Chapter 74

I can't be fixed.

Sarah and Antonia were both startled to see Lisa fly backwards into the stone wall and crumple to the floor. The two girls spun around as Raven raised her arms again to cast another spell.

"Take your hands off my stuff." Raven said, her voice ethereal. All three girls didn't know what to think of the pale girl with glowing eyes and a dark aura around her. "Or I will break you."

Antonia and Sarah stepped forward. Raven didn't let them take a step closer as her powers grabbed both of them by the throat and haul them up off the ground. They were held there for a few seconds before Raven dropped them. She had their attention.

Russel was looking at her with a look that was half awed and half frightened, Raven didn't want to frighten him, but if this stopped Antonia from assaulting him then she'll accept whatever fear or hatred he may now have of her.

"What are you, a Witch... I mean, a Wizard?" Antonia asked, changing the word to a more friendly one. But no amount of sweet-talk was going to change Raven's opinion of her.

"'Witch' is the word." Raven confirmed.

"You can't side with him! He's nasty!" Antonia said.

"Yeah, he's a bully." Lisa added.

"He hurt me!" Sarah also said.

Raven remained silent, her cold eyes just stared at them with a 'don't you mess with me' kind of look.

"Leave!" She warned. "Leave, and never come back. Never approach this mortal again, never speak of Russel again. Forget he even exists."

"But he needs to be punished!" Antonia insisted, "His own mum won't punish him, just because she's been convinced of his lies. He's NOT autistic!" Raven didn't answer, she'd said her piece about it. Russel had already been punished. To Raven, a punishment was supposed to teach and make people learn to behave properly. It should never be done for someone else's emotional satisfaction. Even though there were times she felt like breaking that rule herself.

"That wasn't a request. It was an order." Raven's cloaked form began to elongate, and sinister, dark tentacles sprouted from under her cloak. "I am Raven, I am in charge. That mortal belongs to me. Lay another finger on him and I will strip your flesh from your bones. Now go."

The girls hesitated, but slowly began moving. They looked back at Russel and Raven got the sense they were going to come back for him later. So Raven added to their fear.

"Remember," the darkness started eating up all corners of the foundations. Dark, cold purple eyes opened up from the wall. Two at first, followed by four, eight, seventeen, until Raven's eyes were everywhere. "Every move you make, I will see." Two giant eyes opened up taking up one entire wall. "Every word you utter, I will hear." The girls screamed. "I will know if you come near my stuff again."

The girls were totally freaking out. They retreated up the steps and hopped the railing. They looked back and saw Raven's elongated form flowing up after them. Her cloaked form mimicked that of a coiling snake hunting prey. They ran, again screaming as they went. Raven had to admit, she loved this. The three girls stopped at the gate of the cemetery and looked back at the floating elongating form of Raven as it snaked between the tombstones. Raven felt their fear, and they ran.

Did she go too far? Perhaps she did, Raven sometimes got carried away.

With the girls gone, Raven returned to her normal shape. It was weird elongating her form like that, knowing that her feet stayed where they are while the rest of her body followed her head. With her hood still up, her eyes still cold and intense, Raven held out her hand and Russel's bonds broke, the liquid and dirted he'd been covered with was cleaned up and Russel's trousers and shoes materialised back on him.

He got up, wary of the small girl in the cloak. Despite Raven feeling 'happy' that he was now safe her face looked cold and expressionless.

"They won't bother you again." Raven said, sounding emotionally distant. His drawing book was carried over to him, covered in darkness and gingerly he took it from the air.

"Is that you, Raven?" He asked.

"Yes." Raven said matter-of-factly. Raven tried and succeed in keeping her face a blank mask as her feelings swam around inside her. "I'm... I'm sorry. I thought... Does this change anything?"

Something about Russel had changed. Though the way he held himself was the same the difference was in the face. Raven had seen that face before. The slight frown, the intense, yet emotionally dead eyes. It sent a shiver up her spine. He wasn't scared, so that was something at least, but he certainly wasn't feeling any affection for her.

Raven broke eye contact and looked into a puddle at her feet. She could see her broken reflection in it. "I'm sorry."

Russel sighed deeply, then slowly he turned and began walking away from her. He walked up the steps and left the ruins. He headed off, not towards the town, but towards the forest.

Though remaining cold, Raven reached out for him to come back to her. But he didn't stop. Raven floated up above the foundations and she watched as he vanished between the trees and into the shadows to be alone.

Oh man, did I ever blow it!

Raven did follow Russel for a little, she hovered above the ground so as not to alert him. He found the spot overlooking a lake where they had spent some time together earlier. He sat down against a tree. He looked like he was thinking, quite solemnly. Raven wanted to approach, to see if he was okay. But Raven hesitated, she knew whenever she was like this she just wanted to be left alone for a while to think and articulate her thoughts. So she left him to think. She knew where he was, he'd talk to her when he was ready.

Never having any real friends before, to Raven it just felt natural for friends to band together and support each other. She should've recognised that friends can also manipulate you, they can lead you to a place and do horrid things to you.

Her thoughts when to James Driftwood back in Whitby. The cruel tale he'd told of how a girl had led him to a secluded place so trouble makers could beat him up. Only in this case, Raven had been the girl leading Russel to the slaughter. She was glad she changed her mind and stood up for him, but the scary thing was before she'd found out the truth she was willing to allow it to happen. Just in case it was true. Just in case...

As Raven walked back into town Raven felt a tremor in the ether, and it was big, and it was in a particular direction. The Devils Hump!

Oh shit, the monster, she'd forgotten about it, and by what she could feel it had woken up!

Forgetting about blending in, Raven took to the sky and sailed towards the Devils Hump as fast as her powers could carry her. As she looked down she saw the distinctive shape of the Doctors purple car ploughing through a crop field, racing away from a shimmering image that was churning up the ground.

The Doctor's car spun to the left, and the creature went too far, missing the tight turn and fell over, but it was fast getting up. Raven took this opportunity and materialised inside the cab of the car.

"You just can't stay out of trouble, can you?" She said rather coldly, partially glad to be where she's most comfortable. In a life or death fight against a monster.

"Raven!" The Doctor cried, "How nice of you to drop in."

"You need help, or have you got this?" She subtly mocked him, knowing full well he was in danger.

"I could use some breathing space, yes." The Doctor said, making another sharp turn. "I was just at the Devils Hump gathering readings when the creature suddenly became active." The car bounced around on loose soil, so much so Raven had to fasten her seatbelt with her power. "Raven, did anything happen in the last twenty minutes? Anything particularly traumatic to someone?"

"Yeah, I scared three girls out of their wits." The Doctor gave her a disapproving look. She just shrugged cooly. "They were asking for it."

"You were supposed to make friends!" The Doctor chastised.

"Friends are over-rated." Raven said, "I do like to scare assholes, though."

"Raven, you might have aggravated it!" The Doctor scolded, "who was it? You need to get them to calm down!"

"No." Raven refused, no way was she going to try to pacify those three bitches. But, what if it wasn't Antonia? The creature made a swipe at them, but Raven pushed the car forwards with her power just enough for it to miss them.

What if it was? It might make sense, it might be him.

"I think I know who's causing this." Raven looked at him, "Doctor, he's ignorant of it, he's not a bad person."

"I never said he was." The Doctor said, "but he needs to let go of whatever he's feeling to hold this creature in existence."

From her seat, Raven reached out, and took the car by it's four wheels. Her hands gripped the air like she was clinging to the four wheels, and with a great heave of her hands, she raised them upwards. The car left the ground and sored into the air, out of the creatures reach.

"Haha!" The Doctor laughed, "This is just like the Ford Angular in the Chamber of Secrets!"

"Will that creature be safe there?" Raven asked.

"If we lead it to the edge of the psychic pool then it will gradually dissipate, like a hurricane hitting the shore." The Doctor said, and so Raven carried the car over fields and rivers until the creature began to wear out and fade from existence. "It won't stay that way, it'll manifest again once it gets some psychic backpressure. Pooling psychic energy can be relentless like that. I'd give it a couple of hours before it's back to full strength."

Raven put the car down at the edge of the forest she knew Russel was brooding in. The ground was reasonably solid, though the car's tyres sank into the ground. She got out of the car, the Doctor making an effort to follow with his devices.

"Doctor, I need to do this alone." Raven said.

"Rae-Rae, don't be silly, we can fight this together." He said, like the protective father.

"Alone, Doctor. This..." she swallowed, "This is something personal."

"Raven, please don't hurt him." Raven shot him a look.

"I'm not going to hurt him. I need to talk to him. Alone. He needs to understand. Please." The Doctor clearly had no clue what she was talking about, but he nodded an understanding nod and let Raven go on ahead.

As Raven went into the forest she heard the Doctor distinctly mutter to himself. "Why do I suddenly feel like a companion in my own travels?"

Raven found the brooding teen right where she'd left him. He looked like he was either writing or drawing, she couldn't tell. There was the general air of sadness to him, yet he didn't put off the air of someone who was emotionally upset. The image he painted was quite stoic in nature. He was gently scribbling away in his sketchbook.

Though his exterior was stoic, Raven could sense some turmoil in his mind he was fighting down. What had happened to him had deeply unsettled him. Stirred up emotions long forgotten, scars long buried. And his face. That cold mask he was now wearing. No, that wasn't a mask. The mask he'd worn had been stripped away. What she could see was Russel at his core. A core he was deeply ashamed of, a core he'd been desperate to bury.

Raven kind of felt a little eerily creeped out by how similar this all felt to her.

The goth girl approached and stood in front of him. He was aware she was there as he stopped scribbling, but he didn't speak. He was too focused.

"Russel," he stopped. Oh great, what was she supposed to do? She was terrible at this sort of stuff. "Can I sit down?"

"Knock yourself out." He said with the cold disinterest of a calculator. Raven decided not to sit next to him, instead, she sat apart from him against the same tree. They stared off into different directions. Not a word passed between them for a good few minutes before Raven spoke.

"I'm sorry." She swallowed. "I just... I..." She tried to get her thoughts straight in her head. "I know how you must be feeling. How you must think of me."

"Must I?" he asked, there was no emotion in his voice.

"I didn't know the full story. I trusted people I hardly knew to tell me the truth." Raven paused in thought. "I thought I could be friends with both you and them." Raven took in a deep breath before speaking. "But I know now, they were never really my friends to start with. They only tolerated me. They were just using me to get to you."

Russel's arms relaxed. He angled the sketch pad so Raven couldn't see what he was drawing.

"Why did you believe them? Wasn't there any doubt in your mind?" Russel asked.

"Yes, there was. There always was. That's why I didn't turn on you instantly. That's why I kept seeing you behind their back. I just didn't anticipate the depths they'd go to, to pull us apart." Raven bent her legs and brought them up to her so she could lean her arms on them. "You became distant with me recently. I thought something was wrong. I didn't know you have Aspergers syndrome."

More silence in the air as black clouds moved above the trees.

"I thought I had it masked." Russel said, "I thought I could pass as a normal human being. I thought no one would ever notice. But it's always when it comes to my partners does my mask fail to make me look human."

"You can be kind of awkward," Raven said consciously putting a lighter tone to her voice like the Doctor would.

Russel's nose gave a small snort. Was that a laugh?

"What made you suddenly believe me?" He now asked.

"I don't know." Raven sighed, "I think it's because I understand what happened. A similar thing happened to me a while back. My friends turned against me, knocked me to the ground and they watched as I was assaulted by a gang led by a nasty woman. I... I cried for their help, and they just stood and watched it happen." Raven didn't need to spell it out, she hoped he understood that she'd been in his situation before. "I don't even know what she said to them to make them turn on me, they wouldn't tell me, they thought it didn't need to be said, they thought I already knew."

"That's my life pretty much." Russel said, "they always assume you know what you're doing, they think the 'vibe' you're giving off is intentional when all you're doing is trying to live. They may see you as a monster, but you're a monster who's trying so hard to act like a human being."

Raven turned and looked at him, an eery feeling of Deja Vu in her stomach.

Russel then said in a sombre tone. "You had to know at some point they'd make you choose. Who would you have chosen between them and me?"

Raven sighed, "I'd be torn. But I don't think the girls really liked me anyway. I kind of got that vibe from them. They only tolerated me because I had something to offer them."

"That's a very indirect way of saying it." Russel said deadpan, or was it even meant to be deadpan? The edge of Raven's lip twitched.

"That's just the way I am." Raven said, "I'm just so used to something bad happening to me the moment I get within a sniff of happiness. I'm just looking for a reason for it to fall apart so I..." She paused to think as she focused on a muddy patch on the ground. "You were pulling me out of my comfort zone. I was enjoying it, don't get me wrong. But..." she paused again to think, "I was just scared being outside my box for so long."

Why wouldn't Russel speak, she wanted him to speak. When he didn't speak, she did.

"When I first met you, I felt something I wasn't used to. Something I've never properly felt before. I didn't know how to process it. I wanted to pull away, but I felt compelled to do it, just to know what this 'love' thing felt like."

Russel laughed a little. "Are you sure you don't have Aspergers yourself?"

It felt like Raven's brain had crashed for a second. She'd not really thought about it. "I'm already so screwed up, maybe I do."

"You know, when I first met you I thought you were just another customer. A funny-looking girl who just wanted my services as an artist. But I could see something in you. I saw someone who looked and sounded how I felt deep inside. I liked you, but I didn't know how to approach you without coming off as creepy, so I'd resigned myself to just being friends." Oh man, so many echoes went through Raven's head.

"I thought you'd do the same to me." Raven admitted, "I thought you'd reject me when you saw my core. I just wanted to be friends too, but I..." Raven swallowed as she re-thought what she was about to say, "I felt like I could open up to you. I could tell you my entire story and I just had this feeling you wouldn't judge, that you'd understand, and you wouldn't push me away, hurt or reject me."

"Then my Apsergers kicked in?" Russel asked, "It's okay. I know. I became distant, and that hurt."

"Yes," Raven admitted.

"I'm sorry." Russel said.

"It's not your fault." Raven added.

"But I do feel guilty. You were looking for something else from me. I'd happily give it, but it's something I'm not built to understand or see."

"I don't think I am either." Raven said sadly.

Gently, Russel passed his drawing book over to her, the one she'd given him, the one with the wolf on it. She took it and looked at the drawing. It was of Raven, in her usual leotard attire. She looked relaxed, content, subtly smiling, power flowing around her from her hands with planets and stars swarming around her. It brought a smile to her face, it was so charming that he saw her this way. He definitely could show affection, just not in the conventional way.

"When were you going to tell me about those abilities of yours?" Raven was hoping not to bring them up.

"My powers? I was born with them." Raven hesitated, she didn't want to explain how she got them by being 'born of a demon'. That might be too much for him. "I... I don't want them, but I can't get rid of them. I've been trying to suppress them, but they always find a way out."

"So the creature in the forest, that was you?"

"No." Raven said calmly, it was a reasonable question so she didn't take offence. "That's something else entirely. I think it's something or someone like me, but doesn't nearly have the same control as I do." Raven looked at him. Silence passed between them. "Would... this have changed anything?"

"Why do you think it would've?" He asked her.

"You being a none believer."

"That doesn't mean I'm closed minded. If it was a trick then it was a very complex one, and I know you can't even pull off the old penny behind the ear trick, never mind something like that." Raven held back the laugh but couldn't stop a little smile on her lips. "Why do you want to suppress them?"

"Why do you want to mask your autism." Raven asked back as gently as she could so he'd understand. "Because I can't control them. In moments of extreme emotion, my powers fly out of control. I can hurt people. I just want to be normal, and I thought removing my powers would make me normal. But I can't get rid of them, I'm stuck with them they're as bound to me as you are with your Aspergers. All I can do is suppress, but when I get tired of holding them back they find a way out." Raven swallowed, "That night, under the stars I was scared, not of you, but of what my powers would do if... You saw what happened the first time, under that ledge when you..."

"The explosion in the river, so that was you?"

"Yes." Raven looked down at the ground. "The only reason they didn't snap your neck last night was because the Doctor had set up something that was holding them back for me. I felt free from them and I wanted to 'feel' for once without consequences. But even when I had my powers removed, I still felt like I was so screwed up."

"Is that all that night was?" There was an edge to his voice. It never occurred to Raven that night might've meant something to him.

"I don't know." She said, honestly. It took her a few seconds to understand how that sounded, so she quickly added, "but if I didn't feel anything for you I would never have kissed you, at all." More silence as Russel processed this, it was almost unbearable to not know what he was thinking.

"Man, and I thought I had it hard." Russel laughed. "Maybe you shouldn't bottle your powers up so much. They want to be expressed, so let them be expressed somehow." Raven looked down at the drawing in her lap. "You want to be normal. But why? 'Normal' is over-rated, normal is boring. Your powers do mean a lot to you, don't they? I can tell." He said. Was she so transparent? "It's like me with my drawings. It's an artform I've crafted, homed and controlled. You have a skill you've homed and grown to control. And like my Aspergers it's intertwined with your identity. You can't get rid of it, you can only manage it." She'd never thought of her powers like an art before. In a funny way, that might be true. Russel uses his soul and heart to create and draw, Raven technically uses her soul to move things and conjure power.

Raven had never thought such a powerful insight could be reached by someone without similar powers. But perhaps that was not true. Raven didn't know how to ask her next question, but Russel continued on.

"You want to feel. I think you can, but you need to find that line that trips your powers and learn how to skate close to it but not cross it. Like I do, I recognise what part of my personality is caused by autism and try to mask it."

"But my powers are a curse." She insisted.

"I think my Autism is a curse, yet without it I probably wouldn't be able to draw like that." He said about his drawings. "I think your powers are a gift, but only if you let them be. You can't get rid of them, so might as well learn how to live with them. Learn how to use them to help others. Look at what you did for me. You couldn't save me on your own, so you called on your powers to help me, and you didn't hurt anyone, you just scared them away."

"But I so wanted to hurt them." Raven corrected.

"But you didn't." Russel said, "you have the potential to do so much good in the world." He sounded like the Doctor, which made it all the more irritating since Russel looked kind of like the Doctor, only her age. She clenched her eyes together when the thought crossed her head. Oh God, it's like I'm dating the Doctor!

She thought about Russel's word's a little more, about doing good in the world.

"But I've met horrid people who want me to use my powers for their 'good,' their 'justice,' But their 'good,' from a certain point of view can be everyone else's 'evil.' I can't always tell the difference."

"It's difficult, but that's something you're going to have to work out for yourself. Don't let people tell you what is demonstrably good or evil, because I think you already know." Demonstrably evil? Raven guessed he meant stuff like theft, murder, kidnap and stuff like that. Anything else was potentially too complicated and/or personal to get involved with. Raven remembered the Mistress, someone who believed she was doing good and fighting evil, yet look at what she did to Raven and the Doctor in order to achieve that 'good', her 'good' was causing evil things to happen to Raven and the Doctor, not to mention the inhabitants of the Land of Fiction.

The goth girl looked down at the drawing again in her lap, she realised Russel had drawn her like a dark angel, only without the wings. He saw her that way, she only wished she felt it.

"You must hate me now." For some reason that she couldn't understand, Raven wanted him to hate her.

"No, I don't." He said. His delivery was a little quick off the mark that it made him sound insincere. But Raven could sense through her mind that he meant it. "Maybe I should've explained my condition earlier instead of trying to hide it, so maybe I was just asking to be misunderstood. But I don't hate you. Why would I hate the only person who could talk to me on my wavelength? You're like the only person who speaks any English in a foreign land, to me."

Raven felt moved by that remark, and she felt the same way about him.

"So, what happens now?" Russel asked. "Do we go our separate ways? Or try again, with a new understanding?"

Raven didn't know if she truly was ready for a relationship right now. She'd been given so much to think about and process that she didn't want to just rush into reigniting this relationship.

"Just know," Russel said, "I can't be fixed, I can't be 'healed', I'm stuck this way."

"So am I." Raven added.

"I'm sorry," Russel said, "What do you mean by that?"

"I don't know, it just sounded like the right thing to say." Raven shrugged. Their eyes met again. She did have affection for him, but was it as powerful as the dreaded four-letter L-word?

They both shuffled closer to each other. His sad, puppy-dog eyes did look kind of cute. She felt her defences dropping. He was one of the only people she'd met who she could say could understand her pains. She wanted his friendship, she wanted his understanding, she wanted... she wanted...

Their faces were only inches away again. She was tempted...

"RAVEN!" Oh, for Christ sake! It was the Doctor; and the moment was lost.

Raven and Russel stood as the Doctor came through the trees.

"I'm over here, Doctor!" Raven called him over. She stood next to and close to Russel.

"Oh, hello Russel." The Doctor greeted him.

"Doctor Roth." Russel nodded.

"What's with all this 'Roth' Business?" The Time Lord asked.

"It's okay, Doctor. We talked it through, the creature should be pacified now." Raven said.

"Creature?"

"The thing that attacked us. You were generating it." Raven said, "You needed to calm down so we could stop it."

Now Russel's features moved, they were subtle, but he looked annoyed. "So you lied again, you just needed me to calm down!"

Oh god, not more drama!

"Was any of that mushy stuff..." Raven grabbed him by his collar and pressed her lips to his. The Doctor looked away like an embarrassed child. She then released the boy, an eyebrow raised on her face.

"Any more dumb questions?" He looked so stunned it was almost adorable.

"Umm..." his cheeks were turning read. "Can we do that again?" Raven rolled her eyes, it shut him up at least.

"Later." She said in a hushed voice.

"Raven, he can't be the one generating what I've been detecting." The Doctor said, Raven's face dropped. "He has only a minor connection to the psychic pools, but not a substantial one. The most he could do is cause a low level manifestation. He's not constantly dipping into it, he'd have to, to account or what I've been detecting."

"But he..." Raven looked at Russel then back at the Doctor. "Then who?"

The answer came when Raven saw something coming through the forest, speeding like an arrow. Raven reacted just in time to push Russel out of the way of the spear of clear, psychic energy that had imbedded itself in the tree beside them.

The Doctor and Raven immediately dropped to the ground, Raven dragging Russel down with her.

Something was coming through the forest. It was humanoid, but spider like. It had the body of a girl but it's arms and legs were four times their normal length and the head sat on a neck just as long that wriggled like a snake. But what struck Raven was the creatures face.

It was Antonia.

Raven groaned. "Why can't I have a normal day for a change?!"

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: Strap in, who Antonia is and were she comes from shall be revealed, next time!