THE INJUSTICE OF RAVEN
For a hero called Raven, life has hardly been normal. For one, she was a half-demon, she was part of a group of young superheroes called the Titans (formerly called Teen Titans), she has fought of a genetically enhanced assassin, a geomancer, a cybernetic psychic, a brotherhood consisting of a rubber woman, a brain and a talking gorilla and even her father, the literal manifestation of evil. She would be used to the unusual.
On the other hand, looking a parallel counterpart in her face is something new. Some things can still surprise her. But she didn't like the look of her counterpart. She had the same clothes, the dark blue cloak and hood and dress, the golden ruby encrusted amulets…only her skin was red and she showed off her four red demonic eyes all the time, unlike herself as she still had her grey skin and violet eyes. It had started when she, alongside several JLA members had been pulled in this alternate reality, this reality where Superman has turned into a tyrant after he lost his family due to a dirty trick by the Joker.
"So…you're supposed to be me." The alternate Raven said to her 'Prime Counterpart'. "I must say I am disappointed with you." She could sense the malice oozing from her.
Raven always thought herself as irredeemable due to her demonic heritage. But she had chosen to do good despite everything, and she, on insistence of her teammates and her lover, that she was apparently a good person. This other person is what she could have been if she had chosen her demon half. "I could say the same about you. Just selling your soul to daddy dearest? To join with this totalitarian regime?"
"A small price to pay for the power I've gained. There are monsters in this world, and I'm not talking about me. They are bugs, scum…whom wouldn't care how much blood on their hands, how much suffering they'd case to better themselves. We weed them out, and we no longer show them any mercy since they didn't care about showing it themselves." The alternate Raven said, poison dripping from her voice.
"It's no reason to be judge, jury and executioner. It's no reason to stoop to their level. You are not Trigon material, but you've become as bad as the villains you've fought." Raven told her prime counterpart.
"You are so naïve, Raven…" her counterpart, the 'Injustice Raven' said. "But you hadn't suffered like I have. Your Garfield is still alive, is he?" she said, with a cruel, serrated, sharp-toothed grin.
"What about him?" Raven Prime (we'll call her Raven for short) asked. She and her teammate, Changeling (formerly known as Beast Boy) have started dating. She herself wondered how such a nice guy as Garfield Logan would bother with her, a demoness…
"I can sense it, how a little spike in joy appears when I mention your name. You two are close right?" Injustice Raven asked. "He is a goofball and he can be immature, but he has a way to brighten your day, to not make you feel like a monster, but as an actual person, he makes you feel loved…My Garfield did so too." Her counterpart softened up, as something aside from the malice she sensed earlier started to radiate from her. It were something softer, but also sadder.
"What are you getting at?" Raven asked.
"Are you playing dumb or do you want to hear me say it?" Injustice Raven asked. "You think Superman was the only one whom lost someone that day? That Lois was the only casualty? The Joker decided to have a nuke connected to her heartbeat. If it stopped ticking, the nuke would go off. Millions of people gone…Among them were some good friends like Wally…But also my Garfield." She now radiated anger and sorrow.
Raven was speechless. Sure, she and Garfield only started dating shortly. But they knew each other for years. She loved him dearly. She had often wondered how her life would be without him…If she would one day lose him, it would have left a hole in her heart, an emptiness that could not be filled.
Her counterpart had noticed that she had blanked out as she continued: "You understand now, don't you? The Joker…that monster, less of a human then I am, took him from me. I didn't even get the chance for revenge, but I got a chance to make sure a world existed where monsters like him would get what they deserve, a world that is at peace, at order. Even if I had to borrow our father's power, I will make sure this world is purged."
Raven could bring up a little more understanding for her counterpart's situation, but it didn't help her counterpart was also insane. "He wouldn't have wanted it, for you to become this. Garfield…" Raven tried to tell, but she would be interrupted.
"GARFIELD IS GONE!" Injustice Raven screamed, her four red eyes shedding tears. "No more to feel the touch of his warm hand on mine, no more shall his soft lips against mine. I had wanted to move our relationship forward…But I was scared of myself and I let the relationship go slowly…and I regret that…I want him back. If it was your Garfield, what lengths would you go to, to have him back?"
Raven hung her head. "I do not know. But I know is that my Garfield would not approve of me if I had gone down the path you're walking right now."
"Your Garfield…" the Injustice Raven started, but she interrupted herself, as her sorrow and anger filled grimace turned into a more devilish one. "Is just like mine." She realized. "I'll just get rid of you, and take your place in your world. I'll have Garfield with me again."
"You stay away from him!" Raven lost her composure, her own eyes splitting in four red ones as she shot out tendrils of dark energy at her counterpart.
The Injustice Raven flew out of the way. "Guess you're just like me, Daddy's little girl. Maybe I can make you see my way is best, and I don't have to destroy you after all. On the other hand, I'm not planning to share Garfield."
"He is not yours! He was never yours! He is mine! Would you wish for another to suffer the hurt you have?" Raven created more shadowy tendrils, in the shape of a pair of black energy claws. Injustice Raven did the same, and the two's auras were locked in a power struggle. "Would you be able to live with yourself?"
"Bitch, please! I've done horrible things already. I got over that, I can get over this." Injustice Raven said.
"It would not be fair towards your own Garfield." Raven argued.
"Not fair? You know what's not fair!" Injustice Raven's anger started to push back Raven's aura. "I did anything to defy my destiny, being as good a person as I could, prove that I wanted to be more than the Gem. But the universe didn't care and took away the one I love most. I am no longer bowing to anyone's rule. I deserve this!" From behind her, more tendrils came, spiky ones ready to impale her counterpart. Rave put up a shield to deflect, but the power struggle still held strong. "You have gone soft, my counterpart. That's when you'll become vulnerable, and when tragedy strikes…You'll be broken. I'm saving you the suffering…"
"I have not gone soft. I have learned control!" Raven said as her eyes glowed. Her robes turned white and so did her aura, and tables were slowly turning. "You kept dabbling in the dark, but I was running away, I found a new source of power."
"Oh please, you think you're an angel now or something? You know what they say about angels? They can fall." Injustice Raven continued to fire tendrils after tendril, as our Raven cut them using their own powers. Both pushed more power in the struggling aura claws, but they gave in under the pressure and broke.
The two roared and shot towards each other. Hands flaring with their magic. Injustice Raven shot out hellfire from her hands, while Raven Prime let out a shield that dispersed it. Our Raven then collected energy in a sphere and shot it at her corrupted counterpart, whom created energy claws on her hand to disperse the attack. The two then wildly fired waves of white and black magic in crescent shots, which bounded off each other. It created a smokescreen, from which the Injustice Raven shot at her counterpart, tackling her down. She created claws on her hand and tried to impale Raven, but Raven headbutted her counterpart and kicked her in the stomach, with a powerful kicking move taught to her by Nightwing. Injustice Raven grabbed her leg with a dark energy tendril and slammed her into a rock.
Raven slumped to the ground, groaning in pain as her robes shifted back to black. Injustice Raven raised her hand and a black ooze started to rise from the ground, tar-like, like liquid darkness. She sent the ooze at the Prime Raven to engulf her and hurt her. Raven screamed out in pain as the black liquid formed around her and tightened. "Hardly a challenge. I was the stronger Raven after all. No worries, I'll take good care of your Garfield. I'm strong enough to protect him from everything."
Raven couldn't give up. Not like this. It was like the past she has been fighting is trying to catch up again. But she had come a long way ever since she got rid of her father's influence. And she wasn't going to take any steps backwards. And like hell is she'll let anyone like her demented counterpart lay a hand on her man. Her robes turned white again in a flash, which vaporized the good around her, and she was at full power again.
"You have some fight left. Fine then, I can beat you down some more!" Injustice Raven shot more black tendrils at her counterpart. However, this time the tendrils vaporized once they got too close. "What the…" she shot more hellfire, but Raven just waved her hand to disperse it. "Where does this power come from?" she wondered as she shot several dark spells at her counterpart, whom either easily dispersed them or blocked them.
"Your Trigon may only be banished. But my Trigon…I got rid of him. I fought him and I won! I proved strong enough on my own without his influence, because I drew my power from somewhere else." Raven said as the aura of a giant white Raven appeared.
"Bullshit! Bullshit!" the Injustice Raven, still defined by her insanity and anger as she summoned an aura that looked like a shadowy outline of Trigon, but an incomplete one. The Trigon aura rushed forward and struggled with the ethereal bird form the Prime Raven. There was some punching, clawing and biting for a moment until the white raven tackled down the Trigon image and clawed and pecked until it was torn into pieces.
"No…it can't be…" Injustice Raven said, sounding scared that her Trigonic power was so easily overcome.
"We are more different then I thought. I moved out of my father's shadow, I fought my dark side and I won, and I can do it again! You had a chance to do better, but you had squandered it. Now face the consequences!" Raven, with a power equal to what she had used against her native Trigon, shot out her white soul self, which rushed at the Injustice Raven!"
"No!" she screamed as she was engulfed into the light. When it died down, she lay there, her skin back grey and her red eyes gone. She still had an insane look on her eyes and frazzled hair still. She lay there on the ground. Weak and panting. Raven stood over her demented counterpart. "What are you going to do? You don't kill. You don't have the stomach."
"I don't need to." Raven said as she grabbed at the chakra stone on her counterpart's forehead. The Injustice Raven screamed in pain as it was torn from her forehead, she herself too weakened by the fight to do anything about it. Raven had pulled the gem loose, engulfed it in a white sphere, and then crushed it to dust in her hands. "Right now, you cannot access your demon powers anymore. And knowing you, you probably relied on those and didn't bother to learn non-demonic magic."
"You and your weak-hearted league won't win, our Regime is hardened, they don't hold back. They'll come for you. They'll help me recover my power, and then I'll come for you, and your Garfield. I won't stop until I…" the Injustice Raven ranted until she was kicked in the face and knocked unconscious by the Prime Raven.
"Don't be such a drama queen." Raven droned. She sighed, as that part of the struggle was over. Shortly after she would learn the Prime Superman has defeated his counterpart and imprisoned him. The Regime would be disbanded and this universe would be at peace.
As she returned home with her fellow heroes to her native universe, she was greeted by the person she wanted to say most. "Rae? You okay? You were gone all of a sudden and…" Raven didn't reply but just caught his lips with her own and engaged in a really passionate make out session. Normally she didn't openly display her affection in public, preferring to keep it behind closed doors. But this time she didn't care. Once they broke off, the only thing Changeling could mutter was: "Dude…"
"Garfield…I have been taking things slowly between us because despite everything, I was still afraid of myself. But in that other universe…I've seen a few terrible things, and I was worried…that I wouldn't…" she started to cry.
"Whoa, take is easy, momma. Just tell me what has been going on…" Changeling said to his girlfriend. Raven had explained what was going on with the regime in the other universe. And about her own twisted counterpart. "So, you beat her, right?" Garfield asked, after she was done explaining.
"Yes. But she is what got me so scared. She was ready to take you away from me. She is I what I could become…She reminds me of the reason I am so scared to move forward too quickly…because you may get hurt. I wonder if you would still want a half-demoness as a girlfriend, certainly if I could become as monstrous as the other me."
"But that's just it, you didn't. You're the better of the two Ravens. And I'm a lucky man to have such a wonderful woman by my side." Changeling assured her. "You are not her, you fought and overcome your obstacles, she didn't; She gave up."
"But if I were one day to lose you, I wonder if I may go over the edge like her." Raven wondered.
"Please don't think of the things that didn't happen and look at the things that do happen. Sure, we're superheroes, we live dangerous lives, it can end at any moment. But you are not her, I'm sure that you would not tarnish my memory like that. I trust you Raven." Changeling said.
"You trust me more then I trust myself. I'm not sure whether you are that nice or just foolish." Raven noted.
"But I'm your fool, right?" Garfield asked with a grin.
"Yes, you are…I'm just so glad to have you, Gar." Raven said.
"I think we earned some rest. Let's just go out. Some nice diner or a movie. Just the two of us?" Garfield asked.
"Yes, that would be nice." Raven said. She still had fears, for herself, or what she could become. But at least there is someone whom always managed to ease her fears. She only got into this relationship with Garfield shortly, but she had a good feeling about it. "Who am I to doubt his faith in me?" she wondered to herself.