Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Final Dance of the Fallen Dove ❯ I'm Still Here ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6
"I'm Still Here"

Author's Notes: I apologize for the lateness of this chapter, but I have quite a few lovely things getting in the way when it comes to life (for example, the fun of finding a nice job). Regardless, though, the fic will be completed, it just might take me a little longer . . . ^^;; Anyways, hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'll do my best to get the next one out within the usual week.

 

I found the pieces in my hand

They were always there

It just took some time for me to understand

You gave me words I just can't say

So if nothing else

I'll hold on while you drift away

Cause everything you wanted me to hide

Is everything that makes me feel alive

 

The cities grow

The rivers flow

Where you are, I'll never know

But I'm still here

If you were right and I was wrong

Why are you the one that's gone

I'm still here

Still here

 

Seeing the ashes in my heart

The smile the widest

When I cry inside and my insides blow apart

I tried to wear another face

Just to make you proud

Just to make you put me in my place

But everything you wanted to take from me

Is everything that I could never be

 

The cities grow

The rivers flow

Where you are, I'll never know

But I'm still here

If you were right and I was wrong

Why are you the one that's gone

I'm still here

 

Maybe tonight

It's gonna be alright

I will get better

Maybe today

It's gonna be okay

I will remember

 

I held the pieces of my soul

I was shattered and I wanted you to come and make me whole

When I saw you yesterday

But you didn't noticed

And you just walked away

Cause everything you wanted me to hide

Is everything that makes me feel alive

 

The cities grow

The rivers flow

Where you are, I'll never know

But I'm still here

If you were right and I was wrong

Why are you the one who's gone

And I'm still here

The lights go out, the bridges burn

Once you're gone, you can't return

I'm still here

Remember how you use to say I'd be the one to runaway

But I'm still here

 

"I'm Still Here" - Vertical Horizon

 

A ridge formed of Various junk autos, scrap metal and other trashed odds and ends was his final stop. It overlooked a valley, defined by the walls of garbage surrounding it on all sides, and somehow Robin doubted that the feature was a natural occurrance. More than likely Raven had used her powers to hsape the dump to suit her needs, giving her a hidden place away from prying eyes. Even then, he could see her moving through the small make-shift campsite that had been set up in that valley. She was putting the finishing touches on the sleeping shelter, welding the last strip of scrap metal onto the structure to make it a suitible refuge from the harsh elements she might well have to weather. Beyond that, the site was little more than a drum with a fire burning in it and a make-shift table, but all things considered, it was a pretty impressive accomplishment for a few hour's work.

As Robin watched from his high vantage point, Raven continued to move about, apparently intent on making another addition to the space. From what he could tell, she had not yet sensed his presence which meant he had the element of surprise, and that thought made his bo-staff come almost instantly to hand, almost of its own volition it seemed. But the boy wonder quelled that urge, knowing that course of action to be far too dangerous. He hadn't forgotten how easily Anbu had defeated both Cyborg and himself, and as much rage as he had over what had been done to Beast Boy and Starfire, he simply couldn't deny that it would be unbelievably foolish to try and capture Raven then. If Anbu showed herself, he would be a dead man.

 

So it was with no small resistence that Robin put away his weapon and left the trash ridge. He'd head back to the tower and get Cyborg and Starfire, then he'd be able to take Raven down, he just needed help. That was it, just help.

* * *

It was not long after Robin lef the scene, though, that another figure came up that very same ridge, one with fiery red hair and anxious emerald on lime green eyes. It was Starfire, having been able to elude Robin's detection simply through the fact that she didn't follow him. After realizing her mistake in roughing up the man soliciting that badly-dressed woman's services, Starfire also realized that Robin had intentionally lead her by that area in order to lose her, had tried and succeeded in shaking her off his trail. Luckily for the naive Tamaranian, he had not quite lost her soon enough and thanks to what she had overheard of his phone conversation, she knew Raven was at a hospital.

 

Even in a place as dangerous as Jump City, there was still only one hospital per fairly large section of the city. She found the correct one just in time to catch sight of Robin leaving empty-handed and kept that visual contact long enough to see him pull out his Titan's Communicator. That was all it took to remind Starfire of the secondary function of their communicators: tracking devices. Since she had no longer needed to follow Robin, she had taken a more scenic route to Raven's position in order to keep from being spotted by the boy wonder.

 

And thus she was there then, standing on the ridge overlooking Raven's camp, and even though she couldn't see her love moving about in it, the Tamaranian was certain the other girl was just sleeping in her shelter. With a happiness that easily bouyed her form into the air, Starfire floated down from the ridge to the dirt floor of the valley in the trash heap and entered the camp with her eyes alight. She looked about for any sign of Raven's presence and found many: the kettle of water boiling over the fire, waiting to be used in the creation of some soothing herbal tea, the books stacked inside of Raven's shelter, magical books that Raven had spent more time researching in than Star could even comprehend, and the clutter of various stones on the make-shift table, special stones Raven used in the treatment of her; and sometimes Starfire's too, even; chakras. Even beyond the actual physical, individual features of the area, the whole of it simply screamed of her dove, of Starfire's love being there.

 

As the alien girl thoroughly searched the whole of the small camp, the feelings of Raven's presence did not diminish, even though she was not finding the other girl. And as this became all the more overpowering of a sense, Star's spirits began to fall, because the longer she looked the more the crimson-haired alien felt that Raven was actually there, but was hiding from her. After extensively searching the whole area, Starfire returned to the camp center, pulling her communicator from her belt to check where Raven's tracking signal claimed her to be. For the single second it was there, the blip showed Raven to be exactly where the Tamaranian expected her to be, in the camp. Then it was gone, completely and utterly, from the screen, blocked by some "unknown" force.

 

In silence, Starfire put the device away and looked about slowly, biting her lip in anxiousness.

 

"Please Raven, show yourself, I mean you no harm . . ." She began very evenly, though her voice had already begun to waver by the end of the sentence.

 

When no response came, the alien continued.

 

"I . . . I am sorry . . . for what happened at the tower . . ." She looked down, ashamed. "I did not . . . I did not mean to seem so scared . . . I just could not believe what lay before my eyes." She looked around again, desperately searching for any sign that the magus was going to bring herself into the light, where Star could see her.

 

She found no such manifestation. The Tamaranian girl clutched her hands before her chest, barely holding back tears.

 

"I . . . I am . . . I did not . . . I . . ." She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and the tears fell. "I did not mean . . . to let her touch me like that . . ." Her voice was so tiny then and yet it had an utterly profound effect on the area, as even the very air itself stopped in place, as if time had frozen in horror.

 

And, for the barest moment, Starfire felt as though there was something behind her that was reaching out to touch her shoulder, but the instant she looked back to see it, the feeling vanished. Nothing similar followed it and eventually Star simply stood up and flew away, even despite the fact that her power did not seem to function well as she cried her eyes out, making her flight slow and erratic in its pattern. Once she was nothing more than a dot in the midday sky, Raven rose up form the ground in her shadow, watching Starfire go.

 

Then she too cried.

* * *

The tears had given way to meditation not long ago, as Raven did her best to bring herself under control.

 

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos . . ." This meant, most of all, dealing with her feelings for Starfire.

 

She had not been joking, not in the slightest, back on Tamaran when she'd left the throne room; Starfire was her everything. She knew in her heart of hearts that nothing mattered to her more than her alien love, not even "justice" and certainly not her own life. But what was she to do when her very presence harmed her love?

 

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos . . ." When Starfire had apologized for being violated by Anbu, Raven was certain her heart had done its best to rip free of her own chest and beat her to death for ever allowing the Tamaranian to be put in a position of such pain and anguish.

 

In that moment she had wanted nothing else but to go to the girl and soothe away all of her pain, to just wrap her arms around Star and hold her until she felt nothing bu the love that Raven held for her. But the dark magus could not, because even as she was reaching out to touch her estranged lover, Raven could feel Anbu squirming inside of her and just waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Though Raven was no longer considering suicide as a solution to her problems, thanks to Jasmine, that didn't make living with the burden of the monster inside of her any easier.

 

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos . . ." The only upside Raven had yet found was that it appeared Anbu could not take control of her body at will.

 

If that weren't the case, then why hadn't the dark rage manifested during her stay at the hospital? The violet-haired mage surmised that it took an immense amount of energy to wrench the proverbial "wheel" of Raven's body from her grasp, perhaps like the burst of fuel expenditure that comes with starting up a car, and so Anbu was hesitant to take possession of Raven body for only a short time as it would waste precious energy to do so. More so, Raven expected that the demon was intentionally holding back because of her earlier actions, namely her attempted suicide. If her body died, Anbu was dead as well, so it was likely the monster was holding back just in case she decided to try again, that way she'd have enough energy to intercede and prevent it from happening, much as she hadn't been able to do before, thanks to the immense drain her fight with Robin and Cyborg had put on the demon magus' reserves. They were all slightly comforting thoughts, were they true.

 

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos . . ." Still, none of that changed the fact that every moment Starfire spent with her put the alien girl's life in grave danger.

 

But . . . Raven was not blind, and she could easily see that every moment she was away from Starfire, especially during the current crisis, was causing the other girl undeniable torment and suffering. She had to do something, she just . . . didn't know what.

 

"Azarath, Metrion . . ." Raven's meditative chant was broken and she sulked.

* * *

The sun was just past its midpoint int he sky when he arrived, arms loaded up with heavy boxes. Unsurprisingly, Cyborg wasn't burdened in the slightest by their weight, thanks to his cybernetically-boosted strength. When he initially arrived in her camp, Raven did nothing more than glare, silently demanding to know how he found her. In equivalent silence, Cyborg simply sat down the containers he'd been carrying and then retrieved his communicator from his belt, causing Raven to snort in derision.

 

"I would have been here sooner but the tracking signal cut off and I had to play it by ear from tehre." Raven snorted again and headed over to her drum fire to check on her attempt to brew tea using a scavenged, damaged kettle.

 

Before she could reach the item in question, though, Cyborg spoke again.

 

"Don't try the anti-social act with me, Raven, if you didn't want to be found then you would have killed that signal long before you did." That gave the dark magus pause, though she did not turn to face her visitor even when she did speak.

 

"Maybe I wanted you guys to come here, maybe I wanted your judgement and punishment." She spoke with a quiet, even tone, but the shaking of her hand on the kettle belied that illusion of calm.

 

Even noticing that fact, Cyborg only smiled easily.

 

"Sorry, fresh out of those." He answered lightly, actually causing Raven to look at him out of shock. "All I've got is these medical supplies and foodstuffs here," he began, patting the boxes he'd been carrying. "Those, an ear willing to listen and a mouth ready to discuss." Raven shook her head, at first almost disbelieving the words the cybernetically-enhanced young man was speaking, but eventually accepting it.

 

She doubted Cyborg was trying to put her off-guard so he could more easily attack her because he'd never been the type to do any of that, especially not hurting her.

 

"For now, though, let's take a look at those wrists." Cyborg offered when the silence between them did not break, having noticed the dressings on the girl's forearms, both of which looked as though they could really use a change.

 

Raven complied wordlessly, sitting down in one of the chairs by her table and offering up her wrists once Cyborg did the same. After peeling back the gauze dressing, the young man shook his head.

 

"Dammit, Raven." After removing the sodden stuff entirely, he started to apply a new dressing. "Why the hell did you do that to yourself?" Cyborg asked just a little bitterly as he worked.

 

"I had to, I had no other choice at the time." She answered almost automatically, having been expecting that question ever since Cyborg had arrives.

 

Even though he was in the middle of fixing up Raven's wrists, the techno hero didn't hesitate to let his anger at that answer come to the surface, manifesting itself physically with the youth slamming his hands down on the table between them.

 

"So what, suddenly the people that love you don't matter at all?" He growled, though Raven seemed unaffected.

 

"I didn't do it out of some stupid sense that none of you cared about me anymore, I did it because I care about all of you." Her answer only enraged the young man even further, though.

 

"What the hell's that supposed to mean, our love makes you want to kill yourself?" Raven shook her head.

 

"At the time I had no other choice, I felt like a rabic, uncontrollable dog that would end up hurting and killing everyone that I loved." Before the cybernetically-enhanced youth could say anything in response, Raven raised a hand to stop him. "I have no intention of making another go of it, though, so you can hold back on the lecture." After a moment the taller Titan simply deflated, crumpling back down in his seat and going back to dressing her wrists.

 

"Y'know, sometimes you really piss me off, Raven." He commented quietly, with no real malice in his tone.

 

Silence occupied them for a time following that, before Raven spoke again.

 

"Is Beast Boy alive?" She truly was nervous about bringing up that subject, considering the kind of response it could bring forth from her "guest."

 

Cyborg took it easily, though.

 

"Yeah, he's fine now, if still a little sore." Raven nodded in response and then hesitated just a moment or two before asking her next question.

 

"Do you bl- . . ." Cyborg did not even allow her to finish, almost instantly responding with,

 

"nope." When Raven looked at him, disbelieving, he simply smiled.

 

"Blaming you for what that 'Anbu' did would be like blaming Robin for what Slade was making him do." Raven nodded, understanding the significance of Cyborg's particular choice of a real even to liken her situation to.

 

Still, Raven had to ask, too much was unsure for her right then and she couldn't stand to add to that list.

 

"So you don't hate me?" Cyborg chuckled and reached out to tousle Raven hair.

 

"Nah, not at all." He made sure he had the mage's eye before speaking again, that he knew she was looking at him. "Truth be told, though, I would like it if you hurried up and got back to being the Raven I love, rather than this little scaredy-cat you are now." At first, Raven was shocked by Cyborg's admittance, but once her brain finally took the time to double-check the files she realized that it really did make sense.

 

"I see." She replied quietly, though with a smile on her face.

 

At that point, Cyborg thought it best to stand, having finished bandaging Raven up long before then, and he spoke as he did so.

 

"Well, I better get headed back to the tower, otherwise Robin will notice that I'm gone." Raven nodded in response, not really wanting nor needing to say anything, and watched as the cybernetically-enhanced youth headed off.

 

Without looking back, he called over his shoulder to her.

 

"Remember, Starfire stops treatin you right, don't hesitate to look me up." The magus nodded, knowing that Cyborg would somehow catch the action even though he wasn't looking.

 

"I'll remember." And then she watched him go before shifting her position, preparing for yet another meditative trance.

* * *

 

Starfire stalked through the tower. This was not the usual, floating and happy Starfire that walked the halls though, this was a wounded beat filled with a hundred conflicting emotions. Most of all, more than any other emotion, she was filled with rage. Finally, she reached her destination, Robin's room. Without any hesitation at all, the super-strong alien girl broke the door to the domocile down, seeking entry into the room and surprising its occupant with her destructive lack of patience and control.

 

"Starfire . . ." Robin whispered, caught off-guard by the Tamaranian's appearance in the cloud of smoke and dust thrown up by the destruction of his door.

 

But the alien girl had no intention of letting him take that tone with her, that condescending tone that he used when he wanted her to think that she was being foolish and needed to be put back in her place, and was in his face in an instant.

 

"You lied to me, Robin!" She shouted, eyes ablaze with anger and dangerous energy. "You lied through your teeth to me and you did not care!" She moved away from the boy wonder, simply worried that she might attempt to throttle him if she remained near enough to do so while she continued.

 

It wasn't as though she didn't really want to throttle him, not at all at that moment. Rather, she simply did not want to let him get out of the confrontation so easily until she had at least aired her grievences.

 

"You did not even see fit to tell me of what had happened to Raven." She said quietly, her back turned to him.

 

But it became apparent that Robin had simply seen the eye of the storm a moment later when she turned to face him again, energy thrumming about her form in a dangerous pulse.

 

"You did not see fit to tell me that my love had tried to take her own life, that she had very nearly succeeded!" She screamed at him, only barely restraining those aggressive urges thanks to the wise distance she'd put between them.

 

Robin looked utterly dumbfounded, completely floored by Starfire tirade, but still he managed to speak.

 

"Star, I didn't want to upset y- . . ." He was cut off, though, when his words only seemed to enrage her further, causing her to scream out,

 

"no!" She looked straight at Robin and shook her head. "You have no right to pick and choose what I need to know, and that is what this is really about." The Tamaranian advanced on the boy wonder, grabbing him up by the scruff of his suit, her strong fingers finding just enough give in the nearly skin-tight material to make such possible. "You have been trying to handle me, to control me, because you do not feel I have the ability to make the right decisions." She looked dead on into Robin's eyes behind that mask as she spoke and then she dropped him.

 

It took the young leader a moment to shift his suit back into a configuration that would actually allow him to breathe and once he had managed that, he fully allowed himself to glare at Starfire.

 

"When it comes to Raven, you really don't." He fairly growled and before the Tamaranian could say a single word in response, he was right up in her face. "And making the wrong decisions in this situation will get you killed!" He shouted before finding himself violently shoved away by the alien.

 

"They are still my decisions to make, right or wrong, not yours!" Starfire yelled back. "It is my life, not yours, and I choose to tie it to my love's, for better or worse!" Robin clenched his fists at his sides.

 

"You're being a foolish little gir- . . ."

 

"No, it is you who is being foolish, Robin!" Starfire interrupted, advancing on Robin yet again. "You do not own me, nor am I a 'foolish little girl' anymore, not after all that I have seen and done." She came to stand right before him, and for the first time ever, it became truly apparent that she stood taller than he did. "I am not yours in any way, shape or form, and I wish for you to rid yourself of any shred of that delusion this instant." Her voice was firm, showing no sign of wavering at all.

 

The finality of her words rang against something in the boy wonder's heart and his features hardened with that touch, turning stoney.

 

"I'm done here." He said simply, before turning about and walking away, exiting he room through the doorway.

 

Starfire followed, though, and blocked his path.

 

"No, we are not done yet." Robin said nothing at all, simply moving around the Tamaranian and continuing on. "Do you not even care that you hurt me?!" She screamed, charging after him when he gave no response. "That you left me all alone, that you shattered my trust in you?!" She continued as she stumbled after the caped hero, crying by that point. "That you left me all alone to fight this feeling, this fear that's killing me inside?!" Robin's step slowed ever so slightly as he noted that the alien girl only partially sounded as though she was talking to him.

 

This gave her just enough time to get around in front of the shorter boy again, and for the first moment afterwards she simply stared at him. Then she fell to her knees and truly cried.

 

"Doesn't she care?" She sobbed up to him, and in the face of his continued silence, she found she had to fill the void with more than just her sobs. "I can't see her, can't find her because . . . because . . ." The Tamaranian choked on the words, not wanting to actually speak them and give her fear substance.

 

Saying them would be admitting their reality, their truth. Even still, she said them.

 

"Because she is hiding from me!" Starfire cried out brokenly before very nearly collapsing fully to the floor, the only thing stopped her from doing so being Robin's arms. "Doesn't she care about me, doesn't she love me?" The alien whispered feverishly as only more tears came, causing Robin to pull her in close to him, hugging her.

 

"I don't know, Starfire." He whispered to her then.

 

But even as he did so, unvoiced words followed in his mind, 'but I damn well intend to find out.'

 

* * *

 

It was in but a moment that he was there, simply not having been so the instant before. Still, even that was enough warning for Raven to bring forth her sword, standing up from her seat beside the fire-holding steel drum.

 

"What do you want?" She growled, leveling her blade on Robin's chest defensively.

 

The boy wonder smiled and looked about the area.

 

"This is a . . . nice camp you have here, you've made a lot of improvements since the last time I looked, like that awning over your table." He noted, wandering back and away from Raven's sword.

 

He meandered about, hands raised in what acted as both a gesture of amazement and a show that he held no weapons. Of course, that "assurance" held little weight when from Robin the boy wonder, with his endless supply of gadgets and weapons secreted away in that utility belt.

 

"And I see Cyborg's been by with . . . gifts." The young leader continued, though his smile was getting a little strained. "Maybe we should have some kind of . . . 'hovel warming party'?" He looked around, ignoring the vein throbbing on the dark magus' forehead. "Scavenge up a few more chairs and we could invite everybody, even Beast Boy and Starfi- . . ."

"Will you stop pretending to be my friend and just get the fuck on with it, Robin." Raven snapped out, interrupting the boy wonder and stopping him in his tracks.

 

He held for just another heart beat before turning back to face Raven, the facade gone.

 

"The safety of the city, the team, and of Starfire, along with her happiness." Robin listed, enumerating each point on one gloved hand, raised so that the violet-eyed mage could see it. "These are the things that concern me when it comes to you." He kept his eyes solidly planted on the dark magus as he spoke ans he did not shrink from his gaze.

 

"I assume you want me to alleviate that concern?" Raven asked, though she really didn't need any confirmation.

 

None the less, Robin nodded.

 

"Then I'll just tell you right now that I have every intention of killing Anbu." The young leader of the team nodded at that, unsurprised, and folded the first three of his four raised fingers down.

 

"That may take care of the safety issues, but it doesn't cover Starfire's happiness." Raven looked at Robin with a truly insulted expression.

 

"I would sell my soul if it would make her happy."

 

"So you're willing to do anything for her?"

 

"Anything."

 

"And you really do want to be with her forever?"

 

"Yes, more than anything else in this or any other world."

 

"I'm sorry Raven, but I can't allow that." Like a cobra, Robin struck with speed easily comparable to that of lightning, and his birdarang sword crashed against Raven's materialized blade with the force of a mac truck.

 

The dark magus said nothing even as they held in the lock, instead simply pulling the hood of her cloak up. Then she knocked Robin away with a blast of force, giving her the breathing room she needed to fully prepare. She was in fighting stance just an instant before Robin came back in, swinging for a decapitating strike. She slipped under the scything slash and stabbed for Robin's body, a thrust he barely managed to dodge to the side of. Not about to scede the offense to the mage, though, he went right back in, rushing her with an elbow strike to the head that sent Raven reeling. Even so, she still magaed to block his follow-up cut and held impressively as she tried to break her.

 

"She's going to beat you, you're nothing but weak." Robin hised to the ashen-skinned girl, and she responded with just a smile.

 

That, and a knee to the groin, which knocked Robin back several shakey steps.

 

"You're not scaring me, because I know I'm going to beat her." She noted to the boy wonder, giving him time to catch his breath. "I have to, for Starfire's sake." Robin nodded slightly even as he hung his head while breathing shakily.

 

The next instant he had sent a birdarang screaming for Raven's head, one that was deflected harmlessly to the side by the barrier a slide of her hand had left in the air. Robin came in behind it with a straight thrust that Raven parried to the side and then danced around, putting her behind the boy wonder. He recovered quickly though, already turned about only two steps past her, throwing a pair of his explosive disks at her person. They missed, thanks to a quick dive to the side Raven made, and her make-shift table of scrap metal turned out to make a pretty decent birdarang shield once turned on its side.

 

"Is this how you're going to 'fight' Anbu, Raven?" Robin called out mockingly. "Running away and playing defensive?" He leaped, looking to clear the table and take Raven by surprise, but instead found himself to be the one caught off-guard when the heavy metal object launched at him.

 

He only barely managed to cut it in half with a powerful slash of his sword, but that action made his landing clumsy, almost leaving him open for Raven's sneak attack from behind. He ducked under the slash, though, and came up facing her once again, steel thrumming with Robin's anger at the trick. They traded attacks briefly, becoming twin whirlwinds of clashing steel and flashing sparks as each and every blow was parried or dodged. Finally, in an attempt to break the stalemate, Robin leapt back and threw a smoke grenade at the ground between them, filling the air with an obscuring haze that the boy wonder almost instantly vanished into.

 

Raven did not move even a single muscle after the bomb exploded, not until exactly one second afterwards, at which point she violently lunged to one side, body checking Robin into one of the poles holding up the canopy spread over the area her table had previously occupied. He didn't even get a chance to move, instantly finding himself pinned with Raven's sword at his neck the moment he struck the pole.

 

"I will do anything to be with Starfire, no matter how impossible they may say it is to do." The dark magus growled through her teeth to Robin.

 

After a brief moment, he nodded just slightly and Raven released him, letting her sword vanish from existence as she did so.

 

"Now, take me to the tower, it's time I went back." Robin nodded again, looking away.

 

"Yeah, Starfire's waiting for you."

 

* * *

 

One last stitch and it was done. A snowy white cloak made in the same style as Raven's was smoothed out for a final inspection by pale orange-skinned hands. It had intricate, even artful, white stitching that would hold it together through even the most severe and punishing of assaults that Raven would face. And, emblazoned on the back in a contrasting midnight black stitching was an emblem of a shooting star, stylized and beautiful. Starfire completed this cloak, a gift for Raven, and then she clutched at it and cried.