Disclaimer: No!

Here's the next chapter! Sorry it took so long! Enjoy (: The next update will come sooner.

This chapter is dedicated to Regrem Erutaerc

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Nevermore is the kind of place that, unless I am undergoing a major emotional crisis, rarely changes. When I got there on this particular occasion, it was no different. The sky, as always, was a deep black, pitted with crimson stars and clouds, and the occasionally floating rocky island high off among the clouds. Trees without leaves stood here and there, branches harsh, not softened by the lacy intricacy of tiny twigs branching off on the ends. The trees reached for the sky like the grasping hands of a corpse, skin parted from the bones and exposing the raw, angular bones beneath. The air was its usual temperature, comfortable to the point where you could forget it had a temperature at all. The ground was cracked, dry, and dead beneath my feet, unable to sustain any earthly life, or any life at all, besides those skeleton trees.

The air around me was silent and thick with the inaudible whisperings of things long passed, but nonetheless empty. I stood still, watching the dead landscape warily. I knew that the lonely, almost beautiful peace would not last for long now that I had arrived.

As usual, the first girl to my side was Joy. She didn't come to my side, she merely appeared. Her cloak was a bright, almost sickening bubblegum pink and her hair, like mine and that of all the others, was violet. She greeted me with a bubbly, "Hello, Raven!" and a girlish giggle. I nodded in reply as the others began to manifest themselves.

The second to appear was Timid, in her gray cloak, and she latched herself onto me and wouldn't let go. She was trembling and the ghosts of whimpers were coming from her throat. "Big Raven!" she said, sounding like a puppy that has been kicked one too many times. "Rage won't stop picking on me!" her childlike voice quivered as much as her body did, and I sighed and hugged her back in a motherly sort of way, patting her short violet hair.

"Rage, leave Timid alone," I instructed, sending a challenging look over Timid's shoulder at the girl in the crimson cloak, sporting four matching crimson eyes. She gave me one of her death stares back, which was nothing new, since that was her normal expression. You learn to live with that sort of thing. There was nothing cruel about Rage that wasn't natural. There was nothing she could do about her nature. Just as there wasn't much I could do about mine.

"You haven't visited in a while," Rage said coolly, and when her mouth opened it revealed her small pointed fangs.

"It's true," Timid whimpered in her feeble, kittenish voice. "You never come to see us anymore." she was clinging to the hem of my cloak as though she was afraid I would disappear into thin air if she didn't keep holding onto me. "Do you hate us?"

I sighed and had to work extremely hard to conceal my irritation. We went through this time and time again. "No, Timid, I don't hate you," I assured her. She looked at me with those huge, perpetually quivering violet eyes and I nodded to cement the idea into her skull. "Do not ask me again." I didn't say it harshly, but Timid quivered like I had beaten her. I gave up on the matter.

"So, what is the deal with you never visiting anymore?" asked Brave, the gutsy little Me in a green cloak, Timid's constant companion. "And what do you want now?"

I looked around before answering her to see exactly who I would be dealing with today. There was Knowledge in her bright, sunny yellow cloak with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, there was Joy, Timid, Brave, and Rage, of course. There was Affection, looking particularly radiant today, her huge violet eyes sparkling, her purple cloak swirling around her feet like the delicate petals of a flower. There was Rude, who kept belching quietly in Knowledge's ear, her orange cloak covered in dust around the hem. There was Hope, looking angelic in her cream-colored cloak with that one-with-the-world Robin-esque smile on her face. And Compassion, with her pure white cloak that seemed to give off a glow, and Guilt, with her deathly black cloak. Self-Loathing was there also, looking different from the others with her long hair and mostly ripped-away leotard, and several of the Mark of Scath burning conspicuously on assorted places on her body, along with jagged words carved into the flesh.

One wound among the old ones struck me particularly. The word 'PERVERT', carved across Self-Loathing's forehead. It was nothing but a word of scabs, now. But there were other Words that I still felt, and she had to carve over them again and again to prevent their healing until I could let her Words go. Some of them were still bleeding. 'PATHETIC', 'UGLY', 'COWARD' were particularly fresh and deep, and I could see a sliver of white bone matter showing amongst the letters of the pair of Words carved into her forearm, 'THINGS CHANGE' where fresh, dark blood still seeped, curdling on her pale flesh, matting the tiny, fine hairs of her arm together. It was a Word she had to carve over at least several times a day. The only Word that wasn't directed toward myself.

I hated myself for making her put all those words there, but I was sure hating myself for it was just making it worse. Hate was why she put those words there. My hate. My hate for myself. It was her destruction. Until I could learn to love myself, she would continue to be the victim of my hatred. It made me feel weak thinking about it. Weak and sick and terrified. It made me feel a biting pain in my stomach when I looked at her, and I averted my eyes.

"Well?" Brave asked me, raising an eyebrow at me and thankfully jarring myself out of my unpleasant thoughts.

"I'm beginning to think you really do hate us," Rude said with a smug grin. Timid burst into tears and hurled herself at the hem of my cloak, clutching the dark blue folds and wailing.

"Please don't hate me," she whimpered softly. Brave walked over and pulled Timid to her feet, and I sighed and patted her on her gray-cloaked shoulder.

"Don't think about me hating you anymore!" I said, a little more fiercely than I meant to. "I don't!"

Timid nodded, brushing tears out of her eyes. "Okay," she whispered meekly, giving something close to a smile.

"Alright, I just haven't been here to visit in a while because I've been a bit preoccupied," I said. "I've had a lot on my mind."

Joy giggled, and I sent her a look. "What?" I asked her, though I could pretty much tell what she was giggling about.

"Affection told us aaaaaaall about Garfield," Brave said, and I groaned. "And how you wanna-"

"Just don't talk about it," I muttered, running a hand over my face.

"Why not? It's reality, isn't it?" Knowledge pointed out.

"Okay, you're not exactly one to talk to me about reality. You only exist inside my mind," I argued.

"She has a point," Affection told Knowledge. And then I felt stupid for arguing with my own damn emotions.

"Look, so I want him. So maybe I think about getting into his pants sometimes…so what?" I asked, trying to undermine the enormity of the situation.

"It's a normal part of life. You're growing up, Raven," Compassion patted me on the shoulder. "It's only natural that your lustful side should awaken at some point. That's what's happening. It's nothing negative. Everyone experiences sexual awakening at some point."

This wasn't something I wanted to hear.

"It could be something else. It could be anything else. Maybe I'm just losing my mind," I argued. Not because I didn't believe what Compassion was saying, but because I wanted them all to shut up about the subject. I didn't care that they were, in a sense, me. I didn't even like talking about it, and I certainly didn't want mouths I couldn't control talking about it.

Brave placed a hand on my shoulder. "You're just gonna have to accept it for what it is! So you've got some new feelings. Big deal! It's part of life!" she clapped me on the back. "Hoo-ah! Our little Raven is growing up."

"It seems like only yesterday she was still wetting the bed. Oh, wait, that was last night…but it's a different kind of wetting now," Rude declared. I had to be very, very contained and remind myself that she couldn't help the way she was programmed to act as my crass emotion, and it was all I could do to stop myself from throttling her. Sometimes I wondered if I had more anger issues than…Rage. But I did manage to push my violent irritation out of my mind and focus.

"So you're telling me this is normal," I asked, directed my question toward Brave, Compassion, and Knowledge. "You're saying it's a natural thing for me to feel all of these freaky, completely wrong-seeming desires toward someone who, until a few months ago, I could barely stand to be in the same room with?"

"Everyone experiences these feelings at some point," Knowledge told me, giving that all-knowing but not at all pompous grin of hers. Compassion had her hand on my shoulder again.

"It's perfectly normal," she assured me. "Just let it happen as it happens."

"But what am I supposed to do about it?" I asked them, starting realize that coming in here for answers had been pointless. It was almost as bad as sitting there and asking myself for answers.

"You don't do anything about it!" Brave said, her booming voice a bit grinding on my nerves. "That's the point!" she ruffled my hair in a bolstering, fatherly way. "Life throws you things, and you make the most of them! You're not supposed to know what's coming at you! What would be the point in living if there were no surprises? Life's all about taking chances and finding out what happens next."

"Life is about living. It doesn't matter if you know what happens next." I was getting more than a little annoyed with them and their useless attempts to help. "Coming here was a waste of time, all you're going to do is broadcast greeting card wisdom at me for the next three hours."

At this point Timid burst into tears again and I realized I'd been out of line. "I'm sorry, Timid," I told her, patting her on the shoulder and shaking my head. "I didn't mean it. I'm glad I came to see you, really I am." and Timid's tears stopped flowing. As much as I hated to admit it, as they were creatures of my own mind, I was their master. All of them, even the more disagreeable ones, were constantly (though often secretly) struggling to win my approval. Some of them didn't seem to understand that no matter what happened, they were me, and I had to accept them unconditionally. And so when I said something, it was taken into consideration, though most of them disagreed with me a large portion of the time. Timid, however, believed every word that I (or anyone, for that matter) said.

"I'm sorry we can't come up with better answers," Wisdom told me, straightening her thick, round-rimmed glasses. The bright yellow of her cloak contrasted dramatically with the dull gray of Timid's, who was standing beside her now. "But what we know is limited. We know things that you know but don't yet realize or acknowledge, but if you don't know something, neither do we." she was reminding me of this unnecessarily. I would come to them a lot more if they could help me sort out problems that happened outside of me.

"I know, and it's okay," I said, reassuring all of them as best I could. "I'm sorry, I was being too demanding of all of you." it was sometimes hard to stay nice when I visited, but when I was conscious about it, I retained a kind of compassionate wistfulness. Everything that I went through, they went through too, and I was never alone in Nevermore. "I have to go back to the real world now," I confessed guiltily. "I need to get to bed. I don't want to be tired if we have an emergency tomorrow." It was almost hard to believe that for a long while after first being presented with the mirror, I had been terrified of them. But they weren't frightening. Even Rage had her own good points to offer, and as strange as it seemed (maybe it was some of Robin's unshakable belief in people rubbing off on me), I believed she was really good at heart, past all the darkness and anger that her soul was woven of, past the influence of Trigon.

Though Timid filled me with pity and Self-Loathing made me want to wince with guilt, Rage was the one who pained me the most to look at. That face with the four crimson eyes, the one that filled me with loathing whenever I was angry and looked into a mirror, was what she was faced with all day. Every day, she had to bear the burden of my anger, my rage, my violence. My dark, malevolent side ruled her, and there was nothing she could do to change the role she had been born into. Every violent feeling, every angry thought, every surge of my temper, it was all channeled through her. Though she only existed inside my mind, she was very real to me, as real as any of the others, and she constantly had to carry my cross for me. It was her sole purpose in life. But she was always quiet and never complained about it. She knew nothing else, it was true, but there was something almost noble about the way she carried her burden silently.

Today was no exception. She stood there among the others silently, and had not said a word since the beginning of the visit. It was strange, how she was supposed to harbor only hatred, and yet she still appeared to see me when I visited. They all did, which surprised me, because I could not imagine ever being so loyal to someone as they were.

"I'll come back to visit sooner this time," I promised them as I prepared to leave, turning in the direction of the huge doorway shaped slightly like my own head. "Rage, leave Timid alone this time, and Rude, try to stop burping in everybody's ears for a bit, okay?" I was pulling my almost involuntary mother act as I left. "Goodbye." and with that, I strode out through the doorway, and with a swirling of black and red air and warm wind whipping my hair, I was deposited back into reality.

XXX

Back on my bed once more, my dark room was comforting and welcoming. The air was warm, and a full moon filled the room with the soft glow that bounced off of all my strange possessions and lit the more foreboding shadows. I've never been the biggest fan of sleeping in my room when it's pitch black, contrary to popular belief, and so this soft light was welcome. The illuminated clock beside my bed said 11:00. It was still early, and I had the whole night to sleep off my sudden wave of tiredness. But as I settled down under my warm covers, I became aware of a strange, eerie sensation. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Call it intuition or bring up the fact that I'm a psychic, or say I have a Miss Clevelle complex, whatever you like. But one way or another, I knew something simply wasn't right.

It was only 11:00. And the room was quiet. There was only the soft hum of Jump City across the water. Normally, Robin would stay up until one or even two AM, and never turned in any earlier than midnight. But there was no soft guitar music filtering in from his room tonight. There was nothing. Only a dead, ghostly silence. I was alarmed. Maybe I was just being overprotective again, but it just didn't seem natural for it to be this quiet so early. And so once more I was out of bed and out into the hallway. I knocked on Robin's door, and when he didn't answer, I poked my head in. The light was on, but the room was empty.

Still concerned, I headed down the hallway, the darkness pressing me as I left behind the rectangle of light that Robin's still-open automatic door had left. I hated the Tower's hallways at night. They were so large and dark and seemingly endless, stretching boundlessly in every direction like the threads of a spider's web. I wanted to go back to my room, but some strange force propelled me forward, telling me that when I found Robin safely in the living room on the mainframe computer doing some late night research, I could go back to bed. And so I pressed on.

Finally, the dreary hallway was broken by a turn which led to the stairs, stairs that would lead me down to the living room. I turned and approached the stairs, but when I reached the top what I saw made me stop dead in my tracks.

It was Robin.

He lay sprawled-eagled at the bottom of the stairs, arms and legs splayed out at odd angled. My stomach dropped onto the floor, and my breathing began to race, a million panicked thoughts charging through my brain all at once. But what really made my pulse quicken and my legs lock and tremble was how still he lay at the foot of those stairs so far below me, and the halo of dark liquid pooled on the floor around his ebony-haired head.

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"I'm the fear that keeps you awake, I'm the shadows on the wall, I'm the monsters they become, I'm the nightmare in your skull." -Voltaire