Raven slipped down the hall towards the pyramid of light spilling out of the library door. The stale taste of disorientation in her mouth was leading her here, where she sensed Joseph was once again chasing after elusive sleep.
Adjusting to a new body is not a simple matter, she thought to herself as she remembered her own first days in her new flesh. She paused for a moment and studied the back of her hand in the semidarkness. I should know. He will need some guidance—
Her thoughts were cut short by Cyborg's laughter, which had a few snorts thrown in for good measure. It was the kind of laugh he used when he was telling stories about Bart – and only when Bart wasn't around. She heard the odd laugh, and felt that stale flavor rise like bile in the back her throat. He is trying. Really trying. Dear Victor, you always make someone who seems like a stranger to themselves feel welcome. You are, in your own way, a healer, too. She rested her hand against the wall just outside the library door. I should know.
The disorientation that Jericho was feeling had eased back somewhat, and Victor launched into a tale about the team's latest adventures. Not wanting to disturb them, she allowed her feet to rise a few inches about the floor and gently floated herself back the way she had come. As she traced her way back to her room, her mind drifted back to other conversations in other libraries …
Many years ago…
"Excellent work as always, Theron. These will make a wonderful addition to the archives." The lady's long white hair grazed the edge of a page as she stooped over to read it. "At this rate, our collection will rival that of the old House of Wisdom itself. Or even the library in Alexandria. "
Theron, his face hidden in the shadow of a gray cloak, inclined his head to her. His words were crisp and slow. "A pleasure as always, my lady Azar, to bring more knowledge of our mother world to you."
Azar brushed her ring-laden hands over the remaining books in the stack. The light from the candles glittered as it reflected off the intricately shaped gold wrapped around her fingers. "And mostly to just me, I suppose. Most of the others are no longer interested. I like to have them, though… and someday, when she's ready, young Raven may like to have them as well."
"She certainly likes to read, that one," Theron replied.
Azar's head lifted slightly, breathing in the air around them as if catching a scent on a non-existent breeze. A small twinkle flashed across her eyes. "Ah, Theron," she said, "she does indeed." She closed the book and set it back on the heavy marble table. "The High Council meets soon. I must go. Please catalog these books as you always do, and I will tend to them later. Farewell, for now, my friend." She swept a finger across the gleaming jewel in her forehead and held her hand out to the young man.
He inclined his head once more in reply as she turned to go. Her staff thumped on the stone floor as she made her way out of the high-ceilinged library. When she was out of sight, he lowered his hood to reveal a smile shining out from an ebony face. He observed a tiny gloved hand waving at him from behind one of the many heavy tapestries covering the walls of the hall.
"I t'ink I see a little bird in here," he said, dropping his formal tone for a more musical one as if he were loosening a bowtie. "We didn't have pretty birds like dat back in Jamaica."
A hooded face followed the hand. Blue eyes shone at him from beneath the tiny cowl. "Hello, Theron," she replied. "You always know I am here."
"Of course, of course," he replied, beckoning her to come forward. "You always come to see the new books. Come and help me."
Her cloak whispered around her as she strode forward. Most girls her age, he thought, they would skip or hop. Little Raven walked a straight line, one foot in front of the other, no break in the rhythm of her motion. So serious for a seven-year-old.
She struggled to lift one of the larger books, Mythology of the Western World. "More of the Greek gods?"
"I swear, little girl, that book is bigger than you are!" His laugh echoed through the otherwise silent hall and bounced around row upon row of dusty tomes. He lit the half-melted candle in the elaborately carved holder that was suspended over the table. Then he lifted the book with a grunt of his own. "Here, let me put it away. You can write it here in the archive. Your handwriting is better than mine, anyway."
The tip of the long quill danced above her head as she recorded the name of the book in the records. She set down the pen and pointed to the taper whose flame lit up her small face. "In the morning, Coman is taking me to see where they make the candles."
Theron's voice curled around the bookshelf. "I thought that Coman wanted to keep you in the Temple."
"Yes," she said as she hunched her shoulders and twirled a strand of her long hair around her finger. "I know. But he wants me to see how much work it takes to make one of the tapers." She looked down at the desk. "He thinks I use too many candles." She dropped the strand of hair and looked up with a sparkle in her eyes. "But that is fine. I will be someplace else, at least for a little while. And maybe I will get to see Mother for a moment. Do you think I will?"
"Hah, that Coman." Theron shook his head as he rounded the corner to fetch the next book. "There is no current here. How else you gonna read? They won't let you go see the other people here. There are no other little ones. What else you gonna do?"
"Current?"
"Current. Power. Electricity."
"Oh, yes. Azar and Mother both told me about that. People on Earth have it, don't they?"
"Yes, they do. What else they tell you? About Earth?"
"About all the people there. There are a lot more there than here. Mother told me of a great singer of ballads. He had a very strange name. El-Vis. Perhaps you have heard of him?"
Theron held his belly as he guffawed, his laughter rebounding through a hall where mirth was unknown. "Oh, yes, I may have heard of him once or twice."
"And the wars they have, how they are always fighting each other." She sighed. "Then Coman always reminds me," she said while jiggling her head from side to side and lowering the tone of her voice," 'we do not fight here'. Or sing."
"Well, we chant sometimes."
"Yes, but it is just not quite the same thing, somehow."
His hand hovered over her tiny head as if to comfort her, but he pulled it back as he remembers the decree about touching this particular child. Foolish rule, he thought. How can anyone survive without even a friendly hand on their shoulder?
"I brought this for you, little bird," Theron said, pulling a thin book from underneath his cloak. "This is called a magazine. Like a book, but it talks about many different t'ings. And they make them, each month. Each month, something different, but under the same name."
The bright yellow borders of the cover fairly glowed; she had never seen such colors in an illustration before! She read the title aloud. "Nation… na-tion-al… geo… geographic. How did they paint these?" There was a tremor in her voice. "They look so real!"
Theron laughed gently. "They are real, little sister. They are photographs."
"Pho-to-graphs? These were not painted?"
"No, little one. They use a camera, a box that captures the image and burns it onto film. Then they put the picture on paper from the film."
"Film," she repeated as her hungry fingers turned the crisp pages. Her eyes devoured picture after picture, running her tiny child's fingernails over the words. "Camera. Pho-to-graph." The sound of her voice quivered. "Azar told me today that next week… next week she will start teaching me how to travel. She says I will be able to go from one place to another without moving, like everyone else."
"Really, now," he said as he shelved the last book. He leaned against the shelf and crossed his arms. "If you are supposed to stay in the Temple, where they gonna let you travel to?"
She shrugged. "I do not know." Her eyes shifted from left to right. "Do you think… do think someday I might travel to Earth? See other children, like me?" She looked down at the magazine once again. She waved her hand over the pages. "Or do you think this is all I will see?"
"I don't know, child, I don't know." He shrugged. "Who can tell what will happen? But it is a good thing to learn about where we come from, yes?"
"Yes," she said softly, casting her eyes back down to the picture in front of her.
"Don't read the words off the page, now," he chuckled as he left her to pore over the small book.
She finally took her eyes off the pictures long enough to read some of the words. So this is Earth. Her mind consumed sentence after sentence, seeing words that it did not recognize. She slowly sounded out each one, savoring the feel of them between her teeth, as if she were feasting on some new wild fruit, fruit that was juicy and sweet on her tongue. Tiny paragraphs below the pictures told her the names of these exotic places: Thailand, Congo, New York, Manhattan, Buenos Aires and Antarctica.
"Hello, Earth," she sang softly to the people in the photographs. "Hello."
She studied the map, having learned to love the few maps that were housed in the Azarathian library, showing the names of mysterious places with names like Azar Goshnasp, Nanda Parbat and Avalon. According to the inscription, this was a sphere projected onto a flat page. It is so large, she thought to herself. So this is our mother world. So many cities…which did Mother live in before she came here?
"Natural Disaster Averted," announced one title. "Justice League – 1; Volcano – 0."
"The Justice League," she whispered into the silence around her. "Who are they?"
Raven sank down into her own bed and pulled the covers over her happy but weary body as the memory faded. A small wave of furry happiness washed over her brain as she felt the thoughts of another try to wend their way into her mind.
"Good night, beloved," she whispered as she placed a set of earphones over her head and listened to the soft lullaby that streamed from them. The connection to Gar's dream faded as she fell into her own.
Raven was there again. The future. Or, at least, the version that they had visited only months before. The sour scent of the soupy fog and the bristly aftertaste of sheer hopelessness hanging over the Tower in her dreams were just like the one she remembered from their strange venture into the future, where they had met older versions of themselves. The thought of what they could become in the future had haunted them since.
Raven was standing there, staring out into the grayness, remembering the feeling of life with no brightness just across the bay. The emptiness made her feel queasy, even now. She retraced the steps of memory into the Hall of Mentors, populated by soulless crumbling statues, whose significance was still unknown to them, a puzzle they tried to figure out in bits and pieces when they felt strong enough to talk about what they had seen.
Then there was once again that rush of air and stench of brimstone that made her cringe, knowing that it was the same scent that emanated from her own dimensional travel. But each time she remembered the acrid odor being stronger than it was in real life; the smoke made her eyes water. Facing their own dark mirrors, her friends had been filled with confusion, confusion and fear as the future Kon-El's powers hurled them away from the tower, separating them so that each older Titan could track down their younger opposite.
Looking through the eyes of memory, she felt herself screaming at the pale copy of herself to leave Starfire alone, remembered the chill that had spread out from Dark Raven to cover the landscape. And as their soul-selves arose from each of them, as they had each time she remembered the battle, Raven wondered, What happened to us? To me? So pale, so empty of love, what happened to make me want to attack anyone?
And her face… she has my old face, my old eyes, my blue ones… she looks like I used to. Before I—before we—died.
Even with that mystery puzzling her, she steeled herself for the memory of the collision between the two great bird-shaped shadows, taking a step back from the freight train barreling through her mind and body as the souls briefly merged, then pulled themselves together as both she and the Dark version of herself collapsed in exhaustion and pain. Darkness overcame them both, as it always did in this particular dream.
She slipped away into another dream, one full of lime-colored penguins and talking salads.
A/N: Most of the information here is pure speculation on my part, expanded from Marv Wolfman's back-story of Raven found in the miniseries "Tales of the New Teen Titans" #2, which put the spotlight on Raven.
Coman was the leader of the High Council on Azarath. Where Azar was in charge of spiritual matters, he was in charge of making the trains run on time, so to speak. After Azar died, he was still in charge of the whole place. While Arella took over her daughter's education when the high priestess passed away, it is my theory that he had a hand in how that education was conducted. I believe he had a soft spot in his heart for Arella – like the daughter he never had – but just could not handle her daughter. Personally, I don't think he was good with kids.
Theron is a two-panel character that showed up in the "Tales of the New Teen Titans" mini that told us the story of Raven's childhood. He brought a dying bird to Raven and asked her to save it. We don't really know more than that about Theron. I decided to take his character and give him a little bit of a back-story. I write him as a former Rastafarian from Jamaica, who left Earth rather recently to be with a group of pacifists that he thought more closely reflected his ideals. In the panel where Raven sets the now-cured bird free, Theron is shown smiling at the bird in flight. He seems to be one of the few who were not afraid to talk to Raven. They called each other by name, so I assume that they knew each other already. I wanted to explore her possible relationships with others in Azarath, and he seemed a likely candidate.
Not only that, I figure she had to learn what she already knew about modern Earth (and the Justice League and other superheroes) from somewhere.
The Field Trip to the Future was in the Geoff Johns era of Teen Titans, issues 17 – 19. It took place not too long before the start of Twilight Child, which itself takes place right after issue 20.