Crawling
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans.
Author's Notes: Like I said before, this is not a song fic, mainly because it's against the site rules (I think) and also because the insertion of song lyrics would interrupt the flow of the story. Second, has anyone ever noticed how perfect Crawling (Linkin Park) is for Raven? I realized after listening to it about half a dozen times.
She glared down at the wounds upon her bony arms, upon her stomach and her legs, upon her face. Starry points of lights swirled underneath her flesh, gathering where the runes bled and burned.
It was happening. The end was nigh; the increasing frequency of the runes, and the fact that they bled all the more now, proclaimed it, screamed it to the world. Her secret was out once more just as it had been a month ago when Slade had revealed to her teammates the truth about the mark he bore on his forehead.
He's not serving Trigon for nothing. What could Trigon possibly have offered him? He has to know that a demon's promises are naught but hollow lies and ashes…
She felt her stomach lurch once more, and Raven crawled to the toilet, watching as the last of her long-ago-eaten dinner revealed itself again. She wished she had thought to pull her hair back. The small girl shuddered as she huddled into a corner, her thin body curled on the cold tiles, trying to cool herself down. It was so hot.
The heat was a prelude of the hell on earth that she knew she would unleash. She didn't know when, but now she knew where and how, and the thought terrified her. She knew that when Trigon came, she would be destroyed. Not her body, but the part of her that was more undying.
The runes, when they came, usually disappeared within hours. But these hadn't gone away. They had first appeared that morning. At first, they were like minor scratches or rashes, but as the day progressed, they deepened and darkened, opening and gushing blood and some strange liquid from deep within her body, weakening her to the point that she could barely stand.
Her friends watched, horrified, as she, dripping blood behind her, fled to the bathroom, dressed in bloodied civilian clothing, and locked the door behind her. That had been five hours ago; it had to be at least one in the morning. All of her friends' attempts to get her to open the door had been in vain.
You may not like your birthday, but we're all glad you were born!
Now that you know the truth, are you still glad?
With a shudder and shake of weak, wobbling legs, Raven raised herself from the floor, leaving dark, sticky, crimson smears on the white tiles behind her.
Bracing her hands on the rim of the marble counter (she shivered as her unbearably hot hands hit the icy surface), Raven looked at her face in the bathroom mirror.
Smudges like contusions existed under the wild, too-large eyes that were sunken deep into the ashen, gaunt, haggard face that seemed to be growing more fleshless and angular. Though she neither noticed nor welcomed it, it seemed to give her face an unearthly quality that transcended its usual ethereal beauty, if in a hellish way with slow, viscous blood trickling down the middle of her face.
Her usually thick, fine hair was growing in thicker than ever, newly coarse. Where it was, in happier times, perfectly straight and docile, it now rippled and tangled as it coursed down her shoulders with the uncooperativeness of a violent, living thing.
But it all faded away when she was blinded by a haze of tears. The message was clear. It was written in blood, her skin the bleached parchment on which it was contained. Even her body was changing to suit the dark purpose for which she was destined.
When she looked up, she was treated to a shock that was not truly unexpected. In her place stood a twisted reflection of herself. Four slanted, vicious red eyes gleamed back at her, snarling and holding out a taloned hand that seemed to extend from the mirror into the realm of mortals.
The ground on which she stood was now brimstone and fires erupted all around her. Rage had never been able to do that before.
But Raven refused, and when she tore her gaze away, all that remained was her and her tears.
Please, join with me. We are two halves. Same coin, different sides.
Raven winced; she knew Rage suffered as much from this enforced separation as she did. But she couldn't give into her weaknesses. Rage was uncontrolled, evil, in the sort of way of a wild beast with a dark purpose. Rage was her inner demon, in a way that was frighteningly real. Raven clung to her humanity, clung even when she could feel it slipping. When you hold sand in your hand, the tighter you close your palm, the more sand escapes. No matter how close she was to losing that battle, she would fight to the last.
Rage was just an extension of Trigon; she served Trigon's purposes. Raven couldn't listen to a word she said.
For some time, Raven had been aware of Rage clawing her way back up to the light, steadily gaining power and influence.
And it now seemed like Rage, and by extension Trigon, was lurking just beneath the surface of her skin, scratching away, waiting for an opportunity to break free.
It was as if the monster within her was carving the runes on her flesh from the inside out.
The lights flickered. It drew Raven back to reality. The runes seared. Raven sank her face within her hands and tangled her fingers in her hair, before remembering that her hands had not been spared either.
Her cheeks were now smeared with red marks, her hair sticky in the front and sides. Raven flinched, the coppery smell rising in her nostrils. She wondered if this was what the air of Trigon's hell would smell like, as the noxious fumes rose and ebbed.
She fingered the ends of her long, tangled, unkempt hair. It needed cutting again; it had grown while she was in the grips of a vision. She had terrified her friends by falling to the floor thrashing and screaming, seemingly swimming through a torrent of blood or foul-smelling, coppery water.
"Raven!" Starfire screamed, shaking the girl's shoulders, trying to get her raving friend to awaken from her terrible hallucination.
"What's happening to her?" Beast Boy was near tears, his voice shrill with fear.
Her hands shook as she took up the small scissors in her hand, and began to cut. Snip, snip, snip, with each snip she denied her destiny, denied her fate.
You've known this all your life. It is going to happen. And no matter what you wish, no matter where you go, no matter how you squirm, there is nothing you can do to stop it.
What you have concealed, you shall become! You have no other choice!
It began the day you were born, and nothing can stop it. This will come to pass. I will make sure of it. You're going to destroy the world, Raven. It's written all over your face.
Raven struggled to ignore the sinister voice of the Harbinger that rang, unwanted, through her mind. Snip, snip, snip. All the while, she heard the words…It's written all over your face, over and over again. The mark of Scath gushed blood on her temple.
The Portal must be opened! You can not defy what is to be!
The voice of accursed Trigon seemed so close, so real, bringing with it the stink of sulphur. The shelves and sink shook at the unholy roar.
The scissors dropped to the floor, their two halves breaking apart. Her thick hair was now just as raggedly cut as it had been when she first came into the lives of the Titans, dooming and damning them. Suitable symbolism, seeing as she was distancing herself from them now just as much, if not more, than she had been then.
She yelped and raised a bloody hand to her face, painting it a darker shade of scarlet.
There was nothing she could do to block out the voices howling within her ears.
As she stripped out of her ruined clothes, resolving to burn them and the hair (even the most rank amateur of magic users could make mischief with the hair of another being), and turned on the hot water of the shower, allowing it to wash away all the unclean blood staining her otherwise flawless skin, Raven sank back against the wall, feeling the freezing tiles cool the still-oozing lesions on her bare back.
The end was coming. She would try to stop it. Somehow. But even with that thought in mind, Raven was afraid that nothing she or her friends did would stop him from claiming the two things that he had always believed to be his.
I may end up editing this later. I'm not sure about it right now. But other than that, did you think it was appropriately dark for the time and setting? Do you think the rating should be changed either way?