Lunatic: This is what happens when people don't sleep. Forgive me.
They are mine! Mine all mine! What? Copyright infringement? THAT MUCH?? All right, all right.
I don't own the Teen Titans. Happy now?
Cyborg stopped caring about rocks supporting ceilings the minute Raven screamed. Apparently so did Beast Boy. Before he could even raise his cannon at the mess, the green dude had started lifting away rocks and chipped asphalt with large monkey hands. His gorilla form barely fit into the small, dirty tunnel.
Starfire helped, shooting bright green bolts at the rocks and showering everyone with a fine dust. "Friend! Please, do not give up! We will help you soon!" Starfire pleaded nervously.
Behind the rocks they still had yet to destroy, they could hear Raven struggling with unseen foes. Her cries of strain and exertion were becoming loud cries of pain.
"Move out of the way y'all!" Cyborg shouted over the loud noise of shattering rocks and Raven's plaintive yells. BB and Starfire eagerly obeyed.
The sonic cannon did what the other two Titans could not. The rocks fell away, followed by others. Cyborg dispatched of them as well. The dust choked and swirled around them, hiding everything from view.
When it cleared, Raven was gone.
"Awh man! Not her too!" Beast Boy cried.
"Damn." Cyborg scanned the debris with regret and hope on his face, but there was nothing.
"They cannot have gone far, we should search for her!" Starfire said hopefully. The boys were already plowing ahead into the tunnel, glancing from side to side in fear of danger.
An hour later they returned to the Tower, empty-handed.
"Now what?" Beast Boy asked, and fell dejectedly on to the couch. Sure Raven was a grump, and she never laughed at his jokes, but she was his friend. He remembered her frantic screams of pain, and winced.
"I guess we just keep searching." Cyborg answered quietly. He stared thoughtfully out the window. "Maybe I can run a thermal scan in the sewers
They all jumped as the red alert went off for the hundredth time. Starfire sighed. "I do not like neglecting our duties.
Cyborg brightened suddenly, as if an idea had just come to him. He spun around and grabbed Starfire. "That's it! We don't have to neglect them!
"But friend, I do not understand. Attacking our foes will surely lead to the destruction of the city?" She stared at him in a very confused manner, both of her forearms caught in his cyber kinetic grasp.
"Yes, but we won't be attacking them!" He said eagerly. Beast Boy gave him a blank look.
"Uhm Dude, what are you talking about?
"Simple. We'll follow them. Maybe Slade's henchman can lead us to where they're hiding, and maybe that will lead us to the bomb." He grinned proudly.
Starfire clapped happily. "Wonderful! Come friends, let us not waste time!
Robin ran to the door as he heard footsteps approaching. No one had come once the camera was disabled, and as far as he could see from his little window, there were no other cells let alone any other prisoners. He wasn't sure, but he felt that he had only been there a day or two.
No one had come with any other food provisions or water, which gave him plenty of time to plot by himself, albeit hungrily. He'd thought briefly of taking apart the toilet and using the plumbing as a weapon, but changed his mind once he imagined the things he might find there. Judging by the smell, none of it would be pleasant.
Now it seemed that several people were coming down the long empty hallway.
He leapt back from the door as it opened, revealing two figures, with one being supported between them. They dropped their burden to the ground, along with food. Bread and water instead of that strange sponge like food.
But Robin wasn't looking at the provisions. He was staring at the figure now obscured as the door slid shut. Raven, unconscious and beaten, lay sprawled on his cell floor.
The three remaining Titans peered around the corner of the large skyscraper, staring intently into the darkness. Several figures lurked ahead of them. Despite their guaranteed safety, the criminals still gazed around them with a certain amount of caution.
There were ten, five sharing a heavy burden between them. It had obviously come from the development several blocks away, where many military experiments where tested. The teens had no idea what it was or what it might be for.
Cyborg whispered quietly to his two partners. "They're heading into that manhole." He gestured to the open sewer line, where the villains were silently disappearing.
The three waited for several seconds before following. Starfire and Beast Boy flew while Cyborg did his best to walk along the edges of the sewer, avoiding the water and it's splashing. The shadows of their foes flickered eerily in the half darkness as the men in black splashed carelessly through the water. The Titans didn't dare speak or hardly breathe for fear of their words echoing over the murky liquid and curved walls of the tunnel.
They followed the criminals through several sewer systems until they reached a point where the tunnel ended and spilled its contents into the bay. They could see the Tower glinting in the moonlight only a mile or so away.
"Anyone else feel like we just wasted time going full circle?" Beast Boy whispered quietly. Their ten queries had already plunged out of the mouth of the tunnel and landed in a boat down below. The engine revved loudly and they sped off, heading away from the harbor.
"I guess we've got to follow them." Cyborg said skeptically.
"But I am wondering how." Starfire said sadly.
"What do you mean? We can just fly-" Beast Boy stopped and followed Starfire's finger. The boat, which they had failed to notice did not have an open top, had plunged beneath the surface of the water, leaving a trail of bubbles and foam. "Oh." His ears drooped comically.
"We'll wait here tomorrow, in the sub. Three people can pilot it and we'll be able to follow them." Cyborg declared.
"You are sure that they will return to this entrance again?" Starfire looked dubiously at their home, confused as to why the enemy would chose an exit so close to them.
"Isn't it obvious Star? They think we won't do anything. That's why they chose to operate so close to Titans' Tower, like a really bad joke. They'll be back here tomorrow; trust me." Cyborg glared off into the distance where a small trail of bubbles was fading.
"I do not like this joke." Starfire whispered sadly.
"Raven? Raven wake up." Robin's voice filtered through the darkness, a complete darkness. That was it then, it all had been a dream. She had simply slept too late and here was Robin, calling her to duty.
Upon opening her eyes, Raven could only see Robin's face. Immediately she wished she hadn't opened them at all. Robin was bruised, and was looking at her with a vague mixture of concern and confusion. The rest of their surroundings weren't much better.
She sat up, rubbing her head and groaning. The dirty cell looked like it had been thrown together quickly, quickly but skillfully. She tried to use her powers on a ragged pillow in the corner. Just as she suspected, nothing happened.
"Are you alright?" Robin had a hand on her back. She hadn't realized that it was the only thing really holding her up.
She groaned again. "No." Nausea and dizziness started to blur her vision. Robin helped ease her back onto the floor.
"Easy, don't push yourself.
"I tried- the pillow, I can't use my powers." She said past the sickening vertigo in her stomach.
Robin glowered. "I figured as much." He grabbed the accused pillow and helped to put it under Raven's head. "What happened?
She winced as pain lanced through her head. "Urgh. Ambushed in the sewers. I think I surprised them as much as they Ðow- surprised me. What are you doing?
"Checking your injuries." He paused from where he'd been examining a deep cut on her thigh. "The sewers?
"Yeah. Looking for you." She tried sitting up again, to tend to her own injuries, but Robin pushed her back down. He needn't have done it, dizziness was swirling her vision again and made her weak.
"Whoa, lay down. It looks like you took a really bad hit to the head. Give it an hour or two." He stood, satisfied that all her injuries other than her head, were minor. He started pacing in typical Robin fashion. Unfortunately in the limited space that they occupied, he could only go one or two steps in either direction.
Raven hissed in irritation. "Would you mind not doing that?" Robin stopped and looked at her in surprise.
"I'm sorry. I just can't figure out whose behind all this, or why I'm being kept here." Absent mindedly, he began pacing again.
"Robin. Robin. Robin. He glanced at her. "I told you to stop." Disgruntled and irritated, the boy wonder managed to stop pacing for a minute to face his friend.
Raven sighed in relief. His motion had started to make her nauseous again. "Look we think we're pretty clear on whose behind this. Slade.
He froze completely. "Slade? Are you sure?
She shrugged, and let her head drop back down onto the pillow. How could something that lumpy feel that soft? "They wear his symbol, that's all we know.
Robin fell into a thoughtful silence. Raven took the moment to drop back into unconsciousness.
Raven awoke to Robin's furious pacing, which had not gotten any further than two steps per direction. It made for a very irritating revival into consciousness. She groaned, head pounding, as she tried to lever herself into a sitting position.
Robin stopped his agitated movements when he heard her groan, and dropped to his knees beside her. He had a hand behind her back for support, in case the dizziness hadn't subsided. "Raven! How do you feel?
"Like I've been trampled by some kind of Tamaranian creature." She smiled briefly at him. Robin laughed.
"You were obviously hit harder than we thought. You're actually cracking jokes." His smile faded. "How are the others?
"Panicked." She said plainly. When he tried to help her stand, she pushed him off, saying stiffly "I'm fine." Robin knew when to give Raven her space, not that there was much to give in their tiny cell.
It was such a small enclosure for two people to share, circumstances aside. They were bound to get bored, and irritated, plagued by their own worry and doubts. With nothing else to think about, Raven felt they would be on the verge of insanity before anything changed.
She glanced disdainfully at the toilet. "We have to share that?
The three remaining Titans woke early that morning, whether out of anticipation or fear, they couldn't tell. Cyborg took the pilot's seat in the orange T-Sub, while Starfire and Beast Boy dispersed themselves between the navigation and defense positions.
"All right y'all, I worked on some upgrades last night so she'd be ready for this little excursion." Cyborg was saying proudly. He always took extra pride in his creations. "She's now got a cloaking device and semi-silent engines. If we're lucky, they won't even see us.
The mechanical genius had taken the idea from Robin's Red X, who had also used cloaking technology. He'd altered it to fit a larger vessel. Now the T-Sub, when the device was activated, would reflect everything around it, creating the illusion that it wasn't there.
"All of the systems are online and functional, Cyborg." Starfire pressed several buttons and the sub roared with suppressed power.
"Defensive capabilities are Go." Beast Boy concluded as he checked all the monitors and various levers leading to the T-Sub's weapons.
"Then let's go." Cyborg opened the underwater hatch and guided the sub out into the open harbor.
Sewer water was pouring disinterestedly into the water, creating a ruckus of foam and sewage. Beast Boy gagged.
"Man, when this is over, I'm going to do something about that. That's pollution!" He pitied the fish that lived within the water, breathing the refuge of man.
"Quiet, they'll be able to hear you if they have the technology." He pointed to a black silhouette bobbing harmlessly above them. It was the ship that had sped away the day before. "I'm setting her down.
Cyborg guided the sub to the bottom, nestled between underwater plant growth and sand. With a press of a button the engines shut down and an oppressing silence settled around them.
"Man how long is this going to take?" Beast Boy complained. Cyborg made a shushing noise at him.
"Shut it before I turn off your microphone myself.
They didn't have to wait long. Only an hour sitting there at the bottom and the small boat above them suddenly revved it's engines and prepared to leave. Cyborg reignited the sub's power and they rose a few inches off the murky bottom.
A moment later and the enemy ship sped away, gradually sinking as it did so. Cy activated the cloaking systems. "Y'all ready?
Starfire and Beast Boy gave eager affirmatives. Cyborg hit the gas and took after their target.
Raven had spent the last half hour telling Robin everything she knew about what was happening. They'd saved most of the bread, based on Robin's experience that food didn't come often. Now the boy wonder was thoughtfully hunched in a corner, trying to connect the series of events.
"Slade obviously is trying to take over the city again." He muttered to himself.
"And doing a good job of it too." Raven opened one eye to look at him. Slade had full run of the city, but he hadn't done anything more than attack a few corporations and steal technology. Most of which tended to be back water experiments that had failed miserably.
"But what is he planning? Why hasn't he just sent all his armies into the streets likeÉbefore." He concluded gently.
"Maybe he's building something." Raven suggested. She wasn't trying to be helpful, she was trying to get him to stop thinking out loud so she could meditate.
"But why use so many failed experiments?" He muttered. Robin turned to Raven, who was now giving up on getting any peace at all. "Tell me again what he stole.
"Before you were taken we know he took several plans for military weapons, along with the computer chips that controlled those weapons. Afterwards, he continued to take biological experiments. All we could get were "classifieds" when we tried to find out what those were exactly." She sighed. "Other than that we don't know.
"I don't understand." He said irritably and hit the floor with his fist. Robin was a sleuth at heart and hated being in the dark. "You said he's got plenty of robots and humans, enough to take over the city, and a nuke below it. Why does he need more weapons? And why biological?
Raven sat thoughtfully for a minute or two, staring blankly at the floor. Her head still hurt occasionally and it made concentrating even more difficult. A wave of pain cascaded behind her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Head between her knees, she waited for the pain to recede.
"Raven, are you OK?
She wished he'd stop running to her side every time she had a little ache. She shrugged his hand off her shoulder, but didn't move her head from its position on her legs. "I'm fine.
"You know," he said quietly, "sometimes you're a lot like me.
Raven looked up quickly, too quickly, to stare at him. He had stood and was watching the window in the door with arms crossed.
"What do you mean?" Her tone was so guarded and careful, that Robin turned back around to look at her instead.
"Serious, focused, independent, I'm the same way. But you know Raven, I think that because you hide your emotions so much, you don't know yourself as well as you should.
Raven had no idea where this lecture was coming from, and she had no idea what to say in response. She pulled her hood up around her face. "It's not like I have a choice." She spat.
"I know." His voice was gentle, the same old caring Robin.
It was another few hours before they spoke to one another again. Raven spent the time meditating, or trying to. Robin's words were haunting her.
You don't know yourself as well as you should.
I know myself just fine.
But do you? You're just a series of facets, personalities that you have to control. You won't admit it, but you've divided yourself so much that you don't even know which part of you is real.
"Shut up." She hissed quietly. She couldn't tell which voice was in her head, but if it was Rage then it was a voice she didn't want to listen to.
"Raven?" Robin was sitting across from her, Indian style.
"What?" She snapped. Being in the same room with the same person for hours on end was grating on her nerves, not to mention the sudden self doubt that Robin had so generously given her. Raven liked her solitude, and she liked her confidence. None of it boded well for a pleasant evening in their dingy little cell.
"What happenedÉthat day with Dr. Light? You never told any of us, except BB and Cyborg." For Robin, his voice sounded so unsure that Raven's irritation faded. He wasn't looking at her, but at the floor.
"They weren't meant to know in the first place." She grumbled quietly.
"I know that." Finally he raised his eyes and watched her, some of his confidence returned. Likely he'd thought she would be angry with him for asking. "I've just been wondering about it for the longest time.
True, Robin usually respected Raven's boundaries, and he never needed anything more from her than her friendship. He still stood by that, it came from living with an equally dark and mysterious person (Batman). But that night they had seen a frightening side of Raven, even he had been terrified by her sudden explosion of negative energy. He never doubted that she was on the side of justice, but Robin couldn't help his curiosity. Seeing as they were alone in a cell for hours on end, he figured he might as well ask.
Raven seemed to be debating whether to answer or not. Her sense of privacy was asking her to lie or at least give him a scalding retort that would make him leave her alone. But Raven had always believed in telling the truth, and no matter how much she suppressed her conscience, she could not walk away without facing it. But there was one reason not to tell him what had happened, and it screamed inside her mind with fear.
"I can't." She whispered.
"What?
"You would never trust me again." Her hood cast her face in shadows.
Robin seemed to sit up a little straighter as he answered. "Raven, you're my friend. Nothing you tell me will change that.
She smiled one of her rarer smiles at him, but it was hesitant. She took a deep breath, and decided to tell him the whole story.
"My motherÉwanted power. She gave herself as a- a bride of Satan. An evil being called Trigon took her offer. When my mother realized what she had done, she went to a place called Azarath, a place of pacifists. They raised me to control my powers and the evil insideÉme." She took a deep breath. "That night with Dr. Light, the evil of my father broke my control. It happens when I'm angrier than I should be." Her voice was monotone, as if explaining how tofu was made. She stared resolutely at the floor, fearing the expression on Robin's face.
There was a shuffling noise and Robin put a hand under her chin, forcing her to look at him. He was smiling. He pushed the hood back from her face. "Raven, we can't change who our parents are, or what they've done. But we can change who we are. I don't fear, or see any evil inside of you. You're Raven, and you're my friend. I trust you.
Raven felt stunned, she felt like she had when Beast Boy and Cyborg had stayed in her mind and risked their lives to help her. Of course, what else had she expected from someone like Robin? She smiled slightly and blushed.
"Thank you.
She realized then how close Robin was. He seemed to notice too because a strange look came over his face, a mixture of worry and something else. "RavenÉ" He said slowly.
Raven could feel herself blushing even more, the intensity of his gaze was making her nervous. His hand moved from her chin to her cheek, which was burning. Then his hand was in her hair and their lips were pressed together.
Her initial reaction was total shock, followed by an odd sort of pleasure. She enjoyed how close his body was, the warmth radiating from him was a relief from the cold metal of the cell. His hand in her hair made her tingle and she began to return the kiss.
But things were being forgotten in the face of rash passion. She broke away from him and covered her mouth. "Robin- I- we can't-you and Star- I-" She stuttered, for once at a loss for words.
"Me and Starfire?" He'd let go of her completely and backed away, respecting her denial. He didn't look hurt, only confused.
She pulled her hood back up to hide the turmoil of suppressed emotions there. "You and her have something between you. I don't want you risking that just because you're bored in a cell with me." She answered stiffly.
He stood very suddenly and paced away from her. When she looked at him again, she realized he was angry.
"How can you think I would do that?" He asked quietly. "I don't know how Star feels about me, but she's my best friend. Nothing more. "He cut the air with his hand to emphasize this. When he looked back at Raven the bars of orange light fell across his face. "She's so na•ve Raven, you know that, and so do I. I feel like I have to protect her. That's not-" He sighed and ran a gloved hand through his hair.
"I'm sorry." And for once, her voice was choked with emotion.
Lunatic: Ok who saw that one coming? If you don't approve of R&R don't get all jumpy. There's more to this story than that. I just don't like the idea of Starfire in any relationship, she's cute enough on her own. A relationship would ruin the naivete of her character.
And a thanks to the reveiwers! I can't tell you how much I closed my eyes, fearing you all hated it. So: MUAH Ðkiss- 3