This was my attempt at explaining to myself Beast Boy's character, because you do see a deeper and more thoughtful side of him in the show, but it doesn't get explored all that often. I can't remember where it was going, or what I was really even trying to say, but I do remember that it would put an interesting spin on things if this specific idea was from his POV. Enjoy!
He had seen it coming. He always saw it coming. There was nothing he could do about that.
When something happened, his brain would just click, and the gears would start turning, and everything would just fall into place. It wasn't anything that he could control, or something that he even consciously thought about, but it was there. That shrewd sense of thought itself that haunted him day and night.
Events would turn out the way that he thought, just because he could see through the haze of inferences to the most likely path. He never noticed it when it didn't happen, but when it did, it smacked him in the face and left a scar there.
Sometimes he wondered whether anyone else could see all the marks that littered his features. Mirrors were something that he avoided, because he did not want to be reminded of all the mistakes that he had made along the way.
But this was one mistake that he couldn't take back; one mistake that no matter how much he wished he had said something, it wouldn't turn out any differently. And this time, it mattered that he had kept silent. He had seen it coming, but he had done nothing. And now he was reaping his reward.
The shock of it was only, at this moment, beginning to wear off. He knew that right now tears would start to trickle out of a pair of bright emerald eyes. His dark friend had locked herself away from the others in her room; perhaps to deal with this in her own way. She surely wouldn't let herself cry. Cy… he wasn't sure what Cyborg was doing. Probably feeling the need to become the big brother again; he wouldn't be surprised if a knock came on the door sometime soon.
They had all stumbled back to the tower in a daze. Cyborg had nearly run some poor kid over in his haste to get back. The four of them had immediately gone to the computer in the main room, to go after the Villain.
The Villain. It didn't even matter who it was. Was it the Hive Five? Or Mumbo? Perhaps it was Mad Mod trying to pull something. Or even Slade, who had finally defeated the one thing that had always stood in his way.
It didn't matter. Beast Boy didn't care. All that mattered was that it had happened, to one of his best friends on his watch. In fact, if he thought back to the incident, he couldn't remember who it had been. It was as though his brain had blocked it out, the horror and terror of it.
And the part that he didn't want to see… that one single part kept replaying in his mind. A short, sharp grunt. A body flying back straight into a brick wall back first. A sickening crack as bone met metal and a skull split. The team medic down for the count, not unconscious, but too weak and dizzy to stand, let alone heal someone.
Nobody had been able to get there fast enough.
And he, assuming, and leaving it as he always did, hadn't spoken up. It was a bad habit, the changeling supposed. But now it had progressed beyond that. Now it was a curse, a burden. Beast Boy gripped his hair tightly with his fingers, pulling on the roots painfully. If only he had said something! He thought to himself, not for the first time that afternoon.
Not for the first time in his life, either.
His senses were heightened compared to his teammates. Maybe he couldn't feel emotions the way Raven did, but his powers were more tangible, and something that he could rely on. He wasn't about to trust some kind of magic to feel out what someone was thinking right then.
But now he was angry at himself for being able to sense things, furious at being aware. He cursed the accident that had brought this upon him. That thought was not the first in his life either.
His sensitive ears twitched involuntarily, ringing with the noises that he had heard. Moans and groans as he was hurt and tossed around. He could still smell the blood, metallic and utterly nauseating in his nose. He could see it in mind's eye. Every fiber of his being, even when he had been only just turning around to watch in horror as it happened, had been in sync with the frantic panic in someone else and one's self when they instinctually know that they are going to die.
And he lived it with him, through the senses that tingled in his being. It was one of the most terrible things that he had ever had to go through.
Beast Boy could only imagine what Starfire had gone through; or Raven, for that matter, being an empath. She must have lived his death as the changeling had, only through her own, and Robin's, feelings. Like being torn apart at the seams from the inside. The changeling shivered; he had no desire to go through anything remotely like that in his life.
He had his own demons to deal with.
A shocked silence had resonated after that. The heroes, the stunned denizens of Jump City, even the Villain. Eyes grew wide, then narrowed viciously, or settled in a smug expression. After the last echoes of nothingness faded away a roar of fury shredded the air.
The three superheroes still standing, even if dangerously wounded pounded their enemy back, back, back. It took a surprisingly short amount of time… or not so surprisingly short, as their tears of rage fueled them. Once they were sufficiently subdued, the team whirled around to find a Raven, still seeing spots, in front of their leader.
Beast Boy remembered his heart jumping into his throat- he remembered feeling it beating there, incredibly fast, but somehow not fast enough. Judging from the others' expressions, he was not alone.
Even in her disoriented state, Raven was the one to pull herself together the fastest. Her amethyst eyes bored holes into her friends. No salty tears glistened in her eyes, but Beast Boy wasn't worried about that now; he stored the information in a compartment of his brain for examination later.
"He needs to be taken to the hospital," she had said to them.