Fan Fiction ❯ Broken ❯ Chapter Six ( Chapter 6 )

Cyborg's eyes widened and he jerked around, flipping off the DVD of Raven's songs that he had been watching and/or listening to for hours. He had heard a crash-not that a crash was something that unusual, not around these parts. But he had also heard the sound of sobbing…

Raven's sobbing…

Shaking away that thought, he stood up and walked downstairs, jumping when he heard a scream coming from the bathroom.

«§¥§»

"Well, go talk to her, Beast Boy," said Cyborg.

"No way man," Beast Boy replied, staring up the tall staircase.

"What's the matter, chicken?" Cyborg taunted, trying to squash his own emotions. Beast Boy shape-shifted into a chicken and clucked loudly.

"Well, go talk to her, Cyborg," said Robin.

"Uh, uh, boss."

"Well, why not?"

"I'm chicken."

The past Titans had been standing at the foot of the steps for at least an hour, the guys arguing over who would go up.

"Come on, Raven," said Robin, who had just been asked by Beast Boy. "She's your future self, and it was your task in the first place."

Raven's eyebrow twitched, and for a moment Robin was worried she would blow something up-the reason he had waited so long to ask in the first place.

But she took a breath and seemed to calm down. "Fine," she said at last. "But you have to come. Just because I'm not some idiotic coward like you three doesn't mean I'm suicidal."

«§¥§»

"What happened here?" asked Nightwing, surveying the shards of glass on the floor and noting that several were smeared with blood.

"I-I do not know," admitted Starfire, still shaken. "I heard a crash and came into the bathroom to find the mirror had shattered."

"So that isn't your blood?" asked Larissa, appearing in the doorway with Changeling. Cyborg was behind them, using his special vision to scan the blood.

Starfire shook her head. "Then whose is it?" Changeling wanted to know.

Cyborg's eyes widened. He recognized those DNA scans. They weren't human, and they weren't alien or tree or shape-shifter either. They were…

With a gasp, he turned and ran back upstairs.

«§¥§»

Raven's tear-filled eyes narrowed when she sensed the old Titans coming upstairs. "Go away!" she screamed, clenching her fists and not even flinching when her perfectly manicured fingernails dug into the cuts from the glass shards. "Don't make me hurt you!"

"Just try," Raven dared her, entering. "It's my room, too." Glancing around, she remarked, "I'm surprised this place is still intact."

"Trigon is dead in my time," Raven replied. "He has been for over a year." Her tears began again at the memory-not of the death itself, that was a cause for celebration, but more of the disaster which resulted from it. "What do you want?"

"Just to know what's wrong," Raven replied coolly, wondering why the fact of Trigon's death would seem to distress her future self further.

Raven buried her head in the tear-drenched pillow, her bleeding hand dying Raven's sheets red. "I miss my friends," she mumbled into the pillow.

Raven blinked at her distraught future self quizzically. "We're going to get you back to your own time," she pointed out. "What are you so upset about?"

"Not that I don't want to get to my own time or anything, but it doesn't help that much seeing as how my time is a year after I quit."

Raven gaped at her. "W-What?" she stammered, stunning eyes wide. "Why in the world would you want to quit the Titans?"

"I never said I wanted to quit," she retorted, her grave face beautiful in spite of the tears which streamed over the pale skin. "I just said I did."

Raven lifted a dark eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"

Raven tucked a lock of violet-and-black hair behind her ear, ignoring or not noticing the blood that her slender fingers and perfectly manicured fingernails smeared over her delicately plucked eyebrow and the lily-petal skin of her forehead.

Someday I'll be able to look like a beautiful goddess while my face is bloody, my hair is wet, I've been sobbing for hours, and I'm wearing a wet blood-stained bathrobe, Raven mused wistfully. But today, I don't look pretty no matter what happens.

She was wrong, of course, but she didn't know that. And at the moment, she happened to have more on her mind than beauty.

With a sigh, Raven murmured. "Fine. I'll tell you." She sighed and began.

"Over a year ago, less than 2