Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans or any other DC character listed here.

Deeper - Chapter Seven – Summoned

The hidden face melted and re-formed. Red skin. Two pairs of fierce yellow eyes, sharpened ears, an elf painted in blood and black and blue . . .

Gar screamed at the dark echo of someone he . . .

"You," it said. "The one she called friend. The one that held a seed. I seek you."

Black-blue arms reached through the door and pulled him through the metal to the other side. But it wasn't a lab. It was a furnace – blazes licking and burning and crisping the air around them. Only the flames pierced the smothering darkness . . . nothing else was there. Nothing.

This can't be real, this is him, him making me afraid.

He's doing a good job.

"Your friend's fear is delicious. Say you'll join me, and you'll drink it like sweet honey." The dark man's voice chilled Raven's skin.

The intoxicating fumes of whatever was tickling her insides rose higher into her head. It was the same feeling she sipped whenever she wandered too close to a smoky bar . . .

She let go of the paw and rammed her fists into the porthole frame. "What makes you think I want to taste his fear? Why do I even speak to you?" I have already made contact. I am leaving soon.

"Because you have no choice. Because I can send you deeper. Both of you. In here I can send you so deep that the very oxygen that gives you life will be poison to you."

The jade tiger struggled in that iron fist. His claws tore at the air and ripped at her back. She held him away from her by his scruff.

"Hold! I do not seek to harm you. Not this time."

"Put me down, Raven! Put me down!" He could not focus, could not think. The air was hot and heavy and impossible to breathe. This can't be her. It can't be. But he couldn't see inside the chamber. He couldn't see her.

Mirthless laughter trickled from the red Raven's mouth. "I am not who you think I am, mortal. I am the last child of Trigon." She twisted the loose furry skin in her hands while he kicked at her with massive rear legs. "Not the one you call Raven."

He struggled in her grip, amazed at the towering height of the wraith. "What do you call yourself, then?" he growled.

"I have no name. She took it from me. Arjh-no-ree. She took it from me."

Arjh-no-ree. She spat the words like a curse.

He twisted free of her talons and landed on top of her, shredding her long, long cloak. He lowered his heavy jaws over her face, lips pulled back to reveal sharp fangs gleaming in the firelight. "You're just her body. You're gone. We destroyed you."

She buried her fingers in the fur of his forelegs. Fumes of sulphur poured from her glistening skin. "I am in hell, but I am never gone. More's the pity."

"Liar!"

"I do not lie – lies only bury me deeper in the flames. Lies cannot free me. Only truth." She wrapped her hands around his front paws and pushed herself out from underneath him. No scent of fear lingered where she had been. No fear at all.

"Then why do you do this? To hurt me again? To make her dark again?"

"Foolish little creature. That sanctimonious bitch was never dark. Only I." She stood up and tore her ruined cloak free of her shoulders. "Only I was dark."

His eyes darted from left to right, looking for room to move. His lungs rebelled at breathing the acrid air. He stepped back, one leg at a time, ready to spring again. He shook his head at the voice, so like Raven's voice but with an echo of Trigon's deeper bass reverberating with every word in a wicked harmony.

"You're not here," he repeated, more to himself than to her. He crouched, ready to attach. "You're just that beast trying to make me afraid. Again."

Sharpened canines glinted from between her blackened lips. "Oh, but you're wrong, there, changeling. That is what you are isn't it? A changeling? Like me." Her face flowed again . . .

And emerged as the old Raven. Long, long ebony hair, that curving line at the edge of her eyes, that pale skin, that chiseled stone face. The one that had found them all . . . the one who had fought her father and died . . .again and again . . .

He shrieked at the sight of her. "No more! Stop it! Stop looking like her! You are not here!"

An evil smirk crawled slithered her haunting face. "But I really am here. I am not just a vision. I came through him, through your attacker. He is of my bloodline." She stepped closer to him "Her shell is no longer in that line. Her blood has been purged of me, and our connection is severed."

Bloodline? How? Who has us? No, no, she's lying. She has to be. . .

"But now you can connect me to her."

She could feel her soul soaring through the sky, soaring back to her.

"What is your name, fear-eater? Why did you take what you took? You weren't just after me."

He stepped away from the door. Her lungs labored in the heavier air as his hands moved across the unseen controls of the chamber. Invisible fingers shoved against her eardrums, squeezing until she swallowed against the pressure.

"But I was. I was after you one way or another. When I tasted your fear the first time, I learned everything about you. And my name? You have heard it before, my dear. You have heard it before. And if you won't join me, I'll make more like you."

Rage swelled in Beast Boy, nearly bursting his heaving chest. Memories of all the evil this creature had forced on him . . . ripping out his own shady half and throwing it against him . . . forcing him to murder it . . . forcing him to murder her . . . filling him with germs of corruptness . . .

She held up her hand. "Stop! Do not fear me now!"

"Why?" he howled through clenched tiger-teeth. "Fear is all you ever wanted."

"Because he feeds off your fear! Fear is all he consumes. Do not expect him to explain it. He will not even speak to you. And if he cannot find fear, brave one, he creates it. So for you, he conjured my image from your haunted memories. But he got more than he asked for – he summoned me as well."

The tiger dissolved. The raging bull in his mind tore forward, plowing himself at her at full speed. He rammed her into an unseen wall with a wet thump, splintering scorched stone in a cloud of dust. But she merely arched her back, lifting her chin up, yawning her mouth wide open in pleasure instead of pain. She dug fingernails of broken glass into his withers, pinning him down by his own shoulders. Agony stung his eyes.

"I will tell you why I treat with you. Someone once said that it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. But only one reigns in hell, and it is not I. I ever desired power, and there is no power for me here. I want you -- want her – to free me!"

He lowered his head, pushing the ersatz-Raven beneath him. He bucked and snorted and rolled onto his back to crush the lying breath out of this crimson vision, trying to erase her from his mind. "Let me go! Leave her alone!" He rolled again, pressing on her with every word. "Leave. Her. Alone."

No, no, no, not this . . . she is free of you . . . you can't be here . . .

Somehow this demon slipped out from underneath him. She knelt beside him, spreading her hand out to his outstretched body on the floor. China-white skin bled back to flaming crimson. Eyes emerged on her forehead, glowing with the flames around them. "I have no power here any more. I am not doing this. But as a gesture of good faith, I can give you the way out: remember despair and joy are as fire and ice. Remember that light destroys the dark. As it destroyed my father. As it destroyed me."

She pushed him to his side as she continued to weave her hypnotic tones. "She is safe. Your enemy cannot touch her now. Her delirium forces him out of her mind. The gases in her blood mixed with the drug he injected create a wall – he is being conquered by his own weapons. And they keep me away as well. So I give my message for her to you. Indulge your happiness. Laugh with her and drown out the fear he brings to you, and you will escape from his grasp. Her mysterious joy slips past the hold of the drug. Let it envelop you. Then tell her."

She rested one gloved hand against his muzzle, and he felt himself revert back to a human state against his will. Wrapping one slender hand around his neck, she raised him above her head, impaling him with the stare of four jaundiced eyes. He tore at the hand with all of his might, but her searing hot flesh was sealed to his.

"Hear me now. I have no power to do anything here but change the images that you see. But I come through his mind. I see his plans. He will never speak to you. Why should he? You are fodder for him. The fear-eater will take his fill of you and then take her for his own servant. He will twist her mind with the same drug that crippled his, until fear is all she can see, all she can smell, all she can crave." She squeezed the air out of his throat until his larynx rattled. He tried to change into a snake, a panther, a wolverine . . . nothing worked. "I cannot have that. If he controls her, then I have no way out. You must not let him have her. You must escape."

He sputtered and strained against her fist. "But she is you . . . you are part of her . . . "

She lifted him up over her head. She tossed him back at the closed door of the chamber, which he passed through like a ghost. Her heard her voice, the demonic timbre of it fading with her image:

I was never part of her. I despised her light until I swallowed the darkness. I choke on the dark, and it knows no end. It destroys me again and again and again. I want her back. I want her light back. Tell her. Tell her. I want to be in the light again. Arjh-no-ree. She held me back. She used me to destroy my father. And when I sought to restore him, she annihilated me again. Arjh-no-ree. I have ever cursed her since I learned her name. But I would bless her, if she would only set me free. Tell her. She isn't who she thinks she is. Tell her. Only my enemy can save me now. Go . . . go . . . Arjh-no-ree . . .

Sick laughter that was not his own began to leak from his guts as the fear and the rage faded away. It washed over him like a tidal wave . . . the flames were dissolving . . .the darkness fleeing . . .

He was yanked from the vision by cold fingers twining in his tiger's fur. He was still standing at the door, but the silent shadow was gone. A golden burst of light surrounded him.

"I have returned," she said from behind him. As black smoke enveloped him both, he felt the vision fade from his memory like a long-forgotten dream. Only one thing remained, one faint chant . . .

Arjh-no-ree . . .

A/N: Arjh-no-ree: The first syllable is pronounced with a "soft" j sound (like the g in "mirage"), kind of like a pirate's "Argh" but with the soft sound at the end. The rest is pronounced as written, with a heavier emphasis on the last syllable (arjh-no-REE)

Most of Gar's memories of the red Raven here are from the TERROR OF TRIGON story arc (80s comic series).

The "seed" that she mentions is one of the Trigon seeds planted in Gar during the Evil Raven Titans' story arc post Titans-Hunt (90s comic series). I really hated that storyline, but unfortunately I cannot ignore it. I am giving some hints here as to why that whole story line was the way it was. . .IMHO, anyway.