through, so recent, yet seeming like they came from weeks past. "The drinks were drugged Starfire… that man was an agent hired by an old enemy of mine from Gotham, and he tainted those drinks so he could use you two as hostages. That's why you passed out."
"Oh my…"
"I got you both away without too much trouble, but that wasn't even almost the end of it. It turns out the whole thing was a ruse, and the attack was the drug itself. It was supposed to… supposed to make you both puppets, make it impossible for you to refuse to do whatever you were commanded. It had exactly that effect on Raven."
Starfire gasped, her eyes darting to her friend, only to find that the mystic was even more reluctant than ever to meet her gaze. Though still limp, Starfire got the distinct impression that Raven wanted to curl up and cower away from both of them… a sensation Starfire was herself becoming all too familiar with. Just then, a streak of pain shot through Starfire's head, and she held a hand to her temple and gave a tiny shriek at the flash of agony. Both fellow Titans leapt out of their reclusive stances and exploded with concern, Robin crossing the room in a physical leap and Raven mustering all her independence to shift her head over and fix worry-widened eyes on Starfire.
"What's the matter, what's wrong?" Robin asked, leaning against the bed next to her, staying always just out of arms reach.
"It… it all begins to make sense…" Starfire whispered, letting the hand slide from her skull to her eyes as her breathing sped and her body stiffened in miserable pain. "The strange dreams… the terrifying nightmares… Raven herself mentioned these drugs before… I simply did not 'add it up'…" and Starfire trailed off to quiet misery, even as she seemed to pull herself together, hugging her arms close over her chest as though to stabilize herself by pure physical force. In a voice so serious it was almost frightening, she asked yet another question. "What did I do?"
"Well… er…" as he switched from panic about Starfire's health to panic about her question, Robin didn't really manage to maintain any kind of grace, even physically stumbling backward from the bed when she turned an agonizingly serious glare at him from point-blank range. Grasping for words, Robin glanced at Raven for aid, only to get an even more frightening glare of rejection right back. Raven had helped her through the love triangle revelation… her glare told him he'd be on his own for this next one. Meanwhile Starfire was clearly getting impatient for an answer—clearly because she was starting to shiver in terror at Robin's reluctance, her fear over what could possibly be so terrible to get this reaction from him writing itself all over her face and body language.
"I… I think it would be a lot easier to just show you, okay?"
"What?" Raven and Starfire both snapped out their surprise at this answer in the same moment, though the difference in their tones was on par with the simultaneous reactions by Robin and Star earlier. Starfire was a little shocked and confused, but Raven sounded outright dangerous, her eyes narrowing to slits as a faint crackle of power leapt past the drug's control to play around her irises.
"Ah… it's not what it sounds like! It's just that… the tower security cameras were on the whole time… and I didn't quite believe it myself, right afterward, so it occurred to me to check… and sure enough…"
Raven's glare had become a physical force boring into him, only the ironclad grip of Joker's drug keeping her fury under any kind of control, a fact that Robin was well aware of. As he broke out in a nervous sweat, he tossed her a weak smile and finished his explanation, holding out hope that Starfire wouldn't give the furious woman a premature opening by voicing the confusion she so visibly held.
"Listen, it sounds pretty bad, but I've already cleaned the archives and erased it all from record. I kept one copy… I kept one copy for just this situation. Alright?"
"Oh Yeah," Raven let loose with a huff the moment the question passed Robin's lips, as though a steam valve had just burst under high pressure, "I'm so certain that's why you kept a copy! I mean, I knew all men were perverts, but damnit Robin, I thought you had a bit more character than that!"
"Hey, now stop right there!" and now it was Robin's turn to be furious, the sudden shift actually stopping Raven instantly. "I know you were hurt by this, we were all hurt by this—so have you taken even one minute out to consider how I feel about this nightmare? I mean, good lord, one minute my biggest concern in the world is the dropping crime-rate and an overdose of free time, the next I've been outflanked by not one, but two beautiful women who suddenly cant hold back very large, very real feelings for me! What did you think I was going to do, jump for joy? Throw a parade? I panicked, okay, and the moment I was sure I hadn't dreamed the whole thing, I hid the last copy of the record and I got the hell out of here." He slowed then, seeming to get a grip on himself at last. "That's why I wasn't here… when things went bad… okay? I'm sorry… I… I couldn't think here… not after what happened… and… I definitely needed to think. …What?"
Robin asked the last as he looked up to see both women staring at him with the oddest expressions on their faces. He wasn't sure if he'd ever seen them was such disturbingly identical looks, much less had those looks directed at him, and it actually began to creep him out a little. Okay—more than a little.
"What? I… I know I screwed up… I can't even express how sorry I am that all this," and he gestured vaguely to the room, "happened. What is it?" He couldn't take their silent, frozen stares a moment longer, and his final snap seemed to pull them out of whatever place they'd gone to.
"It's just…" Began Raven, arguably the more clear-minded of the two,
"Do you really…" went on Starfire, who seemed to have forgotten all her fear and pain, at least for the time being,
"Think that… we're…" Raven had to take a moment to get the pronoun right… selfishness never stopped trying to take hold, after all,
"Beautiful?" and Starfire had exactly the kind of tone that makes men sweat and boys run away scared. Robin sort of split the difference, mostly because he was being double-teamed.
"Oh… uh…" 'leave it to women to focus on the damaging part of that outburst,' he thought to himself as he floundered. His flush was classic, his discomfort was nothing if not charming, and he stepped back and started to absently scratch at the back of his head, stretching out his lean physique magnificently. None of that helped cool off the situation. "Well, let's go ahead and get Starfire caught up then, shall we?"
"Yes… shall we then…?" No one was surprised that Starfire didn't hold any enthusiasm for that suggestion, and her face fell terribly as Robin changed the subject and the burst of feeling faded, the wonderfully unintentional, but obviously honest compliment moving into the dust of the past.
Raven, for her part, snapped out of it with only a little less bleakness on her mind. She realized that she'd actually been pining for Robin a moment ago, in exactly the same immature, bubble-minded way Starfire had been doing at the same time, and she was disgusted with herself. That this burst of self-recrimination was no match for the heat pumping in her chest with the knowledge that Robin thought her beautiful was beside the point… or at least that's what she was desperately trying to convince herself right now. The last thing she wanted was to dissolve into a gooey mass… it might still be her only chance of competing with Starfire, and a little part of her wept bitterly as she realized that that was the one true reason she was being so hard on herself.
"Star, do you think you can walk?" Robin asked simply, concerned but moving back to businesslike.
"Ummm…"
"Right, I'll get a wheelchair. There's no point in delaying this any longer." He left immediately, almost eagerly, and took his time. When he got back he looked much more composed, hefting the unwieldy device over the rubble with consummate ease, his masked face no longer revealing anything of the war of emotions that was still raging within them all. Raven was impressed, but Starfire just frowned and fell deeper into withdraw.
As he positioned himself next to their bed, Starfire absently reached out to grab his arm at the bicep for stability during the short trip to the wheelchair. He must have been more exhausted than he looked, because the touch took him by complete surprise, and he recoiled on pure instinct as those petite hands brushed against the deep, still-purpling bruises they so recently caused.
The jerk of motion startled all three of them, Robin glancing back over his shoulder with fresh terror in his eyes at the memory of choking helplessness he'd suffered under those deceptively tiny hands. Starfire looked almost as stunned as she was hurt, for her life never expecting such a reaction, for her sanity not comprehending what had caused it. Only Raven looked on with anything less than horror, the shocking reaction reminding her instantly of the humiliation the young man had suffered at Starfire's drug-maddened hands. With knowledge of just how terrible that must be for both of the others, came also the faintest glimmering of a most horribly treacherous emotion. Hope.
"Raven… you help Starfire into the wheelchair." Robin's tone completely cut off any questions from Starfire, who looked ready to cry again after such an obvious and incomprehensible rejection.
"Yes…" Raven responded as only the drugs could force her. On one side, she knew Robin was completely and utterly botching his handling of this… nothing could excuse his treating Star like that right before what they were about to show the poor girl. On the other side… her own hope continued to burn, and she cringed inwardly at how good it felt to twist the knife in her best friend's back when she couldn't be connected to the betrayal. Her mind was working with a chill deviousness, and she knew nothing would drive a more opportune wedge between Robin and Starfire than this, here, now. She hated herself more and more with every passing second, even as she used her powers to shovel her friend gently into the waiting chair.
"Come on you two… lets get this over with."
"Yes…"
"Robin…?" but Starfire's whisper did not carry, so weighted was it by miserable uncertainty and lingering agony. Raven wept for her friend on the inside, even as she exulted in blessed opportunity. It was not a pleasant duality.
Titan's Tower Common Room
There was a rather oppressive silence as Robin booted up the main terminal, and now no one made any attempt to lighten it. Starfire was sprawled on the couch, still more than halfway undressed, but much too preoccupied with little things like 'why is Robin terrified of my touch' to really care. Raven sat in flat, emotionless silence a little ways around the couch, utterly unreadable, looking almost as indecent as Starfire without her cloak or any of her subdued accessories to accentuate her tight leotard.
The room itself was still a mess, a fact that had caused Starfire no end of worry when she'd first seen it, the broken glass and paint peelings littering the area in front of the television from where Raven had lost it while scoring her first kiss with Robin. That was a delightful memory all right, and even drugged, Raven had to struggle to keep the delight off her face. She reprimanded herself silently again, as she really had no place being so smug and chipper considering what was about to happen to her best friend. She looked to the TV, still shattered from her guilt overload post-kiss, and that killed her mood just right.
Robin was the only one moving, working at a panel in the side of the shattered television. The next moment, the mangled device withdrew into the ceiling, prompting a series of mechanical whirring and clanging sounds. Finally, a fully repaired television slid back out of its recess, the product of Cyborg's inventive remedy to his own video-game stress issues. Robin could only wish fixing the lighting could be that easy.
"Alright, here we go," Robin finally broke the silent stalemate of tension, sliding the digital tape disc into their fresh television and grabbing the remote. Sitting carefully between the two women, well out of reach of either, he leaned forward over his knees in a slouch and got the video rolling.
"Ten forty, Friday night, I get a call from a wanted assassin by the name of Ravager. He has you both hostage and demands that I present myself for termination or risk your lives."
Both women stare in silent appreciation as the screen opens up on multiple camera angles, each one confined to its own box on the huge screen, and revealed the rather impressive pace Robin made out of the building the moment he found out they were in danger. Both women looked at him, but he simply continued to stare at the screen. He fast-forwarded fiercely, jetting through a whole lot of nothing.
"Eleven twenty, Friday night, I arrive back with both of you on hand. At this point we're aware of the drug's effects on Raven and she and I fear the worst… because Starfire… we couldn't wake you up." She looked appropriately grave after that comment, they all did, actually. "I placed you both in the medical bay and got the computers started on analyzing just what it was that had gotten into you." As he spoke, they watched the cameras, the screens blanking out and giving the entire television to the two cameras tracking in the med-bay. He shot forward through the record yet again, and they were treated to the site of him pacing in frustration… for two hours.
"One thirty, Saturday Morning, the computers are still working fruitlessly at analyzing the drug when I receive a recorded message from an unknown sender. It's the Joker, a manically ingenious, maximally disturbed, homicidal maniac that I cut my heroing teeth on back in Gotham. He admitted the drugs were his doing and… here…" he stopped the video, the camera perfectly capturing the shock on his face as he realized what the Joker was up to, "was the objective he sought." Robin started the video again and the three of them got to see a mind-controlled Raven use him to play a drum roll on the wall. Raven shrunk in on herself as she recalled her terrible inability to control her own body.
"We… handled the problem… and Joker went on to gloat his nutty ass off. He took particular pleasure in telling me that while he'd very specifically designed the drug to do… what it did… to Raven, he didn't actually have any idea what it was going to do to you Starfire. We had to find that out the hard way."
All parties went silent for a moment as the tape rolled on, Starfire glancing half-frantically from Robin to Raven as the tension reached a peek. Writhing discomfort was rolling off of each of them in drowning waves, no matter how much the two master stoics endeavored to keep it off their faces. The atmosphere was nauseating, and the death-faced beauty could feel the axe reach its peek, ready to fall and split her soul.
"Here… one thirty five, Saturday Morning, you unexpectedly regain consciousness Star. I'll…I'll let the video… speak for itself."
Starfire swallowed hard and forced herself to look at the screen, even as her friends both averted their eyes. History was repeating itself for her benefit, or her detriment, as the case may be, but neither of the others had any desire to see any of this again… or at least not to see what she thought about it. So she was effectively alone when the screen cut to just one camera angle, filling completely with a shot of her dragging herself drowsily from the hospital bed.
She watched in silence as her image addressed Robin from a haze. She gasped, her pupils dilating explosively as she began to strip off her clothing right there, right there in front of Robin. With a blush that trailed quickly from her face down her throat and body, she glanced down, noticing that she was still exposed, and reflexively hugged her arms across her sparse top in a belated effort toward modesty. She sat, mouth agape, as she… accosted Robin… in a way she just couldn't believe. Her mind boggled, and it was like she was looking at someone else rubbing up against Robin, some other nearly naked woman hanging around him, anyone but her… grinding into him.
"Oh merciful X'hal… what is this?"
"Robin, I think that's enough."
"…no… how… I don't…X'hal no…"
"Robin!"
The video stopped, but that was the only thing to pause in a room suddenly boiling with tense undercurrents. Raven was once again staring murder at Robin, whose body was still, yet trembling undeniably, the remote actually shaking in his hand. Starfire had literally crumpled in on herself, her knees gripped to her chest and her face hidden in her thighs, concealing her every feature with long, bare limbs.
"I'm afraid… I'm afraid there's more."
"Nnhhh…" Raven railed against the drug, straining to voice her protest without the liberation of a question, straining to reach across the room and smite Robin for what he was doing. Any thought of what this encounter would do for her chances with him had evaporated, akin to nothing in the face of what Starfire was suffering right now. Robin had to stop this, but he was picking his words carefully. Fortunately, Starfire wasn't.
"M… More?" Starfire peeked meekly over her knees to stare at Robin in horror.
"Robin, stop it! She doesn't need to see the rest—she gets the idea, alright? Just… just stop!"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry… but she needs to see it all. I need her to see it all. Some things have… have changed for me… and I can't explain those things. Only seeing it could possibly explain it."
"Mmm…" Raven's face contorted, but she had no more leeway to speak.
"I'm sorry. …One forty-five, Saturday morning…" the video sped through the impassioned intervention from Raven that brought him to his senses, as well as the cold shower he'd used to defuse the situation. It stopped again on a mostly naked Robin standing across from a slack-faced, cloakless Raven in the common room. Starfire stiffened, shock-widened eyes taking in a damp Robin stripped down to the waist. "Raven and I managed to calm your initial… 'outburst,' Star. We were talking afterward when another function of drug surfaced… it's truth-serum effect. Mostly through my own bungling, I squeezed the Big Bad Secret out of her… basically dragging this whole beast into the light. That much, at least, is undeniably my fault. So is… what happened next."
"Next…?"
"Please Robin, please don't show her!" Raven begged, her eyes emptied of all that protective aggression. A blush no less furious than Starfire's burned across her face and lit the back of her neck, a matching blush of undiluted shame.
"Raven? I do not understand, what--?"
Starfire looked back up at the monitor from behind her knees just in time to see the explosion of black energy that blew out the lighting. Her question died as her mind tried to encompass this fresh hell, tears bleeding from her eyes as she watched an impassioned Raven pull open her leotard and enfold Robin beneath her on the couch. She acknowledged her revelation of 'what' with a tiny, disbelieving gasp as she witnessed The Kiss.
"GGRRRRAAAHHHH!" Starfire leapt off of the couch in a blur of steel-melting green light, her fists flashing to life like the eyes of an angry god. She clenched both smiting balls of fusion in front of herself, focusing her pain. Her betrayal and base jealousy bloomed into massive star bolts as her face was blanked out by the light of the twin torches on her brow. "RAVEN—YOU—YOU—!"
"ENOUGH!" that one word snuffed Starfire's outburst like molten iron quenched in ice water, and the alien's suddenly lightless eyes shifted to focus on the source. "Don't you dare accuse her!" Robin was standing, and his hard eyes were no longer averted. Like poisoned needles, his disgusted expression sapped at Starfire's will until her rage had curdled into stinking bile in her throat.
"Robin? Raven? I… I don't… what was I doing? What have I done?"
"Don't you dare accuse Raven of anything. My negligence is guilty for what happened last night, do you understand? Raven had been denying her feelings, literally tormenting herself in absolute secrecy, and the one and only reason for it was her care for you Star—don't betray that."
"Oh… my… no…" Starfire tumbled to her knees, then fainted over to a sprawling seat on the floor as she brought her hands up to hide her face. "Raven… I didn't mean… please… I didn't think…"
"And besides," Robin overrode her crushing revelation with an unintelligible mix of agony and satisfaction in his words, "if Raven is guilty of what she did while drugged. Then there can't be any defense for what you did next."
"Next?"
"Robin—Robin stop! You can't do this! I know—I know she hurt you Robin, you're right—we all hurt each other—but this is wrong! There's got to be a better way!"
"I only wish," he muttered, shrugging off the last of his restraint and gathering all of his lingering self-loathing and embarrassment into this next moment. "One fifty-two Saturday morning," the video swirled into motion, not stopping until an awakened Starfire had Robin pinned beneath her to the floor, "Starfire, you recovered and picked up exactly where you left off. With no obvious means to debilitate you short of full on combat, we had no choice but to leave you with free reign. You… used it."
Starfire made an unintelligible noise, cringing away from Robin's vitriol and turning slowly to witness the rest of her shaming. After only seconds of watching, her mouth opened to gasp, or scream, or weep, though she could make no sound come out. She reddened like a steamed lobster, springing off of the floor and backing away from everyone. Absently, she held a hand to her lips, glancing alternately at the tape and Robin as she tried to conceive of what she'd just seen, what she was still seeing as the event endured on the record. Her—Robin—Kissing! … really, really kissing…
"That goes on for a while," Robin sped through the next few minutes, suddenly trying to wear a hole in the floor through the sheer weight of his gaze, "until one fifty-five, Saturday morning, when the situation is… aggravated. This is the part that you need to see. It's the other thing that… 'changed' our situation."
Starfire barely seemed to hear him past her psychotic embarrassment, but her eyes drited back to the tape, Robin cranking the volume until she couldn't hope but hear the words exchanged in this very room a single night past.
"Ohhhh Robin… that was a naughty thing to do… I liked it…" The tape fast-forwards in a squealing blur as her heart makes a concentrated effort to stop beating. "Robin… I have… I… have a question… There is… an itch Robin, it is… unfamiliar… but… perhaps… you might know…?" Tears began to gather for a new deluge, anything at all that might help cool the scalding rush of blood brightening her flesh. Nothing could have prepared her to hear herself voicing questions to Robin that she'd lacked the courage to ask her own doctor on her last visit home. Perhaps it was the sheer extent of her embarrassment, her dangerous proximity to a swoon, that made what came next hit so crushingly.
"Starfire—NO! I'm not going to let you do this! This isn't you, this isn't right, and I won't have any part of it anymore! Let me go!"
For the briefest instant, Starfire's face softened, as though she expected to see herself reach her senses following Robin's passionate command. And then her universe came crashing down.
"And just how do you plan to stop me? You have nohope of resisting me! I can do… whatever I want… because I have the strength…"
"Who—who are you?"
"I… am in love withyou… Robin…"
"NO!" The word sprang from Starfire's lips in a screech, her beseeching denial of the horror she'd just watched her doppelganger commit. Every moment of the recording had sucked another drop of her life away, her brilliant blush draining down to a ghostly pallor as she watched herself overpower and accost Robin in the most vile and nauseating way she was capable of conceiving. By the time Robin had murdered the feed with a curt flick of the remote, she was on her hands and knees, unable to stand under the burden that had just slammed onto her back.
"NO!" she raved, emphasizing the shout with a fist pounded into the carpet, the entire tower seeming to vibrate with the rock-splitting blow. "NO! NO! NO! NO!" and each desperate denial came with another tower-shaking punch, until her final strike shattered the armor-plating under the carpet and her fist cleaved straight through the floor. She pulled her hand slowly from the hole, then collapsed down and pressed her crying eyes into her forearms where they were crossed parallel on the floor.
"It is a lie… It cannot have truly happened…" she begged of the floor. Robin, very slight moisture seeping into the supertech polymer of his mask, knelt down next to her.
"Look at me Star," he spoke, and she obeyed, albeit with agonizing slowness. "Lies don't leave bruises…" and he rolled up the sleeve of his armor to reveal the hideous purpling welts ringing his bicep, an abrasion that was a perfect print of her deceptively petite hands.
She fixated on it, and Robin could see her pupils contract reflexively until her eyes were just two dead, iced-green pits staring in disbelief at the proof of her own sin. Eventually, she let her neck go limp and allowed her head to loll down, her hair cascading off her back to hide her face as she stared sightlessly at the floor.
"I… understand…"
"Star… Starfire… I had to make sure you knew. I had to show you why… why things were different… how they had changed. I didn't want you to hurt… but there was no other way."
"No… no…" her denial, so different now, refuted his attempt to explain, "I see clearly now… I see why things are 'changed.'"
"I don't blame you Star. You were drugged… no more guilty for your actions than Raven was. I forgive you—"
"Lies will not heal the bruises either Robin." Her voice was dead, sucking the warmth from the room and from Robin's blood at the same time.
"What?"
Instead of responding, she reached without looking, darting a hand up to grip his shoulder. His body recoiled on pure reflex, his face contorting into an agony of fear that she did not have to see to know it was there. Her hand froze where it would have touched him, and the next moment he caught himself, ashamed, but too late.
"I… I have dirtied myself…" She whispered, and not to Robin. Like that, she let her hand drop to the floor. Slowly, she took on a soft, green, all-over glow—a glow that immediately began to intensify, pouring out a deluge of heat.
"Starfire?"
"I have betrayed my love… I have violated my friend…"
"Starfire no—I said I forgive you. I'll get over the bruises—I've had worse and you know it." She didn't hear him.
"I am filth… I am… vile…"
"Agg—what?" the heat suddenly became intense, Starfire's whole crumpled form going up like a green arc-lamp, forcing Robin back lest he be burned by mere proximity.
"Azar no!" Raven ended her silence with a shout of panic. "her powers—Robin, righteous fury—she's burning herself up!"
Robin glanced from Raven back to Starfire, his eyes narrowed, and there was the slightest flick of his wrist. A brace of foam capsules burst, spewing out its quenching white suds like a heap of cool whip, drowning Starfire's solar flare before it could really begin. They could hear her hacking and coughing past the hiss of expanding foam, and a moment later, a sudsy woman pulled herself from the muck like a marshmallow giant stalking out of a cloudbank.
"Fool!" Robin accused, as he rushed forward to help her out of the suds, "what did you think you were doing? You could have killed someone like that!" There was a moment of strained silence, then Raven gave a sarcastic cough behind them. "I meant besides herself."
The foam, short-lived as it was, began to hiss into its gaseous phase, and in a moment Starfire was merely a little damp. There was a circle of ash on the floor nearby that was all that was left of the carpet she'd been kneeling on. Robin continued to stare at her irately, a sham cover for his terrified concern, not that she knew that.
"I… apologize. You are correct Robin… that was very reckless of me." Robin relaxed at her apparent compliance, giving her just the opportunity she needed to snake forward and snatch at his belt with both hands. He was caught totally off-guard, allowing her to get away with one birdarang each from the dispensers on either of his hips. Before he could finish flinching, she jammed them together, creating his sword. Twisting the hilt just the way he'd shown her during a fit of unconscious flirting one training day, she transformed it into a dagger.
"Now what—" But Starfire was already kneeling, holding the dagger up to him even as she bowed her head to hide her lifeless expression.
"There can be no forgiveness for what I have done. The way your body rejects my touch is proof enough of that, so do not pretend any longer. By the laws of my people, I have lost my honor, and my life is forfeit."
"That's enough!" and she flinched at his venom, though she did not withdraw the proffered weapon. "I don't want to hear another word about this! I told you that'd I'd get over it, I just wanted you to know why I was a little freaked out. Now put that away, I don't want to see you dead Starfire, I'd give my life to protect yours, even now."
"LIAR!" she shook with her own self-loathing and terror, "I have done something terrible… I cannot live with this knowledge… now please… take your compensation."
"I would never hurt you Star," he said as he reached slowly to get the knife away from her, "I don't want your life."
"Neither do I!" and that shriek was the trigger for her to plunge the knife toward her heart. Robin didn't think, he just reacted, exactly as he had when he flinched from her grip.
There was a confused flash of motion, a loud, sharp chink of metal against metal, and then everyone opened their eyes again. Robin was lain back, his left leg bent at the knee as he held himself up with both hands against the floor, his right leg extended all the way forward, where his armored boot had interposed between dagger and heart. The blade had pierced through and its tip was digging very gently into Starfire's sparse top. It took them both a moment to realize what that meant.
"EEEEE! Robin, your foot!" Star squealed, her suicide momentarily forgotten in blind concern for the fighter. Robin looked ill as he stared at the quivering blade that had stabbed through him, and he wasted no time jerking the blade free and kicking off his metal-shod boot. He held up a black-socked foot and wiggled his toes, displaying the tear where the blade had sliced between them and miraculously missed all flesh. Both man and woman sighed in one unified burst of relief. Then both remembered themselves, and Robin leapt up in a rage as Starfire turned away and covered her face in shame.
"What the hell are thinking? Do you really believe any of us want to see you hurt? Do you really think that's going to solve anything?"
"I… cannot live with this shame…" was her sparse whisper, and Robin took a breath to scream his terrified frustration at her, just as the whole scene was stalled by the elevator dinging down the hall.
"Hot damn, did I ever have a crazy night!" Speedy shouted with amiable abandon as he stepped out of the hallway the next moment, and all of Robin's incredible trauma over Starfire's repeated bursts of self-violence suddenly landed on him in the form of a withering, snarling grimace. He took one look at that and wilted, raising one masked eyebrow in timid embarrassment. "Err, bad time eh?"
"I cannot live with this shame." Starfire said to herself, much more forcefully, as she stumbled across the room to the huge windows overlooking Jump Bay.
"Ahh, really bad time, I get it. I'll just… leave you guys your privacy…"
Before he could finish edging out of the room, Starfire drew her fist back and smashed the pane of glass that stood between her and the night's moonlit void. A burst of air sucked everything towards that point in an ear-popping implosion, a roar of wind providing the soundtrack to the stunned horror of everyone watching. Like that, she was gone into the night… and she wasn't flying.
A blur of red. A hiss and clang of metal. A flying leap. A Robin took flight, trailing his frail lifeline, as his heart plummeted before him to her doom. Air rushed passed in its deafening blasts as he dove, zipping down like a bullet chasing a sputtering spark to oblivion. With a precision borne of incessant training, he overcame blind panic for long enough to wrap Starfire in the kind of embrace that not even death would break, then slam onto the grapnel mechanism, bringing them both to a jerking stop. For an instant, he exulted in relief, even as Starfire, hair flailing while they swung upside down, stared at him with obvious disbelief. She truly appeared as though she'd never expected to look at him again.
Then the moment was over. With a lurch in his gut, Robin's whole body seized with panic. Instantly he knew the hook had popped free of its fastening far above them, and just as quickly, the shadowy rocks restarted their sprint toward the pair's skulls.
Titan's Tower Common Room—10 seconds ago
Speedy watched in disbelief as Robin followed Starfire out the window without the barest heartbeat's hesitation. He didn't even notice as his legs took him toward the window at a sprint, or even the way he cleared the couch like a track hurdle as he drew his bow. He noticed nothing, nothing but the grapnel stuck into the soft plaster of the ceiling, and the screaming terror in his brain that was instinctual knowledge of his blood-brother's imminent demise.
He was still six feet away when the line let out a ringing twang, and though it held for the briefest instant, he still leapt full-out. Sliding on armored belly, Speedy heard the hook jerk free from the ceiling, heard the deadly hiss as the line was sucked out the window, saw the grapnel clang and nip at the floor, searching hopelessly for purchase before it too skittered into the night sky. Then he was out the window too, reaching with the breadth of his bow, snatching up the hook on the shaft of his weapon as he gripped with all his might to either end, spread his legs, and caught the window frame with either foot.
"AAHHHGGG!" his body threatened to buckle under the agonizing strain of three weights, but he dug deep, and for his own life and the life of his friends, he held. "NNNNEH!—" he rattled off a string of filthy curses, "Jesus, you're both out of your fucking minds! Hell, I'm out of my mind! Now we're all gonna die! What the hell am I supposed to do now?"
"Speedy—ask me for help!" he recognized a terror-struck Raven, though he'd never noticed her in the room when he'd bungled in.
"Do I really need to ask?"
"Speedy!"
"I'm just saying—" His feet suddenly slipped two inches, and only the creased toes of his boots were keeping him and his friends from eternity, "HELP! For the love of god, HELP!"
Like that, she was gone from the couch.
Outside Titans Tower: Approx. 10 Stories from a Jagged, Stony Death
"Why Robin? Why do you stop me?" She pleaded, the tears dripping up her forehead and soaking into her hair as they swung upside down.
"Mmrrmphlhrm!"
"What?"
His voice was muffled by chance of their odd arrangement. After all, he had his arm locked around her waist, which, along with their height difference, left his face firmly planted in her cleavage. Not that he had the presence of mind to appreciate the situation.
"Does it matter?" he repeated as he fought clear of her ample endowment. "Star—look at me—look at us! I could never live with myself if anything happened to you! I will protect you with every breath in my body, with every ounce of strength I have. If that means I have to protect you from yourself, then fine! You want to die—here!" He snatched at a dangling hand with his free arm, then held it down to his waist where the grapnel was straining at his belt. The winch had jammed, and he had no clue what it had caught on after pulling out of the ceiling, but with Starfire in no state to fly, it was all that was keeping them alive right now. "If you want to take the easy way out, then all you have to do is press this button. The rocks will do us both."
She hesitated, staring in horror into his look of utter seriousness as he tied his fate to her own. In the face of that kind of resolution, her paltry death-wish fell away, impotent.
"No…"
"What? What's this now?" his voice was more than a little strained by the pressure of talking upside down while dangling in the early morning crosswind, "Suddenly she can live with the shame? Because just a minute ago she jumped out of a damn 30th story window to get away from it!"
"Robin… no… please…"
"It's funny how you couldn't live with the shame Star, considering the situation. Did Raven live with the shame of betraying your friendship? Did she live with the pain of hiding her feelings to protect you? Did I live with the shame of nearly taking advantage of both of you while you were drugged? Do I live with the agony… the misery of knowing you both feel for me 'that' way? Of knowing that any choice I could make will crush the heart of at least one woman I love?"
"No…Liar!" Starfire gasped, shaking her head as she flushed, trying to keep the fact that he'd just stabbed into her mind from being true. Such a revelation, such a glorious, beautiful concept, would destroy her with happiness, would grant her joy she did not deserve—and so must not come true. Her hair cascaded around beneath them in the wind as she pressed herself away from him, ignoring the death this would mean in her irrational attempt to separate, to escape the lifesaving embrace and flee to the oblivion she knew she so richly deserved. But for once, her strength would not come, so strained was her broken heart.
"I'm sorry, you're right, I don't know what I was thinking. Please, let me rephrase that!" and Robin overpowered her feeble flailing, out of panic and desperation acting on a hope, a prayer, and something he'd been wanting to do for days. Slinging an arm around her neck, he pulled her down… er… up until they were face to face, looked her right in her tear-spewing eyes, and kissed her.
At first it was like he'd given her the kiss of death, so utterly limp and lifeless she became. Pressing through, it became the kiss of life, she started to respond rather 'eagerly'… and before he knew it he could have been on the moon for all he knew, because he'd gotten lost in her. The kiss was radiant, a chill touch of nipping frost biting through the warmth of the midday sun, all contained within the intense, twisting, slippery contact of lips. She almost seemed to writhe with the sensation, a coiling motion tensing through every inch of her body, pushing and pulling at him wherever he touched her, making the kiss a dance of flesh, lips, and tongue. He was flying. They were flying. They were… flying?
"Starfire?" he whispered, barely drawing away from her, so that his lips still brushed hers as he spoke.
"Robin—I'm so sorry—I'm so sorry—I'm SO sorry! I cannot believe what I… what I have put you through… not once, but twice now!" She pulled slightly farther back, but their harsh breaths still mingled freely as they twirled in the air. "Can you ever forgive me?"
"Damnit Star," and the relief practically welled up out of his skin it was so extreme as they spiraled upward under her power of flight, "I've already forgiven you," the suddenly put on a burst of speed as her face lit like the sunrise striking through storm clouds, "Now please, stop those tears and let's get inside. This is a damn long way from over," and just like that, they sputtered to a halt.
"But… But you said you loved…"
"Both of you."
"What… how… I do not believe it works that way Robin."
"She's got you there Don Juan!"
"Speedy?" both Robin and Starfire turned to him at the same time, just now realizing that their sudden stop had parked them right next to the window she'd punched out. He was hanging by his toes completely spread out down the side of the tower, the limp grapnel line still hanging from his bow.
"You were expecting maybe Superman? Sorry to disappoint, but this time it was lil' ol' me that kept you from falling to your deaths. So hey, how about… I dunno… SAVING ME?"
"Oh… right…"
"I mean geese, I send Raven out to help you guys and she leaves me hanging, now you two are trying to decide between googly eyes and homicide while my ass is waving in the wind…"
"You sent Raven?" Robin was utterly sidetracked, and his shock gave Starfire pause as well.
"Uh… yeah, I didn't want to die saving your useless ass. Dying while saving Star would have been a reasonable consolation prize, but that wasn't looking too likely—the saving part I mean—the dying part was a lock—so—"
"I didn't see Raven," Starfire said flatly, more than a little dazed. She'd just gone from suicidal to blissful, and now she was hovering somewhere around murderously jealous without really knowing that was what it was. I think one could forgive her for being a tad confused.
"That doesn't mean she didn't see us…" Robin whispered, his heart winding into a double knot of tension as he considered the implications. "Oh no…"
"Uh… a little help here?"
"Star, help Speedy!"
"But where are you going?" She asked to his back as he leapt away from her and back into the common room, right over Speedy's dangling form. It wasn't exactly accusatory, but it wasn't exactly not.
"Just help him!"
"Yes! Just help me!"
"But Robin—" she flew after him, leaving Speedy on the side of the tower.
"Hey! Hey! What the hell—HEY! …Ahh crap."
Rewind 30 seconds
Raven felt the drug loose its grip at the delightfully open-ended command of 'help,' and she took full advantage. Without her cloak on, it was a little odd, but none the less, she melted into a shadow and seeped into the couch, exiting this dimension with a simple spell. Twisting through space, she arrived outside, emerging from the concrete, steel, and glass of the tower wall like it was shallow bathwater. She looked up fully expecting to see the two most important people in her universe plummeting to their dooms, and instead, she saw them kissing.
She clamped down on her reaction, funneling it through space as she'd trained, and as a result, she didn't blow out every window on this face of the tower in a matrix-like ripple of black shadowy contra-dimensional destruction. Instead, somewhere, a microscopic pocket dimension collapsed in on itself, destroying a million, million populated galaxies that would have fit on the head of a needle. Such are the vagrancies of existence, and its not like she knew that's what happened when she did that, so let it lie, because right now, a young woman's heart was melting.
Making not the slightest sound, she dove back into the wall of the tower like she would drown herself in the concrete. Her spell did not care that her mind was on fire, did not care that she'd just been impaled upon a rusty, many-pronged nail of rejection—it demanded a destination, and while she despaired, it wrenched one single place from her mind, the one place where she went to be at peace, the one place where she might be alone with her pain.
When she took her next breath, Raven was on the roof, standing on a ledge one step from oblivion, her arms crossed as she hugged herself against the wind. Without her cloak, the night was bitingly cold, and she felt every motion of air sweep through her thin leotard like an icy lover's touch. Even as she allowed this thought to percolate through the mire of her own mangled love, the drug returned its paralyzing grip, and she was left to fester immobile in her pain.
A strong gust blew across her back, gnawing away what illusion of warmth remained, setting her teetering on uncertain balance, and as her heart leapt in terror, the yawning abyss opened up in front of her. Suddenly, some treacherous voice, a voice she'd never thought to hear, whispered that she should not fear that fall. It mumbled sweet promises of a quick, nay, instantaneous end to the boiling agony that tore at her insides like a pack of rabid dogs, the braying mass fighting over the tattered bits of her heart. The voice tempted, seductive, making headway here that it could never have dreamed of ever before, not on the night she first heard the prophecy, not on her seventeenth birthday—never had she been this close.
Really, why not? Starfire had thought it a worthy option, until he'd healed her every wound with the affections that she'd so desperately, secretly, yearned for. Raven now knew herself to be a fool, a stupid, emotional simpleton, for ever believing she could grasp for him as long as that beauty still drew breath. It simply wasn't going to happen, no matter how long she held out, so really, why not? What more was there to live for? Or so the voice asked. She was bigger than the voice, she was so much stronger than the voice, but in this moment, the voice was all she could hear. It took an intervention before her silent strength could crush that treacherous voice, and fortunately, ever fortunately, an intervention came.
"Raven—there you are!" his voice was a tangle of relief and satisfaction, neither of which she could put a reason behind. "What are you doing up here?"
"Hoping for a favorable crosswind." It was honesty borne of the drug, to be sure, because she instantly regretted the words the moment she could no longer withdraw them. She felt a flash of embarrassment that he might think her that kind of girl, then a flash of shame when she realized just how close she'd been to proving such thoughts true.
"What—" he started, before he noticed her precarious perch, and then he frowned so deeply she could hear it. "I never pegged you as the kind to take the coward's way out." It stung, and so she stung back by reflex.
"I could have said the same thing about Starfire… until about five minutes ago." Burned—and by the silence, he knew it.
"Touché. I guess… I guess this is the kind of situation that drives us all to places one might never have expected to reach." It was one of the weakest remarks she'd ever heard, and she suddenly longed for the opportunity to tell him just that. Damn drugs. "Come on Raven, let's get out this wind. You look like you're freezing." He reached out, she could feel his hands closing in on her shoulders to bring her down, and in that moment, a reaction snaked up from her guts so visceral that it snapped right past the Joker's drug and off her supposedly paralyzed tongue.
"Don't touch me!"
"Raven?"
"What do you think you're playing at? Did you come up here to comfort the runner up? I know it was pathetic to have ever even wished for you to feel something for me, but I'm not stupid, and I don't need your pity. I'm hardly the first teenage girl who's ever gotten her pretty little romantic fantasies crushed—I'll get over it, okay?"
"Raven--?"
"Stay back!" she repeated as she felt him reaching toward her again. "Don't touch me! Why the hell d-d-do you have to be that way?" she was shivering, teeth chattering, so much that she could no longer talk straight. "Why do you have to be so damn n-n-nice about all this? Can't you at least try to rub it in? Can't you act like you so obviously feel, s-s-so at l-l-least I can ditch these lingering regrets! Besides… if you d-d-don't b-b-back off, your new girlfriend is l-l-liable to get the wrong idea."
"Let her." The words slithered into her ear from an inch away, and the next moment she was enveloped from behind by a hot, firm embrace. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her from the ledge, and she was pinned within a hot, firm bundle of super-hero class muscles before she knew what was going on.
"Nnnhh," she began to squirm as much as she was able the instant the initial, stunning surprise had passed, but even without the paralytic effect of the drug, as long as she couldn't use her powers, she might as well try to lift a steel girder as break Robin's embrace. She felt a flash of terror, perhaps some small fraction of what he'd felt at Starfire's hands, and immediately she could sympathize with the rather dramatic way he'd chosen to inform the woman of what her body had been out doing while she was away. She certainly wanted Robin to suffer just then, despite all she felt for him.
"I'm never going to be able to explain this to you… but there's another way."
"Nnnnhh," she strained to curse at him, to damn him to hell for the way he so effortlessly toyed with her heart, but she could form no words without the release of a question.
"I suppose a more poetic person might say it was fate that bottled up your powers though this ordeal and prevented us from trying this earlier, but that's not me. I'm just going to fix it, now."
She wasn't listening, she wasn't going to let herself feel any more useless hope, not after what she'd seen. When push came to shove, it was always Starfire, Starfire, Starfire. She would never be able to compete with the alien… and that was all there was to it, so she blocked Robin's voice out with all of her will as she suffered in his tender, unbreakable embrace.
"I'm ordering you, Raven, to use your powers. You're an empath… look into my heart and see what I'm feeling right now."
"Yes…" NO! NO! NO! She railed against the command, wanting to see nothing of his heart, blessing every moment that the drugs had neutered her empathy up to now. If she looked there… if she saw what he truly felt… she could never again even lie to herself about what she meant to him. Her dreams… already broken… would pass forever into oblivion. As always, the Joker's twisted chemicals worked her like a flesh puppet, and she was given no further choice.
Slipping past Robin's wide open guard was effortless, so that the normally unreadable man might as well have had his emotions blown up a thousand times on an amphitheatre overhead projector. Feeling very much like someone had put her head in clamps and was now holding her eyes open and forcing her to watch something horrifying, Raven looked and saw exactly what he felt. Then she looked again, without the resistance, straining to be certain. Then she could neither see nor sense a damn thing, not past the crying.
"What did you see?" Robin prompted her as he felt her stiff, resistant body suddenly relax into his arms, burrowing into his chest to take shelter from the wind… and to revel in the feel of his heated armor against her thin leotard.
"That's… impossible."
"That's what I said."
"How could this have happened?"
"I said that too."
"No… Robin… oh… do you really… do you really feel that way about us… about me?" He didn't answer right away, instead turning her around in his arms until she was cradled face-forward against his chest. He drew her eyes upward to end their very slight height difference.
"Maybe this will answer your question?" She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but found it suddenly difficult to talk with his lips pressed over hers. Then of course, talking was the least of her concerns as her universe became fireworks and sirens, a wash of undiluted feeling flowing from him to her through their touching lips. It was so different from their first, with him kissing her, his massive physical strength stretched out around her in all its delicious, hard curvature. The sensation was as indescribable as it was magnificent, and as it endured, cracks began to snake and pop as they crawled outward from Raven's feet in an ever expanding circle along the stone rooftop, quietly etching an intricate spider's web onto the floor. Quietly, that is, until one of the strands licked against a rooftop heating vent and—
BOOM
Both young lovers were startled from their indiscresion, pulling apart to watch the vent do its plentiful summersaults before it came back to earth and clattered onto the rootop. Raven was more than a little unsteady after that, and Robin took shameless advantage as he held her up.
"Geese Raven, are you going to do that every time?"
"Does that question mean we'll be doing that a lot?" she turned the tables with a mischievous grin, even as Robin blushed, then frowned.
"I… I wouldn't start—"
"Ahem!" a sudden, intrusive cough from behind them drew their attention back to the stairwell. Each experienced oddly similar combinations of joy, fright, and shame when they saw Starfire standing there, a look of bitter accusation contorting her always expressive face. "I see you found Raven."
"It's really not what—"
"You are impossible!" Starfire looked like she'd be crying if she wasn't so damn angry, and the same began to take the forefront within each of other heroes. "Fine—I do not pretend to understand this planet's romantic customs, but where I come from, a man does not confess his love to a woman, then go behind her back with another!"
"Starfire, just listen—"
"I will not 'just listen' Robin! I am not stupid! I see that you had to lie about your feelings to keep me from… from doing something rash and permanent… but that is no excuse for your current behavior! I am… I am through with you!"
She turned on her heel and dashed down the stairs before he could get another word out, and though he took the first two steps to chase her, he just couldn't bring himself to go through it all again. Not tonight. Not after all that.
"Oh sweet Jesus… not again…" he said, and he petered to a stop as he leaned against the door to the stairwell. "Why me?"
"Robin, let me handle this," Raven took the opportunity to speak.
"What?"
"Come on Robin, isn't it obvious? Sometimes, when you're in as deep as you've managed to get yourself, the one thing that can get you out is a little… magic."
"Wait—you'd do that?" Robin, as always, was catching on quick. "I don't mean to sound overly skeptical here, but it doesn't take a mind reader to know what you've been thinking about since I got back earlier. My bungling this is kind of your big chance."
"Robin… just… shut up. She's as much my sister as that red-haired wastrel is your brother," and for some reason, mentioning him made them both quirk with momentary hesitation, quickly forgotten though, "and she deserves to know how you really feel about her. She… she deserves a chance to feel like this." She couldn't really move to indicate what she was talking about, but by the way her arms seemed to hug more tightly around her, he got the idea.
"Yes. Yes, please, Raven, go get Starfire and show her what you saw. Show her what I've been trying to show her. Show her how I feel about her, how I feel about both of you."
"Yes…"
She was gone in a breath of black, but Robin didn't even have time to contemplate the lingering tingle on his lips before she was back again, a struggling alien amazon in tow.
"Raven, what is the meaning of this!" She said, her voice so hoarse and congested that there could be no doubt that she'd been weeping bitterly ever second since she'd left. "Release me! You've already bested me, now I want nothing to do with you!"
"I'm sorry Star," Raven said neutrally as she let the woman push away from her slightly, then set her right hand to a crackling black glow.
"Sorry? Sorry for what, backstabber? For stealing my heart away? For betraying our friendship? You have done too much to me this night for a mere apology to suffice Raven."
"Don't be such a drama queen, you're about to thank me."
"Why—" SMACK! Raven's hand whipped around in an epic bitch-slap that staggered Starfire out of her raving. At the moment of impact, there was a fizzing rush of energy from her hand into Star's head, and when she recovered, her eyes were wide and misty with some terrific revelation.
"To answer your question, I'm sorry because when you transfer memories second-hand, you have to put a little snap in your wrist." Starfire just stared at Raven, tears dripping slowly down her cheeks for the umpteenth time this night. The only difference was that they were tears of joy this time. "So are you ready to thank me yet?" Starfire just shook her head, the motion forcing her to catch site of Robin over Raven's shoulder, and that vision bringing her back to the knowledge that had just been hammered into her skull.
"Robin… this is… this is impossible."
"That's what I said," Raven and Robin both agreed simultaneously.
"How could this have happened?"
"I said that—" they heard one another saying the same thing and stalled, smiling.
"I can't… I can't… do you really feel that way about us both? About me?" Robin smiled, walking towards her quite suddenly. He stepped close and took her hands in his.
"Maybe this will answer your—"
"Whoa there hot lips—you don't get to prove it to her this time!" Raven strangled the moment in its cradle. She was putting her foot down, her expression quite serious, even jealous… excepting the broad smile, of course. Robin gave her a narrow-eyed glare. "I'm just saying… she's already gotten hers tonight. Besides, come on, recycling lines? What kind of Casanova are you?"
"The kind you both fell for apparently, not that I've the slightest idea how that worked out." Raven opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again, beaten.
"What—" Began Starfire, before she decided better, "no… no… do not mind. I have had enough confusion for one night."
With that, Starfire staggered forward and put an arm around Raven, pulling her close with an exhausted heave. The next moment, the sleepy gesture transformed into a massive hug as Starfire slid her blood sister into an intimate embrace. Raven didn't resist, and wouldn't have if she'd been able to, because this was one time they could both use some physical contact that didn't come with tantalizing cartloads of sexual tension, which pretty well ruled out the only other person present. Their heads wound up right next to each other, and it turned out this was by design.
"Raven… I don't think I can tolerate having to share him. Do you understand?" It was a whisper, and it held no malice, only the plain truth.
"Yes, and don't worry," her answer was prompt and just as free of anger or jealousy, "I don't want to share him either."
"Oh Raven… what are we to do? This… this does not seem to have a solution!"
"We'll worry about that later, okay?"
"Er…" both girls startled and stiffened, because that voice had been Robin's. They shared a moment of intense embarrassment at being caught red handed, but both shed such concerns as Robin stepped up behind Starfire and wrapped his arms around them both. It was impossible for any of them to worry about the future then, not when that present moment was so incredibly perfect.
"Nhhh…"
"You want to say something Raven?" Robin answered the small sound sympathetically, looking forward to the few hours hence when she'd be free of that accursed drug.
"Just one more question Robin."
"Anything… just ask."
"Where did you learn to kiss like that?"
"Urg…"
"Yes," Starfire cut in with the innocence that made her so endearing, "that sounds like an excellent question. I claim no prior experience, but I can't imagine it gets much better than it was."
"Oh… well… it's like this." He smiled with the slightest tinge of embarrassment, glad that neither of them could see his face as he buried it in Starfire's glorious, fragrant hair. "Speedy… the guy never shuts up. He's got experience, and I swear, you get one beer into him and it becomes a god damn seminar. I'm probably good at a lot of things I shouldn't be… if you catch my drift?"
"Ooh la la…" Raven couldn't resist the taunt… not… not to say it was entirely a taunt. Damn, that made her blush.
"Oh Raven, I didn't know you could speak French!" Robin and Raven both grimaced deeply and then sighed, neither one even momentarily considering correcting her.
"Just what I've heard on television Star." That got her a suggestively inquisitive eyebrow from Robin that said, 'just what have you been watching?' She sent him back her patented 'I'm imagining your excruciating demise,' glower, and it was all he could do not to laugh. The whole time, neither of them loosened the grip on Starfire in the slightest, each reveling in the contact with their beautiful friend in his or her own way. Moments just don't get much more glorious than that.
"Friends, please, why do I feel as though we have omitted something? The sensation arrived with Robin's mention of… of…"
"SPEEDY!" all three shouted at the same time, breaking their embrace in a panic as they started for the bay-side ledge of the tower as one.
"You rang?" said a familiar, obnoxiously self-satisfied, if slightly winded, voice. Everybody froze again. They traced the sound of the voice to none other than the man of the moment himself, who was sitting on the ledge of the building next to Robin's grapnel hook. One could surmise from his shit-eating grin that he'd been watching them, but for a moment, everyone was too relieved that he wasn't person-jelly on the ocean boulders below to mind all that much.
"Oh Speedy, thank heavens you are unharmed!" Starfire said readily, though she did not part from Robin's side. Neither of the girls were even sure why he was here, and so they weren't about to move an inch further from Robin than they had to on his account. "I… I apologize for neglecting your rescue… is there any way I could make it up to you?"
"Tell you what guys," and Robin sighed in preparation, because Speedy had that look again, "Strike a little deal with me and all will be forgiven."
"What are you on about now?" Robin wasn't taking any chances, so he cut off Starfire before she could agree in advance like she usually did. Speedy's smile expanded exponentially, and Robin felt his hackles rising.
"Hey, it's no big deal. Just make this ménage a trois into a foursome and we'll call it even. Whaddaya say?"
"Speedy speaks French too?" Starfire asked in genuine surprise, even as Robin held a hand to his forehead in exasperation and Raven grew an expression that could have struck dead a small mammal or stripped the bark off a tree.
"Ah… Raven," Robin mumbled, feeling vindictive, "why don't you give Speedy our answer."
"Yes… it would be my pleasure."
"Hey—hey—no need for that now—"Speedy was way past nervous as Raven leveled her evil eye on him and suddenly also had free reign, "can't you take a joke?"
"Oh sure Speedy, I can take a joke. In fact, here's one of my favorites. I call it jerkoff yo-yo."
"What? No… hey… not… don't… what are you doing with that rope? Hey! Uh… uh… AHHHHH!"
Starfire looked on in confusion as she hung on a grinning Robin's shoulder, because she'd never seen quite that application for forty feet of high-tensile cable and a conveniently local skyscraper. Then again, as she wrapped herself firmly around Robin while Raven was otherwise occupied, she supposed there were worse ways to spend the predawn hours.
Future—I'm rushing this off the presses to be sure, but I can tell you what's coming next, vaguely. Look forward to an explosion of 'friendly' rivalry between our leading ladies, plotting from the fellas to end the intolerable tension this causes, and the triumphant return (or rather, entrance) of those two sadly neglected, oh-so entertaining characters that so far haven't had a lick of page time in this story. We're moving into the last phase now, not that I have a clue how many chapters that's going to take, but the end is in sight. Next update is going to be… thanksgiving-ish, maybe? Oh, but before that, I'm going back to completely revise, maybe even seriously rewrite the first two chapters. The fist chapter in particular needs a ton of work to be up near the quality of the rest of the story, and I've decided that's the best application of the first few days of my thanksgiving break coming up in two weeks.
Hey, if you didn't notice, I worked my ass off on this one. I really did, seriously. So please, it doesn't have to be long and meaningful, it doesn't have to be much of anything at all, but please post a review so I can know you've been here, and hopefully, that I've entertained you. While you're at it, go back and post a review for every chapter you didn't post one for. I don't particularly care about how many I get anymore, but review counts are advertising, and I want more people to look at this story and say, 'gee, I wonder what all those people felt like reviewing for. Maybe I should read and be entertained by it.'
So remember—a review for me is actually a vote for making fanfic readers everywhere slightly happier people.