Notes: I wrote this over the course of 3 days at 3 in the morning, so please excuse any grammar/spelling mistakes. I DID THIS FOR FUN! So there's hardly any plot and whatnot. I really enjoyed writing a Teen Titans fic again, it made me feel good! I enjoyed writing this, I hope you enjoy reading it!
Notes: Caution! Strong language!
Ghost
I am the last free mutant. The Justice League recruited everyone else by any and all means necessary. To protect the mutants they said. Anti-Mutant Laws have run rampant and any mutant not affiliated with the Justice League gets a first class ticket to the afterlife.
I tried to join the League myself, when I had first arrived on Earth, now I want nothing to do with them. They didn't want me back then and I know they don't want me now. The League members who were on friendly terms with me voiced their opinion on the matter, tried to convince me to see it their way, but I will hold fast. I won't join the Justice League not now and not ever.
The government is out to kill me. I am a mutant who shunned the League, my only political protection, and has shown disruptive behavior around the city. I'm a threat to their way of life and they want me dead. I'll continue to outrun the human police and their anti-mutant squads and the Justice League's most powerful heroes will search for me in vain. I'll continue to protect the innocent from the shadows while they speak my name in hushed whispers. I will protect them, from their enemies and from themselves, all the while, protecting my own life.
And why go through all this trouble for absolutely no personal gain? The answer is complicated. Trust issues with the government and from the League due to past encounters, regrets from my childhood and adolescent days, maybe even emotional problems that surfaced when I finally confronted my family, namely my father. But it doesn't matter why I do it, I just do.
It's Raven! They would hush in low tones. No one knew who they could trust anymore, no not anymore with the government corrupt and the League all but gone. They couldn't walk into the street alone much less with a buddy, it was too dangerous. Crime grew unchecked, twisting like weeds around the city, strangling its citizens. You became a crook, or you were killed by one. That was their way of life.
But not when she was around. They say she is an angel sent from God himself, to save this eternally damned city. They say she is a Robin Hood, a human, like one of them, who eludes capture from both sides of the war. They say she is a rogue mutant, neither here nor there, just wandering in between. But where she came from matters little, it's what she brings to them that make them worship her. She brings life back to them, safety, protection, hope. When the rumors fly that she is in town, the loaded gun and bated breath are all put away.
So they pray for her to come to their neighborhoods, like the shadow she is, slipping in through the dead of night, leaving without a trace when the day is done. A glimpse of violet hair or flash of crimson eyes sometimes a brush of a coat as black as night makes them giddy with excitement. They wish for her to protect them, and hope she ends this war.
A burglar and his friends thought they could escape the store without any trouble. They hadn't finished stuffing their bags full of the goods, but they were getting close.
She stepped into the store letting the bell above the door signal her presence.
"Who the fuck are you?" One of them yelled.
"You're that bitch who took care of our other members last week!" His friend said.
She yawned lazily, picking dirt from under her nails, "By 'took care of' I hope you mean killed."
The third one fished a gun out of his coat prompting the others to do the same. Without warning they fired round after round at her. The bullets lodged themselves into the glass and the wall but none grazed flesh.
She appeared behind the leader, out of thin air, like a magician but without any smoke or mirrors, and not a word was uttered as her hands glowed with an eerie black light. In an instant all three criminals were dead, their hearts having been squeezed until they burst.
At least, that's how the store owner described the scenario to the police five minutes later. And within two hours, word had spread that Raven had graced them with her presence, and the children could go ahead and play outside again.
The police roped off the area as Detective Logan surveyed the scene with his own eyes. He was skeptical about the girl's supposed existence, she was never caught on video or any tape of any kind, her very being was based only on the belief of the people. People who were half-crazed out of their minds, delusional even to the point of mental breakdown. The detective prided himself on pure logic backed by cold hard evidence. He didn't dabble in conjecture. What the government may or may not be doing, he didn't know. That wasn't his job to know. He was getting paid to track down unidentified or unregistered mutants. That was all. The Raven was certainly top priority on his list, but evidence was hard to come by when you were chasing after a ghost.
"Sir," His green (not the color but the lack of experience) intern addresses him, "The manager swears it was a woman with purple hair and a long black coat. The description matches with the intel we've gathered from previous people who have encountered her."
"He could be lying."
The intern shakes his head. Logan thinks it's about time to let this one go, he's too soft, he'll believe anything, "The family and friends all say he is a very trustworthy man and wouldn't lie about this sort of thing. Sir, with all due respect, the man's had a gun pointed to his head, and I don't think he'd be making this up."
The detective mulls over the facts. The hard evidence was right here; three men attempt robbery, three men with guns, one store owner present in the room while robbery took place, three men dead.
The nurses from the emergency vehicle report the criminals died from a powerful force exerted on the heart.
So make that three men dead from spontaneous heart crushing. A whopper of a heart attack.
He can't help but wonder if the store manager is telling the truth. Perhaps this Raven woman had really stood here, where he is standing, killed these men, and left one with the story to tell. He can't help but wonder if she is watching him right now, chuckling to herself how cunning she is, how easily she can have him fooled, trying to catch her. To be the first one to catch her since the beginning of this Human-Mutant war. To prove to the people that she is real, that this isn't some ploy crafted from the government nor from the Justice League. That's what the rumors say she is after all, teetering effortlessly on the fine line between each faction.
His intern is sold on the store manager's story, Logan can see it on his face. No matter what he says from here on out, the boy would believe this was the work of the Raven deep inside his heart. And it irked him to no end. He was sick and tired of playing this cat and mouse game with a shadow. Someone who could slip between the cracks of a person's sanity and burrow their existence so deep it would be forever ingrained in their hearts.
He had the police bag the evidence and send it to the lab, but he knew this would be another cold case. No one knew who killed these men for sure, and no one would care, because they already knew it was the Raven who had done it and that was a good enough answer for any of them. Except him. He would never believe this elusive woman was real until he saw her, no touched her, himself, just to prove she was flesh and bone, and not some transparent ghost he had a feeling she was.
He called off the rest of his team, let the police take over and deal with the distraught onlookers, not him. The night was through, the day was done. He would wake up tomorrow with another cold case, and another witness who claimed they had seen the Raven. And he would bag the evidence and track down the leads, but they would eventually lead nowhere. He would return home only to wake up the next day and repeat the process.
She let the people catch a glimpse of her from time to time. She had to give them some sort of hope, and keep the detective on her trail. He tracked her whereabouts even though he wouldn't admit it. Deep down he wasn't sure if she even existed, but on the slight chance that she did, he would be prepared, and that's why he kept tabs on her recent exploits. She enjoyed toying with him. Enough to keep him sane, to keep him on the edge of cracking, but never actually breaking.
So when he did break, she wasn't expecting it.
There were five of them. Trash not worth her time or skills on, but fueled by revenge. They had the honorable detective cornered, fenced in on all sides. It anyone deserved to live, it was the detective, and she was determined to save him. She was the only one who could.
"This fucker sent my little brother to jail for life!" The one closest to him spat.
"All the cops ever do around here is shit! My family gets shot at and you don't do nothing!"
"Let's blow his balls up!" A chorus of agreements are shouted as they shove their guns in the detective's face, letting him know exactly who's calling the shots around here.
He had his hands up and his face full of guns but he still managed to speak calmly, "You can go ahead and shoot me, but if what I think is correct, I will walk away from this fight on my own two feet, and you five will be rotting in your graves."
Ah, now she understood. He had cracked. She wasn't expecting him to go all out like this at least for another year or so. His dedication to finding the Raven intrigued her. The quickest way to draw her out was to put himself in danger, exactly what he was doing now. And she had come just like he had thought.
They leveled their weapons, "Say goodnight pops."
Five guns fired but five bullets never hit him. When he opened his eyes he was encased in an eerie black glow, five bullets wedged in the blackness like a shield. And the five men had deep slashes across their throats, severed jugulars, instant deaths. She wondered what she would do with him now that he had gotten what he wanted, proof of her existence. She knew he couldn't call the police, they'd discharge him on grounds of insanity, no one in their right minds would put themselves in danger just to find a ghost. She wasn't sure what she would do exactly, but she had to do something fast, because five men were dead and gunshots had definitely been heard.
The moment he heard the fifth shot and saw the dark magic he knew who had saved him. They stories had all matched up, the impossible feats, stopping bullets with paper-thin blackness, unidentifiable cuts made with an unidentifiable weapon, disappearing there and reappearing here, internal organs crushed in two or more bodies simultaneously, the list went on and on. Their stories matched up perfectly, but the evidence, the evidence just wasn't there.
And now he had his own evidence, because she was right there standing in the doorway asking him if he wanted a cup of water.
He declined, but she left the room to fetch a glass regardless. He wasn't so keen on accepting anything from a murderer, the one person, perhaps the only person, on his list of mutants that were actually worth looking in to. She was back moments later, and as he sipped his glass of tap water, he studied her for future reference. She would later ask him if he was checking her out, but he would refute that statement vehemently. It was indeed for future reference and future reference only, just in case she decided to play for the bad guys, in which he would have a good idea of what to tell the other police what to look out for. But they both knew there was no need really. Everyone already secretly knew who she was and what she looked like. There weren't many people around who had dark violet hair and deep crimson eyes, who slinked around in the dead of night saving lives. So he studied her as she studied him. Not knowing she knew he kept tabs on her, he figured it was also for future reference. He was a good looking guy, easy on the eyes. Very easy. There wasn't any harm in taking a quick peek once in a while.
"That was highly risky of you," she says breaking the silence.
He doesn't really want to talk to her, but he owes her this much for saving his life in a moment of stupidity, "I know I could have died, but I had to know what was real and what was just a rumor."
"Are you surprised I'm not a ghost? Not a delusion? Not a figment of a collective people's imaginations?"
He's not surprised. He is hardly surprised. Reality was she was real, there actually was an entity known only to the residents of slums and ghettos known as the Raven. He finally had proof. She was right here merely five feet away from him.
She takes a seat on the edge of the bed lost in her own thoughts. He finally realizes they aren't lying on the rain-soaked asphalt of the streets, nor the warm comfortable security of his own apartment, but somewhere entirely new. By the looks of it, he could guess with a fair amount of certainty, this was her apartment. He tried committing everything to memory so he could find this place again once she let him go, and hopefully arrest her later, but there wasn't much to memorize. The walls were completely bare, no pictures, no flowers, no dusty spider webs lingering in the corners of the ceiling, no nothing. The furniture was common, nothing overly extravagant, nothing custom, nothing antique, sets anyone would find at the local furniture store. But even though all of the hard evidence suggested that this could be anyone's apartment, he knew this was the place she came back to every night. She had put him in her bed, and he could smell her scent all over it. It was a calming lavender mixed with something uniquely her, uniquely Raven. He felt like rolling over, sleeping the whole day away, letting his worries leave his body behind.
She scatters his thoughts with her voice that he still isn't used to hearing, "The government's out to kill me, and the Justice League would be happy to have you gone."
"The Justice League wants me dead?"
She shrugs, "Not in those words exactly, but you have the right concept."
"I don't care what happens to who in this war, I just do my job."
She stares at him with those red eyes of hers, it's hard not to look away, but Logan won't give her any satisfaction of her dominance over him. He realizes now what the people mean when they used to say she had the eyes of the Devil. Sad, angry eyes full of emotions her body language and speech wouldn't betray, "Just in case you don't already know, I'm not immortal. I can't keep doing this, this vigilante business, forever, no matter how fun it is. I'm willing to work with you to finish this war because I can't do it alone."
He stares at her not in interest this time, but in disbelief, "You want to work with me? You're joking."
Her cold stare reveals the seriousness she brings with this issue, "I don't do jokes."
"What would you have me do if I agreed to this truce?" He asks tentatively, the detective part of him kicking in.
"Get me past the government's security and into the council's meeting room," She says casually, like this is something the good detective does every day, "That's it."
His brow furrows, he knows why she wants to get into the most secure room in the whole city but he needs the confirmation to come from her lips, "And what are going to do if I somehow got you in?"
"I'll do what I do best," The killing intent drips off of every word.
The detective takes a large gulp from his glass downing it all in one go. He's never worked with a criminal before, it's just not what those sworn to the law do. He works for the council, the government, who could be viewed as villains if all the things they do behind closed curtains are true, in which case he would be working with criminals. However, there isn't any evidence that they are doing the things the people say they do, and without any evidence, there isn't a case. But there's only one reason Raven wants to go after the government. It's because she's a mutant and they kill mutants, enforcers of the Anti-Mutant Laws and all such other things, right? Yet a part of him can't shake the notion that if she was pro-mutant, she would have joined the Justice League eons ago, not be hunted by them and the government alike. He had to face the truth, the reality of it all, she was truly a third party, someone who didn't play for either team. Her track record showed no signs of violence against innocents, she really didn't kill people who didn't already deserve to die in these slums people called home. Logically there was only one explanation for why a third party protector of the innocents would want the council dead, and that was because they deserved to die.
The evidence was all there. He just had to look a little harder.
She let out an exclamation of surprise when he suddenly pulled her face toward his, merely inches away from each other. He had his hands buried in her violet hair as he stared coldly into her crimson depths, trying to discern the truth. This time he had undeniable evidence, he had heard her speak, seen her move, and now felt her warmth beneath his fingers. She was not a ghost. She was not a shadow. She was not an angel like so many had come to believe. She was a woman with a purpose, a grand goal that he was willing to put his life on the line for. He had made his peace with putting the safety of his well being in the hands of another, it was easy this time, he had done so once already.
Another couple inches or so and their noses would be touching, she asks him quizzically, "Is there something on my face?"
He lets her go and immediately regrets the loss of heat and touch of her skin, as she pulls back lingering just as much as he did, "No. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't making a deal with a ghost."
Logan has accompanied Raven on three more rescues, she calls them detours, before they make their move on the council. Now that he sees the rescues (detours) from her point of view, he can easily pick out recurring patterns she subconsciously uses that distinguishes her from other vigilantes. For instance, waiting until the last minute to save someone even when you've been spying on them for some time now, watching the burglars or robbers or rapists, whatever it is, assault the victim until the last second is torture. He voices his opinion of making the victim suffer until they're at the end of their rope before jumping in, and she only scoffs at him, telling him to butt out of her work because he "sucks out all the fun in life, damn killjoy." The detective considers taking back what he thinks about her, being an ethereal, mysterious, selfless, protector of innocents, wondering if a more correct term would be arrogant, apathetic, conceited, protector of innocents.
Now that he has a firmer grasp on who she really is, Logan has doubts on the plan's success as they wait in his car outside the council's building. He doesn't know how good her acting is, but he's willing to bet it's a lot better than his. For today, and today only, he would be her loving lover, and she, his lovely yet slightly ditzy girlfriend. Another glance at his "lover" and he's ready to call off the whole thing. Dressed in a casual blouse and skirt she doesn't look the part of merciless murderer Raven, but then again, his faded shirt and slacks don't do him justice either. She strides out of the car donning her oversized sunglasses and stepping into her actress persona. He follows.
"Come on dear," Logan growls, grabbing her arm and pulling her flush against him, "Let's not wander around suspiciously."
She slaps him hard on his bare arm making it seem like a playful love tap, "Me? Wander? Never!"
They saunter in the double glass doors, bypassing the two security guards stationed at its front. Arm in arm, they take a couple seconds to calm their furiously beating hearts until Raven pulls him in the right direction, "Aren't you going to show me your office, hon?"
Another reason she had come to him with these plans of hers, is that his personal office space resided in the same building the council met in. Few friends of Logan's questioned his sudden appearance to work on what they knew was his day off, because they were too busy questioning him on the beautiful lady hanging off his arm. The detective held great satisfaction in knowing his friends wished their girlfriends or wives were as charming and gorgeous as the one currently squeezing his biceps, but he also held satisfaction in regards to his honesty and dignity, and this woman was making him break every single vow he had ever made to himself. Lying about his objectives as well as his love interests straight to their faces made him cringe inwardly every time he saw them. On the other hand, she was doing well. So well in fact, many questions were dodged, deflected, and downright ignored, all without arousing any serious suspicion.
As soon as they entered his office safely with the door securely locked, he began writing up a new employee passcard for her. As a detective he was trained extensively in pointing out counterfeits, blockage of cyber hacking, lie detecting, and more, but with this knowledge also came the reverse, how to counterfeit, hack and accuse proficiently. He already had her fake secretary card halfway out of the printer when she slipped into her next costume, but not before he caught a good glimpse of her well toned body that made him almost wish their lover's charade was real. …Almost.
"Clip this onto the front of your jacket," He says as he hands her the passcard, "And don't forget to keep the smile on, you're a dutiful secretary remember?"
She grins wider, "Don't worry, I know the routine. How do you think I got this uniform?"
Probably through a quick and brutal assassination but not before studying the previous owner's work habits, is what he wants to say but he holds his tongue. He surveys her completed look once more before quickly ushering her out the door. If all goes well, this corrupt government will be gone by morning, and with it, the Anti-Mutant Laws, Mutant Death Squads, violent riots, and all other crime as the city welcomes its old protectors back again.
She slips out of the room as soon as the hallway empties. The council's meetings are never interrupted by anyone other than the occasional secretary, and Detective Logan had already made sure to discreetly cancel all the other secretary's duties. Hopefully the corpses wouldn't be found until very late tonight.
Logan doesn't question her when she's back in the safety of his office again. Though there isn't any visible blood on her, he feels there is some on his. He already knows she completed her end of the deal, or she wouldn't have come back until she did. With such a short time spent in each other's company, he knows when she makes a promise, she keeps it no matter what. Unbeknownst to him however, she appreciates his silence. Words are left unspoken as they shift back into their lover's charade, ready to finish it by making it safely outside the building. They had come to do their deed, and succeeded, now it was time to make it back out alive.
Victory was in sight as they ambled down the staircase, double glass doors looming ahead of them, when the large well built frame of the security guard blocks their path. With no amount of verbal persuasion seeming to have any effect, it seems as though tonight was the night the Raven was finally caught.
"You mind telling me who you two are?"
"I'm Detective Garfield Logan," The detective says flashing his badge, "And this is Rachel."
Raven clings to his arm, batting her eyelashes at the guard, "He's my darling sweetie pie."
The guard doesn't seem taken by their answers, "What exactly were you doing here Detective?"
Raven makes her voice quiver as she tries to sound as timid as possible, "He was just showing me around his workplace, he didn't want to at first, but I just insisted I see his new office and maybe spruce it up a little?"
The guard grunts in approval but still won't budge, "Ma'am, I'd like to see your identificat—"
In a swift couple of moves that surely saved their cover, Raven had grabbed her "boyfriend" and brought her head up to his locking both of their lips in that position while she stifled his surprise with her mouth. It was inevitable that she would have to produce some sort of valid identification out of thin air unless he went along with the kiss.
To her benefit he complied easily, letting her deepen the passion between them as he snaked an arm around her head and the other traveling to the small of her back, pressing them even closer together. He let her hands explore the taunt muscles in his back and if she had her way, all over his powerful body, hopefully without clothing. He bit back a moan as her hands left hot tingling trails through his thin shirt, he could feel the heat rising between his legs. She delved into his mouth greedily as his fingers lost themselves in her hair, finally breaking apart when he had to come up for air. It took a great deal of effort not to groan from the loss of contact and give him the pleasure of knowing he had any effect on her. For him, he threw internal power plays to the wind as his hands lingered on her body a moment longer before he realized reality from fantasy.
Raven cast a sly smile toward the speechless guard knowing she had done a hell of a job in making him forget whatever he was going to ask her earlier. The look in his eyes told her he wanted them to keep going, maybe make it into a hot threesome tussle. Poor boy, he was going to have to find another way to get his rocks off tonight, because she certainly wasn't going to be the one to do it. Logan, on the other hand… She could feel the detective's hungry eyes on her too, only the sheer force of his iron willpower, standing between him and the notion of doing the horizontal tango with her right here on the floor of the council building.
Breathless, she gave the guard the answer that would finally get them out of the building, "Sorry to trouble you, but we've really got to get back to my apartment as soon as possible."
The council is found dead the next morning. Slaughtered right in their own meeting room. Detective Logan is put on the case, but he drags his heels in the questioning of possible suspects. Everyone knows there is only one person who could do such an impossible feat, they just don't dare speak of it.
He asks her what she'll do now that the heroes are back. The city is back to what it once was, and the rumors of the mysterious Raven will dissolve into myth. Will she retire and spend the rest of her life relaxing? Will she own up to all the deaths she has caused, the grief, the pain she has wrought to loved ones? Or will she simply continue to save the innocents from the shadows like before? Dancing around the ever persistent Justice League and human police?
She doesn't need to give him a straight answer, he already knows just from the look on her face. But he has to know, why go through all this trouble for absolutely no personal gain?
She merely says, "The answer is simple. Because it's fun. Because I can."