Disclaimer: This is a fan work created at no profit and for entertainment purposes only. The author acknowledges that Teen Titans and related characters are property of Warner Entertainment.

Teen Titans – What Grows From Deception

Act III

Chapter 21 – Night on Jump Mountain

"Please Star? I'm gonna fall over if I take one more step." There was a weakness in Beast Boy's words that made it clear that he wasn't just whining. Not that anyone, even Robin could deny that the changeling was bone tired from the near crash landing he made in Mount Jump National Park.

Malchior's radar contact had disappeared in the forest in the mountain's shadow, leaving the Titans to sour them for evidence of his passage. Torn between sticking together to avoid that scenario that started everything and splitting up to search faster, Robin sent Starfire, Raven and Beast Boy to overfly the area while he and Cyborg searched for clues on the forest floor. Beast Boy's request came immediately after the pair of ground-pounders disappeared through the underbrush.

Starfire frowned at the green boy as he swayed to and fro on the edge of delirium from exhaustion. "I will allow it." She said at length. "However, you must promise to transform into something that flies the moment Robin is in sight. He feels that we have been digging beneath him all night."

A blank expression met that last part.

Raven had managed some sleep on the flight into the park, but the lack of a proper forty winks and the stress of the night made her even more snappish than usual. "Undermine. She means Robin thinks I was undermining him back there instead of pointing out an obviously terrible mistake." For a second, Starfire was looking her right in the eye. It was rare that anyone did that with Raven except Beast Boy and that was only because he was largely immune to death glares.

"Oh." The alien girl finally said. "Perhaps you would rather..."

"No. This is your kind of thing. He squirms too much and I need to concentrate to fly." She quirked an eyebrow because for a second, she thought she caught something utterly foreign from Starfire's emotions. Was she... disappointed in her?

"Very well." said Starfire, looking away from Raven and extending a hand. "You may board, friend Garfield."

Beast Boy glanced from one girl to the other. He didn't get why Starfire had even bothered to ask. On the best of days, Raven wasn't up to this kind of thing, and tonight of all nights, it would have been incredibly uncomfortable for them both. Still, he needed rest badly, so he transformed into a squirrel and scurried up Starfire's arm to curl up under her hair in the back.

Within moments, he was asleep and the two girls took flight in silence.

Once they were at a good height to observe, Raven's attention strayed to the brief flashes of green she kept spying beneath her friend's hair? Should she have volunteered to mobile bed duty?

It wasn't as if he weighted much, and unconscious, he didn't fidget nearly as much as she put on. And it was fair in a way: she'd slept on his back the whole flight over. With Star uncharacteristically non-talkative, Raven was left alone with her thoughts. A weekend in her father's dimension sounded more soothing to her soul.

She hadn't told the others about Malchior's mention that Aionor had it in for her personally. Considering the source, doing so could easily be playing into the dragon's hands. But if it were true, did that mean that what she saw on the security tape was part of the plan?

Aionor told her, right before escaping Slade's old lair, that she'd left 'things to entertain' Raven back at the tower. Raven assumed it was the missing book, but what if...

But why? To what end?

The worst part was, Raven wasn't even sure what was going on now. In the tape, it looked like he enjoyed the kiss. Really enjoyed it. But was that just because he got a kiss in general, or because it was her... or a reasonable facsimile of her. Beast Boy wasn't above falling for any pretty face that gave him attention, but she never thought that he would consider her a 'pretty face'.

Of course, she could be wrong. After all, what did she know about romantic and kissing and anything of the sort beyond sensing the raw emotion? Maybe the look on his face hadn't been infatuation at all. Maybe it was something else. Something that meant that the isolation and guilt that followed after wasn't from finding out that he'd kissed someone wearing her body.

And by extension, was his guilt and constant apologizing over taking Malchior's shape proof of just how much he cared about her, or proof that he was trying to let go of his concerns about her emotional baggage?

She hated this. It was a puzzle and she didn't have all the pieces. Almost twenty-four hours passed between that kiss and when she returned. A lot could have happened in that time and there hadn't been time to ask.

And that was before even considering her own feelings on the matter. That was the elephant in the proverbial room and all the other speculation was a screen to keep her from examining those feelings. It was another of those things Raven Does Not Do.

Shortly after the End, she'd been forced to sort through her feelings where Robin was concerned. He had, after all, walked into Hell (well, a hell. Little 'h') with his worst enemy to find her, and that was after being immensely supportive throughout the entire ordeal.

Based on that, a little bit of a bodyguard crush had developed, but on introspection, there wasn't anything deeper. Aside from one hundred and ten pounds of enraged Tamaranian royalty with an attached broken friendship to be concerned with, she came to realize it would be like dating herself; all logic and introversion. Considering that she was never comfortable in her own skin, that wouldn't have been a joyful union.

And, of course, there was Aqualad. She felt so embarrassed with how she and Starfire acted around him compared with how Bumblebee got on with him that she eliminated him as a candidate based solely on how proximity would affect her IQ. Still it was fun to think about...

Second later, she had to bolt to the side to avoid a tree.

Maybe it wasn't just proximity to Aqualad that had that effect.

Raven righted herself and went back to following Starfire, sweeping the ground below for anyplace Malchior might have touched down. And yet, her mind still wondered.

Cyborg and Beast Boy had never even been on the menu. Cyborg started their time as Titans with a misanthropic view of his place in the dating game. He felt that girls were out of the question until his undercover mission to the HIVE Academy. As for Beast Boy, he was just a kid when they started, complete with cracking voice and a green night light in his room in the tower. Even though she was less than a year older, there felt like there was a big difference in their ages back then.

So had that changed? A great deal had, but she was unsure of how far. There was that troubling period after Terra returned the first time. She played it off as jealousy of the geomancer learning control so easily, but the reality was that with Terra around, Beast Boy was falling all over himself to impress her and, well, Raven discovered that she missed that attention, just as she had in recent weeks.

That didn't mean anything, she promised herself. Because she was also upset that Starfire was so excited about having real girl talks and going shopping with someone who actually tried things on, and cooking for someone who appreciated it. And that Robin was preoccupied with creating new training schemes to integrate Terra. If Terra had been a gearhead too, Raven would have felt well and truly put out of the group.

Therefore, that proved nothing, and she was back to square one. Could she even tell if she'd crossed a line between platonic affection and romantic affection? In herself or in others? What if she was wrong? Choosing poorly in either direction would be a disaster.

"Oof!" Her manic thought process was cut off when she flew headlong into Starfire's back. The impact dislodged the sleeping squirrel hidden under the other girls' hair and, through some quirk of fate, he landed squarely on top of her head without waking up.

"Sorry." Raven said quickly as Starfire turned around. She only noticed her passenger by the way the alien princess grinned gleefully while staring at the top of her head. "I'm choosing to ignore him. Now why did you stop so suddenly."

Starfire never stopped grinning and it was clear to Raven that it was taking every bit of her self control not to do flips of joy for whatever misbegotten... Wait. Starfire knew. That's why she covered for Beast Boy's attempts to run from the issue. That's why she had tried to get Raven to carry him n the first place. She was... trying to play matchmaker.

The varied and horrific possibilities of what Tamaranian matchmaking entailed sent a shiver up Raven's spine. This was a people who baked sense-destroyingly bitter pudding to cope with sadness. There was no telling what they did to induce love, but the fact that Starfire owned a device called a fungus cultivation vat did not bode well.

"Oh. I believe you were too lost in thought to notice, friend Raven," Starfire said in a manner that was entirely too coy both for Raven's taste and the ungodly hour, "But I believe I have located the Malchior's hole of bolting." She pointed and Raven could have slapped herself for not noticing that before.

They were beneath the trees on a rocky slope and there before them as a twenty-foot hole in the dirt and rock, leading into the mountain. Limbs had been broken off from above and there were puddles of dark blood on the moss in front of it.

"You know what, Starfire?" Raven asked blankly. "I believe you have too."

TT^TT^TT

Static arced all over the room, as it was full of electronic and metallic odds and ends strew about work benches and pretty much any available surface.

From inside the access panel of a vehicle that was little more than a huge wheel with a seat and control panel in the center, there was a resounding thump in response to the racket.

"Ow! Alright, which one of you crud-munching barf-wranglers doesn't understand the meaning of 'do not disturb'?" Gizmo crawled out of the panel with a grease stained bump on his head. The amusing injury only added to his unique 'evil Charlie Brown' motif. Then he got a look at his visitor. "Oh crud, it's you!"

Aionor smiled sweetly from where she stood in the middle of the HIVE 5's garage. "You don't sound happy to see me, Mo-mo."

He glared at her. "Because every time you show up, some how I end up doing a ton of cludging work for free!"

She rolled her eyes and started wandering about the garage, idly examining whatever caught her eye. "But Mo-mo, how much could you have really charged for hooking me up with free, untraceable DSL and a clean internet persona?"

"A lot. And stop calling me 'Mo-mo'!"

In a burst of static, she was behind him, leaning over rather far to whisper in his ear. "But I like calling you Mo-mo."

Gizmo jumped away and rounded on her, nostrils flaring with his irritation. "It wasn't just the internet. You got me to build you like a dozen drone cameras, a state of the art alarm system, a high res monitor set-up, AND tune your grandma's car! Why do you even need all this tech, isn't your shtick supposed to be magic?"

"Why specialize when you can diversify?" She pointed out. "And this is the last thing I'll ask, I promise."

"Forget it." The diminutive criminal folded his arms and turned away. "I'm not doin' nothing unless you pay me. I'm serious this time."

Aionor appeared in front of him, but he turned again. She followed him again with her teleportation. "Please, Mo-mo? For me?"

"I said no! Now beat it, ya cludge-headed broad."

Unfazed by the anachronistic insult, Aionor appeared in front of him again, holding up a folded piece of paper. "Please? I promise you'll have fun doing it. Just have a look."

Still glaring at her, he snatched the paper from her hands. "Hey, wait a minute... is that the T-car?"

"Mm-hm."

"And you wanna do that with it? Metal-butt would flip his lid if he saw his precious baby converted into this!"

"So you'll do it?" Aionor asked hopefully.

"This time it's worth doing for free!" He agreed.

Aionor grinned. How was it that so many of the Titans' rogues were so laughably easy to manipulate? "That's great. I'll be back to collect you soon." She walked to a clear part of the garage and stretched languidly, igniting the lightning around her fists. "I've got an appointment to show a certain half-demon that she's not alone in her weight class."

Gizmo scoffed. "I don't think you're anywhere near that strong."

"Maybe." Aionor smirked and patted the collar of her armor. Something jangled in the space between that and her body suit. "But I've got luck on my side."

And then she teleported away.

TT^TT^TT

A/N – Welcome to Act III, here is a ton of foreshadowing. Yeah, I engaged in some ship-sinking here, but in my defense, it's used to show where Raven is coming from in all this. Every time she thought there was 'something' before, she was wrong, so she's understandably hesitant to even entertain those thoughts now.

Gizmo's cameo here wasn't planned originally. I came up with it to fill a plot hole with Aionor, who is magical and employs Malchior and the Puppet King, also both magical, using some high tech later in the story. It's also foreshadowing the reveal of another important plot point that's been laid out already, but I promise most of you won't see coming.

Cookie for anyone who figures out Aionor's secret weapon against Raven from the last section before the reveal.

Next chapter: The Titans invade Aionor's lair, but what does this bad girl have in store for them? And just why is she even doing this anyway, and what does it have to do with her grudge against Raven?