Disclaimer: I do not own any of the DC characters who appear in the animated series Teen Titans (as much as I would LOOOOOOOOVE to own Raven). I do not own any of the quoted material that might appear in here from literature, movies, and songs and such. I do not own the demonic tradition of Goetia, BUT THIS PORTRAYAL OF RAIM IS STRICTLY MINE, BITCHES! I will however make THIS distinction: although many of my elaborations upon Raven's past are based somewhat upon DC comic mythos (I don't tend to enjoy American comics, but when I write anything, I do my research ahead of time), some of the details given may not jibe with specific details presented in the comics or future episodes of Teen Titans. I really couldn't care less. This is my fiction, not DC's! Otherwise, the world is mine. You may kneel, now.
(Special Thanks to: DC, Ani D., Joni M., Stephen K., and T. S. Eliot for providing me with material. Please don't prosecute me! Remember, kiddies; good writers borrow, great writers steal!)
Rating: Unreadable and Slated to Be Taken Care of by The Department of Miniluv, as decreed by the Almighty Federal Communications Commission, subsidiary and loyal bitchslave of The Evil Empire, also known as The Bush Administration (TWO MORE MONTHS! TWO MORE MONTHS!)
The Extent To Which Censorship Will Enter My Writing: is THIS! There will be many "mature themes" regarding morality, religion, sex and sexuality involved in this piece. There will be swearing, cursing, innuendo, and filthy gutter language ad libitum which your cliché grandmother would not likely enjoy hearing from your mouth (trust me, my voice mail message on my cell was "Hey there, bitches, this is Mark…I'm out working the curb at the moment, but leave me a message and I'll be sure to get back to you. Muah!" until my grandma called me up in the middle of a class and got the answering service X . X). There MAY be some scenes of graphic nudity, sex, and/or violence (I really am not decided on how far I want to go with this, yet, although I'm pretty certain that I won't be going into the territory of gore; this isn't a Subaru x Seishirou or Kamui x Fuuma fiction, after all! Therefore, there won't be any decapitation, evisceration, or anything of the like…désolé, 13 to 18 year old male demographic!). If you have problems with such topics being addressed in writing, either stop reading here and now, stop reading when you reach them in the fiction, or skip over them. Otherwise, don't complain! You were warned. Oh, yes, and I'm a rabid X fan, so I'm used to other rabid fans who favor other character pairings than myself flipping out over my choice in character pairings. This is tentatively a Raven x Robin fiction. If that causes you to fly into hysterics, also stop reading here. Raechan is going to be commiserating about how "unfair" it is that Star is so fortunate and blessed with Robin's affection, et cetera, and going all internal-angst-tortured-love-emokid mode. Well, it's not going to be that simple, but you know. That's the Sparknotes version of it.
Otherwise, ENJOY,
Mark
(your supreme sovereign master. mwaugh haugh haugh haugh!)
Raven is having trouble not only keeping her buried emotions in reign, but also problems with her…family. As Robin and Starfire grow closer, Raven begins to resent her heritage increasingly with each passing day; if not for her powers as a demon, expressing the love she feels for Robin, the guilt-ridden jealousy she holds for Star, as well as her hatred for her father, Trigon, would be an easy enough task. Fate, seeming to spite Raven, throws her an even greater dilemma when a half-brother Raven never knew she had decides to pay her a visit.
«superhero»
-lyrics by ani difranco
sleepwalking through the all-night drugstore
baptized in fluorescent light
i found religion in the greeting card aisle
now i know hallmark was right
and every pop song on the radio
is suddenly speaking to me
yeah, art may imitate life
but life imitates t. v.
'cause you've been gone exactly two weeks
two weeks and three days
and let's just say that things look different
different in so many ways
'cause i used to be a superhero
no one could touch me
yeah, not even myself
and you were like a phone booth
that i somehow stumbled into
now look at me
i'm just like everybody else
i'm just like everybody…else
if i was dressed in my best defenses
would you agree to meet me for coffee?
if i did my tricks with smoke and mirrors
would you still know which one was me?
if i was naked and screaming on your front lawn
would you turn on the light and come down?
screaming, "there's the asshole who did this to me
stripped me of my power, yeah, stripped me down!"
'cause i used to be a superhero
no one could hurt me
yeah, not even myself
and you were like a phone booth
that i somehow stumbled into
now look at me
i'm just like everybody else
i'm just like everybody…else
yeah you've been gone exactly two weeks
two weeks and three days
and now i'm a different person
different in so many ways
tell me, what did you like about me?
don't say my strength and daring
'cause now i think i'm at your mercy
and it's my first time for this kind of thing
'cause i used to be a superhero
i would swoop down
and save me from myself
and you were like a phone booth
that i somehow stumbled into
now look at me
i'm just like everybody else
i'm just like everybody…else
(SU•PER•HE•RO)
chapitre un: people's parties
It stung a bit when the drop ran over the bone-dry desert, her cornea. It fell on the white of her eye just left and slightly beneath the indigo border of the iris, and it made contact like a firebomb kissing Dresden's merry streets. It sent shockwaves of sensations to her farthest extremities, from the roots of her hair down to her toenails, so rare a thing it was. It curved with the eyeball, meeting the rim of the eyelid and hesitating a moment before gravity pulled it over the brink, down the rest of her face, and onto the inevitable oblivion of the roof.
It felt…painful. Painful…and good. It wasn't hers, though. It would never feel as good as being free to open the floodgates and cry her body into a state of dehydration. But until the day came that she could do so, letting rainstorms do the crying for her was the best she would be able to manage. She and the rain…they had been capricious bedfellows since she was much younger, but certainly no less naïve. Azar had made sure that she knew exactly what she was from a time which preceded even her furthest memories. Azarath had made sure she would never forget what she was. She was an animal. She was a monster. Crying was dangerous. Laughter could injure. And above all others, anger stood as the cardinal evil. Every other child could weep, and the only consequences were a comforting embrace or perhaps a mild admonishment. When Raven cried, though, buildings buckled beneath their own oppressive weight, imploding. When Raven laughed other children were flung screaming into the air like paper airplanes and vividly hued kites, as if propelled by giggles. When Raven screamed, passersby found their limbs snapping and surrounding objects or sometimes even their own shadows assaulting them with all the savagery of wild wolves.
So Raven didn't cry anymore. And Raven didn't laugh anymore. And Raven unquestionably didn't scream anymore. For almost a decade, she had adjusted to this lifestyle, this forced emotional complacency. For almost ten years, she dealt with it superficially, accepting her situation in a robotic fashion. She was born with the latent ability to level buildings with an emotional outburst and she would die with it. There was no getting around that actuality. Raven had sunken into such a state of automatic fatalism that when he awoke her from that frigid slumber, it was an excruciating revelation.
Robin. Just allowing her mouth to trace that name out noiselessly cut into her heart. It made no sense. It made absolutely no sense! Why, after a decade of hiding her most sincere emotions from the rest of the world to the point that even she herself very seldom was aware when that she was angry or happy or depressed anymore, was someone who she had known for so short a period of time able to part all of the façades, the false identities, the ostensibly nonchalant walls she had constructed so carefully for so long and touch her in such a way? Raven very nearly hated Robin for it, but that she considered hating him brought her back to the fact that it would be impossible for her to loathe someone unless she also cared about them enough to love them.
She was in love with Robin. She had come to that conclusion last night, as she lay awake in bed, listening to the rhythmic opus of the rain dancing on the roof and down the gutters. She knew it to be true now more than ever as she lied in the same prone position as she had in her bed on that rooftop, letting the rain soak her skin and steal the warmth from her. She felt so warm lately, as if her feelings themselves were fueling her heart, causing her blood to rush at an alarming speed through her veins. With a pulse so insistent and strong, who wouldn't feel almost feverish and drunk on confusion and eros? It was such an entirely alien sensation, something she would have never in any of her most demented dreams imagined possible, let alone actual.
Her mind wandered further into that emotional mire. How could she consider Robin without considering Starfire? The two were that ecumenical perfect couple – the quarterback and the head cheerleader, the mother-fucking prom king and queen. They were the very apotheosis of the word "couple". What was Raven, then? The stereotypical goth-girl-cynic who kept a diary of all of her innermost thoughts and clandestinely wept in her dark room, causing all of her eyeliner to run down her face after shuffling home from school and popping a Cure CD into her stereo.
She was envious…envious of Star. That wasn't something that had taken her months to realize, and it was only partially over the notion of where Robin's affections lay. Having occupied Starfire's body herself during their little altercation with the Puppet King, Raven experienced Starfire's emotional abandon. Without rage, without ecstasy, it was impossible for Star to even levitate. She and Star were alike and yet unalike. Their powers were comparably derived of emotional responses, but unlike Raven's hideous strength, Star's abilities required no emotive moderation, no mental clarity. Starfire was free to scream, free to weep, free to cower, free to giggle…and the twin paramounts, free to love and to hate. Starfire had everything that Raven had ever truly desired, and yet Star seemed totally unaware of how very much she was blessed with – and that was just icing on the cake. How could Raven feel such a loathing for Starfire when it wasn't even Star's fault that she was simply born in the right place at the right time? If anything, this jealousy only made Raven feel increasingly selfish, increasingly condemnatory of her own human urges. Raven's conditions weren't anymore Star's fault than they were Robin's or her own.
"Raven?"
Murphy's Law crashed down upon her undefended ego like a piano dropping from four stories up, and she was in the right place at the wrong time. His voice. It was his voice.
"Yes?"
The words spoke themselves like a reflex. For all that truly mattered, a universe could have existed between the hot pathos of her heart and the sterility that encompassed every dark and dead syllable that fell from her lips. She almost cringed in disgust of her own voice's tone. She sounded flat and empty, she sounded like – We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! – hollowness incarnate, and by virtue of the very absence of any interest or dynamic in her voice, she sounded annoyed. Annoyed! As if Robin had interrupted her, as if she wanted nothing more than to be left alone when that couldn't have been any further from the truth at that instant. Thankfully, she managed to maintain control. It all came down to control, and Raven had that in abundance; she had it ingrained into her very being.
"Am I intruding on . . . anything?"
Like voodoo. She swore at times that he was just as telepathic– Or maybe it's just the common link we share? she thought, A residue from my intrusion upon his mind? – as she was herself, although he would probably give her some sort of cynic's rationalization if she had ever suggested the idea to him. 'I can't read minds,' he'd say, 'I just know how to read people.' Yes, that was exactly what he would say. She stood up and let the rain that had pooled in the hollows of her clothing and her body to roll off of her, savoring it like any true addict.
"Not at all. What do you need Robin?"
She took him in with one seemingly unimpressed – We are the hollow men – glare, no slow sweep of her pupils to surrender to the world any possible insinuation of what those silent oculars actually considered as they moved over Robin's form. He was short for his age, certainly, no more that five feet and seven or eight inches from his soles to his fine ebony hair . . . not taller than she herself by much. That glossy, sable hair was matted – it was that soaked? How long had he been on the roof with her? – to his head by the rain, now, weighed down by humidity and the depressing ambience. Her fingers felt so anxious to wander through those dark locks, to playfully tease the moisture out of them. When he moved, his slender limbs undulated with a willowy, sinuous grace that betrayed his training in acrobatics and the martial arts. She would have compared his complexion to a snow-laden field lightly flushed with the sickly reflection of weak, wintry sunlight, but after reconsidering this thought all the months ago when it had first occurred to her, she recognized it for the horrible cliché that it was.
He stepped forward – nausea and self-defeating hope washed over her all at once, knotting up the air passages of her chest cavity – and placed a hand on her shoulder. Breathe, breathe. She hadn't spoken the entire time she had been up here – at least, not yet – so it's not like he could have any idea of what she had been doing. Concentration failed her; it took a bit of telekinesis to force her facial capillaries to contract. She would not blush in front of him, damn it!
"Cyborg picked up some sort of energy signature on the far side of town. We couldn't identify it from any previous data regarding our allies and our enemies, but it seems, strangely enough, to bear a strong resemblance to the electromagnetic pattern that your own telekinesis produces."
Mild astonishment hit home. Her distinctly unemotional – We are the hollow men – eyes widened slightly.
"You want me to investigate with you?"
A strange, warming light turned the corners of his lips. It was a radiant thing, such a natural smile.
"Bingo."
•••••
It was rather…well, shiny. Yes, shiny…that was precisely the word he had briefly been fishing for in between daydreams. It continued to gleam – A penny for the Old Guy – as it tumbled from such a great height, over the edge of the edifice, despite the meager amount of sunlight that was penetrating the oppressive cloud cover. The roof upon which he crouched was easily one hundred metres from the slick cement surface of the sidewalk. All other factors aside, acceleration due to gravity gave the penny roughly (one Mississippi) four seconds before it would bury itself in concrete. He didn't feel like waiting quite that long, so he…touched it.
The glimmer of the coin died beyond instantaneously – faster, perhaps, than it was falling. It darkled, (two Mississippi) suddenly a shade – Shade without color – that existed further than the darkest inks and fiercest storms. It was almost as if it had become a miniature black hole, rushing to greet the pavement. Still not fast enough, he judged. He…pushed it.
Penny collided with sidewalk (three Mississippi) and ceased to be seen either as an absence of light or a mirror of it. He whistled a little tune he has heard once as it fell out of sight, but hardly out of mind. Or rather, out of touch.
The words came haphazardly, like afterthoughts, like idle whims, lyrics breezing in through his mind and out through his lips.
"I told you when I met you I was crazy."
He was standing, now. No more peering over the precipice to entertain himself with bits of raining currency. Something else had drawn his eye away. A peculiar sight, indeed. Well, any other person might find it quite peculiar (other than, perhaps, the people residing in this city, who likely witnessed such things on a regular basis, like going to work or to school). Not he, though. Rather, he had been waiting for this. Yes, he had been waiting this moment for well on eighteen years, now.
"Cry for us all, beauty."
It was gradual in its assembly (of course it would be, it was nigh on two decades in the works), but a grin took hold of his face. It started in his eye, his abyssal indigo eye (the white one didn't work very well – well, it did, but its purpose wasn't quite that of the kind of straightforward seeing that most people believe to be an eye's work), and crept down to the leisurely furling corners of his mouth along the creases and dimples in his otherwise sleek countenance. A light had rooted itself firmly in that expression, a kind of unreal, imbalanced glee. It was almost…sadistic.
"Cry for Eddy in the corner, thinking he's nobody, and Jack behind his joker, and stone-cold Grace behind her fan…"
He could feel it itching in the tips of his long fingers, tickling in the arches of his feet. A kind of current had overtaken him, and he understood what was about to happen. It was a knowledge that superseded all logic and sense; it was a knowledge – Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow – that defied sanity.
He plucked a cigarette from the depths of his right pocket and a Zippo from his left. Lighting up, a long, smooth drag readily dulling that unquiet sensation that was riddling his nerve-endings.
"…and me in my frightened silence thinking I don't understand."
She was finally here.
•••••
In recent years following the realization that even if light-speed travel were possible it would still take several years to even reach the nearest star, scientists had begun to rethink common sense; that is to say, could there be a shorter distance between two points other than a straight line? Considering space as similar to a piece of fabric, the shortest path between two points on the fabric was not in fact a straight line. The shortest path between two points was to bring the two points together by pinching the fabric and then to widen one of the spaces between the warp and weft of the fabric until an instrument (such as a sewing needle) could pass through one point and into the other. Spatial singularity.
That was the general idea behind it, Robin had recalled reading in some physics or mechanical engineering journal a while back. He didn't know if that's what Raven did when she used her power to teleport, but he suspected it was something close enough.
"Should I…you know, hold your hand or something?"
Raven turned to him, now hooded, and delivered him her typical deadpan glare – although he thought he could detect some trepidation (What's she so anxious about? Robin wondered) – and then returned to meditating upon their destination.
"Where is our destination, Robin?"
He blinked, slightly taken aback at her blunt treatment and raw tone. Raven usually reserved her rough side for Beast Boy. Had he said something to put her in a bad mood? Had he offended her?
"Robin? The destination…sometime today?"
Her singsong irritation sliced through his thoughts.
"Right – sorry. Umm, twelve and a half kilometres east by northeast, in the vicinity of Metropolitan Government Office Building Four. We don't know what we're dealing with yet so–"
"Leave a decent distance between ourselves and our target."
Robin blinked again, and then nodded hesitantly. She was being sharp with him! He hardly had the time to articulate the thought as his field of vision became engulfed in the colorless – Shade without color – shadow of Raven's power. Lurching from within his viscera, Robin sensed an inexorable and severely nauseating heaving, as if someone had ran him through with a meat hook that was chained to a bullet train. His eyes swam in their sockets as glimpses of a demented, nightmarish landscape flashed before them. That was the problem of the universe-as-a-cloth metaphor. When you pinched the two points together and passed the needle through one to the other, the needle had to traverse the space created by the folded fabric. The space between their fold in the cosmic cloth was the extradimensional plane from which Raven's demonic father, Trigon, had originated.
It was all over in mere seconds, but being that time and space as they existed were inseparable, in warping one, the other was warped as well. Moments seemed to stretch out into hours, into months, into decades, into life times, into eternities…There was a shrieking from within Robin's skull, buzzing through his brain like white noise. It was actually done as soon as it had begun, but Robin's mind couldn't wrap around that fact until after he had oriented himself to normal space and time upon arriving three blocks from Metropolitan Government Office Building Four.
"Remind me to just buy us two bus tickets next time."
Robin doubled over on himself; he planted his hands firmly on his knees and paused to catch his breath. Well, that and tried his damnedest not to vomit in front of Raven.
•••••
Raven almost skittishly readjusted her cerulean cloak after teleporting herself and Robin. Maybe it was the fact that she had never tried to pull someone entirely through the extradimensional plane along with her…or maybe it was the fact that Robin's offering to take her hand had so violently thrown her concentration for a loop. Whatever the reason, she had never experienced that kind of vicious reaction in the course of teleportation.
Her face was flush, now, either from their wild trip through the other dimension, from Robin proposing physical contact, or the both. She could feel the heat of her dilated blood vessels, so she knew she had to have been blushing like an idiot, but Robin was mercifully far more interested in preventing himself from regurgitating his lunch than in noticing what a lovely shade of red Raven had turned. Her hood also went far in the capacity of hiding those shamefully crimson cheeks.
Robin muttered something, but the only intelligible words she could pick out were "just" and "bus". She was about to tell him to get his ass in gear when –
Why hadn't she felt it! All around them…this entire area of the city, for what must have at least been a radius of a kilometre was charged with psychic energy – energy almost exactly identical to her own! What blood had rushed to her face drained twice as swiftly as she created a mental parameter. She circled anxiously, scanning the street, the buildings, rooftops, sidewalks…nothing. Who was generating this prodigious power!
"Raven, what's the matter!"
Robin was standing at alert, now, surveying their surroundings just as warily as she was. Something was very wrong here. There were no people on the sidewalks, in the stores, driving down the streets – it was as if the city had been emptied of all human life other than herself and Robin. And, looking up and about, she realized with amazement that the rain had simply ceased. Raven reached out empathically in an endeavor to figure out just what the hell was going on –
•••••
They were there, now. Two of them. He had only wanted her there, but the other one wouldn't pose too much of a problem. He could feel no conscious power emanating from the other one, so her bringing along a companion really didn't matter.
What did matter was that she was there. As soon as he had felt her there, he expanded his control over every inch of the city within at least a kilometre. There would be no interruptions, and no more of that fucking rain. He didn't enjoy it much, to say the least. He moved fluidly through the empathic field that he had created – one moment he was on the roof of Metropolitan Government Office Building Four, the next he was on the silent street far below. A blink later, and he was directly behind her. She was rather on the short side, despite that she was levitating. She couldn't have been more than maybe five feet and four inches tall. So thin, too! It was no good trying to spy the color of her eyes or hair from this vantage though, so he opened his mouth –
•••••
"Hey."
Raven spun in midair, nearly losing her precarious balance, startled by the sound of a mellifluous yet foreign voice rising from behind her. There, in what space only seconds ago she was certain was unoccupied, stood a strange figure. He towered over her, even though she was deftly floating three inches from the ground (which made her about five and a half feet tall), and to say that she didn't find him menacing would have been a barefaced lie. His limbs were long and lanky – bordering on gaunt – and his head was crowned with a garland of shaggy, coal-colored hair that didn't quite reach his shoulders, but was certainly long enough to obscure his eyes. His skin was wan and ashen much like her own, and he was dressed from his neck down to his combat boots in black. He donned a black band shirt – Smashing Pumpkins, may the rest in eternal peace, Raven caught herself thinking before reminding herself that this guy was potentially dangerous – a pair of clinging bondage pants made of patent black leather. Black straps studded covered in metal studs adorned his neck and arms. He took a drawn out drag on a cigarette and then exhaled the smoke slowly, relishing the taste and texture.
"W-who the…fuck are you?"
"You like the Pumpkins, too? We have more in common than I would have thought."
The man was smiling at Raven. He was so relaxed. Could he not see that Raven and Robin were on the edge of blowing him half way across Jump City and back! Did he just read her –
"Indeed," he spoke. "I know you're both…scared. I know a lot of things. And yes, I did just empathize with you."
When "scared" crossed his teeth, his mouth turned upward into a sadistic smirk briefly. He was toying with them! The shock and fear she had initially felt were melting with an abandon, giving way to blind rage.
"Now, now, Raven. Azar taught you better than that, didn't she? Anger will get you nowhere…dear sist–"
•••••
SILENCE (he's here) SILENCE (he's in my mind)
In death's dream kingdom –
SILENCE (don't come here!) SILENCE (don't rape my mind!) SILENCE (DON'T RAPE MY – )
– Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom –
SILENCE
•••••
The straw that broke the camel's back. The Breaker that snapped the Beam of the Turtle and the Bear. It was all the same thing; the same result was achieved. Raven broke. Raven snapped. Ripples in reality itself burst outward from her body. Robin couldn't quite remember when that telepathic screech had torn through his mind. There was only a blank between the time he was about to carve the antagonistic bastard-in-black up with his birdarang and the moment when he realized that he was cradling his head on the concrete surface of the sidewalk. Covering his ears had done him no good, of course – the psyche-rending shriek existed only within his brain, but the survival instinct had taken over at that point. His body understood what had happened only in terms of pitch and tone, but Robin knew that Raven's cry had hardly occurred in the material realm.
As he came to, he realized he was wet. It was raining again. Moreover, he was being splashed – by a car speeding through a nearby puddle. Robin shook his head as his pupils dilated and contracted, adjusting to the grey light. There were people here. Had Raven teleported him? Or perhaps that strange guy? He quickly scanned the skyline and street as he shook the water off of himself and attempted to stand only to find his right leg painfully unresponsive. No. This was almost exactly where he had been before his mind had gone vacant. Where was Raven? Where was the – The bastard, Robin thought, clenching his teeth – guy?
"Raven!"
The only answer was the empty lull – As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass – of a late afternoon in the city.
«i do believe that that is the end of le première chapitre. : nodnod : reviews, comments, compliments, critiques, vicious verbal attacks; all are welcome – nay, demanded! even an angry response is better than no response at all. what did you like about le première chapitre? what did you hate about it? where do you think it should go from here? (i already have several ideas, but, to be quite sure, good suggestions will lead to a better story) all valid opinions will be taken account of and possibly incorporated in future installments of this, my evil fan fiction. if you really wish to harass me, my AIM name happens to be oOSumeragiOo – yes, my life is so boring here at college thati don't mind strangers IMing me. adieu. mark.»
«an added note: i've just finished revising ce chapitre (hopefully for the LAST time) . . . proofread it, shored up any plot holes and unintentional ambiguities, as well as inconsistencies with the following chapitres (id est: Robin being more severely injured than i initially imagined). i'm almost finished with le chapitre troisième's final revisions, and i've already begun freewriting le chapitre quatrième. désolé for the horrendous lapse of activity, but i'm (as i mentioned above) a college student, and i have a bit of a life beyond writing fan fictions. RAVEN AND ROBIN FOREVAAAAAAAAH! hee. . mark.»
