Raven's Christmas
(This story takes place about six months after my story "Where Were the Angels?" . You do not have to read that story to make sense of this one, but there are a couple of references.)
Raven tossed the remote onto the couch in disgust. Titan's Tower, with its giant TV and its eight million channels...
… and currently seven million of them were yule logs and the other one million were random Christmas specials.
She had lived on Earth long enough to get used to the idea of Christmas, the excitement (which she privately considered a little ridiculous) and the hoopla, but she still hadn't gotten used to the fact that on the day itself, when Christmas arrived, it suddenly got very, very... quiet.
Metaphorically quiet – she'd listened to the police scanner for an hour this morning and absolutely nothing was going on. Psychically quiet – Jump City's five million people, their noise and hubbub, usually droned in the back of her mind like a white noise machine, and the sudden lessening of those minds, those emotions, was like a sudden overwhelming silence. And literally quiet. All the Titans were gone. Robyn was in Gotham with Starfire, Cyborg was visiting an uncle or something, and Beast Boy was with the Doom Patrol.
She was all alone. She was bored.
Raven stood up impatiently and jerked her dark blue cloak around her, pacing around the great room. She'd listen to the police scanner. She'd meditated for an hour on the roof. She'd even cleaned the kitchen. She wasn't interested in her books (Beast Boy would drop his jaw if he heard that) and even spells were not appealing today.
As she walked Raven caught a glimpse of herself in the polished glass of the tower. Her cloak was pulled tight around her, her steps were quick and short, and her eyes glowed a little red in the darkness of her hood. She looked like a brat, stalking around like this. She should be ashamed of herself, being bored. Dull people were bored. People with no interests were bored. She was probably romanticizing the quiet, there were all kinds of petty crimes going on out there, if she had any sense of responsibility she would go out and –
Maybe you're lonely, offered a voice in her head.
Raven stopped abruptly. "No. I'm bored. But I'm not bored enough to talk to you, so go away."
Somebody laughed. Raven thought it sounded like Affection. Damn it. She ignored the laugh. "Boredom can be cured," she said firmly.
What had she not done? The gym needed cleaning. They still hadn't finished repacking all that stuff in the basement. That's what she'd do. A nice two or three hours in the basement, getting dusty and dirty and not letting herself think much.
Affection (Raven was pretty sure it was Affection) laughed again. He's on the roof.
"Who -" but she didn't even have to focus to know. After the quiet of the morning, Beast Boy popped up in her mind like a puppy in a church. He was a bird landing on Titan's Tower, now he was in the elevator, now he was...
Raven stepped back but she was still right in front of the great room's door when it slid open, startling Beast Boy. He immediately fumbled with a package he was carrying, hiding it behind his back. "Dude! I knew you were in here but what, were you going to mug me?"
"Don't be stupid," she snapped, glad her hood was up, strangely glad he was here (Shut up, Affection, shut up!) "I was going to clear out those files in the basement, they're all spread out from when Cyborg was doing that chemical analysis of the Slade artifacts. I thought you were with the Doom Patrol."
Beast Boy smiled sheepishly at her. "They went to New Zealand. Something about earthquakes. So I came on back. Didn't really have anywhere to be. Do you mind?"
"I don't care," she said in her usual flat tones. Beast Boy didn't seem to expect anything else, and nodded.
"I'm going to have some lunch," he said, "You want a peanut butter sandwich?"
Raven shrugged, so Beast Boy took out a couple of plates, stashing his package under the kitchen counter. "You know," he said, rummaging for the bread, "Christmas has been weird this year."
When you're not from Earth, Christmas is weird every year, Raven thought, but didn't say anything, just looked at him.
"After we fought Trigon, and after we went, I mean, you and me, went to heaven..." Beast Boy trailed off and concentrated on spreading peanut butter, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She had not invited him and he had wrecked her spell. Then she had cried in front of him and held his hand all night. The faintest mention of that episode was enough for her to turn bright red (as far as he could tell against her pale gray skin) and give him the silent treatment for a week.
Raven didn't say anything, and Beast Boy felt emboldened enough to continue, "And we talked to an angel! A real angel!" He pushed a sandwich toward her. "After that, Hark the Herald Angels sing just sounds strange. Maybe more like Hark the Herald Belathaphel yelling at me." He smiled a little. "He was okay, though."
Raven still didn't say anything, and Beast Boy didn't push his luck. He got some soy milk out of the fridge and they sat there, eating their peanut butter sandwiches, Raven knowing she should go get some work done.
Raven was putting her dishes in the sink when Beast Boy said behind her, "Raven... I got you a present."
She turned around, and he was holding out the package he'd been semi-hiding before. "I was gonna give it to you when I got back, but it's Christmas, so why not?"
The package was childishly wrapped, with way too much tape and the wrapping paper (blue with white snowflakes) sticking out at odd angles. It was slim and flat, like a book. Raven blushed furiously and muttered, "I thought we all agreed we weren't going to..."
"Aw, c'mon, Raven! Open it." Beast Boy was practically hopping from one foot to another with excitement, his green eyes glowing.
Slowly she undid the paper, and slid out a flat, polished item that looked like some kind of electronic device, almost like – "An iPad?"
"It's a Thosson Projector!" Beast Boy said excitedly. At her blank look he continued, "Cy saw them on Kickstarter and sponsored so he could get one of the first kits, then he helped me make this one." His shoulders drooped a little and he looked at her sheepishly again. "Well, okay, he made it, but I did help-"
"I believe you," Raven interrupted, still staring at it, "but what does it do?"
"I'll show you," Beast Boy said. He took the projector from her and pointed toward an open area in the middle of the room. "Go stand there."
She did as she was told while he propped the projector up on the kitchen counter and tapped on it for a few minutes. Then he came to stand beside her, saying, "It has to load, wait a minute."
The edges of the project began to glow white, then the entire thing blazed, then …
Raven thought for a second she was back in Azarath. She was standing on a wide plain, with red mountains in the distance on all sides. She could hear the scuffling and scrabbling of lizards running through the sparse greenery on the ground, and see little puffs of dust kicking up. The blue sky on the vast horizon spoiled the illusion of Azarath, but the place still looked familiar.
She turned to Beast Boy, who was grinning at her befuddlement. "What..?"
"Thosson Projector. You can use it to take panorama video of a location, and then reproduce it in a standalone 360-degree projection, like we're in right now. Of course if you go six feet you'll walk right through it, but isn't it great?"
"But where is this?" asked Raven, completely bewildered.
"Well... remember when we had to chase Robin down because he was hunting Slade but he really wasn't? He was hallucinating?"
Raven nodded.
"It seemed like that you didn't mind too much being out at 2am with it raining like crazy, and I wondered why. And I heard you tell Starfire that you liked the mountains, that they reminded you of Azarath."
Raven remembered now, too. It was the foothills northwest of Jump City. Once you got out of the forests the sky was vast, and the mountains were stark, and there was a deep quietness there that didn't have anything to do with Christmas, or people. Even in the rain with Robin running around yelling about Slade, there had been a definite peace there. For a moment it had reminded her of home...
"So I thought..." Beast Boy uncertainly, "that if I went and took a panorama of those mountains, you could set it up in your room, and any time you wanted to remember Azarath, you could..."
"Thank you," Raven said softly, looking at the mountains, her restlessness gone for the first time today.
She pushed her hood back and took a deep breath, imagining the sounds of chanting and the smell of incense, trying to remember Azarath when it was home, when it was perfect, before it was destroyed. She could feel Beast Boy watching her. Eventually he said, "Raven... do you ever think about the real meaning of Christmas?"
She tensed. One of the unspoken rules that enabled five teenagers – two of whom were aliens – to get along was that they did not talk religion. "I don't know what you-"
"Oh," Beast Boy said, realizing. "No. I don't mean that. Well, kinda. But if you sort of – put everything to one side – and just think of the story. Someone is sent here – to make everything okay. And today, we can think that everything is going to be all right."
"But if you're not a -" Raven began, and Beast Boy shook his head impatiently, running his hands through his hair. Raven remembered him telling her that he didn't think about things like this, he got too mixed up.
"I know. But isn't it a good idea, one day where you can just forget, and believe for a little while that the world is all right? That things happen for a reason, and that it's all going to work out?"
"And that I'm not half a demon, and that we don't spend most of our time fighting incredibly evil people?" Raven said sarcastically.
Beast Boy smiled, a little sadly. "Yeah. Considering what we do it's kind of stupid. But -" he moved a step closer to her, cautiously, "That's what I wanted to give you, Raven. Belathaphel said it, and I just want you to believe it – one day of peace. You're always remembering, and you're always sad, and you're always ashamed." Raven looked at him sharply and he said, "Well, you are. And I hate seeing it. I want you to be happy, Raven. I always want you to be happy. I lo-"
He stopped in the face of Raven's furious, white-faced, terrified glare.
Beast Boy sighed and subsided. "All right. But I do."
Raven turned away from him and looked back at the mountains again, thinking about what he'd said (except the last two words.) One day. Forgetting. Imagining everything would be all right. Just one day. Maybe that's why it was so quiet everywhere. Maybe she was restless because she couldn't accept it. Maybe if she tried.
She closed her eyes, imagining that kind of innocence. It was immense, impossible, and shattering. She shook her head, trying to hold back tears (why was she always crying in front of Beast Boy? Didn't she have more sense?) and tried to think about Azarath again. Home. Before all this started.
"It's too much," she whispered, half-to-herself, "It's too much of a gift. I couldn't accept it."
Beast Boy patted her back awkwardly, tugged gently on her hood. "I know. I know. But I hope maybe you will one day."
Raven impatiently rubbed her hands over her face and met his eyes. "I wasn't talking about the projector."
He smiled again. "I know."