Chapter 8

The next few days were an absolute whirlwind. One moment he would be in Cyborgs workshop getting his new appendage calibrated to his nervous system sporadically between idle debate and comparison of biological notes, and the next he would be with Robin in the command room, observing criminal attack patterns of the city and giving his tactical opinion. He had learnt that Cyborg was involved in a pretty bad accident and they had to practically rebuild him from nothing, and with not much left to the remains of his life he signed up with the teen titans and had been living here ever since. He acted like the paternal figure of the team and he was almost enjoying working on Cranes hand, getting him to move three fingers, then two, and then grip a glass without crushing it. "Trust me it's weird to start off with and difficult to get the hang of it you'll wonder what you ever did without it" Remarked Cyborg as he shifted his hand from a normal looking hand with finger and stuff to a tiny blowtorch and set to work on a computer chip the size of a postage stamp. The result of this giant metal man working on something so delicately on something so minute was almost comical. "Nice accessory" commented crane as he observed Cyborg expertly weld the soldering to the circuit board. "Thanks, as you can see I made a few improvements on my original parts, I doubt the surgeon who put me together had in mind half the stuff I do." Replied Cyborg, "There we go… One transceiver capacitor, hold still" he finished as he started wiring the chip into Cranes hand. "Where did you learn to do all this stuff anyway?" he asked as he watched with fascination as lights in the chip went from red to green as they were wired "I doubt there's a collage course in making mechanical body parts."
" When you become half man, half machine overnight you do tend to have the habit to become very interested in mechanics overnight, I would recommend learning some of the basics, stops you having to coming back to the tower whenever something goes wrong with your hand. What's going on with you and Raven anyway?" Crane was as taken aback from his sudden change of topic as he was confused "What do you mean?"

"Well she doesn't normally talk to anybody around here, like ever. She keeps herself to herself as much as she can and reads, but since you've been up and around she's been eating dinner at the table with the rest of us and you two have been talking a lot, and I was just thinking that maybe…"
Crane finally caught on, "Oh no! No no no no, no. She's just been good to me since I got here and we have a lot in common to talk about, which, I have to be honest, is kinda nice. Nobody back in Gotham ever had much time for any of my theories. We're just friends though, seriously." Crane could kind of see where Cyborg could have got the notion; whenever he did have any spare time and wasn't drugged up with painkillers he did spend most of it with Raven; either on the roof at night when he couldn't sleep, looking out over the bay, or reading in mutually comfortable silence in the lounge or (what is most likely to make Cyborg think there was something going on between them) in Ravens room, looking through the stacks upon stacks of books ( the girl had a serious thing for the occult he had to give her that) . Fact of the matter is over the last couple of days Raven has been acting towards him in a way he expected a friend would act. Which as completely alien to him as it was, it felt kind of nice. However he couldn't afford to start thinking of these people as friends, they were the enemy and in a matter of weeks he may have to end up fighting, and beating these people who have shown him so much kindness. The idea of doing so didn't unsettle him too much, he had betrayed people before, but for reasons he couldn't explain he was a little bothered about the idea of using his fear gas on Raven…

Later that night Crane was tossing and turning in his bed, he was finding it difficult to get back to sleep after his third consecutive nightmare involving a violent death. "This was getting ridiculous" he thought to himself as he sat up and made his way out of his room to the kitchen to grab a drink, "Me?! Getting scared of something to the point where I can't sleep?! If the sea and the croc didn't kill me the irony will!" He was so wrapped up in self scorn he did walked clean into something in the corridor, said something promptly told him to watch where the hell he was going and turned out to be Raven, on her ass in her pyjamas on the floor, rubbing her head. "I'm so sorry, are you ok?" asked Crane to which he received an irritable "yeah I'm fine, now are you going to just stand there gawping like Beastboy or are you going to help me up?" From Raven as she held out her hand to be helped up as Crane took it and pulled her to her feet "can't sleep either?" Remarked Crane noticing how much less "Queen of Death" Raven looked in what he could only assume were her PJ's, which looked much less threatening than her big scary robe… in fact if it weren't for prior knowledge he'd say she was a perfectly normal 18 year old

"I'm not much of a sleeper anyway; I'm just coming back from the kitchen, Robins used the last of the mint flavoured hot chocolate again… remind me to do something horrible to him for me would you?" complained Raven, dusting herself off. Crane couldn't help but smirk at this "sure thing, see you tomorrow Raven, I'm dying for something to drink" he replied, as we walked past Raven he couldn't help but notice she looked a little conflicted, like she wanted to say something but….

"If you're having trouble sleeping… I was going to go to this place I go in the city when I can't sleep… if you would like to come with me?" Asked Raven; almost timidly. "What kind of place?" Asked Crane, intrigued.

"A place that does mint hot chocolate"