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Stuffed Dolls

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Summary: Beastboy sneaks into Raven’s room and sees something he wasn’t expecting to.

Will it explain things to him about the relationship between himself and Raven?

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Everyone was grouped up in the Ops Room as usual.

Cyborg and Beastboy were sparring via virtual reality; Starfire and Robin were looking through pictures of their latest date, choosing the ones to stick in her scrapbook.

“Robin, look at this one! Your expression is truly invaluable!”

“Shh, Starfire, not that loud, please.” Robin said, looking around furtively to see if anyone had heard. “And the word’s priceless.” he added with a smile.

He suddenly frowned – not at Starfire, but at the room.

“Hey, team, has anyone seen Raven?” he asked.

“Nope!” the two boys on the sofa shouted at the same time, not even bothering to glance towards Robin’s direction.

“Ha! Got you again, green bean!”

“Aww! I was so close!”

“Yeah, right, close as in far, far behind!”

Robin’s frown got a fraction deeper.

“Do either of you know where she is?”

Beastboy finally looked at Robin. “She isn’t in her room?” he asked.

He sounds…worried, Robin mused with surprise.

“I don’t know,” Robin replied. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on anything.”

“Oh.” Beastboy said, and returned to the screen.

Or maybe not.

Robin looked back down at the photo displaying his expression when he was shot in the face with the water gun. He smiled. If he remembered correctly, it was Beastboy who had got him, and his expression was due to surprise and shock that Beastboy had been able to best him.

“Shall I go and do the checking on friend Raven?” said a soft voice through his thoughts.

He looked up into concerned green eyes. “No, if she wants to be alone, we should respect her privacy.”

“All right.”

He couldn’t help but smile into that face, so familiar yet totally different from his.

“What do you think about this one?” he said, gesturing at the photo in his gloved hand.

--

This time, Beastboy had won, but he didn’t feel like shouting out his delight, like he usually would have. He did shout, “Yes!” with a feigned smile of happiness to escape suspicion, but his heart wasn’t really in it.

“I think I’m gonna get a bite to eat, then look at some comics in my room,” he said, and jumped over the sofa and walked toward the kitchen, glancing at Robin and Starfire as he did so. They were laughing quietly at something on the table, and seemed to have woven a cozy world around themselves, in which they were the only two people existing.

He opened the fridge, grabbed a salad and sprinkled some dressing on it. Then, after making sure that no one was watching, he poured some hot water in a mug and dropped a teabag into it.

Holding the cup with one hand and the salad bowl with another, he walked out the door.

I wonder what she’s doing, he thought. I don’t think she even came out to breakfast. Maybe she ate breakfast when we were all asleep.

He stopped in front of the door marked, “RAVEN”.

“Well, here we are,” he spoke out loud. He set down the two items in his hand on the floor near her door and raised his hand to knock.

A minute passed, but he was still frozen in the act of knocking.

What if she gets angry? he thought. What if…

He hesitated, then grit his teeth.

A single knock resounded in the hallway.

“Raven, are you in here?” he asked the gray door. The door was mute to his call.

“Um…Raven? Hello?” The door remained silent and closed.

Beastboy frowned at the door, angry at its silence.

“It can’t hurt to look,” he told himself, ignoring the fact that the last time he said that he was sucked into Raven’s mind.

He morphed into a fly, and then crawled under her door. Once he was inside, he sprang quickly back to human form. A fly’s vision was always hard to get used to.

The room looked just as same as it always had the few times he was allowed to see it. The large globe of the world stood at his right, the scary masks to his left. Books were tidily lined up on her triangular bookshelf. Her hooded bed was neatly made up, unlike his own messy bed.

But it wasn’t the bed that made him stop in his tracks and gawk openly. It was what was on it.

Among the many pillows that lined the headboard was a stuffed white chicken.

“See, we told you we’d win you something!” Beastboy cried triumphantly.

“A giant chicken. I must be the luckiest girl in the world.” Raven remarked, her tone obviously meaning the opposite of what she was saying.

He approached the bed; not daring to believe it was the same one. But why else would something like that be in Raven’s room? She was definitely not one to buy something like that.

Beastboy picked up the doll in his hands. Sure enough, there was the absurdly happy expression on the chicken, and a brown stain on one side, from where it was dumped unceremoniously on the ground. But it looked like someone had tried to get the color out.

“I thought you threw it away,” Beastboy murmured.

“But I didn’t.” said a dark voice.

--

Raven sat in her practically reserved chair in the bookstore, skimming over a book that sounded interesting.

“Miss Raven, any good finds today?” asked the storeowner, restocking the shelves.

Raven held up the book in her hand. “This does sound interesting.”

“The House of the Scorpion,” the storeowner read. “That’s a really good one.”

Raven raised an eyebrow at the woman. “You’ve read it?”

She smiled. “It’s one of my favorites.”

Then, as if she had just remembered something, she plucked a book from the shelf.

“Maniac Magee?” Raven asked, a little incredulously.

The woman just shrugged. “I know it’s not really teen stuff, but it’s a good one.”

Raven gave her a small smile. “If you say so, I know it’s good.”

She stood up and placed the two books on the counter.

When she had left the bookstore with two new books to read tucked under one arm, she visited her “favorite depressing café” as Starfire put it. She didn’t think it was depressing, but then again, her definition of depressing was quite different from Starfire’s.

While the band played their usual deep music, she sank into one of the chairs and began on the book the storeowner had recommended. It really was a good book, one about a runaway orphan who slowly learned how he was different from the world around that thought skin color mattered more than personality. And how his friendship would make him become a sort of legend, changing and shaping other people’s thoughts.

When she did look up, the sun had gone farther across the sky than she had intended.

Robin’s going to worry that I’ve been gone so long without telling anyone, she thought ruefully. But he always respected my privacy, so he might not even know.

When she passed the Ops Room, she held her ear to the door. The sounds of a video game going on and Starfire’s clear laughter could be heard.

Good. They’re all in there. No one would have noticed.

She walked the remaining distance to her room. From the end of the corridor, she could see something on the floor near her room door. She approached it cautiously, in case it was another one of Beastboy’s pranks.

To her utter surprise, it was a cup of tea, still warm, and a bowl of salad.

“What – ” she muttered. Beastboy, she thought, observing the contents of the salad. It’s all vegetables, it has to be him.

As the door swooshed open, she saw him pick up the stuffed chicken from her bed. She hovered silently toward him.

“I thought you threw it away,” he said quietly.

“But I didn’t.” Raven said.

--

Beastboy spun around, so rapidly that he almost lost his balance. “Raven!” he exclaimed, with something like fear in his face. “I’m so sorry…I know I shouldn’t have come in but you didn’t show up for so long and I was worried but when I knocked you didn’t answer so I just sorta let myself in and there was this on your bed and I’m sorry!” he rattled on in one breath.

“Calm down, Beastboy, I’m not mad at you.”

His eyes widened. “You’re not?”

Raven held up the tea and salad. “At least your intentions were good. But next time, remember that curiosity killed the cat.”

“Phew!” Beastboy sighed. “I thought I was toast!”

Raven narrowed her eyes. “But don’t get the wrong idea. I still like my privacy.”

“Okay, point taken.”

Raven fully expected him to turn around and walk away, but he just looked curiously into her aubergine eyes.

“How’d you get it back? I definitely remember you throwing it down when we went to save Star from that robot octopus thing.”

Setting the food down on her dresser, she sat down on the bed.

“Well, the day after that whole fiasco with Blackfire, I went back. And what do you know; the guy at the booth had kept it safe for me. So I brought it back to the tower after saying thank you to him.”

He was sitting down next to her on the bed.

“I thought you didn’t like it.”

“Well, it was a gift. And I’m not one to throw away gifts.”

Beastboy raised an eyebrow. “Even ones from me?”

“Especially ones from you.”

Raven’s eyes widened as she realized what she had said only after they were out of her mouth.

But Beastboy didn’t look offended. In fact, he looked pleased.

“Thanks,” he said with a smile.

“Um, you’re welcome?” Raven said uncertainly.

Beastboy cupped her hand in his.

“It’s nice to know the feeling’s mutual, Rae.” he said softly.

Then, suddenly, he gave her a quick hug.

Later, Raven could never remember for sure, but she thought he whispered, “I love you,” into her ear before he sprinted away.

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Just a little something I whipped up long ago, that I decided to post here after a few edits...