Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans in any way, shape or form.


Raven replaced the IV bag dutifully, making sure that there was no air in the tube leading to the Professor's arm. No, Lucifer, she reminded herself, as he had told her to address him during one of his short moments of consciousness and clarity. Lucifer. Smoothing his blankets with a now practiced hand, the girl was careful to avoid pressing on where she now knew he had sustained other injuries. A shattered left forearm and a destroyed left leg, calf muscles slashed, were the most serious of his wounds, but not the only. The bruises covered nearly every inch of skin, though they had begun to fade into a sickly green and yellow. She had questioned him the very first time his eyes had fluttered, two days after she was charged with his care, and demanded to know what had caused the wounds. He hadn't answered, but the fear in his eyes had spoken volumes. He was only conscious for a few short minutes; she did not question him again.

The tap of footsteps drew her attention to the door, where Slade appeared without a word. Nodding in greeting and returning to her task of replacing the dressing around Lucifer's head, Raven only kept her breathing in check because of the intense training she had been forced to endure. It was strange really, to see a different side of this man, this monster. (Her monster?) She rolled her shoulders in response to the idiotic thought. She wasn't some sort of weak idiot who would crawl into the hole of Stockholm's Syndrome and never again see the light of day.

Slade had made it a habit to come each day to check on Lucifer, looking through the charts that Raven kept regularly and reading through the information available on the computer monitors that kept track of his every heartbeat and brain wave. All this, he did in silence, and Raven considered this a gift. There was something in her that had changed the very moment she saw the man beside the hospital bed that very first time she was summoned to Lucifer's side, and she did not find that 'uncomfortable' was a strong enough word to describe the sensation. Her skin prickled, as if a cactus was growing beneath the surface and beginning to press for freedom, and her head was heavy and light all at once. She never could tell if she was going to feel extraordinarily off balance, or extremely focused during Slade's daily visits, and it was something of which she did not approve. The control she so treasured had been stripped from her with her capture, but just as she had begun to feel in control of herself (at the very least), her body had betrayed her.

"Has he spoken again?" Slade asked in a low voice, his eyes having fixed on Raven when she wasn't paying attention. Raven was startled by the generally silent man's words, and unsettled by his knowledge. Again, he had said. The first time the Lucifer awoke, he had not said a word, but in the following short bursts of consciousness, he had tried haltingly to speak with her. He had asked the questions one would expect from a man lingering between asleep and awake, like where am I? and what's going on?. But after he seemed to become more aware during these states, he had started saying things that didn't always make very much sense. He would mumble about demons and home, and ask her if she wanted to hear a story, like a child. These things were so very strange, and seemed somehow like secrets, prompting her to merely record increased brain activity, and not the fact that he had spoken. It was unclear why his words had been so.. just odd, and yet how they could still sound so true, and also why Raven would feel the need to hide them.

She should have known better than to assume Slade wouldn't be watching. He was always watching. His eyes glittered in a way that said he knew just what she was thinking, and it left her unable to answer verbally, merely responding with a shake of her head.

"Pity. I recall he wanted to tell you a story." Setting aside the chart he had been reading, Slade stepped towards Raven with an air of pure command, only stopping once he had entered her personal space. One hand lifted to touch her cheek with an uncharacteristic tenderness that ended as quickly as it had begun. "It is important for the sick to feel valid."

Raven, uncertain as to the tender touch and as to what Slade was trying to do, watched the man leave the room as silently as he had appeared.

"Looks like I have permission to talk to you. Now will you listen?" Lucifer's voice was rough as he spoke from his bed. Turning to find him trying to sit up on his own, Raven darted back to his side to assist and keep the man from injuring himself further.


Slade nursed a healthy glass of whiskey as he sat, fixated on a slab of rock that lay behind a shimmering force field. Quite obviously ancient, though remarkably well preserved, the stone was carved with intricate pictograms and symbols that no mind on earth would be likely to translate within a single lifetime. Satisfaction was so far a goal, the man felt nearly sick to his stomach. This plan, his masterpiece, so long in the making. Right now was the turning point, and a single screw up would set him back far longer than he cared to consider.

Lucifer's voice sounded from speakers attached to the monitoring screens on the other side of the room, but Slade already knew well the story he was telling.

Finishing the measure of whiskey in his glass and pouring another, Slade traced his eyes over the slab of rock with familiar ease. Each symbol and pictogram were as known to him as if he had carved them himself. So long had he stared at this object, had he studied it and the meaning it held, he could not count the seconds, minutes, hours. The promise held within the simple thing was a promise of a new.. everything.

He could and would have everything. After all, it wasn't as if the effort could kill him.


Well, I must apologize for the dinky chapter. But the next will be at least twice this long, I already have it planned. So let's all cross our fingers and hope that I get it done by next Friday along with the work for two college classes I started today, and the beginnings of the paperwork I need to complete to go to school here in Germany!