A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

Raven and Lucien's conversation continues.

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“We’re not done here yet, and I don’t appreciate you trying to move me along like I’m some nuisance to be placated and then shuffled off to the side.”

Lucien blinks, taken aback by Raven’s rare display of irritation. Not quite anger, but definitely irritation. She’s even scowling at him now, narrowing her eyes as she crosses her arms over his chest. Sensing this sudden change in atmosphere, a cute little growl emanates from under the table, causing Lucien to lift a hand in that direction and call out warningly.

“Spot. Down boy.”

The Snow Leopard Cub returns to his second slab of meat while Lucien keeps his eyes on Raven. He doesn’t think that the heroine is likely to attack him here unless he does something really dumb, but letting his pet try and attack her would certainly constitute as such a thing. Regardless… he bows his head in Raven’s direction.

“My sincerest apologies. My father is something of a sore point for me, as I’m sure you could tell. Talking about him made me defensive… and short. Especially since I know exactly how someone like Robin will react if he discovers my father is Lex Luthor.”

He doesn’t fail to notice Raven’s reaction to that. She does her best to hide it of course, and she does a good job too… but his eyes are an amalgamation of Snow Leopard and Tamaranean sight now, and he’s getting really good at reading people with them. Of course, it also helps that his foreknowledge gives him a handy-dandy cheat sheet.

Raven experiences the smallest of flinches at his words and Lucien just knows that the half-demon girl is currently thinking about her own father and how her team might react if they learned the secret she’d been keeping from them. Having Lex Luthor as a dad was pretty bad, but not quite as bad as having a Demon Lord father who wanted to try and slip into their reality and conquer or destroy it or whatever.

How would Robin react to knowing who and what Raven truly was? Would their time together as teammates result in him standing by Raven’s side, or would he turn on her to try and protect reality itself from being torn asunder? Privately, from everything Lucien knows about the man who would eventually become Nightwing in the future… it’s the former, not the latter. But Raven doesn’t know that.

“… I understand.”

That’s it. That’s all he gets on that subject. But that’s okay, because Lucien isn’t supposed to know about Raven’s circumstances anyways. And frankly, he had no intentions of blackmailing her or anything like that. With how little specific knowledge he had about Raven’s circumstances and Demon Lord father, he wouldn’t want to step in it by overplaying his hand like that. Still, he’s managed to get Raven thinking about their parallels, about the fact that they both have such shitty fathers. That’s gotta be worth something.

After a moment, Raven just shakes her head and moves the conversation along.

“Robin aside, parentage aside, I have other questions for you. What are your intentions towards Starfire? She’s not just my teammate. She’s my… friend. I won’t have you hurting her.”

Ah. This was a little unexpected, but Lucien supposed he really should have seen it coming. Raven wasn’t just worried about the threat he might pose to their team, but the potential threat he posed to Starfire personally. Well, at least here Lucien could be completely honest.

“I want what’s best for Starfire, just like you do. I just want her to be happy. You’re the one who can sense emotions. You tell me… is she happy?”

He makes his tone pointed near the end there, giving Raven a meaningful look that has her narrowing her eyes at him in response. No, he hasn’t forgotten where he caught her. She’d been standing outside of Starfire’s door and while Lucien didn’t know exactly what her intentions were there, it certainly wasn’t a good look for her.

The way Raven looks at him makes it clear that even if she can’t read his emotions for some reason, she definitely picks up on how he’s subtly calling her out. Letting out a huff, she shrugs her shoulders.

“She is… happy, yes. But I’m concerned about why she’s happy. Tell me, what do you know about Starfire’s sister Blackfire?”

Ah shit. He had to tread carefully here.

“Starfire told me some things. She told me about some of their past together while we were following Kitten and Robin around the other day.”

Raven’s eyes widen in surprise at that.

“That fast…”

Ah, yeah. He supposed it was pretty fast in a vacuum. He’d drawn Starfire into the conversation about Blackfire though, prompting her first with a question about her being an alien princess and then following up when she’d mentioned her sister wanted to kill her. From there, Starfire had just been in a venting mood as they’d watched Robin and Kitten move around the city. Actually, that was a pretty good excuse. Shrugging, he gives Raven a crooked grin.

“I think she was just in a venting mood that day. One thing led to another and I guess she just needed to… let it all out.”

Raven nods sharply, her head jerking up and then down before she huffs.

“And I suppose ‘one thing led to another’ and you two wound up in beg together too, is that it?”

Lucien lets out a bark of laughter at Raven’s incredibly dry tone. The grey-skinned woman narrows her eyes at him for being amused and he just raises his hands in defense.

“Look, I’m not an idiot. I fully acknowledge that I’m the rebound. Starfire and Robin had some sort of… ‘will they, won’t they’ thing going on before I showed up, didn’t they?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Raven jerkily nods again in acknowledgment. Lucien just sighs.

“Yeah, it was kind of obvious, even to me. Robin got caught up in saving the city at all costs but didn’t do anything to try and protect Starfire’s feelings. He didn’t think about her at all until later when he saw us kissing. So I feel like… I get why Starfire’s mad. And I wasn’t about to reject her to spare Robin’s feelings either.”

It’s obvious from the look of discomfort on Raven’s face that this has officially gone into territory she’s not too sure of. But then, for someone like her, she’s probably had to be very careful not to experience anything too strong on the emotional spectrum. Happiness would be just as bad as anger. Lust and love would be just as bad as disgust and jealousy. Basically, she’d been suppressing and repressing her feelings and emotions for so long that talking about Starfire and Robin’s tiff was very difficult for her.

That doesn’t stop her from soldiering on through, however.

“… Robin is not a bad person.”

Lucien inclines his head in acknowledgment of that fact.

“Never said he was. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy necessarily. Bit self-sacrificing, bit uptight. Used to getting his way. But he’s a hero. All of you Titans are. I aspire to be like you all, to be as beloved by people who I’ve saved with my own two hands as you all are beloved by Jump City.”

Amusingly, that gets to Raven more than most things, causing her grey cheeks to color a little bit. Clearly gratitude is a weakness of hers and she doesn’t know what to think about all of the grateful people who truly love the Titans for their heroic efforts.

“Still, that doesn’t mean I have to standby while he’s making a jackass of himself. Nor does it mean I have to abandon Starfire just because he has some pry ephemeral claim or something. She needed someone and I was there for her. Now we’re… well, I don’t know what we are in truth. We’re having fun together though. She’s happy, I know that for a fact now because I just had an empath confirm it. And that’s all that matters.”

Raven huffs at having her confirmation thrown back in her face like that. Then, she frowns.

“Is it all that matters? She’s happy, yes… but is it the right kind of happiness? Her and her sister… Starfire has never hated Blackfire. Even throughout all of these attempts on her life, on our lives. I’ve felt what Starfire feels for her sister and it’s never been hatred. Pity. Despair. Longing. But never hatred. Now though… she’s taking advantage of Blackfire’s amnesia and I’m not sure it’s healthy for either of them.”

Lucien has to blink at that as he parses Raven’s concerns. He would have thought she would be more worried about Blackfire taking advantage of Starfire but… no? Then again, Raven was the empath in this situation. So clearly she saw different things then Lucien did when looking at Starfire and Blackfire. But… with her pointing it out like this, he could actually kind of see where she was coming from.

Amnesiac Blackfire still didn’t know what had happened between her and Starfire, nor between her and their people. She didn’t know she’d tried to kill Starfire during training, she didn’t know she’d been disowned and exiled for it, and she didn’t know she’d come back with a vengeance at the head of an invading army to conquer her own people and enslave her own sister.

Starfire was keeping all of that from her at the moment and under normal circumstances Raven might have been okay with it… but due to her empathy, the half-demon could likely feel what had been happening between them. Especially what had happened when they’d gotten back and all three of them had gotten into the shower together.

This was a delicate situation to say the least. Raven had a point, but she looked… disconcerted. Like she didn’t want to have to press said point. That made perfect sense all things considered. Raven was Starfire’s friend and Blackfire’s enemy. She didn’t want to have to go up against Starfire to defend an Amnesiac Blackfire at the end of the day.

“… What even is healthy, really?”

Raven tilts her head to the side at his sudden query.

“What?”

Lucien just shrugs.

“What is healthy? You’re worried that Starfire is taking advantage of Blackfire and I sort of see your point but I’ll tell you right now that the last thing Starfire wants to do is lord Blackfire’s amnesia over her and be on top. In fact, Starfire very much prefers to cede control to her sister… to try and make amends for their past. I think she knows Blackfire’s amnesia might not last forever and she hopes that the work she does now might be enough to sway Blackfire once her memories fully return.”

Raven’s face grows a little redder at that.

“I… I see. Yes, I had noticed that the emotions were… w-well, I could feel Starfire’s happiness had a tinge of… submission to it. But I assumed that she was only… I mean…”

Lucien grins, actually quite enjoying just how out of her depth Raven is. She’s kind of adorable like this. More than that though, he understands exactly what she’s trying to get at.

“I’m a blind spot for you, aren’t I? So you thought Starfire was only feeling submissive to me… because you’ve felt that before in the Tower when we’ve been together.”

Raven scowls as he just spells it all out like that, but after a moment she nevertheless nods in confirmation. Lucien just chuckles at that.

“Well having spent the day with both of them, I’ll tell you this much… it’s Blackfire who’s taking advantage of Starfire right now. But Starfire wants it that way. And so long as Starfire is happy, I’m happy.”

Raven doesn’t look so sure about that. Lucien can fully understand why. It’s still an incredibly fucky situation and even having been the one to engineer it, he can look at it and recognize how ridiculous this all has gotten. He doesn’t think it’s necessarily out of hand yet or he’d already have pulled the plug. Still… sensing an opportunity, he takes a step forward and thrusts out his hand. Raven startles, tensing up like she thinks he’s about to attack her, before relaxing when she realizes it’s just an offer.

“Tell you what. Let’s make a deal, right here and right now. You keep me apprised on how Starfire is feeling about all of this, and maybe about how Blackfire is feeling as well. And I promise to take everything you have to say into consideration. If Starfire is putting on a brave face and starting to feel differently then she is right now, I want to know about it immediately. If Blackfire is getting her memories back and plotting something, I want to know that too. Sound good?”

Raven looks from his face to his hand and back again, biting her lower lip for a moment as she studies him for deceit. He’s putting on his best earnest expression though, and in the end she stands no chance. Still, she hesitates.

“… What about Robin? What about your father being Lex Luthor?”

Having already been anticipating that question, Lucien just grins and shakes his head.

“Starfire already knows who I am. I told her the truth about my father. So if you have to tell Robin and the rest of the team, so be it. This and that are two completely separate things. No matter what, I will work with you to safeguard Starfire’s happiness, even if you tell Robin exactly who I am. Alright?”

Raven hesitates for a moment longer… but he knows he has her this time. He can tell that separating his parentage from Starfire’s happiness has appealed to her greatly. A bit of self-sacrificing that Raven can relate to given her own parentage. Finally, nodding sharply, she steps forward and takes his hand in her own, giving it a firm shake.

In that moment, Lucien has her in his power though she doesn’t know it. While the heroine does wear gloves… they’re fingerless. Meaning her grey skin is touching his pink skin right now and his power is active. Meaning… he’s got everything she has, everything she is. Of course, he doesn’t actually do anything to Raven like this. He makes zero changes to the half-demon heroine as they shake once and then let go of each other’s hands.

“I’ll hold you to that promise, Lucien Luthor. And… so long as you don’t hurt Starfire, I can keep your parentage a secret.”

Lucien grins crookedly at that, noticing but not pointing out the hypocrisy inherent in Raven making her silence inherent on Starfire’s happiness just after she’d been happy that he’d separated Starfire’s happiness from his secrets. But whatever, it mattered little.

“Trust me when I say that hurting Starfire is the last thing I want to do.”

He means it too. He wouldn’t have convinced Blackfire to go along with this crazy amnesia scheme if he wanted to hurt Starfire. Everything he was currently doing was centered on trying to give everyone involved in this torrid affair a happy ending. Well, except for Robin. But he would move on, right? Lucien was sure he’d heard about Nightwing having other lovers besides Starfire over the years…

Regardless, Raven just nods in response and then moves to the balcony slider and pulls it open. She gives him one more look before flying out into the night and leaving his apartment behind. Lucien watches her go for a moment and then walks over to close the slider before looking down at his hand with a big, shit-eating grin on his face.

Raven’s physiology was simply… magnificent. And utterly fascinating. He couldn’t wait to play around with it…

[X] Hold off for the time being until this mess with Starfire and Blackfire is a bit more settled - 83%