Chapter 8

Awake

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or anything related to Teen Titans. Unfortunately.

Blue light consumed Robin's vision as he passed through the portal and set foot on the other side; the ground crunched beneath him. Illuminated by Cyborg's shoulder light and Starfire's hands, he looked down, then out, and then around at the scorched, windswept wastes, exactly as Raven had described.

"Guess Raven wasn't kiddin'," Cyborg remarked with distaste.

Beast Boy shivered in the breeze while Starfire let her light fade, battle-readiness giving way to curiosity.

"My apologies, but I do not wish to stay in this place any longer than is necessary." She turned her gaze up and out into the starless void. "I find it…most unsettling."

"Agreed. Cyborg?" Robin turned to the metal man.

Cyborg held out his arm, scanning as he turned in place. "Gettin' faint electromagnetic signals over there. Could be the life pod. Dunno what else it'd be."

"All right. Let's—"

"Robin!" Starfire shouted, pointing behind their leader.

The whole group turned to find what they could only presume to be one of the creatures Raven and Jinx had encountered. It's eerie iridescence, malformed appearance and stiff, unnatural movements inspired in Raven's comrades the same dread and primal urgency as it had in the empath, for a moment holding them all captive in disturbed paralysis.

It was one thing to hear Raven describe it, but another entirely to see it firsthand.

Then, Robin was rudely jerked back.

"Remember," Starfire told him. "We must not touch them."

Robin looked from Starfire back to the thing, realizing only then, as his faculties returned to him, how close he had allowed it to get; he narrowed his eyes at the sensation it inspired: a tugging, as if on a string tied to a wooden block buried somewhere in his chest. "It," he said. "There's only one of them."

"One? I thought you said there wouldn't be any!" Beast Boy protested.

"I did, and there shouldn't be," Cyborg insisted, checking his readings again. "Raven's energy was gone when we went through, had been for hours. I waited to be sure."

Something fell into place in Robin's head. "It's me," he determined. "Our bond. I've always thought it was just a psychic connection. But whether she intended to or not, Raven must have left a piece of herself behind. And this thing's feeding off it."

Cyborg turned his scanner on Robin to confirm. "Not enough to bring 'em all back." Then he turned to the creature. "Not even really enough for one."

The misshapen thing continued to reach and drag and lurch toward Robin, and for a few seconds more, the group watched.

One in uncertainty.

One in fear.

One in pity.

And one in something else entirely, something that did not lend itself to simple description.

Starfire's gaze poured into the horrible thing as the essence of it flowed back into her. Every stilted, doll-like motion, every wisp of light that rolled off its unstable form, every moment it existed, it tore at the very deepest part of the Tameranean's heart—tore at it, ripped and shredded and held it close and cried into it, bit down and thrashed and sobbed and screamed into it; Starfire's jaw trembled, her eyes wide with concern, and she stepped back.

"It is wrong," she said terribly.

Robin reexamined the thing. "It…looks pretty much like Raven said it—"

"No," Starfire cut him off. "You do not understand. It is wrong. It is wrong that it is. Please," she implored them, "I do not wish to look upon it any longer."

Robin took her hand in a calming gesture, what little good it did. "Starfire, it's okay."

"No, it is not," she insisted. "It is…the most awful thing I could never have imagined. It is the opposite of okay."

The phrase, while perhaps innocuous from anyone else, from Starfire possessed a weight both stunning and profound: it was the opposite of okay—the antithesis, of all that could ever have been right and good and natural, of all the splendor and glory of creation, the antithesis, an existential miscarriage of being. The opposite of okay.

Robin switched his view to Cyborg. "You said you found the pod."

Cyborg gave a nod, then indicated a direction. "That way. Not sure how far."

"Then let's go. Starfire, can you fly?"

Beast Boy wasted no time in morphing into a pterodactyl, more than ready to go.

When Starfire failed to respond, Robin took her gently by the shoulders, turning her to face him and forcefully averting her gaze from the creature. "Starfire."

Her eyes, fearful and wet, connected with his briefly before she blinked them closed and wiped them on her arm. "I— Yes. A moment."

Unsteadily at first, Starfire took to the air, hoisting Robin along with her. Beast Boy and Cyborg followed, and they flew on in shared silence. An hour or two later, Cyborg's light illuminated a debris field beneath them, and they set back down.

Beast Boy took his human shape, taking in the wreckage strewn everywhere. "Whoa…"

"Debris field's pretty wide, but the pod should be nearby." Cyborg started walking, and the others followed.

They all turned back at a foreign light to find another of the creatures trying to take shape from the ground. Starfire looked away, while Robin took it upon himself to lead the thing around their perimeter and out of the way.

"There." Cyborg pointed ahead as the pod came into view.

As they got closer, Beast Boy knelt to examine the set of crawling tracks leading up to the pod. Two more sets led away. "Looks like this is the place."

Cyborg approached the pod but turned to the others. "Ya'll might…wanna hang back on this one. She's alive, but…the way she's gonna be hooked up, it ain't gonna be pretty."

They did, and he disengaged the locking mechanisms and opened the hatch. Sure enough, Jinx awaited him inside, just the way he'd imagined she would: sewn and stitched through by wires and tubes of various colors—but no two ever the same. He found each one meticulously labeled and, taking some time to gather a lay of the land, saw that she had been disconnected from everything unrelated to life support and powering the pod.

He closed the hatch; the locks engaged with a clunking ker-chunk and a hiss. "Time to go."

Beast Boy raised a hand. "Yes, please."

"Seconded," Robin agreed, walking backwards in a circle as the thing followed him.

Cyborg entered a command on his arm. "Motion carries." One more key press, and the portal flashed to life nearby.

Beast Boy first, Cyborg followed with the pod over his shoulder, Robin stepping through backward after.

Starfire, however, lingered on the threshold.

She looked back at the creature, who had stopped moving altogether in the absence of its goal and begun to evaporate without reforming. It shook unsteadily, one leg collapsing and followed swiftly by the others until it lay motionless on the ground, a puppet without strings.

Starfire winced. "I am…sorry. Truly, sorry."

The creature faded from view, and she stepped through the portal.

On the other side, the world returned. Like a switch had been flipped, the oppressive atmosphere imposed upon the group by the other dimension vanished.

Beast Boy let out a sigh of relief. "Man, that place was freaky. Not exactly, uh…vacation destination of the year, am I right?"

"No kiddin'." Cyborg set down the pod. "Whole universe full of ghosts."

"And no stars," Beast Boy added. "How weird was that?"

"Starfire, you okay?" Robin approached her, but she shied away.

"I…am fine. I will be. The experience was…quite jarring."

Robin took her hand, massaging it gently with his thumb. "Okay," he said. "I'm here. If you need me."

She smiled. "This, I know."

Robin smiled in return.

"I, uh… I'll go get Raven." Beast Boy excused himself, but paused when the yes bell jingled. "Oh. Hey."

Jinx folded her arms. "Went that well, huh?"

Robin said nothing.

"So, what'd ya think? If we go the timeshare route, I want summers," Jinx said in mock excitement.

"Get Raven," Robin said, and Beast Boy took off.

Cyborg opened up the pod and got to work. "I don't know what side-effects we're lookin' at from Raven's end, but from a medical standpoint… I mean, muscles are gonna be wonky, probably gonna be hungry, eyes are gonna hurt, but…more or less okay. I'll get ya cleaned up and disconnected so you're not chokin' on tubes or pullin' out wires."

"Great," Jinx said, simultaneously jingling the yes bell and clearly unenthused by the mention of tubes and wires. Also not lost to her: the fact that Cyborg had deliberately faced the pod away before opening it. She made no effort to approach, merely crossing her arms where she stood and diverting her attention. "So…what did happen?"

"We saw one of the creatures," Robin told her, still doing his best to comfort the Tameranean and presumably, to everyone else, just volunteering the report for Jinx's sake.

Robin said no more, but didn't have to. His lack of urgency and Starfire's condition painted a pretty good picture. Even more, seeing Starfire made Jinx wonder about her own reaction to the things, whether Raven's calming influence had affected it and exactly how much.

A black raven materialized through the floor with a screech before disappearing and leaving Beast Boy and the empath behind.

Raven looked to Cyborg, who gave a nod.

"Should be good to go," he said.

"What should I do?" Jinx asked.

Raven walked past her to the pod, focused entirely on the task at hand. "Nothing. But I will ask everyone else to stand over there and not move." She gestured at the door.

"Are we at risk?" Robin asked.

Raven held her hands near the pod. "No. But this is a very complex set of delicate, powerful energies, and I don't want anyone in the way or breaking my concentration. Think of it like…weaving a multi-planar fractal. Out of spun glass. With my mind."

"Should we…maybe leave the room?" Beast Boy asked.

Raven shook her head once. "You're alive. Your ambient energy will help keep the lattice stable, as long as you don't move. If you need to do anything, do it now. Once I begin, this will take some time."

Beast Boy held up a pointed finger. "I, uh… I'll be right back." He left in the direction of the bathroom.

"Is it…dangerous?" Jinx asked, trying to hide her worry out of reflex, even though she knew it wouldn't matter.

"No," Raven assured her. "Worst case, it doesn't work and I go back to the drawing board. But it is taxing, and I would rather not have to wait to try again if something goes wrong. I've…never done this before, but I imagine, if it works, it will also be very…jarring. We're basically plugging a live wire back into a machine. Be ready for a jolt."

When Beast Boy returned, the group took up positions they could keep for the long haul, and Raven began.

As Jinx and the others looked on, she pulled up her hood—presumably to block out distractions—and raised her arms in a way reminiscent of a musical conductor. Strange and arcane whispers flowed from beneath the hood in a fluid, ethereal stream, her feet planted firm but her arms, hands, and fingers drawing shapes in the air; the lights dimmed, but in a way wholly unfamiliar to the onlookers: as though the electronics themselves had not, but the light had, in fact, grown dimmer.

Darkness overtook them and lingered for several minutes, Raven's airy chant continuing all the while.

Then, Raven's hands appeared in the gloom, illuminated by a blue-white glow that traced their every motion. A particularly emphatic utterance gave way to a few moments of silence, and the same glow appeared from the inside of the pod; Raven's hands raised, and her chant and ritual resumed.

The glow from the pod pulsed in rhythmic fashion—a heartbeat—and with each one, revealed more and more of a marvelous tapestry of energy threaded through the room and its occupants like crystallized smoke hanging just slightly out of phase. At each pulse, the room brightened, creeping back from the darkness with every beat.

At one point, Jinx's eyes wandered to her companions, only to find many of them staring right back at her.

The light and the lattice hummed after a time, increasing in volume and luminosity until they forced all eyes closed and submerged the assembly in deafening, otherworldly bass that continued to build. At the peak of its crescendo, the humming sound culminated in a violent crack accompanied by a brief but brilliantly pink explosion.

In its wake, the group found the light, the lattice and the sound all gone and the room returned to normal.

Approaching the nearest wall, Raven leaned against it, shoulders heaving with great, heavy breaths. "You can move," she managed between them. "It's done."

"Did it work?" Robin asked.

An unsteady groan emanated from the pod, followed by another that escalated into a mostly pained, partly annoyed, "Ow…"

"Guess so," Beast Boy replied.

Cyborg held up one arm, scanning as he made his way over. "Life signs steady." He stopped at Raven. "You okay?"

Nodding and brushing him off, she directed his attention to more pressing matters.

A few quick checks over the pod and its occupant, and Cyborg eyed the others. "Everything looks fine. Pretty much what we expected."

"My ass…" Jinx retorted rudely, then whimpered more quietly, "Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill…?"

"Please don't puke," Beast Boy begged her, queasy himself at the thought.

Jinx groaned again.

"Your muscles are actually in pretty good shape," Cyborg told her. "Stiff, but not atrophied. Just maybe give it a minute before y—"

"Augh!" Jinx rolled over in a flash, thrashing her head and covering her face with one arm—and growling at the pain of moving it there.

"—open your eyes," Cyborg finished. "Go slow. You'll be fine." Interacting remotely with the room's settings, he lowered the lights some.

"Gee, thanks… And not a moment too soon…" Jinx quipped.

Waved over by Cyborg, Raven approached the pod to view her handiwork while the others lingered back a bit, giving them space. The empath's brow lifted, shocked or impressed, at the colorful flood of language pouring from between Jinx's clenched teeth.

Beast Boy's ears twitched. "Whoa. Guess Gizmo rubbed off a little, huh?"

Gradually, Jinx calmed down as the stabbing pain in her eyes ebbed. She lay still afterward, one arm still over her face only because she hadn't bothered to move it; she drew in several long, slow breaths. One at a time, different muscles groups visibly relaxed, starting with her feet, up her legs to her body, her hands and her arms, and finally her shoulders and upper back.

"Sorry," Jinx said, and took in another large breath.

"For wh—" Cyborg cut himself short when Jinx's exhale coincided with a ring of pink energy that expanded until it hit the walls, subsequently frying most of the tech. The metal man hung his head with a sigh. "At least the lights still work…"

Squinted tightly, Jinx's eyes fluttered in their attempts to open. When they finally succeeded, a smirk slithered across her lips; stiffness and pain and all, her right hand flew up and took a stunned Raven by the collar. "Hello, nurse!"

Before the empath could react, she found herself yanked down into a kiss; with several snapping pops, the lights went out.

"Come on!" Cyborg complained in the dark.

"I know, right?" Beast Boy agreed. "I mean, I spend hours coming up with material, and she keeps cracking jokes!" He counted on his fingers. "It's alive, welcome to the world of tomorrow, mostly dead all day—I had a whole set!"

"Corpse breath," Raven noted. "Thanks."

"Corpse Bride! Hello!" Beast Boy exclaimed, case-in-point.

The room's emergency lights kicked on, dimmer but workable.

"How are you feeling?" Raven asked.

Eyes shut again, Jinx scrunched her face in discomfort. "Like a sardine." She smirked. "Probably smell like one, too."

"I didn't mean physically," Raven amended.

Jinx seemed to consider the question. "Dunno. Normal, I guess? What am I lookin' out for?"

"Baseless depression, undirected rage, nihilistic disregard," Raven replied. "Anything different, powerful, and seemingly without cause that might indicate your soul hasn't properly adjusted. Anything missing, or there now that wasn't before. Anything you don't recognize."

A vicious grin spread across Jinx's lips, accompanied by a furious pink glow that consumed her slowly opening eyes. "The sudden urge to reverse the wheels of probability, undo the order of creation, and rule over the unmitigated chaos into which I've plunged the universe as its mad god-queen?"

Beast Boy blanched.

Jinx's fervor disappeared in a blink. "Nah. Mostly just want a shower. Like, the hottest one of my life. Maybe scrub off the first few layers of skin. Y'know."

Starfire inched forward in the background, clearly itching to hug or help or something, but admirably restrained herself. "I…realize that you may wish the space while you recover, but please, is there anything that you require? May we assist you, somehow?"

Jinx's voice came evenly, rehearsed, and without hesitation. "Bath bomb. Exfoliating gloves. Candles."

Starfire put on a look of concern. "You…desire an explosive?"

"We can handle that," Robin volunteered, promising Starfire that he would explain what Jinx had meant.

Beast Boy raised his hand. "Exfoliating gloves. Spare set, never opened. You can keep 'em if you want." He was met by several curious stares. "What? A guy can't appreciate good skincare?"

Taking it for what it was, Raven chimed in next. "And I've got candles." She then put on a tiny smile and commented to Jinx, "You put thought into that."

Jinx's eyes narrowed, playing up the drama. "Bein' dead. Really puts things in perspective."

"What really matters?" Raven asked, dryly but playfully just the same.

Jinx offered a slow nod.

Raven crossed her arms lightly. "At least you've got priorities."

The next few minutes saw the group adjourned from Cyborg's workshop: Robin and Starfire off to procure Jinx's first request and Cyborg to run a post-op diagnostic on his machine, while Raven accompanied a fuzzy green bear as it carried Jinx from the pod up to her room. The changeling then retrieved his spare set of exfoliating gloves and departed afterward with a joke and a grin, leaving the two alone.

"Sure you're all right?" Raven asked, watching an unsteady Jinx prop herself up on the threshold to the bathroom.

Jinx waived off the concern. "Oh, yeah. Metahuman. I'll be doin' backflips and cartwheels in an hour."

"If you do need anything, I'll be reading," Raven told her.

"Uh-huh." Jinx's reply came between the sounds of her presumably negotiating her way into the combination tub-shower.

Raven, meanwhile, took a seat at the foot of her bed. She doffed her hood and, hands resting idly on her knees, looked down at them. Through them.

As Jinx went about her business a room away, Raven's mind returned to another villain altogether, his self-assured bravado, his cocky sneer, his confidence. His pinprick pupils, eyes wide with the most genuine fear, his frantic scrambling for safety he would not find. The satisfaction she'd felt, her vision bathed in red, zeroed in on his racing heart, his rising blood pressure—his mounting horror—as her tendrils sprang from the depths, coiled, and dragged him screaming into the abyss.

Emotion run rampant, out of control. Unleashed.

Her hands curled on her knees.

For a moment, she wondered what other people must have worried over when considering their first sexual experiences, or if they worried at all. The situations were hard to pinpoint, so her empathic tendencies hadn't given her much intelligence on the subject. Maybe they didn't even worry at all, until the moment. Maybe they wondered, mostly. Idealized. Fantasized.

She worried.

At least, now she did. Jinx's feelings didn't appear to have changed, which meant…

Her memory flashed back to that night in the cave, now with the advantage of afterthought and time to process. Though she believed she understood it better now, she still found the results largely nonsensical. The acts themselves, simple enough, and kissing strange enough on its own. How or why any of it should have produced the feelings it did escaped her.

Two slices of bread, some fillings, maybe some kind of spread: put them together, and they made a sandwich, a logical sum of the parts involved.

Bodies pressing together, hands feeling, mouths blindly groping other mouths: put them together, and they created an utterly inexplicable sense of comfort, of fulfillment, of completeness, a wholeness like she hadn't before experienced and doubted she would encounter anywhere else ever again. Two plus two that equaled not the four it should have, but some grand and mystifying sum that should not have been.

Acceptance?

Maybe. Or more than that—her whole life at arm's length, and then to be not only wanted but desired, and desired for who she was and not what she was or what she could do.

Still…

In a world of billions adrift in a sea of limitless dimensions, that any sort of connection with any single individual should carry such weight, that a person's feelings of emotional completeness should rise or fall by the desires or approval of any one being, it made so little sense.

It occurred to her at that point that, in her explorations of her emotions, she had encountered an entirely new creature: comprised of raw emotional connection down to its most basic components, it defied rationalization by virtue of its very nature, and by that same nature begged to be accepted simply because it was, on its own terms.

Non-Euclidian…

A thing that could not be contained or defined in the context of the reality she understood: in her case, reason.

Taken that way, it would not change. Could not. She could either accept it and explore it further, or deny it and banish it away back to its own reality.

The decision, a simple one, might have been very different some years earlier. Still, Raven found herself drawing a deep breath at what it implied, the daunting task ahead. This was not simply some new equation or formula she could learn and integrate into her existing schema, no; this was an entirely different math, where numbers she knew might or might not exist and where two plus two might indeed equal whatever it wanted.

With that thought, she resolved to alter her emotional explorations, somewhat: to try to understand them in her usual way, of course, but also to take them at face value, on their own merits—to no longer reason them through to decide whether they were valid, but to accept them as valid and also reason them through.

Her entire emotional worldview, turned on its head so profoundly by one impulsive night in a cave.

Along with her desire to chase that feeling again, however—and she did have that desire, could not deny that she did—came the worries.

Obscure, intangible, unquantifiable worries. Worries about the unknown. Rage, at least, she understood, had experienced before, knew what to expect. This, whatever it was, though she could feel its pressure behind the dam, she knew nothing else about it.

And that worried her. Not knowing.

What it would feel like. What effects it would have. What risks it would present.

Resolved, Raven reached out to several books on a nearby shelf. Engulfed in her dark aura, they levitated over to her, opened, and began turning pages as she scanned through them. At the very least, she could look for a way to suppress or dampen her powers long enough to create a safe period for experimentation. Mitigation. That way, at least if she did lose control, well…better a kitten than a lion.

Spells…no. A loss of control precluded anything that required concentration.

Glyphs?

No. A glyph large enough to suppress her potential, even for a short time, would have to take up half the city. Wards, as well. Unless she planned to rearrange a few skyscrapers into a totem.

Runes.

Possible. The right ink, infused with her blood, given the right enchantment and tattooed under the skin… Risky, though. Too little, wouldn't work. Too much, might not wear off.

One of her books flipped past a page diagraming a set of manacles designed to restrain sorcerers, and she paused.

That could work.

Maybe not that exactly, but the right variation.

Set of wristlets, anklets, maybe a collar—solid iron cast from materials from her father's home dimension, infused with her soul self during the smelting process and quenched in water with the right enchantment. Uncomfortable, probably. Maybe even painful. Burning sensation from the iron, high internal temperature from the energy suppression, possibly other feverish symptoms. But it would probably do the job, at least long enough for one night at a time.

Probably.

The materials would be easy enough, for Cyborg anyway. Leave Robin home and they could travel the dimension safely, and his scanners wouldn't have any trouble finding the requisite iron.

But the enchantment…

Far, far beyond her ability.

In its search for candidates to perform the enchantment, her mind found itself back in the ruins of Azarath left in her father's wake. Her heart sank at the memory. Azarath itself might rebuild, but…

Without Azar, the only one left might have been…Doctor Fate. Maybe. If she could contact him. And if he didn't immediately distrust her. And if he could be bothered to try.

With a sigh, Raven closed the tomes and placed them back on the shelf, done for the moment. She would have to approach Robin about some way to contact Fate through the League and…try to figure out how to voice her request so that the interdimensional symbol of Order wouldn't know the whole thing stemmed from the need for a safe way to get past first base.

Not that such restraints couldn't have other practical uses, should she ever decide to explore emotions like Rage.

Of course, that thought brought others to mind, of other…practical…uses certain people might have found. She didn't relish the thought of introducing her own kryptonite into the universe, especially for something as ultimately trivial as intimacy. But as much distaste as she had for the prospect, the rational side of her couldn't deny the necessity of it.

She had done admirably well in her life so far, she thought. But if anything were to happen, if she were to slip one day, make a mistake or somehow otherwise lose herself to her heritage…

Well, most people put together plans to handle their funeral expenses. She could only hope that hers didn't fall into the wrong hands.

A knock at her door.

Raven approached, and the door slid open to reveal Robin and Starfire, who smiled.

"We have returned!" Starfire proclaimed, presenting Raven with the bath bomb.

Raven eyed it, and then Robin.

"She, uh…liked the idea. Of the bath bombs," he explained.

Raven switched to Starfire. "How much?"

"Oh, Raven! They are glorious! You merely place them in the water, and they do the most amazing things!" Starfire told her.

"Sorry we took so long," Robin apologized. "Turns out they, uh…don't sell by the gross at the mall. We had to talk to a distributor. There's a crate coming next week."

Starfire clapped excitedly, bouncing in place on her toes. "There are many different kinds, as well! We will try them all, yes?" She took Robin's arm.

"Sure," he said with a smile.

From the bathroom, the sound of a rushing faucet replaced the shower.

Raven glanced back, then faced her friends again. "I should…"

"Right," Robin said.

After thanking them for the bath bomb, Raven retreated inside her room and retrieved several candles. She lit them, then levitated them along with the bath bomb and a set of pajamas into the bathroom.

"Thank you," Jinx sang from inside.

A little envious of Jinx's relaxation, Raven decided on a little self-indulgence of her own. She entered a few keystrokes into the wall panel near the door, then returned to the foot of her bed and took up her hovering lotus position. Not long after, the lights dimmed—in the bathroom as well—and the sound of falling rain trickled over the room. The scent of wet, fallen leaves drifted from the air vent, and Raven allowed herself to drift into meditation.

An hour or so later, Jinx emerged from the bathroom in her borrowed clothes.

"Pretty cool," she said, in reference to the room's atmosphere.

"Thanks," Raven replied. "It…helps me relax." She floated silently down to the floor, then raised a curious eyebrow when Jinx ran her fingers up through her wet hair with a crackle of pink sparks; it emerged dry and in its usual style. "Interesting," the empath observed.

Jinx smirked. "The real secret to great lift. So, what's the deal with these?" She indicated her pajamas. "Didn't take ya for a satin fan. Not that they're not comfortable, I mean."

"A gift, from Starfire," Raven explained offhandedly, retrieving a clean uniform and a towel from her closet. "I usually just sleep in uniform."

"Kinda figured," Jinx said.

"I'll be back in a minute," Raven told her.

Jinx plopped down on the side of the bed. "'Kay."

As she disappeared into the bathroom, it occurred to Raven to warn Jinx about some of the books and objects in her room. To even her own surprise, she mostly put aside the worry. Jinx was a practitioner herself, after all. She would sense anything magical, and would know better than to meddle with anything she didn't understand.

A quick and pleasant shower later, Raven returned. Wet towel set in place to dry, she sat alongside her bed, retrieved her hairbrush from the bedside table, and brushed, allowing her senses to venture out as she did; Jinx didn't appear to have moved from the spot she had occupied when Raven had left. The small bandages Cyborg had placed after removing the wires and tubes were already gone, the sites more or less healed.

Anticipation. Nervousness. Anxiety. Excitement buried in there somewhere.

Nothing wholly unexpected, although it did give the empath a rather clear image of where her guest's mind had wandered in her absence.

"So…now what?" Jinx asked, in a way that gave the empath the impression she was fully aware that her feelings were on the table. "I mean, Bird Boy offered me my own room if ya—"

"I don't see the point in that," Raven told her. "You've indicated that you haven't lost interest. I'm interested in exploring further. We had what I understand to have been an extended and very unorthodox first date in another dimension, and we've already slept in the same bed, as it were."

"Okay," Jinx said.

"But…you do need to understand: this isn't just new to me, in the dating sense. Every feeling involved with it is new. What they mean, how they feel, how they affect me, what they are. While I'm comfortable with you, I'm uncomfortable with all the parts of me being explored, here—in every sense," Raven told her.

Jinx turned her body to face Raven, her face honest and her hands flat in surrender. "Totally get it. Your pace. No pressure."

Raven looked down, unsure how to respond, unable even to define what her pace was.

"So, uh…normally I wouldn't ask—kinda kills the mood a little, takes the fun outta bein' spontaneous—but since this is a special situation: how, uh…how far didja wanna go, exactly? Like, what're ya…y'know…okay with?"

"I…don't really know," Raven admitted. "What we did before should be fine. Maybe a little more than that, but…probably clothes-on, maybe wait for anything too serious until I can take precautions against any risks. At least until I have a better idea of what the risks are."

"So…have fun, but play it by ear," Jinx paraphrased.

"More or less," Raven confirmed.

Jinx looked away, her feelings swirling and swelling between apprehension and anticipation.

"So…now what?" Raven asked.

Jinx opened her mouth slightly at having her question thrown back at her by the person who was supposed to have answered it. "Uh…"

"Well…what would you do if it were someone else?" Raven asked. "Other than me."

"What would I do?" Jinx made sure.

"Within reason," Raven stipulated.

Jinx thought a moment. "Ya like music?"

Raven shook her head some. "Not really."

"Okay…" Changing tactics or just skipping a step, Jinx got up long enough to turn out the lights completely, then returned to the bed and lay down on it properly.

A touch on her arm, and Raven allowed herself to be led down onto her side, facing away with Jinx behind.

They lay there, seconds ticking by in still silence.

Uncertainty.

"Little weird," Jinx commented.

"Why?" Raven asked.

"Input," Jinx said.

Choosing an answer from the multiple-choice quiz going on in her mind, Raven scooched closer.

Relief, reassurance.

Correct answer, apparently.

She raised her head a bit to allow Jinx's arm to slide under her pillow, while the other came to rest over her midsection.

That relief, however, ebbed quickly, the old uncertainty creeping up from below.

Raven grumbled inwardly. "How do you know?"

"What?" Jinx asked.

"How do you know what to do?" Raven asked, trying not to let her annoyance slip through.

"I-I don't know," she said, put on the spot. "Just…don't think about it. Are you not into it?"

"You're not," Raven said pointedly. "Because I keep screwing up, missing steps, flubbing lines. I can feel it."

Realization, guilt, regret.

"Like that, right there," Raven said. "I did it again."

"No, you just— I didn't—" Jinx took a breath. "Whaddaya want?"

"I don't know," Raven said, then chose a new approach. "You want to do more. You're hesitating. Apprehensive. Why?"

"I…wasn't sure if—"

"I'm clueless. If you're waiting for signals, you probably won't get them because I don't know how or when to send them," Raven told her. "But I'm also an empath. If you're put off, I'll be put off. If you're into it, I'll be into it. You already have my permission, so unless I tell you to stop, just—"

She stopped abruptly when she felt a hand move from her stomach up to her bust.

Then, apprehension again.

This time, Raven grit her teeth and ripped off the Band-Aid herself, taking Jinx's hand and pressing it down.

Like a chain reaction, in a flash Raven found herself pulled on top into a straddling position. Hands touched down on her arms, feeling their way to her chest, down her stomach, around her sides and up along her back as they guided her down into a kiss. She tensed when the hands ran down past her waist to her bottom and squeezed; Jinx drew in a seething breath through her nose.

But rather than the awkwardness she had expected to feel while having her body explored by unfamiliar hands, she found herself not only okay with it, but perhaps even more than that. The prospect of being someone's object of attraction, of allowing her body to be used by someone in that way, made her heart race.

The empath felt her partner's hips begin to roll in a way that suggested unconscious movement. It turned deliberate, however, when Jinx slid her feet up, planting them on the bed to bend her knees, and began pulling Raven closer in time with her rhythm.

Raven's heart fluttered at the new emotion—almost completely new, directed at her—that swelled above the rest in that moment: arousal. And alongside it, the electric excitement from the cave.

Like a catalyst, the two feelings reacted instantly inside her, calling up the urge she remembered. Careful to keep a kill-switch of control, she turned it loose; it sprang forth eagerly, moving her hips in tandem on her own; shifting her face next to her partner's, she breathed heated breaths against her ear.

Jinx's response was immediate: a sigh, a tightened grip. Elation.

Spurred on, Raven reciprocated the gesture, biting down gently on her partner's ear and moaning softly into it. Before she realized it, one of her hands had moved down the front of Jinx's body below her waist—fingers still but firm, tracking the motions of her hips and giving her something to move against.

Jinx's excitement spiked with a shakily whispered something at the realization of some long-held fantasy. Her hands moved up, past Raven's back to her shoulders, locking her in place. She shivered when Raven let out another sound, not a grunt, a moan or a groan, but something invested, hungry, and pressed their bodies—and her hand—more firmly, insistently.

Jinx's pace quickened, and Raven nibbled a little harder, tugged a bit, and nuzzled encouragingly. She imagined she must have said something, as well, although she failed to recall exactly what. But whatever it had been, it had been enough; one of Jinx's hands took the bedspread in a death grip while the other flew down and took Raven's at the wrist, holding it just right. Her muscles tightened with a strained, sustained groan, and then she relaxed entirely onto the bed, panting and heart thumping hard enough that Raven could feel it between them.

But at that moment, she barely noticed, her entire emotional landscape clouded over by the peaceful, satisfied haze flowing from her partner. Even as she felt it fade, she let her eyes lose focus along with her mind, every conscious thing sacrificed to better appreciate the short-lived, perfect contentment; for an instant, probably a brief one, nothing else mattered or existed: worry, stress, fear, doubt, all of it lost in a blissful fog that refused to be ruined. For an instant, absolute balance.

Seconds rolled past like a mounting breeze, blowing away that fog little by little until it was gone.

In its wake, a new memory emerged. The cocktail of pleasurable sensations inspired in her partner, the exhilaration of climax, the emotional primality of its pursuit took root inside the empath and grew—quickly—a tiny seed exploding into a monstrous, alien mass of tendrils, grasping and lashing out in the blind pursuit of more.

Raven cut them off at the base, silencing the new urges in one swift, decisive mental stroke.

Then, it grew back.

A hand probed her in the dark, undoubtedly in reciprocation of what she'd just done, and no sooner did it touch her than did everything she had silenced force its way back in a fearsome, shrieking resurgence.

Struggling to calm her heaving breaths, she took Jinx's hand and held it at bay as she beat back the urge, the impulse to take things much further than their mostly innocent display and into she didn't know what. Thoughts of flesh and tastes, of feelings and incredible sensations invaded her mind as she fought to clear it.

"What about you?" Jinx asked, only seconds having passed.

"I'm..." hungry..."okay."

"Are—"

"I'm fine," Raven insisted harshly, chiding herself afterward for her misdirected anger. "I just..." want to wring you dry..."need a minute…"

A second.

Another.

"Okay," Jinx said.

Raven moved off her, holding her head as she pushed her way through the torrent of feelings to fix the crack she had allowed in the dam. "It isn't you. It's..." amazing incredible wonderful addictive. "Just..."

"Are ya okay? D'ya need—"

Raven jerked away from where she imagined Jinx would reach out for her in the dark. "Please..." touch me hold me want me make me give me more… "Ugh..." She held her head more tightly. "S-Stop..." making me wait...

Worry.

Pink light emanated from Jinx's hands, illuminating Raven's huddled form. "Raven?"

Raven curled into herself, squeezing into a ball. "I…" need it want you want everything. "I c-can't..." stop now wait any longer live without more. "I…" She looked up, and—when she saw Jinx recoil at whatever it was she saw in her eyes in that moment—released the kill-switch she had held at the beginning.

Like a breaker flipped, without any drifting off or countdown or fading out, the world went black.