Another chapter.
Teen Titans not mine.
The room was silent, other than the sounds of the waves and wind outside, and the occasional falling of a piece of broken glass from the shattered windows.
"What happened here?" asked Robin as he picked his way through the plaster and wood that represented what was left of the common room.
"Nothing good, that's for sure," Cyborg replied, examining the window. "It looks like a storm happened, but just in this room. Star, can you go get BB and Rae? Maybe they heard something?"
Cyborg turned around to find that Starfire was no longer in the room. In fact, Starfire was currently hurtling through the corridors of the tower towards Raven's room. Raven had confided in her a few times about the instability of her emotions recently, and combined with the earlier shout and the state of the common room, a bad feeling was settling in her stomach.
"Friend Raven!" Starfire shouted through the door as she knocked. "I request to speak with you please!"
Silence greeted her.
Starfire's fists thundered off the door, shaking the walls with each impact. "Friend Raven, I will not leave you in your room again. I must speak to you, so you must open this door, or I will break it down!"
The door slid open as Starfire's fist whipped forward again, her fist becoming caught in an orb of black magic before it could collide with Raven's face.
"What, Starfire?" Raven growled, clearly irritated at being forced to converse with anyone.
Starfire steeled herself in the light of Raven's annoyed gaze and refused to back down. "The common room is very untidy at the moment; do you know what happened to it?"
There was a moment's pause, before Raven drawled "Yes".
Starfire continued to look at Raven expectantly. The pause drew longer and longer before Raven sighed.
"Beast Boy and I just had a little argument is all, it's not a big deal," she shrugged. "I'll tidy it up later, for now, I really have to meditate."
Raven began to close her door but found it blocked by a feminine orange hand. "Friend Raven, I must do the disagreeing. It appears the storm has come to visit, and it is not a considerate houseguest. I would say your argument with friend Beast Boy was very much the big deal."
Raven sighed again. "Look Starfire, Beast Boy just pushed my buttons today and I lost my temper with him. It won't happen again. Now excuse me." She began to close the door once again.
Starfire frowned but allowed the door to close in her face. 'I must speak to Friend Beast Boy to check that he is the OK' she thought to herself, before rocketing off to Beast Boy's room further down the hall.
Knocking loudly on the door, she called through. "Friend Beast Boy, are you in your room?".
Hovering out of nervousness, she called again. "Friend Beast Boy".
After a few moments without a sound, Starfire sighed to herself. Raising her voice louder, she all but shouted through the door. "Friend Beast Boy, I know we have had discussions about making sure that one is decent before entering the room but I must check that you are OK."
Breathing in, she reached for the door before a strong metal hand gripped her wrist.
"He's not in there Star, he's not in the tower." Cyborg stated, staring intently at a panel on his other arm. "He's got a very distinctive signature to our scanners, being part animal and all, but he's not showing up anywhere. I don't think he's here."
"But if he is not here, where is he?" Starfire asked worriedly.
Cyborg hummed for a second in thought. "I don't know Star. Come on, let's go back down to the common room, I'll get the computer back up and running and we'll use his communicator to track him down. I'm sure he's just headed out to the comic book store or something; you know how he gets when he's had an argument with Raven."
As Cyborg and Starfire returned down the hall, Starfire spoke again. "I do hope that he is not too badly upset. It is most cute when he and Raven are getting along."
Cyborg's chuckles faded away as they entered the elevator to the top floor, neither he nor Starfire seeing a pair of watery violet eyes peering out from a slightly opened door.
"Not again," Raven mumbled, stumbling around her room. Her headaches had been coming fast and frequent over the past few months, and they always came with sporadic bouts of memory loss and disorientation. As well as…
Raven shook her head. No. After the last time, she promised herself she would not lose her temper with him again. It was only thanks to his animal reflexes that he was able to dodge that car she had thrown and not been seriously injured, though it was thankfully easy to play off as her being aware of his capabilities and not intending to seriously injure her. She knew the truth though. She was fully intending, fully hoping, that he would be injured. What she didn't know was why.
"Ugh, I have no choice," Raven grumbled as she grabbed her meditation mirror from her otherwise bare dressing table. She always hated going into her mind like this, her emotions were just so...emotional.
Sighing deeply, she felt the familiar tug of the magic as she was drawn down into the mirror, and felt the familiar thud as her backside impacted with the ground. Though Happy was one of her least favourite emotions, Raven had to admit, her pink, fluffy grass was by far the softest way to land in Nevermore.
"RAE-RAE!"
Raven was tackled to the floor by the ever-exuberant clone of hers in the bright pink cape. Just looking at it was beginning to make her headache worse.
"Get. Off." Raven growled, roughly shoving Happy off of her. Happy, of course, used the momentum to roll her way down a hill, eventually coming to a stop on Raven's other side, laughing and giggling like a child the entire time. Raven decided to not think about the Escher-like qualities of her mind, and focus on her purpose for coming.
"Can we play a game? Oooh, we could play tag. I could get Brave and Affection, they're always happy to play a game, ohhh this is going to be so much fun! Oh, I know. Let's play hide and seek. That way Timid can play too, though she always wins because she's always hiding away in that spooky maze of hers and-" Happy's ramblings were cut off by a pale hand snaking its way over her mouth. Unfazed, Happy continued to talk, even as her green-cloaked partner walked passed her, keeping her hand covering her mouth the whole time.
"Hey Raven," Brave greeted the original with a slight smile. "Don't see you down here too often."
Raven sighed again. 'Is it too much to ask for a little quiet time, even inside my own head?'
"I need to speak with all of you, can you ask Knowledge to call a counsel?" Raven asked Brave, already both hopeful and dreading the outcome of the meeting. Consulting directly with her emotions always left her with as many questions as it did answers, but at this point, she'd take whatever she could get.
"I have already done so," droned a voice from behind Raven. Turning, she was greeted with yet another copy of her wearing a yellow cloak and pair of spectacles. "I sent Happy to come and get you, though why I thought she would be able to do so without getting distracted is beyond me. Come along."
The multi-coloured group continued through Nevermore in silence until they came to a large round table sat in front of the Forbidden Door. Raven was surprised to see that even Rage had been forced to attend, albeit shackled to her chair to prevent any unpleasant outbursts.
Raven took her seat along with the others and waited out a rather pregnant pause.
Knowledge, seeing the tension and being well aware of Raven's awkwardness in any kind of social scenario, even when interacting with only herself, coughed into her hand to gain the others' attention.
"Raven has requested this meeting to try and get to the bottom of her current problems with her anger. Rage - you are not usually brought into these meetings as, no offence, you rarely have anything to add beyond 'Kill them all'. As this is your specialty though, you've been brought along. Please try to behave."
Ignoring Rage's snarl, Knowledge turned to Raven. "Ask away."
"Why is Rage so out of control if she's still bound?" Raven asked. "I can feel my temper slipping every time anything goes even slightly awry. I know that I've always had trouble with my emotions, but this is different. This feels different."
Raven looked around the ragtag group of emotions, who were all looking suspiciously in any direction other than directly at Raven. Other than Affection.
"As much as I hate to tell you this, it's our fault," Affection stated simply. "Not just Rage's, not just your's, but all of our's."
"How is that possible?" Raven fired the question to the assembled emoticlones. "How can any of you affect my Rage?"
At this question, there was silence. The emoticlones shifted uneasily and glanced towards one another, silently debating who should broach the subject.
"W-We all feel it," came the ever-quiet voice of Timid.
Raven looked stumped at this statement. "That's...that's impossible. You represent my emotions. You shouldn't be able to feel anything other than the emotion you represent. You must be mistaken."
Raven turned away from the cowering gray-cloaked girl and returned her gaze to Knowledge. "I'm beginning to lose control of my powers and it's going to get dangerous for those around me, so I need some straight answers, not half-baked theories!"
Knowledge sighed as she gazed sternly at Raven. "It is wise for you to keep your emotions in check whilst you are here - becoming angry in this place would be… ill-advised."
Knowledge's eyes flickered towards the end of the table, where Raven could see Rage's power beginning to build, flickering along the chains and building up where the links would be weakest.
Cursing under her breath, Raven forced herself to calm down, taking a few minutes to chant her mantra and bring her emotions firmly back to heel. Looking back towards Rage, she was comforted to see the chains looking stronger than before and Rage's power barely licking at the links.
Nodding her head at Knowledge to go on, Raven crossed her arms and waited impatiently.
"Timid spoke the truth when she said that we all feel your rage. Though we may be only facets of your emotions, something has...happened, which has seemingly given us emotions of our own," Knowledge stated nervously. "Clearly, when you get angry, Rage is the most affected out of all of us, but we all feel your anger. Equally, when we get angry, you feel our anger, and that is what is causing you to lose your temper."
Raven gaped at her emotions, understanding but not believing what she was being told. "You're saying that when I'm losing my temper, it's because all of you have already lost it?!"
Timid glanced towards Rage, frightened as she could see her power building once more.
"I've been working my entire life to maintain a handle on my emotions, even going so far as to create my own mindscape where my emotions can express themselves safely, and now the beings I entrusted my emotional security to are the ones who are destroying themselves - and any semblance of my control along with them?"
"Raven, stop!" Affection shouted, startling Raven out of her growing fury. "Try to remember that you have had your whole life to feel these emotions; we have had a few weeks since Trigon's defeat! We are working at it, but these are new sensations to us, and whenever we have attempted to express ourselves, you have forced us back down. Of course we're angry! We are finally free of his influence, we can finally do what we would like to do, but you lock us up just the same as you always did. Even Happy was getting angry about it, because you refused to express anything!"
Raven sat dumbly as she processed the words of her normally more tender emotion.
"You don't understand - none of you do," Raven stated disappointedly. "We are not free of his influence, because I can never be. He is a part of me as I am a part of him and-" Raven sighed and closed her eyes, opening them once more to display four glowing red slits, "that can never change. I will never stop fighting him, but I cannot fight him and you at the same time, so you all need to just calm down before you make me do something I regret."
Raven blinked, her eyes once more returning to her normal state before she stepped away from the table. "Knowledge knows how I control my emotions - she will help you all to learn to control your own. I trust that this issue has been dealt with, and will not come up again."
As she began to walk away, a gravelly voice stopped her. "Raven."
She turned to see Rage grimacing at her. "You've already done something you'll regret."
A blast of power connected with her chest and flung her through the forbidden door and out of her mind.
"Really Rage?" Brave asked casually. "That was your big reveal?"
Rage sighed and turned away. "I couldn't tell her. I can't tell you. They'll all find out soon enough and then…" Rage's speech petered out. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Alright, computer's up and running!" Cyborg hollered, punching the air. "I am the man!"
"Please Friend Cyborg, I understand you are happy with your gender but we must find Friend Beast Boy!" Starfire pleaded unhappily.
"Star, I'm sure Beast Boy is OK, he's just going to have headed out somewhere, that's all," Robin attempted to comfort the worried Tamaranian.
"I do not think you are the correct Friend Robin," Starfire replied without taking her eyes off of Cyborg's progress on the computer. "I fear that it is something worse."
"Huh, that's weird," Cyborg commented, scratching his head. "The computer is having trouble finding him. It has the signal, so it's still working but it's...faint. Like damaged, or really far away."
"Show us the security footage in here Cy," Robin ordered, a bad feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. With Starfire's worrying, Raven's absence and Beast Boy's departure, it didn't take the apprentice of the world's greatest detective to work out that something must have happened.
"Alright man, I'll put it up," Cyborg replied, fingers tapping confidently on the screen to drag out the required footage.
[Security Footage - Main Common Room - December 1st - 10:34am]
Beast Boy poked his head through the door and hesitated slightly before walking in, seeing it was only Raven in the room. He wasn't sure why, but for the past few weeks, Raven had been blowing up at him for even the tiniest things. He knew that she sometimes found him annoying, but ever since the...incident...with her Father, she had been downright cruel.
Sighing to himself, he drew himself up and walked calmly across the room, casually firing off a "Morning Rae" in greeting. Not more than a few steps further and a thump on the back of the head sent him careening forward, windmilling his arms to keep from falling over. Raising a hand to rub his now sore head and continued to walk forward towards the kitchen.
'Ignore it Beast Boy, she's just having an off day. Just ignore it.'
Robin raised an eyebrow as he looked over at Cyborg and Starfire. "Well that was a little harsh, even for those two."
"It was."
The three started as they looked over their shoulders to see Raven standing there, an apprehensive look on her face.
"Keep playing it."
[Security Footage - Main Common Room - December 1st - 10:40am]
"Uhhh, Raven? Do you mind if I watch some TV?" Beast Boy asked nervously, being extra careful to use her full name. Casting his eyes towards his teammate, he breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her not looking up from her book. Taking it as a silent affirmative, he grabbed the remote and sat down on the sofa in front of the television. Kicking his feet up onto the coffee table and throwing his hands behind his head, he turned on a nature documentary and sat back to enjoy.
Raven's eye, hidden behind her book, was beginning to twitch dangerously. The TV was gratifyingly quiet, but the rolling waves of emotion coming from Beast Boy were driving her insane! His emotions were always intense, but recently they'd been so much more so that they were overwhelming at the least.
There were undercurrents of fear, but that was usual for the past few weeks. A slower, duller emotion was weaving its way through him, one that she had always been able to sense there but never been able to place, it being hidden too deep. There were others…
She found herself so engrossed in observing and internally commenting on his emotional states that, as she shifted, her leg nudged her cup of tea and sent it spilling across her seat and legs.
The world went black.
…"Don't come back".
There was silence in the room as the recording was stopped.
Robin and Starfire turned to look at Raven, who was staring, horrified, at the screen as though it had never stopped. Cyborg was too busy frantically typing away at the computer as he overrode the computer to manually seek out Beast Boy's communicator. From the damage the room took and the state Beast Boy was in before he was flung across the sea, any damage the communicator would have taken was unsurprising. It was a miracle it was still working at all.
"Raven, what…?" Robin began, but paused, unsure of how to proceed.
"Friend Raven!" Starfire barked out, snapping Raven out of her daze and bringing her gaze across to her disappointed looking friends.
"Raven, why did you do that? What possessed you to do such a thing?" Robin questioned angrily. "I understand that you and Beast Boy don't see eye to eye, but that is no excuse for what you have done!"
Robin ran his hand through his spiky hair frustratedly. "You are going to help us find him and then you are going to heal and apologise to him. If anything is permanent, you will face punishment."
Robin's eyes hardened as they gazed deep into hers. "Understand this though. The only reason you are still on this team right now is the things you have done in the past to help us all; I am choosing to believe that there was a reason for this, and I am trusting you to find a solution to it."
Raven shook her head despondently. "Robin, I-"
Robin interrupted her. "No Raven. I know you, better than mostly anyone. I know you would not do this without reason, not to one of us, not to anyone. Find the problem. Fix it."
Raven looked down and nodded sadly. "I-"
"Found him," Cyborg stated grimly. "He's about fifty miles out, location is steady so he's not going anywhere. Let's go."
The Titans marched from the room towards the hangar, all lost in their own thoughts.
As the craft launched from the tower and began hurtling across the sea, a shadowy figure sneaked from rock to rock, easily avoiding the cameras scanning the beach until they reached the waters and dove in.
Resurfacing a short distance away on a small outcropping of rock, the figure placed a finger to their ear and awaited further orders. It was not long before a gravelly tone echoed through their ear.
"Congratulations, I would have struggled to do it better myself."
The figure snorted. "It was too easy. They've been so busy celebrating their own successes; they've grown lazy. I could have just killed them you know."
"Oh I know, but that would have been far too easy. I wish for them to suffer, they way I have suffered. I wish for them to be humiliated, the way I was humiliated. And then, when they are broken completely, they will fear me as they never have."