Raventhedarkgoddess: It's three in the moring, so if this sucks, that's why. ((Rae/Cy))

With You

Standing on a bridge.
Waiting in the dark.
I thought that you'd be here by now.
There's nothing but the rain.
No footsteps on the ground.
I'm listening but there's no sound.
Isn't anyone trying to find me?
Won't somebody come take me home?

She was all alone. Her hair blew, her eyes stung, and the violet rain beat into her frail body, the figure hunched slightly against the wind, but still standing tall, almost uncaringly. She was unsure of what had possessed her to come out onto this rotting wooden bridge over the river so late at night, so far from the city and away from help, but she refused to turn away as the river churned below her like mad and the storm raged at her, furious that it had not intiminated this frail creature into hiding as it had the city inhabinats into staying inside. She clutched to the splintering rail for dear life: What was left of her once dear life, anyway.

The rotting wood was sharper than she had anticipated, sharp from lover's hands and vandel's kicks as they stood in the spot where she now bask in her numbness, yet she didn't feel the splinters entering her grey hands. She barely even began to notice it as it trailed down, beating it's own rythem with the rain, indifferent yet exactly the same from it's crystal clearness. The dark around her was pulling, moving, and unwelcomly pulling on her, dragging her down, pulling her into itself. It covered her like a blanket: A heavy black blanket that had fallen over her forever, weighing down her shoulders, making it impossible to see anything but her hands in front of her face.

The dark had been her friend, at first. She'd wallowed in it when no one else understood. She'd taken comfort in the dark, unwelcomed, unloved, and unwanted by most people, as was she, and so she had kept it close at hand, ready to run back, ready to sink into it and leave herself there forever if no one would have her. But then she had met the Teen Titans, her teammates, and had begun to shed the dark ever so slightly, and regain control of her life. But now she was blanketed, held by the dark again, and held friend only to the dark. She cursed the dark at that point, though, cursed the night, cursed the bridge she stood on, and cursed her friends for breaking up. It's all my fault, Raven thought numbly, the first real thought since this hellish nightmare had begun.

The blood on her grey skin looked natural soaked in blood for only a second, but even after she did nothing to stop it. She allowed herself to become caught up in the intrecate pattern of wood, crimison blood, and grey flesh that was her hand. She was not replused by the sight of what she was becoming as most people would have been: The only feelings that crept through her body were saddness, regret, and hopelessness, along with the sensation of being lost. Lost to herself, lost to the people she was closest to, and lost to anyone who could have helped her.

Lost to everything that ever mattered.

The bleeding slowed. She didn't want the torrent of guilt, the thoughts, and the pain that would follow her from the home she was running from. She didn't want to remember Titan's Tower, or her room, or all the times she had sat on the couch next to her friends, warm and safe, hands on her shoulders and words in her ears, reassurence. She wanted this to be her forgetting place, her dying place. I can die now, alone, friendless, cold... She looked around once more, longing for the comfort her friends had given her. Her eyes caught only the cold rain, falling all around her, and her ears heard it, alternating with the water below the bridge, and then the water began to drip down her face, salty and unlike the rain water...

There was a crash, a redundant crash, and a tree fell at the bridge's base, glowing black, and it reminded her why she couldn't cry. Her father, her emotions, her link to him, her mirror, her friends... Part of her didn't want to cry, but the other half wanted to bawl and let go of all the pain still inside her head. It's all his fault. I can't love, I can't cry, I can't do anything a NORMAL person could do... Suddenly, the controlled girl who was the mask Raven wore, the lie she lived, came out and pulled the tears back, kept the emotions inside. Raven resented her, yet she also knew she needed to regain herself. But with the control came the feeling, the grief, and the pain, which only made it all harder to contain. Somehow, though, she felt the control wash over her.

She sat down, directly in the middle of the rotting wood, listening hard for something she wanted to hear more than anything else in the world. The rain hit the exposed part of her neck as she leaned forward, but Raven either faked ignorence or truely was ignoring it, because her face remained set, her shoulders squared under her cloak despite the rain coming through the thin material. Settling down further in the bridge, she knew something in her was giving up. Her violet hair was plastered to her head in a messy pattern by the wind and rain, but she couldn't bring herself to brush it away from her eyes. All that mattered right now was listening: Listening for the footfall of one of the friends she wasn't even sure she had anymore.

She found herself straining, wanting to hear something, wanting to belive in something or someone that wasn't coming, wasn't true. Even she didn't know what she was wishing for. Everyone's gone, no one's coming for you, she snapped at herself, although she was still straining, still fighting, still listening, almost hating herself for this foolish wishing and dreaming all the while. Why? The empty question bounced inside Raven's skull, forcing Raven to hear it a thousand times, but reciving no answer to the endless echo. Why?

Cyborg... She was unsure of why, but his was the first face to surface from the sea of painful memories, and the first to hold her. His human eye seemed to sparkle, and the offhand way she last remembered him talking to her, the lovingness behind it as he stared at his girlfriend, was almost too much for Raven. She pulled her head down, the rain attacking the back of her neck worse than ever. I loved him. Why does it have to be this way? Does anyone even miss me? Do they know I'm gone? Or do they think I'm being antisocial me, locked in my room, ignoring them, packing, getting ready to leave them?

The only answering sound was the rain and the clap of thunder, the light of the lightining flashing as breifly as the light in her life had, both pitching her into total darkness. She realized what she wanted to hear all of a sudden: She wanted to hear someone coming for her. Isn't anyone coming for me? Won't somebody come take me home? Another clap of thunder was her reply.

It's a damn cold night.
Trying to figure out this life.
Won't you take me by the hand
take me somewhere new?
I don't know who you are.
But I, I'm with you.
I'm with you.

Raven ran one hand over the back of her neck, wiping away a few drops of icy rain. Parionid, feeling something was watching her, she spun around, the cold feeling of eyes bothering her as she turned slowly, trying desperatly to see if anyone was there, if anyone could show her the world again, if anyone could pull her from the dark. No one and nothing was there. Raven thought about trying to stand back up, but her legs and her mind saw no reason to stand back up.

The cool air slipped under, past the buldge of the hood of her cloak, chilling her and yet remaining completely unbothersome. Instead, she looked at her comunicator under her cloak, a memory of Cyborg, of Robin and Starfire, of Beast Boy, of her warm room, of Slade and Terra and everything that was her world... It served as a memory, a dark and terrible memory of the happiness and the smiles, the laughs and the warm rides in the T-car, fighting beside Cyborg, meditating with Starfire, healing Robin's arm, throwing Beast Boy into a wall, talking in Terra's room... Without warning, the comunicator was thrown across the bridge, shattered with her mind.

The possessed strenght and feeling gone, Raven could hardly hold her own head up off the ground, and did so with amazing difficulty. The rain pounded, poured, bit into her still, but even the will to care was gone. The will to care has been gone for a long time, said a voice in her mind. I never did care, she tried to tell it, but the will to lie outright to herself, to pretend she was an emotionless immortal, was long gone, like the raindrops that had been falling when she'd first run, terrified and upset, out of the tower were gone, soaked into the ground, as passing as the life of a person, endless in their coming.

The chill returned to her slowly, creeping, as if more eyes had come upon her, but she did not turn around this time. Why does it have to be so damn cold...? She pulled the cloak to herself and brought a corner of it to her eye, hoping to wipe away the tears before they began again, the tears of hell's angel, finding heaven for a second only to be dropped by her God itself, now too broken and alone to go back where she had come from.

"Raven's gone," Cyborg called from the long hallway, into the various open doors of the people he had thought were his friends, the people he had never thought would abandon him like this, his voice laced with an edge of panic.

Robin came to the doorway to stand next to his friend, kicking the box he was kicking with hate and spite. "If she's gone, she's probably already left to try to get her life back. She's got powers: She can pack quicker than anyone. I would forget her if I were you, because this fight obviously means everything, everyone we loved and lived for is over. Raven's probably gone on." The leader's voice was gentle, smooth: The voice of a best friend who knew he was losing all of his friends in the same night, in the same way, and knowing it was his fault they had fought, they had hurt one another, and they they stood only an hour away from last goodbyes.

"All her stuff is still here," Cyborg protested, still not satisfied with Robin's answer or willing to forget about Raven, not until he knew where she was for sure.

Beast Boy's hand rested on an old monkey that he remembered from another time. Help me, help me, help me count, Beast Boy thought to himself, seeing the look of murder on Raven's face, seeing her face's anger and relif, her threats, and her life's legacy in one long look. "Maybe she didnt' want to be reminded of us..." He yelled to Cyborg as he threw the monkey in the box with the clothes off his messy floor, ignoring the peice of ceiling tile that Starfire had blasted down on his head earlier as he strived to pull his clothing out of their heaps and make sense of what he was and wasn't taking. "She could have just left everything!" But why would she leave her mirror? Her stuff was important to her... Wasn't it? Beast Boy was completely confused. We were important to her too and she's not taking us... At least I thought we were important to her... And if I feel like this, then what about Cy?

"I'm gonna go out for a little bit," Cyborg said quietly. If anyone cares, he thought. Which they don't. He listened to the door lock securly behind himself as he went out. He made a quick decision: He would go into the woods and check Raven's favorite haunts, every place he'd ever been with her. His feet splashed the puddles, his face took most of the rain, and he ran quickly past what could possibly have led him to Raven: Her footprints in the soft mud, full of water, leading to the dark bridge and the answer to his life.

"I'm sick of thinking," Raven said aloud to the darkness, feeling the finalness of it all. She reached under her cloak, hoping to find something, something he could hold on to, something that would bring back the reason and logic of life and permit her to leave, to awaken from the darkness that had taken her heart over. Instead, she brought herself to look down, through the thin wooden slats in the bridge, at the rotting wooden rail, and thought about how easy, how painless it would be just to allow herself to jump into the churning water.

She wasn't certain what it was about being here, about being alone again, but it was making her judgement impaired highly. She thought of Cyborg, but this thought brought no comfort, only empty pain, anger, and rage at the thought that she would never see him again. Maybe I don't want to die, she thought, but the two sides of her mind were muddled with this conflict so that her decision quickly became just to sit there and try to figure things out. "I just want to get away," she whispered to the falling rain. "Someone come take me home."

The words were out. She, Raven, who had trusted no one, wanted to be held and led back to the home she was fully aware she no longer had.

I'm looking for a place.
And searching for a face.
Is anybody here I know?
Cause nothing's going right.
And everything a mess.
And no one likes to be alone.
Isn't anyone trying to find me?
Won't somebody come take me home?

"Raven!" Cyborg called into the empty night. "RAVEN!" He had been everywhere, from one end to the other, but he hadn't seen Raven, hadn't seen any sign of anyone, just wind and rain and emptyness in his own heart. The expansive silence was his only compainion as he moved.

"Raven." He whispered the name this time, the will-power and his own voice taken by the wind, the sound broken, frail, and quiet, his hands balled into fists at his sides. The underbrush smacked his legs, his feet slipping as he fought forward.

"Raven! Raven, come on! Where are you?" There was thin path, very narrow, where a person could have gone, the underbrush bent back slightly. Raven. Cyborg set off at a run, slipping and sliding, for what he hoped would end this hellish nightmare.

"Is someone out there?" Raven's voice was little more than crazy rambling now, but she didn't care. No one's around to care, she thought. I just wish one of my friends would... I just need someone right now... Isn't there any place left in the world I can go, any place left for me? Then her friend's faces burned back into her head, and she knew there was no way to find another place she truely belonged: She had just been in one, and everyone there couldn't possibly stop hating each other after the fight. What was it even about? It left me alone, and for what? My friends... She remembered there last laugh together, smiling at a joke Cyborg had made, Starfire confused but laughing just to be a part of the laughter...

No one would find her here. No one would know, no one would care. No one knew her face anyway. Short of the people she had been close to, no one knew her name, no one knew anything about her. If she were found dead, only four people would be able to idenify her. And would those four people care? Would four hearts contract in loss? Would the brains go into denial, shock? Or would they just think, "She's not someone I know or care about anyway." Would they even remember her? Or would they think she was every bit of the cold bitch she pretended, ignoring them, leaving her things and starting a new life they were not involved in? Maybe no one would find her, and her body would rot in that icy, cold water, cold as the night itself...

"I'm not like that," she whispered out loud. The rain kept to it's answer in a steady, annoying rythem, that never changed and never gave a furfilling answer.

Everything is such a mess... She saw them again, eating, laughing, until Robin and Beast Boy had started. A petty fight, worthy of no one's notice, until Robin lost his temper. He swung at Beast Boy. Raven saw again, saw Starfire involve herself in the struggle, pulling Robin away. Beast Boy had become angry and one of his blows hit Raven. Cyborg pulled her back, off to the side, holding onto her, but watching her friends, something inside her snapped. She had run from the tower...

Every scowl, every cruel word, came back, hard and fast, every time when she'd wanted to be alone, every time she'd stormed off to be alone... I don't want to be alone now, she thought. I don't ever want to be alone again. I never want to be so, so alone, so hurt... "I just want to go home."

Cyborg's search was begining to feel vain, foolish, as he ran along the path. This could be a deer trail for all I know. Suddenly, the woods opened up, and an old bridge loomed ahead of him. The decaying wood was holding up quite well, from what he could tell. But the part that he was interested in was out in the middle: A girl, blue cloak flying in the wind, sitting cross-legged, purple hair plastered to her forehead.

He ran toward her.

It's a damn cold night.
Trying to figure out this life.
Won't you take me by the hand
Take me somewhere new?
I don't know who you are but I
I'm with you.
I'm with you.

Why is everything so confusing?
Maybe I'm just out of my mind.
It's a damn cold night.
Trying to figure out this life.
Won't you take me by the hand,
Take me somewhere new?
I don't know who you are but I
I'm with you.
I'm with you.

She was slumped there, slumped by the wreckage of her comunicatior, so alone, so forgotten, that Cyborg quickened his pace, now a full-out, hapazard run to her side. That was when he noticed the water clinging to her cheeks wasn't just rain: It was teardrops.

The tears were hot, fast tears, and Raven didn't care. She couldn't contain them anymore, and there was nothing out here she couldn't destroy. She could destroy the bridge benieth her, fall through into the water. It didn't matter: Nothing did. She was so intent that she missed the sound she'd been hoping to hear: Cyborg's footfall.

Cyborg leaned down to Raven, not even bothering to say her name, tears falling from his own eyes as he scooped her up in his arms. "Are you okay, Rae?" He managed finally. He stared at her, at the cuts, at the blood, at the endlessness of her hurt, and knew Raven had been trying to forget, had been condeplating a way to end it all. I'm not going to let her give up, he thought. I need her.

"Cyborg?" She was confused, dazed, holding onto him, and he set her down, allowing for her to lean on him, holding her. "Cyborg... Why did you come after me?" She paused. "No one even cared when I ran out. Why did you come? I was going to die... I almost died here..." The tears fell faster, loud explosions being heard.

"Raven, I thought you understood that I love you. Come on, let's go home." Both of them started for the home they weren't sure if they had, but even the broken home couldn't harm them. They were together now. Maybe the others would come back, maybe they wouldn't. Cyborg kissed Raven's lips gently, carefully.

I don't know who you are, not really, Raven thought, but I'm still with you.