A/N: hi-lo cherry-oh, how are you this fine day? I would continue, but I can't keep up that kind of energy even in writing. So, what is this, the fourth chapter I've gotten out on time? amazing. Now if only I could do the same for other stuff in my life.
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Chapter 19: Something Clever
"Raven!"
Robin was mad; hopping mad, red faced mad, dangerous mad. The kind of mad that only two people had ever been able to push him to. Now there was a third.
Raven was either ignoring him, or couldn't hear him. She was silent, hunched over Beast Boy, running her hand down his face over and over. No tears were shed, she just sat there, green boy in her lap, starring. Cyborg was at her side, also ignoring him, and ignored by her, running biometrics on their downed comrad.
"Robin, wait," Starfire put a hand on Robin's shoulder as he made to march over to her, but she found that hand violently jerked off.
Robin's face didn't soften at the sight of her, not like it should, and Starfire prepared herself to physically restrain him. While her boyfriend was nowhere near as strong as she, he was very slippery.
"No Star, this time is too far, she... she..." Robin raised his hands a grunted in anger. He turned back to the empath, but found Cyborg in his way. He looked up into the taller man's face, finding Cyborg's face set in a hard expression. "Not now dude,"
"Cyborg, she killed him!"
There, it was out in the open. A relative silence followed, and Cy's face fell, betraying the hurt behind his brave face.
"He'll be back, he can heal-"
"It doesn't matter!" Robin cut him off, shouting. "I don't care if he was Adolf Hitler! We don't kill! No matter what!" He stepped to the side and gestured accusingly at Raven. "Raven killed, end of story,"
"But, Beast Boy," Starfire spoke, softly, in the wake of Robin's yelling. Her eyes pooled with unwanted tears, and she felt her voice catch.
Robin turned to her, ready to yell, but saw the tears, and he realized, in that moment, what had happened. He failed, he lost a teammate, a friend, and he'd closed himself off from it; he felt no sorrow.
An image of a black cloaked figure jumped to mind, fists in the shirt of one man, in the wrong place, interrogated and beaten, his wife and child forced to watch. The shadow's face turned to his mind's eye, and in the cowl he saw himself.
Robin felt like he'd been punched, and he stuttered his response. He couldn't become him, anything but him...
"Star, I know... I know. But if we start killing, we become just like them,"
"Oh, so we're like that maniac now? Raven stops one psycho who had it coming and she's evil?" Cyborg chimed in, his own tears falling unnoticed from his eye.
"Is it not justified?" Starfire asked, and Robin turned from her sorrowful face to the hunched form of Raven, reminding him of another memory, of a little boy hunched over the fallen and broken bodies of his parents, "It is never justified..."
A crash woke them from their argument, and they looked up, seeing a strange blue telephone box sitting amidst a crater of sorts. It's door opened, and a strange man came out, and had they been in better mindsets they would have known him.
The Doctor, the man from the box, had watched, helpless from his box, and decided to intervene, but he was too late.
He hustled towards the fallen hero and his new friend, but stopped. He was gone, another one, one he'd barely gotten to meet; like Clara, like Amy and Rory, snuffed out in an instant while he watched, too slow to help.
"Not again," he whispered, and pulled his sonic screwdriver from its pocket home.
"Not again," this time he was louder, as he picked up his pace, and fiddled with the silver device. It chirped at him, telling him all about the strange green human.
Soon he was beside Raven, and he placed a hand on her shoulder. The woman, so young to his eyes, looked up into his, anger spent. He looked into her face, lost and hopeless, and his own broke into a determined smile. "Not again!"
In one swift motion he crouched next to the pair, and pulled the green boy from Raven's embrace. The grey girl started to protest, but the Doctor ignored her, and started towards the TARDIS, struggling with the boy's weight; surprisingly heavy for so small a man.
Soon three pairs of hands joined his, the Titan's arguments forgotten as they lifted their comrade, their friend... their brother.
Raven looked on, her mind in chaos, but somehow still silent; it was a wordless scream in her mind, and unintelligible howl of pain. She felt the dust strike her back, and she turned back to the battlefield, seeing a plane crashing in the not too distant rubble. Beyond it bombs fell and ships fired, and endless and uncaring battle, with nothing to show for either side. The war went on, never stopping even for an instant.
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Beast Boy felt the change in the air, the sudden rise in moisture and electricity, his tongue feeling just like he'd licked a battery. The savannah of his childhood stretched out before him, unending, unchanging, even as the dark storm front rolled its inky black waves into the fading sky.
"Where are we?" Control Freak asked, looking around them. "I mean, besides your mind,"
Beast Boy sent him a quick glance, seeing him rubbing his hands together as the temperature dropped. "Africa. This is where I grew up,"
Control Freak nodded, glad he asked, for the sake of the audience.
They walked for a while in silence, until Beast Boy spoke, "So, how do we go deeper? I mean, we've been walking for a while,"
Control Freak shrugged, "I don't know. Everyone's head is different, I've never been good at this kind of thing anyways."
"That's reassuring," Beast Boy muttered, and gasped a little as a thin sheet of icy rain struck his head. "So, how long before I... you know..."
Control Freak shrugged again, and Beast Boy groaned. The geek pushed his greasy orange hair out of his eyes and explained, "Time doesn't work the same in a mind, it's all hinky,"
Beast Boy grimaced, "So I could just go at any moment?"
"No, at least, I don't think so," he added after a worried look from Beast Boy, "It should stretch with us; days in here could be a second out there."
Beast Boy nodded, still not quite getting it, but he felt like he got the gist. He turned back to the path, and stopped in his tracks, seeing a treeline before him; one that hadn't been there the last time he looked.
"Going deeper," he said, and Control Freak gave a halfhearted chuckle.
They stepped forward, and soon the forest was all around them, and through the sound of the ever increasingly downpour Beast Boy began to hear the chattering of hiding animals, the rustle of leaves, and the sound of running water.
They pushed through a thick brush of wide leaves and stepped onto a river bank, and felt the ground start to soften and turn to mud. Beast Boy looked to Control Freak, who shrugged again.
Not knowing what to do, Beast Boy just turned to his left and kept walking, staying on the solid line in the river bank. The water flowed towards them, and as they walked the river picked up speed, and soon was racing past, ever deeper and wider, until all of a sudden they were walking on natural gravel.
Control Freak squinted through the rain, and saw a mist in the distance, and heard the roaring of water. He knew this place, he'd seen it before, where had he seen it?
Beast Boy stopped dead in his tracks, so suddenly that Control Freak ran into him, and the two fell in a heap.
The boy's green eyes were staring at the rising mist ahead of them, not blinking or shifting. Control Freak looked between him and the mist, feeling an alarming amount of déjà vu.
A clinking sound drew his attention to his right, and he looked over to the racing river to see a broken fishing rod, caught on a yet to be eroded stone. Looking past it he saw more detritus amongst the whitening water, and more stones jutting up. They were approaching rapids, that's where the mist was coming from, and these...
Control Freak's breath caught, and he suddenly knew where they were; it was a place he thought he'd never see in person, but he'd read about, in so many stories, comics, and wikis. This was the place where it happened, the place where Beast Boy was born, the place where Garfield Logan died.
Beast Boy starred into the misty rapids, imagining even now the familiar prow of the Logan piercing the mist. He could see his father on the deck, his mother at the grill, and he holding a fishing rod in his hands.
His father was showing him how to fish, his small green son listening intently as he furrowed his nose at the reek of the bait bucket. Father's large hands guided his, showed him how to grip, reel, toss, the details were lost, but they were not important. Those hands, how he missed those hands, teaching and caring, embracing and healing; Beast Boy looked up to his father's kind and laughing face, and smiled back.
His mother came to them, paper plates filled with fresh cooked fish caught shortly before, along with grilled vegetables that Beast Boy himself had grown. Her smell, her smile, his mother; as he watched his father take the plates and kiss her, he felt his heart fill with joy, unfelt in the years since.
This dream, this memory, could not last, and he felt the rod in his hands jerk. He exclaimed as the fishing rod left his hands, and he fell, scrapping his knees. Mother and Father turned to help him, and he tried to scream, tried to warn them, but they knelt next to him and comforted him, even as they approached their doom.
A sickening jarring, and their fates were sealed, and Beast Boy watched in silence as his parents turned away, to the engines, to the controls, not knowing that they were too late. The lone boulder had done its job, tearing through the hull, and no one was there to watch. No one was steering, because he couldn't hold onto a stupid pole.
There was no frantic running, no screaming, just calm acceptance, as with every failed option mother and father grew closer and closer to death. The water picked up, they slipped on life jackets, but it was no use. They knew that, and the rapidly approaching rapids of this uncharted river loomed in the distance.
They turned to him, he who was the cause of all of this, he who had already taken so much of their lives, and calmed him. They spoke soft words to him, and his mother hugged him. They told him to fly, to shift and fly away, to fly away and not look back.
He didn't know, didn't understand, but he knew their fear, and so listened; he shifted and flew, but he did look back. He saw that ship go into the mist, his parents embracing on the deck, even as they were swallowed by the violent waters.
"Beast Boy?"
Beast Boy shook his head, and looked around, back in the present. The river bank on the far side of the rapids, the remnants of his family embedded in its depths. Control Freak was shaking his shoulder, trying to wake him, but Beast Boy didn't want to wake up.
"Come on! Beast Boy, wake up! This is it, this is the barrier, through here, you'll be home free,"
Beast Boy looked into the man's acne ridden face and smiled, a bittersweet smile. "And what if I don't want to be?"
That gave him pause, and Control Freak bit his tongue to keep from hasty reply.
"What if this is it," Beast Boy continued, "What if I'm supposed to go like this? I'm back where I started, after all, back at the beginning,"
Control Freak's eyes were tearing, and he blinked them away; this was not going to be the end. "You are not meant to die here,"
"How do you know? You said it yourself, you've been trying to kill me for, like, ever, and you're not the only one. What good is it? What good is being good when I've done this," Beast Boy's eyes caught on the fishing rod, broken in the water, "Nothing can fix this,"
"Maybe not," Control Freak replied, and Beast Boy gave him a confused look, "Aren't you supposed to be helping me?"
"I am. Now get up, you're a hero for crying out loud." Control Freak stood with difficulty, and reached down to take Beast Boy's hand, and lifted him out of the mud.
"I don't know what to do, but I know you're a hero, Beast Boy. You're my hero."
Beast Boy looked into the other's face, and he remembered, recalling all that he'd done. It started with the literal saving of people's lives, but moved on and he remember everyone he'd helped, all the people he'd so deeply moved, changed.
It wasn't all good, but as he mused he recalled a phrase, uttered by one he held most dear; "Having that thing inside doesn't make you an animal. Knowing when to let it out is what makes you a man,"
"It's what makes me a hero," he whispered, and Control Freak nodded.
"C'mon Beast Boy, one more push and you're out of here."
Beast Boy smiled, and pulled Control Freak into a hug.
It was a nice, friendly hug, but it shocked Control Freak. He'd never been hugged before, and he only just patted his back when his hero pulled away.
"I think I know what I have to do. What about you?"
Control Freak gave a sad smile, and shrugged, "I'll get out... what's important is you; I can't imagine a world without my heroes."
Beast Boy nodded, trusting Control Freak for some ineffable reason. He turned away and stepped forth, coming to the water's edge. With one final glance back, and plunged into the icy depths...
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The Doctor worked frantically, moving about the body of Beast Boy, fiddling with gadgets and screens. They were under the control room, surrounded by mesh and stairs, and the Titan's looked on, concerned, some helping, the others with nothing to do left to wait.
Raven was at the boy's side, her face lost, hands glowing blue as they moved over his body. She didn't let anyone any closer, no one but the Doctor. She even growled at him when he approached.
The boy was dead, he knew that; he'd seen more bodies than he could recall, but their number he remembered. He never forgot, even when they say he did, he never forgot their number. Even though it was hopeless, he kept working.
Starfire was the first to speak, "The Doctor, will friend Beast Boy be the okay?"
The Doctor looked from Raven to the Tamarranian and sighed, "I don't know,"
"But... you said he would be? You said 'not again',"
"I know!" his voice raised, and Starfire hung her head. Feeling slightly ashamed, the Doctor sighed, "I'll save him, I promise you, I will," A little voice in his head told him not to make promises he couldn't keep, but the Doctor wasn't one to listen to reason.
Robin embraced his girlfriend, and she returned it in earnest, burying her face into his shoulder.
Just then something shook the TARDIS. Confused, the Doctor tapped at a screen, and grimaced, "They've found us,"
Just then the air around them started crackling, and the ship groaned under the metaphysical pressure and millions of bony claws tore at the fabric of its reality. Robin drew his staff from his belt, and Starfire's fists lit up.
Cyborg gave the Doctor a frightened look, and he tried to smile in return, "They've, um, they've found us," He entered some commands into a panel, but there was no stopping them. Those that were not meant to be had found them, and nothing could stop them.
"Keep working, we'll hold them off," Robin said, and Starfire nodded. A sharp ripping sound told them that they were out of time, and an unearthly shriek propelled them into action, tellingthem of the newly arrived Annunaki.
The Titans sprung into action, and The Doctor watched, again helpless, as the two left his sight. Alarms were blaring in the distance as more and more breeches in the TARDIS's dimensional barrier were torn down.
Sounds of distant combat struck up, and the ship rocked with explosions. Robin and Starfire were fighting and running, trying to draw the creatures away from the others, but they were only a door away.
Cyborg spoke up, his hands currently wired into the TARDIS under a guest protocol, monitoring the barely living shell of his best friend. "Hey, Doctor, he's fading, fast. What are we going to do? Even Rave's magic can't fix him, and nothing I've found on your mainframe is looking promising,"
The Doctor nodded, "Where is that bloody Sontaran when you need him?"
Scanning billions of bytes, Cyborg almost missed the voice as he worked, but as the Doctor turned away, head in hand, he caught it amidst the static. It was a woman's voice, a warm British voice, and he sifted through the data to hear it better.
"He needs fuel, he needs a fire," it whispered, and Cyborg placed it; it was the TARDIS speaking, not to him, but to the Doctor. He could hear it, but the Doctor couldn't, it was like he was listening to one half of a phone conversation.
It made him wonder whether the TARDIS was always thinking, always talking, trying to get the Doctor to hear. It would certainly explain why it always knew where he was needed, and what he needed, even when the Doctor himself was clueless. Not that the Doctor was ever really clueless.
In a nano second he had all of this thought and pondering, and realized that the TARDIS wasn't just talking at nothing, it was trying to talking through him. Clearing his throat he spoke, and felt, somehow, the ship settle, satisfied that its message was sent, "What if all he needs is fuel?"
The Doctor looked at him in confusion, and spoke, "I'm sure you know the human body is more complicated than that, its not like we can just plug him in or anything,"
He looked down at Raven, and watched her run her glowing hands over Beast Boy's body. They left a trail of haze behind themselves, and it looked familiar. Then, like flicking a switch, the connection was made, and the Doctor snapped his fingers, "Of course!"
This time Raven looked up, and watched detached, "It's so simple, why didn't I think of it before?"
The Doctor turned to the center of the room, to the cylinder that filled the center of the control room. He pulled and spun, until he reached a particular panel. Here, hundreds of years earlier in his life, something extraordinary had happened, and maybe, just maybe, it could happen again.
Pulling at the plate metal, he exposed a jury rigged patch on the cylinder itself, the very spot where years before one Rose Tyler had defied death itself.
The Doctor reached a suddenly shaky hand toward the seal, remembering the price of the last time. He looked back to Raven, who watched him unwaveringly, face vacant and hollow. It was worth it, for her; he didn't know exactly who it was going to be, or why, but he always knew.
With a tap from his sonic screwdriver, the patch pulled up, just at one corner. Golden mist with a mind of its own swirled within, and the Doctor was quick to cover the hole with his hand. The heart of the TARDIS pulsed under his fingertips, and he smiled, "Hello again, old friend,"
Turning to Raven, he called out, voice breaking slightly as the ship siphoned him even as it filled him, "Bring him, quick,"
The TARDIS had finally recognized Cyborg, and gave him partial access to her defenses, and half of his concentration was on that while the other focused on Beast Boy. He noticed a slight spike in his life force and Raven wrapped her arms around his torso, and he smiled sadly, that even in such dire straits the green bean knew her touch.
"What are you going to do?" Cyborg asked, though he had a general idea; he'd seen the show, many times, and he hoped that this would end better than the last time.
The Doctor sent him a tight smirk, his old charm returning for a moment; "Something clever, of course,"
Raven brought Beast Boy to the Doctor, whose face was beginning to strain. She propped him up, holding his arm around her shoulder. The Doctor shook his head, "You can't, you need to set him down, and not touch him,"
"No, whatever it is, I can take it," A fire returned to her eyes, and she held the boy a little tighter. The Doctor sighed, and relented, holding out a now glowing hand.
"This is going to hurt," he said, and pressed his golden fingers to Beast Boy's face.
The reaction was enormous, like he'd been hit by a space bus, the kickback. Raven felt it too, like every bone, tendon, and muscle in her body was beaten savagely and put back in place. She struggled not to stagger, even as the Doctor did the same, even as Beast Boy drank up the power.
His skin was beginning to glow, but nothing was happening. The Doctor and Raven looked hopefully into his still features... but the boy was still.
Just as the Doctor was about to pull away, and as Raven was about to embrace Beast Boy for the last time, he moved. He breathed in sharply, as if woken suddenly from a deep sleep, and just opened his eyes.
They were unfocussed and bright, and she knew those eyes, but they were not Beast Boy's; this man, in her arms, was the Beast.
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A/N: what? the Beast? an oft used trope of Titans fanfictions? am I a cliché? I certainly hope not, though I have found an alarming amount of parallel thinking in my lifetime, so remember, its not necessarily inspired by something else. I'll credit it if I do take an idea from somewhere, trust me!
Now, on the flashback sequences here, its a bit of lore (I think it counts as lore anyways), the first is from the New Batman Adventures, the reason why Robin leaves Batman to go off on his own. My stories exist in a hybrid universe, loosely integrating the DCAU and the Teen Titans. The second bit is from the comics, which I admittedly have not read, but like Control Freak, I've read an alarming amount of wiki and story versions of this origins story for Beast Boy. I think that's it, not too much outside references here.
As always, reviews and stuff is greatly appreciated, and I do my best to respond to every comment, as well as take suggestions. So, tell me what you think; hate it? love it? couldn't care less one way or the other? I'd love to know any which way.
See you next week folks.