iv. Chapter Three

Raven walked out of the doctor's office, feeling weak and washed out and infinitely better, dosed with numbing painkillers and wet bandages that seemed to all be kicking in at once. She made her way back into the waiting room and stopped in front of Beast Boy, who was sitting slumped down in one of the green vinyl chairs. She was still wearing the plaid shorts and t-shirt that the woman, Joy, had given her.

For a long moment, she stared at his shoes, sloppily tied and coming undone. Then she moved on upwards to where one knee was bouncing restlessly, and up to his lap where he was holding a large egg-shaped toy owl, and then to his eyes, watching her expectantly. He had gentle eyes. She had always noticed that about him, ever since the first day.

"Is that for me?" Raven asked, looking back down at the stuffed owl, pretending that she didn't care, like she always did. Why did she always do that?

"Uh… it can be if you want," he said.

They both knew that meant yes, and he offered the thing up to her. She took it carefully into her arms and simply held it. She thought of the night that they had all gone to the carnival, and the giant chicken doll that now lived in the corner of her closet. Sometimes she opened the door just to look at it, sitting there, because it was so useless and stupid, except as a marker that somebody had cared enough to win it for her. She thought this one would go there too.

"Promise to take good care of it," he said, half-jokingly.

"I promise," she echoed, without much thought. It was soft and downy in her arms and she made herself resist the temptation to bury her face in it. It was bad enough that she was standing there holding the thing in somebody else's well-worn clothing.

"I went and got some money from the bank across the street while you were in there," he told her. "In case you were wondering… Man, it takes waaay too long to make a withdrawal and I can never remember my ATM code. I hate going to the bank."

"Oh," she said.

But I did it for you, just sat there, unspoken and unmoving. She ignored it.

Each of the Titans had their own account, where the city poured whatever money wasn't taken up by the cost of the Tower and city repairs, for the Titans to buy their personal stuff. Like a paycheck or a pseudo-allowance for the five parentless children. Raven had hardly used hers, except sometimes to buy books.

Beast Boy got up and stretched, throwing his arms out wide. He scratched his head and looked at her.

"So, uh, feeling any better?" he asked.

She nodded. Her mind was floating around somewhere outside her head, and she didn't quite trust herself to speak. But she did feel better.

"Good," he smiled. "I guess that means we can go back to the Tower, if that's what you want…"

"Actually…" She clamped her mouth shut, frowning. She knew she couldn't trust herself to speak. "No. Never mind."

"What?" he asked, curiously. "What is it?"

Now that she had sparked his interest it would be too difficult to back track. But she was all about futility. She was all about grasping at hope where there was none. Hadn't Robin called her the most hopeful of them all? Certainly, it was true that she kept hoping if she cut off all of her feelings, severed them and let them fall away, that they would not come back.

But melodrama was pointless.

"It's nothing," she said to Beast Boy.

"Aw, you can't just leave me hanging like that!"

"Watch me."

She began to walk out of the waiting room, holding on to the stuffed owl with both arms, the loose t-shirt and shorts swishing, wisping gently against her skin. She wasn't used to that, so different from her skin-tight suit. Beast Boy caught up to her, carrying her cloak and her ripped uniform.

"Please?" he said.

She glanced sideways at him, her boots padding softly on the linoleum. "Why? It's not important."

"If it's not important, then it doesn't matter if you tell me," he challenged.

Raven pressed her lips together. For a moment she didn't reply.

"I need… clothes," she admitted finally, feeling stupid. "Something that lets me get to… my injuries more easily."

"What about your, you know, normal clothes?" he asked quizzically. "Like jeans and t-shirts and stuff…"

She stared down at her boots, moving one after another as she walked.

"I… don't have any…"

She had never realized how strange that was.

Beast Boy seemed to think it was strange, too, because he stopped and stared wide-eyed at her. "Not any! But what about all those trips to the mall you take with Starfire?"

Raven shrugged self-consciously. "I never bought anything. And we don't go that often… I don't know." She looked away from him. "It doesn't matter."

Briefly he digested this in silence. They stood there together in the hospital hallway.

"Okay," he said after a moment.

"Okay, what?" she asked, eyeing him with suspicion.

"Okay, let's go," he said.

It was her turn to stare at him.

"I can't go out like this," she sputtered, gesturing to her clothes, and then regretting it when he looked her up and down. She tightened her arms around the owl doll, blushing hotly. Beast Boy didn't seem to notice.

"Wait right here," he told her, grinning with the brightness of an idea, and dashed off before she could open her mouth.

Raven peered after him, not knowing what else to do, half-formed protests sticking to her tongue, until he skidded around a corner and was blocked from view.

She glanced around the hallway, which was sparsely populated, mostly by the elderly. People walked by, sometimes glancing her way, sometimes passing her over completely. Heaving out a sigh, she leaned back against the wall, tucking the stuffed doll under one arm and folding the other behind her back. She scuffed one boot on the floor, back and forth, anxiously.

…What was Beast Boy doing?

All she could do was wait and see. But she had been playing that game her whole life, waiting for Trigon, for her mother, for things that would never come. Waiting and uncertain. She hated that not-knowing that went so often with waiting.

When she was five she had moved away from the home of her mother to train with the monks of Azarath, and live with them in the lonely cloisters. And every day was filled with that desperate not-knowing. When was mother coming? Was she coming at all? Would she ever come again?

Stop thinking about that, she told herself. Absently, she brought her arm out from behind her back and felt the bandages over her ribs through the faded cotton t-shirt with her bandaged hand. The hurt was so much less that it almost wasn't there at all, and she felt fragile and outside herself, as translucent as a jellyfish. She would have to come back here in another week for a check-up, but for now she could believe everything was all right.

Still waiting, Raven lowered her eyes to her boots to avoid making eye contact with the strangers in the hospital hallway. If she couldn't see them, they couldn't see her. She remembered repeating that to herself when she was young, almost believing that if she did it often enough, it would come true. For a moment, then, she felt like a little girl again, unwise and impulsive. She closed her eyes.

"Raven?"

When she looked up at the sound of her name, Raven almost dropped the owl doll in surprise.

"Well," said Beast Boy, "What do you think? Pretty spiffy, right?"

He held one arm out to better display the hospital scrubs he was wearing. They were white and printed with miniscule flowers, and they looked like a pair of particularly ugly pajamas. The delicate bones of ankles and wrists stuck out at each of the cuffs where they weren't quite covered by his gloves or his sneakers. Over his other arm he had draped both their uniforms, and he paused to toss them over one shoulder, striking a pose like a catalogue model.

"I think," replied Raven, after a moment of quietly studying him, "that you are an idiot."

At that he seemed to deflate a little bit, and Raven hated herself for feeling a twinge of guilt.

"How is this supposed to be helping, again?" she asked him.

"I dunno." he scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "I thought you would feel better if we were both wearing something… uh… weird…"

She raised an eyebrow, refusing to be touched. "Weren't you already wearing something weird?"

"Hey, what's wrong with my uniform?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, then. Good." Beast Boy nodded to himself, apparently satisfied. "Let's go!"

Raven hesitated.

"… People will stare."

And she knew she wasn't supposed to care about that. But there were certain things she did not do, and making any kind of spectacle of herself was one of them.

"Dude, Raven, they'd be staring no matter what. Who cares?"

No sound came out when she opened her mouth.

"Come on," Beast Boy repeated, full of energy, and it looked for a moment as if he would grab her hand to lead her away. When he seemed to think better of it, Raven told herself it didn't matter. "Let's go."

"Wait," she said.

He made a noise of impatience. "Raven! You don't look bad –" He seemed to realize what he was saying, and fumbled "– Uh, I mean, you look good. Well, you always look good, and you still do, so, um, there should be no problem. Right?"

Raven didn't know how to respond to that. Nor did she even want to think about it. So she just… didn't. Instead she pulled the prescription that the doctor had given her out of her pocket and held it up.

"I was just going to say that I had to stop at the pharmacy before we leave."

"Oh," said Beast Boy, reddening. "Yeah. I knew that."

So they went to the bank first, where Raven withdrew from her account, and then to the pharmacy so she could buy the salve that had been prescribed to her, and then out of the hospital and into the sprawl of Jump City. It was bright out and the fall air was crisp. After a moment of bickering they decided to find a bus that would take them downtown to the shopping district (and not the mall, Raven had insisted).

Raven had never ridden a public bus before. But, she reflected somewhat bitterly, why would she have? She had never needed to.

Beast Boy seemed to know what he was doing though, so she followed his lead in dropping her fare into the cash box at the front as they boarded. The driver was an unhappy-looking man with a hat pulled down to his eyebrows. He looked at them without curiosity as they moved down the aisle, one after the other. Raven didn't realize how closely she was following Beast Boy until she bumped into the back of him and had to murmur a hasty apology. He flashed her a grin.

She wasn't afraid. But she was uncomfortable, not just with the bus, but with the newness of the situation, the stares they were attracting from the other passengers. She should have been used to being scrutinized. She was, after all, a semi-celebrity, wasn't she? Only, the truth was, she just didn't put herself in a position to be stared at all that often.

She didn't like the way the eyes darted, widened, tried to look away only to be drawn back. She didn't like the discreet, sneaking glances of those too polite to stare and too curious not to. She had had her fill of that on Azarath, where the whispers said demon's child, wild, and dangerous, and pitiful…

"Uh… Raven? Hellooo…?"

She blinked, startled, and drew back from the hand the Beast Boy was waving back and forth before her eyes.

"What?" she asked roughly, caught on the raw.

He shrank away from her a little bit.

"Do… uh… do you mind if I take the window seat?" he said in a rush.

"Does it look like I mind?"

She was swamped immediately with guilt and self-hate.

"I guess not." He gave an awkward attempt at the laugh that normally came so easily to him. "I'll just take it then," he said, to fill the void.

As the bus grumbled into motion, he slid into the seat, holding their uniforms balled up on his lap. Raven sat down next to him, and stared over the head of the owl doll at her white, unspotted knees, wondering why she always ruined everything.

It was a few moments of being jostled about on the un- cushioned seat before she chanced a look around the bus. Beside her, Beast Boy was staring out the window in a way she would have labeled pensive had she not known him personally. From her spot near the back end she could see the passengers up front: a heavy-set woman with a bun piled atop her head, an elderly oriental-looking couple dressed in clean, subdued clothing, a man in a sleeveless shirt and baseball cap, and another in slacks and leather shoes, a mother and child, a pair of teenagers whispering together.

Who were they? What went on behind the occasional shifting glances, and the bored, unrevealing stares? Were they looking at her at all, or were they just alone with their thoughts, alone in an oasis where she herself did not exist?

The worst part was always the not-knowing, so she forced herself to stop thinking on it. And anyway, if they did stare, they were more likely to be staring at Beast Boy than at her… All of a sudden she knew very clearly why he had changed into the hospital scrubs. Her fingers dug into the plush doll he had given her, whitening.

"Why do you always have to be like that?"

Raven looked back down at her knees.

"…I don't know."

"Well…" he softened, "are you okay?"

No.

"Yes."

"I don't think you really are," said Beast Boy, over the rumble of the bus's engine. "I think you're a liar."

"You're entitled to your opinion." She didn't need him to point out to her that she was doing it again.

"Look, I know you have to be all dark and creepy and 'everything is pointless' because of your powers, but –"

She cut him off. A small part of her was offended. "Maybe that's just the way I am. Did you think of that?"

"Dude, how would you know if you've never even tried to be different? You don't have your powers now. You could, you know, let loose!"

"What's the point?" she asked, suddenly full of aimless rage. "Why change when I'm just going to change back again once I regain my powers? It makes more sense to keep things as they are. Anything else is just setting myself up for disappointment."

"Yeah… I guess…" he replied slowly, after a moment. "… but you could just try to enjoy the time you have."

Incorrigible.

"You don't understand," was all she could think to say, deflating in her seat.

"Nobody ever does," said Beast Boy, with frustration. When she made no move to speak he returned to looking somewhat moodily out the window.

It was difficult to upset Beast Boy. So why was she so good at it?

Raven bit her lip on the inside, absently tightened her arms around the toy owl, and resumed the silent contemplation of her knees. The rest of the ride passed that way, until they reached their destination and Beast Boy nudged her out of her seat, seeming to have bounced back, as he always did, to a brighter mood.

When they stepped off the bus, they were on the corner of a long shopping street. On either side, merchandise spilled out into the walkway. There were more pedestrians than vehicles. Mostly, Raven was just glad they hadn't ended up at the mall.

"Alright!" said Beast Boy, full of energy. "Now we can get started!"

Raven did the customary thing and rolled her eyes. Weren't boys supposed to dislike shopping?

By tacit agreement, they both ignored the argument they'd had on the bus, as if it had never even happened.

Raven was an efficient shopper, and before they had left the first store she had found that Beast Boy was most emphatically not.

That was a shocker.

While Raven would have settled for picking items half at random and buying them straight off the shelf, it was Beast Boy who urged her into a dressing room, continually attempting to slip more outrageous clothing into the pile on her arm. She tolerated that for a time, until he somehow managed to find a tacky faux leather bustier and sneak it into her own selection.

If she'd had her powers she would have – But she didn't. So she stomped out of the dressing room and stuffed his head through the thing instead.

After that, Beast Boy turned to displaying his extreme lack of fashion sense to amuse himself. And no matter how many disparaging comments Raven made, he insisted on striking poses in the three-way mirror. She didn't know whether to laugh or pretend she didn't know him.

Sometimes, strangely, someone would approach him, or both of them, for an autograph. Raven signed her name with mild embarrassment – She wasn't any better now than anybody else, and had probably only been vaguely recognized because of who she was with. Beast Boy, on the other hand, preened under the attention. That, she supposed, was the difference between them. One of many.

At one point he tried to direct her towards a store that carried spiked bracelets, printed t-shirts, black bondage pants and the like.

"What makes you think I want to go in there?" she asked him, eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Uh…" he said, apparently realizing he was in too deep.

"Exactly."

And they moved on.

In the end, the trip was quite a bit longer than it would have been had she been by herself. She came out of the last store (what she hoped was the last store for a long time to come) wearing a pair of black cigarette pants and a soft black sweater. Not everything she had bought was that same color, but… well, a lot of it was. The uniforms, the borrowed clothing, and the toy owl had been relegated to the shopping bags with the other new purchases.

To Raven's surprise, Beast Boy came out looking half-decent. Instead of the atrocities he had flaunted in the various dressing rooms, he was dressed far more sensibly in jeans and a t-shirt. She hadn't thought it possible, but he appeared even more wiry without the muscle definition that his suit made visible.

"So…" said Beast Boy – she wondered if she still ought to call him that, even though he was out of uniform. She decided that she would. She wasn't about to start calling him Garfield, although perhaps if she practiced enough she would be able to say it without laughing. "… you wanna get something to eat?"

His stomach growled loudly, as if to punctuate, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, sheepishly.

When Raven thought about it, she realized she hadn't eaten all day. She felt a sort of empty tiredness take her over, and for a moment was forced to concentrate very hard on not swaying where she stood.

Beast Boy seemed to take her silence for a show of reluctance. "Please, just a quick bite? We can go back to the tower right after."

"O-okay," Raven agreed faintly. The tower. The others. She had almost forgotten, or at least relegated it all to the back of her mind. But it seemed to want to stay there, so she allowed it to. She would feel better, she decided, if she did get something to eat.

They ended up at the pizza shack, because that was the only thing they could agree on, but the rest of the day was sort of a blur to her. They ate outside at one of the circular plastic tables. The wind blew Raven's hair into her face. She finished her pizza, and rested her cheek in her palm. Across the table, Beast Boy was just starting on thirds.

The only moment she remembered – and this with absurd clarity – was the moment that Beast Boy looked up at her. He was in mid-bite, but suddenly he clicked his mouth shut, lowered the slice of pizza – vegetarian, no onions – down to the grease-stained paper plate, and cocked his head to the side. Oddly, he was still wearing his gloves.

Out of the blue he said, as if they had been discussing it the whole time, "Raven, we're friends, aren't we?"

She sat up at that. He looked back at her expectantly. A burst of wind stole one of the paper napkins she had tucked under her plate. Her cup, filled only with ice now, sweated onto the table.

"I think so," she said.

He nodded, and when his hair – a tad bit longer than it had been, and messier now, less deliberately spiked, still the same pine green that she had long ago ceased to notice as abnormal– when his hair flopped down over his eyes he brushed it back distractedly with one gloved hand. There were goose-bumps on his arms. His skin was downy and grass-green. He should have bought a jacket.

"I thought you should know that I – that we all care about you. We're all friends, you know? It doesn't matter if you… if you're not… I just thought you should know, in case you didn't know already."

Raven nodded mutely. Seemingly satisfied, Beast Boy raised his pizza again and took a large bit out of it.

I wanted you to know that I… care, too, she thought later. But at the time, she said nothing.

Raven dropped her head heavily back into her palm, one elbow propped up on the table. After a moment, she closed her eyes. If they talked about anything between then and their arrival at the tower – and they must have, because, to put it lightly, Beast Boy wasn't one for silences – she could not remember what it was.

A/N: Ok, it's ranting time, everybody. If you don't want to read my thoughts on the subject of Raven and shopping, feel free to skip over. Here we go –

First, I must admit, that the scenes of Raven and Beast Boy shopping are sort of a send-up of those stories where Raven goes out and buys fishnets and boots and low-cut tops and blahblahblah, usually from Hot Topic, which is a store that I hate with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. You know what I'm talking about. These types of stories rub me the wrong way because, number one – I don't believe that Raven is a goth or a punk, and number two – if you shop at Hot Topic or whatever, you are not a goth or a punk either.

I apologize if I offended anybody out there who really does shop at Hot Topic. However, this is clearly a subject I feel very strongly about.

:P Yeah.

I think you all know my thoughts on reviews already, but I'll say it again anyway – I heart reviews! Thanks for reading!