Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans.

I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
-Frank Herbert

More Than I Expected


Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep be-BOOM!

Raven was still having difficulty with her alarm clock, but paid the annoying device little thought beyond that required to dismantle it. Stretching her lithe form, she hopped out of bed and grabbed a cloak out of her closet.

She phased through her door and began to float down to the living room for her morning caffeine boost. A twinge of guilt stabbed at her as she passed Beast Boy's door, and she decided to lift the spell she had placed on him last night.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Beast Boy?"

No reply came from behind the door. She tried again.

"Beast Boy, it's Raven. I'm not going to kill you."

Nothing.

"If you don't say anything in ten seconds, I'm coming in."

One.

Two.

Ten.

"I'm coming in- you had better be decent."

A black portal opened up in front of her, and Raven passed into Beast Boy's room. She almost teleported back out when the smell of weeks-old laundry assaulted her, but she steeled herself and searched for her teammate instead.

"Beast Boy, I'm not in the mood for games. Come out from wherever you're hiding so I can fix you up!"

She could almost hear the crickets chirping in the background. Frustrated, she made a sweep of the room with her powers. The black aura left no stone unturned, disrupting every pile of dirty clothes, rustling through the rumpled bed sheets, and generally throwing things around in search of Beast Boy's hiding spot.

Wherever he was, it wasn't here.

So where is he?


Monkey? Green. Pain! Crying? Mommy?

Pain.

Snake! Mommy!

Kill. Kill! KILL!

Mommy?

Mommy, why are you crying?

A small tortoise huddled in the middle of the floor, its head and limbs safely tucked away inside its shell.


Raven floated into the living room, looking around for any sign of life. All she found was Cyborg quietly eating his ham, sausage, bacon, and egg extravaganza. He spoke before she could get a word in.

"So did ya kill the kid?"

Raven's eyes widened imperceptibly. "Just a minor curse- I take it you haven't seen him?"

Cyborg shook his head, and swallowed a piece of meat. "'Fraid not, Raven. BB should have shown up to shove his tofu down my throat once he woke up and smelled the bacon. Did you check his room?"

Raven was slightly worried, but didn't let it show. "First place I looked. If you see him tell him I need to see him, alright? I just need to lift the spell."

He nodded. "Will do, Raven. Oh, and could you check the laundry room for me? The security system registered the machines critically malfunctioning right after you finished with BB- a parting shot, I'm guessing? Anyways, I know it's a long shot, but could you check to see if he cleaned up the mess?"

"I'll do that." With that, she turned and left. The laundry room made as much sense as anywhere else to check for Beast Boy.


Fire! Fire! River! Rapids! Mommy! Daddy!

Dead.

My fault. Mine. All mine.

A large green jackrabbit shivered underneath the pile of wet and soapy clothes, its eyes flitting about nervously. It twitched slightly as it heard footsteps approaching the door in front of him. The footsteps stopped in front of the door, and the rabbit furiously backed into the pile of clothing so that no part of it was visible. The door opened, and someone walked inside.

"I can't say that I'm surprised," said a monotone voice. "It wouldn't be Beast Boy if he didn't leave a trail of destruction behind him."

With that unknowingly ironic statement, the half-demon began to clean up the mess. Piles of clothes levitated into the nearest washing machine while mops flew around the floor. She worked like this for a minute, and had almost finished returning the wet laundry to their proper places when she noticed something move out of the corner of her eye. She turned and looked at one of the piles of clothing in the corner. It was perfectly still. She almost dismissed it as a trick of the light or a figment of her imagination when she saw it again.

The pile had definitely moved. Not very much- just a twitch. But it had moved nonetheless.

Warily, Raven raised her hand, and with an aggressive shout, she ripped the pile up from the floor. She gave a cry of surprise when a large green rabbit shot out from the pile and disappeared out the door. She spent a second gathering her wits before muttering under her breath.

"Well it must have been an even weaker spell than I thought- he certainly seems up to his old tricks already."


Raven had been reading alone in the living room for two hours when Cyborg came in. Judging from the oil stains on his hands, he'd been working on the T-Car.

"Oh, Raven- Rob wanted me to tell you and BB that he and Star are gonna be out 'patrolling' for most of the day." Raven could almost hear the grin that had to be plastered on his face.

The robotic hero moved over to the kitchen sink and began washing the gunk off of his hands.

"So, did you have any luck with finding BB? I walked past the laundry room and saw that it had been cleaned up."

Raven looked up from her book. "Yes, I found Beast Boy, and no he didn't clean up the laundry room. I think he's feeling better- he was hiding in one of the laundry piles to jump out at me."

Cyborg stopped washing his hands and looked over his shoulder at Raven, giving the empath a blank look. "You… don't say."

Raven was slightly taken aback- her friend had gone from grinning like an idiot to deadpan faster than… well faster than she did.

"Yes, I do. I picked up one of the piles of clothing and he darted out from under it. That is, unless we have an infestation of green jackrabbits I wasn't made aware of."

Cyborg's face remained unreadable. "I'll... I'll be right back. Gotta go check on something."

Raven raised an eyebrow and returned to her book. Five minutes later, Cyborg came in- the blank look now had a hint of worry on it.

"Raven, his sheets aren't wet."

She looked up at Cyborg. "And?"

"And the security system said that the washing machines spit out enough liquid to cover the floor with two inches of soapy water. His sheets should be damp, at the very least."

Raven was beginning to get a little worried, but held out for some hope.

"Well maybe he opted to sleep somewhere else- somewhere where he wouldn't get his sheets wet."

Cyborg shook his head, his expression growing more worried by the second. "No, the security system also didn't register the laundry room door opening again after you left. Raven, I don't think he left the room until you opened the door."

Raven closed her book, giving Cyborg her undivided attention.

In a voice that was almost a whisper, he asked, "Raven… what did you do to him?"

The half-demon gave a small sigh. "Nothing big- I figured that a guy as overbearingly cheerful as Beast Boy wouldn't have too many terrible memories to dwell on, so I placed a small fear charm on him."

Cyborg just stared at her like she'd just announced that she was entering the Miss America Pageant. "You… did… what?" he whispered.

"A fear charm- he'll relive some mildly unpleasant memories and be nervous for a little while. Why?"

Cyborg continued to stare at Raven, his mouth gaping. Then he processed what she'd just said.

"You… you're joking, right? PLEASE tell me this is some horrible joke and that someone's going to jump out from the couch and tell me I'm getting punk'd. Oh hell... anything but this!"

Raven didn't understand what Cyborg was talking about, but answered anyways. "No, I'm not joking. What's going on here?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he raced over to the main computer and punched in a series of codes. Raven heard a very loud rumbling, before the sunlight from the window suddenly vanished. She looked over to where the sun had been shining only seconds before to find a thick steel plate covering the window.

"Cyborg? What's going on here?"

Her question again went unanswered as their communicators went off. Robin's voice came out of Cyborg's arm.

"Cyborg, we just got notice that the Tower is on full lockdown- is everything alright back there?"

"Yeah Robin, we're just having a little incident with BB- we have to keep him inside the Tower and this is the most effective way to do it. I'll let y'all know when you can get back in."

"Alright. Robin, out."

Raven knew that she'd done something very wrong, but she wasn't sure what it was, and Cyborg wasn't exactly being forthcoming.

"Cyborg, tell me what's happening! Why are we on lockdown? What's wrong with Beast Boy? What did I do to him?"

The robotic Titan slowly turned to face Raven, his face once again completely expressionless.

"Raven… do you know anything about Beast Boy's past?"

Raven thought for a moment. She had to confess, she did not. The time before the Titans wasn't something that they talked about much, if at all.

"Not much at all- just that he had a virus and the cure gave him the shapeshifting powers."

"Good God, Raven. No wonder he didn't leave the laundry room last night- the kid's got the most messed up history I've ever heard, and I've only heard half of it!"

Raven was shocked. Beast Boy? Her Beast Boy? The annoyingly happy-go-lucky court jester with the attention span of a goldfish with ADD?

She shook her head and spoke once more to Cyborg.

"So, why are we locking the Tower down?"

Cyborg raised an eyebrow. "Raven, you know better than most how hard it is to find Beast Boy when he doesn't want to be found. And that's just within the Tower. Imagine trying to find his butt out in the city, where he could be a grasshopper or an aphid or a songbird, or anything else that wouldn't stand out because it's green. It'd be a nightmare, at the very least."

The empath nodded in understanding. "I'll do what I can to find him. If he's feeling as strongly as you say he will be, it shouldn't take too long."

Raven closed her eyes and began levitating a few feet off the floor. She cracked open an eye to see Cyborg looking over at her expectantly.

"By the way… I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't apologize to me; apologize to BB when we find him. And besides, I understand how you wouldn't know. The kid's almost as secretive as you are. Took me two years and a lot of talking to get what little I know out of him. Don't beat yourself up- just find him and fix him."

Raven nodded and closed her eyes, descending into her mind.

She had needed to meditate first, of course. Her calm outward appearance very effectively concealed the fierce emotional battle raging within.

And so, Raven found herself back in Nevermore, staring at the most bizarre thing she'd ever seen in her meditative career.

Seven of her eight primary emotions were gathered in one spot- that was strange enough. Weirder still was their behavior.

Happy was crying. Brave was crying. Anger was comforting Happy and Brave. Wisdom and Intelligence were in shock, staring off into the distance. Rude was tearfully asking the yellow and brown emotions if they were alright, while Timid…

"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US?!"

Timid was screaming. Raven spun around to find the grey-cloaked emotion in her face, eyes glowing a vibrant red.

"NOW HE'S GOING TO DIE AND EVERYONE WILL HATE US EVEN MORE AND AND AND GRRRAAH!"

Timid spun around and stormed off, screaming incoherently at everything she passed.

Raven was thoroughly confused by this point. None of her emotions were behaving as they should be. And what worried her most was the one that was missing…

"You know, you really should have been nicer to him."

Raven's eyes bugged out as she spun around to face the red-cloaked emotion addressing her.

"Anger, where is-"

"She's off in her own little world, generally making things worse."

Raven was confused, a feeling that she was getting far more frequently than she liked today.

"Making things worse… how?"

"You're a smart girl, figure it out." The orange emotion piped up beside her, having given up on coaxing a word out of Intelligence and Wisdom.

"Actually, I don't have time for this anyways. Right now, finding Beast Boy is much more important than finding… oh."

Anger and Rude looked at each other.

"Well that was easy."

"Yep, message delivered."

Raven blinked. Message? What message?

"And now that that's taken care of…" said Rude.

"… it's time for you to get out!" finished Anger.

Raven felt a sensation suspiciously similar to the feeling of being kicked in the rear end before finding herself back in Titans Tower.


"Perfect timing, Raven." Cyborg's voice snapped her back to reality.

"How so?" she inquired.

"Some news about Beast Boy."

Raven looked at Cyborg, her expression unreadable.

"Well the good news is that security just found him."

And the bad news...

"And the bad news is that security just found him."

Raven blinked. "How is that bad news?"

Cyborg groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Because security found him leaving the Tower through an air vent twenty seconds ago."