...Herro.
I can only say sorry for putting off writing for so long. My apologies.
I felt that I have, however, grown up a bit as a writer. Every time I recently tried to write this, I found myself getting hung up on every line. I think I shall be relying on my oh-so-awesome beta labreck01 in the future to aid speedy update times.
Rest assured, I will not be one of those authors that abandons their story.
This will get finished, one way or another. I know exactly where I want this to go; it's just getting there that's the problem
Anyway, let me know exactly how happy or unhappy you are!
Chapter Twenty: Rock The House
Hundred of miles away from where Beastboy was walking towards whatever doom awaited him, Raven meditated softly above her bed. The only movement in the room was the slow, rhythmic movement of her chest with every measured breath.
'That should be enough to get through this. Stay calm, don't do anything rash.'
Slowly opening her eyes, Raven reached out and touched the send button on her titan communicator. She immediately teleported into the kitchen and turned on the kettle. he had a feeling she'd need some tea for this.
Starfire arrived first a minute later. "Good morning teammate Raven!" She announced, swooping into the room and flipping before descending into the seat next to the empath.
"You've cheered up." Raven stated dryly, taking a small sip of her tea but finding it too hot.
"Oh yes friend, I am above my previous sadness and look forward to the solving of problems now! I sought to share my new happiness with you last night but I could not find you."
'And people say I'm bipolar.'
"I was…meditating. Away from here." Raven said, feeling decidedly frosty.
"I gaze." Starfire stopped, looking thoughtful. "Wait, I mean 'I see?'" She looked to Raven questioningly.
The half-demonness felt the tightness in her brow loosen and her mouth twitch at Starfire's mistake. "Yes, it's 'I see' Starfire."
"Excellent. Well, now that you are here-"
The doors to the common room swished open again and Robin entered, moving quickly over to the table and taking a seat opposite Raven. "Good morning."
Raven stared, face a blank slate. Slowly and deliberately she raised her mug to her lips and drank softly, eyes never leaving his.
Starfire glanced from one titan to the other. "Glorious morning friend Robin."
"Morning y'all." Cyborg appeared in the doorway and slowly made his way to the table before sitting down. Everyone nodded to him as he took his seat.
There was silence for a moment as eyes flicked over others.
As usual Robin took charge.
"So Raven, you called this meeting. Would you start us off?" He met her gaze that hadn't left him since he had entered and tried to return it as best he could. However despite his mask, he felt exposed beneath Raven's vacant but piercing eyes.
She spoke, not a hint of emotion or inflection in her tone.
"How could you do that to Beastboy?"
Robin didn't move. He had been expecting the question and had prepared for it.
"I assume you watched Cyborg's recording of the events?" He asked. She nodded once.
Robin took a deep breath and played his opening gambit.
"What do you think I did wrong?" he asked clearly.
Immediately Raven's eyes lit up a sickly scarlet and started to separate. "Wrong? Wrong?! You-!" She stopped herself and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath through her nose. Raven consciously relaxed her body and unclenched her fists. 'Calm. Don't lose yourself. I need to help him, not hurt him.'
Robin watched her carefully. That was a bigger reaction than he had been expecting. An unexpected bonus.
"Do I need to spell it out for you?" Raven bit out through clenched teeth. She opened her violet eyes to glare at the Boy Wonder, who just nodded to her. Her hands started to curl inwards again.
"You did nothing right." She bit out, anger and power locked into her voice. "You clamped a teammate in need of medical attention into a chair and interrogated him over an event he had no recollection of! You did not trust him or give him any benefit of the doubt! You threatened him with jail! You threatened a member of this team with jail over circumstantial evidence!"
Starfire and Cyborg looked to Robin, who sat leaning back in his chair.
"Yes I did Raven. And I don't regret it."
Raven's mask broke for a split second into a look of incredulity. Before just as quickly switching into seriously pissed off. She opened her mouth, but whether or not she was going to yell at him or curse him he never found out.
"Listen to me. Listen to me all of you." Robin cut in, making sure to make eye contact with each member around the table. Well as much as he could with a mask on.
"Let's get one thing clear. We are a superhero team. We save lives. We protect people. We stop criminals. We do this because we have gifts or abilities that give us the capability to do the jobs that no one else can." He paused and looked around at the titans, before leaning forward in his seat and placing his hands on the table.
"But it is the most powerful heroes that pose the biggest threat to the people they protect. When Superman's mind was taken over by Maxwell Lord, he suddenly became the most dangerous individual on the planet and had the potential to wipe out humanity."
Cyborg had had enough. "Any one of us is susceptible to that. What does any of this have to do with Beastboy?"
Robin turned and addressed his second in command. "You asked me what my problem is with Beastboy." Cyborg's eyes hardened. "My problem is that Beastboy is not always in control of himself. And when he's not, he's a danger."
Starfire cut in. "You are making teammate Beastboy's…condition too simple. He is still a fellow titan when he is the Beast or Changeling.
"Just like Superman was still a member of the Justice League when he started trying to kill them," came Robin's immediate rebuttal.
"Completely different." Spoke Raven. "Beastboy isn't being controlled by an enemy when he's like that. He's just embracing his animal half."
"The same as when you embrace your demon half. And we all remember what happened to Light when that happened." His word's cut through the air like a scythe.
Raven inwardly flinched as her eyes flared red. She couldn't deny the validity of the statement, but she didn't like it either.
"And you'll recall that I was never a danger to anyone on this team. It's the same with Beastboy. He may be more instinctive and animalistic in that state, but a part of him is still there. And he would never turn a hand to us!"
Robin leaned back in his chair. "I'll agree that you were never a threat to us, but you came very close to straight up killing Light. And Beastboy is not you. He lacks your discipline and the mental capabilities to contro-"
"Intellect has nothing to do with it!" Suddenly Raven was standing and Robin was lying on his back with has chair beneath him. Tendrils of blackness started swirling around the sorceress, but her eyes remained clear and violet. Her voice took on a deeper and more menacing baritone as the air grew heavy with power. The very light in the room seemed to darken and warp around the heroine.
"You understand nothing!" Came her unworldly, twisted voice. "When we embrace the sides of ourselves that aren't human, human intelligence disappears and only what is in the heart remains. Beastboy has the heart and spirit of a hero! More so than I ever will. I trust him in that state far more than I would ever trust myself! And so should you!"
Robin was floored. He had never expected such passion from his gothic teammate. He stored that thought away and focused on the situation.
"And that is where we part ways in our thinking Raven, let me up so I can explain."
Raven blinked and realized that thin ropes of onyx were tied around Robin's wrists, neck and torso, binding him to the floor. 'So much for not doing anything rash.' She glanced over at Starfire and Cyborg, who were staring with a mixture of panic and astonishment. She had forgotten the two of them were there.
The atmosphere lightened and the energy faded from around Robin, who pushed himself up, righted his chair and sat down cautiously. He had been taken completely unawares and was not happy. He had also not expected any of this to happen.
Raven floated slowly down into her waiting chair and fixed an icy gaze on the team leader, who took a deep breath.
"I cannot afford the luxury of blind trust Raven." He said, meeting her gaze. "To me everyone is a potential threat."
"E-even us Robin?" Starfire's tentative voice spoke up.
Robin met her wide eyed gaze and felt himself torn. The next words he spoke could change everything.
"Yes Starfire, everyone."
"But we are your friends Robin, your family!" Starfire wasn't going to let this go and Robin couldn't help but notice the thin strips of water forming below her eyes.
He soldiered on.
"I know this is a hard truth Starfire, but you need to hear it. We are all dangerous. It's what makes us good at our job. But it also means that we all have the capacity to hurt and harm – the capacity to become villains. Beastboy just so happens to have a… problem that makes him more of a potential villain than all of you guys. Precautions have to be taken." He looked around wildly, searching for a spark of recognition to his logic in his teammates faces.'Why does no one understand?'
Silence.
Starfire choked down sobs rising in her chest, hands clasped to her mouth as watery eyes strained to keep back tears. Cyborg's eye was wide with emotion as he physically leaned away from the table as if trying to distance himself from the revelation.
And Raven.
Raven just stared.
She tried to see the sincerity in his face. Tried to see the good intentions behind his twisted logic and reasoning. She tried to see Robin.
But all she saw was a big…
Red…
X.
"So you stand by your treatment of Beastboy?"
Robin looked sharply at Raven. 'Dammit. I'd hoped to avoid that subject again. And worse, she looks… different. Icier, harder.'
"I judged the situation and found that measures needed to be taken to ensure our safety."
Raven's eyes narrowed.
"So you denied him treatment of his wounds. Clamped him into a steel chair and effectively tortured him for information for our safety?"
'I'm going to need to give her something.'
"He was in a stable condition and an unstable state of mind after nearly killing half the team as a giant monster. As for torturing him, don't exaggerate Raven; that was strong questioning at worst. In hindsight, yes I was too hard on him. But in my defense, you were in a coma, supposedly because of him, and he wasn't cooperating with me. But yes, I could have handled it better."
Robin watched for a reaction. 'Come on, just take it.' He saw no change in the cold demeanor of the half-demoness.
"And that's the problem." Cyborg's unexpected, clinical tone washed over the table. All eyes turned to him.
"You just used the word 'supposedly.' That is the issue here."
Robin's brow furrowed. "I'm afraid I don't see your point Cy, what-"
"The point Robin is that you had more faith in the circumstantial evidence against Beastboy than in BB himself."
That bought Robin up short.
Starfire spoke up, not even trying to stop the tears now. "It is true. You did not believe Beastboy. You doubted his loyalty and displayed him none when you threatened him with jailing."
Robin flinched as the words impacted him. This was not how it was supposed to go. He felt control slipping.
"I was never going to turn him over the authorities, he just needed some incentive to cooperate. I just wanted to know what had happened."
"Then you went about it in an incredibly stupid, arrogant and downright dictatorial way!" Raven spoke with rising darkness in her voice.
"But that's not the point either Raven." Again the tightly controlled voice of Cyborg brought all eyes back to him as he slowly rose from his chair to tower over the table.
"What I want to know is if you have so little faith in all of us or just Beastboy? And if it is just Beastboy that you doubt, why do you?"
Robin looked around at the scorching gazes of his team and knew he had to patch this up quickly. Cyborg was homing in on a particularly dangerous topic.
"Look, you are all overreacting. I lost faith in Beastboy because he wasn't in control of himself at the time. I was dealing with an entirely new entity. I trust Beastboy absolutely, just like I trust all of you. But I wasn't dealing with Beastboy that day; I was dealing with the Beast! Why can none of you understand that?
"And this was years ago! Have I ever doubted him since then? No, I haven't. Because he's never given me cause to. The problem of the Beast was solved and that was that. We went back to how we operated before. It was never a problem with Beastboy guys, it just a problem with the Beast!
The leader looked around desperately. He was making sense! Safety came first!
'He does have a point,' Cyborg thought to himself. 'We all know how BB was in the days running up to the incident and he was dangerous. Maybe I'm being a bit too protective of the bean. But I can't shake the feeling that there's something more to this...'
"Friend Beastboy was quite terrifying as his Beast. And very powerful." Starfire said aloud, drying her tears. "Perhaps we are being too harsh on friend Robin."
"No. We're Not."
All head turned to Raven who was gazing with tensed eyes at the team leader.
"The Beast is not a separate being to Beastboy. They are two sides of the same coin. Just like my demon is a part of me. If you don't trust the Beast, then you don't trust Beastboy."
'Exactly Raven.'
"Well, I don't really know what to say to that Raven. I think we may just have to agree to disagree. I didn't see any of Beastboy in the Beast that night when it fought us. Maybe now I know better than that. But at the time, I wasn't sure what was going on and went a bit paranoid on the safety measures. Can we not just leave it at that?"
Robin looked around to see Starfire with hope in her eyes and Cyborg with an unusually expressionless face. 'Time to go in for the kill.'
"I mean he's off training with the Batman to get rid of the Beast anyway, so this is all moot. He'll come back soon good as new and better than ever. In a way this whole thing has worked out excellently for him."
There was an expectant quiet for a moment, before Starfire, ever the peacemaker and remembering her revelation on the matter the night before spoke up.
"Robin speaks truth. We may have failed friend Beastboy in his time of needs, but the Batman has said he can help more than we. Perhaps our friends problems can be solved in Gotham?"
Robin's eye twitched at her comment, but he put aside his annoyance to seize the opportunity. "Exactly Star. Trust me; once Batman puts his mind to something, it gets done. Beastboy will be taken care of. And come back a better and stronger hero."
'If he comes back at all.'
"So you do not think of friend Beastboy as a threat, but you do of his Beast?" Starfire asked, still disturbed by Robin's earlier announcement of considering everyone a threat.
Robin turned to her and spoke sincerely. "Of course Star. I would never dream of any you voluntarily hurting anyone or the team. I trust you all with my life. But the fact is we are dangerous. whether by mind control, magic or some other way, it's possible for us to act against our will. That is all I fear."
Robin was suddenly trapped in a vice of steel Batman himself couldn't escape from as Starfire sobbed afresh into his chest. "I'm sorry friend Robin for doubting you in fear. I thought you did not trust any of us as your friends or family."
The other two titans watched silently, each still caught up in their own thoughts.
Cyborg was eyeing the look of relief on Starfire's face. 'She's too trusting, too naive. I wonder if I should do something about that...'
Raven for her part hadn't moved, eyes still boring through Robin's mask.'There's more to this. He's not telling us something. I don't know what but it's there...Question is; what to do now?'
Robin looked up at Cyborg as Starfire relinquished her grip on him. He took a moment to catch his breath before turning to the others. "Well? Do you guys understand why I did what I did?"
Cyborg was the first to reply, eyes still calculating. "You sure that the only problem you have with him is the Beast? You weren't exactly keen on following him into the forest when he disappeared into it with that white thing."
"We had no idea what was happening. We didn't know how dangerous he was or what state of mind he was in. I was just being cautious."
"Hnn." Cyborg studied the leader for a moment longer before retaking his seat.
Breathing an internal sigh of relief, Robin turned to the last member at the table, who just stared right back.
Slowly, the empath rose to her feet. The air grew heavy with tension.
"I understand why you did what you did. Beastboy and I both have sides to our being we have trouble with and I can relate to him a lot more than any of you can. This undoubtedly shaped my input. However, that does not make me wrong."
Robin nodded once, relief springing in his chest. "I know Raven. I'll be counting on you guys to help me with stuff like this is the future when Beastboy returns."
"Excellent, then you won't mind this as much."
Robin was suddenly suspended a few feet above his chair, wrists and ankles bound with onyx cuffs keeping him afloat.
"What you are-ugh!" Robin groaned as the energy spread his limbs further apart, stretching his body painfully.
"Listen to me and listen well." Raven stated, eyes glowing reddish. She was standing now, left arm held aloft controlling Robin's bonds while the other hung loosely at her side. "This is the only judgement I shall pass on you for what you did to him. Consider it forgiveness of a sort. But I will not forget it. You will not forget this when you consider abusing your power again."
"Raven, Don't!"
But it was too late. A basketball sized orb formed above Raven's right hand and with a demonic smirk, she flicked it at the Boy Wonder.
The condensed energy shot through the air with inhuman speed, connecting solidly with Robin's gut.
The teen seemed to contort around the ball for a moment, spit flying from his mouth, eyes stretched in agony, limbs flopping uncontrollably.
And then there was a crash of breaking glass as his body smashed straight through the glass pane he himself had damaged so badly the day before. Nothing was heard for a moment, until a single, small splash could just be caught.
The orb floated innocently for a moment before dispersing into oblivion.
"Friend Raven that was not needed!"
"Yeah Raven, I wanted to do the same thing but I knew it wouldn't accomplish anything! What's wrong with you?"
Raven continued to look out the shattered window. Her eyes followed a drop of scarlet blood fall from a ragged glass edge.
"Don't worry; I didn't do any terminal damage. I'll heal him when he comes crawling back."
"Never mind that! You just can't just attack him 'cause he screwed up! What are you thinking?!"
"He needed reminding of a simple truth." Raven said nonchalantly, gazing out at the blue sea and subconsciously calculated which direction Beastboy was in.
"What truth do you speak of friend Raven?"
Raven turned and started towards the main doors. She spoke loudly enough for them to hear.
"Followers should not fear their leader,' she said solemnly.
The door shut on her final words.
"Leaders should fear their followers."
So there you have it!
As I've said before, I really enjoy exploring team dynamics and this is definitely not the end you will see of the progressive relationships among the titans.
Did it work? Was it realistic?
And most importantly, did you enjoy it?
Thanking you!
CJB