Empathic
Fanfic requested by Raze the Draconic Knight. It's finally up!
The ever-over-used disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. I never have owned Teen Titans, and unless I win the lottery several dozen times and pull the deal of the century, I never will own Teen Titans.
TTTTTTT
T - Morning - T
When the average person from a middle-class family woke up, they would usually feel the tendrils of a dark mist settle in their mind. After that, the shadow would do it's very best to drag the conscious mind back into darkness for another few hours of peaceful oblivion. Strangely, the average person from a middle-class family also knew the sensation simply as "drowsiness" and paid it little or no mind.
In the most morbid way possible, she wished that metaphor would remain just that in her life. Her mind was often kept sharp and clear by two things that typically occurred in the morning: Meditation and the internal struggle to regain the sanity she lost at night when her mind was at rest.
Body temperature already higher than normal, she rolled over uncomfortably on her vast lavender-sheeted bed. Violet eyes aimed at the darkened ceiling, she stared without seeing. The room itself was totally dark, not yet bathed in the small amounts of sunlight rarely allowed through the single window at the far end of the gloomy chamber.
A sharp intake of breath caused her pale stomach to rise with her chest as her back arched, pressing her head into the suddenly itchy fabric of the pillow. Her mouth opened in a quiet scream that barely reached above a whisper.
In her mind, she ran for her life.
Feeling almost incorporeal as she moved across the barren wasteland that represented (and incorrectly so, she thought) her mind, she moved rapidly over the jagged landscape. At times she managed a sprint, however most of the time she was reduced to scrambling in a frenzied rush to escape. Her breath came in wheezing gasps as she continued.
It always did.
She would always have trouble breathing, her bare hands and feet would always be cut up and scraped, and her body would find itself shivering from a frontal blast of cold air one minute, or languishing in the punishing waves of heat that would scorch her back from behind. It didn't help that her clothes –already revealing for a rarely exercised ease of movement- would be unfeelingly ripped from her body as she fled the presence of him.
There goes modesty again. She thought, not turning back as the final shreds of her cape were seared away alongside what was left of a leotard sleeve. Forgetting herself momentarily, she slumped, knees cracking against the rocks painfully as her hands hit the blistering granite surface. Gasping in pain, she pushed herself up; ignoring the hissing as her bare feet touched the rocks. As the fiery air assaulted her back and feet, a chilling wind bore down on her from above and ahead, causing her entire front to stiffen momentarily before she shivered.
Alone between two opposite fronts, she stopped, falling to her knees a searing drift of snow. This is insane… she thought miserably before her sleep-addled brain kicked her facefirst into the snow.
Literally.
Scrambling wildly, she pushed herself out of the drift, every part of her body now too stiff to even consider shivering. It took her a few seconds to realize the cause was not another wave of heat.
"Stop whining and get up." her own voice sighed from behind. "If you kept up on meditation before bed, you would be in and out of this place before the wind even took your hood."
"Fine..." she breathed heavily, feeling the elements around her fade away quietly. Around her, the piles of snow were blown away, whirling around the flames and steam vents until all was extinguished across the barren rocky landscape. The wind howled again, a hollow sound as was usual. Indeed, the entire ordeal of insanity seemed as though they had simply been a dream. A dream... she thought. Glancing down at her naked body, she stared as tendrils of black and blue bound her body tightly, rustling over skin and each other until her clothes were restored.
The girl's deep violet eyes snapped open and she sat up with a heaving gasp as though she had been held underwater. Suddenly awake far faster and harder than she had wished, she slid into a cross-legged position as a blue shroud nearby suddenly leapt from its rack like some nightmarish bird of prey and settled on her shoulders in a surprisingly gentle fashion, given how violently she had moved it.
Leotard-clad body still soaked with perspiration, Raven drifted towards the ceiling from her bed, ignoring the tangled mess of sheets beneath her as the sun's first rays slipped into her room from behind the curtain.
"Azarath, Metrion," I should get a shower. "Zinthos..."
TTTTTTT
T - The Night before - T
He hated it, pure and simple. The already austere room was too silent for his tastes, and even the loudest of music would only reverberate off the metal walls in a way that seemed to mock him with its echoes. He hated it.
He had to sleep, even if he didn't want to.
For many people, sleeping was no big deal. They would crawl under the covers, snuggle into the sheets as a child would curl up in its mother's arms , fell asleep, had a nightmare or two, and wake up the next day, sometimes lacking memory of whatever dreams had plagued their mind the night before.
For him, it was different. No dreams came to him, indeed, he never woke up at night unless there was an emergency, and even then his activation was at the beck and call of an external computer system. The irony of the situation was that the very parts he wished his routine was not a slave to were also the ones that kept him alive.
--Begin shutdown--
There it went.
--Power cutoff to extremities--
Though there were no real nerves or nerve endings left in the armored hands mounted to the forearm bridges that connected to the remaining human parts of his arms, the inability to feel any power in the fingers was disquieting. Perhaps he would have thought the same about his toes if he'd had any left.
--Primary limb cutoff initiated--/--Power cutoff to limbs completed--
That was when terror would set in. At that point, only the locked joints of his knees and ankles kept him from sliding down the examination table that served as a bed. As the shutdown continued, he suddenly wished he'd opted for a normal bed instead of something designed specifically to keep his parts perfectly immobile.
--Nerve centers disconnected--
The first time that had happened, he had barely been able to turn his neck and stare at the room around him, feeling more vulnerable than ever. It was only after last year's fight against an obsessive mastermind that he had used his machine half to force himself to remain calm; realizing that there were far more agonizing things than a painless loss of sensation in several limbs.
--Muscular relaxation commenced--
At that point, only the machine remained truly active on the outside. For such a peaceful sounding shutdown phase, that part of his "sleep" had always unnerved him as his human eye would automatically shut and he would lose tactile sensation altogether.
As his lone mechanical eye viewed the world through a digitized haze, he braced himself for the eventual plunge into the death that was sleep.
I bet Raven never has to deal with any of this. Cyborg thought as his eye dimmed and both sides of his brain quieted to total inactivity for the night.
--Shutdown complete--
TTTTTTT
T - Morning - T
--Startup begin--
Aw yeah, that's better!
--Restoring muscular function with stimulus--
At the sudden jolt of energy, Cyborg's jaw dropped and clamped shut again rapidly, confirming quite unnecessarily that he was indeed awake.
Yawning and stretching as motor function was restored and activation was completed, he stepped away easily from the slab that was his resting area with an ease that belied his fear of the thing at night. Moving with a confident ease, he slid into the darkened hallway --lighting measured seventy percent below optimum one hundred percent--, finding nobody else in the immense tower. As his softly clanging footfalls rang through the corridors of the home he shared with his friends, his enhanced hearing picked up the yawns and beeps of an already-awakened friend at the gamestation.
Playin' before breakfast? he thought incredulously. Guy's gotta eat sometime, right?
Intentionally putting off an exuberant greeting to Beast Boy --probability of virtual entertainment following salutations: ninety-nine percent-- he moved further down the hallway from his room, wandering up two flights of stairs to avoid another crime rate survey from one of his other friends.
It was then that he found himself in a familiar section of hallway.
--Door destroyed three years ago-- his mind seemed to whisper to him, bringing that part of his first major adventure with Raven to the front of his mind.
Cyborg listened.
Nothing.
So I'm not the only one trying to be quiet and avoid everyone this morning. He thought, sighing to himself. Starfire's probably off trying to cook breakfast again, B's already playin' video games, and Rob's losin' himself in work...again. Looks like Rae and I are the only ones with any sense right now.
He had turned away silently, hand having been inches away from knocking. He was about to back to his room in an effort to find some sort of distraction from reality, when he heard it.
clk-sssssss
He knew what that sound meant.
"Don't tell me you broke the car again?" the comfortingly familiar voice yawned from behind a pale hand.
"Nah, Just had a lousy time gettin' to sleep last night."
"You're...not one to have nightmares." Raven said, slight concern tracing the soothing monotone that was her voice as she pushed the damp strands of just-washed hair from her pale face.
"It's not the nightmares." he replied "It's..." He sighed, stopping himself and pinching the bridge of his nose as though talking about it would give him a headache. "Nothin'. Sorry to bother you."
"Wait..." she called, moving forward slightly. Normally I'd rely on Beast Boy for trying to lighten things up, but...
Cyborg stopped, turning slightly and casting an amused glance over his shoulder. "Aw, lemme guess; you're havin' nightmares?"
"No." she said sternly, backing up a step. "I don't have nigh-Well..." she let out an exasperated breath, realizing that Cyborg knew her well enough to tell when she was telling the truth and when she was closing herself off to her friends.
"I won't tell B about it." he said, eye widening as he held up both hands defensively.
"Fine." she said, casting a glance back into the darkness of her own room. "But we're not talking where Beast Boy can turn into a fly and hide in an air vent."
"Hey, I keep the ventilation areas in my room under surveillance." he shrugged, jogging ahead briefly to match her surprisingly quick stride. Why am I about to tell her about all this? He wondered to himself. The most personal thing I ever talked with her about was the T-Car --Blood increasing in facial area-- Nuts... He thought, immediately hoping Raven hadn't noticed his physical reaction, or caught thought of that particular memory. Somehow at the same time though, he realized he wouldn't mind her realizing it.
It's not like the time Beast Boy showed up asking me to be his therapist, and it's not another one of Robin's issues with the bad guy of the week, so what is this all about? Raven wondered as they moved towards Cyborg's room. I've always been around when he needed help, but this hardly sounds like an emergency.
Keying the code into the lock next to his door, Cyborg momentarily wished that he had thought to keep several of the chairs cushioned. He didn't need such a thing, and people rarely visited his room anyway.
He was relieved to see that Raven either didn't notice or didn't care.
"So...if it's not nightmares, why did you want to talk with me?" she asked, remaining standing behind the resting table, one thin-fingered hand sliding across the metallic surface of its own accord.
Why am I telling her this again? he asked himself. "Raven," he began, noticing she shifted slightly at his not calling her by the common nickname of "Rae". "This is gonna sound like something BB would say but, are you afraid what happens when you, y'know..sleep?"
She blinked, noticeably taken aback by the strange question that didn't seem like something her friend would normally ask.
"Why would I be?" she asked, realizing the response probably came out harsher than she had meant it to be.
She ran for her life... again.
Feeling almost incorporeal as she moved across the barren wasteland that represented (and incorrectly so, she thought) her mind, she moved rapidly over the jagged landscape. At times she managed a sprint, however most of the time she was reduced to scrambling in a frenz-
"No..." she whispered, realizing her left hand was clutching her forehead while her right gripped the reflective slab again.
"Yo, you okay?" Cyborg asked, rising from his chair and moving near to Raven so fast she could have sworn that he had teleported.
"I'm...fine." she gasped, memory fading resentfully as her mind composed itself once more.
"I'm not afraid of going to sleep." she said, realizing how odd it sounded while being thankful that Beast Boy was not in the area. "It's..." she paused. "Waking up."
Cyborg's human eye blinked as he thought it through for a moment. "It's your father, isn't it?"
"Yes." she sighed, feeling as though a weight were being lifted from her chest as she spoke. "At least, I think so. If it's not him, it's just...who -no, what I am." she finished, voice fading to a whisper. And I can't do a thing about it...
"Guess we're stuck then." he said, realizing he'd had one hand resting on her shoulder for the past few minutes. It was a comforting gesture, even if he didn't feel it through his palm the way he might if he were still "normal".
"We?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked at him.
"Yeah, don't think I got a chance to mention this earlier." he said, thumb twitching up along her collarbone slightly --blood rush increasing again-- "When I'm asleep, it's completely."
"I'm, not sure I understand." she said, shivering slightly at his touch. Why...?
"I'm still half-machine." he said, not missing a beat. "When I go to sleep, my mechanical side shuts down and takes much of my remaining human side with it until I'm reactivated. I'll admit, it's not that big of a deal as it was when I started out like this but-" he stopped, realizing he was out of breath.
"You still think you won't wake up when you...go to sleep?" Raven asked, choosing her words carefully.
"Yeah." he replied, sinking into the chair behind the "bed" and moving his hand from her shoulder.
"Guess that does mean two of us are having sleep issues." she said, pulling a chair up and sitting down next to him. For a moment, they sat there; her eyes studying his face as she caught the most random of thoughts that fluttered outward from his mind. "You really should put some cushions on these chairs." she said with the barest hint of a smile.
Aw crap, she noticed. He thought. "Hey, I'll even let you pick out the colors for them too!" he added with one of his old grins.
Fragile state of mind? Personality escape? she wondered. No...I'd feel some sense of worry. "You're..." she began, blinking as she realized what she was about to say before she could stop it. "Funny." she finished, barely holding back another smile.
Cyborg froze, surprise written across his human features as he stared at Raven. I'm already tellin' her stuff that I didn't even tell Jinx the night we went out for that dance. "You know you're," he paused, taking a moment to leap the last hurdle before confession. "the first girl whose ever told me that?"
Why's he telling me this? "It's not the first time I've said it though." she said dully, watching as Cyborg's mind worked out who else she would have said such a thing to without him noticing. She could tell when he'd figured it out, as his human eye seemed to twitch ever so slightly.
--Preemptively halted Gordanian invasion incident-- His mind buzzed. She said that to Beast Boy? "Uh, Rae?"
"Elation..." she began, raising one finger as though to ward off any sort of outburst. "due to our first real victory."
Cyborg covered his mouth to avoid bursting into an attention-stealing peal of laughter.
"It's...really not that funny." she said, feeling her face redden slightly.
"Sorry..." He chuckled. "Just funny 'cause you found 'im funny before I did."
"And believe me, I've regretted it since." she frowned, finding her mind wandering back to that incident and the first time she'd met with real friends. "Besides...you were the first person I met that day that I actually felt comfortable around."
The stifled laughter stopped as his mind raced.
--Despite exhaustion, they still had a job to do. He watched three of them move on ahead as the girl in blue seemed to drop back, moving slowly as though something other than the mission's physical requirements was taking its toll.
"Hey," he said, moving ahead with some amount of concern for her. "Mind telling me why you're always by yourself?" he asked, noting her resigned sigh as he finished the question.
"You heard the kid." she replied quietly. "I don't exactly fit in."
The comment struck him as odd, and he delivered the only response he could think of at the time in a quiet whisper, still not used to the others yet. "He's green, half of me is metal, and she's from space. You fit in just fine." he said reassuringly, putting an arm around her. Man, she's not pullin' away, but she's not relaxing either. He mused. She's probably still nervous bein' around so many people. --
And I've pretty much been givin' her a wide berth after that as much as I can, too. He thought, mind returning to the present.
"You're that surprised?" Raven asked, dragging him out of his thoughts from the chair she now sat cross-legged in. "You were the first one to approach me as a friend on that mission."
"Ah...yeah…sorry about after that an' all." he said, scratching his head worriedly.
"For what?" she blinked, not hearing the response she'd expected.
Uh, I thought that was obvious... Cyborg thought. "Not tryin' to include you more." he sighed "Still seems like you've kept to yourself most of the time, even after I said I'd help you fit in." he finished, realizing even that that it wasn't quite true. He'd made efforts to pull her into activities with --yourself?-- other people.
"You've given me more than anyone else here." she said, feeling her face warming slightly. "Everyone else has either ignored me or tried to drag me into something I'd really rather not be doing." like tofu eating contests... She added as a private afterthought. "I think that's why I like you more..." she said, mind frantically buzzing for the right word as she managed to keep herself from giving into another facet and losing all emotional control. "than anyone else I've ever met, Cyborg."
"Uh...Victor." he said, --Blood increa-- Shut up. He thought, directing the unvoiced words at the over-informative machine half of his mind.
She stared. He heard that last bit? she thought, realizing that the expression on his face and what he'd just said told her that he likely felt the same. At that moment, she realized how far they'd both come since the day they'd met, sharing more than just adventures and moments together. And something's always held us back...maybe we really weren't fitting in with the person that mattered? She thought, eyes wandering over his desk. I've never really tried to very much with him either. Why?
Aw man, she's just as nervous about this as I am. Victor thought. Maybe this is why we never really did anything together before. I was always over-respectin' her privacy. "So yeah..." he finally said, eyes meeting hers. "I guess I do feel the-"
"Guess?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
Yeah, I've definitely gotta work on my wordin'. He thought. It's always easier when its just a crush.
"I'm...sorry." She suddenly replied with a depressed and final tone that sent shivers of the remaining human portions of Victor's spine. She suddenly sounded as though she were going to burst into tears and leave.
Cyborg opened his mouth to protest. Why? After all we had talked about, after all that had been said, everything we shared. What's she saying?
"I'm…sorry." Raven replied again. "I can't return those feelings." Head low, the empath moved with a shuddering grace that seemed completely alien to him. With a final sigh, she had moved beyond the door and vanished behind its reflective surface with barely a whisper.
It seemed like hours --three seconds-- before Victor finally moved towards the suddenly ominous steel-plated door of his room. As it opened with a hiss and a click, he realized oddly how he had never appreciated the more rapid hiss-click noise of the rarely-opened door at Raven's personal chambers.
Crossing the austere floor of his own room and crashing heavily into the iron-grey chair at his desk, he realized how little he would be hearing that seemingly unimportant noise in the future.
His human eye seemed unfocussed, wandering the room as though looking for some sign of her again. He wasn't sure how he could remain on the same team with Raven as it was. He had gone further with her than he had with any other girl, laying his feelings and indeed his very soul on the line, and lost. Victor Stone had lost himself over some foolish bid for love on the first of Apr-
He froze, disbelieving as he stared at the calendar.
"Aw, no way…" he said, a huge grin splitting his face as his once forlorn demeanor abruptly vanished. Leaping to his feet and sending the chair crashing to the floor noisily, he sprinted from the computer, almost forgetting to open the door. Calendar clutched in one hand, he half-ran, half-slid down to the living area with the same smile on his face. Skidding to a halt in the main room, he caught sight of only Starfire behind a messy kitchen counter, preparing something that looked vaguely like a dead creature from Star Wars. Shaking his head, he leapt back and turned down the hallway once more, leaving the confused tameranian hovering behind the pot, confusion written on her innocent features.
clk-sssssss
He would never forget that sound as the door slid open to her room.
Raven was sitting cross-legged on her bed, reading another book that nobody else could decipher. She blinked in surprise as her door –unlocked- slid open and Cyborg stood framed in the entrance with what appeared to be a calendar crushed in his right hand.
"And…why are you here right now?" she asked frostily as he crossed the room and held one arm out over her lap.
The calendar hit the surface of the pages with a dull thump, the front sheet seeming to stare her in the face. For the briefest of moments, their expressions became blank, staring at the date on the small collection of paper.
Then Raven glanced at the eerie black clock that stood against the far wall. "It took you two minutes to figure that one out?" she asked, shaking slightly as though trying to hold back laughter. Her violet eyes moved back to Cyborg just as he went red with embarrassment at having been tricked.
Coughing, he narrowed his human eye accusingly. "Don't do that." He groaned. "Do you know how scared I got from that joke?" he added, leaning closer as if to emphasize the panic he had felt earlier
"I can only imagine." She said with a slight smile.
The mock-anger in him vanished as he felt a familiar reddening sensation in his face. "Do I need to put an ejection system in your side of the car, Rav-?"
She cut him off.
"Rachel." She sighed heavily, as though finally lifting every worry off her shoulders and dropping it aside.
Cyborg blinked as both halves of his mind each processed different thoughts for the next few seconds. Vic, you're inches away…kiss 'er already! --Recognition patterns: public-Raven, private-Rachel-- Uh, her arms just wrapped around my neck and it's not a chokehold... --temperature increase in facial area noted-- mmmmm --overheatckhzz-
I may still have my problems, She realized. But I have someone I can look forward to seeing each morning, and I won't be alone as often now. She thought as her hands brushed the armored surface of his back. His lips are warmer than I thought they would be…