His left hand traced circles on her right palm, as he was doing earlier. He felt himself slipping into sleep. Right before he fell asleep, he registered some strange raised lines on her wrist. Half-conscious and not thinking anything of it before he began slightly snoring.

"Raven? You ready yet?" It was the next day, and Raven promised Gar that she would explain her strange actions the previous day. She hid in her room after breakfast with the excuse to come up with a way to explain the situation. Gar had been playing video games to pass the time, but she was still locked up in her room for over 5 hours. It was currently 2:18.

"Raven. Please let me in." Gar was pleading at this point. He heard movement behind the door before it opened a crack. Raven's face was barely visible, and her eyes were on the floor. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. She clearly hadn't changed out of her pajamas. "Raven. You okay?" he asked.

"I came up with an analogy. It was easier to explain. And for you understand emotionally." Her tone of voice was forced, like she was hiding the fact that she had been crying for hours, which wasn't entirely out of the question in Gar's mind.

"Just tell me straight."

Raven took in a shaky breath. "I'd rather not." She opened the door enough to let him in, and quickly shut the door, locking it.

Gar stood next to Raven, who was visibly shaking. "Rae, please tell me what's going on."

She turned around, ignoring him and sitting on her bed Indian-style. She took immense interest in the dirt under her fingernails. "The analogy will hurt you. I'm sorry. I couldn't think of anything else," she mumbled.

Gar sat down across from her. "I don't care. All I care about right now is you." He emphasized this by reaching out and grabbing her left hand in his right. He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. She watched his finger methodically move across her hand for about a minute before gently pulling her hand away from him. Her eyes stared at her lap. The two were quiet for another minute or two before Raven said, "You know, I really don't want to hurt your feelings."

"When has that ever stopped you before?" Gar said lightheartedly with a smirk. "But seriously, I won't mind. This seems to be extremely emotional for you, and I want to help you."

"Do you remember the lake where your parents died?" Raven said quickly, before she could change her mind.

Gar's face dropped. 'That kind of emotional.' he thought. "Uh, y-yeah. Yeah. We-we'd go out to the lake on t-the boat once or twice a month. You know this already." It was true. The boating accident was no secret in the Tower. In fact, it was the only full story of a Titan's childhood that was made known.

Raven licked her lips in anticipation. She gripped her sweatpants with her fists for something to support her. "Imagine that you on that lake is me. Y-your parents are my self-worth. The boat is Azarath. And the lake-" she took a deep breath. "The lake is my father."

Another brief silence followed. Gar broke the silence by asking, "Azarath wasn't in your father, right? How does this analogy work?"

Raven glanced up at him before her eyes returned to her lap. "No. The analogy doesn't work perfectly, obviously, but it held some kind of emotional value to you and I-" She was getting flustered. Gar noticed this and scooted closer to her until their knees were touching.

"Hey, relax. Explain. Deep breaths. I'm right here." He placed his hands on top of her clenching ones. She breathed deeply for a few seconds before returning to her explanation.

"I was in Azarath. With my self-worth. Or you and your parents were in the boat."

"Yeah, that part I get."

"Shut up. I'm trying to explain this," Raven said, half annoyed and half jokingly.

"Ok. I'll stop."

"My father would visit me. Once or twice a year. The way you went to the lake. Of course, under special circumstances with guards and monks surrounding me, but he wanted to see his daughter. Said he was proud of me." Raven pauses to scoff. "Anyway, he would talk to me for about an hour before he left to do whatever an interdimensional demon does. Similar to the lake."

Raven tensed before telling the next part. "But, you know what happened at that lake. One fateful day, you went to the lake. As had happened many times before. It was routine. But something went wrong. The boat malfunctioned, you sunk into the lake, further and further down into the crushing depths of the lake." Raven started talking faster and more hurried. Her hands flew to her head as if a migraine had struck. "The lake deprived you of oxygen. You couldn't breathe. You couldn't see. You were trapped. The lake began to fill you. Fill you in ways it had never done before. Touch you in ways it never should have. You watched your parents die, despite your best efforts to s-save them, a-and you fought to live, a-and somehow you did, b-but without your parents, you felt guilty, that this could have been preventable if only you were stronger-" Raven lost all control and fell into Gar's chest, sobbing. She grabbed his shirt. "I wish I was stronger," she whispered.

Gar wiped a tear from his face quickly before pulling Raven toward him, maybe too forcefully, as they both fell back onto the bed side-by-side. Raven clutched to Gar's shirt as she cried. Gar tucked an arm under her and began gently rubbing her back, while his other hand raked through her hair, in an attempt to calm her. They stayed like that for about five minutes before Raven had the strength to push his chest away. Gar untucked his arm and used it to wipe away the remaining tears on her face while still running his fingers through her hair.

"Talk to me. Without analogies," he murmured.

Raven took a few shaky breaths. She rested her head on his hand. "Ok," she whispered.

"Azarath allowed visits to my father once or twice a year. I was heavily guarded, and was on the edge of the dimension, so that if anything got out of hand it wouldn't cause much collateral damage." Raven's fingers toyed with the hem of Gar's shirt. Her eyes followed them. "But one day, he managed to sneak into to Azarath undetected disguised as a monk. He went into the temple where I was being trained-" Raven's voice cracked out of fear.

"You're okay. I promise."

"A-and he found me. Took me to my living quarters. Said it was a new form of meditation they were trying. He destroyed me in there. Took off the disguise. Touched me. Filled me. Fucked me." Raven's voice cracked again. Gar wiped away a tear she hadn't noticed escaped. "He was too powerful. I tried to fight back. The strain put a dent in my training. He stayed there for a month. Every day. I'd make excuses. Say I was feeling sick. I wanted to go to my mother. Anything." She shook her head. "Once they discovered him, he was permanently banned from Azarath. Monks spent weeks trying to repair the damage he had done on me mentally, with little success. My fear turned to guilt which turned to rage. I wanted to kill him. Rip his head off. That time you got trapped in my mirror? That was a common occurrence for years. I suspect it happened then as a warning for the inevitable..."

Her voice trailed off. She shook her head vigorously and returned to talking. "Monks tried to fix the Azarathian defense systems with little success. The weakness of the defenses were so well-known that simple criminals could easily break through. The monks knew they had to get me out of there. My training was accelerated. I was forced to learn out of books in my spare time, which I still do. My training was never completed." Raven's voice raised again. Her hands gripped the bottom of Gar's shirt. "The last thing they taught me was how to create an interdimensional portal. The second I opened it, they practically pushed me through, telling me I was safer in there. My father would never find me on Earth, it was too common a planet. Clearly they were wrong, but it gave all of us some peace of mind. I never got to say goodbye to my mother. I just left. With nothing. Deprived of training. In an alien world. In an alien dimension. All because of my father."

Raven stopped talking. Gar was brushing away hot tears with his left hand, while his right continued to work its way through her hair. He didn't know how to react.

The second she stopped talking, he pulled her back into her chest and rested his chin on top of her head. He whispered, 'I am so sorry...if I had known...he's such a bastard...that explains so much...he's gone now... you're safe. You're here in my arms. You're okay."

Wow. That got dark. Also it's midnight again. It's a school night. I haven't finished my homework. Welcome to an M rated story! Mostly for topic, but also for the future *insert smirking emoji*. The analogy thing was really bad. I'm sorry. I thought of it in the shower and I couldn't get it out of my head. Yeah that's about it. Any questions, comment and I'll respond. Idk. Email me. DM IM PM whatever it's called on this site. Bye