In Your Dreams, Garfield

A/N: Hope you all enjoy!

Chapter 1: Not Quite Myself

Raven opened her eyes as she felt a warm wind blow around her. She turned to get a better look at her surroundings, and found that she was on what appeared to be a skyscraper. There were lights dotting the night sky, cast by other buildings and passing cars, revealing the world past the edge of the roof. The wind blew again and carried a low note from a saxophone. Raven turned and looked for the source of the sound, but only saw a door on the other side of the roof. The low note suddenly shifted into a jazzy tune, with a drum-line that seemed to pick up her very heartbeat. The door suddenly burst open and light poured onto the rooftop. Raven smiled at the familiarity of the scene and moved towards the dark silhouette of a boy standing in the doorway.

Raven had had this dream many times before, yet she was always taken aback when her Dream Boy appeared before her. He was always bathed in light in a way that his face was always hidden from her. Despite this, she could feel the tremors run down her spine as he slowly approached her. From what Raven could discern, he was wearing a purple button-up collared shirt, a black t-shirt underneath, and a pair of black jeans. Raven herself was dressed in a tight, red dress with spaghetti straps that came halfway up her thighs with matching red high heel shoes. Despite the fact that Raven's usual uniform was a leotard, she knew that she mostly stayed under her cloak for modesty's sake and would probably die of embarrassment if she were ever caught dressed in such a promiscuous outfit. However, this was her dream world, where no one was around to judge her except for the boy in front of her.

He never spoke in the dream and his face was covered in a shadow, but Raven could feel the gentleness of his touch as he took her hands within his own and drew her close to him. They began to move in rhythm with the music and Raven could feel his fingers running through her hair, which was no longer her usual short cut, but instead lengthy and luxurious, ending just past her shoulder blades. Raven had insisted that she had cut her hair after her father had tried to conquer Earth, and the Titans had accepted this as a way for her to put the whole ordeal behind her.

Although they were right on the most part, Raven had also wanted to cut her hair because she knew the dangers it represented. Her hair had always been one of Raven's favorite features, and she believed that long hair actually did make her seem better looking. Nevertheless Raven was all too aware of the danger of feeling things like pride, which like any other emotion, could send her powers on a destructive rampage.

For this reason, Raven shunned anything that stood for beauty and femininity, saving such fantasies for her dreams where she could pretend that someone could love her and that she could love him in return. The music began to slow, and Raven lifted her eyes from the floor and stared into the shadow where her Dream Boy's face should have been. Raven's heartbeat quickened as he leaned in towards her for a kiss and his face began to emerge from the darkness. Raven had always been awoken from her dreams before the music had stopped and had resigned herself to believing that her Dream Boy had no face and that the dream had no happy ending, just empty aches that her heart had pushed into her mind so that she could pretend to know the joys of passion and romance. The idea of seeing the face of the boy she loved, the idea of him having a face, an identity; would he be just another creation of her imagination like the scenery around them, or would he be someone she knew, but Raven did not feel that way for anyone, did she? Her Dream Boy was now closing the gap between Raven and himself, his face coming into the light as his lips were about to fall upon her own.

Raven suddenly felt a crackling sensation around her hands and looked down to see Dark Energy pouring out of them. Raven's emotions had become so strong that her powers were manifesting even within her dream. Her energy surrounded her with a dark aura in the shape of her namesake bird, and she rocketed off the rooftop and into the night sky. She flew with no real sense of purpose or direction, flying solely with the motivation of escaping from knowing the face of her Dream Boy.

She rose higher and higher, past the Moon and stars of the dream world and seemed to approach a bright light. As Raven exited her dream through the bright light, her Dream Boy had tried to follow her, only to stop at the edge of the roof where they had just danced. He remained speechless, but continued to stare at the place in the sky where Raven disappeared into the light, but all that was left was a shining star. In the real world, Raven's body was tossing and turning in her bed as if she was in great pain, then went completely still, rose into the air, and was coated in Dark Energy. The energy peeled itself off of Raven's body and took the form of an exact duplicate of her figure, forming her Soul Self a few feet away from her bed while her body fell back onto her mattress.

A/N: Next Chapter will be posted next Monday. Any thoughts on what's coming next? Leave your guesses and thoughts on the story so far in a review. Until then, see ya!