CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AMETHYST

Raven's back lined up against the stone bench.

The ballroom buzz struggled to reach this corner of the courtyard, bundled away behind shrubbery and shade. Residual light streaked out from inside, tinting the footpaths a pale, tawny white.

Evening had somehow blinked into nighttime.

She could breathe again out here - beneath this vast, spangled sky. The breeze in her nose smelt woody and cold. It crawled over her arms, left prickles of gooseflesh suspended on the hairs. A plume of it fell out with one dip of her chest.

Raven stared up into the black infinity above her, and silently willed for it to pull her in.

"Needed some air?"

Her spirit sparked. Startled eyes flew to the sound; a face hovering just below one of the pillars that held up the building's truss. One green hand lay flat against it, back foot idling on the porch's last step.

His smile fell short of its typical cheer. It looked a little worn. A little tired.

"... Something like that," she said after a beat, in a voice that was mellow and made Gar's skin hurt.

"Same." He stepped forward even so, still smiling. Both hands sunk into his trouser pockets whilst his legs drew him away from the hall. "Was gettin' crowded in there." It fell a bit flat as he reached her. He noted the dull rumble in his head; the thing that, moments before, had been a party in its throes.

It all felt hidden now. Pulses through deep water.

When Beast Boy joined her on the bench, he did so wordlessly, placing himself a fraction closer than he'd intended. Whisks of air whipped the hem of Raven's dress, tossed loose hair about her winter cheeks.

She tried not to think on how they kept finding each other in this sprawling estate. Each time, him acting like it was some sort of accident. Like he hadn't been actively seeking her out.

"... Nice night," he said eventually. The words felt vacuous.

"Yeah," Raven returned, eyes still set to the stars, hands folded in her skirt. The shifter followed her gaze, planting his palms on the bench.

"You can see Eridanus."

Raven turned to him, shocked to hear the name of a constellation that, though she knew, she would have no hope to point out herself.

Azarath didn't have constellations. Because Azarath didn't have stars.

Her first home was a floating mass, sealed in its own dimensional pouch. Sometimes, in her childhood, she would peer up at that void and think about the galaxies in her books. The constellations she envisioned in her windowless room.

She read about clusters in the Vadus dimension. Myths in the skies of Ceharix. And every time she went back to that void, it made her feel a little less hopeful. A little more trapped.

So she returned to books. Returned to patterns surrounding Earth - the birthplace of her mother. She knew Corvus and Lyra and others. But Beast Boy knew more.

"Y'see that star there?"

He shuffled in and stretched an arm out to guide her line of sight. Raven's bones became still. She only nodded.

"That's Cursa, where it starts," he explained. "Then, if you just follow it down to this cluster and take a left, that brings you to Theemin." The motion of his wrist mimicked his words, finger now aimed at a wholly different star.

He spotted how Raven squinted from the corner of his eye. Tried not to smile at the cute way her nose bunched.

"That one?" Ever the student, the sorceress pointed too. And just as well, for she was slightly off.

Not so subtly, Gar slid some more inches along the bench until his hip was adjacent to hers. One green arm went behind her, resting along the back as his left hand rose to clasp over her knuckles.

"That one." He moved it a few spaces west.

Away from the crowds, his voice was weightless. Raven swallowed weakly.

"Oh."

She didn't know what to do with this Gar. This taciturn person, with soft touches and lilting tones. When he came in close and it felt real, not staged.

Quiet held out before Beast Boy stammered and released her hand. It calmly lowered to its place in her lap, his own now moving to scratch at his ear.

Neither dared to mention the arm that remained stretched across the bench.

"From there you just go south till you reach the brightest star." He sounded suddenly rushed, like it was never really important to begin with. Raven disagreed.

"Did your dad teach you that?" she asked, careful to tread the topic but curious all the same. His nervous smile bloomed into a brighter one.

She remembered.

"Yeah," he grinned, eyeing her. The sky at night was hard to read, he'd found at first. Some stars didn't want to be seen. He had to be patient. Wait for the clouds to part.

Gar propped his free arm on the bench's other side and cosied in, leaning back. "He said it means 'River', but I insisted it was a space snake."

He hadn't expected her to laugh, and she didn't. But the wayward confession strung a hum from her lips, stirring them into a half-smile. Her head angled as if to see it too, a purple crown stalling just above his shoulder.

"Of course," he heard her tease. An easy chuckle spilled from him then, and he tried not to imagine a scenario quite like this - one where her head had landed.

"Tamaran's out too," he mused, breaking away from the thought. Raven blinked and studied the sky, soon detecting that small dot unlike all the others. The one whose shine was tinged rosy pink.

"Wow." It was a very distant planet, only visible from theirs when the heavens were clear. And it didn't matter that they'd seen it before, been there before. Its radiance still mesmerised her every time.

"Man." Beast Boy freed a wistful sigh, mentally stepping into the past. "How long's it been now?"

"Two years."

Her response shook him. She spoke it with such clarity, as though her mind were a library with memories like aisles.

"Really?" He glanced her way, brows raised, and she nodded, attention still seized by Tamaran's glow.

Some quiet dragged as he considered the passage of time. How months and months could skitter by him, like sand.

"I just remember the killer furniture," he said.

"The wriggling dessert," Raven added.

"And Robin totally freaking out the whole time."

The girl winced. "That was painful."

"Right?" Beast Boy laughed. "So obvious."

A foolish thing to say, he realised at once. Hypocritical.

The air thickened after that, holding a heavy quality that the heroes endured. Raven's fingers curled into her kneecaps, legs feeling solid and stiff. Back inside the ballroom, there was a shift in the music; an effortless glide into a sweet, drowsy tune.

"... Aren't you missing the dancing?" she said, not really knowing why she did. Beast Boy raised a shoulder.

"Eh." His tone was grasping for that easiness again. "I'd just show everyone up."

"With your 'killer moves'?"

He understood now that he craved her sarcasm as much as her sincerity, because he suspected that, secretly, they carried the same affection.

"Exactly."

An uncharacteristic snort came from his side. He feigned offence, hand spread out and pressed to his front.

"Are you doubting me?"

She knew she couldn't talk, but at least she didn't pretend she could.

"I've seen you dance," Raven said matter-of-factly.

"So you know it's true," he bargained.

"Do I?"

She was grateful then, for being raised on restraint. For trusting that she could face him now, having jabbed at his ego, and surrender to nothing grander than a smirk.

The shifter pursed his lips and glared. Raven held steady till he was heaving himself back, raising his brows and pushing out a sigh.

"Welp. Now you leave me no choice." Rough hands pressed into the stone and threw him up, bringing Beast Boy to stand like it was some great burden. He swivelled on his heel to face her, holding out an upturned palm.

"I'm just gonna have to change your mind."

Raven's smirk fell. She stared down at that hand - gloveless - knowing the gesture came free of expectation, but brimming with intent.

There was a 'logical' side that sprang to life, telling her fervently that she shouldn't. It was the side that, long ago, had tried to sway her from joining the Titans. That sounded too much like the monks, and wanted to rob her of everything she never knew she could have, if she would just let people in.

"Hey."

Indigo eyes rose. A shyness had clouded his ribbing expression.

"No one's watchin'," he said. And the blanket of his voice was dampening her doubts. Shimmering silver beneath the full moon.

Its bewildering light reflected in his eyes. She detected fine flecks of teal scattered in amongst the green - and beneath them, a new smile. One he trusted would disclose what he couldn't put to words.

Perhaps, Raven thought, she was always going to be drawn to the person who strove to make her happy. The one who accepted her, and whose purity burrowed down to the veins.

She wanted to be what he wanted. She wanted to be vulnerable for him. Not so vulnerable, though, that when she waited a tick and at last took his hand, she didn't forget to roll her eyes - as though this whole thing were some great burden on her too.

Raven let herself be drawn to her feet, displaying the abandon he deserved for his courage.

She predicted linked fingers. Graceless swinging, like in The Nook. But Beast Boy proceeded to steer her left hand to his bicep, tuck her right into his own to hang at their side. Because this wasn't The Nook. This was a ball, and when in Rome.

Scepticism pulled at the strings of her face, pushed itself through warm, blotted cheeks.

"No surprises," Raven warned, recalling the last time where she'd been dipped from the floor.

"No surprises," Gar grinned, not entirely certain it would hold up. Then he smoothly set out to move, first pressing forward in what she gathered was a lead.

Her right foot dragged back to make space for his left, eyes routinely dropping to track his next step. It came as a slide outwards, then a fluid pull that brought her into him again.

He considered the slightness of her waist beneath his hand; how much power was housed in this small, petite frame. It thrilled Raven to know how easily her spine gave to the weight there; a solid anchor tying her to the world.

It was disorienting - this notion that his touch could make up for the years lived without it. Of others being too afraid to touch her, and her body in turn feeling strange to the act.

Hers was a body that had come to anticipate wounds. Punches and bruising - steel hands on her clothes - licks of flame that stuck to the skin and made it scream.

That same body shivered now as his fingers broadly splayed, offering balance to level her form. His warmth pressed in through the fabric of her dress. Sunk itself down to every raw nerve.

Raven's vision drifted to his collar when he recited the steps, striding forward just as before. She began to predict them, caught in the cradle of a rhythmic sway.

Beyond the courtyard, the music's tempo feathered out. Its bass note thrummed like a faraway heart.

"Not bad."

Dark eyes flicked to see that his were already on her. He looked at her slyly, shoulders pushed back. "Who taught you?"

She shrugged through the tiny kick of her chest. "Some guy," Raven said, too aware of the reaction it would spur.

"'Some guy'?" Case in point. "Was this guy, by any chance, tall? Handsome? Remarkably funny?"

"And so humble," she said with a flare of the brow.

"Wow. That too?" Laughter crept around the edges of his grin. It had the same melody as when he was younger, but now rumbled like rolling thunder in his throat. "He sounds pretty great."

"He is."

The changeling's face went slack.

That... hadn't meant to come out. It had meant to stay trapped in the craters of her brain, where it was born. He allowed for the pause that outlived the words, a telling pink fanning over his nose.

"... But, don't tell him I said that." Raven backtracked. "His head would implode."

So reliant on snark to save her. He watched her a while longer, lips eventually crawling up at the sides.

"Heh." A sharp tooth peeked out. "Good thing it's just you 'n' me then, huh?"

His voice was crushed velvet when he spoke, a timbre like cello strings kissing the ears. Raven marked the small twinge in her sternum - the sense of stability falling away.

In the heedless shifting beneath her, a heel clipped the side of Gar's ankle, and the sibyl stumbled a bit. They both peered down.

"C'mere." He was chuckling again, propping her back to full height. He freed her right hand so both of his could sit at her waist. "You gotta..."

His stance broadened and he forged on, intuition reigning in an absent-minded lull.

When Raven realised his left hand wasn't coming back, that her right was still floating like a bird without a perch, she dazedly made her own, setting it to rest at the slip of his neck.

They wavered like that, quietly running through the dance. But her focus was on him. On how the old Beast Boy might've still been laughing to see her trip. How he might've pulled out a wisecrack to rile her up.

The whiplash of it alone made her stumble again.

Her head dropped sharply this time, as if cursing her own legs, just as Beast Boy's bobbed up.

"Okay." Raven caved in averse defeat. "I look like a moron."

Gar exhaled softly through his nose.

"You look amazing."

The wind clutched at the moment. Halted it.

Raven raised her head slowly now, wide eyes captive by young, stormy green.

"What?..."

She searched him. Studied for any sign that she was being mocked. A wave crested, threatening to break when Beast Boy didn't immediately dismiss it as a joke. Instead, he started, snapping out of a haze.

"Sorry." His tongue hurried the sound out, appalled by its own betrayal. "Just... I wanted to say before," he told her, nerves bubbling. "You do."

And there was something immensely sincere in it. Immensely exposed. He knew too well how it sounded, so he leaned into its rawness. Observed the faint splashing of scarlet in her cheeks.

Raven blinked at him exactly two times before her eyes descended to his waistcoat. The hand at his nape wandered there, dragging in a line down the side of his chest.

It was the same hand from that first day. The same pounding underneath. And Raven didn't know it, but like back then, it was the only thing holding him up now too.

"This is nice," she murmured, flattening the lapel. A pathetic response to his staggering praise.

"Thanks." He let out a weak laugh for what felt like the hundredth time. What else could he do? "I kinda hate it."

Raven glanced down at the two-inch heels she was 'required' to wear. "I know the feeling," she said.

An amused breath fell against her neckline, forcing her to acknowledge their closeness. The hum of violins came to a swell, then effortlessly dwindled to finer, slower strokes.

And they danced again, echoing its pace.

A gentle rocking. A delayed turn.

Evening cocooned the two heroes. It waned, warping them to somewhere beyond Town Hall. Stripping them down to their barest parts; to people who, in essence, bore the same type of scars.

People who pretended far too much for their age.

Delicate hands trailed soundlessly up Gar's shoulders, fingertips meeting at the base of his neck. The beat in his chest had become a solid welt, ribs like bars his heart wanted to breach.

Raven wasn't sure when her temple had drawn to his shoulder. She wasn't sure when he'd secured her to him, or how long ago their bodies had abandoned the steps.

She only inhaled the scent on his shirt. Felt her lungs expand when his chin grazed her hair.

Her mind was unravelling now. She had this idea that, against all odds, she could be more than she was. Have more than she deserved.

Because no one held their teammates this way. No one held their friends this way.

Beast Boy stared soberly at the cobble, as if there would be answers for him there. As if it could guide him through.

His fingers flexed just above her hips, taking their shape into his memory. Then his eyes closed, and he filed this moment away, savouring what it was where he could lose her in the next.

"I have to tell you something." A note of unrest slipped into his voice.

Raven ceased their swaying, withdrew from his embrace with questioning eyes.

"Okay."

He watched her for too long a time, afraid to breathe too little or too much.

"I lied."

Her eyebrows furrowed.

"Back when..."

The words perished on his tongue. He was nervous. She could hear it.

I don't want to ruin our friendship, something inside him cried out, but it too was lying.

He did want to ruin it. He wanted to tear it down and build it up again with a whole new name.

"Back when I first became the Beast, you asked me why it only protected you."

Raven stared at him. And he knew she remembered, because that look she gave him was like the look of someone who'd been waiting on an answer for years.

"And I said I didn't know why, but... I did." His will won out. "I do."

There was something unseen, tugging at her. She struggled to inhale. To exhale.

A looming question crept closer to her lips, desperate to be heard.

"Why?" Raven asked, more breath than voice.

Beast Boy was quiet for a while.

His eyes changed. They kept drifting to that space just above her chin, and they were timid now. Longing.

"... Same reason I came out here."

Not a lie, but too much of the truth.

Garfield's Beast did not emerge for the Brotherhood. It did not emerge to protect the Doom Patrol, or to even spare his own life.

His Beast wanted. God, it wanted, and he shared that want. Stared directly at Raven with that want.

Her pulse stuttered to a still, eyes turning dusky when his own wilted down. She carefully watched the tip of his fang, transfixed on that point - tried to keep her head above water, but he was going under and he was taking her with him.

"You came out here for some air," she reminded, gaze shallow.

His lip twitched at the absurdity of it. If it was even possible, she felt the arms encompassing her wind tighter still. Stray fingers pressed with the urge to bring her in.

"You bought that?" His voice sounded taken apart.

A lithe wrist crooked to the bend of his neck, hanging on.

"No..."

They weren't coming back from this. Whatever happened, Garfield knew they would not be the same once they returned to the tower.

His soul was laid out. There was no game anymore. No words. Only eyes that searched for hesitation in and out of darkness. A silence that heightened and a distance that thinned.

Breath released in tandem. The last thing she caught was the line of his jaw, tilting one way as her eyelids sank low...

"They said they saw him go outside."

A third voice speared through them, advancing down the stairs of the porch, and Raven's body slammed inwards.

She didn't even gasp - just felt her breath lodge and arms recoil. She tore herself from Beast Boy - too much, too much - head snapping in time to see the sharp bolt of energy that left her, suckerpunching one of the pillars just as two figures rounded its base.

"No!"

An urgent hand flew out, eyes bursting wide when it cracked down the middle and toppled from its mount. One half of the pair seized the other, yanking her back so the marble skimmed her face.

The couple ruffled, a deafening crash receding in their heads. Rubble scattered across the courtyard, Raven's arm locked in place.

It almost looked like she'd meant to do it.

"Does my wife look like a villain to you?" The mayor leered at her like the dark thing she was, and Raven was reminded that the world was bigger than this courtyard. Than the space between Beast Boy's arms.

Her bated mouth was all she could move.

"I... didn't mean—"

"You could've killed her!"

The ensuing silence snuffed everything out. It stung.

Amethysts set like hard stones in their sockets. A hollowness opened up in Raven's stomach, hitching her control on its side. There was a mirage of Beast Boy to the right of her, flaking. A jagged lurch of guilt taking hold of her heart.

She must've looked so stupid to him right now. A stricken, shaken soul, who didn't know how to do this. Who didn't know if pleasure scared her more than perdition.

Gar marked the frown as it marred her face. The dread settling in.

He saw Raven shrinking into somebody else. That girl in the labyrinthine - the one who wore grey.

Then he saw something worse.

The instinct. The switching off.

Traits of the forsaken who were raised not to feel.

He knew then what would follow before even she did.

"Raven..." It was a last ditch effort to bring her back.

Emotions slurred into a foggy murk. She had to let it go white, but his blinding colours kept creeping in, like paint smearing the blank canvas of her.

"Sorry," she said tightly, already walking away lest the visceral shame stir itself into a storm.

It was a sore word. A black hole that absorbed all other sound. And it wasn't meant for the mayor.

"Wait—"

His voice leapt an octave. Her presence at once felt achingly far, and Beast Boy reached out - tried to grab for her hand - not caring that they weren't alone. But he missed.

Raven turned to shadow, vanishing through the floor. Joyless smoke slid through his empty grasp, and of course Beast Boy missed.

She was the night. No one could capture the night in their hands.

A sharp fist gouged into his belly. Squeezed.

Time slowed to a horrible crawl; a nightmare where all his limbs had turned to rust, and the ghost of her fingers still traced along his neck.

"Honestly." Someone was muttering near him. They were holding a woman and checking her over. "Are you alright?"

"Forget it, Jeff," someone else assured. "Look."

Mayor Sawyer did his best to shake off his fright, and stood tall again, regarding the changeling.

"Oh." He gave a strained laugh, making light of awkward things, as politicians do. Footsteps approached the shifter. "Beast Boy."

But his mind was swimming, green eyes soldered to the place where she had been. In reality, seconds had passed. In his head, hours.

A cough. "Just the guy."

"What?" He blinked, twisting out of his trance.

"We've been searching all over for you, m'boy," Mayor Sawyer said. "Had to take the opportunity to meet the man who saved our Lucas."

Even Ava had retrieved her composure now. Her own smile sat strangely on her face. His sixth sense itched.

There was more to this. They'd seen how their daughter had taken a fancy, and were doing their part. When the hero didn't answer, Jeffrey went on.

"Won him over that day, you did, son." His wife hummed along beside him. "It was a rhino obsession for weeks, thanks to you."

The sounds surrounding him turned to white noise. Static. His lungs were filling up with a thick, viscous tar.

When he blinked, he snapped forward in time. Was dunked into his body again.

And Raven still wasn't there.

"Look." Gar was suffocating. His cracked voice cut right through the one speaking at him, legs moving him briskly to the stairs. "I'm— I'm really glad your nephew's safe." Robin would kill him for snubbing the mayor. He didn't care. "And I'm sorry, I just—" One sharp glance behind. "I gotta go."

Beast Boy shot up the steps and through the drapes, leaving the couple confused and agape.

Soon, Ava's forehead wrinkled, a huff pouring out of the grimace she wore. One manicured hand weaved its way through her husband's arm.

"I never liked that pale one," she said.

Author's Note:

accepting death threats :)