A/N: I do not own Teen Titans.
Raven hardly waited for the doors to the common room to open before she flew to the sofa. She tried her best to keep her team's drained emotions from infiltrating her mind. She pulled her hood down and sat on the very end of the couch. The rest of the Teen Titans followed closely behind her, seemingly also intent on relaxing. Starfire headed for the kitchen while the three boys sprawled across various parts of the sofa.
Robin sat on the left side, stretching his arms before folding them behind his head. Cyborg sat down near the center of the couch, resting his arms on either side of him on the back of the sofa. Beast Boy flopped backwards on the cushion, letting his feet dangle over the back while his head hung listlessly off the couch by Raven's feet.
"Man," Cyborg yawned, "That white monster thingy really took it out of me."
"You are correct, friend Cyborg," Starfire said while reaching in to the fridge for a bottle of yellow mustard. She came to the couch and sat cross-legged next to Robin, taking a large swig of her drink. "This particular foe was quite unpleasant."
Robin nodded in agreement. "If Beast Boy hadn't shown up when he did, we probably all would have been burnt to crisps. Although, if he had been with the team in the first place, we wouldn't have needed to wait so long for him to show up."
Beast Boy lifted his head to defend himself, but when he saw the teasing smirk playing on Robin's face, he let it slump back down again.
"Whatever, dude," he said, waving his hand, "I was busy, and you know it. You're just lucky I showed up to handle your dirty work for you."
"Right, you were busy," Cyborg said, the sarcasm evident in his voice, "with blonde-haired high school girls that want absolutely nothin' to do with your scrawny butt."
This time Beast Boy did lift his head to speak. "Look, Cy, I know no one wants to believe me, but Terra is alive, and I think she remembers who she really is. She didn't want to at first, but I think she's coming around now."
No one responded, so Beast Boy looked around at his team desperately, noting their skeptical faces, "Tell me someone believes me on this."
Starfire looked at him sympathetically, "I am most sorry, friend Beast Boy, but your claim appears to be slightly outlandish. We all witnessed Terra as a rock formation after she sacrificed herself to save us from the underground explosion."
When Beast Boy's ears drooped as a clear sign of sadness, Starfire said, "Perhaps, to appease your mind, we could all journey to the place of her resting to ensure that her statue has remained untouched."
Beast Boy did an ecstatic somersault off of the couch, landing on all fours before straightening up.
"Seriously, Star?" he asked enthusiastically, "That would be great! You guys could see that the statue is gone, and then you guys would totally believe me, and you can help me figure out how to get her back on our team! Raven could transport us there right now, right, Rae?"
Beast Boy turned to face Raven with large, pleading eyes. Raven looked up at him with a passive expression.
"First of all, my name is Raven, not Rae. Secondly, no, I will not transport all of us to the cavern at this moment. We just finished fighting that villain and I would like to rest and meditate before using any more of my powers. Furthermore, I'm tired and would not like to go on any fishing expeditions at this point in time."
Beast Boy looked taken aback. Though Raven was exhausted, she opened her empathic senses to feel Beast Boy's emotions. Raven was unsurprised when she could feel the disappointment pouring off him in waves.
"But Rae-" he started.
"My name is Raven," she said as she interrupted him, "and I said no, Beast Boy. I need to rest and meditate. Stop whining and let it go." The tone of finality was clear in her voice.
Beast Boy's face contorted into a look of anger at her blatant dismissal. The change in his emotions was instantaneous. He had gone from hopeful to disappointed to furious in the matter of seconds. Raven was worried that maybe she had pressed one too many buttons but before she could try to soothe the situation, he was speaking.
"Right, Raven," Beast Boy said her name with a sneer, "I forgot that you were the only person on this team who could make decisions. And excuse me for not taking your meditation schedule into consideration for something so huge- like Terra being alive!"
By the end of his sentence he was nearly yelling at her. The anger that Raven felt him giving off was strong. Suddenly, the emotion completely cut off and a void was left in Raven's senses. She could feel nothing coming from him. Beast Boy took a step towards her, lowered his voice, and said, "You never think about what everyone else wants or what's good for them. You know, if you stopped being so damn selfish all of the time, I think this team would be way better off."
Raven's lips parted slightly in shock and Beast Boy's eyes widened slightly, as if even he was surprised at what he had said.
They looked at each other for only a split second before Beast Boy turned on his heel and stormed out of the common room, not acknowledging, or even stopping at the calls of Robin, Starfire, or Cyborg.
Raven was astonished Beast Boy spoke to her like that. She had made him mad before, of course, but he had never used that tone of voice with her. It was unsettling.
Raven was also confused at the fact that she lost detection of Beast Boy's emotions during his outburst. Fury was a strong emotion. She knew she should have been bombarded with his anger, not completely cut off from it.
Raven stopped pondering this, and she schooled her face so that it did not betray her confusion and surprise. She did not want the others to see that Beast Boy's actions had affected her. She simply pulled up her hood around her face and dropped her eyes to the floor.
The other Titans stared shocked at the door for a moment before they focused on Raven.
Cyborg was the first to try to speak.
"Raven, are you good?"
"Yes," she responded in her monotone without lifting her head, "I'm fine. This isn't the first time we've witnessed Beast Boy lash out when it comes to Terra. I believe it was to be expected."
Robin nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, I know we've seen him become a little irrational with Terra involved, but don't you think you may have been a little harsh on him, too?"
Raven did not answer. After a few seconds of tense silence, Cyborg stood up and said, "I think someone needs to go talk to BB just to make sure he's okay and not rippin' his room to shreds, so I'm gonna go do that."
Starfire and Robin nodded in agreement as Cyborg walked around the couch and through the common room doors.
Just as Cyborg reached a little over halfway to Beast Boy's room, he heard a loud crash followed closely by a growl. He quickened his pace.
When he arrived at Beast Boy's room, the door was open and he saw the changeling, still in his human form, let go of the desk chair in his hand and hurl it across the room with a grunt. It splintered into three pieces as it collided with the side of the bunk bed. It fell into a pile of other broken wood that looked suspiciously like it used to be his bedside table. Beast Boy began to reach for the lamp on his desk.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, B, chill out!" Cyborg yelled as he ran into the room. Beast Boy's hand stilled as it hovered over the lamp. "You might be worked up, but breaking things that I'm just gonna have to fix is not the answer."
Beast Boy glared at Cyborg but made no move to pick up the lamp. After a moment, his face relaxed, he turned, walked toward the bed on the other side of the room, and sat on the bottom bunk. He put his head in his hands and groaned.
"Was Raven really upset that I yelled at her?" Beast Boy's muffled voice asked. The sudden change in attitude startled Cyborg.
"Aww, you know Raven," Cyborg eventually answered, rubbing the top of his head. "She doesn't get too upset. She's as stone-faced as ever. I think it'd take a little more than that to rattle her."
"You know, Cy, I couldn't even see your face, and I still know you're a pretty terrible liar," Beast Boy said morosely.
After a few seconds, he lifted his head to look Cyborg in his face. Beast Boy's face was a mixture of amusement and sadness. Cyborg rubbed a hand over the top of his head again and sighed.
"Well, ya know, she didn't want any of us to see it, but I think we've been living with her long enough to know what the tiniest of her facial expressions mean. So I can tell you that she did look a little upset when you walked out, man." He paused as Beast Boy's grimaced, then after a second added, "I mean, you did call her 'damn selfish,' so I think that's enough to shake up just about anyone."
"Yeah, I know I was a jerk, but I didn't mean to yell at her," Beast Boy said. Cyborg opened his mouth to say something, but Beast Boy waved his hands defensively and said, "Honest, I didn't! I just get so worked up when I think about Terra. And Raven always knows what buttons to push to make me go overboard."
Cyborg crossed his arms, leaned against the wall opposite Beast Boy, and shook his head.
"That's no excuse, B, and you know it," Cyborg said, pointing a finger in Beast Boy's direction. "She may have been a little rude to you, too, but that doesn't give you the right to get up in her face like that."
Beast Boy nodded his head in concession. "I know, I know. I'll go apologize to her when I'm almost certain she still isn't mad enough to throw me out the window."
Cyborg raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"Just like that? You were angry enough at her five minutes ago to be manhandlin' chairs, and now you're ready to apologize?"
Beast Boy rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I didn't throw that chair 'cause I was mad at Raven," he said, "I threw that chair 'cause I was mad at me."
Cyborg looked confused as he waited for an elaboration, so Beast Boy added, "I yelled at Raven for really no good reason. I mean, did you see her face, dude? She was shocked that I did that. I was shocked that I did that. It was like I lost control, and I don't like losing control."
Cyborg chuckled, "Yeah," he said, "You don't like losing control and yet you hurled that chair across the room. That makes sense."
"Dude, you don't get it," Beast Boy whined leaning further back on his bed, bracing himself on his hands. "I was in total control when I threw that stuff. I wanted to break something because I was angry and if I didn't get rid of some of my anger, I was probably going to go all animal and rip up my good sheets."
He huffed out a breath, "But I don't know why I yelled at her. It's not like me to yell at her just because she disagrees with me. Normally I can handle it, and today I couldn't for some reason. And I do think she can be selfish sometimes, but I don't think that we'd be better off without our Raven as she is. We need Raven, flaws and all."
Cyborg pushed off of the wall and went to sit on top of Beast Boy's desk, as there was no desk chair for him to actually sit in.
"Okay, man, I can respect that," he said, "but you gotta put a lid on that losing control stuff. The girl may not show her emotions often, but she still feels them. You can't go around yelling at her just because she's not gonna yell back. Hell, she may not cry or anything, but she'll throw you out a window for it, and that'd probably be worse than getting yelled back at, so I'd be extra careful."
Cyborg's attempt at levity had an unsuccessful effect on his green teammate. Beast Boy simply nodded his head slowly and sat forward, resting his hands on his knees. "You're right. I'll work on it. But it'll be so much easier when Raven just accepts that Terra's coming back because we totally won't fight as much."
Cyborg grimaced at Beast Boy's sentence.
"Yeah, about that," he started slowly, his eyes glued to the ground, "You do know that Terra might not be coming back, right?"
Cyborg let his words hang in the air, afraid to look up at Beast Boy's face and find a less than pleasant emotion displayed on it. But as the silence in the room turned tense, Cyborg gulped in a breath and picked up his head to look at Beast Boy.
The green boy was still sitting on the lower bunk of his bed, but his hands were gripping his sheets hard and he was watching Cyborg with a confused and angry expression.
Cyborg could sense that his sentence had angered Beast Boy much more than the cybernetic man had anticipated, so he preemptively tried to explain himself and soothe the situation.
"I just mean to say, man," he started, "that maybe she doesn't even want to come back. If she is alive, and we don't even know if she is, she might not want to be a Teen Titan anymore, and we might not let her back on the team right away either, you know?"
"Why not? Because Raven doesn't like her?" Beast Boy asked. He raked a hand through his already messy hair before returning his hand to its previous position of being curled up in the bedsheet.
"No, dude, that's not it," Cyborg sighed, "We just all know that the last time she was on the team it ended well, but there were a lotta bumps in the road. We'd have to have a long hard talk as a team about what we wanted to do. And that's even if she wanted to come back. It has nothing to do with Raven, and you know that."
Beast Boy unraveled his fingers from the bedsheets, stood up from the bed, and went to stand by his window. His back was towards Cyborg and he looked out toward the water. He took a deep breath and said, "I get that things before were a little rocky, but Terra is a Titan. Not was, she is. We can't just abandon her."
"We wouldn't be abandoning her," Cyborg huffed out. He was starting to get annoyed at this point. "But you even told us that she didn't want to remember you. If she doesn't want to remember you, what makes you think she would want to come back at all?"
Cyborg couldn't see Beast Boy's face but judging by the way that his back stiffened and his left ear twitched, Cyborg could guess that his statement may have been a little too harsh.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could get a word out, Beast Boy had opened the window, lifted his foot on the ledge, and propelled himself out.
Cyborg ran over to the window in time to see his friend's freefalling form turn into an eagle. Beast Boy flapped his wings and began to fly toward the city.
And for the second time that day, Cyborg watched shocked as his normally happy and upbeat friend stormed angrily from a conversation.
Boy, Cyborg thought to himself as he tapped the window sill, incredulously shook his head, and watched as the green eagle faded into the distance, that girl is going to be the death of him.
He took one last look out the window before turning out the light and leaving the room.
When the doors swished shut behind Cyborg as he went to check on Beast Boy, Robin tried again. "I get that today was a little tough with the white monster, but maybe, just to make him feel better, we could have gone to the cave to see if the statue was still there and you could have meditated afterwards?"
"Robin," Raven said, the slight sigh in her voice the only indicator that she was obviously annoyed with him, "my meditation schedule is not the problem, and you know that."
Starfire set down her bottle of forgotten mustard, flying to Raven's side and settled near her, asking, "Then please, friend, explain. What is the problem?"
Raven lifted her face to see into their eyes, her hood remaining in place.
"Terra deceived us," Raven said slowly and as emphatically as she could, "She went to work with Slade, and she tried to kill us. She may have also saved our lives, but are we just going to bypass the fact that she was the one who put our lives at risk in the first place?"
Raven opened her mouth to continue speaking but quickly closed it again.
Raven knew what else she wanted to say. She wanted to tell them that she fully understood that Terra saved Beast Boy's life by not putting a rock spear through his body, and she helped them attack Slade instead. But Raven wasn't sure that if it had been any of the rest of the team on the other side of that rock that Terra wouldn't have driven it through their heart.
She knew logically that Terra had a special bond with Beast Boy that she had with no one else on the team. Even so, they had let her into their home, into their family, and she threw that away by allying herself with Slade. Raven knew she couldn't easily, if ever, forgive Terra for that.
And even though that's what she wanted to say, Raven was a woman of few words, so she settled with telling them, "We trusted her, I trusted her, and she betrayed us. If she truly is human again, and not a stone, and we let her back into our lives, who's to say she won't do it all again?"
Starfire contemplated this before she chimed in, "If what friend Beast Boy says is true, and Terra does not wish to remember who she is, then perhaps she is choosing to forget because she feels repentant."
Raven simply shook her head at the alien.
"She may very well feel repentant, but I don't want to risk allowing Terra back into our lives when she can hurt any one of us."
Especially Beast Boy, she thought bitterly.
Robin leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and considered both Starfire and Raven's words carefully before saying, "Raven, I know that you find it hard to trust people, and when you do, it is a big deal. But Terra was manipulated by Slade. She needed our help to get out from under his wing, just like I did when he manipulated me into being his apprentice. And when she finally got a real chance, she not only helped us beat Slade, but she helped us get out alive, and saved the city from destruction."
Robin paused for a moment then said, "She may have let us down once or twice before then, but when it really mattered, Terra stood with us as a Teen Titan. If she truly is human again, and we let her back into our lives, who's to say she won't be a powerful friend and teammate once again?"
Raven grimaced at Robin throwing her own words back in her face, while Starfire shook her head up and down vigorously in agreement. "Yes friend," she said, addressing Raven, "it may be difficult to accept that Terra has done the changing of her ways, but if she has, and she wants to be part of the team once again, I believe she should be welcomed with the open arms."
Raven nodded at Starfire and Robin in turn.
"You may both be right, but my trust is not something I give out blindly. Therefore, if she wants to rejoin the team, it may take me more time than the rest of you to fully accept her."
"Speaking of which," Robin said, "We can't keep using hypotheticals forever. Instead of saying 'if she's alive,' we need to know for certain. We need to go to the cave to see for ourselves."
Robin stood up and took out his communicator. He opened it, pressed a button, and phoned Cyborg.
"Cyborg, come in, Cyborg," he said into the device. "Bring yourself and Beast Boy to the common room as soon as possible."
"Yeah, sorry, dude," Cyborg's voice resonated through the communicator, "I can't exactly bring Beast Boy with me."
Before Robin could question the cybernetic man through the device, the common room doors opened, and Cyborg stepped in.
Seeing that his former method of communication had become obsolete, Robin closed his communicator and said to Cyborg, "What do you mean you can't bring Beast Boy?"
"I don't know man, we were talking one minute, then he got mad at me and flew out the window." Cyborg shrugged. "I'm not sure where he went."
Robin sighed.
"We were all going to go to the cavern to examine the validity of his statement that Terra is alive again. Guess we'll have to do this without him. All right, Titans, let's go."
Upon their return to the tower, the four Titans found the changeling sitting on the couch, seemingly waiting for their arrival.
He jumped up, and said, "Did you all go where I think you went?"
Robin stepped forward, and replied, "Yes, Beast Boy, we did, and you're right, she wasn't there. That girl you saw at Murakami very well could be her. I'm sorry we didn't believe you."
He waved his hands dismissively, "Whatever, dude. You're forgiven. So what are we going to do? Are we going to go get her from Murakami and bring her back here? I just saw her. She was walking home from school. We can go get her from her apartment 'cause I know where she lives now."
He paused for a second before stammering, "I- I mean, that's totally not weird or anything. I just wanted to go check on her, and if we were going to get her, I needed to know where she lived, and-"
"No," Robin cut in placidly, "We're not going to get her from her home. We're not bringing her here. We're not going to do anything."
Beast Boy stood stalk still. "What do you mean, 'we're not going to do anything?'" he demanded. "You just said that the girl must be her, so let's get her and bring her back home. To her real home."
The other three Titans, who had previously been standing behind Robin, silently moved to the couch to give their teammates some space to hash out whatever they needed to.
"Beast Boy," Robin said slowly, as if speaking to a small child, "You said yourself that she doesn't want to remember who she is. If that's true, we have no right to pull her from the life she's living and force her to be a Teen Titan. That wouldn't be fair. So, if, not when, but if, she seeks us out, wanting to become a Titan again, we'll consider letting her, but until then, we're going to leave her alone."
"But-" Beast Boy tried.
"No, Beast Boy. That's an order."
Sensing Beast Boy would continue to argue, Robin broke in with, "We're not even sure if she remembers who she is. Maybe she hasn't decided to come back to the tower because she doesn't remember she ever lived here. Being reincarnated could have given her some form of amnesia. If that's the case, we especially don't want to shock her by potentially kidnapping her and telling her she has uncontrollable powers. We aren't even sure she still has use of her powers. So, I'm sorry, Beast Boy, but for now, the answer is no."
Robin patted Beast Boy on the shoulder as he passed him. He walked to the couch and sat down next to the rest of his team.
Beast Boy looked indignant for a moment before he seemed to deflate and followed Robin's path toward the couch saying, "Yeah, you're right. I guess I was just hopeful. I miss her, that's all."
Before Beast Boy could reach the couch, however, the main frame computer flickered to life, filling the room with a sound of static.
Confused, Cyborg leapt to his feet and rushed to the console. As he rapidly tapped on the different keys and buttons, Starfire and Robin moved closer to the computer, waiting for Cyborg to update them. Beast Boy and Raven stayed back, more toward the couch, to allow the team more room.
"I'm not sure what's going on," Cyborg told them, "It doesn't matter what I do, I can't get it to return to the main screen, I can't put a different image up there, but I also can't get it to turn off, either."
Starfire flew closer to Cyborg's left side. "Friend, Cyborg," she said, "perhaps if we remove the plug from the outlet, the machine will turn itself off."
"That's not a bad idea, Star. Maybe after that I can manually reboot the entire computer," Cyborg said as he reached for the outlet.
Before his hand could touch the cord, though, the static faded and a figure materialized on the screen. The Titans collectively gasped as the ominous figure spoke.
"Hello, Titans."
A/N: Hi, everyone! This is my first multi-chapter story that I am attempting to write and I'm really excited about it! As I mentioned in the summary, this story takes place immediately after the final episode of the series, "Things Change," which means that Trouble in Tokyo does not apply. Also, as I write this story, I cannot promise timely updates, unfortunately, but I will do my best.
Sorry if Beast Boy comes off a little OOC in this first chapter, but we all know that he is wildly overprotective of Terra, and I am using that emotion to help create some tension between him and Raven. I will explain a little bit more of his moodiness in the next chapter, so don't worry.
Thanks for reading!
