Chapter Eleven: Everything Will Be Alright

Robin smiled as he placed the final wire from the complex-looking diagram and carefully shut the back-plate of his metal friend's body. Beast Boy, Starfire, and Raven all stood around Cyborg's cold metal bed, if it could even be called a bed, anxious looks on their faces. Raven had her hood up, but her eyes gave her away: She looked terrifed and yet relived to be standing there, and the hope came through the fear.

"Is everything ready, Beast Boy?" He asked. Beast Boy stood before the computer, looking mildly confused but resolute at the same time.

"I think I've got it, Robin," he said, trying to sound normal instead of strained and worried, although his face failed to hide what his voice clearly showed. He looked over at the silent goth girl, who had moved up and lain her right hand on Cyborg's shoulder. "Are you ready, Raven?"

Instead of uttering some form of audioable response, Raven just nodded blankly. Robin hugged Starfire gently to his side, seeing the worry on her face, and the two of them looked on as Beast Boy began muttering to himself, reading the diagram Raven had refused to touch and wishing someone else was doing this for him.

Starfire looked over at Raven, who was staring at Cyborg as if he were the only thing in the small room.Starfire found her eyes shifted from side to side, trying to find something else to focus on, but everywhere she saw signs of life, and so instead she forced herself to watch Beast Boy and Raven.

I killed someone. Even if he comes back... He'll never love me. He'll never really be able to love someone who murdered because of him... Raven looked at her own hand laying on his shoulder, then over at Beast Boy's face as he muttered something and tried a different key sequence.

"Friend Robin, why does friend Cyborg not awaken?" Starfire's emerald eyes were full of tears, tears that Raven could not force herself to look at, for she would have given anything to be able to cry. Instead, she turned and left the room, spinning on her heel and leaving before anyone had a chance to stop her.

No one could say anything. "Friend Raven..." Starfire started, but could not finish her sentance, and stood alone as Robin, saying loud, angry words that triggered an upset response from Beast Boy, ran over to see why nothing was working. "...Another way!"

"Dude, I've done everything I can!" Beast Boy snapped, his face glaring at Robin, his hands still resting over the keyboard, still trying to find a second way to bring Cyborg back to his former self, to bring back theteen he considered his best friend. Instead of yelling back, Robin started slamming keys, yelling things no one else could understand.

Starfire really did cry now, tears sliding down her face as she listened to the fighting and staring after Raven. Robin seemed to be having no better luck than Beast Boy, however, and their voices trailed away to nothing.

Whether several minutes or several hours had passed, no one knew. The voice that broke the silence, hoarse and broken, was almost too good to be true, and for a second all of the Titans were dumbfounded. "Where's Raven? What happened to Raven?" Cyborg started to pull one of the cables out of his body, but Robin stopped him with a gentle hand.

"Everything is fine. You're going to have to stay here for a little while longer, and then..." Slowly, careful not to say anything that would cause Cyborg to jump up and run out the door after her, Robin began to tell Cyborg the events of the last few weeks. Cyborg listened intently until Robin had finished.

"Why'd she do it? Did it just kind of happen, or...?" Cyborg seemed slightly confused on the details of Raven's murder. Raven... I can't believe she would do it, but she must have had a reason...

"You. She wanted to get the blueprints, and when Slade had them... She thought she would rescuse him on her own. We couldn't stop her in time..."

"Oh," Cyborg managed to get out, his voice thin and strained-sounding.

"We are most sorry, friend Cyborg," Starfire whispered, moving over toward him and putting her hand on his shoulder where Raven's had been before. "I only wish we could have prevented..."

Cyborg simply shook his head, saying nothing, his feelings gone numb. She was willing to... She did... For me? She loves me... She loves me despite the metal body... She just wanted to save me...

"I have to see Raven."

Raven sat down by the water's edge under an overhang of rock, her back propped against the crushed rock that had formed the overhang. The sun came up with the red of blood over the water, but Raven made no sign that she really saw the rippling of the water, or the sunrise. Instead, her head lay against her hand, hair blowing around her in a wind she didn't really feel.

"I went all that way for nothing. There was nothing I could have done..." There was a pause in her words, which echoed back to her cruely in the small cavern. "I killed in vain. No death should be..."

In vain. She finished the thought quietly, unable to say it and make it real to her. "Cyborg... Cyborg, I never realized what would happen if I went after you. I never realized that I didn't tell you enough I loved you. I never..." She stopped, unable to stand the sound of her own voice any longer.

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she failed to notice the footsteps, failed to notice the person coming closer and closer to her as the first of the tears slid down her face, sending a nearby rock hurtling out into the water. "Cyborg..." Another rock came, another tear slid down her face. I cant' stop crying...

She felt a hand come to rest on hers, but she ignored it, wanting nothing more than to fall back into her pain and let it surround her until there was nothing else left. "Raven..." The voice broke with both the feeling of unused-ness and emotion, and Cyborg tried to keep his own tears back upon finding her like this. To think it's all for nothing, she must be in so much pain...

Raven blinked once, twice, trying to control the emotion. Am I just hearing voices? Murderers go crazy... But I'm not hearing Slade's voice... That's... "Cyborg?"

Cyborg swallowed hard, swallowing his own emotion enough to speak. "Raven... Please stop crying. It's okay now. I'm here."

Instead of answering him, Raven stood up and fell against him, Cyborg still tightly gripping her left hand in his own. He brought his right arm over to hold her against his chest and just let her lay there, tears glistening and falling over both of them from her eyes, rock after rock making it's way out and into the water, shrouded in her black aura. "Cyborg... You're okay?"

"I should be asking you that question," Cyborg replied. "I'm fine, but you don't seem... Seem to be doing too well."

"They told you what happened?" She turned her tear-streaked face to him. "Cyborg, I can understand if you can't talk to me agian... I never should have done it..."

Cyborg made a soft shushing noise. "Raven, you would have killed for me, and you put your life on the line for me. How could you ever think I would hate you for that?"

"So... So you really don't think it makes me cold, that it makes mea cruel person?"

"I'm not saying it was right," Cyborg quickly clarified, "But what I am saying is that I'm not going to stop talking to you for a mistake, no matter how big the mistake. Okay?" He held her closer to him all the while he spoke, letting of of her hand and brushing her hair back away from her eyes, seeing the trust in them.

"...I was so worried I would never see you again," Raven said finally, breaking her eyes away from his.

"I never want you to doubt I'm here for you if you need it, okay?" Cyborg asked. "I just... I want things to go back to how they used to be. We'll fight crime and... We'll be the same people we always were."

"So you're saying... That things can be like they always were?" Raven looked at him with an expression of hope, and Cyborg was taken by the beauty of it all.

Instead of actually answering her right away, Cyborg took Raven and placed his hand under her chin, tilting it toward him and locking eyes with her again. "Yes." Without waiting for her to respond, he pressed his lips gently to hers.

Raven looked startled for only a second, then brought her arms up to rest around his shoulders and started kissing him back. Cyborg smiled and closed his eye after a second of watching her, and the two of them sat under the blood-red sun like that for several seconds.

Raven was the one to pull away first as the light came to rest in a gentle beam across the left side of her face. "Are you ready to go inside and let them know everything is all right?"

Cyborg took Raven's hand and started to walk away from the rock where she had sat crying before. "Everything is all right. Everything will be all right, Raven."

Because I love you, regardless of what happens. Nothing is going to tear us apart, no matter what.

Thank you to all my reviewers.

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