Who was she hiding from?
*The bad man.*
*My father.*
Both those thoughts felt right, but that didn't make sense just now. Her father was bad? That felt right. Did that mean she was bad, too? She felt tears in her eyes, but certainty swept them away. She wasn't bad. If she were, then noone would be coming to save her, and someone was. She knew that. How did she know that? Who was coming to save her?
Was it...her prince? That felt right, somewhat. Yes, her prince was coming to rescue her from her evil demon father. That sounded right. Any minute now, her green prince would appear to sweep her off her feet, and...
Green Prince? Her prince was green? Why was he green? Was he a frog? She seemed to remember her prince was a frog...sometimes? Wait, she knew this one. She would kiss him, and then he would save her.
Hadn't she done that already? No...he had kissed her. She hadn't kissed him back. Why hadn't she?
...Someone was coming. Her prince? Her father? Someone scary? She ran and hid, watching. Then she heard the voice. A voice filled with concern, affection, and a desperate hope.
"Raven? Raven, answer me please!"
She saw him. Her prince. He had come to save her. She ran to him. When he saw her, he knelt and scooped her up in his arms. ...was he always so much bigger than her? She looked at him for a while.
"What's wrong, Raven?"
"...aren't you supposed to be a frog?"
He looked at her for a while, then cracked up laughing. The laughing had a desperate relief to it.
"I can be, for you," he said, once he reclaimed his breath, and in a moment he became one.
She looked down at him. "You...you came to save me."
He changed back. "Of course I did, Rae. Now come on," he scooped her up onto his back. "Let's get you out of here."
As he climbed the walls, other things started to come back to her. Her friends, her last moments. Her closeness to him brought the memories back. Then the questions came.
"You...you were going to die for me, weren't you?"
He was silent for a while. "...Yes, if it came to that."
"Why?"
"...Because I didn't want to live without you."
They climbed on in silence.
"...What you said...when you kissed me. Did...did you mean it?"
"Don't ever doubt it for a moment, Rae."
"And it's been true since the day I met you."
"But...what about Terra?" She flinched inwardly at asking that.
"A mistake."
"What?"
"...For a long time, after I became green, I was certain I'd never find anyone to care about me. No matter how many people were around me, I always felt alone. I didn't think...I could ever be loved, so I told myself I wouldn't love, to spare myself the pain. Can you imagine?"
"...I don't have to."
"Oh. Well...that all changed when I met you. You were beautiful, dark, mysterious...I fell for you at first sight, and the more I learned about you, the harder I fell. Remember when I wound up in your mind?"
"Mmhmm..."
"Well, what I saw of you in there...that brief glimpse of what you kept hidden...I couldn't bear to even imagine the pain you lived with every day. I wanted to be the one to take your pain away. But it seemed, no matter how much I wanted to be there for you, you just pushed me away. I began to think...that you would never let me in. It was more than I could bear."
"...Beast Boy..."
"And then Terra came. She was pretty, I guess, in her own way. She was rough and tumble, she laughed at even the stupidest of my jokes. And...she made me feel like I was worth loving. I thought she loved me. And...after everything I'd been through...at that point I'd have given anything...just to believe that someone loved me. I guess..."
"...she was your Malchior?"
Beast Boy winced at the comparison. "Yeah...something like that."
"I'm sorry, Beast Boy. I never meant to hurt you. I...I thought I wasn't worthy of you. I thought I was protecting you, when I pushed you away."
"Well, let's make a promise then." He set her down. THey were almost to the surface.
"A promise?"
"Yeah." He held his right hand out to her, pinky extended. "A promise to never shut the other out, to never push them away, to never leave their side. Pinky swear."
Raven stared at him for a while, looking into his eyes, finally recognizing the emotion she'd felt from him before, the emotion filling the both of them now.
Love.
She linked her pinky with his. "It's a promise."