STARR FUERTA, D9 :: FIN

When you were still tiny, no more than five years old and brimming with boundless possibility, you were put in time-out for darting your fingers through a candle's flame, feeling the kiss of an almost-burn sear at your skin. You couldn't understand why you had been in trouble for being drawn to the flame, the glowing spark that looked like your soul always felt, and as you sat on the little stool with a vacant expression one of the caretakers knelt next to you with a too-serious face and gave you a stern lecture of fire is dangerous, Starr. You shouldn't play with it.

But light was always so much more than a plaything for you. No, it was an embodiment of the star-stuff that you were made of finally brought outside your skin and shining so bright that no one could deny it the way they always seemed to deny you. It wasn't so much that you liked to play with fire as it was that you liked to get lost in its beauty, despite the danger of it. Years later the skin of your hands is pockmarked with burn scars and the punishment of time-out has grown into the greater penance of being locked into a shimmering pair of handcuffs when anyone catches you toying with the burning wicks of candles or the bootlegged fireworks that some of the boys sometimes steal off the trains shipping out to the Capitol. Their only mistake is that most of the time they give Cy the key, and he usually lets you free within a few minutes with rolling eyes and an easy laugh that you should have known better than to practice your art when there were people watching. Still, the threat of punishment has shaped you over the years, leading to an ever-present carton of cigarettes in your front pocket ever since you were fifteen simply because they were the only fire that you didn't get in trouble for creating. Most of the time you don't even smoke them, the rich thickness of the vapor burning hot and rough over your tongue, but rather sit and watch with fascination as they smolder away to nothing, glowing red and orange and everything in between, a whole spectrum of light as they consume their existence and float upwards into the sky.

But the source of most of the cloudy scars that pepper your hands is actually another constant, little matchbooks swiped from the kitchen cabinets and the tables of the fancy restaurant in the square that Cy and Robin always scrape up the funds to treat you to on your birthday (you don't have a birthday. Not really. What you celebrate is the day that the Matron opened up the door to find you cold and wailing on the front porch, maybe two years old and maybe not, but the number has stuck ever since). When you sit in moments of idleness it's an automatic response for you to pull them from your pocket and strike them one by one, watching them burn to curled black slivers until the flame reaches where you've pinched one between your thumb and forefinger and gives way to the white-hot stab of a burn across your skin. You don't mind, though. There's a sort of exquisite, rare beauty in the flash of pain, a rare gradient of color when you watch your skin go from pale-white to vibrant-red. Sometimes Cy looks at your hands and cringes and for a moment you feel bad, remembering that he's gone through far more flames than one person should ever be close to, but part of you knows that he would never say anything. He understands, he and Robin both do, they understand that you're made of shooting stars and the fire at the center of the universe and that this is the only way you can remember yourself sometimes.

The others don't understand, and if they do, they ignore it. Robin told you once that you shouldn't let people take advantage of you, but heeding his order has always been hard because your belief in the world is so pure that the deepest part of you still wants to think that everyone has your best interests at heart. It didn't take long for the other children in the home to figure out that they could convince you to do just about anything and you would comply with a starlight-smile and a true happiness sitting in your bones at the prospect of pleasing someone, and so much of your time was spent in the time-out corner or sent to your room without supper, consequences of stealing cookies for this little girl or for Tarzan-swinging from the living room curtains because that little boy told you it would be fun. It's not that you can't think for yourself, but life always seemed a little smoother when you let someone else make your decisions for you.

Even now, it's hard to not go through life letting the nearest person guide your actions - it's one of the reasons you're so thankful that most of the time the nearest person is Robin, with his strong sense of justice and the bone-deep knowledge that he, unlike most of the world, really does have your best interests at heart. He is your conscience and defender, forever ready to stand up for you since you never really grasped the concept of standing up for yourself, too averse to conflict to do anything other than blithely drift along life's current. Through the years he has become an integral part of you, an extension of yourself that helps you function in a world that's a little too dark for someone with the stars in their blood to find their way. Where his face is all care-worn sleep-shadows and stark angles yours is something softer, brighter, dimpled cheeks and wide eyes and a full-lipped smile beaming constantly out at the world. People always wonder how the two of you are friends, and if you could find the words to make them understand you would tell them it's because you're the parts that each other are missing, far better together than you could ever be apart.

One day, you like to think that you'll outgrow the bonds of gravity and fly back to the stars from whence you came. You were never meant to be someone who stayed on the ground (that much is evidenced in how often you stumble and go pitching forward and Cy has to catch you before you break your nose again, resulting in yet another unsightly bump along the bridge), and when you dream, it is always of flying. You have painted the tiny bedroom you share with Raven into a would-be galaxy, deep-blue walls and tiny shards of shattered mirrors hung from bits of fishing line on the ceiling that make the whole room blaze when the sun rises. Last year for your birthday Robin managed to get you a little packet of tiny plastic stars that you stuck to the ceiling above your bed and nearly shrieked with glee when he turned the lights off and they flickered to life, painting everything with a phosphorescent glow. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, you almost cried, but the fire behind your eyes was that of happy tears, because he understood the simple thing that no one else has ever seemed to grasp. You don't belong here, Starr Fuerta, Starfire, but there are things about this world that can always make you feel a little closer to home.

★ c o d e w o r d ★ odair

★ o t h e r s p e e c h ★ E5BC61
★ e m p h a s i s ★ E2904E
★ m a i n ★ DF653C
★ f l a s h b a c k ★ DC3A29
★ s p e e c h ★ DA0F17

★ f a c e c l a i m ★ stefani breitzig

★ p l o t s ★ starfire in stare's teen titans plot

★ s o n g ★ let the flames begin - paramore