Fan Fiction ❯ Broken ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Raven sighed as she sat on the couch, desperately trying to fight the urge to use her powers to listen in on the past Titans' discussions. She desperately wanted to know what they were saying, but she knew it would be better for her if she didn't have to know.

Why me? She wondered bitterly. I don't want to be a Titan, and nothing some crazy super-powered fan says or does is going to change that!

With the concert nearing and pictures of her probably going to be everywhere in Jump City, this was really the last thing she needed.

I don't need the Titans, she thought angrily. I'm happy without the Titans…She raised her head from her lap and stared out a window. I am happy, aren't I?

When she first quit, she was anything but happy. She spent her days lying around in a rundown apartment room without even a bed and writing poetry that would make Satan himself cry his eyes out.

Whenever she saw a newspaper or magazine featuring the Titans, she would scribble each picture out wildly before crumpling the paper up and burning them to ash-she burnt them with magic, since she couldn't afford a fireplace or anything. She could barely afford her own food.

Right outside of her apartment room was a billboard featuring them. Every night she would go out onto the porch and scream at it. It seemed like a great mockery, being right there. She wanted to destroy it with her powers, but she never did.

Eventually her screams would fade and she would sob uncontrollably until slipping into an exhausted state between sleeping and waking-so she didn't need a bed anyway.

For a time she thought she might go insane-perhaps she had. Most of her memories from that time were fragmented, and she didn't want to remember it anyway.

She had definitely not been happy.

But that state barely lasted over three months-though it felt like three years to her. Even now, sometimes, when she saw a picture or when she was alone with nothing to do…even now, she would remember and have to force herself to keep from crying-failing sometimes, I might add.

But, mostly, she was happy.

…Right?

***

"I still can't believe it," Robin remarked. "It just seems so weird to have two Ravens around. Not that I have a problem with you or anything," he told Raven quickly. "But it's still strange."

"Yeah," Beast Boy remarked. "Who could possibly think Raven would turn out to be a hottie?"

Raven pointed a magic finger at his chair leg from under the table at the same moment as Cyborg kicked the abovementioned chair leg. The result was the green shape-shifter's chair tipping over and him tumbling backwards into the wall.

Getting back to the conversation, Cyborg said, "She seemed angry about something. She was certainly acting like it."

Raven shook her head. "That's just how I deal with being sad or afraid. I can't blow up, and I can't show weakness, so I act like that. It isn't real or anything."

"That's good to know," remarked Robin. "But that just makes it more imperative that we get her to her own time, and a soon as possible. Having her in the past may affect the future."

"Do you not remember the future I was shown by Warp?" Starfire requested. "It seems to me that changing the future is a good thing."

"She may have been acting mean, but she didn't exactly seem to have lost her mind," Cyborg pointed out. "Maybe we should just ask her if the Titans are still together."

The Past Titans glanced at one another, including Beast Boy who was getting to his feet. Then they all looked at Raven.

"What?"

"Do you think it's a good idea if we ask your future self if the Titans are still together?" Robin pressed, and everybody leaned forward.

Raven crossed her slender arms over her breasts, lifting her chin as her astoundingly purple eyes flashed. "Absolutely not."

"All right then," replied Robin, who had suspected she would say that-and he suspected also that she was right. "You ask her."

***

"Some world-famous singer is supposed to be coming to Jump City soon," remarked Nightwing as he and Cyborg shopped. "Larissa and Changeling have tickets. They might want you to come."

"And I suppose you and Starfire have a date today?" he asked, a tiny smirk hiding his pain. Everybody has a girlfriend except me

Nightwing blushed and stammered something inarticulate before remembering himself and protesting, "It's not a date! We're just going to see a movie."

Cyborg rolled his eyes (that isn't a typo, he's human now remember?) and shook his head, looking away. "Huh. They're putting up a new billboard," he remarked casually, and Nightwing looked.

"It's probably of that singer. For some reason, she insisted when she became a singer that she not have a concert or any pictures of her in Jump City for one full year. Weird, huh?"

"Yeah," Nightwing agreed, turning back to the groceries. "Maybe she was a villain or something and thought we'd forget about her in a year. I'm going to go to the martial arts store, all right? Can you finish this?"

"Sure," Cyborg replied absently, still watching the poster be put up.

It was of a slender, pale woman with an intense beautiful face and long purple-and-black hair. She wasn't in a sexy pose or anything, in fact she was wearing a black turtleneck and jeans.

Instead she looked kind of like that woman from Evanescence-Amelia or something (Evanescence rules!)-as she stared out at the city with the most striking eyes Cyborg had ever seen.

Besides Raven's of cour-

Then his own eyes widened. There was something familiar about those ethereal features, and definitely familiar about those eyes. He blinked as realization dawned on him.

No…he thought. There's no wayit can't be.

He stared again at the poster, turning his head this way and that, trying to memorize every detail of it. The name was the last thing to be put on-and such a painfully familiar name as well.

And then he knew that it was.

***

Priestess: Sorry for the tiny chapter, but I just couldn't resist that cliffy! In case you weren't paying any attention, Cyborg just figured out that the Titan Raven and the singer Raven are the same person.