Raven blinks awake in the infirmary, a mumble of voices causing a susurrus around her. For the moment her mind was still. She floated in the void of herself, heart beating lazily in her chest, breaths gently ghosting over her lips. For a moment she does nothing but exists. Peaceful.
Then a hollowness opens within her. Peace pouring into a void of loss. She bites her lip, clenches her eyes shut. It's no use, the tears come. They sting the corner of her eyes and fall unseen to the pillow beneath her. She silently weeps, gasping in air through clenched teeth. Unwilling to invite the attention of others, she nurses her grief in solitude.
Her tears were far from gone and the pain in her chest was far from over, but Raven forced stillness upon herself. As she had been trained to do all her life, she knotted up her feelings. Pushing them to the far corners of her consciousness. It was hard. So, so hard. The void of sorrow was vast, but she pushed her mind to clarity.
The tears ceased. The pillow dried. She sat up.
Across the small room, surrounded by machines with Cyborg anxiously hovering Beast Boy lay serene and whole. Raven drank in the sight of him. The forest green of his skin and the messy ruffle of his hair. The slope of his nose and curve of his cupids bow. The small fang that peaked from his lips and the steady up and down of his skinny chest. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Urge those eyes open and hear him call her Rae Rae despite her protests.
She wanted to feel him. The zing of his emotions. The bright bubbliness of his excitement, the peppery twang of his impatience. The signing trill of his happiness and the bright sonorous comfort of his love.
Grief rocked through her, strong enough to leave her gasping. She curled over her breaking heart. Gritting her teeth and forcing the feeling down. Blinking away the sting in her eyes.
"Raven, you alright?" asked Robin, coming to her side. Starfire settled down on the bed beside her. The princess reached out, hand hesitating over her shoulder before falling to grip the sheets. Raven was glad, the touch would have broken her.
"I'm fine" she croaked, voice dry and cracked. Her throat burned for moisture. Robin pressed a glass of water into her hands. She drank deeply.
"Are you injured? Tired? Cyborg checked you over and said everything looked fine, but you passed out."
Raven blinked, remembering the raking of sharp claws across her back. She sat up straighter, expecting a sting of pain but there was nothing. She twisted to feel her back, finding a fine slit in her leotard but beneath it the skin was whole and unblemished. Blinking, she focused on the rest of her body and found the aches and pains of the day were absent. The bruise she had on her hip, the small ache of her shoulder, the tightness of her skin from the cultist's ritual. All gone, faded like a dream.
"I'm fine" she repeated, voice faint with surprise. "I-I'm not injured."
"What happened?" asked Starfire. "When the magic began, we could not see but we heard shouting, screaming. Friend Beast Boy was in pain." Wide eyes stared at her imploringly, searching for answers. Robin was unnaturally still, belaying his anxiousness.
"Some of the Aspects…they got into a fight. It disrupted the ritual." Raven stopped, hesitated. The scene flashed before her eyes. The heated panting of Lust, the roaring of Instinct, the heckling laughter of Envy, the frothing screaming war cries of Anger, the cursing and spitting of Hate. The thin toothed smile of Cruelty, dipped in blood.
Love falling still in her grasp. Cold. Lifeless.
Gone.
"It was nothing much. I was just surprised. It's over now."
The two Titans shared a look. Mercifully, they let her keep her silence. She wasn't ready to re-tell her story. She wasn't ready to face her failing.
There was a change in the room. A noise, before innocuous and unnoticed, now making itself heard. The machine beside Beast Boy beeping to a new rhythm as the green boy stirred. Short thick lashes fluttering around sleep hazy eyes.
There was a rush to Beast Boys side, Raven pushing herself between Robin and Stars pointy shoulders. Cyborg fretted all the harder, running his bionic eye over the boy, readouts projecting from his arms.
"Dude, BB? You with me String Bean?"
"Wh-ha. Was's it?" Beast Boy drawled, flinching back from the light of the room. He groaned long and hard, more of a whine, and then forced his eyes open slowly.
Ravens breath hitched. She had thought the Aspects all had Beast Boys eyes. She had been wrong. There was something in the twitch of the muscles, the scrunch of the nose, the small flecks of gold and brown in the iris that let her know this was the true Beast Boy. As he should be.
"What? What are you all doing?" he said, frowning at them in confusion. A wry smile twisting his lips. "Did I miss something?"
Cyborg let out a disbelieving gasp, "Dude! What's the last thing you remember?"
"Err, we were fighting the Hive? Or something. The building came down, I think. Did I knock my head or something? Why do you all look so worried?"
He didn't remember. Perhaps it was for the best. Raven didn't even want to think of the headache getting over thirty different sets of memories, from thirty different points of view, would cause.
"Oh man, do we have a story for you bro. You have no idea" said Cyborg, already fiddling with the equipment. Removing the pads monitoring Beast Boys brain waves from his temples. Another glass of water was passed along, Beast Boy sipping it delicately as he was helped into a sitting position. The weakness of his muscles surprised him.
As the others crowded close Raven found herself pulling away. Now that the initial flash of relief of Beast Boys waking had passed the fear was returning. Emerald eyes settled on her, she opened her senses wide, seeking warmth.
His eyes slip away, distracted by Stars enthusiastic hug. Raven shivered, what little colour she had recovered draining from her face. Cold creeps into her soul, the void beckoned. There had been a spark of joy, a flash of comfort, a gentle bubble of affection.
But no warmth.
No hazy glow of contentment, no flickering fire of desire. No bright uplifting admiration. No sweet syrupy adoration. No steady burning devotion.
No love.
Raven faded away, the excitement and joy of having their friend return enough for no one to notice her absence. She sleepwalked to her room, seeing the scattered mess of parchment and books left in the wake of her research. Remembered Knowledge kicking his heels as his avid eyes skimmed every page, bright turquoise skin a starburst in the dark.
She crawled into her bed and closed the hangings. Let the gloom and the dark cradle her. The void rose. In solitude Raven let the tears come.
Mourning a relationship that never was. A choice never made. A chance lost.
A heart broken.
—
After a few weeks Raven had nursed her sorrow to a slow aching bruise. When the day dawned bright a crisp with the first bite of winter, she decided it was time to stop hiding. She had not so subtly been avoiding Beat Boy and doing the best she could to ghost past the rest of the Titans, least their curiosity wring the truth from her.
Luckily villain activity had been sparse, allowing her the time to dry her tears and calm her emotions. Now, with the glittering fragile frost she felt it was time to take the first step in moving forward.
Raven lingered in the kitchen, warm tea in hand, waiting for Beast Boy to stumble back from his morning run. The boy had a bizarre sleep schedule, staying up late only to sleep during the early hours of the night, waking up with the dawn for a run, fly or swim-the only time she knew him to habitually seek out solitude-once he returned, he would cook himself up a quick breakfast and then retreat to his den to sleep until noon unless the alarm rang. It used to drive Robin crazy when they first started living together. Their leader raging against the animal shifters apparent 'laziness'. Now, over a year of being, living and fighting together they were much more forgiving of each other's strange habits.
As expected, Beast Boy stumbled in around seven, skin flushed and almost steaming in the fresh dawn air as he stumbled to the fridge.
Chugging his orange juice from the carton tired emerald eyes lazily fell on her still form. She offered what she could of a smile.
Beast Boy started choking. Raven waited patiently for the spectacle to play out. She told herself it wasn't funny, letting her sense of empathy open as BB gasped in a few spluttered breaths and stopped coughing.
"Raven!" Elation, happiness, weariness. He had noticed she was avoiding him then. "I, err, didn't see you there."
"Good morning, Beast Boy." Raven took another sip of her tea, hiding behind her cup. She cursed herself for not planning out what she was going to say beforehand.
"Morning! You're up early. Did you sleep alright?"
"I slept fine." Doubt, embarrassment, small bubbles of joy. Raven didn't really need her powers to tell what BB was feeling, the boy wrote it across his face. Beast Boy leaned against the counter, sipping his orange juice at a much more sedate pace. For a second, they just existed together.
Raven took a quiet breath, opened herself further. It wasn't a deeper feeling she was searching for, as BBs love for his friends ran deep as an ocean. The boy would give his life for any of theirs, would sacrifice and fight and bleed for their happiness.
Instead, it was a breadth of feeling she was looking for. That subtle cord that spoke of a different kind of endearment. Those few shades of emotion that separated pastel pink affection from rosy love.
She strained her sense, desperately searching out that single note of longing, that chord of desire.
Nothing.
Raven gulped down the last of her dying hope with her tea.
"You seem better?" she said at length, catching BBs attention.
He ran a hand through his sweaty ruffled hair, flashing a fang. "Fit as a fiddle according to Cy. Getting some weird dreams though."
"Dreams?"
"Flashes and stuff, all jumbled up. Nothing really makes sense. It's like remembering watching a movie or something. The memories are there but they don't mean anything, you know."
"It's to be expected" she said, watching the confused crinkle in his brow. She wondered if she should say anything, remind him of Cruelty's attack and Loves sacrifice.
But would it mean anything? Would he feel the memories or simply remember them? Would he understand what it meant?
"It's strange though" BB continued, musing into the empty kitchen. Talking as much to the early dawn as too her. "I know I've forgotten most of it, I get that…but there's something else, something important," he trailed off into whispers, "something I've lost."
Raven almost dropped her tea, catching it at the last moment with her powers. Shakily she placed it on the counter.
"What-" she gulped another breath, "what do you mean?"
The crinkle in his brow deepened. BB ran a hand through his hair again, rubbing the back of his neck. Raven waited impatiently for him to find the words.
Eventually he clicked his fingers, snapping himself to attention. "Okay, so it's like losing your phone-or your communicator-or something. Something you always have on you, something you don't even notice most of the time. Just something that's always there as you go about your day. But then-then you put it down somewhere, right. And forget to pick it up again. You following?"
"I'm following" said Raven, nodding along. She wasn't exactly a techy person, but she could understand the concept of what BB was talking about. She supposed it would be like her without her cloak.
"Right. So, you put it down and go off and do something else. And here's the thing, at first you don't notice. It's not a big deal. But then you go to check, and you realize it's not on you, and you tell yourself it's fine, you haven't lost it, you've just put it down somewhere. But now you know it's missing, and you can't help noticing that it's not there. It's just, something small. But it worries you, nags at your mind. Until you have to go find it and pick it up again."
He trailed off, looking into the distance, eyes unseeing. "Only, I don't even know what it is I'm missing. Or where I've lost it. So, I can't get it back. But I know it's gone. I know somethings missing. Not a memory but a feeling."
He could be talking about Bloodlust, she told herself, but Raven knew that not to be true. Her heart was pounding, cold sweat on the back of her neck. She should say something, tell him what had happened. Admit to her own feelings.
Confess.
"Ah, well" said BB, pensive mood brushed away with a hand wave. He perked up, smiling with all his teeth. "I'm sure it'll come back to me. Thanks, by the way. For, you know, stitching me back together and everything." He lay a hand lightly on her shoulder and gave a brief squeeze. It was a distance Raven had made sure to carefully maintain for months. "Don't know what I would do without you Rae Rae. You're the best!"
Raven reached out, pulling the startled green teen into a hug. Curled her arms around his surprisingly solid shoulders, pressing her fingers into his back as she buried her face in his shoulder. She coughed out a laugh to hide a sob.
For three heart beast she revealed in his warmth. Long enough to feel the animal shifter relax and hug her back, large hand slowly rubbing circles on her back. She soaked up the comfort, greedily stealing every second she could. Just until the tears came.
"Rae Rae?"
She pushed back, clenched her eyes shut, made sure they were dry. Meeting his kind worried emerald gaze, she smiled gently. "It's good to have you back BB. I missed you."
I will miss you.
Raven didn't stay. He tears wouldn't let her. The quiet of the dawn faded to true day as Beast Boy watched her go. For a long moment he didn't move, heart skipping one small fluttering beat.
"Chamomile" he whispered to the empty air. "She smells like chamomile."
He thought of the curl of her lips as she smiled. Blushed. Shook his head, capped his orange juice and went about the rest of his day. And if he continued to notice the smell of chamomile, well, it was to be expected. He had a sensitive nose.
He would forget by tomorrow.