A/N: Some of you may have already read this chapter because it's been on the site as a stand-alone for a couple of years now, in which case, feel free to proceed to the next chapter. Otherwise, here's my chapter dedicated to Raven, set on the morning the events of "Nevermore" took place. My goal is to demonstrate how I envision her empath ability. Plus there are a few great moments with Robin and Starfire.
Context: Raven ended the battle with Dr. Light pretty quickly when she lost control of Rage and nearly put the villain in a catatonic state. The next morning, she incinerated Beast Boy's tofu eggs and stormed out of the kitchen after one of the changeling's jibes about her outburst. Next, we see her meditating on the roof of Titan Tower, presumably to deal with her unruly emotions. This chapter begins between Raven's one woman war with the tofu eggs and Robin and Starfire informing her on the roof that someone has broken down the door to her room.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans.
Quoth the Raven
Raven needed more tea. She hadn't eaten yet that day, but the idea of food settling in her stomach seemed nauseating, so she figured she'd settle on tea. Unfortunately, the trip would require that she exit her room-which she hadn't done since her outburst at breakfast when she'd exploded tofu eggs in Beast Boy's face-and she doubted she'd be able to avoid her teammates on the way down to the kitchen. She grabbed her empty mug from her bedside table and headed down the hallway. She could have simply phased through the floors, the ceilings and the occasional wall, but she wanted to conserve her energy since she still hadn't completely recovered from her attack on Dr. Light the previous night, and the sleepless rest that followed hadn't helped.
She made it to the elevator without anyone approaching her. "Maybe everyone's out," she thought hopefully, and pushed the down button. But of course, she could sense four familiar presences nearby.
The elevator doors slid open, and in the split second between the glowering empath catching sight of the Tower's most hopelessly infatuated not-couple and the two Titans spotting their moody teammate and leaping to opposite sides of the elevator in embarrassment, Raven caught a rare glimpse of the pair's more intimate exchanges. Starfire and her omnipresent smile had sidled up next to the Titan leader to watch him show off his latest utility belt-friendly gadget, and the Boy Wonder had his arms wrapped around the golden-skinned alien, presumably to better to show the Earth tech-ignorant alien how to activate the new bird-a-rang's features.
Apparently the invention deserved much celebration, if the Boy Wonder's excitement had anything to do with the updated equipment, which Raven wasn't so sure it was. He wore a careless smile—a wide smile compared to his more common half-smile and even more frequent smirk, and Starfire, ever cheerful, seemed more jubilant than usual. Raven was tempted to let her companions' soothing emotions roll over her and take the edge away from her irritated countenance, but Stubbornness ruled at the moment, and she decided she'd rather stew in her own prideful anger until she could take care of her emotions through meditation.
"Just put your thumb and forefinger here," Robin directed, oblivious to the doors sliding into the walls. He placed his hands over Starfire's and directed her fingers to the appropriate places, "and press the spring like this," he pushed a couple of buttons, "to activate the release and—" The front half of the bird-a-rang shot off like a miniature jet, trailing behind it a long stream of scarlet-colored smoke. It would have collided with Raven, still standing mute in the hallway outside the elevator, except she used her telekinesis to stop the projectile mid-air and sent it clattering to the ground.
The gadget fell faster than the limp jaws of the embarrassed couple, but made twice as much noise.
The sight of Raven and her clenched fists prompted Robin to cut his demonstration short, and he took a large step away from his female companion as though to pretend he hadn't just held her to him like a love-sick teenager. Blushing furiously, he attempted to cover his move by approaching the elevator's button panel and asking, "Which floor, Raven?"
"Ground," she answered tacitly, irritated. "As if he could hide what just happened from an empath who can practically read his mind."
Awkward tension replaced the happiness, melting it away like a caustic substance. It pulled the pair's matching smiles into deep frowns, fully visible to Raven in the reflections on the steel-plated walls in front of her, and pulled their gazes to anywhere but at one another or Raven. In contrast, Raven stared directly ahead, pretending no one else stood beside her.
The elevator shuddered, and Raven panicked for a moment, fearful that her powers had escaped her control. "Duh," she realized, "it's just slowing down because we're nearly at the bottom." The doors opened once more and Raven stepped out slowly and headed in the direction of the kitchen. Robin and Starfire remained frozen at first, like as not waiting to make sure their foul-tempered teammate wouldn't spontaneously combust before following her.
"I won't bite," Raven spat over her shoulder. The couple took a few tentative steps out of the elevator, then resumed a normal walking pace.
"Wanna join Starfire and I for a movie?" Robin asked politely as he turned on the big screen TV.
"Yes, please," the Tameranean princess encouraged and settled onto the couch.
"No, thank you," Raven replied in her usual monotone. She set up a tea kettle to boil and walked over to the gargantuan window on the opposite side of the room. She calmed a bit at the view of the tranquil water that surrounded her home. "Do I really need to go back to my room?"
She needed to meditate. Normally, she dedicated a few hours each day to maintaining her inner-tranquility, but between dealing with Slade and Beastboy's merciless pranks, the sorceress hadn't meditated in three days.
And the strain had started to show.
"Are you quite certain?" Starfire asked in a cheerful voice. "It is supposed to be quite scary, and we have made the popcorn for the event. Cyborg usually throws it at the TV while watching large, sweaty men grapple small rubber balls who chase one another around a field of grass—"
"Uh, Star we talked about this, remember? It's a sport; we call it football," Robin interjected kindly.
"Yes! Cyborg throws popcorn at the TV while watching the ball of feet, but Robin says it is best for eating."
Raven took a deep breath before replying with a simple "I'm good, Starfire." Usually she could tolerate listening to the culturally-warped observations of the energetic alien girl, but recent events had exceeded her patience. Besides, she'd failed when she'd tried meditating in her room, surrounded by all manner of dark, depressing objects and colors. Usually they provided the perfect environment for her, but today the room had felt suffocating; she needed a wide open space if she wanted to meditate, "Which I do."
Usually she did quite well when it came to hiding her emotions, but last night, Rage had overwhelmed her during the combat against Dr. Light in a sadistic display of fear-inducing sorcery and needlessly aggressive self-righteousness. And when the police had come to arrest the quivering villain after his terrifying journey beneath Raven's cloak, he all but ran into their squad cars to seek asylum.
Yes, she needed to meditate.
Raven flipped her hood down and levitated, ready to pull the tattered pieces of her self-control back together.
But her mind was all a flurry with scattered thoughts and memories of the ordeal with Dr. Light—the frightened look on her teammates' faces after seeing her four red eyes and the shadowy tentacles of black magic she had created with a mere compulsion; the ruined suit and weaponry of her enemy as he lay, petrified and confused at the base of her feet; Robin's panicked voice as he called her name to pull her back into reality; Beast Boy's hurt look after she'd so impatiently rejected his invitation to breakfast.
"He shouldn't have pushed me," she told herself. She tucked away the niggling guilt, clamped down on her wayward thoughts and focused on her mantra. "Azarath metrion zinthos," she whispered. "Azarath metrion zinthos, Azarath metrion zinthos, Azarath metrion zinthos…"
All sound from outside of her corporeal body faded as she sank into a relaxing trance. She smiled inside herself, already calmer than she had been in days. In such a state, her consciousness extended far beyond that of her mortal boundaries, to all living things in a half-mile radius: she was the green grass and the earthworm that plowed beneath it, the birds in the sky and fish in the water—their focus, their desperation and tranquility, belonged to her, and she relished in it.
She also felt the empathic signatures of her teammates, but she'd lose them within the diverse array of life on the tiny bay island. She felt Robin and Starfire behind her and finally gave in and let their contentedness wash over her. She reached out for Beast Boy and Cyborg, but couldn't quite lock onto to them. Perplexing as it sounded, Raven somehow understood that the two were simultaneously far away and close by. "A fluke, clearly; another indication of my need to meditate." She brushed the thought away and threw herself full force into the collective life force of the island.
But her serenity didn't last long. Distracting thoughts crowded the periphery of her mind, pulling at her concentration. She felt herself descending back into reality, weighed down by the burden of bodily attachment, subject to the forces of gravity that only the soul could truly escape.
An image of Robin entered her mind, and she was nearly overcome by the idea of running her hand along the strong curve of his jaw, or the lean muscles of his arms. She thought about his lips: "I never really considered it before, but his smile is incredibly expressive—it really makes up for the emotions he hides behind his mask."
Raven's lips upturned in a small grin. She felt coquettish yet shy, sitting next to him on the couch. But should she move closer to him?
A lance of Fear speared through her, breaking her out of the trance.
"Eeep!" A high-pitched voice screamed behind her. Raven turned around to look for the disturbance, just in time to see Starfire throw the bowl of popcorn into the air with a shriek as a large, tentacled sea monster rose up from the ocean and clambered onto the deck amidst the yells of the ship's crew.
Raven shook her head in annoyance. "I don't know where those thoughts came from, but I do not have time for them," she decided, confused but comforted that at least her teammates couldn't see the blush on her cheeks.
"Azarath metrion zinthos. Azarath metrion zinthos…"
The blush deepened as Raven became aware of Starfire's quivering body next to hers. "Should I hold her?" She asked herself. She wrapped her arms around Starfire's bare waist. "I wonder if she has any idea what that does to me," Raven joked wryly. The empathy opened up her eyes. Those definitely weren't her feelings.
"It's okay, Starfire," Robin said, pulling Raven's attention once more to the couple on the couch. She whirled around and saw Starfire's head resting on Robin's, her body presumably much closer than it had been when the movie had begun.
The tea kettle whistled for Raven's attention and she sighed inwardly. "Maybe I shouldn't have tried to meditate in the common room after all." She walked back to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of tea and silently made her way back to the doorway.
"Did we disturb you, Raven?" Starfire piped up from the couch. Raven crossed the threshold into the hallway before facing her, the tea cup cradled in her hands. She raised an eyebrow at the ironic sight of the super-strong alien princess cradled up against the vulnerable side of a mortal, teenage boy.
"Were we too loud?" She prompted, peeking out from Robin's cape, which she had sprawled across herself like a barrier against the seeweed-covered creatures on the screen before her.
"Only your thoughts," Raven replied mysteriously, and pressed the door release so it closed in front of her.
"Of course those weren't my thoughts," Raven realized, irritated. "Just my lack of meditation, which is obviously affecting my self-control more than I had believed. My empathic senses must have reacted to Robin and Starfire's mutual attraction and influenced my subconscious." She nodded to herself, nearly satisfied. "But why did my empathic powers produce thoughts so disturbingly specific to what was going on?" What if she had actually been reading their minds? "No," she reasoned. "Their emotions simply inspired reactionary thoughts in my mind."
She considered her teammates' affection for one another as she entered the elevator, desperate for a distraction from herself. They were best friends, clearly attracted to one another, "like my experience a few minutes ago isn't enough evidence." On the whole, it was blatantly obvious to everyone who watched them that they would fit so well together as a couple, so why didn't they just admit their feelings already? She snorted. "Clearly not everyone can deal with repression like an empath."
The elevator dinged cheerfully as it stopped on the top floor. "No one will would disturb me on the roof," she thought, and headed for the short flight of stairs that would take her to the roof's entrance.
Raven sighed upon stepping foot on the roof's warm, cement floor. "And to think I tried settling for the common room." The view here would provide an uninterrupted panorama of the Tower's surroundings, the only sounds that of the rushing wind around her and crashing waves below, "a decided improvement from Starfire's squeaking."
The half-demon sorceress floated a few feet off of the ground, crossed her legs, and took in a deep breath.
"Soon, now," she consoled herself. Clearly she needed to focus on controlling her empathic ability, rather than letting it control her. Like all of her other powers, empathy had its drawbacks: healing others exhausted her; telekinesis required such focus it sometimes left her blind to other attacks; telepathy and empathy both led to a gross invasion of privacy. Thankfully, telepathy didn't present too much of a problem for her because she seldom used it, "Out of principle," she'd reasoned long ago, "after all, I wouldn't want someone to do that to me." But the latter ability was inherently more problematic because she couldn't turn it off. She tried to anyway, if only to keep the others out of her head; she had strict boundaries regarding her own feelings—namely that they weren't any one else's business, and she wouldn't allow the mental goings-on of others to influence her personal thoughts no matter her relationship toward them. She'd learned years before the consequences of allowing another person dominion over her.
Her teammates didn't understand her, that was obvious. "At least they try to respect me most of the time," she thought. "Except Beast Boy," he didn't even know how to act around her most of the time. She briefly wondered if explaining everything to him might help him to tolerate her a bit better, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. "If he knew what thoughts I just had in the living room about our friends, I'd never live it down."
How unjust of him to condemn her as he had, she thought, irritated and experiencing newfound vindication for her actions that morning."He has no idea how much work it is to keep everything under control," she thought, irritated. It wasn't as though she didn't try to respect everyone's privacy, but if she didn't keep her guard up then every once in a while someone else's emotions would slip through her mental barriers.
"Which brings me here," she reminded herself, determined to lock her emotions and insecurities away for just a few hours.
"Azarath metrion zinthos…" she chanted. "Azarath metrion zinthos… Azarath metrion zinthos…"
Seconds, minutes, hours later—Raven didn't know how long since she had no concept of time while meditating—the door to the roof opened up with a loud bang. It jolted Raven out of her meditation, though she pretended as though she hadn't noticed.
"Starfire," Robin admonished quietly.
"Sorry," Starfire laughed nervously.
Raven sighed inwardly. She resigned to ending her meditation early regardless of how dissatisfactory the spell had proven to be: for unknown reasons, she had been plagued by alternating, fierce mood swings despite her trance-like state. "Happiness, guilt, and bravery; how odd."
The pair approached, and Raven sensed the awkward tension from the elevator resume with full force.
"Raven, are you okay?" Robin inquired. "We stopped by your room and the door's been knocked down."
A scant pause passed as Raven tried to tamp down on the panic setting in, but she was overwhelmed by what only be described as a fit of giggles, characterized by maniacal laughter. "More mood swings?" She pondered, horrified at herself and embarrassed by the twin shocked expressions of Robin and Starfire, who had raised their hands up to cover their faces as though fearful of an explosion.
"I need to be alone," she said. The sorceress flipped her hood up and rushed away, leaving behind her bewildered teammates.
Raven rounded the corner toward her room and instantly spotted her door lying down on the floor, as though ripped off of its hinges by a great force. "Cyborg? But that wouldn't make sense." She walked inside and used her telekinesis to pick the door up and place it gently back in place. Another step forward and she caught sight of her magic mirror—the doorway to her emotions—lying on the floor, as though someone had dropped it.
"No," she cried, sinking to her knees and grasping the cold iron in her hand. "Beast Boy," she realized, and activated the spell that would bring her to the mischievous changeling as he dallied with her savagely guarded emotions.
"Nevermore," quoth the Raven, and she vanished into the black of her mind.
Let me know what you think, eh? Where are the weaknesses, what would you have liked to have seen more of?
Thanks for reading!
Next chapter: Beast Boy gives Terra advice on how to interact with the other Titans.