Author's Note: I promised myself I would never do the "review black-mail", and I will hold to that. But I am feeling slightly under appreciated here (that's my severely deflated ego talking) and unloved. Please, I implore you, pick my writing apart! There must be something you don't like; I want to know what it is! And 'your story sux' doesn't count, I want specifics! Anything I can, I will fix, so please let me know! Thank you!
Disclaimer: Wow, it is far more difficult than I thought to come up with creative ways to say that I don't own Teen Titans.
Chapter 4
Things had been going fine up until that point. True, she was in Beast Boy's head, but at least there wasn't some kind of strange incarnation of him trying to tell her joked. A part of her was actually sad to find it so… empty. She had been expecting something, well, not what she found, something far from what she found. Perhaps a distorted version of the Tower, a shrine to tofu, even a bunch of jumbled and unclear images, disjointed thoughts, and half formed jokes. This was Beast Boy's mind, after all, how organized could it be? Obviously, quite a bit more so than she had thought, the proof was her absolute surprise upon entry. What she found was a type of long, black hall lined with doors, each a different color and design. It never ended, regardless of how far she followed it, though she did notice that the doors were beginning to repeat after a few minutes of walking. At first she thought it was silent, not even the echo of her footsteps there to keep her company. But as soon as she stopped listening, sounds began to drift into her ears.
They were faint at first, just a few stray notes that silenced as soon as she began to focus on them. Then the song began to drift through the darkness, flowing like water and dancing like wind. Raven found it to be quite beautiful, though it wasn't quite her style, the raw emotion of it threatening to bring tears to her eyes. Loneliness, terrible loneliness spread across thousands of years; pain beyond her comprehension, and rage deep as her own on a bad day. The strange part was, the music wasn't Beast Boy's style either, and these emotions were far too ancient and heavy to be his. And the voice was female. She stopped, blinking at this new bit of information and its possible explanations. A voice from his past? He'd never talked much about his past, just some vague mention of Africa. A lullaby he'd heard on the radio that was just stuck in his head? Unlikely, he didn't listen to this type of music, and that didn't explain its elusive nature. Maybe this was the song he had been babbling about, the music that called to him. If that was the case, then she needed to find its source, find some way to stop it. Beast Boy had asked her here to help and that was what she planned on doing.
"Raven?" A small voice shattered the metronome of the song in his head, forcing it back into the nothingness it had arisen from. She blinked, surprised to find herself not moving, standing like some kind of idiot and looking around as though half asleep. "Is that you?" The dark teen turned slowly, expecting, once again, something quite different from what she found. Black eyes blinked down at her from above a wicked beak, the green raven seeming to fidget uncomfortably on its perch above one of the many doors. The raven seemed rather relieved to see her, though it was difficult to tell what those cold raptor-like eyes held. "You don't recognize me, do you," the raven said, well, that might have been the wrong word. It was more of a telepathic communication than a verbal one, giving her a moment to register the owner of the voice.
"Beast Boy?" She asked tentatively, aware that she was probably on uneven footing. This was his mind; she had little to no power here unless he gave it to her.
"In the flesh! Well, sort of." Yep, definitely Beast Boy. "You got lost, I came to find you."
"Why are you a bird?" The question was sharper, more accusing, than she had intended. It had become a habit over the years, just the way things were. Raven thought he would be used to it by now, he never paid any attention to her tone before (hence the many burses obtained from flying out the window, into the wall, floor, that sort of thing.), but this raven Beast Boy looked hurt.
"To be honest, I have no clue. Same reason I found you wearing pink that one time," he said, attempting a joke. She flushed at the mention of her Starfire-like emotion, though from embarrassment or anger, she couldn't tell. "Need help," he offered after a moment of silence. Her lack of answer spoke for her, a reaction that would have curled BB's lips if he'd had them. The changeling fluttered down from his perch, landing on her left shoulder. "You're going the wrong way, turn around," he said rather flatly.
"How do you know?" Stupid question, she knew, but she had to at least try and save her pride.
"My head, and there are places here I really don't want anyone going." His feathered body was pressed against her cheek in an attempt to remain balanced, causing her to flush again for reasons beyond her comprehension.
"Get off," she hissed, shrugging her shoulders to dislodge him.
"You're going to make me fly the whole way?" He was pitiful, his winy voice in her head as he hovered in front of her face. "Come on, Rae! I'm just a bird!"
"Change into something else," she snapped, brushing past him a few steps, then turning to see if he was going to follow her. The green raven had landed, his head cocked up at her in confusion.
"I can't change form any more than you can change into a non-pink outfit. Those are the rules," he said smartly, a would-be trade-mark grin in his eyes. "Besides, you'll be stuck in here forever without my help." That got her attention. Sighing, she extended one hand for him to perch on, and he accepted the invitation, allowing them to continue.
"You're really milking the situation, aren't you?"
"Think of it as pay back for all the Garfield jokes." She never thought she'd see the day when Beast Boy would take revenge on her, but here it was. At least he wasn't half as skilled as she was in that particular art, though there were times when she wondered if the horrible jokes were some form of revenge themselves. Another silence descended between them, only interrupted by the raven's occasional instructions to turn into alleyways that she didn't know existed before. His mind was far more complex than it had first appeared to be; the tiniest thing could turn out to be incredibly significant and she was expected to just pick up on them as if they were neon signs. At the same time, everything was exactly as it seemed, no hidden meaning, secret codes, special buttons, just what you saw… once you were able to see it. That's not to say that there weren't hidden things in his mind, the doors proved that, but there was no deception.
"So, what is it that you don't want me to see?" Raven decided to break the silence before the singing started up again, figuring she might as well take the opportunity to learn a bit about him. Could come in handy one day.
"There's more than one thing you know," he said, almost bitter. "Turn here. Let's just say that my main secret concerns you and is potentially quite damaging to our relationship." Beast Boy was trying to sound smart, but the complex sentence structure he was using was actually the best joke he had ever made. She had to hold back a snort. "Besides, you're empathic, right? You probably already know."
"Well, if I already know, then there's no harm in telling me, is there?" There was no reason that this should bother her half as much as it did, but she couldn't help but be frustrated. What could she say; she was a detective at heart.
"My, my Raven, I never knew you were so nosey," he teased, shaking his feathered head. "We're her," he said, cutting off her reply and causing her to halt at a large, white marble archway. It had large pillars supporting a type of roof and was distinctly Greek in design. "I have to go now, good luck."
"Wait, you're just going to leave me?"
"She won' let me in there, if she ever even finds out I brought you…" He shuddered, looking away from the door.
"Who?" Raven asked, rather concerned as she began to step through the archway. There were only two possible reasons for his use of the pronoun: there was some kind of manifestation of emotions who had a different goal than Beast Boy, or there was someone else in his head. Neither was pleasant or healthy.
"I don't know." She tried to ask more, but her foot was already through the doorway. The darkness sucked her in before she could get the words out. Memories hit her like a brick wall. Yellow eyes snapped open, causing pain to explode in her head in the form of a terrible screech. A mockery of the beautiful song from before. She shrieked, then there was only blackness.
It was about 5:14 in the morning when Robin jerked into wakefulness. There had been a noise echoing through the walls of the Tower, barely more than a vibration in the titanium by the time it reached his room, but still loud enough to poke his sensitive ears. He wanted to roll over and just ignore the sensation, give himself two more minutes to sleep. It was only 5:14 in the morning. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) for Robin, he had been Batman's sidekick for better or worse, and his senses had been tuned to perfection, his reflexes sharpened to perfection, and his natural teenage tendencies artfully suppressed. So when the shriek echoed through Titans Tower at 5:14 AM, Robin was out of bed and in the hall in less than three seconds, trying to identify its source. The scream didn't come again, frustrating Robin's search for its source.
For about a minute, he stood still as the dead, waiting for the sound to repeat. The second he began to relax, a cry rang out, causing him to tense again. This one did repeat, a single word hysterically broadcasting itself through the winding labyrinth of corridors. Help. Robin lurched forward without hesitation, his metal tipped boots clanging loudly as he ran. Starfire would wake up as soon as he passed her door, and he sent a message to Cyborg using his communicator. Soon they would all be assembled, ready to investigate the disturbance. All but two of them… the two creating the disturbance. Beast Boy's voice was getting louder, like a broken record played at different volumes and different pitches, each one sounding more desperate from the rest. Questions raced through Robin's head fast as his feet, questions like what was wrong. Who had screamed? Why had they screamed? What had they been doing? Why on Earth was Beast Boy in Raven's room?!
He skidded to a halt, Starfire and Cyborg mere seconds behind him, equally shocked by the apparent situation and all its implications. Robin stopped just long enough to let his brain get the facts so far in order, his mind calculating at a mile a minute. Raven and Beast Boy had been doing something in Raven's room, he didn't know for how long, something had happened and Raven had screamed and was now unconscious, judging by the lack of her voice. Beast Boy was in a panic, most likely because of Raven, and probably not thinking strait. "Raven," he called, pounding on the door with one fist, then attempting to force it open. It wouldn't budge, Raven must have locked it. "Open up!"
"What's going on," demanded Cyborg, sliding to a halt by his side, Starfire already hovering to his left. His sonic cannon was ready, his face etched in stone.
"Yes, what has happened?" Under any other circumstances, Robin would have smiled simply because he had herd her voice, but now was not the time.
"Raven and Beast Boy are locked inside." Short, sweet, and to the point, allowing the Titans to take care of the situation quickly. But by the time Cyborg had charged and aimed his cannon, the door was already demolished. "Starfire, that might have been a little overkill," Robin managed, stunned. The alien princess wasn't listening; her glowing eyes were fixed on the shadows beyond the door. Beast Boy's screams, which had previously faded into background noise, hit the three standing Titans again full force. There was Raven, collapsed on the floor in front of her bed and Beast Boy, hovering over her and yelling for help like there was no tomorrow. "What happened," was all Robin managed to say.