(A/N) The Muse of Angst strikes again. Actually, I have no idea where this came from. It was a drabble, and then it turned into a short one-shot, and hopefully (for the sake of my sanity) it won't turn into a multi-chaptered fic.
I find it interesting that I had to invent the last quote (You'll know what I'm talking about once you finish reading), because other than a couple lines in "How Long Is Forever", Raven never really criticizes Robin or calls him names in the show.
"Great, Robin. More yelling will definitely stop all the yelling."
- Raven, "How Long Is Forever"
Disclaimer: Yes, you fools, I went and bought the Teen Titans. I now own all rights to the TT script, screenplay, characters, music…and while we're at it, "gullible" isn't in the dictionary. Would I really be writing a fanfiction about them if I owned them? I thought not.
Triplicate
A one shot
Raven did everything in threes.
She had smiled three times in her life, and all three times she smiled at three people. Beast Boy, of course, wasn't one. He used to spend long hours annoying her, trying to get her to laugh. Making faces, cracking jokes…"Whatever it takes to make her laugh with me," he'd said to his empty room one night, "instead of at me."
It never happened. He still remembered the words she had spoken to him after Trigon had finally been defeated.
"My favorite color is still blue…and don't get used to the smile, 'cause you're still not funny."
She spoke three magic words, the only three which could bring her comfort even in the darkest of times. Starfire never was able to cheer her up the way she could cheer up the others, with a smile, a laugh, and innocent questions. When they meditated together, however, Raven looked undeniably less foreboding.
"…Azerath…Metrion…Zinthos…"
She helped him three times. Twice, after the incident, she gave him a hand in the garage. And then there was the incident itself, when he thought he'd lost his car, his baby, for good. She had helped him find it; had helped him find himself. Cyborg was usually an older brother figure, the one who gave help, not the one who needed it. But he had needed understanding then, and she had given it, though she was always thought of as unfeeling.
"When I use my powers, I put a little of my soul into whatever I'm moving. I become a part of it, and it becomes a part of me. That's kinda what happened here. It wasn't just a car. It was…your baby."
They fought three times. She never was as good at hand-to-hand combat as with her powers, but it was the only fair way to settle their differences. It would have been cheating if she had used her powers. Raven always tried to be fair, especially to her friends. Fairness wasn't always enough to ease tension, however. Sometimes nothing was enough except to run to the training room (a race, naturally, but only after Robin made her promise not to teleport) and have at it.
They couldn't discuss things, after both were angry with themselves and with each other, because although they were the two mature Titans, there was only so much one could say.
"Stubborn, hot-headed, Slade-obsessed, pompous, arrogant, self-absorbed…" she smirked at him suddenly, not paying any attention to his (rather feeble and half-hearted) attempts to break her hold. "I think I'll stick with three of them, so as not to waste my breath. Spiky haired, traffic-light wearing jerk."
In keeping with her unspoken and unacknowledged tradition, she spoke three words on the day she died.
They had been fighting Slade again, the evil madman out to destroy the city, capture Robin, terrorize Raven, or whatever he was going to do. They hadn't waited for an explanation before charging blindly at him to the usual battle cry of "Titans, GO!" Too blindly. None of them save Raven saw the trap until after it was sprung, until after it was all over.
The knives came from nowhere, the arrows from the other side of nowhere, the lasers from robots on the I-beams above, and the crude sharpened sticks from the bottom of a cleverly disguised hole in the warehouse floor. It was a living nightmare, or it would have been, had not Raven managed to throw a shield over all four of them and levitate them out of the way.
In doing so she left herself open, however, for she had been behind them a ways. Too far to throw a shield over all five of them. "One for four," she might have said, had she not saved her last breath for three other words.
The bullet from Slade's gun went right through her heart, and it was enough – more than enough – to kill her. She was, after all, half human.
In slow motion she fell to the ground, to her knees, and coughed blood.
It was her half-demon side, ironically, which gave her the time to turn her head, blood trickling out of the side of her mouth, to look at them. She smiled then, for the unprecedented fourth time, and said those three simple words.
"Love you all."
And she collapsed, for the third time in her life.
You can only die once.