Whitewashed Years

By Broken Azar

Disclaimer - I no own, you no sue.

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Chapter Four – Goodnight and Good Luck

4.1

"Rae?"

The slim, pale girl didn't bother to look up. She'd been standing on the beach for too long, with only the light of the gibbous moon to see by. She wasn't quite sure what she'd been looking for in the gentle lapping of the water as she gazed over the bay, but no answers had presented themselves.

"Raven?"

"My name is Rachel. Raven died with Starfire." She returned, feeling much like a petulant child and not quite sure she cared.

Changeling's voice was deeper and richer than it once had been, but it still held a level of uncertainty and concern – and caring.

"Rachel then. Thank you… for helping Terra. She would have died if you didn't."

Raven shook her head. "She would have survived. I just hurried the healing along." She touched her stomach gently, where it was still tender. She had never told the others that her healing powers merely took the pain of the wounds into herself. "No thanks are necessary."

Changeling sighed. "They are. Cause you're my friend, no matter who you are now."

Raven turned back to look at him. He dwarfed her with his height and the breath of his shoulders now. She could barely remember when he'd been smaller, but the ghost of that boy's face was visible in this man's.

"Yes, we are friends."

"Then why not let things be like they were? We could even find Robin and-"

"No." was her too quiet answer.

"But why not! Things could be right again!"

"They could never be how they were. We're not who we were then, Changeling." She returned, and he sighed. He said nothing more; he knew that she was right.

"Can we at least stay in touch? I don't want to lose my big sister again."

She smiled; it was sad, faint smile, but she smiled. "You won't." She stepped into a hug that left her thoroughly rumpled before she walked past him into the tower. She was restless; she wanted to go back to Steel City.

She took what few things she'd brought with her and left in the night on a bus headed for Steel City.

4.2

"I'm sorry, Miss Roth, but you cannot turn your paper in late." The professor's words shocked her. "And without it, you will not pass this class."

She was flabbergasted. "What do you mean, Professor? I had a family emergency!"

"Unfortunately, Miss Roth, you are listed with the school registry as having no living relatives."

That he had checked both irritated and flattered her.

"A friend of mine was gravely injured at work. They didn't think she was going to live!" She wasn't lying; perhaps spreading the truth a little thin.

"I don't make concessions for friends, Miss Roth. Now, if you'll excuse me."

With that the professor left the class, and Raven slid into a seat, face in her hands. How had this happened? How was she failing out of this semester!

She stood, and went back to her dorm with a heavy heart, thoroughly depressed.

She would have to leave school…but where would she go? She could go back to Jump City, and stay at the tower. No, she wasn't ready for that. She might never be ready for that.

Where then?

She looked up at a flyer she'd gotten in her mailbox that morning and read the information.

Are you a writer? Gotham Publishing is looking for accomplished poets and authors for a new line of up and coming works! Apply in person on-

She stopped reading and glanced sideways at a stack of notebooks she kept lying around. She was a writer. It was worth a shot, after all.

4.3

Raven stepped off of the bus into a dingy street opposite a run down old store. She shuddered and settled deeper into her gray jacket.

She started down the street with only a backpack on her back, feeling a little like a runaway- then again, hadn't she always been one?

She already disliked Gotham City, and she hadn't seem more than the bus station.

4.4

He would have sworn that he recognized the pale young woman who passed him, but it was only a flashing glance. After all, he'd been thinking about the old days, and what would the odds be that Raven was in Gotham, and passed him on the street.

Last he'd heard about her, she'd faded into the scenery in Steel City. No reason for her to be here.