Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raven sat quietly on the couch, her head perched on her hand, head stuck firmly in her book. Ah, the simple joys of being alone. It had been a long time--too long--since she had had the whole place to her self.
With her head in her hands, she slowly drifted between sleep and consciousness. Her dreams were a twisted land, nothing falling into her reality at the slightest--it was during this dozing that she heard the doors open and the sound of loud talking ensued.
She looked up from her book, blinking, "What are you doing?"
They had in their hands large amount of paints, cleaner, and (of course) zillions of grocery bags. Raven blinked again, taking in the green pain in Beast Boy's hand. What on earth?...
"Well," Cyborg rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
"While we were out for pizza," Beast Boy flung himself over the back of the couch and plopped down next to her. "We decided that we needed to kick the security of this place up a notch--you know, after..."
Cyborg growled, "SHHH!"
Raven pulled her hood over her head again. "And that involves green pain HOW?"
"Well, since my rooms the smallest..."
"We're going to be expanding Beast Boy's room just a bit." Robin said, balancing a bunch of groceries in the crook of his arm. "And mine too. We'll also be fixing up the basement and making it a larger space for Cyborg to do maintenance."
"BOOYA!"
Raven sighed. This was going to mean noise and lots of it. "And what exactly are you two going to be doing during all this time?"
She had to admit that she was a little offended...So what if she wasn't there for dinner!? She was apart of this team, and she should have been considered during the decision making. Still, she kept her mouth shut. Whatever. Just as long as it didn't affect her room, it wasn't going to be that big of a deal.
"Well..." Robin shrugged sheepishly. "I kind of figured that Beast Boy and I will set up camp on the couch until our rooms are fixed--that should save us the of moving into a hotel."
Beast Boy and Cyborg looked at each other, screeching in unison. "DUDE!"
"I don't like the sound of that." Raven rolled her eyes.
Beast Boy began, "Total insomniac sleepover party!"
"Yeah," Cyborg cheered. "For like three weeks straight. Come on Raven, you'll enjoy it! We can all stay out here with BB. And Robin."
"And what?" Raven stood up, tucking a book under her arm. "Contemplate throwing all of you off the roof as you throw popcorn at each other for 168 hours straight. I definitely don't think so."
"Oh, glorious." Starfire clapped her hand, a big smile on her face. "We shall watch movies, and eat popcorn...And, play Snargonorf!"
"SNARGONORF?"
Raven took this as her cue to leave. Walking down the hall, she heaved another sigh as she tucked the book under her arm. This didn't feel right to her somehow--in fact, it felt so wrong that she felt as if she had a leprechaun dancing up and down her spine. Not even the disappearance of the words on her wall could calm her super sensitive senses down.
Raven rubbed her eyebrow. "This is not going to end well..."
From the commons, she could hear the other Titan's let out squeals of joy. She listened to them and felt something crawl out of the pit of her stomach--the familiar illness that came out of being different. The sickness of premonition as it came back to haunt her.
If we can get through this...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the construction beginning the next day, Raven felt whatever hope she had that her feelings would disappear vanish. With the coming of the workers, (a few friends of Cyborg's from a local mechanics shop) she felt everything get worse. It was almost to the point of her wanting to stick her head in the toilette and throwing up.
Now, as she stood in the kitchen, a cup of steaming tea in her hand, she looked up and saw Robin standing nearby. He was a lone, thank God. She didn't want to do this when there was other people around--especially Beast Boy.
"Robin?"
He looked up from his newspaper, a curious look on his face.
"Yes, Raven?" His face quickly switched from serious to concerned. "You're looking a little sick. Are you alright!?"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about..."
"Yeah."
Raven straightened up and pulled down her hood. It usually had a more heavy affect on friends if her hood was down. "Well, I don't think all this is such a good idea. Ever since yesterday I've been having these feelings about the reconstruction...bad feelings."
"This is about what happened the other day, isn't it?" Robin raised an eyebrow, placing his newspaper down on the counter completely now. Once again, the believer in logic. "Look, just because of what happened-"
"Robin, listen to me." Raven growled. "You know me--I don't shed my warnings often. There is something not right about this."
"And what harm is reconstruction going to do, Raven?"
"I...don't know." She should have known better. When it came to Robin, he believed mostly in solid hard proof. The only exception that was ever usually made was in Slade. "But something is not right, Robin."
"Just because your-"
The nearest vase exploded. "FINE!"
"You're really serious about this." Robin's eyes were so wide with shock that Raven could have fit two whole bowling balls in his sockets. "I mean really, really serious. Are you sure that you-"
"EVERYBODY!" The was a howl as the door to the commons was opened, and Beast Boy clambered through from the other side. He was covered head to foot in green paint, his two eyes glittering with so much excitement that it almost made her feel guilty. "I have officially decided that I LOVE the color green."
Slightly annoyed, Raven balanced on one of her hips. "Looks as if you got more on yourself then you did on the wall."
"HARDY HAR HAR!" Beast Boy was still smiling. "But I'll have you know that I did a very good job at painting, right Cyborg?"
"Whatever you say, B."
Robin smirked, Raven scratched at an invisible itch in her arm, and Cyborg was too busy digging through the fridge looking for hamburgers to notice. Maybe this would be the best time to sneak out...
"FRIENDS!" Starfire burst in, her hair fluttering in a invisible breeze. "I have found the simple most amazing game in the world! You must try, you-"
Raven was out of the room and down the nearest hall before their eyes even had the ability to register what happened. The last time Starfire wanted to play a 'game', she had Beast Boy dressed up in a dress and full make up. If she ever let that happen to herself it would be her dying day.
There was the sound of distant laughter as she walked down the hallway, and she peered into the garage where the workers had already begun tearing down the wall. Four men and a woman stared up at her with goofy eyes, sweat drifting down their face.
Two of the men were shirtless, waterfalls of sweat coasting down their hot sweaty backs. The others had t-shirts on but had sweat stains all over their clothes. She was on the verge of heading in the opposite direction when one of the men rubbed his hands on his pants and offered her his hand.
"I'm Mick--not Mike. I hate it when people call me Mike."
"Oh." She felt herself flush. "Raven--Raven Roth."
"How can we not know?" The woman wandered over now.
She was beautiful and Hispanic with sweaty ringlet curls around her face. The others just nodded at her as if she was a shadow, not really caring that the owner of the house was standing right here acknowledging them.
Raven nodded towards the sweat stains. "You must be working hard--too hard. Cyborg isn't paying you for this, you know."
"We owe you guys a favor." He wiped his hands on his dirty pant again--like that would help much. "Saved my kid's life years back--been grateful ever since."
"Oh." She felt a blush creep up her cheeks again.
"Recently divorced to, if you're inter--"
"STOP IT!" The Hispanic lady smiled and said, "You're not interested in him, are you?"
"No."
She growled, hands on hips. "SEE. Now stop bugging the customers."
"So...Raven..." He looked at her lightly, his eyes crinkling happily around the edges. His eyes were two deep swimming pools, deep and thoughtful. "You're a big bad superhero, huh? Want to see something scary?"
Scary? Here, in Titan's Tower?
His hair was cut in a bowl cut, his face was tight and slightly wrinkled. Though he was one of the sweaty men with his shirt off, she found herself not repulsed. She pulled her hood up to shield her face, her mouth hidden as she surveyed them. Already she had given too much away.
"Oh, not that again." The Hispanic woman murmured.
"Come on." He held out his hand, but instead of taking it, she took a step further away. "I won't bite, and neither will what I'm going to show you--promise."
And though followed him, she made sure to keep her distance. She didn't like how much she had given away of her personality in the couple of minutes she had stood there. It just wasn't right for somebody like her...
"So..." Raven took a step into the backroom.
"This was your basement, right?" He took a step into a room that she didn't know that they had, and in the middle of the room was a hole--a crawl space if you will. She had to bend down to get in there. "Turns out the foundation of this place--the foundation that was the bottom of the house that was here before Titan's Tower--never removed this part of the building."
Raven blinked in surprise--this even had her. "So there were more rooms here all the time? And we never noticed."
"Well, the stairwell was built underneath the wall of the garage. This place here--this crawl space," He pointed towards the small hole that was dark and deep and musty, "Is indeed a 'UNKNOWN' basement. Even Cyborg and the other workers didn't know about it--until now, that is."
It was dark and musty. Even peering down into its depths was a step worse then what she felt when facing down a villain--it just seemed so evil. It wasn't like a bad guy that was simply intoxicated with his greed, with his insanity. This was the purest for hatred, of malice, that she ever felt.
And then she walked over to the hole and peered down. What on earth was down there? Something inside her, her illogical half, wanted to go down there. She was a super hero, so why couldn't she stand to crawl down there?
She put her foot in and lowered herself down.
"Wait." He cried in panic. "You can't go down there! It's..."
But it was already too late. Here she was, standing in the deepest form of the dark, surrounded by nothingness. She groped the air around her, feeling nothing but cobwebs that had begun to populate after years of nonuse.
Her fingers curled over the air in the darkness, and she felt something light caress her fingertips. She gasped, pulling back her hand--a spider, fine and graceful as a dance, scuttled across her fingertips. With that, she shook her hand lightly, her eyes searching--nothing was here. Nothing that was important anyway.
"RAVEN!" She heard a female's voice. "RAVEN, are you okay down there!?"
"Yes." She looked up into the small whole that she slipped into. "I'm down here...And I'm absolutely fine."
To the very left was a corridor--a corridor long and deep. She could see the rafters where the unfinished part of the basement must have been. Cob webs danced across her vision like that of the old haunted houses. She reached out her hand again, this time more hesitantly.
Though she could see nothing, something drew her in--closer and closer she went to the source of the sound. There was nothing but darkness around her. A world so deep and dark that she thought that she would be okay. And then she took one step, and then another step.
The voices of her friends and workers seemed so far away now, so distant. There was something back there, and she knew it.
In front of her eyes, something flickered. Something solid and black, like a giant monstrous shadow. Her spine began to crawl, completely and utterly. It felt as if her spinal column had twisted itself until it became a giant spider, twisting and turning.
"Hello." She whispered. "Is there...anyone there?"
From beside her, something fell--a old wooden rafter?
She looked for the source of the sound, a source for the thing that fell. Could she be imagining the heavy breathing that was in her here? Could she be imagining the sense of heaviness she felt all around? Could she be imagining the cobwebs that seemed to have filled her own chest from where she stood at this very second...
If she didn't imagine those things, then what?
"Rae?"
She looked up to the sound of Beast Boy's voice, but she ignored it. This was far to important for her to be sidetracked during something like this. There was a intruder in their house--a intruder in Titan's Tower. And this very person happened to be clanking around beside her right now.
"Look." Raven put down her hood again--non-threatening behavior. "If you let this go right now, we'll not attack you--but I must warn you that I..."
There was the sound of creaking of the floorboards, the heavy 'thud, thud' of footsteps against the ground. If someone had accused her of being frightened right then, she would have denied it--and that denial would have been completely and utterly a lie.
"Azirath, Metrion, Zinthos!" She raised up her hand in threat, but there was nothing she could see to attack--this was an enemy of the deadliest kind.
She felt something brush against the back of neck--a gentle caress on the back of her neck like cloth on skin, gently rubbing the surface so that all the nerves beneath were completely exposed. Every last hair on the back of her neck began to stand up on end, her body shuddering with fear.
Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she could swear the sound of it was echoing against the walls┘.
"Come out now." 'Thud, thud, thud, thud.' "AZIRATH, METRION-"
"Rae!?"
She tried to ignore her own heart beat as she felt herself shudder again--something from behind her was touching her. There were hands on her hips: heavy, rough hands. The kind of hands that belonged to a worker men...or a registered murderer.
But when she jerked around, nobody was there.
"Hello?"
There was the soft sound of laughter in her ear, as if somebody was standing right behind her--somebody that she couldn't see. And when she looked down at the floor, directly beneath her, was a pile of yellowing, decaying bones--bones that looked like they belonged to human; bones that looked as though the person who had used them was curled up in massive pain.
And then, for the first time in a long time, she screamed--hollering as watched the dirt around her began to cave in and the rafters began to crumble...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No Flaming Please!
