[AN:] I can't believe it's been almost two years since my first BBRae fanfic. Back in March, ObeliskX asked me if I was going to make another BBRae fic, and I wasn't able to make any until I got out all my Bleach and Naruto fanfics out. Finally, I'm done with those, and with that I present to you "A Wistful Nightfall," which I've been working on since the middle of last month...Gotta say, it was only three weeks that this fanfic took for me to finish, but it feels like it's been two months LOL! I could've uploaded it about four or five days when it was made, but I wanted to give as much love to this as I did my Bleach and Naruto fics, so it took an extra two weeks. Hope you guys enjoyed this, because I tried my absolute hardest to fix any mistake and add unto anything left with more desired. I'll definitely be making more TT fics, this summer.
[Author:] Lumiere de Venise
[Title:] A Wistful Nightfall
[Fandom:] Teen Titans
[Genre:] Hurt/Comfort & Romance
[Prompt:] None, just that it's a genderbend TT fanfic. The original idea I had for that it was a genderswap fic about Raven taking Beast Boy to the rooftop, looking at the stars, and getting a kiss from her, but I felt like it would've been nicer to have it deal with feelings, like my previous fics. For anyone who's seen my HP fanfic about Luna, yes, the Luna fic's star-watching seen was inspired by this TT fic.
[Ship:] Genderbender/Genderswapped/Rule63 BBRae (BeastboyxRaven.)
[Rating:] K+ (It feels weird, making a fanfic that is able to be in the K+ category.)
[Summary:] Whenever midnight comes, Beast Girl takes the time to reflect on the deceased in her life, and mourn for the life she could've had, in another universe. She knows that a certain gloomy male tends to use the rooftop for his own doings, and thus only goes when the night sky has a shade similar to a sweet shade of pink. On one evening, however, it seems that the person she tries to avoid the most during those nights happened to have a change of plans. A gender-swapped BBRAE fanfic. Presumably, after season six, since there are mentions of Trigon in the fifth season and Terra, specifically on the part where she stated that she didn't remember Beast Boy.
[Word Count:] 2,693 words/6.3 pages.
[Disclaimer:] I do not own Teen Titans—if I did, I would've tried to bring it back!
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11:35 PM, Titans Tower. The rooftop.
Whenever the night sky had a fuchsia tone to it, and it was late into the night to the point where midnight was under half an hour away, Beast Girl tended to end up on the rooftop of Titans Tower, where she looked at the star-filled sky above her.
Sometimes, the vegetarian would lay down completely, and get a full view of the quiet scenery, while other times she would criss-cross applesauce on top of the roof. Either way, the teenager would look at the bright stars and would imagine the luminous twinkles in the sky as a sign that, one day, she would see two—sometimes three—special people that risked their lives to save her, that were always in her heart no matter what...
Her parents.
The girl knew her parents were dead, but it didn't stop the animal lover from dreaming about seeing them once more. Her adventurous parents, who took her around places to see amazing animals and beautiful beach-sides. Her courageous parents, who sacrificed their lives in order for her to escape their terrible fate that was drowning.
She yearned for the day where she could be held in her mother's arms, and have her hair ruffled by her father in parental pride. The diamonds the late night provided to her eyes would shine another life as well, where her parents were alive and she wasn't a heroine but instead a child again, in a world where villains do not exist. A word where she and her parents spent their time traveling around Africa.
The reminiscent girl sometimes dreamed about Terran, the third person, as well, because even though she found him alive, he acted as if he had no clue as to who she was, and that could count as someone dead in your heart—although, in her case, it was her being dead in his heart—right?
"I wonder why they had to die," she whispered to no one but herself. She felt her eyes start to water and she tried, she really did tried to hold them off, but before she knew it they spontaneously poured down her face. The teen tried to think of happier times, and tried her hardest to keep a smile, but not even someone as cheerful and optimistic as her could bounce back from such a doleful chain of flashbacks.
For ten more minutes, the female's tears poured hard to the point where a small puddle of her weepings was on her neck and chess, and the more she tried to wipe the water away from her eyes, the more the skin around her eyelids and upper cheek swell painfully in deep agitation.
Beast Girl ignored the physical pain though, because she was only hurt by the emotional and mental troubles she faced. She was close to a moment of hyperventilation, and could barely keep her voice restrained.
In the end, the depressed girl was sure that, unless she jumped into the ocean in front of the tower, turned into some animal to cry, and pretend to forget about her issues, she would end the night with a panic attack.
Unfortunately for the female, her cries were enough to wake up a certain person, who interrupted her from her episode.
"Beast Girl? Why are you up at this time? It's almost midnight."
The female in question immediately whipped her tears away and made sure not to look behind her, so much so as to not let her teammate know she was crying.
Why was Draven here? Beast Girl knew that the other teen only went above the rooftop when the night sky had a navy blue tone, so that he could use his cloak to blend in with the darkness. She decided to say a quick excuse to make the male leave her alone.
"Y...y-yeah, I kinda can't sleep. I guess that's what happens when you play too many video games," the sad heroine weakly responded, her voice a tad distorted due to her failed attempt to sound like her usual perky, sociable self.
When the purple-haired male did not respond immediately, Beast Girl tried her best not to let out a cry. Her heart suddenly started to pump more and more, and she felt as if the organ was going to explode right then and there.
After a few more seconds in silence, Draven finally questioned with a sympathetic but stern tone, "Gabrielle...Can you tell me why you're actually here?"
The petite girl had to bite her lip in order to not let out a gasp. The other teen had addressed her by her real name, and that could only mean that he saw through her lies. When she heard his feet start to walk towards her direction, she turned her head away, and replied rather pathetically, "I'm alright...there's no need to—"
"I'm not going to make fun of you," the stoic hero interrupted as he sat right next to her, his knees up and his eyes straight on her turned around face, "so don't hide yourself from me. There is nothing wrong with crying."
She didn't give out a verbal response, but Beast Girl turned to look at him. Marks of earlier trails of tears covered her cheeks and the side of her chin, and her eyes shimmered with a gloss that warned that much more waterworks were about to deepen the pattern.
For two minutes, the two adolescents sat in complete silence; the female of the two looked at her feet, while the male looked at his hand. Gabrielle tried to turn to her teammate and talk about her issues, but, ironically, the usual chatterbox only gave out a silence tone when she opened her mouth.
Luckily for her, the half-demon of the Teen Titans, for once in his life, was the one that started the conversation's "spark."
"I...don't know what's wrong with you, but if it's about someone you've lost, I'm here for you," the teleporter said as he stared at her. Beast Girl felt uncomfortable with his locked gaze, and decided to just get over with it and just reveal why she was on the rooftop.
"I was thinking about my mom and dad, and Terran too, and I'm sorry because I didn't want to a-admit it, and I'm...I-I'm...I-I-I'm—"
Before she knew it, her eyes began to water and her voice choked on her words. She cried like a wounded dog, and was only able to choke out between sobs, "I m-m-miss my mom and dad a lot, D-Drav', I really d-do!"
Beast Girl stopped to look at the male she had revealed her issues to, and felt a tad more uneasy at how nonchalant his expression was. She continued her story anyway, though, because at least she had a listening ear to vent out to, even if the other teenager was probably being a "helping hand" for malicious reasons.
"I'm a superhero, and as a hero I should be stronger, I k-know," the heroine choked out as she practically slapped her hands unto her head and, much to her embarrassment, sobbed into her palms, "but...I got to know them for only half of my life, and they're gone forever, never t-to...to…."
The shapeshifter spent the next three minutes crying. When she thought she was temporarily finished with letting out another lament, she opened her mouth to stutter out another apology, as she felt as if she was acting like a crybaby, and she was sure that the other teenager would berate her for not finding a more mature way to deal with her sadness.
To her surprise, Draven did not mock or rebuke her. With his cloak, the male wiped her new row of tears away, and huddled the girl close to him. She tried to hold back her tears, as well as the involuntary blush that she felt appear on her face. He looked at the sky, his purple irises with a longing look that the female knew all too well—the look she used when she looked for something in the star-filled nebula above.
She was going to question him on if he has someone who he "looked at" whenever he was stargazing, but he was one step ahead of her.
"When the night sky is of a color more akin to my cloak, I sometimes go on the rooftop and dream about my mother."
She knew about how the half-demon was conceived, as well as the fate of his mother, so she mumbled out quietly, with a little pause at first in order to word her reply correctly, "...It really hurts, when they vanish."
He nodded at her, and pulled his cape around her sullen form even more. He shut her eyes when he responded to her, and his face was more or less on a aloof stance, but Gabrielle inferred that his eyes had a doleful look to them. "It really does hurt indeed. My mother was both my mother and father, as she was the parent who truly cared for me. Not that...monster of a man who bore me out of a abominable, debauched need for power."
There was a pause of a depressing wave of nostalgia between the two superheroes. They were children raised in a world where the best heroes and heroines came to life by tragedy, but fate wanting them to rise up and prevent future generations from severe sorrow by hypocritically putting teens like them into menacing, sepulchral plot-lines of families either without heavy troubles- which was extremely rare, mind you- or with generations of misery.
After five more minutes of an non-awkward but nevertheless depressive silence, Beast Girl looked to her left and saw Draven's eyelids slowly open, and she couldn't help but feel bad as she saw the chakra gem wielder's eyes slightly water.
"I used to secretly detest her, when I was a child. I thought she hated me because, somehow, despite looking like my mother, I managed to have the aura and powers that a heir to such a disgusting demon would be bound to have."
It was the female of the two's turn to wrap the male's cape around the person grieving. She looked at him, and for a second, he gave her an empathetic, self-reflecting look, but he quickly went back to his view at the sky above.
"Even when she found a way for me to escape Azarath, back when Trigon destroyed it...Along my way to earth, I hated her," Draven admitted. Beast Girl noted that Draven was trying his hardest to bite down his tears, but didn't say anything about it.
"I was too young, then. I only knew little glimpses of what the Azarath residents told me. I wish...I wish that I had been wiser. I wish I could've held her tighter, before I left for earth. It's too late, now."
He wiped the premature start of tears that almost fell into his gray cheeks, and then said to Beast Girl, "Most, if not all of us life have people that we see in the stars above; we see the lights that shine upon us as visions that we wish were reality. But they're not."
Beast Girl nodded. Tears rolled down her face, but she was too tired to wipe another set of water off of her sore face, and so she just continued to be a still, listening ear.
All in all, the heroine felt...safe, knowing that there was nothing juvenile or selfish in what she was doing, and that even as someone as "impassive" as Draven had a desire to reach for the other reality that the night could bring. It was something that she even struggled to have with Cyber, and Cyber was her best friend for life.
"I may not be the best when it comes to showing emotions," the sorcerer stated after two minutes of staying silence once more, "but I can assure you that, beyond the powers and the physical and mental mutations you and I have, we're both human."
Beast Girl huddled closer to Draven, and in turn he looked at her and flashed a smile. Beast Girl found it to be nice, as it wasn't a smirk of maliciousness or a forced smile of a boy that doesn't want to be in the room, but a comrade, a teammate, a partner that has her back.
"I even dream of my father sometimes, despite how horrible he may be, as I believe that, at one time, he was and could of been a man that was good. He could've been a man that was there for me, a man that cared for me and not the power I possess, a man that never...touched my mother."
The half-demon heaved and took a minute to respond, choosing to just keep a glare at the stars above, something that the super-heroine next to him realized that it was much more than just longing for his mother; perhaps the male looked at the stars when he used to live in Azarath, longing for the day where the people of Azarath wouldn't raise him in reluctance and fear but, sadly not possible now, full on love and pride.
It made sense, really, why the boy was "detached." It took the vegetarian a while to truly get the boy, other than the fact that his dad was awful and his mother and Azarath were destroyed by the demon, but Gabrielle was starting to believe she got it. He never once tried to not give emotion, but he tried to give it out as safely as possible, even after his father was deleted, because emotions kept for so long were hard for him to take out.
The magic user was used to keeping a facade, and it would take years for the mask he bore to go away completely. He was much better than when she first met him, but he had a long way to go. She'll help him, though, yes—just as he gave a lending hand to her, she'll give him a lending hand.
Since he dulled the colors in her life that were too bright for her, and thus rid her of the naivety that almost caused her life to be in danger many times, as well as help her instruct a serious element to herself, she will fill in the colors that he was lacking so that he'll be able to smile all the time, grin all the time, be human all the time, even if he was only half, because, to Beast Girl, both of the male's demon and human side were him, and that's what she loved best about him.
"...Ah!"
The girl was suddenly taken out of her analytical insight of the male when she felt something...warm, a tad rough yet cozy covering her whole hand. The green-skinned female looked down and realized that the other hero was holding her left hand with his larger, calloused one. When she looked at the male, she saw that, this time, the male was the one with a flushed face of romantic shyness.
"That being said, I'll….I'll be there for you, the next time you feel so sad, so don't...Please, Gabrielle, don't cry anymore...Let me wipe your tears for you, both the ones you hold inside and let out."
Suddenly, Draven held her chin and looked into her eyes, a swarm of sadness mixed with love swarming in his irises. Her green irises, she believed, probably had the same sense, as she waited for him to lean over and embrace her. "I'll watch all the stars with you, Gabrielle."
With that, the sorcerer gave a kiss to the female, said female kissing back with an equal amount of affection, and they combined their sorrow emotions. Despite how cruel life was, they were able to turn their issues into a "harmony" for just that night, and turned them into empathetic comfort.
The two superheroes sat together in a mutual but nevertheless comforting silence at exactly midnight, the shimmering diamonds in the night sky a remembrance of the sadness they faced in their life, and the other person the yin to their yang.
[End.]
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[Ending AN:] There you have it. I think that BBRAE appeals to me the most because of how Beastboy shows out all his emotions, but not really the negative ones, while it's the opposite for Raven. AKA, opposites attracts having different personalities yet similar copings and sorrows have an extensive amount of fanfics you could write about just their similarities and contrasts in feelings alone, and I love opposite-attracting couples. Also, Raven is my favorite from TT. Until next time!
-Lumiere de Venise.
