Cyborg's eyes clouded over as he gave in within his mind to another place, another time, and he remembered the girl he hadn't seen in seven years.
Seven years ago...
"All I need is a little more time," Raven said, a pleading edge on her gothic monotone, a shimmer in her purple opticals at the thought of Cyborg leaving, the thought of Cyborg rejecting her. "I just need a little more time."
"How much more time do you want?" His voice hit it's roughest pitch, yet it was also dark and cold. "Raven, two years is enough time, but I don't know anything about you. I've have trust, I've had love, and I've had patenice. I can't keep showing things that are never returned." He looked her in her eyes, trying to ignore the feeling he got at seeing her so close to tears. "The least you could do is TRY, Raven." His blue human eye narrowed, trying to force anger he wasn't feeling into his face, hoping the red robotic eye made up for his human one.
"I don't want this to be hard," she told him matter-of-factly. "I thought you understood: I may have problems expressing my emotions. You know what goes on inside my head... Don't you care at all?" She dared herself to match his glare with one of her own, to keep her thoughts hidden. If he doesn't care about you, don't care about him, she told herself, knowing this wasn't quite true.
"I care, Raven. Maybe it's you who doesn't, though, because even if you can't show it, couldn't you give me a kiss once in a while, at least SAY 'I love you'? Tell me, Raven, when was the last time you met my eyes with a look, a real look, one that said something about who you are and who you see in me? Huh?" He kept pressing, his anger welling in his throat, the human eye that had done nothing for so long threatening to spill over with tears.
"Maybe you're mistaken. Maybe all this has been empty, no feelings, no real words. Maybe I'll never be good enough." Her voice was tiny, quiet, and hard for him to hear, something about it so different, so unfit for the girl he knew and had thought he loved, that he wanted to hug her and tell her how sorry he was. But something held him in place, the fury in his eyes and throat choking but also comforting him, because anger was a much more solid emotion than love could ever be. And then she did it: Brushing back her oddly colored hair, she stared at him, and both of her eyes were as emotionless as the day they met. The girl he cared about was driven away from him. She stepped back, stepped slowly away from him, the shadows of the stairwell ingulfing her, taking her up the stairs, still staring at him, staring straight through the closed door to her room.
He felt them come, felt the tears, felt the emotion, felt the need to scream. But he refused to scream. Instead he stiffened his resolve. He would tell Robin in the morning. But the morning converstaion was first between Robin and Raven, and Raven announced she was stepping out of her spot on the team. The four Teen Titans watched her go, the way she left hitting them all in the chest, but leaving Cyborg with no words to say. He went out the door, down the road, toward a place he knew of where he could be alone and not get the usual strange looks: He was headed for the bar.
Cyborg sighed and looked at the beer can in his hand.
She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind
Until the night
It'll just never be enough, he told himself. I need Raven back. Yet at the same time, something inside him told him Raven wasn't coming back. And a part of it hated himself for it, but another part of his heart wanted to hate her as much as it wanted to hold her. This is so messed up...
He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I'll love her till I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby
And then he knew what he needed to do. I can't drink her away, he told himself. Then he thought of stories he'd heard, stories about the end of pain really lying through a portal, a portal known only to man as death. He knew that, even half-robot, he could die, and maybe, if he died, regreat could leave him. "What's the worst that could happen?" He said aloud, pulling out the small gun, taken from a villan, that he knew could do the job.
"Friend Cyborg!" Sweet naive Starfire was calling through the door, to the boy who she still tried to make laugh after seven years without a smile of any kind. "Cyborg, breakfast has been prepared by Robin, not Beast Boy. Please come and see!" She didn't recive an answer, and she tenitvly turned the knob.
What she saw shocked her. Cyborg had one hand on a picture of Raven and himself, just after they had started dating, his face hidden by a white, fluffy pillow. Or what should have been a white pillow. The blood that soaked it was crimson, pouring from the human side of his face. Starfire's eyes went wide, her hands began to shake, and she stood, taking the scene in, not daring to breath the slight stench of death in the room. Then her lips parted, and her legs unfroze. She ran, screaming and sobbing, until her head connected with Robin's shoulder and she clung to him, wordlessly howling.
"Friend Cyborg..." She managed, then sank dead away.
Across town, Raven sat, alone in her small, cold apartment, her black skirt trailing her as she walked to the couch, trying to ignore the slight sloshing of the whisky in her glass. The hand around it was frail, paler and longer then the hand that had helped Cyborg wax the T-car seven summers ago, different then the hand that had come to Starfire's mouth or Beast Boy's head, different then the hand she had used for good those years ago. Now it worked, cleaned, and mixed drinks. Suddenly, a loud knock on her door startled her. Playing over her still-short purple hair, hurrying to hide the drink glass in the kitchen, popping a mint into her mouth, she headed toward the oaken door that seperated her from the rest of the world.
"Raven." That was all Robin could bring himself to say. His friend's eyes were much older, sader than the day she'd left them. She looked back at him, her high heels giving her a little bit of an extra head on him, her body braced in the doorway, so pitifully, her arms thinner than ever in the black shirt, hugging herself.
"Raven, it's about Cyborg!" Beast Boy blurted out, unable to keep himself silent. He didn't want to hold the note they'd found next to the bloody body, didn't want to hold onto the last thing Cyborg had done before he'd died, didn't want to look at the girl before him, the once-strong Raven Roth reduced to nothing but this thin shell, fighting to get by in the world.
"Well, where is he?" Her voice came out sharp, ragged, and she saw an apprihension in her eyes they hadn't seen there before. She's really worried about Cyborg, Robin thought, frozen and trapped by his own greif and the greif of Raven. "Where is Cyborg, Robin?" One hand drew away from herself, into one of the first acts of human contact she'd made since she lost Cyborg: She grabbed onto Robin's shoulder, nails dug in.
She was hurting him, actually hurting him. Robin leaned to her, his voice as soft and gentle as he could make it in her ear. "He's dead." The words of comfort he had come to say were gone. He told her only the truth, and watched her eyes get big, her mouth freeze up, and tears come to the violet of her eyes.
"Did he die in a battle? Who killed him? I'll kill them." Savage tears, Starfire thought. I would react the same way to being told of Robin. Raven had released Robin, was herding them back inside. The dark apartment held about as much cheer as Raven's room had once held, but no one said anything to her about the decor. That was how she liked things, they knew. The only real light in her light had been them, her friends... Robin felt a pang of dirty guilt. I should have forced her to stay, he thought. Then Cyborg would still be alive and Raven... He looked into her cold, upset face, saw the tears, and shuddered. She was obviously someone she didn't want to be.
"Truth is, Raven... He kind of... Well..." Beast Boy was stuttering. Robin snatched the note out of his hand and gave it to Raven.
"He left that. He... Oh Raven..." Robin found that, for the first time as the leader of the Titans, he was fearful of Raven, fearful and speechless. "He killed himself." She didn't respond, her hand on the note, ripping it open, reading it.
"Oh my God." That was all Raven said, her eyes wet and her body shaking, black energy embracing various objects, throwing them around, adding to the chaos. "You haven't buried him yet, have you? I want to say... Say goodbye." She finished, trying to remain strong and avoid falling to peices. The others nodded to her and they walked the three blocks back to Titans Tower. There she saw the hole the others had finished, the black box of an open casket, and walked over. Her beloved had been cleaned of all blood, but she could still imagine how terrible he had looked. And it's all my fault, she thought miserably.
They stood under the old willow, her favorite tree, which was behind the tower. She had first professed her love to Cyborg there, had first kissed his lips, had first overworked her emotions to keep them still, had meditated there and watched the moon there whenever she couldn't stand to be in her room anymore. She watched Robin and Beast Boy, shoulders hunched and tears running, close the lid. She couldn't stand it anymore, yet she stood there anyway, transfixed, some form of morbid fasination keeping her there, helping her to keep her hand steady to lower him, to replace the dirt. Starfire watched Raven, could tell how close Raven was to breaking down, but didn't say a word. Raven bid them all a very fast goodbye and almost ran home, keeping herself from running only by thinking the word calm over and over.
Three Long Years Later...
The rumors flew but nobody knew
how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide
the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away
a little at a time But she never could
get drunk enough to get him off her mind
Until the night
Raven sighed, all alone, in that same small apartment where she'd first been told about Cyborg. The decorations hadn't changed much, and the room was overall damp and cool. She hardly used her powers anymore, but that didn't save her the need to mediate, which she had been doing until the craving to get up hit her. She wanted to forget about Cyborg, who was always in her thoughts. She had been trying. At first, it had been nothing, just a glass of whisky now and then to ease her depression. It had gotten far worse since he died, though, and the glass in her hand was the fourth of the evening.
She knew the rumors that had flown around town, the rumors that concerned her. She had very little contact with anyone, save the old team members. Not that they were a team anymore, but they did come around once in a while to see how she was, to see if their old friend needed anything. Ten years, ten very long years had passed since she'd left them: She was very lucky they cared at all. Yet Starfire still acted like a sister, Beast Boy tried to make her laugh, and Robin played the role of a brother, her shoulder to cry into and the person to talk to about Cyborg. None of them seemed to blame her.
But what about you? She asked herself. You know you did it. You were the one who stepped away. You were cold, too cold... You loved him and never said it. You wouldn't stand by him. It's your fault, you know it is. She looked at the glass in her hand. It'll just never be enough. He'll always be here, so close, so so close...
And then she heard the answer in her head. If you can't beat him, it crooned, and you can't get him back, join him. She knew where the gun was, the gun she'd had for years, the gun she'd been afraid to use.
I can do this now. The feelings inside her came out, the love, the hate, and the passion to die. She didn't understand, never could have understood what possessed her or anyone else to do such a thing. Cyborg... She took his picture in her hand, the picture he had taken in his the night he had fallen. The pillow below her was the only becon in the dark room. She looked over at the picture of the five of them and set a small note next to it. The note read: I know, I know. What the hell is she doing dead? Why did she leave us? I know I don't have the rights to do this. You guys have tried, you deserve more credit than this. The truth is, though, you only get one shot at life, and that comes with your only shot at love. I had mine: I failed. Failure is not a crime, it just means you have lost the right to keep living. And I've done that. I pushed Cyborg away, I pushed everyone away, and now I'm alone, teetering on the brink of my own destruction, held back only by thoughts of you. Although selfish, I will have gone through with it when you find this. Please, do not hate me, although you have every right. Remember me, not as you found me, but as I used to be: Alive and filled with unshowed love in Cyborg's arms. I'm going to him. Maybe he'll forgive me. Maybe you can forgive me. Thank you for everything and goodbye. Raven
She sighed, the knife of doubt that was usually with her overcoming her. No, I will do this, she told herself. She took a practice shot with the hand that was not on Cyborg's picture, making sure she could shoot the small weapon, and blasted a bottle of whisky. There, she told herself. It's not hard.
She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby
Beast Boy and the others went in without knocking, as they'd done every Saturday for the past three years. The living room had no light, no life to it, and they figured she must still be in her room. They knocked, loud and hard, the way they had done when she lived at home in the tower. The lack of answer passed between them in a worried, tense vibe, and Robin kicked the locked door down.
Robin pulled the chain on a small dark lamp, his gloved hand brushing the gothic design as he lit the room. Beast Boy looked around, remembering the room that was pretty much the same as the one she had at Titans Tower, only different in the placement of the blackout drapes to hide the full-wall windows, the ever-familer mirror laying on the bedside table, which was washed with the faint pool of light. And in the middle of it, once white, now blood-red sheets and pillow encasing her body.
Raven was face-down, her note by her head, the one side of her face reflecting the serenity of sleep, the other done in by the bullet. Beast Boy took one look at her and fainted. Robin clutched Starfire as she read the note in her shaking voice, and they both broke down into complete and total hysterics.
They buried her that same afternoon in the pouring rain, laying her next to Cyborg in the shallow grave that could have been empty. If only... Robin thought, longing for old times. He held Starfire, and the two of them began walking away. Beast Boy turned to follow suit, but heard a humming sound. Although he could not be sure, he thought it came from above him in the tree, female auto and male bass. Shaking off the feeling that Raven and Cyborg were just above him, he followed the others, and the muddy graves were left to an eternal time to reconisle the mistakes of two young teenagers.
