Bargains and Balance
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I do not own Teen Titans.
Raven started sobbing and embraced Beast Boy tightly under his arms. Beast Boy tensed in surprise but embraced her lovingly and whispered comforts into her hair.
"We need to get out of here," he said softly as he reluctantly pulled away. He put his hands on her shoulders and held her at arm's length to inspect her. He made sure she was okay physically before questioning what Slade had done to her mentally. But he decided to think about that later.
"You're okay. You're with me now. Nothing and no one is going to hurt you ever again, you hear me?" Beast Boy said almost sternly.
Raven nodded and her face returned to it's familiar expressionless state of resolve besides the faint tear trails that showed evidence of her broken walls of resolve.
She pulled up her hood. "I'm going to kick that man into high heaven and watch as he falls into hell."
Beast Boy grinned. "Let's go."
He pulled her out into the hallway and as she exited the now familiar blue room, Raven felt a tingling sensation go down her spine.
Please let me have my powers, she prayed silently.
Her hand never left his as they made a few turns down the seemingly endless hallways until she heard the painstakingly familiar cry of "BOO-YA!" coming from down the halls.
Raven was the one who ended up dragging Beast Boy the rest of the way down the hall to her group of friends. Raven found herself doing something incredibly rare for her (besides crying). Raven was grinning and she never thought she would stop.
"RAVEN!" Cyborg, Robin, and Starfire cried out in unison. They all practically tackled her in a big group hug and Raven couldn't help but feel as if she'd never been more happy to be suffocated.
The moment was amazingly perfect. But then that moment ended.
They all froze as they heard the sound of metal boots hitting the floor, accompanied by the menacingly melodramatic slow clap.
"Well, done Robin. I didn't expect you to be able to defeat my new line of robots, but you have surprised me before."
The Titans broke apart, and Raven made a point of standing shoulder to shoulder with Beast Boy, who put a hand on her back in reassurance.
"Slade. What do you want?" Robin growled as he pulled out his bow staff.
"Now, now. What's the fun in ruining a surprise? You must have learned that by now." Slade looked completely relaxed and it was having its desired effects on the Titans.
"Why did you take Raven? Looking for a new apprentice?" Robin practically taunted.
Slade looked Raven up and down and shrugged. "As much as I respect her and her skills, I require her for a different purpose. One that is especially important to me. Now if you wouldn't mind, I need the girl."
Beast Boy, forgetting that Raven disliked being babied and overprotected, thrust her behind him so he stood between Slade and Raven. "No!"
"How touching. The changeling has a heart. But I do need the girl. I'll ask once more before I hurt you more than you ever thought possible," Slade said as he took a step forward.
Robin called his bluff. "I'm afraid that we can't do that. Titans, GO!"
Starfire flew up and pelted Slade with star bolts, but as always, he dodged each and every one of them easily, just as he did Cyborg's laser. Beast Boy turned into a mouse and snuck between Slade's legs before turning into a rhino and throwing the startled criminal into the air.
Slade hit the roof of the hall with incredible force, and fell to the ground on the brink of unconsciousness. Beast Boy turned into a himself again and started pelting Slade without mercy.
"Beast Boy!" Robin yelled to his teammate.
Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire could only watch in amazement and surprise as Beast Boy let out a fury of fists, his face in hardly controlled rage. They all knew that if he had been pushed just a little bit, that Beast inside of him would come out like water bursting from a dam.
"You. Are. Not. Going. To. Hurt. Her. Ever. AGAIN!" Beast Boy said every word with every punch he gave. By now his knuckles had gone numb, but he didn't care.
Robin tried to restrain Beast Boy, but it didn't work, for Beast Boy would just throw him off onto the floor with some sort of newfound strength. Eventually, Slade found an opening in the onslaught and brought up his right hand and held Beast Boy's fist where in mid air.
"You surprise me changeling, and you have done much damage to me, more than you realize. But luckily, I have some sort of foresight." Slade said in an even voice as if he hadn't been hurt at all. Beast Boy recoiled. This wasn't natural.
Slade pulled his mask off revealing a small screen with the real Slade standing in front of the camera. "I admire your fury, green one."
Beast Boy let out a cry of frustration and fell to his knees with his head in his hands. Raven fell to the ground next to him, pulled her hood down and pulled his head into her shoulder as she put her cheek into his dark green hair.
No one questioned Raven's uncharacteristic actions of compassion, but was sorely focused on Robin's arch-enemy.
"Now, Robin. You should know me better than to bluff about a serious deal. I meant what I said. Something's going to happen that will tear your team apart." Then the screen turned black and started to smoke as the insides of the computer burned to a crisp.
"GAAAAAGGGGHHH!" Robin yelled in a frustration that rivaled Beast Boy's.
Starfire put a comforting hand on his shoulder and said what she knew everyone needed to hear. "Let us go, dear friends. Tonight should not be consumed with the anger."
"Thought I'd find you here."
Beast Boy didn't open his eyes, and didn't turn around as he heard the voice he had been missing more than anything in the world the past few weeks.
"I needed space."
Raven sat next to her friend in the same spot they had before she had been taken; legs hanging off the edge of Titan's Tower's roof looking at the lit city that contrasted with the inky blackness of night.
"I go here a lot, you know. When I need space after you and Cyborg."
Beast Boy gave a small smile.
"So what's eating your consciousness right now?" Raven asked him as she scooted so that their arms were touching.
Beast Boy sighed. "You know how both Robin and I were incredibly angry and frustrated after seeing Slade?"
Raven only hummed in response.
"We were both angry and frustrated, but for different reasons. I know it sounds foolish but . . . but I wanted him to pay for what he'd done for you. Draining your powers, leaving you in a room, taking you from m . . . . everyone. I just wanted to rip him in half and it took every ounce of me not to let that Beast within me out into the open again. I feel useless. Hopeless." He put his head in his hands again, and Raven though she saw a tear slide from the corner of his eye and fall off his chin.
"I know how you feel," she said quietly. "What it's like to be useless. To feel useless. To want revenge and not being able to get it. To fear for everyone you meet."
Beast Boy lifted his head and for the second time since he had gotten her back, looked her full in the eyes, and she felt her heart skip a beat.
Those eyes, they spoke his heart without him being able to. They showed compassion, confusion, guilt, anger, loss, and something else part of her recognized and part of her didn't want to.
"He said something bad was going to happen. He had a backup plan, Rae. He wasn't there himself so he knew this was going to happen. It was a trap. This was part of his plan, and I feel useless because I don't know what's going to happen."
She searched his eyes for something to build a statement off of. To help ignite some sort of spark of hope and confidence in this broken Beast Boy her heart broke for.
Raven, without thinking about what she was doing (I'll get you later, Brave!) put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him closer to her as she leaned in.
Their lips brushed each others before their communicators started buzzing. Raven pulled back and, hoping they both weren't blushing too much, opened her communicator and with a growl of annoyance that Beast Boy snickered at said, "What?"
Cyborg was on the other side and obviously in the garage where his T-Car was (they could see it in the background) and he said as if he had just had a revelation, "Guys! Meet me in the infirmary! I need to check for something important! Cy, out!" He hadn't given them time to say anything.
They sat for a couple of seconds in an almost awkward, but strangely comfortable silence before Beast Boy gave a low chuckle.
"What?"
He snickered. "I was totally right. You know exactly how to cheer someone up, Rae."
She only blushed and smiled.
"Poke me one more time with that needle, and I swear, no matter how much I missed you, I'll send you to another dimension."
Cyborg grinned sheepishly as he retracted the needle. "That was the last test."
Beast Boy, who had already been stuck with nine needles already hadn't figured out what Cyborg was doing. "C'mon, dude. Please tell me what you're doing!"
"I have to check everyone for any microbiological intruders inside you guys. Remember how Slade got Robin to be his apprentice? Yeah, we aren't going to let something like that happen again."
"What about Starfire and Robin?" Beast Boy whined.
Cyborg waved a hand. "I'll check them tomorrow. Starfire was having a pretty intense talk with Robin so I decided not to interrupt them."
Raven scowled at the obvious irony and Beast Boy looked more than a little annoyed himself. "So what about Raven's powers?" he asked Cyborg.
"As far as I can tell, her connection to her demonic side is still there. It's like a drained battery. It just needs to be recharged. WHICH MEANS," he looked at Raven, "you can't use them until you're back, otherwise it'll extend your waiting period to get them back."
"So, no missions," Raven summed up in a sentence.
"Yeah. No missions. At least for another month," was Cyborg's reply.
"Great." Raven sounded thrilled.
"Okay, you guys. Just wait another fifteen minutes and the results will come up. I need to use the little robot's room, holler when everything's ready." Then he left the room.
Beast Boy looked at Raven and tilted his head like a puppy asking a silent question. Raven gave a small smile.
"Don't think anything new, string bean. I'm still confused as well," Raven told him.
Beast Boy grinned in his way that he does and showed her his white fang. "Me? Nah. Never."
She threw a pillow at him.
How's that for 'quite a bit'?
That took forever to write. Not to mention I'm picky when it comes to grammar so, yeah.
KEEP REVIEWING, MY LOYAL PEEPS!
-Belgaria