Chapter 2

Back at the Tower…

The silence was audible. The Jump City Titans just didn't know where to begin, whereas the new Titans seemed happy to just wait to take their hosts' lead, in fact they seemed to find their confusion amusing. They were all sitting in the common room, heroes on one side, anti-heroes on the other.

The new Robin was sitting in an arm chair, with his ankle resting on his knee, and his hands resting on his stomach, twiddling his thumbs, and looking at his counterpart patiently. His accompanying Starfire was sitting on the armrest, legs crossed and arm draped over the back. The black-clad Cyborg, Beastboy and Raven were standing behind the chair, flanking their leader and giving them all the look of an underwordly royal court, the king on his throne. Facing them, the Titans were seated on the couch, with Robin in the middle, Beastboy and Cyborg next to him, and the girls standing behind them.

As serene as the visitor-Robin seemed, his impatience, curiosity and urge to lead were slowly getting the better of him. Eventually, he said

"Well, there are some obvious differences between us, because otherwise, well that would be just plain dull. So why don't we start by talking about ourselves?" The Titans were startled at his voice. It was completely identical to Robin's.

"Yeah, 'cause you're so good at that." muttered Beastboy behind him. The young man in the chair shot him an amused pretend-dark look and his subordinate held up his hands defensively.

"Well, okay, why don't you start?" asked the resident Robin, unwilling to give anything away without knowing more about these visitors.

"Why don't you? Strategically, you pose more of a threat to us than we do to you." came the evasive reply.

"Do you always do that? Calculate the risks, and plan strategies for everything?" asked Starfire innocently. The boy in the chair looked at her as if he had just seen her, perhaps for a little longer than necessary. Robin didn't like it.

"What makes you say that? Just because I did it this time doesn't mean I do it every time." he said, flicking a suspicious glance at Robin.

"True, but you still haven't answered the question." she replied, giving him her winning smile. The stranger smiled in return and turned to Robin properly.

"She's smart." he said.

"You don't have to tell me." he said quietly. The other man turned back to Starfire,

"To answer your question, planning strategies and calculating risks is what a leader does, and if it keeps us alive…" he said, shrugging. Robin hadn't failed to notice the second quick but meaningful look he got as his twin answered.

"And what is it exactly that you do?" said Cyborg. The man laughed,

"That, I strongly suspect, is where our differences lie. Let's see if I'm right. You fight crime, don't you? You know, the whole "good triumphs over evil" thing? Complete with capes and witty one-liners?" he said.

Robin nodded reluctantly, and shrugged,

"Basically." he said, "Which means you're criminals." The dark Robin leaned forward in his chair to make their resemblance even more the mirror image.

"Bravo, Robin, we do indeed live outside the law, as you might say. But that doesn't necessarily make us bad people. You have to bear in mind that our Jump City is a very different place from yours. In fact, in our city, we are the law. We make sure crime is just crime. I don't allow sadism in my town." The crime-fighting Robin seemed to consider this, and size up his equivalent. Without any perceivable change in their expressions, their eye-contact suddenly became a vicious test of wills. Neither would bow to the other's authority and tension hung in the air like a storm.

"Oh man, am I hungry." declared the new, level-headed Beastboy, breaking the silence.

"My thoughts exactly." agreed the other Beastboy, looking both surprised and approving.

"You got any tofu?" asked his match.

"Do we ever!" cried Beastboy in reply, looking eager and bounding off towards the kitchen.

"Uh-uh man, I ain't eating none of that tofu stuff. Gimme meat every time!" said Cyborg. The more sinister Cyborg turned to him,

"Tell me about it man, that stuff ain't even food."

"Exactly" the blue Cyborg replied with a look of wonderment that someone finally understood his point of view. Then he turned back to the Beastboys. "So I think we've agreed. We're having steak." he finished.

"No way man, I can't eat meat, I've been most of those animals!" And so it went. Raven, the original one, shook her head. She jumped when a sugar-coated voice at her ear said,

"Adorable, aren't they?" It was the other Raven.

"What do you mean?"

"Beastboy, you gotta love him."

"No" It wasn't a denial, merely a dismissal. Just because they looked the same, didn't mean Raven had to share anything with her.

"No? So you're telling me you don't think about him at night when you're alone, or catch yourself holding your breath if you see him even come close to getting hurt?"

"What makes you think I do that?" asked Raven.

"Because I do."

"Oh yeah? Well you're wrong, you're nothing like me." She turned to walk away from the unsettling copy of herself, but her reflection caught up with her.

"Okay, okay, I can see you don't wanna talk about it. But I bet there's one thing we have in common." Her eyes were twinkling mischievously. "Wanna meditate with me?" Raven would've said no, but she didn't sense any malicious intent in her offer, and she was going to anyway. If they were going to be staying in the same house, it would make sense not to get off on the wrong foot. Besides, when was she likely to ever meet another half-demon from Azarath, even if it was herself.

"Okay"

"Cool," she seemed generally pleased, "where do you like to do it?"

"My room, it's always too loud anywhere else."

The new Raven laughed, "Tell me about it." she said. Together, they left the main room and made their way upstairs.

With them gone, and the Cyborgs and Beastboys still arguing in the kitchen, only the Starfires and Robins remained seated. Not for long though, because the darker Starfire was watching the other one curiously. The two Robins didn't notice, they were sulking. But she soon spoke,

"Koriand'r?" she said, making the others look at her. She was talking to her lighter Starfire counterpart. She said something short in Tamaranian. A look of happy surprise sprung to Starfire's features and she replied in Tamaranian. Soon the two were off by themselves speaking in fast Tamaranian with animated hand gestures, leaving one Robin with the other.

Not wanting to look at his other self, Robin sat and watched Starfire instead. Robin had been watching her for a minute or two, when his alter ego jumped in.

"For someone who spends so much time staring at her, you would think you wouldn't be so blind." he said.

"Excuse me?" replied Robin, flaring at his doppelganger's implied insult.

"Starfire. You love her, just like I do. Only I seem to have been the only one to do anything about it." he said proudly.

It was true that when Robin had seen his other self with the corresponding Starfire, it had made Robin's heart twinge and doubt his own reluctance to approach Starfire. God knows he loved her enough to lay everything on the line for her, but it was the rejection he wouldn't be able to bear. And how would that affect the team? The team had to come first, no matter how hard it was.

"Let me give you some advice, Robin." Robin wasn't sure he wanted to hear this. "Just go for it, take that leap of faith. You'll regret it if you don't. And if your Starfire is anything like mine, she won't turn you down."

"Thanks, but she's nothing like your Starfire." he replied scathingly, before getting up and retreating to his room to think.

The Tofu vs Meat argument had subsided. The Cyborgs had agreed to monitor the cooking tofu while tending to their precious steaks, since both Beastboys felt they would lose their breakfast if they had to do the same to slabs of sizzling carcass. This left the young, green men to talk among themselves, and one thing in particular had been weighing on Beastboy's mind.

During the ride back to the Tower, the other Raven had been all over his counterpart, leaving Beastboy full of doubt and a strange loneliness. How was it that this Raven was so open and comfortable around the darker him, when his Raven was just as withdrawn and solitary as when they weren't dating?

He understood that her powers prevented her from expressing emotions too openly, but she could tell him how she felt, couldn't she? She could still touch him after all. Beastboy was disgusted with himself, and hated himself for being so selfish. He knew how guilty she felt, for not being able to be everything she thought a girlfriend should be. Time and time again he told her he was happy being able to be more than just her friend, but they'd been together for a while now, and he could tell she was starting to have doubts. He couldn't stand the thought of losing her, but he couldn't think of what to do to convince her of that. Their relationship had become more about trying to give Raven reasons to stay together, when he was quickly running out of them himself.

He remembered what he'd done about a week after they'd started dating. He thought maybe Raven was just waiting for him to make the first move, take control of the relationship. So, once they were alone, he'd pulled her to him and kissed her before she had time to react. She hadn't fought him or rejected him exactly, he even thought she'd begun to kiss him back, but then the lamp next to them shattered into a spray of porcelain shards. Beastboy remembered looking back at Raven, to laugh about it, but he only caught a glimpse of some deep frustration, before she pulled her hood up and pushed him away. It had taken weeks of grovelling and self-inflicted jokes to get her to hang-out with him again.

He decided to take it up with his alter ego.

"So, you and Raven, huh?" Subtlety never was his strong point.

"Yeah" he replied proudly, "Isn't she something?"

"She sure is. You know, out of all this," he gestured loosely at the room, "I think it's the Ravens that are the most unlike."

"What do you mean?"

Beastboy laughed sheepishly, "I couldn't help but notice your Raven seems a bit more… engaging, than mine."

The other Beastboy snorted bitterly, "Yeah, you and the rest of the world."

"What do you mean?"

He sighed, "Our Ravens aren't that different really. They just control their powers differently. Yours, I would guess, keeps all her emotions in an iron cage, and if they were to get out, things would explode. Mine, on the other hand, hides her emotions behind a mask of seduction. It's just the way she is. She isn't more open about herself than your's is." This new Beastboy's voice sounded just the same as the other one's, but it was completely steady, not fluctuating with jokes and emotion, and that made all the difference.

"Sorry for being shallow, but why is that a bad thing? At least she shows you she loves you."

"Perhaps, but then she loves everything and everyone. My girlfriend flirts with the entire world, and that's a bad thing. If you were to ask her what she thought of a movie, she'd say which actors she thought were hot."

"Oh, I think I get it now." Beastboy understood that perhaps his reflection's relationship wasn't any better than his, yet his soul was still heavy with wanting to find a way to help Raven. They were quiet for a minute and they both seemed introspective. Then the new Beastboy said,

"If there's one thing I've learned from being with Raven, it's to just give her time. She's probably as torn up about it as you are."

Beastboy was about to reply when Cyborg rapped him on the head, steak in hand, and said,

"I think your sorry excuse for food is done." Any further thought was overrode by his stomach.