Disclaimer: NO!
Chapter forty-nine! Yay! Sorry this took so long. I rewrote it obsessively a few times before I got something I liked.
I now own all three Invader Zim DVDs. Life is good.
Note to Kopi Kat: I'm sorry I insult myself! I'll work on not doing that. Hey, I feel really honored that a BBRae hater would actually like this story despite the pairing! That's awesome! (: Hugs! So, what pairings do you like?
"I can't have anything I want
They say I'm just too young
But it's not my fault"
-Alexz Johnsen
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"What am I gonna do what am I gonna do what am I gonna do?" Beast Boy asked aloud, flopping down on his bed and covering is head with his hands. "I don't know if I want to forgive her…and I don't know if I can! Arg!" he clutched several handfuls of his emerald hair in his fists and gave a loud, frustrated groan. "Why does this have to be so confusing?"
Beast Boy felt terrible. She was trying so hard…it was obvious. She wasn't willing to give up so easily.
He rolled over onto his stomach and pulled the pillow over his head, plunging him into a quiet, dark cave under the depths of the lump of fabric and cotton. "I need help," he muttered. "Please…somebody…help me. I can't do this alone," he muttered to no one, squeezing his eyes shut and attempting to soothe this mind. A strong, strange ache bubbled up in his chest. Loneliness. He swallowed a few times, but it did not subside. He pulled the pillow from his head and wrapped his arms around it, burying his face in the soft material. But it was too soft. Too small. It was no substitute. It felt nothing like her. Smelled nothing like her. It just wasn't her. No one and nothing else was Raven.
XXX
This time, the land was already alive and flourishing. There was no trace of the dead, bleak landscape of before. The sun was shining and the grass was soft and green beneath his sneakers.
"Hey, Beast Boy!" a shout came out of the silence behind him. Whipping around, he found himself staring Terra in the face. She looked irate, one hand on her hip and a slight scowl on her face, blue eyes squinting slightly. And at first he couldn't place why.
"Hi," he said, cocking his head slightly and scratching the back of his neck. "What's the matter?"
Terra gave a small noise of exasperation. "What do you mean 'what's the matter'? You're just…please forgive me for saying this…you're being a complete and total idiot!"
Beast Boy was slightly offended. "Hey!" he said. "How am I being an idiot?"
"You're trying to deny the fact that Raven loves you more than anything in the entire world. You know she does, but you don't want to deal with having to forgive her!" Terra shook her head. "I'm so tired of sitting here watching you pretend you don't want her back!"
Beast Boy glared at her for a moment. "You don't know what I've been through!" he said. "If you understood how much she hurt me, you'd understand how hard it is to want to forgive someone after that!"
"I know what you've been through, Beast Boy. I've been watching. I know it hurts, but holding a grudge just because you're too stubborn to admit you want to forgive her is just going to hurt you more," Terra told him patiently, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"I know," Beast Boy muttered, defeated. "I just…it just hurt so much, and I don't ever want to feel like that again…so betrayed. And if I don't forgive her…it can't happen again."
"That's pretty lame, BB," Terra said. "Listen, you forgave me, and I did way worse than what Raven did. I completely and totally deceived all of you. She was scared, and you know what it feels like to be scared enough to want to just escape from everything. Her leaving was no more selfish than your suicide attempt. She forgave you for that. Don't you think she deserves another chance after this?"
Beast Boy sighed. "How do you do that? You're the only person I know who can make me realize what a jackass I'm being without making it sound completely brutal," he said with a slight grin.
Terra shrugged, raising her palms to the sky. "I guess it's just a gift."
"So…you want me to forgive her then, don't you?" he asked, pretending to be extremely unhappy.
"I'm not trying to force you to do anything, but I am going to tell you that she feels just as bad about this as you do. You're not the only one getting hurt here. I think the best thing you two can do is feel lucky that you've still got love for each other after this ordeal and put back together the pieces of what you had as well as you can. I don't mean to be harsh about this, it's just that I figured it was time someone gave you a verbal slap in the face about this. The other Titans don't seem to be drilling it into you, so I figured I'd give them a hand in figuratively knocking some sense into you."
Beast Boy shrugged. "I don't know…it's just so hard…I don't know how I can ever completely forgive her."
"Put yourself in her place," Terra said in a sagely manner. "I'd love to talk some more, BB, but it's time for you to wake up now."
Beast Boy opened his eyes slowly and gazed up at the ceiling of his bedroom. He gave a heavy sigh as Terra's words echoed through his mind, pulling himself into a sitting position, rubbing a hand over his sleep-weary eyes.
"Forgive her?" he asked himself aloud softly. This was a new concept for him. He had spend so long trying to get over the pain and the resentment that forgiveness had barely crossed his mind lately. "Can I really forgive her?"
If she was truly sorry, then why shouldn't he forgive her. "is she really sorry she hurt me?" he asked himself, speaking aloud once more.
"She was scared, and you know what it feels like to be scared enough to want to just escape from everything." Terra's words suddenly rushed through his mind. He crawled over to the edge of the bed and hopped down onto the floor, kneeling on the carpet and reaching his hand under the bed, feeling around in the dark, dusty space until his hand touched the smooth, cold handle. He drew it out and pulled it nearer to himself.
"Put yourself in her place."
He held the small mirror upright, took a deep breath, and leaned over so he was staring at his own reflection in the glass for a moment. And then four crimson eyes appeared on the surface of the glass. Beast Boy braced himself as a huge black hand outlined in glowing red shot miraculously out of the seemingly solid glass and wrapped its long, pointed fingers around him. The grip of the hand was warm, almost gentle this time, and it pulled him forward into the mirror.
Beast Boy was pulled into a familiar passageway, a short, red and black tunnel. He could hear the faint sound of a child sobbing echoing through the cold space. He would have shuddered, but the grip of the warm Black Hand kept him from getting chilly, holding his own heat against him and warming him even more with its warmth. The Hand pulled him forward through the vortex of black and red light, and the further they got to the small opening revealing a circle of sky at the end of the tunnel, the louder the crying became. It was the heart-wrenching sobbing of a terrified little girl, and it continued on as they progressed farther until it was a deafening roar in Beast Boy's ears, and then they reached the end of the tunnel. The Hand let go of him and he fell out into the sky, morphing into a sparrow to avoid plummeting to the ground below this time.
Beast Boy morphed into his original form a few feet above the ground and landed on the cracked, dry earth with a soft thump of tennis shoes. He looked around. The place was much different from the last time he had visited. The usually clear, starry sky was filled with angry, turbulent gray storm clouds, churning madly as though trying to devour each other. Some of the already dead trees had collapsed. The air was no longer filled with that…'Raven-y' feeling. It was now filled with a sense of foreboding and gloom.
Beast Boy gave a shudder. He walked forward through the empty landscape. He had been walking for a few moments when a strange, foul scent reached his nostrils. He wrinkled his nose, shaking off the smell that hit him so powerfully and almost triggered a gagging reflex. It was the smell of rotting, sunbaked flesh. He shook his head several times, blinking back wetness from his eyes watering, and looked around for the source of the smell.
Several feet to his left, Beast Boy saw a sight that make his hair stand on end. Lying in the dirt was Raven…or, someone who looked like Raven…she was wearing a pink cloak. She was perfectly still, and somehow the image of her told Beast Boy that she was obviously dead.
Her leotard and bright pink cloak were caked with dirt from spending time on the ground. Her stomach was sunken in and her ribs protruded disturbingly, an obvious sign of starvation as the cause of death. Her violet hair was stringy and matted, falling out in some places. And her face was spotted brown, white, and purple in places with rot and mold. Her eyes were open, but there was nothing to be seen where they should have been. They had rotted to nothing, leaving behind empty, consuming voids of darkness, in which Beast Boy could see maggots squirming as they greedily devoured the rapidly decaying flesh of the skeletally thin girl. The maggots were everywhere; crawling through her thinning hair, squirming madly in small holes in her arms and legs made by decomposition. Tiny, plump white grubs voraciously filling their need for nourishment on the body of a once living thing. Beast Boy's eyes widened and he retched, collapsing to his knees and vomiting onto the weathered ground. Coughing at the burning sensation in his throat, he leaned over to avoid the sight of Joy's decaying corpse. His breath came in shallow gasps.
"Are you OK?" came a voice from off to the side. Beast Boy slowly raised himself up into a sitting position and turned his head. Sitting in the dirt a few yards away, a violet-haired girl in an emerald cloak stared at him straight-on as though challenging him with her eyes. Another version of Raven. Brave…if memory served him. She was sitting cross-legged in the dirt with no sign of discomfort at the soil against the bare skin of her legs. Cradled in her lap was another Emotion…this one wearing a pale off-white cloak the color of a dove's soft feathers. She was looking up at Beast Boy through half-closed eyes, obviously very weak and listless.
"Yeah…I'm OK," he said, climbing shakily to his feet and testing his legs to make sure they still held his weight. "What…what happened to her?" pointed in Joy's direction, afraid to see the corpse again. The stench was still overwhelming, penetrating his very soul like a florescent light bulb. He resisted the urge to gag again.
"She died," Brave said, plain and simple, stating it like a weatherman announces a partly-cloudy day tomorrow. So simple, so fixed, so accepting of the words that came from her mouth as though she had uttered them countless times before.
"That's kind of obvious," Beast Boy said. He was afraid to ask anything further. The girl Brave was holding gave a soft moan. "Um…is she OK?" he gestured toward the cream-cloaked girl in Brave's lap, who looked at the verge of death. Brave didn't look exactly healthy either…she had a touch of weakness to her, but was obviously holding herself normally with quite a bit of effort.
"Yeah, Hope should be OK. She's getting better…just needs a little boost," Brave said, giving Beast Boy a look.
"What?" he asked suspiciously.
"…a boost like maybe you starting to act like I'm worth your time," Brave said, squinting at him. "I love you, and I deserve to have you treat me at least decently. I would do anything for you. Give me some credit." it took guts to come out and say these things, and for this Beast Boy couldn't help but admire Brave. She was certainly being true to her name. Beast Boy lowered his eyes from her face in shame. He knew she was speaking as Raven here. She was just another one of Raven's sides. This was Raven. This was how Raven felt to some degree.
"I know…I've been horrible," he admitted softly. He was aware that this was a lot like apologizing to Raven, which made him feel strange.
"Damn right you have," Brave said, though she was smiling. "You'd better get your act together, or I'll have to get medieval on your ass!"
"OK, OK," Beast Boy told her, pretending to be afraid. He shook his head amusedly. "You are one tough bitch, aren't you?"
Brave nodded. "You know it."
"I'd love to stay and chat, but I need to get away from…that…" Beast Boy said, pointing blindly in the general direction of Joy.
Brave nodded. "OK, then. I'll be here…just in case Joy wakes up."
"See you, then," Beast Boy said, walking past her. His pace was brisk as he struggled to put as much distance between himself and the corpse as he could. He had been walking for several minutes when suddenly something shot up seemingly out of the ground directly in his path. Beast Boy gave a shout of surprise and toppled backward, landing on his back and kicking up a cloud of dirt. Choking on the dust, he sat up quickly to see what had tripped him. Kneeling on the ground before him was what was obviously another Emotion, but it was unlike any side of Raven that he has seen.
This girl was no identified from the others by her cloak, for she wore no cloak. When she did wear was remains of her black leotard, ripped away to leave her almost naked save for two parts which served to cover anything explicit. The violet hair on her head was matted, messy tufts of hair sticking up at odd angles as though it had been crumpled repeatedly by its owner in frustration. On the pale, exposed skin of her body, innumerable cuts marred the smooth flesh. Thin, angry red lines biting at the beauty of the flawless skin. Some cuts were short, and others stretched as long as six inches. Between the cuts, the skin was marked faintly by scars of varying age. Newer ones were a soft pink, older ones glowed a stark snow white. And the finishing touch to the whole masochistic masterpiece was the word 'BITCH' carved deeply into the flesh of her stomach, only recently scabbed over. The letters were jagged, lines of flesh angrily carved away in desperation to take away the pain. The girl's thighs were smeared with blood from having them pressed against her stomach when the wound was still bleeding, as well as her arms and hands. She was not looking at him. Her hands covered her face and she was shaking.
Eyes wide, heart hammering with shock, Beast Boy crawled across the ground and stopped just before her. He stared at the cuts covering her arms, legs, stomach, shoulders, neck and every other visible part of her body in horror. "Hello?" he asked her. "Are you…OK?"
The girl didn't answer him. She did, however look up at him. Her pale face was covered his cuts as well. The word WHORE was scratched into her forehead, not deep, just thin scratches. There were other words scratched into her face as well, SLUT, COLDHEARTED, MONSTER, WORTHLESS. And the list went on. The whole face was a collage of self-demeaning words.
"Who are you?" he asked in terrified, almost disgusted awe. The girl gave a particularly hard shiver.
"I'm Raven," she answered plainly, simply.
"Yeah, I know but…which Raven are you?" Beast Boy asked.
"Oh, I forgot! I'm too insignificant to be Real. I'm pathetic enough to have to be an Emotion, locked away inside this prison!" the girl wailed, and then dropped her eyes to the ground. Beast Boy reached out a hand and placed it on her thin, sliced up shoulder. Her eyes went back to his face, widening in fear. She wrenched herself away from him.
"No! Don't touch me! I don't deserve to have you touch me!" the girl moaned. Beast Boy's hand leaped from her shoulder as though he had been bitten. The girl quickly sunk into the ground and Beast Boy was left staring at thin air.
"That's Self-Loathing. She has issues," came a voice from behind the girl. Beast Boy looked up to see three more Ravens. One had a black cloak and miserable eyes. The other had a pale blue cloak and her skin was a healthy pale peach rather than a grayish white. She seemed to be glowing. And the third was familiar to him…a scarlet cloak and four menacing crimson eyes that watched him from under that hood.
The black-cloaked Emotion stepped forward first. She knelt before Beast Boy and threw her arms around his neck. Shocked, Beast Boy could do nothing but sit there. "I'm so sorry!" she wept softly. "I'm sorry I hurt you! I'm sorry for everything! This is all my fault! I'm so sorry!"
"Um…" Beast Boy muttered, patting her on the head awkwardly. Rage gave a slight quiver.
"That's Guilt," explained the blue-cloaked Emotion happily. "And this is Rage," pointing to the red-cloaked Emotion. "And I'm Love." Rage quivered again.
Beast Boy nodded, somewhat startled by the sudden appearance of the three. Guilt pried herself off of Beast Boy and stepped back, looking ashamed. Beast Boy sat on the ground, unable to grasp what was going on. And then Love flopped down into the dirt with him and shocked him out of his conscious mind when she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. His eyes widened and he stammered several times but could not force any coherent words out. Off to the left, Rage, who had been standing quite placidly the whole time, gave another ominous quiver.
"I love you!" Love said loudly, seeming to lose her mind for a moment. "I love you so much! I know I have no right to love you after what I did but…I love you!"
Beast Boy only stared at her silently, unable to speak. This was just getting to be too much. He ran a hand over his temple, willing himself to stay calm and not start yelling. He could see the exit, the large door shaped strangely like Raven's hair, not so far away. If he just made a break for it right now…
And suddenly Rage moved. It was only seconds before she was before him, grabbing him by the front of her shirt and lifting him up so he was level with her.
"Why won't you forgive me?" she roared. Beast Boy started to shake violently. "I said I was sorry! I said I was sorry but it wasn't fucking good enough! What the hell is wrong with you? Why can't you just forgive me? I would give you anything! But it's never good enough for you, you little bastard! Just because I'm not some blonde Benedict Arnold who throws pebbles doesn't mean I'm not worth your damn consideration you stupid prick!"
"Rage, that's enough!" Love said loudly from behind them. Rage shot her a look of pure poison. "Why? Because I'm not sugar-coating my opinions like you pussies do? He's being an asshole, and it's time he heard it straight from the person he's been hurting!" she shook Beast Boy violently like a rag doll.
"Control yourself!" Love snapped. Rage stopped and stared at Love for a moment, then glared at her and dropped Beast Boy without a word, sinking into the ground and out of sight with a mutter of something unpleasant-sounding under her breath.
"Rage left!" Guilt said, eyes moistening with tears. "It's my fault, isn't it?" and she burst into tears, sinking into the ground to retreat to some other unknown part of the world inside Raven's mind as the two other Emotions had before her.
"Guilt, come back! We love you!" Love said, sinking in after her.
When they were gone, Beast Boy used the opportunity to flee off toward the exit. These crazy Emotions were starting to almost scare him, and he wanted out. It was scary. Raven was scary. He just wanted out of there, and he wanted out now. He was almost to the door to freedom when a sound made him freeze. He stopped in his tracks, looking around. The sound had been a soft whimper. A few feet away from him to the left stood a girl with violet hair and a pale gray cloak wrapped around her shoulders. She was staring at Beast Boy through large, heartbroken violet eyes. When she saw him looking at her, the eyes grew even wider.
"Please don't hurt me," she whimpered.
Beast Boy walked over to her slowly, hands held up as though to prove himself harmless. "Whoa, easy…Timid, right?" he asked as he approached her. She nodded. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"For what?"
"For making you hate me," Timid said, eyes watering slightly.
Beast Boy's mouth dropped open. "I don't…hey, I don't hate you," he said.
"You…you don't?" Timid asked him, eyes filling with a faint glimmer of hope.
"Of course not," Beast Boy said softly, lifting a hand nervously and placing it on the girl's pale cheek. "I was a little bit…mad at you but I never, ever hated you. I can't believe you thought-"
"You yelled at me and said you…didn't want to love me anymore," Timid said quietly.
"I was angry. And I didn't want to love you because it hurt. But it's different now," Beast Boy said. And he leaned over slowly and kissed her cheek. "I'm sorry."
Timid gave a tiny, faint shadow of a smile, and Beast Boy smiled back. "Look, I've really got to get back home now, but I'll see you later," he said. Timid nodded shyly, and Beast Boy turned after giving her a pat on the shoulder and walked toward the door, wishing that apologizing to the real Raven were that easy.
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More soon!