Thank you so much for all the reviews!
Dedicated to alena-chan, The Writer you Fools, Gray Dove, and sekai no yakusoku!
Waste Not, Want Not
Chapter Seven: Last-ditch effort
In the years to come, Raven, for all her incredible mental power, would not be able to recall exactly how it happened, or in what order.
But she did remember what happened.
"Robin!" she cried out to warn him of what looked to be a fatal blast, but she needn't have worried.
A great, fiery green mass exploded onto the scene to counter and effectively cancel out said blast and in its dissipating dust stood the Tameranian in a cotton T, jeans and sneakers, flame-red hair billowing behind her in a way that made her familiar, even in her civilian clothes.
The green sparkle in her eyes, newly lit with remembrance, ascertained the empath's guess and she forewent any caution she might have endorsed otherwise.
"Starfire!" she called out, almost overcome with the intensity that came along with being united with a dear friend she'd thought lost to her forever. The redhead flew over with all speed.
"Friend Raven," she said with some broken-heartedness in her voice, for the reunion and for the break-up she knew came with it, hand in hand. "What binds you to the air?"
"Malchior," Raven replied somberly and Starfire gasped as only she might, whirling to really get her first good look at the man she recognized from the gala all those nights ago.
"No," she breathed and cast a sideways glance to Raven.
"Go, protect him," Raven pleaded, not beyond this now that so much was at stake again, and would have gestured for Star to join Richard faster, but she needn't have. She was already there.
"Star," the dazed young man looked at her.
"Robin," she half-smiled.
"Pay attention you two!" Raven shouted and they both dodged to opposite sides as Malchior sent another nasty looking hex their way.
It smelled of death.
"Do you honestly think remembering will do you any good now, titans?" he sneered, wizard hands flexing experimentally with the power they knew they could wield as if it were mere child's play...as if it were a game.
"Dude, you don't know the half of it!" a new voice taunted and a massive green tiger barreled down on him. So unexpected was this physical assault that Malchior was caught entirely unawares as Beast Boy proceeded to try and rip his head off—none too politely—but recovered quickly and sent the changeling sprawling with an explosion of screaming white. Beast Boy rubbed his side as he moved to stand where he had landed and Cyborg moved to him, standing as a safe-guard, cannon trained on Malchior.
And he would have shot too...if the damn man hadn't kept on flitting about like a hummingbird but he was fast, powerful, and without any other options. That's what made him, perhaps, the most dangerous...a man with nothing to lose—a man without his only semblance of love holding him to his last shred of humanity—was a man unimpeded by conscience, or creed, or otherwise.
He was, loosely put, unstoppable.
Somewhere in the fight that ensued though, one particular knock must have sent him for a loop because Raven felt herself fall to the concrete before she could react with an undignified thud. She stood, grateful for her freedom only long enough to find herself wishing once again that she had her powers.
"I can't believe this," she fumed, muttering to herself.
A nearby lamppost veritably liquefied itself in a warped heap of metal with a sickening creak.
She arched a brow.
Maybe there was a God after all.
Other than her father, that is.
"Azarath, metrion, zinthos!" she chanted, taking her returned abilities out for a test run: sending Malchior careening into the ground from the substantial height at which he'd been evading their previous attacks with greater success than not.
The cement cracked under the impact and something happened then.
Something happened to Raven.
She didn't know exactly what. She didn't know precisely how. She certainly didn't know why.
But she felt guilty and her glowing aura subsided immediately.
I shouldn't feel this way, she raged at herself. Rage, herself, was having something of a free-for-all...or as much as one could in chains.
I shouldn't care!
But she did and she begrudgingly admitted the weakness of her human half.
She snapped back to attention as she heard a familiar mechanized whir: Cyborg was about to fire into the hole where she'd sent Malchior seconds ago...
"Wait!" she cried, angry at herself and stunned at her own voice.
And they did...more out of shock than anything else, but they stopped.
"Rae?" Cyborg questioned, dubious, cannon still at the ready.
"Don't...don't kill him," she whispered.
"But Raven!" And now it was Richard...no, Robin's anger. "You can't possibly feel sorry for this...monster? After what he's done...?" he sounded almost desperate. Desperate?
Oh, Robin. She understood.
"I don't love him," she reassured him immediately; his posture slackened...only a little, but it affirmed her suspicions. "Not at all," she added weakly.
"Then...?" Starfire prompted, eyeing the slowly stirring wizard with more than a little anxiety.
"I'll seal him back," Raven decided firmly.
"But...the book?" Beast Boy asked, confused.
"I don't need it."
Raven said this with such resolve that none questioned her.
They'd seen that look in her eyes before, the fight with Trigon.
And they knew what it meant.
If Raven said she could, she could.
She approached the edge of the hole where Malchior now stirred.
"R-Raven," he choked out. Her heart tightened.
"I never understood why you couldn't trust your love," Raven said, sadness now evident and Richard froze, listening. "If you hadn't...tricked me so..." she trailed off, brokenly.
"You would never have loved me! You always loved him!" Malchior shot a hand in the direction of the ex Boy Wonder whose face was unreadable now.
"I did, but...never mind. It is in the past. All things are in the past. You must join them," Raven told the sorcerer with a strange sort of gentleness.
"No! I won't leave this place again! No!" Malchior yelled, his voice distorting unnaturally as Raven began the incantation that should put him back between parchment pages. So concentrated though on the spell, she didn't notice in time when Malchior released one last spell. As she finished the words his spell grasped her around her ankles and threatened to pull her in with him.
"Raven!" Richard dashed to grab her wrist, barely getting a hold before she all but flew into the enchantment. Beast Boy secured himself somehow to the Cherry Blossom tree while holding onto Cyborg who held onto Starfire who held onto Richard who did his best to keep holding onto Raven. "Let her go!" Richard shouted in rage at Malchior, the only parts of whom he could see were the white-silver eyes, never blinking, always watching, staring, waiting for Raven to fall into imprisonment with him. "You cannot have her! She is mine!" Richard tugged harder with renewed energy and it seemed they might pull their long-lost empath back to them.
But it was not to be.
"You are only a human," Malchior spat venomously and from nowhere another tendril of the black magic snaked its way around Raven's waist and swallowed her into the vortex, Richard's hand now empty.
"No!" His heart shattered and with nothing left to lose, he detached himself from the other titans who were trying to hold him back and dove into the fast-closing black hole. It shut around him like the closing of shadowed curtains and then disappeared into nothingness, leaving a Tameranian, a bionic man, and a changeling standing with similar looks of fear and concern, helplessness and confusion.
And there was a markedly complete silence except for the distant sound of a bird that might very well have been a robin.
So sorry for the shortness and lateness of this chapter!
Review please and thank you.
-very busy castle in the air who hopes to have the next chapter out much sooner