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."
Except, if Raven listened closely enough. . .
One of the Cray dropped a bar of soap. Raven picked it up for her, handed it to her.
"Nais tuke," the Cray said.
Raven nearly dropped the soap again. Cray. . . She recognized it.
She turned to Starfire. "Have you ever heard of Romania? Of the Romany gypsies?" She turned to the girl, said loudly, "Bengesko niamso."
There was a low murmur of horror throughout the women gathered.
One of them wrestled through the throng, placed both her hands on Raven's shoulders, gripped them tightly. "Na bister 500,000, gadje."
That settled it. Cray. . . The Cray were just the Romany gypsies, under another name.
And suddenly, everything fell into place. Why the Cray were running a circus, why they had been outcasts for millennia, why Robin looked so much like them all.
"Who is the ringmaster here?" Raven demanded of Starfire. "Tell me."
"A man named Tito Haley, frequently called Pop."
"This is Haley's circus, the last surviving all-Cray circus, isn't it?"
Starfire nodded. "Yes, how did you know?"
"Because this same circus exists on Earth. . . it's where Robin grew up."
Memories of Robin teaching her scattered phrases in Romany sprang to mind unbidden.
Would this world's Robin have taught her to speak his earliest language in a dark room in Wayne Manor? Was this world's Robin as proud of his lineage as the Robin in her world?
Somehow, she didn't think so.
The Cray women around her all glared at her. She had called one of them a filthy German. Considering what had happened to the Gypsies in WWII, Raven didn't want to contemplate what they were probably thinking about her at the moment.
Raven performed the rest of her ablutions in silence, wishing for a shower curtain or something.
She'd never exactly been modest— considering what her costume was, nobody could really accuse her of modesty— but she wasn't used to bathing with a bunch of other people in the room. Starfire was one thing. They'd already practically seen all of each other, one way or another, anyhow. But a Starfire she didn't really know, and a group of strangers?
We are all women of the world, she told herself. There's nothing freaky about this. This is a circus. They don't like to be alone. I can handle this.
Nothing is freaky in the house of freaks.
I can handle this. I've done weirder things.
And she had. She'd performed a minor blood sacrifice to undo damage her worshippers had done. She'd curled into a ball in her living room as singing, dancing zombies had waved their own limbs around and banged bloody cymbals and god knew what else they did.
When she finished washing, she dried herself off, pulled on her street clothes and left. Amazingly, she didn't get lost on the way to her trailer.
Starfire followed her and helped her put on her face. The make-up felt strange against her skin. Cold.
When she'd finished putting on the make-up, she barely recognized the face in the mirror. She had never worn eye shadow. She'd never worn eyeliner, either. In fact, she couldn't remember wearing make-up at all.
And now, to put on so much for no real reason. . .
"Well, Friend Raven? Are you ready to begin your work? Today is a day of labor, after all."
Raven gave herself another long look in the mirror before taking up her drama masks and re-lacing the bodice of her dress.
Children, it turned out, were easy to amuse. All she had to do was show up holding her Happy Mask on a Stick over her face and act enthusiastic.
The acting part was hard, but it wasn't long before she managed to get the children to leave. She told bad jokes and made the children sing silly songs.
ACT II, SCENE 8 — ENTERTAINING THE CHILDREN, PART ONE
RAVEN
What looks like a traffic light and smells like hair grease?
RAVEN pauses.
RAVEN
Robin! Points at ROBIN.
Children look, and surely enough, ROBIN looks like a traffic light and smells of hair grease.
All laugh.
CURTAIN
And she realized that keeping children entertained wasn't hard. Swallowing her pride and making herself seem happy was a challenge, but once she forced herself to get over it. . .
It really wasn't hard.
And then she met Trevor.
"Hi, I'm Princess Raven!" She forced herself to flash a cheesy grin "What's your name?"
The boy stared at the ground. "Trevor," he answered sulkily.
Raven knelt and took the boy's hand in both of her own, shaking his hand enthusiastically. "It's nice to meet you, Trevor. What's your favorite animal?"
"I hate animals."
"That's not true, Trevor," said a tall man she could only assume to be Trevor's father.
The short, dimpled woman next to him smiled apologetically. She laid her hand on Trevor's head.
"Can you tell the pretty lady what your favorite animal is?"
Still sulking, Trevor muttered, "Frogs."
"Oh, goody! I like frogs, too! Now, look here, Trevor." She crossed to the woman, whom she assumed to be Trevor's mother"Excuse me ma'am, just what's your name?"
"I'm Glenda, Princess Raven."
"Glenda. That's a nice name. Well, Mrs. Glenda, I have a surprise for you. Hold out one hand and close your eyes."
Glenda did so.
Raven waved one hand over Glenda's. She murmured her chant.
Nearby, the lily pad on which a frog sat began to quiver and lift. It levitated towards Glenda, then dumped its contents into Glenda's hand.
311:00 PM
Raven stared at the plate in front of her. The Cray of this particular circus kept odd hours to accommodate the circus hours.
They ate breakfast early, lunch at four, and then dinner after the show. If you grew hungry in between meals, you had to eat on your own time, as your duties allowed.
"Not hungry?" Robin asked.
"It's not that. . . I just. . ."
The items on her dinner plate didn't look edible. In fact, they didn't look like anything edible she'd ever seen before. Even the food on Tamaran had looked more appetizing than this stuff.
Starfire looked over at her. "I think she does not know what it is. Even if you are uncertain of the food's quality, you must eat it. If you do not, you will grow weak."
Something about the way Starfire said that sent a chill down Raven's spine.
A Cray woman walked up to them. Her long, flowing skirts and shawl-like shirt swirled around her as she produced an envelope. She handed it to Robin, and then walked away.
Robin opened the envelope, revealing a letter written in symbols Raven couldn't read.
"Harley is hosting another party in O Baro tonight." Robin spat out the word party as if it were an insult. "She. . . requests your attendance."
Raven looked over at Starfire. "Whose?"
"Ours." Starfire sounded sad.
Raven bit down panic.