Disclaimer: I do not own, nor have I ever owned, the Teen Titans.
Ascension of the Beast
Chapter IV
Misso Eius
Although they were already nearing the climax of the movie, if you were to give Raven a pop quiz on what had happened so far, she'd probably fail. Her curiosity was still piqued and she was beginning to obsess about what he hadn't told her. 'H-he doesn't trust us,' a sniffling Timid suggested a possibly as to why the changeling hadn't disclosed anything to her the empath about his past. It was especially annoying since Timid had been in a paranoid mood the whole time, and each of the other emoticlones were suggesting their own explanations for why he didn't want to talk about it.
Regardless of the purpose for his refusal to talk about his past, which she herself suspected might be the result of denial, she was beginning to work up the courage to try to break through. She just needed to figure out how to bring it up. Outright demanding to know about his past might seem a little too intrusive and domineering, so some amount of tact might be useful. She knew she had to avoid allowing him to change the subject, so she had to focus on this subject. She would also have to use her empathy to detect when something she said provoked a defensive response, and attempt to deal with any such defensiveness. Thinking of all of these things was beginning to make her doubt her need to know, but Wisdom reminded her of the potential importance and Brave was working as hard as she could to keep her from backing off.
As the credits began to roll, she took an inventory of the changeling's posture; he seemed pretty relaxed and was certainly the happiest she had seen him since they arrived in Los Angeles two weeks before. This gave Brave a bit of a power boost, as the empath thought to herself 'maybe this will be easier than I thought.' Regardless, she decided to find a semi-indirect way to open the conversation.
"Do you trust me?" Raven asked the young man sitting across the couch from her. "I trust you with my life, but sometimes I don't feel like it's not reciprocated," she said honestly, while trying not to sound accusatory.
"Of course I trust you, Rae!" Beast Boy replied with more than a little shock in his voice. "Why would you think I didn't trust you?" His face now very strongly expressing confusion.
Raven thought carefully about what to say next. She felt kind of bad as it felt like she was guilting him into this, but it was important. "It's just... you've never told me or any of the other Titans about your past before you were in the Doom Patrol." She decided it might be a good idea to add something encouraging to keep him from getting defensive, "I know I can be a bitch to you sometimes, but I wouldn't use anything from your past to hurt you. I hope you know that."
Beast Boy seriously considered changing the subject somehow, or saying something to push Raven away for a while, but she was being gentle with him—way more gentle than she might normally be—and he figured it would be out of line to do anything to intentionally make her angry right now. He decided to finally come clean in a way, by explaining his reasons for not wanting to talk about it. "There's just some things from my past that I don't really want to remember. It's like, out of sight, out of mind. As long as I'm not thinking about the bad things from my past, they can't hurt me."
She suddenly realized her initial guess as to what defense mechanism was at play here was wrong. He wasn't in denial; he accepted that the memories existed and he accepted his emotional response to them. He wasn't using a pathological defense mechanism, but rather a neurotic one: he was isolating his painful memories and feelings. It made so much sense now; that's why it was so rare for her to pick up negative emotions from him.
"But what if there was a way for me to see your memories without you having to relive them?" Knowing the reason why Beast Boy didn't want to talk about his past, Raven was quick to think of a way she could learn about it without causing discomfort to him. "I would never do this without your permission, but if you're willing to let me, I could enter your mindscape and view your memories there without you being consciously aware of them."
"I'd probably be cool with that, except for the matter of my privacy," he replied. "I mean, I trust you and all, but there are some private thoughts which have to stay private—you wouldn't really appreciate it if I jumped into your mirror and started reading every thought I could, would you?"
She initially wanted to argue with him on that point, but quickly realized he was right. Still, she was undeterred. "Well, if you give me some ground rules to keep me away from memories you don't want me to see, I'll do my best to follow them. And I promise you I will not read your contemporary thoughts." She was giving him a way to accept and still not lose his privacy.
He considered her proposal very carefully. Beast Boy knew Raven well enough to know that if she made a promise, she would do her best to fulfill it, but he was still apprehensive about the possibility that she might accidentally stumble upon one of his more embarrassing contemporary secrets. His instincts, however, were telling him that it was time to let her in. "Okay," he finally accepted, "I guess if you stay away from any thoughts or memories from after I joined the Doom Patrol, it should be fine. But I should warn you there's some pretty intense memories in there."
Raven chose to ignore his warning. She had seen plenty of horrible things in her life, and although she'd realized her conversation with him that he had been isolating his traumatic memories, she still couldn't bring herself to believe that they could be as bad as what she knew about the pasts of Robin, Cyborg and herself. At this point she wasn't so much denying that he could have experienced trauma, but rather she figured that if it was really so bad it would have ended up overwhelming his defense mechanism. The tone of his voice when he warned her of his intense memories sounded quite exaggerated to her, as if his past was full of a large number of PTSD-inducing incidents. Isolation or not, she doubted that someone could experience a life with that much trauma and still maintain a cheery disposition.
"I'm going to project my soul-self into your mind," she stated, in full monotone. "You can fall asleep if you want. Whether you're conscious or not really won't make much difference to the process, and after what you've been up to for the past two weeks, I would certainly advise that you get some rest." She got up and moved herself to a chair as Beast Boy began to lay himself out on the sofa, apparently choosing to heed her advice.
As the changeling drifted off to sleep, Raven began her astral projection into his mind. As her soul-self entered her friend's mind, she failed to notice that his corporeal being was beginning to stir in his sleep. For the next few hours, not a sound would be made in the room, except for the mumbling of a young man who was experiencing a particularly vivid dream.
Raven suddenly found herself lying face down in what felt like grass. As she got up, she found the assessment to be correct; all around her was nothing but golden grass and a few trees. For some reason, this particular part of Beast Boy's mindscape was an African savanna. She did not have much time to observe her surroundings before she realized she wasn't alone.
Sitting beside her was none other than the Beast himself. The sight quite naturally startled her; although the Beast had been her savior in the only previous interactions she'd had with him, to say that it was not an intimidating figure would be a gigantic lie. The Beast instantly picked up on her apprehensions. "Do not fear me," he said, "I am here to serve master and aid you." She was initially surprised at how articulate the Beast was, but then she remembered that the natural rules were somewhat different inside a mindscape than in the real world. "Your arrival was expected, and I have been chosen to accompany you."
Raven was taken slightly aback by the revelation. She'd been given a chaperon! Initially this offended her somewhat, as her first reaction was to assume that Beast Boy did not trust her. But then the offense faded as she realized the changeling's mind was probably not organized like hers, and her chaperon was probably a courtesy to both protect her from any dangers (if there were any) and help her find what she was looking for. At that moment, her thoughts were interrupted by a loud clap of thunder and she finally recognized that there was a storm on the savanna.
As she looked at the Beast apprehensively, he responded to her unspoken inquiry. "Master is having a nightmare." This had become a rather common occurrence around in Beast Boy's mind recently, as the news about Lamumba had uncovered long-buried memories, which the changeling was now reliving every time he entered REM mode. "Don't worry, it won't affect us." Raven was only partly relieved by the Beast's assurance; she was safe, but the storm looked particularly violent, which she could only surmise meant it was a bad nightmare.
The Beast began to walk and motioned for her to follow. After what seemed like fifteen minutes, they reached what appeared to be a grass hut, but crossing the threshold revealed that it was merely a portal leading to a different section of Beast Boy's mind. This one appeared to be the inside of a large building; certainly of the information age and most likely urban American. Glancing toward the walls, she noted the presence of a surprisingly large quantity of contemporary technology. Toward the ceiling on each wall ran what appeared to be a news ticker; although they were presently turned off, she was guessing they relayed information from the outside world collected when Garfield was conscious. One of the walls of the large room appeared to be entirely comprised of an enormous flat screen television. Each of the remaining walls was lined with computer kiosks. Taking in what she was seeing, she could only suppose this was an information hub and memory bank similar in purpose to Knowledge's library in Nevermore.
The mere existence of this information hub made her ponder the question of whether or not Beast Boy had similar manifestations to her emoticlones. It seemed entirely unreasonable for the changeling's mind to have an information hub of this magnitude and form if it didn't serve some purpose. Her thoughts were interrupted as the Beast led her to an elevator at the end of an adjoining hallway. As the doors closed, a tune began to play which was at once sweet and sinister, reminding her of a music box, except that a piano was also playing along in the background. The tune, together with an odd assortment of emotional impulses with which Beast Boy's mind was bombarding her made her feel simultaneous tinges of happiness, sorrow, security, terror, warmth and grief. She didn't know whether she wanted to smile or cry, and a quick glance at the Beast confirmed that she was not the only one being affected this way.
For about 90 seconds she could feel the elevator descending, until it suddenly stopped at what she could only presume was the deepest level of Gar's memory bank. With a ding, the door opened and she soon had an answer to the question she was pondering earlier about whether or not Gar had emoticlones of his own, as two figures stood before herself and the Beast.
"Hello Raven," said a voice that seemed a little too high to be Beast Boy's, "I am Busara and this is Akili. We are the manifestations of Garfield's wisdom and intellect, respectively." Raven suddenly noticed that, although Akili was a true clone of Beast Boy, Busara was not—although her appearance was what Raven would expect Garfield would look like if he were a female. Raven began to open her mouth to ask a very obvious question, but was quickly cut off by Busara. "Before you ask, I have taken a feminine form in part because, in addition to being the personification of Garfield's wisdom, I am also his anima." This made sense; where the Beast was the primal side of Beast Boy and connected him to the Red, Busara connected him to the human collective unconscious. Although Raven was now plagued with the question of why she didn't have an animus. Or maybe she did but just never encountered him for some reason. Either way, she made a mental note to take a trip to Nevermore after she was done with all of this, and inquire Knowledge and Wisdom about her seeming lack of an animus.
As the party which now consisted of four made their way down another hallway, Raven took time to observe her new companions. It struck her how much femininity Busara exhibited; even the way she walked seemed to scream "woman," which made Raven more than a little uncomfortable as the fact that this was an integral part of Beast Boy's mind created a bit of cognitive dissonance. It helped that Busara was otherwise very much like Beast Boy, including the green skin, hair and eyes, and lean, yet athletic figure (Beast Boy had gained in the area of muscle over the years, but never so much that he appeared to be like a bodybuilder); although Busara appeared to be shorter than Garfield. In their younger years, Beast Boy had been slightly shorter than Raven, but in his late teens he experienced a large growth spurt and now stood at 5'8"—not excessively tall by any means, but still a quarter of a foot taller than Raven's own contemporary stature. Busara seemed to be the exact same height as Raven. That was not the only similarity, as Raven had noticed Busara's breasts also appeared to be the same size as her own. Busara also wore her hair to the same length and in the same style as did Raven, who was beginning to wonder if there was a significance to these similarities to herself—but she quickly shrugged that thought off.
The top of Busara's uniform seemed to follow the same pattern as the top of Beast Boy's own uniform, except, as expected, in the area of the actual colors used. Busara's top was still black in the same places where Beast Boy's top would be, but in the places where Beast Boy would have been purple, Busara had more of an magenta. The front differed remarkably, however, in that the top was lower, and exposed the beginning of Busara's cleavage. Raven noted the absence of gloves on Busara's hands before she lowered her line of sight. The lower half of Busara's uniform consisted of a knee-length skirt, which was magenta with black stripes down the hips and thighs that matched in continuity with the top half of the uniform. Before turning her eye to Akili, Raven noted that Busara did not wear two-toned boots like Beast Boy did, but was rather wearing solid magenta shoes; there were no stockings or anything covering her lower legs between the bottom of the skirt and the tops of her shoes.
Akili's figure was a precise match to Garfield's. 'Same height, same figure, same green skin, hair and eyes, same cute ass...oh Azar, I did not just think that!' She began to blush uncontrollably, both embarrassed and surprised by the thought that had just crossed her mind. She was now more than a little hesitant to continue eyeing Akili, but ultimately compromised with herself by choosing to focus on his clothing. With no great surprise, she noted that his ensemble was identical to Beast Boy's uniform, with two notable differences. The areas which would have been purple on Beast Boy's uniform were yellow on Akili's. Also, like Busara, Akili was not wearing glove. Raven noticed that unlike Busara, however, Akili had claws rather than fingernails. Raven had never seen Garfield without either gloves or a holographic ring on his hand, and Akili's claws made her curious about whether her friend had claws or fingernails.
She did not have much time to further ponder the question, however, as the party arrived at their destination. The plaque on the door said "Viewing Room 1A." Inside she found that it was an auditorium with a large projection screen at the front of the room—it looked like a movie theater.
Author's Notes
In my mind's eye, the tune playing in the elevator was the first half of Clint Mansell's The Nursery from the Moon Original Soundtrack. Something about that piece seems to really fit the situation for some reason. Maybe because the tune's music-box-like tune seems to really fit with the descent into the part of Beast Boy's memory bank which holds his earliest memories.
Akili and Busara are both Swahili words. Akili means "intelligence, intellect, cleverness, ingenuity, reason, wit, resourcefulness, inventiveness, sagacious, sense." Busara means "wisdom, understanding, knowledge, insight, perception, good judgement; common sense; good sense, rationality, prudence, tact, judiciousness." Busara is intentionally the more outspoken of the pair—I figured that Beast Boy always has to use his judgement and common sense on a daily basis (for example, knowing which animals would be the best to morph into in a given situation), whereas he has never seemed to make full use of his intellectual capacity.
I was originally going to include Raven viewing Beast Boy's memories within this chapter, but I ultimately decided that this chapter was running long enough as it is, so I split what was going to be one chapter into two.
I made a reference to Raven's emoticlone Knowledge having a library because that seems to be the fanon as far as fanfics that deal with Nevermore are concerned. I decided it would make sense for Beast Boy's mindscape to have an information bank which, in contrast, disseminated information more by audiovisual means than by the literary means employed in Raven's mindscape.
I've been wanting to introduce a more overt element of sexual tension, but the opportunity really didn't present itself until this chapter. I figured it would make sense for Raven's mind to momentarily slip from her controlling grip on her feelings when she was looking at Akili because of an element of dissonance. It's Beast Boy, but not Beast Boy as she would normally think of him, so it presented an opportunity for that slip up to occur.
Annatheavidreader-Yeah, I like blending the cartoon, the comics and even some things that have been impressed upon me by other fanfics. I figure it creates characters who are multidimensional and, as a result, are more realistic than the rather simple portrayal the cartoon tended to give. Though, a very interesting thing which hasn't seemed to come up yet is where the blending will steer their (or rather, Raven's, since I've already made a bit of a reference of Beast Boy's) diets. I find it pretty interesting that in the comics Beast Boy ate meat, while (in the earlier comics) Raven was the vegetarian. I'm figuring the blend that I'm going for will end up leaving Beast Boy as a strict vegan as he was in the cartoon (since the whole cannibalism argument makes sense to me), while I'm probably also going to make Raven a (less strict) vegetarian, because one would figure that she's probably had a lot of nightmares in her life about death and destruction, which I would figure would make flesh pretty undesirable. But the way I figure it it, Raven does not seem to be the type who would eat tofu (there was even a point in the cartoons where Raven commended Beast Boy's integrity for not eating meat, but asked that he respect her choice not to eat fake meat), but would seem to tend more natural, for lack of a better word. Either way, I'm not even sure that's something that'll even come up in the plot, but it's an example of the kind of things I've put thought into with regard to the characters. Also, Raven will be learning about Beast Boy's past in the next chapter for sure; what kind of turning point that might be in their dynamic, though, is something I'm not even sure about yet.
JasonVUK-Glad you like it. I hope it continues to be an enjoyable story for you as it moves forward.