A/N: Hi! This is my first story. I love one-shots, so I wrote one. Reviews will certainly be appreciated! Constructive criticism welcomed. Please don't be too hard on me, though, becuase it's my first fic.
'Us'
Alone.
Just a word.
Yet it seemed to comprise a majority of what Raven was before she made friends (and sometimes after that). At Azarath, while being rejected by the Justice League, against the Order that chased her for being the daughter of Trigon, at the beginning of the formation of the Titans….when Terra came back…..
It never mattered how much she tried to show that she hated being alone, she always, for some reason, ended up doing the opposite. The Azarathian monks thought isolation was the best medicine for Raven, but now she knew that they were wrong. She now understood, long after joining the Titans, why 4 hours of isolated meditation did not help as much as 2 hours of the same with Starfire. Or why the day felt incomplete without Beast Boy's desperate attempt at making her play video games. She felt that giant hollow in her heart fill up when she saw her friends….be her friends.
She wondered why she was thinking of such things while lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. It had been long since the Titans had formed, yet their affection and need for each other was as new as ever, or maybe, had increased with time. She wondered where she, Beast Boy, Starfire, Robin and Cyborg would be if they weren't the Titans. Cyborg would remain a depressed teenager, and grow up to be a depressed man. Robin would have been as stuck-up as Batman, just the way he was when they first met. Not the gentler, more humane version of himself he now was, thanks to Starfire. Starfire would have become a slave to a bunch of monster-cum-alien species. Beast Boy….she didn't have much of an idea of what would have become of him…he probably would have gone solo and lost his sweet childishness. She wasn't sure, though. After all, he was as much of a mystery to her as she was an enigma to him. It was their game. And what would have become of her wasn't very hard to imagine. She would be dead in some place if the Order would have tracked her down. If not, she would have destroyed the world. And if that would have somehow been prevented with her living to tell the tale, she would have gone insane with loneliness. Neither of the possibilities seemed to paint a pretty picture.
But when they came together, all of this was changed. Not in an instant. It took a long time, a lot of compromise, tonnes of understanding and empathy, and, for some reason, a lot of enduring Slade. For all she knew, the team could have fallen apart or be infected with Reckmas and drifted away. She knew 'Reckmas' were real now, not a part of Tamaranean old wives' tales. But all such misfortune was miraculously prevented. They stayed together due to all their efforts, and now were the most formidable superhero team in the world, far above the Justice League. Their strength, power and bond were legendary, not even twisted villains like Slade could make them doubt each other. She knew that and was proud of it. She was proud that their friendship was legendary, unique and beautiful in its existence. The Titan family had only grown and gotten stronger with time.
She allowed a smile to grace her features as she contemplated how well things currently were. Marvelled at the kind of friends she had been blessed with. She was glad that their 'us' was well-defined and unbreakable.
It was easy to make friends, tough to choose the right kind and the toughest to keep them, and they had accomplished it all. For friends come and go like the waves of the ocean, but the true ones stay, like an octopus on your face.