ix. Chapter Eight

Both Beast Boy and the thief were staring at her, but Raven hardly saw them anymore. She hardly saw anything. Her heart thudded in her chest and she knew she had to get out. Half-blindly, she backed out of the room, down the hall to the stairwell. Instead of going back the way she came, she went up. Her shoulder crashed against the wall as she turned the corner, and she paid it no mind.

Up and out, she thought, up and out, like a mantra.

That had always been the way. Up off the roofs of the bronze towers, up where there were no limits.

Raven burst out the door and onto the roof. The cool evening air enveloped her. She breathed in deeply and looked around, at eyelevel now with the treetops. Jump City was a glow in the distance.

She walked to the edge and there she sank to her knees, not by choice. Looking over the edge, it was a dizzying drop to the ground. Memories came to her, one after another, relentless.

By herself, peaking at the other children as they walked in line to a school she would never attend, alone and watching the traffic of people from her window in the room that the monks had given her, filled with yearning, stuffed with it up to her eyeballs, sweating it from all her pores, breathing it, eating and sleeping it, heart pumping it cyclically through her veins. She thought she would die from wanting, so she taught herself not to want at all.

Some things, Arella had told her, are just not meant to be.

Even though she had crushed and crumpled that wanting, buried it in the deep dark and forgotten it, it had flourished there like a jungle vine.

"Raven…?"

Beast Boy's voice traveled out to her, sounding a little winded. Raven could not remember running up the stairs, but she supposed that she must have done. He took a cautious step closer. She did not have the energy to turn around.

"Are you okay…?"

She remembered another time on another roof, Beast Boy extending his help and she rebuffing, rejecting without thought. She could not do that anymore. She did not have the heart.

"Is it… is it true?" Beast Boy's feet crunched the gravelly surface of the rooftop, coming slowly toward her. He stopped a few feet away. "Did you wish for...?"

"No!" Her hands fisted the knees of her pants. She squeezed her eyes shut tight. "I would never –"

She broke off. The words would not come.

"Then, maybe whoever is after you…" suggested Beast Boy, slowly and gently, like a man to a frightened animal. Her stomach tightened into knots, and she did not believe that she could move if she tried. She was paralyzed with shame, sick with it. What had she done to herself? Why couldn't she handle the life that had been given to her, and why was she always running away?

Raven shook her head, and the mouse-brown hair swayed from side to side.

"No," she said. It seemed all she could say. "No."

She thought of that first day, when she had jumped from the window in pursuit of the thief. Going after her powers had been just a convenient excuse, when the truth was she had hardly thought of them at all, except as a means to an end – she had not risked her life for her powers, not really. All of it had been for the need to stay in the tower, to be useful to her friends, to keep them close, to keep from being alone again.

The loneliness of childhood was a wound that had not healed.

And as a child, her heart's wish, every moment of every day, had been to be perfectly ordinary. And as an adult, she knew that such a wish would only deconstruct the life she had made for herself, a good life, simple and comfortable and fairly constant. She did not want change, did not want thought beyond the Titans, did not want complications, did not want it…

If only she had been able to make herself stop wanting to begin with, but she never had. She just wasn't able to.

"… Raven…? Could you maybe talk to me a little?"

Honestly, Raven was not sure that she could. She opened her mouth, no sound came out.

"Do you know what happened with the jewel?"

"I – I think I do," she said finally. Somehow, when she had fed her power into that gem, it had searched her through, and uncovered that buried wanting in the deep dark, a thing she would never have consciously wished for, unavoidably there just the same.

"Would you tell me…?" asked Beast Boy.

Slowly, seeming to move against a great resistance, Raven turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. She knew that she did not deserve the kind of caring that she saw in him, in the tense lines of his body, ready to take her and swallow her up.

Her vision blurred and she turned away again to rub her eyes. Her fingers came away wet, and she stared at them in surprise, thinking, What is this?

"I just want to help you," he said, with heartbreaking earnestness.

"…I know you do," she murmured, around a difficult tightness in her throat.

Beast Boy sighed heavily.

"Raven, come here," he said.

She focused her gaze on the edge of the roof in front if her. "Don't worry; I'm not going to jump off this time."

"That's not it," he told her. "Please. Come here."

"Why?"

"…Isn't it obvious?" There was a note of desperation in his voice that she could not figure out.

"No." She felt that she could only be a disappointment now, even in this. "Not to me."

In the silence, the sound of Beast Boy's feet shuffling seemed loud.

"I just want to be close to you, Raven," he blurted. "So could you… could you please come here?"

Her heart beat frantically. She thought about being young, her mother's body before the funeral pyre was lit, embracing for the first time the doctrine that was forced on her, to feel as little as possible, to feel nothing if she could. At that moment she had never wanted to feel anything again. She thought about the ghostly figure in the hand-mirror in her room. She thought about yearning, and Some things are just not meant to be.

Raven bowed her head, stared hollowly at her lap.

"Help me up," she said quietly to Beast Boy.

Without speaking, incredibly, he drew her to her feet and away from the edge of the roof. His hands enfolding hers were reassuringly solid and it seemed that they stood there for a long time before he let go.

"Thanks," said Raven.

"No problem."

They were silent. She looked down at his shoes.

"I didn't –" she began, rubbing a hand up and down her arm self-consciously "– I mean, I don't want to leave the tower. I never wanted to. You know that, don't you?"

"No one ever said anything about you leaving," said Beast Boy slowly, frowning.

"Don't try to tell me that none of you have thought about it," she countered, without much rancor, without much of anything.

"Why would we? We have the jewel – we can get your powers back now –" He stopped, realizing suddenly what she was trying to say to him without words. Raven peaked upward and briefly met his eyes. There was a flash of understanding. She cut her gaze back to the ground, ashamed at the knowledge that had passed between them.

"Raven," he said, urgently, "does that mean you… really did wish for this?"

"I didn't mean to –" It was a sad excuse, and she could not complete it.

"But why?"

"I don't know," she answered weakly. She looked away, at the surrounding trees and stars because she could not bear to look at him. Her mind reeled. She could not think straight. Raven felt a lump form in her throat, felt the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, felt it faster and faster. She could think of nothing that would not lead him to be disappointed in her.

"When I was young," she continued finally, in a low voice, "I wanted to be ordinary more than anything. I wanted it so badly sometimes I couldn't breathe – I couldn't think of anything else. And that… isn't something that just goes away…"

"Believe it or not," said Beast Boy, gesturing to his face, in his uniform the only part of him that made visible the green eyes, green hair, green skin, "I know how that feels."

"But it's more than that!" Raven turned her head sharply to look him in the eye. "I'm not like you, and – that's not easy for me, alright? It never has been! I was told to feel nothing, I wanted to feel nothing, but I've tried so hard to sever myself, to cut, cut, cut away – to stay in control all the time – and it's too big for me. It's too much, and it's not going to get any easier. I hate it. I hate my powers, Beast Boy. Some days I feel like –"

Raven broke off there, startled by her own admission.

"I feel like I'm losing my mind," she finished in a small, frightened voice.

Beast Boy swallowed thickly. She could see the movement of the tiny muscles in his throat and jaw shifting beneath the skin.

"The only thing I can do," he said at last, his hands floating up as gently as gossamer to clasp her shoulders, "is tell you that you're not alone here. We… I won't ever leave you, okay? Even if we only met because of your powers, that's not the reason we're still with you. That isn't why we fought for you, or why we'll always stick by you. It's got nothing to do with your powers, Rae. It's just you. And if you don't want them back… well, that's your choice to make. We're all with you… I – I'm with you."

Suddenly, Raven could not stand on her own and did not want to. She made a choice, and allowed herself to fall into Beast Boy's grasp, to bury her face in the junction between neck and shoulder, to inhale deeply and shakily. Her hands brushed the bumps of his spine, shoulder blades, planes of tough muscle, curious at the landscape of a body that was not her own. There was a feeling of oneness, breathing life into forgotten and neglected nerves. She felt the heady sensation of blood-rush, the prickling of pleasure as her skin seemed to welcome his touch.

Raven had always found that physical distance enahnced emotional distance and used it to her advantage. Touch was such a foreign thing to her. She had not realized how she had been starving for it until this moment. It was as sweet as the first lungful of air is to a diver breaking the surface. She was like an animal. She thought of dogs with their heads thrown back, the slow closing of a cat's eyes before the purr, knowing and abandoning themselves to the simple pleasure of physical touch.

Now she felt a welling up of love, a burst of intense affection, a wave washing over and taking her where she could not resist, leaving her weak with a feeling of hazy physical pleasure and love, nothing but love. This was why. This was why she could not… could not ever…

He touched her hair, and she wept.

"I don't want them back," she sobbed, surrendering. "I don't want them."

She had not cried since she was a child. It was a quiet, desperate act. There was only the violent trembling of her shoulders and the ragged pull of breath. Her eyes screwed shut, she hid her face further, her nose pressing uncomfortably into Beast Boy's collar bone.

"What can I do?" she whispered.

"It's okay," he said. She could not be sure, but she thought she felt him press a kiss in to her hair. "It's okay, it's okay."

When she had calmed down again, Raven stayed where she was, her forehead resting on Beast Boy's shoulder, her body close within the loose circle of his arms. She opened her eyes, and all she could see of his uniform was blackness. She felt that she could not move, not if the floor fell out beneath her. Her body was languid and empty, asleep.

"Here," said Beast Boy, breaking the silence before it became awkward. Raven was grateful for that. "Lie down."

He let go of her and lied on his back. She stared at him in dumb surprise and some bemusement.

"Come on," he urged, patting the space on the rooftop next to him.

Raven was too tired to argue. She obeyed.

"What are we doing?" she asked, when they were both situated side by side, faces directed up to the black stretch of sky.

"You can see the stars pretty well from here – I mean, it's nothing compared to – well, it's better than in the city, anyway." Raven turned her head to look at his profile in the gray moonlight. Beast Boy did not seem to notice. She saw him breathe in deeply, calmly.

"My parents used to do this for me," he said, looking at the sky as if he were searching for something. "I would get scared sometimes… we camped out in the wildlands a lot, and at night sometimes we would hear the big cats hunting. The sounds the dying animals made would give me nightmares… so to calm me down, my parents used to take me outside and lie down like this and tell me about the stars. It always worked to relax me…"

"You lived... in the wild?" said Raven, a spark of interest stirring inside her. Beast Boy never talked about his past. Really, none of the Titans did. She recognized that he was venturing into the intensely personal for her, and felt honored.

"Yeah," Beast Boy answered, smiling vaguely at the memory. "I was born in Africa. We lived there until…" he paused and she sensed a shifting of course. "…until I was about nine. My mom and dad were both geneticists. They got paid to study the animals there. In Africa, away from the city, the stars are so clear at night that it's like you could reach out and touch one if you wanted."

As he spoke of that place, his voice became as loving as a caress.

"I didn't know," Raven said.

He turned and smiled carelessly at her. "You never asked."

"Which is the north star?" she said, to distract herself from the funny sort of fluttering of her heart.

"I'll show you," he answered, and did so. She found that he was surprisingly knowledgeable about the subject. He told her about constellations, and how travelers used the stars to guide them. For a while, Raven forgot where she was. The sound of his voice seemed to carry her gently from thought. It was clear that the knowledge was precious to him, that these were memories that had been revisited again and again.

"Did it work?" asked Beast Boy, when he seemed to have come to the end. "Do you feel better?"

"Surprisingly… yes."

He grinned. "I knew you would." If she thought deeply on it, Raven knew she would find that nothing had changed through all this. But she was content not to think of it, to let it be for the moment. There was, after all, nothing she could do but make a choice.

"What I wanted – it wasn't about you, you know, any of you," she said, speaking of her ill-fated wish.

She felt the hard and gritty surface of the roof pressing into her through her clothing, but the sky was all she could see. There was a need, she felt, to expel the heavy things within her, to give them form and let them free. She very carefully did not think of what she would say. She tried not to think at all, just to speak, as if the words might be clearer somehow, as if her meaning might be clearer.

"It was a stupid thing to want. I always felt like I shouldn't have wanted it, but I… couldn't help it. I tried not to want anything. I didn't know that it was impossible.

"When I was five I was too dangerous to live with my mother anymore, so she sent me away. I lived with the monks on Azarath. They didn't really know what to with a child… especially one like me. I was by myself all the time, except during training. I wasn't allowed out of the compound without permission.

"I never knew when my mother would visit. Every time I wondered if it would be the last. I knew these were things that the other children didn't have to think about.

"I wanted to be like everybody else so badly. I thought it would be easier, but it's not. I wasn't meant to be like this.

"I guess I… knew that.

"I just didn't want to admit it to myself."

Somebody sighed, but Raven could not tell whether it had been her or Beast Boy.

"Another thing my parents would tell me, after – after this happened," Beast Boy said, gesturing down the length of his body, "was that we're all about ninety-nine point nine percent the same genetically anyway, so I couldn't have been all that different from everybody else. Maybe like a point zero one percent, or a point zero zero one. Not too far off, right?"

"That's not really…"

"I know. It didn't work on me, either. I mean – they tried, but… well, I never said they were perfect, did I?"

Raven stared up at the sky, a tiny crease forming between her brows. Somehow, that last statement more than any other drove home the intimacy of the moment. She had a flash of panic at the sense of closeness, wanting to call back all the words, wind them back like a ball of yarn, like a video tape. She had said too much, she had let spill too much, and time before had told her that this was a dangerous thing.

"It's getting cold," she said, abruptly, but she did not move. "We should go."

"Raven, I –" Beast Boy turned his head to look at her. "Whether you have your powers or not… I'll protect you."

The sharp sense of panic grew bleary.

"…okay," she whispered.

The walk back to the subway station was mostly quiet. Raven was exhausted. Her body was like a weight to be carried. Her eyelids were heavy, her arms and dangling hands were heavy, her feet were heaviest of all. She moved mechanically, and once they were seated on the train, she could not remember how she had gotten there.

Beast Boy spoke sometimes, but more for his own sake than hers – half the time she hardly heard him, and she had no energy to reply. But she felt no need for words. There they were, seated side by side, and after everything that had happened, that had to be enough. She could say no more. There was nothing left.

Her mind was strangely blank. She could not allow herself to think. It had come down to the point where only her action could move things forward. The choice had been left entirely up to her. It was like placing a novel in the hands of a young child. She could turn it over, chew on it, flip the pages, but she could not open it and comprehend what was inside, or put it to proper use. Raven did not know what to do with it. She had rarely been in the position to direct the course of her own life so strongly.

To take back her powers, to crawl back into the cocoon that she had broken from. To remain as she was, to start new again, alive and alone.

What could she do? What could she do?

She wished that somebody would tell her.

The train lurched into motion, and Raven leaned back against the seat. The rocking of the car, the monotonous ticking of the wheels against the tracks were vague, soothing sensations. She closed her eyes, only for a moment, and when she opened them again –

"Raven?"

– she was raising her head from Beast Boy's shoulder, blinking blearily at him, scattering half-dreamt shadows to the corners of her mind.

"I… fell asleep?" Raven murmured, surprised.

"Uh, yeah… you… I mean… Yeah." Beast Boy, staring at her strangely, seemed to have lost his capacity for speech. She accepted that without much thought.

"How long?" she asked, blinking in the harsh fluorescent light.

"N-not very… I'd say twenty minutes, at a guess… Don't you remember?"

Raven looked at him.

"…remember what?"

Beast Boy seemed to shrink away from her, a tiny bit, watching his twiddling fingers with pronounced interest. "Well, um… I mean, you… you… you were…"

"What?" she asked, losing patience. She was sure she had embarrassed herself in some way, and wanted him to spit it out and get it over with, quick like a band-aid. "Did I drool on you, or something?"

He laughed weakly at that. "No, but that's a good one…"

Raven was surprised at herself. She had not thought there was any room left in her for irritation, but there it was. She frowned.

"Beast Boy, tell me what it is. Now."

He gulped.

"Did you know that you talk in your sleep?" he blurted.

"What?"

The car went dark.

Raven looked about in panic. The sound of the train on the tracks seemed to swell and press in upon her. Her heart hammered in her chest. She could not see. She could not see at all.

Close by her face, close all around her, she felt the flutter, the beating of wings, the brush of feathers. There was no room for movement, no room for breathing, for sound, pressing in upon her, in the dark, she was like a child hiding in the dark of the cedar trunk as she had been told, afraid and hiding, crouched with the damp smell of the wood.

When she reached out reflexively for her powers, there was nothing, but she sensed, as one senses eyes on their back, that the darkness was not ordinary and that she was not alone.

She made a blind grab for Beast Boy's arm, and somehow she found his fingers. There was a moment where, gripping his hands, she felt no harm would come to her.

Her body was enveloped suddenly with a rigid cold, and she was ripped away from that, jerked backwards into the dark.

"Beast Boy!"

"Raven!"

The last syllable of her name became a dangerous growl. An immense shadow sailed over her. She heard a clatter of claws on the floor, the wet sound of ripping, a shocked grunt of pain.

The cold that had gripped her withdrew. Raven breathed in deeply in relief. The sounds of fighting went on, but when she turned her head in that direction, she could not see a thing. Only a few moments passed. It felt like forever.

Frozen on the ground and watching the dark, Raven did not see Beast Boy's tossed-aside body coming towards her until it was too late. He crashed into her, and they both skidded to the back of the train. His body was hot with the fight, and covered in fur. Raven lied there, shocked and bruised, but he was up in an instant, standing protectively over her. She felt his deep bass growl vibrating in her chest.

She recognized dimly that he had not transformed into any sort animal, but into the beast of his fight with Adonis.

Raven craned her neck to look where he was looking, but it was useless. She listened to Beast Boy's breath coming in short, winded huffs from the great lungs. They sat still in the dark. Her eyes were wide and searching. Her heart beat wildly.

Suddenly, Beast Boy lunged forward. Raven saw a flash of white light. Then she saw no more.

A/N: The epic conversation of Raven and Beast Boy. So, so shmoopy...

I want to talk a little bit about music. Feel free to skip over this if you don't want to hear my little thoughts. Okay, onward: Difficult as this chapter was to write, I got to listen to my favorite kind of music - sad songs! Music is a must for me when I'm writing. And,oh, God, do I love sad music... Cat Power is one of my absolute favorite artists, and throughout this whole fic, I've been listening to her stuff - especially the songs 'Maybe Not' and 'Colors and the Kids'(I think of this song as 'the raven song' XD)and 'The Greatest.' If you've never heard her music, I highly recommend it. I think her best album is probably You Are Free... Also, Iron and Wine is a great band for mellow music. Love the songs 'Jezebel' and 'Cinder and Smoke' and 'Gray Lady.' The soundtrack to 'The Piano' got replayed a whole lot, too...

I guess that's it. These are just songs that got the mood going for me. I just wanted to share :P

I got such wonderful reviews from you all last chapter! I can't give enough thanks to those of you who review! I really enjoyed reading them, but I want to throw something different out this time - as an author, I'd like to know what works and what doesn't, so...did anyone have a favorite line or scene? Something that jumped out at them, maybe?Or even something they really didn't like?

No pressure on that. Just wondering. Obviously, you don't have to do it... but if you happen to think of something, I would love to hear from you :D

Thanks for reading!