Beep. Beep.
The sheer foreignness of the sound woke her up. Raven's older tin alarm clock, of course, did not beep. She'd barely put her fingers over the screen of her communicator when Robin's voice came through.
"All Titans report to the Evidence Room. It is urgent."
Robin and Beast Boy looked like they hadn't so much as let their eyelids droop throughout the night. In his chair just within Robin's blind spot, Beast Boy covered yawn after yawn as they all filed in dutifully.
"We haven't discussed Slade all that much lately, for obvious reasons, but I think we might need to refresh a few things." Robin tapped his papers, obsessively aligning them all. "First…I think we can all be sure that Slade is alive again. He is definitely flesh and blood."
"You mean his little trip down under was a success?" Cyborg's eyebrow was just the slightest bit arched in barely contained shock. "When he came back to help fight Trigon with that huge axe, he still seemed pretty superpowered to me."
His words sparked something in Raven's memory. "The axe is proof." Everyone wheeled around to look at her. "It's the axe of a Reaper. They guard the different doorways of the…Underworld." Raven felt a flash of their collective fear.
Starfire flicked at her bangs in discomfort. "That means Slade has accomplished something involving the powers of the World Beneath, but what?"
"Going by what he said himself, and Raven just confirmed? He went to Hell, collected his soul and came back to life." She must have shown some sign of discomfort, because Robin glanced at her, looking commiserating. "I know, the idea disturbs me too."
Cyborg whistled. "That is the understatement of the century. I'm not the magic expert around here, but I for one wonder what collecting his soul back might have changed in him. Did it give him powers? Another demon buddy? Is he…even still mortal?"
Cyborg was too humane to word it just so, but Raven knew he was wondering if their longtime nemesis was still killable. Even though taking lives was against everything they stood for, even though none of them felt the slightest bit of joy at it, she'd long had the feeling that that was what it would come down to with Slade.
Robin's shoulders had gone rigid. "Those are very important points we need to look into Cy, thanks." He reshuffled the papers one more time, doubtlessly trying to step past the implication. "But we're getting off track. Beast Boy and I may have managed to figure out the method behind Slade's apparent madness." He took a step back and lay a hand on Beast Boy's shoulders.
Beast Boy sighed, glancing down at the ground briefly before looking back up with determined eyes. "We believe Slade was trying to get me to morph into feral form."
A slight impression of cold informed Raven that her face had rained of what little color it had, and she felt both Starfire and Cyborg jolt with shock.
Robin looked at the other two, then caught her gaze and nodded. "Slade is clever. He probably realized Beast Boy has an ability he hasn't seen him manifest again since he attacked the tower with Trigon's flame demons. We went through a lot of potential reasons for attacking a bunch of high school students. Terror tactics, experimentation. I even wondered if going through Hell to have his mortality restored might have made him go insane."
Cyborg scoffed under his breath "Right. Because he was this paragon of mental health before." Raven couldn't agree more.
Robin heard him anyway. "He's disturbingly sane in his planning, sadly. Slade's deduced that Beast Boy doesn't turn into his feral form on just any old occasion, that there are certain triggers involved, and he's been exposing Beast Boy to every one."
Beast Boy nodded, his entire posture grim. "That's also why he ambushed me in the old fairground. He was trying trigger number one, rage."
Raven caught on not a second later. Beast Trigger Number Two: Endangering the person Slade believed Beast Boy cared for the most. As far as Slade knew, as far as any of them knew, that person was Terra. When she chanced a backward glance, Cyborg's expression had gone sympathetic, and Starfire's mouth had opened in a gasp before, inexplicably, her eyes flicked briefly towards Raven.
"So now he's interested in Beast Boy's feral form. Why?"
"He could be interested in recruiting him." When Beast Boy snorted, Robin amended, "'Recruiting' is a very ambiguous term when Slade is involved, I know." His voice lowered "He could be trying to make Beast Boy lose control. He could be trying to make him go feral on us. We haven't figured out that far ahead, but Slade's intent is fairly clear. The attack on Tara Markov wasn't so much a diversion as it was a part of the tests he's conducting."
Starfire's eyes became shrewd. "I believe he has tried to trick us without openly trying to do so. He would have let us think the attack on the High School was aimed at Te- at Tara by not explaining himself."
Raven was momentarily overwhelmed by another subtle current of fear as everyone attempted to process what it meant that Slade had become so well acquainted with their course of thought that he'd gone and tried to let them trick themselves. Cyborg swallowed audibly. "Well, he's had no Beast so far. Which means another little visit should be due soon."
A pregnant pause followed Cyborg's words. Robin wordlessly handed his robotic friend a small partition of the papers he'd been fiddling with, Starfire walked towards the board with the clippings, hands holding her elbows, and Raven picked up her legs, sitting in midair in a lotus position.
Beast Boy remained utterly still for all of five minutes before standing up and effectively dismissing himself, slightly wobbly with exhaustion even as he headed out of the Evidence Room, head held high. Raven kept her gaze locked on the floor, determined never to discover if he'd spared her a glance before leaving, or if he'd looked away studiously.
There was too much emotion outside of her room, inside of herself: Raven had a cup of tea immediately after the meeting, then promptly locked herself up and meditated the day away.
The sky's colors were well into bleeding towards dusk when she emerged, having achieved some semblance of peace, into the common room. She had wandered into the kitchen area, pondering the consequences of putting food into her badly coiled stomach when she heard the pneumatic doors open. When no heavy metallic footsteps followed, no exuberant hello resounded, she knew.
"Hi…Raven." Floof. One of the cushions on the couch exploded into stuffing and torn fabric.
"Hello Beast Boy." Her senses cautioned her against turning to face him in her precariously balanced state, and a very brief war in favor of opening herself up to his emotions was lost to her restraint. Though Raven had to admit she hardly needed her powers to interpret the slight movement and shuffling behind her as a very, very disconcerted changeling.
He moved forward, closer. Then he moved back. She guessed he was fiddling with his hands. More shuffling. His steps moved away, towards the couch and likely towards the decimated cushion. Raven remained perfectly still, feeling his eyes on her the whole time.
Raven slowly counted ten minutes. When the Mexican Standoff became too much for her, she opened a portal and sank through the floor.
"Wha-WAIT!"
Raven was back in her room so quickly, the distressing emotions caught up with her there and one of her own vases burst into pieces.
That very night, just shy of one in the morning, the alarm went off.
As Raven lay wide awake above her covers, in her cape and uniform, a bizarre mixture of anticipation and relief relieved the tension in her stomach. She rose from the bed, neither rushing nor stalling, but inescapably glad that the wait was finally over.
Upon arrival, Raven was surprised to discover she was the third person to appear in the common room. Cyborg and Robin were already in front of the computer, and the location of the alarm was already locked on the screen.
Her heart leaped to her throat. The catacombs. The ones beneath the old library site. The place where my father entered the world. The place where almost all of me died.
Beast Boy skidded into the room next, wholly silent for once, and Starfire had to have appeared not long after because then they were in the garage and then the T-Car was hurtling towards one of the last places on Earth that struck fear into her heart. Fear was, however, only partly responsible for her lack of awareness. Her mind was racing while her body was on autopilot, trying to puzzle out Slade's next move.
The fairground. The high school. The catacombs. Rage, failed on two counts, and worry failed once, with Terra. The catacombs. The place where they saw me die.
The catacombs…
It clicked somewhere in the vicinity of Raven's heart before it appeared as a real something in her head.
Navigating the catacombs was infinitely easier this second time, both due to Robin and Raven being able to traverse them (the latter because she knew the way, the former because he had excellent recall) and to the apparent absence of invincible, scythe-wielding specters. Raven wondered if it was a touch of paranoia, or if the group was deliberately keeping defensive formation around her as they descended, with Robin and Cyborg abreast of each other in front of her, Star and the still eerily silent Beast Boy behind her.
Cyborg's lantern bobbed as he walked, illuminating the statues and carvings. "Never dreamed I'd be down here again."
Robin nodded, not turning around. "I'm surprised at how…sound this place looks."
Cyborg scratched his neck. "I don't follow."
"Well, Raven's magic restored the entire world, so I shouldn't be surprised that this place was put back up too. I just thought, what with it being Trigon's point of entry into the world…I wondered if it would be too tainted." At that, he looked over his shoulder, and while the contrast of illumination made it harder, Raven knew he was looking at her. "This is a temple for you, isn't it? It was built to honor you."
Beneath the cover of her cloak, Raven's mouth slacked very slightly in surprise. "Clever."
"Was it built by the people of Azarath, Friend Raven?"
"Yes and no. This temple was made based on visions of what would happen, by Trigon's followers, hundreds of years ago. A few of them defected to Azarath when they realized what they were worshipping, but the cult itself was made up mostly by Earth humans."
Beast Boy's voice, unexpected, nearly made her jump. "Wow, so this is really the Temple of Raven?" Raven forcibly stopped herself from smiling at him like a ninny for the admiring tone.
It had been built centuries before her birth was even a remote possibility, erected by corrupted cultists who based it on the prophecies that heralded her as the Gem. It was a tribute to wanton destruction and evil, with her present only as a mindless instrument.
The beam of Cyborg's light caught a large statue with a blank face and an eerily familiar cloak.
Okay, tribute to evil with very creepily accurate detail. I can allow them that.
They walked deeper in, coming closer to the chamber where the Hand was. She wondered if it was still there, or if it had vanished after Trigon had-
"Raven!" She was flung sideways violently, metal and stone crashed together, and a green bear materialized between herself and the wall before the impact.
"Very good, Beast Boy. You might not be such a failure after all." Slade was hefting the Reaper's axe back onto his shoulder, and Raven knew its blade had struck the very place she'd stood in not a minute before.
The axe! "That's not a decoy!"
Behind her, Beast Boy was himself again. "Huh?"
"That is the real, actual Slade. Not a robot. Only the person who obtained the axe can wield it." She hurried to her feet. The others were already converging on Slade, Starfire's fists glowing like searchlights. "DON'T LET THE BLADE TOUCH YOU!"
"Dude, this is, like, the second time in six years I've ever heard you scream." Raven wheeled around and pressed her hands to Beast Boy's chest, clenching the material of his shirt tightly.
"The stories say that blade can cut through anything. Even demon flesh. Even souls." She looked into his eyes brazenly, not removing her hands. "Stay safe. Please. Gar."
Beast Boy blinked. "I will." His wide eyes and firmly clenched jaw told her of a mixture of confusion and seriousness. Raven removed one hand, then pressed the other over his heart. In for a penny…
She was airborne already when it struck her. A penny. She would have laughed at herself if ahead of her Slade hadn't just halved Robin's bo staff, straight down the middle, like it was dough being parted for kneading. As he jumped back, Slade's head turned to her.
"It seems the lovers have finally joined our dance. Wonderful. I'm afraid, however, that the dance floor is about to get…crowded."
He righted the axe and slammed its base against the floor. The sound echoed throughout the chamber. It became lost in the silence.
Cyborg heard them first. His eyebrow shot up. "Winged reapers! Incoming at twelve o clock!"
Surely enough, the chamber was soon immersed in screeches, and a thick flock of the skeletal creatures descended upon the Titans en masse.
AN: I apologize profusely for the long wait. Shout out to Artemis Raven Courtney, who realized Terra/Tara was a decoy.
