Alright, boys and girls! As always, I'd like to extend my warmest thanks to my readers and reviewers. Believe it or not, we're coming down to the end of this little story of mine. There are a few things left to tie up, but... we're almost at the end. I actually considered ending at the end of this chapter, but I realized it would have left too many unanswered questions. And it would have just been mean. Enjoy.
"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."
~Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Darkness Calls: Chapter 10
As Raven looked at her clone's decapitated body, she felt as if the air around her was ossifying. The Observation Room still echoed the sounds of combat: the Kiai of Robins as they pummeled each other rang out sharply, punctuated by the clang of bo staffs and birderangs; bolts of sizzling green radiation flew through the air, impacting the ground and adding colossal explosions to the mix; and the snarls of wild beasts completed the cacophony. Yet in the midst of all the action, fully aware that she still had two of Seth's astral projections to deal with, Raven couldn't take her eyes off the body before her.
She'd just killed herself.
The empath knew the dead girl sprawled on the floor was a fake, but she couldn't deny the likeness. The voice that had gasped out in shock when the machete sunk into the pale girl's skin had been Raven's voice. She was looking into empty violet eyes that used to be alive with emotion and thought. She'd snuffed them out. Beast Boy was by Raven's side. The elf's face was greener than normal as he stared at the slain sorceress.
A tremendous burst of energy broke through Raven's thoughts and drew her back into the moment. Two Starfires had been pelting each other with starbolts overhead. One of them crashed to the floor and slid along the pristine whiteness before bumping into the dead Raven's head. Starfire sat up and shook her head, then turned to apologize. The Tamaranian's words stuck in her throat. Starfire looked around in horror for the rest of the body. Her eyes landed on Raven and Beast Boy. The shaken alien flew from the floor.
"You have killed Raven!" she roared.
"That's only a duplicate, Starfire. I'm the real Raven."
The redhead's eyes narrowed. "I have spoken at length with this Raven. She was the true Raven."
Beast Boy interrupted the exchange. "Star, this is Raven. Come on, you know me. I would never have helped her if I wasn't positive. She's the real Raven. I'm the real Beast Boy."
"I do not believe you!" Starfire shot back. "I know my friends better than Seth has given me credit for. This was the real Raven… that means you are only a cheap imitation," she spat. "You have killed my friend, and you shall be made to pay for it!" Brilliant green energy encased the alien's hands as she spoke. Beast Boy jumped in between the two heroines, his hands held up pleadingly.
"Star, please… don't do this. It's only making Seth stronger for us to doubt each other. If that," he nodded toward the dead Raven, "was the real Raven, then she's dead. There's nothing we can do to change it. But how could an imitation beat the real thing?"
"With assistance from similar forgeries," Starfire seethed. The girl leveled her glowing fist at Beast Boy's head. "You will remove yourself from my path, or I shall irreparably damage you."
The changeling didn't budge. He took a deep breath and stared imploringly at Starfire. Raven could see her friend's indecision: she didn't know what to do. The three conversing Titans had drawn attention. There were Ravens, Starfires, Beast Boys, and Robins staring at the scene, their fights amongst each other eclipsed by the horrifying prospect of one of their number lying headless on the floor of the Observation Room. First Cyborg, now possibly Raven, and it looked like Beast Boy was heading in the same direction.
"I'm not moving," Beast Boy said. "This won't help. If we start fighting each other instead of only fighting our look-alikes, we're going to make a mistake. We'll kill the wrong person and then we'll have to live with that for as long as we manage to stay alive. I'm not moving, Star. Please. Don't do this. Don't let Seth win."
The redhead glared at Beast Boy. "You were not so adamant about refraining from attacking each other when you assisted that imitation in the murder of my friend." The green boy's head sunk to his chest. Raven saw a tear run down the contours of his young face before soaking into the light layer of fur that covered his body.
"It was hard to do. I… I didn't know that the body would still be here. I thought it would vanish or something. I helped Raven because I know – don't ask me how, but I do – that this is the real Raven." He pointed to Raven, and her two remaining clones quickly objected. The room was swallowed by blinding white light as one of the Robins threw a flash-bang.
"That's enough!" the Boy Wonder bellowed. "Starfire, get away from Beast Boy. He's right. We can't risk this turning into an outright brawl." One of the other Beast Boys tapped the acrobat's shoulder.
"Dude, it's because that guy helped that Raven kill the other Raven that we're even having this conversation." The changeling pointed from Beast Boy, to Raven, to her fallen opponent for emphasis. The empath glared at the changeling. It could be Beast Boy, but the green boy wasn't helping to defuse the situation. She glanced at the boy with the number 1 etched onto his chest and realized something: there were only two Beast Boys in the gathered crowd. The boy next to her made three.
Someone was missing.
She flew into the air immediately, her sharp violet eyes scanning the crowd. The Starfire who'd been threatening Beast Boy and her shouted up after her. A starbolt shot past Raven's head, but the sorceress, accustomed to Starfire and all her battle tactics from years of living and working alongside the Tamaranian princess, knew that she missed on purpose. A warning shot. Raven's self-appointed ally grabbed Starfire's fist and forced it down, preventing a second starbolt.
"What's up, Rae?" he called up to her. She didn't answer. She counted the people below her. There were three Robins staring at her and one unconscious one on the floor. Four Starfires. Two Ravens. Three Beast Boys.
"Has anyone killed a Beast Boy?" she shouted to the crowd of heroes. Her teammates and their clones looked around, realizing what Raven was getting at. The empath's gaze darted around the Observation Room. She couldn't see a body. The sorceress locked eyes with each changeling, receiving a shrug from each in turn. She looked from one green boy to the next, noting the oxidized blood, the bite mark on the lower lip, the tangled nest of forest green hair. What she didn't see was someone with a large gash in them, the type of wound that would be left by a machete.
Raven paled. She stared down at the obsidian blade in her hand. She'd attacked one of the Beast Boys with it, and now the changeling was conspicuously absent. The weapon fell to the glistening floor, clattered against the white stone, and vanished in a puff of smoke.
"Oh, Azar… No. No. No, no, no." Raven floated back to the ground, shaking her head all the way. Tears began to sting at the corners of her eyes, and the distraught sorceress was helpless to hold them at bay. The Beast Boy with the 1 on his chest was a perfect likeness of the real thing, the projections got better with time and interaction, she'd known that all along, but she now realized the truth: she'd attacked the real Beast Boy. She'd stabbed him. And now he was missing.
"Beast Boy!" she cried, looking around for the changeling. "Beast Boy! Please, answer me. Tell me you can hear me." The projection with the 1 on his chest stepped forward, his brow knitted in confusion and concern.
"Rae, I'm right here."
"Not you!" Raven spat. White energy erupted from the empath's eyes, and the approaching changeling was lifted from his feet and thrown backward. He crashed onto the floor and slid backward. Everybody was looking at Raven, she could feel her friends' uneasiness about being around her. She was acting emotional, something she tried very hard never to do, and crazy. The Starfire who'd threatened her nodded.
"I am thankful that it is truly you, friend. And it is fortunate that you no longer fear expressing your feelings." The redhead smiled and wrapped Raven in a hug. The empath blinked away her tears and returned the hug. She was afraid to let go, afraid that Seth would seize Starfire and cart her away again if they stopped touching. Finally, the demoness broke the embrace. She needed to find Beast Boy.
The Observation Room was engulfed by her magic. Raven started to pry, sorting through her friends' presences. Her senses were useless and her empathetic powers couldn't lead her to the boy, but her powers would adhere to anything that she believed she was supposed to find. If there was a projection of the real Beast Boy in the room, she'd find it by process of elimination.
The sorceress' magic drew back to her slowly, releasing the Titans as she sorted through them. Then there was nothing left. Raven couldn't see any evidence of her power still in the room, the maddening white had reasserted itself, but she still felt as if she were wrapped around something.
Something microscopic.
Raven widened the sphere of magic that was around the tiny speck she felt, and a black orb appeared on one of her clone's shoulders. She drew the orb toward her, and it flew from the Raven duplicate. Using a trick she'd learned from Malchior, the demoness transformed Beast Boy back to his human form.
The changeling appeared on the floor, his face ashen and his abdomen coated in blood. He'd transformed into an ameba to minimize blood loss and cell damage. As a single-celled organism, there was no blood, no internal organs, and minimal to nonexistent brain function. Raven smiled at how ingenious the boy lying before her was. For all his immaturity, bad jokes, and poor confidence, he was amazing. Raven ran to the boy, Starfire fast on her heels. The crowd of Titans watching them didn't move.
Raven checked for Beast Boy's pulse. She could feel something, but it was faint. She shook her head. That didn't mean anything: her senses were only telling her what she expected by analyzing the amount of blood on the boy, the pallor of his face, and the length of time since the injury.
"He needs a doctor," Raven whispered.
"He needs to be gotten rid of," one of Beast Boy's projections said, stepping forward. The empath glared at the boy.
"He is the real Beast Boy. You are nothing!" She glared at the Ravens, Starfires, and Beast Boys watching her. She knew she was herself, and she knew she'd found the real Starfire and Beast Boy.
"What do you suggest now, Raven?" Starfire whispered. The shock of discovering the headless Raven and the critically injured Beast Boy was wearing off. It wouldn't be long before the battle broke out again. Raven clenched her right hand into a fist and placed Beast Boy's hand on top of it. Starfire followed suit.
"Our minds are here, but our bodies are still in our dimension. Our senses tell us what we expect to be told, but that doesn't mean it's real." Raven focused and bronze light began to shine in her fist. Against her will, her fist loosened, as if something had been placed in it. The empath took her hand away from her teammates' and opened it. The Mark of Chaos glinted up at her, sparkling with untapped energy. She squeezed her hand shut and glared at the people around her.
"I am the real Raven," she announced. "The other three are nothing." Bronze light blinded Raven as it sped out into the white expanse of the Observation Room. The headless body and the two other Ravens vanished as if they'd never existed. The demoness extended her hand to Starfire, offering the powerful rune. The alien girl grasped it firmly.
"I declare myself to be the only true Koriand'r, princess and former Grand Ruler of Tamaran." The remaining Starfires vanished.
"Any other takers?" Raven called to the remaining Titans. Only Robins and Beast Boys remained. There was a shuffling amongst the Robins and one of them came forward. The Boy Wonder's mask was torn, and his body was peppered with bruises. Despite the damage to his mask, the boy's eyes remained hidden.
"I hope this isn't one of Seth's tricks," he sighed, taking the Mark from Starfire. "I'm Robin. The rest of you… get lost. Game over." The three masked acrobats disappeared in a flash of light. Raven glared at the Beast Boy with the 1 on his chest.
"Here's your chance: if you're the real Beast Boy, your physical body should still be touching the Mark of Chaos, and you should be able to get rid of Seth's astral forgeries. But you're nothing but an imitation designed to trick me into attacking my family." The changeling was quiet for a second.
"You always were smarter than me, Rae."
"Only Beast Boy's allowed to call me that!" the empath hissed. The forgery before her was wrong: transforming into an ameba was the most intelligent thing Raven had ever seen Beast Boy do. And he'd done a lot of amazing (and admittedly not so amazing) things in the time she'd known him.
"You're proud of yourselves, Titans?" the projection sneered. "It doesn't matter that you've figured out how to identify each other. The damage is done." Robin stepped toward the fake Beast Boy, his fists clenched.
"We won your sick game, Seth."
"You haven't, actually," one of the other projections said, stepping toward Raven and Starfire. "You only win once you've killed all the clones. Those declarations of yours were touching, but Beast Boy's in no condition to make any such claims. Do you have what it takes to kill all three of us?"
Starfire straightened and got between the Beast Boy and the clone. They needed to protect the real Beast Boy. If he died here, then he was gone. The Tamaranian locked eyes with the clone.
"Had you asked us such a question a few weeks ago, we would have been unable to honestly say we could slay someone who looked so much like one of our friends, but you have rid us of such inhibitions, Seth."
All three changelings laughed. They sounded exactly like Beast Boy.
"I don't think so, Star," the best projection said, the projection with the 1 on his chest. "You remember what it feels like to kill. You've got all those memories from when you were roaming the streets like a rabid animal. It's hard to do."
Robin drew two birderangs from his utility belt and locked the two projectiles together, creating a sturdy long sword.
"You're underestimating us," the Boy Wonder growled.
ooooo
The television had been reporting the same lack of information for hours. Slade was only listening with half an ear.
"As of yet there is no indication to what caused the disaster–"
"Preliminary reports from the NSA have placed the body count in the United States alone at over 85 million–"
"First hand reports from survivors in Jump City, California have indicated that the Teen Titans had something to do with the phenomena's reversal–"
"The body of the Teen Titan known as Cyborg has been found–"
Slade's head snapped to the side at the sound of sizzling flesh. The masked assassin watched as the four Titans' hands began to burn. He'd been careful when transporting the heroes to make sure they stayed in contact with the Mark of Chaos. It had taken longer than he'd expected, but Raven finally figured out how to use the artifact. Now the Mark was activated to its full potential.
Seth would be hurting.
The allegedly dead sociopath watched as the Mark of Chaos grew brighter and brighter. He had to shield his eye to avoid retinal damage. The bronze light grew to amber. Amber grew to gold. Gold turned to white, and still the Mark of Chaos burned hotter and brighter, peeling the flesh from the Titans' hands. Slade reached out and knocked the rune to the floor. The light faded until only bronze light danced across the surface of the ancient stone like stray electric current.
Slade turned off the television and stood abruptly. He scooped up the Mark of Chaos and slipped it into a pouch on his belt – right next to the Mark of Death. The man couldn't help but spare himself a small smile. He had the beginnings of quite a nice collection. Slade strode with purpose to the tower's mainframe computer and pulled up all information on the security footage. It was a simple matter to erase all electronic records of his presence at the tower and set the security cameras on a timed loop. He had twenty minutes until the cameras started recording things as they actually were.
Slade pulled up Cyborg's memory and cleared all record of his initial installation and their conversation. The masked villain strode out of the room and headed for the archives in the basement. Slade and Robin were very alike, no matter how much the young detective denied it, and Slade would never trust electronic records alone for security. Those could be erased, forged, or compromised. There would be hard copies of security footage in the basement.
ooooo
Raven ducked underneath the gorilla's fist, backpedaling to keep away from the muscular primate's crippling blows. It swung again, twisting its hips like a boxer to put extra power behind the punch. She ducked again. Mid-swing, the ape began to shift into an Ankylosaurus. The armored dinosaur's clubbed tail slammed into Raven's ribcage and sent her flying. Before she could right herself, one of the other projections, this one in the form of a kangaroo, slammed into her, kicking out with all the force it could. Raven crashed into the Basin. The empath regained her senses to see a hippopotamus charging her, its head swinging from side to side. She could just imagine the devastating impact a full frontal assault would have on her.
The demoness prepared herself, calling upon her powers and ready to stop the raging beast in its tracks. When it was only a few meters from Raven, the hippopotamus was replaced by a squirrel. Raven tried to seize the rodent with her powers, but it was too small and too fast. It jumped, transformed into a king cobra, and opened its mouth wide. Against her will, Raven screamed. The deadly snake was struck by Starfire's eyebeams and careened into the maddening whiteness.
The Tamaranian's momentary assistance left her vulnerable to the Beast Boy she'd been fighting, and the large mountain goat crashed into her stomach, winding the redhead. Raven opened a portal behind Starfire, and the girl was thrown backward into it. The empath opened the portal and deposited her friend out of harm's way.
Raven saw Robin fending off a lion with his long sword out of the corner of her eye. The goat that had attacked Starfire charged at Raven, its hoofed feet clattering against the floor. She shot a spike of black magic at the animal, but it morphed into a hummingbird and darted around the attack.
"Starfire! I could use a little help," Raven called as another spike of energy formed at her fingertips.
"One thousand apologies, friend, but I am previously engaged," Starfire called back, already fighting the projection she'd thrown across the room with her eyebeams.
The hummingbird darted forward. Raven fired at her avian attacker, but it swerved to the side and morphed into an armadillo. The green mammal curled into a tight ball before colliding with Raven's head. As it fell to the ground, the Beast Boy projection morphed into a barracuda. The fanged fish's teeth sunk into Raven's arm. She cried out with pain as its teeth sunk deeper and deeper into her flesh. Then the pressure alleviated; the clone had turned back into something that could breathe air.
Raven blinked through the tears and saw a horse in front of her. It was a small horse, but rapidly getting larger and larger. The stallion's hind legs slammed into Raven's torso, and she was thrown back. She didn't even feel it when she hit the floor.
The injured girl couldn't breathe. She felt nothing but pain. It throbbed in her injured arm from the bite, it stabbed at her solar plexus and her left breast where the stallion's hooves had landed, and it pulsed in her skull from the armadillo collision. She'd never known Beast Boy was so tough.
Beast Boy had spent hours during their celebration of Trigon's defeat recounting how hard it had been to fight himself. She hadn't understood until now. The changeling was a powerhouse. He could turn into any animal, but it was more than that: he was smart. He could turn a crippling blow from one of the world's most deadly predators into a series of blows. She'd seen him do it. She was currently on the receiving end and losing. Raven looked up when a shadow fell across her. There was a Grizzly bear looming over her, its mouth open and rank breath coming from its powerful maw.
"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…" Raven gasped. She could barely get the words out, but it was enough: a claw of energy erupted from her hand and caught the Grizzly as it lunged toward her. The massive omnivore was sent hurdling into the air. Raven felt the strain on her powers worsen as Beast Boy's mass increased. She ground her teeth together in concentration. It was too much, and her powers failed, her psyche over-taxed by the confrontation.
There was a humpback whale plummeting toward her.
Starfire raced over Raven, grabbed her leg, and dragged the exhausted sorceress out of the way of the mammal. When the gentle ocean giant realized its prey was gone, it morphed into a hawk and gave chase to the retreating heroines. Starfire glanced over her shoulder and put on an extra burst of speed, throwing starbolts at the hawk with her free hand.
Raven watched the hawk get closer. She tried to focus on the bird, but her head was light and her vision fuzzy. Robin was on the opposite side of the Observation Room. His sword was in pieces on the ground, and he was jumping and rolling to avoid the rhinoceros that was charging him. The Boy Wonder was working in wide circles around Beast Boy's unconscious form. Raven realized with a jolt that Robin was fighting an enraged rhinoceros, Starfire and she were running away from a vicious hawk, but nobody was protecting Beast Boy from the projection striding toward him.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Dormant power coursed from the demoness, and she freed herself from Starfire's grasp. Raven raced toward the hawk, and the bird's dimensions began to shift. The empath was ready. With a concentrated burst of magic, Raven phased through the animal sailing toward her. Starfire doubled back to engage the projection.
The demoness neared Beast Boy's body. The projection with the 1 on his chest was sneering down at the changeling. He started to transform: scales erupted across the projection's body; his teeth grew and his head began to shift; his nose elongated. Soon there was a crocodile next to Beast Boy. The reptile opened its massive jaw, and Raven lost herself to the pain and the rage.
Seth couldn't kill Beast Boy. She wouldn't allow it. Cyborg was already dead. The scars of Seth's madness were already everywhere, but she wouldn't let the Entity destroy Beast Boy. Not now that she was beginning to understand how important he was to her. The green boy had grown on her.
"AZARATH! METRION! ZINTHOS!" Raven yelled. The crocodile was lifted from the ground and jettisoned from Beast Boy's body. The reptile morphed into its human form, and Beast Boy's clone did a neat back flip, landing in a crouch and sliding backward without missing a beat. He smirked at Raven as she hovered over her unconscious teammate.
The projection stood up and started walking in a wide arch around Raven and Beast Boy. He eyed Raven apprehensively, but the look he was giving Beast Boy's helpless form was far worse. Raven had seen it in the eyes of known sex offenders as they looked at pictures of small children; she'd seen the same avarice and obsession on the faces of criminals pulling a big heist and seeing their prize for the first time. It was the look of a predator stalking its prey, confident that it was only a matter of time, skill, and patience before they got exactly what they wanted. Raven would die before Seth took Beast Boy. The changeling had to know that, but it did nothing to wipe the smirk from his face.
"Rae–"
"Beast Boy calls me that. I'm Raven to you."
"You're going to be dead in a few minutes. You really want to waste that time debating who gets to use your pet name?" He chuckled at the bruises rising on her pale skin and the blood flowing from her arm. "You don't look too good, Rae."
"I've been through worse," Raven answered coldly. The boy nodded.
"Being Trigon's portal was worse, but you only recovered from that disaster because of Robin. He can't help you this time. He can barely hold his own." Without thinking about it, Raven turned her head to where she'd last seen Robin. The Boy Wonder slid into her field of vision, and she turned further to check on her leader. A large green beast covered in a thick shag mane barreled after the boy. The Beast crashed into Robin before he could even stand, and the young acrobat rolled along the floor of the Observation Room like tumbleweed.
Raven turned back to her opponent and realized too late that he'd used her concern over Robin as a distraction. A massive green hand wrapped around her waist and squeezed the breath from her lungs. The empath was faced with her own version of The Beast. The primal creature slammed her into the ground, and what was left of Raven's breath left her in a rush. She tried to gasp out an incantation, but the projection's other fist slammed into her face. Stars peppered her vision, and blood flowed from her newly broken nose.
She suffered blow after blow after blow. Raven lost track of how many times she'd been hit. After the fourth strike, she'd lost the ability to defend herself. She just wanted it to stop. Her mind was lost in a fog of pain, and she was no longer aware of her other injuries. Even the location of her hands and feet was shrouded in mystery.
Suddenly the pain stopped. Raven stayed prone on the ground, gasping as the green carpet that had been over her was replaced by an expanse of blinding white. Distantly, the empath could hear Starfire's starbolts and The Beast's howls. The Tamaranian had saved her. Raven tried to sit up, but the slightest motion made her feel nauseous.
There was something she was forgetting. Something important. Raven tried to focus, but the effort made her head throb painfully. Beneath the din of battle, she could hear somebody laughing. It was a high-pitched, slightly nasally sound. A smile tugged the corners of her mouth. Whatever she was forgetting had something to do with that sound – or maybe the person or thing responsible for making the sound. Raven squeezed her eyes shut in the hopes of remembering more.
Beast Boy.
Raven turned onto her side with great effort and saw Beast Boy lying on the ground a few meters from her. Using the last vestiges of her strength, she crawled to the boy. Raven grabbed a hold of Beast Boy's hand and let her body shut down. There was only one last thing to do. She couldn't help anymore with this fight, but she could still be useful. The empath whispered her three magic words and then blacked out.
Robin chucked an ice disk at his opponent and used its momentary hibernation to take stock of the Observation Room. There was a dead Beast smoking next to the Basin, and Starfire was engaged in a fierce blow-for-blow match with the other projection.
The Boy Wonder gasped when he saw Raven and Beast Boy. They were both covered in blood, apparently unconscious. Before his very eyes, Robin watched two of his teammates vanish. They melted out of the Observation Room, and he was helpless to stop it. Ice began to crack behind him, and Robin drew two disks from his utility belt. One was a powerful impact explosive rivaling the destructive power of C-4. The other was a harnessed, concentrated, and magnified sonic pulse. When The Beast broke free from its icy prison, Robin was ready with a patented Titans' Sonic Boom.
ooooo
Raven opened her eyes to a familiar sight: she was sitting on the couch in Titans' Tower. The windows looked out at Jump City. The city was perfectly in order, it was all too tempting to forget what had happened. The empath breathed a sigh of relief. Robin, Starfire, and Beast Boy were sitting next to her.
As she looked at her teammates, Raven realized that everything was covered in a light tan sheen, an envelope of barely perceptible magic. Everything wasn't as normal as it seemed. Just as Raven was preparing to stand and investigate the room, a voice stopped her.
"I'll explain once the others wake up." It was a soft, feminine voice that reminded Raven of an overly strict librarian. The sorceress looked behind her. There was a petite woman with long black hair sitting before the tower's mainframe computer. A large tome was resting in her lap, and a gorgeous golden amicus was perched atop the book. Without asking, Raven knew she was looking at the Entity of Order. Temple smiled at Raven.
The other Titans woke slowly. Raven kept turning toward the woman behind her, intent on opening her mouth to speak, to ask one of the many questions currently boiling under her skin and consuming her senses, but every single time, against her will, her mouth, once open, would close. The tan light shimmered over her innocently. Raven knew better.
Starfire stirred first. The cheerful Tamaranian opened her eyes and blinked at the dead television before her. Raven took her friend's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. The redhead opened her mouth, and Raven watched at it was forced shut again. The girl blinked, puzzled, before trying again. The same thing happened again. Raven nodded toward Temple, who was busily reading her book and idly sliding beads down the length of her amicus every few minutes. When all four of the Titans regained consciousness, Temple spoke.
"You'll be glad to know that Seth has been dealt with. I promise you he won't be attacking this dimension again during your lifetimes."
Robin snorted. "Is that supposed to reassure us? The damage is done. I still remember everything that happened, and it's a fair assumption that everybody remembers what that horrific world was like."
Raven felt her stomach sink as Robin spoke. A small part of her recognized the fact the moment she awoke, but the brutal reality was sickening.
Seth had won.
Red clouds might not be circling the sky anymore, but the people who'd died, the people who'd been murdered, they were dead and gone. The horrors people had lived through were still lurking in their minds to plague their waking hours and their dreams. It would take decades for everyone scarred by Seth's actions to heal. It would be centuries before the damage was undone.
Only Trigon had ever reversed death. Raven knew how to prolong life, she could cheat death in theory, but there was no way to resurrect the dead. Necromancy was nothing but a depraved fantasy. Even when Slade had been brought back from the dead, he'd only possessed the basest mockery of life.
She tried to understand why Seth was allowed to do what he did. There were twelve Entities. Somebody should have stopped him. The Entities existed through balance. According to Slade, they competed with each other for power. Raven shuddered as her intuition made a sickening leap: for Temple to get stronger and stay that way, Seth would need to get stronger as well – otherwise they'd continue to go back and forth in a game of tug-of-war. If Seth got to mentally scar billions of people on earth and trillions across the dimension and Temple got to benefit from a renewed sense of purpose and unity as people began to heal and rebuild, then both of them would profit. Raven stared at Temple, appalled by her suspicions. All the horror she'd been through was purely political.
"It should reassure you," Temple said. "Seth's dangerous, and you hurt him – a lot. He's looking for revenge, but he can't get it because of me."
"You are the Entity of Order, correct?" Starfire asked.
"Temple. But yes." Temple's gaze wandered from one Titan to the next. She shook her head when she got to Raven; the empath was glaring at the Entity with venomous intent. Temple was acting like their savior, but Raven knew the truth. She wanted to shout, she wanted to rage and scream and make her friends aware of the scheming witch before them. The demoness' mouth wouldn't open.
"I can't help you with the aftermath of this disaster. I just wanted to say thank you and congratulations. Seth's a skillful opponent. I've spent billions of years trying to beat him back and gain even the tiniest shred of influence. It's hard. Without your help, I'd never had succeeded."
"I just wanted to tell you, whether you know it or not or whether or not you care, that the bigger picture is better because of you. There are entire dimensions that are better off because of the events in this dimension. You can't see it, you'll never benefit from it, but I thought it might help you put things in perspective."
Raven continued to glare at Temple. The woman was trying to placate her. The others didn't know what she knew. They didn't know Seth's reign had been precipitated by the woman before them.
"The aura around you is keeping your minds and your bodies slightly separated. All the pain your astral forms experienced will be transferred to your nervous system. Once I let you go, you'll be in pain… from the battle and from the burns on your hands."
They all turned their attention to their hands simultaneously. Raven would have gasped at what she saw if Temple wasn't still keeping her mouth shut. She hadn't felt the burn at all when she woke up, but glancing down at her slender palm, Raven could see where her flesh had been peeled away. She was missing muscle. Raven stared down at her hand and flexed it experimentally. The sorceress could see the bones moving. She looked away quickly. That was going to hurt a lot. Raven watched her friends' reactions. Her burn was the worse by far.
"Please, how did my friends receive these injuries?" Starfire asked. The Tamaranian only had a tan where a burn should have been; her peoples' natural resistance to extreme temperatures had clearly served her well.
"When Raven activated Seth's Mark, a lot of power was released."
"And large fluxes in the amount of energy available in a system most frequently correspond to dramatic increases in thermal radiation," Starfire said, nodding.
Beast Boy shook his head. Starfire's intimate knowledge of physics and chemistry was sharply at odds with her general ignorance of basic human culture. The changeling poked at his burned hand. His glove had been peeled away, part of the fabric had welded itself to his skin, and the green fur that covered his body was conspicuously absent.
Temple cocked her head. "That's correct. Your friends were burned because their bodies couldn't withstand the temperatures emitted by the Mark of Chaos."
"So where's the Mark now?" Robin asked.
"Dude," Beast Boy said. "If it did this to our hands, what do you think it did to itself?" The Boy Wonder frowned. Raven could tell he had doubts about that theory. So did she.
"I wanted to be here when you woke up. Just so you weren't in pain and confused," Temple sighed. "I can't stay here for very long. Good luck, Titans. I'm counting on you to do your job. I took care of Seth; you take care of this." Without another word, Temple vanished from the tower, and she took her tan aura with her.
Pain pulsed through Raven's hand, and the empath cried out. It was unbearable. She'd been burned before, she'd broken bones, she'd been electrocuted, she'd been torn apart molecule by molecule, but the agony in her hand was more concentrated and much sharper than any sensation she'd ever felt. The burn wasn't a natural one. By instinct, her healing powers kicked in, and soothing blue magic began to pulse through her hand, clearing the burn of possible infections and replacing the skin and muscle than had been removed. Once the burn was partially healed, she began to feel the pain she'd suffered in the Observation Room.
Robin was next to Raven, his undamaged hand flying through the compartments of his utility belt. The Boy Wonder started applying a putrid yellow gel to the burn. Beast Boy shrieked once from the burn before transforming into a toad. The amphibian used its tongue to flick open a small canister on Robin's belt, and highly pressurized liquid poured over it. Starfire watched her friends with concerned emerald eyes. The cheerful alien girl flexed her uninjured hand experimentally. She had to be in pain from the battle, but the Tamaranian refused to show it.
"I must leave you for a time. If Seth's influence was felt throughout the entirety of this dimension, I will be needed at home. I shall remain in regular contact with you and return as soon as I can." Before anyone could move to stop her, Starfire had shot out of the room.
Raven turned her attention to Robin and Beast Boy once her hand was healed. The empath was exhausted, the mental effort of her confrontation with Seth and the projections was quickly descending on her, but she needed to take the sting off her friends' pain.
There was a thud from up on the roof, and Raven glanced in the sound's direction. Starfire had fallen out of the sky. Beast Boy changed back into his human form and yawned. The changeling's eyes drooped shut, and Robin's head fell to his chest. Raven struggled to stay awake.
"What just happened?" Beast Boy asked around another monstrous yawn.
"We got played. Seth. Slade. Us. We were all trying to get control, we were trying to manipulate our way to the top. Seth wasn't in control… Temple used him. And she used us to beat him."
Raven closed her eyes and leaned back against the couch. She knew Temple wouldn't let Seth attack again. She needed everyone alive to rebuild; that was how she planned to get stronger. All the pain had been for nothing. All the fighting was just a way to fall into a trap. The empath felt herself being dragged off to sleep. They'd all been trying to manipulate the situation, but Temple had controlled and predicted every single thing they did.
"Rae," Beast Boy whispered. "You were right. It wasn't the end." Before Raven fell asleep, she couldn't help but wonder if they'd staved off the end or if the end was only beginning. It would be hard to rebuild, perhaps impossible.
AN: Like I said, this would have been a mean ending. But in one or two chapters, we'll be done. So, what do you guys think about a sequel?