CHAPTER TEN
WHITE
As early as learning to talk, Raven had been taught to suppress.
There was no room for error in this within Azarath's temple walls.
Interaction with other children of any kind had always been forbidden, for such pleasures might stir elation in an infant Raven's age. Tantrums could not be tolerated, and were quickly put to rest before they had even the chance to spark.
Failing that, as would only seldom happen, the thing left would be to contain the girl in her room: a cold and barren space, pale-walled and windowless. There was a second iron door barring the exit, six inches thick, which existed as an added precaution lest the hellion want out.
And it always did.
Sometimes, when the emotions came spilling over that small, new body of hers, there could be the raking of claws heard throughout winding halls, dragging and wailing in crooked lines across alabaster stone.
And the next day, once those strangled cries had shrank back into her burning throat, Raven would look around herself in horror, wondering how her little bleeding hands had managed to tear into marble as though it were the pages of her books.
"Vi Al'zikhira", Monk Iahhel had called her unorthodox treatment, when Raven turned three and started asking questions. She would not learn until age five that this translated to mean: 'Purging of the Pestilence'.
Which didn't make much sense, she thought, because Raven was not sick.
"But you are, child," the priest had told her, a palm flat to the crown of her head. "With something beyond sickness itself."
The girl had left the monastery confused that day. She had wandered past the courtyard, made a turn at the abbey, and stalled at the familiar sound of laughter rippling the breeze.
They were there again. Outside.
As she approached the wall that encompassed the grounds, Raven spotted the throng of children through the spaces between thick, stretching pillars. She focused on their skin, then glanced down to her own hands, wrapped around the columns.
Grey.
Perhaps she was sick. Had been born sick, with something she was not yet old enough to grasp. Born with one foot already in the grave, and the tint of her flesh and shine of her gemstone was a death date that she wore for the world to see.
Because if it weren't, then she would surely be on the other side of the wall. Because if it weren't, she would be smiling along with them, unburdened by the trained guilt that always followed such an indulgent act.
"Isn't that her?"
Raven blinked from her hands to the lone finger pointing her way.
"Are you Raven?"
Her lips pressed together and she nodded, afraid to speak.
"She doesn't look scary," the girl heard another say, quickly realising that the observer had become the observed.
One of the children stepped out from the cluster, slowly inching toward the wall that separated them.
"You wanna come play with us?" the kid asked, as though they were speaking to a person and not a prisoner. Raven stared back, feeling her heart tick. She could levitate above the wall, she knew. But she wasn't supposed to do that…
"I…"
The child was ripped from her sight.
"Reya! You must keep away from the temples," a tall woman jeered, her grasp bruising at that frail wrist as it was hurriedly dragged away. Purple eyes peered up to see dread alight in the woman's face, and as the horde trailed wordlessly behind her, became faded figures shrinking into the distance, Raven felt herself begin to understand.
Like talking, like reading and spells and suppression, hate too was something taught.
"Push hate down, Raven," she remembered. "Despair, fear, love, all of it. Place it into a box. Seal it tight. Let it collect dust in that crawl space at the back of your heart.
"For hearts were not made to be touched by you."
And so through necessity, rather than a dreamer, Raven became a realist.
No. Did not become.
Was.
Had always been.
Must always be.
By six, she understood this as well as she understood meditation, and not flying the wall. By eight, she understood why. And by fifteen, when Raven left Azarath and the only home she'd ever known, she arrived on Earth a disciplined veteran.
An inhale was all it took for the green of envy to fade to white. The yellow flares of joy. The skittish grey. And whilst rage was fiercer red, more frequent and closer to the surface, she could usually quell that too; could dilute it enough with chants and focus till absent white prevailed once more.
This often led people to believe that Raven did not feel as others did. That she was a bit of an empty husk, masquerading as a girl. Because she had built a wall around those feelings, and the wall was pillared high, like the one from her youth.
Just because she could pass it didn't mean that she should.
And just because you could only peer through the gaps didn't mean there wasn't someone living inside.
In her room at the top of Titans Tower, Raven skirted her dresser to light another candle. She thought that sometimes the little flames looked like feelings - small and alive. And quite like feelings, if she didn't keep watch, one might easily set the whole room ablaze.
With a sigh, the magus shook out the match then sat at the edge of her bed.
It hadn't been an easy week. Even with the lack of crime, things felt like they were starting to move fast again. Fast could be good, she tried to reason. Fast could be exciting. But she knew as well as any that, more often than not, excitement often came splashed with unknown.
That was one thing Raven had never brought herself to stomach.
For a long time, she had convinced herself that red was the only one to worry about. She wasn't sure when that had changed, couldn't quite put a pin in it, but at some point, it had. At some point, there was something strong, and pink.
Rosy pink, like the colour that seeped into her face when that feeling crept upon her. Rosy pink like the sky before twilight. Like a smile. Like warmth.
It came in gentle flutters, in and out. But more than this, Raven was sure it had not existed before Earth - before the tower and the Titans.
She had never been trained for it.
The girl thought that maybe the first time was Aqualad. Maybe. Once that whittled away, there was a long stretch where the feeling had no name, or perhaps she just didn't want to name it. Perhaps it was easier that way.
But as time went on, if Raven ever did feel the urge to reflect, she could gather that its name might just have two syllables, eight letters, and a familiar sound on her lips.
She would call it a fluke in the beginning. At some stage, she'd have to ask herself how many times she could call it that and still believe it to be true.
As with rage, with fear, with all those fiercer shades, Raven quickly decided that pink had to be pushed down too. So far down that she would forget its hue. So far, that she could imagine it wasn't even there, that she didn't know its name, and hadn't for some time.
Maybe it had come to her the evening Terra returned, and she knew that all the attention and warmth she'd grown to like was about to be swiped away again. Or when their final moments had been close enough to touch, and he had gently taken her hand to place one last token of luck inside it.
Or maybe it was when she'd been out in the mountains, on a cool, cramped train, and his voice had sounded too much like a place to rest her head, and his face through that little screen had looked too much like coming home...
It didn't matter.
Raven understood that it was safer this way. This way, no one would have to fly the wall, no one would have to risk getting hurt.
So training had been just another fluke that she could throw onto the mounting pile - just another incident in which her cheeks had burned, heart had hammered, blood had rushed like fire. And she would forget it, she told herself.
She would gather it all to a single point, and once more let it die in a wash of white.
There was some shuffling as she brought her legs up to the mattress and folded them beneath her. Though the pillows behind her looked inviting, the sorceress chose to sit upright, right after reaching to her bedside for the hardback beneath her lamp.
She opened the book at the dog-eared page and set it down in her lap. It was heavy and cold against the flesh of her thighs. A fantasy novel, with mythical beasts and valiant feuds. In this chapter, the behemoth had thwarted the hero with a final, crippling blow, and he was blacking out, being carried from the scene by allied hands in a desperate bid to reach the healers in time.
Raven felt her fingers grip at the sides of the book, eyes darting with impatience.
Then a gasp shot into her as crimson flooded the room, pulsing like a heart at the siren's piercing call.
She swallowed, dropped her book, then let her legs swing over the edge of the bed. In seconds, the common room doors were hissing open and she was running down the stairs to join her friends, all gathered at the computer screen.
Robin tapped rapidly at the keys, scanned the report through the mesh of his mask. When he finally turned to his team, in the instant she saw that dip of his brow and turn of his mouth, Raven knew, and her gut sank.
"Adonis."
Author's Note:
imagine my joy when i was waiting in the queue for my covid vaccine and realised 'eight letters and two syllables' actually works for BOTH his names :D
anyway, getting into raven's mind is kinda my speciality, even tho most of this fic is from gar's perspective so far.
consider: raven has an appetite for fiction and fantasy. consider: raven is actually JUST AS MUCH a romantic as garfield. consider: we've seen this much in the episode 'spellbound'. consider: she just doesn't think she's ALLOWED to be because that's what she was raised to believe. consider: my heart is breaking as i write this.
(also, i have such a thing for the notion of a young raven not knowing how to deal with having emotions and being a demon and just totally wrecking her room out of frustration and confusion then feeling terrified of herself in the aftermath and realising she's a monster ajhajkskdhskak MY DAUGHTER)