iii. Chapter Two

It was like taking a leap and missing the ledge you had aimed for. Raven reached for her powers as soon as she let go of the thief's board, and found nothing. It was like a crutch breaking out from under her. She dropped out of the sky, her mind going bizarrely blank, her heart leaping into her throat, time stretching as if to catch her.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't what do to know. She what know didn't –

With a shattering thud, Raven slammed into the roof of a building and lied there, stunned. The wind had been knocked out of her. She couldn't breathe. She had never felt so weak or so foolish in her life, not even when Malchior –

No. She still had enough of her sense left not to go there.

She began to rise, trying to prop herself up with one palm on the roof. Bad idea. Oh, oh, bad idea, worst idea she'd ever had. She hissed in pain.

When she went to look at her right hand, she found that there was an angry red line burned into her skin, just short of being a gash, on the place where she had been holding on to the hover board. There were more straight-line burns, one on the inside of her right thigh, another on the inside of her left arm above the elbow, and another right across the rib cage, an inch below her breasts. The last two were less serious, but they had made holes in her uniform.

Raven curled down over her knees. It hurt, was where her mind was stuck, it hurt, it hurt. Tears stung her eyes. Why had she jumped after the thief?

Why had she jumped?

There was a sudden swooping of wings behind her, and when she looked up, Beast Boy was there. He took a concerned step toward her, then stopped, uncertain. His hands, which had been reaching out as if to touch her, withdrew and hung at his sides.

Well, she didn't want to be touched anyway, she told herself, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes. She never wanted to be touched. And now she only wanted to curl up alone and die.

"Raven, are you okay? Are you hurt?" he asked. The urgency in his voice was startling.

For a moment, she didn't know what to say. Then she pointed in the direction the thief had gone. "W-what are you doing? Follow him!"

Beast Boy stared down at her. "Raven, he's already gone."

She leaned her head heavily on her uninjured hand and closed her eyes. Yes, she had known that. Stupid to say that, stupid to have jumped, stupid to feel the red-raw skin as if it were still being scorched – No, she wouldn't think about that. She wouldn't think about anything.

"I – I'm sorry." Beast Boy's voice cut into the silence. "I wasn't much of a protector."

Raven took a deep breath to steady herself. "No. You didn't do anything wrong. I was the one who – what I did was –" She broke off and stared at the ground, biting her tongue on a wounded noise. It hurt. She had been so stupid, and now she was paying for it.

"Here," he offered after a moment. "Let me help you up."

"No," she shook her head again, not looking at him. So stupid. "I'll be fine."

"Please," he said, stepping closer. As he reached out to touch her, he saw the burns for the first time. "Rae! You – you're…"

Of course the first thing he said was her name. He said her name a lot, she noticed, absently.

"I'll be fine," she repeated irrationally through gritted teeth, humiliated and angry and hurting most of all. Why, why was she arguing? What was the point? But she didn't care anymore about the point, just wanted to curl up alone and die.

"What's you're problem? I'm just trying to help you!"

"I don't need help!"

"Yes, you do!"

That was when they realized they were no longer alone.

"Um… hello, what's going on up here?"

Raven could barely raise her head to look for the source of the voice. A civilian woman stood in the doorway that led down the stairs and into the building. She had a short bob of brown hair, and the sun glinted off of her wire-rimmed glasses.

"Are you…" she stared at them. "…the Titans…?"

Beast Boy scratched the back of his head. "Uh… yeah…"

"Beast Boy, right?" The woman came slowly closer. Raven closed her eyes, nerves firing off all over, powerfully, like canons, searing her seared flesh. "And… are you Raven? You look different in the paper…"

The woman saw Raven's injuries and gave a gasp of horror.

"Oh, God! Are you – no, of course you're not alright, stupid question. Okay. Okay. Can you stand – or… fly? Or something?"

"I can walk," Raven answered, not sure why it mattered, not caring. She assumed she could walk anyway. Haltingly, with Beast Boy reaching out twice to steady her only to withdraw, she climbed to her feet to test it out.

Instantly, she wished she hadn't, but she remained standing anyway, retreating into her cloak, cradling both arms against her. Her vision swam, and she wanted only to fall back to the floor and sleep, fall back and curl up and anything, anything at all, just to make it go away…

"Why don't you come inside with me? I live in this building –"

But she didn't want to be here anymore. She wanted to go back to her room where she could be alone and forget all of it had happened, forget that she had been so stupid and allow her wounds to heal.

"No," Raven cut the woman off. Somehow, she kept her voice steady. "Thank you, but we have an infirmary at the tower. And we should be heading there now." She shot a pointed glance at Beast Boy. He looked surprised.

"But Raven, I can't carry you! Do you really want to be dangling by your arms way up in the air right now?" He waved his arms as if to underscore his point.

"I do if it means getting back home already," she said blackly. But inwardly she realized with a wince what a bad idea it was.

"No way!" replied Beast Boy, folding his arms across his chest emphatically. "That'll just get you more hurt, and I'm not doing that."

"He's right," the civilian woman put in. As if it were any of her business. Raven resented her right then. "That wouldn't be a good idea."

Beast Boy stood up taller. "See?" he said triumphantly.

Raven let out a breath. She just wanted to get out of here. She hurt all over. She hurt so much. She couldn't remember ever hurting worse than this. And she needed to…

No, she realized with a start, she didn't need to meditate. That was a bizarre concept.

"Why don't you call the others, then?" Raven asked, and it would have come off as desperate if she had been anybody else. "Where's your communicator?"

"Uh…" said Beast Boy, frantically patting his pockets. Oh, she didn't like the sound of that. "Oh, yeah, I remember… I took it off."

"What?" Raven glared at him.

"Well, I was trying to get comfy on the sofa when I was taking my nap, and it kept digging into my side, so I took it off and put it on the floor…. Come on, don't look at me like that! Why don't you just use your communicator?"

Now that she thought about it, her communicator was not hooked to her belt, as it normally was. She remembered dropping her used uniform on the floor earlier in her room, not stopping to unhook the com-link and reattach it to the fresh suit.

"I… don't have it," she admitted. Her burns flared sharply, as if they were still pressed so closely to the steel, skin crumbling and burning away. She shook.

"Ha!" said Beast Boy, smiling widely. "Who's little miss perfect now?" He paused. "Wait…"

Raven rolled her eyes. "You are, Beast Boy."

That drew his attention to her. "Raven, you're shaking…"

Beside them, the woman cleared her throat. Raven had almost forgotten she was there.

"Do you need help? I want to help you, if I can," she said, not hesitant at all but straightforward.

"Yeah," Beast Boy replied, before Raven could get a word in. "That'd be great. Wouldn't it, Raven?"

She stared at him grimly, but she didn't care enough to argue anymore. It hurt too much to argue anymore. She allowed herself to be led to the apartment where the woman – who introduced herself as Joy Anderson – lived. It was cluttered up with knick-knacks, rough clay pottery and figurines, dolls, decorative boxes, ferns in hand-painted pots.

Before she knew it, Raven had been shown to the bathtub, handed a set of clean clothes, and left alone to peel off her ripped uniform and get some cold water on those burns, which was supposed to help them. So she did all that, swaying on her feet, trying to let her mind wander away, only it was anchored by the pain, which receded and swelled back up like an ocean's edge over and over, as if the nerves too were swaying as they burned her.

Finally she dressed herself in the soap-smelling clothes: an over-sized t-shirt, brown and well-worn, and a pair of faded flannel draw string shorts that bared her leg until an inch above the knee. They felt good and clean. But even so, all she wanted was to fall over and die.

She had been a fool to jump, and now she had the injuries to show for it and nothing else. And Beast boy knew she had done it, and so the other Titans would know, too, in time. They would try to pity her, wouldn't they? As if she weren't humiliated enough already, with no powers, only a weak human body, which she had gone and injured right off the bat, failing miserably in her attempt at heroism. A stupid, stupid attempt. An embarrassment.

Why had she jumped? Why had it seemed like the only course of action at the time? She remembered seeing the last link to her powers slipping off, and the desperation stealing over her, choking her. And she jumped. She could have been killed. Was that how much her powers were worth to her?

She didn't want to think about it. So she shut that part of her mind off.

Raven paused at the bathroom door. When she tipped it open, she could hear the not-so-far-away voices of Beast Boy, and the woman, Joy. She stood for a minute, leaning heavily against the door frame, listening.

"…when I heard a bang from the roof," the woman's voice floated to her. "I live on the top floor, you see, with my husband – he's away on business right now – and so I went up to see what it was…"

"It was Raven," said Beast Boy.

"Do you mind if I ask what happened?"

"She… uh… she fell…"

"But… isn't she one of the ones who fly?"

A pause. Raven found herself leaning in a little, to hear.

"…No."

Raven shook herself and walked out into the kitchen then, where the two were seated at an island counter. As she came into the room, she heard Beast Boy steer the conversation into safer waters.

"Did you paint all this?" he asked, gesturing to the ceiling, which was painted with clouds on top of a cheerful robin's egg blue.

"Oh, no, no, no," said Joy, smiling warmly. "I'm no an artist. I had a friend do it for me. Lovely work, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Beast Boy replied. "Cool."

Raven made a little noise in her throat, feeling a swell of terrible pain. She told herself that it wasn't a whimper and clung to her cloak and uniform, folded in her arms.

On cue, Joy and Beast Boy turned to her. Beast Boy's eyes widened a little bit, she noticed, probably at the sight of her in a pair of dumpy shorts. Normally, she would have refused the clothing point blank. But obviously… she wasn't normal anymore. Or, rather, she was, and that was the difference.

"Here," said Joy, handing her two bags of frozen peas. "Take these. I'm sorry, I didn't have any ice packs…"

But Raven set her cloak down on the counter and took the bags without hesitating, just for the brief, subsiding relief when she placed them on her burns. She hardly cared that they were bags of vegetables, or that she was wearing somebody else's clothing, if she could just get it to stop hurting. God, she had been so stupid… She closed her eyes.

For some reason, her thoughts drifted back in time to her mother. If Arella were there, she would have sat her down without fuss and helped her into a healing trance (another thing that was barred to her now). That's what she would have done. Because Arella had seemed to love her daughter fiercely at times and distantly at others, and she was always sad and beautiful and far away, like a star, and Raven had worshiped her and wanted to be just like her. And now…

"I called a cab for you two," Joy said. "It should be here shortly."

"We were gonna call an ambulance," Beast Boy told her, "but –"

"I don't want an ambulance," she interrupted. She thought of the lights, and the siren, and the commotion, and the people. No, she didn't want that, no matter what… even if it hurt so much that she couldn't take it, which it almost did. She told herself that she ought to be strong and not feel it.

Beast Boy looked at her. "I knew you wouldn't," he said simply.

"Oh." Raven frowned and concentrated instead on pressing the frozen peas to the wound on her upper arm. It didn't help very much, but it was better than nothing.

"Do you want any more ice?" asked Joy.

"No," said Raven. She didn't know how she would hold ice to all four injuries at once. "But thank you."

And then silence. It was a small eternity before the cab came, but finally the buzzer by the door rang, and Joy showed them down to the door and pressed some money in their hands to pay the driver, and they said they would pay her back when they came to return the clothes, and Joy said not to worry about it, it was the least she could do, and so on and so forth, until she was gone and Beast Boy and Raven were sitting in the back seat of the Jump City cab. The interior was brown vinyl, and it smelled dusty, like old suitcases.

The driver did a sort of double-take when he saw them, but didn't otherwise comment. When they were settled in, he turned to look at them over the divider.

"You going to the hospital?" he asked, eyeing the spots where Raven had covered her injuries with the frozen bags of peas.

"Yeah," said Beast Boy, at the same time as Raven answered, "No."

They looked at each other.

"I want to go home," Raven said flatly, in a tone that should have brooked no argument. But Beast Boy argued anyway. Maybe she was losing her touch.

"Raven, you need to see a doctor –"

"There's burn salve at the Tower. I don't need to go to the hospital. It's not that bad," she lied. It was, it really was, but he knew she was a private person, so couldn't he see that she just wanted to hole up and lick her wounds on her own?

"Look, I know how bad it is!" said Beast Boy suddenly. "I know you're tough and you can take it, but I also know how much it hurts, even if you won't admit it!"

And he snatched off his gloves one at a time. Raven saw that his palms were all bandaged up with beige medical tape. His skin stood out against the skin-colored wrapping. His fingers were blunt and heavy, not yet grown into. She wouldn't have expected him to have such strong-looking hands.

"Cyborg treated me last night, but I had to go to the hospital later anyway," Beast Boy continued more calmly, more quietly. "The stuff we have at the Tower doesn't work that well – I mean, we don't usually handle any fires, so it's just this over-the-counter stuff…"

The words sort of bounced off of her. She stared at his hands.

"Oh," said Raven.

Oh, so… she… wasn't the only one… who had been injured…

Beast Boy, noticing the direction of her gaze, self-consciously began to put his gloves back on. His cheeks were flushed with color.

It was then that she noticed that the cab driver was staring at them. He quickly averted his eyes when she stared back.

"So…" said the driver, clearly pretending that nothing had happened as he turned to face the road, "…You going to the hospital?"

Beast Boy looked to Raven. For a moment, she was silent, as her mind reached back to earlier that morning, on the roof of the apartment building, her fight with Beast Boy, who looked at her with urgent eyes and tried to help her even as she batted him away. She fiddled with the edge of her borrowed flannel shorts.

And then Raven did something that she didn't do often. She surrendered.

"Fine," she said. "The hospital."

The cab purred into motion, sliding smoothly into the Jump City traffic.

Beast Boy smiled. "Good."

"You two mind if I turn on the radio?" asked the driver a moment later from up front.

Raven left it up to Beast Boy to answer, looking out the window with disinterest.

"Sure," he said. She had known he would say that. "Whatever you want."

The driver pressed a button and the radio came to life in a burst of static. He flipped around through a few stations, and finally settled on something that smoothly saturated the cab, seeming to fill it all up with a deep voice that sang:

'I…I'm so in love with you,

Whatever you want to do,

Is all right with me…'

Raven closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window pane, pressing one of the bags of peas to her arm, searching for relief, not finding any. She glanced at Beast Boy without really meaning to, and found him looking at her. Their eyes bounced off of each other and away, back to the window. She felt a knot form in her stomach. She hadn't meant to look at him.

'Cause you make me feel so brand new,

And I want to spend my life with you…'

She decided it was going to be a long, long trip.

A/N: I like Raven when she's being difficult :)

The song at the end there, by the way, is 'Let's Stay Together' as performed by Al Green. It's on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I don't own it. And it will probably be the only song in this fic, so if you really couldn't stand it, you're in the clear.

Big thanks to everybody who reviewed last time! I do love to get reviews... hint, hint.

Next Chapter: Beast Boy and Raven go shopping in the city... what?