A/N: Woof two damn months! This chapter (for whatever reason) took me ages! My thanks as always to Xaphrin for wacking me with her smarts stick and saying "meh you can do better".
xXx
It took Argent a few minutes to realise that the booming knocks she heard were not (in fact) resounding like jackhammers in her head and a part of her vicious hangover, but were actually coming from the front door to her flat. She was about to call out for Raven to "get the damn door" when (after a few more painful minutes and thunderous knocks) she remembered that her roommate was not there.
Actually, Raven had been missing for almost two days now, which seemed unusual to Toni. Granted they had fought before Raven had stormed out, but she never would have thought it would make the half demon girl go AWOL. If it had been one of Argent's band mates she wouldn't have given it a second thought (her bassist in particular was prone to week long fits of absenteeism especially after one of the band's almost daily creative differences shouting matches). But, this was Raven, who seemed more prone to lock herself in her room when upset than stay away from it altogether. Toni had always been pretty good at reading people and their natures, a useful skill for a teen superhero, and doubted she was wrong now.
Something was definitely not right.
The knocking increased in tempo and volume, which made every cell in Argent's already agonized brain cry out for mercy. Grunting a curse, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and waded through her room's mess to the front door.
I really hope it's not another one of those religious sorts, she thought, pulling on a pair of pants. They've been here every other day this week, and I'm in no mood for any Higher Powers at the moment. Her mind trailed off to a particularly obnoxious preacher who had tried to give her a doorway sermon on the evils of meta-humans last week. He hadn't been able to scurry away fast enough when she crankily demonstrated her own "affront to nature" powers right above his head. The memory made her smile and then wince. Even that small movement was too much. Ugh. Gotta get some coffee in me and then track down Victor for news of Raven. Her being gone this long doesn't sit right.
From the sound of the knocks, if the person on the other side was a man of god then he must be a giant. Argent was actually surprised that the apartment's door had managed to stand up to such a pounding, and she wouldn't be surprised if it crashed in before long.
"Look, whatever you're selling or preaching, we're not interested. I've told you lot before..." Her words died in her throat as her still-groggy eyes tried to take in the last possible thing she expected to see. Red hair... purple outfit...orange skin.
"Hello, friend Argent. I'm looking for Raven. I wish to speak with her most urgently."
Toni's mouth opened and closed several times before she could manage to produce sound.
"S-S-Starfire! Why? What?!" She paused taking a few deep breaths before trying again. "How are you here?"
The Tamaranian blinked emerald eyes, obviously puzzled at Argent's outburst. "I flew."
Kori floated passed the stunned former Titan and looked around the small flat. "I came here from Oracle's Clocktower after Barbara told me where to find your apartment, she and I were once great friends. We spent a lot of time together while Richard and I were..." Starfire stopped and shook her head as if to rid it of something unpleasant. "She was eager to help once I explained. Now, please, where is Raven?" She glanced around again as if Raven were simply hiding and would jump out at them at any moment. "It is very important. We must talk before I go see Richard."
Giving up all pretense at trying to regain composure, Argent stumbled her way into the kitchen, all focus on finding a large glass of water and some crackers. I'm too damn hungover for this, her brain managed to mutter as she wrenched on the faucet handle. She stood there and drank several glasses of water while Starfire stood in her kitchen, eyes darting around to the various objects and pictures on the wall. She had never seen the Tamaranian so uncomfortable before. Toni decided to end both their miseries and get her out as quickly as possible. Even nervous, Starfire practically oozed all things sparkly and it was starting to become more painful than the hangover.
"Look, Starfire, I'd like to help but right now your guess is as good as mine where Raven is." Toni shoved at her bed-head again, making it stand up even more and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before stuffing in a Saltine. "I haven't seen her since she stormed out a day and a half ago," she mumbled around the cracker.
A faint electronic beep could be heard coming from the depths of Toni's room. She struggled to place the tone as she chewed until Kori pointed it out:
"That sounds like a Titan communicator."
Communicator? Did she still have that thing? She hadn't seen it in ages. Wading through piles of clothes, band equipment and assorted CDs, Argent made her way through her room and fumbled around in a box towards the back of her closet before finally yanking out the small, yellow communicator. Hitting the talk function, she watched Victor's face swim into view.
"Argent! Thank god! I was praying you still had your com." He let loose a breath of relief. "Listen, Raven's been hurt-"
"What!?" Toni glared at the small picture in the screen, anger and fear mixing painfully in the pit of her stomach. This was the call that every hero dreaded and it never got any easier. She swallowed thickly.
"Yeah, she's been hurt. Bad. I wish I could say more, but I don't have a lot of time to explain. I need you to get something for me, it's an emergency. Go into Raven's room and find a hand mirror, then signal me with your com. I'll have J'onn transport you up here as soon as you do."
Toni nodded, her red and black bed-head waving wildly. "Got it. But listen, Cy, I should probably mention..."
"Whatever it is will have to wait," the half robot cut her off. "Just get the mirror."
With that the screen went dark and Argent snapped the cover back into place. I should probably mention that Starfire is here and has been looking for both Nightwing and Raven, you know just to pour gasoline on this fire. She stumbled back into the living room and made for Raven's door.
After some searching through things Toni didn't even have names for (or wish to know), she managed to find the ancient looking mirror. Everything about it felt wrong as she tightly gripped the silver handle. It felt alive somehow and she swore that it seemed to writhe slightly in her hand. Can't see how this creepy thing will help Raven, she thought closing the bedroom door behind her. It gives me a case of the heebees. But, the sooner I get it to Cyborg the sooner the horrid thing is someone else's problem. Argent found Kori sitting at the kitchen table, staring intently at the salt shaker, apparently deep in thought. Speaking of someone else's problem...
"I thought I heard Cyborg's voice," Starfire said, not breaking eye contact with the shaker. The Tamaranian seemed almost riveted to the creaky kitchen chair by some internal force and her voice came out rather strained. To Toni, Kori seemed to be using all of her considerable will to remain seated, as if something inside her was trying to make her fly away as fast as the wind could carry her. "Is everything alright?"
Argent punched in Cyborg's call code on the communicator's key pad. "Raven's been hurt, I don't know how bad, and apparently this-" she held up the sinister looking glass "-will somehow set her right." Toni hit the final button to call Victor and linked arms with Kori. "We're talking it to them now."
Kori's eyes went wide. "Oh no I couldn't! Friends Cyborg and Beastboy will not wish to see me." She tried to disengage her arm from Argent's but Toni clamped down.
"Oh, no you don't!" She scolded, holding fast to Starfire. "I did not get woken up with a hangover from hell by your freakishly loud knocks for you to skulk away, especially now that I and the rest of the group need you. Man up, or whatever they do on your planet. I get that you and Raven may have had some bullshit between you what with liking the same tightly wound pain in the ass control freak. And, yes, Victor and Gar will find things a bit awkward for a while, but, Raven is hurt and so help me god it is going to be all hands on deck until that changes or I will smack all your heads together with this creepy ass mirror! AM I CLEAR?!"
Kori's head nodded so fast Argent could practically hear it rattle.
As the transporter beam illuminated the space around them. "Perhaps I should not have come after all." Starfire whispered, the shaft of light whisking her skyward.
xXx
Raven, or rather what still remained of Raven, stroked the head of a red eyed crow and sighed. The darkness pressed around her child-sized body, a form her damaged psyche had forced her into in a effort to preserve what it could of her true self. She was no longer master of this place, a fact driven home by her diminished size. The Emoticlones had locked her away in the same prison she had once held them and usurped her power, but her cage still had windows.
Raven had watched it all from behind the bars of her mind like a terrible flickering film reel with the sound turned off. The explosion hurling shards of twisted metal into her chest, almost in slow motion pain blooming like thorny flowers. The Emoticlones ripping from her throat as they clawed their way out into the real world and chained her here. Richard bent over her, eyes so filled with worry that it tore her heart in new ways she never thought possible. She foolishly thought herself long immune to such gnawing aches. The worst had been Duncan at her bedside.
Raven had screamed out with everything she had when he touched her hand, desperate to have someone hear her, to somehow wake her from this nightmare. In doing so she had unleashed the last thing she wished and had been forced to watch in helpless horror as the black recesses of her soul dragged Duncan into her own personal hell. He was in here somewhere with her, Raven could sense him, a prickling in her sixth sense like a splinter caught under her fingernails, but in her current form she was as helpless to save him as herself.
Out of the corner of her eye a silvery specter glimmered into view.
Raven... Raven... Raven...
She clapped hands over her ears to shut out the ghostly whisper of Nightwing's voice. Her mind had been at this for a while now, but for exactly how long she was unsure. Be it minutes or years there was no sense of time in this space but each vision weighed on her like an eternity. Whatever powers currently held possession over her were choosing his form with more and more regularity, sensing the pain it caused her. Yet another torture inflicted upon her in this place, one more step on the road to madness.
Raven... Raven... Let me in Raven...
The voice bore its way through and coiled around her heart, feeling like barbed wire. Raven squeezed her eyes shut trying in vain to keep the tears back.
Let me in Raven... Raven, my love...
"STOP IT!" she screamed, startling the crow and causing it to fly off in a flurry of pitch black feathers. "STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!" Through her tears she hurled blast after blast of magic at the haunting form. Weak and ineffectual, the bolts passed through his silver body harmlessly.
"How can I let you in when you've never left?!" Crying hysterically now, Raven fell to her knees. "Always here, in my mind, in my soul. Seeing you when I close my eyes and haunting me in every dream. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME?" The memory of Nightwing knelt before Raven and wrapped ghostly arms around her small shoulders.
Raven... Raven my love...
Raven's sobs echoed in the hollow recesses of her mind, heard only by a memory and a crow.
xXx
"AGAIN," Nightwing shouted, causing the computer's training programme to reset. Pausing for a moment to catch his breath, he took a running leap through the first hurdle of the obstacle course and smashed his fist through the next. Richard had been at this for hours, ever since being sent home by Batman like a disobedient child. Engaging the simulation to the most difficult setting he could find, Nightwing kicked, punched, and ran his way through his anger and frustration. Dealing with everything that had happened in the only way he knew how he inwardly raged as images of Raven danced through his head.
Raven smiling up at him.
-PUNCH-
Raven with her nose stuck in a book.
-SMASH-
Raven sleeping next to him, the pale skin of her back soft under his hands.
-CRACK-
Raven, Raven, Raven.
Richard sent his heel through the heart of a sparring dummy and threw the sparking robot body to the floor. Across the room he heard the faint beep of the Batcave computer's communicator. He debated ignoring it for a second, not in the mood for anyone or anything outside of the Cave, but then realized that it might be something to do with Raven. He prayed to whoever might listen that she wasn't any worse. Calling for the programme to stop he crossed the cave and pressed the answer button.
"Nightwing, here."
Changeling's larger-than-life panicked face filled the screen. "Richard, dude, you gotta get back up here ASAP. Raven needs you!"
Anxiety filled Nightwing. Had Raven taken a turn for the worse like he had feared? He internally wondered. His breath caught in his chest as his mind ran through a million different scenarios, trying to find one that would get him back on that Tower, back to her. None of them ended well.
"I… can't, Gar. Batman has locked me out of the Tower. No one is allowed to transport me." He hated feeling this helpless, like he was forced to watch his friend's disintegration behind bullet-proof glass.
"Screw that!" Gar's suddenly defiant voice echoed around the cave. "Cy's hacking his way into 'porting you up here as we speak. This was basically a courtesy call so you didn't kirk out when you suddenly found yourself up here." A glimmer of the old fun loving Changling flickered across his magnified face.
Richard smiled, his first in days. His teammates may have joined the League but they were Titans (and his friends), first and foremost.
"Oh, and I should probably mention." Gar's expression was suddenly solemn again. "Richard, Starfire's back."
The transporter beam hit Nightwing just as his heart fell into the pit of his stomach.