(I guarantee my chapters will get longer. I'm going to make this one pretty long. Sorry this update came at like 2 in the morning, but I've been busy, and had some time now, plus, I had some trouble sleeping tonight, and suddenly had some new ideas and wanted to write a new chapter. Enjoy! )
Chapter 5:
Raven's eyes widened as it came down, and she brought her hands up to try to block it. However, the impact never came. She brought her hands down and peered at her father, who now sat on his knees at the foot of the bed. He still held the bottle in his outstretched arm, but then flung the bottle to his left. The brown rum inside the bottle splattered across the black wall of her room, as the bottle shattered.
"Still here…" he muttered under his breath, "Mother…Melissa…dammit."
"Dad?" Raven asked softly.
"IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!" he suddenly yelled in a rage, looking up at Raven with a tears streaming from his bloodshot eyes. "IF YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN, IF I HAD STUCK WITH HER, AND NOT WANTED A CHILD, SHE'D BE HERE! YOU AND THOSE WEIRD THINGS YOU DO! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN NORMAL, BUT NO; YOU WERE BORN A FUCKED UP FREAK!"
Raven had no idea what he was yelling about, and wasn't even sure if she could make sense of what he meant. Her mother died when she was six, and she remembered little of what the circumstances were. Her father always said it was a random illness, that had been inside her, and she was too worried to tell anyone. Raven was suddenly suspicious of any of this being true.
"Dad…what do you mean? What do I have to do with this? Just because I was born?" she asked, a set of tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
"You've seen yourself do that stuff. You may not realize it, but you've seen it," he said, squinting as the salty tears burned his eyes.
He stood and turned toward the door.
"But…" he started to say, but was silenced as he turned round, and gave her a hard slap across her face, the hardest in fact he'd ever done it.
She touched her hand to her face, and watched as he stormed out and into the kitchen down the hall. The kitchen refrigerator light came on, and she heard the rattling of beer bottles as her father pulled one out and walked into the living room farther away.
Tears still coming, she rolled over on her pillow, and wept into its soft surface. She didn't want to stay here forever, she couldn't. Still weeping for a while longer, she finally drifted off into a depressed sleep, not waking till sometime around ten p.m.
-xxx-
Raven awoke, finding it night outside. She had slept for hours, and now, remembering the event of the day, began to ponder on what she should do. Finally, she decided on one plan of action: to leave tonight.
Raven walked over to her dresser, and pulled out four of her black bodysuits, and a few pairs of long black pants, which had always seemed long on her due to her short stature. She stuffed them into a small duffel bag, and walked over to her bed. She opened the window behind it, and, pulling her bag onto her shoulder, she climbed out the low, one story window.
Now outside, she began walking down her dark street, on the outskirts of the city. She had no idea where she was going, but knew she'd know when she found it. As she walked, she thought about everything over her fifteen years of life. Her mother's death when she was six, and her fathers slow decline. He had been so good until she was around teen, when he hit the alcohol heavily, and apparently come to terms with whatever she had done, or whatever she was. Then the women came, and gave him small pleasures for large amounts of money. They kept coming, and he kept getting deeper into everything. Then, on Raven's eleventh birthday, he'd hit her for the first time. She'd cried for a long while after that, but then, when didn't she? She was at least thankful he had never gotten any other ideas with her like the sick fathers she'd heard about on the news.
By the time she was done thinking about everything, she realized she was walking down a sidewalk just outside the Jump City bank. Suddenly, an explosion flooded out of the doors, blowing Raven into the street. She picked herself up quickly, and dodged into the alley next to the bank. Two men in typical robber attire ran from the building. Suddenly, Raven heard a loud thud, almost like thunder. It almost reminded her of the Jurassic Park movies, when the T-Rex was coming. Only then did she see the robbers go running the other way, being pursed by, in fact, a large green T-Rex. It reached down and bit into their clothes, and lifted them up. No sooner had it done so, three police cars pulled up ready to take the criminals to justice. Raven watched as it dropped them, and suddenly shrunk down to the form of her dream guy from school, Beast Boy.
"Wow," she gasped.
She looked up at the building around her, seeing many girls around her age looking out windows and calling to Beast Boy, professing their love to him.
"Ladies, ladies!" he yelled, "Theirs enough of the B-man to go around!"
Raven suddenly realized that he could probably have any girl he wanted. She could just see her dream shattering around her. That's when it hit her: Nothing good would ever happen to her. She looked at the overturned garbage and picked up a shard of glass lying in it.
"Oh god, why did you fuck things up this bad for me?" she asked silently, expecting the God of this world to answer her out loud at that very moment.
She put the shard down on her wrist, ready to make a cut.
"I've nothing to live for," she told herself, looking at the sharp piece in her hand, "I just want out of it all."
-xxx-
Beast Boy walked across the street, to sign an autograph for a boy who had come down to see him up close.
"Stay cool, kid," he said calmly, and walked back to the police cars.
"Thanks for your help," the woman officer said to him, "The city owes you another debt."
Beast boy saluted her, and turned to leave, when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see Raven sitting in the dark alley alone, looking at something in her hand. In his vision, he could see clearly the large shard of glass.
"O no!" he said loudly.
He than began to run toward her. As he did, she put it down toward her wrist. B.B. transformed quickly into an octopus, and whipped his tentacle out, knocking the glass away. Raven looked up at him as he turned back into his normal form.
"What are you doing!" he asked, not realizing he was yelling at her.
"I…don't know," she told him, "But, I did want to get to know you, before everything today."
Beast Boy sighed and smiled, relived that he had stopped her before this moment.
"If you wanted to talk," he told her, "you should have just come and asked," he then smiled.
Raven gave a soft smile, looked up at his bright face.
"Come back to my apartment," he said, smiling wider, "We can talk there."
B.B. offered Raven his hand and pulled her up. She stared into his eyes for a moment, and then walked off down the dark streets of Jump city to Beast Boy's apartment in the middle of town.