Dedicated to CalliopeMused. If you ever see this: you rule forever. Raven's love for oriental food is a tribute to you.

The takeout carton was warm. The common room was empty. Raven perched it carefully on the coffee table and set herself up for her meal.

The fight against the shapeshifting creature had been cut almost laughably short after Beast Boy reached the Recycle Center and they managed to turn the thing into flesh and blood. A complex police investigation was underway to determine what the creature was, which took some of the weight of investigative responsibility from Robin, leaving them free to go home and enjoy the mostly crimeless city for a while. Robin hadn't even felt the need to reprimand Beast Boy for his absence.

On the other hand, Beast Boy was such a compact, unyielding mass of sadness and angst once he did appear that Robin might as well have torn him a new one or three. He hadn't even insisted on pizza afterwards, though their last attempt to subdue the creature was a success almost entirely thanks to him. Questions concerning Terra were met with determined silence and avoidance.

To her empathic powers, he'd felt as grimly resolute as he had just after the messenger drone from the Doom Patrol had broken into the tower. It was a far cry from the bone-deep joy he'd been exuding from being home after spending the better part of a year away, even different from the more familiar righteous grit she'd begun to sense in him during said year. It was foreign to the very nature of the Beast Boy she knew, and she didn't like it.

Thanks to his shortness, none of them needed to be empaths to know something was wrong with Beast Boy. But the chase had been exhausting and even Starfire had agreed that they'd look over the problem with renewed eyes after some rest and maybe a good night's sleep, so they had gone straight back to the tower after the creature was secured and transported away. They even left each other to their own devices for dinner because Cyborg was too tired to cook and the general disposition too somber to wrangle everyone into a big family meal.

Because while he was unquestionably the largest blip in the radar, it wasn't just Beast Boy. All of them were affected by the changes. Cyborg was waxing philosophical about the forward march of technology that had sunk video rental stores while they weren't looking, Starfire was concerned about rekma (the drifting, Raven recalled), which had prompted Robin, easily the most adaptable of the five, to have a long talk with her on the roof. Judging by the gentle hum of content she could sense from up there, it was going fairly well, but there were occasional flares of fear and uncertainty enough to keep her on her toes.

Raven considered herself only slightly less adjustable than Robin. Self-awareness derived from meditation and a hotline to her own emotions helped her deal better, and while she had her own pondering to do, her melancholy would not be overwhelming: the bookstore had been a pleasant constant, one she'd been glad to find when she first came to Jump City, and she would mourn its loss. She'd been disquieted about her own variation of rekma over the past several months, because their missions didn't always involve being together, and at times she'd felt convinced they'd be too far changed after their world tour to fit back together. But here they were back at the T shaped tower out in the bay, somehow even more seamlessly entwined than before, and if the machinations of an entire board of criminals handpicked by a brain couldn't break up the Titans, she had her doubts about time being any more successful.

Head heavy with dark thoughts and contradictorily buoyant emotions, Raven had retired quietly to her room to ponder until her stomach remembered dinner, and cooking was still not her forte. So she'd melted through the shadows to her favorite Chinese place (still there, thankfully) for a late night meal.

The wontons were crunchy, the noodles of her chicken Lo Mein flavorful, and she alternated between their vinegar-and-salty taste and the breaded vegetables.

The food was hot and bracing. The common room was quiet and empty.

Sweet and sour.

As the moon began to rise to the middle of the sky later that evening, Raven sensed the cloud of discontent moving to and fro about the tower. The stress levels associated to being a cape in charge of a city full of people made insomnia relatively common to all of them, particularly when alarms could go off at any hour of the day or night. Ordinarily, however, only Robin and herself would be awake late into the night, Robin filing or compiling or analyzing, Raven enjoying a time when all the nearby minds were quiet and she could let some of the more taxing mental precautions go.

Beast Boy and his cloud wandered down her hallway, slowing slightly when he passed her door but never stopping. He went by again not too long afterwards, heading for the main hall and the elevator shaft, probably meaning he'd be heading for his rocky outcropping out by the shore. Raven counted fifteen minutes before melting through the floor.

He was in his preferred seat, looking up at the sky. This far from the city, with the lights from the tower off for the night, it was alive with stars.

She picked her way carefully across the rocks, but even her silent stride was detectable to animal ears.

"Hey Rae." She didn't answer, coming to sit in her own spot just to the right of him. She gazed up at the sky herself, and Beast Boy turned slightly to her with a deep, slow exhalation. "I like it when I can see the stars."

"They do help put things in perspective."

"I guess. We're here all puny, they're out there, kilometers away…" There was a hint of melancholy in his talk of distance. Raven looked back up, sensing it a wrong time to try digging through his soul, but still the moment was fragile and heavy with his longing for things vast and nameless. Her eyes traced the subtle lines of the constellations she could recall, and caught at the sight of a moderately bright star, one she remembered was named Alpheratz.

She moved her shoulders back slightly in a jolt of recognition. "Andromeda"

"Huh?"

"There." She thought nothing of drawing closer, matching their perspectives so she could point out the bright pinpricks of light. She connected the stars with her finger. One had to use a little imagination to replace the simple lines for the image of a young woman bound to a rock, but Beast Boy's problem was usually his excess of it.

"Oooh." A pause. "Let me guess, the monks on Azarath?" It was Raven's typical answer when she was asked why she knew this or that, despite never having gone through any earthly school system.

"…no."

"Woah, really?"

"Azarath is another dimension. The stars there are completely different." In the light of day, idling in the common room with all their friends, she would have left it at that. But the significance of this rocky outcropping always brought out her talkative streak, even if what passed for talkative in Raven would have been near muteness in Beast Boy. "When I decided to come to Earth, I was warned that no amount of reading would help me with cultural norms and personal interaction. They aren't something you can learn theoretically. It was a…jarring thought. But I had to do something. So I tried reading about other particular Earth things, to create a sense of familiarity." What she really meant was that she'd wanted constants to hold on to so being in an entirely different dimension wouldn't panic her into destroying the world, but Beast Boy nodded like he understood. "I found authors that the monks hadn't considered very formative, like Lovecraft. I knew of poetry from Poe, but not his stories. I read those. I even gave King a try."

"King? As in Stephen King?"

"If I say yes, will you stop looking so smug?"

He smiled, just the slightest bit contrite. "It's just, whenever I catch you, it's books with really freaky names in Latin or authors smug Lit professors would get giggly over. Not mainstream horror stuff, and definitely not Stephen King."

She shrugged, smiling slightly at the implied compliment. "I thought It was…OK." Even if she did prefer a more subtle art in what she read, she would always be a little partial to posses of misfits, banding together against malignant, interdimensional horrors.

"Really!? Dude, we have got to watch that for movie night next!" He positively beamed. Raven forcibly shoved away the thought of reminding him the video rental market was down for the count. "But you haven't finished the thing about the stars."

Oh, right. She nodded in acquiescence, but let the silence stretch between them for a moment longer, contemplative. "It's the little things that make you feel like you're here or there. Smells. Sounds. I thought about looking up and seeing entirely different stars…so I learned about constellations." But then she'd discovered the brightness of modern cities cancelled out their lights, and she'd never had the chance to test that knowledge. Not until she'd been roped into taking up residence in a giant T out on the ocean, and suddenly the sky had come alive with stars she'd known of, but never seen until then.

Beast Boy's entire body shifted slightly towards her just a few more degrees, his eyes wide and eager. "I...I totally, totally get where you're coming from. I mean, I lived in the city enough to know it, but I spent most of my childhood in Amazon jungles, then in Congo, so that's a totally different universe, kinda. I was used to the animal sounds and smells like moist earth, so coming back to the smog and the cars and the random ambulance in the middle of the night…I was really glad when Rita and Mento sprung me free. The ship had different sounds, but they grew on you faster."

Raven didn't ask why Beast Boy always referred to Mento by his alias and the rest of the Doom Patrol got first name basis. She didn't need to. Not when the woman who'd birthed her was 'Arella' in her mind more than she ever was 'mother'.

It was a thing between them. The thing. She and Starfire bonded over a literal trading of bodies, Robin shared her drive and discipline, Cyborg over patient, delicate acts of creation. But her and Beast Boy, despite their vastly different personalities, shared a deep understanding of the fibers of the other's being. They didn't need to swap life stories to feel a profound sense of comprehension when they were in each other's presence, even with the jokes and evasions (though Raven was becoming less and less prone to evading, particularly after almost losing all of them), and when they did, they often discovered how their fundamental fractures, the blows life had given them, felt the same. In the other's skin, they'd see, here and there, the same scars.

"So, Rae. Andromeda was this greek lady who did stuff, right?"

Raven almost chuckled. "You learned Greek Mythology from the cereal box too?"

"Nah. Sticker things inside the candy wrappers."

"Wow." She deadpanned, more for comedic effect, and got to hear Beast Boy's shrill laugh.

"Yeah, I'm totally a scholar." He kicked his legs, boot toes just grazing the water. "Seriously though, what'd she do?"

"She was the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia. She's there." Raven pointed out the M-shaped line of stars that was Cassiopeia. "Cassiopeia bragged that Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids (that's sea nymphs, Beast Boy), so they asked Poseidon to punish her. He sent the sea monster Cetus, who'd be there, only he's a little harder to see from here." Cetus was more visible to their region of the sky in other times of the year.

"Huh." He let the toes of his boots sink just a fraction into the water "So Seto killed everyone?"

"Cetus. And no. The king asked for help, and the Oracle of Ammon told him the monster would leave his kingdom alone if he tied Andromeda to a rock and offered her as sacrifice..." Her words tapered off at a sudden transformation beside her. Beast Boy remained very still, but his emotions dimmed abruptly and changed, the delicate happiness from their jokes and jabs fading away like a candleflame on the wind. She saw him lift his boots, off and away from the water. Felt him retreat.

Raven could have slapped herself. Of course. In his state of mind, everything would relate back to Terra. Especially women sacrificing themselves on rocks to save cities from evil monsters.

All her worry, all her carefully dispensed care. And she'd been the one to jostle the healing limb.

She didn't move, even as the space between them, smaller than a hand's span, began feeling like a deep, endless chasm. Beast Boy even turned fractionally, his body no longer facing her. She didn't even consider saying she was sorry, not because of any misplaced sense of pride, but because even apologizing was an act of violence, forcing him to admit that she knew what was on his mind, forcing him to admit that it was on his mind.

She stayed on the shore, still and silent, until he got up and left. It was a petty sort of offering, letting him be the one who left, but she would offer it to him. She had nothing else to give.

Petty triumphs, carefully concealed care.

Sweet and sour.