Not Alone

Raven sat down at the simple, polished wooden table with her mug of tea and sighed, glad to be outside of the confines of the Titans' Tower for even just a few brief moments. Trigon's urgings and nightmarish portents had been coming more and more frequently during her sleeping and waking hours, and Raven felt herself becoming more and more anxious and claustrophobic the more concerned her teammates became.

So she'd snuck out in the dark of night and absconded down to a local coffee bar she knew would be open for a mug of tea, her usual haven in times of emotional turmoil. But even here, the snatches of happy conversation, the glimpses of laughing faces, it all put her on edge. And when she was on edge, she felt paranoid and strained, which only stressed her out more. The cycle of emotions continued in that vein for a while, spiraling further downwards until Raven just wanted to sink into her mug and disappear.

"Hey."

The unexpected voice jolted Raven out of her melancholy and she looked up, coming face-to-face with a boy she'd never seen before. He looked to be about her age, with a slender, graceful face, hair the color of straw and eyes that were a light, piercing blue.

"Hey," Raven greeted back with an arched eyebrow, more confused than upset and too strung out to be angry at the sudden intrusion. "Do I know you?"

"Nope," the boy replied nonchalantly, extending his hand, "but that's an easy fix. My name's Luke; what's yours?"

"Raven," she replied, still skeptical but taking the offered hand all the same. The simple contact was a strange sensation: she felt comforted, relaxed and inexplicably reassured all at once.

"Raven, huh?" Luke said, seeming not to have noticed the effect his handshake had had on the girl across from him. "Nice name. Reminds me of my brother, actually."

"Really?" Raven asked with dry amusement, part of her wanting to tell this guy off but the majority of her too curious to chase him away. "Is his name Raven, too?"

"Not exactly," Luke answered, a soft glint in his eyes as he seemed to be looking through Raven and off somewhere into the distance that only he could see. "I guess you could say he really likes them, though. The birds, I mean."

"Right…" Raven replied drolly, before taking advantage of the lull in the conversation. "So, what exactly are you doing here, Luke?" she pressed, and the boy shrugged.

"You just looked like you needed someone to talk to, Raven. Am I wrong?"

He wasn't wrong at all, but there was still something slightly off about this kid, and Raven just couldn't place it. But she was more inclined to look at him as a puzzle rather than a threat; there was no way she would have trouble handling him if he did turn out to be some kind of scumbag, and Raven did love a good puzzle.

"No," she answered at last, "but I doubt you'd believe half of what I'd have to say, Luke."

A smirk curled up the corner of Luke's mouth, in a way Raven could only describe as mirthfully mischievous.

"Oh, really?" he parried airily, before his eyes became suddenly serious even though his tone didn't change. "Try me."

Raven rose to the challenge with a smile, wondering how long it would take her new acquaintance to freak and go running out the door in fear. Just to make it more fun, though, she figured she would start out slow.

"I have some issues with my father, I guess you could say," she began, and Luke gave a short nod.

"He one of those overbearing types?" the boy asked, and Raven nodded. "I can relate to that," Luke continued. "My brother really enjoys being a domineering prick sometimes."

"Can you really relate, though?" Raven countered, her own tone mischievous this time as she relished the opportunity to talk to someone who didn't treat her like she was made of glass.

"I doubt your brother has ever told you some of the things my father's told me, Luke."

"You wanna bet?"

The simple question somehow found a way to catch Raven completely off-guard, the snake-like tone of Luke's voice slithering around her confidence and holding it in a vice-like grip, a twitch away from breaking it. Swallowing hard and regaining her bearings, Raven locked eyes with the boy across from her and gave a serpentine smile of her own.

"You're on," she said with conviction. Her smile was immediately mirrored on Luke's face, his demeanor changing completely on a dime once again. He laughed happily, all the pressure he had been putting on Raven a moment ago totally evaporating.

"Music to my ears, Raven," he said. "Fine, if I can't match you, I'll pick up this bill. Deal?"

Perfectly content to let someone who had butted in on her solitude pay for her tea, Raven nodded.

"Go ahead," she said, and Luke paused for a moment, building the tension like a born storyteller, before plunging headlong into his tale.

"When I was young," he began, voice light and lilting, drawing in his listener more and more with each word, "my brother and I didn't really get along at all. In fact, I didn't get along with much of anyone in my neighborhood, to be honest. Everyone was stuck in their own ruts, doing their own thing. Every time I tried to mix things up, do or make something new, people kept looking at me like I was the crazy one. And my brother was the worst of the lot, let me tell you. Looking at me like I was the scum of the Earth, just because I was d—"

"Different," Raven cut him off, surprised that their stories were so alike. Luke smiled once more, but this one was small, and tinged with sadness.

"Exactly. Of course," he continued, taking a pause for a breath before continuing, "that was before the goddamn prophecy had to come along and make things even worse."

"The what?" Raven replied, shocked by the sudden turn and struggling to keep her voice even. She must have succeeded, because Luke didn't act like he noticed any change in her as he clarified.

"The prophecy," he said again, his tone eerily calm, like he believed every word he was saying. "Pretty standard doomsday stuff, but whenever a prophecy gets told by someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about, everyone goes nuts."

"Who told the prophecy?" Raven asked, though she already had a guess.

Luke sighed, his gaze clouding over as he sunk into some bitter memory and spoke out from its depths.

"My brother, that asshole," he grumbled. "'You're going to undo the foundations of this world and send us all spiraling into ruin and destruction!', that sort of crap. Otis always was a sucker for the dramatic."

Raven was even further surprised by such an outlandish similarity, and what had begun as an attempt to freak out her acquaintance had instead turned around on her completely, leaving her feeling unnerved instead. If Luke hadn't sounded so convincing, she might have been able to write him off as a crazy person, but there was the undeniable ring of truth to every word of his story.

"So, what happened?" she managed to ask through her unease, and Luke shrugged.

"The prophecy came to pass, like they all do. I almost destroyed the world. Emphasis on the word 'almost', by the way," he added pointedly, but Raven could only stare at him.

"You… almost destroyed the world?" she said mutely, expecting some kind of happy ending to come along and show her a way out of her own situation, instead of the prophecy being inevitable.

"What stopped you?"

"My friends managed to clean up after my mess, thankfully," Luke said blithely, as if averting the apocalypse was no more taxing than taking out the trash. "We all lived to see another dawn, despite the prophecy."

Raven was stone silent for several moments, taking absent-minded sips of her tea on reflex as Luke watched her closely, steadily working away at his coffee.

"Is there supposed to be a moral in there somewhere, Luke?" she asked after several moments, but all she got in return was another shrug.

"Hell if I know, Raven," he replied casually. "Every story has a dozen different morals; it all depends on who's listening to it. Go back to your friends and think on it for a while; you're smart enough to figure it out."

Luke glanced out the window to a nearby park bench, frowning as a single raven landed on it and stared at him. It had a single red eye, shining sharp in the darkness.

"Well, I gotta go, Raven," he said, rising from his seat and finishing off his coffee with a gulp. "Do me a favor?"

Raven looked up at the strange boy, now absolutely unsure what to make of him.

"Yeah?"

"Close your eyes for a second."

She found herself doing so an instant later, almost automatically. There was a warm pressure on her hands for a moment before it faded, as if it had never been there in the first place. Raven opened her eyes and looked down at the table to find an odd sight sitting in front of her:

Luke was gone, and a ten-dollar bill, more than enough to cover the check, sat next to a single sprig of mistletoe. For a minute, the girl was puzzled, until she thought back to the mention of mistletoe in her tomes on Norse mythology and all the pieces fell into place in a single cascade. Raven's eyes shot open even further in surprise and she gasped, finally realizing just whom the hell she'd been talking to for the past ten minutes.

It was absolutely impossible, not to mention completely insane, but it was also the only conclusion that made sense.

Besides, there were, no doubt, some people out there who would consider what she was to be impossible. It would be hypocritical for her to make the same judgment of someone else.

A smile spread slowly over Raven's tired face as she pocketed the mistletoe and rose, walking out of the coffee bar with the moral she'd chosen to draw from Luke's tale.

I'm not alone, after all.

Outside on the park bench, the raven barely twitched as Luke appeared next to it out of thin air.

"That was shockingly altruistic of you," the bird quipped, its tone sharp. "You honestly think that child has a chance of stopping Trigon?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Luke parried, running a hand through his hair, "but it's more fun this way than sitting on the sidelines waiting for the end."

"That's the kind of mentality that almost resulted in you ending the world, Loki, in case you've forgotten, to say nothing of the rule of non-interference," the raven countered, its glare impossibly becoming even more severe. "And where do you get off calling me 'Otis', you ingrate?"

"Jesus, lighten up, will you?" the other god shot back. "Everyone's a critic."

The raven shifted and morphed until it had assumed the form of a youth no older than his brother's current appearance, one eye shining silver in the darkness while the other socket was covered by a patch.

"Let's go," Odin said in a commanding voice, and Loki just rolled his eyes at his brother's back before the pair of them vanished into the winds with a whisper.

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A/N: Not much to say, except I hope you enjoyed this one-shot as much as I had fun writing it; Loki has got to be the most sympathetic complete bastard in all of mythology.

Oh, and reviews are highly appreciated. Please take the time to drop one, if you would be so kind.