Bumblebee went through all the footage, knew all there was to know from it - what they needed to work on as a team, where they went wrong, what was damaged and in need of repair.
She knew at what point each and every one of her teammates had fallen victim to Brother Blood's mind control, and she knew that none of Titans West had done so.
The only thing she didn't know was how.
How come the original Titans were all immune?
(She'd thought she could fight it - she'd been in the HIVE for months after all, and he hadn't gotten to her. She was Bumblebee, no one told her what to do. She suspected that there was some sort of ritual Brother Blood had done when he took over the HIVE to make the other students all controllable, and Bee had skirted around doing it, but no. There was no ritual. Because Brother Blood had waltzed into the T- Tower and hypnotized her entire team.)
(... but not Cyborg's team.)
It was starting to give her an inferiority complex.
Only starting to, though. Bee nipped that shit in the bud.
One of the things you learned early on when you made the jump from being a lone agent to a team leader, was that communication was key.
So she called Cyborg and asked him about it.
Turns out it was Raven's doing. Raven, who was a telepath and a sorceress with years of training in the mental arts.
That made Bee feel better.
Mostly.
She didn't see Cyborg (or the rest of his team) in person again until the whole Brotherhood of Evil affair.
He tried to dance with her afterwards, at the big party they threw in Titans Tower (the west one).
Bumblebee excused herself from the dance floor. She told herself it was because she had her team, and he had his, and she didn't want to make him question leaving his team again since she sure as hell wasn't stepping down as leader of her team. Yep, that was Bee; a career girl through and through, with no time to waste on a man. She was definitely not avoiding him because the last time she saw him in person she tried to take him apart with a scalpel. Nope.
She ended up ruminating in a corner, sipping punch and thinking about Cyborg, and the Brotherhood of Evil, and the upcoming Steel City Annual Budget Legislative Session (Titans East's budget proposal was due soon, and she hadn't started it yet since they'd been capital-B Busy). She should be happy—they just took down a gang of super-bads the size of the Justice League—but instead she mostly felt…
"You're giving me a headache."
At that utterly nonsensical statement, Bee turned from the window she wasn't really looking out of to see Raven. The goth girl was standing in the darkest shadows in the room, half-obscured by a support beam. The most visible feature on her face was a frown.
"Excuse me?" Bee said.
"Stop stressing about the future for one night and just enjoy the fact that we won this round."
In a blink's time, Bumblebee had her stinger pressed against the girl's pale throat. Raven didn't flinch.
"How'd you know what I was thinking about?" She demanded.
"A combination of personal experience and luck," Raven quipped. After a moment, something in her expression shifted. "And empathy," she added, almost gently. "No mind-reading involved, I promise." When Bee hesitated, she drawled, "You should probably lower that before one of the three Titans watching us right now decides to intervene." Slowly, Bee holstered her stinger and looked over her shoulder. Sure enough, Jericho, Kole, and Gnark were all staring intently at her. Jericho in particular looked stricken; he had his hand to his throat. Bumblebee's cheeks burned.
"Just a misunderstanding," she called, holding her palms up placatingly. The other teens seemed to accept this, and she turned back to Raven.
"Sorry about that. I can be a bit touchy about mind-readers, after…"
"Blood," Raven finished darkly. "Understandably."
They both shuddered, just the tiniest bit.
Great. Now Bee had given the girl a headache, threatened her with pointed objects, and reminded her of the creepy megalomaniac who'd once tried to dissect their mutual friend alive while they watched. She'd had no idea she was so much fun at parties.
A thin line of red drew her out of her self-deprecation.
"You're bleeding!"
Raven brushed her fingers over the cut, and held them up to inspect. "Yep."
Bee grabbed her hand—the one not smeared in blood—and tugged her towards the exit. "Let me patch that up for you."
To Bumblebee's surprise, Raven didn't protest, and they quickly left the noise and blaring lights of the party behind them.
Once they were away from the music and the mingling, Bumblebee felt her confidence return to her. This was more her element.
She led them unerringly to the med-bay. She'd never been inside this wing of the Tower, but she had the schematics memorized, of course.
When she gets to the med bay, she finds it's set up just like the one in Titans East Tower, which makes it no problem at all to spot the cabinet with the antiseptic and the bandages in it.
She goes to open the cabinet, and that's when she realizes she's still holding Raven's hand.
Bee lets go. "Sorry," she says.
Raven shrugs and half-floats onto the patient cot, crossing her legs as she does so.
Bee holds a cotton pad up to the antiseptic and tips the bottle just enough to wet the cotton. Normally, she wouldn't bother with antiseptic; soap and water were good enough. But she knew all the nasty places her stingers had been.
Bee tilted Raven's chin up with two fingers, and pulled down the girl's high collar. Gently, she daubed the cotton pad against the wound. Raven winced at the sting of the alcohol, the first genuinely human reaction Bee had seen her make all evening.
Bee finished sterilizing the cut, and made one more pass to wipe up the blood.
Then she threw the pad into the biohazard bin, got a bandage out of the cabinet, turned around, and stopped.
The cut was gone.
Bee blinked. The cut was definitely gone.
Suddenly, Bumblebee remembered an important piece of information from Raven's file: she had healing powers.
"Why'd you even come with me if you could just heal it yourself?"
Raven readjusted her collar.
"I couldn't think clearly back there," she said, hopping off the gurney. "Anyway, healing powers don't come with antiobiotics, and if your rogue gallery is anything like ours, you've stung some nasty stuff with those."
It was the second time Raven had echoed Bee's thoughts.
"Hey," Bee said suddenly. "I don't get to hang out with other girls very often, and you don't want to be here. Why don't we go out for drinks, or something? You pick the place, it'll be my treat."
Something gleamed in Raven's eyes. "I'd like that."
Author's note: I don't have the wherewithal to write the epic, kickbutt, action-packed romance story these two superheroines deserve, but it makes me a little sad to see that it's been 20 years and I can't find a single piece of fanfic or fanart that considers the possibility of these two as a couple. There's also very little fic/art of them interacting as friends, outside of the girl-titans as a whole.
It's a shame, because you can't convince me that Karen "There's not a man alive who can tell me what to do" Beecher isn't a lesbian. And Raven and Bee have both a common friend (Cyborg) and a common enemy (Brother Blood) and a common pastime (Sarcasm).
Anyway, thank you for reading my fic and coming to my TED talk, have a nice day, and maybe drop a review if you're so inclined~