Okay. When I said that the next update would probably take a while, even I hadn't thought it would be this long. So, a million apologies to my readers and reviewers. I know that promptness is something I appreciate in authors, and I can only assume that other people enjoy that quality as well. I could give you the reasons for the delay, but they really aren't that unusual or interesting. :-)
I hate to do this to you after such a long wait, but I don't know how quickly I can get the next chapter out either.
So, without any further delays, I would like to submit for your reading pleasure the tenth chapter of SFTC.Smile for the Camera
Beast Boy slid the front door of Titan's Tower open slowly. He could never act naturally when he preformed this task. Mainly because he could never shake the feeling that he was doing something wrong. It didn't matter how often he'd done it or how well he'd rationalized it; it still felt wrong.
The sun was just beginning to lift itself out of the ocean, and the bay looked spectacular. Shy rays of light were pulling themselves into the sky, coloring the fog filled city and warming the world with their touch. The wind swirled up from the earth, towing behind it the sting of melting slush. The cold bit at Beast Boy's nose and ears, making the young elf shudder.
Everybody was still asleep, as far as Beast Boy knew. He stepped out of the tower and allowed the doors to close behind him. The changeling took a deep breath until his nose and throat started to throb. The chill helped him clear his head, and he needed to have a clear head for at least the next minute or two.
Beast Boy reached into his pocket and fingered today's love note. Sarah Rose had written it before she went to sleep last night. Beast Boy had been worried about that at first, but it hadn't looked like anyone had found the message during the night. Beast Boy had skimmed the message before sticking it in his pocket and heading out. He needed to get it into the mailbox and get back inside before he was missed. Maybe then he could catch up on his sleep.
Beast Boy hurried away from the tower, his shoulders hunched against the wind. The ground was brown and barren. What little vegetation had lasted into the winter had been killed by the recent snow. All that remained was fresh mud. He hurried to the mailbox. Beast Boy couldn't stop himself from throwing nervous glances over his shoulder: Stewart's expression last night had embedded itself in Beast Boy's mind.
Still, even Stewart couldn't be everywhere and see everything.
Beast Boy arrived at the mailbox out of breath, though he'd been moving in a careful crouch. There had been enough sneaking and lying in the past few days to keep the prankster happy and docile for years. The changeling's breath came out in icy puffs. The white mist lingered for a few moments before disappearing completely, leaving behind nothing but a hint of warmth that vanished all too quickly. Beast Boy fished through his pocket and withdrew the forged love note. He thrust it into the mailbox and slammed the lid shut.
The sound of aluminum clashing together reverberated through the air. It gave Beast Boy a strange sense of closure to slam the lid shut on those notes. The green teen pivoted on the balls of his feet and came to an abrupt stop. Everything stopped. Beast Boy's next breath caught in his throat, threatening to suffocate him; his heart jarred dangerously in his chest, and the changeling was almost convinced the organ had stopped completely.
"Good morning, Beast Boy," Stewart said cheerfully. He continued quickly. "I always assumed you to be a late sleeper. You're usually the last Titan on the scene, right?" The glint was back in Stewart's eyes. The cameraman looked more dangerous than Beast Boy had ever seen him.
The changeling dragged himself back to the real world. "Dude! Don't you ever sleep?" Beast Boy cringed at how frantic he sounded. There wasn't a single thing about his body language that didn't scream guilty. He knew that. Worse still, he knew Stewart knew it.
Stewart smirked from behind his camera. Beast Boy tried to keep calm, to maintain eye contact, to not fidget. Nothing worked. Stewart traipsed over to the mailbox as Beast Boy tried to keep himself from going crazy. Stewart would find the note, he'd know that all of them had been faked, he'd figure out that Beast Boy was trying to hide something. And then he would find out what it was. There wasn't a single corner of his mind that allowed Beast Boy to think otherwise. Everything was about to fall apart. Unless he could stop it.
"You scared me," Beast Boy continued as Stewart approached the mailbox. He was being ignored. Still, Beast Boy thought he had one trump card. He only hoped it didn't explode too quickly. "For a second I thought you were somebody I should worry about."
Stewart turned away from the mailbox casually, but Beast Boy didn't miss the hatred burning in every crease of the man's face. Stewart liked control, and like so many before him, Stewart equated control with power and power with fear.
"And who exactly would you need to be worried about?" Stewart asked. It was the first time Beast Boy had ever noticed the aged cameraman being careful with his words. There was no question that he was always doing it when the cameras were around; still, this was the first time it had been obvious.
"Robin. Starfire. And Raven, usually, too. She's never likes my pranks, even when they have nothing to do with her."
"You woke up this early to play a prank?" Stewart asked.
"Yeah," Beast Boy said. "There was a girl a while back who went gaga over Robin. She was a complete nut case. Anyway, I've been forging notes from her to Robin." Beast Boy chuckled. "It's been priceless."
"The notes from Madeline were forged then?"
"Maybe…" Beast Boy twiddled his thumbs innocently. He could see Stewart following the story point by point, looking for a mistake or a contradiction. As long as he didn't find anything suspect, the aged cameraman would have no reason to research Madeline. If he started looking for Madeline and found out that she worked for Sawchak, however, things would get ugly quickly.
Sawchak turned back to the mailbox and opened it. "You won't mind if I take a look," he said, but Beast Boy was already gone.
ooooo
Beast Boy and Drew were sitting outside her room when Raven opened the door that morning. The changeling was hunched over against a wall with his head cradled in his hands. At first, Raven didn't think the boy had seen her.
"How close are we to being done?" Beast Boy asked before Raven was out of her room. Sarah Rose stepped around Raven to get a better shot of the changeling.
"I don't know. Unless we can find Sawchak, it could be a while." Raven started walking to the living room. "Are you coming?"
Beast Boy got to his feet stiffly. Raven waited for a few moments as the boy got off the floor with undo sloth. Then she turned and walked away. Beast Boy was at her shoulder moments later.
"We might have a problem with Madeline," Beast Boy said. Raven stopped. "I was putting the letter in the mailbox earlier and Stewart saw me. I think I convinced him it was just a prank, but if he does a back-ground check or calls Sawchak then we're in trouble."
Beast Boy watched Raven mull over the information. Even as he watched, the elf was convinced that he could see all the gears and tumblers and whatever else turning in her head. Raven would come up with some sort of plan, some sort of safeguard.
"We can't do anything about that. As long as you didn't say anything to provoke him, he might not even look into it." Raven studied Beast Boy's face. "You provoked him."
The changeling shuffled his feet, suddenly very interested in the hole his big toe was wearing in the left shoe. "Yes..."
Raven groaned before starting toward the living room again. Beast Boy followed behind her, still expecting some sort of miracle to jump out of her head. The empath was a genius at strategy. Raven was, really, an overall genius. She would know what to do; she just needed time to think.
After finishing a cup of tea in silence (even Beast Boy had been mute), Raven was no closer to an answer. Drew and Sarah Rose recorded each moment – Beast Boy's expectant face, Raven's calm movements.
"If we find Sawchak," Raven said at last, "we'll never get him to admit he set us up. We don't have any proof, and this will look bad without it." Raven gestured to Drew and Sarah Rose, the stolen camera crew. Beast Boy nodded.
"So… what do we do?"
"I'm not sure there is anything we can do, Beast Boy. Madeline's interview is only worth so much. She was fired after we signed the contract, so everything she said could be chalked up to a disgruntled former employee."
"Wait, Madeline was fired?" Beast Boy asked. She hadn't mentioned that when they talked, and she was the strongest support they had.
Raven only nodded. The living room was empty. Cyborg had come in earlier, but after seeing Beast Boy, Raven, and their shadows sitting in silence he left quickly. Beast Boy had toyed with the idea of watching some TV, but had elected to stay silent. Robin and Starfire were both missing; Beast Boy was positive they were in a room somewhere, being forced into an interview about the love letters.
Beast Boy poked his index fingers together, glancing hopefully up at Raven's face as time passed. The empath took no notice of him; the demoness continued to stare at some invisible thing floating out over the bay. Drew and Sarah Rose set their cameras up in their tripods and played rock, paper, scissors. Sarah Rose was winning.
Beast Boy let his attention wander. It was a pacific moment, and the boy treasured it. So much had been going on – he hadn't stopped to think recently. Beast Boy chuckled. He'd never expected he would miss thinking time. The cameras hadn't been in the tower very long; still, every moment was a battle now. Beast Boy closed his eyes.
The changeling couldn't pin down when this catastrophe had started – or what started it. Reading fanfiction could have been it, but Sawchak had lost his sister years before that. He might have just found another way to torment them. This was a battle unlike any Beast Boy had ever fought in. There were no enemies to beat, no criminals to catch, no clear lines between the right thing and the wrong thing. Instead, there was just Stewart and his obtrusive crewmembers.
Beast Boy was jarred from his thoughts. At first, he couldn't tell what had distracted him. The alarms were flaring bright red and a cascade of screeches was flying through the tower. Beast Boy jumped up as soon as the sound registered.
Robin and Starfire charged into the room. Beast Boy couldn't help but smirk when he saw Stewart limping behind them. Robin was pounding away at the mainframe terminal before his aging shadow caught up. The screen flashed to a grid-map of the city, zooming in quickly under the guidance of Robin's nimble fingers. Raven arched an eyebrow at the screen. Beast Boy could understand why: ever since the final battle against the Brotherhood of Evil, villains had been rare. Professional criminals the world over were an endangered species.
"Where is Cyborg?" Starfire asked. Beast Boy glanced around the room. His metallic friend was missing. The changeling shrugged. Raven closed her eyes and planted her fingers against her temples. Beast Boy frowned.
"We'll have to do without him," Robin said as the computer screen fixed on a quadrant of the city dangerously close to the power plant. Starfire floated into the air and headed for the door. Robin and Raven followed quickly.
"Cy," Beast Boy said as he pulled out his communicator. "Where are you?" The communicator crackled with static before Cyborg's voice drifted from the electronic device.
"I'm already heading there, B. Hurry up. I did a seismic scan and it looks bad. I'm talking lost remote bad." The communicator dissolved back into static. Beast Boy flipped the device shut before giving Drew, the only shadow who hadn't run from the room, a feral grin.
"Try to keep up."
ooooo
Beast Boy sprinted into an alley. The dumpster was overflowing, full of discarded fruit peels and half-eaten fish. It would have been a perfect smorgasbord for the starving homeless if not for the police station across the street. The fish were left to the cats. The concrete was chilled and cracked, viciously lashed by winter's whip. Cars zoomed past at forty miles an hour, and Beast Boy instinctively hid his face behind his hands: he was too recognizable.
Drew had been hard to lose. Beast Boy had been afraid of looking like he was running away, and because of it spend long minutes going in complicated circles under the guise of being lost. Drew had disappeared four blocks ago. Beast Boy only hoped everyone else got Cyborg's cryptic message.
After catching his breath, Beast Boy morphed into a falcon and took to the air. His large wings grabbed at the swirling currents swept up by the traffic, and the changeling was soaring in moments. Beast Boy scoped the streets below him for Drew; he didn't see him. Satisfied, Beast Boy turned to the bay. With deft, effortless movements, Beast Boy sailed through the air, enjoying the chill breeze as it whispered through his feathers.
ooooo
The docks hadn't changed much since Beast Boy's last visit to them. Rusted barges and long-dead cruisers floated in the gray sea, bobbing up and down with the tide like a forlorn yo-yo. Beast Boy perched on a smokestack and waited. It took a while, but Robin eventually swung into view. The Boy Wonder was alone.
Robin scanned the storehouses. Beast Boy thought he saw his leader's gaze halt on one wall. The Boy Wonder pinned an old man there by the throat once, long ago. Beast Boy spread his wings before hopping from the quiescent smokestack. He swooped down to Robin and morphed into his human form.
"It took you long enough," Beast Boy said around chattering teeth. "I was freezing my tail off up there."
"Your hindquarters appear undamaged to me," Starfire said from behind him. Beast Boy jumped: he hadn't known Starfire was here. He could tell from Robin's frown that Starfire was inspecting his bottom.
"It's just an expression, Starfire," Robin said. The Tamaranian nodded in understanding.
"So… where're Cy and Rae?" Beast Boy asked. His lips shook as he spoke, but his teeth were mercifully silent.
The docks felt like a graveyard. Except instead of tombstones there were dying ships. Instead of flowers there was the must of mildewed wood. Beast Boy scrunched his nose up to block the scent, but he knew from past experience that it wasn't possible.
"Friend Cyborg said he was already on his way," Starfire intoned helpfully. "It is likely that he is already here, watching to be assured that we were not followed." Beast Boy was willing to take Starfire's word on that. He hadn't seen Cyborg though, and the cybernetic superhero was easy to see.
"How'd you get rid of your shadows?" Beast Boy asked, mostly to kill time and distract himself from his frigid limbs.
"I outran him," Robin said dismissively. It occurred to Beast Boy that Robin was upset about the notes Sarah Rose forged. Beast Boy chuckled nervously. Robin glared at him and the weak sound died in his throat. Beast Boy shuffled away a few inches. There would be a time and place to explain everything he'd been doing, but it would be better if Raven was there when he did explain it. The dark girl could almost always talk Robin down from madness.
Beast Boy pricked his ears up and listened. He could hear the light click of Cyborg's feet as they walked across the shattered concrete. The cybernetic teenager rounded a corner and walked over to the assembled Titans.
"You guys know where Rae is?" Cyborg repeated Beast Boy's earlier question. Everybody shook their heads. Cyborg frowned and scanned the nearby rooftops, as if expecting Raven to hover over one at any moment. "You guys don't think she couldn't get away…"
"No way," Beast Boy interposed. "Sarah Rose is cool; she's working with us." His friend's looked at him. Beast Boy felt the blood rushing to his face, and he was thankful that it was next to impossible to tell when he blushed.
"Raven and I were working with Drew and Sarah Rose, our shadows," he amended when the names didn't register with his teammates. "We were filming a counter documentary to release when Sawchak's came out. You know, show what really happened."
"So all the times you disappeared and all the distractions you set up were to work on your documentary?" Robin asked. His tone was harsh and full of skepticism, yet at the same time, Beast Boy could feel his leader's anger ebb. Beast Boy nodded.
"If Friend Raven was working on this other movie, why is she not here?" Starfire asked. "If the Sarah Rose did not detain Raven, where is she?" Beast Boy had no answer to that. The changeling pulled out his communicator but thought better of it. If Raven had run into trouble, she didn't need, and probably didn't want, him calling to check up.
"She'll catch up later," Beast Boy said with more confidence than he felt.
Robin nodded his agreement. "We're too exposed here. Raven knows how to contact us. Let's move." Beast Boy flexed his fingers, wincing when they cracked as if the knuckles themselves had frozen. Starfire frowned out at the horizon where one gray melted into another – sky and sea an indiscernible blur.
"We should wait," was all she said, but the Tamaranian floated after her teammates as they entered storehouse thirteen. Water dripped from a broken pipe concealed in the rafters and landed with a dull plop within the maze of crates.
Cyborg unfolded a floodlight from his shoulder and cast a brilliant light into the dank space. Robin moved assuredly from crate to crate, working from a photographic memory that would lead him to the concealed tunnel. The Boy Wonder stopped before a large crate that smelt of wet mothballs.
Robin shoved the obstacle aside. Then he disappeared down the hole the crate had been covering. Beast Boy sprung down after the acrobat, morphing into a rat so he could move more easily through the irregular tunnel. Starfire crouched down behind him with a starbolt in hand. Cyborg was forced to slither on his stomach; his chest plate grated against the granite and sent tortured shrieks through the storehouse.
The tunnel leveled eventually and the horrible screeching stopped. Beast Boy scurried after his leader. The changeling had never been down here before – like so many of the Teen Titans emergency holds, this place was never used. Beast Boy felt the engine vibrating through the stone before he saw the room.
The place was a cavern carved of living rock. Condensation clung to the smooth walls, frozen in place until the winter passed. Dying incandescent light flowed from niches in the walls. One of the bulbs was humming insistently, a warning bell that it would soon burn out.
"We should be able to operate out of here," Robin said as he booted up an ancient computer in the corner that Beast Boy hadn't noticed. The monitor was dusty and pixilated.
Beast Boy shivered. It had nothing to do with the cold. "What now?" he whispered. In response Robin started hammering a code into the computer. Flawlessly, the entire computer screen lit. Beast Boy recognized Titan's Tower and all its security cameras. He hadn't known there was a backdoor into the security grid.
"You and Rae weren't the only people keeping busy," Cyborg chided after seeing Beast Boy's expression. Robin cut off the impending argument before it could build momentum.
"We need to all get on the same page," Robin said as the tapes began to rewind. Beast Boy glanced around the spacious cavern again. Raven was still missing.
Starfire placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. It was just like it had been so many years ago, one of those rare occasions where the Tamaranian princess knew the exact measure of her strength and how much of it was required. Beast Boy took comfort from Starfire, absorbing and containing the squeeze, capturing the force and energy and vitality and adding it to his own dwindling supply.
"Raven is well. She will come."
Author's Note: I hope everybody enjoyed that. It was a little shorter than a few of the longer chapters, but hopefully the writing made up for that. As always, I welcome your theories, opinions, praise, and critique, so, please, review.
A small note to readers - from those who were with me from the beginning to those who caught up today: this story will be coming to a close soon. I see a few more chapters on the horizon, but this fanfiction is approaching its end. Stick around and see how that comes about.