Just a one-shot as a kind of hommage to the animated series that i watched years ago and have recently rediscovered, set shortly after the trouble in tokyo film with an array of bits and pieces that turned up in the episodes.

Disclaimer: you know the drill.


Broken Brick-a-Brack

"Oh come on Raven, just come with us. You know you're going to anyway after you sulk for a bit."

"I do not want to go to some ridiculous comic book convention." Her tone was monotonous as usual and as usual she didn't lift her head from the novel she was reading, Beast Boy would get bored of asking in ten minutes and she could finish her chapter in peace.

"But you love books."

"Comics aren't books." She flicked the page over with a sharp snap betraying her appearance of patience.

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. Besides what with Robin and Starfire on their date you'd be on your own."

"Oh no, however will I cope."

"Ah come on. We need you." She rubbed at her temple, annoyed that she had read the same paragraph three times now.

"Just because you and Cyborg decided to dress up doesn't make it fun."

"But without a Wonder Woman we don't have the full Trinity." He jumped over to Cyborg (who knew better than to get involved) to strike a convincing superhero pose.

"Please."

"I said no"

"PLEEEASE." He fell to his knees in front of her with his hands clasped together and gave her the big droopy eye look that generally only worked on Starfire.

"Stop begging, you should have asked Starfire before she made plans with Robin, at least she doesn't care if she wears basically nothing." She eyed the primary coloured disaster piece that Beast boy was waving at her; he had even gotten the boots and lasso.

"Robin wishes." Cyborg said not quite under his breath, he picked up the tickets sensing that the argument was winding down as Beast Boy ran out of steam.

"At least she cares."

"What?" At Beast Boy's last remarks warning signs had flashed in Cyborg's head and he desperately signalled to Beast Boy behind Raven's back, but he obviously had a death wish tonight.

"You could at least pretend to care about the rest of us sometimes."

Beast Boy stood with his arms folded and annoyed expression, his tactic was to play the guilt card so that Raven would sigh, sulk, give in and then come along which is what she usually did. The tower was quiet but for Raven quietly and very deliberately closing and putting her book down. For a moment Beast Boy thought that it had worked despite Cyborg chewing his fingers and his eyes darting between them, it could get ugly in the tower when Beast Boy over steps his mark with Raven. She paced for a moment, unsure at which direction and she struggled briefly with her powers.

"So I don't care?"

Beast Boy couldn't work out whether it was a question or a statement but something was wrong with her tone, she wasn't just angry with him, he knew angry and this was different. She grabbed his wrist and started to drag him towards her room with her hand glowing with dark energy, he wouldn't have been able to pull away even if he wanted to.

"Eh Raven?" This was bad, what was she going to do to him: something so horrible that she couldn't have Cyborg as a witness? "I didn't mean that you didn't care just..."

"Just that you don't think I do?"

Once inside her room she released her grip and deposited Beast Boy by the door and for once he didn't feel inclined to wander further in despite having the rare permission to be there. Raven had pulled out an old wooden chest from one of the far corners of her room; she waved her hand over the lock to open it and started to rummage around its contents with her back to him. Beast Boy hesitated, she wasn't slapping him; did she want to show him something? Could he sit down? Before he could decide a large white stuffed toy chicken was launched at him and bounced off his head, he recognised it and picked it up.

"I won this for you at the fair."

A large scrap book landed at his feet, it looked like it had be rebound several times to make room for more pages, whilst she was still rummaging he bent down and started flicking through the pages. It had what appeared to be every newspaper headline and magazine article that the Titans had ever featured in carefully snipped out and glued in. Some pages were photographs, ones he remembered taking, ones Starfire had taken and others he wasn't sure and underneath each one Raven had written a date and a place. He turned randomly through the book and read little snippets around the photos that either Raven in her heavy italic script wrote or the spiky slanted hand that Starfire had written in purple.

As he turned to the latest pages a ring of cream ceramic beads landed by him, they were Star's friendship beads, he'd kept his too and he tried to remember where he'd put them. The most recent pages in the scrap book had a copy of the photos he'd taken at Tokyo and Japanese newspaper articles about them; she'd highlighted bits and translated pieces at the side.

A head lamp from the first T car rolled over to him, the front was cracked, and Beast Boy remembered that she'd help to rebuild the car after it got trashed. The T car often got trashed in hot pursuit of crime and Cyborg dealt with it a lot better now and enjoyed building things anyway.

Beast Boy gathered up the items she had thrown at him and went at sat a couple of feet behind her, the book that Malchior was trapped in was by her knee with ah origami paper rose on the cover. Right now he wouldn't be all surprised if she pulled out the paper turtle he'd made, but she didn't and pulled out a tattered black and yellow cape instead.

"Robins torn cape when he brought me home on my birthday he wrapped it round me." She didn't pass him the cape but did hand him a DVD in an almost embarrassed way.

"Wicked scary, I bought it when it came off rental."

"I thought you didn't like the movie?"

"Why do you even think I was scared? I've had nightmares that were worse. I can even be nightmares that are worse." Beast boy could easily believe that, you didn't need to see Doctor Light nearly wet himself in her presence to know that Raven could do scary better than most.

"Um, because it's the scariest thing to come out of Hollywood?"

"Because I'd never seen a horror movie before, Azarath isn't..." she sighed and took the movie back and dropped it back in the chest.

"Isn't what?" he didn't want her to stop talking, Raven rarely opened up to anyone long enough to tell them much about herself.

"It's just different, completely different; you seem to forget that like Starfire I'm not from Earth either."

"Eh, well you never seemed to eh have trouble? I guess I just assumed that Azarath was a bit like Earth."

"English isn't even my first language." That was surprising, she spoke it better than he did and he was pretty sure Raven didn't go around kissing random civilians to learn languages. She pulled out a small object hat had rolled into one of the corners of the chest.

" Cyborg's holographic ring, he only broke one of them. He said that it had made him feel real and normal."

"Normal's overrated." Did he spy a slight smile at that comment? Either way she wasn't angry anymore and he decided to shuffle closer and peer into the chest and poking out from under Mumbos hat he saw something that was his.

"Why do you have one of my belts? "

"Cyborg found it after you saved me from Adonis when the chemicals had turned you both into those beasts. You can have it back but the clasp is broken." Most of the bits and pieces Raven had held on to seemed to be a little damaged.

"Robin was so ready to believe that I'd hurt you." He had noticed then that when you were feeling really down that was when Raven generally found you. "Is that one of the game stations controllers?"

"One of the old ones, no one wanted to use it after you put glue on it to stick it to my hands."

He reached in a picked up a bottle of nail polish and looked at her questioningly. "Starfire got it for me, I never used it because she got blue and I didn't want waste it, she laughed and said that I was being a... some Tamarainian slang, so I got her a red one that we both use." She put it back and scooped out a number objects including a few sticks of Super Twinkle Donkey Gum and the Brushogun book.

"Your employee name tag from that horrible alien tofu meat place, because when you wanted something you were willing to work hard for it."

"A dummy?"

"Teether gave it to me." She bent over the chest looking for something important and when she found it she put it in his hand.

"Do you remember this? It's one of the things I've kept that mean the most to me"

"It's a penny?" he turned the coin over in his fingers to see if there was anything special about it, if it was one of those double headed ones, but it was just an ordinary penny.

"You gave it to me?" she prompted.

"Is this because I still owe you twenty bucks?"

"No, you gave it to me the day the world ended." She sounded impatient with an eyebrow raised.

"Oh yeah, see a penny pick it up... um something good luck."

"I went back to find it afterwards." She must have meant the cavern under the old library, how could she have gone back to that dark old place where she-... well, he didn't even like to think about what had happened. They'd all watched her die unable to do anything about it.

"Why? I could have given you another if you asked."

"Because when I dropped it I let go of my hope. And I never want to again."

"Raven..."

She pulled out a white cloak and laid it across her lap, "I kept this because for a brief while I was the person I always wanted to be but didn't think I could be." She suddenly looked very sad and turned away from him holding her cloak close to her chest.

"Raven?"

She started putting everything back haphazardly, bent over the chest and wouldn't face him, it was like she'd regretted letting him in.

"Raven, I'm sorry that I said-"

"Get out... please... just leave my room." She took the objects he was still holding from him: the chicken, the head lamp, the scrap book and the penny.

"I just want to say-"

"You don't have to. Just go and enjoy the convention. I want to be alone."

He stood up to leave and hesitated trying to think of something to say but kept his mouth shut for once knowing that he was prone to ruining 'moments'. He looked back at her crouched figure in the darkness of her room before closing the door behind him.

"Sometimes I don't think that you do."

Hope you enjoyed it, Raven is one of my favourite characters and keeping little bits of memorabilia might be something she would do, or it might be too sentimental for her i'm not sure.

please review, feedback is always welcomed and helpful.