There were several things circling through Raven's thoughts the past few days.
Now that it had been a few days since the gathering, how should she repurpose the barbecue pit into something multipurpose?
What should her approach be when advertising her new meditation programs and sanctuary amenities? Her sanctuary was essentially ready for business.
Who could she recruit, if any, to assist her in these new endeavors? She never had been the enterprising type.
When should she next contact her mother, Arella?
Was there going to be another letter delivered Gar-style? The last publicly shared one was very heartfelt and seemed an appropriate final sendoff despite her not getting any targeted treatment. Perhaps that was the intention.
Will she see projection Gar ever again?
And what was that subdued tension between Robin and Starfire?
As she lay on her bed, she thought back to how Starfire reached out to her in her former apartment on her last birthday.
"Maybe I should reach out this time," she contemplated. She lay silent for a few seconds before remembering that projection Gar had not made an appearance in a while to give his two cents.
Taking the initiative, Raven telekinetically unlocked a safe and summoned her communicator.
"Raven?!" Starfire cried out with a grunt. Raven was worried for a second until she heard Traci Thirteen grunt in the background, along with the vile, guttural sounds of Plasmus. Titans on a mission, as it should be. "Wonderful to see you in communication!"
"I'll make this succinct," Raven uttered. "Once you're freed up, want to have a... er... girls' chat?"
Her eyes were not on the transmission, but Raven could hear the beaming bolts. Starfire had just attacked Plasmus.
"That would be stupendous!"
"Incoming!" Raven heard Robin shout. Then, there came the familiar high-pitched shriek of his ammunition disc detonating, followed by a massive splattering of what she deduced to be Plasmus parts.
A couple of hours later, Starfire had settled in her room and called Raven back. They started catching up.
Raven had been putting off her burning question. She didn't call her best friend just to interrogate her. But a few questions in and she felt it was now appropriate timing.
"Can I ask you something about last week's barbecue?"
Starfire, who had been laying on her bed on her back, flipped around.
"Of course."
"You and Robin." Raven saw the little flinch on Starfire's cheeks. "I think you know where I'm going with this."
Starfire looked up. Raven guessed she was checking her bedroom door. Perhaps to make sure it was closed.
"I concede in my secret." Raven grew confused and curious. She let Starfire elaborate. "You and the Doom Patrol were not the only ones delivered letters from friend Gar."
Raven couldn't help but furrow her eyebrows.
"You've been keeping it secret from Robin, and me? But why?" Raven racked her brains. "... Gar said so?"
Starfire nodded. Raven sensed she was opting to speak less, presumably to avoid eavesdroppers.
"It arrived to me sneakily by way of a snake..." Starfire shuddered. "... that emerged from the bathroom sink. Thank X'Hal Silkie warded it off. It was unsightly."
"If you don't mind me asking..."
The hues of red that appeared on Starfire's face piqued Raven's curiosity. What could Gar have possibly said?
"Oh, very well, Raven... Friend Gar sent me words of encouragement. And I do the quote, 'to go for it if my heart is set on it, because while love lasts, lives do not.' He ended it with the 'Yours sincerely' but with a lot of the letter S's, and an adorable drawing of that feisty snake."
Raven had to admit that those words made even her swoon.
"Why's he saying all this to you?"
Starfire's voice dropped to a whisper.
"He has been urging me to propose to boyfriend Robin."
Raven let out an audible gasp. Starfire slammed a fluffy pillow against her T-communicator to muffle it.
She lifted the pillow up and examined her friend's facial expression. Her mouth was agape and her eyes were wider than the time she saw her immersed in a really good book. She also noticed, behind Raven, ripped pages floating to the ground, as if her telekinesis had caused it to implode.
"That's nice of him." Raven had managed to poise herself.
Starfire's nod was fast and eager. "It is, yes? It reminds me of the time we were discussing Tamaranean engagement and marriage customs, and how the physiology of the person proposing does not matter. He'd been secretly insisting me in jest ever since."
Raven blinked. "How come I never heard about these customs?"
"Because you never bounced engagement ideas to me."
The look of bewilderment on Raven's face alarmed Starfire. Raven let the silence between them simmer.
"... Gar asked you for engagement advice?"
"The tone in which you asked that question suggests that I may have let the Gludelflog out of the Satchenshog..."
Images of one of Gar's letters entered her mind. She could even hear projection Gar read it to her - though he remained absent.
I don't want you to regret us never tying the knot. There is NOTHING I regret between us. Nothing. Having said that, I want you to have one less regret because of waiting.
Raven cracked a smile.
"You know what, Star? If you want to propose to Robin, I'd love to help you."
Starfire matched Raven's smile, and then some.
"I have tabled one idea... and I do not mean the furniture. An idea that involves an occasion that means a lot to me and Robin -"
Their talk was disrupted by a loud barking whoosh on Raven's end.
"Starfire?" On Starfire's end, Blue Beetle started knocking on her door, hearing the whooshes. "What's that?"
"That would be my first ever batch of customers," Raven answered, waving at her first group as their hovercraft landed. She noticed then that Starfire had ceased transmission, presumably in a hasty manner to assure her teammates - especially Robin - that there was nothing going on.
She realized, at that moment, thinking of Starfire's proposal and seeing her visitors coming, that she had so much to look forward to.
The next month had kept Raven busy.
On one end, she was working out the kinks of her new engagement. Being the ever-introvert, she had structured her sanctuary sessions so that she did not have to always be in direct contact with her guests.
"Admittedly, there were mixed reactions to my... uh... services," Raven reported as she finished her waffles on the grey countertop. "That's why I was in a long conversation with Traci Thirteen earlier. She and Jinx will stop by and test run a new, more comprehensive yet hands-off session."
Sitting opposite her, Robin nodded in between gulps of his protein-rich lunch. Speaking of engagement, she had been secretly helping Starfire plan out and now execute her proposal. After a month, it was time, and her first course of action was to pay a visit to Titans Tower, Jump City.
"I'm stoked for you, Raven, seriously," he uttered casually.
Raven studied the silence that followed. She could tell by the way Robin had his lips pushed against each other that he was wanting to say something but had decided against it.
"Are you okay?"
Robin set his utensils down and looked at her. He was always masked to her, which after all these years of friendship, Raven had imagined his blue eyes and their various expressions. Right now, she imagined stern.
"It's not my place," he spoke, "but why didn't you want to tell us about your Gar hallucinations?"
Raven was taken aback. "They were a by-product of Doctor Fate's spell combined with my projection magic, not hallucinations. And, because, Doctor Fate. He was helping me navigate through the grief as a magic user. I wasn't ready to share that. To be fair, though, there were rough moments that made me want to just treat those projections as if they were really him."
Robin nodded. "I was - am - just worried. It does seem like it's gotten better, which is why I felt I could ask you this. If I seem intrusive, I apologise."
Raven fiddled with her glass of orange juice, looking at the reflection.
"No apologies necessary... But since you asked me a question, I have one for you."
The eyes she was imagining on Robin at that moment was a slight widening, perhaps of curioslty.
The past month, Raven had been thinking about Gar's letters to Starfire, the Doom Patrol, and even Arella. Cyborg had been pouting about his lack of letters, so that left Robin. And that was when it all clicked for her.
"Did Gar get you to get that sanctuary for me?"
Robin did not seem to waver, but she was well aware that he was a master of not giving much away.
"What makes you say so?"
Raven looked at Robin's reflection on her glass of OJ
"A calculated hunch. I am not privy to any riches he had. I have a slight idea of yours, though, but sorry if it's a wild and wrong assumption."
On her glass, Raven watched Robin lift a hand, about to say something. He seemed to be nodding, though the distorted reflection made her second guess. She then noticed Starfire walking into the room. She looked up at her. It was time.
On Starfire's invitation, the couple had spent that late afternoon on a specially romantic date curated partially with Raven's input, while the half-demon was on her separate way in secret, setting up the stage for the proposal.
From the rooftop ledge of a nearby building, Raven conjured up a pathway upon spotting Starfire and Raven on the preplanned spot.
Starfire giggled while Robin, holding the bouquet of roses that he had gifted her, looked bewildered. Pedestrians watched on in curiosity. Raven had created some kind of barrier so as to leave the couple's moment unperturbed.
"Uh... These stairs are encased in Raven's telekinetic energy," he said looking around the street for his former teammate.
Starfire grabbed his hands, dropping the flowers, as she looked into his masked eyes, piercing into his soul. Robin looked at her, finding her especially beautiful today.
"Do you know the significance of where we are in this very moment?" she asked.
He looked around again, and chuckled fondly. Raven loved that her best friend could bring that out of him.
"Of course," he answered. "It's where we first met. The both of us, and all of our best friends... And where you first kissed me. It was a non-romantic kiss, but oh well."
From afar, Raven couldn't make out what they were saying, but judging by their shared laughter, it was going well.
"On the subject of our friends," Starfire continued, "They have told me about this lovely phenomenon in the Earth animal kingdom called the pair bond. Beavers, in particular, scientists could not understand how they came to fall in love.
"But, they do. And, when they do find their mating soul, they bond for life. The beavers, they know when they have found someone special. And, akin to those wondrous, dam-constructing creatures, so have I known as well."
Robin gasped as realization was sinking in as hard as how Starfire had crash landed on to Jump City all those years ago. Gasps from what grew into a crowd were heard as well, as well as eruptions of premature tears.
Raven watched as Starfire got on one knee, asked Robin what must have been the proposal, and Robin's mixture of confusion, and increasing jubilation as he accepted her ring.
The crowd roared in resounding congratulations.
The newly engaged shared their laughter once more as they helped put their rings on. Starfire looked up at a building in the distance, and gave a wave.
With joy in her heart, Raven conjured her shroud, and transported the two out of there as they expressed their thanks to the joyous crowd. And, once she had done that, she teleported herself out of the scene, her mission accomplished. She took immense honor in having a big hand in her best friends' big moment, especially since Gar had a big indirect hand in it. She never thought beaver facts could play such a romantic, full-circle role, but, as Gar had indeed told her once, a pair bond is forever.
"We did it, Gar," she uttered to herself, on her way back to her new residence.