Disclaimer: I still don't own the Teen Titans or anything else I might reference too. Actually, I own nothing besides this little black mutt who's been VERY hyper today.
A/N: Thanks for all the reviews! I won't be talking to you individually, because I've heard that's been banned on (stupid thing). But I do want to say…
I read some of the comics, when I can find them and afford them. Mostly I follow the show, but I get info from web sights and a few friends who know more than me.
The last sentence "I've never been so happy to see dirty laundry" (or something like that…how sad I can't even remember my own writing) was meant because at that moment Cyborg attacked Raven and BB with the evil STANKBALL. Which consisted of dirty clothing. BB's Mom wouldn't know what to call it, so I just said Dirty Laundry
Thank you to a wonderful site where I got the transcript of the show the Beast Within.
THANK YOU!
We Three Spirits
Chapter 2: This…Beast Boy
Once again I'm back at my son's home, Titan's Tower, and once again I see that other spirit. On one hand, this is great, that means that most likely my wife will be meeting us as well. I haven't seen her since we watched my son apologize to a young woman. But on the other hand, even though I haven't been able to speak to her since then, I know that Marie instantly despised this other spirit. Call it a husband's instinct- we have to have them to survive.
I clear my throat. Or try to anyways- technically I don't have any physical pieces of me left.
"So, you're back too," I say in an offhand manner to the other spirit. Actually, I say this thought to the wall in front of me, but the woman answers anyway.
"Yes, it does seem that way," she replies. Then silence.
"I'm Mark Logan," I say, turning to face her. This time she looks right into my eyes and I am overwhelmed with the amount of emotion that her face holds.
"I am known as Arella of Azarath. But you may call me Angela. That was my Earth name."
"Earth name?" Was this another alien, like that other girl, Starfire?
"I was born on Earth but I was taken in by the monks of Azarath when I was pregnant with Raven," she answered, her eyes clouding as she seems to remember something.
"Oh. So that young woman was your daughter?" I ask, trying to keep the conversation going. Nothing's happening around us. Maybe we were sent here to learn about each other. It's obvious our paths will be traveling together for at least a while. Hopefully forever.
"Yes," Angela replies with a smile, "Her name is Raven. She was my reason for…" She trailed off.
"For surviving," I answer. I knew the feeling.
She nods.
"When was the last time you saw Beast Boy?" Angela asks me, as an obvious change of subject.
"Well, before we saw them together, I watched him fight that one named Slade."
"Oh I hate him."
"Me too. There was a girl…a different girl there, one I hadn't seen before. Her name was Terra. My son was fighting to save her and I watched as she betrayed him, to work with Slade. I've never seen him fight as hard as he did that night."
Angela doesn't say anything for a minute.
"I saw Terra too. When she attempted to destroy our children, she taunted Raven. I wish I had been able to fight her too. There's the evil Slade seems to be, but that is nothing compared to the betrayal of a friend."
"Well they must have finally destroyed her, or we wouldn't be here waiting for them today."
Angela smiles. But before she can say another word, an alarm and red lights are buzzing every where.
"How can they stand this?" I yell over to Angela. She shrugs, gesturing down the hall. A door has opened and her daughter is quickly levitating towards us. When she passes us, we begin to follow.
"It's Adonis," we hear their leader, Robin, yell out, and the team takes off before Robin can call out the words that seem to be his catch phrase.
Theoretically it shouldn't be hard for Angela and I to keep up, but in practice it's quite different. Trying to keep up with teenagers seems just as hard in the afterlife as it is while living. We arrive just to see my son slam into an X-Ray machine. He makes some quirk, but the noise of the fight is too loud for us to hear what it is.
As the villain- Adonis, I need to remember that- yells out some threat, we travel towards our children.
"Bring it on!" we hear the deep voice of Adonis yell.
"Dude, it is totally brunged...Branged!" Gar yells out.
"Oh, bad grammar, that ought to scare him," Raven replies sarcastically.
And with that they take off, these teenagers throwing everything that they have at this giant monster. I feel the same anger bubbling up inside me, that rises anytime I have to watch them battle.
"Why do they have to do this?" I mutter to no one. But Angela answers.
"Well, it is better than being called a freak, don't you think?"
I silently agree.
"Where's your wife?" Angela says, talking over the noise of the battle.
"She's never with me when I watch him fight. It would break her heart."
Angela looks like she's planning to say something back, when our attention is caught by my son and Adonis crashing into a tank of chemicals.
"Oh God damn!" I exclaim, "How many times have I told that boy to be careful with chemicals?" Quickly we're next to the accident.
"Hydrogen allantoin, seems to be mixed with glycol in…" I sniff the chemicals. As usual, there's no smell. "Possibly glycol in an emollient base."
"How would you know that?" Angela demands.
"I'm a…I used to be a chemist," I answer cringing, "My wife- Marie- and I both were."
Again, before she can respond, our children interrupt our thoughts.
"Yeah," Raven begins sarcastically, "Had any good freak-outs lately?"
But then my son gets in her face.
"No, I just got sick of being pushed around."
With that he turns to face us. And I gasp. That boy is not my son anymore.
I am alone when I'm suddenly ripped into another scene of my son's life. He still has that animalistic look in his eyes. I watch him as he stalks down the hallway and begins to scarf down ham and eggs. That was something he wouldn't do even before his accident.
He's rude to his alien friend, attacks Cyborg, the machine man. But then he confronts Raven. This girl that I had seen him approach so carefully and smile at like she was the same sunshine he used to smile up at when he was a small boy.
They yell at each other and everything seems semi-normal between them until Garfield takes it too far. He turns into some horrible kind of beast and tries to intimidate her. And it works, for once I see the normally fearless girl seem helpless.
The fact that he can't hear me doesn't stop me from trying to chastise him.
"Garfield Logan, you stop that this...this…God damn it boy, you listen to me or I will put you in your place! You don't treat a bloody girl like that no matter what she's done to you. I have raised you better than that, do you understand me? I. Raised. You. Better."
I turn away from him in disgust, just like all of his friends have. I try to walk away, for the first time I actually try to leave his life. But apparently fate had something else in store for me. No matter how hard I struggled, I followed him back to his room. I follow this…Beast Boy.
Of course, once I'm inside my son's room, my opinion changes. As I helplessly watch him writher on the floor, I begin to remember the chemicals. Allantoin with glycol in it? That would do wild things to someone with normal DNA. To my son, it simply wreaks havoc.
I find myself next in the sewer. Angela is there again, but this time she turns away from me.
"Angela, look, you don't understand…"
"Oh I understand perfectly," she snaps turning to look at me with that same look that has so often sent my son cowering away from her daughter. "I saw what your precious…boy did to my daughter. He was a monster."
"What?" I ask. I had seen him through his painful transformation; I was pulled out as he ran out the door wildly.
"He attacked her. I have never seen her with so much fear written across her face. And he carried her off."
"Maybe it wasn't the same…"
"About ten feet tall, werewolf looking, stands on two hind legs?"
I say nothing. My son did attack his friend.
"I'm sorry Angela, if there was something I could…"
And then I see him. Running towards us with Raven over his shoulder, one clawed hand digging into her back. I see blood, but no serious wounds. Angela gasps and turns her back. I can't blame her, I can only watch out of morbid fascination. And I feel it's my duty to her, to be able to report what he does to her daughter.
The beast begins to sniff the air, as it throws Raven to his other shoulder. Angela winces and I put my hand on her shoulder. She turns to bury her head into me as I continue to stare. This beast seems different than the one I saw my son turn into. He's darker and a bit taller. Of course, I tell myself, more than likely he's transformed more over the past hour or so. I desperately try to form a better reasoning in my mind when one is suddenly given to me.
My son swings down from the ceiling, knocking the beast back.
"Angela look, there's two!"
"Oh god no," she mutters, turning to look. But when she sees that they're fighting over Raven she sighs in relief.
"Maybe they'll kill one another. Maybe she'll make it out alive."
"No!" I reply instantly, "The short one is my son."
"Son or not he still seems…" She's rendered speechless as she watches my son pick up her daughter carefully in his arms and runs down the sewer passage with her. We follow quickly; floating over the unconscious body of what I've determined must be Adonis.
"This way!" I point and we catch up with my son as he takes Raven by her cloak and begins to carry her in his mouth. He's climbing out of the sewer before Adonis awakes. He's almost there when I hear a sound behind us.
'No, he couldn't of woken up that fast,' I think as Angela and I whip around. And it's not Adonis. It's worse. It's Cyborg.
With Robin and Starfire right behind him. And suddenly I realize that they don't know who this being is, that this is my son helping his friend. I start to call out a pointless warning to them when they attack. They would have never had heard me anyway, but it still makes me feel terrible I couldn't help them. Now it's my time to turn away while my son is beaten by his friends and Angela reports what's happening.
"Starfire is trying to help Raven. He wants to protect her but Robin's in his way. Well, not anymore. But Starfire's giving him a rough time of it. Now Robin's…"
"No." Robin says in disbelief. And I turn and it's still true. Where the beast once stood is my son, torn up and beaten. And very confused.
"Why's everyone looking at me like that?"
Angela and I are together again.
"And you're telling me I did that to her? That's impossible!" my son is yelling when we appear. The three boys continue to yell while I lean over to Angela.
"Hydrogen Allantoin would erase his memory of anything that would happen while he was being affected by the chemicals. Allantoin by itself is often used in small doses in sleeping medicine, to stop people from remembering their dreams."
"Raven…she's going to be alright isn't she?" my son asks innocently. "I mean, she's not moving. What have I done?"
Robin responds as a leader should respond.
"Claws and a scream isn't nothing. What else?"
I can't blame Robin, but I'm still frustrated that I know what's affecting my son and I'm just floating here helplessly while he takes the blame for something he can't even remember.
"That's all," my son confesses.
"No it isn't. You have to focus."
"I am!"
"You have to remember!"
"I'm trying!"
"Try harder! If you can't tell me what happened, I have to assume the worst. I have to put you in jail. You need to remember!"
I cringe at Robin's words and tone. My son isn't going to be able to handle that voice, not right now. And at this point into the conversation I can't blame him; I was ready to knock some sense into Robin too.
"I CAN'T."
And then he changes. His friends take his advice when he tells them to stay back. But then he's gone and going after Raven. To him in animal form, she's in danger from these people who had tried to take her away earlier. They had fought him, now they were the enemy. And she was not safe.
When Angela and I are back in the sewer, the action is already taking place. Robin and Cyborg are pleading with my son to stop when Adonis swings back into the picture, attacking my son.
"There are two of these things?" I hear Cyborg mutter and I can't help but agree with him. One seems like more than enough stress for everyone.
We follow Adonis and my son as they fight. When the ceiling caves in, Robin and Cyborg have to fall back, but Angela and I keep up with them. And as suddenly as it had started, the fight is over.
"Oh Garfield," I mutter before Robin and Cyborg appear to help my son and to arrest Adonis. The man now looks quite skinny and nothing like a monster anymore.
This time my wife appears when I do. I'm holding her before I realize where we are- outside Titans Tower. And my son is sitting on a rock staring at himself in the water. We both watch him as I explain what I had seen to my wife. Her eyes close and I can hear her controlling her breathing. When I look up from her, I see Angela standing about 5 feet away from us. I nod to her and she smiles back. It's good to have someone who understands just how emotionally wound up my wife can be.
We all three watch as Raven exits the tower and carefully walks up behind my son. He notices her reflection in the water next to him.
"So, he was the one who hurt you right? Not me?" he asks her softly. She puts a hand on his shoulder and replies,
"He broke into the Tower to attack you and wound up attacking me too."
My son groans.
"I can't believe I ate meat. I acted like a jerk. I'm sorry."
"He ate meat?" my wife whispers to me and I nod as we hear Raven.
"You weren't yourself."
"Cyborg says the chemicals at the lab messed with my DNA, unleashed something…primal."
"Hydrogen Allantoin mixed with most likely a glycol in an emollient base," I say before my wife can ask.
"And he gave you an antidote. You're better now." Raven says, almost encouragingly to him.
"Yeah but that thing- that beast- came from inside of me. And it's still there. I can feel it." I wince at my son's words. They break my heart. My wife is biting her nails, a sure sign she's upset. But she didn't have to watch him fight.
"Good," we hear Raven say as she sits with him, "If it wasn't for that beast, I might not be here right now. Having that thing inside you doesn't make you an animal. Knowing when to let it out is what makes you a man."
My son stands.
"Hmmm, maybe you should call me Beast Man from now on," he jokes. And I can't help but laugh. He's okay.
"We're having a moment here, don't ruin it," Raven replies with a sigh.
As he sits and we fade away, I can hear him try again.
"Beast Dude?"
A/N: Alright, I hope this chapter is okay; I finished it at 4 in the morning. I was lying in bed and couldn't get my mind off of this story. I thought up an epilogue (I just need to GET there first) but I'm really happy with the ending. ALSO in the ending, there will be an explanation on what I believe is the afterlife. Not saying I'm right, it'll just help with understanding the story a bit better. Until then….
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