Disclaimer: See Chapter 8.

"To hear the phrase "our only hope" always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn't work, there is nothing left."
~ Lemony Snicket

Chapter 9: Demon in the Walled City

The studio's atmosphere was entirely chilled, perfect, Robin felt, for his team. It released them from the tension they'd felt for the past few days, and helped eased their latest memory. Jericho sat cross-legged on stage, strumming disjointed chords on his guitar that fit together in strange, beautiful patterns. Mel was working the commercial-size espresso machine for Raven, they appeared to be chatting about magical weapons.

Someone sat next to him, someone warm and gentle. "Robin, we must talk."

"Sure, Star, what is it?" He pulled his gaze away from Mel.

"Are you feeling well?"

"Yeah, I guess. No worse than I have been."

"Something is getting the bug in you, yes?"

"Bugging me?" He corrected lightly. After a moment, "You don't see me as Slade's son, do you?"

She looked startled, like she hadn't thought that this of all the other problems they've had lately would be the one most prominent on his mind. "No."

"You told me once we were similar."

"You had hurt me." She reminded him. She sounded too much like one of his reoccurring nightmares. "But yes, you are similar in fighting and sometimes in thinking. But your intentions are opposite."

"So you don't think-"

"No," and this time he could see the worry, "but I think that he does."

Robin had nothing to say to that. Instead, he turned the conversation away. "What about you, Star? You've been quiet lately. Is there anything on your mind?"

Her eyes flicked to the kitchen and back. "No, there is nothing on the mind."

"Star, you can tell me."

She hesitated. "Do you like her?"

Jericho's delicately laid chords scrambled, loudly. Robin glanced over to see the boy clenching his eyes closed in deep concentration. After a few false starts, he managed to get back in rhythm, though his new song had a darker element to it.

"Mel? No, Star. She's just-" he hesitated. A friend? Can you call someone you barely trust that? "I don't trust her." He finished.

Star looked confused, but Raven and Mel were just about to join them. Mel caught them both looking at her. "Oh? Would you like some of my amazing espresso as well?"

"She's a coffee genius." Raven said, oddly giddy. Maybe she was happy that she could finally talk ancient lore with someone.

"It's nothing, really. Just a skill you pick up when you're a chronic insomniac." Mel said. "Here, I'll bring you guys back a cup."

"What were you talking of?" Star asks.

"She wanted to know more about demon-slaying weapons." Raven said. "We ended up talking about old inter-dimensional stories of weapons. She knows a lot more than anyone else I've ever met."

Mel returned with a tray of giant tea cups filled with coffee. She was just handing one to Jericho when a loud, disastrous noise nearly blasts the tray away. Jericho covers his ears, crouching over in pain. Robin looks over, Cyborg and Beast Boy were holding a music war with several instruments, arguing largely through noise.

Two bolts of blue lightening freezes them. "Maybe we should put the instruments down and drink some coffee." Mel says through clenched teeth. Cowed, both boys take their cups.

They congregate silently at the couches, sipping from their cups. Raven was right, the coffee was excellent, yet it didn't encourage conversation. The atmosphere mellowed out, the coffee flooding their veins, soothing and filled with warm summer breezes.

"What did you put in this?" Robin asks, sinking deep into the couch. But the room was fading fast, and, seconds later, he was asleep.

Robin found himself in a closed stone room, a blacksmith's hovel with a large fire against the wall and a table and hammer in the center of the room. It was dark, the only light coming from the fireplace.

Raven stood at the center, dressed entirely in white, looking everything like a priestess. They gathered around the glowing fire. Starfire, her eyes glowing green with power, shot a bolt into it, causing the flame to roar into a bright white blaze. Cyborg stepped forward, presenting Raven with the lump of black metal he was holding.

Raising the metal over her head, she muttered an unintelligible incantation. White marks glowed over the metal, binding it. She placed it into the fire and Robin stepped up. The searing heat of the fire lit something within him. He found a hammer in his hand, and, without knowing where the knowledge came from, he began to shape the glowing metal. As he worked, a gentle melody rolled over him, working its way into the metal, pure and innocent, like a child's voice. It grew older and older, until it reached a man's voice. Jericho. When his song finished, the white fire died to embers.

Robin drew out a glowing blade, shaped and ready. Raven poured cool water into a trench, muttering more incantations as he sank it in. The blade cooled, revealing a knife as black as night with white letters etched deep into its blade. Beastboy transformed into a huge black dragon and offered his back. Raven closed her eyes, as if praying, then used the tip of the knife to up a long strip of skin from his back. The skin dried rapidly into scaled black leather, which she wrapped around the hilt.

Melody stepped forward from the darkness, leading Jericho, dressed in white, to them. She took the blade that Raven offered and kissed it. When she drew her lips away, the place where she had kissed, where the blade transformed into hilt, glowed deep blue, transformed into a dark blue gem.

She turned to Jericho, eyes misted over with tears. He nodded solemnly. With a lunge, she buried the blade into his chest, where his heart was.

"NO!"

Robin wasn't the only one screaming that as he sat up. His entire team, gasping from the places on the couch they had fallen asleep at, sat staring, wild-eyed ahead of them.

An actual cry of pain cut through their receding fear. Robin looked over to see Jericho thrashing on the stage. Every tense muscle suggested agony, his eyes squeezed shut. Melody was on her knees, holding his head in her lap, stroking his hair.

"Shh," she whispered, "It'll be over soon."

This seemed to calm him a bit. She produced her flute and pressed it to her lips.

No sound came out, but a blue-white mist surrounded her flute. After a few minutes, the mist sank into Jericho and Mel dropped her flute and hugged him. He was breathing heavily, a sheen of sweat coating his forehead. He hugged her back, the fading pain glazing his wide green eyes.

"What just happened?" Beastboy asked.

Raven was on her feet and at his side instantly. She brushed Mel aside and yanked Jericho towards her. "How long?" She snarled, her eyes glowing white.

Mel pushed her away, getting into the empath's face. Her own eyes were glowing blue. "Back off. You haven't even given us time to explain."

"This better be good, Piper." Raven growled. "If not, you're dead."

She backed down. Mel's eyes returned to normal, and she immediately went to Jericho's side.

"Seriously, what just happened?" Beastboy asked Raven as she sat next to him in a huff.

"Before she performed her spell, I sensed my father in Jericho." Raven said. "But that's only part of it. That blue-white mist? It contained to souls of another city."

"So Slade and Robin were right?" Starfire asks, her voice trembling.

"Yes." This came from Mel, who had positioned herself in a way that both faced them and supported Jericho. "But please, hear me out."

"Then come out with it." Robin said.

She took a deep breath. "Back when Trigon had the world, he took interest in Jericho's soul. At first it was a way to control Slade, but after a while, it was because he realized that Jericho served as the perfect back up plan, and after Slade betrayed him, the perfect revenge."

The hostility had died. Her voice wove too fascinating a tale.

"So before you banished him, Raven, your father implanted a seed on Joseph Wilson's soul. One that would grow into a parasite, shredding the host and taking over his body to create another door for your father."

Raven looked unsure. "How do you come into the picture?"

"I've known Jericho for a long time, since after he ran away from his mother and father. We met at my sister's bar. He was a regular feature." She was smiling. "But he disappeared one day, and, when we met again, the seed had been planted." She stroked his hair. "Of course we didn't know that until after we started dating."

She painted a tragic picture, but Robin knew better. At least, he thought he did. "What do the cities have to do with it?" He asked rather harshly. The sympathy his team was showing broke a little.

She looked pained. "He wanted me to kill him. He said it was the only way to stop Trigon's return."

Kill him. Those words hung around them, weighing down the room with their implications.

"But I couldn't. I've been trying to find a way to get rid of the seed, but I'm running out of time." She sounded desperate now. "No, I'm out of time. I've been out of time since New York. I've been using the dreams of these people to stop the seed from growing, but it's only temporary."

"You've been using the souls of people to protect him?" Raven was livid again. "Don't you know that only makes Trigon stronger?"

Jericho released a sigh, breaking the tense atmosphere. His entire body relaxed, the faint rise and fall of his chest the only indication that he hadn't already died on his own.

"Not their souls, something more powerful. Their dreams." Mel explained tiredly. "Souls would work, too, but they would become food. Dreams, on the other hand, are entirely made of hope. I've been using people's hope to keep Trigon at bay."

"What give you the right to use millions of lives-" Cyborg began.

She quieted him before he could rampage. "I'm not. It's reversible. The dreams will be restored and the cities brought out of the suspended animation I put them in as soon as Jericho dies."

Jericho dies. It echoed around the room, in their minds. Jericho must die for the cities to go back to normal.

"There's no other way?" Robin asked.

"Nope." He had fallen into a fitful asleep. She started stroking his hair again, as if to ease him. "Either Jericho dies with the seed or the seed is removed from his soul. Those are the only ways I'll be able to release the dreams."

"So the dream we all just had…" Raven began.

"I thought that if I drove the sword into his dream-self, it would kill the demon in his soul. Instead it let Trigon's seed grow more. I had to use two cities' worth this time to stop it."

"Two cities?"

Raven kept her cool. "Does that mean the sword won't work at all?"

"No, it will." She drew it out. Black leather on black metal with white etchings. A blue gem. That was the sword they had forged. "But I have to actually kill him."

Beastboy stared at the blade, rubbing the back of his neck. "Dude, that came out of my skin."

"The success is in the sacrifice." Raven muttered. She noticed her team staring at her. "It's part of the spell."

"Yes." Mel said. "I thought that if we used the sacrifice of his voice, it would be enough. But it must be his life."

"His voice?" Raven asked incredulously. Robin agreed, it seemed hardly comparable to a life.

"His dream, though he won't admit it." Mel replied. She looked broken, sad and tired. "He sang when he was young. Could have been great, maybe even the greatest of this time. But that was crushed. And now it means nothing."

The Titans were silent, watching couple in front of them, unable to imagine the boy they had always known as silent singing. Robin watched Jericho's face, looking for any trace of Trigon, of Slade. Of evil. He found none. Jericho remained one of the most unassuming heroes he had ever met. The Mel turned her gaze on them, suddenly sharp and demanding. The blade landed on the floor in front of them.

"That plan was my only hope of him living through this." She said. "It's your choice now. Kill him or spare him."