Disclaimer: I own nothing!
A/N: Thank you to everyone who is bearing with me and reading this story. Hopefully things should be a little bit faster paced from here forward. Again, forgive the terrible formatting from my phone. Thank you Anna for your reviews :) and thank you everyone for your follows/favorites. I means a ton to me.
Raven stopped at Changeling's door before knocking. While the sorceress had gained control over her powers for the most part, Garfield had a way of bringing out both the best and worst in her. Everything just seemed to go haywire around him. The man appeared to be bound and determined to test her very last nerve, on a daily basis no less. Raven sighed before putting her hand up to knock. The truth was, irritating though he could be, she wouldn't have him any other way. She rapped lightly at the door.
Changeling opened the door and walked away to continue packing. "Yes?" he asked, without looking up from what he was doing.
'You shouldn't do this" Raven stated, watching him with his back to her. He was packing the last of his things into an overnight bag. "Something is off about the whole situation." Raven continued.
Garfield stopped moving and just let out a short, bitter, laugh before turning to face her and walking rapidly over until he was face-to face with her. There was barely a foot left between them. Raven's breath caught in her throat at the sight of anger and hurt flashing in his emerald eyes. "This is what it always comes down to, isn't it?"
Raven squared herself and tilted her head up to look him in the eyes and meet his anger. Raven opened her mouth to speak and perhaps say something comforting, but before she could he began to speak again.
"You don't trust me and you never will." He accused, shaking his head.
Now it was Raven's turn to get angry, she felt a searing heat fill her. 'How dare he…' thought Raven, her eyes glinting with an anger all her own. "This is ridiculous and you have no…" She was cut off by him again.
Changeling leaned in, standing up straight from his normally slouched posture. When he did this, he was at least a head taller than her. He glared down at her. "So tell me Rae," he asked mockingly, "Are you all worried because you think I am incompetent at the job, or do you just assume I'm a total idiot?"
"I-…" This was not going as she planned. She could feel a crescendo of anger and hurt building up in the room.
"You say it enough. Robin double checks me constantly, Cy and Star seem to feel I am still in need of a babysitter. I'm done with this! I'm going to help them! " He shouted in an outburst uncharacteristic of his usual laid-back temperament.
She looked at him quizzically. It seemed that time primal protective instinct had been triggered. She knew some small amount of what had happened to his biological parents and remembered how hard he had worked to protect Steve, Rita and the other Titans when the Brotherhood of Evil battle was going on. It seemed that he was determined not to let anything hurt his family. All logical thought was gone from her friend. She locked eyes with him as he stood, chest heaving, recovering from his outburst.
Changeling broke eye contact first and grabbed his bag. He turned to Raven and said in a dull tone that could have belonged to the empath, "Are you going to move so I can leave?"
She panicked inside at the thought of him leaving with the mental state he was in. It only got worse as he approached with the bag. All of her instincts were telling her not to let the normally happy-go-lucky man leave her sight. Worse than the fact her instincts didn't want it to happen; her emotions seemed to be clamoring to get her to make him stay. She felt almost helpless, a feeling she wasn't overly fond of or familiar with. Raven watched him as he shifted to her left as if to walk around her.
Almost of it's own volition, her hand shot out and grabbed his arm in a firm grip. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "You're not alone."
He paused, his back straightening, as he turned his head to look at her.
The grey hand on his arm tightened it's grip. "I know that you think you're alone, Garfield, but you're not." She said purposefully, reminding him of his own words to her all those years back. She met his eyes, searching for a sign he was listening.
The heat went out of his eyes, "Rae-", he started
"Look, if you have to go, take me with you. I don't think you should go at all but if you feel you have to, let me watch your back. You don't need to do this alone." She had a pleading tone in her raspy voice that was more than a little unusual coming from the normally cold sorceress. When she saw his shoulders finally relax too, Raven let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding.
Changeling placed his bag down on the floor. "Why are you so set on this Rae?" he asked with less heat and genuine curiosity. "I can handle myself, you know." Then, with a small hint of mischief in his jade eyes, "I am bigger than you now, if you didn't notice."
"I hadn't noticed…" Raven dead-panned in her usual manner.
"Also, you're still holding my arm…"
She flushed and dropped his arm as if it was on fire. Clearing her throat, she set about answering his original question. "I don't know why. I just feel odd. If I could tell you more, I would." Raven replied with uncertainty in her tone.
"You realize that you are voluntarily agreeing to spending and indefinite amount of time with your favorite green shape-shifter, jokes and pranks included, right?" His face brightening at the prospect of his own thought he responded, "Fine. You can come too. The flight leaves in two hours."
Changeling watched her leave his room with a confused expression. Raven and he had grown closer over the last few years but he had never seen her or heard her that worried about him. Truth-be-told he valued her opinion more than he should value the opinion of a friend. He hadn't tried to analyze it in the past. Raven was just, well, Raven. Her praise was seldom given, but managed to make him feel like he could do anything when he did get it.
His personality was at a direct contrast to hers, so he wasn't entirely shocked to hear her counsel caution regarding this mission. What still surprised him was her insistence on going with him to Seattle to assist his family. He wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth though. He wouldn't mind having her as back-up and neither would Steve and Rita. Plus, this gave him another opportunity to try to get her out of her shell. 'Who knows, maybe with less people around, she might actually relax' he thought.
Over the last 5 years, he had some small successes in pulling her out of the fortress she had built around herself. It had taken, time, patience, and some physical durability to weather the outbursts that came with it. Now, when she sat with them during movie nights, trips to the pizza parlor, or just around the dinner table, he couldn't help but feel a small bit of pride at seeing her laugh or just talk normally with her teammates. The one problem he had was the fact that every time he felt like he got a glimpse of the real Raven, she would close herself off again and disappear for a while.
He knew about her fear of being hurt. He knew she had attempted relationships outside of the team that she thought no one knew about. He knew the first one or two times he had hidden and followed her out, just to make sure the guys were not villains in disguise or that they didn't have the wrong intentions with his friend. He stopped doing this around the time he saw a goth boy get flung into a wall for trying to push her too far. Changeling figured that she had it under control at that point.
Still, he would know whenever one of the relationships failed. He would see her sitting on the roof just staring out at the ocean. Quite a few times he would just go and sit with her. No words were exchanged. He knew this would just drive her to go to her room to be alone. So, he would just sit with her, silent until she would get up. She would then look at him, and say a quiet "Thank you", before going inside. He knew that was as much of an acknowledgement as he would ever get that she needed a friend. He was content with that.
Hearing voices in the common room, Changeling figured that Raven had finished packing and Cyborg had the results of his investigation in. Garfield threw the bag over his shoulder with a casual grace, then, left the room to join his team.
The Titans once more gathered together to check the information from the message and to see off their friends. Cyborg passed the communicator back to Changeling.
"It all seems legit." Cyborg stated, shaking his head. "I ran just about every test I could think of on it. Even down to checking the grammar and syntax from the Christmas and birthday cards Rita has sent. It's from her. Hell, the message even originated in Seattle judging by the satellite that transmitted it to your communicator."
Changeling nodded his head, he had expected nothing different. While he had his own private questions as to what had led the Doom Patrol to come to Seattle, he knew his foster mother's writing. He looked down at the communicator briefly before pocketing it in the slot he reserved for it in the utility belt.
Robin walked up to Garfield and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know you can handle this. If you need anything call for back-up. Cyborg will have the T-plane ready to take off at a moment's notice. Good luck and take care of yourself." He leaned closer. "Take care of Raven too, please. If she lets you" Robin said, in a tone he hoped was quiet enough to escape the emapth's notice. From the glare he received, it wasn't.
"I will", Changeling said as he turned to Cyborg and received a bone-rattling pat on the back from the mechanical man. "You got this" the android said to his best friend before moving aside for Starfire.
"I will miss you both terribly" bemoaned the red-haired alien, before pulling him into a bone-crushing hug and turning to give Raven the same.
"Return home quickly" Starfire said to the empath before letting her breathe.
The two Titans took hold of their bags and emerged onto the rooftop. One bonus to having Raven along was getting to skip the airport traffic. A dainty grey hand reached out and took hold of a larger green one. A black, raven-shaped, wave of darkness overtook them and left the remaining three Titans looking, sadly, at empty space where their friends stood a moment before.