A.N. Ahem. Um, hey everybody. I know, I know. It has been months since my last update, and I apologize. Wow, has it really been over three months? Time flies when you're crashing through junior year. However, either my email notifications aren't working properly, or not many people are updating their stories much either. Darn real life commitments and their ability to sap time from doing more important things. (Grumble grumble)
Anyway, regarding my profile poll, it seems that the overwhelming majority of you are in favor of this fic following a more mature path than I had originally intended. I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to review or PM me regarding how they voted and why. Based on the response I received, I'm leaning towards making a oneshot/offshoot out of any explicit material, so that I don't alienate my less gung-ho readership. But don't worry about that just yet. I'll be sure to warn you in advance if there's anything blush-worthy coming up.
For now, just sit back and enjoy the special Thanksgiving installment of everyone's favorite story.
Chapter twelve of "Like It Or Not," entitled "Revelations"
Beast Boy was at a profound loss. As Raven disappeared for the sanctuary of her room, he stayed behind in the kitchen, a feeling of numb bewilderment freezing over his body. The nightmarish tirade that Raven had just thrown upon him had hit its mark.
Mind on autopilot, he took several deep breaths, dazedly gathered up the breakfast dishes, and brought them to the sink to be washed. His hands shook as he rested the plates inside the sink, so he balled them into fists at his sides as he made his way to his bedroom. Somehow the wedding gifts from the reception had ended up there, and the changeling spent some time perched on his bed, flipping disinterestedly through a few of the comic books he had received. However, the pages before him might as well have been written in Ancient Hebrew, considering how little he got out of them. Even more irritating, his gaze kept shifting up from the pages and towards his window. Beast Boy didn't know how many times he caught himself staring into space during that single futile attempt to read, but his sudden inability to focus was becoming quite aggravating.
"I need something to do," he muttered to himself. The last thing he wanted to do was to stay unoccupied like this, because he knew that he would just end up brooding over Raven. God, he didn't want to do that. He didn't know what to feel. He supposed he ought to be angry – probably furious – that Raven was treating him like this, but he just… wasn't. A random factoid sprung to mind, about how the human body blocks out pain when it becomes too overpowering to bear. He felt desensitized and it almost worried him, but it wasn't hard to decide that he'd rather feel nothing than experience the inevitable pain from the total rejection of someone he had given so much to save. The full realization of Raven's words would soon set in, he was sure. He was still in shock, he supposed, but shock seemed far better than what he feared was to come. Raven had destroyed the delicate illusion of hope that he had allowed himself to rest upon, even for the briefest of moments. He had made himself vulnerable. In return, she relented an inch and then leapt back a mile, leaving him utterly ostracized.
A throat-constricting ache gripped Beast Boy again as his mind drifted listlessly, pointlessly to Terra, another who had instilled this same feeling of defeat in him not so long ago. Was Raven doing nothing more than repeating history by leaving him alone to be tortured with the grief of unbearable isolation? Was he again just destroying himself by holding onto hope?
No, it couldn't be! Raven was his wife… and his friend at least, right? She would come around, right? That grain of hope seemed to hang tauntingly a million miles above him.
The correlation between Raven and Terra, however trifling, threatened to set off the explosion of memories that danced around the edges of his mind. The emotions he had so long suffered with when Terra betrayed him – the debilitating anger, anguish, and depression – were clawing their way back into his consciousness. Perhaps the true magnitude of sorrow over Raven had not yet set in, but the torturous feelings he would forever associate with Terra were never too far from reach to be called up during such a morbid time as this, serving only to compound his misery exponentially.
Beast Boy felt the backs of his eyes prickling with suppressed despair and he leapt to his feet. He didn't want to think about what had happened. He didn't want to accept it. He just wanted to convince himself that Raven was speaking irrationally in the heat of the moment, and that all that stuff she said about never loving him or wanting to be with him wasn't true. He really, really wanted to forget all about it. And most of all, he wanted to stop seeing Terra's face as Raven's words echoed through his head.
Gripped by desperation to forget his dismal state, Beast Boy stumbled from his room and down to the common room, where he landed on the couch. However, the usual comfort of the familiar place failed him. He couldn't even work up the will to pick up a video game or a magazine with which to waste his time. His eyes kept returning to the windows, where he stared vacuously at the bay below until his brain refused to remain dormant any longer.
With a sound of exasperation he hurriedly pulled his communicator from his pocket, flipped it open and called Robin. He exhaled deeply and his chin sunk down to his chest as he waited for Robin to answer his call. He waited a few long moments, but wasn't surprised when Robin did not respond. Beast Boy depressed the talk button and tried again.
"Beast Boy to Robin," he said in slight agitation. No reply. "C'mon dude! I know you never turn off your communicator, so stop pretending you're not there." A beat. Still nothing. "Robin, for the love of God, I swear I'll go throw all your birdarangs into the bay again if you don't answer me right now." A short, indecisive pause. Then the screen flashed to life, and Robin's perturbed visage appeared on the changeling's communicator. Beast Boy grinned in spite of himself.
"Beast Boy, you're not supposed to be using your communicator unless there's an emergency. You're on vacation. So go. Have. Fun," the changeling's leader tersely replied.
Beast Boy chuckled mirthlessly.
"Believe me, I am," he sighed, and shook his head in exasperation. "Actually, Rob, I'm more convinced than ever that Raven hates my guts. What was I thinking, tricking myself into believing that she'd actually act civilly towards me after I threw my future to hell and married her?" He could have sworn that he saw the corners of Robin's mouth twitch upward, but his leader's voice was impassive as usual.
"It's not going well, I take it?"
"Dude! I'm trapped in the Tower alone with a girl who wouldn't touch me with a fifteen-foot pole if you gave her a million dollars. How do you think it's going?"
"Yes, well, you're already starting to sound like quite a few married guys I know. So if that's all—"
"Don't you dare hang up, Robin!" Beast Boy demanded in panic, "I'm having a crisis here!"
"It sounds like, as usual, you need to go talk to Raven. I can't help you, Beast Boy."
"I can't go talk to her! You don't get it!"
"You're right, I don't," Robin agreed with a nod. "And you understand the terms of your honeymoon, so I think I'll be going—"
"Dude, stop! This is definitely an emergency."
Robin didn't reply for a moment, and Beast Boy could practically see the exasperation building behind his leader's mask.
"Is Titans Tower still standing?" Robin asked blandly.
"Well, yeah," Beast Boy replied with slight reluctance.
"And both you and Raven are safely inside said standing Tower?"
"… Well, yeah."
"Then I don't see what the emergency is, Beast Boy," Robin concluded. "And if nothing's wrong, I'm kind of busy, so—"
"No, wait!" Beast Boy exclaimed, talking rapidly in case Robin were actually to hang up on him. "Dude, please put me back on duty. I can't take a whole week of this. I need to be doing something, anything, just to get my mind off of things."
"You're supposed to be enjoying yourself, Beast Boy, or at least resting up. It was a team decision to grant both you and Raven temporary leave, and the conditions of your furlough are nonnegotiable."
Gosh, Robin made the situation seem so clinical that it was almost funny. Beast Boy probably would have found his leader's graveness humorous too, had the circumstances been different.
"Yeah, but Raven… well, she kinda made it clear that she doesn't want me around," Beast Boy replied lamely.
"And this makes your current situation unique because?" Robin asked with a sigh.
"Because I thought things would be different!" Beast Boy exclaimed vehemently. "I mean, she was acting… nice yesterday."
"I see. You didn't forget her birthday, did you?"
"Of course not! Even I'm not that absentminded."
Robin paused and briefly looked up from his communicator.
"I don't know what to tell you, Beast Boy," he finally admitted with a sigh. "I'd like to say that Raven might come around, but when her mind's made up – if it really, really is – you probably won't be able to change it."
"Come on, I already knew that," Beast Boy said in frustration. "Can't you come out with some fortune cookie proverb of relationship advice?"
Robin's eyebrows knit together.
"You and Raven are pretty much on your own for the time being," he responded. "Just make an effort to give her the space she needs to avoid a second Apocalypse, alright?"
"All I ever give her is space," the changeling exclaimed. "Why can't she just appreciate that?"
"Don't ask me, ask her."
"What kind of leader are you? Do you want me to die? Look, neither of us appreciate you marooning us at the Tower, and I'm sure that both of us would be happy if you put me back on duty this week."
"Have Raven's powers returned yet?" Robin asked, obviously ignoring Beast Boy's petition.
"Um, not yet."
Robin's face darkened considerably.
"That's not good," he remarked, obviously disquieted. "That was the entire reason behind this… endeavor. Does she know why?"
"… No?"
Robin's frown deepened.
"She must at least have some idea."
Beast Boy shifted uncomfortably. "Well, just a stab in the dark, she was kinda figuring that since our souls split and all—"
"Your WHAT?" Robin exclaimed, nearly dropping his communicator.
"Yeah, and there's the tiny possibility that the curse won't be happy until Rae and I've done all we can to, uh, unite our minds or something like that, and who knows how long that'll take, unless we, uh, utilize the most direct way to, ya know…"
"What on earth, Beast Boy?" Robin exclaimed, mask wide with confusion. "I'm not tracking with you."
The changeling coughed into his glove and was silent. He really, really didn't feel like divulging everything to Robin. With his luck, Robin would pull a Batman and deduce precisely what had led Raven to seek solace in her bedroom, and why Beast Boy was practically begging to be taken off leave. Frankly, the situation was awkward enough as it was, even without everyone knowing that Raven would rather lose her powers forever than sleep with him.
"Ya know what?" Beast Boy began pensively, "You're right. This is for Rae and me to figure out."
Robin's eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline.
"You're just going to casually mention splitting souls and then drop the issue?"
"If you put me back on duty now I'll tell you."
"Beast Boy, don't be petulant," Robin warned in annoyance. "If there's something wrong with my team, then I need to know."
"Well, nothing's wrong, as in immediately life threatening," Beast Boy offered with an awkward shrug. The silence that followed spoke volumes of Robin's incredulity.
"If you're not going to tell me what's going on, then I'm not going to waste my time," his leader replied stiffly. "Cyborg, Starfire, and I will be back in six days, and I don't want to hear from you until then, got it?"
Beast Boy rolled his eyes.
"Tell Cy and Star I said hi," he said bitterly. "See ya, dude."
With that, Beast Boy cut the transmission and fell back against the couch in frustration. Robin had proved to be absolutely no help at all, and he actually regretted contacting his leader at all. He was still back on square one, and it sucked.
TT
"That was Beast Boy," Starfire stated as Robin shut his communicator with a noise of aggravation and replaced the device in his utility belt. Robin nodded in response and went back to the day-old newspaper before him, shifting slightly in his old kitchen stool. Starfire had walked into the kitchen half way through Robin's short conversation with Beast Boy and sat down across from him, followed by Cyborg a few moments after the call ended.
The three unmarried Titans were currently spending some time in Kid Flash's apartment, because… well, actually Robin couldn't remember why. He believed that Jinx had wanted to bring Starfire there earlier in the afternoon, and somehow they had all ended up in the cramped space. It hadn't even been a full day since the wedding and already it was proving difficult to stay out of Raven's and Beast Boy's way.
Cyborg gingerly took a seat on the stool beside Robin; he had already learned the painful lesson once that day that the old junk apartments came pre-furnished with wasn't intended to support the weight of a six-foot tall machine.
"And what's up with them?" the metallic teen asked his leader curiously.
"I have no clue," Robin replied dryly. "Something about soul splitting and Raven isn't talking to Beast Boy again."
Cyborg and Starfire stared at their leader in silence for a moment.
"I am not familiar with this concept of 'soul splitting', I am afraid," Starfire offered.
Robin shrugged tiredly. "I haven't the faintest idea either. And Raven's powers haven't come back yet. Ironic, right?"
"That's not good," Cyborg said with sadness. "Does she have any idea why not?"
"It wasn't clear. Beast Boy mentioned something about linking their minds, but he might have just been talking nonsense. You know how he gets when he and Raven are fighting."
"So what do we do now?" Cyborg asked.
Robin hesitated before speaking.
"I guess nothing," he finally decided with a sigh. "Beast Boy was practically begging to come off leave early, but I don't think that's a good idea. If nothing else, he ought to be resting up, so we don't have a repeat of the warehouse incident."
"Maybe I should go talk to him," Cyborg said pensively. "Ya know, he probably could use some moral support."
"He needs to learn to get by without people holding his hand and helping him through all of his relationship issues," Robin reasoned. "We can't be expected to intervene every time he thinks he needs us, especially now that he and Raven are married."
"Are you sure that this is the most prudent course of action, Robin?" Starfire spoke up in concern. "I do not like leaving my friends alone to suffer when they require assistance."
"In principle, neither do I," Robin replied, "but just trust me. I bet Beast Boy will work this out with Raven on his own eventually. Besides, we should be more worried about Raven right now."
"Man, it's pretty scary that she doesn't have her powers back yet," Cyborg agreed, and Robin nodded grimly.
"I was really hoping that this wouldn't happen," Robin said, obviously distressed.
"Well I'm sure that Rae's troubleshooting as we speak, unless she already knows what's up," Cyborg offered.
"If she knew what was happening, then why wouldn't she tell Beast Boy? Or why wouldn't Beast Boy tell me?" Robin posed. "He knows how serious the situation is. We can't afford to have a team member out of commission for much longer. People are talking already."
"So let 'em talk!" Cyborg exclaimed. "Don't insinuate that you're thinking of taking Rae off the team, Rob."
"Oh, please, Robin," Starfire gasped, eyes wide. "Surely you do not wish to remove Raven from our family, do you?"
"Absolutely not," Robin assured her. "I don't want to do anything like that. Ever." He hesitated and glanced around the room. "But sometimes people are forced to do things they don't want to. God willing that won't be the case, but if Raven were to never get her powers back, then what use would she be to a team of superheroes? It might sound harsh, but we don't have any room on the team for dead weight. That's life."
Tears shimmered in Starfire's eyes and she clasped her hands firmly on the table before her.
"Raven will never be the dead weight to our team," she sniffed, "And I will not stand to see her sent away because of this misfortune, unless you wish to send me away as well."
Robin's mask widened imperceptibly and he was silent. Cyborg spoke up.
"I agree with Starfire, Rob," the bionic teen stated steadily. "Rae's my girl, and I'm not gunna let you just take her off the team because of this mess. Same goes for Beast Boy."
"That's ludicrous," Robin replied, a hint of indignation in his tone. "You've both heard the adage before: We're only as strong as our weakest link. One weak spot could cost us all our lives some day. Naturally it's hard when changes in our team become mandatory, but sometimes change is necessary for survival."
"Well maybe that's a risk the rest of us are willing to take," Cyborg shrugged, his calculating gaze rigid. "Like Star said, we're family. If you have a problem with that, then you need to deal with it."
"We're superheroes," Robin exclaimed, throwing up his hands in emphasis, "And that's the position we've been commissioned to fill for Jump City. We can't afford to be selfish when we have a city to protect. We're not like a normal family."
Cyborg exhaled and shook his head.
"Well," he replied, "There's no point in depressing ourselves like this now. Hopefully Rae'll figure out how to get her powers back, and Beast Boy'll figure out how to get along with her."
"And maybe Slade will turn himself into the JCPD tomorrow," Robin said in frustration. "Let's just leave them alone for now. If there's a God, then perhaps something will change between now and a week from now."
"And if something does not change?" Starfire asked.
"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Robin replied definitively, and he refused to speak on the subject anymore.
TT
The old scientist's fingers shook as he assembled a slide of the blood he had been given. He felt atrocious to be aiding such a feebleminded criminal carry out such a malevolent scheme, but he was truly powerless to object. He simply could not live with himself if his brash actions were to cost him the life of his wife or children. He simply couldn't.
Feeling less than justified, he carefully placed the prepared slide on the stage of a nearby microscope, and expertly focused in on the sample. It only took a few moments for him to determine that the blood sample was relatively fresh, a few days old at most, if the lack of protein denaturation was any indicator. At a glance, the white blood cell count seemed to be slightly higher than average, but he would have to wait for the completion of his chemistry panel analysis to get a more precise figure. Which reminded him, it would be best to begin that PCR test before he continued, which would analyze whatever DNA could be collected from the blood.
He couldn't imagine anything more frustrating than being given an anonymous blood sample like this. There was a reason that he was in central nervous system research and not forensics. Creating a complete blood profile of this unknown source was tedious work, – the busywork of interns, actually – but the effort was mandated by protocol for the task that he had been commissioned to perform. Naturally he was forced to garner all of the data himself, in light of the fact that he was sworn to absolute secrecy.
The scientist swallowed his displeasure as he moved away from his microscope to prepare the PCR test, and then took a brief trek to a nearby storage room to collect what he needed to perform a blood typing test. He cleared a space on one of the tables in his laboratory and set out the testing cards, then expertly placed a small amount of the mysterious blood onto each card. Each card then received several drops of a different type of antibody-containing reagent, and he allowed himself to sit back a moment while the blood typing test was left to work.
Shutting his eyes and wiping the back of his wrist across his perspiring forehead, the scientist allowed his mind to wander back to when he had been accosted by that wretched villain that morning and made to carry out his bidding. He wanted nothing more than to botch his project and hopefully make the villain fail in whatever scheme he was attempting to pull off, but the wizened scientist feared the ramifications of failure terribly. He simply could not in good conscience risk innocent life by purposefully disobeying the criminal. Still, for once in his life, he wished fiercely that his effort would fail, so that the poor victim of this project would not have to suffer as he or she inevitably would.
His eyes moved listlessly back to the test before him, then widened significantly in shock. He leaned over the samples and peered at them closely, brow furrowed. It seemed that every single blood and reagent mixture had experienced agglutination, which meant that the blood sample did not match any human blood type.
"By God," he whispered in horror, as the appalling reality of his discovery struck him full force. What monstrous endeavor was he being forced to take part in? This was indeed no simple plot to kill an average human, as he had initially suspected. He would have to quickly order more reagents to test for blood types unique to animals, and the DNA test would clearly confirm that the blood was indeed from an animal source, most likely mammalian. But his conclusion troubled him deeply. Why on earth would the villain take such care to create a disease that would uniquely target an insignificant animal? It simply did not add up. But what other organisms contained blood that shared such incredible similarities to that of humans? Logically the organism was important enough in the villain's eyes to merit such an incredible effort to thoroughly and painfully annihilate it.
And then it hit him. The scientist stood quickly, sending his lab stool falling backwards and clanging against the linoleum floor. He backed away from the table in terror, tearing off his latex gloves as me moved. Suddenly the gruesome facets of the situation were falling into place.
This was truly a hellish nightmare.
Of course the blood wasn't from an animal. It was from a metahuman.
Which meant that he was being used as a simple tool to destroy… a superhero.
TT
Beast Boy was feeling dizzy, and his vision was beginning to go dark. He was still staring out the window from the couch in the common room, but he had been lying on his back with his head draped over the edge for some time. He hadn't been conscious of how much time was passing, such was the tumult of thoughts that troubled him.
The changeling took a deep breath and kicked his feet up over his head, somersaulting backwards and landing on his knees on the carpeted floor. He then jumped up and crossed the room to the window, plopped down and crossed his legs.
He hardly understood his sudden fascination with staring out the window. There was something liberating about the outdoors, he supposed, and although he wasn't exactly chained to the Tower, he felt trapped. Precisely, perhaps he felt more trapped with a certain hiding half-demon than he cared to be.
He couldn't help but wonder how nice it would be to just leave for somewhere he could forget all this. He understood that Raven was desperate to distance herself from reality and trick herself into believing that things could go right back to normal, but the fact was, they couldn't. And somehow he seemed to be the only one who was suffering for it.
It was just so unbearably ironic that he and Raven had endured so much change just to save Raven's life and to get them to the point where they were, but the obstacle of consummation threatened to stop them dead. Perhaps literally. And Raven just didn't seem to understand how incredibly painful it was to be treated like the source of her misery. On the contrary, he had done everything she asked without complaint. And still she had the audacity to treat him so terribly!
Beast Boy leaned back and lay supinely on the floor, head cradled in his laced fingers. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath to keep his sanity. Why did Raven have to be like this? Why couldn't she just comprehend what she was putting him through? And for the love of God, why would she promise to try to make the marriage work, when not a day later she turned around completely and refused to even speak with him?
Their interaction in the med bay the morning before should have prepared him for this. It just didn't add up how Raven could be so stubborn the majority of the time, but turn and run whenever the topic of intimacy came up. Sure, it was embarrassing to discuss with someone that you didn't quite like that way, but did he disgust her so much that she couldn't bear to speak with him at all? Wasn't she the one who always lectured him about acting his age?
Beast Boy couldn't deny that this experience had taught him a great deal about Raven, perhaps even more than he had garnered over their simpler years together. He was hardly empathic, but he could read in her eyes as plain as day how troubled she was, despite how she prided herself on being unreadable and collected. In reality, she was the perfect opposite. She was unconfident, distrusting, and afraid.
Afraid! Of him! Could you believe it? If that wasn't a turning of the tables, then nothing was. Just the week before Raven had him running and cowering under couches, but somehow, in her mind at least, she had become the prey. The change was a hard realization but an incontrovertible one. He had easily been picking up that aura about her when they were together lately.
The changeling hated the idea that Raven feared him for the control he suddenly held over her life. He wasn't the Beast. He was hardly ever aggressive. He tried so incredibly hard to control himself, which went vastly underappreciated. He knew that Raven had had a hard life, but what had happened to her to teach her such fear of being hurt? He really wanted to know, because he could barely stomach the thought of spending the next two years as the undeclared enemy of the person who ought to be his best friend. He didn't want to feel like some sort of predator, which he thought that he had made clear to Raven. If it were up to him alone, then he would probably do all in his power to give Raven distance, if that meant peace between them. It sure has hell hurt less to avoid emotional conflict with her.
And such was the crux of his dilemma: Should he respect Raven's desperate bid for normalcy, or should he risk further estranging himself from her by trying to gain back her powers? If you thought about it, normalcy was gone forever. It was absolutely shot dead, without hope of resurrection. If he and Raven were to sleep together and thereby regain her powers, then perhaps the Teen Titans could go back to operating as usual power-wise, but the team dynamic would be changed forever. On the flip side, trying to maintain normalcy now might prevent Raven from ever getting her powers back, which would probably end with Raven being forced to leave the team or leaving on her own accord. Still, even if the team miraculously managed to stay together, Beast Boy didn't see why Raven would ever relax her defenses around him. For as long as the threat of intimacy remained, in her eyes, he would be the enemy.
It had only been a matter of days since the air between him and Raven had changed, and already he had been reduced to an exhausted, depressed mess. Beast Boy could hardly fathom maintaining the sorry status quo for two whole years. He had a feeling that calamity would strike before that time was up. Whether it would hit himself, Raven, or the whole team was impossible to predict.
The green Titan set his jaw. He had arrived at a decision. In the interest of preventing life from getting drastically worse for himself or his friends, he had to do something. The cost of inaction was just too high, even if he might have to further sacrifice his happiness. He hadn't the haziest of ideas what he ought to do, but the very decision to take action was a victory.
He couldn't help but wonder what possessed him to come to this conclusion. The suspicion that the situation would worsen otherwise wasn't exactly grounds to pursue a dangerous change in his relationship with Raven. There had to be some sort of deeper motive, one that lent him perseverance, even in the face of complete rejection. There had to be a reason beyond latent desire for his personal happiness, or the notion that it would benefit his team (because honestly, he didn't think that he was quite that selfless).
If it wasn't himself and it wasn't his team, then it had to be Raven herself that he was willing to sacrifice for. That seemed awfully absurd though, considering how much she despised him. Evidently his determination transcended tribulation.
Could it be that… he loved her? A blush rose to Beast Boy's face at the novelty of the thought. He hadn't truly loved a girl before, and couldn't imagine why Raven would be deserving of his affection, but how could he possibly explain his deep desire to keep Raven from a life of being powerless and unhappy, despite being the object of her agonizing rejection? Frankly his nobility seemed to go beyond the commitment that teammates ought to have for each other. But what else could merit his determination, or explain why it crushed him so much to be spurned by her?
Regardless, there was still one troubling piece of evidence, however, which clearly suggested that he wasn't in love: He didn't seem to be afflicted with most of the expected symptoms of the condition. He kept his wits about him whenever Raven was in the same room as him, he hadn't given a second thought to random hugs and whatnot through the years, and not once had he desired her in a lustful sort of way.
But honestly, did it really matter if he loved her? Would it only complicate their marriage? Gosh, he hated to think how Raven would react. She'd probably go off on a rant on the futility of young love again and then run in the opposite direction (again, perhaps literally). And maybe that would be the blow that distanced him from her irreparably. Frankly, he wasn't willing to risk that, even if his unexplainable desire to see Raven happy wasn't truly love. For the time being, he decided that it would be most prudent to keep that revelation to himself.
He hated to admit it, but maybe Robin was right. Perhaps he should go talk to Raven, before he had the time to lose his resolve and descend into hopeless depression again. But would she listen to him? He supposed not. She was hardly inclined to listen to him at the time being, especially if he at all appeared to be advocating what she obviously so ardently opposed. He had never had a way with words, so making her listen to him would probably be an exercise in futility.
Suddenly the changeling's eyes widened. He rolled onto his stomach and got to his feet, a grin spreading slowly across his face.
Life had been thrown up into the air, but for a brief moment, he had a plan.
--
I'll try to have the next chapter up in a more timely manner, I promise.
Reviews are very appreciated, if you have a moment to write a response.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who's celebrating it, and thanks very much for reading!
