My Own Worst Enemy
Chapter 5 – Raven

"Beast Boy."

I don't wanna. It was the first thought that came into his mind at the annoyingly urgent voice that called to him. He'd been up late, and it was very early. He knew it from the light that bothered the backs of his eyelids while his head rested horizontally on the desk in the medical bay.

"Beast Boy," the voice said again; this time, the changeling felt a nudge on his shoulder, rousing an audible groan from the green teenage hero. "Wake up."

No.

"Yes." Apparently, he'd voiced his refusal aloud as well as in his mind. The voice was beginning to take on a vaguely irritated tone; Beast Boy was groggy, but not so completely unconscious that he couldn't recognize the voice as Robin's. "Starfire's destroying the city, Beast Boy. We have to go stop her."

He wanted to laugh, but he was still too tired to manage it. Starfire, destroying the city? Yeah, right. This has gotta be a dream.

"This is not a dream," the voice said heatedly. Still, the changeling made no effort to move; Robin grumbled to himself, resolving to resort to desperate measures to wake him up. "Beast Boy, Terra's dead!"

"What?"

The changeling shot up off of the desk immediately, leaving a puddle of drool on the table beneath him. Frantically, his eyes darted toward Terra, and then to the monitors surrounding her hospital bed. His expression changed from panicked to confused in a matter of seconds.

"Terra isn't dead."

"I know." Robin folded his arms crossly and narrowed his eyes at the other boy. "I said it to wake you up."

The look of confusion quickly became a glare. "Dude…not funny."

Robin ignored the changeling's newfound resentment toward him. "I just got a call," he explained, opting to leave out the fact that the call had come from one of the Titans' most notorious enemies. "Starfire is downtown. We've got to get down there and stop her."

Recalling the "dream" he'd just had about being informed that Starfire was destroying the city, Beast Boy frowned, moving his glare from Robin's face to rest his troubled eyes on Terra's sleeping form.

"What about Terra?"

"Terra's still unconscious," Robin said plainly; Beast Boy immediately wanted to kick himself for saying something so stupid. Robin barely noticed. "I'm not saying we should leave her here alone, but maybe we should leave Raven or Cyborg behind…someone who will know what to do if something happens."

But… He didn't know what to say to effectively argue the point against the boy wonder. Robin's mind typically worked in logical patterns, and nothing that made any sense, even to Beast Boy, came to mind as a reason he should be left at the tower instead. The painful truth was that he didn't know how to operate the machinery Terra was hooked up to. If something irregular happened to her, he would have no idea what to do about it. The logical thing to do was to leave one of the other two to watch over her.

Beast Boy wasn't sure if he could ever accept logic as truly being logical. He didn't care what made sense, really. Voicing his wishes was better than begrudgingly following along without protest. "Robin…I want to stay."

The boy wonder had anticipated that Beast Boy would say something to that effect. Surprising even himself, Robin nodded in understanding, watching the changeling's eyes brighten at the acceptance he was given. "I figured you might." He tried a smile despite the circumstances, trying to fight off the feeling that something terrible was happening elsewhere at the very moment. "I already talked to Raven and Cyborg. They both said they wouldn't mind staying with you if you don't feel confident about checking up on the neural analyzer and all that."

The changeling paled slightly at the idea. "Yeah, I'd appreciate that," he admitted, smiling wryly and scratching behind his ear while fighting back a large yawn.

"Okay. I think Raven is coming with me to get Starfire, so Cyborg should be down here in a few minutes."

Beast Boy nodded, simply watching while Robin turned and began to make his way out of the room. Something in the back of his mind stirred suddenly; the changeling found his mouth speaking before he even realized what he was doing. "D'you think you could ask Rae to stay instead?" Beast Boy called after Robin's retreating form.

Robin paused, throwing a mildly surprised glance over his shoulder. He'd been under the impression that the two were currently on bad terms…but hey, if Beast Boy would rather have it that way, then Robin wasn't going to argue. He only wanted to get to the shopping district before Starfire finished with it and moved on—or possibly vanished from their radar altogether once again. "Sure."

With that, the boy wonder finally left the room. Beast Boy sighed, though he didn't know whether it was out of relief or frustration. Why Rae? he asked himself almost lamentably in spite of the answer he already knew. He wanted to apologize to her.

For what? He hadn't been the one in the wrong, had he? Terra was hurt—she'd needed him. Raven could have gone after Starfire herself, especially considering how wasted their joint effort had ended up.

But that didn't matter, he knew. Supposing that Starfire had been in those icy waters, Raven would have never been able to brave them herself without some sort of submarine or other contraption to keep her warm. He was the only one who could turn into a fish at will; Red X was right to call upon him as the one to go to the river in search of the alien heroine.

Beast Boy sighed again, moving his eyes from the empty doorway they lingered upon toward the screen on the wall monitoring Terra's heartbeat. It looked normal enough, to him—those little squiggly lines kept popping up, and the beeping sounded like it was coming at a normal pace for a human being. He wondered how long it would take for the geomancer to wake up. Raven had once kept herself unconscious for a day and a half following an incredibly harsh battle, and that was with constant use of her healing powers.

He shuddered at the thought. Terra didn't have healing powers. She could be out for days.

He hoped with all his might that she wouldn't be.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Azarath…metrion…"

Her eyes squeezed themselves more tightly shut; Raven blew out a quick sigh and then inhaled deeply, releasing the breath slowly and drawing in another before relaxing her scrunched face into a normal, reflective expression.

She tried again. "Azarath…"

The lack of tranquility she felt while murmuring the first of her usual three words was enough to convince her that meditation wasn't going to be working for her at the moment. Only vaguely frustrated, she opened her eyes, squinting slightly against the sunlight she was met with while her eyes adjusted to the change.

She had been surprised, to say the least, when she'd gone to Robin to tell him she was ready to leave only to have him tell her to stay. Her surprise was only doubled when he told her that he was relaying Beast Boy's request. Since then, she had resolved to focus her energy on calming herself down with regards to the green changeling; granted, she wasn't exactly upset with him, but the degree of upset she still felt toward herself would undoubtedly transfer to him once she saw him.

Therefore, when Robin and Cyborg left to start after Starfire, Raven had brought herself up to the roof rather than going down to monitor Terra with Beast Boy. Being in that room, watching his eyes move mournfully over her time and time again, hearing him repeatedly voice his senseless worries about his precious geomancer…it wasn't quite the empath's idea of a good time. If anything should happen to Terra that would require her attention, she knew Beast Boy would come for her. There were only so many places to look, after all.

Meditation was usually the only means the empath ever needed to help herself gather her emotions. Very few occasions had proved themselves too psychologically taxing to render her meditation entirely ineffective; Raven guessed that she could probably count the instances on one hand. This, she decided, would have to be added to that list.

What was it that was bothering her? She didn't know, exactly, and the uncertainty made it all the more frustrating. She knew that a big part of it was her failure to sense the being that had forced Terra to attack her former friends. One thing that she did learn through the lack of another presence in Terra's mind was that whatever was controlling her couldn't have been the result of a psychic power. Whether it was a relic or some sort of technological device she couldn't be sure. When the geomancer woke up, Raven decided, she would need to have a talk with her…maybe the blonde would remember something about the event that could help lead to the answer.

But even after working through the possibilities in her mind, the empath still didn't feel any more at ease than she was when she began. She didn't want to consider it, but she knew that the only other explanation was that she had some sort of personal issue regarding either Terra or Beast Boy.

For her sanity's sake, she'd chosen to focus mainly on her conflicts with Terra. This was where she came to a roadblock—all of her issues with Terra were buried long ago. Sure, she hadn't trusted the girl, and she'd been sourly betrayed after learning to trust…but, in Raven's opinion, the geomancer had redeemed herself by choosing to save the city from a massive volcanic eruption—saving thousands of people—over running away to simply save herself. Defeating Slade had helped, but not as much as one might think; the personal sacrifice Terra made spoke volumes. Though, she had to admit, Raven was glad to be rid of the man…however short-lived her relief had been.

Coming to this conclusion left Raven with only one grim option to consider: the problem must lie in some aspect of her relationship with Beast Boy. But exactly where was the right place to look for the issue she needed to resolve?

Beast Boy—as much as Raven denied it in front of any and all other life forms—was without a doubt one of the closest friends she had ever had. He annoyed her much of the time, yes, but not quite as intensely as she usually pretended. When she'd first met him, she'd told him he was funny, and it was a mistake she still regretted to this day. It seemed that at times his life's mission was to make her smile. In fact, on more than one occasion, he'd explicitly declared that it was. He would never know it, but just hearing him say that often brought a smile to her conscious mind; she was important to him, and he made that clear. She doubted that there was a better feeling in the world than knowing how important she was to someone else.

But she knew that she wasn't just important to Beast Boy. She was important to her other teammates, as well. Robin, Cyborg, Starfire…they'd all made sacrifices for her, and she knew that they all loved her as though she was family. The bond of trust that held the team together was stronger than any weapon or power that any of them possessed; she cared about each of her teammates, as they each cared about her.

So…why was it that Raven let herself laugh at the sad attempts at jokes Starfire tried to make? Why would she smile to herself while eyeing a smear of oil across Cyborg's robotic face? How could Robin draw a grin from her with the corniest of wisecracks, and yet Beast Boy could not?

You never let yourself smile for him.

The inner voice that accusingly came to her caused the corners of her mouth to angle themselves downward. It was true, but…why? Some sort of moral dilemma, perhaps? Was laughing at Beast Boy's jokes so wrong? Starfire did it all the time, even when she didn't get them (although, with Beast Boy, not many people ever did). Why couldn't Raven bring herself to do the same?

"Come on, Raven, you know I'm hilarious. And I'm not gonna give up until I get you to smile."

She remembered wanting to laugh when he'd said that to her, but she did not. She'd only glared out the window, feigning annoyance and inwardly grinning to herself. He was so determined…and she liked the attention.

But where was his attention now? Not on the rooftop with her, that much was for sure. It was several stories beneath her, sitting in a stuffy hospital room with one tiny window on its side and focused entirely on a blonde, teenage geomancer who'd stolen his attention away from her on more than one occasion before.

So that was it. Raven came to the realization almost reluctantly, staring out over the shimmering water and still sitting cross-legged on the tower's roof. She drew in a breath and held it for a moment before slowly exhaling, closing her eyes along with losing her breath. It was several seconds before she could bring herself to draw in another.

I'm jealous.

It seemed ridiculous, but the agonized feeling in her chest was slowly dimming, replaced by an overwhelming feeling of hurt within seconds. There was no other explanation—at least, not a sensible one that she could think of at the moment.

I'm jealous of Terra. Jealous over Beast Boy.

The thought was accompanied by a reflexive shudder.

…This can't possibly be right.

The creaky sound of a metal door swinging open suddenly swallowed her attention; Raven opened her eyes and glanced behind her, instantly meeting the meek stare of the green changeling standing in the doorway. The empath opened her mouth to snap at him, but her heart caught in her throat, effectively cutting off her attempt at speech. She merely blinked at him instead, her mind reeling while he offered her a cheesy grin.

Please don't tell me I'm thinking what I think I'm thinking.

"Hey, Rae," the boy said uneasily, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly and letting loose a few nervous chuckles. "I, um…Terra's neuro-transitive monitor or whatever it is…kind of looks like it's acting funny…"

The words came from his mouth hesitantly and uncertainly; Raven lifted an eyebrow, silently wondering whether his concerns were genuine or nothing more than an excuse to gain his precious geomancer the watchful eye of an expert. Inwardly, she snorted, a string of wildly furious words running through her head at the thought of being manipulated into taking care of Terra. No one manipulated Raven—especially not Beast Boy.

His worried smile, however, was hardly the epitome of a scheming con artist. He looked like a mess of emotions were plaguing him, as well; his expression showed her everything from worry to dread along with his usual hint of goofiness. Timidly, he appended his nervous explanation for his appearance with a hopeful question. "D'you think…maybe…you could come down and take a look at her?"

She opened her mouth, intending to snap at the boy. She wanted to tell him that Terra was fine, that he was overreacting, and not to come back unless one of her vital signs dropped completely off the charts. None of that was what came out when she found her voice.

"Sure. I'll be down in a second."

Beast Boy smiled, his nervousness visibly subsiding, and nodded at Raven's response before hurriedly retreating back through the doorway. The changeling hadn't so much as pulled the steel door the entire way shut before the empath's hand smacked her forehead in complete exasperation.

You are pathetic, she berated herself, her fingers massaging at her forehead while her eyes glared narrowly at her palm. Not gonna be manipulated into taking care of Terra, huh? Absolutely pathetic.

She hated what this implied about the theory she'd come up with. The twisting feeling in her gut only enhanced her frustration.

There's no way I'm thinking what I think I'm thinking.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

Cyborg shook his head, moving his eyes up from the sonic scanner built into his left arm to meet Robin's worried stare. "Nothing."

The boy wonder mirrored Cyborg's action, emitting a quiet "tch" of annoyance from his throat and throwing his glare toward the ground. "I can't believe it," he complained aloud against his usual tendencies to keep his gripes to himself. "Fifteen minutes and she's gone? What happened to Red X?"

The other Titan shrugged, looking to the halfway demolished buildings of the former shopping district the pair were standing amongst. Judging by the damage, she'd had a lot more than fifteen minutes to handle this part of town. "X must have caught her right when she was finishing with it," the half-robot guessed. His eyes moved back toward Robin; the boy was still glaring downward, arms folded bitterly over his chest while he hatefully stared at the at the pavement beneath his feet. "I don't know what she must have done to him."

"Hopefully killed him," Robin grumbled more to himself than to Cyborg. The older boy heard him and shot him a momentary worried stare; in truth, they both knew that Robin hadn't meant what he said. With all of the others missing, however, the young hero was much more open with his thoughts—for as long as the team had been together, Cyborg had been the only one he would allow himself to make such comments around, though neither of them exactly knew why. "Is there some sort of scanner you can run to see where the last place she hit was? That way, we can at least see if she stopped after dealing with him."

The half-robot nodded, retuning his attention to his arm and punching a sequence of keys into it while he spoke to Robin. "I can program it to detect heat trails. I'd guess it'll serve the same purpose. I mean, those starbolts of hers are basically just balls of heat, right?"

"Yeah." And they're not a lot of fun to get hit with, Robin silently added, thinking back to the training stints he'd done with Starfire that hadn't quite gone according to plan. One particularly intense session had ended with burns all across what was exposed of his right arm. She'd apologized relentlessly for her recklessness for weeks afterwards, even after the burns were healed. He'd never really considered what damage she might cause a normal human being if her starbolts were directed at them intentionally. "Maybe we should see if we can find Red X, too."

Cyborg chose not to comment, resolving to merely smile to himself while the boy wonder looked elsewhere. He knew that the thief wasn't exactly Robin's favorite person in the world, but Robin was still Robin—he couldn't wish undue harm upon anyone who'd once helped him out without a very good reason to. A successful beep from his arm told Cyborg that the scanner was ready for use. Robin glanced up, as well, watching while Cyborg shifted his position into different directions to get a good survey of the area.

A few seconds went by silently; a frown appeared on Cyborg's face that Robin quickly copied. "The hottest thing in the area, besides yours and my body heat, is just past this building we're in front of. Very small trace of heat on the ground. I think it might be the communicator X was talking to you from."

"And that's it? No blast in the ground or anything around there? She didn't even fire at him?"

Cyborg shook his head. "If she did, she hit him." The emphasis he used was enhanced by a brief widening of his eyes; the expression and tone could only translate to mean certain death for the black-clad thief.

Robin's teeth dug into the inside of his lip while he rolled the information around in his mind. So Star and X hadn't fought. Did she just let him go? Did he teleport away before she could hit him? No—she would have at least blasted at the empty air if he'd done that. X had a tendency to rattle the enemies he found himself against; there was no way he could have just left her without so much as a snide comment to be offended by. Surely they had some sort of encounter. But if it wasn't a violent one…?

"Maybe she teamed up with him?" the boy wonder guessed, his eyes moving helplessly toward Cyborg's; the half-robot, in turn, shrugged nonchalantly. "I guess it's the only theory we have to go on for now."

"We probably shouldn't start theorizing before we get a little more evidence," Cyborg pointed out, earning a thoughtful frown from his younger teammate. "Whatever happened, it happened pretty quick. Could have been a team-up, or it could have been a throw-down. Just because there's no heat blast doesn't mean she didn't swing a couple of good punches at him."

True enough, Robin sighed to himself. "Let's look around a little bit more," he suggested, casting a hopeful glance toward his friend. "Maybe there's something we missed."

Cyborg wanted to tell the boy that the best thing they could do was return to the tower—to regroup and get the input of the other Titans—but he knew all too well the look in the young hero's hidden eyes. "I care about her," it plainly said. "I need you to help me find her." How could he refuse a plea like that?

"Sure thing, little man," the half-robot grinned, reaching out to pat Robin lightly on the shoulder. The boy wonder only gave a small smile at the action, waiting while Cyborg turned to make his way toward the rear of the building before beginning to follow.

He knew that he was lucky to have such good friends…and even good enemies, when it was called for. Beast Boy and Raven spent all that time searching an empty forest, Beast Boy alone had stayed up for hours searching on the computer systems, and Red X—quite possibly the boy he hated more than any other—had even gone so far as to call him to let him know that she was alive. He was going to have to think up some way to repay them all for what they were doing for him once all of this was over.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

You are wasting my time.

That was what she wanted to say, but the only thing that came to her lips was a small frown while her eyes scanned yet another time over the monitors showing Terra's vital signs. The unconscious geomancer lay somewhere to her left; Beast Boy's nervous form was visible out of the right corner of her eye. Raven felt more and more like the corner of an awkward triangle as the moment stretched on. She could feel the changeling's eyes on her, and she hated every second of that feeling.

"Everything looks normal to me," she said reasonably, finally breaking her stare away from the assortment of screens before her to look to the green boy beside her. Still, he looked worried…almost as though he was never really concerned about the status of the machines connected to the blonde at all. Raven shrugged off the suspicion before she let her mind take hold of it. "If something happens, there will be a little red light that'll flash on. If the light comes on, you have to get me immediately."

She said it so gravely that Beast Boy physically shuddered, unwilling to think of what might happen if he failed to comply. Raven seemed to take no notice.

"Otherwise…if things just look like this…" She paused, waving a hand toward the monitors to indicate the image of normalcy. "…then there isn't any reason to panic."

"Oh," he said, feeling dumb and sounding even dumber. He saw the subtle look of incredulity that passed onto Raven's face before the empath slowly nodded and began to draw her hood back over her head. From there, the changeling's instinctive panic took over; he took a small step forward, reaching one hand out as though he was going to grab onto her shoulder. But past experience had taught him better than that.

Instead, he simply froze in that position, as did she. They stared at each other—Beast Boy in mid-reach, Raven in mid-cloak—for what felt to him like an eternity. The silence that consumed them was already strained; his mind raced in an effort to find something to say to break it.

As usual, his effort went by in vain. Raven blinked and quickly finished her motion, taking a step away and effectively causing Beast Boy to awkwardly draw his hand back all at once. Still, he fumbled for something to say to her—something to keep her from leaving him alone with the unconscious ex-Titan once again. "I, uh…thought that maybe…"

"Don't think, Beast Boy. You're not cut out for it."

Despite himself, his mouth cracked into a tiny grin at the dry, sarcastic tone he was used to hearing from the empath. Her lips were perfectly straight, not smiling and not frowning; her eyes, however, showed him that she was smiling as well.

But not on the outside. Raven never smiled on the outside. Never at him, at least. It was something he'd grown quite used to, and it no longer bothered him in the least. And it was a good thing, because if he let it, he would be in low spirits for a greater chunk of his time than he cared to think of.

"Good one," he smiled, straightening his body to look at her less frantically. He needed to look cool, calm, and collected, he decided…even if he didn't really feel any of those things himself. "Look, do you…maybe wanna play cards or something? I'm sort of lonely down here, but I don't want to leave Terra alone…"

Raven watched his eyes move toward the geomancer, who was now positioned behind her. She could see the longing in his face; she could tell how desperately he wanted her to wake up. When his eyes moved back to meet hers, though, the expression wasn't gone. Her eyes widened slightly as a new thought occurred to her: perhaps he only longed to have someone with him. Anyone.

Not just Terra.

"I…sure," she said before she let herself think too much about it. More than likely, she would regret this decision later, she knew. But the simple fact was that he didn't want to be alone…and quite frankly, she didn't want to be, either.

Beast Boy noted the look of slight surprise on her face, but quickly passed it off as a reaction to his willingness to play a card game with her. Raven always won at card games. She was an empath; she knew just from his devious expression when he had a lucky hand. He'd tried his best poker faces on her without any luck over the years.

But he liked it when she won. She smiled when she won. Granted, it was an "I just took all of your money" smile…but it was a smile nonetheless.

"Great," the changeling breathed, sounding much more relieved at her agreement than he'd meant to. Nervously, he eyed Raven, expecting a lifted eyebrow at his tone, but she pretended not to notice.

Instead, the empath only made her way toward the table she'd sat at along with Cyborg the night before, pausing before she sat down to throw a glance over her shoulder toward Beast Boy. From there, she took in the view of the changeling's lopsided smile alongside Terra's unconscious body.

His eyes weren't on the geomancer behind him. They were on her. Raven couldn't help smiling to herself at the observation, ignoring the tiny voice in her head that was telling her not to be so selfish. After all, Terra would eventually wake up, and where would Beast Boy's attention be then? She resolved to herself while she broke her stare away from the pair and settled herself into her seat that she would have to enjoy it for as long as she could before she once again lost it to the blue-eyed blonde.

A/N: A bit shorter than the rest, and not much plot development…but I wasn't going for plot development just yet. ;) I apologize for taking a week to get this out…I had trouble with the last part, but then I ended up clipping the last part entirely and focusing on the characters rather than the plot. Hope it doesn't seem like a total waste of time reading.

One thing I do feel obligated to mention is that my work schedule is getting a bit more hectic due to other peoples' vacations this and next month, so unfortunately it'll be a bit of time before I can update quickly again. A week is a good estimate for a wait time for the next part…but I'll try to work on it as much as possible. :) Getting into the plot is exciting. I can't wait to write it out.