Night has fallen.

It is cool outside with the shadows of stars bathing the land.

I know that the Titans are in the Main Room upstairs.

Beast Boy has cooked a tofu dinner. Cyborg is promising a double-feature of sci-fi epics on the DVD player. Robin has finished his training for the day and Starfire's decided to try wearing overalls around the Tower for the first time.

I slip on my blue robe.

I momentarily examine my hair in the mirror on the side of my room….but soon realize there's no point.

I walk quietly out of my room.

I march down the hall.

I reach the elevator.

I press a button to call for it.

I stand and wait.

I tilt my blue head up.

Deadpan.

I swear for a moment that I can hear the voices of my teammates.

Laughing.

Arguing over tofu helpings.

Raising a happy row about one thing or another.

Perhaps even starting the movie with its roaring surround sound.

I lower my head and stare at the elevator doors again.

Silent.

After a while, the elevator car arrives.

Ding!

The doors open.

I walk in.

I press the button for the first floor.

The doors close.

And I lower.

After half a minute, I softly reach the first floor.

I walk out of the huge double doors of the Tower.

The coolness of night cascades over me.

I take a deep breath.

I adjust the robe and pull the hood over my soft head.

I walk out gently into the dark night.

The City glitters in the distance.

Skyscrapers shimmer from rows of windows in an earthly twilight that challenges the stars.

I walk down the asphalt path that slopes away from Titans' Tower.

The rock bluffs of the island stretch higher and higher on either side of me.

Like a dark, black ravine.

The window blows through strongly here.

I clutch my blue robe around my shoulders, braving the rush of air.

I inhale the coolness.

The moistness of the Bay.

And soon, everything is gently swaying and lapping up around me.

I gently traverse the land ridge connecting Titans' island to the Main Land.

It is a thin stretched of raised rock and paved asphalt running straight between the two dry grounds.

In a way, it mirrors the Suspension Bridge to the west of us, across the waters.

I glance across the dark black waves.

The moon reflects in a rippling matter, stretching over till the shadow of the car-studded Bridge blots a sliver of it out with its own shadow.

The Bridge has long been a symbol for this City.

Its dark-gray granite structure embodies the neutrality of our City. Its seemingly plain figure in the wake of such sprawls as Metropolis and Gotham City. Here in this City, the sky is clear. Clean. Seemingly untouched and unblemished by evil. The crime here is as nefarious as anywhere, but it seems to lack the sadistic style and darkness of other famous Cities on this continent. In a lot of ways, that has made me thankful. And it has also made me bored. I take it all in stride. In stride…like my drifting across the land ridge.

I wonder about the people who are driving on the Suspension Bridge. Of those leaving, I wonder if there's somewhere important where they must go. If perhaps they are sick of life here…sick of the Titans…and sick of the gray granite that surrounds them. I think about those coming in. I wonder if they come here legitimately to live in peace. Or perhaps they are would-be criminals wanting to challenge us. Or tourists wanting to see the Titans or see the Ocean or see nothing at all. I envision families and dreams being born on that bridge. I then imagine dreams dying on that bridge. Of the water that swallows gravity up like a huge black hole beneath the wires and coils and concrete holding the connective monstrosity together.

I look forward to sleeping tonight. Drifting off like a maiden floating on the waters that now flex and dance around me. A midnight queen wafting off to meet Arthur…or Beowulf….or Boromir. I think about the sands of sleep like the sands of time like the molecules adrift in water, constantly shifting and constantly dancing and constantly sinking into dark, silent, sleepy oblivion. The atoms that make up human beings and decay into the ground and take the secrets of our existence further and further into the hot core of life's cauldron.

And where the water ends, the rock and asphalt begin. And I realize that man has toiled his muscles into granite to tame the earth that will not bow down to him. And it seems a funny irony of historic happenstance that the same world hunters/gatherers sexed the Neanderthals to dust in became the same urban theatre set caped teenagers with superpowers battle for.

Azarath has no history save for the frozen blood of its existential occupants. Whatever is left of my home dimension is awash somewhere in the cosmos like the water coldly dancing around me. Blue is a color close to heart. It's an aquamarine sage that mutely reminds me of what I've lost, what I live for, and what I both threaten and promise the world in the simple nature of my existence.

I've often dreamed of slapping myself alone inside a giant, iron-wrought box and dumping myself into the ocean where I'll sink and sink and sink to the deepest abyss never to hurt anyone ever again. In a lot of ways, just 'being alive' is accomplishing the same thing. But it threatens even more people. Here I am, walking out at night into the depths of the City. I haven't even reached 'dry land' yet and already I know that I am no better than a walking time bomb.

People think I'm pretty. Beast Boy has an indecisive crush on me. Cyborg treats me like a chivalry-deserving, pedestal princess and Robin—though he won't admit it—gets ever so slightly distracted by my feminine ways in the middle of mutual training or the crime-fighting battlefield. I know that the people of this City admire me. High school boys and teenagers working at fast food joints or random guys at the pizza parlor where the Titans and I frequently visit—they all look at me. Some of them flirt with me. Some of them say and gesture things that make me want to disembowel them. But I know that it's all their random ways of showing their appreciation of me. Some think I'm beautiful. Some think I'm sexy. Some are attracted to me for reasons they don't even know but merely want to look at me and try to find an answer. Then there are girls and youngsters who are fans of me. People who want to be like me. People who buy posters, artbooks, and even shirts about me. People who want to write fan fiction about the 'dark Titan' or produce shrines about me on the Internet. People think all manners of good things about me.

But nobody knows me.

I would never let them.

And I don't ever let them…

Not even Robin, whom I respect the most.

Not Cyborg, who I know is harmless in spite of his random immaturity.

Not Starfire, who I don't believe could ever understand me.

And sure as Hades not Beast Boy, who is just about as compatible with me as a shrew to a uranium ore deposit.

I can't let them know me because if they know me, then they all would hate me. I have to keep my distance….and as I've discovered them more often than naught trying to get closer to me, I have to make them want to keep distance too.

And so there's the bitterness. The cynicism. The sarcasm. The biting remarks. The incessant glares and the monotone drone that I so often employ with my voice.

I mean everything that I say to them. Not because I make myself believe it. But because I have no other choice. I can't afford to express my emotions. I can't afford to unveil myself like a bitter scroll. I can't let them see the real me. I must sink below the surface like a dark treasure inside a wrought-iron box and hide in the darkest abyss of the earth. Deep beneath the waters where man knows less than the surface of the moon. Both sides.

I suppose that my friends are concerned about me. I call them my 'friends' because it is only fair to them. I do not at all regret the way that I treat them or the fashion in which I distance myself. I am merely wanting them to know—in some fashion or another—that I am extremely grateful for their bravery. When I say 'bravery', I mean their willingness to exist around me. The fact that they haven't disregarded me as a phantom. A ghost of a girl. A demon in disguise—which is what I am for all intents and purposes. I want them to know that I admire them as heroes, and as crime fighters, and as human beings all around.

But I can't tell them that.

Not even to save my life.

It's not punishing myself.

It's preserving myself.

And….ultimately….

Preserving them.

I walk slowly along the last lengths of the land ridge.

I realize that I'm still 'hugging' myself in an attempt to keep the cloak steadily around me. My robe never really has a penchant for flying off in the breeze, so I realize that what I'm doing is a fruitless endeavor. I find that—these days—I hug myself a lot more than I used to. I do it a lot in bed. Especially in the middle of the night. When everything is so dark that I can hug myself and—in a way—pretend it's the arms of another person encircling me. And more often than naught, those arms are that of Aragorn, or Achilles, or Heathcliffe, or Rorek, or Lancelot, or—on rare occasions—Ford Prefect.

But lately those arms have belonged to none of them but myself. I see when I close my eyes at night the face of a lonely girl getting in and out of the shower. Her hair is soaked and her pale skin makes a nude body seem colder. Like she's been carved out of eye. And her violet eyes are like black bruises from her own fist. The blue hair is a funeral shroud. And she wraps her own corpse in sheets and lies in the mouth of a big, black bird every night to practice dying.

And that's why I began walks like this one. Walks on the horizon of the night. It reminds me—in whatever lonely fashion I have available to employ—that I am still alive. And that girl—that one person I intimately know in the mirror—is possessing warmth somewhere beneath the ivory exterior. And on warm days I might soon be able to pull her over to a park bench and talk to her. And I might finally have someone to bounce off of. To discuss the annoyances of Beast Boy, the tactics of Robin, the peculiarities of Starfire, and the dramatics of Cyborg. And we might laugh or we might cry or we might just blend in with each other and bleed and beat and breathe the same. All I want is for her to stop looking sad. To accept the way things are. The solitary frigidity of it all. That warmth is an illusion that we make ourselves chase like white rabbits in our black and white dreams, and maybe if we simply become the glass that divides our nude bodies in the bathroom mirror, we'll see the green haze of the world for what it really is. A momentary escapade in lunacy before death belatedly rocks us all to permanent, relaxing sleep.

I reach the Main Land.

The buildings and the streets open up to me.

Sounds of a City still alive past the sacred hours waft over to me.

Sounds of car engines and chattering voices and distant dogs and distant music and distant dreams hitting the floor or laughing against the onyx night sky…….

Noise to me means something akin to warmth. It is an intrusion. Warmth enters this universe on behalf of energy. In a perfect oblivion, there would be Absolute Zero. Inarguable cold. An all encompassing purity of nothingness. I cannot even begin to fathom the silence of that. Save for death.

But such an analogy cannot truly hold its own permanently. I do not hate warmth in the same way that I often dislike noise. I could do with a mute world. But not necessarily a frozen one.

I respect this world. This City. My life and my team members.

I do.

And it's not that I have a hard time paying that respect. I choose not to. Or at least, I choose not to pay respect in the manner commonly expected of me. To verbally reinforce my friends and tell them how much I admire them for simply existing would be giving things away too easily. I don't pride in being coy. At the same time, I don't desire some adverse strength in suspending the knowledge that other people have of me.

I just….don't like touching things. And I feel that most things should stay as such; untouched. Pure. Formless. The worst thing mankind did is the best thing mankind ever did: raise a hammer. But in a world that's constructed and rusting all around me, all I want to do is float free. I want my life to come and go like a maglev whisper. Propelled between the lines. Shadowed between the walls. Gentle….but touchless. Skinless, but not heartless.

I don't want to look at things from the sidelines. I'll gladly go to the front of the charge. I'll throw myself at life's troubles or my friends' enemies or any such chaos. But within the bubble of confusion is where I dwell best and continue to dwell best. It is something that meditation has managed to support within my person. It isn't so much strength as it is malleability mixed with versatility. I want to be a quasi-magnetic ghost with only a pinch of the apathetic. The world may surround me…swallow me even, but I want to regard the walls with as much distance as they can reflect me but not touch me. Wishful thinking yes, but it's worked so well.

I know that I am a time bomb. I know that it will take very little time and very little energy to rip open my chest and bloom forth the infernal portal. I hold this inside of me like a land mine from a war sixteen years running. I dare not talk about it, but I dare not ignore it either. My whole life is a half-digested afterthought boiling around in my stomach. And all I can hope to do is read to distract myself or walk, walk, walk, walk, walk it off…..

I walk it off with the shadows hugging me across streets. Down sidewalks. Under the doubly-cold brows of building faces. Families, young teens, and other local folk visiting the night scenes chat openly in the evening air. A few glance my way, but don't see me. The soft shadows afford me the leisure of seeing their smiling faces, distracted gazes, and innocently creeping lives.

This is a friendly City. Honestly. The criminals may be fierce, but they are few. The Titans have seen to it that those who live here can truly 'live' here. The night isn't a place of fear like in Gotham City. It is but one of many battlegrounds randomly fought when—as I see right now—solace and peace dwells in the chaos' stead.

Critics sometimes insist that the Titans are dwelling in a City that doesn't need protection. They call our career a 'part time job' or a 'kids' vigilante stand'. I don't hold it against such people to make those statements. Everyone in existence—especially the popular entities—are due some criticism or another at various points in life. The only thing that bothers me is what exactly it is that closes people's eyes to the good things that we have done and constantly do at times. I don't hate the intent of blind criticism, but rather the spark that blinds the eye to begin with. Are people made paranoid when we do too good of a job protecting the citizens around us? Perhaps meditation for most human beings requires chaos, and we have robbed everyone of such?

I have had myself thanked openly by many a child and adult before. Eleven times I have been hugged by perfect strangers after saving them from a gunman or a burning building. Three have even kissed me—one of whom was a she. And then I've received approximately nine hundred and seventy-two love fan mails. I know this because—after I dump all the fan service away—Beast Boy has the nasty habit of picking up my discarded memos and reading that which I dare not touch. He gives me details every now and then. Sometimes blushing. I haven't killed him for that. Not yet.

I frankly don't understand what possesses a person to spend so many long, obsessive hours writing to me or any of the Titans. I guess I'm supposed to be flattered, but it does the opposite for me. In fact, it almost insults me. The best way a person can ever thank me for having saved him or her is to live his days for himself and those around them, not waste them in writing junk mail that eventually I'll discard as the common plastic bag. It's such a waste.

To be honest, I'm surprised that none of my 'fans' or anyone else in the City in general has totally villainized me by now. I treat the media and the collective identity of the City with the same distance and sarcasm that I treat my teammates. And—combined with my dark image and obsidian ways, it can't be a great result. But alas, I still stand. They still make cursed backpacks out of me. I've given up on the world in general. Even when they love me, I still feel sick and awkward.

The Titans know of my apathy towards receiving praise and admiration from the culture we fight crime in. And they constantly express shock and dismay—as always. Sometimes they think I'm punishing myself, or that I'm cold because of some angsty bitterness in my life. I know that that's all believable. But at the same time, I know that it's all untrue as well. Thus, I don't see a reason to explain myself when they inquire about me. When they wonder if I'm lonely. When they wonder if I'm dismayed. When they wonder if I'm depressed.

I stroll along the streets.

The cold air rushes down again.

The glittering lights of a theatre and a shopping complex where some outside pageant is being held shimmer and bounce an aura of brightness off my side.

I stay within the echoing ambiance of the distant reverie, but I turn my profile to the night-piercing halo and slide…slide…slide….

To where it's colder, moister, and softer.

The air increases in its down rush.

It smoothes across my limbs.

My robe and cloak's hoot wave in the drift.

I take a deep breath and hug myself. I press on.

Hugging myself………..

I am not depressed. I am simply existing.

I had a dream once that I woke up in the darkest room of the Tower. And I wanted to tell the Titans everything that was ripping myself apart from the inside out. I ran up the stairs, desperate. Heaving. But when I reached the Main Room where I expected everyone to be, the place was empty. The Titans—my friends—were gone. And I was all alone.

That was depressing. But that was an illusion. My life is far…far more lonely than that, but—for me at least—the real world is solvable while the dream world isn't. And the solution to my lonely existence is that it's an existence. Not a happenstance illusion.

I am bothered by existentialist, melodramatic preachers who moan that the world is merely a hallucination made to punish us for something we didn't do. People insist that existence is a cruel joke. That we are all born to die, and thus we are victims of a nameless, celestial conspiracy.

I believe that there is a lot of lunacy in our collective being. But hardly can one call existence pathetic or unfair. Cruelty is only a part of life. It doesn't spring from it. Even if Darwin somehow proves that red, tooth, and claw are all we have to depend up and not each other—human beings have proven that in a world constantly decaying down the ladder of violence, there survives amidst it a spirit of grace, redemption, and exoneration.

I am what I am because my mother sacrificed herself for me to continue breathing. After Trigon ravaged my mother, she could have done away with herself and all the pain she eventually would receive in bearing me and raising me in Azar. But she chose the difficult path of existence so that I may be blessed with a chance…

A chance to be.

Life is a momentary blink, yes. But things happen far faster than we give them credit for. Because all things—as far as we are concerned—are merely drawn out, hyperactive blinks that we give names and religion to. And those very blinks move mountains and I can move mountains too. Huge, holy mountains. The things that civilizations live and die to shape, I can rearrange, preserve, or destroy in a flick of breathy wrists. As can everyone. As can all things that simply sit back, pause, and squint at the lights hiding between the shadows. The untold hope we all stomp down into oblivion because all we see most of the time is the infinitesimal smallness that encompasses and overwhelms us.

I don't claim to be some sort of prophet. Or sage. Or oracle. Or deity. I'm not a 'Jane the Baptist' or a 'Joan of America'. I'm far too reclusive to be called someone or something to care about the eternal structure of a spiritual generation. I am simply a demon trying to fine more feathery and less fiery wings. I guess that's true of all of us whether we admit it or not. Only, I don't have many people to tell it to….

Scratch that. I have anyone and everyone to tell it to. Merely no desire.

I am alone, but I am not lonely. I wish the Titans would realize that. I wish they would leave me alone.

Alone…..

I feel the City stretching tall and concrete above me.

Steel bones shivering in the cold night air.

The twilight of stars echoing down to sigh off my shoulders.

The warm bodies ant-squirming a hurricane invisibly around me.

Distant glittering lights and lingering laughter.

Car horns and airplane buzzes growing distant.

The water lapping all around us.

The living, throbbing, shaking world.

And I shivering in the center of it.

I feel nude. Vulnerable. Like a scurrying little thing to be crushed, skinless. Something with juices inside, curdling to the surface. If water was to be poured one me, it's seep straight through. Perhaps I could walk through walls. Perhaps I could sink into the center of the earth if I exhale….

I am so very alone, but why should I complain?

I feel special here. I'm like the Titan who never was. The shadowed, alternative identity to what the media broadcasts and the papers print and the world advertises as 'Raven'.

I know that I am very precious and that I am significant because…

Even though nobody sees me (and nobody is looking) I am quite magnificently more aware of the crumbling, cold culture around me and my imperviousness to it because nobody and nothing knows or feels or tastes the nature of what lies in between my two ears but me.

And there's something to be cherished in a world that understands you when it's exactly what you want. And this peace, this solace, this solitary drifting…

It's exactly what I want.

The blue emptiness of it all. It does not hurt me. It fills me. It confines the universe to my head and arms and chest and back and legs and feet. My toes and my fingers go numb and tingle with the sensation of existing. And when I die, I won't be sad. I will be emptied and all I will have to do is sigh a relaxing sigh and the shell of what is left of me will happily fold away and disappear in some dark, dark drawer.

Accomplish is simply what you get from living. I have no intention of fighting for some last minute goal before I perish. Why struggle for something that you already have? Why sob and cry over something that is just as lost to you as your sobs and cries?

I don't understand the world, and yet I understand the world. Paradoxes run hand in hand with the acceptance of one's own breath. It's not something to have a headache over. Maybe something to pinch oneself for. But always something to be grateful for, in however subtle way an individual chooses.

I take a deep breath.

I have reached the park.

Lonely lampposts and cold fountains dot the gray-green landscape.

The twilight fades for a moment as I bathe in the cold, silver mist.

I stroll forward, down paths.

Eyeing the grainy gravel roads beneath me.

Why did Starfire come to this planet to begin with?

I take a deep breath.

I linger beside a bench.

Arms folded.

Blue body draped by falling, pale light.

Starfire doesn't belong on this planet. I don't mean that in a hateful, spiteful way. But—quite simply—she is of a completely different ilk. Seeing her next to Beast Boy or Cyborg or Raven is like a paradox to me. How can someone that innocent, that kindly, that devoted to universal platitudes of righteousness manage to survive on this Earth for so long?

I suppose that is lucky—in a sense—that Starfire is living in the protective, powerful relation of the Titans. I feel sick thinking of her in that fashion. Guilty, even. Starfire might not think much of it herself, but I know that I would despise it if everyone I knew took me for a girl who needed protection. To be placed on a pedestal. Cyborg does that a little bit to me, but I don't mind. Because he's Cyborg. The way I see it with Starfire, she respects protective emotions directed towards her as true camaraderie and friendship. And it is. But, I don't think she would find it demeaning at all. We all want to protect her. Almost to the point that we worry over her more than respect her. At first, it wasn't like that between her and I. I despised her about as much as I despised Beast Boy. Her joyous, loud exterior disturbed me incessantly. But over time, I realized that loudness was soft and respecting. And the joyous annoyance of her character was merely an alien girl doing her best to adapt, while at the same time not losing out on her passionate, Tamaranian side.

I respect Starfire now. I feel that my need to protect her is equal to her love for me and the rest of the Titans. I say the word 'love' lightly in Starfire's case, because it is only fitting. Tamaranians can love a whole lot easier than humans. And—as I take it—they can trust more easily too. But thankfully, Starfire and the rest of the Titans—myself included—have been together long enough for all of us to trust each other equally. And love? Well…one thing at a time. Starfire keeps her distance from me when I meditate nowadays, I guess I 'love' her for that.

I sit down on the bench.

I rest my hands on my knees.

I exhale….

Softly.

I have been unofficially 'watching' Robin since the Titans ever began. It's based on a request he gave me a long time ago. Back when we were the two to found the team. Robin felt that he was competent as a crime fighter, but he didn't yet know his integrity as a team leader. He knew he couldn't risk sharing this out loud with the Titans or else they wouldn't have confidence in him. But, he was willing to share his concern with me. Probably because from the get-go, I could very easily sense where he was coming from and just what made his emotions tick. If I tried really hard, I could even figure out his secret identity. But I had no desire to. And I still don't.

Robin was afraid. Robin still is afraid. He fears not for his life or his identity, but for the rest of the Titans. He knows that he's hardcore. And he knows that there's a monster inside of him when it comes to fighting evil. And he doesn't want that same monster being unleashed on his fellow teammates. Especially when they—like Starfire—trust him so much.

In a lot of ways, his nightmare came true when Slade took control of him. The four of us all saw that monster in him head-on. It was terrifying. But we braved it. Perhaps in an unconscious desire to face the rough waters in equal fervor as he did. To keep himself from suffering, he had to put all of his heart and soul into the act of Slade's apprentice. That's why I couldn't sense an ulterior motive in him until after Slade's probes attacked us. Robin was being hardcore about his business. He was punishing us to save us.

Afterwards, when all was said and done….When we returned to the Tower and when Robin was peeled out of his bloodied, beaten apprentice uniform….

He anguished. He really, truly did. At nights over the next week or two, I would lie restless in bed because I could sense—through the many walls and floors of the Tower—the Boy Wonder crying himself to sleep in such lonely ways that he would expertly deny the following morning. And none of the other Titans ever saw it. I never sensed that same anguish passed on to them. Starfire has even been oblivious.

Guilt is a monster in and of itself. More than Slade, it has consumed Robin and I fear….

Yes, I fear….

I fear what it might do to him in the not too distant future. I can only help that Starfire will understand Earth and Robin enough by then to be a good shoulder for the Boy Wonder to lean on when all of his weaknesses catch up with his flightless figure. I intend to be far away. Because, as I see it, I'm bound to collapse much sooner than Robin. And when that happens—for the sake of the Titans and the world—I want to be as far away from this dimension as possible.

And perhaps soon—with this everyday practice of heroic hesitancy—I'll summon the strength necessary to perform that very migration. I just can't do it right now. It's not that I'm not ready.

My friends…..

I take a shuddering breath.

I stand up.

I move westward.

I walk through the park.

Exiting.

Flowing.

Drifting across the City.

Sometimes I think I'm walking when really I'm hovering. It's a trait that Cyborg noticed first. He's observant for things like that. And he seems to have quite the robot eye for…..feminine qualities in the nuances of everyday happenstance.

Sometimes I think that Cyborg has a crush on me. Then I remind myself that he's simply very friendly. And like every other boy his age who possesses more muscle than metal, he's hormone driven and testosterone induced. The fights he has had with Robin on occasion makes my head throb. But the team would be nothing without him. And I don't mean to refer strictly to the Titans' Tower which his family—indirectly or not—has supplied us with, but his personality and stature as a whole. Cyborg is a lot more mature than most of us tend to think on a regular basis. He's older than the rest of us. A lot more 'grown up'. He has his many moments of restraint as well as impulse.

On a whole, Cyborg is a well-rounded adult. And I think the worst thing he could ever do is doubt his potential. As empathic as I am, I'll never truly understand what it is about him that makes him so extremely self-conscious about his robotic parts. I think Cyborg is under the assumption that he has lost a huge part of him that shall never be reclaimed. That disturbs me. At the same time, it makes me proud of him. Because he deals with these issues of his in an open fashion, not quite as closed up and dangerously reclusive as Robin. Cyborg isn't afraid to open up on numerous occasions. The only shields he has are the typical 'macho' shields of masculine buildup. He doesn't have the psychological iron fence surrounding him like Robin does.

I think Cyborg—more than the rest of us—would make a good family man (or woman in my and Starfire's case). He's the perfect big brother. He knows how to lifts spirits and to correct people out of line. He's smart, people-friendly, and devoted in all energy to life as a whole. There is so much respect for goodness, justice, and prosperity within his circuitry-interrupted soul. It is a joy almost equal that to Starfire, all outer exaggerations brushed aside of course. I'm sure that someday, he'll make a woman very, very happy.

If only he gave himself more credit….

I find myself walking through suburbs. Cookie-Cutter houses on winding, circular streets. The occasional streetlamp reflecting off the sleepy-eyed glass of the still buildings' windows. Transformers, dog houses, abandoned tricycles on the sidewalk. Somewhere overhead, the moon giggles before evaporating to gray glaze behind a cloud or two.

A cold wind.

I take a deep breath.

I walk/drift forward.

I pull the hood of my blue robe back over my head.

Gently…..

It has greatly surprised me just how low the self-esteem of heroes are. Both young and old.

I met Superman once. Batgirl. The Flash…..

Everyone of them has a dark, stone-hard pit of guilt, shame, and fear boiled up in their centers. They could really use some meditation. But I doubt even that would help. Pain is indicative of a superheroic life. I'm not a sadist, I just simply believe that fact.

The Titans are no less affected. Cyborg has his circuitry. Robin his hardcore ego. Starfire her adaptation.

And Beast Boy is the greatest epitome of low-self-esteem I've ever seen. His thoughts are practical fireworks in both the daytime and the nighttime. He thinks constantly about parents that he no longer knows nor tries to talk about. He hates himself. Secretly. Softly. Arsenic tears in the shower stall while the water's running. Untold sighs in the backseat of the T-Car. Beast Boy is sad. Very sad.

Everybody knows it. But nobody knows it. For we deal with the jester. The green harlequin of animalia. The changeling is as rarely without a smile as he is rarely in one place. He moves around. He animates himself. It's like all the metabolism that manages his ungodly metamorphing needs an outlet through kinetic energy. It annoys us to death. It makes us want to wring his little green neck. And at the same time, it makes us happy for life.

Beast Boy is absurd. And in his absurdity, he reminds us all of the lovingly stupid people we are risking our necks for each and every day. Without Beast Boy on the team, there'd be no excuse four our incessant 'meatball' crime fighting. I must admit, he does put some fun into the near-death experiences with fiends of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, he can be a terrible thorn in the side.

But for all the reasons that he ticks us off, we similarly don't ever want him to leave. Myself included. It's amazing, but I actually have gotten used to him. And to think of Beast Boy leaving the team—it would devastate me. Simply because that would be a defeat in my eyes of all that we've fought for. The only reason Beast Boy would leave the team would be if he horribly, terribly lost the last shred of conceivable faith in himself. And the only way that would happen—I imagine—would be for one of us to die.

And I don't…..want that.

It has never been my place to try and alter the way my teammates are. I have no problems with it myself. I would be glad for Beast Boy to find other ways to address his secret hurts than by joking all the time. And I would quietly revel in Cyborg losing some of his insecurity…and Robin lightening up….and Starfire showing some righteous anger for once.

But is not my place.

The Titans don't know it….

They don't know it all…..but….

I am their biggest burden.

And I am the biggest burden that they will ever have. I will not….cannot….burden them further in any fashion whatsoever. I respect them too much. After working alongside them for so long, there is nothing I can do but put them at the forefront of my concerns. And the best way that I can help them, is to not try and help them. For to do that would for me to get closer to them. And I've gotten close enough to my teammates as I can ever possibly allow. Perhaps—even—too close.

I must keep my distance from now on. I must meditate in this new fashion. I must reorganize myself, seek solitude, and within that shadowed loneliness remember who I am and once again touch the pale face on the other side of the glass. This hapless survivor from Azarath. A demon girl that's all by herself in the beginning and—inevitably—in the end.

The middle is irrelevant.

The houses are replaced by warehouses on either side of me. Industrial complexes. The darker…grimier of buildings.

Any Titan will confess that I am quite the fan of dark, grimy things.

They might also—hopefully—admit that I am a very practical human being.

I like darkness, but I'm not stupid.

I turn in my tracks, and avoid the seedy part of Town.

I seem to be gliding now. As if the City is an ice sculpture melting beneath me. Sometimes when I lean back—walking or sitting down—I roll my eyes into the back of my head and suddenly the universe is a small place in the Jesus points of my wrists. I've often wondered what the vibration was in the beginning of time that determined even today the pulse of my heart. Time is an illusion to biological engines called human beings and the things that—literally—make them 'tick'.

But if time is truly a crime, why has life organized itself around his twisting finger? Is Nature as lazy and easy-sliding like the rest of us? The cosmos are dwindling into cold, cold darkness at an irresistible rate. Certainly the physicality of all things existing senses this. This transferal from microcosm to macrocosm, combined with the diminishing of energy.

In a lot of ways, we are the tools of eternity. We are the sinking lure that the universe tosses into the dark waters to test if fate is biting or not. I often see everything as a giant, omnipresent matriarch. Mother nature's periods are coming to a close. A celestial barrenness whispers prophecies to consume us all in oblivion. The doom and gloom is but tomorrow's reality—perceptually speaking of course—and maybe we were birthed to taste this oblivion one by one in our separate, perishing ways to that the accumulated ashes of our mortal hilarity would amount to a fortune telling potion?

People are far too quick and impulsive to rule out the impact of a divine Creator upon this world. I know that death is permanent, and existence is short. But heaven and hell—absent from reality—do not necessarily detract from the possible potential of an omnipotent originator behind everything. I figure that if God exists, he is far crueler and far more sadistic a god than ever the generations of pessimistic monotheists could assume. And what god best serves his own creation through a shroud ambiguity as his universal, grand narrative? We are indeed to 'fear God', for he imposes upon us—if he does indeed exist—a methodology under which the very things natural human beings are made to rely on—the physical senses—are but comical pranks waved before our bleary eyes.

I would serve that God if I had no choice. But I am convinced that—indeed—I have a choice. I was raised to respect all life. And if all life came from a Creator, then who am I to hate Her or Him? It happens that I also respect death. And for that, I cannot choose to follow God. For when it comes to death, every god I've ever been taught of has been nothing but a mountainous hypocrite.

I suppose it all bleeds from heaven to earth. The human race is a hypocritical accident. But every now and then, there are a few accidents that would inexplicably desire joy and prosperity for all the silly siblings stumbling around them. I respect those more than any deity that does or does not exist invisibly beyond my senses. Why does it feel that the second beloved commandment of Jesus is ironically the best and most practical of all for humans to follow? Those who follow god establish doctrinal friction. And who on this globe can argue—in spite of everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen to our fellow man—that the only thing that religion succinctly manages to do is kill ourselves?

To love your fellow neighbor as you love yourself, that fills me with a lingering hope for humanity. Christ may not have been quite the madman that he came off as. Mohammed wasn't entirely a misogynist ignoramus. And Buddha wasn't necessarily self-centered. I dream of the day when everyone wakes up to the one thing that makes the Vedic Faiths promising in my eyes: the openness to all manners of yoga in approaching the mysterious essence that is our Origin, be it God or not or Purpose or not or the Golden Mean or not.

But we are far too cursed by the superficial soup that sloshes and spirals at the end of our fingertips. Life is like breathing underwater. For seventy-odd average years, a human being doesn't realize that he's drowning until he comes up to the obsidian surface. And maybe there and only there—on the deathbed with nothing but the flittering firefly warmth of life dancing its whining way out the window and into the night—we all realize how pathetically absurd it is to spend all our years away flying airplanes and cars into each other's faces. And where will all our trophies go? The silver and the gold? The bank deposits, the autographed photographs, the lockerroom inches to invisible phalluses bragged about by drones the world-over or the number of screaming little cherubs that we manage to squeeze out of our uteruses and fight to regain our patriarchally-demanded figures afterwards?

Somewhere in some place of time, some bastard was born out of an angry thought, and he or she rose to power to slay the huge, life-giving beast called 'Sensibility'. And all attempts to democratize nature and sub-nature since has been pies half-baked by parachuting dreams in the sky. Sometimes I am very much tempted to believe in cruel, self-centered deities being spawned by the scrotal blood of castrated earth-spirits.

But then again….the Titans too were overthrowned. And their nephew went on to rape dozens of women as oxen, swans, coins, and various other perverted fetishes of the bored Aegeans.

It goes without saying. The world was a lot crazier place before Poe arrived.

Right now… the night is cool. My senses take over, and I am once again encapsulated in the capsule called my body. A very soft and feminine place, or so I am told. I don't try to come across as coy or egocentric, but if someone were to ask me how I keep myself so 'pretty' and 'graceful', I honestly answer them that I have no clue. And I don't try to be beautiful. Honestly, I don't. I think some things come natural with being a magician. I might be beautiful on the outside, but on the inside I see the demon in waiting. And I know that I am bitter. I am so very bitter. My friends need to taste of it everyday. They're my fellow Titans, and what do they care if I am or am not necessarily 'pretty'? It's a second thought to them now. If not a third thought. It could have been different had I been different from the get-go. But it's too late for me to change. And it's even later for me to care.

And yet I sense the petiteness of my frame. The utterly ridiculous smallness and frailty of what I am and what I grew up to be. And I wonder—perhaps for the first time—perhaps for the millionth time….

Why am I not older?

How could I possibly be this young?

Why is it that I can feel the raping fingers of Trigon inch towards my inner psyche, and yet I can't reach the top of my bookshelf in my room?

I very well know the answer to this.

I know that there is an explanation.

A reality.

Something cold and naked and shivering.

Mud-breathed.

Grimey and disgusting, like the buildings I turned away from.

It's a part of me, this ugly duckling limb. I can't saw it off for the life of me. There's no silver bullet for me to bite onto. No purple heart to be won. I am alone in this cyclone. So very alone.

I feel moisture in the air.

Water lapping on either side of me.

And I look up.

And I know…

I have come full circle.

My walk is coming to a close, and I have returned to the land ridge.

Titans' Tower stretches tall in the distance.

Its metal surface is so clean.

It's windows and shiny faces immaculate.

I could happily dive into my 'home' and drown.

And I realize…that I do just that.

Every night.

In my cold room, while yet…

The Titans are floors and walls away……..

…..I can still feel them…..

………and I feed off of them…..

I know that I already have the answer to myself.

I know that I know all that there needs to be known.

And I know….more than anything else….that they don't know.

And all they'll ever do is distract me.

And though I don't submerge myself with them….

Though I don't join their DVD nights or their card games or their ice cream outings or their jokes…..

I know that I need them.

I need them so….so terribly.

Because—for once in my life—I can be honest and say….

I can afford the distraction.

I can truly, truly afford the distraction.

As long as all they know is the surface of the dark sorceress that shares dinner plates and laundry duties with them.

The blue shape in the corner of blurred, heated fights against crime.

I don't try to dwell on how much they might possibly need me.

But I need them.

And—Azar willing—they will be repaid in the long run.

And maybe my death will be a silent, gentle one.

Sucking in only my own soul and leaving them untouched.

But….

I know the truth to that too.

I walk slowly to the front doors of the Tower.

I enter in through the mammoth entrance.

The air is still cool inside, though without the breeze.

I ascend an elevator.

Leaning against the metal wall.

Hugging myself…..

The doors open.

I walk into the hallways.

And again…I think I can hear them.

Upstairs.

In the Main Room.

Perhaps a movie.

Perhaps a game.

Perhaps laughing and talking loudly just for the sake of doing so.

Life……………………………………………………………………..

…..

I walk to my room.

I enter the soft, cold-blue domain.

A silent, soothing shower….

I emerge and clothe for the night.

A modest night gown.

And after straightening my hair, I light a few candles.

I snuggle up with a blanket in a big reading chair besides the stretch of windows.

Looking out onto the gray City where I spent the last two and a half hours traversing.

I take a deep breath.

I manage a slight smile….

And open a book.

In my element.

Franz Kafka.

You know………

My life would be a whole lot more interesting if I woke up one day as a bug……