The Second Curse: A TT Fanfic-CHAPTER 13

A/N: This is Chapter 13 of my OC Teen Titans Fanfic, The Second Curse. If you have not done so, please read the Prologue first, and then the chapters that precede this one. Note: there is no First Curse; this is not a sequel to anything. Hope you enjoy! : )

PS. Thank you, Reader, for your input and advice. I shall try to put in a tad more description in future chapters. And to the rest of you, feel free to send comments and constructive criticism and such; it helps! :D

It was about 3:30am, and the Tower hallways were completely dark. Yet the green shape shifter found himself, once again, walking blindly back to his room. Beast Boy silently cursed himself for letting Starfire trick him into eating Tamaranian food again. She'd said it was a salad, but apparently Tamaranian vegetables were alive. Like, with eyes and tentacles hidden under their leaves. Worse yet, they didn't agree with him at all.

Beast Boy groaned with one arm over his stomach, his whispered mutterings of "never again…" sounding unusually loud in the silent hallway. His eyes stung with exhaustion. This was the fourth time he'd had to get up for a bathroom run. 'How could veggies betray me like this?' he wondered. And he knew he wasn't alone; he'd passed Robin at least once on his way to the bathroom. He'd never seen the Boy Wonder look so...sick. Robin usually never let any kind of feelings show. Ever. It was like a law of physics.

As he continued down the hall, Beast Boy knew he was walking past Cyborg's room. It was too dark to read his name on the door, or to even really see the door at all for that matter, but he heard the faint, slightly monotonous snores coming from inside the room. 'At least someone's getting some sleep around here,' he thought bitterly. But something was different. Over the snoring, Beast Boy heard a faint yet insistent beeping. It sounded like some kind of alarm. Either that, or Cyborg was hiding some new video game.

Without even thinking, Beast Boy pressed a pointed ear up against the door to Cyborg's room. The beeping continued and the snoring stopped, followed by a gruff, confused expletive.

'Since when does Cyborg swear?' Beast Boy idly wondered, leaning closer to the door. In doing so, he accidentally hit a button on the wall, which in turn caused the door to Cyborg's room to swish open and left the green eavesdropper to fall flat on his face.

"D'ow! Wh-oh, hey Cyborg! Heh, didn't see you standing there. Um…what brings you here so late?"

"It's my room, B, we've been over this. But right now, I don't even care why you were huggin' my door in the middle of the night," Cyborg said, not at all amused. He shot Beast Boy a brief yet angry look over his shoulder before returning his attention to the computer screen that had folded out of a nearby wall.

"What's going on?" Beast Boy asked timidly, his curiosity getting the better of him, yet he couldn't help but remember the old saying; 'curiosity killed the Beast Boy.' Rarely had he ever seen Cyborg angry.

Cyborg sighed. "I don't even know, man, and that's the worst part. The security sensors picked up something banging on the front door, but the camera won't pan down far enough to let me see what it is. All I can see is a dark shape in the bottom of the screen, and this thing…won't…-" he said, trailing off as he repeatedly stabbed the arrow keys on the keyboard in a futile attempt to move the camera. "And you know I gotta coach Little League in the morning; I gotta be up in…" he paused in his abuse of the keyboard to glance down at his arm, "three hours? Aw man! I don't have time to be chasin' raccoons or whatever this thing is off our doorstep! Man, if I don't get some sleep, we'd be better off sending Raven to coach those kids' game in the morning."

Beast Boy laughed at the thought, though he couldn't deny it was true; Cyborg got beyond cranky if he didn't get enough sleep. But then again, who didn't? Then, an idea occurred to him. "Hey, why don't I just go check it out? I'm not getting much sleep anyway after that weird salad Starfire made, and a raccoon would probably like me better than you; I speak it's language!" he said cheerfully before suddenly morphing into a green raccoon.

"Aight, thanks, man," Cyborg replied, a hint of a grateful smile now on his face. Then, in a more serious tone, he added, "Be careful."

The raccoon chittered and gave Cyborg a quick salute (which, Cyborg had to admit, was a pretty funny thing to see a raccoon do) before scampering out of the room and down the hall. As the green raccoon disappeared into the shadows of the hallway, Cyborg yawned, silenced the alarm, shut his bedroom door, and went back to bed.

Beast Boy, still in raccoon form (he found he could see better in the dark that way), ran swiftly down the hall until he reached the elevator. Once there, he resumed his human form and pushed the "DOWN" button. In seconds, the elevator arrived and Beast Boy walked in and pressed the button for the ground floor. As the elevator slowly descended, Beast Boy started to wonder what exactly it was that was at the door. Now that he thought about it, a raccoon couldn't have made the swim to the Tower. And it couldn't be a person; who'd come for a visit in the middle of the night? And if it was a bad guy, why would they have knocked?

By the time the elevator reached the first floor of the Tower, Beast Boy still hadn't come up with any plausible ideas (though a lot of implausible ideas were still swimming around in his head). As he approached the front doors, he noticed he couldn't hear any banging. For a moment, he thought that whatever it was must've gone away. He was about to turn back and head upstairs when he heard a strange noise coming from the other side of the doors. Coughing? No, it sounded more like hiccupping. But that didn't make any more sense than coughing.

Thoroughly confused, Beast Boy flipped the lights on with a nearby switch and pushed a button that caused the doors to slide open, revealing a most unexpected sight.

There, kneeling on the ground, was Jane. She seemed surprised to see him, like she hadn't actually expected anyone to answer the door. But other than that, she looked like she'd been through hell and back. She was hiccupping, like she'd cried so much that was all that was left. Her face was smudged with dirt and streaked clean where tears had obviously run down her face. Her eyes were red, her lips were pale, and she looked exhausted. Her wings hung limply to the sides, trailing on the ground, and strewn beside her were a purse and…a guitar case?

What was going on? Beast Boy's head was spinning with a million emotions and twice as many questions. But questions could wait. Above all else, he was worried about her. He found he had the most unusual urge to reach out to her; to hold her, comfort her. He couldn't explain why, but it was embarrassing nonetheless.

Amidst the jumble of thoughts in his head, the only solid sentence he was able to form out loud was her name. "Jane?" he asked, incredulous, worried, and still awfully confused.

"S-sorry…" she said as her eyes started to close. Her voice sounded shaky, like her teeth were chattering.

"Huh? Why? What's-Hey, careful!" he cried out, for before he could even get out a decent sentence, Jane's eyes had drifted shut and she started leaning heavily to one side. Before she could hit the ground, Beast Boy lunged forward, falling to his knees but still managing to catch her (even if it was clumsy and awkward, she hadn't hit the ground, and that was what mattered).

Beast Boy held her with one arm under her shoulders and another across her waist, reaching behind her back. As he looked down at the girl in his arms, he realized she had passed out cold. Also, now that he was close to her, Beast Boy noticed she smelled like smoke. "Jane…what happened to you?" he whispered with a heavy tone of concern in his voice, all other emotions temporarily forgotten.

But she didn't respond, and she'd gone totally limp. A moment of panic struck his heart, and he was about to call out for help when he picked up the faint sound of her breathing. She was lying on her side, but he was still able to see her shoulders slightly rising and falling with each breath she took. That was a good thing, right?

Then, in her sleep (which was more like a coma, really), Jane let out a soft whimper and muttered, "…not my fault…nng…I tried…I tried…" Her face contorted with what looked like fear or sadness.

Beast Boy, in a desperate attempt to make her feel better, leaned down and said softly in her ear, "It's alright, Jane. It's OK…you're safe…" He didn't know for sure if she heard him or not, but he took the calm that instantly overtook her face as a sign that she had. He smiled at her reaction.

Then, snapping back to the situation at hand, Beast Boy remembered he was still kneeling at the Tower's front door with an unconscious girl in his arms who probably needed medical attention. Looking up at the camera, hoping to signal Cyborg for help, he then also remembered the camera was still broken and no one could see him. Beast Boy finally realized that his only option was to carry Jane up to the Tower himself. Then he could wake the rest of the team and go from there.

Deciding he'd come back for her bags later, Beast Boy stood up, struggling to shift and balance the girl in his arms without dropping her. Then, he made his way into the Tower as quickly as he could. Once he had Jane in the living room, he nudged the light switch on with his elbow and gently (though gratefully, she was heavier than she looked) placed the unconscious girl on the curved couch, a slight déjà vu feeling ringing in the back of his mind as he did so. Then, he ran swiftly across the room and, ignoring the "Beast Boy, don't touch this button. Ever! – R." sign taped next to it, slammed his palm down on the big, red emergency alarm button, rousing his fellow Titans from their sleep.

After what felt like ages to the worried shape shifter (but was probably more like five or ten minutes), the other Titans slowly began to file into the room, expressions varying from rage to confusion on their faces. Robin, the first to enter the room, was the first to speak.

"Beast Boy, it's 4 o'clock in the morning. There better be a good reason you woke us all up. I know I've told you at least a hundred times-"

"I know what you're gonna say, but this is different; there's actually an emergency this time!" Beast Boy said, cutting off the Boy Wonder.

"Care to explain how a raccoon qualifies as an emergency?" Cyborg asked, an annoyed look crossing his face as he shut off the emergency alarm with a button on his arm. The other Titans gave the robot boy a confused looks, Robin mouthing a silent 'raccoon?' in his direction, but they all immediately returned their attention to the green boy as he continued to blather on.

"Does she look like a raccoon to you?" Beast Boy retorted, gesturing animatedly to the sofa.

The Titans looked confused, some wondering why and when Beast Boy had decided the gender of the sofa, others wondering why the sofa was an emergency. Yet Robin, being the leader, still felt the need to investigate. Out of curiosity, the other Titans followed behind him, though they kept back a safe distance. Walking past the possibly deranged shape shifter, Robin stepped around to the front of the sofa and finally saw who was passed out there. Several of the Titans (all of them, really, save for Beast Boy and Raven) gave out sharp gasps of surprise.

Seeing the condition Jane was in, Robin skipped over confusion and went straight into concerned-leader mode. He knelt in front of the sofa and took Jane's pulse, a serious look on his face, as he demanded, "Beast Boy, explain. What happened to her?"

"I don't know, that's what I've been trying to tell you!" Beast Boy exclaimed, frustrated. "She was the one banging on the door setting off Cyborg's security alarm, but I didn't know that until I went down and found her there! She was just kneeling on the ground, and she looked like she'd been crying. She didn't say much before she passed out, and then I brought her up here."

"What did she say?" Robin asked, still keeping his attention on Jane.

"'Sorry…'" he replied quietly.

"Well, that doesn't tell us anything," Robin replied, standing up to face the rest of the team. "But she definitely needs medical attention. Cyborg, you and Raven can take her to the infirmary; I'll be in in a minute. The rest of you, try to get some sleep."

With a nod of agreement, Cyborg stepped up to the sofa. He then lifted Jane gently into his arms and carried her out of the room with ease; a silent Raven following closely behind him. Beast Boy turned away and pouted as the rest of the Titans cleared out of the room. Cyborg always got to carry the girls.