A bit of a short chapter but I think the IMPORTANT things are covered.
Read reivew and l with the show.
Chapter 4: The Teashop.
The occupants of the medical Bay watched with concern and hesitancy as the dark mistress of magic worked about healing Donna Troy. What was troubling however, other then the fact that Raven was taking her pain into herself, but how severely injured Donna was. Being the sister of, and possessing the same powers as Wonder woman, you'd think she would be a bit tougher to take down, and yet here she was. Clawed, slashed, and bitten like she was nothing more then a mere mortal.
Ravens hands moved smoothly over the open wounds, her dark magic working to seal the skin together and stop the bleeding. Everyone winced when they saw the same markings appear on Ravens body, though not as severe, it was still clear that she was in severe discomfort.
"Raven," Starfire called, "She seems to be fine for the moment, perhaps she can continue healing herself on her own?"
Raven blinked the dripping sweat from her eyes. Her natural tendency was to keep going, but Donna wasn't the only one in need of attention. With her powers she did a quick empathetic sweep of the Amazon, and once she saw that she would be fine with just some rest, removed her hands.
"She'll be fine," she croaked already the weight of her healing pushing down on her shoulders.
She attempted to stand, but Beast boy put his hands on her shoulders to keep her seated. "Take it easy Rae, you've done enough." Through the darkness of her hood she glanced at Damien on the other side of the room. Following her line of sight, he added. "He's fine. Not a scratch on him."
She sighed in relief, but his physical issues weren't bothering her. Damien was emitting an emotional output that was unusual for him, and it caused her great worry and concern.
"Gar, take her to her room," Starfire ordered. She casually glanced at Nightwing who was with Damien, his stare silently telling her he wanted private time with the young swordsman. Once Beast Boy had Raven safely in his arms, and her head lay against his shoulder, Starfire followed them out of the medical wing.
Now that they were alone, Nightwing turned his scowl to the young Robin, but even he had to admit that he saw something flicker across Damien's unmasked eyes that he rarely, if ever saw.
Guilt.
As rare and welcomed as this was, Nightwing still couldn't let Damien off that easily.
"Did you get a look at the at who did this?"
Without taking his eyes off the unconscious Amazon, Damien reached for the R symbol and his chest and tapped it with two fingers. A small flash drive popped into his hands and he handed the small device to Nightwing. "I didn't see him, but I may have video tapped it."
Nightwing stared wildly at the flash drive. "Video taped?"
"I video taped each of my patrolling or training sessions to help improve my skills." Silence, until Damien glanced at him, "What?"
Nightwing shook his head and took the flash drive. "I spoke to Bruce today to. He says he never mentioned a container for you to watch."
Any guilt that may have shinned in his young green eyes quickly hardened. "It was a trap anyways. A ruse to get Donna out into the open."
"That may be the case, but if we all knew about it then we all would have been able to help her."
Damien glared, "I would have been fine if I didn't have her to worry about."
Nightwing shook his head while staring at the ceiling. "Damien when are you gonna get it through your head, your on a team, we WORK as a team."
Damien got to his feet in a huff. "And when are you gonna get it though your head that I don't NEED a team-"
"-Well you can't be by yourself-"
"-Only because even if I tried to run, you and father would find me some how so leaving is pointless."
Before Nightwing could argue further, he took a deep breath to calm himself. "Damien. You were making progress until we made Jaime second on command. But you have to understand we KNOW you can be a leader, but you don't know how to be a follower, but if Jaime is to succeed then he needs to know you have his back and the rest of the team," he glanced at Donna, "Or more of this well happen."
There it was again. A flicker of guilt, regret and shame.
He fought to keep his chin up, and shoulders back, but Nightwing could see them falling ever so slightly, and before they could, he left the medical room without another word. Nightwing couldn't be sure, but he was considering calling this progress.
When Damien discovered Raven was able to feel the emotions of others, he trained to keep them bottled, and hidden from her, much like his father was able to teach him to guard his mind. Since this was the case, Raven had a difficult time seeing what kind of shape he was in as she stood outside the closed door of the training room. Although she had a good guess considering Donna was injured and was essentially his fault, she figured he was just blowing off some steam. As she stood, listening to the clash of weapons and holograms disappearing and reappearing, She took a deep breath . . . and another . . . and another . . . and one more, the two pieces of paper getting moist in her clammy hands.
It took Her a couple of hours to recover from healing Donna, and another couple to psych herself up for this, but with One more breath she stepped inside. She caught him taking off the last head of one of his foes, before dropping to one knee, using his sword to steady himself. She had come just in Time it would seem. It appeared his training regimen was over, now he just stayed there on one knee for a rest. But as soon as he heard her boots as she stepped in, his head snapped up in her direction.
"Can I help you?" He asked flatly.
With a throat made of cotton, her hands shaking and sweaty she approached the young warrior. She kept her eyes on any but him, However with her training acquired in Azarath in keeping her emotions bottled, and her face a permanent mask of seriousness, no one would ever think that she was nervous about anything, certainly not Damien.
Damien repeated himself bringing the dark girl to the situation at hand. "What are you up too?"
He raised a brow, and suddenly she was aware that his mask was off, revealing his bright forest green eyes. "You came in here just to ask me what I'm up too?"
The question caught her off guard, well she was nervous so EVERYTHING was going to catch her off guard. "I, um," she subconsciously began fiddling with the two piece of papers between her fingers, "Well, there's this cafe that I go to on occasion, and this Thursday their having a, um, one of my favorite bands coming, and I was wondering if . . . you wanted to go?"
Phase one completed . . . and now . . . we wait . . .
With an unreadable expression, he examined her face, as if trying to see she was messing with him, but knowing Raven, he knew she wasn't. He was quiet for much longer then she wanted, until finally, "As a . . . team?"
Okay, maybe there was more then two steps.
"Well, um," almost robotically, her hand lifted into the air revealing only two tickets, "Just you . . . . and me . ."
He was glancing from the tickets to her, once again examining her expression. After six agonizing seconds, he stood up and headed to the control panel. "Thank you, but I'll have to pass."
He spoke as gently as he could causing Raven to fell an odd mixture of relief and disappointment, but honestly, she wasn't surprised by his answer. "I, uh, just thought you might want to-"
"-I'm fine. I just need to find the guy who did this."
There.
Raven felt a sliver of his emotions peek from behind the barriers he had placed and she felt . . .
Guilt . .
But was it guilt for saying "no" to her, or for Donna?
"Damien-" But he was to busy setting up another round at the hologram simulators. Raven felt an odd twisting sensation in the pit of her stomach, something she had felt before, like when she would catch glimpses of her mother from her quarters at the holy temple of Azar, but she never knew what the feeling was. And yet here it was again, mocking her. She gave a small nod and left him to his devices.
Damien waited until he was sure she was out of earshot, his typing slowly down, and his head hanging slightly. "Sorry Raven," he muttered, before going back to his work.
How could she have been so foolish? A few months ago when her father was taken from her chakra stone, she was able to feel more freely, though she still had to be careful. And yet with all of her meditative training she wasn't familiar with how to deal with this twisting in the pit of her stomach. It was almost painful, like someone had grabbed her insides and began wringing them out, like you would a wet towel, and in this case it was her powers dripping free. Finally with one final twist, she could feel her powers bubbling to the surface, unable to contain it anymore, she let it go.
POP!
"GAH!"
Her eyes snapped open. She had been so lost in her own little world, she didn't notice Beast Boy standing at the door of his room, clothes from a hamper in his hands strewn about.
"Crap," she muttered under her breath and went rushing to his aid. "Gar, are you okay?"
Beast Boy removed a pair of pants off of his face, staring up into the violet eyes of his teammate. "I think so. I think . . . my laundry exploded? Man I KNEW doing chores would kill me."
"Uh," Raven began putting his clothes back into the basket, "It wasn't your laundry basket."
Beast Boy shook off the shock of the explosion, looking her over oddly, "Wait . . . did you . . "
She gave a small blush and a nervous grin, "Sorry."
Beast Boy tilted his head, "Raven, you haven't had an outburst like that in years, is everything alright?"
She shrugged a shoulder as the two of them cleaned up, "I'm fine, just . . . fine."
Needless to say he didn't believe her, but out of the corner of his eye he saw something next to her knees, a pair of tickets to a local band. "Dude, the Teashop!"
Raven hadn't realized that she had set her tickets down, and they were now in his hands, but her shock, and slight embarrassment, suddenly switched to surprise. "You've listened to the Teashop?"
"Are you serious? Of course I have," Something clicked in his eyes when he looked back to her, "Wait, YOU'VE heard of the Teashop?"
She gave a slightly offended stare, "Why wouldn't I?"
"W-Well there kind of a pretty loud rock group, I didn't think . . . ya know, you'd listen to rock. I would have thought you'd listen to . . I dunno, slow babbling brook, or the sounds of the rainforest kind of thing?"
Raven couldn't help but raise an amused brow, "I'm big into meditation, I'm not a hippie."
Beast Boy let out a nervous chuckle when something else seemed to occur to him. Two tickets? She's feeling down? Oh . . .
"Did you, um, ask Damien to go?"
Raven placed the last piece of laundry into his basket, when a flash of sadness gleamed in her eyes, but it was quickly replaced with her usual stoic expression. "I asked him, but he's busy that night."
Beast Boy "hm'd" looking between the tickets and his friend, when his ears perked. "Dude how about we go together?"
Raven's eyes bugged slightly, "Uh, together?"
"Yeah," he exclaimed excitedly, "I mean I like the band, you like the band, I'm not busy this night. Why not?" Raven glanced at him oddly. It was her understanding that when members of the opposite sex went out together alone it meant they were courting, or dating. Seeing her confusion he decided to clarify, "Think of it this way. Were just two, heartbroken friends, licking our wounds." He shifted into a small green cat and crawled into her lap, rubbing his furry head against her belly just below her ribcage and purring in a begging fashion.
Raven blushed at the close and intimate nature, and blushed even harder when he saw him peak from underneath her breasts with . . . . the face. DAMN THAT FACE! She shooed him off of her with an eye roll. "Fine, you can come, but just as friends."
He shifted back into his normal pointy-eared self. "You got it Raven, dude this is gonna be sweet!"
Raven shook her head with a small smile as he helped her to his feet. An outing with Garfield? This should be fun . . . . right?
Donna's crystal blue eyes snapped open and sat upright in the hospital bed. "DAMIEN!"
"Hey, hey, hey," Starfire was by her side with her hands on her shoulders to steady her, "it's okay, your back at the tower. Your safe."
Donna's eyes were still wide with fear, "But, Damien-"
"-is fine. We got to him in time. If it weren't for your distress call, we may have been to late, but you did the right thing in contacting us."
Donna slowly began to relax and ease herself back onto the bed, "I just remembered seeing him run for the big metal box, and those things came for me as if he wasn't even there."
"Yes, it would seem that those lizard beings were after you."
For some reason Donna didn't seem too upset by this. Instead she looked down at her body. "Did Raven?"
"She did. Although it's a bit troubling that you were injured in such a manor."
Donna glanced at Starfire, "I think I knew what those things were. I've only heard stories, but it's something."
Starfire placed a hand on her shoulder. "It can wait until your more rested. Richard and Jaime are out on patrol as we speak and if they'll find anything they'll let us know."
Donna didn't have the strength to fight, but if she was right in her assumptions, they were in serious trouble.
A bigger question however is why were they after her?
