—-—- Prologue
It was a cloudless night when the five of them met. Five strangers still then, with stranger pasts. It was later that night when a common goal brought them together and bound them in friendship. And it was as the sun rose that they stood on the shore where their home would later stand, and Beast Boy saw Raven smile for the first time. The corners of her mouth curved upward and she said, "You know, you're kind of funny."
Man, did he ever get a kick out of that. He made smile the girl without smiles!
So really, though she was never to know it, it was Raven's own fault that Beast Boy wasted so much time mercilessly pelting her with jokes. With pranks, with loud-mouthed remarks and ceaseless banter, with pokes and prods and whatever else popped into his head. She hated it, how she hated it, and since she knew full well what he was trying to do she begrudged that it was working.
Sometimes, especially in the beginning, Beast Boy would start to worry he'd gone too far, that maybe her dark demeanor and unresponsiveness was all there really was. He might as well be tickling a brick wall.
But then—!
It would happen, once in a while. He would hit the right nerve. Like a break in the clouds, she would smile before she could catch herself. One time he even saw her teeth! Admittedly, half the time she was smiling at her own snarky comeback to whatever Beast Boy had thrown at her, but a win was a win. On the team's first April Fool's Day together she busted into laughter so suddenly at Starfire's green hair that Beast Boy almost fell over in shock—and then he did fall over, when a backlash of coiled energy whipped out from Raven and shattered all the glasses on the coffee table.
Everyone else gaped, and Raven swept from the room with a flourish of her indigo hood to conceal her dimming expression.
But Beast Boy—he was grinning on the floor like an idiot with a million dollars.
"Did you guys see that?" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet.
"Yeah, B, we saw," Cyborg said gravely. He shot a wary glance at the shards of glass, the dripping flat cola pooling at Starfire's bare feet.
"I wasn't talking about that," he dismissed, "I mean, Raven was laughing!" Really laughing.
The only other time he'd heard her laugh so freely was during that strange dreamlike trip he and Cyborg had taken into her mirror, wherein they stumbled on the rare opportunity to meet Raven's Happiness. And, if he wasn't mistaken, he did believe he'd just met her again.
People had accused him before of having an addictive personality, and this was something he couldn't deny. He was hooked. There was no other way to describe it. Something about getting her to slip her emotions was just... satisfying. It was a thousand times more satiating to get a lopsided grin out of Raven than to get full-bellied laughter out of all his other teammates. Maybe because it was harder to get. Maybe he only craved it like he craved high scores and rare collector's editions of old arcade games.
In a way, what he was doing was wrong. He understood that she controlled her emotions for a good reason. The surging lights whenever she lost control were enough to prove it, the bits of broken glass and electronics that slowly filled a metal trash can in the back of the Titans' pantry over the years (which Beast Boy jokingly referred to as the "emotican"). He was aware that his efforts to budge her were unraveling some of the carefully tied strings she'd tied to hold herself upright. But, though guilt wriggled in his heart, it was invariably drowned out by the urge to cut those strings, snip snip snip, one smile at a time.
On the first night of the rest of her life, Raven stared at the back of Beast Boy's head and wondered what the hell was so funny. He'd been cackling like a hyena for ten whole minutes. She could scarcely hear herself think.
"Raven," he said suddenly, startling her out of her attempted meditation, "you gotta come see this." He spun around on the couch, lolling over the backside like a dog, controller trailing along the carpet. "This is the funniest glitch we have ever found in this game."
Cyborg attached his signature to the statement by bursting out into such boisterous laughter that he nearly fell off the couch.
Raven blinked at the screen unseeingly. "It looks the same as all the other times you play this game."
Robin spoke up from the far side of the room, where he and Starfire were still finishing their food. "Don't push it, Beast Boy. Raven's had a rough day. Let her meditate in peace for once, would you?"
"A rough day," amended Starfire with caution, "is what I think you would call the 'century statement.'"
"Understatement of the century!" Cyborg roared, unaware of the others' conversation, and threw down his controller in another fit of laughter. "BB," he went on, and slapped him on the back, "this is the funniest glitch anyone has found in any game ever."
Knowing her cue, Raven rose to vacate the room. Today the world had ended because of her. It had been mended in the end, leaving a dangerous amount of happiness and hope swirling in her heart, but it still didn't mean she was completely okay. She'd had her fun and had amicably stayed for the party her friends threw in celebration, but now that the initial joy had worn off a familiar hollowness was creeping within her. Something about today had changed her, mentally and physically. She found that instead of being bombarded with all her friend's emotions, like the constant radio signals she was used to tuning out, there was radio silence instead and she had to purposefully reach out to turn up the dials. She'd yet to decide what it meant. More control or less control? Good or bad?
She needed time alone. Time to think. Time to recover.
"Beast Boy," Robin warned as the accused opened his mouth to call Raven back.
For Robin's intervention she was grateful. At the end of the world she'd found a deeper friend in her team leader than she knew she had, and he'd been there for her in a way she'd never have asked for from anyone. She knew he couldn't ever fully understand her—after all, no one could—but it was clear he understood what she wanted. That was more than good enough.
"Oh, shut up, Robin."
The shocked silence that fell over the tower's common room after Beast Boy spoke would have been heavy enough to smother a forest fire. Only the cartoony shriek of Cyborg's game character as it died interrupted the stillness. But Beast Boy clambered over the back of the couch, completely oblivious or completely uncaring of the reception of what he said, and cantered over to Raven where she hovered in the doorway.
"Come on," he complained, "it's your party. You're staying." As if to prove his point he grabbed her wrist and began tugging her back into the room.
"Beast Boy," she growled through clenched teeth, standing stock still though he heaved on her arm. "Let go." She would give him three seconds before she made him let go.
Starfire descended on them with a concerned crease in her eyebrows. "I believe friend Raven has expressed her wish to be alone. Please let go, now, okay?"
But Beast Boy had transformed into a gorilla; with the added strength he was now nearing the couch and no one else seemed interested in stopping him. Robin was still comatose at the kitchen table, unable to process what Beast Boy had said.
"Oh hell no," Beast Boy joked as he transformed back. "She's been alone for long enough. It's time to play with the other kids."
"I want to be alone," Raven snapped, finally wrenching her hand from his grasp. She pulled her cloak tightly about herself, feeling oddly vulnerable.
"What do I have to do to get you to stay, huh?" He dropped to his knees, hands clasped together, eyes glistening. "I hafta beg?" His body melted, though his eyes kept that same sharp glisten, the wide-eyed manipulation, and he took on the form of a noble Great Dane. He pawed the ground and whimpered. Raven settled her weight onto the other hip, her hands at her waist as she shook her head in disbelief.
"Well. You have no shame." She already knew that, but sometimes he still managed to surprise her.
He shifted then into a St. Bernard, his face so sad and droopy with melancholy cheeks that Starfire's hands went to her face.
"No shame," Raven repeated in the same monotone. She tilted her head to the side, mirroring Beast Boy's doglike motion, and wondered why on Earth he cared so much.
Beast Boy shifted again, shrinking, his piles of fur shrinking away until all that was left was a fat, stout, round little body, wide buggy eyes that pointed different directions, and a tongue that lolled out of his mouth sideways. The green pug at Raven's feet gave one short wheezy bark.
Cyborg snorted, and the sound of metal on metal mixed with the game's 8-bit soundtrack as he slapped his knee. "A pug, man?"
Raven pursed her lips at the idiot at her feet. What was he trying to accomplish? He looked so.. so foolish. He gave another bark and then shifted again, into an even smaller and even more horrible-looking dog. A tiny little chihuahua with eyes like marbles glued onto a skull. Cyborg immediately tried to jokingly grab at him, shouting, "A chihuahua? For real, man?"
When Beast Boy squirmed away, his paws skid on the tile and his stubby little legs did a skittering dance before completely giving out on him. He faceplanted hard.
And Raven couldn't help it. She laughed.
She tried to cover it with her hand (after all, she'd really worn herself out today—this was too much). But Beast Boy saw, and suddenly his beaming human face was three inches from hers and he was saying, "Alright, Raven!"
Before she could comprehend what had happened, she'd been pulled over the couch and found herself between Cyborg and Beast Boy, staring at the video game flashing across the flat screen.
"Why do you do that?"
"Okay, take this," he told her, ignoring the question and instead shoving his controller into her hands.
He was never afraid to make a complete fool of himself in his efforts to get her smiling, or laughing, or just participating. She wanted to know why.
"You'll like this," he assured her. "Just walk forward until you get to the streetlamp there."
She complied, but out of the corner of her eye she surveyed her strangest friend, his sprawled position, his lax demeanor. He certainly was not acting as though the world had just nearly ended.
"Why do you do that?" she repeated later, when the other three titans were fast asleep on the living room floor. Raven was at the window, pretending to meditate. In truth she was counting stars because she couldn't summon the concentration required for the deep meditation she desired. Beast Boy remained on the couch, playing the same game, messing with some other glitch he and Cyborg had discovered.
There was a gentle beeping as he paused the game, and she heard the couch rustle as he turned toward her. "Do what?"
She shrugged. "Act like a moron just to try to make me laugh."
"I dunno..." She glanced his way and caught a crazy glint in his eye. "Maybe I'm not trying. Maybe you just think I'm funny."
"Dream on, Beast Boy." But her deadpan stare had no effect on him.
"I don't have to, I know you think I'm funny."
"Just because you get one laugh doesn't—"
"One laugh? Come on, Rae—"
"Okay, maybe a couple of—"
"A couple of—!"
"So? What do you want?" Raven barked at him. She didn't remember having crossed the room, but there she was, towering over him. "You want me to say I think you're funny? I think you're the funniest guy in America? Funniest thing since Tamaranian pudding?"
On the table, a crack went through Beast Boy's glass and water trickled down. Raven simmered down. But Beast Boy was giggling. "Good one," he said. "But nah, you don't need to say it. I mean, I already know you think so."
"Do you?" she muttered dangerously, almost a threat.
He flipped through the options on the pause menu, until he got to 'save game.' "Yep." The 8-bit melody faded and the screen cut to black. He turned to her and flashed a confident, toothy smile. "So, what," he asked, "you wanna watch a flick or something? We can watch whatever we want since Star's passed out cold." He jabbed his thumb in her direction, where she lay with her back to the side of the couch, her hair spilling over Robin's shoulder.
Raven stepped back, cloak closing around her.
"The world ended today, Rae," Beast Boy added, a sudden note of quiet sincerity in his tone. "Watch a movie with me, okay? Don't make me turn into a chihuahua again."
"That wouldn't work twice," Raven mumbled. Yet she took a seat anyway.
"So, what'll it be?"
Out of curiosity, Raven reached out mentally and turned up the dial on Beast Boy. She was so accustomed to mentally filtering out his unending torrential barrage of loud emotions, that it was almost disquieting to have him so empathically silent. His emotions felt warm under her metaphorical touch. Bright and solid, happiness encasing a slew of other emotions, drowning them. Drowning her. So much light—grassy fields and sunny days and—Raven gasped and drew back. Too loud, too loud. His emotions were far too loud.
"Helloo? What do you wanna watch?"
She realized he was staring at her quizzically, and wondered how long she'd been silent. She turned his dial all the way down and decided that this newfound control was a gift. It was a gift she would take full advantage of.
Raven unclasped her cloak and let herself sink back into the soft couch cushions. The tension on her muscles melted and she sighed softly. "Your choice," she answered. Surprisingly, she trusted him to pick out something good. Something that wouldn't rouse any old fears, or birth any new ones. Something to distract her. Something she'd enjoy. Because, loathe was she to admit it, but it had finally begun to dawn on her that while her friends knew what she wanted, Beast Boy alone seemed to have figured out what she needed.