Disclaimer: I own no superheroes, much less the Teen Titans.
This story was originally written in second-person perspective. There's a magic to the second-person that no other point of views can catch, a certain tone that is weaved through the 'you's and 'yourself's. Unfortunately, it appears that the Terms of Service on this site does not permit this second-person perspective. (Thank you for bringing this to attention, by the way!) I personally disagree with this rule because, as I've said, second-person immerses you into a strange but fascinating world, and it's quite sad that deprives its writers and its readers of that joy. Oh well, though. When in Rome...
Anyways, I've changed it to third-perspective, in an attempt to salvage some of that impersonally-personally-impersonally-personal tone, but alas, I have to admit defeat. (If I say so myself, it's gotten a bit flatter and much less exciting.) Sorry to those who liked this story particularly because of that wonderfully hard-to-get tone, and I hope the new version isn't too grating on the nerves as it was with mine.
Let's enjoy what we can.
Her first impression of him is that he's green, he's honest, and he's just a bit funny.
Before she knows it, in a whirlwind of events she ends up living in a giant tower with four other self-made heroes, and he is one of them too. As time passes on, she realizes something crucial- her first impression was wrong.
He's green, honest, and not at all funny.
She prefers to hang in the shadows, help where it's needed, and stay silent, hidden in her hood, but he- the green, the honest, the unfunny one- he likes to (drag) bring her out and include her in their teenaged shenanigans. She wants to ask him why (why me?), for what reasons, but she's too (envious) lonely to refuse, to be anything more than reluctant. Still, she pays the price, having to constantly meditate in order to keep her (emotions) powers in check.
He's still not funny.
Life goes on, and the five of them are closer than she ever thought was possible, because she hasn't been this comfortable with anyone but the monks of Azarath. Even then, she'd mostly spent the time in silence; here, every moment's filled with noise. His jokes remain lame, but she has secretly grown to tolerate him, grown to tolerate all four of them. The only one she can't tolerate is herself, but that has always been a given. Born to the dark, to be the starting trigger for doomsday, she wonders if she should just escape from the very place she's meant to help destroy. She's unsure, insecure, unstable, but for now, she stays. The daily interactions she has with her (friends) teammates are too precious to let go, so for now she stays. (She berates herself for being so selfish anyways.)
She wakes up one day and realizes her birthday is just around the corner, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. She's on the edge, and the hurt looks in their eyes aren't helping her control her emotions. She's scared, more than anything else, for the (wonderful) people she's met and the (beautiful) world she lives in. She feels regret the moment she turns away from the birthday party, from his wide eyes and their shocked faces, but they shouldn't be celebrating her existence. After all, she's been sent for destruction, and that includes them.
Includes him.
Somehow, impossibly so, her birthday's disaster is over, and everyone's fine. She still can't believe it, and she doesn't dare to accept it as reality. Suddenly, life's brimming with possibilities, and she doesn't feel guilty anymore when she allows a smile to surface once in a while. Sure, things happen, villains arise, but she's in the team that defeated (father) Trigon. If they can do that, they can win over anything. She lets herself relax.
Her relationships with the lot of them improves, now that she knows she won't be destroying them involuntarily any time soon. Trust reaches new levels, and even if her daily interactions change on miniscule scales, they understand, because they understand her. It's the same with him.
Everything is fine.
Fine, that is, until one day he falls sick, and doesn't get better, and nobody- not even Cyborg and his supertechnology- knows why. Day after day, he lies, still, pale, in pain, while Cyborg toils away into finding out what's happening to his best friend.
It doesn't take long for them to find out. His DNA is falling apart. The parts of him that makes his superpower possible are failing him now. He can't shapeshift anymore, can't even move, and it's doubtful he'll survive long.
She can't believe it. Nobody can, but it's the worst with her. He's done nothing to deserve this kind of fate. (If anything, she thinks to herself, it should've been her. The one who put this world in danger, selfishly staying by all these wonderful people. It sure shouldn't have been him, but it is, and it's unfair.)
She silently screams at the sky with her eyes, alone on the rooftop, wanting to darken the clouds and let the rain pour, wanting to rip apart the blue that's too cheerful (unfair), destroy the sunshine that's too bright (unfair). Nobody else should be happy when the world's this unfair, she thinks, and the rooftop door snaps into pieces before she can stop her powers.
Retreat. That's the only thing she can do, and she's so helpless she doesn't know why they even keep her in the tower, much less the team. She considers herself too jaded to offer sympathy like Starfire, too dark to put on an encouraging smile like Robin, too otherworldly to give proper medical attention like Cyborg. She's completely useless, and there's only one option for her: retreat. Keep away from him, let him smile while he still can.
Still, she's too worried to stay away forever, so she peeks in here and then when she knows he's sleeping. She watches her friends drop their bright expressions the moment they come out of his room, and she wishes you could do more. When Cyborg announces, gravely and in a seriousness she hadn't known was possible, that there are no possible treatments, she slinks away before she (her powers) can do any harm.
As she lays in her bed, unable to go back to the fitful sleep she has managed to get by with ever since she found out the unfairness of the universe, she gets struck by a thought. This world may not have the treatments, but maybe elsewhere.
Elsewhere, like the worlds she knows.
The next day, she pores through all the books in her room and then some, even visiting other dimensions to try and look for an answer. Her eyes are constantly bleary, and she barely comes out of the room, but she forces herself to go on. There's no other way. She quietly shares the idea with Starfire, because she's from another world (planet) as well, and her sad eyes (which have been drowned in tears for days now) lighten up, just a fraction, and she grasps her hand lightly before she rushes into her own room to search.
But the hope that had found her is eaten away, little by little, with each book that gives no information, with each page that has nothing to do with (him) his problem. Even so, she and Starfire blaze through everything that the two of them own, grasping at the last straws, looking for a miracle.
And suddenly, she does have a miracle. She receives good information from a trustworthy monk of Azarath that there is a cure for a DNA mess-up. The steps themselves are simple: all she has to do is boil four different (magical) plants and make it into a frothy juice, then feed the liquid to the patient three times a day for three days. She can't wait to tell your friends.
But with a little good comes a little bad, because he tells her that the ingredients needed are several rare plants found specifically in certain places, that which would take days to journey to. It would take her, he calculates, a little under a month to get all of the plants and return. And that's if she doesn't get delayed looking for the plants in the first place or finding her way to those different places.
It takes her less than a second to decide that she'll be the one gathering the ingredients. All those places she needs to go to are far and in different dimensions, so logically speaking there's only one person- her- who can finish this task as quickly as possible. After all, none of the others know the dimensions at all.
The moment she returns from Azarath, she asks Robin to gather everyone (except him, but that's a given), and she quietly tells them of the news. At first, they're excited, and then they're worried.
She turns to Cyborg and inquires whether he would be able to last another month. He frowns, and tells you barely, but yes. Already he's falling into long periods of sleep, waking up only to drink water or stare into space blankly. She nods once to Robin and hugs the weeping Starfire briefly (she prefers as little contact as possible), and she makes her way to the door. Just before she leaves, she look over your shoulder, and softly (pleads) asks them to not tell him.
Really, this is all she can do, she thinks, and she's kind of happy that she can actually do something for him, because these past days she considers herself unable to do anything. On an impulse (which she rarely follows), she peeks into the med room, confident that he'd be asleep as per usual. She's rightly startled to see glazed eyes staring back, and before she can quickly make a disappearance, he croaks out her name.
Well, she thinks, can't hurt to give him her attention before she goes.
She walks in cautiously, and he asks you hoarsely where you've been, and she answer vaguely enough. He tries to talk more, but before he can get out more than a syllable, his eyes slide close and he's out like a light. She smiles softly at his peaceful expression, knowing that he must be in great pain despite all the painkillers Cyborg had put in him, and she leaves without a second look.
She pack as lightly as possible and she goes as soon as she's ready. There isn't any time to waste.
The journey itself is, well, hard. By the time she reaches the last ingredient, three and a half weeks later (the urgency has given her a strength she has never known before), she's plagued by fatigue, battered, bruised, and almost too tired to open the portal to her room. She feel like just crashing into the bed and sleeping for a week without stopping, but she knows he is more important than that. She'll recover someday; his recovery is your top priority.
She drags herself outside and stumble across an alarmed Starfire, who bundles her up and flies all the way to the med room, where she deposits her (and the bag she is clutching) onto the bed next to his. She sits up immediately- if she let her eyes close, she knows, she won't be waking up any time soon. Feeling faint, she tells Starfire the instructions, forcing her to get a pen and paper to write these all down so she can't forget, and she gives her the precious bag containing all the ingredients.
The last thing she sees before she pretty much loses all consciousness is him, still asleep, unknowing of the goings-on.
-0-0-
When she wakes up, he's there, grinning his toothy grin in all its glory. She notices the frailness of his arms and the hollow cheeks he sports, and the relief that she first felt disappears. He laughs at her frown, but even his laugh is hoarse and thus does nothing to improve her impression of his health. Before she can do anything to drag him back to his bed, Robin pops up and enthusiastically calls out to the rest of the team, announcing her "revival," as he states it.
In a moment's time, they're all surrounding her bed, and she scowls to hide the swell of joy that's inside of her.
"I wasn't the one in danger of death, unlike a certain someone, you know," she comments dryly (and it's fitting, because her throat is parched).
"Hey!" he protests. "That's not true anymore, Cy said I'm, uh, coopering now."
Cyborg rolls his eyes. "Recuperating, grass stain. But it's true," he smiles, turning to her, "thanks to you, his DNA isn't messed up anymore. It's just he's unbelievably weak." She note that he's pouting while the half-metal man snickers away, and she wonders what she missed in her sleep.
Star smiles at her, all stars and rainbows. "Oh, friend Raven, we are all so very much happy that you have returned from the journey with a safe and a sound!"
Robin laughs, correcting her, "You mean, safe and sound."
"But friend Raven is not a sound, no?"
"Actually, that's a very good question. Why safe and sound?" She turns her attention to him, musing out loud with a mockingly serious expression on his still-gaunt face, his hand posed on his chin.
"The word 'sound' has two meanings," she replies. It's a silly discussion, but that's to be expected, and she's just happy to be back and that he's okay and everyone's back to being happy again. "Audible sensory waves, and also being whole and working. For example, 'a sound machine' would mean a machine that is whole and fulfills its own functions."
Robin grins at her. "What she said," he shrugs to Star, whose starry eyes soften her own. She really had missed all this ruckus, she thinks fondly.
"Anyways," Robin continues, "I'm glad this is all over. We were all worried, you know."
Cyborg chimes in. "Yeah, li'l grass stain over here kept asking for you every time he woke up." She listens to loud protests mixed in with chortles between two best friends, and she smiles softly.
"I'm glad to be back," is all she says, but everyone stops whatever they were doing and smiles back.
"For this glorious day, I shall prepare the Tamaranian meal of festivity and welcoming, the Fl'ustnigtraksh'a!" Starfire claps, rushing out of the room while the rest of the team (her included) cringe.
"Man, just how many different types of events did Tamaranians have to make dishes for?" he complains, but not even the looming doom waiting of Starfire's cooking for dinner is enough to bring down the overall relieved mood. Even if her smile has been dropped. (She's never been so open about her emotions anyways.) He turns his green eyes on her, but just before their eyes meet, she looks away.
(She's never been quite open about her emotions anyways.)
Instead, she urges Robin to go stop Starfire somehow, and the leader of them all groans, knowing how nothing would stop Starfire in her mood right now. Reluctantly, he goes, half-heartedly calling out for Star. The rest of them laugh, and she watches him laugh in the corner of her eyes.
It's been too long without him.
Later, after everyone had gone to (sneak away and throw out) eat Star's feast, there's only the two of them left to "cooper." The moment the door closes, it's silent, and she's determined to keep it so.
Except, when it comes to him, he's never been sensible to others' moods, so even when she closes her eyes and lie down, clearly about to sleep, he talks regardless.
"Hey, uh, thanks for all the stuff you did," he says. Though her eyes are closed, she can almost see him rubbing the back of his head while he says this. She muses at how unintelligent that sentence was- "stuff?" Really?- and she makes no reply.
The silence must've been awkward for him, because he hurriedly continues, "I mean, going all the way to what's-that-place and getting all those weird-looking plants, that's pretty cool."
She thinks, how lame, but for some reason the corners of her lips twitch. Taking pity upon the green man, she finally opens her mouth. "Azarath. It was nothing. We're teammates; anyone would've done the same for you."
"Still," he insists, "that doesn't change that it was you who did it. So thank you, Raven."
And with that, he leaves her to wonder how it is that even with such a low intelligence level, he manages to ring the heart true. She decides that it must be a talent, because even the most smart-sounding proverb wouldn't be able to give this kind of feeling to her. After all, he's green, not at all funny, but honest- and somewhat, she thinks, drifting off into dreams, charming, in his own way. He reminds her of a frog prince (even though it seems that this time around, she was the damsel charming and he the frog in distress), and belatedly she wonders, just before you succumb to sleep, if he's still able to shapeshift.
