Raven A. Star: blinks
O.M.G.
Two things: Yes! Please send the email. Oo
And second...OMG! That was awesome. So many video references (even though they were intentional). It was awesome. I loved this chapter, and I am so excited on what is going to happen next. Please continue! And update as soon as you can.
Priestess Aishisu: The chapter was strongly influenced by the Evanescence Everybody's Fool music video. In the Mediaminer version Broken, the chapter was actually a songfic to Everybody's Fool. For some reason, two of my best songfics are based on that song.
mew-xena: 0.0 that was such a good chapter!oH. mY. gOSH! i can't believe how good taht was! I'M SERIOUS, IT WAS AN AMAZING CHAPTER! it was so well written! you could feel Raven's pain. and the mirror and election! brilliant! i am so happy the election is OVER! i LOVE THIS STORY! please try to update soon!
Priestess Aishisu: ::Gallant bow:: Thank you, thank you. I appreciate the compliments. And yes, you could feel it, couldn't you?
TheExcellenceOfExecution: I to am glad that the elections are over, though I won't say who I voted for. Anyway, this chapter was a really good one. Showing that she does in fact want her friends--her life back. Two thumbs up!
Oh, you might wanna check out my story "Nobody Knows It But Me" for specific reasons.
Priestess Aishisu: The story was really good. But you might want to check on your C2 Community (it is yours, right?) Several of the fanfictions have nothing to do with Raven or Cyborg. In fact, at least three of them are about Terra and Beast Boy.)
BlackStorm: Priestess Aishisu,
Great chapter. Kinda confusing, but good, none-the-less.
BlackStorm
Priestess Aishisu: Thanks.
BrassBanana: o...POOR RAVEN! She really needs her friends back because she's such a wreck (besides the wonderful singing, that is). I am looking forward to the next chappie...UPDATE ASAP...uhh, please?
Have Fun!
BrassBanana
Priestess Aishisu: Exactly! She's thrilled with her life, but without her friends she's still a wreck. She likes singing and all that, but she needs friends to really enjoy it.
BlackShield: My, my... this looks a little familiar, I must say, but it's still good. "My, how the mighty hath fallen." The lies that protect us can suddenly turn against it. It really gives you a feel for how unstable our whole world is. A single flick, we go tumbling into space. A light touch, and we fall over. A gently tug, and we fall forward ass-over-teakettle. A single push, and we plummet over the edge of whatever it is that we call Sanity. Really makes one feel unstable; insecure; insignificant. But it's something we all think about - all NEED to think about once in a while. Once in a while, we need to see just how small we all are. We're even built to look unsteady; what other creature only uses two feet for balance? And even monkeys have tails to counterbalance. When we stumble, we have to put a foot forward... and there's no telling where it'll land...is there.
...What the hell did I just write?
Update when ya can.
Daydreams, Firebeetles, and Midnight Suns-
BlackShield
Priestess Aishisu: ::Eyebrow twitches:: Very good question. By the way, how many people can make something so philosophical capable of causing laughter.
DarkGoddessRaven: good. hurry and continue.
Imean Raven and Cyborg from the future.
Priestess Aishisu: I don't like hurrying.
KageOni1: very good. I'm glad Raven finally realized the fact that she needed her friends back. But what are the new Titans doing about Raven going missing? AIA, a very good chapter.
P.S. I'm not really happy about the election either. NADER ALL THE WAY!
Priestess Aishisu: I don't plan to tell anybody who I voted for unless they first tell me their vote and then ask me to tell mine, but…yeah. And what do you mean, what are they doing? She quit over a year ago, they don't even know she's missing!
«§¥§»
Cyborg's eyes widened and he jerked around, flipping off the DVD of Raven's songs that he had been watching and/or listening to for hours. He had heard a crash—not that a crash was something that unusual, not around these parts. But he had also heard the sound of sobbing…
Raven's sobbing…
Shaking away that thought, he stood up and walked downstairs, jumping when he heard a scream coming from the bathroom.
«§¥§»
"Well, go talk to her, Beast Boy," said Cyborg.
"No way man," Beast Boy replied, staring up the tall staircase.
"What's the matter, chicken?" Cyborg taunted, trying to squash his own emotions. Beast Boy shape-shifted into a chicken and clucked loudly.
"Well, go talk to her, Cyborg," said Robin.
"Uh, uh, boss."
"Well, why not?"
"I'm chicken."
The past Titans had been standing at the foot of the steps for at least an hour, the guys arguing over who would go up.
"Come on, Raven," said Robin, who had just been asked by Beast Boy. "She's your future self, and it was your task in the first place."
Raven's eyebrow twitched, and for a moment Robin was worried she would blow something up—the reason he had waited so long to ask in the first place.
But she took a breath and seemed to calm down. "Fine," she said at last. "But you have to come. Just because I'm not some idiotic coward like you three doesn't mean I'm suicidal."
«§¥§»
"What happened here?" asked Nightwing, surveying the shards of glass on the floor and noting that several were smeared with blood.
"I–I do not know," admitted Starfire, still shaken "I heard a crash and came into the bathroom to find the mirror had shattered."
"So that isn't your blood?" asked Larissa, appearing in the doorway with Changeling. Cyborg was behind them, using his special vision to scan the blood.
Starfire shook her head. "Then whose is it?" Changeling wanted to know.
Cyborg's eyes widened. He recognized those DNA scans. They weren't human, and they weren't alien or tree or shape-shifter either. They were…
With a gasp, he turned and ran back upstairs.
«§¥§»
Raven's tear-filled eyes narrowed when she sensed the old Titans coming upstairs. "Go away!" she screamed, clenching her fists and not even flinching when her perfectly manicured fingernails dug into the cuts from the glass shards. "Don't make me hurt you!"
"Just try," Raven dared her, entering. "It's my room, too." Glancing around, she remarked, "I'm surprised this place is still intact."
"Trigon is dead in my time," Raven replied. "He has been for over a year." Her tears began again at the memory—not of the death itself, that was a cause for celebration, but more of the disaster which resulted from it. "What do you want?"
"Just to know what's wrong," Raven replied coolly, wondering why the fact of Trigon's death would seem to distress her future self further.
Raven buried her head in the tear-drenched pillow, her bleeding hand dying Raven's sheets red. "I miss my friends," she mumbled into the pillow.
Raven blinked at her distraught future self quizzically. "We're going to get you back to your own time," she pointed out. "What are you so upset about?"
"Not that I don't want to get to my own time or anything, but it doesn't help that much seeing as how my time is a year after I quit."
Raven gaped at her. "W–What?" she stammered, stunning eyes wide. "Why in the world would you want to quit the Titans?"
"I never said I wanted to quit," she retorted, her grave face beautiful in spite of the tears which streamed over the pale skin. "I just said I did."
Raven lifted a dark eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"
Raven tucked a lock of violet-and-black hair behind her ear, ignoring or not noticing the blood that her slender fingers and perfectly manicured fingernails smeared over her delicately plucked eyebrow and the lily-petal skin of her forehead.
Someday I'll be able to look like a beautiful goddess while my face is bloody, my hair is wet, I've been sobbing for hours, and I'm wearing a wet blood-stained bathrobe, Raven mused wistfully. But today, I don't look pretty no matter what happens.
She was wrong, of course, but she didn't know that. And at the moment, she happened to have more on her mind than beauty.
With a sigh, Raven murmured. "Fine. I'll tell you." She sighed and began.
"Over a year ago, less than 2½ years in the future for you, Trigon's control started to become really strong, more than in the past. I'm pretty sure that the reason was because—" she blushed. "Well, there was somebody I liked and I was afraid to say anything."
Shaking those thoughts away, Raven continued, "The Titans realized that something was wrong with me, of course—how couldn't they? They asked me what was wrong, but I couldn't tell them without Trigon taking over. So I didn't, and he took control."
Her eyes were glazed over with tears now, but she continued, "I'd rather not go into any of the details, but the battle wasn't pretty. He used me to open the gates between dimensions and let him enter this world, and of course his first attack was on Titan's Tower."
She took a shuddering breath before continuing. "I managed to destroy him permanently, but not without consequences. Titans Tower was almost completely destroyed, and the rest of the world was affected as well—Europe and part of Asia split away from the full continent, Scandinavia and Australia and part of India and Pakistan were destroyed, blah-blah-blah."
The old Titans were crowding the doorway, all wanting to hear more but none daring to enter the enchantress's dark and mysterious room—especially not if Raven were about to go into hysterics again.
"They blamed me." Raven looked away. "There was a huge argument, and I lost my temper. I was finally able to reveal my true feelings without killing somebody, and even I hadn't realized how long I had wanted to say any of these things."
Another long shuddery breath, tear after tear slipping from her grief-filled amethyst eyes.
"I know I was right to be mad. I know it wasn't my fault. I know that, Trigon or no Trigon, hiding emotions that had been building up for almost seven years would have driven me mad. And I know that, after everything that had happened, staying would have caused more trouble. So I quit. There was nothing else I could have done."
She gazed up at the ceiling, the tears now dripping onto her already-drenched robe. "There was nothing else I could have done, but I'll regret my decision for the rest of my life."
"What happened after that?" Raven asked, almost afraid to learn the answer but her curiosity outweighing her fear. "In the future Starfire saw you—I—we—went into deep depression or something but…"
"I did go into deep depression," Raven admitted, deciding that if they were going to know the Raven's tale they may as well know every feather. "At least for a few months. But things got better."
"I started publishing some of my stories and poetry, and I became a pretty famous angst writer. I turned some of the poems into songs, and some producer who heard me singing thought I was good. He wanted to know if I could sing in a movie he was starting, and it turned out to be one I wrote. And since it was basically my life narrowed down to symbols then the symbols turned into a different story, the acting was easy enough."
She looked down at her outfit and grimaced, but decided to ignore it. She could take another bath later.
"Next thing I knew, I was famous—a singer, an author, an actress, blah-blah-blah. I suppose I could have gotten caught up in it and let someone else control my life, but you must know me better by now. Under any other circumstances, my life would be perfect—and it almost is."
Then the tears started again, and she began sobbing into her hands. "But it can't be!" she shrieked, staring tearfully at her past self.
"It's not real! I have no friends, I have no family, there's no one I'm in love with, and I move from place to place too much to have any of these things! And now there's a concert coming up in Jump City and I've been so worried because I might have to see them, and I will go insane!"
Raven waited to reply, not wanting to set the distraught beauty into hysterics again. Once the wracking sobs faded into a steady trickle of tears, she ventured, "Why not try to rejoin?"
Raven gave her one of the most piercing looks imaginable. "Have you not been paying attention? And you must know how much I under-exaggerate things! Some things don't change in four years, you know."
Raven (damn, this italic/bold thing is getting annoying) hesitated, but replied, "You've obviously forgiven them, why wouldn't they do the same? You're telling me you think your friends—our friends—could stay mad for over a year for something that isn't even your fault? In this time, Robin is the only one who doesn't know all about Trigon and Starfire is the only one who's never shown a sign of evil. They'll have to forgive you!"
Raven scowled. "This wasn't like when Cyborg quit," she hissed, tears still streaming down her beautiful face.
"That was a petty argument. This wasn't. You didn't see their faces. You didn't hear any of the cruel things they said—you didn't hear any of the angry things I said. You didn't see the wreck that was caused, didn't see their faces when they thought it was entirely my fault."
"So what?" Beast Boy asked from the doorway, and both Ravens glanced up to see all the Titans standing there with compassionate expressions.
"It doesn't matter how awful the damage was, or how angry we were," Cyborg continued. "We'll always want you around."
"He's right, Raven," Robin supplied. "We'd never want you to quit, no matter what. And we'd never turn you away if you wanted to rejoin."
"You are our friend, Raven," said Starfire softly. "And nothing can ever change that. Do you not wish to be a Titan again?"
"Of course," Raven whispered, feeling the slightest stirrings of hope warming the cold emptiness within her. "I'd give anything to be Titan again."
Immediately warmth filled her. Energy lanced through her slender frame, and she felt suddenly disconnected from everything around her—she couldn't even feel the bed under her slim silk-draped legs. Raven lifted her graceful hands wonderingly. The torrent of bleeding had ceased, but that wasn't what she noticed. What she did notice was the blaze of magic around her hands.
Looking around, everything seemed to be disappearing. She tried to touch the bed but couldn't. And then she knew.
"Never quit the Titans!" she screamed, knowing somehow that her voice would be impossible to hear.
And then she was gone.