Author's Note: Aight, I got nothin'. There's no good excuse for why I haven't updated since Thanksgiving. Plain and simply, I've been a lazy nomad, and I'll probably be throw in to a snake pit by Mammon when I die. So, let's just forget about the whole thing and enjoy this chapter.
A hearse passed by the window at 12:00. An ordinary shiny black hearse that she most likely wouldn't have noticed had it passed 48 hours ago...but, like nearly everything even vaguely associated with death that Raven had seen since the previous night, she found herself staring at it; watching it with concerned, half-lidded lavender eyes until it rounded a left in the intersection and disappeared into traffic.
She'd had a dream last night; a particular type of dream she hadn't experienced since Adeline's birth; the type she thought would have died with Wrath, Trigon…and Adeline's father.
A dream with fire.
A dream with pain…
A dream with purpose…
…however…. she had absolutely no idea what that purpose was. Looking back on it, the entire thing had been ambiguous enough to almost be deemed a nightmare…with no hints of meanings, sense or foreshadowing. Just memories…and nothing more.
But…
…Begrudgingly, Raven knew that wasn't the case. She have been freed from her past, but she was still an empathy, and therefore, still susceptible to the occasional not-too-subtle messages of her unconsciousness. Visions. Sometimes…her mind sent her messages that meant absolutely nothing at all…and sometimes, it sent her dreams like this one.
She was standing in a room…a room literally made of flames. They covered the walls; they covered the floor and even covered the ceiling; churning and dancing along each surface in an unstoppable fury, in an outright defiance of gravity. They had felt so real, so unarguably genuine that she'd felt her skin grow brittle, her eyes drying out and her blue hair sizzling like a field of wheat in a firestorm. In the middle of the room, there was a sleek, large table; its metal frame turned a searing white hot and the flames quickly creeping up its sides like greedy pairs of hands, eager to snatch whatever was on top. However…the top of the table was nothing but a gigantic bonfire itself, a pillar of flames that reached all the way to the ceiling.
And over it all…rising over the roar of the flames…there was music playing…an unnamable and yet incredibly familiar tune. It was leisurely, sounding like an early 50s record skipping on a phonograph. There were slow scales circulating on a distant, grand piano, a dozen hazy violins slurring through crescendos accompanied by saxophones, trumpets…and above all, voices; distorted by static and the crackle of flames. Grainy, old-fashioned voices perfectly synchronized…perfectly harmonized all singing in eye-closing harmony as it droned through the fiery hell. Raven had never heard it before, but…it'd been the most familiar thing in the world to her…as if she'd spent her entire life in this room…a burning purgatory of fire, heat…and the song.
Flames began to dribble from the ceilings, leaving a streak of flame in its wake and yielding a temporary aperture in the sea of fire that covered the ceiling before they were once again smothered by flame. In a temporary glimpse, Raven thought she could see tiles…plain, off-white, ceiling tiles; like the kind you'd find in a hospital. Another rift yielded a fluorescent light panel…another revealing a corner mounted television…another; a plain metal speaker…
She was in a surgery room…a blistering, inferno of chemicals, drugs, and sweet rich medicine. She could recognize its shape, the feel, the very smell of it…masked beneath a layer of chortling flames.
And then something moved from atop the table…and suddenly, there was another voice…
Fire fire everywhere…never fading, always there…flaming passions, dead despair…fire fire everywhere…
…and then she'd woken up.
That was all she'd been able to remember…and everything she'd been unable to forget. The dream kept repeating, like the show tune you never quite get out of your head. She'd reiterated the dream over and over in her head, trying to make anything out of it. A room full of fire sounded more like something that'd be a reoccurring theme in some of her dreams…but that portion of her life was over; dead, cremated and buried.
Thus…the dream couldn't have been about herself, or Adeline. However…despite the fact that she'd never been in that blazing room before…the whole thing had seemed familiar. The song, the feel…the very atmosphere; all were indirectly recognizable, like one big fiery subluminal message. Out of the entire thing, however, only one thing was for certain.
Something bad is going to happen; happen to somebody close to her, important to her. Somebody…other than little Adeline.
Giving her limited number of acquaintances in France due mostly to a poorly developed sense of their language and a certain capturing of 'The Brain' a while back which had destroyed a good portion of city property just feet away from the base of the Eiffel tower; Raven only had one other person to affiliate with the dream. Only one other…
Cyborg…Victor Stone
…He was in danger…in trouble…in something. Something deep enough for her to pick up on from across the ocean.
Something…
"Mom…" Something tugged on Raven's sleeve.
She glanced down.
Adeline stared back, holding her arm with one hand and a suitcase nearly her own size in the other. She looked surprisingly composed for a ten-year-old who'd been freshly and forcibly forced out of a warm comfy bed to make an unannounced and unexplained flight across the ocean two whole days earlier than previously planned. She was even more composed than her mother. After getting the tickets within 24 hours, packing the rest of their clothes, and neglecting to give the house a good once-over before leaving were just some of the trials Raven had faced in order to leave France within the day. She was probably going to return home and find out that it had burned down as a result of an unattended pan of pasta of the stove.
If her gut instinct had failed her on this one….if all this had been nothing more than flammable nightmare that'd caused her all this grief…
Adeline tugged again at her mother's sleeve, her eyes beckoning to two seats in the Air-Port terminal near two gigantic windows. "Mom, over there! We can see the planes landing!"
Raven slowly rubbed the skin under her eyes with the opposite hand, nodding tiredly and levitating their luggage over to the seats with a nonchalant flick of her hand, an action which derived several raised eyebrows and head-turns from some of the citizens within the terminal...but Raven wasn't even acknowledging them. Right now, she just wanted to get on the stupid plane before she started throwing larger things than suitcases.
Raven moved over to one of the seats and eased herself down onto it like a smarting old woman. She hadn't slept a wink since that dream; and she had a strong feeling that she wasn't going to be getting a good night's rest until this whole damn thing was over.
Adeline plopped herself down on the seat next to her mother's, happily watching the lights of a large airliner come in for a landing against the night-sky outside. Without taking her eyes from the window, she spoke. "Why'd we leave early?"
Raven crossed her legs, absently scrounging around for her paperback. "No reason, Adeline. I just…want to get there earlier."
Adeline separated her gaze from the window for just enough time to give her mother a surprisingly worried, brow-furrowing glimpse. "It's more than that. You've had that look on your face ever since two nights ago."
Finally locating it, Raven pulled out her book; readjusting herself in her seat several times before answering nonchalantly, flipping through pages. "What look, Adeline?"
Adeline, losing interest in the planes, righted herself in her seat, looking at her mother with a look of subtle childish concern. "That look, mommy…the look you get when you have a bad feeling. You've had it for two days now."
Raven sighed, lowering her book to her lap and meeting her daughter's eyes.
A regular Nancy Drew, this one…
"Yes, Adeline, mommy did get a bad feeling. It's nothing to get concerned about…" She paused for a moment, glancing out the window. "…It's probably nothing at all."
Adeline wasn't convinced. She tilted her head, glancing down to the floor and feet swinging from under the seat. "Was it about…Uncle Cyborg? Is that why we're leaving early?"
Raven's voice became sharper, her nose once again slinking into her book. "Adeline, it's none of your concern. You wanted to go earlier, didn't you?"
Adeline lowered her gaze timidly, crossing her legs and looking away, shying away from a confrontation. "Not if you have that look. Something bad always happens when you get that look."
Raven sighed as she watched Adeline slowly turn back to the window, curling her legs up to her chest and watching the planes once more. Sighing again she let the book plop down on the chair next to her and slid an arm around Adeline's shoulder, giving her a slow, warm hug. "Look." She whispered. "Uncle Cyborg has always had…well…difficulties after all of us retired from being Titans."
Adeline looked up at her mother, smiling. "You mean super-heroes?"
Raven returned the smile, giving a small amused huff. "Yes…when we were super-heroes. It's just that…Uncle Cyborg never quite got used to it. He…he feels alone, and so he usually is alone. He doesn't remember much about his life before becoming a Titan…so his time as a titan was his life. Now that it's over…I'm not sure he knows what to do. He doesn't have a family anymore…he doesn't have anybody to love."
Adeline let out a quiet yawn, lowering her head onto Raven's lap. "But you love him, right?"
"Of course I do, Adeline, he's like a brother to me."
Adeline blinked and turned her head up to meet her mother's one more time. "Like a brother?" She said, her mind clearly having been set on another relationship status. It took Raven a moment to catch it. Finally upon realizing it she stopped, glancing down and meeting the curious gaze of her daughter.
Adeline stared back almost lucidly, her eyes glinting as if to say Yeah…I know about it. Raven shook this off with a half-smile. The relationship that Cyborg and Raven shared went beyond Adeline's understanding. She was, after all, just turning eleven and, like most eleven year old girls with single mothers, always was on the lookout for a new 'father'. It wasn't really that surprising then that Adeline would interoperate Raven and Cyborg's friendship as…well, something more. She had always been smitten with romance from the beginning…a trait that must have been inherited from the later side of the gene pool. Her shelves at home were covered wall to wall with picture books and short stories…all about love, relationships…and, of course…a happy ending.
Raven saw no particular problem with this…although she knew from personal experience that the world was full of unhappy endings and unhappy people. Still though…she thought it'd be nice to give Adeline that hope; a hope for the happy ending that her life never quite achieved. Despite the fact that she had a wonderful daughter, her career was taking off, and she was easily attaining enough money to put Adeline through the best of educations...Adeline's father was still dead. Ten years was not nearly enough time to lessen the blatant obviousness of his absence. An entire childhood without a father had taken its toll on both mother and daughter. But no…Adeline hadn't grown up without a father. She'd spent nearly half her life across the ocean in the company of one of the best substitute parental stand-inns Raven could ever hope to find; a man willing to help Raven through those first gauntlet years of motherhood while still respecting who Adeline's father truly had been. To Adeline…Cyborg was the only other family she ever had.
After several awkward moments of silence, Adeline, clearly not in the mood to pursue the matter further, simply shrugged and snuggled down on the chair, her head resting against her mother's thigh. She shifted once, twice, before finally finding a comfortable spot and letting out a quiet, content cat-like sigh. Raven edged off her coat and lowered over Adeline, giving a small, half-smile.
"Sweet dreams…." She sighed, flipping open her book once again. "…and happy endings."
Author's Note: Not a very action packed chapter, I know, but it does give you some important hints and whatnot to what's going to go down in future chapters. This was kinda meant to be a more 'warm and fuzzy' type of chappy, sorta a break between the gore, murder, and mystery! I'll try to update more quickly from now on. Happy Nomadic Holidays, everyone!
-Bert the Nomad