It was a dim night, clouds masking the sky and shielding the stars from the eyes below. A gloom set upon the Earth, a strange ambiance in the air that caked their world with the strangeness of starless nights and absent suns.
Starfire looked out at the gloomy world, hints of sadness showing on her face. She didn't like such weather, for it to be so dark. But she new her lover would love this, as she always did. And she was right, as well. Raven drank in the sight, small smiles passing across her face every now and then.
She sipped her tea slowly, enjoying the gloom.
Starfire looked down at her own cup, which Raven had made especially for her. The taste wasn't exactly to her liking, but she swallowed it still, trying to make Raven feel better.
She had been a weeping mess this morning, for reasons Starfire didn't know.
And Raven wouldn't tell her anything.
That had put a knife through her heart, twisting around painfully.
She pressed the steaming mug to her lips, drinking more tea in hopes to forget their recent morning. Raven said nothing about it the whole day, once her emotions had cleared and she was once again in complete control. But the broken lamps and torn curtains were history.
Raven glanced over at Starfire, seeming to want to say something.
Starfire waited, but no words ever came.
Her eyes ghosted over her once, twice, then thrice but her eyes were always drawn back out to the world around them. The ocean that stretched on forever and ever, the multiple shades of blue dulled and muted.
"Raven," Starfire tested her words carefully. "You seem to want to say something."
"Only that I am content right now," came the immediate response.
Starfire sipped more tea, trying her best not to make any faces. The tea was herbal, of course, and piping hot. The temperature wasn't what bothered her; it was the flavor. Green tea. Even after Starfire had added teaspoons of sugar to the liquid mixture, the green tea was still as bitter as ever. How Raven could drink it straight was beyond her.
"Do you not like it?" Raven asked.
"What?"
"The tea," she said, and swiveled her head around. Innocent green eyes met her purple ones, but she knew easily enough the thought that were traveling through her head. She was an empath, after all, and Starfire's emotions had always been so strong.
For so long, that had been the reason she had avoided her as she did.
The thick texture of emotions, it could become sickening after a while.
"The tea," Raven repeated again. "I know you don't like it all that much."
"Oh—well—I," Starfire didn't really have anything to say to that.
It was the truth, after all.
"Sorry," Raven said in her usual monotone, her head turning back around to survey the dim ocean. "I'll try to make something a bit sweeter next time."
"Oh, no! This is good!" Starfire took a swig of her tea to try to prove her point, but the lie had come too late. She knew she wasn't fooling anyone, so she only sighed in defeat.
"I still do like this. What we have," Starfire made a vague gesture. "Spending time with you is very nice, and I hope that I can spend time with you more often. After that month or so we spent apart, I don't think I can be without you now for much longer…"
Her words faded into the night air.
Raven's eyes became misted over. She blinked, trying to clear them, but a small burn still itched at the back of her eyes. She rubbed them, but it still did no good. She released her own sigh, letting her eyes mist over again and them rubbed them at them with her sleeve.
"Have I upset you?"
"No," Raven said, "just got something in my eye."
"And you have my heart in yours," Starfire said, her voice taking on a dreamy quality. It was poetic, the way Starfire had kept saying she had given Raven her heart. It made Raven's own heart swell with emotion, and it had caused her to break many different things. Each time Starfire gave her sickeningly sweet smile and said her words like honey, about her heart in Raven's hands, something always was destroyed.
As of now, the nearby tree near the Tower was breaking off branches.
"I love it when I can make you do that," Starfire said, reaching out and tucking a bit of flyaway behind Raven's ear. She blushed, and looked down. More tea, that was what she needed.
"I am so happy that we have given each other our hearts," Starfire continued.
"You keep saying that. Is it a Tamaranian thing, to give someone your heart?" Raven asked, worry clouding into her voice. She sipped more tea, and watched Starfire for her reaction.
"Yes. Of course. It is the way it has always been in Tamaran. You can have all sorts of lovers, you can even have spouses and harems, but to give your heart to someone, that is the bonding of the most intense level. It is like…um…what Earthlings call….lovemates?"
Seeing Raven's face, she stuttered again.
"No. Um, heartmates?"
"Soulmates?" Raven offered, to which Starfire's face lit up.
"Yes. Soulmates," she said.
Her voice took on a softer edge, and she moved closer to Raven, pressing her body close to hers. The warmth of the tea mattered not anymore; the heat between the two of them was burning almost, and it was growing hotter still by the very seconds that passed. Even the chill winds that threatening rains and storms could not extinguish this heat, kindled between the two lovers.
"Where do you keep my heart?"
That was a question Raven was not expecting.
"Where do I keep it?" Raven repeated, trying to make sense of the question. What exactly was Starfire talking about?
"Where do you keep my heart? Do you keep it within your own, or do you keep it within your head?"
This was getting more metaphorical by the second. Raven liked it, to some extent. It reminded her of all the love poems she had read, and all the love poems that were still there to read. And all the depictions of romance found in good books, and romance found in just okay books.
"I…um," Raven stuttered. "I haven't really thought about it."
"Think? So you keep it in your head?" Starfire knitted her eyebrows together, and Raven was worried she might have upset her. "I was hoping you kept my heart with yours. After all, that is where I keep yours." Her hand lifted, and she crossed her fingers over her breast. "Right side by side with mine." Pause. "I love you."
"And I love you, too," Raven assured her.
She finished the last of the tea, and then set the empty cup down on the steps of the Titans Tower. She would collect them both later when they went back inside. If it rained, maybe the cups would collect rain water, and they could drink that.
That sounds like something straight out of a Tolkien novel, Raven thought to herself.
"You haven't really given me your heart though," Starfire thought aloud.
At her words, the two empty tea cups shattered, ceramic shards flying dangerously through the air. Since Raven was the closest to them, the sharp shards cut her most, cutting open her skin effortlessly before falling down to the ground. Raven paid no notice to them.
"Why do you say that? I've told you before how much I love you."
"You can love someone and not give them your heart." She spun, turning to look Raven straight in the face. Green eyes matched violet ones once more. "On Tamaran, to give someone your heart is the most sacred thing a person to do. To declare it, privately or publicly, it is beyond compare. To do so, the two of the lovers must have mutual trust to each other. To hide nothing, to always seek each other out, even in the worst of times. Giving someone your heart is like giving someone your soul."
As Raven listened to this, she grew more and more worried.
To put so much trust into that…
She shuddered.
Starfire continued on, speaking in terms of what sounded like ancient wedding vows. Black spares of Raven's dark powers were forming around the edges of her soul, and her hair was lifting slightly with the force of her powers. Her skin was electric with the flowing magic.
Starfire made her feel like that often.
But now, it was something completely different.
"So Raven," Starfire said, taking both of her hands into hers. Raven glanced down at their hands, up into Starfire's face, back down and back up again. "Do you give me your heart?"
Starfire was smiling wide,
but Raven hesitated.
After everything she had said, Raven didn't think she could put that much trust into someone, even if she did love them. She faltered, her words not coming to her lips, and Starfire's entire being simply dropped. Tears started forming into her eyes.
"You…" streams of water were falling down her face, "you will not give me your heart?"
Starfire looked so hurt, broken and miserable, Raven was at a loss for words. Her lips moved, trying to speak, to form anything to say that would make this scene better. But nothing came, she could sonly sit there mouthing invisible words like an idiot.
Starfire only cried harder.
Raven put her hands up, stroking them down her arms, squeezing her shoulders lightly, wiping the tears away from Starfire's face. Luckily, Starfire didn't recoil from her touch.
"Starfire, please understand. I can't really give anyone my heart." The words were finally coming to her, but they didn't sound the best. That phrase didn't seem to do any good, and mentally Raven was kicking herself. Slapping herself across the face and scolding her own mind for being like this. "Please. Starfire, if I could I would. But I can't. You know I can't."
"Please," Starfire said coldly, standing up and walking back inside the Tower. "Say no more."
The night was far colder. Winds howled outside the Tower, and rain fell free from the mountainous black clouds that built forever within the massive expanse of the sky. Even Starfire, who was usually so immune to cold, shivered underneath her covers.
She bundled up in a fetal position, blankets and sheets clutched around her, desperately trying to get warm. Deep down, Starfire thought that this coldness was unnatural; that the chill she felt now was coming from inside of her rather than from the air around her. She shivered more.
The door to her room slid open, and Raven walked in, dressed in only her loose sleeping bodysuit, and nothing else. Starfire could hear the faint sounds of her feet stepping upon the floor, making their way towards her bed. The covers were pulled away, and Raven took up residence with her bed.
Starfire didn't mind.
Even if what she had said earlier had hurt her, she still loved her.
Raven's feet were cold, but her embrace was warm. Starfire didn't resist, but instead rubbed back up against her, happy that she was here. And she let Raven know so.
"Starfire?" Raven's voice hung in the air, after a long pause of quietness.
"Yes?" she whispered back to her.
"I—I have something for you."
Starfire turned around in the bed, facing Raven, curious as to what was going to be given. In the dark of the night, she saw Raven hold out her hand. A small trinket sat within her palm, and Starfire picked it up curiously. She twirled the small gift within her fingers. Her eyes glowed bright green so that she could see the object better.
It looked like a small crystal, a gem. It was of clear glass, with a darkened center behind all of the crystalized surfaces. Starfire pulled it closer to her face, inspecting it. Orbs of bright red were in the center, forming the shape of a heart, both anatomically correct and shaped in a cartoon-like fashion. It all depended on how you spun it, looked at it from one side. Surrounding the entire center were capillaries of red, streaking out like tiny lightning bolts.
"Is this what I think it is?" Starfire asked.
"It's made from my blood," Raven said bluntly.
She waited.
Starfire did not recoil from such a morbid gift, but instead took a liking to it. A smile shone across her green-lit face, and she clasped the gem within her fist. She pushed her fist to her chest, close to her heart, and looked at Raven with her eyes still glowing.
It was the most emotional Raven had seen Starfire. Not for the fact that her emotions were showing, but because there were so many of them dancing before her eyes, each the same and in turn different from one another. Raven read them all expertly, then decided she should be feeling instead of analyzing.
"It was a spell created long ago, for this very specific reason: love. A witchcraft art, if you will. You take some of your blood, and you use your powers to form in into a heart. For by logic, that blood that you give has passed through your heart. You give a pi….you give your heart so someone."
Raven nervously licked her lips, wondering if Starfire had become suspicious of her stuttered words.
She did not.
"My blood came from here," Raven said, holding up her hand and wagging her index finger. Starfire clasped Raven's wrist in her hand, and pulled Raven's fingers to her lips, kissing them where they bled still.
"So does this mean what I think it means?" Starfire kissed Raven's fingertips once more.
"Yes," Raven said, no hesitation at all.
Starfire let out an audible sob, tears sliding freely down her face and her grin bright and wide. "Oh, Raven," she said quietly, but could not hide the joy within her voice. "You have given yourself to me. You are mine."
"Yes," Raven agreed, her voice even and subdued. "I am yours. Just as you are mine."
"You are mine," Starfire repeated to her, over and over again. She spoke so happily that it could almost make Raven grimace. "You are mine," she kept repeating, as if to confirm it to herself.
Raven slept in Starfire's bed that night, cuddling with her and waking to kiss along each other's skin before falling back asleep with their sweet dreams of love and sexual pleasure. Raven had the smallest blight on her heart though, a dark spot of immense weight, like a black hole within the universe of her soul.
She had been lying when she said that she had fully given Starfire her heart. As she was about to have said, it was only a piece of the heart. But Raven shook her head, reasoning with herself. She had given her as much of her heart as she could, and even with that Starfire had the power to destroy her, to crush her, to break her heart into a million pieces.
It was enough, it had to be enough.
She loved her still, even if she withheld.
She was hers, and she was hers in return.
It would have to be enough.
Raven woke once again during the night, hearing the still steady rain and the far off thunder echoing through the atmosphere. She leaned over and kissed Starfire, before propping herself up and looking out beyond her, out towards the gray of the ocean and night sky. Intracloud lightning lit up the heavens, and illuminated the cathedral of clouds above.
"I am yours," Raven said once again.