TWO

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Lunch

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Raven took him to a small, quiet café/coffee house/book store that she liked when she needed to get away. They got a quiet table in the back, a cappuccino and a hot tea, and began proper introductions. David, it turns out, is an alien. His home world is called Valador, and it's in another dimension. He was disappointed at Raven's lack of surprise at this, which she found funny. She had to remind him that one of her teammates is an alien. He's also a powerful mage, mages and magic being relatively common on Valador, and he's immortal, almost 600 years old. He can teleport anywhere in the universe, including across time and parallel dimensions, and he's been traveling for centuries. His explorations led him to Earth, then eventually to this particular Earth, where he's been fascinated with the phenomenon of superheroes. They don't exist on most of the Earths he's been to.

David then insisted it was Raven's turn to talk. He had studied up on her professional life, but could find nothing about her personal life. She reluctantly began her tale, the half-breed daughter of a demon who raped a human woman, raised in an extra-dimensional sanctuary called Azarath, relatively recently come to Earth. She found herself unexpectedly comfortable talking to this man, unexpectedly open. She confided in him that she still felt like a stranger here, even to her own teammates. They were her only friends, but she felt like they didn't really know her. Suddenly, Raven realized she was sitting here telling her innermost feelings to this perfect stranger, quickly shut up, and looked away embarrassment.

It was clear that David knew exactly what had just happened, but he graciously, mercifully, changed the subject, asking her about her magic. His own powers are fueled by an energy called 'mana,' which is everywhere back home, but only exists in very low levels here on Earth. Raven didn't know what energy he was talking about. Her power comes from within, from her own soul, her own force of will. David agreed it was all about force of will, but he spoke of bending this external energy to his will, while Raven saw it as force of will to control the energy inside her. David pointed out, rather bluntly, that she's not human, she's half demon, and that the rest of us don't have that internal energy source to play with. Raven went silent, looked away, and did not respond.

David took her hand and apologized, softly and sincerely, saying he didn't mean it like that, and didn't realize it was such a sensitive subject. He reassured her that she was just as human as her teammates, the mutant and the half-robot, which got a small laugh from her. He reassured her that it was OK to just be herself, and that anyone worth having as a friend would accept her for who she is.

Raven felt like she'd been needing to hear that for a long time. She'd heard it from Robin and the others, but somehow this was different. Though she tried to contain her enthusiasm, Raven was overjoyed to have finally met someone who understood what it was like for her, being different, being an outsider.

David confided in her that he was also always the outsider. He knew half a dozen places where they would welcome him 'home,' including the one where he had actually been born and raised, but none of them, even that one, felt like what a proper home should be. He always knows he'll be leaving again someday, which makes it hard to 'put down roots,' so to speak. He always knows he'll outlive his friends, move on to greater adventure when they're old and gray, and long after they've been put to rest. That is the curse of being immortal.

Of course, the benefit is countless lifetimes of experiences on exotic worlds across the stars. After their rather intense heart to heart, David lightened the mood with a few tales of his past, stories from other worlds. He thought she might like to start close to home, with what led him to her. Originally, he had found the Earth quite by accident. He had run into Earthlings on an alien planet, befriended them, and gone on their starship back to their home world. He was fascinated with Earth primarily because it had humans, identical to the human race that lived on Valador. He calls this 'cosmic coincidence,' and says it actually happens a lot.

David has been exploring the Earth for a while now, different continents, different centuries, different timelines. He decided circa 2000 was when it really got interesting, and has been traveling the U.S. and Europe, bouncing across timelines, checking out alternate versions, until he came upon her world, a world full of superheroes.

The entire phenomenon of superpowered people fascinated him. He had never seen it on anywhere near this scale. On most Earths, he said, the idea of someone with actual superpowers was considered science fiction. He explained the 'weirdness scale,' a measurement which he made up for comparing worlds. As a world's weirdness factor goes up, so does the incidence of things considered supernatural or paranormal, such as psychics, mutants, the appearance of ghosts, the practice of magic, and for some reason, the appearance of aliens. He described this world's weirdness factor as 'through the roof,' and Raven laughed.

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Author's notes:

Well, kids, I've hit major writer's block with where to go with this. I honestly don't think this really needs to be finished. The idea is that they talk and get to know each other over the course of a long conversation, several times over the next few days. They get to really like each other, and they both know that they really 'like' each other, and Raven is excited that she might be about to start some kind of romance with this older man. But no, they both agree that she's just too young for him, and they're better off being friends. So, after maybe a few days, he says he's got a universe to explore, and is going to be off. Now that's he's found a world with such a high weirdness factor, he wants to see what it was like in Medieval Europe. He gives her a signal beacon, which he leaves with friends he makes around the universe. It's a temporal-spatial anchor that he can lock on to and teleport to, so if she needs him she can call him. When they say goodbye, I'm picturing a long, tender hug, then as they pull back they very nearly kiss, but hesitate, then pull away. Without a word, David takes a few steps away and triggers his glowing green wormhole bubble. They're looking each other in the eye when the sphere implodes and he's gone. Raven wonders what might have been, while David secretly plans to come back and see her again when she's a young adult. THE END Cut to "The Blackwolf Intervention: Deleted scenes" when she signals him a year later, for a continuation of the story.

I have a question for all my fans. You'll note that in Ch. One I wrote all the dialogue, and in Ch. Two I summed up in paragraph form what they talked about. My question, I guess, is what did you think of that? Was Ch. Two OK? Would you have preferred the actual dialogue? The chapter would have been A LOT longer if I'd gone into the detail of the dialogue, but then, I feel like that's all "Blackwolf Reunion" was, a lot of dialogue. So tell me what you think of the two different styles in this piece.

I struggled at first with whether "Reunion" qualified as fan fiction, both because Logan and Terra are so different from the Beast Boy and Terra of either the cartoon or the comic, and because it co-starred my boy Blackwolf, who I feel is terribly cool, but who doesn't have much business in a fan fiction. I just want to say that I recognize that this piece is particularly bad. There is A LOT of what David does and what he says about himself, poor form in a fanfic. But I figure, you're not meant to be reading this until after you've read all my other stuff, so maybe you care about the character by now.

That's all I got, folks.

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