Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. It belongs to a bunch of creators at DCcomics and some other people. How I wish I were that creative. :huggles a Raven plushie: Instead, I'm stuck using other people's characters and ideas to create stories. It's quite sad really…
Warning: Rated for potentially morbid content in later chapters. I have problems controlling what comes out of my mind…
Summary: Raven finds herself reflecting on her entire life, even her dreaded past. After a fight with a greatly hated foe, she finds herself not remembering the fight at all, and trapped in a void where nothing remains as she wants it to be, and anything she sees refuses to stay long enough for her to get a closer look. She also finds that she can hear the voices of her friends occasionally speaking, though their bodies never appear. Could she finally be losing it? Or is there something greater going on?
Help Me Whilst I Hide
Chapter 4 – Dreams and Realities
Beast Boy stared longingly at the portal, attempting to rush toward it, but finding it a nearly impossible feat because Cyborg had a firm grip on his upper arm. So firm that it was actually beginning to hurt. The green changeling struggled against the hold without any actual progress.
"You don't know what's in there! And what if there's no way out?" Cyborg exclaimed, simply staring at the portal whist refusing to let Beast Boy rush through.
"There's gotta be a way out, 'cause there's a way in. Anyway, I'm sure that Raven goes in there all the time and she hasn't gotten stuck yet," Beast Boy replied stubbornly, unwilling to give up, since he knew that he was right.
"She doesn't go in there. No one goes in there. Raven doesn't like to remember her past," a voice said as a figure dressed in a glimmering, silvery robe, stepped out from the shadows.
"Who're you?" Beast Boy asked, staring at the figure who had dared shoot down his theory. It had been a great theory! Of course, it could easily be left up to Raven's emotions to shoot down anything the he said. They were a part of Raven, after all.
The figure blushed prettily and looked down at her silver clad feet. Her short, lavender hair fell around her face, hiding it from view. "Raven," was all she said in response. Beast Boy was rather surprised that she hadn't made a remark towards the thoughts that he knew she had probably read.
Cyborg seemed to be analyzing her, probably as interested in her as Beast Boy himself was. "Which side? What emotion do you represent? And why are you all the way down here where no living creature seems to walk? We haven't seen any of you since we got here. Only a freaky bat."
The figure looked back up, then sighed and hung her head again. It was strange to see Raven so …down, even knowing that it was only a personification of her, and not actually the real thing. "The creature which you met is called Imagaor, who is the guardian of the memories, whom I take care of because I have no other purpose. Raven has no want of me, and so, she suppresses me the most, after Anger of course."
"You aren't Friendship by any chance, are you?" Beast Boy asked, cocking his head to the side.
The figure shook her head, giggling a bit. "Friendship isn't an emotion, it is simply a feeling that humans have towards other humans. I suppose that in a way I am supposed to assist that process but…" A faint blush still stained her cheeks as she looked back down at her feet.
Cyborg blinked, "You're a personification of Love! Raven's love emotion!" He exclaimed.
The figure nodded and looked up again, with the slight expression of nervousness on her features, and Beast Boy couldn't help wondering why this particular emotion seemed to be a sort of – blend – of many different emotions, almost as if she were an entity completely different from Raven. Then again, it was true that love was a complicated emotion.
"I suppose I can see Raven not liking you too much. Love's a strong emotion, and she's always worried about showing too much of any emotion," Cyborg said. Love however, didn't seem to be paying any attention. She was too busy staring past Cyborg and at Beast Boy.
'Woah… She's like… Staring at me. Why do I interest her? Raven hates me!' Beast Boy thought. The robed figure blinked her violet eyes and looked away from the changeling, clearly, she had heard that thought. Either that, or she sensed that he was uncomfortable with her gaze.
"I-I should go. Be careful in there… Please…" Love said, her eyes meeting Beast Boy's gaze before she turned and began to return to the deep shadows of Raven's mind.
"Wait! Could you come with us? We really could use a sort of guide, you know, so we don't get lost. And maybe you could help us find Raven after. We know she's in here somewhere," Beast Boy said, reaching out and catching on to the back of the flowing silver material that hung from the personified emotion's shoulders.
"Raven wouldn't want it," she replied, shaking her head. However, she was smiling gently as she watched Beast Boy, her eyes daring him to continue. It was actually worrying Beast boy a bit, as he knew that Raven would kill him if she ever found out about this. But then, she wouldn't right?
"Who cares what Raven wants? You're part of her, so you should get a say too!" He exclaimed, knowing it could very well be the quote that ended his life, or put him forever at the top of Raven's smite list. It didn't matter though. He did not agree with the way Raven lived her life, though really he had no say in it what-so-ever. The Gothic girl was never open with anyone, kept to herself far too often, was far too quiet and never smiled. At least, she didn't direct any of her rare smiles at him. And it was really no wonder if she was going around keeping emotions like Love far at the back of her mind, as if it didn't matter at all.
Love blinked and giggled again, "I suppose that it couldn't hurt." She responded with a smile, turning to face the portal. "But I'm warning you, most of the memories that you will come into contact with aren't very pleasant."
Beast Boy frowned, wondering why that would be. Maybe unpleasant memories surfaced in Raven's mind more often, or they fought harder to get out? That would explain why Raven was always so grouchy, she had nothing happy to reflect on. And of course she would hold back anything happy that she could remember, because she had the mindset that emotions were bad. Especially happy ones.
It was too much to try and understand the way Raven's mind worked, even while actually standing and lingering within it, so Beast Boy simply looked at Love and shrugged. "It's Raven. We weren't expecting anything happy."
Raven paced in a circle, trampling and re-trampling the long stemmed grass that she had been walking back and forth across for what felt like ages, though had probably been only a few minutes. Something within her mind was forcing her to dwell on a certain person that she had no wish to dwell upon, and it was beginning to bother her.
She growled as the alien feeling of affection rose and fell within her again. She felt like she would burst. Why couldn't she suppress that cursed emotion that called itself Love? She was going to kill Beast Boy and Cyborg when she found them. They had to be behind this somehow, and were obviously doing something that they shouldn't have been doing.
She grumbled to herself, annoyed, as the feeling bubbled up again. How dare Love approach them? She should know better, should realize what she was doing. Raven focused angrily on the feeling, and on pushing it back to where it belonged, hoping to move it away from wherever her fellow Titans were, but she had little success. She was scarcely concentrating, since her mind was preoccupied, and it was making it easy for the emotion to resist with little effort on her part. Curse her!
Beast Boy stepped up to the portal, preparing himself to walk through it. Cyborg was standing just behind him, and Love was next to him, her own eyes focused on the swirling vortex. He looked down at her for support, unsure in his decision now that he was faced with actually going through with it. Love smiled up at him – still strange, as she had that striking resemblance to Raven – and slipped a small, fragile hand into Beast Boy's green one.
His eyes flickered slightly. The first thing that he had felt had been small calluses, as if from burns, and it struck him that because of her condition, Raven's emotions had been affected by whatever had attacked her. But that wasn't the major concern here – Raven was holding his hand!
"Uh…" he began, startled. Love only giggled with a small blush before beginning to lead him through the portal. Beast Boy wasn't ready though, and quickly pulled her back. "I don't think…"
"Oh no. You're not backing out now. Move it," Cyborg said, prodding the green teenager forward.
Beast Boy turned his head to glare, but stepped through anyway with Raven's love emotion by his side and Cyborg following behind. It was a strange feeling to be swallowed by a portal, and Beast Boy now felt himself experiencing it once again. It wasn't really the main attraction though and Beast Boy found himself stunned and disoriented by the scene that he had walked in on.
It took him a moment to realize that it was actually a memory and not something that was actually happening as he looked on helplessly. For he was watching as Raven approached a towering, demonic figure whom Beast Boy vaguely remembered as Trigon, Raven's demon father. Raven seemed determined as she walked, though she looked very unsure about what she was doing. The latter was apparent from the tears leaking slowly down her cheeks.
"Don't do this, Raven!" shouted a woman's voice from a crowd of onlookers that had just appeared in the memory. Though the crowd was very blurred and sometimes not even there, this woman stood out, as clear as Trigon himself. She was a young woman, and it seemed that Raven had wanted to preserve the image of her above all else that was at this ruined site.
Raven's head turned toward the woman who had spoken, and her hood fell from her head to reveal to all her tear streaked face and as she did so, Beast Boy's mind processed a sudden realization. Raven and the strange woman looked very much alike. They shared the same hair type, though while Raven's was lavender, the woman's was a deep shade of ebony, they had the same eye shape, and startlingly dark eye colouring and their faces were very much the same. Beast Boy had found himself staring at a person who could only be Raven's mother.
Raven was watching the woman, her eyes flickering a bit, her sadness for leaving barely reflected beneath strong determination. Determination and fear.
"Raven!" He shouted, though he knew that it was pointless. He knew that there would be no way for a memory to comprehend or even to hear him. It was something that had already happened, and it was impossible to change or alter it in any way.
Raven's cloak whipped around as a wind blew through the area, and the teenage girl turned her head and attention back to focus on the demon that still towered above her. Beast Boy's eyes moved back to the woman in the crowd, drawn because she had suddenly stepped forward, but couldn't continue approaching because a man in the background had seized her upper arm.
"Arella, no!" he said in a sharp voice.
Arella… An interesting name, and definitely not one of Earth origin, though he knew that he wasn't viewing something that had taken place on his home planet. Raven had been born and raised on another planet, no matter how much she knew of Earth, no matter how human she looked. Even knowing this, Beast Boy found it difficult to think of Raven as an alien girl.
Raven took a few more steps forward as Beast Boy waited to discover what would happen next. Had she gone with Trigon? Had something held her back? But he never found out. Instead of seeing Raven take those few more steps toward her father, the scenery faded out and the world went black for a moment, before an area full of ghastly looking shapes and figures came into view. Beast Boy blinked and stared – he was looking at an army of Raven's, all different ages, all with different expressions on their faces.
Most were expressionless, though some were sad, and some even seemed lost or confused. Beast Boy though, was disappointed that he couldn't spot any that seemed truly happy. Raven truly had a lonely past.
He was jerked from his reverie by Love's voice. "Don't let them touch you," she began in a soft whisper, "You'll be brought into their memory, and could witness something very private…" She trailed off and looked up at Beast Boy, as if finally realizing that this was the reason for Beast Boy's 'pilgrimage' across Raven's mind.
"But that's why we're here. We want to see things that no one else knows about Raven, because she won't tell anyone. She's far too secretive about her past, and maybe if we knew something, we'd be able to help her. She always keeps herself in seclusion, and it's not right." Beast Boy persisted.
Love simply looked at him sadly. "Perhaps if you tried to speak with her…" The emotion murmured. "Perhaps then she would be willing to tell you something of her. You've never really asked, not in a way that made it easy for her to answer."
Beast Boy regarded Love with annoyance, "Why've you taking her side all of a sudden?" He asked, "All she does is push you away. I'd think you'd want to do anything possible to get back at her for that."
The emotion stared at him blandly, a look which probably meant that the real Raven would be rolling her eyes and dripping sarcastic comments. "Beast Boy… I may have different views than her, but you forget the most important thing. I. Am. Raven."
She was watching him carefully, and clearly trying not to hurt him in any way, but seemed unsure as to how she could go about doing this and still get her point across. It was the typical Raven but with a twist – this one seemed to care whether she hurt Beast Boy's feelings or not. The Gothic teen's doppelganger seemed genuinely concerning about what Beast Boy's reaction to her ramblings would turn out to be.
"I know that but…" Beast Boy started. He was determined not to upset her, determined to get this right. Slowly, he began to wonder what would happen if he said something to hurt her. Would she crumble to pieces like a broken heart, or be like normal Raven and simply ignore it?
Beast Boy blinked, wondering where the thought had come from. He doubted that Raven's heart could be broken. It had to be made of ice, or something stronger, like steel – the girl never hinted at having the feeling of compassion for anyone at all. But then, the figure before him wasn't exactly Raven. This was an embodiment of her that was made entirely of kindness and love. It was something strange to think about, especially when Raven was concerned.
"But that's why we came, to find out more about Raven, well, you. So… If you don't want to hang around, I guess that's okay."
Love regarded him curiously and then seemed to think for a moment, though she made it difficult to tell because her face had become stoic and unfeeling, much like Raven's usually was. "I'll stay," she answered finally.
Beast Boy grinned at her, and their hands found each other again as Beast Boy turned and barreled into a figure who looked like she could have been Raven when the Gothic Titan was at about the age of ten. Cyborg, who had been silent through the entire argument – unusual for him – followed reluctantly.
"I'm going to kill them!" Raven seethed, trying to shake off the memory that Beast Boy and Cyborg had just forced her to relive, probably without them even realizing what they were doing. It had been a memory that she had been trying to forget ever since she had first come to Earth. The memory of her going with Trigon to the dimension which he ruled over, for the simple reason of stopping him from increasing his territory into her own galaxy. And now she had many memories of Trigon's planet rushing through her head.
The terror, destruction and fear that the citizens of his reign had lived with still haunted her, though she had spent less than a month in that place. She was an empath, and Trigon hadn't realized what he was putting her through by keeping her there. She had constantly felt the horror that the citizens felt, and their inner pains and sorrows. She had felt that her soul was tearing apart.
But that memory also contained a clear image of her mother, one of the only clear memories she had of the woman who had given birth to her. Yes… Arella Roth… The woman who had been raped by the monster, Trigon. The woman who had kept a demon child in her womb for nine months, while not knowing what the babe would turn out to be. The woman who had gone through the pains of birth, only to have a child who was half human. The woman who had protected her child from those who would have killed Raven while she was still a defenseless infant.
Raven gasped suddenly as another memory surfaced, this one almost solely of her mother, and Raven found herself reliving the time that had immediately followed the death of the Great Elder of Azarath, and her mentor from when she was a young child, Azar.
Raven's 10 year old eyes flickered around her bedroom, wondering what the alien feeling which filled her senses was. Her mentor had passed on, and though the child had known that it was coming and had even been expecting it, she found herself filled with this strange emotion that she was unsure how to deal with.
Raven shook her head, knowing that if she let her confusion rise too far and overwhelm her, that something bad would happen. She had always been taught that emotions were bad, that emotions were a destructive force and that she couldn't show them. She couldn't show emotion, because if she did, she could destroy her entire planet.
Raven looked around her bedroom again before slowly standing, running her hands down her long, blue divided dress in a quick movement. She had stood with the intention of continuing with her normal routine of prayer and meditation, a way to keep her emotions far within her, and control her powers, but found her intentions interrupted by a quick knock at her door, just as she was donning her cloak.
"Enter…" She said gently, turning to face the door. She watched as the handle slowly turned and a woman entered, whom Raven hadn't seen in at least three months. "Mother." She said with a nod.
The woman smiled at her and crossed the room to stand near her daughter. Raven knew that the woman had strong feelings of love for her, but had never been able to express them for fear of setting off Raven's emotions. It was the way that she had grown up, and she was used to it. Far too used to it.
Her mother approached slowly, "Are you alright?" She asked calmly. Raven looked at her, the girl's face was blank, but her mind was buzzing. They hadn't seen each other in ages, but her mother was still able to tell that something was wrong with her, even though she was keeping her face as blank as possible. She figured that it had to have something to do with a mother's intuition or something of the sort.
"I feel… confused," Raven admitted softly. She looked at the ground. "There is a strange feeling within me that I cannot place." Raven sighed and looked back up at her mother, hoping that perhaps she would be able to give some insight as to what this strange feeling could be.
"You are feeling loss, Raven. It is a natural thing to feel when you have lost someone who was close to you," Arella explained calmly. She hugged her daughter and Raven's eyes widened slightly in surprise. The twinkling sound of breaking glass was heard in the background, and Raven quickly pushed away, her head bowed again.
"I am sorry," she said quickly, clearly embarrassed by what had happened, and unsure of what her consequence would be. There were some in the temple who punished her harshly whenever she broke or exploded something, and others who took it in stride, smiled kindly at her and continued on their way. Her mother was usually one of the latter, but if she was taking the place of Azar, then that could change.
"It is alright my child… It was my fault," her mother murmured in a soothing voice. She looked down at her daughter and sighed, "I love you Raven, and I will always love you, no matter what happens. I want you to remember that." Her eyes strayed to the red jewel in her daughter's forehead, before flickering back to make eye contact with the girl.
It was then that Raven felt the memory begin to fade, and she found herself forced back to reality. She looked around and sighed, "I love you too…" she whispered gently to the sky that her mind had conjured up. It was slightly stormy, and looked as if it would cast rain upon the ground at any time. It was reflecting how Raven felt inside, the swirling vortex of emotions that was within her, the same swirling vortex that would eventually swallow her, simply because she wasn't allowed to express them.
Author's Corner
I liked the end to this chapter. Anyway, I'm sorry for the extremely late update, but I was a bit stuck on the way this chapter would go, and I wanted it to flow well. Also, I was working on a one-shot Christmas piece, (which probably won't be up until next Christmas now) and that took up a lot of my time.
Notes on Memories – Both memory scenes were adapted from things that actually happened to Raven in the comic book. I had to make alterations though, so that I could adapt it to the cartoon storyline that I've based this piece on.
Memory 1 – Raven did go with Trigon to the planet he ruled over, but in reality, it wasn't until after the Titans were formed. The entire team was on Azarath because Trigon kept attacking Earth, wanting Raven. Raven returned to Azarath to save the Earth, and then the Titans followed to save her. Raven eventually agreed to go with Trigon to his planet, but only because she didn't want Trigon to kill the other Titans, destroy Azarath and take over another galaxy.
Memory 2 – Raven's mother, Arella, is actually human. She went to Azarath after being 'raped' by Trigon. Azarath is a planet of people who fled Earth seeking a place where they could create their own way of life, free of violence. However, the planet was forced into drastic changes after Raven was born because of what she was. Before Raven, the planet had been beautiful, but when the girl was born, everything changed drastically. There were many on the planet who wanted her dead, and a few attempts on her life that drove Arella to be a protective mother.
However, Arella was soon after separated from Raven because of an event that basically awoke Raven's demon side. After an attempt on her life that connected her with Trigon when she was only about one or two years of age, Raven's power started blossoming. Azar, the Elder of Azarath and the leader at the time, took Raven under her wing to help her to control the powers. As Azarath was already a planet of people who focused on prayer throughout their days, there wasn't much that Azar needed to change in her training of Raven.
Arella wasn't allowed much contact with her daughter because of obvious reasons. Azar wanted to keep human contact with the child limited. She didn't want bonds forming between Raven and anyone else, because that could cause emotion to show. And so, we meet the Raven in the cartoon.
Also, Azar did die when Raven was about 10 years old. That part however, is all I actually took. I couldn't remember the rest so I just wrote my own. ;;
To my reviewers...
Nevermoretheraven – Bah, of course I was going to update. --
ive lost it-there, i said it – Yeah, writers block is bad. And you're welcome….
Love you all
Completed – 28/12/04
Uploaded – 28/12/04