Back again kids! Alternate title: Everybody Loves Dick Grayson. No spoilers, I'll see you at the end. Enjoy!
Poor unfortunate soul - JM
In all the grand libraries of Azarath, there is only one book of Earth folk stories. When she finds it, Raven turns to the only other piece of Earth she knows. But Arella does not react much beyond the same tired expression. After a cursory glance, she calls them fairy tales and explains. Old nonsense about magic, adventures, and love. Stories parents would read to their children in place of lullabies, to fill the quiet of a long afternoon. Then the withdrawn woman grows even more silent, eyes locked unseeing on the printed pages.
Arella gives her the book back. Raven can already read all by herself. It's just simpler this way.
The stories are not for children.
Or at least, humans are very blunt about danger with their children. If her little story book is a guide, Earth is a terrifying place. A trap for one person is a gift for somebody else. Beauty, fairies, and strangers are not to be trusted. At least, unless they deem you good. Unless you are brave enough to smile in the face of danger. Unless you are somehow clever enough to twist the rules to your bidding. It's all rigged, cruel and callous in teaching heavy handed generalities. After the fifth story ends with the charmed from birth child earning a kingdom with a smile, Raven gives the book up. There are no stories for people like her. Or at least, none she likes.
It's only fair though.
Earth and humans might be part of her heritage, but it has never been the most important part. Always been something to observe, not belong to. Something bitter in her thinks she wasn't kept from learning about people to teach her guilt. Look child, at all these beautiful things that you will someday destroy. So she knows human languages, history, culture and regret taints every syllable of that knowledge.
But she must do something. She's doomed, just like those middle born children from the fairytales. Not the wise first born or the golden youngest. But she must try to be more than the creatures stalking through the dark, the witches waiting to claim the unaware. A demon waiting at the crossroad for the desperate. Always waiting.
When the time comes, she chooses to leave. When she chooses, there is only one real option.
This is not the Earth of her picture books. The road is littered with unconscious aliens and scraps of a city. It isn't even the twisted world from those folk tales. But there is a boy, dark haired, masked, and smiling in the middle of the chaos. He isn't afraid. Robin extends a hand, asking herself and four strange strangers for help. And there. A sharp spiraling curl sweeping around a cluster of seven and what could possibly be the edge of a sun peek from below his right elbow.
Like somebody else's proposal, private but brazenly public.
The aliens are sent away. She lives in another tower. But instead of the silent sanctuary, the walls ring and hallways echo with noise. So many explosions in so many different colors, nobody bats an eye when the coffee pot melts in shimmering black. Their island is not always sunshine and the beach is more rock than sand. But she likes it. At least, she likes it enough to tolerate it.
However she was completely unprepared for the reality of people. At least in that respect, Raven and Starfire are equals. Outsiders fervently watching, taking notes and trying to play off their uncertainty. The boys are wonderfully and terrifyingly human though. They are almost rabid with it.
It's like observing an anthropology study in action. Modern Observations of Young Earthling Males Specializing in Vigilantism. Or something in that manner. Starfire would probably read it at her amazement, the boys guide their slapdash team into its own strange organism.
Social positions are assigned and challenged. Robin and Cyborg scuffle every so often. Interrupting each other, absentminded or intentional. Unsubtly one upping each other while making plans. Unspoken contests of strength and speed that inevitably end in Starfire accidently winning.
Beast Boy has no desire for whatever they struggling over. Sometimes he plays referee. Sometimes he just throws gasoline into the fire of competition. Every so often, he will decide he wants to play. But she's almost sure that his participation is to keep 2nd place from also being last. Or because Beast Boy just enjoys being the spanner in the works. He's difficult to gauge at times.
When they come back with first Robin and then Cyborg in command, Raven is not too surprised. Cyborg might be older and arguably more stable, but Robin's hunger to prove himself is never going to be sated. He always wants more, better. The dizzying heights he wants most desperately won't be reached by following. In his chase towards greatness, the rest of them are pulled along at a pace that falls between frightening and inspiring. She is exhausted but stronger, faster. Better aware of her limitations. More aware of how cohesive this fledging team is and how rare it is.
Being second means Cyborg has a chance to indulge his own appetites. New gadgets appear throughout their home like the condensation on the overly large windows. They start eating better. The house is more comfortable. The training systems become more intimidating. Not all updates are universally welcomed.
Though he somehow scrapes away without any additional responsibilities, Beast Boy's talent for disruption is too powerful to waste. He likes to poke at weak spots, to test the limits. Argues until cold logic doesn't work anymore. So they make that his job instead.
Saying the hard things. Checks and balances. Unnecessary vs necessary losses. What can and should never be sacrificed. Blind ambition and callous pride, numbing agents to their purpose. Things that their new dissenter is to keep far from their door. Beast Boy jokes that he's their union rep. But there's something grim in the grit of his jaw even as he smiles. These things at least, he will always take seriously.
Whatever roles they ended up with, any combination of the three boys proves a frighteningly efficient team. Sometimes it seems like each pair speaks a completely different language, every combination churning out new shorthand and jargon. None of her experience in ancient translations is enough practice for deciphering their slang. Specific phrases she assumes must relate to video games, experimental technology, battle tactics. It has only been a short time, but all three are beginning to pack phrases and glances with volumes of meaning.
They create rules and traditions. Some are unspoken. Everybody must eat at least part of whatever Cyborg makes for Tuesday's breakfast. One good prank deserves at least three more. The boys never fully discuss their pasts, only offering hints up when relevant. And that's fine. Nobody is required to share more history than they want.
Others are more formal. The Initiation Ceremony, a near hellish night spent creating challenges for the others to complete. It is vehemently agreed that personal secrets that threaten the group aren't allowed. A specific set of complicated rules concern the trading, sales, and purchasing of things like chores and choosing rights to movie night, games, ect. The boys' more ambitious team building activities are planned with something close to reverence, nearly as sacred as the actual rituals of Azar. Thankfully the minimum requirement for participation is attendance.
Just being present is enough to make them happy. Such a simple thing is all they require from her. All Raven has to do is be there to belong to them and to claim them in return. She is learning though. It isn't too difficult spending time watching her teammates have fun. It is beginning to hurt less watching them live.
Not by very much though. Every so often, one of them will laugh just a little too much. Or remember something just a tad too sad. Emotions peaking and falling like one of Cyborg's fancy sensors. Once, Starfire glances out the window towards the distant stars.
Nostalgia aching for a place that doesn't exist anymore and maybe never really did. The gaps between her fingers are too empty, even when curled into fists. Especially then. Affection fitting like a poorly made collar, cutting and choking around her throat. Familiar feelings, but not her own.
She thought she knew. Thought she had enough control for this. The monks had never bothered her, empathically at least. But years of meditation had done their job. Even the bite of their fear had been blunted by discipline. Not these new strangers. They are raw, sharp. Blisteringly intense. She would love it if not for how breathless it leaves her.
The source of sound is her new…friends? They are ignorant enough to claim the title casually. Robin isn't ignorant though. He's confident. Leaping from great heights as if the world hadn't forgotten his wings. He's talented. Somehow learning to fly all on his own while the world tries to ground him. He's…too much. Easy, careless smiles that make him seem approachable, like he isn't soaring leagues above them all. Like anyone would be welcome to join him.
But those heights are still dangerous, made only more dangerous by the blinding charisma. He's dazzling, distracting. Raven just tries not to stare when the stars tease during training, just barely hidden beneath his glove. It's only polite after all. Safety has nothing to do with it.
There's more, he says one day with a smile. Raven doesn't ask to see. Boldly, he shows her anyways. The smallness of his grin holds a disproportionately great fondness. Something close to joy radiates from his smile, blazing as he subconsciously strokes a trail down his right forearm. It's that joy she uses to hush the quiet mourning of something that never was.
Robin has more than muted colors, not just blues and greens. The shades are as brilliant as they are varied. Yellows, purples, reds, and everything else stand in stark contrast against the tan of his forearm. More than that, they are in sharp relief. Thin black lines tracing smooth curves and straight angles through delicate fields of tiny stars and planets. It's no wonder he tries to carry the world's weight. No wonder he makes it seem effortless. Not when he is always cradling an entire universe in his arm.
He truly is fearless, she muses. Her own mark is still nothing more than a puddle of color curled into her elbow. No secrets to give away, no reflection on her character or her other half. But she can count on one hand the people living who have seen it. A number that doesn't include a single person within Earth's dimension.
It has been clear for years, he said. Ever since he made his choice. After all, that's how it's supposed to work. People change, make choices. They are malleable, with soft hearts and lonely hands. It would be cruel to be born in a world where you aren't allowed to choose, to change. Not when a left fork in the road of life could send you to a completely different person than would be waiting to the right.
At least, it could be cruel. But destiny always has more merciless options held in reserve.
She doesn't ask what exactly he decided. The choice that set him hurtling through life faster than his namesake through the skies. That kind of decision is usually hugely personal. Of course, marks usually are rather intimately personal too. Yet Robin is willing to bare his soul to her with a smile. She still can't bring herself to ask.
He has no clue what the image is. Well, that's not accurate. He knows a galaxy when he sees one. Studied star charts out of curiosity to understand. Robin can pick out Earth, her moon, and the sun from a particularly bright patch at one end of his personal nebula. Takes great pride in introducing the barely there Pluto as his favorite planet. Naming stars until he can't anymore, ending long before the star system on his arm does. A wordless smile at the little, unknown moons and nameless planets dotting his wrist. He knows, but he also doesn't. With a laugh, Robin explains he doesn't understand why stars.
Then a star walks by and spies the delicate colors wheeling across his arm.
Starfire asks to see. She doesn't hesitate, starts naming off the worlds scattered near his wrist, fingertips brushing softly through the miniature nebula. Working in the opposite direction, before trailing away in gentle confusion long before his elbow. Poking lightly at Pluto's tiny spot with a curious smile. The joy in her voice when she recognizes Earth, finds home, echoes in Robin's smile. Tracing what has apparently always been the pathway that leads from his arms to her.
The stars in Robin's eyes are so much brighter than the ones his soulmate attentively observes. They are both so bright. So brilliant, Raven wants to shrink away to hide.
It's almost perfect. Except Earth culture is different. Dimensions different from Azarath. Lightyears from Tamaran. At least Azarath knew the concept, understood the meaning.
The time it takes for Starfire to explore Robin's mark turns out to be the same amount of time it takes for two soulmates to miss a connection. For all his fearlessness, he doubts when Starfire merrily asks why he carries the universe. A question that for all his confidence, Robin fumbles to answer.
He pauses. A delay that will take years to resolve.
If you still have questions about how my soul mark system works, let me know. Don't worry, Robin's mark works in both directions.