Disclaimer: I do not own any of the DC characters who appear in the animated series Teen Titans (as much as I would LOOOOOOOOVE to own Raven). I do not own any of the quoted material that might appear in here from literature, movies, and songs and such. I do not own the demonic tradition of Goetia and the Lesser Key of Solomon, BUT THIS PORTRAYAL OF RAIM IS STRICTLY MINE, BITCHES! I will however make THIS distinction: although many of my elaborations upon Raven's past are based somewhat upon DC comic mythos (I don't tend to enjoy American comics, but when I write anything, I do my research ahead of time), some of the details given may not jibe with specific details presented in the comics or future episodes of Teen Titans. I really couldn't care less. This is my fiction, not DC's! Otherwise, the world is mine. You may kneel, now.
(Special Thanks to: DC, Ani D., Joni M., Stephen K., and T. S. Eliot for providing me with material. Please don't prosecute me! Remember, kiddies; good writers borrow, great writers steal!)
Rating: Unreadable and Slated to Be Taken Care of by The Department of Miniluv, as decreed by the Almighty Federal Communications Commission, subsidiary and loyal bitchslave of The Evil Empire, also known as The Bush Administration (TWO MORE MONTHS! TWO MORE MONTHS!)
The Extent To Which Censorship Will Enter My Writing: is THIS! There will be many "mature themes" regarding morality, religion, sex and sexuality involved in this piece. There will be swearing, cursing, innuendo, and filthy gutter language ad libitum which your cliché grandmother would not likely enjoy hearing from your mouth (trust me, my voice mail message on my cell was "Hey there, bitches, this is Mark…I'm out working the curb at the moment, but leave me a message and I'll be sure to get back to you. Muah!" until my grandma called me up in the middle of a class and got the answering service X . X). There MAY be some scenes of graphic nudity, sex, and/or violence (I really am not decided on how far I want to go with this, yet, although I'm pretty certain that I won't be going into the territory of gore; this isn't a Subaru x Seishirou or Kamui x Fuuma fiction, after all! Therefore, there won't be any decapitation, evisceration, or anything of the like…désolé, 13 to 18 year old male demographic!). If you have problems with such topics being addressed in writing, either stop reading here and now, stop reading when you reach them in the fiction, or skip over them. Otherwise, don't complain! You were warned. Oh, yes, and I'm a rabid X fan, so I'm used to other rabid fans who favor other character pairings than myself flipping out over my choice in character pairings. This is tentatively a Raven x Robin fiction. If that causes you to fly into hysterics, also stop reading here. Raechan is going to be commiserating about how "unfair" it is that Star is so fortunate and blessed with Robin's affection, et cetera, and going all internal-angst-tortured-love-emokid mode. Well, it's not going to be that simple, but you know. That's the Sparknotes version of it.
Otherwise, ENJOY,
Mark
(your supreme sovereign master. mwaugh haugh haugh haugh!)
Raven is having trouble not only keeping her buried emotions in reign, but also problems with her…family. As Robin and Starfire grow closer, Raven begins to resent her heritage increasingly with each passing day; if not for her powers as a demon, expressing the love she feels for Robin, the guilt-ridden jealousy she holds for Star, as well as her spite for her father, Trigon, would be an easy enough task. Fate, seeming to spit on Raven, throws her an even greater dilemma when a half-brother Raven never knew she had decides to pay her a visit.
(SU•PER•HE•RO)
chapitre trois: selfless, cold, and composed
selfless, • cold, and • composed
DATTA•DAMYATA•DAYADHVAM
«give—sympathize—control»
"HOW CAN YOU JUST LEAVE ME STANDING
ALONE IN A WORLD THAT'S SO COLD?
MAYBE I'M JUST TOO DEMANDING;
MAYBE I'M JUST LIKE MY MOTHER– "
"How can you stand this shit from the eighties?"
Raven was desperately resisting the urge to use her power to rend Beast Boy's hollow head from his green body.
"Beast Boy, why is it that the doves are crying? I do not understand."
As if the ear-drum-popping vocalizations of the midget sex god weren't enough to force her sanity from her, Star was, of course, totally and aggravatingly oblivious as to whom Prince was and what metaphors were. Although Beast Boy could forgive her glaring misinterpretation of artistic idioms – As if he even knows what a literary device is, she expelled a precariously held breath sans cadence, chuckling sardonically – to know not the glories of the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As was a mortal sin. Somewhere between baleful mutilation and outright murder lay the lack of awareness to the likes of Prince, Cyndi Lauper, and The Buggles. Just as she has anticipated, a tremendous gasp echoed throughout the operations center.
"YOU—DON'T—KNOW—PRINCE!"
Starfire blinked twice, her eyelids eclipsing those viridian globes in brevity. Beast Boy's jaw was busy lolling somewhere along the floor. Raven's left nostril twitched in disgust, drawing up half of her upper lip to reveal her clenched teeth. She considered leaving him there to gather himself, but realized the childish antics would only be prolonged without her intervention; better to just expedite the whole damned process than languish in the midst of it. A touch of telekinesis – Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow – and his hyperextended muzzle was righted. The favor went thankless, much as she expected it would. Beast Boy was still in a state of relative shock at Star's absence of pop cultural knowledge.
"Wait, wait, wait…even if you don't know Prince, you must know Blondie!"
Star's listless stare persisted.
"The Culture Club?"
The alien's pupils had dilated.
"Whitesnake! Wham!"
Star blinked. One blink for yes, two for no. The thought came upon Raven utterly unprovoked – and her lips furled again, stunning her with the revelation that she was enjoying herself – but the likeness it created between Beast Boy and Star's vagaries and a pretentious made-for-T.V.-movie or daytime television was just too laughable to ignore. Raven found herself in a tepid limbo between amusement and annoyance; the annoyance resulting from the direct exchange between the orange and the green idiots, but it was such mental commentary that she was adding in contextually herself to that kept their little debacle from being entirely caustic. Rising from her diaphragm and forcing her torso to rapidly spasm, a giggle rose. She stifled it in just in time. Nothing good ever came from encouraging Beast Boy when he was busy hyperventilating.
"Karla Devito! Simple Minds! Frankie Goes To Hollywood! Pat Benatar! MICHAEL JACKSON! MADONNA!"
Just as Beast Boy had become positively frenzied and the idea of having to restrain him psychically from leaping onto Starfire and tearing at her hair and eyes popped into Raven's head – Or maybe I should just stand aside and listen to some Stravinsky while he does that, she smirked. Images of Beast Boy tearing Star into bloody ribbons nanced through fields of wildflowers to the Finalé of The Firebird in her head – Cy stepped into the room from the infirmary.
"– CYNDI LAUPER! –"
Raven and Star turned concurrently to Cyborg, all previous concerns being suspended. Beast Boy's assiduous babbling was abruptly silenced with a half-hearted afterthought to telekinetically seal his mouth shut. He waved his arms about impudently, of course, and several guttural intonations escaped his throat despite her power, but all of Beast Boy's endeavors to call attention back to himself were wasted upon the forthwith somber trio. Star shot straight to Cy's side without any visible sign of hesitation. Raven, forgetting herself for a moment, stumbled forward almost one full stride before she caught herself midstep. Of course you can't display your concern to the extent that she can, a callous, small voice taunted from within her own mind.That would be inappropriate considering it's an all-but-unspoken law of the universe that he and she are a couple.
"Will Robin be alright, Cyborg?"
Cy shut his eyes carefully, deliberately, his chin inclining toward his neck. Raven felt her heart catch itself in her throat.
"What's the damage?"
Her saliva soured at Beast Boy's insensitive handling of Robin's condition. She hadn't even realized – I'm losing control, adrenaline responded to the pealing of that foreboding idea as it echoed across her psyche before being again drowned by an even more calamitous fear; fear for Robin – that she had eased her control of Beast Boy's mouth in her distraction. Robin's life and health took precedence even over her own frustration with Beast Boy. Cyborg drew air in through his orifice as though he had been rehearsing this, as though it were some sort of speech – Just like a doctor who has to break the news of the death of a family member, she knew.
"Five broken ribs, dislocated right ankle, partial fractures in the left femur, multiple fractures in the right arm, numerous lacerations and a bit of internal bleeding, running a fever…"
She had to actively crush the fetching wish to lunge at Cy and pummel his metallic chest into shrapnel. She just barely managed to ward off the impulse, channeling it instead into detached fury. If someone had dropped an iceberg of frozen bile into her stomach, she knew with a relative surety that it would have felt just as sickeningly cold, just as overwhelmingly bitter; it was like a hybrid of leprosy and frostbite, sickly-sweet decay and needle-sharp frigidity.
"Why…did you let him come to find me knowing he was injured so badly? For all any of you knew you could have been running headlong into a trap, into physical danger. If any of those ribs had punctured one of his lungs –"
Every word was like a grain of sand falling, gaining momentum. She should have stopped herself, but she really didn't…want to. What she wanted to do was to see Robin safe and unharmed. They were accumulating rapidly enough, though – where there was sand, sandstorms would follow…
"Look Raven, don't take this up with me. Robin was going crazy pent up in the infirmary while you were who-the-hell-knows-where and nothing short of Star or me throwing him against a wall and pinning him there with steel I-beams – which would have made his injuries worse – was about to stop him. On top of that, we had no clue at the time just how bad he was hurt. Batman, Slade…the guy's trained with the best of them. That he could even stand, let alone walk on a dislocated joint is a mystery to me."
Her gaze was beyond incendiary, she was certain – she could sense the itching of flame along every fiber of her eyeballs. A nauseating animus – Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow – had risen from the depths of her heart and it was thirsting for fresh blood. The ice-cold pit of her viscera began to thaw and boil, a painfully acrid sensation took hold in her entrails and racing up her esophagus, fermenting her spit, giving form to words that were just as rancid and pungent as the taste they were leaving —
"He—could—HAVE—DIED!"
As if to answer the crescendo of her imperious voice, a cacophonic concerto arose from their surroundings. From within the cupboards and drawers of the kitchen, the distinctive rattling of silverware, dishes, pans, and appliances could be heard accompanied by several loud crashes of shattering porcelain and tumbling metal. Flocks of Beast Boy's CD collection cut through the air like shuriken before embedding themselves in the walls as the cushions of the couch ruptured ferociously, spewing stuffing across the carpet. The acid of her voice and abyssal innards had spewed out over the entirety of the room, infecting it with the selfsame bestiality. The television lit itself and began to scroll through the channels at a frenetic pace. Cords flung themselves upwards, writhing like expiring serpents that had suffered cranial contusions. The operations room had become her anger.
"HE—COULD—HAVE—DIED—AND YOU JUST…LET HIM—!"
Raven's face drew itself taut with surprise at her own outburst and sudden loss of control. She hadn't even been cognizant of her own levitation and menacing advance upon Cyborg until she was floating within inches of his bewildered face. Self-consciousness taking hold of her, she soon realized that Star, Cy, and Beast Boy were all staring at her, their expressions riddled with an arresting terror. Several discs in the midst of impelled flight fell harmlessly to the flood with a hollow clatter. She fell to her feet, scrambling for some sort of excuse or explanation as what felt like every drop of blood in her circulatory system rushed to her cheeks.
"I – I'm…sorry."
The words had such a hollow coarseness to them that they seemed, if anything, even more embarrassing than her telekinetic fit. Starfire was the first to speak, regrettably.
"It is…alright, Raven. I…understand your concern for Robin."
If anything, Star saving Raven face by speaking up before Beast Boy could make a vulgar comment about Raven's state of mental health only made Raven begrudge Star her virtues increasingly. If her cheeks had felt warm with shame moments ago, they were now absolutely torrid. She could sense every ounce of bile and acid that her flesh contained boiling with a grim indignation; I don't need to be saved!
"We should probably go take a look at him."
At that, Beast Boy and Star fell in line behind Cyborg. Raven shrank away from the others a moment. Her heart rate was still elevated…she could feel the muscle fluttering like a hummingbird, prestissimo e staccato, striking away at the walls of her chest. Every beat was an internal, anguishing shriek. The aorta itself seemed to be wailing for liberation from the confines of her flesh.
I—will—(DAMYATA)—will—not—lose…
Arrestingly, the furor within her subsided. It passed within mere fractions of moments. Composing herself, Raven hurried after her friends in the direction of the infirmary.
•••••
The flesh had now darkened where blood had been spilled within him. The wan, yellow pigment that heralded the body's diligent repair of the mashed vessels was markedly absent. The initial signs of atrophy had joviallytrounced the height and breadth of him in a disturbingly engrossing manner. The bare skin of the chest, ashen as it was, rose and foundered shallowly, dissonantly.Here and there were scatteredpurpling scathes in his surface, marring his lithe symmetry. Almost garrishly, strips of sterile white had wound themselves around the worst of his traumas. Her eyes had flitted away immediately…it was simply too much to take in.
And above everything was one hideous notion:
This is all because of you…this is all your fault.
Her brow furrowed. She couldn't afford to lose control again. Especially not when it could mean inadvertently ripping out the cords of machines which were sustaining his life in the heat of an empathic fit.
She couldn't allow herself to drown in grief and self-accusation.
Azarath…(DATTA)…Metrion…(DAMYATA)…Xinthos…(DAYADHVAM)…
In the midst of her inner meditation, Cyborg's words cut through to her mind.
"…he's gone into shock. He…he might not…it might be a long…well, a while before he…"
"No."
Even Raven herself was a bit thunderstruck at her interjection. Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg had all turned wide-eyed expressions toward her, expectant of her next words. Star's eyes, she had noticed for the first time, were glazed over with the virgin moisture of tears. That was what she really wanted to do at that very time; cry. Cry with insane abandon. Rife with renewed mourning, her mind was addled.
"I…we…can't let Robin…"
Die. She couldn't bring herself to say that awful word again. Funny, that tiny voice called from inside of her head, sardonic in its amusement. You were screaming it like bloody murder a few minutes ago.
She drew in a long breath, gathering her thoughts; she steeled herself against the deep despondency that was threatening to swallow her.
"I'm going to delve into Robin's mind again. I will bring him back. Come morning, he will be…better."
Raven laid her hands upon Robin's bloodied chest.
•••••
What had followed their rescue of Raven at the warehouse on the pier had been foggy, to say the least.
"Robin!"
who is there?
"ROBIN!"
who is screaming? is someone calling my name?
…"silence
timeless white
drifting, drifting, drifting…
Time fell out of thought and memory, drowned in the echoes between words, the noiseless sound of waves upon a far off shore, or perhaps the myriad voices of the grains of sand as it danced aimlessly on an arid breeze. The idea entered his mind to call out, to provoke an answer, any answer at all, but the only thing that escaped his hollow throat was a lamentable sigh. The empty space's ebb and flow seemed to swallow any attempt to shout or speak or even exhale with a force…but it was not uncomfortable. To the contrary, he found it soothing, like the gentle swaying of a boat upon a lake. He suddenly felt very drowsy…
It was brief. So brief he almost doubted that it had happened at all. Someone had touched him. It was as if the other had quickly, smoothly dipped a toe into the surface of his retreat before darting out in just as stealthily a nonchalant manner it had intruded. In fact, he would have been quite certain that it had all been a trick of his imagination had the momentary contact not sent warm, caressing ripples across him, tickling his lower spine and stirring a lurch of pain and desire behind his navel. Agony licked along his bones , driving white-hot talons into his ankle, his ribcage, his arm. If he had not realized those ultramarine pupils, he reserved no misgiving that he would have been writhing in the suffering that physical actualization was causing…but he had seen them. Eyes like indigo brilliance, sunlight on a broken pillar, ancient and wise.
Raven, he smiled.
•••••
She woke with a start the next morning as goldenmotes of dust illumined by the light which was casting itself through the windows of the infirmary. She had spent much of the night in deep meditation by Robin's side, trying to retrieve his consciousness from the very edge of existence. All of her effort had gone into a single thrust, simply to graze the verge of his degraded mind, but she knew that it was a success. Dark, disheveled hair had tumbled helter skelter over the naked skin of his softly rising chest; she was so exhausted simply by endeavoring to reach him before he was beyond her skill that, she reasoned, it probably hadn't taken much for her to collapse in a sleep-deprived heap onto him seconds after her last waking memory of his body, sleek even in his current state of disrepair, arching his back wildly, as if he were trying to press his stomach to the ceiling. His eyes had burst open then, along with his jaw, and she thought she had imagined that he had met her gaze for a moment before his limbs again fell inward upon themselves with the low murmur of some unintelligible word that had sounded, at least to her, suspiciously like the word "urn". Following that, they both had promptly gone into a state of dreamless sleep.
For the most fleeting of moments, Raven considered never moving again. Here, with her right ear resting against his delicately warm body, she could feel the resonance of his heartbeat, sometimes synchronizing with her own, sometimes syncopating. The almost inaudible rustling of his breath was, all at once, more sublimely melodious and heart-rending than any song that had previously swayed across her eardrums. The faint, rosy hue of his areola, mere inches from her lips, seemed (in her own romantic delusion) to very nearly mirror the shade of the eastern horizon that was visible through the window. The skin which only hours ago had been a abtract mess of slashes and lacerations now bore only pallid lines…scar tissue, the by-product of her empathic healing (My mark upon him, she thought, and a smile graced her complexion just as the sun's first warm fell upon her). He was flushed, no longer feverishly, but pleasantly so, as if he had just came back from a nice, long run and happened to fall asleep here with her on a bed in the infirmary of the tower where there were three other people living, one of which was the girlfriend of Robin all but in name.
With that biting punctuation to her last thought, Raven knew how awkward it would be for Star to wander into the room to find Raven dozing contentedly upon the exposed flesh of Robin. She certainly didn't want to be the cause of anymore drama in the tower after her…episode last night, of which (among other things) her friends would likely want to discuss with her later in the day. On the off-chance that Robin himself regained consciousness while her face was still reclined atop his body, the situation would have been an even worse predicament. How could she possibly explain with a straight face to Robin that she had been wordlessly basking in his body heat as she presumed that he would never be any wiser? Moreover, how could she fabricate some cheap lie to cover for her instant of emotional weakness, when she had decided to yield to her heart rather than ignore its wants?
And so, she rose to her feet, stooping fluidly to pluck her cloak off of the floor. She wrapped it around her shoulders, fastening the clasp automatically. As her fingers worked, her mind strayed elsewhere…to Raim's words.
"Expressing my feelings…"
The syllables slipped between her lips before she could muster the will to stifle them. She had laughed at the man who claimed to be her half-brother, then. She had laughed raucously and rancorously. A bitter joke, that what it amounted to, to her. A very cruel, very malicious joke. But at that genuine second, gazing down upon Robin's gracefully slumbering form, she longed for nothing more than to unfetter the dams of her heart and to asphyxiate in the deluge of her own surreptitious desires.
She pulled the folds of her sapphire mantle tighter around herself, trying to ward off perilous ideas futilely with gestures.
«m'eh. je reviens, mes putains! so, i think the direction i'm taking ce chapitre will be that of greater definition of Robin and Raven's relation. being her empathic self, she will help him to heal. i'm thinking recollections of the instance in which Robin was hallucinating that Slade had returned in which Raven empathizes psychically with Robin. before seeing through his mind's eye, visions of Robin's past flash through her mind. as i find this occurrence significant (in that it seemed that Raven was penetrating certain memories which were acting as mental defense mechanisms in order to access Robin's mind directly) i think i will expand upon that. don't worry, dearest Raim isn't down for the count, yet; i've also imagined a quaint little café scene in which Raven and Raim banter back and forth concerning the nature of morality. this will help to reveal some of Raim's past (which i've already fleshed out in a reference document) as well as his intentions, motivations, and world views. it might not come until le quartrième chapitre, but I thought I'd just toss some ideas out for the sake of your information and feedback. danke, danke, danke schön. mark. p. s. i personally LOVE those eighties artists that BB threw about, i just think that Raven would tend, as a character, to dislike them. p. p. s. i apologize for some of the terrible grammar from the first time i posted ce chapitre. i writing it at four ante meridiem. x . x»
«an added note: this is the FINISHED CHAPITRE TROISIÈME! HUZZAH! FINALLY! expect the fourth to be along soon. things to look forward to? the other Titans confronting Raven about Raim and her haywire powers, Raven confronting Raim over harming Robin and kidnapping her, Raim wittily bantering with Raven "in a coffeeshop, in a city, which is every coffeeshop in every city, on a day which is every day" over her relationship with Robin, her emotional approach to life, and on the nature of good and evil. this conversation's basically going to be Nietzsche from a nihilist's standpoint versus Kant from a moralist's standpoint. it will be up within two weeks, i solemnly swear upon my grandfather's tomb. mark. p. s. YAY "BIRTHMARK"! RAVEN X ROBIN SUGGESTIVE MOMENTS!»