Yay for the next chapter! I've had most of this written for a while, but chapters involving dialogue take me a lot longer, because I suck at dialogue. But this one needed to be pretty heavy in it, and took a lot of revisions. I'm still debating exactly how long I want the story to be, and a lot of it's going to depend on how original I want to get with it. Woot on that one. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and I hope to hear from you again for this chapter. Enjoy!

Lilith eyed the ebony-haired girl cautiously, searching her amethyst eyes for answers. Raven, or Rachel, as she had been announced, seemed tired, stressed, as if the weight of the world were pressing down on her shoulders. Not wanting to risk recognition in the daylight, Raven had dyed her hair black and donned street clothes. The disguise was successful, even managing to take the attention off her strange, piercing purple eyes.

Out of curiosity, Lilith attempted to pick the front of the girl's mind, only to find herself blocked. She stood behind her desk and with a small gesture of her right hand, indicated Raven should sit. Raven did so, gratefully. It was also Raven who broke the silence.

"It's been a while." The sentence was brief, true, and in Raven's usual style.

"It has. You've never seen my office before. What do you think?" Lilith leaned back in her chair, proud of the office she'd worked for years to attain. Raven knew little of Lilith's past, but empathically felt her pride in her achievement, and becoming the dean of the University of Jump City is something to be very proud of.

"Very nice. Comfortable." Raven appeared distracted, shifty. Lilith knew Raven was the type to hate having to ask for help, and couldn't think of another reason Raven would visit her during office hours.

"Something's up, Raven. What's wrong?" The question was genuine.

Raven shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. "I'd like to take classes here. But the application deadlines are past, and classes have started."

Lilith leaned back in her expensive computer chair, smiling warmly. "Not a problem. I'll personally have you placed in whatever classes you want. I doubt you'll have a problem catching up on the work."

"I really appreciate it, Lilith, but I'm also not sure how I'll be able to pay you."

The dean closed her eyes and waved her hand, dismissing the idea entirely. "No payment needed. You and the Titans protect the city, the least the city can do is help you with your education." Looking at the Titan, she noticed already a slight perk in Raven's posture. "We can make your school ID today, as soon as you leave here, and I'll send along some paperwork to the Tower—"

Amethyst eyes widened. "No! I mean, I have an apartment now."

"You moved out of the Tower?" Lilith was shocked. Raven nodded, eyes downcast. "Why?"

Raven thought, choosing her words carefully. "I felt it was time to try something on my own." The answer was vague, but gave the impression of containing more information than it really did. "Lilith, if you don't mind, can this be between us? While here, I want to be Rachel Roth. I don't want the Titans to know I'm here, and I definitely don't want to be the resident superhero on campus. I want to see what a normal life is like." Sometimes she was so good at deceiving others that she almost believed herself.

Lilith nodded in complete understanding. They had more in common than either of them had thought. "I completely understand. Trust me, it won't be a problem."

"I don't belong here. I never did. And it took me entirely too long to realize it." It hurt Raven to say, but not as much as it hurt her to see her friends' reactions. She wanted nothing more than to look away, to lower her eyes in shame and sorrow. But to do so would be an indication of the lie. Instead, she pushed as much strength behind her eyes as she could, forced them to conceal the pain in her heart with resolve. Moving stiffly, she sat up on her hospital bed, and dangled her feet off the edge.

"You do belong here, Rae. You're a part of this team. You're its founder." Cyborg tried to convince her. He had always felt like an older brother to the empath. Usually he felt like he had a general understanding of her disposition, but there were times when she surprised him. At this moment, he was confused, but mostly concerned. Could she genuinely believe what she was saying? "Most importantly, you're our friend." The other Titans nodded in agreement.

"No. I made a mistake. I left Azarath to find a place where I could belong. I was young and I was foolish. I realize now I will never belong. Not here, not anywhere. I'll always be too creepy." She injected a convincing amount of scorn into her voice for the last word. Beast Boy visibly flinched, and Raven's soul cried in protest. "That is why I must go."

"But Raven, we're your friends. Creepy or not, we still love you. We need you. You can't tell me that you feel nothing for this team." Beast Boy's voice was pleading.

Raven mentally steeled herself for this one. She stood up as she spoke, and turned her head to the side, staring passively, the corners of her mouth twisting in a bitter smile. "I don't have friends." She said it evenly, smoothly.

"How can you say that, Rae?" Cyborg's voice was soft, hurt.

"Because it's the truth."

"Congratulations on a great performance," Robin proclaimed. Raven's face changed into an expression of shock, thinking he had seen through her ruse. Before she could defend herself, he continued, angrily this time. Hurt. Betrayed. "You had all of us fooled. Here we were, thinking you cared about the Titans, and all this time you felt nothing for any of us. That's pretty cold, Raven." He spat.

Here we go. Azar, give me strength. Help me bear this. Help me save them.

"You're pretty gullible, Robin." Her eyes narrowed, and she stood up slowly, squaring her shoulders. Even without the four eyes of Trigon, Raven was an intimidating character.

"Stop the holier-than-thou shit, Raven. We've put up with more than enough of that during your time here," Robin narrowed his eyes, and crossed his arms over his chest.

As she fell into the argument, her tone became more like her normal tone, but instead of a somewhat depressive, sarcastic undertone, it now wore bitterness. "Yes, I'm the one who has a holier-than-thou complex, Robin. Remember that time you faced the Master of Games and everyone was disappearing, but you were so focused on being the best that you almost lost half your team?"

Beast Boy spoke quietly, his eyes downcast. His accusation was bolder than his stance. "There's one person you always thought you were better than, so much that you drove her to betray us." After he said it, he didn't know why he had. What he did know was that he had thought it for a long time.

The Titans' eyes widened in surprise. Raven was taken aback as the intensity and calmness of Beast Boy's accusation set in. Did he really believe this? Her empathic powers told her that he did; her heart broke. Maybe what she was doing wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Somewhere in her mind, Anger snickered and Timid cowered.

"Are you implying I alienated Terra so much that she turned to Slade?"

"I'm not implying anything. I'm stating fact. You hated Terra the moment we met her. You hated her because she was everything you could never be, and you were afraid she'd take your place on this team. You sabotaged her from the start." Beast Boy's voice was becoming passionate, but still maintained a quiet anger that was more frightening than if he had been yelling.

His jaw was set. His eyes remained downcast, and he leaned heavily against a counter. He looked tired. Raven refused to look in his direction. She could feel his sadness at his own memories of Terra, his own treatment of her, and his conflicting emotions of hurt and hope surrounding his recently voiced opinion. He was hurt that Raven had disliked Terra so much, and that he thought she was capable of alienating the geomancer. But he was hopeful that maybe he was wrong. She could feel him doubt his own words. Worst of all, she could feel him find some truth in it. The blow to her soul was almost physical, as his emotions began to hit her in more powerful waves.

Starfire was in shocked into silence; she had never seen such a strange display of hostility within the Tower, and it sobered even her usual happiness. Cyborg had resigned himself to a spectator's sport, wary now of Raven, but something about the whole thing was bothering him. Cyborg doubted the reality of what was happening. This wasn't the Raven he knew, who had put in the extra effort to find Sarasim in a history book, or helped him repair the T-Car.

"The fact that you think I would push someone to evil, Garfield Logan, shows that I was right." She used his name to make it more personal, for emphasis. "You are not my friend. I may not have feelings about anyone on this team, but I would never purposefully push someone to the edge Terra fell off of. I would never cause someone to turn to evil. I've spent my life fighting evil! I formed this team to fight evil." Raven growled defensively. For the sake of her ruse she would forfeit a certain amount of pride, but this was an accusation against which she felt she must defend herself.

Robin shifted slightly and looked Raven in the eye. "How can we believe anything you say? Our entire past is based on a lie. You lied about being our friend. You formed this team for selfish intentions. When you almost drove Dr. Light to insanity, Beast Boy asked me how we knew we could trust you--."

"At least now I know I was right—" They hadn't felt they could trust her, and what kind of friendship doesn't rest on trust?

"—and I said that you were our friend, and that was all we needed to know. You've made a liar out of me, Raven." His voice raised in anger. At this moment, Robin was most like a parent speaking to a child in which he was very disappointed.

Raven knew his weakness. "I am not a liar. I never pretended to be friendly with anyone on this team. And you've made a liar out of yourself on several occasions, Red X."

Robin's face twisted in shock, his eyes opening wide and his mouth forming an "O" before twisting into an angry snarl. He stepped forward as if to attack her physically. She remained standing, unflinching. "You BITCH!" He yelled, just as Starfire caught him mid-lunge and held him back. Starfire whispered to Robin, a silent plea not to be so angry with Friend Raven. He calmed, speaking with a voice dripping with venom. "You are a liar, Raven. I know why you formed the Titans. You lied to us right from the beginning."

The other Titans registered shock. However, by this point, it was getting hard to shock them. None of them could truly believe this was happening, the anger flying between them.

Raven's rose to her throat. Oh dear Azar, what does he know? She felt like screaming in terror, her worst nightmares suddenly being realized. They knew. They'd known all along what she was meant to do, her heritage, the evil within her. What she was doing was pointless.

"Didn't think I knew about it, Raven? Batman is my mentor, not to mention a member of the Justice League. When I joined you, he told me about your rejection from the League by Zatanna. What did she say about you? Or were you just not good enough?"

Raven relaxed, but only slightly. He didn't know nearly as much as he thought he did or he would have mentioned her heritage directly at this point. Though his penultimate question made her nervous, she ignored it and replied, feigning indignation, "I was too young. But think what you wish." Her age had been a small part of it; the Justice League was for adults. The biggest part, of course, was Zatanna sensing her evil heritage.

Robin spoke sternly, yet thoughtfully. "I think there's more to it than that. I think you're hiding something. You've been hiding something since we met you—"

"That's what this is about, isn't it Rae? Why are you acting like this? Pushing us away? What are you hiding? Because this—this side of you—it doesn't fit. Tell us and we can help you. It doesn't have to be this way." Cyborg had finally found his window into the conversation, his way of trying to give Raven another way out of what she was doing. None of this felt right.

"There is no trust on this team, Cyborg. It was an illusion." Raven stood stoically now, facing her team, looking at each of them in turn, her face an expressionless mask. "And that is the reason I must go. Maybe if I'm lucky I can convert a few more 'innocents' to evil." Her last sentence was spoken bitterly. She turned her back to them and grabbed her cape to disappear. But before she could, Beast Boy spoke, again softly, but pointedly, his voice brimming with hurt and his eyes with tears.

"Terra was everything you could never be."

Raven threw a final look over her shoulder at him, and her eyes flickered with sadness and hurt for one brief moment. Only Cyborg noticed. Struggling to keep her voice level, she quoted: "'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.' Goodbye…"

With a sweep of her arm, she was enveloped by her cape, disappearing from the Tower.

"…friends." In her small apartment in the worst part of town, Raven hung her head and took deep breaths, trying desperately not to sob. Her heart felt like paper being run through a shredder over and over again until nothing was left. Even now, she could not cry, because crying could set her emotions free, in turn bringing Trigon into this world.

And at that moment she wouldn't have cared had it not been for her friends.

First, a couple things on the timeline I want to clear up. Raven has the dream, then leaves the Tower. She gets an apartment, but that's all, then goes walking through the park doing her thinking thing. The Titans nab her, and off to the Tower they go. It's after the Tower that Raven dyes her hair black and meets with Lilith at UJC. I wanted to clear that up, because I know the way I'm writing this is confusing and broken, but it's weird kind of element I thought would add to the storyline. Kind of like the broken fragments of her life, if you will. If you've got any questions or found plot inconsistencies, holla at me and I'll do my best to fix them. Otherwise, hope to hear from you in a review, or it will be just as long if not longer before my next update. Thanks!