Brotherhood
Chapter 6: Fear Itself
Beast Boy sat up feeling like he'd just been hit by a truck, his head woozy and a bitter taste lingering in the back of his mouth.
"About time you showed up, asshole."
The voice was bitter and caustic, but underneath all of that Beast Boy still recognized it as his own. Shaking his head to clear it and looking over, the shape-shifter was faced with a mirror image of himself, except one that looked far more bestial. It was the huge, imposing form of his Inner Beast, the one he had taken on when that recombinant DNA had infected his bloodstream.
And it was locked behind the thick, steel bars of some kind of cage, separated from the rest of the white room that housed just it and the shape-shifter.
But wait, Beast Boy thought. What was he doing in a white room? Where the hell was he?
"That doesn't really matter right now, kid," the Beast said gruffly, arms pulling away at the steel bars to no avail. "What you need to do is get me the fuck out of this damn cage you put me in just now, and then we'll talk."
"I did that?" Beast Boy asked, and his eyes widened slowly as realization dawned on him and he remembered what had happened just before he passed out.
"So you get it now, eh?" the Beast sneered, its seemingly blank white eyes narrowing in spite. "You couldn't handle me, so you locked me away like the coward you are."
"That's not true!" the shape-shifter bellowed back, charging up to the bars of the cage and looking the Beast dead in the face with a snarl. "You're the one causing all of my problems. You're the one that makes me lose control!"
"Oh, so it's all my fault, is it?" the Beast parried, never losing the sneer. "In case you haven't figured it out, Sherlock, I'm part of you. I'm your most basic instincts, and the source you tap in to every single time you change your shape. So when you say it's my fault, you're really just talking to yourself."
Beast Boy's frown deepened; he was not going to be outflanked by this… thing.
"If I'm just talking to myself," he tried to reason, "then why are you even here in the first place? You're different from me, different enough that my head separates you from everything else. Like Raven's emotions in Nevermore," the shape-shifter said, only to earn a derisive chuckle from the Beast.
"And you think those were separate from her, kid?" it countered. "Don't bullshit me. You saw them recombine with her, right before she blasted that mental Trigon back into submission. Her mind just split them up because she wanted it that way. Because she was hiding from her emotions, and refused to accept them for what they were. Just like you're doing with me right now, kid. I just have one question for you:
"What are you so afraid of?"
Beast Boy raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Huh?"
"What are you so afraid of?" the Beast asked again, its voice stern and unchanging. Annoyed now, the shape-shifter replied.
"I'm afraid of the damage you always cause whenever I fight," he said, but the Beast was unflinching.
"That's a lie," it countered. "What are you afraid of?"
His frustration growing, Beast Boy's next answer came through another snarl.
"I'm afraid of my instincts," he said, but to no avail.
"Stop lying!" the Beast roared back, completely trouncing the shape-shifter's anger. "What are you afraid of?!"
Beast Boy was about to just rip off the bars of the cage and start pounding his Inner Beast to a pulp when he felt another presence quickly approaching, one that was dark and ominous and full of hatred.
"I found you, Garfield," the warped voice of Raven's Rage hissed, disembodied, in the white room of Beast Boy's mind, "and I am coming for you. You locked me away, and for that I will have my vengeance.
"Say your prayers."
Beast Boy bolted upright once again, but this time there was no ache in his head, no bitter taste in the back of his throat. Looking around, he found that he was back in the real world, lying on a plain cot somewhere within the League of Shadows' underground complex. Breathing in rapidly to fill his lungs, the shape-shifter could feel something—someone—approaching, Rage's cackles still echoing hollowly off the walls of his mind.
He had to get out of here. He had to get away, to a place where no one else would be involved in the duel. If whoever or whatever was controlling Raven wanted to fight him, then that was just fine by Beast Boy. Springing out of the bed and onto his feet, the shape-shifter quickly morphed into a bloodhound and sniffed the air tentatively, seeking out the scents of Robin and Starfire. After finding out where they were, Beast Boy changed into a cheetah and raced through the narrow halls, turning back into his normal self only right before the last door. Pausing for a moment to gather his breath, he calmed down and walked through the door.
Robin and Starfire were there, as were Ra's, Lady Shiva and Talia. Not even sparing a glance at the woman who had put him into a semi-coma, Beast Boy locked eyes with Robin and spoke.
"We have a problem."
The uncommon seriousness in the shape-shifter's voice got Robin's attention immediately, and his blue eyes narrowed in concern.
"What's up?"
"It's Raven," Beast Boy explained, his fists clenching unconsciously. "There's something wrong with her."
Robin's concern skyrocketed. 'Wrong', when applied to Raven, could vary from 'She just leveled a house with a thought' to 'Oh god oh god the skies are raining fire and the world is ending.'
"Just how wrong are we talking, Beast Boy?" he pressed, and the shape-shifter sighed.
"Back at the Tower, last night, when… you know, you died, Raven and I got attacked. By Mallah and Trigon."
Robin nodded, his expression grim.
"Slade told me Trigon had come back in some form, during our fight," the Titans' leader said. "You think he's found a way to get to Raven?"
"Yeah," Beast Boy agreed, "it's the only thing that fits. Before I woke up, I heard her voice in my head, but it was… twisted... corrupted, almost. And she said that I'd 'locked her away'."
Starfire spoke up, her voice worried.
"What should we do, Robin? We must help Raven; corrupted or not, she is still our friend."
Beast Boy shook his head, firming up his resolve.
"You're going to do nothing, Starfire," he said evenly, turning from the Tamaranean to face his leader, "and that goes for you, too, Robin. I'm going to face Raven alone."
Robin's concern swiftly changed into blatant shock.
"What?" he exclaimed. "Alone? Against Raven? Are you crazy? No offense, but you won't stand a chance!"
"Yeah, maybe not," Beast Boy answered with more than a hint of bitterness to his voice, "but she still singled me out as the target, and I'm not about to draw anyone else into this! No one else is getting hurt on my account," he said sharply, finally looking Talia in the eye. "That's never happening again, and I swore that to myself, because that's not who I am. I'm a Teen Titan, and it's about time I started acting like it."
Beast Boy walked to the other side of the room and through another door, closing it shut behind him. Robin made to follow after him, but Ra's' hand on his shoulder stopped the Titan.
"Let him go, Grayson," he said firmly. "That is also one attribute that we, as leaders, must possess: faith in those who follow us, just as they have faith in you, who leads them. The boy is stronger than he looks, but you must give him a chance to prove that not only to you, but to himself as well."
The sage advice stilled Robin's reflex to go into battle for his friends, and he sighed.
"You're right," he admitted after a few moments' pause, "this is his fight. I just hope it's not his last."
"It will not be," Starfire assured her leader and closest friend, her voice as determined as ever. "I do not believe that Raven would ever kill one of her friends, even if the influence of Trigon has twisted her emotions."
Robin forced a weak smile onto his face, trying his best to ease some of Starfire's own worry. The Tamaranean smiled in kind, and each of them found some small comfort in knowing that the other was by their side.
The green hawk shot purposefully through the night sky, betraying nothing of the unease that was coiling in Beast Boy's gut. Going up against Raven on a good day was scary enough, but now he was faced with going up against Raven on one of the worst days imaginable while her psycho, chronically-suppressed Rage was being given full control over her body. And all of the power that came with it.
He probably wasn't going to survive this.
But for some reason, that didn't bother him that much. Beast Boy had always worried that his death would be some quiet, pitiful thing, in a staid hospital bed hooked up to monitors that would eventually flatline with a single, never-ending beep. Fuck that; he was going to drag Raven back to her senses, and if he had to die to do that, then he was more than happy to go down in a blaze of noble sacrifice.
Everyone would accept him then, through mourning his memory as a fallen hero. His green skin and his abilities would no longer make people recoil from him as they had in the past...
Beast Boy gasped as he came to the realization that he knew the answer to his Inner Beast's question. All he had to do was find a way back into his head, and then maybe that brutish bastard would finally shut up—
"Hello, Garfield."
The voice scraped across the wind like a hundred rusty nails, rocking Beast Boy out of his thoughts. The shape-shifter was even further surprised when he tried to morph again and found that he couldn't: the red-eyed Raven in front of him was keeping him locked in the form of a falcon.
"It's been a long, long time since I last saw you, punk," Rage hissed, hatred, vindication and sadistic glee all intertwining in her voice. "It might only feel like a few years to you, but to me it was an eternity trapped in darkness and exile, with nothing! That bitch tapped in to me for her powers whenever she needed them, but never anything else. And it was you who put me in that cage, you bastard! You consigned me to that hell!"
Rage paused in her ranting, moving deliberately closer and closer to the frozen Beast Boy. She stopped only when she was looming over him like some great and terrible shadow, a single hand spread out to hover over his fragile form.
"I will show you what that hell feels like," she declared, calling a small spike of red energy into her hand. She drove it down through the falcon's chest, piercing its sternum straight though, and all went dark for Beast Boy.
"Back again so soon, huh? I knew you couldn't bear to be away from me; must be that animal magnetism."
The shape-shifter groaned in pain and opened his eyes slowly, dismayed to find himself sitting back in the same goddamn white room, in front of the same goddamn cage that still held the same goddamn Beast.
"She got you good, kid," the Beast commented, eyeing the gash in the shape-shifter's chest with worry. "And she can control your morphs. Doesn't look like you can win this alone, after all."
Beast Boy just smirked, his expression bleeding confidence for every drop of blood that seeped out of his wound.
"I know the answer to your question from earlier," he said, and it was the Beast's turn to raise an eyebrow in skepticism.
"Oh, do you now?" he asked, and the shape-shifter nodded confidently. "Then tell me, kid," the Beast repeated, his tone as serious as it had been before.
"What are you afraid of?"
"Of being alone," Beast Boy answered simply. "Of being pushed away because of what I am, because of my powers."
A crooked smile graced the Beast's lips, the amusement in his eyes bordering on feral.
"You mean because of our powers, Garfield," it replied, using Beast Boy's first name for the first time. "But I think your fear is pointless. In fact, I think you've already conquered it. You just can't bring yourself to admit it, because your difference is the crutch you lean on to define who you are."
Beast Boy frowned, the pain in his wound beginning to worsen. He needed to be out there fighting, not in here talking to himself!
"What the hell are you blabbering about?"
The Beast laughed.
"Why did you join the Titans, Garfield?" it asked. "Wasn't it specifically to be around people who would accept you as you were? And wasn't that exactly what happened?"
The shape-shifter paused at that, his mind racing back to all those games of Stankball he'd played with Cyborg, or all those nights he'd spent glued to the TV, just watching movies and laughing like crazy with the other Titans. When they'd been together like that, the weird had become normal. Everyone had been accepted despite their oddities.
"Yeah," Beast Boy agreed, beginning to understand. "It was. They all took me in for what I was, no matter what."
"Then why am I still sitting in this cage!?" The Beast shot back, the force in his voice taking Beast Boy by surprise. "Why are you still afraid of what you can do? Your friends won't be scared of you. She won't be scared of you. So why are you still holding back? Let me free, and let's stomp this demonic witch into the ground!"
The shape-shifter smiled, an expression that got even wider as the bars around the Beast simply faded away. He reached out eagerly, quickly taking the Beast's massive hand in his own. He felts its power surge into him, going so far as to staunch the bleeding in his chest and close up the wound.
"So," Beast Boy said, playful mischievousness back in his voice for the first time since the Brotherhood had attacked Titans' Tower, "what exactly can we do now, partner?"
The Beast smiled as well, its eyes bright with the hunger for victory.
"Use your imagination."
Rage scoffed as she looked down at the broken body of the bird that had fallen onto the rooftop below: she had at least expected the runt to put up a decent fight, but their rematch had hardly lasted for more than a minute.
Oh well, she thought with a sigh as she gained some altitude, preparing to completely annihilate her prey with a single blast, I guess I gave him too much credit.
"You bitch," came the cold, hate-filled curse of the Raven who was being held hostage in her own mind. "You worthless piece of shit, how could you? You killed him!"
"Technically, you killed him, Raven," Rage's voice spoke through Raven's mouth, savage glee dripping from every word. "I'm using your body, after all. But go on, by all means keep hating me. It just makes me even stronger."
Rage felt Raven fall silent after that, despair rushing in to take the place of anger. Which was just as well; Rage hated hearing that self-righteous princess yammer. Satisfied with the height she'd gained, Rage focused dark energy into her hands and sent a beam of it screaming down below. It slammed with fatal power into the spot the fallen falcon lay, unmoving. She smirked in triumph, but the expression was short-lived and disappeared completely when she felt a presence emerge behind her.
"You know," Beast Boy's voice spoke, "that wasn't very nice of you, whatever your name is."
Rage spun around quickly, but was met with nothing but air.
"Looking for me?"
She spun around again, and this time her blood-red eyes widened in surprise at what she saw. A massive bird hovered in the air behind her, shaped like an eagle but at least ten times larger.
A talon slashed hard at her just as Rage had put up a shield, the claw slicing through the weak, hasty barrier like it was nothing.
"And this is just a Roc chick," the bird seemed to quip using some kind of telepathy, its voice that of Beast Boy's. "Imagine how nasty it would have been if I'd brought out its adult form instead."
"Die!" Rage snarled, lashing out with sharp crescents of energy. But they all missed their intended target as the Roc transformed into a hummingbird, effortlessly flitting through the barrage and emerging without a scratch. Beast Boy quickly got above Rage and pulled one of his favorite maneuvers, transforming into a large Amur tiger and body-slamming his enemy. But the demoness wasn't about to be beaten so easily, and forced the feline off of her with a shout and another blast of dark energy.
"Who are you to challenge me, you child!?" Rage screeched as she regained her footing in midair and began to focus, letting her own anger lift her to higher and higher levels of strength. "I am the avatar of Trigon! My power is his power! To stand against me is death! I am Rage, and I am without mercy! I possess the power of the Demon Lord! You, a mere mortal, could not assume to defeat the gods!"
Beast Boy, far from being scared by the declaration, just laughed, echoing the rumbling chuckle he could feel coming from the Beast within him.
"The gods, huh?" he asked flippantly, cracking his knuckles in anticipation. "Well, it's a good thing I read so many picture books on mythology as a kid, then, ain't it?"
Before Rage could even blink, the full moon above her was darkened by the towering figure of a Griffin, its eagle eyes as sharp and cruel as the claws that adorned its lion paws. Its harsh shriek ripped though the air as it flew down upon Rage, and for the first time the avatar of Trigon knew what fear felt like. The beak rent and tore at the barriers she erected while its claws cut through her attacks like nothing, the relentless attack pushing Rage further and further back until Beast Boy finally landed a blow, carving three diagonal lines across her chest with a single swipe of one of his paws.
But as Rage moaned in pain, Beast Boy could also hear Raven's voice as it moaned in agony as well, and regret pierced him to the core. He quickly changed into a hawk and flew back up into the air, taking the breather to consider a new plan of action.
"What are you doing?" the Beast asked inside his head. "Get in there and finish her off! This is no time to be playing games, Garfield!"
"Shut up," Beast Boy growled back, trying to think despite his partner's anger. "That's not going to work! I forgot that Rage is using Raven's actual body; if I destroy it, that's as good as killing Raven. I need to think of a way to get rid of her without that happening!"
"Well, you better think of your miracle solution fast," the Beast said, "because the witch is getting her second wind, and she looks like she's done pulling punches."
"How dare you!" Rage shouted from below, her eyes blazing with fury even as blood continued to drip from her wounds. "You will suffer for this insult, you worm! Thusía, Therion, Thanatos!"
As she chanted, the demonic power crackling in the air around Rage tripled in strength, and her second row of eyes appeared.
"What the hell is she saying?" Beast Boy asked his partner frantically as he moved back and forth to dodge the renewed volley of attacks, but the Beast was no help.
"It's all Greek to me, kid," he said with a shrug. "Why don't you focus less on that, and more on figuring out how not to die?"
"It's hopeless, you wretch!" Rage shouted up at Beast Boy, her voice becoming stronger as she gained altitude and approached him. "You cannot win this battle! I am going to kill you, and then the rest of your friends will follow! No one will ever lock me up again; no one! I've lived in a silent hell for long enough, forgotten and alone—it's time your soul experienced that torment!"
Rage redoubled her attack, hoping to break her troublesome foe quickly and decisively. But as Beast Boy let his enemy's words sink into his head, he finally found the answer to the problem of how to defeat Rage without killing Raven. Taking a deep breath, the shape-shifter concentrated with all of his might and waited for the gap in attacks that came in-between volleys. When he saw it, Beast Boy let out a roar and attempted the biggest transformation he'd ever done. It was a gamble, and he had no idea what would happen if he failed, but he had to try it.
For Raven.
Rage smiled viciously as she heard the shape-shifter roar above her, assuming that the brat had finally taken one too many hits and was dead and gone at last.
Which was why her mouth dropped open in shock when she saw an unbelievably huge serpent fall out of the sky and slam into the ground, the impact sending out shockwaves that kicked up large dust clouds as it landed. It was hundreds of times larger than any snake Rage had ever seen, its golden eyes twice the size of a monster truck and its fangs as long as a house was tall.
"Holy shit," Bravery exclaimed in awe from somewhere inside Nevermore, "that's the Midgard Serpent! Is that guy trying to destroy this whole city!? That's freaking awesome!"
Rage felt her bones rattle as the Serpent let out a shriek that shattered every piece of glass on the block, her hands flying to her ears in pain as her eardrums almost burst from the pressure. She was completely overwhelmed as nothing more than a flick from the Serpent's tail sent another round of shockwaves racing along the ground. The simple gesture forced Rage to her knees, breathless. She slung a few attacks at the scaled behemoth, but it shrugged them off like they were nothing more than buzzing gnats.
All she could do now was wait for the end, for the death she knew was fast-approaching.
But it never came. Instead, Rage looked up to behold Beast Boy standing over her, in his normal form. His stance exuded waves of calm and control, backed up by some power Rage had no idea the punk even had. She tried to zap him, but her energy fizzled and died on her palm. Sighing, she used the last of her strength to rise to her feet. If she was to die, she would at least go out with some dignity.
"Finish it," she said defiantly, even as her voice began to weaken and break. "Send me back into the darkness."
Beast Boy's eyes narrowed, his reply equally defiant.
"No."
Before Rage could even think of a reply, Beast Boy had lunged forward and kissed her. The contact felt the same as when Malchior had done it earlier, if not a bit rougher around the edges, but the emotions that fueled it were completely different. Where Malchior had felt the need for Conquest, Beast Boy felt nothing but Concern. Where Malchior had been Spiteful in the callousness of his kiss, Beast Boy showed only Tenderness. And where Malchior had been compelled mainly by Lust, the undeniable driving force behind Beast Boy's kiss was nothing but pure, unadulterated Love.
Rage felt herself being torn in two as the emotions from the shape-shifter flooded into Raven's own consciousness: it was everything she had desired to feel during those long years of imprisonment, but at the same time it was destroying her piece by piece, supplanting her with… something else. Finally breaking under the strain, Rage gave in totally, a single tear rolling down her cheek as the last shreds of her existence faded away.
I see now… she thought weakly as the world faded to white around her. I see.
Thank you.
Beast Boy felt Raven move against him and broke the kiss, taking a few steps back. He was inwardly delighted to see her eyes back to that dark shade of purple he knew so well, but as Raven's eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, the shape-shifter cringed and prepared himself for the usual slap as the empath took a step towards him and spoke.
"Who told you to stop?"
Beast Boy barely had a second to let the question sink in before Raven initiated a second kiss, wrapping one of her arms around his back and putting her other hand behind his head, holding him in place. That last kiss of his had shot her emotions clear into orbit, and Raven was damned if she wasn't going to return the favor. She broke away from him a good fifteen seconds later, resisting the urge to lick her lips in satisfaction. As she saw that Beast Boy's eyes had gone as wide as a pair of dinner plates, she chuckled. All was fair in love and war, after all, and that idiot had to be ready to take as well as he gave.
"Uh… wow," Beast Boy forced out after a moment, wondering what bizarre alternate universe he'd stumbled into where Raven would actually kiss him. "Clearly, I need to save your life more often," he joked, and Raven smiled.
"Hopefully," she answered, "you won't need to." Looking around, Raven surveyed the damage caused by the Midgard Serpent transformation through her own eyes and whistled.
"You really went all out, didn't you?" she asked, but Beast Boy just shrugged.
"It was nothing, really," he said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing utterly. Raven shook her head.
"No, it wasn't 'nothing'," she countered. "It was incredibly stupid of you."
Beast Boy raised an eyebrow in confusion, wondering if he'd heard that last bit right.
"Wait, what?"
"I said it was incredibly stupid," Raven repeated, her eyes completely serious. "But it was also brave, courageous and utterly selfless. Thank you, Beast Boy," she said sincerely, before her voice switched back to serious, "but never, ever do anything like that ever again. Do you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," the shape-shifter replied at once, and the empath smiled again.
"Good," she said, leaning in and giving him another quick kiss. "Now let's get the hell out of here and find Damian, assuming he hasn't gotten himself killed already."
Back in Nevermore, Raven's emotions were still all gathered together, and none of them knew quite what to think about what had just happened.
"Well, I'll at least say that he's a damn good kisser," Lust spoke up first, and Intelligence rolled her eyes behind her glasses.
"Typical," she scoffed.
"Hey, everyone?" Timid said softly, her eyes moving from side to side nervously as she spoke, "there's an open space here now. What're we gonna do about it? There's never been an open space before."
The emotions realized that the gray-cloaked Raven was right, and exchanged concerned glances while waiting for someone to come up with an answer-- even Happy seemed worried.
Then, out of nowhere, there was a flash of light in the middle of the ring the emotions were standing in. As it cleared, a small form became visible crouched on the ground. It looked like Raven aged nine years younger than she was, wearing a white cloak. As it dawned on the other emotions just who exactly had replaced Rage, their mouths dropped open in shock.
"Um, hello..." the younger Raven said with a little nervousness in her voice as she rose to her feet, wiping some of the dust off her leotard. "Nice to meet all of you."
Happy was the first to move, squealing with joy and scooping the new emotion up into her arms.
"Oh, isn't she just the most adorable thing you've ever seen!?"
Intelligence's reaction was substantially more understated, but no less surprised.
"I can't believe it..." she said. "I never thought we would see the day she showed up to replace Rage."
Bravery just laughed boisterously, throwing back her dark green hood and grinning.
"Hah, all you suckers owe me twenty bucks apiece!" she said loudly. The next words she spoke, though, were barely a whisper.
"And they thought she'd never fall in love... those idiots."
A/N: OK, so I clearly need to stop putting previews in the A/Ns, because once again I had to leave something out. But fear not; Damian and Blackfire will most definitely be showing up next chapter! But speaking of this chapter, I hope you enjoyed it, and reviews are, as always, highly appreciated. So please do try to find the time to leave one if you would be so kind. It makes me feel all awesome and accomplished.
Other scrapped titles for this chapter were "By Our Powers Combined", "Fun Time with Italics" and "Mythology: Jazzpha Thinks it's Awesome".
For those of you wondering what the Ancient Greek words mean that Rage says for her version of "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos", 'Thusia' means '"Sacrifice", 'Therion' means "Beast" (used in the Biblical phrase To Mega Therion, meaning "The Great Beast", signifying the huge beast ridden by the Whore of Babylon), and 'Thanatos' means "Death". They all seemed to fit, I thought.