I definitely don't own Teen Titans.

Much thank you for all reviews, especially those of you keeping on with this story and letting me know generously what you think of as each chapter is posted. I really appreciate it. Your comments make my day pretty much, to be honest.

Does that say I obsess over fanfiction too much? Hmmm...ah well. Whatever. I like it.

Now then, a shorter chapter, but a chapter nonetheless:

Glass

Chapter Three: Beast

"Where are your roses?" she asked, eyes taking in the way the stranger's cape billowed behind him in a wild wave of night. They had foregone the lord and ladylike thing of holding hands for now; it was far too awkward and they both had silently agreed that neither of them much liked being touched anyway.

That too was uncomfortable. But what can I do? Raven wondered. She dared not lie.

"In the wood," he said without slowing and Raven had absently noticed how the crunching sound of his boots on snow had turned to a clicking one against stone as they walked through the castle. The echo was unnerving and the shadows seemed to flicker at her unkindly, like invisible watchers. But she shrugged it off, determined still to be as fearless as she could. She did not want to appear weak.

"Where are we going?" she asked after a few uncounted minutes of silence and at this the stranger paused so abruptly that Raven nearly ran into him. His back was still to her but she could swear he seemed to be considering something.

"Where would you...like to go?" he inquired at last, facing her, and Raven's immediate thought was: home. But she did not say it and counted herself as fortunate when his blue eyes didn't seem to notice her sudden bout of despondency. In fact, she could be wrong, but he seemed to have some difficulty with his next words, focusing overly on them. "Would you...that is, are you...have you...do you want food?" He looked stricken.

"It has been a long time since you last had guests," she surmised and he blinked at her, running a hand through his dark, beautiful hair, nodded and now Raven found herself certain that he looked far too sheepish to be beastly. Being sheepish, for all that its root suggested otherwise, was a very human look to have about yourself—she thought so anyway.

"My hospitality wanes," he admitted and Raven half expected an arrogant smile that never came. It occurred to her that maybe he didn't smile at all, but this was a particularly unpleasant thought, beast or no, so she put it aside as best she could.

"I don't care," she said blandly and he sighed.

"You don't, do you?" he asked.

"Not a hint," Raven shook her head dully and paused. "I am not hungry, but I would like to know where I am to be kept," she almost stopped here but something inside her extracted what small courtesies her sister Starfire had been able to engrain in her, "...please."

"Come," he said for the second time so far and she didn't like the sound of it any more than the first, but she went anyway. It is not like I have a great deal of choice in the matter, she thought, discouraged, but again she kept this to herself. Raven lost count of the long, grand corridors of marble and the faces in the haunting portraits on the walls seemed a mess of indistinguishable eyes and mouths before her captor stopped.

"Here?" she inquired, voice breaking and scowled. Blue eyes questioned this expression, thinking her displeasure to be with the room when in reality—but what was reality in this strange place?—her unhappiness was due to how meekly she had asked 'here'. Her sisters had always said she was overly critical of everything about herself, but she never really listened to them, thinking them to simply be placating her. Oh she had heard them, definitely, but never listened. Otherwise she might have noticed there was too much compassion in their voices for there to be placation, but she did not listen and so, she never knew.

"Here," he nodded and opened the door. There was a nameplate on it, but it was blank and it made the huge snow-white door seem far less stupendous than it really was. "They call you Beauty, do they not?"

"They do," she agreed slowly, too slowly, and he who was listening heard what she did not deign to say.

"But you do not like it." It was a statement, not a guess or a question and Raven gazed directly at this striking person for the first time since the rose garden. He was older than her, she now realized, though not by much. Yet his eyes made him seem as aged as they made him beautiful, and this was very.

Very and very.

"Beauty is fine," she finally said, surprising herself and watched in milder fascination than most as something invisible scrawled in loopy handwriting 'Beauty' on the nameplate. I am willing to bet he doesn't have a loopy nameplate on his door, Raven thought briefly. He did not seem surprised, however and she wondered at this even as she asked, "How do you call yourself?"

"...I have no name that I can recall and there is not much need for...names in this place anymore," he replied and his tone was so distant that she could almost see the rocky shore he stood on, waves crashing like thunderclaps on the edge. But it was all in his eyes and when she looked away she found herself back in front of her room, his hand still restlessly on the doorknob.

Her room? She frowned deeper; it was not well of her to think of it like that. She already had a room and she would go back one day, she thought fiercely. No, this was not her room. It was one of his, she told herself dutifully, almost savagely and clawed the idea into her mind, lest she forget from whence she came and where she truly belonged.

Some part of her told her she had never felt the sense of 'belonging' though and, startled by this part of herself, she did the only reasonable thing she could think of in that moment: she ignored it.

Instead, she stared back at the stranger, and took her first few cautious steps in as, with a wave of his hand, the blue-eyed man directed her to explore her new living space. "The nightly meal will be within two turns of the hall clock," he told her and she nodded as he turned to leave her for a time.

"If I am hungry, I shall join you," she replied.

"You will be hungry," he stated, circling back to stand outside her door.

"Maybe," she allowed, leaning on the frame lightly.

"You will," he insisted, putting his hand on the frame, a tension in him quite suddenly apparent.

"If I am, I shall be there," she retorted now, irritated, standing up straighter and crossing her arms pointedly.

"Why do you insist on being so difficult, lady?" he asked, resorting to formality, and she noted how painfully difficult it seemed to be for him to curb his temper. His hand shook visibly on the frame and she could see the lines around his mouth fighting between indifference and outright anger.

"Why do you trap girls in your glass garden and bind them to you without their consent? What is it you get out of such trickery?" she countered. His expression grew very dark now and Raven, for all her courage, felt the edges of fear creep in on her; this man was already dark and to see the shadows take over him wholly was the kind of thing only a stupid person would not be frightened of. Raven was not stupid.

"I do not," he said coldly. "It is the way of the forest. You should not have come," he continued. "And then, to admit you were lost? All others have had the sense to keep their mouths shut; they have left unscathed," he spat bitterly now and when she looked as though she might interrupt he drew closer to her, making her lose her breath. "Do you truly see only a man, lady? Or is it the beast in man's clothing? Do you see a...a villain who would hold young girls in his highest tower for power...for pleasure...for evils?" His tone kept getting more and more outraged, more and more distant and at first, her heart chilled. But then he said something else, "You know nothing." Her eyes flared and she was afire with her own displeasure.

"I know enough!" she shouted, her words throwing themselves back at her through the echoing hallways, but she didn't hear them. "I know that whether you meant to or not, you are the reason I may never see my family again. You are the reason I am in this mess, and I don't care if you think I'm right or wrong! I know what I know! I know you are short-tempered and expect people to bow down to your whims! I know you are not a beast because a beast is an animal capable of things you have shown yourself incapable of. No, you are not a beast, sir. You are a man, only a man, a cold, bitter, self-centered, detestable man." She calmed down—though whether from shortness of breath or actual relaxation of her nerves she wasn't certain—and took in his response with as void an expression as she could master. To her well-bridled confusion, he laughed and the sound was slow and empty.

"You know nothing," he said again. Her temper returned in record time.

"Then help me, milord, to understand something. For instance, why do you call yourself a beast, or assume I do? The closest you can come to a truth is that my sisters called you thus," she took on a calculating tone and dared to inject a careful amount of skepticism.

"I know they called me so. I thought surely your sentiments would be the same," he said shortly and unfeeling. She suspected there was more reason than he let on and pressed forward.

"There is another reason! I do not know how I can tell but I can tell! Perhaps it is this bond you so cryptically refer to when it is convenient for you, but I can tell! Be straight with me, for I know you keep something from me and I will not have it! You may be lord and master here sir but I am not going to—" she stopped short as his words sunk in at last. "How did you know they thought of you as a beast before I told you of it?" Her eyes reflected the flickering light coming from the many candles that lined the hall and their violet hue seemed to almost glow.

"I know many things," he replied evasively.

"Tell me and I shall come to dinner," she bargained.

"You are in no position to make deals," he said and she understood he was still affronted by her most recent outburst. She also didn't care and actually felt he very much deserved to be put in his place, master of the castle or no, but she kept this tactfully to herself. Some things could wait to be said. She would probably be here a while, she knew with some sense of loss.

"Fine," she settled for and turned to retreat into the room he had provided. She thought he had gone too, but there was a shuffling sound and she gazed over her shoulder to see he had readjusted himself and now leaned against the doorframe. It looked like he might be considering something unpleasant, several somethings really, but it seemed like neither one was very appealing to him and eventually with a roll of his eyes, he met her gaze.

"Listen and listen closely, Beauty," he emphasized her nickname and she could not hold back a wince, feeling thoroughly foolish for not giving him her real name earlier. Beauty seemed to be the last thing that could exist here, in name or otherwise.

"I am listening, milord," she forced herself to say, pleased at the displeased reaction she got from him at the use of 'milord' again. Good, let him frown at me like the problem I am; he asked for it, Raven thought, resentment renewed at his evident superiority which only seemed to increase as he continued.

"One: I am more a beast than you can know. You are smart, I grant you that," he paused, noting her bristle in response to this as though it had nothing to do with him 'granting' her anything, but continued. "And as you are smart, I will also grant that you will probably understand—when your emotions cloud you less—that a 'beast' is not wholly defined by animalistic traits but by far darker things than any animal would contract himself to." That was only the first, she wondered weakly now. That had been more than she bargained for but she struggled to look unfazed as his voice pierced her again. "Two: I know how your sisters think of me because as I am in ways more than the mere man you paint me to be; I see more clearly than others. And, lady, I shall leave the interpretation up to your tenaciously bookish wits."

He pushed himself off the frame of the door and Raven hated the grace with which he did it, with which he seemed to do everything. How could such a horrible man have that kind of fluidity, that sensuous charm?

It must be Mischief, she thought stubbornly. What other reason could there be?

"I shall see you at the second strike of the clock. When it is time you need only walk the corridor. It will bring you to me."

And he was gone, the edge of his ebony cape the last thing she saw as it too disappeared from view of the doorway. The door itself swung a little unhappily in the limbo between being propped open and being firmly shut. Raven scowled; she really didn't want to go anywhere near where that...man had just been. She almost painstakingly kept telling herself he was one in an almost desperate need to convince herself. His words had made more of an impact than she wanted to admit.

But the door closed would be nice…

Close, she thought absently.

It closed.

She jumped.

Oh for Heaven's sake was her silent reaction.

"Oh dear," was her verbal exclamation to herself, as she eyed the shut door with some misgivings. Enchanted like the wood, she thought and then asked no one in particular, "When am I to have some sense of peace?" She paced a bit and came to the four-posted bed, sitting on it eventually with a sigh. The silence seemed oppressive and Raven spoke again to fill the void: "You know, it is not very nice to think that one day I could be in a foul mood—not unlike this one, mind you—and wish something awful on something or someone and whatever awful thing I wish would actually happen!"

"It is a bit of a problem," someone said. Raven whirled a full three hundred and sixty degrees as if she were on defense for an ambush; she sort of was.

"Who is there?" she called.

"Someone," someone replied unhelpfully and Raven exchanged her momentary apprehension for something more akin to extreme irritation.

"You are as hospitable as..." she trailed off, realizing she still did not know the name of the man with the glass roses. But wait, no, he did not have a name for her to know, or so he said. That could be a problem, she mused.

"It's not his fault he's that way," the same someone said dolefully. Raven sighed.

"That I could see you, perhaps..." she asked without asking.

"Very well," the still same someone said and Raven gasped. It started as an outline of light, a dull shimmer of white-blue, and slowly it outlined the face and physique of a young man with a cocky grin. Apprehensively, she held out a hand. The outline shook his head. "It is of no use," he said. And he was right.

Her hand went right through him.

"What are you?" she asked. His grin grew, if possible, and she found herself fast losing her annoyance. This...form was at least friendlier than her subjugator. To her further amusement, he made a show of adjusting his collar and inhaled importantly before executing a sweeping bow.

"I am...a very unfortunate merchant," he said and Raven did not fail to hear the cheekiness in his answer. She did her best not to smile at his melodramatic behavior.

"Unfortunate? I take it you were not born that way then," she commented.

"You are correct in your thinking, lady," he said and she let go a sigh of exasperation.

"Please, do not call me so. I am not a 'lady' at all, just a...person," she decided on and the outline shrugged.

"As you wish, Beauty," he said and she was not surprised he knew her name. There was life everywhere, she was realizing in this magicked place and soon she thought she might grow to also be unsurprised by things as preposterous as green men and beings that could shoot fire from their eyes and hands.

But maybe not, for such things were entirely too impossible of course.

"So, a better question perhaps, is who are you, my transparent acquaintance?"

"Oh my name? Well, back home they nicknamed me Speedy, but before I got...well, you know," he gestured at his current state and she nodded even as he finished, "But yeah, before I went all invisible-man, they called me Roy, Roy Harper."

Thank you for the reviews. I know this one was a great deal shorter but it was mainly to exemplify and allude to part of why our nameless, blue-eyed master of the castle is the theoretical 'beast' and to introduce Roy. Yeah you thought he was just there for Victor's back-story didn't you? Hehe. Nope, there's a reason for everything in this story so pay close attention. Some small things will come into play later on.

Review if you've got a sec! Thanks.

-Rei

p.s. for those of you wondering when the nameless man we know to be our beloved Boy Wonder gets his name—Richard or Robin, I wonder—that comes next. So, um, thoughts?