Fear and Doubt
A Teen Titans Fanfiction by Jacob McDonald
Opening notes: Another one shot to tide you over while I finish up Chapter 9 of Jump City Cantata. This one is, like my other one shots, Ravencentric, and deals largely with her fears and dobts. Thus the title. It's been sitting around on my hard drive for months now, and I decided to finish it off and post it tonight. Hope everyone likes this one, and I'll see you at the closing comments.
Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own Teen Titans.
Raven was running.
They had been fighting... who? Her mind was fuzzy. The last thing she seemed to be able to remember was Robin screaming at her to run, to get away from...
The Scarecrow. That was it. The spindly armed super villain had come from Gotham in an attempt to hit Batman where it hurt; his family.
The Titans had been out matched, but Robin had refused to give up, even as his brain was being fried by hallucinogenic chemicals. Even when Cyborg had gone down, even after Beast Boy had been tossed of the pier, unconscious, he had still fought. Even as she herself had taken a nasty blow to the head, he had simply stood up with Starfire's help, and yelled at her to run.
And run she had, her brain too addled to do anything except follow his orders. How long she'd been running, she didn't exactly know, but now, as she regained her bearings, she slowed to a stop. Looking about, she shivered.
They had been fighting near the waterfront on the far side of the docks, close to the city's edge. She must have run further North, because now she stood in the middle of a narrow street, lined with run down houses and flickering street lamps that poured dull, yellow light into pools of illumination. A light snowfall had covered the ground in white powder, and the flakes that still fell twinkled merrily in the glow. The only sounds were the wind and the soft crackling that the year's first snow always makes. Almost like softly breaking glass.
It was an astounding contrast to the loud, violent battle she'd left... how long ago? She was still struggling to regain her senses.
"Must have been hit harder than I thought..." she whispered, almost afraid to disturb the tranquil night air. Feeling something warm and wet on the side of her face, she touched her cheek and her fingers came away red. She needed someplace to get out of the cold and patch herself up. Then she would call Robin and Starfire and get new orders.
Raven started walking down the street, looking for any condemned houses, or uninhabited ones. Her luck seemed to be running out though, and after three blocks, she stopped and gazed up at the sky. Giving up and sitting down in the snow seemed like such an easy thing to do. Fighting these endless battles to save people who would never see her as anything better than 'creepy' was getting old. Her will to continue had been failing lately, and with her eighteenth birthday fast approaching, she was considering leaving the Titans. Giving up and dying now would save her the trouble of explaining it to Robin anyway...
Glancing to her left, she noticed a building slightly larger than the rest of the houses. Taking a closer look, she saw stained glass windows and large double doors in it's front, carved with crosses.
A church, set back from the road, in the middle of a slum. At half past midnight no one would be there. Looking back up at the moon, she frowned. Luna was playing with her this night.
Walking over to the large doors, she tested the locks and was surprised to find they pushed right open. Glancing around behind her one last time, she ducked in and shut the doors against the chill wind.
The church wasn't much larger than the houses that surrounded it, but because the chapel area dominated almost the whole interior, it still looked large. Several rows of pews, set up in two sections with a center aisle, covered three quarters of the floor. The rest was made up of a small podium that sat next to a long wooden table that held nothing except a bowl of bread, a bottle of wine, and a two foot tall silver cross.
Stained glass windows depicting various biblical scenes lined the walls, and a larger one behind the podium was backlit by an artificial light. It held a simple cross.
Moonlight was too weak to illuminate the rest of the windows, so the only light in the church was the red and gold from the backlit cross. It cast shadows everywhere, but Raven was used to shadows. In fact, they were the only thing she found comforting about the whole place.
Staring at the stained glass cross, she contemplated her demonic heritage and the wicked fate that she would someday have to face. Her father, Trigon, would make his bid for the conquest of this dimension sooner or later, and she would have to stop him, alone.
Suddenly, standing in the midst of such a quaint and yet holy place, her fate seemed much more important than she'd been giving it credit for. She'd spent too much of the time she'd been given to prepare with her friends, squandering it by going out for pizza and watching movies. She was supposed to be mentally and physically arming herself for a battle with the Master Demon of Azarath, not hanging out.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..." she whispered to the cross.
"Is there someone there?"
Raven jumped at the voice, looking about wildly. Her eyes finally came to rest on an old man wearing all black, save the one strip of white in his collar. A priest. He was standing next to an open door she hadn't noticed before, set deep in the shadows of the corner.
As he stepped further into the church, she noticed his slow gait and how stiff he seemed. When he got closer she could see why. His face was lined and ancient, and his pale blue eyes stared straight out into nothing, not perceiving her at all. He was old, blind, and the chill in the unheated church was probably getting to him.
"I can hear you breathing, you know." he said conversationally, "You might as well just tell me who you are." Raven was astounded that his voice still sounded so strong. It wasn't a voice she would associate with an old blind priest.
"I'm sorry, Father. I don't mean to hide, you just startled me."
"Ah, a young lady has visited me tonight. How lucky I am." he smiled, as he stopped not three feet from her.
"Yes... sorry to simply walk in like this, but I need someplace to rest for a few minutes, and I thought that there wouldn't be anyone here."
The priest smiled wider, "The churches doors are always open to people in need. What is it I can do for you tonight? Food? Drink? A place to rest your head?" before she could really react, he had reached out and touched her face, "What is your name child?"
"Raven." she replied automatically. Usually she would have flinched away from someone who was trying to touch her, but now she found it oddly comforting.
He jerked his hand back suddenly and rubbed his fingers together. Bringing them to his nose he sniffed them, and she saw they were stained red with her blood. "You're bleeding, Raven." he said quietly.
"I know... I was hit in the head..."
"By what?"
She managed to stop herself from telling him it was a steel girder that had fallen from a loading crane, "A branch... it fell off a tree in the wind and hit me pretty hard..." Weakness disgusted her, but her own weakness was something she simply couldn't stand. She found herself making an excuse, "It doesn't even really hurt-"
"Nonsense." he shook his head with a chuckle, "Let's get you patched up, then we can talk some more, okay?"
She needed to get back to Robin and Starfire. She needed to help save Jump City from the Scarecrow. She had a duty to defend people's lives.
But none of that seemed very important right now.
"Okay." she said, and followed him as he started back down the aisle.
Fifteen minutes later, they were seated across from each other in front of a desk in a small, cozy office in the back of the church. Tea was warming on a hot plate near the one window, and a small box of medical supplies was open next to them on the desk.
Now then," the blind priest said as he finished applying a bandage to Raven's head, "why don't you tell me why a young lady is wandering the streets in this part of town all by herself in the middle of the night."
"I'm hardly defenseless." Raven replied with a light edge to her voice, "I'm not scared of a few slums."
"So why were you wandering about then?" he quirked an eyebrow and smiled.
"I-" Raven paused. For some reason, she didn't want him to know the truth. He couldn't see her face, so he wouldn't recognize her like the rest of Jump City would, and he wouldn't judge her based on her slightly other-worldly appearance.
A normal conversation would be nice for once.
"I guess I'm just lonely..." she smiled sadly, "I mean, I have friends, but none of them really understand me. None of them understand what I have to do someday."
"What is it you have to do?" the priest leaned back in his chair.
"I have to... fight my Father for control of... our family business."
"Why is that?"
"If I don't... he'll expand into Jump City and start running other people out of business." she was starting to warm up to the story, "If I don't stop him, thousands of people might lose their jobs."
"What is it your family does?" the priest started to clean up the medical kit.
"It's a conglomerate corporation that owns interests in multiple markets. We're called Trigoncorp."
"Never heard of it." he shrugged as he stood and walked across the office to put the kit back in the drawer he'd retrieved it from earlier.
"Not surprising. We're a parent company, not a well known name." Raven marveled at how he was able to navigate the church and office perfectly, even though she was positive he couldn't see.
"Well, it seems to me that your friends may not understand your problem because you've never explained it very well, or perhaps you've never placed very much emphasis on it. If you don't act like it's a big deal, they wont see it as one."
"You're probably right." Raven smiled weakly, "I haven't been preparing for it as much as I should have."
"Well, no time like the present."
"I'll have to get started tomorrow, first thing. There's still a few things I need to take care of tonight."
The priest seemed surprised, "You're going back out yet? Young Raven, it's cold and late. Stay here tonight. I have a cot in the next room over you can sleep on, and food for you to eat if you need it."
"Thank you for the offer Father, but I can't." Raven frowned, "I really have to finish what I started tonight."
"Another fight?"
"Something like that."
"It sounds to me like you could use a bit of a rest." he chuckled.
"A vacation sounds wonderful..." Raven closed her eyes and briefly indulged in a fantasy of sunny beaches and half dressed cabana boys, "But I have people who rely on me here in Jump. I can't just take off."
"Ah, I see." he chuckled and motioned to his sightless eyes, "A little joke there."
"Very little." Raven agreed with a smile and a laugh.
"Tell me a little about yourself, Raven." he smiled as he sat back down, "I don't get enough time to talk with young people now a days. How old are you?"
"I'll be eighteen in just a few months." she paused, not knowing if she should give a description of herself to him. She decided to ask, "Have you even been able to see?"'
"No." he shook his head, "I was born blind."
"So it wouldn't help to tell you my eye color or anything then, would it?"
"Not really. You can tell me why you make such interesting sounds when you walk. Are you wearing a cape of some sort?"
"No... a cloak." Raven thought franticly, "It's very warm."
"Well, it's quite cold outside, so that is helpful. Anyone special in your life? A boyfriend? A best friend?"
"Oh, well..." she blushed, and was glad he couldn't see it. What would it hurt to tell him, anyway? "I do have a good friend... Kori. We kind of... like the same guy though. And he likes her."
"What is his name?"
"Rob." she blushed deeper. Saying it aloud made it so much more real. Her crush on Robin wasn't very strong, but she couldn't help but admire the young man who could do so much without any powers or enhanced ability at all. She knew he'd always like Starfire... hell, he loved her. She could feel it. Admiring him from afar was the best she could ever hope for.
"Have you talked to him about your feelings?"
"Oh, no. I'd be too embarrassed, and besides, I'm not really the dating sort."
"Right, right."
Silence descended between them for a short time, before Raven sought to break it. She spoke softly, almost afraid to voice her fears to someone who was, essentially, a stranger, "Sometimes I think... that maybe there's no one in the world who could ever love me."
"Oh, come now." the old priest smiled at her, "You can't mean that."
"I do though... I'm not the easiest person in the world to get along with, and I'm not at all good looking, and I can't ever love anyone back, and-"
"Why not?" he broke into her self-hate tirade.
"Excuse me?" Raven came back to herself, looking up at him as if she just realized he was there.
"Why can't you love anyone back if they love you?"
"Um..." she'd really dug a hole now, "You see... it's... complicated."
"Oh, well then." he smiled and she blushed, "I've been around the block a few times, Raven. Why don't you try me."
"You really want to know the truth?" she sounded afraid.
"Whatever the truth may be Raven, you've proven to me that you're just as normal and ordinary as any other teenager, regardless of being a Titan."
Her shoulders sagged, "So you knew."
"The cloak gave it away." he chuckled, "How many Raven's run about getting bashed in the head in the middle of the night wearing a cloak and going on about their friend 'Rob.'"
"Oh no..." she blushed a bright red, "PLEASE don't tell the papers about that. I'd never hear the end of it from Beast Boy."
"My lips are sealed." the kindly old priest reached out and patted her knee, "Now why is it that you can't love anyone back?"
"My Father..."
"The one who owns the corporation."
"It's more like he leads an army of demons and he wants to leave my home dimension of Azarath to conquer this plane of existence. Earth is just where he'll start."
The blind Father blinked.
"I know, it's a little much to take in, but... I'm half demon Father. I don't deserve your kindness, or the love of any man in this dimension. I'm... evil."
"You most certainly are not evil, Raven." he replied sternly, "You might come from an evil background, but you are a good soul. Why else would you protect this city so?"
"I know that, but... I can feel his essence in side of me... growing, getting stronger... some day soon, I'll have to face him. If I'm not ready for that... he'll destroy me and take over the Earth."
"My, that does sound like an important job. We'd better get one of the good guys on it right away."
Raven smiled, "Stop it. You're making all of my excuses sound so lame."
The blind man leaned forward, "Maybe that's because they are."
Raven blinked, then burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that the window cracked. Seeing her powers getting out of hand, she calmed down and centered herself again. "Sorry about the window. I'll get that replaced."
"Oh, don't worry." he waved it off, "The kids in the area are constantly-"
He was cut off by a resounding BANG!
"The doors." Raven stood up, "Someone is here... someone... not friendly."
"Do you think someone followed you here?"
"It's possible... I left a bit of a blood trail, then my foot prints in the snow would have been easy to follow..."
An eerie voice drifted to them from the chapel, "Oh Raven..."
"Scarecrow." she whispered, a hint of fear edging into her voice, "Stay here, Father."
"This is my church-"
"Stay." she commanded him. She sounded so intense that he just nodded.
She walked slowly, quietly to the door of the office and looked out into the chapel area. It the dim red and gold light, she could make out the spindly form of a man moving about the shadows. Tensing, she prepared to chant her mantra and lash out at him with her powers.
"Raven," he said in his cultured, high society voice, freezing her where she stood, "why don't you come out and face your fears? Maybe you will be up to the challenge... your friends definitely... weren't."
"No..." she whispered, and his head snapped around to look directly at her, "you're lying... Robin-"
"Is dead." Scarecrow chuckled, "Though he did put up a better fight than that alien girl. What was her name?" the fact that he was refering to her friends in the past tense was not lost on Raven, "Ah yes. Starfire."
"No." Raven shook her head as she floated up off the ground and forward into the chapel, "You're just saying that to scare me, to make me afraid."
"I wouldn't lie to you, Raven..." Scarecrow smiled up at her, that toothless void of a smile.
"You're trying to kill me. I have no reason to believe anything you say." Raven held her hands out to her sides, "Azarath, Metrion, Zinth-"
"Do you want to know what Robin's worst fear was?" his voice froze her again. How did he do that? "He was afraid of many things, failing chief among them. Most of all though... he was afraid of you."
Her arms dropped to her sides, and she choked out, "What?"
"You, Raven. And what you represent. Evil." she shook her head and put her hands over her ears, but couldn't seem to block out his voice, "Your powers are dark, your soul is dark, and some day... you will learn to kill."
"NO!" she screamed at him, "I wont ever-"
"YOU WILL!" he shouted back, "You know you will!"
"I... I can't..." she slowly floated to the ground.
"Why don't you let me end this for you Raven. I can end... your torment." Scarecrow started forward, and narrowed his eyes, "Just one little injection..." he held up a needle, "and it's all over."
"I... I..." Raven fell to her knees, "I don't know what to do..."
"Raven!" she heard the voice of the priest call to her from the door to the office, "Raven, don't give up!"
"Father?" she stood up quickly, "Stay back! He'll kill us both!"
"I'll let the priest live if you die in his place, Raven... then you could even go out protecting lives, like you've been fooling yourself into believing was what you were meant to do..."
"No! Raven!" the priest started forward, but Raven held up a hand and stopped him with a wall of black energy.
"No, Father. Stay back." she turned back to Scarecrow, "I'll... I'll do it."
"No, Raven!" the priest shouted.
"This way... Trigon can't attack this dimension. This way... the world will be safe." Raven shook her head and chuckled, "Two birds with one stone." looking over at the blind priest, she smiled, "That's a little joke."
"Not a very funny one." the priest shook his head sadly, "Raven, if you're gone, who will protect this city? Who will talk to only blind priests in the middle of the cold, dark night?"
"It's better that-"
"Raven." he said in that stern, strong voice, "There is the easy way to do things, and the right way." she blinked, "Are you going to do the easy thing, or the right thing? It will be harder on you if you choose to live, yes, but will it be better in the long run if this city, and the people that care about you loose you?"
Raven's eyes softened, and a single tear trailed down her cheek, "You're right, Father."
"Too late for that, I'm afraid." Scarecrow stabbed at Raven's neck with the needle, having snuck up behind her while she was talking to the priest.
The priest heard a thunk, and a cry of pain, and his heart almost stopped, "Raven?" he shouted.
"I'm fine, Father." Raven replied from where she held the Scarecrow's wrist in her hand, twisting it to the side until he dropped the needle, "I apoligize in advance for this, Father, but it's about to get loud."
"Oh, no my dear. Do what you have to."
"I don't think so!" Scarecrow's other hand shot forward and he sprayed his hallucinogenic fear toxin in her face. Raven cried out as it burned at her eyes, making her momentarily blind. Reeling backwards, she tripped and fell against the table that held the cross.
Almost instantly the visions started. Her father, destroying the city, her friends broken bodies littering the snow covered ground, the priest being tortured by Scarecrow...
She herself killing people at the forefront of a massive demon army...
"No..." she growled as she pulled herself to her feat again, "Fear is an irrational emotional response caused by chemical transmitters in the brain. It can be repressed by strong enough force of will, and redirected into positive-"
"Keep up with the psycho babble if you want, my dear, but eventually, you'll have to succumb to your fears." Scarecrow leaned forward in a greedy manor, "Now tell me... what is it that the creepy, frightening girl from the Teen Titans fears most?"
Raven looked up at him through bloodshot, tear soaked eyes and pinned him with the most enraged stare he'd ever seen, "You want to know what I fear most?" she grinned as her eyes burned with red, demonic light. In a voice very much not her own, she growled out, "Behold! The terrors of Azarath!" and she grabbed hold of his head.
Scarecrow fell to the ground in front of her, his mouth opened in a silent scream as she poured visions of Hell into his mind. As his limbs began to twitch and he began to choke on his own tongue, the priest figured out what was happening.
"Raven!" he shouted, "Don't kill him!"
Her eyes snapped back to their usual violet hue and she let go of her enemies head. He slumped to the ground and continued to twitch, choking out noises of fear every so often.
Stepping back, she took a moment to center herself and chase the remnants of the visions away. "Thank you." she said quietly.
"You are quite welcome." the priest replied.
They stood in silence for a full minute before she spoke again, "I need to call the police... and my friends-"
As if on cue, the doors to the church banged open and Robin came pelting in, his staff drawn and ready for battle. Starfire flew in right behind him, her uniform in tatters, but otherwise unharmed.
"Raven!" Robin shouted, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Boy Basket Case." she smiled weakly, "Scarecrow is taken care of..." she stumbled forward a little, and he rushed up to meet her, catching her in his arms when she fell.
"Raven?" he asked as she started shivering in his arms. After a moment, he realized she was crying.
"He said you were dead..." she whispered, "He said you were all dead, and for a moment... I believed him."
"Raven..." he wrapped his arms around her and let her cry into his chest, "It's okay... we're here, and Cyborg and Beast Boy are both doing fine, if not a little banged up."
"I almost let him kill me... I almost... gave up..." she looked up at him with a red, tear streaked face, "But the priest helped me..."
"I know, Rae... it's okay now."
"Robin?" she asked as Starfire floated over to check on the priest.
"Yeah, Rae?"
"I have some pretty heavy stuff to tell you guys when we get back to the Tower."
He arched an eyebrow, "About the destiny you mentioned a while back?"
"Yes." she hugged him tightly again, "But right now... just... hold me, okay?"
"Okay, Raven... okay." Robin wrapped her in a tight hug and let her cry.
Starfire landed next to the priest, who wore a small smile on his face. She looked over to where Robin was hold Raven and frowned a little, but spoke any way, "Are you injured, Sir? Is everything okay?"
"I think," he replied as he continued to stare atRaven and Robinwith his sightless gaze, "that everything will be just fine now."
Closing notes: Cool, huh? I thought it was a nifty little break from my usual sex, violence, corny jokes and swearing. You've read, so now do the kind thing and review. Later.