My first Titans fic! I've never really written action like this, so let me know what you think.
The actors made me fall in love with the characters, but this is a story about the characters they play. (I only realized like a month ago how young Teagan Croft was when she started playing Rachel—though it did finally explain that 'screw you' moment between this most adorable of tv not-couples which made me want to climb through the screen and onto the Titans set so I could find the writers and yell "WhYYyy?!". Apparently, they needed to throw four years of wrenches into the cuteness.)
Set about a year after season 3
Rachel woke to the sudden blaring of the incident alarm. She rolled over with a groan, grabbing the edge of her night table to haul herself to her feet. Once dressed, she stumbled out of her room into the hall just as an excited Tim rushed past, nearly running into her.
"Sorry!" he called back, sincere but also not slowing down as he rushed to meet the others.
"Think he'll ever grow out of that enthusiasm?" asked Gar's voice from right behind her, sending a shiver down her spine.
She turned to see him rubbing a hand over his drowsy eyes, his hair sticking up in all directions, making him look like a sleepy, green porcupine. "It's been almost a year. Signs point to no," she said, doing her best Magic 8-Ball impression, stifling a yawn. Tim Drake ever not being fired up for an incident alarm, even ones that pulled them out of bed, was about as likely as her ever getting used to how cute Gar looked when it happened.
She shot him a smile as they walked down the hall to where the other Titans had gathered. She and Gar could never be what Rachel wished they could be, but that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy what they were.
After spending her life making herself invisible, limiting interactions, and the risk of her powers showing in front of strangers, Gar was her first and best friend. He saw her. In Ohio, he'd even seen the part of her that was responsible for more than one religious conversion in her hometown, and he'd never once judged her for it. Whatever distance she kept between them was to keep him safe. To keep everyone safe.
But while her distancing herself from him was a slightly newer development, life in the Tower seemed almost like the old days now, with Jason and Rose off doing their own vigilante thing, Connor and Blackfire off-world, and Donna working for ARGUS. These days, it was just the original four and Tim, who had immediately fit in as the (slightly annoying in his boundless enthusiasm) super sweet little brother to their weird, messed-up family unit.
"We'll be there for backup, but it's looking like this may be a case for the girls," Dick was telling a somewhat-dejected-but-still-way-too-upbeat-for-four-in-the-morning Tim. On the monitor was footage of a dark street surrounded by skyscrapers with a blurry, roughly diamond-shaped object made of light, maybe a foot or two taller than a person, hovering above the pavement in the center of an intersection. One could almost see a shadow in it like something, some being on the other side trying to get through.
"Yeah, that definitely looks like a 'magic' problem. Can I go back to sleep?" asked Gar. Rachel glared at him. If she had to work this early— "Kidding! You can put away the glowing eyes, Rache," he said, laughter lighting up his eyes.
She rolled hers, too tired to fight off her more childish impulses, and stuck her tongue out at him.
Gar just chuckled. "Just glad I'm not the only one who's not a morning person," he said, getting two travel mugs out for coffee.
Tim sighed. After a few hours of Rachel and Kory trying to get rid of whatever the hell this light was, he and the others were all pretty fed up by sunrise. By ten AM, most of them were straight-up cranky. They'd spread out around the—portal? Entity? Glowing thing-of-unknown-origin? Tim would check with Dick on the terminology of it later. There had to be something better to call it than just 'thing'—each taking a corner of the large intersection in the Financial District while Rachel circled the object in the center.
The thing in the light-based object that looked vaguely like a silhouette of a person hadn't moved at all, just shimmered as the light changed.
Now, Gar was sitting cross-legged on the ground, leaning back on a fire hydrant while Kory lounged on a bus stop bench. Rachel was only alert because it was her turn to try to do something, but Tim was still on edge as he watched the light. He had never faced a villain with magic and wasn't willing to let his guard down. Dick wasn't letting his down either, but Tim had been with the Titans long enough to suspect that was at least partly because the man genuinely didn't know how to relax.
Dick had tried to touch the thing after Rachel and Kory's first attempts to affect it failed. For all that it seemed to be made of light, the object looked tangible, but his arm went straight through like it was nothing but a sunbeam.
"We have some way to transport this thing if nothing happens, right?" asked Gar. "Get it somewhere for observation that's less populated?"
"We might not," Dick replied stoically. "Not if Rachel and Kory can't affect it. If they can't move it, I'm not sure who could."
"What?" Rachel squeaked as they abruptly realized the job that had seemed interminable might very well be. "Then what's our plan for this thing? For all we know, it might be months or years before anything comes through. I'd rather not be stuck here until—"
She'd been gesturing toward the light, and her hand accidentally brushed through it. Finally, the figure inside moved, striking as fast as a snake, latching onto Rachel's hand through the veil. Rachel tugged her hand out of the light, but it came out with the stranger's hand gripping hers like a vise. A flicker of recognition passed through Rachel, and the young witch paled, her eyes going wide. Gar and Kory were running from the far side of the street while Tim and Dick rushed toward her.
It all happened so quickly. The man seemed to pull himself through in an instant. He didn't look very magical; he was wearing a black suit and might have been invisible walking these streets with the rest of the bankers. But he looked happy seeing Rachel, while she looked horrified. Then Tim noticed the recognition that passed through the other Titans.
He had researched all the Titan's enemies, living and dead (Lazarus pits were a thing, after all), and the only ones whose faces he didn't know were the ones that had never been photographed.
Of villains that the new Titans had faced together, that only left—
"Trigon!" Dick yelled, trying to distract him into letting go of Rachel, who was too stunned to do anything. The remarkably human-looking demon's head darted left to take in Dick. "Well, if it isn't my little girl's chosen father figure," he sneered. "Nice to know the family's still together after all you did. But the time has come to wake my Rav–" Whatever he'd been about to say was cut off as Gar yelled, "Let go of her!" The demon man's head swiveled right, looking to Gar with alarming speed, and in the space of a second, the demon no longer looked like a man. He grew many feet taller, horns sprouting from his head as his face changed and his suit melted away to skin the color of rage.
"YOU!" Trigon bellowed, his voice monstrous. Tim was shocked the force of it didn't knock back the now green-eyed Gar as car alarms went off behind the teenager. "You were meant to die! Your death was to be the catalyst; you're why my daughter turned on me!" Then the fury seemed to leave him all at once, replaced with cold disdain. "No matter," he sneered as he narrowed his eyes, studying Rachel. "She knows now the danger she puts you in."
Rachel went white as a sheet as her fearful eyes fixed on her father's. "Breaking your heart won't require the others this time." Then, almost lazily, he lifted his claw-like hand, and with a flick of his wrist, sent a ball of solid, coal-black smoke hurtling straight toward Gar.
Rachel's eyes snapped to the shapeshifter as she bent with a bone-chilling scream. Time seemed to slow as the windows in the surrounding buildings shattered at the sound, sending glass flying gradually through the air. Rachel's power poured out of her as more enchanted ink and smoke than Tim had ever seen leave her body engulfed her father. Other tendrils of her magic chased the poison he'd sent to Gar, trying to engulf it but never catching up as Rachel ran, wings of pitch-black smoke streaked with violet propelling her even faster.
But her father's magic hit Gar first, and he fell. The other Titans started toward the pair, their motions slowed, but Tim couldn't move; he was rooted to the spot, transfixed by glimpses of what was once Trigon through the swirling cloak of Rachel's powers. It was as if, within the cone of energy circling Trigon, time had sped up. His skin wrinkled, then started to sink into his bones like he was being mummified alive.
The man was being drained: of life, of moisture, of time.
Tim tore his eyes away to look back at his teammates. Rachel was kneeling, her face full of fear, Gar's head in her lap as she drew the magic out of him with shaking hands. The others were running toward them, albeit in slow motion, the demon all but forgotten as her powers ravaged him. But they'd thought he'd died last time; someone had to make sure Rachel's father was gone for good. When he looked back at Trigon, the skin had crumbled away, leaving just his horned skeleton suspended in the air until that too began to decay.
When time once again moved at its normal speed, the once-powerful demon was nothing but dust.
Even before Dick told him to, Tim was sprinting to the car to transport Gar, but all he could see was the grin that had twisted Trigon's features as his skin dissolved. He'd looked almost... proud.
Next chapter will have it from Raven's perspective. I'm not sure if being a visual artist is helping or hurting with how I'm writing action. I have such a clear vision of what the scene should look like in my head that I had to tell it from the perspective of someone outside it who would see the whole scene, because I think if I told it first from Rachel's, a lot of the scene wouldn't end up in the story because with where she is emotionally she wouldn't notice or care about the other stuff. But then I worry that I'm taking an unnecessary deviation from the pathos of the story just to describe the image in my head.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
Also, I looked it up, and Raven actually can mess with time in canon. Is there anything this girl can't do?
Okay, so I know in some ways, I did what the show did and had her just defeat the immortal and indestructible embodiment of all evil in a quick fight, but,
A) I'm claiming artistic license since I didn't have a ton of ideas for drawing out the fight, and this story is meant to be about what happens after the fight anyway (this wasn't even originally going to be in the story, but I realized I was trying to write about too many events in past tense and it was getting confusing), and,
B) in a (chiefly metaphorical) way, this is a sort of fight between pure good and pure evil. In my head, what she did to Trigon, speeding up time/degeneration of an immortal being, is what allowed her to slow down time while she got the poison out of Gar (who, at least to her, is the embodiment of everything good in the world).
I don't know, just don't be mad at me like people were at the show when she defeated Trigon in that quick and pretty emotionally-removed fight. At least there were emotions here!
Please fave and follow if you like it. Knowing people are actually reading it is what keeps me writing it.
