"Where's Raven?" asked Cyborg the next morning at breakfast.
"I haven't seen her either," said Robin. "She's probably still in her room."
"Oh dear," said Starfire. "Usually if Friend Raven is not out of her room by this hour, she may not emerge for days. I shall go see her."
But before Starfire could reach the door, Raven entered. Her eyes were bloodshot, and had circles under them. Her grey skin was discolored. She looked exhausted and almost feverish. Her face was slightly swollen and her hands were shaking.
"Raven," said Robin carefully, "is everything . . . ok? You look, um, pale-er."
She looked up, her hair across her face. A tiny smile quirked one corner of her mouth. "Oh, everything is ok. It's more than ok. Starfire . . ." Raven turned. "I'd like to talk to you after breakfast about some . . . girl talk."
Much later.
"Friend Raven," said Starfire, "This is not the girl talk. This is . . . serious. I do not think that I am the best person to help you. I - I do not know anything about earthly emotions. I cannot even understand Robin."
"Don't be ridiculous. Don't forget, I've been you. Well, sort of. You can easily display joy, boundless confidence, and righteous fury, to fly, fight, and throw your starbolts. I've done it myself that time we switched bodies," said Raven.
"On my planet, we live by our emotions, not our intellect. From our earliest age we are encouraged to feel our passions. It is from them that we draw our strength and our power. You have been trained from birth to do just the opposite. I do not see how . . ."
Raven interrupted. "Starfire - when you call up your righteous fury in combat, you don't just spray your starbolts out of your hands constantly. You can call on your power and hold it in. Whenever I start to feel things . . . my power gets . . . loose." She folded her arms protectively over herself.
"But I . . ."
Raven looked down at the floor, and spoke again. "Starfire. I mourned my mother for the first time last night. She's been dead since I was a young child."
"Oh Raven, you have been carrying that pain around for all this time?" Starfire's emerald eyes welled with tears.
"I finally let it out last night in the Failsafe Room. It went pretty well, actually." She looked up. "I only scorched the walls a little. Listen, I'm a pretty disciplined student. I know that if I could just find a starting place . . ."
She stepped forward and caught the taller girl by the shoulders. "Please help me. I'm sixteen years old. And I don't know how to feel."
Starfire looked into Raven's Amethyst eyes and said, "I will try."
At Raven's insistence, the two girls walked down into the core of Titan Tower, returning to the Fail Safe room. Starfire examined the burn marks on the walls from Raven's mourning the previous night. She rubbed at one.
"This is not as bad as I thought. It is just a little soot. Why are the walls not scored?"
"I don't know. It may be the sigils you guys put up to keep Trigon out. Or it may be that after all this time, my pain over my mother's death has gotten smaller."
"Oh no, Friend Raven, here is lesson one - when you lock feelings away, they get stronger, not weaker."
"Ok. So - what do we do now?"
"When you taught me to meditate, you spoke of finding your center, yes?"
"Uh huh."
The both sat down on the floor.
