Playing the Fool, a teen titans fanfic

Disclaimer: The series Teen Titans and the song "Ice" do not belong to me in any way, shape, or form. This is a work of fanfiction and was written for entertainment purposes only. No profits are made from the writing or reading of this story. Only original characters and situations are © copyrighted by me.

Rated for: Sexuality, adult situations, and dialogue.

Playing the Fool
©2004 by Kei

/the ice is thin, come on, dive in/
/underneath my lucid skin/
/the cold is lost, forgotten/

Robin and Starfire were standing in the kitchen, locked in a tight embrace.

Raven, reading in the lounge, caught sight of them from the corner of her eye. Something jerked and tingled inside of her.

She was made of glass.

A melancholy bird fluttered its clipped wings behind her breastbone. Its little talons gouged her clenching stomach.

Forcing her gaze away from the lovers, she briefly watched Cyborg and Beast Boy battling it out on a virtual raceway. Where Cyborg was vociferous over his misfortunes or rubbing record lap times in Beast Boy's face, the green shape-shifter seemed lackluster and not at all earnest in his efforts to play the game, let alone win. Cyborg was too absorbed in the competition to notice his opponent's lack of enthusiasm.

Two years.

It had been two years since Terra's transformation into a stone statue. The Teen Titans had worked hard to discover and implement a strategy to return her to a flesh-and-blood being, but their labors came to naught.

Now Beast Boy was almost as much of a statue as Terra.

If I were warm, Raven thought. If I were warm, I would hold you.

She was glass; she was ice; she was the unfeeling half-demon result of rape.

Later, on her bed, eyes trained blankly on the ceiling, she wondered if she could help the wilting flower. The once joyous yellow blossom of youth had faded to crisp brown hopelessness. She missed the golden bloom, no matter how much he had grated on her nerves.

/hours pass, days pass, time stands still/
/light gets dark and darkness fills/
/my secret heart forbidden . . . /

Asleep when she came upon him, his limbs flung out, twisted, tangled in the bedclothes. His mouth hung open as he breathed audibly, a droplet of saliva threatened to trickle from the red corner.

She hovered over him, reached out to caress his cheek.

"Raven, wha—?"

Her lips silenced him.

He made no protest. Feeling his stiff body relax, she moved her body across his, deepening the kiss, plundering his mouth, rapacious for the taste of nature inside him. She poured her desolation into the empty well, and could almost hear it crashing on the bottom.

For her there would be him and him only, lest the little bird suck the marrow from her fractured bones and leave her husk to be devoured by scavengers.

She stroked him, raked her nails and left bloody trails, elicited deliciously wicked sounds from her victim. Eventually both died little deaths, shackled together by voracious bodies pouring sweat and blood and desire. Even as they became raw and the motion painful, they continued, wracking and wringing each other to liquefaction.

When he dozed off once more, Raven crept back to her room and captured a few hours of oblivion before breakfast.

/i think you worried for me then/
/the subtle way that i'd give in/
/but i know you liked the show/

She rose and went to the kitchen. As she passed the table she saw Beast Boy, but her amethyst eyes passed over him like he was meaningless.

As she was setting her empty teacup in the sink, Beast Boy approached to rinse off his empty plate. Raven had just turned to depart when she heard him speak.

"I think we need to talk."

"I'll be in my room."

She had just settled on her bed to meditate when he knocked. She let the door open and smirked as he cautiously entered, still wary of the strictly forbidden chambers.

Her legs folded in the lotus position and her eyes closed, he barely pricked the edge of her consciousness, she told herself.

"What do you wish to discuss?" she inquired after a moment of privately enjoying the squirming waves of awkwardness oozing off him.

"I think you know."

"The sex."

His entire face burned bright red. Her smirk increased.

"I-I'm flattered, Raven, really, but . . ."

"Yes," she said, sliding off her bed and standing motionless before him. "You can't forget about Terra. The fact is emblazoned on your heart and might as well be on your forehead, too."

He was speechless.

"I am not looking for love," she told him plainly. "I only want contact—yours, to be specific. Forget emotional attachment; this is purely physical."

Scratching the back of his head, Beast Boy said, "I thought women couldn't have emotionally detached, um, relations."

She laughed a short, mirthless laugh. "That's what you get for thinking. Don't strain yourself, Beast Boy."

"Hey!" he yelped, jolted out of his embarrassment by the insult. "Be nice or I won't let you sleep over anymore!"

She arched one thin, dark eyebrow. "You want me 'sleep over' again?"

His cheeks reddened once more. His body craved fulfillment. "Yeah, I guess I do. But, Raven, are you sure?"

"Dead."

/tied down to this bed of shame/
/you tried to move around the pain/
/but oh, your soul is anchored/

Above him, she threw her head back, sweat-matted violet hair flying wildly. She gripped his shoulders so tightly her fingernails left tiny bloody crescents in his flesh. His hands grasped her hips, fingers bruising, as his essence burst up within her and she convulsed spasmodically in her own climax.

After disentangling their glowing limbs, the two collapsed and lay side by side. Beast Boy turned his face towards Raven, his brow furrowed. She gazed at him unblinkingly, expectantly.

"I have to be honest," he rasped out. He cleared his throat and continued, "I'm pretending you're her."

"I know," she replied, staring straight at the ceiling.

Glass.

Stone.

Nothing.

"I'm-I'm sorry, Raven," he said helplessly.

Her smile was swallowing smoke and orange rind.

"No, you're not," she replied in a monotone. "You may think you are, you may want to be, but in the end you know you love these little sessions."

He grabbed her roughly, threw his weight upon her, and shoved himself inside her. His eyeteeth were suddenly quite prominent.

"Do you?" he demanded.

"Do I what?"

"Enjoy 'these little sessions'," he clarified, pulling out and thrusting harshly back in to punctuate each word of the quotation.

"Who doesn't want to feel good?" she responded noncommittally.

"That's not an answer," he growled, grinding his bony hips hard against hers, which were equally as jutting. She fought back a wince.

"No, it's not," she confirmed. He snarled even more gutturally and seized her by the hair, twisting it around his fist so tightly she gasped and stared at him with wide, tear-shiny eyes.

"Well, I want an answer," he rumbled, the sound vibrating down through his chest and into Raven's belly.

She contracted her muscles around his length, milking him dry. She arched her back, pressing her breasts against him so he could feel her taut nipples.

"Yes," she whispered silkily, her lips barely brushing against his. She laved down his jaw-line until she arrived at a spot just over his pulsing jugular. She latched on and sucked, scraping once or twice with her teeth, earning a couple of groans from her otherwise silent partner.

He forcefully shoved her down and rammed into her again, again, again.

She wasn't broken yet.

/the only comfort is/
/the movement of the river/
/you enter into me/
/a lie upon your lips/
/offer what you can/
/i'll take all that i can get/
/only a fool's here . . . /

He had begun a hateful habit of murmuring love every night on the first thrust. He was replacing her with Terra.

Yet, as he pretended, so did Raven. She made believe he meant those words for her, for the loveless half-demon witch. She sucked his affection like blood; let her cheeks flush and her heart pound hard in her chest.

If her shoulders ached beneath the weight, she flew to a far-off river deep in the city. It flowed out to the bay, the ocean, endless expanse of water in which to lose oneself.

The fresh smell of the unpolluted water and the quick trickling sound soothed her ravaged soul. She could see her reflection in the rippling liquid and almost taste redemption on her tongue.

Here she thought on the farcical relationship. She forced herself to acknowledge the truth: that it was damaging to both, despite her good intentions. But it felt so good she wasn't ready to let go.

She would strip and bathe in the water, but was never cleansed. Her misdeeds clung like a second skin, like dried superglue. She couldn't wash away the remnants of slickness and non-love.

Tears were lost in the river.

And why did the little bird persist so violently, especially when Beast Boy declaimed his love for Terra when the one he entered was Raven? It wasn't as though the action hurt her.

/i don't like your tragic sighs/
/as if your god has passed you by/
/well hey, fool, that's your deception/

He took to talking after they finished, instead of trying to sleep and letting her get some rest as well. The first several times she let him chatter, able to shut out his voice and drift away. But as it continued night after endless night, it grew to be unbearable. He bemoaned his life of suffering, the curse a heartless god had laid upon him.

"Every day is just another torture."

"My life is meaningless."

"I'm completely alone."

"Nobody understands me."

"Nobody understands the pain I feel."

"She understood."

"She was special."

"She was the other half of me."

"God took her away from me."

"I'm empty."

"She made me feel whole."

"She completed me."

One too many nights of his jabbering took its toll on Raven. Just before her head could explode from being overflowed by his endless histrionics, she bolted upright and turned on him, eyes blazing.

"Beast Boy!" she practically shouted at him, jerking him from his wretched reverie. He gaped at her.

"Look around you!" she said hotly. "You have a roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in, good food to eat, nice clothes to wear. You have four people living with you who care about your well-being, who care about your happiness. Because you are alive, and because you have special abilities, you can save other people so that they can have good lives. That is definitely not meaningless, and I hope your tongue falls out of your head if you ever say something like that again!

"God did not take Terra away from you. She made her choices of her own free will, and she took the consequences like a decent human being, not a pathetic, whining sack of self-pity! I know you're hurting, I know! I'm an empath, remember? I feel your sorrow oozing out of every pore, do you get that? And it hurts that much more because it's not my own pain, but that of someone important to me!

"So stop with the bitching and moaning about how hard your life is, how pained your soul is! It's only your own distorted perception making it that way because you refuse to accept that Terra is dead and move on with your life!"

By the end of her uncharacteristic tirade, Raven's chest was heaving and her nostrils flaring as she took in as much air as she could.

Beast Boy stared at her for long moments. Raven gazed right back.

He said nothing. She gathered her clothes and returned to her room.

/your angels speak with jilted tongue/
/the serpent's tale has come undone/
/you have no strength to squander/

The next night Beast Boy started talking again, but it wasn't as contemptibly piteous as on previous nights. He wasn't whining so much this time.

"I just don't understand how she could do that to me," he began. Raven suppressed an aggravated sigh.

"We shared so much and she didn't have any qualms about stabbing me in the back.

"Before she came, I thought I knew the difference between good and evil. Before she came, I thought I was going to live forever, that I was invulnerable. I thought the Teen Titans were unbreakable. I was immortal."

For some minutes there was silence. Raven's rage of last night had dissipated. She rolled over to face him and murmured, eyes closed, "Live and learn, Beast Boy. You will die someday, though nobody knows when. Because of that, you should live well now, in the present. You need to move forward from Terra and what happened to her so you can live a good, full life."

She opened her eyes to see him avoiding them and masticating his lower lip, his brow furrowed in anguish.

"I just . . . can't," he whispered.

In that moment, an epiphany hit Raven. Stars burst inside her head and moonlight burned through her eyes and she could see clearly.

There was nothing left in Beast Boy for her. They could fuck all they wanted and he still would never feel anything deep and true for her. All his feeling, all his love and trust, had turned to stone with Terra.

For Raven there was absolutely nothing.

Raven nodded once before reaching out and pulling Beast Boy to her, into her, inside her.

Only when she was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that Beast Boy was deeply asleep did Raven creep out of bed. She gathered her clothes and went back to her bedroom. There she took a shower before straightening her room a bit and taking one last look around.

Then, she phased through the outside wall and took to the skies, the wind tugging her wet strands of hair plastered to her skull.

After a few minutes of flying, she arrived at her river, her single consolation.

The water was so fresh, so clean, so pure.

Not like me, Raven thought. I'm so impure even I'm surprised.

She had thought she wasn't broken, that nothing would ever touch her coldness, would ever penetrate the icy shield surrounding her heart, encasing her feeling in a perfect transparent prison.

In a foolish whimsy she had forgotten that ice melts.

For Beast Boy had been like a flame to her. Even when he flickered while he grieved for Terra for so long, he still turned the ice into water and the water into air that Raven breathed into him.

"I was arrogant," she said aloud to no one, only herself. "Beast Boy thought death couldn't touch him; and I thought Beast Boy couldn't touch me.

"In the end, I am the biggest fool of all."

Her eyes again touched the water as water touched her eyes. She smiled bitterly, tasting the saltwater collecting on her lips.

Raven walked forward to be cleansed.

/only a fool's here to stay/

Two weeks of frantic worrying, wondering, and searching passed for the four other Teen Titans as they scoured the city for any trace of the missing Raven.

None of their efforts bore fruit.

In the dawn hours of the fifteenth day, a call came from the police commissioner. Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, and Beast Boy, all bleary-eyed and pajama-clad, huddled in front of the vid-screen to communicate with the commissioner.

"Titans," the aging woman addressed them, "a fishing boat in the bay picked up something in one of its nets. We'd like you to come down to the docks for identification."

Everyone rushed to get dressed. Starfire and Beast Boy flew down while Cyborg and Robin tore through traffic in the T-Car.

The docks were not crowded this early in the day. Sounds of crying gulls, lapping water, and droning boat motors accompanied the scents of fish and salt and sewage.

A detective was awaiting the foursome at the dock entrance. He led them down past numerous boats until they got to the big barge that had brought up something relevant in its net.

"So what is it, detective?" Robin inquired, looking around for anything remotely related to Raven.

"This way," the man said, motioning with his hand for them to follow him up the gangplank.

Once on-deck, the Titans saw what they had come to identify.

Starfire released a shriek of pure horror before dissolving into wracking sobs, hiding her face in her hands. Robin put his arms around her and looked away from the sight before them, shutting his eyes, his chest tight.

"Oh, man," Cyborg moaned, turning his back to the scene.

Beast Boy said nothing and found himself unable to look away. This couldn't be the flesh-and-blood girl who not three weeks ago had cried out in climactic ecstasy below him. There was no way, right?

Her skin was pruny gooseflesh, even paler than usual, except around the face, which was blotched pink and greenish. There were bleeding cuts and gashes all over her visible body. On her cheeks, breasts, belly, and thighs some flesh had been torn away in chunks, like something had decided she might make a good meal. Scrapes and lacerations looked bright and new where the net had sliced into her.

She looked swollen and soft, cold and dead.

The detective cleared his throat expectantly. Robin glanced at him, then to the corpse, then away again.

"That is— was Raven," the masked young man said.

"We'll be doing a full investigation. The medical examiner will probably be able to determine whether this was a homicide or not, if she was dead before or after she hit the water," the man replied. "Homicide by drowning is extremely rare, so the body may have been dumped after the murder. Or," he continued, "it mighta been an accident. Last possibility is suicide." He shrugged. "Eh, like I said, ME's examination will be able to tell more."

"Detective," Robin began, his voice low, "we knew Raven; she was our friend. And she wouldn't have been murdered, and this couldn't have been an accident. We know what happened, and we want it to end here. She's gone, and that's all we need to know. We don't want any examinations or investigations."

While the detective and Robin discussed this demand, Cyborg took over soothing Starfire. Beast Boy stared at Raven's empty, naked, violated husk.

"How could you do this to me?" he whispered. "You're just like Terra."

/only a fool's here . . . /

-finis-

NOTES:

A happy little yarn, was it not?

What I find most tragic is not that she kills herself, but that Beast Boy is still thinking of Terra even after Raven's sad demise. Actually, this nearly reasonless suicide is, I think, vastly uncharacteristic of Raven, but I am still proud of this fic nonetheless.

Anyway, please leave a review with comments, questions, critiques, etc. Thank you very much for reading.

Appreciatively,
Kei