A/N: Good day! Welcome to my Titans Christmas fic. Newcomers be warned that this story takes place in my alternate timeline in which two new Titans have joined the team, Collin "Ragnarok" Roberts and Davis "Yin" Jefferson. Actually, this story takes place a bit ahead of my timeline, and Yin hasn't been introduced yet. I suppose this is his big debut.
My other stories "Legacy of the Tamaranian" and "Colors" tell about
everything that has happened differently from the series, but you don't
have to read them to understand this story.
Good Tidings, Great Joy, All That Jazz...
Light slid into his field of vision, and he rolled over. Tired. Soon, he felt a hand on his shoulder, tapping, shaking him from is comfort. The radio began blaring a song he'd heard far too many times lately—Have a holly, jolly, Christmas began playing for the seventy-first time that week.
"Not now!" he said, rolling over.
"Yin, get up," the voice was low and feminine. Sort of raspy, but not unpleasantly so.
"In a minute!"
He thought he heard a sigh of frustration in the darkness, and then, suddenly, something was in his mind, activating it, pushing him into full alertness..
"What," he sat up. "Who's there?"
"It's me," said Raven.
"Raven? How did you get into my room?"
Raven looked over to the table beside his bed, where there sat a rubix cube. She lifted her hand, and it floated over till it hovered in between the two. "I have my ways," she said, and the puzzle began to twist and turn withing its black encasing. Raven held out her hand and took the cube, and the black energy faded away, revealing that the puzzle was completely solved.
"What time is it?"
Raven glanced at Yin's clock. "5:29," she said. "You said you wanted to mediate with me today, didn't you?"
"Five thirty on Christmas Eve morning?" After a moment, he continued, "You're serious, aren't you?"
"I like to watch the sunrise," Raven said. "But until then, the dark helps me focus. Come on, I made you some tea. It's cold outside."
"How cold?" Yin arched an eyebrow at Raven. Being the newest Titan, he still found himself having to constantly remind the Titans of things, including the fact that his powers make him vulnerable to cold temperatures.
"Twenty-two," Raven answered. "You'd better bundle up."
Twenty two degrees! She had to be kidding! But she certainly didn't appear to be. "Fine, fine, but if I go brittle and break, I'm going to sue."
"I thought your body had only elastic properties. You're saying that cold actually effects you like it would rubber?" Raven seemed mildly concerned.
"Cold and heat," Yin replied. "Temperature extremes aren't good either way."
Raven nodded. "When it's this cold, I normally make a shield—with my powers—to keep the chill off. Since you can't levitate you should probably bring a blanket or pillow to sit on."
As the two spoke, they walked together into the main room, the one Robin always referred to as Ops, even though it seemed to Yin more like a big living room with a kitchen attached to the back end (complete a pile of dishes that still needed to be done.)
"Good idea." Yin smiled broadly. Yeah, he felt really stupid for it, and worried he was making Raven nervous based on what he was feeling. Still, either she didn't notice or didn't mind it, and either way, it was a good sign. If she didn't notice, there was no harm in having the feelings, and if she didn't care, that might even mean she returned them...
As soon as he had thought that, Raven glared at him with some hint of alarm in her eyes.
Yin flushed, suddenly greatly embarrassed—if she had read his mind. He turned away and stretched his arm across the room to a blanket he had happened to see lying across the sofa and picked it up.
"It's alright,' she said. "I just got a general sense of it. I can't read minds by accident, only emotions. And I'm trying my hardest to keep myself away from yours..."
"Oh..." Yin said dejectedly... "Right."
Raven sweatdropped. "I didn't mean it like that! I try to block everyone out, Davis."
Yin arched his eyebrow, barely noticing that he was pleased she had used his first name. "Even around Christmas?"
Raven looked away. "Not everyone gives off good vibes this time of year, you know. It's not that I'm against Christmas. People should celebrate whatever Holidays they want to. It's just that I've never seen the point of it."
Yin blinked at her. "What about peace on Earth, good will towards men, baby Jesus, and getting presents?" His tone was somewhere between joking and serious, since he was basically probing Raven to see if she was really bitter about one or all of such things.
She just sighed. "Let's meditate first. We can talk about this later."
"Okay..."
Suddenly, black energy surrounded Raven and the newest of the Teen Titans, and the two were pulled up in the shadowy Raven to the roof of the tower. Raven, as promised, created a black dome with her powers, but then let the opacity fade until it just barely darkened the skies; it made a sufficient wind breaker, but still somehow let enough cool air in that Raven and Yin could breath, and not get uncomfortably hot.
"So what exactly do your words mean? Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos?"
"They really wouldn't mean anything to you. Azarath is where I grew up, where I was born. After my mother realized she was carrying the child of a demon, she fled until she was found by a kind man who called himself Metrion. He took her to Azarath's great city, where she found piece. He was the closest thing I had to a father in my childhood. Zinthos... that one would be rather hard to explain. Regardless, these are things that put me at peace, remind me of home and family, whatever I had of one."
Yin smiled at this. "Does that mean I have to come up with my own words?"
"If you want to. You really don't have to say anything at all, though." Raven turned, facing East over the city, waiting on the sunrise. (It had occurred to her last week that the day Slade had revealed to the other Titans the Prophecy, the sun had risen over the Pacific ocean, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever in retrospect. She had quit trying to figure it out, though, because her brain couldn't handle it.)
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos," they began to chant...
oooo
"You have to be joking me," Raven said. After the rest of the Titans had gotten up, she and Davis had returned to ops with the rest of them, minus Starfire, who was still asleep. Cyborg had made breakfast, and was humming along to the radio, which was of course, playing Christmas songs! At the moment, the Titans were hearing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the eleventy-first time in the past five days. Thankfully, it was low enough to just be background music.
Breakfast happened to be waffles, with red and green chips of what was supposedly chocolate...
"No, I'm not," replied Robin, taking another bite of waffle and swallowing it before continuing. "Why would I be joking?"
"Because!" Raven started, trying to think of something... "We're super heroes! We can't be seen endorsing one religion over another."
Beast Boy looked at her. "Dude, Raven, we just got done disassembling that giant menorah from our roof like yesterday. It's not like we're celebrating only Christmas."
"And who in Jump City doesn't celebrate Christmas?" Ragnarök, also known as Collin Roberts, asked. As the sixth Titan, he had a bit more experience than Davis, and new the ropes a bit more. But he did have a rather embarrassing quirk. "I swear sometimes this city reminds me of Whatville from How the Fitch Stole Christmas."
"You mean Whoville and Grinch, right?" asked Davis.
Collin arched an eyebrow and pulled out a three subject note book labeled Differences Between My World and This One and began writing somewhere about half-way through.
Raven looked back over at Robin. "Fine, so we're not celebrating Christmas exclusively. But still, this is ridiculous."
"It's Christmas in Jump City. We defend Jump City. Why not celebrate with the people of Jump City?" Cyborg asked.
"This is humiliating," she said. "Superheroes don't give out gifts, and we don't go caroling. Have you ever seen Batman out celebrating with his friends?"
"Our base is a giant letter of the alphabet, for crying out loud," Collin interjected vainly. "It's not like Batman has a huge building in the middle of Gotham with his name on it."
After an awkward pause in which Robin seemed to be astounded by Collin's statement, Robin spoke. "Leave Batman out of this. I'm not him. His methods work with Gotham, but here, we don't have to be like that. Besides, other than his butler, I don't think Batman has any friends."
"What if I refuse to go?" Raven asked.
"Raven," said Davis with much frustration. "It's not like he's asking you to sing a solo or something."
"Heads would roll if that were the case," she said. "Look, I don't have anything against Christmas, but if you haven't noticed, I'm half-demon. Peace on Earth and good will towards men is nice, but it sort of leaves people like me out of the loop."
"Raven," Beast Boy said. "Don't say that. Even if you can't get into the good will vibes you could at least think about the presents!"
"Beast Boy," Robin said, glaring in the changeling's direction, "you're not helping things any."
"Sorry." Gar turned to Raven. "What's the deal, though? You've never had a problem with Christmas before."
"Robin had never told the mayor we'd celebrate publicly before!"
"Come on," Cyborg said. "You're an empath. You know after all the vampire business the town's morale is low. They could use a boost."
Raven sighed. "If you all want to go make us laughing stocks of the superhero community, be my guest. I will be elsewhere."
Of course, Raven figured that they knew there was more to it. Raven had often been derisive of the term superhero, and she really didn't care what the media thought of them. Well, except for Trevor, but that was different. She felt like a total hypocrite, though, and she knew the Titans could have called her on it.
They didn't.
She stood up and left the room, heading back to her quarters. It was still a day until the event. Maybe she would reconsider. Not bloody likely, but possible. She hated to go running back to her room, but it was the only way to make her point—even if she was free(er) to use her emotions now that her father was gone, she still kept to herself a lot. And she still had his blood in her veins, and still transformed into something awful when her temper was aroused. All due to who she was.
Hence, the Titans knew when to leave her alone...
Well. Most of them did. She felt Davis' faint mental presence a split second before she heard his footsteps behind her. "Raven, what's up?" he asked. After a brief pause that Raven found herself regretting, he was walking beside her.
"Nothing," she said. "I just don't care for Christmas. Either way, bad or good."
He frowned. "There's more to it than that. You seemed almost offended that Robin would even suggest this event, or deal or whatever it is."
"You know where I come from," she said. "That should tell you enough."
And with that, she vanished into the shadows, teleporting to her room. The Titans would not be allowed to press her on the real reason she had reacted this way.
oooo
"So, Collin," Robin said, walking up behindand looking over his shoulder. "What are you doing?" Several hours had passed since the confrontation at breakfast, and the Titans had all been trying to cool off. Starfire was still sleeping, which meant that Robin had to find someone else to talk to. Whatever had possessed him to talk to Collin was lost to time.
"Diabolically plotting to steal your girlfriend," Collin said with a grin. "Or just finishing up wrapping presents. Thankfully my dimension's time line isn't perfectly synchronized; Christmas has already come and passed there, and my parents gave me a bunch of money when I visited.?
"Your parents..." Robin started... "Do they know? About what you do here, I mean?"
"Of course they do," he said. "My identity was secret there at first, but after Delirium... did what he did... then all the Titans ID's went public because most of them... didn't make it. Only Beast Boy, and he's an actor now."
Robin nodded. "My dad... He found out that I was Robin just before he died. This is my first Christmas without him." A sigh escaped his lips. "We never celebrated a holiday where I was keeping no secrets from him. Not since I started this job."
"I... I'm sorry," Collin said. Why Robin was confided this in him, he had no idea. "I don't guess I can related."
"You lost someone really close, though. Your world's Starfire." Robin's words probably came out more insensitively than he had intended them.
"Kori was different. She was a close friend, but can that compare to losing your father? And, well... your father has no replacement. But in a way I got a bit of a mulligan. This world's Kori."
Robin sighed. "I don't know why I brought this up. I just thought perhaps you could relate."
As the Boy Wonder turned to go, he shot a glance over his shoulder. "Merry Christmas," he said. Sincere, but dejected, Robin's voice cracked slightly.
"Yeah. You too, Tim," Collin replied.
oooo
After deciding that Raven would cool off quicker if Davis let her have her space, he had gone to his room and now set intensely studying the television. He was playing Fire Emblem on his old Gamecube, and his sword-wielding knight had just been speared by a lame enemy hero unit. This made him rather angry. He gritted his teeth and brought down one of his own hero units to kill off the enemy, and then sent his knight up north and used a healing item on it.
Davis glanced back, and suddenly realized that Beast Boy was beside him. "Gar?" he asked. He still hadn't quite gotten a handle on all their names. "What brings you in here? I think this game has a two-player mode if you want to..."
"Dude, I don't play these times of games. Too much thinking."
"Right. You really should give it a try, Beast Boy. It's not like I'm going to laugh at you if you fail. Strategy games have been proven to help people strategize in combat. It would probably be to your benefit."
"Maybe, but that's not why I'm hear, Yen."
"Yin."
Beast Boy ignored the correction and sat down next to Davis. "About Raven..."
"What is her deal?" Yin blurted. "She doesn't have to lock herself in her room. I was only trying to point out that she was over-reacting."
The changeling shrugged. "Raven is just... Raven. You get used to it."
"I thought she didn't have this problem now that you guys wasted her father," he said.
"Trust me," Beast Boy said, "Raven did pretty much all the 'wasting' in that fight. But yeah, she has gotten better since then. Dude, you should have seen her back in year one."
Davis sighed. "Just because she's better than she used to be doesn't mean she is where she needs to be. It can't be healthy to lock herself away like that."
"Raven's smart," Beast Boy said. "She knows when she's gone too far, even if it takes her a while to see it. Things like this take time. Or at least that's what Robin says. I was just going to say that you should give her her space. She is new to feeling emotions. And I think she might have more for you than she's willing to admit."
"Don't be ridiculous," Davis said. "I'm a newcomer, a year younger. And Raven doesn't do romance. Right?"
"She's let you in faster than anyone, man," Beast Boy said. "She seems to trust you or something.
"Still—" Davis was cut off mid sentence by the blaring noise of the plot device---er criminal alarm... "Why now?"
"Just part of the job," Gar said, running off down the hall. Yin followed him, and the two got there just as Raven teleported in, an exasperated look on her face. Starfire floated in yawning. "Who would disturb our merriment on such a glorious December morning?" she complained.
Robin turned on the monitor in ops to display a huge blizzard centered around one person. "I was afraid of this. Batman had told me she left from Kobe three days ago."
"Who?" Cyborg asked.
"Rei Kawabe—Flare's sister. She goes by the name of Glacier, and obviously, has powers just the opposite of her brother."
"But she is equally evil, yes?" Starfire asked. "I would so like to open a can of the butt whoop on her for forcing me to wake up."
Robin sweatdropped at Kori's unusual display of enthusiasm for violence, but realized she hadn't gotten much sleep lately, and there seemed to be something wrong with her ability to absorb sunlight. Robin hoped it wasn't serious...
"Not exactly evil. She's insane—thinks that she's Raiden's daughter, like her brother did."
"Davis' face contorted into an exaggerated grimace." This CANNOT be happening. "I'm initiated fighting Flare, and now I have to fight his sister on Christmas eve. It's as if karma is trying to torture me for all the terrible things I've done."
"What terrible things?" Beast Boy asked.
"I can't think of any," he sighed. "Which is most of why this is not very pleasant for me. If I deserved it, I wouldn't be so frustrated."
"Will the cold affect your ability to fight?" Robin asked.
"Probably, but I need the training. I'm going anyway."
"You're not the leader here," Robin said. "I give orders, not you. But you're right. We have to be ready for things like this. The weather will be a strain on all of us except Starfire."
Starfire, who happened to be exhausted. A massive yawn escaped her mouth.
"Let's go, Titans," Robin said. "I don't know what Rei is after, but we have to stop her."
As the Titans filed out to the T-Car, (because nobody wanted to ride in the weather) Ragnarök matched Yin's stride and spoke to him. "I can't believe you opted to fight in this weather. I wish I didn't have to."
"It's a challenge." Yin replied.
"Now you're sounding like Delirium." Rag frowned. "With your weakness it sounds more like suicide than challenge. Sometime the better part of courage is knowing your limits."
Yin reached his hand across the room and grabbed the coat he had worn earlier. "We'll see," he said, putting it on...
oooo
The T-Car blazed over the roads towards the scene of the crime. The back had been expanded to fit the whole team, but it was still a tight fit. And the radio was mercilessly blasting Jingle Bell Rock the whole way.
Hang a right up here," Robin said, "she's moving towards the Westron Tower Mall."
"A mall full of last-second Christmas shoppers," Raven said. "This is not good."
"At least the mall is warm," Beast Boy said.
Yin said nothing, but seemed to be in deep thought. Raven reached out and felt that he was preparing for battle. She only hoped he didn't do what he had last time and treat it like a game...
As they Titans neared the mall, Cyborg gasped as the external temperature reading on the T-Car began to drop drastically, getting ever closer to zero...
"We have to get there fast before the whole mall is a giant ice-cube," Cyborg said. He slammed on the gas, activated the thrusters, and deployed the T-Cars glider wings. Then he used the machine guns to blast out the highway guardrail ahead of him and blast off the overpass with the thrusters and glide towards the mall.
As they landed, the song on the radio switched to Twelve Days of Christmas—instruments only. Cyborg drover over the curbs, and then realized that the Car was sliding. It had come into a part of the parking light covered in pure ice. Spikes deployed in the tires to boost the traction, and the vehicle continued onwards towards the entrance to the mall.
Suddenly, a portion of the mall's outer wall exploded, blasted from the inside, and Cyborg jerked the wheel quickly to the left. The car turned sideways and began to skid across the ice, when the Titans saw her. All the Titans held their breath.
Standing motionless like a statue in the icy mist that had risen, Glacier awaited them. Her face was like stone, adorned with a bitter scowl—nothing like the infernal permanently-etched arrogant smirk on her her brother's face.
The vapor around her formed into ice, and the ice became a blade and began to slide towards the T-Car.
"Titans, evacuate!" Cyborg screamed in panic. He slammed a button on the console and the top of the car exploded off, and the seats ejected from the car...
Rei walked forward as the two halves split and went their separate directions. The girl wore only a simple shirt and a pair of blue-jean shorts, which were soaked and frozen solid. Anyone else would have been very uncomfortable in this weather, but Rei continued on, small pieces of her frozen clothing cracking like brittle slate as she moved.
Cyborg deployed spikes from his shoe and began to move forward, and noticed the other Titans slipping and sliding. "Starfire," he called back. "Melt the ice."
Starfire did so with a starbolt, and the other six Titans managed to get to their feet, Robin taking the front position. "Titans, you've seen what she is capable of. Exercise caution."
"Caution will not help you," said the girl absently. "Fight me and perish." Cyborg thought even though having the exact opposite physical characteristics of Cate Blanchett, Glacier reminded him of Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings films based on her manner of speech.
oooo
"Titans, GO!" Robin ordered, and the Titans dashed forward. Starfire sent a group of starbolts at her, but ice shards flew up and blocked them, steam spraying everywhere. Beast Boy charged her as a polar bear, but she jumped over him and formed a cage of ice from the mist and slush and captured Beast Boy in it. Then she turned and fired several ice shards at Cyborg.
Robin charged forward, rolling underneath ice shards and dodging blasts of some sort of blue-white energy that came from her hands. She smashed at her her head, but she brought up an arm and blocked his bo... It should have shattered the bone, but instead his bo actually bent around her arm, and he noticed at thin layer of 'black ice' over it, that had apparently strengthened her block.
She pistoned the hand forward and blasted him backwards.
Raven hurled all the things she could find at the girl, including the halves of the T-Car, but Glacier formed shields of ice around her frail-looking body and the objects bounced off.
"Only death awaits," she reminded them.
Ragnarök finally found suitable amounts of earth underneath the frozen asphalt of the parking lot and caused a massive spiked column of earth to break from the ground below, and when Rei dodged the first one, another one erupted below her. Rei bounced off that one, and then formed a bridge of ice between her and Ragnarok, and surfed down it on her bare feet, finishing off by kicking Rag in the face. He sailed backwards a ways and slid across the ice.
Yin noticed this and ran around behind Glacier, grabbing the two columns of rock and wrapping his stretched arms around them. The coldness of the dirt sent painful shivers up his arm where it touched, and that was in many places. Yin walked backwards, building up the tension in his arms... but then he slipped on a patch of ice, losing his balance...
The elasticity of his arms carried him forward, arcing towards Glacier as she was distracted by the other Titans. "Glacier!" he shouted. The Japanese girl blasted the Titans away and then snapped her head around just fast enough to see his feet slam firmly into her face
She snarled something in Japanese as she recoiled from the blow, and blasted a shining blue energy attack at him. Yin dodged out of the way and yelped when he realized that his arms were still tied around the columns of rock and were greatly limiting his mobility.
That and the cold.
Glacier fired at him again, even as the Titans recovered from the previous attack, and though Starfire was the least affected by the cold, even she was having trouble continuing.
A sonic cannon blow to the back convinced Glacier, it seemed, that enough was enough. She snarled something loudly in Japanese, and then said, "I have come for revenge, and revenge I shall achieve! Revenge first against those who would imprison my brother, son of Raiden, and all the Western world for the humiliation of Nippon!"
"What is she talking about?" Beast Boy chirped.
"Nothing good, I know that much," Cyborg said, shooting again and then realizing that he had shouted—shouted because the wind had picked up.
"This entire city will freeze," Glacier said returning to her calm, Galadriel-like state. "And then die."
She raised up her hands, and light appeared everywhere, searing the Titans with a frigid gale. "What is that stuff?" Collin asked.
"I think it's cold energy," replied Cyborg.
"'Cold energy' is an oxymoron," Robin said.
"Says the guy who fought crime with a giant bat!" Cyborg shot back.
Robin glared at him, and then darted forward to attack Glacier again...
But then, her light focused into massive ball of cold energy, and suddenly, all went white..
oooo
Raven felt herself flying through the air before she knew what had hit her. She also knew that she was mind-numbingly cold...
And then, a very solid object slammed into her back and she smacked her head against the wall she'd hit. Pain shot through her body, numbing the cold by virtue of numbing her brain functions. The last thing she saw looked like a sign... With a cross on top...
Then she passed out.
Part two should be up by Sunday.