CHAPTER 5: He sleeps peacefully in Hell

I'm sorta building this chapter around one basic idea, so if things go wrong... well... bare with me.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Teen Titans, except Zero.

Raven couldn't sleep that night. She thought about the new guy Zero, and how became a Titan. She ran the memory through her head again and again to fully comprehend what had happened. When she finally got the picture of how things went down, and tried to go to sleep, he popped into her mind again. She couldn't stop thinking about him. Maybe it was because his room was right next door... No, that couldn't be it. Maybe it was something that happened during the day. She ran that through her head as well...

"So, Zero," Robin said. "How do you want all this laid out?"

Zero thought about his room, and how to incorporate a firing range into it. Robin did say that he could have it anyway he wanted it, so why not a decently sized firing range? They had already cleared space for a long room, running the length of the top of the tower; it was just a matter of where to put everything.

"I think I'll handle this part," Zero said, observing the length and width of the room.

"Okay, whatever you say. Just yell if you need help."

"Sure."

There were many various boxes behind him as he stood in the doorway looking into his room. They consisted of a bed frame, a mattress, computer, stereo, desk, end table, and the box he bought himself contained a drum kit. He'd have to make it al fit so he went to work. But just as he started unpacking a box, Raven approached him.

Raven sensed something different about him though. When she got within a few yards of him, she started hearing noise. She tried to pinpoint the location, only to find it was... coming from Zero's head? She listened harder to find that the noise had a rhythmical beat to it. Was someone playing loud music? No, everyone was out today except Robin, Zero, and herself. Robin was probably training like his typical self, and she and Zero were right there in the same hallway. So what was that noise? Was she hearing Zero's thoughts? Only if Zero's thoughts were a bunch of static and drums, but she would have to focus on reading his thought to hear them. Strange...

"So, you moving in?" She asked.

(I had the biggest urge to put a 'here's your sign' joke right after that, but I decided against it. It would've been funny as fuck, but its not Zero's style.)

"Seems so." He said blankly as he picked up a box and set it inside.

"And I, uh, noticed its right next to mine?"

Zero came back out of the room and looked around the corner. Raven's room was right there next to his.

"I'll get muffling for the walls."

"Why?" She asked tilting her head slightly.

"I own three firearms and drums."

"Oh."

He carried a few more boxes in, and she kept trying to decipher the noise. She could make out a faint type of rhythm, but nothing else. She tried to get a conversation going with him.

"So, what did you do before you came here?" She asked

"I worked as a mercenary a few years back." He said flatly. She noticed a slight increase in the volume of the noise, but now it wasn't noise, it was a song. Music being broadcasted from his head?

"What was your biggest job as a mercenary?" she asked, still paying much attention the music.

The memories flooded back of the island, the scientist, his friend... "I don't walk to talk about it," he said hotly, turning away to pick up another box.

Suddenly the music's volume went ballistic. Heavy drums and shrieking guitar solos lashed at her mind, and she winced at the shear intensity of it all. She could not identify the song or artist, but she understood clearly what singer had yelled. All the music had gone silent, and the singer yelled out, "I WAS BORN FOR DYING!"

She looked at Zero at that very moment. He gave a dark smile as he picked up another box. Was there some connection between what the singer said and the smile? She had no idea, but her head throbbed from listening into the song in Zero's head. She went back to her room to clear her head.

That's what kept her awake that night. That music. What did it mean? Why the hell did it come out of Zero's mind? And why did it escalate when she touched upon his biggest job as mercenary?

She was confused by so many things, that she decided to get an inside look on things...

She quietly crept from her room to Zero's, and slid the door open slowly. She took a look at his room. 'You can learn a lot about people from their room décor,' she thought. When she opened the door, the room stretched of to her distant left, the wall on the right being flush with the doorway. She took a step in, closed the door, and let her eyes adjust. The living part of the room was simple enough. The other stretch of the room to her left was a three lane firing range. The living section was a 20-foot square section with jet-black carpeting. Over in the far right hand corner sat his drums, which he had already set up, and to the left of that was his dresser, which the stereo sat upon. In the middle of the right wall sat Zero's bed, which he of course was dead asleep on (or so it seemed...). Closest to her was his desk, which housed his computer. The walls were littered with different posters of WWII planes, a picture of him and a famous drummer with the adjacent autograph, and cars of different variety. One section of pictures caught her attention. They were pictures of relatives, his old drum line from high school and pictures of his old friends. But these pictures were all older than he seemed to be. They were all dated back in the 1940's, so they had to be at least 60 years old. He was only 18 though...

She looked at Zero. He was sleeping very peacefully for a person who seems to have been through hell. He had buried the left side of his face in his pillow, hiding his scar, but he was now wearing short sleeves, which revealed a grim sight. Her eyes widened at the sight of his right arm hanging over the side of the bed. It was unbelievably scarred. Large chunks of flesh were cut out from bullet wounds, and the scrapes from yesterday still remained. She observed this contrast between his scarred body and the way he slept. He slept like he was carefree and happy, but his scarring told a story of blood, misery, and pain. She noted this and went back to surveying the room. She found his CD player lying on the desk.

'Music. Maybe the song from before.' She thought. 'I'll give it a shot.'

She sat down at the desk and opened the CD player. The disk inside was of Metallica: Master of Puppets. She lifted an eyebrow to the name and album title, but then spotted the lyrics, so she started reading. Then the temptation became too strong, and she put on his headphones and started the music. She listened to many guitar solos, fast tempo, and raspy singing. Then came a song that caught her attention. This song told a tale of a young guy going off to fight a war, the sites he saw at war, and how he felt in battle. She looked at the lyric sheet. "Disposable Heroes" was the song title. She listened hard to the lyrics as she read them on the sheet. Then she realized it was the song.

She read over the lyrics once more.

When the song ended she stopped the CD player and hastily took off the headphones. She sadly remembered those words: I was born for dying. She looked at Zero and felt sorry for him. His life was probably a living hell, with all the slaughter he experienced as mercenary...

'Wait,' she thought. 'He said he was a mercenary a few years back. If he's 18 now, that would make him at least 15 back then, but that can't be right...'

Suddenly the pictures she saw earlier came back to her. 'There dates were set in the forties,' she thought fiercely. 'If he has friends in the forties... no that's impossible. But WWII was in the forties. This song seemed to be about war, and he always smiled when he heard those lyrics...'

"Oh my God," she said in the darkness. "Are you even alive?"

Zero shifted slightly.

Raven walked over to him. She felt grief for him deep down inside. These feeling usually forbidden welled inside of her. She went to stroke is hair to see if it would maybe comfort him somehow, but when her finger touched his head, he sprang alive. In one quick motion, Zero grabbed her wrist with his left hand, reached over the right side of the bed producing a 92FS 9mm handgun, turned the safety off, and aimed it right in between her eyes. His left eye glowed in the night.

Raven gasped, and clenched her eyes shut, but he didn't fire. He merely let go of her wrist, turned the safety back on, put the 92FS back, and then rolled over to his other side and fell back asleep.

Raven staggered backwards and fell into the computer chair. She their and sifted through her thoughts. So many things had just happened, and they were all flooding her mind in a violent cyclone. She wore herself out trying to understand it all, and she fell asleep in the chair.

The next morning, she awoke very early. Remembering she was in Zero's room, she scrambled to get back to hers. But when she attempted to stand, she felt heavier somehow. She looked down to find the comforter off of Zero's bed wrapped around her. She turned and stared at him. She put the blanket back on Zero and slowly walked out of the door. Just as she was about to leave, she looked back over her shoulder at him.

Maybe there was more to this blood stained lone wolf than met the eye.

Well, that was pretty long (to me at least, I've been typing for 3 hours). And NOW I have no Idea of what to do for the next chapter. Seriously. I have got no godly idea. Well, post some reviews and comments and stuff, and I'll get on to the next one...