AN: Life owns my soul. Haven't watched Teen Titans in a few months, so this is probably all horribly out of character, I'm writing from memory. I read the book Wicked, by Maguire, and cried for about a half hour, recommended for anyone who doesn't mind tragedy, smut, and bad characterization for the sake of beautiful prose and a hard theme. (I identify so much with Elphaba it's not even funny, and I'm only sixteen. Teenagers shouldn't be able to identify with such broken women.)

Castle on a Cloud

Set a decade or so before Go!

Raven was pressed flat against the pillar. The sun lit the floor gold through the windows--gold, bright gold dusting the walls and the ceiling and everything except Raven. Gold, totally unlike Raven in just about everything. It was beautiful, the way the deep purple tiles soaked it up. Even the way it reflected and glinted off of Raven's cold skin was gorgeous.

It was wrong, what she was doing, it was--it was evil. Azar would be upset. She would look at Raven and nothing in her face would change except her eyebrows would slant down and the skin would crease in between them.

Still. Nobody was watching.

Raven darted across the hallway, a stretch of deep purple tiles and simple dark arches, and jumped off the balcony. She focused, and she lifted up over the street below. It was an alley disguised as a courtyard and the sun didn't touch any part of it beneath the high walls of the Temple. All dark green and all shadows.

The toe of her boot brushed the sandstone of the wall and soon her hand bumped against it and her body was forced to stop its forward glide. She let herself hang in the air and focused, again, so that her body lost feeling and the wall lost it's hardness. A push forward and she was through, hanging in the ceiling of a room that was full of hangings and arches and shadows. It was a deep tile floor, coated in a few places with deep red rugs, left in its bare blackness in others. Raven hid in the shadow of the arched ceiling and breathed.

A bowl, big enough to hold soup for fifty and made of gold rested in the center of the room. It was full of something that looked like water, and Azar had spent twenty minutes describing all the divining possible with it just yesterday. Raven didn't look at it twice. It was the woman standing as far away from it as the hall allowed that Raven watched.

She was tall, and thin. Unnaturally so. Her wrists were pinched, like her eyes and nose. One hand, made of long, thin fingers, was splayed against the window and her breath fogged the glass.

She had to be the one.

Her hair was purple and her eyes were the same color. Light purple. This bothered Raven. The woman was supposed to have been human. But there had to be a story there. An explanation. The purple didn't matter.

The woman shifted from the window, sighed, and hid her hands in the sleeves of her robe. The view she wanted wasn't there anyways, Raven knew. She wasn't sure how she knew. Everything about the woman just screamed it. What she wanted to see couldn't be found from any panoramic Azarathian skyline.

To talk was to be caught, to have Azar's almost-frown. To have her evilness proven, again. To stay quiet was another night of staring at the ceiling, wondering.

The woman hummed something in the back of her throat. Her voice--it was the first time Raven heard it. Low, faltering. The melody was simple, repetitive, desperate. The woman walked across the rug in long strides. The volume of the melody broke until the woman was singing, forming words that Raven couldn't catch. It wasn't a chant. It was something else. Something that made the hair on Raven's neck stand up. It was about the ocean, and stars, and a child. The woman was quiet, too quiet for Raven to catch everything from the ceiling. Raven didn't dare move closer.

The woman paused at the bowl and looked in. The water was glass smooth, and bright silver. It reflected the woman's face up to Raven. Delicate, slim eyes and a box chin. Raven met the eyes in the water, and the woman ended on a soft, low word.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" The woman asked, and everything inside Raven jerked forward, as if to run, and then stopped.

Raven blinked and the woman blinked back in the reflection of the pool.

"Yes. I am wicked." Raven announced, and waited for the woman. It seemed like her future waited with her, for this stranger's verdict. Guilty, or not guilty. Defendants in murder cases couldn't feel any less anticipation.

The woman looked away. "They say that." Rich as well as low, and raspy, too.

Hope, wondering whether or not to dare. Had the woman given her an affirmative? Probably. But not quite. "Do you--do you think so?"

The woman turned around and looked up at Raven. She lowered her hood, and Raven noticed what she hadn't, before. The hard lines of her cheeks, the dark red lips. "I don't know." She whispered. "You're as much my daughter as his."

Mother.

What was your favorite color? Did you ever want to be an animal, when you were little? To run away? What did you want to be when you were older? Did you ever fall and scrape your knee? Did you cry? What type of music did you like? Was your father nice to you? Did he have a scratchy beard, and did you look into his eyes because they were beautiful? What's your favorite color? What's your favorite story? Mine is about a daughter and a garden, Mother, but it has the wrong ending. What was your first memory? Did you ever see the ocean? Did you ever wish on a star? Mother, I do every night. Azar says--

Azar says I shouldn't ever ask you things like that, Mother. Azar says that I would hurt you and you would hurt me. Azar says I can't feel to train, to live. Azar says that all the time, Mother. She must be right.

I am evil, Mother. Because I hate what Azar says.

The door burst open, and Azar was standing in the doorway. She looked at Raven, and at the woman, and the little crease in between her eyebrows surfaced. "Arella," she said gently.

I am evil, Mother. Because, sometimes...

The woman's face lit bright red and she ducked into a bow. The purple hair spilled across her face and Raven sighed. She sank until her feet brushed the tiles. She let go of the air, and all of the strength of gravity gripped her and tugged her to the ground.

Azar glided across the tiles, all high forehead and flowing blond hair and white robes. "Please finish washing the statues in the temple."

"Yes, Azar." Arella, Mother, stood upright. She opened her mouth to say something to Raven.

"Raven, I will escort you back to your room." Azar's hand was bony, and firm, and wrinkled. Raven could feel it through her robe, closed tight as a vice or a heart around her arm.

Arella closed her mouth and looked away.

...sometimes, Mother, I hate Azar, too.

And now, for the bit nobody except Wicked fans will want to read. I make a cameo in this chapter, and I'm not the saleslady. Guess where? xD

Wicked, part 2

dun dun DUUUN

"Want!" Beast Boy yelled. Robin growled and tightened his gloved hands into fists. The lobby was crowded, people kept pouring in, and worse, people were staring. At Robin's mask, a little—he had the sense to put on normal clothes for the play, but the mask hadn't come off in public for years and now was not any excuse to start. Robin got stares, but the majority of the whispered remarks were aimed at Cyborg or Beast Boy. The crowd pressed in on them, and the clerk behind the souvenir counter dropped a box full of snowglobes when she saw Beast Boy. He was dressed in a tux, of all things, his hair immaculately clean and gelled in neat spikes. It didn't suit him.

"I can't afford any of this crap!" Beast Boy yelled at nobody in particular.

"Shut up and buy something." Raven hissed. Her hair and pale skin got no more than a passing look, not after the boy with the rainbow mohawk checked in.

"Hey, want one of the Defying Gravity t-shirts, Rae?"

"I wear t-shirts… when?"

Steel City, unlike Jump, had a theatre. The musical was showing on the day Beast Boy had mysteriously suggested visiting Titans East. Wayne Enterprises had fitted the bill—third row back, dead center seats.

"The witch hat necklaces are seventy five bucks each, Rae. Give me something to work with."

Raven's reply was inaudible over the sound of some random teenage girl clapping for Beast Boy and asking him to be the father of her children.

"Nonsense, of course you want something. Hmm, okay. One Dancing Through Life t-shirt, men's small please, Dee's new album 'I Stand', and one… Raven, you'd look good in green, right? Purple, gray-ish-white-ish, that goes with green fine. One Defying Gravity shirt, the one with the broom on it. Woman's… small?"

Raven's reply better have been different than what Robin heard. He had been going so well on getting them to drop the language.

"Whatever you get, just get it fast." Robin yelled. Starfire was waiting back for them at the seats, and that delinquent next to her could not be trusted. At all. Robin didn't catch what he asked her, but he could guess when she answered back "No thank you, I am not currently in need of rest."

"Seventy six dollars, please." The clerk said and hurried to grab the items from boxes under the counter. She passed the shirts and the cd across and took the cash from Beast Boy.

"Congratulations," She remarked. "I've only met two other people who actually painted their skin green for the play before."

"Oh, my skin is actually this color. Bitten by a green monkey in Africa when I was two. Thanks, though."

The woman shrugged and turned to the people next in line.

Beast Boy skipped away clutching the merchandise to his chest and giggling hysterically. "Wicked!" He yelled when Raven asked him what was wrong. "Woo!"

=O=

"Merry Christmas!" Beast Boy shoved the green abomination at her as soon as they were in their seats. The lights had already dimmed.

She almost didn't take it. It was worse than the chicken. Almost being the operative word.

The mechanical dragon looming over the top of the stage roared into life, complete with glowing red eyes and rotating neck and wings. The orchestra started, and Raven's breath caught. Just a little hitch, but now her skin was crawling and her heart stretched tight.

Beast Boy giggled and slid further into his seat. "Just wait till Defying Gravity!" He whispered.

=O=

"Dancing through life!" Beast Boy yelled and burst into a dance move in the middle of the street. "Skimming the surface, flying where turf is smooth!" He whirled around and caught Raven's shoulders. "Life's more painless for the brainless! Why think too hard, when it's so soothing?"

She rolled her eyes and pushed past him.

"Into the T-Ship, Beast Boy!" Robin yelled.

Beast Boy danced up the stairs into the sub a second ahead of Raven. "Dancing through life, mindless and careless!" He belted out, completely off key, and did a totally inappropriate pelvic thrust. "Make sure you're where less trouble is rife! Woes are fleeting, blows are glancing, when you're dancing through life! So." He said and whipped around to Starfire. "Where's the most swankified place in town?"

"That would be the ballroom of the Oz Dust." Starfire said cheerfully.

"Get into your seat, Beast Boy!" Robin screamed. It was a lost cause.

"Raven!" Beast Boy yelled as the sub started to take off. "Raven! Raven! Raeee…."

"What."

"We're defying gravity!"

"…They'll never bring us down."

"So you liked it!" He yelled cheerfully across the com link. "I knew you would! The only people who don't like Wicked are guys trying too hard to be manly and the braindead."

Which referred to Robin and Cyborg, of course.

"Hmm."

"True story." Beast Boy fiddled with some of the knobs and accidentally dropped one half of a metric ton of water on the town below them. "Who's your favorite?"

"I don't have favorites, Beast Boy. They're all fictional characters."

"Gelphie forever!" Beast Boy said in response to this. In his mind, it probably made sense.

"I enjoyed the show heartily also, friends." Starfire cut in. "It was the victory of epic proportions, correct?"

"Yup! Totally an epic win." Beast Boy said. "Which scene was your favorite, Star?"

"I…" Starfire faltered. "Popular was extremely humorous, but… I was most touched during the parting of Elphaba and Glinda." She sniffed a little and hastily turned the link off.

"'Most touched' consisted of crying into my shoulder for the rest of the play." Raven explained.

"Dude, we had a good Galinda. She was comparable to Chenoweth." His sentence came out in an awed whisper. He ruined it by giggling. "When she shoved Elfie's face into her—"

"Bosom." Robin interjected.

"--and stroked Elphie's hair and said that it was all going to be okay—I laughed for like twenty minutes! I've seen Popular, like, thirty times, and she still made me laugh all the way through it. She even got a smirk out of you, don't think I didn't notice."

"Hmm."

"Which one did you like the best, Rae?"

"Curtain call."

"Aw, c'mon. You can't pretend not to like it, I saw your face during 'Defying Gravity'. And, you were clutching the seat so hard during 'No Good Deed' that I thought the armrest would snap off."

"Yes, I liked it." Raven snapped. "It was just as good as you made it out to be, Beast Boy. I, unlike you, can't just pick which scene is my favorite. 'Defying Gravity' and 'For Good' would probably be a part of that list, if I had one. Happy?"

"Yup. Defying Gravity is still my favorite, too, next to Dancing Through Life, of course. And that scene with the talking, and the monkeys getting let loose? That was awesome too. Fly my pretties!! Be free!!"

Raven shut her com link off then. Or maybe his. Either way, Beast Boy ended up blaring the soundtrack in his section of the sub the rest of the way home.

Wicked!