For those of you who didn't know, last Friday was Lunar New Year. That being said, happy new year to all my dear readers! I wish you all a new year filled with peace, happiness, luck, and prosperity. While it's typically supposed to be a very happy time, I'm sorry to say you'll be reading one of the saddest chapters of the whole story now. Oh well. Here it is, hopefully worth the wait! Read on.

Chapter XIV - Broken

"Raven, can we talk please?"

Raven stopped in her tracks and stared at the man in shock and confusion. "I—how did you get here?" she stammered. Glancing back at the portal, she suddenly said, "I—I'm sorry, I can't talk now. I have to go."

"Wait, Raven!" Malcolm said. "Please, don't run away."

"There's something important," she tried to explain as she started walking towards the portal. "Garfield might be in danger. I have to go."

"Didn't you two break up?" he asked. "Raven, is this about last night? If so, I'm sorry."

"I—" again Raven stopped. Turning towards the man, she asked warily, "L—last night? What happened last night?"

"What are you talking about? Don't you remember?" Raven opened her mouth as if to say something, but shook her head and apologized, running into the portal. Malcolm tried chasing after her but the portal instantly closed. Sighing, he hung his head and proceeded to leave the tower.

…

Beads of sweat dripped down Changeling's forehead as invisible needles pierced through his shoulders, legs, throat and eyes. He opened his mouth to scream and felt a force like a snake roll into his mouth, slithering about before sliding down his throat, gagging him and muting his cry for help.

He could feel something sliding all over his skin like blood. He felt like he was rolling around in broken glass. He wanted to die. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

A darkness overtook his eyes and he didn't know whether the world around his suddenly darkened or he was simply shutting his eyes in fear and distress. He recalled what had happened the night before. The night with him and Malcolm…

"Raven," he remembered thinking despite the immense pain that grabbed him in its clutch. "Raven, forgive me!"

He didn't know how long he had been shutting his eyes. He wasn't sure exactly how conscious he was when he had been rescued by Raven and other officials and rushed into the New Azarath Medical and Healing Facility. When he woke up, the first thing he noticed was Raven's hand clutching his.

"Raven…?" he muttered. He nudged at her head, which was dosing off while resting on his side. "Raven, wake up."

"Am I dead?" Changeling wondered as he continued to gently nudge her face. "Is this the end?"

His girlfriend's sudden reaction upon waking up proved him wrong. "Gar!" she cried. "You're awake. I was worried."

"Raven," he said. "What happened?"

"None of that matters. It won't happen again. I promise." She gave a sigh of relief. "You really scared me. I was so worried something would happen to you."

"Why would something happen to me?"

Raven shrugged. "Well, you're my boyfriend. I never want anything bad to happen to you." He flinched upon hearing this. "And, I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry I kissed Raphael. It was completely my fault and I handled it very immaturely." Again Changeling flinched and winced slightly.

"You—you did nothing wrong," he mumbled half-heartedly. Raven—as humble as ever—insisted that it was, indeed, her fault. When she sensed that her boyfriend didn't wish to talk about it any further, she dropped the subject and helped him stand up. He did so with somewhat difficulty—his legs felt slightly numb and he was still weak but was able to walk with support.

"Where were you last night?" she suddenly asked him as they walked out of his hospital room. "I waited for you to come home all night but you never did."

Changeling's heart skipped a beat. As Raven closed the door behind them, he suddenly recalled the sound of Malcolm shutting his bedroom door.

"Tell me," Raven insisted. "Were you okay? You didn't sleep on the street or anything, did you?"

Changeling had been avoiding her eyes, fearful that she would somehow sense his secret if he did. But now, he couldn't help but look straight at her as the question burned in his mind: should he tell her?

He remembered his conversation with his emoticlones. Surely he could not tell her what had happened. She would be devastated and would only be hurt should she know. But for some reason, Changeling found that, now as he stared into her eyes, he couldn't bring himself to lie to her. How could he lie to the woman he loved? The two choices did battle in his mind and he did not know which would emerge the victor. Which would cause less pain to him and Raven? What should he do?

In the end, he pulled her in for a hug and chose to be silent instead. Appeased by the non-answer, Raven conjured a portal and brought them back to Earth.

…

Slade stood on the balcony of a hotel in Metropolis, having finished his visit to Lex Luthor. He lifted a glass of wine onto the moonlight and observed a single ice cube in it. He drank.

"Well?" he heard a voice say from behind him.

Recognizing his visitor to be Rift, he said, "Luthor couldn't find her."

"What?" the man behind him raged. "He couldn't find Anna Crowe? How is that possible that one of the most powerful men in the world couldn't find a simple woman?"

Slade shrugged. "It's as if she completely disappeared. Records show her up until five years ago. After that were all the false documents you crafted of all the fake Anna Crowe's you made."

"Incredible. Absolutely incredible!" Rift shouted. "It's amazing how much of a useless imbecile you people are! I spared your life and you can do nothing in return?"

"What life is worth living if you have a master hanging over your head?" Slade uttered calculatingly. The words seemed to have some effect on Rift.

"What—," he said suspiciously, "what are you implying?"

The man formerly known as Deathstroke smirked under his cold mask as he lifted his glass of wine up to Rift's face. Carefully, he gave the glass a little shake, letting the single ice cube inside chink. "Care for some?" he asked jeeringly. "You might be surprised at how much you enjoy it."

Glaring at him, Rift struck away Slade's hand, hitting the glass of wine which flew off the balcony and onto the street below. Slade did not seem the least bit fazed, instead walking over to the edge and looking down at where the glass lay shattered dozens of feet underneath. "Oh dear," he chuckled. "Oh, you shouldn't have done that."

"Enough! How do you expect to pay for your inability to do anything?" Rift growled. "You've barely done anything successful and here you are drinking wine."

"Oh, about that. You see, I'm having a little celebration."

"What?"

"While searching for your oh-so-dear Anna Crowe, Rift, I've been doing a little extra work, myself," Slade explained. "It was extremely difficult at first, but I managed to hack into the Titan's database for a little and managed to extract their Crowe file, i.e. all the information they have on the Crowe's and on you. That, combined with my own diligent research, resulted in this—" he paused for dramatic effect. "I know everything now. Who you are, what you want, what relationship you have with the Titans and Anna Crowe, and—most importantly—who you're working for." The last four words he whispered in a tone so cruel that Rift instantly punched him in the face.

"Hahaha," Slade cackled as he recuperated easily from the sudden attack. "We're a lot alike, you and I. Men who don masks such as ours have a special understanding of one another, do we not? But yet the mask you wear is so thick—you can't see out of it!" he taunted.

"What kind of gibberish are you talking about?" an increasingly infuriate Rift shouted.

"How immensely dull you are," the former tutted. "I am not talking about literal masks. I am talking about the figurative one that you wear—the one you use to hide the pathetic being you truly are inside. You think just by working for him, you can make something out of yourself. That you can for once, be happy. Doubtless that desire will disappear from your hands as if you were trying to catch smoke. My only question is why did he choose you?"

"Shut up!" Rift shouted in vain.

"Oh, but here's the catch." Slade was grinning widely underneath his black and orange mask. "I know where Anna Crowe is." This caused Rift to freeze in his tracks.

"What? You've found her?"

"Yes, indeed. I've discovered where she is, where she's been, and why she was gone. I've written it all down on a tiny piece of paper and hid it inside a cube of ice—" here he smiled sinisterly, "the very ice cube that was in my glass of wine. The ice cube in the glass you had just knocked off the building no more than five minutes ago." He chortled full-heartedly and sneered, "I told you you would've liked that glass of wine."

Rift was speechless and utterly petrified. When it had all processed how he had been played, he roared, clutching a nearby bottle of wine and flinging it at this aggressor. "You bastard!" he snarled. "You'll pay for this! You will pay!"

"That is your flaw, Rift!" Slade shouted. "Your mask is too thick that you cannot see through it! You are too obsessed about getting what you want that you cannot see when the answers are right in front of you!"

Rift leapt onto him like a tiger, snarling as he shoved his fists onto Slade's throat. The latter tried to fight him off, but found that he could not. "Would—would you please… die!" he heard Rift shout. Another mind-control attempt, he realized, and tried his best to resist it. But Rift was too strong, and eventually Slade succumbed. He felt his lungs tightening and realized his body was obeying the masked man's command. As Rift got up and left in fury, Slade placed his hands on his throat and found that his body was forcing his lungs to collapse.

"This is the end, huh?" Slade contemplated as he lay dying on the ground of the hotel. "Strange. I always assumed I'd die at the hands of a Titan. Nightwing will be extremely angry when he finds out. Heh, I was even planning on helping the kid out with figuring out Rift's identity. I guess… that secret dies with me then." He gave a mental sigh. "So it ends… Slade, your time on this world is over. Have you done good? Have you lived well?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Polaroid photograph he had always kept with him—a newborn Jericho in the hospital.

"The boy must be asleep by now. Fighting men like me as always."

Slade probably would have had more to say to his estranged son, but he had trained himself not to think useless thoughts such as those long ago. With his last moments of life, he decided to leave behind a message to another person instead. Pressing a button near his neck, he whispered with the last of his breath: "Nightw—heh… Robin, when you find this, I will be dead at the hands of Rift. It displeases me as much as it does you that my death will not be at your hands nor yours at mine. But in the end, I would have greatly preferred you being my apprentice." He snickered and added, "Another day, Robin. Another day," and died.

…

Naturally, Nightwing was distressed to the fullest extent upon hearing of Slade's death, even more so when he listened to the final message left to him. He flew to Metropolis immediately to attend the burning of Slade's body. Meanwhile, Changeling was confined to the infirmary for a week until he fully healed. To make matters, a small rise in Jump City's crime rate due to the recent arrival of a new criminal mafia called the Jade Syndicate kept the three remaining Titans on their toes.

The one suffering most, however, was Changeling. Day and night he was haunted by what he had in Raven's body and his inability to tell her the truth. He refused to see anybody, especially Raven. Thus, he considered himself lucky that it was a busy week for the other Titans, which meant he could be left alone for the majority of the day.

Most of his time alone he spent thinking. Most times he spent his time with healthy activities like walking to ease his mind. Other times were not so healthy—once he had to explain why a bathroom mirror was broken and why he had a bloody fist. By the fourth day, he managed to learn how to work Raven's Azarathean monitor and found solace in watching her old Magic Dueling recordings. "She is so… cool," he would think. Cool because of her amazing abilities. Cool because she was willing to sacrifice happiness with others to keep everyone safe from her demonic heritage. Cool because she was able to do so much for him even though he had done nothing but… hurt her. He was the one who was too weak to do anything for her while she had always been strong for him.

Sometimes his solace led to a second broken mirror and a bloodier fist.

His actions did not go unnoticed by Raven, who became increasingly worried about his erratic behavior. The night that the second mirror broke, supposedly because Changeling had "fallen on it", Raven decided to enter Changeling's mind to find out what was going on. Immediately she sensed great emotional distress and backed out.

A week afterwards, Raven decided to pick up her T-Communicator and dialed a number. When the other line picked up, she said, "Hello?"

"Hello, Raven. Th—thanks for calling."

"It's nothing, Malcolm. Sorry about last week. I was in a huge rush. What did you want to tell me?"

"Oh… about that…"

By the time Changeling strolled down the hall and made it to Raven's door, it was too late. He walked closer to the open door of her room and saw her drop her phone. When she turned around and gazed at him, the look on her face confirmed his fears.

She knew.

Changeling felt an icy chill up his spine. His fingers trembled. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but left it hanging there until it slowly and quietly closed in on itself. The sorceress' deadpan look on her face remained unchanged as she raised her hand, telekinetically closing the door and separating the two Titans.

For the rest of the day, no one dared to go near Raven's room but Changeling, and even then, his periodic knocks were met with absolute and utter silence. Eventually he remained at her room, sitting outside in the hall leaning against the wall. More than once the other Titans tried to ask him what was going on, but each time he would only open his mouth, close it, then shake his head, sometimes muttering, "I messed up. I messed up," before proceeding to knock on Raven's door again.

It wasn't until nearly sunset that any sound came from Raven's room. "Raven…" Changeling croaked for seemingly the thousandth time as he knocked on her door, his knuckles now sore. "Please, I know you're in there. Please, come out. Yell at me, scream at me. Hit me, throw me in another dimension. I don't care. Just… say something."

An emptiness rang in the air. Suddenly breaking it, "There's… nothing I can say."

Changeling's heart skipped a beat upon hearing Raven's voice. "Raven. Please just listen to me. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know what I was doing. I was drunk—incredibly drunk and angry. Please, I didn't mean for any of that to happen."

"Then why did it happen?" Her voice didn't sound angry, nor did it sound sad. Rather, it sounded like the voice of a person who was half-asleep. Or half-dead.

"I—I don't know!" Changeling said as if he was talking to the wall. "I—I was just so mad and angry. I didn't know what I was thinking. I made a mistake! I just knew that… that I wanted to hurt you." He could hear her panting in pain, clearly trying to hold back so much anger and hurt.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he kept on going. "I was—was so disgusted with myself… then this morning I was so—so upset at what I had done. Then—then when I heard you went to Azarath, I wanted to see you—to beg for forgiveness. That's why I switched us back so fast, because I wanted to see you. Because I was happy to see you."

"Just stop it, Garfield," she said bitterly. By her voice, he could tell she had been crying. "Why did you want to hurt me? Why did you want to do that? Just because we had a fight you think you could just use my body for this—this disgusting act?"

"I—I just did it because I thought that at that exact moment, you were having sex with Raphael," Changeling confessed, feeling his voice rising. "You—you were always with him and then you kissed him then you were talking to him about me even after I left. Me and the drunk person I was forgot that our bodies were switched and I wondered if you and he were having sex."

"What? What is all that crap? Me sleeping with Raphael?"

"You kissed him! Let's say you and I were in our own bodies that night. How was I to know how far you and he would go? Would it have been you and him sleeping together instead of me and Mal—" he couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence.

"Okay, fine," said Raven, her voice tightening. "Let me ask you this: if it had been me and Raphael sleeping together that night, would you have been able to forgive me?"

"Y—yes," he answered a little more hesitantly than he wanted to sound. "Of course, because I love you."

"Think about it, Garfield. Remember how you reacted when he and I only kissed one another. How would you have reacted if I slept with Raphael?" Changeling was silent. "Think about it, Garfield," Raven continued. "Now think about how I would react if you slept with someone else. Think about what I'm feeling right now!"

"Raven, please…" he begged.

"I kissed Raphael because I had missed him. If say, Terra was still alive and you had kissed her, then I would be so angry with you. If you had slept with her because you were drunk and missed her, then I would've hated you but it still would've been better than now. But what you did—what you did was unforgiveable. You slept with him not because you were in love or anything but because you intentionally wanted to hurt me. You did it out of hate for me! How am I supposed to forgive that? How am I supposed to even look at you now?"

Changeling felt his eyes burning as he blinked out some tears, which he wiped away on his arm. "I know," he wept. "I know, I know, I know. But I can't—I can't forgive myself. I just—I just want us to go past this. Please, Raven, I'm begging you!"

It was at this time that Nightwing, Cyborg, and Starfire were walking towards Raven's room in an attempt to talk to her. Hearing that Changeling and Raven were fighting, they immediately stopped and listened at the corner out of sight.

"What are they talking about?" Cyborg whispered.

"I dunno," Nightwing replied. "But it doesn't sound good."

"You slept with a man while in my body!" they heard Raven cry out. "How am I supposed to look past that?"

"Whoa…" Cyborg gasped. "D—definitely not good."

Starfire's eyes widened and she was left speechless. "H—how… how… how…" she mumbled.

"Raven, please!" Changeling sobbed. Getting down onto his knees and bowing to her door, he cried, "I'm a horrible, horrible person. I don't deserve you. I don't deserve anything! I'm scum, I know. But please, just come out. Let me see your face. Please just look at me!"

His wish was granted. The door slid open and a very pale Raven with a wet face and eyes red from tears emerged. The man immediately got up and tried to hug her. She pushed him off with amazing strength.

"You—you used my body to sleep with someone," she said in a voice so dead. "You violated my body."

"Raven—" he tried.

"I was born from rape," Raven declared, her eyes not focused on anything in particular. "Trigon raped my mother for his own pleasure and his own goals. From that, I was born. I was born not from an act of love as it should've been but an act of hate and malevolence. I—I never believed my own body would be used in the same way—especially not by you!"

Her words pierced Changeling's heart. "R—Rave—" he struggled to say as he tried once more to hug her. Once again, she pushed him off, sending him knocking against the wall.

"You—you were supposed to be my guardian angel," she wept, tears flowing down her cheeks. "I—I thought you were someone who would never hurt me, ever. In the past, I had always hurt you but you never did it back to me. I thought you would never hurt me. Especially not like this."

"R—Ra—" he didn't even have the strength to say her name anymore. Exhausted with a heavy heart, he tried for the last time to hug her—to touch her. She shoved him aside.

"I trusted you!" she screamed. "I trusted you. I trusted you!" Walking back into her room, she pulled down something from the ceiling and turned around to wave the object in Changeling's face. He looked up and saw what it was—the crystal bell that they had won together on their first date. "I trusted you!" she screamed as if her heart was about to burst. Changeling's own heart nearly broke as he watched her raise the bell and fling it onto the ground.

It shattered.

The three Titans watching from behind the corner flinched, knowing how much the bell had meant to both Changeling and Raven.

Raven was panting in pain. She stood there silent while Changeling knelt on the ground, staring frozen at the broken bell. Eventually she whispered, "Let's end this."

Shaking his head, Changeling searched his head for a response. "Wait, Raven please!"

"I can't look at you anymore!" she snapped back in a hurt voice. "I can't be with you anymore. I can't—I can't think about you anymore!"

"Raven…" His tears dripped onto the ground.

"I'm leaving!" she declared in tears. "I'm leaving the Teen Titans. I can't do this anymore. My—my powers will get out of control. I'm leaving before my emotional distress will hurt anyone. At least… anyone other than myself."

"No, Raven!" Changeling screamed. "Please, you can't go! I—I can't bear the thought of living without you. Please!" He crawled on his knees and placed his hands on her feet. "How can I live without you? How can I go a day without—without seeing your feet. Your legs, your—" He placed his hands on her own, caressing them carefully. "Your hands, your beautiful, beautiful hands."

Raven shoved him away half-heartedly. He persisted.

"Your beautiful face and hair and lips and eyes. I love it all! I love you! How can I live without seeing you?" By now he didn't even bother to wipe away his tears. "I can bear us breaking up but I can't bear not seeing you. Please Raven!"

She merely shook her head. "N—no," she sobbed. "I—I can't do this. I—my powers will be a danger to everyone. And I know now that I can't—I can't control them. Not when every day and every night I'll be thinking about you and—and what you did."

"Raven, don't go!" Raven turned around to see Nightwing, Cyborg, and Starfire standing in the hallway, all three with tears dripping down their faces.

"You can't leave," Cyborg said. "What are you thinking? How could you leave like that?"

"Please, just forgive him," Nightwing added. "Changeling's an idiot, we all know that. Don't let his stupidity carry this out too far."

"Raven, you cannot leave us!" cried Starfire. "We have been friends for so many years now!"

"I'm sorry. But I can't," Raven stammered. "I—I won't be able to control my emotions after today."

"Raven, listen to them," Changeling wailed. "I'm an idiot, I'm an idiot. I made the mistake, not them. Don't let our friends suffer because of my actions."

Raven wiped away her tears and shook the green man off. "I can't leave you," she whimpered. "I can't leave you and I can't leave them. But I can't stay, either. I can't stay. I can't!"

With a wave of her hand, she telekinetically had two small bags fly out of her room. "I've already packed," she stuttered as she briskly tried to walk past her friends. "All the other things in my room, I already sent to New Azarath." The three Titans made a pathetic attempt at stopping her by blocking her way. "Don't do this," she muttered as she constructed a portal underneath and sunk down with her bags.

"After her!" Nightwing cried in tears. The three ran as fast as they could towards the elevator, leaving Changeling all alone. Breathless, he crawled over to the broken bell and broke up the shards of glass. Slowly he picked himself up and dragged himself to the end of the hall, where he looked outside onto the ground below. It was raining and dark clouds covered the skies. The sun had already set and darkness eclipsed the heavens above. There he saw Raven standing with her bags with Nightwing, Starfire, and Cyborg catching up to her, begging her not to go.

"Raven…" he sighed as he placed his hand on the glass window. His tears had dried.

He watched as Raven seemed to say, "I'm sorry. But I can't stay." The others tried to stop her. She hugged all of them individually. She looked up at him as if to say goodbye.

If this was one of those romantic movies or love story books that people watch all the time, this would be the part where Garfield would run outside, rain and tears dripping all over his face, screaming to Raven, "Stop! Stop! Please stop!" He would grab her arm and never let her go, get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness, kiss her feet—no! the ground on her feet—and say a million times over how sorry he was. With the rain soaking his clothes and him shivering in the coldness of sorrow he would cry and beg and sob and beg and weep and beg. She would forgive him, perhaps not right away. But she would agree to stay. They would hug in the downpour.

But it wasn't a movie. This wasn't a love story, it wasn't a romance, it wasn't a book. This was real life, and in real life, Garfield did not do all that. He wanted to cry, but he didn't. He wanted to run out and stop her, but he didn't. He was sorry, so sorry, but he didn't tell her. He stood inside the Titans Tower and watched her toss her bags into a portal to who-knows-where. Then he saw her turn her back and walk inside. The portal disappeared before he realized it.

This isn't a love story. This didn't have a happy ending.

Raven was gone, and he didn't even say goodbye.

That night, he tossed and turned but couldn't fall asleep. That was the night Garfield Logan became an insomniac.

~Difficult Words to Say~

JasonVUK - Interesting predictions. And a good lot of them actually happened! It won't end like this, though. Things will become brighter in the future for sure! In the meantime, keep on reading :) PS as for the pregnant thing... I won't confirm it, but I won't deny it. Just a little somethin-somethin to keep you on your toes until next time! :)

Bluedog197 - Beast Boy justly deserves whatever horrible things Fate is flinging at him (meaning me). The story won't end here, I promise. There is still so much more left.

Thebookthief18 - Yowzers! Looks like she found out big time. Haha, sorry I couldn't keep the secret a secret. But hopefully chapter was good? Many more awaits!

Kaarlinaa - Congrats, she did! Now she's gone. And everyone's sad. Keep on reading to find out what happens next though!

BartWLewis - Well she broke up with him and left him. And yeah, he really does deserve that. But what will happen next, I wonder? Haha, thanks for your review.

gabylokita41 - It's all very tragic and sad right now. And this is aiming to be my best and most complex story yet. And you know what that means! (Hint: If you ain't crying, my work ain't done!)

Guest - Uh... I don't really have control over what other people do... Sorry! Thanks for the review though.

Guest - Thanks :) Your words encourage me to write.