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Chapter Forty-one! It's a weird chapter with a weird concept, but it was something I wanted to try. Enjoy!
Thanks again to all of the people who are reading this! And also, thanks to everybody who's been sending me stuff for my site. If you want me to put the link to your fic or to a fic you like on it, email me about it! I'd be more than happy to do it as soon as I can get in to edit my site again.
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"How could you do this to him? You are a stupid, terrible bitch! You will never be anything else, you shameless little whore!" Rage snapped loudly, grating on Raven's nerves. "You should be struck down by the flames of Hell itself, you miserable cretin!" the voice rang out through the silent, dead air. The dead, bare black trees seemed to shake with it. At the angry shrieks, the small ravens perched in the trees' branches took flight in a flutter of feathers, speckling the air with faint caws of distaste.
"I know," Raven replied.
"He doesn't want to love you anymore. It's our fault!" wept Timid. "All our fault!" her wails echoed over the barren landscape just as intensely as Rage's growls.
"I know that too," Raven whimpered, pulling her knees up against her chest rocking herself slightly for comfort. "You think I haven't figured that out by now?"
"This is so terrible. He loves you so much, and you're just hurting him by loving him back!" Guilt said gloomily. She was the loudest of all, blaring through her mind, searing Raven's heart each time she released one of her comments.
"So what am I supposed to do? Stop?" Raven asked, pulling at her violet hair, little jerks releasing her frustration on the purple locks. "I could never stop loving him! Never!"
"Maybe you should try harder! You ruined his life! You ruin it every day with your feelings for him! Every day a little more of him is eaten away by the acid you call love! You just hurt him even more by going to him! Did you think you were going to feel any better by seeing him?" Guilt asked harshly.
"Yeah, what the fuck were you thinking?" Rage bellowed.
"You just wanted to see him!" Love chimed in, offering the best and truest words she could summon.
"You knew he wasn't going to want you anymore!" Timid sobbed shamelessly.
"There was no point in going! You knew it was going to end in pain!" Hopeless cried, her tone true to her name.
"You were the ones who told me to go to him!" Raven said. "You said that if I truly loved him, nothing could keep us apart! I was an idiot to listen to any of you!"
"Love told you that. None of the rest of us would say something so completely moronic!" Rage roared, giving Love a swift kick in the shin.
"Well, Love, you are a fucking dumbass! It's not true! I love him more than anything in the world, but after what I've done to him, I don't deserve him! He deserves someone who will make him happy. I could never make him happy! I could never make anyone happy!" Raven rubbed her forehead. "There are some things even the strongest of love cannot withstand."
"You're damn right!" said Doubt loudly. "You really think your love was strong in the first place, anyway? How could love coming from a monster be strong? Because that's all you are, Raven! A goddamned monster!"
"Stop sitting there like a child and face it like a woman! You are a worthless, pathetic piece of shit. Stand up and look at me!" Self-Loathing said, words cutting Raven like daggers in her throat.
Raven pulled her knees farther up against her chin, starting to weep softly. Not for herself. For Beast Boy.
"Stand up, dammit! Face me, you stupid bitch!" Self-Loathing grabbed Raven by the hair and pulled her to her feet. Raven gave a slight gasp of pain as Self-Loathing held her aloft for a moment and then threw her back to the ground. The already fractured dirt cracked even more as Raven's body hit it. Self-Loathing gave a small cluck of disgust at Raven, walking over to where she now lay and kicking her in the ribs repeatedly. Raven lay still and allowed herself to be harmed. Tears were running silently down her cheeks to the unforgiving ground, tears of bitter shame and self-resentment.
"I deserve this," she whispered. "I deserve every bit of it." her own words were a desperate plea to bring more pain. To bring more of what she deserved.
"You are fucking right!" Rage said, watching in satisfaction. She gave Raven a few kicks too, and then spit in her face and ground her foot into her chest, the rubber heel digging painfully into her left breast. "You deserve it! The best thing in your life, and you fucked it up! Is that all you're good for?"
"Yes," Raven whispered.
Guilt knelt down beside her and slapped her repeatedly in the face. "Stupid, stupid Raven!" she commented. The cold hands stung Raven's cheeks as the words numbed her mind, bring more and more truth to the words in Raven's own point of view with every slap.
Doubt grabbed pinches of Raven's skin and twisted them painfully, all the while chanting "Bitch, bitch, bitch!" the pale skin buckled under her thick grip, burning and stretching and duplicating her inner pain.
Hopelessness was clawing Raven's face with her fingernails, digging viciously into the skin. Pulling out great chunks of flesh. Raven felt almost a sense of satisfaction as her own blood began to pour from the wounds. As the small bits of flesh came lose, Hopelessness flicked them off to the side like gum wrappers and continued her savage task.
Not far off to the left, Timid was on her knees, sobbing uncontrollably, the mind-numbing wail piercing Raven's ears. Love stood beside her, beating herself with her own fists. Quick, desperate beatings of anger and pain. Pain of a love that could not and would not die, but knew it would be best if it did. Behind this scene, Hope, Joy, and Brave lay on the ground, their bodies long dead and dismembered. This had happened to the three at different times. Joy had died the moment she had left Beast Boy's side. Brave had gone as Beast Boy screamed his words of resentment and love all bundled into one at her. And Hope had gone down slowly, Starving rather than being struck down quickly and painlessly. She had begun to starve the day Raven had killed Cinderblock. She had finally passed as Raven left the Tower again tonight. Their bodies lay still on the harsh, cracked dirt, rotting, filling the air of Raven's mind with the scent of decay and the memory of all she had lost.
"You deserve this!" Timid wept silently, pulling at her own hair, tearing at her pale gray cloak, struggling to relieve herself of the resentment and pain.
"Yes, you do! You deserve to bleed for him!" Love moaned. "Bleed, dammit! Bleed!" the one positive Emotion that Raven still retained was offering no more condolence than any of the others. In her battle she was alone.
"I'm bleeding, damn you! Can't you see?" Raven wept. "What more do you want?"
"Die!" Love screamed at her, tears starting to pour down her cheeks as well. She pulled her powder-blue hood up over her face and sunk down into the dirt as she began to cry as hard as Raven was. "Just die! You don't even deserve to live!"
"I fucking know that!" Raven snapped. She attempted to crawl away from her Emotions, who were still ravaging her body, but they followed her. She climbed shakily to her feet, finally finding the drive to want to end the pain. She took several quick, shaky steps away from them and then went down as Rage grabbed her by the back of the head and pitched her forward. She hit the dirt hard and felt her nose break.
"You need to stop trying to run away from your emotions, dear," Rabe said maliciously, kneeling down beside Raven's fallen body. Raven was shaking, willing this to be over. Rage slashed her sharp fingernails across Raven's chest, splitting her leotard and making a gash in her breast. Raven gave a soft whimper but gave up her retreat. Rage did the same savage act to Raven's belly, slitting the flesh deeply. Blood was starting to stain the ground. Rage cut Raven's neck, dipping her hand in the fresh blood and smearing it all over Raven's face, forcing it in her mouth. "Taste it! That's what shame tastes like! That what his pain tastes like! Drink it!" Rage roared, digging her fingers into Raven's shoulders.
"I deserve this," Raven reminded herself out loud. Rage straddled Raven and slowly dragged one long, deadly thumbnail across her forehead, cutting right down to Raven's skull. Her four cold, crimson eyes stared down at Raven with malicious pleasure, burning her very soul. "Can you feel it now?" she hissed. "Can you feel Beast Boy's pain?"
This pain was beyond anything Raven had ever felt, pain spanning every inch of her body. It was agony. It was torture. It was what she had done to Beast Boy on the inside. At the realization of this, her sobs became hysterical, piercing the silence of her mind.
Rage cackled. "That's right! Hurt how he hurts! Feel what he feels just because of you!" she grabbed Raven around the throat. Raven choked. "Yes, that's it. Just give in real nicely. Die like a good girl," Rage's voice came, lulling, almost gentle.
"No!" Raven gasped. "I can't die! I need to let Beast Boy know how sorry I am!"
"It's too late for that now!" Rage roared, squeezing harder, closing off any hope of oxygen sneaking through.
"He needs to know!" Raven choked. "I can't leave him like this!" she reached out blindly with her hands, swatting at Rage's face, but they did not phase her in the least.
"You can and you will!" Rage informed her, her hands pressing harder and harder into Raven's pale neck, the wicked smile that twisted her face growing wider.
"No!" Raven snapped, finally finding her strength were weakness had ruled supreme until that very moment. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" she roared, knocking Rage backward with a fountain of black psychic energy.
"Oh, aren't we the clever one?" Rage asked with a small smile as she picked herself up from the dirt, brushing grime from her deep crimson cloak.
"You can't kill me. You are merely a figment. You are only the physical manifestation of my own malevolence. Not real," Raven said, backing up a few feet.
"Maybe in the real world I'm not real," Rage said with a horrible smile on her lips. "But honey, in here, we're all that is real!"
"No!" Raven muttered, covering her head with her hands. Her fingernails dug into her scalp until she could feel the release of blood. "No! None of you are real! Get away from me!"
Raven shot into a sitting position and looked around. Thousands of twinkling stars winked down at her from a deep, royal blue night sky. She realized, looking off into the bay, that she was on a small ledge of the bridge above the water. Titans Tower was a like a beacon in the distance. Raven's hand flew to her face. When she found no blood there, she breathed a sigh of relief. The wounds were not there. The only moisture on her face was that of the tears that still spilled untamed from her eyes. The memories of the terrible pain ebbed. They could not hurt her. They were not real. Raven had had a harder time getting in and out of her mind without the mirror, but she had managed. She had been in her own mind. They were only her feelings. They were not real and never would be.
But their words were real.
Raven had known she had hurt Beast Boy before, but now, she was starting to see just how deep that hurt was. She hadn't had any idea it was so terrible. Her heart ached for what she had done to him. She loved him so much, and yet she had hurt him more than anyone else ever had. That knowledge was like an arrow wedged in deep between her ribs, piercing her heart but yielding no release of blissful death. She had done the unforgivable. She had broken the one she loved completely and absolutely, and there was no way for her words to take back what she had done. But no matter how long it took, how much it hurt, no matter what it cost, she would find another way. She was not going to let this torture be the only thing that linked them for the rest of their lives.
"I'm so sorry, Beast Boy," she whispered in the direction of the Tower. She pulled her knees up against her chest and sat there, staring at the giant T with tears still clouding her vision. She would stay close, with the Titans and Jump City in her view, and she would slowly find a way to repair all she had broken as time went on. But no matter how it happened, she wasn't going to give up. "I'll make it alright, Beast Boy. I promise," she whispered softly into the warm night air.
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More soon. Yay! I'm glad the site is working again! (: I was getting so angry!
