Disclaimer: I once again do not own the Teen Titans.

Ascension of the Beast

Chapter VIII

Surcease of Sorrow

As Raven's avian aura returned to her corporeal form, she was left with a fairly difficult decision. It was early morning, but, thankfully, Beast Boy was still asleep on the couch, so she wouldn't have to worry about him quite yet. However, her journey into his mind had left her no opportunity to rest herself, and she was quite fatigued. But, on the other hand, what she had seen had left her emotions so messed up that even now it was difficult to keep her eyes from welling up. She could take a nap, but falling asleep with her emotions in turmoil had always proven to be a bad idea. So, ultimately, she had to visit Nevermore.

As the empath made her way to her room, she couldn't keep her mind off her green friend. His past was a complete shock to her—that anyone could maintain a cheery disposition after experiencing all of that was still difficult to wrap her mind around, even though she knew that he was able to do so by segregating his traumatic memories from his conscious mind. To be perfectly honest, however, his past was not the only thing she was thinking about.

As much as she didn't want to admit it, she knew that the preceding night was a turning point and her relationship with the changeling could never be quite the same again. She could no-longer see him as the annoying elf she had thought he was when they were younger. She couldn't see him as weak. She was even beginning to find it difficult to see him as immature. In his past experience and his determination to rise above it, she now realized there was an innate strength and wisdom to him. The scary thing, to her, was that even if she refused to acknowledge the fact, her feelings for him had evolved.

She would never admit it, even to herself, but there was always something about the boy which she found cute. Even from the first day they met, this was the case. It was more than just a physical description—as much as his antics could annoy her, there was always something special about his displays of childlike innocence and the jovial nature he was able to so carefully retain. In the old light, he was like a Peter Pan, desperately trying to find his Neverland. She desperately tried not to smile for him—her own mature side didn't want to encourage his immaturity—but it was exceptionally hard not to smile, or even laugh, at a lot of his antics.

But now he was in a new light. The heroism that was innate in him even when he was a six year old rescuing his mother from certain death; that same heroic nature which manifested itself even in his most feared transformation, when it rescued Raven herself. That heroic nature belied his unspoken maturity. As did his compassionate nature—in his Beast transformation, Garfield was probably the Titan second (to Raven herself) most capable of destruction, but he chose to just let abuses against himself slide, because he always found value in the humanity of others, even if they were asses to him. That same compassion was also what made him worry so deeply for her during the incident with Malchior; all of the other Titans figured she would want to be left alone, but he knew that it wouldn't be right and that she needed someone. His leadership skills and desire for mediation and reconciliation were also exemplifying his hidden maturity; indeed, Raven was beginning to recall incidents where hindsight was making him wonder if he had mediated some disputes by intentionally turning both parties against himself in order to distract them from their disputes with one another.

She couldn't see him as a boy anymore—it was now quite clear that he was a man. Of course, emotional maturity was not the only thing which would cause her to review that consideration. Physically, there was no longer much of a child to him. Sure, at eighteen, he wasn't really in his final form yet, but he was by far more man than minor. She could no longer consider him cute, actually. He wasn't cute—as much as she would incessantly deny it to herself, he had somehow become sexy. It certainly didn't hurt that, on top of his great humane mentality, he was almost dripping with shear animal magnetism in the physical realm.

As she grabbed the handle of the ornate hand mirror, she had a brief second thought. She was feeling very drowsy and didn't know whether or not she would be able to remain conscious long enough to make her rounds with all of her emoticlones. But a nightmare is never a pleasant thing for the person experiencing it, and when a demon was the one having the nightmare, it wasn't pleasant for anyone in the vicinity either. She decided she'd most certainly not want to add further trauma to Garfield's mind. Without a further thought, she lifted the mirror and looked at her reflection, until a black hand reached through and pulled her into her own mindscape.

Picking herself up, Raven rubbed her eyes and let out a yawn. She was again beginning to second guess her decision to enter Nevermore. She was now fairly sure that she would not be able to make it out of her mindscape before she fell asleep—she could only hope that she didn't fall asleep in the realm of Rage. Or Brave, or Rude, or Happy, for that matter, seeing as Brave and Rude were probably the only ones who would dare prank her as she slept (Brave was a little too brave sometimes and Rude just didn't care what Raven's reaction would be), and waking up to Happy's irritatingly sweet and joyful disposition was not something Raven wanted to deal with right now. Though, given the present state of Nevermore, she probably wouldn't have to worry.

It wasn't much of a surprise that the first portal she came to led her to Timid's maze. That was pretty much standard operating procedure in the realm of Nevermore, anyway. What did shock her, however, was the torrential rain pouring down upon the maze, and the two feet of water which stood on the ground inside. "Hmm," she looked around with a concerned look in eye, but still maintained a monotone voice, "this is new." In all of her experience within Nevermore, she had never observed rain before. "I don't know what's going on here, but I'm going to find out."

As she began to make her way deeper into the waterlogged maze, she could faintly hear the sound of very heavy sobs. She had no doubt as to who the crying entity was—after all, this was very much the gray-cloaked emoticlone's forte. As she waded forth, she eventually came upon a sight which at once confirmed her assumptions about the identity of the source of the crying, yet also shocked her to the core. Timid was the weepy, scared, continuously self-conscious emotion who represented the most depressive aspects of Raven's emotional being, but she had never, since the day Raven left Azarath, been this bad. Here she found her submissive double sitting in the fetal position, with the only thing keeping her from sliding completely beneath the surface of the water being that she was propped up with her shoulder against the wall. All the while, Timid was crying harder than Raven had ever seen before—hard enough that she could not speak; indeed, hard enough that she would probably have suffocated already if she were a corporeal being living in the real world.

Normally, Raven tend to be annoyed by Timid, and under normal circumstances she would have found herself even more so still. But after all she had seen when she was within Beast Boy's mindscape, she knew that this reaction was actually quite reasonable under the circumstances. So, instead of feeling frustration, the normally stoic dark empath felt compassion. Instead of mumbling derogatory insults about Timid's lack of composure, she sat with the emotion and drew her into an embrace. "Timid," she said in a sweet, almost maternal voice as the grey-cloaked emoticlone cried on her shoulder, "it's going to be alright. We know what he's been through now. I'll help him."

In the warmth of the embrace, Timid's crying began to subside, and so too with it did the rain. "W-Why d-did it all h-have to happen to h-him?" Timid said in a voice that sounded eerily like a child who had just been told some horrible news.

"I don't know," Raven answered with full honesty. "Sometimes fate can be so cruel. But I need you to be strong, so I can be there for him. Okay?"

"Okay," Timid nodded, as she swept the tears from her eyes. "I'm sorry I haven't been strong," she said in her normal nervous voice. "It was just so horrible I didn't know what e-else to do bu-ut c-c-c-cry," Timid's eyes were threatening to well up again.

"It's okay, Timid," Raven said, still maintaining the sweet voice with which she had been speaking, "you're who you are, it's kind of your thing." She paused for a moment before asking the gray-cloaked double of herself a question. "How have the others been taking it?"

"Happy hasn't smiled since we saw what happened to his parents, and she sunk into depression when it became clear that his parents' death wasn't the last traumatic experience Gar had," Timid said as her composure strengthened a little. Her voice was still in a very meek tone, but that was normal for her—at least it was stable and she wasn't studdering now. "Rage and Brave want to find Galtry and subject him to scaphism, and then resurrect Mobu and the criminals who enslaved Gar, just so they can send them back to the afterlife in greater agony. Affection has been alternating between crying as hard as I was and joining Rage and Brave's calls for vengeance. Knowledge has locked herself in the library, trying to analyze everything. Wisdom has been second-guessing herself and wondering how she never saw the pain..."

"Haven't there been any of you who weren't affected by this?" Raven interrupted. The course of action proposed by Rage and Brave was certainly alluring, but going through each emotion's response was costing time. She figured it would probably save more time to look at it in the reverse. Ultimately, she was right. Timid shook her head in reply. They'd all been affected.

"We all like him," Affection caused both Raven and Timid to jump, having been unnoticed in her approach. "It hurt us all to see Gar enduring so much pain, so much anguish, so much hardship. He never did anything to deserve any of it and, though we haven't held council yet, I'm willing to bet the consensus among us is that we want to do whatever we can to help him."

"That's actually why I'm here," Raven replied. "If I'm going to be helpful to Gar in any way, I'm going to need rest. I'm not going to be able to get even a catnap if all of you are in turmoil. And to add to that, even if by some miracle I did get some rest, I can't help him if I'm not thinking clearly." Raven expressed her apprehensions freely, as Wisdom quietly joined the group.

"Don't worry about getting us in order," the newcomer said. "Since you've already consoled Timid to the point where she is no-longer crying, the rest of us should be returning to a quasi-normal state shortly. Take a nap, then go to him. We won't be a problem for you." Wisdom paused for a moment before adding something else. "And you should probably get him out of the house tonight. Go do something you think he'd enjoy doing; it'll do a lot toward restoring order here if we can see him happy. Besides, if you don't get him out of the house, he'll just go back to his fruitless obsession with Lamumba."

"I'm not so sure anymore that it's a bad thing for him to be concerned with what's going on over there," said Raven. "He spent such an important part of his life there, his parents died there, and King Tawaba was one of his first great mentors. He should want to do something."

"I'm not saying that it's unreasonable to want to do something," Wisdom replied. "But he can't do anything about it alone, which is why his recent behavior is unhealthy. If he truly wants to do something, he'll need a team. He's never going to get a team together if he keeps himself in isolation."

Raven couldn't argue with Wisdom's logic, but the idea of dragging Garfield out of the house to do something he'd like was questionable for a simple reason: she probably wouldn't like it so much. Going to a crowded arcade when her emotions were in an unstable state was not exactly something she considered a good idea—she had gained a lot of control of her powers over the years, but they were still based on her emotions, and she still lost control every now and then when under stress. But she knew Wisdom was right; if she didn't see a smile on Gar's face, her emotions would remain in turmoil.

As she approached the Forbidden Gate, she decided that, while Wisdom was right and it had to be something Gar would like, she had to have some limitations. First, it could not be an arcade—the crowding, the abrasive sounds of all the games being played—these things would stress her out and possibly endanger everyone around her. Secondly, it should be somewhere without much lighting; that way, if she began to lose control, she could slip away and find someplace to hide. At the intersection of these two rules, Raven found two worthy possibilities. She highly doubted that going to a movie theater would do much to get his mind off from things, so she decided to rule that out. With the cinema eliminated as an option, Raven made a decision as to where she would drag her friend that night—though it certainly irked her.

Returning to her bedroom, Raven set her alarm clock to wake her up after two hours and promptly collapsed onto her bed. The nap would not be as refreshing as a full eight hours, but it could give her enough rest to keep going until late in the night. As she lost consciousness, the last thought on her mind was of Garfield Mark Logan.

As Raven awoke to the sound of her alarm, it took a moment for the events of the previous night and her mission for the day to flood her mind. "I should probably meditate," she said to herself, before shaking the idea off. "No, I need to talk to him. I can meditate after talking to him," she strengthened her resolve to take care of the matter. Time was a factor now. "I could use some tea, though."

As she made her way toward the kitchen, she decided to check the great room to see if Beast Boy was still asleep on the couch. He wasn't, but she was pretty sure she could guess where he was. 'The study', she thought in response to the unasked question. She was hoping she could get to him before he returned to his fortress of obsessive brooding. Obviously she lost that race.

As she entered the kitchen and pot her kettle on the burner, she realized she had no idea what to say to him at any rate. How does one speak to someone about things that happened a decade earlier, especially if the person does not even want to remember those things? 'Perhaps I shouldn't talk to him about those memories. I can't blame him for not wanting to recall those memories—they hurt me, and they weren't even my memories', she thought as she fixed her tea and took a seat in the dining room.

As she sat at the table, drinking her tea, the silence was deafening. The whole time she had lived at the Tower, she hated all of the noise everyone else would make. She absolutely hated it when the others would interrupt her meditation, or her thoughts, or her reading with their arguments, games and antics. She especially despised how Beast Boy would always pester her, but now was very different. Now it was the silence that was getting to her. Now she would give anything for her annoying little elf to interrupt her thoughts and tell her some terrible joke.

She especially hated seeing him like this. In the past, he had annoyed her, but—although she'd never admit it—his bright disposition had also been a comfort to her. His cheesy jokes always told her that everything would be alright, and his goofy smile could inspire hope on the most vital of moments. Moreover, his stubborn determination absolutely astonished her; he probably was the only person she'd ever met who was as stubborn as she was, and, although that could create a lot of friction between the two, it was a quality that made her feel like she wasn't alone. She wanted that Garfield Logan back; she needed to her Beast Boy. It had been ages since she'd seen his goofy grin, or heard him crack a cheesy joke, or seen the hope in his eyes, and for the love of Azar, this tendency to obsess on Lamumba had caused him to neglect his prior stubborn mission with regard to her (not that she was being selfish in her thinking here—rather, the fact that he was no longer trying to make her smile was a definite sign that something was very wrong).

Preferring not to waste any more time, Raven left the dining room as soon as she finished her tea, quickly finding herself in the hallway, standing before the door leading into the study. For five minutes, she would knock on the door and wait briefly for a response. Even as her knocks grew louder, each knock she dealt went unanswered. A combination of impatience and concern ultimately overtook her, and she chose to let herself in.

Her eyes first met the desk—it was empty. However, she quickly discovered Gar sitting on a small couch with a bottle in his hand, staring at the flat screen television he'd set up in the room. Raven couldn't be sure whether he even knew she was there at the moment. If he did, he surely did not let it on; indeed, his eyes hadn't even shifted toward her. As she closed the distance between herself and her green friend, she noticed that the bottle in his hand was a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey Rare Breed; sitting alone drinking Bourbon did not typically bode well for the mental state of a superhero, let alone one who wasn't even legally of age to drink yet. 'Where on Earth did he get that?' thought Raven, after the initial shock of seeing Garfield in this most depressing state wore off.

As she took a seat next to him, his eyes still made no movement to suggest that he even knew she was there; his gaze remained on the television unbroken, an eerie despair to it which she'd never seen in him before. Worried about her friend, Raven turned her attention to the television and, soon enough, it all made sense. The situation in Lamumba had changed drastically over the course of the previous twelve hours. First, dissident militias in Lower Lamumba's three northernmost districts clashed openly with government troops, after the regime attempted to seize armories in the area. The country was now openly in civil war.

But the shit hit the fan even harder in Upper Lamumba. Over the past six hours, there had been violent clashes between local militias and government troops in every one of Upper Lamumba's seven districts. But it was the reason for these clashes that particularly explained Garfield's disposition at the moment—these clashes were in reaction to the discovery of the corpses of Upper Lamumba's royal family.

"I wish I wasn't so worthless," Garfield said, finally addressing Raven's presence before taking a swig from his bottle. "You saw what happened with my parents—if I had been smarter, I could have saved them. I could have saved Tawaba and his family too—if I'd have just gone and talked to him when I heard about the coup, I could have convinced him to take his family into exile for his and their safety, but like a complete idiot I just sat here." He sighed before continuing his self-abusive diatribe. "I could have saved my parents if only I tried harder. Their death was all my fault. I could have saved Tawaba and is family—the people who took me in after my parents died and treated me like one of their own—too, but again I'm too much of a failure. Mento was right when he blamed me for letting the Brain go, Robin was right when he didn't trust me during the whole Beast incident, and you've been right all along—all I am is a stupid freak who always seems to screw everything up. I don't even deserve to live."

Raven reacted impulsively to his last six words, slapping him across the face with as much physical strength as she could muster. "Don't you ever say or think that again!" she exclaimed in a tone which simultaneously emoted anger and concern. "I did see what happened when your parents died—there was absolutely nothing you could have done about it; it wasn't your fault! Tawaba and his family aren't you fault either—you didn't know that Kibwana was going to kill them! Mento himself later admitted that he was wrong. And as for Dick," she paused for a moment trying to phrase it in a way that wasn't to hard on the Boy Wonder, but she had to be honest. "Dick is one of my closest friends, but sometimes he can be a complete asshole who rushes to judgment without having all of the information, and that was one of those times. I mean, come on Gar! You saved my life that night!" Her voice softened considerably as she finished what she was saying. "If you don't deserve to live, I don't know who does. I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for you, and neither would Dick, nor Mento, and let's not forget all of the civilians you've saved. Just because you're not omniscient doesn't mean your life has any less meaning. In fact, you know how rare it is for me to say something like this, but your life has a lot more value to me than you'll ever realize."

"I don't know," Beast Boy replied. "I mean...I know you're right—everything you're saying makes total sense. But I still can't help feeling like this is all my fault. And, you know, I want to do something to help the people who are still there in Lamumba—to help them end Kibwana's tyranny—but I don't even know what I can do. I'm just..." he would never finish the sentence, as he broke into tears at that moment. Raven pulled him into an embrace and let him cry on her shoulder.

"Gar, I have a story I need to tell you I know you probably don't think it will help, but just hear me out," she said, almost whispering in his ear. Garfield raised his head and looked her in the eye to signify that she had his attention, but did not otherwise interrupt. "Once upon a time, there was a fifteen year old girl who felt like there was no one who truly understood her or with whom she could really bond. So, when she was feeling down about herself, an evil dragon trapped in a book convinced her that he was a good wizard and that he understood her," Raven gave a painful sigh as she was recalling one of her less cherished memories. "She fell in love with the dragon, who promised that they would be together if she freed him; and he taught her all of the black magic she would need to free him. But when she was freeing him, she learned that he had been lying to her and using her the whole time. The girl forced him back into his book, but the experience left her despondent..."

"Rae, I know this story, but I don't really see what Malchior has to do with..."

"Just hear me out," was her simple response. "So, I was left heartbroken and feeling more alone than ever, but I had someone who cared enough to worry about me the whole time the dragon was fooling me. When my heartbreak was so horrible that I couldn't really deal with it, that sweet boy came to me and told me exactly what I needed to hear. He told me 'You think you're alone, Raven, but you're not.'"

"I remember Rae, but I still don't see how that applies to this situation."

"Well, it's rather simple. Just like I thought I was alone then, you think you're alone now. But just like you were there for me then, I'm here for you now," she tightened the embrace slightly as she paused. "You think you're alone, Garfield, but you're not."

"I appreciate it Rae, but I can't ask you..."

"Gar, you're not asking me, I'm telling you. I've seen your past, I know that you need to do something, and by Azar I swear that I will be by your side the entire way. You don't need to brood alone; we can act together."

Author's Notes
The title of this chapter is taken from a phrase used in the fourth line of the second verse of The Raven. I decided to use a title which references Poe's poem for obvious reasons, and the phrase "surcease of sorrow" also fits the general theme of the chapter, both with Raven's effort to bring her own emotions under control and to be there for Beast Boy.

I don't want to spoil much on what's to follow, but next chapter will reveal some important plot points and focus on Cyborg's meeting in New York, and then the next chapter after that will see another important BBRae moment. After that, the chapters ahead will gradually introduce one hell of a cast of characters (some of whom, while being characters who exist or have existed in the larger DC universe, would not normally be expected to make an appearance in a Teen Titans fic...but in most cases these characters will have an association of some sort with someone who's already in the story, so they're not going to be just randomly dropped in), as well as gradually revealing bits and pieces of the plot.

Also, on a random unrelated note, there probably will be waaaaay too many romantic pairings in this story (it's very much subject to change, but at the moment I'm counting at least twenty romantic pairings that I want to either display, mention, acknowledge or allude to in this story). A little excessive, but many of the romantic pairings in this story will be absolutely vital to setting up some of the later sequels I've got in mind. For example, this is definitely a spoiler, but Mar'i Grayson is one character I want to see having a role in some of the sequels.

Annatheavidreader-I figured that, given Raven's demonic origins, the development of deeper feelings toward Garfield would necessarily begin with her unconsciously taking a possessive view toward him. I don't want to spoil much, but this will periodically get a little interesting in a few moments in chapters ahead.

Hairul The Nightrage Beast-Without a doubt. In an attrition situation, Beast Boy could probably outlast just about anyone. But I doubt it would even come down to attrition—he has some pretty serious capabilities. I mean, just to use a few examples from the cartoons alone: he made Slade show fear and held his own in one-on-one combat against him in "Betrayal," he made Robin (the f'ing highly-trained protege of the Dark Knight, mind you) flinch in "The Beast Within," he inflicted serious enough physical pain upon Trigon the Terrible that it made the demon lord cry in pain in "The End, Part 2," there's pretty much the entirety of "Titans Together," etc. Then when you get into the comics, one of his problems is that he's actually too strong; he can be pretty dangerous in his more powerful transformations. For example, he (in the form of a chimera) accidentally killed Madame Rouge in the comics, which ended up leading to her daughter, Gemini, coming after him in search of revenge years later (but, with the help of Bette Kane, Gar made it through that whole ordeal). If the situation calls for it and the threat is serious enough to make him forget about his inhibitions, Garfield can probably be regarded as the second (only to Raven) most dangerous Titan.

JasonVUK-Not in this chapter, but maybe later.