FicWad

"Beast Boy."

With one hand on her forehead, the purple-haired girl rolled over in her bed and muttered the offender's name. His cry had woken her from a sound sleep, one to which, even as she turned, she knew she wouldn't be able to return. Beast Boy's shout pounded in her head with no such grace as church bells; instead, it was as if her pink-cloaked persona were gleefully banging on a series of bass drums with careless disregard to anybody whose head she could be occupying.

She hated herself sometimes.

Managing to subdue the "musical" accompaniment enough to hear herself think, she did just that. "Terra? Is Beast Boy still obsessing over her?" With a disgusted sigh, she rolled over again to face her wall. She heard a faint voice say something indistinguishable to her, outside of knowing that it belonged to Beast Boy.

As the result of an amazing lapse of reason and judgment on Robin's part (as well as a grand ignorance of one party's protests), Beast Boy's room was now almost directly adjacent to Raven's. Thick as the walls of the Tower were, she couldn't help but overhear most of what the changeling did. Thinking about some of the things she'd heard forced her to mentally smack many of her emotions repeatedly and with little restraint.

However, one of her emotions, garbed in an azure robe, escaped being repressed again long enough to catch her attention. It spoke to Raven and recalled her memories while it had the chance. "Has he ever done something like this before?" At the thought, Raven blinked. Yellow-cloaked Reason dictated that no, he hadn't, and that something was most definitely troubling him, to which magenta Compassion and azure Curiosity simultaneously responded, "Go. See what's wrong."

Obeying herself, Raven slowly climbed out of bed and walked over to a small rack on which her purple robe hung. Lust earned itself a series of slaps (which she feared the emotion enjoyed a bit too much) for suggesting that Raven go wearing only her leotard. After clasping her cloak shut, she opened her door, turned left, and started walking the short trip to Beast Boy's room. Worry filled her mind as her bare feet steadily padded against the steel floor of the Tower's hall and lingered with her when she knocked on the green boy's door.

There was no response the first time she knocked. "Beast Boy?" Her concerned voice drifted through the door to the ears of nobody. Trying the knob, Raven found the door to be unlocked. "Odd," Suspicion raised its voice through its lavender vessel. "He doesn't leave his door open this late." Pushing the door open, she was greeted with a largely dark room lit only by the strange mix of moonlight and faded sunbeams creeping in from the large open window opposite Raven.

Her purple eyes, during a scan of the room, caught on a green bird in the sky beyond the window that appeared just to have left. "Beast Boy," she called softly, wistfully. "Where are you going?"

Reason piped up again. "Remember from when you fought Terra? Robin said that Beast Boy was five kilometres east and eight hundred metres below the surface. He should be there."

Every emotion responded at once, including Raven herself. "Terra's grave." Without even realising it, she found herself floating towards the window. Once she knew what she was doing, she gasped slightly -- but she didn't stop. "Beast Boy may need me now more than ever," she admitted while crossing the threshold into the reality outside of the Tower. As she followed the raven she knew to be her friend, she searched for something inside her, some emotion on whom she could place the blame for that admission, sorely convinced that something like that could not possibly have come from her.

-T-

Beast Boy thought nothing of distance or coordinates; he simply knew where Terra rested. "Jump City at night looks so peaceful," he commented to himself with another deluge of sorrow. It, like most everything, reminded him of Terra, but specifically of their first -- and only -- date. Looking down upon the city didn't help his condition; unconsciously, he was flying almost the exact same path as the one on which she had taken him. Passing over their diner (and he would always think of it as "their" diner), he practically drooled as he remembered the glorious pie he had tasted there. The taste in his mouth was bittersweet, though, because he knew that the only reason it had been so delectable was that she had been there with him.

"Okay, maybe it was really good pie, too," he confessed as he left the diner behind and entered the chilling air of the amusement park. His heart raced and his wings beat faster than he thought possible. He'd had enough of that place and wanted to escape it as quickly as he could -- but not quickly enough, evidently. Five words plagued his memory and caused his flight to waver. Five words that he had said; five words that could not be less true, especially right now.

"You don't have any friends."

The words formed a black chorus in his mind. He said it; he told Terra that. He'd never been able to forgive himself, despite how much he tried to repress that sordid memory. The chorus escalated into a sinister crescendo as the words' power intensified and crippled him. His wings stopped beating and he plummeted down. During his fall, he regained his human form almost too quickly, like the stress of what he had done had finally convinced him to just...give up.

-T-

The daughter of Azar gasped with fear as she watched the beast writhe and winced at the noise of the impact. In a similar (though by all means more controlled) dive, she rushed to her fallen friend's side. Kneeling on the car's roof sent chills through her, as if the atmosphere affected those who had not been present just as fervently as those who had experienced it firsthand. Reluctant and jerky, she placed one hand behind his head and the other on his arm and, with the all-too-familiar chant of "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos," sent her power through him and attempted to heal the boy.

The pain he felt, though, was something that not even Raven could fix. At her touch his eyes opened into slits and he murmured, "Terra?"

Raven actually smiled legitimately. She was glad to see that he was conscious and alive, even if he had confused her with someone long since gone. "Close, Beast Boy."

His eyes widened to past what he believed humanly possible and he scrabbled out of Raven's arms. Once a safe distance from her, he exclaimed, "Raven! What are you doing here? How did you know I was gone?"

"You woke me up," came her bitter retort -- though something behind it suggested that it was not meant to be as harsh as she had said it to be. As if compensating, she steered the conversation away from herself. "You still miss her, huh?" Beast Boy's silence was an obvious answer. "I miss her, too, you know. Not as much as you, but...well, I will say that it's a bit odd around the Tower without her."

He laughed cynically. "Like you'd know. You never knew anything about her. You never even gave her a chance. You just wanted her out. You threw her away like trash." And now it was Raven's turn to be silent, though hers was contemplative rather than mournful. "She meant nothing to you! You don't miss her! I'm the only one who knows what it means to miss her!" He found his heart racing again from both anger and adrenaline.

"You're right," she confessed with the same lack of emotion she most often showed. "But that doesn't mean I can't try to help you. Does it, BB?"

He just stared for a few seconds in utter disbelief. "You...you called me 'BB'. You've never called me that."

"I think the situation calls for it. Now," she didn't even wait for an answer to her previous question. "You were heading to her, weren't you? Mind if I tag along?"

"I...that...uhm, sure!" Stumbling through his words, he barely got through saying, "The more, the merrier, right?"

"Are you up to flying there on your own, or should I give you a lift?"

He paused. "You know...I think I'm okay." He transformed almost immediately, and the pair of ravens continued their eastward journey together.