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When she finds him the sun is rising.
Terra’s room is still there, none of them have had the heart to undress her bed, paint the walls, cover up that desert skyline and all the stars they’d drawn by hand.
He’s a dog curled up around that heart shaped box, the one he doesn’t think she knows about. His whines, high pitched and mournful, can be heard through the door. They turn to growls when she phases through unannounced.
“What do you want?” His voice is raw and thick with sadness.
“To talk,” Raven answers. She sits on the edge of Terra’s bed, the sheets dusty from disuse. Beast Boy remains on his side, his eyes not meeting hers. She doesn’t try to touch him.
“-don’t wanna,” he mutters, curling further into himself. Any moment now he’ll change into an armadillo and that will be the end of it, such are his means of pouting.
“Tough,” she says, her tones measured as always. She takes a breath, “You know, you weren’t the only one that loved her.” He actually sits up at that, his face a mask of shock, then outrage.
“She was my friend,” he growls.
“She was never our friend Beast Boy,” Raven feels the bitterness well up in her, and quashes it like a stopper on a leak. She still feels it there though, pressure building behind her eyes and deep in her chest.
“That’s a lie!” he shouts, wiping tears away with the back of a fist, standing in front of her now so he can look down with all his rage and sorrow, “You-you never wanted her here anyway!”
“Now you’re the liar,” Raven replies, looking down at her hands so demurely folded in her lap, “You don’t have any idea-”
“Well I guess not,” he bites out, “I guess I really don’t because all you ever do is drive people away and you don’t feel anything!” he wails this, not able to stand still, shaking on his feet for all the anger that he can’t explain. It’s painful to watch, and infuriating for Raven with all her careful calm and silence.
“You know I can’t show how I really feel,” her fingernails dig into her palms. He snorts.
“Are you even sad? Are you even sad that she’s dead!?”
She slaps him.
“You stupid brat, you know nothing!” she screams in ten thousand voices. She can see the red light of her own eyes bathing his tearstained face, coloring it a dingy brown. Her own tears don’t make it past her lids, hellfire evaporating them into steaming trails along her cheeks.
“I-I…” he stammers, his hands clutching weakly at her arms. When did she grab him? When did she lift him from the floor and pin him on the window? She deflates and feels her body shake.
“I wanted her so much,” Raven hears herself say, “I wanted her to be my friend, I wanted to help her and laugh with her and let her love you because she really did and I just…I can’t love anything anymore…” a sob wrenches her chest and she lowers Beast Boy to the floor, lays her head against his chest as she crumples.
“Raven,” his voice is so soft and pitiful, it makes her want to break his arms and kiss his mouth at the same time but she doesn’t know which is right or if they would live through either. He says her name again, “Raven, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,”
“Shut up,” she draws herself up again so that she is taller than him, “Shut up, you don’t deserve to see me like this,” she presses a palm into her eye, “I hate you so much you idiot, I hate you so much and somehow I still want to take care of you, explain that to me.”
He looks lost and confused, still clutching the box to his chest. Wordlessly he steps closer so they are only inches apart, and folds it into her hands. The metal is warm from where he’s been holding it, the base heavy in her grip.
“This is all I have left of her,” he says slowly, and Raven wonders if he’s going to ignore everything she’s just said. “She was the only person who seemed to…get me, you know?” He closes his eyes, his lips a thin line. “I mean really…really understand me…and want me, like I was hers and she was mine, right?
"But that’s not right is it?” he looks up, all steely eyed and trying to be stoic when he really looks like a scared little boy with too much feeling crammed inside his tiny heart. Like he’s spilling over.
“I don’t think you-” she starts.
“Shut up,” he says it so forcefully that a blush creeps under her cheeks. “I mean, that’s not right. She wasn’t mine. We all loved her. I’m not the only one who’s lost someone,” he rests his hands on the box, over her own.
Raven regards him coolly, finally reaching up to wipe unshed tears from his puffy skin, “I do miss her, you ass. Just because I don’t show emotions doesn’t mean I don’t feel them.”
“Hey I apologized,” he manages, but his goofy smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “But…I miss her too. Maybe we can miss her together.”
The sun is over the horizon now, light filters through the window and paints their grief red and gold. He speaks up again while his hand reaches up to touch her arm, warm and comforting.
“Raven. You said something about…taking care of me. Who’s going to take care of you?”
She suddenly pushes the box back into his hands and steps away. Their quiet moment of mourning suddenly seems strange and intimate, and she would never say but she is frightened. He looks like a puppy that’s been kicked.
“Get some sleep Beast Boy…” she hears herself say from far away, “Terra would want you to stop grieving and…and rest.”
Raven leaves the dead girl’s bedroom colder than when she entered, eyes bloodshot and her frozen heart aching with the thaw.