Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titan's or this song but the plot and non-Titan Characters are mine.
Note: The POV changes between Raven and Beast Boy.
Chapter 2
(male voice)
Wait,
There's no mountain to great
Hear these words and have faith
Have faith
The moon hung heavy in the sky and the stars glimmered softly, a single person sat on the waters edge. The waves washed against the stones softly immune to the mood of the boy sitting there. His eyes were distant as he focused off on the invisible horizon where the black water joined the black sky. He closed his eyes and shivered as the memory of the hot copper blood filled his thoughts and he swallowed as he remembered the loss of control he had felt, the way the sweet heat of the blood had pushed him over the edge.
He'd always kept a tight hold over himself whenever he had fought either his friends or the bad guys. His talents were to destroy and kill, in the wild you fought to kill and it was the only way. The shapes he had used to fight were used to that and trying not to hurt anyone was what had put him on the bottom end of the fighting area. But something different had happened today, more then his friends would ever know. It had started when he'd shifted into that snake, he had lost his grip on the shift, the DNA that he'd used had been stable but some outside force had knocked it down and had made him revert to his normal form. He still hadn't been able to figure out what it had been then Robin's barrage of attacks had forced him to take another shift and that one had gone wrong to. He had told his DNA to shift into a wolf but it had taken someone else's orders and morphed into a tiger. How the tiger's mind had been unusually difficult to control and how it had longed to fight the way it would naturally.
He felt another tremor run down his spine, it had wanted to kill and would have succeeded if it had been someone other then Robin. He fisted his hand and looked down at it. The green skin was highlighted with silver from the moonlight, and he could feel the microscopic shift of his DNA in the very cells of the flesh. He sighed and looked out over the water.
"What's happening to me?" He muttered and another sigh slid out of his lips followed by a disgusted snort, who was he trying to fool, he knew what was happening. The time was coming and his final days as he was were fading away. He'd heard the call all the way across the ocean. The birds that circled lazily over the city were chanting the message; everything around him was constantly repeating it. It would be time soon but he wasn't sure he could take them anymore… wasn't sure he would be able to survive them… another sigh, this time of bitter acceptance, escaped his defeated form once more as destiny tightened it's death grip around his small body.
"Beast Boy?" the green teen felt his shoulders sag even lower at the voice and the tone; the fickle wind carried her scent to him teasing whiffs of what he could never have. He listened to the soft scrape of gravel under her steps as she approached him. Keeping his face averted as she sat down. Bitterly repeating the mantra within his thoughts, "I am the clown, the silent jester, a painted smile hides all true tears…"
"Beast Boy? What happened?" Raven asked her body language revealing more then her words. Raven always thought that she could hide her emotions so well and she could, honestly she hid them better then anyone he had ever met before. But he had 65 million years worth of experience of reading body language hardwired into his DNA. So even the subtle hints that Raven gave were received loud and clear by him add to that the knowledge, no matter how incomplete, of his experiences with her and she could be like reading a picture book some days. Right now concern was what she was showing with a little bit of wariness as well.
"It's nothing the DNA just slipped on me." He lied and she sat down next to him, her scent a torture to his thoughts. Now he watched her reflection in the water between waves and her body language said she wanted to reach out to him to comfort him for what though she didn't exactly know. He kept his face averted from hers remembering the last time the two of them had met at the water's edge like this, after he had turned into the were-beast. He had needed her forgiveness then, and even though he had joked and ruined their close moment he had done it because he hadn't wanted her to know just how close she had hit to a nerve. He still hadn't forgotten it and that night had haunted his dreams ever since, returning whenever he thought it had gone for good.
"Beast Boy you- you…" she trailed off trying to organise her thoughts. "I've never asked you but what did you do before you joined us?" she asked and he turned to her, his eyes narrowed in suspicion and surprise. It wasn't like Raven to pry or ask about what wasn't freely offered. She sat hunched up staring out over the water as though waiting for him to tell her to back off, waiting for the hurt. Strangely he knew if anyone else had asked him he would have made a joke and kept up his reputation as a clown but since it was Raven asking, Raven, who closed herself off from the world so tightly, Raven, who, despite appearances, was so sacred of being rebuked or hurt that she rarely asked for fear of being denied and didn't reveal much for the same reason.
"What do you want to know?" He said watching her calmly with curiosity that edged to suspicion. She turned to him as though she was surprised that he was offering to talk.
"Anything, I don't know just anything and I don't know I guess I'm…" she searched for the right word, "curious." she finished and looked at him meeting his eyes.
"Well I guess I just sort of floated. Stayed out of view of people as often as I could. I lived in the bush for a while fell though the cracks of social services and was on my own. Did a few things that weren't quite lawful but nothing really serious." he looked out over the water, "dreamed mostly of going home again one day," he looked down at his hands again, "yeah that was something I did a lot, still do from time to time, there's something about the city that just can't compare." he trailed off as suddenly the flat expanse of water dissolved before him and his mind painted the flat dry savannah that he remembered so well.
The scattered trees where animals lounged in the faint shade, and the rocks and sand where the lions yawned and play fought. The massive herds of thousands of animals some of them so unique that no one truly appreciated them. The sense of timelessness and continuality that seemed to say, yeah you're here and that's important how? The skies so blue and unique that they seemed different there then anywhere else. The heat of the night and the completely different sets of laws that seemed to take over then and how when the sunrise came it was always greeted by the stirrings of life once more… He started when he realised that he had been saying all of that out loud and Raven was listening. He flushed in embarrassment that was hard to see with his skin colour. "err, yeah." he mumbled and went silent, the night and the ocean settling back into their respective places.
"Do you miss it? Africa?" Raven asked and he sighed realising that it was to late to change the mood for the moment.
"Yeah in a way… Do you miss Azerath?" he asked and she jerked for a moment then looked out to sea.
"I do some days, it was my home for a large portion of my life but I already know that I'll never be able to go back and I can recognise now that it is a better place for my mother to live then it is for me. Her place was there and mine is here on earth." she fidgeted, "What do you miss most?" she asked and he gave another wry smile.
"You don't give up do you?" the smile faded, "I miss the space, my mountain, it's the first home that I can remember it's the place where I died, where I was born…" he trailed off uncomfortable, "But then if I was living there I wouldn't be able to play any video games now would I?" he said trying to break the mood. Raven just looked at him and he let out a sigh, "Let's not talk about it forget I said anything." he said sharply before she could say anything. She froze never having heard him use that tone before. Then she nodded and looked out to the ocean accepting and respecting his desire to drop the topic.
They sat in silence for a while, nothing but the lap of the waves offering any sort of sound then suddenly a breeze began to whip around them, Raven glanced over at her green team mate but when he appeared to be ignorant or uncaring of the wind that stung his cheeks with cold she simply gathered her cloak around her and stayed as well. She glanced at Beast Boy out of the corner of her eyes and realised that he had his head cocked to one side as though he was listening to someone whispering in his ear. She narrowed her eyes wondering who could be talking then she heard a murmur as well and keeping her gaze on beast boy sought the source of the voice.
"My son… you sit and gaze upon my relentless shores yet you continue to not answer… I'm calling you will you not answer… I can see you… feel the pulse of your heart… I am the air that you breath… the rock you sit upon… will you not answer me my little one?…" Raven blinked and turned her head to look directly at Beast Boy who closed his eyes and bowed his head as though struggling with something deep within himself. Raven opened her mouth to say something when the wind whipped by her and that same motherly female voice spoke only this time Raven sensed that the whisper was for her alone.
"Shhh… my daughter of darkness… be still and listen to me… this is something far older then you… he must make this decision alone… be still my daughter… be easy… Have faith my Hope… I am not here to take him form you… yet… I am merely here to help him soothe the burns that lie within him… be silent… be still… and listen as well…" then the voice left her, and Raven shivered at the brush of power that trickled over her skin like a caress as well. She glanced around then back at Beast Boy and blinked as the moon kissed the single silver tear that slipped out from under his eyelids.
"Why!…" another voice called out and the single word seemed to rip at her soul, and she ached to reach out and take away the misery and confusion that it expressed, "… Why me!… I don't know if I can do it… I don't know if I can… If I can leave… I'm not strong enough… I'm…"
"Avoiding the real question within you…" a smile seemed to slip into the voice, the voice that Raven could now recognise as both ancient and achingly familiar, "… The one sitting next to you now doesn't believe that you're not strong enough… and she doesn't even know what the task you face is… My child you never doubted you strength when you had to will your own heart to beat in order to survive… Never once as that part of you shifted… why do you question it now?… why now do you doubt that strength of your soul, your will, now that you must test it?… You have been taken to a land far from your home true… a land that is outside the rules that you in your secret past embrace… but it is your home to… will you sacrifice one for the other…"
"I must in order to do as you ask… I must leave this place… wander the sands of time… If I fail I will cease to be… If I succeed I- I fear the future that spans before me …" the younger voice, the child's voice says, Raven can almost see the speaker clinging to skirts of a mother, his head resting upon her knees, tears seeping from his eyes.
"My son you remember the pool?…" the woman asks and within Raven's mind the scene holds strong now a gentle hand, dark as rich earth, smoothes against his hair, the boy nods his head still laying upon the woman's lap. "The future is nothing but pretty pictures… nothing is solid, till the future meets the present… some things, some events… are unchangeable as the seasons shift, but the choices of the present allow us to choose how we face them… whether alone or with a pack… from behind or in front… free or in chains… I laid down the laws back when everything was young… I can't change them now for you… nor would I… they are there for a reason… even now you can feel the change within you… the time of the tests are coming… you shall face them fail or succeed as all before you… even humans themselves have bowed their heads and humbled their pride to the tests… you will take them as well my little one… but speak to me now… and ease you soul… have faith… the future isn't for you to worry about… the dawn will come… and when it does my protector will come for you and you two will fight and snarl and fight and scrape… ah, I see that… you're even looking forward to that… males…" she said in mock exasperation and Raven sat still next to Beast Boy through the long night, keeping him company, and listening to both woman and child as they spoke. Many things she didn't understand but when the woman's voice finally faded away and the wind lifted he opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness. Her hand was gripped within his own…