Author's Note: Welcome to the final installment of my Limits series, where we delve into the hidden depths of our favorite five. This time, Beast Boy steps into the spotlight. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans. If I did, Beast Boy would make some killer rice for me! The lyrics that were embedded in the chapter are from Babyface's "Nobody Knows it But Me", but I removed them. The song did inspire this piece, however, and if you know it you should be able to weave it in.
"You sure you don't want another round of Mortal Kombat? I'll even let you be Liu Kang this time," Cyborg wheedles.
"Nah, I'm good. Thanks, dude," Beast Boy replies.
"But it's - " Cyborg starts.
The panel slams shut in his face.
"Only nine o'clock," Cyborg finishes lamely. He sighs, shrugs to himself, and walks away from the door.
On the other side, Beast Boy stands rigid, unmoving.
Slowly, he turns from the door. It looks as if he's about to go over to his bed, but instead falls backwards to lean upon the panel. His gloved hands slowly come up to massage his temples. After a few strokes, he lowers his hands and looks at them. Then, slowly, he removes the gloves, one hand at a time, gently setting them on the overcluttered table next to the door. He leans back against the door panel again, slowly massaging his temples once more with clean green fingers that end in sharp, trimmed claws. Despite the movement, they do not rake his scalp.
It's a surprising bit of tenderness.
The headache must have abated, for he lowers his hands again and looks about the room. Then, slowly, gracefully, he tiptoes over the unruly mess of paraphenalia strewn across the floor to one of the two clear spots in the room: a brown plush window seat.
The window is simple in design, a square of glass and a semicircle of purple stained glass, separated by a panel of wood painted white. It almost looks like ivory. Maybe sometimes he's reminded of the tusks of elephants he met as a child in Africa. If he is, he never tells the team.
In fact, he never tells the team anything about Africa. Robin has logged every bit of information he can find about Beast Boy's childhood - including Africa - in the computer's data files, but he had them encoded three times over by the Martian Manhunter. To this day, nobody else has seen them.
Beast Boy sits with his back against the wall, his feet planted on the window seat so that he looks like a W without the first line. Always incomplete. Always something missing.
Indeed, it looks like he's searching for something. Searching the incomplete horizon for a vision of hope. Maybe it's a figure on a floating rock.
Terra died four months ago. Only two days after her death did the team see Beast Boy smile and laugh like he had before.
Nobody saw him break down.
Even in the sanctity of his own room, Beast Boy does not let free his emotion. As he stares into the sunset, one small tear creeps down his left cheek. Maybe inside it is a maelstrom of despair. Maybe inside lay the darkness.
But he only showed light and happiness to his teammates. Incessant, jocular, immature light and happiness.
But as the sun sets, so does the ruse. The pain is clearly etched into his features, clearer than any sculptor could attempt. If one looked hard enough, she might say it was the same pain etched into a statue's eyes miles under the earth of Jump City.
"Dear Journal," Beast Boy says suddenly. "Day 119. Still no news from the six other geokinetics I contacted about Terra's condition."
He is silent for a few moments.
"I wish Mom and Dad were here. They'd know what to do."
He is silent for a few more moments.
"I wish I could have told her. I know she knew. But it would've felt so good to tell her and hear her say it back. All of it."
He laughs a little. It's not real laughter - more like a self-conscious scoff.
"I guess you always want one more day. One more time to see them again. Tell them how you feel. As if they didn't already know."
He stops for a moment, as if considering something.
"Humans are so egotistical. We think the people we love don't know our hearts. But they do. They always do. We just think we're the only ones who know it.
"For a race that knows so much, we really are ignorant.
"For a team that knows so much, they really are ignorant."
He pauses here, and grimaces.
"Not about the important things, like fighting bad guys. They're never stupid about that. But when it comes to really knowing each other, we think we're the only ones who know about our pasts. And we think we're the only ones who can understand those pasts. Even Starfire hasn't told us everything.
"I feel ignorant sometimes, journal. I feel like they don't know what I'm going through. But they all know."
Oh, Beast Boy. Not all of them.
Barely even one.
He smiles now.
"I don't know why I never share these kind of things with them."
He frowns.
"Yes I do. Cyborg'd just look at me funny. Starfire wouldn't understand. Robin'd argue with me until he tore every little thing I said into pieces.
"And Raven...she'd probably just tell me to shut up. Like usual."
Instead of frowning again, he instead shrugs.
"No big deal. I'm used to her. She can't really risk being nice, anyway, unless her powers go crazy. Well, she could risk it if she really wanted to. Evidently she doesn't want to."
He sighs.
"Terra, you made her so happy. She had someone she could argue with and not totally hate when it was over. You made us all happy, Terra. Someday you'll be back and it'll all be better. You'll see."
He is silent for a long time as he watches the sun finally dip below the horizon. Lights begin to flicker on in the city. His room remains dim. Perhaps it's a reflection of his dying hope.
"Even sub-humans can be a little ignorant sometimes, I guess, Terra. I'm still ignorant enough to think we've got a prayer of bringing you back. But until they tell me it'll never be possible, I'm not going to stop looking. It's ignorant, but I don't care."
He smiles.
"Maybe I'm ignorant to think that they won't understand me if I told them everything. If I shared every thought on my mind, instead of the happier ones, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
"I guess I'll just have to find out tomorrow.
"I'm going to undress now, Raven. I'd appreciate it if you didn't look. End journal entry," he finishes.
Raven backs the computer chair slowly away from the terminal and turns around to face a different screen. It shows her his journal entry, typed in a tidy cursive font that she barely recognizes. She squints a little to see it clearly, and finds that she does recognize it from a grocery list she once saw. She thought Robin had written it.
Clearly, she had been wrong.
She had been wrong about so many things. Wrong and ignorant, just as Beast Boy had been so kind to - so thoughtfully and logically and how could Beast Boy, of all people - point out. She had made a mistake she thought she was above making.
She had underestimated a friend.
The last time she did that, Terra nearly suffocated her.
Terra.
She thought he was over it. It took her only a few weeks to fully get over Malchior, after all.
(Yet every time she passes a Chinese restaurant with a dragon emblem on the sign or sees a dragon figurine in the mystical shops she often visits, she feels a twinge she doesn't want to explain.)
Clearly, she had been wrong.
She turns to the cameras that show his bedroom. The one focused on his bed shows him curled into a ball, covered only by the air.
She turns away, blushing. He really meant it when he said he was going to undress.
She begins to return the screens to the settings they were before she snuck in here. She only came to view a file on Mumbo Jumbo when an oddly-named folder caught her eye. She used her powers to break past the encryption and found herself flooded with images and accounts of a life alien to her.
And yet, somehow, she thinks to herself now, it is strangely similar to her own.
The room is back to normal. Nobody will suspect she has ever been here.
(But Beast Boy did. He knew, all along. He knew more than she ever thought he did.)
She cannot think of Beast Boy as ignorant any longer. In fact, he's probably the wisest man she has ever met.
Tomorrow, she knows he will be back to annoying her. Tomorrow, she knows she will threaten him with at least twenty different versions of a gory, painful death. It will all seem the same.
But tomorrow will never be the same; never again.
Despite that, she's eager for tomorrow's dawn. She has found a friend she can argue with and not hate when it's over, a friend she's always had but never understood. Perhaps a friend she will never understand.
She shares a private smile with herself as she teleports back to her room.
Author's Note: Please read, and please review!