Raventhedarkgoddess: Time to actually break my writer's block for good..... Why can't I write anything decent anymore..... Oh well, I shall try......

Chapter Fourteen: Not Always Easy

"It always was hard to prove that I belonged anywhere: But I will prove to Slade I am the only apprintice he needs. We will be closer than father and son, the bond between man and his master..... And you, my dear girl, are the key." He looked her over, attempting to see if he need stab her again or if the force of his first blow was enough, if her spilled blood had taken her out. The red mixed with the black of her hair...

Her chest was hardley rising and falling. "The pleasure of an assassin, my dear, is in watching his chosen victim fade...... I will watch you now, so far gone....." He leaned his head into his hand and fingered the knife that he had removed from Anna, watching both sisters bleed. One hand on her chest, he pryed the knife from Lecita's throat and watched as the crimsion flow was renewed. "This is my goodbye......"

Anna sputtered, trying her hardest not to slip into the blackness gathering at the edges of her vision. "You.... vile.... bastard...." Her head spun and the words came out quietly, barely above a whisper and hardly to his level of hearing.

"I've been called much worse, my dear. Just listen to the lullaby...... You know you're tired and your head is spinning.... Go forth, and may you be granted an eternal nap." His face split into a self-centered, terrible grin.... He was watching her fade quietly. "Or perhaps you would like me to just finish you now?"

"My friends..... Will come..... For.... us...." The Titans really are my friends..... How could I have been that way to them? And Cyborg.... He just wanted to be close to my sister, and I pushed him away from us.... Her brown eyes were narrowed, hardly slits, and she could hardly keep herself awake. "I...will.... not... fall to... you...."

Her chest heaved up and down another time and the world seemed to spin at a faster rate than she could see, everyone and everything nothing more than a colored mass of shapes, hardly worthy of her attention. "I.... love you.... sis." Her chest heaved once more, raising slowly and then collapsing as all air removed itself from her body, a single tear making it's way down her cheek.

"She's weaker than you, Lecita.... But you're not going to hold up, I can see how weak you're getting......" He traced the blade lovingly, knowing that at any given point he had the power to destroy her, and yet that there was simple joy in holding control of her life over her head. If only she were awake to plot, to attempt escape.... That's what I really want, to watch her fight to get away from me......

Her breathing became more ragged, and she actually opened her eyes. "Cyborg.... Where did you go...." She muttered delusionaly, looking around but unable to raise her head. "Why would you leave me........"

"You will never see Cyborg again.... This is your end, my dear...... You have served myself and Master Slade quite well. I thank you for him." Derek bowed his head slightly, an insane grin on his face. I'm actually about to make it into the ranks of the man I admire.... I'm one kill away from being a part of the team that will rule the world.... The Titans will fall, and no surviors will be left. I'm actually about to be someone that my no-good father could never have seen me being....

"I can't..... beliveive he would leave without.... Saying goodbye to me, without even bothering to tell me that.... he cared about me...." Lecita hissed weakly. "They'll be here for you, and for Slade..... I won't be fo...fo....forgotten....." Her lips trembled slightly over the word. They would never just leave us.... We're their friends.... She forced herself to breath, every effort causing stabbing pains, forcing her to struggle to keep her head clear.

"Your sister said the same thing as she perished, I'm assuming that feeble minds think alike, as do great ones." He laughed cruely at his own sick joke, laughing at the pain and discomfort he was causing, and made a while gesture to Anna, the whites of her eyes slightly visable through the slits she had glared at him through in her last moments, her entire form awashed in blood.

"Anna.... No....... God, no..... And my friends.... I'm all....a...alone....." Lecita's head began to spin more than ever: This boy had killed her sister, had reason to belive her friends were dead, and was now killing her, torturing her as she died, watching her bleed and smiling because he was the one to have done it.

"She wanted you to know...." A thin smile played over his cruel lips, a lifeless shell of a face with sick pleasure, "That she cared. She said that she loved you as her parting words." To this he recived no response, only an anguished sob, the tears draining her even more of her precious strenght.

"Lecita!" Robin cried out. "Don't move, don't scream, don't cry out....." Robin found himself slipping into what Raven affectionatly called 'full-on leader' mode: Yelling and trying his hardest to forget about his own problems, trying his hardest to prevent death......

"So the Titans live. This is quite a turn of events for me. I enjoy this kind of work." He turned his eyes to Terra. "A tradior in our mist, I see, Terra." He chucked her under the chin with his hand, Terra standing quite still in spite of him. "So nice to see you....."

"Shut up!" She stepped over the body of Anna, permitting the horribly weakened Raven to slip behind her toward Lecita's fallen form. "Just shut up and leave my friends alone! Your master has left you and fled. You have no one. Accept it!" Her blonde hair flew around her face as she flung her head.

"This is the line of an assassin. We'll join up later, after I have done the work of eliminating you and your.... friends, if you wish to call them such. However, real friends would not have left you alone for so long..... Slade knows I can handle you, or he would not have left me alone... For I am never alone with Slade...."

"Enough talk!" Cyborg punched the boy in the side of his head, willing to stand by no more. His eyes managed to pull themselves away from Lecita, who was gasping and choking, no longer able to call out to her friends as she choked on her own tears and lack of strengh.

"Can you hear me, Lecita?" Raven was at the girl's side, summoning what little healing strenght she had left to close the hole on the side of Lecita's neck. "Cyborg dragged me the whole way here..... Did I do anything for the damange?"

"Much.... better..." Lecita choked out through the sobs, the only thing still haunting her her dead sister. Raven took her in her arms and let her sob, knowing neither of them were in any condition to be of use to the rest of the team.

A few kicks and several punches later, the boy was surrounded by the team. "Do you really have the heart to take me out, Robin?"

I cannot be the killer again........ "Get him!" He yelled heartlessly to the rest of the team, feeling himself breaking inside to know that he was about to go back into the same position he had been in a few months ago, the heartless killer.......

Cyborg was the one to drench his hands as Beast Boy missed, tearing at the boy, his mechanial weapons all but forgotten in the brawl of pure fists. "Die, damn you!" Everyone else backed up, Starfire into Robin, who pulled away from her and held his hand on her shoulder in a friendly way, and Terra buried her head into Beast Boy. "Don't ever touch anyone close to me, damn you!"

"Slade..... Will avenge me....." The boy fell to the ground and Starfire, Robin, and Beast Boy pried Cyborg's body off of the lifeless corpse, trying to calm him to the best of their ablitities. Raven looked up slowly, her movements weak and mechanical.

"Let's just leave him here," Terra said softly. "The cops will probably be here soon anyway....." She was white and shaking, and from what Robin could tell, she had moved back to the team. Everyone nodded slowly nodded and Robin quietly shouldered Anna's body.

"What are we going to do about her?" Raven whispered to him, leaning into him so that she could walk.

"I don't know, Raven. I really don't know."

Raventhedarkgoddess: Merry Christmas, you guys. Hope this update was okay.