A/N: this is my first Titan's fic. If any one but Raven is out of character please let me know so I can improve. I don't own the Teen titan's I think that's DC comics or WB or cartoon network or something so any ways don't sue me and we'll all get along.
A young petite girl walked though the halls of the teen tower, from the back she looked like any thing you might come across in a normal high school. As she entered the central room she found her self tackled and in a bear hug.
"Welcome new friend!" Starfire's overly perky voice answered her entrance.
"Starfire. Get off!" the girl's voice was flat but a vein twitched in her temple.
"Raven?" Star pulled her self up and Raven followed dusting her self off. Her violet hair was pulled back in to a bouncy ponytail. She was wearing a pink baby tee tighter than even her costume. Her low riding blue jeans ended right below the knee and she was wearing straw covered sandals. Complete with eye shadow and lip-gloss she looked almost...
"Raven?" robin started.
"You're NORMAL!" Beastboy finished.
...Normal. She blushed slightly and turned away as she had no hood. "I have a meeting, my costume would have hindered the process. "she attempted a false weak smile. The group winced.
Beastboy wiped away a stream of drool and closed his mouth. "You look... good."
"Uh... thanks." On that awkward note she turned. "I was uh, just letting you know I'll be gone." She began to glide but thought better of it and grounded herself firmly and proceeded to walk out of the room.
"What was up with that?" Beastboy was the first to speak up.
"I don't know but it has something to do with who she's meeting." Robin replied trying to find a mystery where there probably wasn't one.
Starfire merely looked fearful. "Raven has...changed."
"I can't see this as permanent. I wouldn't worry Star. Maybe it's just a phase?" Cyborg tried to comfort her.
On the mainland Raven hail a cab. She gave the driver the address she'd been told and attempted to relax and allow her mind to go blank. The static in the air proved this wasn't working.
She dug in to her pocket when the taxi stopped and gave the cabbie a twenty-dollar bill for a twelve-dolor fair. In one action she stepped out of the car and stood in front of a large brick building. To her it seemed windowless and much taller than its five stories. It was her prison and more than likely her down fall.
Taking yet another deep breath she mounted the stairs and entered the large mass. In her years as a Titan and before that she had never been more scared or intimidated. Slowly and deliberately she quieted her fear. She followed the sings that pointed to her final destination. Social services.
With faux-calmness she knocked sharply on the door. "Come in." the voice was cold and professional, almost as toneless as her own. She pulled the door open and was greeted with a grey room.
"Is the room really colorless or am I going blind?" Raven wondered. But the gaudy outfit on the woman at the desk brightened the room, only slightly. "Good morning." Raven tried, and failed miserably at sounding cheerful and bright. The result made her sound sick and she cleared her throat and said in her regular voice. "Good morning." What she needed right now was the voice of a certain Tameranian but that wasn't going to happen.
"Do you know why you where called here ms. Allen?" the woman, who strongly resembled the giant stuffed roster that Beastboy and Cyborg had once won her, leaned closer as if to suggest confidentiality. Raven only shook her head. "It has come to our attention that you have no legal guardian. Do you understand?"
" I take care of myself."
"Be that as it may I have a few questions about your lifestyle, where you live, etcetera. I assure you this is a routine interrogation, we just want you to have as normal a life as possible." Raven had to stifle a snort. "Your hair for instance."
"Yes?" Raven wondered what was wrong with her hair, she had pulled it back and she knew that that was normal; she had seen at least twenty other girls like this.
"It's purple, the people that you live with, for I see you must be living some where, they allow this radical color?"
"Oh- that, no this's na--"she cut her self off. "An accident, I wanted red and a housemate wanted purple and the colors got switched."
"We have here that you have no official mailing address but you live in a, what my assistant has put down is, a tower in the harbor of central city." The woman looked doubtful.
"Yes that's right." Her tone, or as tone as as Raven gets added, 'your point is?'
"You mentioned house mates, how many people live in this tower?"
"Including me?"
"Yes yourself included." The woman sat back her sausage fingers steeple while she waited.
"Five." She suddenly wished that she had asked for a different answer or that she had even few friends. The five just now seemed to be entirely too many to be living in one house. Even one as larges as the t-tower.
"Alright." She marked something on her clipboard and Raven couldn't help but notice the creak the over stressed chair made as she leaned forward. "And there is an adult in the house?"
"Uh..." quickly things flashed into her head. How old was Starfire, she might be eighteen, or Cyborg, when was he born? Aloud she said. "I don't know I suppose one of tem must be."
"Well I'll need their names." The woman seemed bored, as though she heard this all though the day witch admittedly she probably did.
Every undesirable word Raven had ever heard ran though her head. "Clorbag." She muttered under her breath. "I don't know their real names, just what we call each other. Those would not help you I don't think they are close to their real names." She stated this as calmly as if she were talking about the weather but she was struggling to keep her self-calm.
"You don't know you're housemates' names?" the caseworker asked doubtfully.
"Not their real ones." Her tone was still even but she was starting to slip. She waited for the topic to switch.
"Ah, you would describe it then as an untrustworthy house." To anything but that.
"No," Raven bit her lip and took a deep breath. "We trust each other with our lives." Boy that was the truth. But worrying them with this would have been pointless.
She made another mark on her clipboard. "That uh... gem, on your forehead, is that a piercing?"
"It's my third eye charka. It's...religious."
"So you practice new age religion." She woman was hunting out any 'fault' and had her pencil to the paper ready to put down a dash under some category or another she stopped short when Raven came back with a reply.
"Five millennia is hardly new." she raised her eyebrow minimally waiting for the woman's response.
Her pencil moved over the paper to a different location and she made her mark. "Just a few more questions. These may be slightly more personal." She rifled some papers. "Drug use?"
"None."
"Alcohol?"
"None."
"Smoking."
"No."
"You may have to take some test to ensure that you are telling the truth, not just what you think I want to hear." The woman looked raven straight in her purple eyes, witch she had surprisingly not commented on. Raven's mental barriers immediately went up. "Do you consider your self balanced?"
"I have to be." Raven did not break the gaze though it was very intruding. The woman did however.
"O-ok." Another mark on the board. "I do have to ask this... you're sexual orientation?"
"None." But for some reason a picture of Beastboy came to mind, Raven dismissed it. Probably because it was something her would laugh at.
"So you mean bi-sexual." It was a statement.
"No I mean none. I have no sexual interests, or romantic for that matter." The woman looked puzzled. "No none of the above box on that form?" she asked evenly with just the barest hint of sarcasm.
The woman put down her pen. "This is a very serious matter ms. Allen."
"Raven." She corrected.
"Yes, I have you down here as Raven E. Allen." The girl grit her teeth, it had been a long time since she'd heard her full name. Not long enough. "Ok take this ..." she handed raven a card. "Show it to the woman at the front desk. They'll point you to the physiatrist for a preliminary evaluation. Then we will send some one out for a home inspection."
"A home inspection?" she window behind the woman shattered.
"What!" she snapped around. "Did you see what happened?" this was more emotion than either of them had shown though the whole process.
"Uh. Pigeon." Raven tried lamely.
The woman sighed noisily though her nose as her lips were pressed together. "As I was saying, we'll send out a home inspector."
"Don't think you need an inspector."
"Funny I usually get that with the therapist requirement but you'll have both anyway." She seemed to take a direct pleasure in this.
"What could she be doing in there?"
"I don't know."
"She's been in there forever. Maybe we should just go y'all." Cyborg suggested from their hiding spot in an alley across the street.
"No! You saw how she was dressed." Most of the group winced. "Nothing good could make her do that. I'm not going anywhere 'til I find out what." Robin said crossing his arms.
"So...we can leave the-ow!" Beastboy was hoping on one leg nursing his opposite foot. "What you do that for?"
No one said any thing.
Raven came out of the building. "There she I--" she climbed into another cab. "Goes."
"We shall follow?" Starfire asked.
"I don't think we have much choice." He paused a second. "She's going home."
Every one turned and looked at Robin. Starfire took off quickly not wanting to face raven's anger if she found out they were spying. She muttered something as she began to fly.
Beastboy raised his eyebrow. "Where'd star learn THAT word?" the other two boys shrugged and began to head to the tower also.