Chapter 2: The First Scan
The medbay’s light was a cold, clinical blue. It didn’t pulse with the living aurora of the suite; it throbbed with a steady, insistent rhythm that matched the headache building behind Raven’s eyes. The table beneath her was cool and unyielding, its surface holding her in a gentle, inescapable stasis field.
“This is unnecessary,” Raven said, her voice flat against the hum of the ship’s core systems. She stared at the ceiling, which was a lattice of crystalline fibers carrying liquid light. “I can sense it. That’s confirmation enough.”
Starfire moved between humming consoles, her fingers dancing over interfaces that responded to her touch with soft chimes. Her gown seemed absurdly out of place here. “Sensing is not knowing, Raven. We must understand the… the parameters. For her health. For yours.”
Her. The pronoun was a tiny hammer hitting the same nail over and over. Raven’s hand drifted to her abdomen. The warmth was constant now, a low-grade ember that had become part of her internal landscape in just a few hours. She hated that she was already getting used to it.
“Fine. Just do it.”
A console detached from the wall, floating over on silent repulsors. A ring of opaline light extended from its base, positioning itself over Raven’s torso. It began to spin, emitting a low, penetrating thrum that vibrated in her teeth.
“It will not harm you,” Starfire said, her eyes fixed on a rising holographic display. “It reads bio-auric signatures and genetic cohesion. It is a simple scan.”
Nothing about this was simple. Raven closed her eyes, seeking the dark. But the scan’s thrum was an invasive frequency, a buzzsaw against her mental shields. She felt it peel back layers, not of flesh, but of energy. It touched the ember. The ember flared.
A sound escaped her—a sharp, startled inhale.
“Raven?”
“It… reacted.” The words were gritted out. The warmth wasn’t just warmth now. It was a conscious pulse, a curious awareness brushing against the edges of her own. Like a minuscule soul-self, reaching out.
On the holographic display, data-streams in Tamaranean script cascaded. At its center, a three-dimensional image resolved. Raven forced her eyes open, turning her head.
There it was. A nebulous, shimmering form, nestled in the schematic of her own body. It glowed with two distinct, interwoven auras: one a deep, familiar amethyst, the other a brilliant, solar gold. Threads of light—empathic tendrils, genetic pathways—spooled out from it. One set connected deep into Raven’s own psychic matrix. The other reached out, unmistakably, toward the figure of Starfire standing beside the display, as if seeking her in the room.
“By X’Hal,” Starfire breathed. All the practiced diplomatic composure drained from her face, leaving pure, unfiltered wonder. A tremor went through her hands. “She is… perfect. See the aura synthesis? It is a complete fusion. Her life is drawing from your psychic energy and my photonic core. A true triad.”
Raven said nothing. The cold dread was still there, a glacier in her gut. But now, fissures were cracking through it, filled with a terrifying, unwanted awe. This wasn’t a tumor. It wasn’t a phantom. It was a construction. A tiny, impossible star, forged from their mutual bond and spinning in the darkness inside her.
Starfire reached a hand toward the hologram, her fingers passing through the light. A single, luminous tear traced a path down her orange cheek. “Hello, little one.”
“Don’t.” Raven’s voice was cracked glass.
Starfire looked at her, the joy in her eyes dimming just a fraction. “Raven?”
“Don’t talk to it. Don’t… personify it yet.” Raven pushed herself up on her elbows, the stasis field disengaging with a soft sigh. The hologram flickered. “This is a biological incident. A cosmic error.”
“She is not an error!” Starfire’s voice rang with a warrior’s certainty, sharp in the sterile air. “Look at the coherence of the matrices. This is a viable conception. She is developing at an accelerated rate, but she is healthy. Our bond is sustaining her.”
Our bond. The marriage bracelet on Raven’s wrist seemed to grow heavier, warmer. She swung her legs off the table, the floor cool against her boots. She felt exposed, her innermost reality displayed as public data. “How accelerated?”
“The scan suggests a gestation not of nine human months, but perhaps… four. Maybe five.” Starfire wiped her cheek, her gaze still locked on the fading hologram. “Tamaranian hybrids adapt. They are resilient.”
Four months. She was two months from nineteen. She could be a mother before she could legally drink on most of Earth. A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. She strangled it.
“Garfield.” The name fell into the space between them, leaden and ugly.
Starfire flinched. The reality of Earth, of the tower, of their friends, crashed back into the medbay. The wonder on her face melted into profound guilt. “Oh. Beast Boy.”
“Yes. Beast Boy.” Raven stood, her knees steady, her insides a whirlpool. “My boyfriend. Who has no idea his girlfriend is married and pregnant with someone else’s child. Someone else who is also, technically, now her wife.”
“I… I did not think…”
“That’s the problem. No one thought.” Raven hugged her arms around herself. The ember pulsed, a soft, calming rhythm, as if trying to soothe her. It made her want to scream. She took a sharp, controlled breath. “You will not tell anyone. Not Cyborg, not Robin. No one. Especially not him.”
Starfire’s expression crumpled. “But Raven, they are our family. They will wish to help. To support—”
“Support what?” Raven’s low voice cut through her. “Support the freakish accident? The thing that makes no sense? Robin will see a mission complication. Cyborg will run a thousand scans. And Garfield…” Her voice finally broke. She saw his face, his wide, green, trusting eyes. The joke he’d make, trying to cover the hurt. The betrayal that would eclipse it. “He will be destroyed. I will not do that to him. Not until I understand what this is.”
She gestured wildly at her own stomach, then at the now-dark holographic display.
Starfire was silent for a long moment. The ship hummed. The consoles pulsed. The medbay felt like a cage.
“This is not just yours to keep secret, Raven,” she said finally, her tone quiet but firm. “She is mine, also. I have a right to speak of my daughter.”
The word ‘right’ hung in the air. Raven turned, her cloak whispering against the floor. She met Starfire’s gaze, letting a fraction of the storm inside her bleed into her eyes—the dark, chaotic power that was her birthright. “You have a wife who is asking you for time. Who is asking you for discretion. This isn’t about rights. It’s about survival. My survival. Until I can… process this. Until I can find a way to even look at myself in a mirror again.”
The raw vulnerability in Raven’s words, so seldom voiced, seemed to disarm Starfire’s defiance. Her shoulders slumped. The warrior princess faded, leaving just a scared, young alien far from home, tied to a reality she never intended.
“What do we do?” Starfire asked, echoing Raven’s own question from the suite.
Raven looked down at the bracelet, then at the spot where the hologram had been. The ember glowed. A tiny, undeniable else.
“We go home,” Raven said, the decision solidifying as she spoke it. “We act normal. And you give me time to figure out how to stop this from burning my entire life to the ground.”
She walked out of the medbay, leaving the bioluminescent glow and the scent of ozone behind. Starfire didn’t follow immediately. She stood in the quiet, one hand resting on the console where the image of their daughter had shone, her other pressed against her own heart, feeling the ghost of that golden empathic thread stretching out after the retreating figure in the hall.