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Part 12- Revelations

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NOTE: Normal is Raven, Bold is Beast Boy, Italic is thoughts/dreams.
Game/Show: Teen Titans
Characters/Pairing: Raven and Beast Boy
Disclaimer: Mature Themes (language). I do not own Teen Titans or anything from the DC Universe.

Raven breathed in the salty air as she looked out onto the ocean. The breeze ruffled her newly shortened hair and she let her mind go blank as she basked in the simple beauty around her. The time away from the superhero life had done her some good. She had been seeing Dinah Lance twice a week and she was finally able to put some of her past behind her. She hadn’t realised how much it had been weighing on her until some of it was gone. She felt lighter somehow, without some of her mistakes holding her back. She heard noise near her and watched silently as a couple walked hand-in-hand down the beach, sneaking kisses when they thought no-one was looking. She smiled to herself, even as she felt the twinge of jealousy go through her. Wanting something you’ll never have is pathetic. Raven pushed Anger’s barb to the back of her mind, not allowing the venomous words to take hold. She might not ever have a relationship that would last more than a few months, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a happy life.

When she asked Roy to let the team know she was Ok, she knew they would try to get in contact with her; which was why she was taking a small vacation to this particular beach. While they might be looking for her in Star City, they probably wouldn’t check in Jump City for a while. Their fearless leader had the tendency to miss thing that were right in front of him. Look at him and Star.

Either way she could teleport to see Dinah no matter where she ended up so she still had that to ground her. Raven knew, though, that sooner or later she would have to make a decision, for no other reason than the team might want to replace her and use her room. The thought of never being able to go home to the Tower again physically pained her but no more so than the thought of having to watch BB and Terra fall deeper in love, get married, and have kids. The thought of having to watch them build a life together made her ill. She might want him to be happy, but that didn’t mean she wanted to watch as it unfolded in front of her.

Before she did anything else, she needed to figure out if going home and being a Titan was what she really wanted, or if it was a safety net she was afraid of losing.

In the mean time she had a plane to catch. Raven looked down at the ticket in her hand, wondering if her decision to go to Africa to volunteer as an aid worker was part of his hold on her thoughts. She shook her head. No. She wanted to do something good with her powers that didn’t entail hurting people, and just because Gar…BB was the one who had told her of his childhood helping out people there didn’t mean she was doing it to be closer to him, because that would just be pathetic.

Raven internally rolled her eyes at her obvious lie and moved to join Roy at his car. He had agreed to give her a lift to the airport on the agreement that if she wasn’t going to contacts anyone else, she had to at least let him know that she was still alive on a regular basis. Somehow he had gone from man-whore she couldn’t take seriously to someone she could trust to have her back. He’d had an untraceable email address set-up in case she wanted to contact anyone other than him, and had gotten her a satellite phone so she could call if she needed help. Raven fiddled with the holo-ring on her finger. When she landed at Cape Town she would be travelling as herself. She doubted anyone would care about her purple hair, grey skin and ruby bindi when she could heal people with her hands. Until then, she wanted to get out of the city without the team trying to stop her. If they would try to stop her.

She could admit, if only to herself, that she doubted her friends would ever want to see her again after what she had done. Almost killing them in her sleep would do that to any relationship. She had sent a farewell email to Cy before her trip to the beach, telling him that she was sorry, that she had never meant to hurt them and everything else she hadn’t had the nerve to say to their faces. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to walk away again if she saw any of them face to face, especially not BB. She told Cy to apologise on her behalf to their friends and give them the email address Roy had given her that they could use to contact her if they felt like it. She wished that it would go some way to repair the damage that her silence had inflicted, but she didn’t hold out much hope that they could ever forgive her.

She wasn’t sure she could ever forgive herself.

Raven opened the car door and turned back for a final look at the Titans Tower that had been her home for over 7 years, before getting in the car. Raven sighed as Roy pulled the car into traffic and the Tower was a blur in the rear-view mirror.

Maybe it was time to move on.

*****

BB was determined to get his mind off of the hole Raven had made in his life when she had left. He had started to work-out more, train harder and basically did anything that exhausted his mind and body enough that he could ignore the gaping hole in his heart and sleep. The dreams weren’t helping. Almost every night he was haunted by her.

Yesterday he had pushed it too hard and had almost broken his arm, leading to Dick banning him from all training until he got his head on straight. BB had grumbled but accepted it. He had tried to play video-games, but had lost interest in it pretty quickly. So, after a lot of grousing from their fearless leader, he had finally agreed to go through his stack of fan mail.

BB entered his room and eyed the mountain of letters and packages that would put Kilimanjaro to shame. He approached it carefully, worried that any sudden movement might send it all tumbling down. BB’s foot suddenly caught on one of his books and he toppled to the floor, knocking into his desk in the process. The mail scattered to all corners of his room.

BB cursed under his breath as he righted his waste bin. Something un-trash like caught his eye. He pulled out a small cream box with the name of a familiar hotel stamped on the lid from under some balled up paper, like someone had tried to hide it. He opened it slowly and picked up the note from inside.

Dear Mr.Logan,

                          When our cleaning staff were attending your room, they came across this and handed it in to be returned to you. Thank-you for your patronage and we hope you will stay at the Olympus again soon.

Sincerely,

Mr.Murakami

Hotel Manager

 BB opened the box, pushing apart the tissue paper and froze. His breath stilled in his chest as he carefully pulled out the platinum and sapphire anklet that he had given to Raven. Why would it be in his room? The last time he could remember seeing it was when he had watched Raven entering the ballroom after everyone else at the fund-raiser. He remembered feeling happy that she had liked his gift enough to wear it out. How had it gone from her ankle to his hotel room?

An answer tried to make itself known, but he pushed it ruthlessly back. It couldn’t be that. It had been Terra in his room, not Raven. Terra had told him as much herself. She hadn’t wanted him to think she was just after a one-night stand for old time’s sake, so she snuck out of his room after they finished.

Even as her explanation ran through his head, something about her account of events niggled at him. It was if a fog was lifting from his mind as certain facts started to irk him. If she had been with him that night, why had she been surprised at his appearance at the Jump U campus? He had still been wearing his holo-ring when he had woken up the next morning so she should have recognised him at the campus. The entire team had been searching the crowd for Red-X, so why hadn’t one of them spotted her there? She didn’t know what their alternate appearances looked like, the holo-rings were after her time, so she wouldn’t have been able to avoid them and find him at the same time. For that matter, how had she found him in the crowd? He remembered the voice that he had been hearing everywhere, but had never been able to place it. He heard it again; moaning Gar, screaming Garfield over and over again. He could count the number of women who knew his real name on one hand.

Terra wasn’t one of them.  

Raven however, was.

BB stumbled to his feet as memories and thoughts crashed and clanged in his head as pieces that had seemed so random, so unclear, suddenly fell into place as his mental block seemed to fall away. Raven had been distant after that night and she hadn’t wanted to be too close to him. Her holo-ring had ‘accidentally’ broken leading her to change her out-would persona. Her reaction to his flings and his relationship with Terra. She had frequently left the Tower if she knew he and Terra were there, choosing to stay with Garth and Titans East instead of at home.

Cases of déjà vu, her leaning against the door as he banged on Cy’s door, the feel of her body against his when he had rescued her from her poisoned chamber, the sound of his name on her lips, the unusual feeling he got when she called him Gar. It hit him then what the other scent had been, the one that had been itching the back of his mind for months. The peaches had almost masked it, but beneath it had been the scent of jasmine. He only knew of one person who wore jasmine perfume on special occasions, and it wasn’t Terra. All the pieces came together to form a damning picture and suddenly his dreams came back to him full force.

This time in his minds eye he could see his partner clearly as he pinned her to the door (among other places) as they had sex over and over again, before holding her in his arms as they fell asleep. He had thought the dreams of Raven had been a mixture of wish fulfilment and his worst nightmares. Now he realised that the dreams of Terra were false, the ones about Raven had been memories.

Why didn’t she tell me? Something else, another memory, surfaced as he tried to understand how Raven could hide the night they had shared together from him. Oh, please god no! The words spoken between dream and sleep as the scent of peaches lingered in the air. Her body stiffening as he pulled her closer, calling her someone else’s name. He sank his head into his hands and pulled roughly at his hair.

He knew how hard it was for Raven to let anyone in, he was one of the lucky few. And with one sentence he had probably wounded her badly.

He had to know if what he was remembering was true, or just his mind trying to give him memories of a woman who had held his heart in her hands for longer than he wanted to acknowledge. BB pushed that train of thought away, moved quickly over the scattered mail and jogged to Cy’s room, banging on his door.

The sense of déjà vu was so strong that he looked behind him, hoping to find Raven leaning against the door, her small smile in place and eyebrow raised at him. The hallway behind him was empty and he continued to abuse the door until it finally slid open. “Dude, do you know what time it is?” Cy rubbed his human eye as he tried to wake up. “I don’t care; I want you to show me the footage from the hallway outside our rooms the night of the fund-raiser.”

There was something in the way Cy stilled that clued BB in to the fact that his friend knew what he was looking for. “I deleted it. I don’t really keep video files more than a couple of months unless told otherwise.” BB stared him down. “I don’t believe you. I want to see the footage, Cy. It’s important.” Cy leaned against the doorway, not moving to his computer or letting him in. They were at a stale-mate. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t know what you think you’ll find but I’m sure it’s not on the video.” BB finally lost his patience and morphed into a sparrow and flew past his friend and morphed back into himself in front of Cy’s computer. “Hey, get away from there!” BB ignored him, moving through Cy’s obsessively organised files until he came upon the file that he wanted.

Opening it, he fast forwarded it until about 2am when Cy had said he had heard him get back to his room. The bottom of his stomach fell out as he watched himself being supported by Raven as they made their way to his room, both obviously tipsy. He cringed as he watched himself giggle as she took the key card out of his pocket to open the door. When both of them were inside, he fast forwarded through the footage and neither emerged until he opened the door to Dick and Star the next morning. He blushed at the reminder of his lack of pants. He sat back in Cy’s chair and let it sink in. He had spent the night of the fund-raiser with Raven, not Terra. They had spent the night having sex before he blew it and she ran, not letting on after would that anything had happened between them. He had drunk-blanked-out most of the night and hadn’t known the damage he had caused the woman he loved.

Everything inside him stilled as he finally, at long last, acknowledged the truth.

He loved Raven. He loved her long purple hair, her silky pale skin, her warm violet eyes, her sweet curves, and her beautiful smile. He loved the way she didn’t even seem to know how stunning she truly was. But more than that he loved the way she would banter back and forth with him, when so many others just dismissed him as an idiot. The way she had let him cry on her shoulder and brought him back from the edge when things had gotten bad. Her dry wit. How she had gone with him to his parents’ graves when the team had gone to Africa. Her strength in the face of unbeatable odds. How she gave no thought to putting herself in danger to save someone else, even a stranger. Even when she hadn’t approved of his coping mechanism, she had always been there if he had needed to talk something out, never belittling him for struggling to move forward with his life. She was compassionate, and warm, and one of the most hopeful cynics he had ever met. She was everything he had ever wanted in his life and she was far more than he deserved.

BB replayed every memory he had of her since that night and he wanted to crawl into a hole and never leave. When he knew the truth, everything fell into place. She had been heartbroken and he had gone on oblivious, too wrapped up in himself to notice his friends’ pain. He had unknowingly flaunted his relationship with Terra in front of her, not realising that he could be hurting Raven by enjoying his time with Terra. A sudden thought flittered through his mind and struck him dumb.

He turned to face Cy, who was watching him silently from the doorway. “Tell me I’m wrong.” Cy sighed, rubbing his forehead before answering. “She didn’t want you to know about that night and…” BB stopped him. “Not about that night. I think we both know what happened then. Tell me what I’m thinking is wrong.” Cy looked at him, confused, before the lightbulb apparently went off.

The answer was written all over his face. BB heard a high-pitch ringing in his ears as he numbly rose from the chair and escaped from the room, ignoring Cy’s calls to wait. All this time he had been cursing Garth for getting Raven pregnant, and it was him all along. He had raged at the man for abandoning his friend when she had needed him most, and he was the callous bastard that had left her all alone to deal with her loss. He gasped for air as his lungs failed him. He staggered through a door, realising too late it wasn’t his room.

Ravens room.

He looked around and realised that some things were missing since the last time he was in here. There were less clothes in her closet and the bookcase was almost empty, but her Beast Boy piñata still had pride of place on the top shelf. After she left, he sometimes came in here to try and feel closer to her. Maybe that should have clued him in that what he felt for her was something more than friendship. Her absence had tilted his world and he was still struggling to adjust. He went to her vanity, sniffing the jasmine perfume whose scent had eluded him for months. He put it back down and moved to lie on her bed. He knew that if she ever found out he was in her room, let alone lying on her bed, she would go all rage-monster on his ass and he’d be making friends with the fishes in the bay again. At this moment, it would be worth it just to see her; just to see with his own eyes that she was OK. He’d give anything to hear her scold him, or roll her eyes at one of his dumb jokes or raise her eyebrow when he did something stupid or fought with Cy. She was his anchor, and having her gone was making the Beast restless under his skin for him to find her. It didn’t feel right to be without her for so long. He moved under her covers and basked in her scent.

God, I miss you Rae.

*****

“You have miscalculated your hold over him.” The hooded figure turned from the screens to address the blonde standing behind him. “I don’t know what happened. The pheromones in the candles stopped working. I know he loves me, but he feels guilty about that stupid goth whore.” Terra shrunk back as the figure rose and back-handed her. “She is mine. You will not speak of her that way; do you understand?” She nodded as she wiped the blood from her mouth as he sat down again. “You used the candles too often and he grew immune. Thankfully the fear toxin in the tea worked before you overplayed your hand. The team is broken and she is vulnerable. It’s time for the next phase of my plan to begin.” Terra quickly left the room before she drew his ire again. "Soon, my love. We will be together soon and then all will bow before the might of our power."

I finished it off this afternoon so I decided to put it up a day early. I'm trying to enjoy the extra free-time to write, and unpack, and clean before Uni starts back up in a few weeks. Anyway, I still have no clue how long this story will end up being as I tend to just write a part a week then upload it pretty quickly after I finish typing it up. A horrible practice I know.
As always, enjoy and feel free to comment Heart

Note: slightly edited/proof read 20/03/2017

Pevious: Part 11

Next: Part 13


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The cliff hanger is killing ahaha it's so good