The clouds in the sky obscure every star, plane, and satellite. There is nothing and no one to bear witness to Raven as she stands on the roof of a thirty story building.
The soft light graces her features, giving her skin a porcelain quality and making the red of her lips deeper and accentuating their natural pout.
She knows she is beautiful--and that is not vanity speaking, but truth.
As part demon everything about her appearance is meant to be alluring: from the color of her hair to the sound of her voice.
She is a miracle, you know.
Her father tried for years and years to have a daughter only to be met with failure. But he always gets what he wants in the end, as she has learned from the many torturous years she spent with him.
It is time for this miracle to die.
Even the the wind agrees. It blows from behind her in strong, inconsistent gusts. Strands of her own purple hair dance in front of her.
This building is under construction so her body won't be discovered until morning. It is a comforting thought, as grim as it may sound.
With the tips of her shoes just barely poking out over the edge, she looks out towards the city covered in smog. It is filthy and reeks of sin. Farther out, there are better places. Places worth being saved. People worth dying for.
Raven closes her eyes and extends her arms out wide, like a bird ready to fly. With the next gust of wind she rises on her toes and teeters forward off the ledge. For a pristine moment, she really can convince herself she is flying. Having never been one for idle fantasies, she opens her eyes.
She is falling. Her instincts try to kick in but with a will of steel she fights the urge to simply fly as the ground comes at her at an alarming rate.
This needs to happen, and yet even as she remains determined to fall, she finds herself forced off course by something hard slamming into her side and knocking the wind out of her.
She processes arms wrapping around her and the impact lessened by them once propelled back into the building she jumped off of.
Glass sprinkles the ground and she feels a few stray shards make it past her human shield and slice her shins in a few odd places.
Once she remembers how to breathe, Raven registers she has rolled to a stop atop her 'rescuer's' body and is half wrapped in a sturdy yellow material that seems to have also been used to shield from the glass.
Not dead, she tells herself. Saved by a bird in flamboyant colors.
She shoves off of the costumed guy and glares at him as he quickly stands, assessing the damage made to the room--nothing here but a few stray tools and a sea of support beams.
Raven has only been on Earth a week or so, but she knows who this is. "Robin," she says, more to herself than him.
He jerks his attention back to her. "That was a stupid thing to do."
She can't see his eyes behind the mask but she has a feeling he's glaring at her. The nerve of it!
"Hey, I wasn't calling out for help," she growls at him. "Don't you have more important things to be doing? I'm sure if you put a light in the sky your bat will find you."
They say if you speak of the devil, he will come. Not true. But it must be so for the Dark Knight because he glides in through the window in that exact moment.
"Good work Robin," Batman says in a deep and obviously false voice.
"Apparently I shouldn't have bothered." Robin strides to the broken window and leans down to see the street below. He's not leaving but has clearly dismissed Raven as Batman's problem.
Batman pauses, gauging how to approach the obviously miffed teenager who just tried to kill herself. "Your parents must be worried about you," he says carefully.
"Don't patronize me," she snaps back.
Robin turns back and says, in a considerably less gentle tone, "How about you tell us why you jumped off the building. Two more seconds and you would be dead."
"I slipped," is her sarcastic reply.
"Let's get you back home," Batman says.
"I have no home." Making another attempt on her own life with these two around would just be stupid so she turns to leave by way of stairs. "And if you think I'm going anywhere with you then you've got another thing com--hey!"
Something stabs into her side and she spins around to glare at the bat. She immediately summons her powers but whatever she's been injected with takes effect and the glowing blue energy emitting from her palms quickly fades.
Both Batman and Robin mark the magic coming from her hands with a down tilt of their heads and a flare of surprise in their otherwise stoic emotional walls.
Raven stumbles and barely lets out a breath before darkness envelopes her. When she wakes up, she finds herself laying on an uncomfortable bench under the glare of florescent lights.
The sounds of the world slowly comes back into focus. She is surrounded by the sound of paper rusteling, phones ringing, and indistinguishable voices.
She sits up and stares at the men and women in uniform and glances down to make sure she isn't hand cuffed like those on wooden benches across the room.
The police station.
"My heroes," she mutters, sitting up.
"Hey kid, come on over here." An officers with a friendly smile gestures to the chair across from her. Once Raven does as she's told, the police woman says, "Robin brought you in. He believes you're a run away."
Raven doesn't reply, but she can sense genuine concern coming from this woman so she forces the scowl off her face, opting for a neutral expression.
"What's your name sweetheart?"
"Raven," she replies.
The woman nods, writing it down. "Alright, and can you tell me where you live?"
"Nowhere. My parents are dead."
Sadness flows off the woman and Raven decides she likes her. Her compassion is admirable, Raven hasn't met many people like that and none since coming to Gotham.
Maybe it's that kindness that lulls Raven into letting herself her be processed and eventually taken to a place where children without families go.
It's not until she's sitting on her assigned bunk bed while other kids run around in the halls that she realizes how stupid she was.
She really should have just teleported herself out of the police station. Will killing herself in this place scar these other kids?
Meh.
Not that big of a concern. Besides, she's seen plenty of dead and she's turned out alright.
Sort of.
Sighing, she hops of the top bunk and closes the door of the room, instantly muffling the noises in the hall.
From the hall someone says, "Oooh, she shut the door!"
"That's against the rules," another whispers.
"I'm telling!"
Footsteps speed away and Raven growls. She'll have to make this quick then.
Without room for second thoughts, she strides to the dresser where a clutter of colored papers and glitter sit.
One of the kids was crafting something that to her looks like a purple dinosaur.
She picks up a pair of lime green safety scissors and with the strength of her demon blood rams it into her neck and pulls it out in one swift motion.
ROBINRobin can't believe what has become of himself. As the future Batman he should be given more respect than this. Surely the likes of Blue Beetle or Red Hood can be doing this.
It's a good thing no one can see him perched in this tree. The bird jokes would never stop. It's things like this that keep people from taking him seriously.
He has much better things to be doing than running surveillance on a moody teenager.
Bored, he watches her hop off the bed and slam the door shut. Then she picks up some scissors and stabs the artery in her neck.
Robin curses and swings out of the tree, running to the window and easily sliding it open.
By the time he gets inside the girl is laying on the floor with blood pooling onto the hardwood floor.
She isn't even trying to stop the bleeding so Robin kneels down and presses a hand to her neck.
"Hold still," he instructs.
But already the blood loss is too much. He's seen a countless number of people bleed out so he knows it's too late. The blood that manages to ooze through his fingers slows to a stop, as does her breathing.
"Dead," he tells himself.
For some odd reason, his nerves are still on edge as if they know more is coming. He knows to trust his instincts but he's not exactly sure what they're trying to tell him.
Robin breathes deeply and considers his options.
He'll have to tell Batman of course. But should he simply leave this matter for the coroner? There is something about this definately not sitting right.
The pounding of footsteps in the hall reminds him of the others present and he quickly goes to the door and wedges a chair under the knob.
The blood on his gloves smears onto both the door and chair.
He contacts Batman while setting to work with cleaning traces of another person having been present.
"Robin I'm busy."
"We have a problem." Robin stares down at the girl who's purple hair is soaking up blood.
"What happened?"
"The girl is dead. I didn't reach her in time."
"How?"
Robin squats down and examines the scissors still clutched in her hand. "That's the thing, she did it with a pair of safety scissors. Stabbed herself in the neck." Robin presses his lips together, thinking. "She didn't even hesitate."
"Get out of there," Batman says with a hint of weariness in his tone. "I need you back at the cave. There's something happening in Egypt the League has just gotten word of."
Before Robin even stands up, the girl begins to glow a soft blue light and sparks shoot across her skin.
Robin curses in his native tongue and shoots upright. On the other end of his communicator, Batman mumbles a curse of his own.
"Scratch that Robin, looks like it's too late." This time Batman doesn't try to hide the exaustion in his voice. "They're all dead."
"What a coincidence," Robin replies, fighting to keep his voice calm. "Mine just woke up."