End of my World
By wheresmybook
Disclaimer: Unfortunately I do not own Teen Titans. If I did, Raven and Beast boy would have had much bigger parts in the movie, Slade would have showed up, and we would know who Red X is. But I don't-and it's probably better for the sanity of the world. (Don't bother suing me… I've got nothing worth owning, unless you want the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my ceiling.
Raven struggled to close her open mouth, to choke off the words before they were spoken. But all in a rush they ran forth, sending the green teen before her reeling back in pain.
The world is going to end.
The dark girl saw anguish and fury well up in Beast Boy's eyes, a primitive desire to strike back, to repay pain with pain. But Raven didn't want to anymore, she struggled with the apology that was stuck in her throat. What she had said… it was too much…
The world is about to end.
"You think you're so much better? At least Terra tried; at least she wanted to be our friend! You just sit in your creepy room and refuse to even talk to us. You brought two bad guys to our home, Malchior and Trigon!" Snarled Beast Boy, his normally endearing fang threatening and sharp. He stood up straight, his gangly shoulders square and his eyes like flint. "You call yourself a Titan. You aren't."
Raven shook her head, a loud unpleasant buzzing rattling around her brain, "At least I don't pretend. At least I don't act like I love you-" it was the wrong thing to say, the straw that broke the green camel's back. His fist came up and around, no animal strength behind it this time, just rage and long hours spent in training. The purple haired girl felt it connect solidly with her cheek and fell slowly, in a swirl of blue cape to the floor.
She closed her eyes against the milliseconds. The brief time before the others would step forward. She could feel their horror, the dread of the Rek'mas filling Starfire, a terrible responsibility weighing down Robin even as it spurred him on. Stunned disbelief from Cyborg that BB, his little grass stain, would ever hit a girl.
The world has ended.
Everyone else just doesn't know it yet.
The milliseconds passed.
Starfire inhaled to cry out.
Raven phased through the floor, letting her own darkness swallow her. She didn't fly; she didn't go to her room. She crashed into the floor of the room below the living room, and lay winded for a moment.
The world had ended, and she could not even summon up the will to move. Too much, she had said too much. Part of her brain laughed insanely at this thought- that she, the "quiet one" could ever say too much.
She couldn't say for sure why she got back up. Instinct, she thought dully, born of fighting crime all these years. To stay down when you fell was to cause worry, to not be there when your team needed you. The team, she corrected herself, she had never deserved to be a part of their lives. In a team, all the players were on one side, but from the beginning the dark-haired girl had known that she was worse than Terra. That she would betray her friends- and the world that they sought to protect- to a doom from whence there could be no return.
The end of the world.
It had come after all, just later than she'd expected.
So what now? Fulfill Beast Boy's expectations of her and release Malchior again? She could, she knew. The incantation was there- always hovering in the back of her mind whenever she had a particularly rough day.
Some days, the only thing that stopped her from reciting the spell was the knowledge that, as uncentered, unfocused as she was now, it would hurt. It might fail. It might very well drive her spirit from her body entirely.
But she could try. She could release the dragon, her mind's eye played the scene like a movie left running in an empty room. The black dragon would rise as she toppled, her cape whipping futilely at the air as she fell.
He would laugh at her, as he had before, he might kill her then, or just leave her, broken, soulless on the floor. The titans would come and fight.
They would probably lose.
No help would come from her, without breath, you cannot fight to breathe, without a spirit; you cannot feel the urge to fight at all.
Her feet carried her solemnly toward her room, pausing as the door slid meekly aside.
Of course, she could also do just the opposite of what he expected.
A terrible idea was forming in her mind, hidden in the very back so that her consciousness could not protest.
The empath crossed to the chest that housed Malchior's book, her body moving with purpose even as her mind drifted in a gray fog.
What did it matter anyway? The world had ended.
Pale gray hands lifted the lid, and withdrew the white book, a sigh hissed through the air as she touched the cover.
"Ahhh, sweet Raven. Whatever is the matter?" his voice seeped into her mind, shocking it awake, her hands realized what they held and shook with the desire to fling it from her.
"Malchior," she croaked dryly, her voice sounding as though she had not used it for years. Had it truly been years since the confrontation in the living room?
At the mention of his name the pages flew open to display those strange and compelling eyes. Hastily Raven laid the book down on her dresser, now, even more so than before, she didn't want to touch the cursed book.
"My dear, what is wrong?" his voice intoned again, laced with the concern, the charm, which had marked the beginning of their relationship. A tendril of paper separated itself from its fellows and brushed her cheek, pulling away to show a blot of wetness.
Raven glanced up at the mirror, looking at her paler than normal face, framed by dark purple hair. Silver streams ran down her cheeks, one of which was still an angry red.
"The spell," she whispered, "the spell that releases you… can I use it on other things?"
The printed eyes regarded her, impassive as ever, his voice echoed cool and calm in the silence of her room.
"I suppose. It would be dangerous without stringent training. It might even be impossible."
Raven shook her head, stepping away, eyes drawn toward her window.
"I was a Titan, impossible is just a word."
"Beast boy!"
"-Dude that was-"
"Totally out of line! What were you thinking?!"
The green titan snarled at his leader, ire finding an easy outlet,
"I was thinking that maybe I'm not going to let her walk all over me! The way she does to everybody! You all let her get away with so much bull- stuff you'd never let anyone else say!"
"Hey man, it's Raven," Cyborg answered, hands raised in a placating gesture, one that failed miserably.
"I'm sick of her bringing us down all the time!"
"She can't help being pessimistic Beast Boy," Robin responded, trying to take his turn at calming him down, "Raven's been through a lot."
"Which of us hasn't? Cyborg's half metal but he doesn't throw people out of windows for trying to talk to him, Starfire's sister went completely mental and tried to kill her, but she doesn't lock herself away in her room. Slade stalked you, but you don't refuse to sit in on movie night. I'm freaking GREEN, but I can still LAUGH about it!"
"Please!" Starfire called in desperation, stepping between the two boys, "this fighting will not help. Friend Raven is what she is, she sees events in a different way."
"And that makes it all right for her to talk about Terra- about me like that?!" Beast boy yelled back, his pointy green ears quivering with disgust and anger.
"Beast boy, stop," Robin ordered, a scowl crinkling his mask, "we aren't saying what Raven did wasn't wrong, but you shouldn't have acted the way you did either." He turned to Cyborg and Starfire, "I think we should go find her, she's probably upset," Starfire nodded solemnly while the half metal man winced at the thought of all the property damage the dark titan could cause in a state of emotional upheaval. "Split up and look for her, try to calm her down some." Two titans left the room, and two stayed, Robin stared at his remaining teammate from under his mask.
"You better not ask me to help." The shape shifter growled.
"Wasn't planning to." Robin hissed back, "I think you should lay low somewhere and think long and hard about what you did. Terra's gone, and like it or not, whatever she did afterward she did betray us. Raven never had many people close to her growing up. I know you haven't forgotten how hard it was for her to trust us, Raven might have forgiven Terra for what she did, I wouldn't know. But I don't think you can ever ask her to forget, and I'm sure that whatever kind of bond you two had, you just broke it."
The Titan's leader didn't wait for Beast Boy's snarl, but turned and strode through the automatic doors to check the tower, leaving the green changeling alone in a room that echoed angry words with unholy satisfaction.
It was incredibly hard to focus her powers toward flight, harder than it had ever been before, but Raven managed it. The part of her that still believed herself a titan, still believed that the end of the world was not yet upon her, was grateful that her powers weren't wreaking havoc on the surrounding landscape.
She passed over the ocean like a seal cutting through the water, probably terrifying any citizens of Jump city at first glance- she was flying in the dark spirit form of the Raven, it was faster, and some absurd emotion- Hope, she thought, was acting as her namesake and Hoping that her friends would realize what she was going to do and try to stop her.
Raven knew they wouldn't, but she didn't have to give them the chance.
They said that fair exchange was no robbery- so in fact, she was giving them a gift. Getting rid of the pessimism that dragged even the most stalwart hearts down to crushing reality- giving instead someone warm and caring, someone who would play video games with Cyborg, visit the mall with Starfire, support Robin and laugh at Beast Boy's jokes.
Someone not her.
Her time- her world had ended. She was just still alive for some reason.
The crevasse was easy to find, it had been roped off, made into something of a monument, though the average person was discouraged from venturing into the unstable depths. The raven dove into the darkness of the earth, even the darkness of the earth not as dark as itself, and alighted upon a flat rock before a statue, like a supplicant before some ancient deity.
Raven's feet touched down on the rough stone and looked up- at the dried flowers still lying at the statue's feet, at the pain stricken face on a too-skinny frame.
Colorless, immobile, she wasn't at all threatening, cloaked in gray, with no hint of the yellow aura that Raven had come to perceive as dangerous.
Safe, that was the primary thing, the reason why Raven had not tried this before. She had wondered, on occasion, if the spell could be used to this end, but always there was a reason not to try. It was safe without Terra. The Titan's didn't need her help, they could appreciate it but they didn't need it. It was safe without this blond haired, blue-eyed girl, who had stolen the hearts of the tower, and proceeded to smash them as easily as she might a boulder.
Above all else, before, during and after Trigon, Raven had wanted her friends to be safe, to be happy. But she saw now, at the end of her world, that she had wanted this only for herself. She had been happy, she had been safe, her role with the titans unthreatened, uncontested, the horrible fight with Terra pushed steadily to the back of her mind. But now it didn't matter.
Her world was over, and her time was up.
"Hezbereck, et mortene…" she whispered, hands rising in half-remembered gestures, eyes closed, seeing a page that was no longer there. She felt her power fan out like spiraling wings behind her, tugging at her, her spirit clinging desperately to her body as she crumpled. Her indigo eyes shot open, forcing her mind to observe the result, the white circle dissolving the stone, the color that seeped into being, the hair that fell, suddenly limp and demure once more, the frame that sagged with exhaustion.
Terra fell, even as Raven had fallen, crumpling to the ground, her breath coming hard to lungs that had not been used for a year.
The girl in the tattered suit coughed, upsetting the volcanic dust that had coated her throat and pushed herself upright.
Raven was barely conscious, her eyes only opened to slits as she watched Slade's former apprentice get to her hands and knees, then push herself to her feet and look around. The blue-cloaked girl could almost feel Terra's gaze snag on her, could feel the emotions pound into confused overdrive like seventeen semi trucks laying on the horn as a red light turned green.
"Hey- are you-?"
"Go to them," Raven croaked, not even trying to pick herself up, "The Titans are waiting for you. Just… go to them."
The blond startled back at the raspy voice, fear blaring through her emotions for a moment, before euphoric joy drowned it out.
Raven could hear the slapping sound of Terra's feet on stone before the old/new Titan leaped into the air and a boulder caught her, wrenching itself from the ground with a sickening crunch.
Then the dark girl let out the breath she had been, holding, a breath magnified by a cave that was too large for it's single occupant, and let her mind drop her through to oblivion, past the pain that was her soul, hanging on by tenterhooks, to her body.
Now, she thought muzzily, perhaps my world can truly end.
A/N- I can already imagine flames, just a few points I would like to make first,
I don't think Beast boy is being that OC, no one is happy all the time and the show clearly displays certain instances when he has a bad day and gets angry. Maybe not quite this angry- but in my personal opinion, when he was 'infected' with the Beast, it wasn't creating the anger or aggression, just getting rid of his means of controlling it. Everyone has buttons that should never be pushed, and no one has perfect control.
I know it's crazy to assume that the spell to free Malchior could work on anything else, but hey, it's my fanfic.
It's a little weird that Raven would go release Terra, I admit, in my defense, I was in a weird mood when I wrote this. Really I was.
Well, let me know if you love it or hate it, I might update it later- turn it into a story instead of a one-shot, because no, Raven is not dead, and I'd hate to leave her in such a miserable situation.