"Hey, Rae?" inquired Beast Boy cautiously. He nervously looked across the table at Raven, who was engrossed in her latest book. Her hood was up, covering most of her pale skin. Beast Boy's eyes travelled from her hidden face to her cloaked shoulders, to her thin arms, to the book in her hands. It looked like an ancient book. It had a dark hard cover with lots of detailing on the spine. The pages were crisp and yellowed. He was competing with a book for Raven's attention and the book was currently wining. Since he got no response from Raven, he decided to stretch himself across the table to take a peek at what she was reading. Despite the upside down point of view, he saw old calligraphic text and wondered how Raven could possibly read that. Even if he was sitting right side up, the font would hurt his head too much.
Beast Boy sat back down in his seat. He simply watched Raven's eyes go from left to right as they scanned the words on the paper. He watched as her eyes reached the bottom of the page and he left hand reached up to take the corner of the page between her finger and thumb. She turned the page and her eyes began furiously moving from left to right. Beast Boy was usually content with watching her read, but he had more important matters to get straightened out today.
"Rae?" He tried again, without any impatience. He knew how absorbed she got when she was reading. She had said it was because she was investing so much of herself into the story and that she became part of it, temporarily leaving the earth and joining the characters in the book. Beast Boy learned that she secretly liked reading because it was an escape for her. If she wasn't allowed to experience emotions as normal humans did, then she would live through her books. He was touched, really, that she shared something so personal with him. But he wanted more.
He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted her to know everything about him. He just wanted her to be his, and him to be hers, forever. He had a request in his mind; something very intimate to join them together. He wanted Raven to enter his mind. He wasn't sure how she was going to react to his request, but it was worth a shot.
Without taking her eyes away from the lines of text, she answered, "Hmm?"
"I was just wondering… what's it like being in your soul self?" Beast Boy continued to remain on the empath before him. He anxiously awaited for her answer.
This caught her attention. She slipped her bookmark in and closed her book. "My soul self?" she repeated. Beast Boy nodded. She was a little caught off guard by his question. They didn't usually have deep questions during the day, let alone in the middle of the common room. The few deep conversations they had were usually at night, away in either of their rooms for privacy. "Well," she started, "it's kind of like a dream. A lucid dream." Noticing his confusion, Raven described what a lucid dream was.
"It's a dream in which the sleeper knows that are in a dream and therefore they can control what happens in a dream." Beast Boy nodded to encourage her to continue with her explanation. "So when I leave my body it's like a person going to sleep and leaving their body to exist in a dream instead."
"So…" Beast Boy had many questions. "Does it… hurt?"
Raven shook her head. "Not really, but I can only be away from my body for a few minutes at a time."
"So when you enter somebody's mind, what's that like?"
"Beast Boy, what's with all the questions?"
"Just curious." He grinned sheepishly. Raven didn't buy it. With one eyebrow raised, she gave him a look of disbelief. "It sort of bothers me that you've been in Robin's mind," he confessed, almost ashamed of himself.
Although they never talked about it, Raven always knew that Beast Boy was somewhat jealous of Robin. Being an empath she naturally picked up on those things. Beast Boy liked Robin, and respected him, but he sometimes got jealous. Raven suspected it was because of his own insecurities. Robin was tall, dark, and handsome, according to the media. Well, Robin wasn't exactly Mr. Tall but he was certainly taller than Beast Boy. Robin had spiky black hair that the ladies just seemed to love. Robin had the "it" factor that made him the centre of attention and got him so much attention from girls.
Raven liked how reasonable Beast Boy was with her relationship with Robin. He knew that Raven and Robin had a special bond, even before she entered his mind. It wasn't exactly the brother-sister bond she shared with Cyborg, and it wasn't the love-hate relationship she shared with Beast Boy. It was something different and it bothered Beast Boy. Beast Boy tried to reassure himself occasionally. Obviously, she liked him in a different way than she liked Robin, otherwise she wouldn't be dating him right now. Beast Boy knew that he couldn't ask her to stop seeing Robin because that would be pretty difficult seeing as though they live in the same building and are part of the same team.
"Beast Boy, you know the only reason I went into his mind was to save him. We were trapped and I had no choice." Raven was monotonous.
"I know, but it's weird that you're closer to Robin than you are to me." Beast Boy's ears drooped as he spoke. "So… I want you to enter my mind. I want you to explore every inch of my soul. I want our souls to intertwine and become one…"
Raven was feeling overwhelmed right now. Beast Boy was the type of boy who was very affectionate, while she was the opposite. That was the problem with their relationship. Beast Boy always reached out to her, while she retreated in situations like these. Raven remained calm, as this was her only defense mechanism. "But that requires dark energy and it will probably make you feel queasy." Raven remembered how he didn't like to travel with her if he could avoid it because it gave him the shivers.
Beast Boy put his hand over hers. "I don't care." Raven's eyes widened in shock, and Beast Boy noticed. Behind him he heard the toaster explode.
"But once I enter, we'll be tied together forever. There's no way to sever the tie."
"I know," said Beast Boy confidently.
"But it's an invasion of privacy. Our thoughts will never be private. And if you can't have private thoughts then you can't think what you want to think. And that's basically taking away your freedom of thought. It's really a legal issue," said Raven nervously. She was usually much more eloquent with her words, but she was panicked.
Beast Boy chuckled. "But if neither of us say anything to the authorities, it isn't illegal, right?"
"Look, I just don't want to share my thoughts with you," she said bluntly. Immediately she regretted it. Another appliance blew up.
Beast Boy took her hand of hers. His eyebrows furrowed with confusion. "Raven, do you not want to… be with me? I feel like I put more into this relationship than you do. I feel like you're more intimate with Robin than me… And since Robin is with Starfire… I'm your second choice?" asked Beast Boy, putting together the puzzle pieces as he talked.
Raven's eyes went wide. She shook her hands in the air for extra emphasis. "No, Beast Boy that's not it." Another appliance blew up in the background. "I just don't want to do something that we'll regret later."
Raven portalled herself to the security of her room. She clutched her book in her arms, pressing it against her chest. She leaned against the door and stood there with her eyes shut tightly. When she regained her composure she released her tight grip on her book and set it down on her shelf.
Although none of the Titans ever spoke about it, they all knew that Raven had trust issues. Not just trust issues in the romance department, but trust issues that go deep into her past way before the Malchior incident. Raven liked to keep to herself, afraid to let anybody in. Slowly, one by one, the Titans began to break into her guarded shell. But still, there was a second wall beneath that one. Every day a green smile, warm hands, and goofy jokes bombarded her second wall, slowly chipping away at its defense.
And that's what Raven was afraid of. She was afraid of him getting too close to her. To be honest, she wasn't exactly sure why she was afraid. She surely trusted him with her life, why couldn't she trust him with her heart?
What was troubling Raven was her indecision. Although she would never in a million years admit it, she sometimes fanaticised about romantic dates and sweet gestures. She liked reading romance novels. And on the days she was feeling bold, she even flirted a little with Beast Boy. But when Beast Boy would do something romantic or want to be alone with her, it frightened her. She felt like she was leading him on. It wasn't fair to Beast Boy, she knew, but she didn't know what else to do. She wanted to be with him, but at the same time she didn't.
She would consider herself a loner. She liked being alone. She liked having peace and quiet. On the other hand, she sometimes felt left out when she saw the other Titans enjoying themselves together. Sometimes Raven wanted to be part of their tightknit circle. She didn't want to be a loner, but she couldn't help it. She didn't want to grow old alone but she couldn't seem to stop pushing people away. It was a paradox and it gave her a headache.
She knew Beast Boy would soon follow her to her room, so she had to get out before he came. As she was about to take off, she heard a knock on her steel door. She froze in her tracks, eyes wide.
Another round of knocks came. Again she didn't move. "Raven, I'm, uh, sorry." Raven felt bad. She was the one who ran off and here he is apologizing. "Maybe we can just forget about this and go back to the way things were… before we started dating. I think I would be okay with that… If that's what you want." Beast Boy anxiously waited for a response. "Maybe we could talk about this? I mean, if you're up to it." Beast Boy paused and waited for a response. He obviously knew she was there but he didn't want to force her to talk. "Um, I'll leave you alone now. And again, I'm sorry for upsetting you. I just wish I could give you everything you wanted."
Raven often accused him of being immature, but here he was wanting to talk things out while she hid and pretended not to hear him. When did Beast Boy grow up, she wondered.
It was early in the morning when Raven heard a light knock on her door. Levitating over to the door, she pressed the button to slide open the steel door. Looking left and right, nobody was to be found. Looking downwards she found a box neatly wrapped in a ribbon.
She took the box insider with her and sat down on the edge of her bed. She carefully tugged on one end of the ribbon causing it to relax out of its tied form. She gently pulled the lid off to reveal an old looking book. The cover was a dark green colour, so dark that it could almost pass for black. The spine of the book had gold bands going across horizontally. A matching gold ribbon hung loosely from the top. It was a bookmark, she assumed. Raven flipped through the book, casually catching glimpses of words on the page. She recognized Beast Boy's handwriting.
His handwriting was a weird hybrid of cursive and printing. She silently laughed to herself at his attempt to cursive write. These are my parents, Mark and Marie Logan. Beside that was a picture of the three of them, before Beast Boy became infected with Sakutia. He looked like a regular little boy with his loving parents. The paragraph went on to talk about his life before Sakutia and then about the death of his parents.
Raven flipped to another page. This one was about the Doom Patrol. Pages later were dedicated to defeating the Brootherhood of Evil. It was a book about his life. All his secrets, his fears, his dreams were bound in this one book that Raven held in her hands.
Curling up on her bed, Raven flipped to page one. After a few hours, Raven had reached the last chapter. It was titled Raven. That took her by surprise.
Raven is dark. She stays in her room mostly, locked away from the others. She hardly talks, hardly laughs, and hardly smiles. And I think I'm in love with her. Others think that she's creepy, but if she gives you the chance to get to know her, like she did for me, then I guarantee you will fall in love with her too. She has a beautiful personality to match her beautiful face. I know that one day I want to marry her, if she will let me.
"Beast Boy!" Raven called, as she saw him walking down the hallway. Book in hand, she approached him. "I read your book." Raven blushed a little. "I'm really touched that you would share this with me. And I, uh, think,"
Beast Boy cut her off. "Listen, I don't expect you to go into my mind. It was a selfish request and I'm sorry."
Raven shook her head. "It wasn't selfish, Beast Boy. I want us to share that connection. I really do. Maybe not today, but I would really like to share my story with you." Raven handed the book back to Beast Boy.
"Keep it, it's yours," he smiled.
"Look at the last page."
Raven is in love with Beast Boy, too.
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