Oneirophobia
In their struggle with life, the Titans find their fears reflected in their dreams. But it's as if their fears are staring at a funhouse mirror: the reflection is so much worse than the reality.
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The nightmares of the Titans. Have fun reading!
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Robin
He was standing in a white room, not wholly there, but sure that there was some purpose to his existence. The room didn't materialize to be anything; it just simply was.
While there was something that made him think it was morning, he couldn't be sure. He knew it was a dream. In conscious thought, he didn't have a clue. But dreams had the sort of feeling that this room gave him: that he was alive and breathing, yet everything around him was completely still. Like a mist, except the kind that breathes in slow, shallow breaths.
There was a color in the distance. For a moment it seemed only to be more white, but then it occurred to him that the white was mist. The color in the distance was a person. Holding his breath seemed impossible, yet he felt himself tense in his sleep.
The color was a person, and it was a girl. His girl. Her hair was the only color for miles, and it seemed to burn, the darkest, purest crimson in smoldering flames. He reached his hand out to touch it, and found it cool and crisp. The girl under the fire smiled, a smile that held mysteries. A knot in his stomach clenched.
"It hurts, yes?" she whispered.
"Yes," he said, not really sure what she meant.
"It's supposed to hurt."
"It is?"
"Of course, Robin."
He looked away from her black eyes for a moment, taking in his surroundings. They were on a ledge, far above the ground, the world still enveloped in white mist. He could hear and see a rushing waterfall, cascading over a rocky ledge. When Starfire grabbed his hand, he found that it burned him like her hair didn't. This time, it hurt.
Without stopping to think about it, and without letting go of Star's burning hand, he took off his clothes, passion muffled against heat. He looked over to her and found that she had done the same. White mist surrounded her in an eerie emerald glow.
They jumped the ledge together, but when they hit water he would never know. When he opened his eyes, she was there, watching him from beneath the black water. Her eyes were darker than the blackest of the universe. Her hair burned brighter still.
Their lips met under the surface, and bodies collided in turn. It never bothered him that every inch of her burned.
When he woke, charcoal black burns has blistered his skin.
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Raven
Something was very serious in her eyes. Like an important message that she knew she would never know, they asked her a question she didn't know the answer to. How did she get here? Like her eyes, she had no answer.
The pen she was holding felt quite real, but she knew that something about it was an unreality. The question was burning at her like a hot iron, but it was too muffled to be real. Nothing, she knew, was real.
So why was she so afraid?
It hit her like a wrecking ball that she knew exactly why she was afraid. She knew why she was here, staring at the wall of her room. She knew why there was a pen in her shaking fist, and yet there was no explanation as she began to trace a shape along the black wall.
The ink showed up blood red against the wall, and it began to form the shape of what was unmistakably a door. Pressing her hand to it, she found it opened up. She fell in before she could breathe again.
Inside was a long hallway of black and red. These colors didn't scare her, but something else did…. It was fear. She could smell the fear inside the room. It was a slick, hard feeling. It smelled horrible, yet it sounded completely silent. There was nothing to see…. Only her trembling feet.
All emotions fled from the sight of fear, like trained animals suddenly snapping. It didn't make her change in any way, but there was an empty feeling. The knot in her stomach was suddenly painful.
At the end of the hallways was a table. It was a glowing rosewood table, with a shower of every kind of food there was to exist. At the end of the table was a man with pale skin and blank eyes. Blood dripped down from his body and lay in a puddle below him. He looked near death, yet so restlessly alive.
Two sensations gripped the girl. One was unrelenting love for the poor pity of a soul at the end of the table. She wanted desperately to help him, yet the other feeling in her held her back. It was hunger. Hunger for the food, yet something else that she seemed unable to feed. The food, she thought, would quench that hunger.
She rushed towards the table, forgetting about the man whose blood was now flowing like a cascading waterfall. Not noticing what she put in her mouth, not caring what it was as long as it filled her.
But as she swallowed her first bite, something in the atmosphere changed. Her fear was clawing at her insides like a trapped animal, and it was painful. With hunger and fear gnawing at her, she turned around to face the nameless man.
He was awake in his puddle of blood. His eyes were black and very much alive, his skin inflamed with something she would never be able to name. The blood that now dripped from his open mouth was black, the hair in his head receding into his skull, and a fierce sound coming from his lungs.
Before he came forward, she thought for a single moment about the sound coming from his mouth: it was hunger, like hers, except hunger for her fear.
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Cyborg
The team captains were chosen. Nameless, faceless men without feet to stand on. Cyborg felt pity for them, for all of them, because he was the only man with a whole body. A completely flawless body that was all his.
The captains began to call out names, undistinguishable names, of the other men. Pride in his own body instantly stalled as Cyborg realized that they were not choosing him first. The other deformed men were called to stand next o the captains, and more and more continued to leave until only Cyborg was left standing there. Completely alone.
The two teams began to fight over who would take him. With a pang of hurt, Cyborg realized they were not fighting over him, but rather fighting over who should take the retard. No one wanted him there.
A silent agreement was made that Cyborg would form his own team, alone. Willing himself not to cry, he made his way over to the other side of the field. When a whistle blew, he stayed there, watching as the other teams fought together.
It seemed years passed until something changed. The direction of the game was now different. While Cyborg had no idea what new direction it was, he feared it nonetheless. It scared him.
He watched as the two teams, no longer fighting, made their way over to where he stood. Their faces came into view, and with a surge of shock and sadness, he realized they were the faces of his friends. They came close to him, whispering words of fierce hatred, about how much of a loser he was. Tears began to fall from his large face, colliding with the ground in great big splashes. Every time he heard it, he jumped in fright.
He could not fight back. His limbs were paralyzed, and all he could do was sit there and wait for death as the deformed versions of his friends beat him down and out of his mind.
Upon waking, tears the size of golf balls were found dripping from his eyes.
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Starfire
She couldn't remember a time when she had looked more glorious. Her hair was piled on top of her head in an elegant bun, decorated with diamonds and rubies. Her eyes shone with a brilliance of longing, her face glowing with pride and toner. A glittering cherry dress fell over her, looking weightless and too beautiful for words.
She left out the door in a hurry, for what reason she wouldn't care to know. It did not surprise her that the whole world seemed captivated by her beauty. Wandering the streets of a different city, it seemed, each minute. She was looking for a mystery, yet it seemed to content her all the same. Everyone loved her.
She could have wandered the streets for years, and it would not matter in the least.
In the hallways of a club, she felt something new. There sat a man that lit her throat on fire, making her heart beats forced and painful. He sat with an air of haughtiness, like a king in his element. She smiled at him, a smile that never left her face.
"Hello," she said, breathless.
"You look beautiful," he said, pulling her into a dance.
Her chest swelled with pride and love. It was this man, she knew, that she had been looking for the whole time in her wanderings. He looked at her with a fierce longing, and she knew it was where she belonged in that lifetime.
But then he turned away, and something inside her opened. She tried clinging on, but he and the closed feeling pushed her away. He turned to another girl, one more beautiful than her, and began dancing in a rhythm that defied everything she knew.
Suddenly, she felt incredibly out of place. All of these beautiful people surrounded her, staring at her, calling her names. She didn't cry, but tried her best to hold her head high. People tore her dress away, pulled out her hair. Still, she did not cry.
It was a custom she was somehow familiar with, as if in another lifetime. Had the world always been this way? Had people always been this cruel?
She hadn't known it years ago, when she was ignorant.
Ignorance is bliss, after all.
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Beastboy
His head was throbbing with memories of emotions. Of love, lust, and sadness. He could not pinpoint why they came to him now, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
A crowd of girls sat before him, all making fun of him in his attempts to be kind. They could care less whose face they stomped on on their way to fame. He had learned that the hard way.
Men wolf whistled at the crowd of girls, nothing but sex on their minds. The girls blushed, flirted, but resolved right there that they would not give the boys what they wanted. They were better than that. After all, they would be famous soon.
Leaders of men and women alike smiled with pride. They stood on top of piles of sadness, yet they were oblivious to it. Power was all that was on their mind. Leading a country in the direction they thought was right was their number one priority. It didn't matter what everyone else thought.
Mindless soldiers and citizens followed that leader. As if hypnotized, they cared only for their own well being, and figured that whatever everyone else did was ok. As long as the policeman told them it was ok to kill the man, they would carry a gun with pride.
The boy found himself separated from them all. Observant, not hypnotized, but an individual. He feared for these people.
In the crowd of girls was another girl, who he feared for most. She stood, blonde head shining in the sun, hypnotized like the rest. Yet there was a fight in her he could not describe; she knew was she was doing, yet accepted it all the same.
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Gah, I had a really hard time finishing these. Sorry if the last three were rushed. I almost wanted to leave them out completely.
Well, the point of this was to show what each of the Titans wanted/feared most.
Robin: Feared that Starfire was better than him, and wanted him only to dispose of him later on. He feared rejection, and wanted Star.
Raven: Feared what she was. She knew she had the power to help humanity, yet she was selfish and helped herself first. She feared that she would become selfish.
Cyborg: Probably the most straightforward. He feared rejection.
Starfire: She feared two things. The boy, as you might have guessed, was Robin. She feared that he would reject her because she wasn't good enough. She also feared what the world thought. She isn't ignorant anymore, and she only just recently discovered what everyone's jeers and laughs really meant.
Beastboy: He is the most selfless of the Titans. The only thing he wants is Terra (I'm sorry, I'm a BB/Rae shipper, but I really needed to do Terra for this one), and he fears what the world will become. Especially since Terra is so susceptible to the world's influence.
Hope you liked it! Please review!
~Alien