Edge of Awareness : Twilight Zone
Title: Edge of Awareness : Twilight Zone
By: Lady DeathAngel
Rating: M
Fandom: Teen Titans
Disclaimer: This is all done for fun. I don't own the Titans.
Genre: romance, drama, angst, AU
Warnings: language
A/N: On time! Yes. Score. Etc. Anyway, more characters are introduced in this chapter which his happy, and I think that the story picks up speed from here on.
Summary: Raven acquires a couple of study buddies.
Twilight Zone
It turned out that Gar had a few classes with Raven. That was the good news. The bad news was that for her first class of the day, she was on her own. She wasn’t too worried about it, or so she tried to convince herself. She wasn’t a very good liar, though, and she must have nervously glanced at her schedule four or five times on the walk to the room. Gar had laughed.
"You’re schedule hasn’t changed since the last time you checked it. Twenty seconds ago."
She’d glared up at him and he’d chuckled holding his hands in front of his body.
"Not that I was counting." He grinned at her and shook his head. "You’ll be fine," he assured her.
Raven didn’t bother telling him that no, she would not be fine. She was a freak. She wasn’t lying, making up all those names that she’d been called. Her slate could only be wiped so much and maybe here there wouldn’t be rumors flying around about her dedication ceremony to Satan, but she still got weird looks from girls and guys alike. She wasn’t willing to count her getting along with Gar as anything other than luck. She certainly wasn’t walking with him to her class because of her own social skills. She had none.
Raven didn’t know how to deal with boys who liked her and she was scared of what would happen with boys who didn’t. She couldn’t talk to girls about girly things and the ones who were cruel to her didn’t warrant her attention. She rarely laughed and her smiles were smirks and sneers. She could count the number of times she’d cried in her life on two hands, and most of those breakdowns had been recent. She got mad and she beat the shit out of people. She’d never had a friend in her life until today, and she wasn’t sure she’d count Gar as a friend. More like a kid who’d been intrigued by her and now refused to go away. She didn’t know what he was hoping to get out of this, but she was sure he was in it for something.
As far as people went, unless someone was suicidal or mentally unstable, Raven had no experience at all. And so no, she wouldn’t be fine. She’d be very far from fine.
But she didn’t tell Gar that. She just stayed silent and when they got to her room she even let him put his hand on her shoulder for a moment. He smiled at her.
"Look, they may or may not chew you up and spit you out, but if you’re anything like me I think you can handle it."
Raven folded her arms across her stomach and raised an eyebrow.
"And am I like you?"
He took his hand away and shrugged.
"Not that it’s a good thing, but maybe. By the way," he added. "D’you mind being my ‘get out of class early’ card? We’ll just tell all our teachers that I’m your student guide." He waggled his eyebrows at her.
Raven shook her head and stuffed her hands in the pocket of her hoodie.
"I feel so used," she said, sighing. "Yeah, fine."
He grinned and started walking down the hall.
"Awesome! Remind me to thank you properly later!"
And then he was gone and Raven was left to face her English literature class alone. She frowned and took a deep breath before walking into the classroom behind a gaggle of girls in short shorts with identical haircuts. They all took seats in the middle of the room, flanked by boys Raven assumed to be members of some sports team or another. She didn’t recognize the jerseys. Back home there had been football and baseball and that had pretty much been it. Maybe they played soccer?
She didn’t bother thinking too much on it. She was already looking around the room for a seat in a dark corner.
"You’re Miss Roth, I presume," a voice said, catching her before she could make a beeline for the empty back row.
She turned to face a male, tall and scrawny. She nodded.
"I’m Mr. Daniels. I teach this class."
She thought that might have been obvious, not only because he was the only teacher in the room, but because it clearly stated on her schedule that a Daniels, Kevin taught English literature in room 213. She didn’t say anything, though. She just nodded.
"I want you to know that I’m not going to go easy on you. This is a tough class. I expect you to read what I tell you to read when I tell you to read it. I expect that the essays I assign will adhere to all MLA standards, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. I also expect every one of my students to participate in discussions about chapters read; making it evident that they do know what’s going on and have begun to analyze the novel."
He stared hard at Raven over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and she blinked and nodded.
"That being said, we’re beginning the term with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. You’ll need to acquire a copy by the end of the week."
He dismissed her just as the bell rang and she turned to see that most every seat in the class was filled. She sighed and pushed a hand through her hair. There was one seat in the back next to a blonde who was hastily scrawling in her notebook. There was another seat toward the front behind a red-head who was smiling beatifically at Daniels and whose perfume Raven could smell where she was standing a few feet away.
"All right, ladies and gentlemen," Daniels said loudly, standing. "We’ve got a new student. Her name is Rachel Roth." He glanced over at Raven with a small smile. "Say ‘hello,’ Rachel."
Raven grimaced and coughed.
"Hi," she drawled uncomfortably.
Nearly everyone snickered and Daniels frowned at them before indicating that Raven take the seat next to the blonde. She made her way to the back while the teacher called role. She settled into the seat, grabbing her notebook and a pen before settling her messenger bag on the floor. The boy in front of her and the boy next to him twisted around.
"Hey," the one in front of her said.
She fought to keep the frown from her face and nodded at him. The one next to him grinned.
"Not very talkative, are you?"
Raven blinked.
"Um, not really."
The boy in front of her shrugged and smiled.
"Eh, it’s all right. I can talk enough for the both of us. I’m Roy Harper and this loser next to me is Bart Allen."
The boy named Bart frowned at his friend.
"Hey!" he hissed. "I’m not a loser. I am totally cool."
Roy raised his eyebrows and then snorted.
"Right, okay."
"I am!" he insisted before looking at Raven. "I totally am."
Roy opened his mouth to retort, but Daniels had apparently finished taking his silent roll call and loudly announced that they were to open their books to chapter five. Bart spun around in his seat to grab his copy while Roy smiled at her.
"You can share with me," he said, waving the novel in front of her. She shrugged and watched as he straddled his seat and laid the book between them.
"Now," Daniels said. "Who can summarize the chapter for me? Miss Anders?"
The redhead that Raven had noticed earlier spoke in a slow, cultured tone and Raven tuned her out. She’d never been a fan of Jane Austen. Her stories were clichéd tales of love, requited and not-so-much, and she didn’t go much for the soupy tales of the Eliza Bennets of the literary world. It was clear that Daniels worshiped the woman, and the redhead if the way he said, "Very good, Miss Anders," was any indication.
The minute Daniels turned to the board to begin writing down whatever he thought they needed to consider important, Bart turned in his seat again and made a face.
"This is so incredibly boring," he muttered. "I’ve already read this book, like, six billion times."
Raven raised an eyebrow at the exaggeration and watched as Roy shook his head.
"See? Definitely a loser."
Bart smirked.
"But you love me," he said. "And you wouldn’t have me any other way."
The look on Roy’s face was a cross between ‘fond’ and ‘annoyed’ and only made Bart smirk wider.
"Anyway," Roy finally said, rolling his eyes. "Since Bart’s read it so many times, and since I’m just naturally that smart, we’ll help you out in this class if you want."
Bart nodded.
"I know this book inside and out, backwards and forwards."
Daniels had turned back around and was reading a passage from the book. Bart turned in his seat again and Roy snorted. While the teacher droned on, Raven stared blankly at the page she was supposed to be reading and considered the two guys in front of her.
Roy was solidly built and beneath his black wife-beater he looked to be nothing but muscle. His hair was red, short, and his bangs framed his face and hung in his grey eyes. He looked, for all the world, like your typical bad boy and Raven cringed at the thought of the stir he would have made in her old town. Still, despite his stature, he had the features of a flirt. His eyes were bright and practically glittered, his lips were full and sensual, and his grin was all the arsenal he needed to charm any girl. Well, except Raven. But then, she wasn’t any girl.
Bart, she noted, was the opposite of Roy in many ways. He was shorter than the red-head, and infinitely slimmer. The kid was painfully skinny but he looked healthy and the calf muscles that Raven could see emerging from the baggy legs of his shorts bulged in a way no normal calf muscle should. And those were just the physical differences. He had child-like qualities about him that made him endearing and she figured that most girls found him just as appealing as Roy. In fact, they were probably a devastating double act.
Raven thought that they were both what other girls would call ‘hot’ in their own ways and the part of her that was fairly normal didn’t mind their attention at all. There were, however, other parts of her didn’t quite know what to make of them and of their intentions. Daniels had stopped reading and was listening to that Anders girl give another answer to whatever question he’d asked. Bart and Roy were both looking at her again and she almost flushed under their gazes.
"So Rachel," Roy said, turning his girl-charmer grin on her. "Wanna be our new study partner?"
"Um . . ."
"Come on," Bart wheedled, blinking his russet-hued eyes at her pathetically. "You know you want to."
"Um . . ."
"Rachel Roth, would you please stop disrupting my class?" their teacher cut in with a glare at the trio in the back corner before turning to the blonde next to Raven. "Simms, assuming you could hear the question over the sound of your neighbors’ banter, what do you think?"
The girl, Simms obviously being her last name, smirked in Raven’s general direction and began a dissertation on the dastardly Darcy’s behavior toward Miss Elizabeth Bennet. When Daniels was satisfied and turned to write on the whiteboard, Roy and Bart turned to her with raised eyebrows. She drummed her fingers on her desk and then sighed.
"Fine. But only if you call me ‘Raven.’"
The two grinned.
"Done," they said together.
Bart turned around again and immediately began staring into space, tapping his pencil against his desk so fast it gave Raven a headache to watch. Roy sighed and flicked his friend in the wrist to make him stop. Bart grinned sheepishly and drummed his fingers instead.
"He’s a little ADD," Roy told her with an eye roll.
Raven just stared at the smaller boy’s fingers and nodded.
"Ah."