I admit, I think it's kind of dry. Read it anyway, because at least I tried. Spare my feelings. Don't you dare send me hate-vibes.
Cyborg played with rapid-fire precision. "C'mon Beast Boy. Are you even trying? This is embarrassing, man, just embarrassing."
"Just wait, I'm about to unleash hell." Beast Boy tapped the buttons. "You ain't got nothing on me, Cy. Nothing."
"Oh! Power ball! It's mine, it's mine."
Robin, sitting between the two loudmouthed, trash-talking fanatics, raised an eyebrow. "Is that what we're supposed to be going for?"
The little characters scurried for the glowing orb. Robin stayed clear of the fray for a second and considered the situation. Cyborg's Luigi character was bombarding Beast Boy's green Kirby with fireball after fireball. Beast Boy was yelling, "You just wait until I get my big pot! You aren't even the favorite Bro. Everyone knows it's all about Mario, and Luigi just leeches off his fame!"
Cyborg gasped. "Blasphemy!"
Now.
Robin's Meta-Knight swooped in and dealt Kirby a powerful blow, sending the character blasting off until he was no more than a wink in the sky. Kirby's damage had been too great. And Cyborg's was no better. Robin turned on him.
"Oh, crap!"
Luigi turned tail and made a break for the power ball. He hit it twice before Robin descended, and then broke it the third time just in time for Robin to slash him once, sending Luigi off screen like a rocket.
Cyborg collapsed dramatically over the side of the couch. "No! No, no, God, no. I was so close!"
Robin set the controller down. "Alright, it's decided. Beast Boy does the laundry. Cyborg gets the trash. I'll be in my room if you need me."
He walked away, a bit of a swagger in his step.
Beast Boy looks at Cyborg. "It must be beginners luck."
Cyborg raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Or he practices when we're not looking…"
They stayed quiet a moment. "Best two out of three has to do both."
"You're on."
"If I have to listen to those idiots fight over who does the chores, I'm going to push them through the window."
"Beast Boy would fly off. Only Cyborg would get hurt."
"I could tape them together first. And besides, do you really think Beast Boy would let Cyborg fall like that?"
"But would they be able to separate before they hit the ground? And no, I don't think Beast Boy would let Cyborg fall. Still, I don't know that the fall would kill them."
"Right. I'd have to follow it up with something heavy."
"Maybe more than one. And possibly something sharp."
"Yes."
"Hm."
"So… It's not like I want to pry or anything… but seeing as… well… what's wrong, Star?"
Raven plucked uncomfortably at the cover on Starfire's bed. Starfire was sitting on the floor, hunched over the pillow in her lap. She'd been like that since Raven entered the room. Everything Star said was muffled and monotone. Like she had no energy.
This wasn't Raven's idea. To ask Star what was wrong. But someone needed to do it.
By all rights, that someone was Robin, the resident therapist. But he was sort of shifty when it came to Starfire, naturally. Not when it really counted. But lately, Star had been avoiding Robin all on her own, which wasn't natural at all, and that in itself prompted Robins' avoidance in turn.
So that was why he was outside the door, discreetly holding back, and Raven was harassed into going in to work out the problem with the alien girl.
Star was quiet for a while, then she glared with such ferocity at the far wall that Raven looked over at it herself. "I apologize, Raven, but I cannot speak with you about this particular matter. I haven't made up my mind about it yet, and until then I would rather keep it to myself."
Raven felt relieved, and then immediately guilty for it. She could try and persuade Starfire to spill her secret, and she had to admit, it was more than a little intriguing. But something about the way the girl looked, so rigid and guarded, made it clear that this time at least, Starfire wasn't going to confide in anyone.
"Well…"
There was an awful awkward silence.
"Is there… anything I can do?"
Starfire shook her head. "Not at the moment, but… thanks Raven. Oh, and…" She angled her head to the door. "Don't tell him anything, okay?"
So she knew that Robin was sending her in to spy. The girl wasn't as oblivious as she let on. "I'll keep him off your back, Star."
Raven leaned back a little and heard a rustle of paper as her hand met the cool, glossy cover of what could only be a magazine. Her eyes slid down and for the second time in as many days, she saw that blasted magazine.
With a startled, cat-like hiss, she retracted her hand and sprang from the bed. "What the hell -?"
Starfire turned upraised eyebrows her way. "Oh. I got that a while back… Interesting, isn't it?"
Raven snapped wild eyes at Starfire, catching the too-casual lilt to her voice. "What would make it so interesting?"
A little bit of Star's old giddy buoyancy returned to her features, and she floated up and over her bed to snatch up the magazine and flip to the exact double-page spread that had started all of her madness. Starfire held the damn thing open to show her.
It was against her better judgment. All of her being urged her to avert her gaze and save herself. All that meditation would have gone to waste. But Starfire was watching her intently, and any sign of weakness now would be more of a downfall than she could ever recover from. So she stayed stock-still like a rabbit caught in the open, sensing the fox prowling in the high grass around her.
The fox was probing her defenses, checking for weak spots.
She put up her best nonchalant face, and regarded the poster with careful indifference.
"It's a good thing we made him get new clothes."
"Yes." Star said, floating ever closer. "I agree. They are awfully tight in this picture. And those pants are dangerously low. It's a good thing we caught this atrocity in time. He might have been attacked in the streets."
Raven grimaced. "I don't know about attacked… the fashion police work in much subtler ways, I'm sure."
"I don't know if the police would have gotten to him in time, fashion-oriented or not. I was always much more concerned about the mobs of…" a bitter look of hatred crossed her pretty features. "fangirls that would come drooling over another Titan."
She shook her head, as if to clear it of residual hatred. After all, she had to concentrate on Raven, and her perpetual war with Robin's fangirls could slip from her mind for a moment.
Raven decided it was time to keep her mouth shut. The girl was drifting so close, dangling that cursed magazine before her like a piece of incriminating evidence.
Evidence for what? She's got nothing on me. Nothing.
Raven lifted her chin.
"You know, this was the last copy I could find…" She flipped to another page, another candid shot, something she hadn't seen. "I've always wondered how they get close enough to take these kinds of pictures. It seems so foolish."
Despite herself, Raven's eyes lit onto the image, devouring the picture like fire.
"Wha –?"
The shot showed Beast Boy, crouched and leaning forward as if about to leap, one hand outstretched in a fist, and the other held back for balance. The look on his face was pure feral rage and determination. His canines stood out, deadly incisors ready to rip a bite out of whoever he was glaring at out of frame. The chords in his neck stood out as his animal snarl was caught forever, frozen and silently furious. There was a gash across his cheek, leaking blood just beneath his flaring green eye, wide and wild.
He looked delicious and visceral. Near the brink of sprouting fangs and claws, a coiled force of utmost power, ready to unleash hell and break some ass. This was a primitive, base side of Beast Boy that one rarely saw. It made you think there was a barely concealed monster hidden under the surface of all that boyishness. A tense animal lurking in the depths of those dancing green eyes.
"…aven?... Oh, Raven? Come back to us, lover-girl."
Raven rocked back on her heels, and shot a look that could kill at the girl in the air just before her.
She didn't even have the decency to cower. Instead she grinned, devilishly accomplished and triumphant.
"Bang! Right on the mark." She made a little pistol with her finger and thumb, and blew the 'smoking barrel'.
Raven shook her head, dazed and riding through her astonishment and embarrassment, all of that emotion riding a bigger wave of supreme anger. She sidestepped Starfire and made for the door.
Just as she got to the exit, her salvation from the ultimate shame of her realization of something her own mind was struggling to keep from the surface, she turned.
"Don't you fucking tell anyone."
Starfire smiled, then seemed guilty. "I wouldn't tell, Raven. But you should not take this so hard." She tossed the magazine at her and Raven caught it deftly. "It is not a bad thing to like someone. Even Beast Boy. You'll come around to the idea."
Raven's face twitched and she swept out of the room, leaving Starfire to chuckle at the other girl's foolishness. She hovered a moment in the air before watching the window wearily. Setting down gently, she neared the glass and pushed aside the heavy curtains to stand before the large floor-to-ceiling panels and gaze out into the bay. Shoulders heavy, the girl stood and waited.
Raven passed by the main room, where Beast Boy and Cyborg were still nuking it out on the game console.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Get away from my item. Urah! I'm going to murder you!"
"One, two, three… oh! Bye, bye Beast Boy!"
She stopped and watched, shaking her head in disbelief.
This is so not worth the agony, she thought. I should kill him and get it over with.
With a loud groan, Beast Boy set down the control and leaned around, angling his body awkwardly to ease the tense muscles in his back. He saw Raven standing at the door, and fixed his eyes on her.
"Hey, Rae."
For some unfathomable reason, at the sound of his voice, sparks of that black, negative energy of hers flew from her eyes. Beast Boy sat up straighter, intensely aware of the dire peril he was in, but bewildered as to the cause of it.
She'd been mad at him for some time now. And he was starting to think it wasn't all because of that incident on the roof. Something was bothering her bad, and for some reason, Beast Boy was involved in it.
"Rae? Are you okay?" Cyborg cut in. Brave of him, for interfering. But inversely, at the sound of Cyborg's deep voice, she seemed to calm a degree.
"I'm good," she said shortly. "just pissed off."
And with that she walked off.
Beast Boy and Cyborg stared at each other.
Beast Boy shook his head. "Man, I don't know how much more of this chick-madness I can take. I think my life is in danger. Did you see the way she was looking at me?"
Cyborg pressed a few buttons on his controller distractedly. "Yeah. Maybe you should apologize or something."
"For what?! I didn't do anything. She's crazy or something. Crazy and dangerous."
"I don't know. Obviously you did something wrong. If you don't know what it is, just fake it till you make it, man. Do something, god, this is making everyone's life hell. Own up, dude. Be a man."
Beast Boy pouted and he flicked an imaginary speck off his pants. "I don't want to be a man."
"Maybe you should be really, really nice to her for a while. You know, get on her good side."
For a moment, Beast Boy mulled this over. "She wouldn't go for it."
No, any attempt at being nice would be met with icy hostility.
"Well, you've gotta try something. Otherwise I'll be stuck cleaning chunks of your dead body off the walls, I swear."
Something, something. Beast Boy knew being nice wouldn't cut it. He'd have to go to the extremes, supplicate himself, be completely at her mercy. He'd have to sacrifice things he would never dream of sacrificing. She'd be in possession of his soul, his sanity.
"There's no other way," he said, deathly grim and resolved.
Cyborg caught the look on his friends' face and frowned, worried. He had the look of a man about to sell his soul to the devil for a peanut and a hit of tequila before the final hurrah.
"Good luck, dude."
Beast Boy gulped, finding his throat parched and his tongue thick. He patted Cyborg on the shoulder.
"Luck won't help where I'm going. Just remember me as I was… please?"
"Always."
"Thanks."
"…We going three for five?"
"You know it."
I don't know. I just don't know.
Please review. I need it.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
(I just thought that was an awesome quote from an awesome poem)
