Inside Summary: The icy gale battered and beat at her petite frame, forcing her to her knees. Inside, her emotions were doing the same, whirling around against the edges of her sanity until suddenly one broke loose. All her emotions stilled for a moment, her entire being focused on the tiny tendril of light that rose into the air… and vanished, leaving Raven with a sense of forgotten warmth. Release them, the tiny sliver of light seemed to say. So she did.
Raven jolted upright with a gasp.
She'd woken up that morning, as she did nearly every morning, from a nightmare. Raven took a deep breath, and released the stranglehold her powers had on nearly everything within a five yard radius that wasn't bolted to the floor. Dreams were supposed to be useful tools in determining one's emotional well-being. That's what the monks had taught her, anyway, but there wasn't much point in reflecting on her nightmares anymore, Raven mused as she tried to calm herself down. They always took on the same theme, even if the details of the second apocalypse varied from night to night. She already knew what caused them – after living in fear of Trigon's shadow for so long, who would be able to convince their subconscious mind to stop fearing him? – but her wakeful mind knew that he was gone and that she was in control of her emotions. The dreams would subside eventually, she told herself; in the meantime, there was no reason to worry her friends.
Raven levitated to the front of her vanity, picking up a pair of oft-used scissors. She'd just lifted the blades to the first overly-long lock of hair when Beast Boys voice came over the intercom.
"Guys, you gotta get to the ops room! Hurry!" Raven frowned. Beast Boy almost never used the intercom, and he'd sounded almost panicked. Raven dropped the scissors and quickly flew to the common room.
"Friend, what has transpired?" Starfire was asking when Raven reached the common room.
Beast Boy looked totally devastated; his shoulders were slumped, his expression crestfallen as he lifted his snot-crusted face towards his alien friend. "Someone hid all my tofuuuu!"
"You brought us all here for that?" Robin asked incredulously.
"You don't understand, dude! I spent all my money for the month on comics! I can't go a whole 2 weeks without tof - oww!"
Raven honestly didn't intend for the black spark to go off exactly where Beast Boy happened to be standing, but she didn't regret it either. BB, for his part, jumped about a foot in the air, and turned to protest - but he stopped short. Instead he stared at Raven, confused. For the first time, Robin and Starfire really looked at Raven and they paused too.
Raven frowned. "What?"
"Um, Raven? Your hair is all girly and long again… you're not being chased by creepy dead guys with fire demons, are you?" Beast Boy asked oh-so-sensitively.
"No."
"Are you su-"
"I'm not, Beast Boy."
"Then why is your hair suddenly long again?" Robin asked suspiciously. He knew he was acting paranoid, but Trigon was an experience none of them could forget easily…
"Uhh, magic?"
"Someone cast a spell on you?"
"I may have… accidently cast some minor spells in my sleep…"
"You mean you sleep-magiced?" Robin asked in disbelief.
Raven defended herself, "It can happen." And it did happen. To 5-year olds. Not that anyone on her team knew or needed to know that.
Star seemed to buy it, and in typical Starfire manner exclaimed "Oh, regardless of the cause, is Raven's hair not most glorious Robin?"
Under the Tameranian's imploring gaze, even Robin cracked and admitted Raven's hair was 'pretty,' though he obviously wasn't buying her sleep-magicing excuse.
"Riiight, anyway if you guys are done, I'm going to go cut it now…"
"But friend!" Starfire gasped. "Your hair is not lengthy very often. We should take the advantage of this opportunity, correct?"
)o(
Starfire chattered happily as she attempted to manipulate Raven's hair into…a German tiara braid? Belgian crown? Dutch headband? Something like that. Raven wasn't entirely sure Starfire knew what she was doing either, as there was no way people regularly stuck that many pins in their hair.
"Is this not a most glorious way to spend the day?" Star enthused.
"Sure," Raven responded noncommittally, worn out as she was from her 'day of female companionship' with Starfire.
They'd spent the entire morning at the mall, buying civilian clothes for Raven's rather limited wardrobe. Raven had, as usual, bought next to nothing, but the selection had been slightly better than usual, probably because it was winter and all the stores had grudgingly relinquished their bright fall colors.* When they'd finally returned to the tower, Starfire had immediately bade Raven put on her new clothes – all conservative blues and blacks and purples, with nothing more accessorizing than a scarf– while she herself donned a tie-dye sundress that had no right to be worn when the temperature was 30˚ Fahrenheit.
Star had just finished the braid, and was about to pull out the nail polish when Robin – thank Azar – came over the intercom. "Titans, report to the Ops room. Repeat: Titans, report to the Ops room."
)o(
"-not saying anything until the whole team's here, Robin." And there was Bumble Bee's sassy cadence, resisting Robin's obsessive need to know when anything bad was happening. It was odd for her to call now though, when it was Friday night in Steel City.
"Well they're here now, so talk!" This was also off – Robin had worked hard to overcome his own controlling natu+re and to act less like his mentor. Raven examined him closely, noting the stressed twist of grey in his shoulders and the halo of suspicion around his head, and decided that he was probably still worried about Trigon… which meant he would probably confront her later on and demand the truth as her leader and her friend, yada yada yada. It was a shame, because Raven had been hoping to keep her nightmares to herself…
Aware as Raven was of Robin, the powers of her empathy could not pick up on emotions through digital transmissions; if they could, she might've realized she too was being examined.
"Whoa, Raven you look beautiful… I-I mean, you both do," Aqualad hastily corrected himself.
The subject of that particular comment looked up just in time to see the wide eyes of Titans East turn from her to Aqualad, who was practically tripping over his words now.
"Not that you two don't always look beautiful, but you look beautifuller. I mean-" Bumblebee elbowed the Atlantean rather obviously, and Raven took the opportunity to clamp down on her emotions before her cheeks could color any further. 'Conceal, Raven, don't feel' Raven internally demanded of herself. 'At the very least, don't let that stupid blush Happy's trying to push to the surface show.' She knew Aqualad liked her –she wasn't sure how she felt about him – but did he have to say that in front of both of their teams?
"Anyway," Bumble Bee continued, ignoring a sniggering Speedy, "there's been some unexplained activity around Steel; robberies from high-security and seemingly random targets, drones that are never a serious threat, but that seem to have no purpose than to engage us in combat, stuff like that. Word on the street is that Slade is back in business. We don't have any substantial evidence pointing towards that conclusion, but we don't have any evidence against it either. We wouldn't have even brought it up, but three separate sources have mentioned it, and we still don't have any other suspects for the robber-"
The alarm chose that moment to go off, and the image on the big screen split with one half still showing Titans East while the other half revealed a blinking red dot in the Jump City industrial zone.
Raven could see that Robin wanted to press Bumble Bee for more details on Slade, but the immediate mission took precedence.
"We'll have to get back to you," He ground out. "Titans, go!"
)o(
They found Doctor Light at the nuclear power plant. He wasn't hooked up to the nuclear reactors themselves – they were far too secure. The giant backup generator for the cooling system in case of a meltdown, however, was easy pickings.
"Ah, the Teen Titans! You cannot hope your dim minds will defeat the brilliance of Doctor. Light! Step aside and I'll leave you enough electricity to power your cybernetic friend."
Robin drew his bo staff. "Or you can go back to jail quietly and hope the commissioner gives you a nightlight."
Doctor. Light smirked at the idea, preparing a blast of light in each hand. "In your dreams."
"Titans, GO!"
They scattered in time to avoid one of Doctor Light's infamous light blasts and quickly went on the offensive, but fighting this near to a nuclear reactor made them all weary. It was too risky for him to use his sonic canon, so Cyborg charged and hardened his hands into fists instead.
"HUUAH!" He exclaimed as he rained punch after metallic punch at the shield Doctor Light had erected, but just as the shield began to crack Doctor Light shifted to offense and sent Cyborg flying into the nearest warehouse.
Beast Boy, meanwhile, had taken the subtle approach and was trying to gnaw through the wire connecting Doctor Light to the backup generator. Unfortunately for him, large green rats weren't that subtle, and BB-the-Rat soon found himself in a pile of the dirty gray snow that clung to the north sides of buildings.
While the brothers-from-different-mothers had been unsuccessfully attacking Doctor Light, the others had formed a plan.
"Let us see how you take your own medication! HYAA!" Starfire let loose a stream of starbolts, flying around Doctor Light in a random pattern that was meant to confuse and disorient. Meanwhile, Raven had teleported Robin to the emergency backup generator to make sure that they could shut down Doctor Light without shutting down the entire cooling system and causing a nuclear meltdown.
Starfire kept distracting Doctor Light, who twisted this way and that trying to get a good shot at Starfire. By a fluke, he got a good shot at Robin instead.
"Oof!" Robin felt his breath get knocked out of him seconds before he plummeted into the dark waters of-
The bay. The same bay whose piers and rocks and boat hulls were glazed over in ice.
"ROBIN!"
Starfire lit a starbolt for light, BB morphed into a seal, and then they were under. Only the ripples marked where they had disappeared, and even those were soon lost in the choppy waves. Cyborg growled and started blasting Doctor Light with his sonic canon, but he'd hardly shot before Raven was upon him…
There were no tentacles. No ropes, no hands. Only glowing red eyes and monstrous shadows. Raven threw open her cloak and gestured with her hands, and suddenly they were everywhere; demonic black creatures, creeping and crawling and oozing from the shadowy recesses of nearby alleys and overhangs, surrounding a Doctor Light who was quickly succumbing to terror, mashing their maws and extending their claws, and–
"NO! PLEASE, STOP! I BEG YOU, HAVE MERCY, PLEE-!"
Cyborg didn't need any words. He just put a hand on her shoulder, and pointed. Raven looked at him. Then she looked towards the bay where he was pointing. Starfire and BB had just emerged holding Robin, who was gasping and shivering, looking fragile and human. The shadows dissipated, her eyes faded from red, to white, to violet, and Doctor Light was left unhinged and unplugged, shivering and muttering unintelligibly about a nightlight.
Starfire diverted her attention from Robin long enough to say, "I shall fly Robin back to the tower now."
Cyborg nodded. "We'll cleanup here."
The three of them watched as Starfire took off towards Titans Tower and the infirmary, Robin secure in her arms. Doctor Light was in no state to put up any resistance, and there had been very little collateral damage for once, so there wasn't much to do except wait for the police to show up and try and ignore Doctor Light's sniveling. Eventually the armored truck appeared, and a team of men in the familiar black-and-white armor of state troopers superciliously handcuffed the villain, hauling him into the vehicle before driving away.
"You know, I think he might actually need a nightlight," Beast Boy commented, and even he wasn't sure whether he was joking or not.
Cyborg ignored him. "Come on. Let's go home."
)o(
The moon was full. Raven stared at it from her window, trying not to think about Robin, or Slade, or anything that had happened that day. The moon was pretty. It was pearly, luminescent, and totally unlike anything she'd ever seen on Azarath, where the floating rocks were jagged and the sky was saffron yellow. It had been a full moon the day she came to Earth, the day the Justice League refused to help her, the day Azar died…
She'd been homeless, confused, and grieving - and the people of Earth had so many emotions, so much more than she'd ever experienced on Azarath, and they'd torn at her control, made it difficult to think let alone meditate.
They were still making it difficult to think.
Raven squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out her friends emotions so she could meditate. She wanted to meditate. She needed to meditate - but she couldn't. Normally she'd simply identify and list out all the things that were bothering her and then rationalize them away, but this time the list was too long, too jumbled up and concerned with too many things - not a single emotion was absent from the forefront of her mind.
Beast Boy was outside of her room. She wasn't sure what he was saying, but he was probably checking on her. The same way he did before she met Malchior, but this time he didn't call her creepy. None of them used 'creepy' or any of its synonyms to describe her and her powers anymore. They still thought it though, still hesitated to get anywhere near her powers and still shivered whenever necessity forced them to use her form of teleportation. She could feel their emotions pressing in on her from all sides… That's when she realized that she needed to get out of the Tower, out of the city
She teleported seconds before Beast Boy opened the door to find an empty room.
)o(
She should have paid attention to where she teleported. She'd wanted someplace far from Jump City, wanted someplace far from humanity in general. She had not wanted someplace so cold.
Around her was a barren wasteland – a field of rock, covered in a thin layer of icy snow. Thin not because it wasn't cold enough, but because the wind had lifted most of the snow into the air so that tiny spears of ice could tear at her skin and sting her eyes. The gale blasted her from all sides, forcing her petite frame this way and that until she stumbled and fell to her knees.
Inside, her emotions were doing the same, whirling around against the edges of her sanity until suddenly one broke loose. Without her meaning to, one of her hands jerked up and out shot a beam of energy. It was neither the black of control nor the white of freedom; it was yellow, the color of wisdom. Her emotions stilled for a moment, her entire being focused on the tiny tendril of light that rose into the air and vanished, leaving Raven with a sense of forgotten warmth.
Release them, the tiny sliver of light seemed to say. So she did.
Her hands shot up instinctively, just in time to direct a thousand splendid beams of light away from her face and into the night sky, where even from a distance they threatened to blind her with their luminescence. Raven gasped as her emotions twirled and flitted across the sky, reflecting and refracting through the hundreds of icy crystals in the air. The gale blew at the colorful light, and like ribbons they danced through the stars, harmonious with the nighttime and one with the wind and sky.
A golden light swirled and spiraled around her before lifting back into the sky, and Raven was filled with thoughts of reassurance and a sense that she didn't care what anyone said or was going to say. A second light, a pink one, came down from the air above her head, circled her once, and, unlike the golden light, returned to her cupped hands, warming her, surrounding her in a soft glow and keeping the ice at bay. The storm raged on, but Raven found the cold didn't bother her anymore.
Her happiness, she would keep.
Everything else, she'd just…
Let it go.
)o(
Omake… ish?:
When the last of her emotions had faded from the night sky, Raven returned to Titan's Tower. She carefully checked everything from her cloak, to her boots, to her messy, windblown braid for frost before entering the Ops Room, where she found the entire team gathered on the sofa, watching something on TV. All four of them immediately turned around at the sound of the door hissing open.
"Friend! You are back!" Starfire exclaimed, restraining herself from any hugging but shooting into the air with the force of her unbridled joy nonetheless.
Raven allowed the smallest of smiles to tug at her lips. "Hey, Star." Raven turned her attention to Robin, who was swathed in just about every spare blanket in the tower and holding a bowl of chicken noodle soup. "You're better, then?"
Beast Boy answered before Robin could open his mouth. "Psh, yeah! The first thing he wanted to do when he woke up was watch the news." Beast Boy exclaimed, as if not only exasperated by his leader's obsession but baffled by the idea that anyone might actually like watching the news.
Raven glanced at the screen and did a double take. "That's the news?" On the screen, just above a billowing cloud of ice made small by distance, were dancing, flitting streamers of light.
"Is it not breathtaking?" Starfire breathed.
Cyborg nodded. "It's the Southern Lights, live from Antartica. Apparently a massive solar flare hit outta nowhere."
Raven snorted at the explanation. Her friends looked at her expectantly, confused at her response. "Not live," She said simply as she walked towards her room – a piece of ice had found its way under her jacket, and she really wanted to get it out before it thawed…
)o(
Frigid
A/N: This was a lot of fun but also very hard. Like, it-took-me-almost-five-months-to-write hard. Granted, I wrote other stuff and did lots of school stuff and competed in extracurricular stuff, but nonetheless! This story is very much about emotions, something I struggle with in both writing and real life. The logic and the conceal-don't-feel? I can do that. The boundless and unbridled emotions? Not really my thing. Call me an introvert or a MBTI thinker or whatever, but if there any readers with lots of emotional experience, could you tell me if this makes emotional-sense? Is there such a think as emotional-sense? And while we're on the topic of things I have minimal experience with...
...Can I say something crazy? All my stories have been a series of words on a page, and then suddenly I wrote up this fic. And now, it's like, I really do wonder what this would look like - as a manga or a comic...
I can't promise anything, but I really am seriously considering trying out a new media and making this a series of comic-book like pages on dA (just look up Juniper-Night) because I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think you can
... review?