Disclaimer: I own my socks!

Chapter forty-six!

Just out of curiosity, why are you guys all ganging up against BB? He's dealing with a broken heart here! He's not dealing with it well, but hey, what can you expect? But yeah, I must admit he's being a bit unreasonable.

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'She's…in…the…Tower…' Beast Boy thought. He was pacing wildly across the length of his bedroom, hands clasped so tightly behind his back that his knuckles made soft cracks with every sharp turn he made as he reached the wall and went in the opposite direction. The repetitive nature of his pacing struck him oddly as the same as his situation with Raven. It went back and forth, back and forth. It spanned a small vicinity, reaching until the barrier that held him back from anything better and forced him to turn back where he had already been yet again, only to reach another barrier and repeat the task endlessly. Whenever it seemed like he was finally getting somewhere, there was that barricade that held him back from moving on, and he had to regress to the same thing he had already done, because nothing else existed beyond that obstruction that he could see.

"Why can't I just move on?" he asked himself aloud, squeezing his own hands even tighter in his steely grip of frustration and confusion. "Why is it so hard?"

'Because you love her,' the helpful little voice at the back of his mind reminded him. 'And you always will.'

"But I don't want to!" he told the voice. "I just want to live again!"

"No, you don't want to live again. Not if it means living without her,' the voice stated matter-of-factly.

"Oh, so now you suddenly know everything about me, is that it?" Beast Boy snapped.

'Temper, temper. Look at yourself. You're blowing up at me, and I'm YOU. So of course I know everything about you. Technically, I shouldn't even be needing to tell you any of this. I am you. My knowledge is your knowledge. The things I tell you are things you know but have refused to accept,' the voice said gleefully. 'Wow, here you are, having two-sided conversations with yourself. Have you ever thought of getting a mental evaluation?'

"Shut up!"

'Why are you telling me to shut up when I'm you?' the voice asked him, slightly confused.

"Agh!" Beast Boy groaned, stopping in his pacing and clapping his hands over his head. "Just go away, OK?"

'Whatever you say,' the voice said, disappearing without a sound.

When he was left in blissful silence once more, Beast Boy breathed a sigh of relief before the tension returned just as heavy as it had been a moment before. He sat there in silence for a few minutes. It pressed in upon his ears. It burrowed into his mind like an insect. It tortured him and soothed him all at once. This always happened. Whenever he was alone, he was driven mad by this silence that he craved so much when he was in the company of others.

He climbed to his feet. What he needed at the moment was a walk to clear his head. Maybe something to eat. And then he would feel better. He wouldn't have this strange, sick feeling in his chest, he hoped. He headed for the door and ventured out into the hallway.

XXX

"So, exactly where have you been all this time?" Cyborg asked, stretching his arms. Cyborg, Raven, Robin, and Starfire had been in a conversation for the last fifteen minutes, trying to catch Raven up on everything she had missed.

Raven shifted slightly on the sofa. "Azarath," she muttered softly.

"And where exactly is that?" Cyborg asked. "Have I been there?"

"No. It's in another dimension," Raven explained. "It's…where I was born."

"And what were you doing there?" Robin questioned.

"Training," Raven told him. "I got some help from an old friend of my mother's, Daemon Dreiling. You wouldn't know him. He helped me get better control… and helped me master my powers a little better."

"And taught you a lot of new shit by the looks of that whole thing with Plasmus," Cyborg said with an eyebrow raise. "I've never seen anything like that before."

"That's something I never knew I could do before. With better control comes the potential for more ability," Raven explained.

"Then just imagine some of the things you'll be able to do after the additional training we're getting you," Robin said.

"Yes, Friend Raven. I am wondering what you will be capable of then," Starfire said.

Raven smiled slightly. "Who knows?" she said. She marveled silently once more over the fact that the three of them could forgive her so quickly, so absolutely, and try to pretend like she had never been on their bad sides. She was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, if these three could forgive her so easily, she might have a bit of a chance with working things out with Beast Boy. She hoped with every fiber of her being that he would somehow give her a chance to show him how sorry she was. She wasn't exactly sure she could stay sane much longer seeing him in so much pain. Her own pain at seeing him hurt throbbed harshly just beneath the surface as she carried herself with as much a sense of normality as she could.

A motion to her left alerted her, and she turned her head. Her blood ran cold at the image of Beast Boy walking into the room. Something inside her sensed that seeing her was pretty much the worst thing that could happen to him at the moment.

Beast Boy froze in his tracks. He stood there as though he had lost all control over his legs for a moment, eyes fixed unblinkingly on Raven's face. The look in them made Raven want to burst into tears again. 'How could you?' those eyes asked her without words.

"What's she still doing here?" he asked. His voice didn't sound as malicious as Raven had expected. Only hollow and resentful.

Robin braced himself. As bad as the results were going to be, he knew that he would have to break the news sooner or later. "Beast Boy, after some serious thought we've decided some things and…well…she's back on the team," he said.

Beast Boy didn't move for a moment. Robin sincerely wondered if maybe the shock had killed him and he was staring at a dead man standing. And then Beast Boy walked over so he was about a foot away from the back of the couch and stopped again.

"Why?" Beast Boy asked. "So she can lure us into a false sense of security and then turn around and ditch us again?" his voice dripped with bitterness. Raven winced slightly. But she didn't dare say anything. She knew that trying to apologize at the moment would only make matters worse. It would basically be suicide.

"Beast Boy, don't you think you're being a little harsh?" Robin asked.

"Harsh?" Beast Boy asked, bristling. "You think I'm being harsh?" he balled his fists, struggling not to lose control and become angry. "You say I'm being harsh when you're the one who let her back on the goddamned team without even talking to me about it first? I'm sorry I can't be happy fucking sunshine about it, but I'm not exactly glad to see her at the moment!"

"And I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it first. But I knew how you were going to react. I knew you wouldn't want her on the team," Robin said.

"What are you saying?" Beast Boy asked him.

"I'm saying you tend to be a little unreasonable and explode over things when they involve Raven," Robin explained.

"Unreasonable? I have a right to be hurt about her doing this to me!" Beast Boy said, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Yes, she hurt you, but do you ever think it might be time to move on? She saved your life, Beast Boy!" Robin said. "How can you hold a grudge against her now?"

"How the fuck can you say that I should forgive her?" Beast Boy snapped, losing it completely. He looked at Raven, who was sitting motionless on the sofa cushion, staring at him like a deer in headlights. "You really want me to forgive you, Raven? You really think you deserve it? You do one thing and you expect it to just erase everything? It doesn't always work that way! It's not going to make it all go away! If you really loved me, you wouldn't be expecting me to forgive you!"

"Beast Boy, I never said I expected forgiveness from you," Raven said shakily, slowly looking into his deep green eyes. "How can you say you know how I feel just because of something you assume I expect, when you don't even have any idea?" she knew somewhere inside that Beast Boy was being ridiculous, but her guilt wouldn't allow her to admit that at the moment.

"If you don't expect forgiveness, why would you apologize?" Beast Boy countered.

"Maybe because I feel terrible for hurting you…for hurting the one I love," Raven said back timidly.

"No you don't! And you don't love me!" Beast Boy snapped.

"Why do you insist on telling me how I feel?" Raven asked him. She was more calm and collected than she had been in her last conversation. Last time she had been the hysterical one.

"Because you won't admit it yourself," Beast Boy said, trying desperately to make himself shut up or start talking sense but to no avail. "Why didn't you just leave me to bleed to death when you found me on the bathroom floor? If I had known this was going to happen I would have rather just died! I never wanted this to happen! And I just want to forget you! Why did you have to come back?"

"Because I'm sorry! I just want to show you how much I love you! But you won't give me a chance!" Raven said, standing up and walking over to him. "Why won't you just stop trying to hate me for long enough to listen to one single thing I say?"

"God damn it, Raven! You don't love me and you never did! Words aren't good enough! Words will never be good enough!" Beast Boy shot at her.

"No, I don't think that's true, Beast Boy," Raven said softly, tears slowly leaking from the corners of her eyes. "I think it's me that's never going to be good enough, no matter my words or my actions. Nothing I do is ever going to be good enough for you." and with that she walked out through the door and down the hallway in the direction of the refuge of her bedroom.

Beast Boy stood there for a moment, shocked and shaken. And then he slowly turned and walked in the direction of his own bedroom.

When he reached his room and walked inside, he stood against the wall beside the door and let the pain flood over him. He clenched his head in his hands, shaking it slightly.

"Why do I love you so much, Raven?" he asked aloud, rubbing his forehead roughly. "And why can't I stop?" he slid down the wall and sat roughly down on the carpet. He pulled his knees up against his chest and hugged them tightly, resting his cheek against one. He was surprised when a tear wove a warm path down his cheek and dropped onto his hand. "Why am I crying?" he asked himself. And then he realized why. He was crying because although he was so angry at Raven, and he took out all of his resentment on her, it wasn't her fault anymore. In the beginning, this had been about her being the one in the wrong and he trying to deal with it. And now it was about him being in the wrong while she tried so desperately to make him see how badly she wanted him to give her another chance.

And he just kept pushing her away.

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More soon.