Disclaimer: face-eating parrots own Teen Titans, not me!

Chapter thirty-five! Everyone, thank The Gnostic! If not for him, I would never have gotten this chapter done. Read his fic "Must This Be Our Future?". I recommend it strongly and give it five stars! TY again for the advice, buddy!

And all of you who are reading this story: I LOVE YOU!


Anyone who has screenshots from the show and/or scans from any comics that are BBRae oriented in any way who would be able to send them to me, please do if it's not too much trouble! I need some more for the proof section of my site. Thanks!

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Running her hand absentmindedly along the cool wall of the hallway, Starfire made her way down the long dark passageway toward her bedroom. Since Beast Boy had left the living room, there had been a strange, awkward feeling set over everything. She hadn't been able to stand it any longer. Retreating off to her own room seemed to be the logical thing to do.

Once in the bright purple-and-pink room, Starfire could feel the relief wash over her like a tidal wave. Shaking off her rampant confusion, she threw herself down on the round bed and heaved a great sigh of relief. She was slightly surprised at herself. It wasn't like Starfire to run off when feelings became overwhelming. And here she was, retreating off to her room like a certain violet-haired recluse she knew.

It scared her, this behavior. It meant she was acting like Raven. And if she was retreating into her solitude like Raven always did, did this mean she was going to start acting like Raven was lately? Did it mean she was going to run off and leave everyone just because of the confusing and almost disturbing emotions she felt at the moment?

Starfire shook this off. She was being ridiculous. Those worries, that paranoia, it was just the stress talking. This stress was weighing down on the entire team, and she knew it. Raven's departure had caused enormous amounts of tension in the four remaining Titans. But what had it caused for Starfire herself? She pondered for a moment, but still wasn't exactly able to put her finger on what she should be feeling. Any feelings about Raven's actual exodus had taken a backseat to her worried emotions about Beast Boy. She tried to focus on how this was affecting her, but realized for probably the first time that she wasn't as open with herself about her emotions as she was with other people. He had little problem talking to others about her feelings, but when it came to discussing them with herself, she tried to push them out of her mind.

Starfire rolled over on her stomach and stared off into the bright surface of the wall, rolling her gaze around the room. She could feel a familiar sense of unease creeping over the far corners of her mind. She knew what this meant. It was time for her to do what she did whenever she had unpleasant feelings…besides making the Pudding of Sadness. She had to clean her room.

Starfire's room was relatively clean in the first place. There wasn't much to do but clean everything off of her nightstand and put it back. In recent times, she had accumulated quite a lot on that small surface. She floated gracefully over to the nightstand and began to transfer the things that rested on its small round top onto her bed. Everything brought back some kind of memory. The small doll replica of her that the Puppet King had created, Robin's corsage from the prom he had attended with that dreadful Kitten while Starfire had stood diligent watch the whole while, and various other items.

As she reached the back of the table, Starfire's eyes fell on the telltale 'Kodac' logo on the backs of a small stack of rectangular objects. She picked up the pictures and began to look through them. The pictures weren't exactly new; they were from about six months ago when the Titans had gone to the carnival, about a month or so before Terra's return.

The first was a picture of she and Robin, standing in front of one of the faster rides. She had a large grin on her face and Robin was leaning on the railing, looking a bit green in the face, and both of their hair was a mess. The next picture was one of Cyborg and Beast Boy in front of a food booth. Beast Boy had his mouth full of cotton candy and Cyborg was holding a corndog. Cyborg sported a large grin and was giving Beast Boy a noogie, and Beast Boy was laughing hysterically at something his friend had just said. Starfire smiled warmly at the friendly images. The next photo, however, strangely did not provoke those same affectionate feelings. It was a picture taken in front of a roller coaster. Beast Boy had an arm around Raven and was leaning on her, his other hand raised up as he waved at the camera, grinning himself silly; and Raven simply stood still, though the look on her face was not her usual bored one, and instead of only showing a trace of a grin she was actually smiling. It was a very friendly picture, one full of fun and joy, but Starfire could feel a strange anger rising up in her throat as she looked at Raven's face.

As Starfire thought deeply for a moment, her rage boiled. "You are not being a good friend, Raven. You are not being a good friend at all!" she snapped, talking about the present rather than the past in the photograph. "You are…you are being a klorbag!" she said, voice rising almost to a yell. Starfire shook her head crossly and stuffed the photo under her bed as angry tears streamed down her face. "How could you do this to us?"

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"I know you guys are talking about me, so don't bother trying to keep it quiet," came a voice from the doorway of the living room. Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg, who had been discussing him with their heads bent, immediately shut up and looked up at him.

"Uh, hey Beast Boy," Robin said in greeting. Beast Boy nodded mutely as he made his way over to the sofa and sat down, all without a word.

"You feelin' better, B?" Cyborg asked. Beast Boy shrugged.

"I guess so," he said unconcernedly.

"You sure?" Robin asked.

"Sure," Beast Boy said, shrugging again. Robin raised an eyebrow. "Don't sweat it dude. Go ahead with what you need to do. I won't bother you," Beast Boy assured him. With this he turned his gaze to the window, staring blankly out into the bay.

Robin sighed. If Beast Boy didn't want to talk about it, he wasn't going to force him. He turned his attention instead to Starfire. She seemed terribly troubled and he was determined to find out why. "Um, Star…are you OK?" he asked gently. Starfire jumped, as though she had forgotten she wasn't the only one in the room.

"What? Oh, yes Robin, I am…fine," she said with a too-cheery smile. It dissolved when she saw that Robin didn't believe her.

"Come on, I know there's something wrong, Star. What is it?" he asked. Starfire looked uncomfortable, as though she were in a doctor's office wearing a terribly revealing plastic gown with no back. "Never mind. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Robin said comfortingly, patting her arm.

"No, it is alright, Robin. I will talk about it. I suppose I am…upset about Raven. More upset than I previously believed." she stopped. "I do not wish to say any more."

"That's fine, Star. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," Robin assured her, slipping an arm around her shoulders. She rested her cheek against his shoulder and gave a troubled sigh.

There was a pause. All four Titans were silent for a moment, staring off into space, picking at the sofa, yawning occasionally, but the small distractions couldn't make it any less obvious what all of them were thinking about. Raven.

"Hey, guys?" Cyborg asked after a few minutes of the tense, uncomfortable silence.

"Yeah, Cyborg?" Robin asked, looking up from the carpet.

"I needed to…to say something. I know you all feel pretty beaten up about what Raven did, but…well…do you think you might be being a little too hard on her? I mean, I can understand how she feels and I know how she must have felt to want to leave like that, you know?"

This statement was met by nothing but a thick, tense silence for a record time of three seconds.

"So you're siding with her?" Robin snapped. "After how she just left us and-"

Cyborg held up his mechanical hands. "Easy Robin, I'm just saying that I can sort of understand how her point of view must be on this and-"

Starfire stood up. There was a look on her face and a set to her mouth that both of the boys could only recall seeing maybe once or twice in the entire time they had known her. "And so you are simply saying that her dreadful behavior is justified?" she asked. By now, she was shaking with anger. "After she has hurt Beast Boy, hurt you, hurt all off us, simply run away with flagrant disregard for our feelings and not even cared enough to look back, not even thought of how it would affect her 'friends', you are saying that it is all fine? We are being to hard on her? We are being too compassionate with her! She has broken Beast Boy's heart, wounded all of us, and it is not fine! It is not OK! DO NOT even consider saying that you can take her side after what she is putting us through!" she was really roaring now. "She is being a FLUCKBEETLE!"

"Calm down Starfire!" Cyborg said.

"I will not calm down!" Starfire snarled. "Not after the things you are attempting to dismiss!"

"Oh, and so now you know exactly what Raven felt when she left? You were there? You saw her smiling when she left, is that it? No! You weren't there! You don't know she didn't care! You didn't know a damn thing about it! So shut up about things you don't understand!" Cyborg snapped, standing up.

"Don't talk to Starfire that way!" Robin yelled, standing up also.

"And so it's OK for her to talk to me like that, and I can't say anything back? Is that how it is? Your friends can get abused all they want, but as soon as someone raises their voice to your girlfriend-"

"That's not how it is at all, Cyborg!" Robin yelled, looking increasingly pissed off.

"Like hell it isn't!" Cyborg shouted.

"Will all of you just shut the fuck up?" Beast Boy roared from the other end of the sofa. The other three fell silent in shock, turning their eyes to the changeling who was now standing also. "It doesn't even fucking matter, OK? I don't give a shit, Raven doesn't give a shit, nobody gives a shit! She's not fucking worth ruining your friendship over! She's just a stupid traitor like every other goddamn person we come into contact with! She's nothing but hurt and lies! She's no better than Slade! So everybody just calm the fuck down!" he screamed.

The other three stood there gawking at the short green teenager who was standing beside the sofa, a seething ball of anger and pain. Cyborg realized just how wrong he had been about him being calm about the whole ordeal.

"BB-" he said as the alarm suddenly blared in their ears.

"Well, Titan Alert. Don't just stand there. We have to go save the goddamn city! We have to go and protect other people who don't give a rat's ass about us!" Beast Boy snapped, stomping toward the door. "Come on, let's get moving."

The other three watched his retreating back in shock for a moment before following him.

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More soon. Wow, someone got some resentment issues there, BB ?