…..
"Starfire, this is not a good time to be joking around."
She blinked slowly. "I am not doing the joking. I did not scream. I heard it coming from a different source."
Robin rubbed the bridge of his nose, mumbling incoherently, "Now we're all hearing things…."
"Y'all?" Cyborg suddenly lifted his head and sniffed the air. "Smell that?"
Starfire followed, green eyes widening in recognition.
"The burning of synthetic leather fabric and titanium."
"Where's it coming from?"
"Here," Robin said, bending down in the corner of the room. Cyborg and Starfire stared dismayed at giant blackened scorch marks covering the kitchen's countertop. Ten inches from where their leader crouched was a small boot print of red cluing entrance into another hallway.
"The misery will never end," Starfire murmured, making the Tamaranean symbol of healing over her breasts.
"Cyborg, get a sample."
Robin stepped aside to let the other man by. As Cyborg's portable DNA scanner went to work, the Titans followed the thin path, watching the red grow darker. The dimness of the hallway was not the one affecting the color. Outside the medical sector, Robin asked for the scanner's results. The human robot said unsteadily, "Man… you don't want to know."
A white and black mask gazed in his exact direction, concealing an utmost serious facial cast. "You don't want to tell me, so I already know."
Starfire squealed frantically, her entire body shaking with the struggle of keeping her fear back, "Where are our friends? I wish to speak to them! I wish to know they are okay now!"
"Calm down, Star," Cyborg said gently. "Just… we'll find them."
"Or we'll find something else," Robin finished darkly, punching the unlocking code on the sector's number pad. As they cautiously glanced around, he knelt beside the nearest cot, his fingertips grazing the ends of the sterile sheets. A glob of dried blood stained an end. After a few minutes of listening to restless shuffling coming from the other side of the sector, Cyborg called for him. The robotic man held Starfire by the shoulders, blocking her view from the bathroom doorway he stood in.
"No, Star! I can't let you go in. I'm doing this for your own sake." The skin on Cyborg's face shone ashy with stress.
Robin said, calmly, "Cyborg, let her go. We don't hide things from each other."
He obeyed his orders grudgingly and thick eyebrows cringed, his dark eye shutting when the Tamaranean's distraught shrieking reverberated in empty walls. She ran straight out of the medical sector, never stopping to pick up the fallen tray of various medicines she crashed into on her way out. Steel toed boots crushed broken vials on the tiled floor. Cyborg spat bitterly at him as he allowed his leader access to the cramped lavatory, "She could have lived without seeing that you know."
"Take it up with me when we're not trying to save lives," Robin remarked, his hand on the wall. Next to it was a bloody hand print, slightly smaller than his own hand. He was about to tell his teammate to take a sample off the imprint when something else distracted him. A putrid smell. "...What is that?"
Cyborg's voice became low and thick with emotion, "Rob... I'm gonna ask you right now if you wanna get the hell out of here and go find Star. Listen to me... you don't need to see this."
Robin's pride got the best of him. He snapped, cape aflutter as he whirled around the lavatory, "You can be the protective big brother to Starfire, but I won't be treated like a little-" A heart took a stuttering beat. His legs went out from under him and Cyborg caught him under the armpits.
"Whoa...! Robin- man-?"
He was completely thrown off by his leader's sudden loss of self-control. Nothing could shock Robin.
The Teen Titan's leader regained his sense of footing and hurried out of the medical sector just as fast as Starfire had moments ago. There was no control in Dick Grayson. He was neither Dick nor Robin at that point, just a stricken mind and a paralyzed body. A body that wouldn't stop running. The cool, dawn air rushed into his lungs as he banged the rooftop door wide open and staggered onto the volleyball court as if seriously wounded. His hands slid up his face and he ripped away his only physical manifestation of armor, his eyes squeezed tightly and leaking. His anger… his pain… his doubt surfaced in one gut-wrenching scream into his wet hands.
RED- so much of it- dark shape- little- covered in Raven's blood-
Through mouthfuls of air, he vomited.
His yellow and black cape swept behind his sweat-bathed back and tossed itself over his head, screening him from the heat of day begging to stroke him. What seemed like hours took only several minutes. He drew himself up on his feet, steady as ever, gripping the pole of the volleyball net. Robin wiped his chin with an moan of effort and kicked his mask away as the wind carried it off the edge of the Tower, sinking out of sight… as if it had no use to him anymore.
In the stairwell, Starfire met with him. She no longer looking upset, but grave once more. Starfire held up a piece of paper and shoved it into his hand.
He asked quietly what it was.
"Instructions. Friend Raven and Garfield have been taken."
His face deadpan, he continued downstairs with measured steps, hanging onto the banister if support was needed. Starfire gazed at his unmasked face as they left the darkened stairwell, commenting, "You are pale." Robin wiped his hot, moist forehead with cold palms.
"I'll be fine. Where's Cyborg?"
Soft mumbling.
"Starfire?"
"….cleaning."
He massaged his throat when it clenched, the muscles in his jaw tightening.
"Tell him we need to leave. Now."
…..
A sickening pop.
Utter agony crawled up his already busted arm.
"You might want to get that checked out."
A joke…
…..
How many places looked identical to this? How many times did he visit these places in his nightmares?
The cold black, the splintered concrete foundation, the badly lit atmosphere, the vast emptiness of a warehouse by the docks. Aching in his lesions. Alone. For now her presence was gone. Same thoughts. Why did she attack him? Why dark flames to swallow him whole? Why did he hear Red X's motorized voice? Why drag him here? Why wasn't he dead yet? If this was truly happening, and he had a solid feeling it was, then what was she waiting for?
The torture inflicted on him was the worst physically.
Mentally, emotionally, he was already dead to her. There was nothing else to break that was not already broken. There was nothing to tear at. A part of him, the deepest most intimately untouchable was hopeful- even stuck in this, he was hopeful… the secret thought that-
She was back.
Black eyes glowing, the empath walked in with a knowing stride. Hauntingly familiar. She was obviously pleased. "Everything's going to plan." Her foot planted under him and flipped him onto his back. She crouched down over him to carelessly turn the unwrinkled side of his face towards her. "We should celebrate." Her sweet breath mingled with his breathing. She licked the dribble of blood pinched from his swollen right eye, openly relishing the sensation. Beast Boy flinched inwardly, hating her wicked tongue. Her black eyes.
"You…"
Raven ran a thumb over his cheek where it would scar the most over time. She waited him to finish his sentence with unnatural patience.
"…You aren't Raven."
A haughty laugh came deep within her chest cavity.
"And what makes you say that, Beast Boy?"
His chest violently heaved as Garfield whispered on the icy floor, his good eye shining intentionally, "Because Raven doesn't call me that anymore."
She pulled on a more solemn expression, amusement washing away.
"I'll call you whatever I want, whenever I want. I'm glad to hear you are speaking to me, for the moment I thought you were truly lost to me."
"...I'll bet. I don't know what you've done to her but I swear…" Raven rose to her feet and placed a boot against his temple, gradually applying pressure.
"I don't approve of swearing." Garfield grimaced blood-smeared teeth. "I am Raven whether you want to believe it or not. Frankly, I don't care because I'm going to kill you anyway."
"I know… who you are."
"Pray tell," she said inquisitively fascinated, her nails brushing the end of her chin. "Do you now?"
The green-skinned changeling bared his fang at the creepy outline. "Raven knew and we didn't listen to her." She grinned, baring her own white enamel.
"So you do have a brain in that fractured skull of yours? Hmm. The Titans are coming. Don't get your hopes up, boy. By the time they find you, you'll be a mere hollow of what was once living. A mass. Just like Robin's precious treasure." Garfield's good eye widened impossibly big.
"What did you do to her?"
When there wasn't an answer, he growled ruthlessly, throwing himself at her face with the strength he had been collecting. Strength through unbridled rage. "...What did you do?"
The grin on her gray face became furthermore twisted. "Nothing I didn't let happen. Why do you care, Beast Boy...? It wasn't your love child."
Craze sweltered and spread in his veins.
"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" Garfield screamed, transforming into a ferocious mountain lion. He dug his paws into the ground and roared bloodcurdlingly.
She just looked on with that twisted grin.
X called out in the distance, "We've got company!"
Raven replied loudly, holding out her hands, "Handle it. I've got business to conclude." The green lion sprang into the air for her ankle and she landed heavily on her feet, blocking and ducking his animal assaults too well for an inexperienced martial artist. She sent him up against a metal bench with a wave of black energy, and then his human form slammed into a wall. Raven closed her slender hands around his windpipe, little by little, cutting off his life.
"You're hardly an opponent, little boy. You should have practiced more. Too bad you'll never get a second chance."
"You…are…not…Rae."
Suddenly, she lifted her face up to stare at nothing in particular, her pupils reappearing and dilated. A soft murmur issued between her colorless lips, "Get your hands off him…" Raven looked back at his blanching face with black eyes, though not speaking to him. "It's on your hands. It's always been on your hands." Garfield watched blankly, his pulse slowing, as she jerked her neck in a sluggish circle, muttering gibberish. Raven hissed, dropping him onto the floor in a heap and began clawing at her shirt, "...Damn you, silly girl….."
Shoved out of her chest, a silvery cloud and a blue soul-self fought above the floating woman. The fog retreated into the shadows to find a host and the raven emerged into a lowered, shuddering body next to the boy. Violet eyes opened weakly.
"Gar…."
Steam hissing. Distant cries. Raven sat up off the hard concrete to hold Garfield's battered skull in her hands, shaking her purple strands.
"Please... I… I didn't mean for…"
No aura. No light. No beat.
A jade eye glittered like a glass marble.
"You…"
'You killed him.'
…..
The Oil Warehouse. Figures.
In fighting stance, he hid in the deepest crevices of shadows behind huge piping coming from the ground to the top of the ceiling. The other two stood in their respectable places. Robin offhandedly tapped the duct with his unsheathed Bo-Staff twice. They had tripped the alert earlier. He had counted approximately thirty visible and lank figures advancing. Whether they were human or robot he couldn't tell. Far better for him if it was the latter, he wouldn't have to hold back.
"Cyborg, Starfire, take them down!"
They went into action. The human robot shouted over the blasts of the Sonic Cannon, "What are you going to do?"
Something exploded with a red flare a foot away. A tattered, black cape swept around a lean frame. A phantom in a skull mask motioned to him.
"I've got back-up security covered." Robin kept himself shaded away, twirling his Staff. "That right, X. Your employer here?"
Red X picked up a heavy, brass cylinder, imitating his twirling. "Can't leave the plans ignored. Glad to see me?"
"I'll be glad when I get my friends back."
"I wouldn't worry about them right now, Kid." X thrust Robin backwards, pinning his neck to the wall with his weapon. "I'd worry about getting my ass kicked."
"Not gonna happen."
Robin knocked him off and they fought hidden into the gloom of the building; the occasional flash of blue, of yellow, and streak of green lit up their surroundings. X bashed him across the face hard and Robin slide underneath the conveyor belt. The thief reached for the fallen Bo-Staff when it suddenly vanished on the spot. X looked up alarmed as Robin materialized in front of him. "Nice try."
"You stole my technology."
"It was mine and I'm stealing it back," Robin replied. A swinging light above their heads cast shadows on their features. Shadowless was Robin's unusable white eyes.
X became greatly unnerved by the sight.
"How did when you…you're bl…."
"You don't watch a lot of news, do you?"
With a neat shot to the abdomen, Robin rendered Red X an crumpled ball on the concrete. "Goodnight. Don't expect me to tell you a bedtime story, Kid." With that being said, Robin unbuckled X's utility belt and tucked it away. Following complete intuition, he leapt up a single case of rickety steps closest to him to find a higher level of vacant-ness.
Almost vacant.
A woman in black took a body into her arms, pressing her face into gold blond, whispering muffled words into the hair. A woman with violet hair.
"R-" He stumbled over a solid object, a jutting foot of a man just inches from him. Was he… sleeping? He wasn't moving.
Who cared... Robin found her… why were her shoulders shaking? Who was that with her...? His Bo-Staff retracted.
Robin took another step forward, purposely missing the sleeping man, trying to ignore this terrible feeling he was getting. Like poison in the air. Like at the park. Raven never saw as she glanced at her side at something approaching her on her other side and screamed at the top of her lungs. A cloud of silvery air enveloped her.
"Raven!"
She attempted to repeal it by getting to her feet and batting it away with her fingertips unsuccessfully. He had no idea what was happening but it wasn't right, this thing was trying to hurt her. Before he could hope to stop a horrific process, the silver cloud took shape of a spiral, winding around her, and with a final spin, withdrew into her. Fright replaced by cool superiority.
The glare she sent at Robin so suddenly produced the strangest ripple of queasiness in his stomach. He held up his hands. "Ravem-"
An awful coldness seized him as she lifted his body telepathically and discovered a few creative ways to injure him against a ceiling. With his head ringing, Robin dropped ten feet onto the floor, thankfully not on any body parts. He picked himself up with his elbows and muttered breathlessly, "...Sorry, babe."
Twenty or so Smoke Pellets and his new Stunner Bombs went off around her writhing silhouette.
Robin dodged flying fragments of sharp metal she threw haphazardly in all directions, crawling on his hands and knees beside the body laying neatly folded. He stopped in the middle of sitting down, stretching his bleeding neck with a groan, and lightly prodded the form. Robin felt soft locks, disfigured flesh, lashes wide open, but somehow he couldn't identify the person. There was nothing to read.
She appeared over them, laughing viciously.
"Cry for him. Cry those white eyes. I want to see you shriveling and vulnerable with grief."
He replied, keeping one hand on his utility belt, "I don't know who he is."
"Think on it, Robin… who could possibly be trapped here, endlessly being tortured for my enjoyment until his little heart gave out from the stress? Well?"
Robin let go of the dead teenager, swearing under his breath.
"He died clever, if it's any consolation to you. Clever than the rest of you. Raven knew the truth when it revealed itself clearly to her face."
Ding went the bulb above the hero's head. By then, it was too late to reverse the damage. Raven lost her hard exterior. "...Of course, I was always evil, I had a bigger destin-" Robin rammed her back against the nearest pipe, his hands squeezing her shoulders back.
He demanded, angrily, "Slade, get out of her!"
Black eyes narrowed.
"You'll have to fight me for her, my old apprentice."
Robin stooped in his fighting stance, elbows out and teeth gritting, not unsure at the least to battle him. Raven flew upwards then backed away, shrilly shrieking. The high whining made his ears sting. He grabbed his ears to plug them up from the god-awful noise and the empath dropped midair to land on her feet, chest rising and falling in a rapid near-hyperventilation spewing from her white-lipped mouth. She clenched her fists, unblinking eyes switching rapidly to blue. Black. Blue. Black. Blue.
Her own toneless voice poured out, laced with fear, "Kill me… if you love me... do it…"
One of Raven's hands unclenched and tore at the V-neck of her shirt, leaving gapes of sallow skin on her neckline visible.
She snapped frontward, soundlessly crying out. The only thing escaping her open mouth was the silvery cloud. It hovered motionless inches above her head. She drew herself up still and statuesque. In between that time, Robin was already sprinting across the floor.
Raven was glowing.
Glowing the dark blue of her powers. Her eyes, her hair, her skin, her clothes were blue.
Her arms moved out, her balance wavered.
At the last second, he caught her soft, yielding figure, the top of her head fell to touch his lips and chin. When Raven gazed up surprised to find herself in the arms of her lover, Robin wanted to say so many things to her. To say his relief that none of it was her fault. To acknowledge that she had been right.
But only hate and love emitted from his unseeing eyes.
She looked back without apprehension of what she'd see. Robin cradled the back of her neck in the crook of his arm, mutely.
The dark boot of the sleeping man disappeared. And Slade watched them from the staircase, leaning on the railing, one foot crossed over the other.
She lifted her head up to stare at their enemy, her stare unreadable. Weakly, Raven pushing her leader away when he tried to assist her. His gloved hand enclosed around hers, very startled to find it as cold as the blue indicated. "Raven, what are you doing?"
She replied slowly and coolly, "Find the others. Get out. Stop any Slade bots you can outside. Let me go." Her glowing fingers slipped out of his grasp. A yellow cape disappeared to find another exit. Raven stood up and said monotonously to the orange and black masked man, losing her serene expression to something much more hostile, "What an ability... snatching bodies...? There's nothing I like better than having a filthy parasite invade my flesh."
"You damnable creature."
"No, Slade, you are damned," Raven tilted her blue head as they began circling each other. "You like games, don't you, Terminator? Let's play the game of 'Guess how much restraint Raven has before she sends you to the darkest flaming corner of Hell in pieces'. That sound good to you?"
"Little girl, you do not frighten me."
She smirked, familiarly. "I beg to differ, your heart rate and perspiration count increases tenfold every time I take a step closer to you."
Slade ducked a blow of energy, his mechanical voice declining on the superiority, "Remember your destiny. You need me-"
"What I need-" Raven kicked him across the face with a grunt. "-is for you to suffer the Bubonic Plague, tuberculosis, and a total system failure, but even that won't cover it. You ruined everything, Slade. And you will pay," she finished matter-of-factly. He spat blood drizzling through the slits of his face mask.
"...destiny…"
"Get over it. My destiny wasn't meant for the destruction of good or my friends. It was you. The Immortal. The evil that won't rest. If someone has to make you then it's the least I can do..." Raven engulfed him in pulsing power and crushed him, his body digging into the bricks and the Oil Warehouse roared briefly.
"for Gabriel Bendson..."
She blasted surge after surge of energy to suffocate him.
"for Terra Markov..."
Wind blowing her skirt and hair.
"for Garfield Logan..."
Slade screamed endlessly.
"for Dick Grayson, every drop of blood you spilled, every bruise on his body, every nightmare you were responsible for!"
Eyes gently narrow. Torment.
"...this is for my unborn child…"
The criminal went flying into the warehouse's control room, the switchboards sparked with an array of colors.
She stood looking down at his crumpled form.
"You took everything from me...…my life…my love…..my sanity..."
Raven pulled him up by the blood-soaked collar with a blue hand, dangerously close for his weakening heart.
"I want nothing more than to kill you. I'd be more than willing to spend an eternity in purgatory for your demise. To make you suffer like I had. But I'll leave it up to you."
Seeping gas somewhere. Minutes tops.
Quickly, he took off his mask. His only eye dark brown and glittering. The other mere scar tissue. His features threatening and chiseled. Hair of an almost recognizable jet black. Sour breath flooded her face as he pressed his man lips to her numbed ones. Impassively, Raven watched his head dangle back with a satisfied sigh.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos."
To the kidneys. One shot knocked him out with unadulterated pain. With a thick accent, she cursed him in her native language.
"Enjoy Hell, you son of a bitch."
With every ounce of will power left in her, she ascended up the tall building, passing through many levels without trying and hovering high above it as it exploded into a giant red fireball. A major fire… a gas leak. A mushroom of black smoke and cinders extinguished the early morning clouds. Firefighters scrambled on the street below, police men and women yelled out orders to the gathering mob of onlookers.
Some strangers horrified, others smiling seldom at the spectacle. A mile back from the inferno, Raven sank onto the street. Passing fire trucks slowed to gawk at the violet-colored, young woman. She went up to the nearest sooty officer and held out the Slade mask, pushing it into already full arms. "Merry Christmas."
The officer shouted after her as the soot-covered empath walked at a leisurely pace through the ignorant crowd of running human-beings.
…..
Absently, Raven rubbed her skin. Why was it still blue? As hours dulled, it eventually faded all over but a new tingling seized control of her every ten minutes, getting annoying fast.
She had been sent to the medical sector immediately upon return to Titans Tower for the loss of blood. Her friends got out fine apparently. Cyborg told her that he didn't have an answer for her condition. No one breathed a word about Beast Boy. Or a baby. Until that afternoon, Raven refused to do anything before then. She swallowed her required medication. She didn't meditate (Azar knew she needed more than anything else). She didn't eat. She didn't get out of her room. It may have been the biggest mistake to have later.
The capability to cry left her long ago.
Her thoughts were disconnected and mixed with Slade, Beast Boy, the smiles on strange faces, and Robin.
Raven buried her face into a hand, closing her eyes. The craving to see him again, his tri-colored costume, his wild hair, his powerful aura that only she could see. It was becoming unbearable to avoid him after what just happened. Damn what he said. She was able to love him. He had to know.
'I can't take it…'
Raven dashed out of her room, materializing through walls as if they were made of water, entering the main room to shout his name over and over. Cyborg and Starfire, sitting in some chairs, jumped up alarmed at her frantic arrival. "Where is he? I know you know where he is... where is he?" she insisted.
"Rae, Rae, it's okay. We're going to help you," Cyborg reassured softly ,hiding a syringe. She spun around to Starfire near tears.
"No! I'm not crazy, where is he?"
The alien woman held the other woman in a comforting embrace, giving an scowl to the half robot.
"Friend Cyborg will not hurt you. We care for you, Raven."
"It's not gonna hurt her, Star. It's a sedative."
Starfire protectively turned Raven away.
"No! You will not do this sedation ritual when it scares her!" In the process of heatedly arguing with Cyborg, she did not notice that Raven's attention drifted elsewhere. The empath yanked herself away and plopped into an office rolling seat near the communications computer. She withdrew from sitting quietly and reading the computer screen after a few minutes, gasping once rigidly.
The Titans picked up the discard of the rolling chair flipping sideways as the blue, glowing female outline vaporized out of the room.
Cyborg scratched his head, forgetting the needle on the table.
"What... was that?"
Starfire glanced at the computer.
"Friend, there is something there."
They stooped down to ogle.
An email.
Raven,
This message is meant for you, and only for you. Your teammates will get their own when I can come up with something. I can't tell you where I am. I'm safe, that at least I can tell you. And that I'm not coming back to the Tower. We always said we'd find a different city to protect and defend when we grew up. I've found mine. It's been in my thoughts for quite a while and my decision has been made. There's plenty of business. I'll be taken care of, and you can control the Teen Titans. I'm leaving you and Cyborg in charge; if you weren't capable I wouldn't have bothered. I'm not proud to be telling you this in a letter instead of in person. For my own selfish reasons I left without saying goodbye. I can't stand holding you in my arms and knowing and seeing those lies we told each other. I can't live in the Tower with the memory of what I found. I can't promise one day we'll see each other. Don't try to find me. I won't be traceable. I think I truly love you. I know I did love you but we can't be together like this. How can we be together when we can't trust each other? I know you'll be better off with the team. You'll be better off without me here to hurt you. Everything you'll need is left in my room.
Delete this.
Robin
Cyborg cracked his knuckles loudly, his outer anger clouding his utter dismay.
"That spiky-haired punk."
Starfire wiped her green eyes, lips trembling. It became too much to bear as she gave way to tears.
Somewhere in the Tower, an overwhelming thud of a necklace.