One Day Raven

Chapter Two

1

There was a tiny blonde wandering around what was apparently the "office" portion of the meeting place. She was randomly pulling items off one of the bulletin boards.

"Robin," Raven murmured. "Just what's going on here?"

"Terra is transferring out of our team. She'll be joining Beast Boy."

"Why?" She watched Terra pack some of the items into a small bag.

After Terra finished, she turned to Raven and hissed, "I don't understand it. You screw up, and he rewards you."

And then Terra left, that blonde hair— now swirling with red and pink and blue and orange stripes— swaying along the length of her back. As the door slammed, Raven could think only thing: That girl knows how to make an exit.

"What was that all about?"

"You made a mistake, almost let our cover slip. Terra felt that you should have been punished."

"Was I?"

"We were going to decide that this morning. We had immediately switched you and Terra as an emergency measure."

"And she views my switching 'back' as some sort of reward?"

"Yes— maybe just backsliding."

"Are we still going to make a decision this morning? Seeing as how I'm not the Raven who committed that crime?"

"Yes, but it will be farce. With Starfire, Beast Boy and I aware of your situation, there is no conceivable way for the meeting to decide to punish you."

"But why not tell Terra and Cyborg?"

"Terra has a big mouth. And Cyborg keeps all his memories logged. If somebody wanted to and was determined enough, they could pull it off of him, eventually."

That was a frightening thought. Cyborg had joined her Titan to some extent as part of a search for equal treatment; his contract had all sorts of stipulations that they couldn't discriminate against him due to the fact that he wasn't entirely human.

Doubtless this Cyborg had been the same... And he was being discriminated against, anyways. He just didn't know it.

Starfire walked into the office portion. "Were your things difficult to move?"

"No, not at all." There hadn't been much.

"I see." The door closed, and the lock turned with a click. Starfire moved towards her. "Raven, no one must know about the mistake the other you made. I feel bad that she fled to your world to escape her duty, but that is so. You— and we— must now make the best of it."

Raven nodded; what Starfire was saying made sense.

Though how certain they were that that their world's Raven had fled her responsibilities disturbed her. She couldn't imagine being so irresponsible and selfish, but she wasn't this world's Raven. Maybe being flighty and unreliable was something this Raven was known for.

On her sixth hour there, she began to feel as if she were in a dream.

Starfire and Robin were wonderful to her. They explained everything so patiently. If felt strange to be in a world where Starfire knew more than she did, but she forced herself to put that feeling aside.

Her mini-trial really was a farce. Robin, Beast Boy and Starfire voted to let her off with a warning. Cyborg voted for a measure that would have been a slap on the wrist. Terra, however, voted for punishment.

Nobody said anything about the votes. Raven didn't understand exactly what they were warning her about, but she nodded her compliance anyway.

As she left the meeting place, she could feel someone's eyes boring into her back. She turned her head for a quick glance and saw Terra, staring intensely at her.

Some things, it seemed, never changed.

Also unchanged, it relieved Raven to discover, was Starfire's generally upbeat attitude. Starfire was more serious, yes, but she still had her optimism.

"Just why do you work with the Cray? I don't think they're going to come around any time soon."

"They may not, but we must at least try to distance them from Harley Quinn, or at least distance the ones who are innocent in this matter from her."

Raven nodded. It made sense. Surely not all the Cray could be involved with Harley Quinn. There had to be something here worth saving when Harley made her move.

"And just how did this operation start? What do the Titans do?" It had been nagging at her. She couldn't remember ever working on a case with all the Titans undercover.

"The Titans is one of the better-hidden branches of the Justice League of America. Where the Justice League cannot become directly involved in a situation, or cannot operate overtly, it sends in the Titans."

"So we're always undercover."

"No, Friend Raven, we are never undercover." Starfire rolled her eyes, then smiled.

So what had happened to their secret identities? What had happened to Robin's wearing a mask, what had happened to all the vigilante laws?

Raven shook her head and sighed. Better not to press it. This Starfire just wouldn't understand her world.

There were times she wasn't sure if she understood her world.

"You know, in my world, we... are good friends. Or as close as I come."

It felt as though it had always been that way, but it hadn't. She and Starfire hadn't always been friends. They had never exactly been enemies, either. There had been peace with no understanding. They had always seemed so different to each other. It hadn't been until they'd forcibly switched bodies that they'd begun to understand each other. Those moments had been the ones when they had begun to see the commonalities between them. That peace had become a friendship, a willingness to meet each other halfway.

She and Robin, however, had seemed to mesh from the very start. His time in the city with Batman had brought a kind of darkness to him. Sure, he shone bright and colorful in Gotham... But it wouldn't take much to be bright in Gotham. Next to Batman, Robin shone with blinding brightness. He was like a flash of something bright in the corner of your eye on a rainy night— when you viewed it on a sunny day, it didn't stand out as much.

He was bright, yes. But not as bright as Starfire, and he wasn't as dark as she was.

There were times that Raven wished she had been able to offer to Terra what she had offered to Starfire. If she had, would Terra have betrayed them?

Raven pushed that thought away. Terra had done what she wanted, and Raven's actions hadn't had anything to do with it.

2

Raven woke up the next morning to somebody's knocking on her door.

It was Starfire. She had her costume on again. "Friend Raven, you must rise now if you wish to be able to shower and put on your face on time."

Circuses had specific hours for things to be done? It had never seemed to her to be a very structured organization.

Raven followed Starfire to the women's bath and performed her ablutions with a gaggle of Cray women. All of them wore their hair up, covered modestly by a saffron, a red or a green scarf. They barely noticed her arrival; they were all too intent on talking amongst themselves in the Cray language.

Raven looked over at Starfire. "Does your version of me speak the Cray language?"

Starfire smiled. "No, as a matter of fact. You have nothing to fear there."