Sitting legs folded, Raven meditated in the air in the center of the room, chanting her mantra as she tried to steady her nerves from the events of the previous night.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos"
Robin breathing hard, sweat and tears pouring down his face.
"Azarath… Metrion…. Zinthos."
Letting out an anguished cry, he smashes the mirror with his fist, drawing blood.
"Azarath….. Metrion."
"Why is she doing this to me?!" He cried out to no one in particular.
"Azarath."
Robin's face was wild and panicked as he seized Raven by her thin shoulders and shook her. "Look at me, Raven! I'm unstable! I'm dangerous! If I keep living like this, I will hurt her! I'll take advantage of her in her sleep and disgrace her!"
"Azarath…"
"I'm not the one who threatened to attack his own team because he thought he was seeing someone who wasn't there!" Cyborg bellowed in fury at Beast Boy and Raven, venting years of hidden resentment at their leader.
Unable to concentrate her thoughts, she sighed and gave up meditation. Standing up, she threw off her blue hood, strode over to the curtains and shoved them aside to glare fiercely at the full moon above.
Her blue eyes stared chillingly at it, her lips trembling as emotions ran wildly through her head, mixing together and like rain and mud before pouring down a barren hillside and sweeping everything away in its path.
For the second time in her life since joining the team, Raven was truly afraid. But not for the ancient prophecy she had been destined to fulfill in wake of her father's return. It wasn't just for Robin himself. She was afraid for everyone. This was a growing evil beyond her power, or anyone's power to save. Any outsider would have indifferently dismissed the Boy Wonder's anguish as nothing more than a serious case of teenage hormones running amok.
It wasn't. She knew enough. Their minds had formed a bond during Robin's nightmarish episode with visions of his masked arch-nemesis, visions no one else could see. Her soul-self had entered his head, flying through forbidden memories of his past, seeing all his deepest fears. She saw a man and woman in circus tights falling from the trapeze. She saw the tall man in a business suit approaching the orphaned boy.
She saw the black cape and cowl as the same man assumed his alternate identity. The boy received a red and green costume with a cape and eye mask from a bald, wizened butler.
Holding back her temptation to delve further into the forbidden corners of his mind, Raven penetrated the last mental barrier and saw the world through his eyes- only for the ghostly Slade to strike him and force her out of his mind entirely.
But the connection was established. She continued to feel his mind and body screaming in agony as the imaginary Slade struck him again and again.
"You can't even touch me." Slade's voice mocked in Robin's mind.
He gasped and wheezed. His breathing short and labored as his heartbeat raced impossibly fast. He wasn't going to make it.
"Your friends can't see the truth even when it's right in front of him." Slade said.
"There was no one there!" She heard Starfire's voice echo.
"There are no generators. There is no Slade!" Cyborg's voice yelled.
"I have to stop him. I am the only one who can! And I'll take down anyone who gets in my way!" Robin shouted in defiance as he brandished a birdarang.
"How can you save a city Robin, when you can't even save yourself?" Slade mocked before delivering a devastating kick that floored Robin.
Then another, far vision arose. A familiar vast and guttural voice thundered all around her. "What you have concealed you will become! The portal must be opened!"
Fire billowing around his hands, Slade ominously lurched toward her in a city where time itself had stopped. The mark of Scath was stamped onto his metal mask. His normally emotionless single eye was wide, filled with triumphant abandon that was unfamiliar and terrifying to witness. "Flesh will become stone! The son will set on your world! Never to rise again!"
"You're willing to give up on everything because of a prophecy you heard as a child? I don't accept it. You can take control. You can make it not happen." Robin said.
She saw herself standing atop the statue of the hand in the amphitheater of the abandoned library, eyes glowing, ancient inscriptions written in red swirling about her. A ball of light formed in her midsection, growing larger.
"The gem was born of evil's fire. The gem shall be his portal. He comes to claim. He comes to sire. The end of all things mortal."
The ball condensed to a tiny dot before exploding outward and expanding across the ground her friends stood on. A monolithic, red-skinned figure emerged from it, bellowing in triumph.
"THE EARTH IS MINE!" Trigon thundered.
Then she saw herself again, regressed to a child, standing before a familiar smiling teenaged boy in a red and green costume.
Climbing atop his back, she held on tightly as he scaled a massive cliff.
"This is the story of Raven. She was my very good friend. And she was very brave. Together we fought evil. We beat monsters and villains, and we kept our city safe."
"The story you were telling...I can see it. Bits and pieces. You...our friends...my father...like it was a dream. A nightmare. Whatever it was, it's over. Nobody can stop him. I remember that. You came down here for nothing. There was...a prophecy, Robin. And it came true. It's all over now. You came for nothing."
"I came down for you." He kneeled down to her level and laid a hand on her shoulder like a protective elder brother comforting his younger sibling.
Her child-self turned around, bitter tears in her eyes. "Look at me, Robin!" She cried, voice breaking. "There's nothing I can do! There isn't any hope! My powers came from him! Now that he is done with me, I don't have them anymore!"
Robin was unfazed by this outburst "It's the end of the world. But so what? We're still here-still fighting. Still friends."
Still friends.
The memories ended and she came back to reality, realizing she was sweating and breathing hard.
"Still friends." She said. "Just friends."
She paced over to her bed and lay down, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. Her mind once again sifted through the past, searching for flashpoints chain of events. Cyborg and Beast Boy both had their moments of heated disagreement with Robin before. But they had recovered from it in time and put their ill feelings behind them. But last night's exchange of words was no moment of immature teenage egos clashing. The anger brewing in their cybernetic teammate was something long coming. Of the entire team, he was the one who had clashed with Robin most in the past when the team was still new and also when Cyborg temporarily left to lead Titans East. Being older than Robin was one thing. Cyborg was also the team's chief engineer and technician. Titans East and a number of Honorary Titans actually respected him as much, if not more than they did Robin.
Beast Boy and Robin's relationship was not as strained, for now. But even there, Raven sensed the beginnings of doubt. The two had clashed twice before. The first time was when Beast Boy temporarily lost control of his animal instincts. The second was regarding Robin's quickness to brand Terra an enemy, a decision Raven agreed with but also understood Beast Boy's point of view. Not to mention, Beast Boy had proved several times in the past he was no less capable of leading when the situation demanded. It was he, not Robin, who led the final charge against the Brotherhood of Evil in Paris. That battle not only ended most of their rogues gallery defeated and contained, but dramatically expanded their network of allies.
It would have been natural to say the tensions were ultimately the result of competitive jealousy between two males if not for one wild card- the one person seemingly innocent in this family feud.
Starfire.
The red-haired alien was the friendliest, yet the most naïve of the team. Despite her awkwardness and questionable habits at times due to not being of earth, she always smiled went about bubbly childlike demeanor of hers. It was easy to forget that she had first met the team as an enemy, mindlessly shouting insults in her native tongue and terrorizing the city with energy bolts fired from her hands. Even after Robin freed her, she regarded him with a threatening growl, hands glowing with energy.
From the start the female teammates never truly got along. Raven was stoic and controlled, keeping a tight cap on emotions. Starfire's emotions were wild and unbridled. She was quick to accept newcomers with open arms and regard them as friends. Friends? She had no idea of the meaning of the word. Friendship was something earned and forged over time. It wasn't something that could be bought and sold like a commodity.
Their disagreements didn't manifest in confrontations or shouting fits of anger as it did between the boys. Most of it was little more than Raven rolling her eyes or sighing in exasperation at Starfire's naivety causing an accident. So far, Raven had been willing to overlook these flaws as Starfire was been an asset to the team in her own way. Alongside Cyborg, she was physically the strongest member of the team in addition to being immune to radiation. It was because of her they were able to defeat the radioactive creature and clear the name of disgraced former hero Red Star while on a mission in Russia.
This latest turn of events had changed everything.
Raven would be lying to say part of her wasn't jealous. Despite the occasional smile she shared with Beast Boy, Raven still had deep set feelings for Robin. He did as well, but his heart ultimately went to Starfire.
Her hands tightened on the covers, crinkling them as feelings of righteous anger mounted in her.
She and Robin's mind hadn't formed a bond like Raven had. She didn't know there was a face, a whole new identity with a life behind the mask. She didn't know even know where Robin came from, or anything about his past life other than that he once worked for Batman.
No. Warrior or not, she was a posh, pampered princess before coming here. First in line for the throne at her home world. She could have stayed, married a member of her race, and continued to live protected from the rest of the world. With the exception of her sister, Starfire grew up loved, admired by all.
What did she know what it felt not to belong? What did she know what it was like, despite everything, to live under the shadow of the more famous master? To break away from said master and father figure to strike out on his own? To lead? To love? It was her, Cyborg, and Beast Boy's willingness to trust and welcome Terra with open arms that led to the near destruction of their home.
Despite being an un-augmented human, Robin by far and away the strongest of them. For all his distrust, competitiveness, and borderline obsessive dedication to a mission, Robin was ultimately the most optimistic of them. He never stopped believing, never stopped hoping against all odds.
Clearly Slade, their single greatest enemy, not selected him to be his apprentice at random.
And yet Robin chose Starfire. And she in turn, claimed him as her own. They guarded one another jealously, shaking with visible anger when members of the opposite gender smiled at the other partner. More than once, Raven had seen Starfire shoot an occasional cold look at her when she approached and shared a rare smile with Robin. She felt the Tamaranian's green eyes burning into the back of her head like a snarling tigress warning her rival to stay away from her male.
HOW DARE SHE?
Raven sat up suddenly, eyes blazing with furious anger.
How dare she come between them? How dare she presume to know Robin better than she? How dare she tempt and seduce him in his dreams, causing him to tear himself apart at the seams. How dare she disturb their leader's peace of mind as he fought to reign in his forbidden desires? How dare she feign innocence when SHE was the cause of everything? Why did she not see what he was doing to him? Why did Robin not see the person truly understood and accepted him for who he was? Why did he so easily suppress the feelings for Raven while tearing himself to shreds for Starfire, who ultimately didn't even know him?
Glaring fiercely at the table across from her, Raven exerted her powers, causing books to fly everywhere and an empty glass to shatter. Then the lightbulb above her exploded.
She stopped and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. The anger simmered but didn't die down. It became cold, focusing on a new target.
She was temporarily broken out of her train of thoughts by a quiet knock on her bedroom door. Keeping calm despite the furious anger seething within her, she quietly made her way towards the door to find a familiar green-skinned teen staring wide-eyed at her.
"Beast Boy."
"Raven."
"Are you okay? You look kind of white. Well…. whiter than usual."
"Super."
They stared awkwardly for another minute.
"Uh… Raven. I don't know if this is a good time but I…"
"I know."
"Huh?"
The door opened all the way. Raven stepped into the hall, grabbed his arm and led him inside.
"Sit. We need to have a talk."
Raven guided him towards the bed and sat him down firmly. Beast Boy stared with confused eyes up at her.
"Raven, what's going on?" He crossed his arms and sighed. "Don't tell me you want to lecture Robin too!"
"It's not about Robin." Raven glared firmly at him, jaw clenched. "It's about Starfire."