This chapter, I think, should be able to stand on its own, so I'm not going to say very much, except to thank my reviewers and give you music for this chapter. So thanks to all those who reviewed, and the music for this one is Hysteria by Muse. That is all.
I'll stop the whole world, I'll stop the whole world
From turning into a monster and eating us alive
Don't you ever wonder how we survived?
Now that you're gone, the world is ours.
~Monster, Paramore
Monster
Chapter 6
Raven was sound asleep when the knock came. Drowsily, she pulled back her covers and yelled for her caller to come in, thinking of ways to maim said visitor. When it was Arella, Raven instantly regretted her thoughts and was then very worried.
"Raven," Arella whispered, the light from the candle she held illuminating her face. "My love, they have come. You must leave immediately or they will find you."
Raven was frozen for only a moment. She threw the rest of the sheets from her body and darted out of bed. "Madar, where am I to go?" she asked urgently, whipping a cloak around her shoulders and hiding her nightgown from view.
Arella grabbed her by the shoulders. "You are to go to the place where your friend Koriand'r was born. You should be safe there."
Raven understood; she was to go to Tamaran. Her mother had not directly said so for fear of being overheard by spies in the castle. It was true then – they had come for her.
"Pack a bag quickly, my love," Arella told her. "And for heaven's sake, change into something that isn't that nightgown. I fear you'll be seen if you wear it. Meet me in the throne room when you are done."
Arella exited the room, leaving Raven to herself. Her eyes welled up with tears, but she pushed them back. If she wanted to survive, she didn't have time to cry. She would have to mourn over her loss of home later, when she was safely of Tamaran and could afford to let herself go. Even then, she was not sure if she could even afford to cry; she would have to be on her constant guard.
She packed her bag quickly, leaving out the cloak she had on and a tight lyrca catsuit she had brought with her from Earth, the thing she was going to change into as soon as she had all she needed thrown half-hazardly into her bag. It would help her blend into the shadows, and it was lined with some strange Kevlar fabric that Robin had assured her was light and comfortable, but also essentially bullet-proof.
Robin.
Raven wished her were with her. He had once told her that she was almost like the centre of gravity on the team, and without her, they would surely all go mad. What she hadn't told him was that he was incorrect, that it was he who held the team together, and without him, things fell apart. She felt like her situation now wasn't much different; she was without him and panicking so badly her hands were shaking. It was really too bad that they had gotten into such a silly argument.
Her clothes fully packed, she quickly stripped and struggled into the skin tight suit she had brought. It was tight, but she could move in it, and that was what she needed. She flung her cloak, blue as the depths of the ocean, around her shoulders and fastened it. With quick, deft movements, she grabbed her bag – much less that she had brought with her from Earth to Azarath – and was out the door to find her mother before she left.
The evidence that the cult had been there was obvious. Things were smashed all over the floor – vases, priceless paintings, furniture. She wanted to stop and perhaps try and reassemble some of her more favoured pieces, but she knew that she hadn't the time. They had already been down this way, but the cultist weren't entirely stupid. If they didn't find her elsewhere, they'd come back, looking for her, destroying even more. She had to get to her mother, and quickly.
She burst into her mother's study, a small room with blue walls, homey for all that it was essentially an office. Her eyes widened as she saw her mother standing next to an entirely familiar figure, though he was dressed in a costume she had not seen him in before.
Robin.
He turned to her as she all but exploded through the door, and they were both silent and still, her face frozen in shock, his a mask, though he was definitely concerned. She tried to speak, but she couldn't. She hadn't brought him here, that much she was sure of, and yet there he stood, next to her mother as if this had been any ordinary day and he had just decided to pop in on her and make a friendly visit.
They both knew that such was not the case.
She was the first to speak, though she couldn't remember how her lips had formed the words or how her brain had managed to regain function. "What are you doing here?"
Her words weren't bitter or angry, but almost soft. She didn't understand how he had gotten to Azarath unless he had managed to climb into the breadbox they had established as a mailbox back at the Tower. Acrobatic abilities aside, Raven was fairly certain he would not fit. He didn't smile at her and simply shrugged, the motion highlighting quite a bit of change in his body.
"Don't know. One second I'm in the Tower, minding my own business, and the next I'm standing her, looking utterly confused and being laughed at."
Raven rolled her eyes, falling into an old pattern with her friend. "Shut up, she didn't laugh at you and you know it." She turned to Arella and inclined her head in respect. "You brought him here, I suppose, Mother?"
Robin's face was confused. "Whoa, she's your mom?"
She rolled her eyes again. "No, I got all this womanly charm from Trigon. Yes, Robin, she is my mother. I only look just like her."
"I've been here all of two minutes," he countered. "Excuse me if I haven't had time to draw comparisons. And it's Nightwing now."
Ah, so that explained the costume change. She looked him up and down, enjoying the change. He had filled out and was no longer gangly. He was still thin, with an acrobat's body, but that was to be expected. He was taller, now, approaching six feet, she thought. Such a change in so little a time.
"Nightwing, then," she conceded. She gestured to her mother. "My mother, Arella. The queen."
Rob… Nightwing's jaw fell open and he quickly bowed to Arella, amusing Raven to no end. He blithered out some muttered apology and called her "Your Majesty". Raven would have laughed if they'd had the time for such pleasantries.
"Madar, I must go, and since you have brought Richard here to help me, he must leave with me as well." Her voice became thick as she said goodbye to a mother she barely knew. "I wish I could say I will keep in contact, but I cannot."
Arella smiled at her daughter. "Go with Azar, my child. I shall miss you." She turned to Nightwing and clasped his hand. "Take care of my daughter, young bird. Protect her."
He only had time to nod before Raven opened a portal and grabbed his hand, dragging him into it behind her. He watched Arella, her expression made of stone save for the one tear that tracked down her creamy cheek. Mourning the loss of a daughter she had only begun to know.
XXX
Raven landed harshly on Tamaranean soil and felt Nightwing collide with her back. She let out an 'hmph' of surprise and rolled away from him and into an almost crouch. She stood and offered him her hand and pulled him up from the ground. They dusted themselves off and looked at the impressive fortress of the castle in front of them.
Tamaran. Nightwing had been there before, obviously, and he knew Raven had too, as they had been there together, along with the rest of the Titans. He wondered if it had merely been the first place she had thought safe or if she had come here on purpose, had planned that she would go to Kori's birthplace if she could not return to Earth.
In the month she had been gone, she seemed to have bloomed. She had always had a slightly gangly appearance; girlish with the bare hint of curves, even in her form fitting leotard. But she had seemingly become a woman in the few short weeks he had not seen her, her figure more rounded and her body more developed. She was quite toned, he noticed, something emphasised by the tightness of the lyrca suit. She moved with a litheness he imagined she had probably learned from him, all grace and ease as she picked up her scraggly bag and motioned for him to follow her.
He found it odd that she knew where she was going, as if she had memorized paths on their previous visit here. They had not stayed on Tamaran very long, and he marvelled at the fact that she had taken the time to make sure she knew where she was. She had always been like that, he supposed, and yet it always surprised him when he noticed. Raven was always in control of things, even if she let others to believe that perhaps she wasn't. That was simply the way Raven was.
Nightwing found himself wondering if her abrupt departure from Azarath had pained her. She had lived there until she was thirteen, he knew, when she had left and come to Earth, seeking the aide of the Justice League. When they refused to help her, she had sought out the Batman, and that was how they had met. She knew so much about his history, and he so little of hers. He wondered if she would share some of her past with him if pressed, but he knew that things had not exactly been ideal for her before she had joined the Titans, and even, to some extent, after.
She turned to him with a knowing expression on her face, her violet eyes almost twinkling. "Think quieter," she demanded of him. "You're projecting emotions like crazy."
He had the good grace to look sheepish as Raven turned around. He sometimes forgot that she could feel emotions, and he was pretty bad at keeping what he felt to himself. She knew that, of course, and she had told him more than once that he "thought" too loud, though it was only her way of telling him that he needed to simmer down. He recalled that during his relationship with Starfire that she had tended to stay away from him, and when he had confronted her about it, she'd told him that she was often able to feel what he felt, and she didn't like her hormones suddenly reacting to something for no reason. After Starfire had broken up with him, well… that was another story entirely.
"It does, you know," she told him as they approached the large bridge that would take them to the gates of the castle, and he knew that he had inadvertently tapped in on their bond. Thinking too loud, indeed. "I never really knew my mother because they didn't let me see her, and I was just starting to bond with her when the news came. I wish I didn't have to leave."
He felt suddenly so in line with her that he almost stopped walking, shocked that she felt so similarly to him. She knew most of the details of his parents' deaths and Nightwing was fairly sure that she knew that he missed them. His mother had been the one to first call him Robin, and it had stuck until he had finally grown into manhood, essentially shedding the mantle of his past to barrel forward into his future.
So he simply said "Yeah, I miss mine, too."
XXX
Sometimes, Raven wondered if somehow the Fates knew that Richard would both drive her insane and be her closest friend at the same time.
She pitied him as he spoke of his dead mother, and yet, she realized that she was essentially in much the same boat. Though her mother was not dead, Raven hardly knew her, and felt as though she couldn't speak of her for fear of saying something that wasn't entirely correct. Back when she had lived at the Tower, it had greatly confused the Titans bar Robin, but she could not explain to them that she hardly knew what her mother's face looked like, let alone how she acted or what her personality was like.
"Now you're the one who's thinking too loud, Rae," she heard from behind her, and she turned to see Nightwing smirking characteristically at her.
She rolled her eyes. "I will never cease to be shocked when you grin like that at the most inappropriate times. We've both just been thrown out of our homes and could have easily been killed and you're smirking at me as if you're thinking dirty thoughts or something."
He shrugged, still smirking. "You never know, maybe I am. That suit is very form fitting."
She smacked him on the arm, rather hard. "You suggested it Bird Brain, and you were the one who took my measurements. If it doesn't fit, it's your fault."
He laughed as he rubbed his arm where she had punched him. "Well hey, it looks good. By the way, why did you never tell us you were a princess? Especially after we found out about Kori…"
"Don't kid yourself, Richard, I haven't always been a princess," she replied. "It was actually a fairly recent thing."
"But you still didn't tell us."
Sighing, Raven dropped her bag to the ground and sat, motioning for Nightwing to do the same. "Azar was essentially the ruler until she died," she told him, all business. "My mother was like her special project, and when Azar died, my mother not only became queen, but somehow inherited Azar's powers as well. She wrote to me to tell me, and I didn't tell you or any of the others because I didn't – and still don't – want to be a princess. I don't like knowing that when my mother dies I'm going to have the responsibility of ruling. It's… a burden."
She looked up to see that the smirk had finally melted from Nightwing's face and he was idly toying with the hem of her cloak, though he didn't seem to even notice he was doing it. "I guess I understand how you feel," he conceded. "I never really wanted to lead the Titans. I wanted to be on my own, go solo, and then you showed up and we somehow started fighting crime together, and when the others came along, I just sort of naturally fell in as the leader. It's really stressful."
"Oh, great Richard, thanks. That's exactly what I want to hear. Maybe I'll make you rule in my place."
She knew that her words didn't quite make sense, but she didn't care. His all-knowing smirk had returned, but he was still messing with her cloak, twirling the soft material between his fingers, but not playing with enough of it that it would tug on Raven's shoulders. He seemed all too childlike and yet utterly not at the same time. The smirk on his face belied his childish action of tugging at her clothing like a newborn at his mother, and yet, even through the mask, she could see the innocence in his eyes, an innocence Raven feared she lacked.
Sighing irritably, she subtly yanked her cloak from Nightwing's grip and stood, sweeping her bag up in one motion. He stood with her and they both looked off towards the castle. "Here we go," she mumbled. "I just hope this isn't going to be as awkward as it was last time."
Nightwing nodded. "Yeah, we wouldn't want to relive that. Do you think that Blackfire's still around?"
Raven shook her head. "Komand'r? No, she's long gone."
She walked on, leaving Nightwing wondering when exactly Raven had become so familiar with all things Tamaran.
END CHAPTER
Reunited, and it feels so good! Yes, I did just go there…
So, in case you guys are in any way confused, I'll give you a few notes:
I'm playing with fire here, mixing up the comics with the show. I really hated the way the show had the Titans meet, but I was only a little fonder of what happened in the comics, so I mashed them together. You'll get more of this in later chapters.
Arella was just a human woman. I think (I'm not sure on this) that Azarathians are meant to be simply humans as well, but that doesn't work with my plot, so they have abilities similar to Raven's. When Azar died, she passed her powers on to Arella, which explains why she was able to bring Nightwing to Azarath.
Any questions? Review and I'll answer them.
So yeah, dear old Robbie-poo is back on the scene. And he doesn't even have an attitude problem anymore! Yay!
Next chapter we have some bird bonding and we meet some Tamaraneans! Stay tuned for our dear Richard finding out that Raven has been to Tamaran more that once, along with a few other secrets.
The fun part is I know what happens but you don't! HA!