Disclaimer: I don't own anything…if I did, this would be an episode…
A/N: When I put the other story back up, hopefully, it'll make more sense after having read this one since it comes first. I guess it contains 'spoilers' to 'Betrayal' and 'Aftershock', but since the only thing I know about the episodes as of yet are from things I've read, I'm not too sure how accurate it is…
Lost
The moon played over the water, its reflection in the gentle ripples offering comfort and tranquility. Stars, surrounding the bright, glowing orb up in the sky glinted consolingly.
He knew he shouldn't have been out there; Robin had them on a strict curfew, which he was currently breaking by more than a few hours, but that couldn't helped; he needed to be out there, on the rocks and the water and under the moon. They might have thought he was bad off now, but if he didn't manage to get out and have these few moments of peace, he'd be much worse. (There was a morbid laugh due in there somewhere.)
Not that the tower was never peaceful. No, the tower had been unusually calmer than it once was for the past few years.
This, whatever it was, had nothing to do with Tower, and everything to do with the tower. And the people within.
And that was the whole truth, though he couldn't explain it.
He sighed, stared blankly at the city lights on the shore, their reflection dim from where he sat compared to the moon, higher up than he could hope to reach, and he admitted it was mockinghim.
Nature's beauty, he'd decided on the tails of being lost between immaturity and responsibility with Vic and Raven and Dick and Kori, was in the moon and all that it lit with pale silver light. It was calming, and reassuring, and beautiful beyond words' description, and he absolutely loathed it.
'Tara' was sitting under the moon, laughing, giggling beside him in that cute little way she did, her eyes wide and shining. 'Tara' was the nights that she'd have shivering, hot, too real nightmares and sleep was out of the question and he'd find her on the water because it calmed it her.
'Tara' was the nights she'd tell him stories about the places she'd been, the things she'd seen, the adventures she'd had, and he'd take her in his arms when the stories turned unpleasant.
'Tara' was the nights she'd taught (outright 'helped') him how to skip a rock right across the water surrounding the island and to the shore on the other side and he'd tell her about his favorite consolations in the sky and surprise them both because even though he'd collected the knowledge randomly over the years out of curiosity, he had no idea it was so extensive.
'Tara' was the nights she'd confess she couldn't control her powers and he swore not to tell. (He didn't realize then he hadn't meant the thing about her powers, and funny how the promise he never made was the only one he never broke.)
But Robin had figured it out anyways. She'd blamed him and left.
She came back about a month later, and they'd been happy. She'd shown him how to skip a rock on his own, and things had been good until she betrayed them.
She'd been…spying on them, the whole time. The whole time she'd been with them. The whole time they'd been together.
He'd –they'd forgiven her, but she didn't know, and they weren't going to be able to tell her anytime soon.
With a sigh, Beast Boy stood, a small stone in his hand.
Drawing back, he closed his eyes and her face swam into his view. Yelling, he tossed the stone at the water.
It hit, distorting the reflections briefly, and sank.
"Come on, BB!" Cyborg tried again, waving a pan full of something under the changeling's nose. "It's breakfast, and look! I'll even let you have your fake meat!" Cyborg beamed brightly, but Beast Boy just slumped down even further in his seat. Cyborg's face fell as he stared at Beast Boy, who sighed dejectedly. He began muttering as he walked off and Starfire took his place.
Her hands behind her back she smiled, "You are depressed and this is unacceptable. No friend of mine shall be unhappy. Here!" She brought her hands from behind her back, clutching a large bowl of an unidentifiable substance. "It is a Custard of Quail; you must feel better! Eat, my friend!" She pulled a spoon from nowhere and scooped a wiggling chunk onto it. She held it out to Beast Boy. His gaze shifted to the widely smiling Starfire; he didn't open his mouth, and he didn't move other than to stare off again.
"Starfire," Raven called and looked up from where she quietly sipped her tea. "I don't think you're helping."
"I'm not?" Starfire frowned slightly and lowered the spoon.
"No."
"….Oh." Starfire moved away from Beast Boy, who blinked.
They sat in silence, the only sound that of the clock ticking and Raven sipping her tea.
With a roll of her eyes, Raven put her tea down and walked over to Beast Boy. She down beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"I know you miss her. We all do," She looked down and clenched her hand. "But it's been years. You need to get over it. Move on with your life, or…."
Beast Boy's gaze slipped from its non-existent focus and lingered over her, but she didn't continue. Cyborg turned back to breakfast meat buffet, Robin to his newspaper, and Starfire to whatever it was she had called the colorless slime sitting on her plate.
"….'Or'?"
Raven removed her hand and got up to leave, pulling her hood back up as she swept pass Cyborg.
Robin and Starfire watched her pause at the doorway.
"You'll miss something you'll regret. That's all."
She disappeared down the dark hall, and they were left in silence again.
Beast Boy returned to staring blankly out of a window. Starfire finished her breakfast, keeping a close eye on him, and Robin went back to his newspaper.
Without warning, Beast Boy stood up and walked toward the exit. The door sliding closed behind him.
Starfire stared after him momentarily as if debating on whether or not to follow him, but didn't make any move to do so, and Robin merely turned the page.
"Isn't anyone going to go after him?" Cyborg finally questioned.
"Why?"
"'Why?'" Cyborg echoed Robin. "Because he's our friend!"
"Exactly," Robin replied calmly. "He's our friend, and the least we can do is give him the privacy he deserves; when he wants to talk, he will. Until then…what kind of friends would we be if we were to try and force him to get over something he needs to deal with himself against his will?"
"Good friends!" Cyborg nearly yelled, slamming his hands down on the table.
"Cyborg, look, he wants time to think this out on his own –".
"He's had three years dealing with this on his own! We're his friends. Or at least I am." Cyborg crossed his arms, and Robin finally looked up at him.
"I am –"
"I don't want to hear it," he growled.
Glowering at Robin, Cyborg walked off toward the exit. Glaring out of the corner of his eye, he waited for the doors to open, then disappeared through them in much the same manner as Beast Boy.
Robin turned to the next page of his paper.
"Beginning countdown," Robin called over the intercom, and Beast Boy and Raven went into 'ready' position at the start line. Cyborg stood somewhat grumpily to the side, his arms crossed across his massive chest.
"I'm depending on you," Raven reminded Beast Boy as she tugged pointedly at the chain connecting them and secured the blindfold over her eyes. Beast Boy grunted in response.
The numbers on the control booth lit up and began to tick away.
10…9…8…7…6…5...4…3…2…1…GO!
As the blue letters lit up, Raven and Beast Boy took off, Beast Boy in the lead. Five seconds in, as Raven's boots skipped over the ground behind Beast Boy's, a thin, square portion of the ground rose. The laser mounted to its underside took aim.
Beast Boy startled as a shot sailed past the tip of his ear and with a leaping step, turned into a hawk, falling behind Raven to lift her in his talons. Training that rarely shined through the comic demeanor taking over, he turned the lasers on each other.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Raven murmured.
Beast Boy cawed in apology, as he sailed upward and dropped her, changing easily back into himself and catching her a moment before he landed on the ground. Releasing her from his arms, he took a moment to steady himself. He ran without glancing back, pushing himself faster, and Raven had a hard time not yelling at him to slow down.
Smirking slightly, Robin adjusted the level set on the controls, and the ground beneath Beast Boy and Raven's feet all of a second ago dropped from sight. Portions of the ground before them followed, and he stopped short in his sprint, giving time for the ground beneath his partner began to crumble into non-existence.
Raven felt the urge to use her powers, but suddenly found Beast Boy's hand gripping hers. With a little effort, he hauled her back up and onto the ground beside him. Starfire cheered for his rescue, and Robin nodded in approval.
Beast Boy grabbed Raven securely, and leaped toward a portion of the ground still intact as the rocky ground they'd been standing disintegrated. Three expertly timed leaps later found Beast Boy and Raven on solid, un-disintegrating ground. Without a word, he let go of her waist and stepped away. Beast Boy tugged the chain connecting them, then set off again, moving faster over the hilly terrain they now had to conquer only to come to a screeching halt as he narrowly avoided having the tip of his nose being disconnected from the rest of his face at the hands of the blade swinging before him.
"Wait!" he snarled, throwing out a hand to halt Raven's progress. "Swinging blades; three sec interval, two yards between. Five of them."
Under the blindfold, Raven raised an eyebrow; he'd sooner be hit by one while favoring a joke than assess their movements.
"On my count, then," he mumbled, watching the blades lazily. With a slight tug, Raven was pulled along 'red-light-green-light' style until they'd made it past all of the blades.
"Yay!" Starfire shrieked and rocketed into the air and was almost harshly tugged back down to earth by the chain, one end still connected firmly to the unmoving Cyborg. She continued to cheer, and as Beast Boy and Raven neared the finish line, Robin joined in.
"Almost there?" Raven called exasperatedly from behind him.
"Almost there," he nodded, continuing to sprint. "Whoa!" he exclaimed, veering sharply to avoid the very solid looking walls that appeared before them without warning.
"Friend Raven!" Starfire gasped as the pair stumbled across, and Beast Boy glanced over to her in confusion, finally looked back to see Raven frantically untying her blindfold and forcing a scream of pain back down her throat. Robin sprinted down from the control center and raced out to them.
Starfire, who wasn't far behind, suddenly found herself being dragged out to her teammates by a charging Cyborg.
"Raven, are you ok?" rang Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg's voices as one.
Raven looked up from where she was surveying the damage to her leg, screaming internally.
"I'll live," she replied dead-pan.
"You should at least let me look at that and make sure the damage…"
"I said I'll live, Robin," Raven interrupted her teammate. "Now would somebody mind taking this off?" She held up the chain, and Cyborg removed it from her belt.
"Thank you," mumbled Raven, and slightly limped back up the entrance of the Tower, ignoring the looks the others were giving her.
"Does this mean that training is over?" Starfire asked as Beast Boy removed the chain from his belt and threw it down. He transformed into a hawk and was in the air a second later, zooming toward the roof of the Tower.
"I don't know; that depends on whether or not you feel like running the course, I guess," Robin rubbed the back of his neck and stared after him. Cyborg removed the chain connecting him and Starfire.
"Y'all go on up. I'll shut everything down here down."
"You sure, Cyborg? I don't regularly excuse anyone from a training exercise."
"Yeah man; I've got it." Cyborg forced a smile and jogged up to the controls before another protest could arise. He shut down the system and stood in silence over the control panel.
As he watched Starfire and Robin make their way back up the tower, he mused absently whether or not he was finally going off the deep end. Cyborg shook his head to clear it and sprinted from the control center and to the tower, silently urging the elevator to move faster.
He decided to get something from the kitchen as he slid through the doors of the common area, but was halted.
Robin was flipping nonchalantly through numerous TV channels, and Starfire was rattling away in his ear.
No surprise there.
The surprise was on the horseshoe couch where Beast Boy was tentatively holding ice to Raven's knee.
And talking.
Not in his usual non-stop-humorist kind of way, but quietly, and sincerely, as if whatever he was discussing held relativity to something worthwhile, and Raven was listening.
"I'll be in my room." Cyborg wandered off in said direction.
"Ok, Robin," Cyborg grumped as he fell into his chair at the Titans'conference table. "What was so important that we absolutely had to have an emergency meeting?"
"Yes, Robin; what is the dreadful emergency that we must take care of?" Starfire stared up at Robin from her seat to his immediate right.
"Well?" Raven turned to where the Boy Wonder stood at the head of the table, too. "And why isn't Beast Boy here?"
"Well, the meeting's kind of about him," Robin grabbed the back of his neck. "I'm not sure how we should start this off…"
"Beast Boy?" Starfire's eyes widened in alarm. "Is he ill? Is there something wrong with him? Is someone after him? Is there something we can do? Will he –"
"Star!" Robin held up a hand to halt her, and her mouth immediately closed. "Calm down, ok? Look," he sighed as he took his seat again. "It's come to my attention…that our friend, Beast Boy... hasn't been himself, lately."
"Of course he has not been himself," Starfire said, he face dropping. "None of us have been ourselves."
"And that's completely acceptable, considering" Raven interrupted. "But while the rest of us have accepted it and moved on with our lives….Beast Boy hasn't. And it is interfering with his duty, and more importantly, his life in general."
Starfire nodded her head hesitantly to show understanding.
"He's been slacking off, and he's really falling." Robin glanced pointedly at Raven's leg, then seemed to think better of it as he cleared his throat, and his tone softened.
"I'm just worried about him. I'm afraid Beast Boy might hurt himself, or someone else if he carries on like this. He's never well-rested, he isn't eating well, and he's pushing himself entirely too hard for the level of health he's taken to maintaining. He's become a liability to himself. And the team." Starfire didn't catch the words along his undertone, bobbed her head in agreement, but Cyborg looked up at him sharply, stood, and turned on Robin.
"I see where this is going," he said, voice lower and calmer than he thought was at all reasonable. "You don't really care what he's going through at all, do you?"
"I'd appreciate it if you'd stop accusing me of such absurdities," Robin replied levelly, but without facing him. Cyborg stepped closer.
"Yeah; that's it. You don't care that BB's hurting," Cyborg continued, his voice raising as he pointed accusingly at him. "The only thing you care about is this so-called 'team'. That and getting to Star, that is –"
"That's not true!" Robin yelled uncharacteristically loudly, standing from his chair and pounding his fist on the table. "This team is –"
Cyborg towered almost comically over Robin. "If this were a team, you'd care about every other member of this team and what happens to them. Not because you're worried about how well the team will perform, but because what affects one of us affects all of us emotionally, physically, and mentally. But nobody gives a damn, not really. That's what started this whole mess in the first place." Robin, already disadvantaged to the towering Cyborg, seemed to shrink under his gaze.
"You couldn't understand BB even if you wanted to, and for the record, you obviously don't. You don't know what it's like to love somebody and not be able to tell them how you feel. You're just dense."
"And you do?" Robin shot back, clenching his teeth and his fists.
The anger in Cyborg's eyes suddenly disappeared, and he retreated slightly before Robin could determine what had replaced it.
"I'm done with this." Cyborg backpedaled and stalked out of the room, the heavy clanking of his feet on the floor echoing into the room fainter and fainter as he moved away from them.
Robin breathed heavily as he fell back into his chair, and the room was filled with silence as Starfire gazed slightly frightened at Robin.
"Well, that went well," Raven commented dryly.
Starfire and Raven both looked expectantly at Robin, his eyes closed as he leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Meeting adjourned."
Starfire awoke with a startled gasp, clutching her sheets to her as she hovered over her bed.
The moonlight continued to wash in over her and the fluffy carpet of her floor.
"Hello?" Her voice echoed quietly in her room, the squeak repeating itself.
Her large emerald eyes darted back and forth quickly as hair on the back of her neck began to stand on end, and her skin began to crawl.
She turned quickly in the direction of her door as she heard quick footsteps. She thought she heard quick footsteps, she quickly corrected herself in accordance with the resident law of the borderline insane. It was probably just a trick of the night.
"Beast Boy, if that is you and you are playing a trick, I do not find it very amusing," she tried sternly, but her voice still ended up an octave higher than normal.
When no reply came, she was unsure whether she should find reassurance that Beast Boy had listened…or if she should be more terrified because the lack of reply was due to the fact that whatever it was wasn't Beast Boy, or a friend at all.
"This is not funny, and therefore, not a joke!" she screeched toward the door. Should she call for help? Would the others even hear her? They had yet to give any indication that they'd heard her previous exclamations.
She squeaked again as she thought she saw movement to the side near her dresser. Mind made up, she rocketed to her bedroom door, eyes closed and hands outreached. She slammed into the button beside her door. It slid open, and she floated in the middle of the hall. Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth and screamed.
In his room, Robin's half closed eyes snapped completely open. Jumping up from his workbench and scattering stacks of important papers, he stumbled across the messy archive that was his room, grabbing his mask and putting it on as he reached the door. He pushed the button beside the door and barely waited for it to open before he had sprinted into the hallways, searching frantically for the problem.
Starfire was still screeching as Raven stuck her head out the door, Cyborg blearily stepped out and yawned, and a sloth came stumbling around the corner at the other end of the hallway, promptly transforming into a stretching Beast Boy.
"What's going on?" he questioned sleepily and without emotion.
"Yeah," Cyborg agreed as he leaned into his room to check the time. "It's….2:30 in the morning. Normal people usually sleep then."
Raven used her powers to shut Starfire's mouth, her scream over their voices effectively silenced.
Opening her eyes, Starfire calmed down slightly and landed back on the ground.
"Without screaming, what is the problem?" Raven asked, monotone as always.
"There's something in my room!" Starfire yelped. "And I did not invite whatever it is in!"
The others stared blankly at her.
"Star," Robin began, coming to stand beside her and resting a hand on her shoulder, "that's impossible; there's no way for anything to get into the tower. It would have to know exactly how to shut down the defense system. You know that."
"Yes, but that does not change the fact that there is something in my room!"
Sighing, Cyborg stepped back into his room, then reappeared, snapping the last layer of his titanium outing on over the smooth black metal of his arm.
"Well then, we'll just have to exterminate the little pest, won't we?"
Raven exited the doorway of her room and stood beside Starfire. "If you say there's something, we'll check."
"Thank you!" Starfire exclaimed, grabbing Raven in a hug, despite her protests.
Slowly, the door to Starfire's room creaked open, and the Titans' head poked around the door.
The moonlight was obscured by clouds, throwing the room into darkness as the five of them quickly skimmed the room.
"Well, no big creepy crawlies in here," Cyborg announced. "Does that mean we can go back to bed now?"
They began to back away from the door, when Robin suddenly stopped them.
"What the…?" he queried, his eyes widening under his mask as the room was illuminated with moonlight again, and four sets of eyes swiveled back, following his gaze.
Starfire's room had been torn apart, her possessions scattered over the room as if someone or something had searched it.
Beast Boy wiped blearily at his eyes. "I'll take first shift, then."