viii. Chapter Seven
A week went by with the queer feeling of limbo about it. For Raven, time seemed not to pass at all. Each day went on like the one before, and she went into a kind of stasis, where she divorced herself from the feeling of futility and tried to enjoy the time with her friends, where she grew more and more numb to the alarm calling the Titans to the city.
Beast Boy was most often the one to stay behind with her. But she didn't mind because, unusually, of all the Titans he pestered her the least about her feelings.
Sometimes he looked pensively at her, though, opened his mouth as if to speak, and then said nothing, and she could not decide which was worse.
She could not bring herself to participate in the search for clues about the thief, the jewel, or the marking. No word had come from the police concerning the sketch of the thief.
Her injuries grew steadily better, but hardly at the rate that they would have healed if she had her powers. She dressed them in the morning and at night – they twinged sometimes during the day. Tender blisters had formed on the damaged skin. However, Beast Boy's hands were almost good as new already, and when she thought about that, when she thought about the incident at all, she felt a hot rush of shame.
Raven was glad when she realized she did not know what had happened to the shirt and shorts that she had borrowed that day. She wanted to put that all behind her and bury it in the dark.
Unfortunately, it was not long before the borrowed clothing resurfaced. On a lazy Saturday morning, while she was idling on the sofa, waiting without much hurry for something to inevitably occur, Beast Boy approached her with the shirt and shorts in hand.
"So, you wanna run an errand?" he asked, leaning over the back of the couch and waggling his brows suggestively at her. Raven made a noise of contempt. "C'mon," he pressed, "I even washed them so we could take them back – well, Cy washed them, anyway. But it took a lot of effort to get him to do it, so now we can't just let them sit around the tower..."
Raven looked blankly at the clothing, remembering. The skin beneath her bandages began to itch. She thought about falling, falling with nothing to stop her and burning up all over, like a meteor dropping out of the sky to impact with death. A knot of anxiety formed in her stomach. She was pitched back to that moment of utter idiocy.
"Dude, do you wanna go, or not?" Beast Boy asked again, when she had not answered after a moment.
"Why would I want to do that?" she said irritably, jarred back to reality.
Like with the museum, she did not want to go back to the apartment building. A small part of her knew that she would anyway, that it was not something she could put off for long, that, try as she might, nothing ever was.
Beast Boy bent further over the edge of the sofa. "Because if you say no, I'll have to start wheedling, and I don't think either of us wants to go there."
Raven leaned back into the pillows, drawn into the valley where Beast Boy's arms pressed down into them. No, she didn't want to go there. She didn't want to go anywhere. She remembered the flurry of days before the final emergence of Trigon, how time had seemed to move against her, carrying her on into uncertainty. She felt a bit like that now, wanting time to slow this moment, crystallize and keep silent and still. If she looked ahead she could see Beast Boy's shoulder in the corner of her vision, feel the warm gravity of another body, the soft huff of breath.
"We could go out for pizza afterward, or I'll even go to one of your creepy cafes if you want," he offered cajolingly.
Raven looked down at her hands, folded over her lap. Small and white, for once the same pale flesh-tone of her mother's hands. She had a memory of Arella, taking up her round child fingers, brushing solemn kisses across her knuckles, but she had not known then, or could not remember, why she did it. Raven looked at her hands. One of them was bandaged. She swallowed thickly.
"Alright," she said finally, softly, giving in.
"Really?" Beast Boy asked, surprised. He almost dropped the small pile of clothing.
"You'd better go tell Robin that we're leaving before I change my mind."
"O-okay," he said, withdrawing from the couch. "Be right back – don't go leaving without me, now."
Beast Boy didn't see it, but she smiled a little bit at that.
Raven had half-expected Robin to offer some form of protest, but according to Beast Boy all he had said – and this without even looking up from the computer where he was working – all he had said was, "make sure you bring your communicators this time."
Beast Boy already had his clipped to his belt, so they were off in a matter of moments. Cyborg took them across the bay, and from there they took a cab to the apartment building where Raven had crash-landed on the roof. When they stepped out of the cab, Raven forced herself not to look up toward the top of the building.
They took the elevator to the top floor. Beast Boy found the apartment – Raven could not remember which one it was. He stepped aside at the door and, with a little nod of his head, gestured for her to knock. She rolled her eyes, but went ahead and did it anyway.
It was not long before the door opened inward. Raven looked inside, expecting to see the half-remembered face of the woman, Joy, who had offered them help. It was not her, though.
Raven's heart leapt into her throat. Numbly, unconsciously, she took a step back, and collided lightly with Beast Boy, standing stock still behind her.
In the doorway was the thief from the museum.
But in a moment he had shifted, scratched his head sleepily, and become another person altogether – he was older than the thief was, taller and with more mass to his figure. He was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, and he wore a pair of wireless glasses, which he adjusted as he squinted to get a better look at them.
Yet Raven had not imagined the resemblance – she shared a glance with Beast Boy, and knew that he had seen it too. It felt as if a deep pit had opened up to swallow her, deeper and deeper into darkness, and all she wanted was for everything to stop moving, to stay still, untangled and untwisted, no more, no more. No more complications, please, let there be no more.
But, oh God, wishing never got her anywhere.
The stranger in the doorway blinked and pulled back in surprise. "Joy told me, but I didn't really – You're the Teen Titans, aren't you?"
Raven stared hard at him.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Well, I – I'm David. Joy is my wife." Belatedly he held out a hand. Neither Raven, nor Beast Boy moved to take it. "Um, why don't you come in, then? I'll go get Joy." With that, he disappeared into the apartment, leaving the door wide open for them.
Raven was rooted to the spot, her legs had lost all feeling, but after a moment, Beast Boy took her by the elbow and began to lead her in.
"What are you doing?" she hissed.
"We won't find out anything by standing out here all day," he said.
Raven stared at him. What if she didn't want to find out anything…?
"Come on," he tugged her sleeve again, and this time she followed. "They seem harmless, right?"
They found Joy and David in the kitchen, speaking in low voices. When she saw them, Joy looked up and smiled. She was dressed plainly in loose jeans and an oversized t-shirt. Her short brown hair was pulled back in a tiny queue.
"Hello again," she said. "It looks like you've caught us on laundry day, so forgive the sloppy appearances. If I knew you were coming, I… Well, it's nice to see you again, anyway. I hope you're feeling better than last time…"
"Yeah, we both are, thanks to you," said Beast Boy, when Raven didn't answer.
"It was the least I could do – this is my husband, David, by the way." Joy gestured to David, who raised a hand in greeting. "He actually just got home yesterday from a long trip, so he might be a bit jetlagged…"
"I'm alright," said David, turning to Raven and Beast Boy. "You kids want anything to drink? We have sodas in the fridge."
"Oh, yes – I forgot – have a seat." Joy nodded at the stools by the island.
"We can't stay very long," said Raven, at the same time as Beast Boy answered, "Sure, that'd be great."
They stared at each other. Raven fought the instinct to bolt from the room, run away and bury her head in the sand.
"Anyway," Beast Boy went on, "we brought back the clothes you gave us – here, they're springtime fresh." He set them on the counter.
Joy smiled. "Well, thank you very much. I admit, I hadn't really expected to see them again."
"Hey," said David, frowning. "Those are my clothes…"
Joy swatted him playfully on the arm, and it looked to Raven like such a practiced movement, a skill worn to perfection from the long years, like a thing the woman could do in her sleep. Raven looked about the happy little kitchen, cluttered with knick-knacks. Such a normal home for a normal couple, whose lives must have been more or less the same from day to day, a road with no pitfalls or sudden stops.
"Do you have any children?" Raven asked.
Joy and David exchanged a glance in surprise at the sudden question.
"No, we don't have any…" said Joy slowly.
"Didn't want 'em," David joked.
"Oh." Relief coursed hotly through her. She could have melted. Was it all a bizarre coincidence, then? No, she thought, and the relief faded. No, it couldn't be.
"…Are you sure?" asked Beast Boy, after a long moment.
Raven could have smacked him.
"What is this all about?" Joy asked, frowning.
Raven looked at David. The resemblance was less glaring in the light of the kitchen, but still very obvious.
"You look like somebody we've met," she said.
"I do?" David echoed, raising his brows. "Who?"
"Some kid," Beast boy answered, leaning casually against the counter. "About yea high, little older than us, dark hair, skinny. Didn't catch his name…"
"Well, I don't know," said David dubiously. For that moment, Raven believed this lead would go no further. "I've been told I look just like one of my nephews, but…"
Her heart sank.
"Here." Joy crossed the small amount of floor space to the shelves behind Raven and Beast Boy. She picked up a framed picture and handed it to them.
Raven looked down at the picture. It was a formal school photo, with a blue backdrop, and the boy – the nephew of Joy and David – stiff in his suit and smile. He looked so ordinary. God, he could have been anybody.
The photo had been sitting innocuously there on the shelf the entire time. What would have happened if they had noticed it before?
"That's him," said Beast Boy gravely. A little jolt of surprise at that. She hadn't known he could be grave.
"Is he… is he in some kind of trouble?" asked Joy.
For a moment, Raven was sick with herself for bringing the dirt into their clean, uncomplicated lives.
"No," she answered. "He's just fine."
Raven didn't know if they believed her.
After that she let Beast Boy do all the talking, the finding-out of where to go and how to get there. She drifted from scene to scene in her mind, thoughts swimming hazily on by, like a stranger in a strange house, moving through the unfamiliar rooms. Floating. Voices seemed to come to her as if from a long distance.
Listening, she found out that the thief attended the university just outside the city. He was a sophomore. He lived in the dorm. He was majoring in biochemistry. His parents wanted him to be a doctor. His name was Nathan.
Thereal questions – Who was he? Why had he stolen the gem? What sorts of things did he think about? What was he like? – those remained unanswered.
Raven did not think she wanted to know – she wanted to go back to the time before all this had happened. She wanted to erase it all, wipe it away, like a pencil smudge. Each step she took now seemed to lead her further and further from that, those simple days of fighting villains because it was right, those days of feeling little and the desperate wanting to feel even less. Events had swallowed her, and now were carrying her along in their current. She did not want to go forward, and she could not go back.
She had an ominous feeling of being pulled in by invisible strings.
"What should we do?" asked Beast Boy, when they were standing outside the apartment building again.
"…We have to go," said Raven, hardly knowing why.
"Shouldn't we – you know – call the others?"
"No." She shook her head. "I – I don't care about arresting him anymore. I don't even think I want to. But… I have to go. Please, don't stop me."
The confrontation felt urgent and inevitable in her mind. Now, she thought. It must be now.
"Didn't I already tell you?" said Beast Boy. She looked up and he was smiling. "I'll do anything you want to do."
Raven didn't say it, but at that moment she knew she did not deserve him. She did not deserve any of them.
"And besides, what kind of protector would I be if I let you go off by yourself on a dangerous journey? That's right – not a very good one," he said, when Raven didn't answer.
"I thought you already were not a very good one."
"I get an A for effort, though, right?"
"Sure you do." Raven turned her gaze deliberately away down the street. "Now, how do we get there?"
Twenty minutes later found them both on the subway. Raven sat leaning into the back of her seat. Beside her, Beast Boy was fidgeting. One of his feet bounced up and down on the floor. Raven hardly noticed.
She looked out the window. The tunnel wall was rushing on by, the lights filtering in and out and in again as they passed, the wheels groaning over the tracks. There weren't many people in the car – a man in a shirt and tie fast asleep in the corner, a mother with a child that stole frequent glances at them, a young man in a sweatshirt looking moodily out the window. Good. No trouble, then.
Raven tuned out her surroundings. She thought about the thief. She thought about the Titans and her powers. Inside she was tense and brittle as glass. Soon she would shatter her pieces across the world. What then?
She didn't know what she was doing anymore.
Oddly, it didn't seem to matter. She felt the pull of a single destination, carrying her forward in the current, everything rushing, rushing on by. Time passing, time standing still, it was all the same.
The others could have handled it, she supposed. There was no need for her to go. There was only the sharpness of the feeling that she ought to. She had the sense that finding the jewel was only the edge of a deep precipice. She had no choice but to go down into it, an explorer of the dark, deep places.
So many questions – Why had she ended up on Joy and David's roof that day? Had it been deliberate? Joy and David seemed harmless, as Beast Boy had said, but she would be stupid to trust them entirely.
It occurred to Raven that she could be walking into a trap right now, but there was no urgency to that observation. I give up, she thought, I give up.
That possibility might have occurred to Beast Boy as well, because he looked jittery, but he didn't say anything.
A trap. Raven though about that harder. How would anyone have known she was coming? She hadn't even known herself until that morning. Either way, she had taken the bait. She had no more control now than the train on the track.
No control. That was a feeling she was familiar with from the long years bearing the weight of Trigon's prophecy alone, knowing her fate as intimately as a lover, knowing without question what was to come. In some ways, a relief.
She listened to the sound of the wheels grinding the track, and it seemed to rise up in her ears so that Beast Boy had to call her name three times to get her attention.
"This is our stop," he said, when she finally turned to look at him. Raven glanced around, saw that the train had stopped moving, and the car was empty. "You know… it's okay to change you're mind, if you want – I-I'll follow you, either way…"
She looked at him. He was wearing his uniform, in case he needed to transform. His hands were moving restlessly, plucking at his gloves.
"I don't want to change my mind," she said slowly.
Beast Boy nodded. "Okay."
He held out his hand for her, and, after a moment of hesitation, Raven took it. The gloveskin was rough and warm. Beast Boy pulled her to her feet, gave her hand a final squeeze before letting go. She felt a flutter of comfort which cast about like a moth and then faded to stillness.
They stepped off the train, walked without much hurry out of the subway station and onto the streets. The college was only two blocks away.
"I don't know what's going to happen…" said Raven, trying in her oblique and cowardly way to apologize. For all she knew, they were heading into danger on her whim alone.
"Well, neither does anybody else," Beast Boy shrugged. He smiled at her, and she looked away.
They walked to the school grounds. Beast Boy had used his communicator, which doubled as a database, to find out the exact room they were looking for. The buildings were plain-faced and unimpressive. Raven could hardly tell one from the next. If she had been born on earth, the daughter of a normal mother and father, she would have been looking at colleges now, comparing and deciding. She thought about that as they walked across the campus.
After an endless while, they found the right building, and went inside.
Beast Boy led her to the right door. It looked just like all the others. She wondered what she would have done without him. Again, Beast Boy gestured for her to knock. She reached out to do it, hesitated.
"What if he isn't there?" she said, as the thought occurred to her suddenly.
"Then we'll wait," Beast Boy replied, not missing a beat. "What are you afraid of, Raven?"
"Nothing," she answered automatically. She knocked on the door.
For a moment there was no answer, only a muffled shuffling from within. Then the door swung abruptly inward, and Raven felt dizzy. This time it really was the thief.
As soon as he saw them he tried to backpedal into the room, but Beast Boy quickly stepped past Raven, who had frozen in place, and stuck his foot in the door before the thief – Nathan – could slam and lock it.
"Hey," said Beast Boy, pressing on the door to force it open, with the thief pushing it shut on the other side. There was no contest. Beast Boy was very obviously the stronger of the two. "We just want to talk to you."
"Like I'm gonna believe that," said the thief, but he couldn't hold the door any longer and backed into the room as Beast Boy stumbled inside. Raven followed numbly behind.
The room was cramped and disheveled. There were two beds. Around one, clothing and garbage from old meals carpeted the floor. The thief dropped onto the other bed, sitting bonelessly on the edge. The air smelled stale.
There was nothing but silence.
"Aren't you going to ask how we found you?" said Beast Boy, after what seemed an endless while.
"I... I always figured that it was just a matter of time," the thief answered, somewhat hopelessly. "What does it matter how you did it...?"
"Then, that day you came to the tower..."
"Oh. That. I guess... it was a safe place to leave her. I went there, without really thinking about it. I should have known... Well. Sorry about the mess. My roommate…" the thief began, gesturing expansively to the messier side of the room. He stopped and frowned.
"What about your roommate?" Beast Boy asked, almost conversationally.
"Nothing. He's… an idiot." The thief – Nathan, Raven reminded herself – raked a hand through his dark hair. He sighed. "God, this is surreal…"
Raven did not know what to do. He really was just a kid, older than she was, but certainly younger in experience. What could she do?
"So you really didn'tthink that we would never find you?" said Beast Boy.
Nathan had his hands on the knees of his jeans, frowning pensively at his feet. He was wearing only socks. His t-shirt was wrinkled.
"No. I don't know what I thought." He shook his head. "It's hard to believe that…"
"What?" Beast Boy pressed. Raven just watched, leaning against the wall. She wished she was wearing her cloak, but all she had on was her long-sleeved shirt and the slim black pants she had worn that day in the city with Beast Boy. Now that she was here, she found that she could not make herself speak.
"… I don't know," Nathan answered. His voice was heavy. "I don't know what's going on anymore."
Raven knew what that was like.
"Why did you do it?" she said, finally, stepping away from the wall.
He looked up and stared at her. For a long time, he said nothing. Then…
"I'm sorry. You have to know I didn't mean for that to happen – I didn't know that it would happen…"
"Why did you do it?" she repeated. Her fist clenched at her side. Beast Boy shot a nervous glance at her. She could do nothing to reassure him.
"It was supposed to – I don't know – to transform me." Again, the thief ran a hand through his hair. "It was supposed to make me different, I guess. Like you. I wanted to get away from this… this ordinary, boring life that was picked out for me, you know? I didn't want to be just ordinary anymore, but…"
Raven's eyes went wide. She breathed in, out, one at a time.
"You wanted… to be like us…?" she said slowly.
The thief – Nathan, she told herself firmly, Nathan, but the name wouldn't stick – he laughed at that, somewhat darkly.
"Everybody does. You knew that, didn't you?"
"…No," said Raven, honestly. But people want what they can't have, she supposed. She might have liked an ordinary life, and Nathan wanted out of his. If he knew what it was really like… She shook her head.
"Did you build that aircraft you were using yourself?" asked Beast Boy. His voice nearly startled her in its lightness. It seemed to have startled Nathan, too, because he paused before nodding slowly. "If you can create something like that, you were never ordinary to begin with."
Nathan's shoulders slumped. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
"The thing is, I thought I could have stood it," he said quietly. "I could have gone through school and been a doctor and everything… 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,' don't they? I'm not the type of person to cause trouble. I'm not like that. I don't know why I…" Suddenly he stopped and looked up at them. "Are you going to arrest me, then?"
Beast Boy glanced at Raven, and remained silent, leaving it up to her. She felt the weight of the decision heavily, but she knew what her answer was, had known before coming here.
"I don't think we will."
"What?" said the thief, startled. "Why?"
"…I don't know," she sighed, closing her eyes, suddenly tired, bone-tired and hollow. "What good would it do?"
"It's probably best not to question it," Beast Boy put in. Although he had said it lightheartedly, for once Raven entirely agreed.
"Then… what are you here for?" asked the thief. Nathan.
Beast Boy and Raven exchanged glances. The truth was, she realized, neither of them had a good answer. She could have laughed at the absurdity.
"I guess you could give us the jewel," said Beast Boy, after a moment. "You know, if you're not using it or anything."
The thief gave a genuine, incredulous chuckle, equal parts astonishment and relief. "O – of course. Sure."
He got up off the bed and went over to a flimsy sort of collapsible basket by the closet. As he groped around inside it for the jewel, he tossed out dirty clothing onto the floor. Eventually, he came up with the stolen item and handed it to Beast Boy.
"Dude, the hamper?" said Beast Boy, brows raised, as he accepted the thing.
"Yeah. No one ever looks in there."
Raven rolled her eyes. "Genius."
Beast Boy looked at her. "Raven, do you…?" he held out the jewel.
She had to keep herself from physically recoiling. Her thoughts scattered. What would happen if she…? She stared at the jewel, glittering innocuously in Beast Boy's hand, red, red, red, sunset on Azarath, glinting the bronze towers, still the city streets.
"I don't think I should," said Raven, breathless. "Not yet."
Beast Boy nodded and lowered his hand. He turned to the thief. "Do you have anything we could carry this in?"
Nathan looked around helplessly. He picked something up from the pile of clothing that had come out of the hamper. "Would this work?"
It was a sock.
Raven groaned.
"Yeah, that'll do." Beast Boy took it and slipped the gem inside. It made an obvious bulge in the toe of the sock, and Beast Boy carried it like a pouch. He held it up in front of him and squinted at it. "You know what I still don't get? How you found out about this thing. I mean, we couldn't find anything about it, except that it was a really big rock, and we looked everywhere. But obviously it's got some sort of crazy power…"
"You… you really don't know?" said the thief, surprised. Beast Boy mutely shook his head.
A knot of tension formed in Raven's stomach. Suddenly, she wanted to get out of there. Her eyes darted for the exit, but she did not move. She felt as if she were a distant observer, watching Nathan form the words to answer, filling up with dread, with the quiet desperation Nathan had spoken of a few moments ago.
"I think," he said, measuring his words, brow creased in recollection. "I think one of my professors mentioned it. It's sort of a mystic artifact – it wouldn't work for me, but I think that could be because it had already influenced Raven… although… I mean, my information could always be wrong."
He looked at Raven, studied her. She wouldn't allow herself to squirm. She had filled up to the brim, was tight and bursting, brittle as glass.
"I was told that thing," the thief nodded to the jewel, "is supposed to grant your dearestwish."
Raven felt sick.
A/N: Cue dramatic music.
Sorry for the big delay, guys! Blame FFdotnet for not letting me upload any documents. This is a pretty long one, though, so I hope that helps make up for it.
You know, I've been looking forward to these next two chapters since I began this story, but, God, this was a bitch to write because I wanted it to be so good and I put all this pressure on myself, and gah… Well, there's things I like and things I don't like. It's always like that. But I hope you all like it, although I don't know how unexpected that was /
As always, thanks for the reviews! You guys are great!