A/N: Well here's another chapter, and the girl will be formally introduced just to let you know… oh and sorry if my Spanish is kinda choppy and incorrect… I'm only starting Spanish 2 hehe… but the things in brackets next to the Spanish is a translation… well what I meant to say. lol. And sorry for any grammar errors I might've missed in my editing… it's a kinda long chapter… SoR

Three

Crescent

Starfire's POV

We are defeated, hungry, fatigued and we have abandoned ourselves to despair. Four months have passed and neither Raven nor Beast Boy have attempted to help us, they may not even be alive. They may never have discovered the truth about Malefica, or if they had, it had been too late.

Seven of us sat around a dwindling fire in the cold Azarath night. We were all skinny and our skin was drawn tight to our bodies. Our eyes were glazed and lifeless, and our stomachs grumbled constantly. The cufflinks on our wrists prevented us from using our powers, and only Malefica held the power to unlock them.

I took the cup of stagnant water that Cyborg passed to me and picked up my stale bread, shivering as a cold wind blew through the mines. The memory of the girl's face haunted me, and the power of that witch sent shudders running up my spine. The look in her eyes was still imprinted in my mind, that venomous look that had paralyzed me with fear, and had made me back down. Was it my fault that girl's father was dead…?

"¿Qué ahora?" (What now?) Mas y Menos inquired tiredly.

"What else is there to do?" Cyborg gasped. "We lost. We can't fight Malefica or Trigon, not without Raven and Beast Boy." He drew Bumblebee closer to him and she put her aching head on his shoulder.

"Then we wait," Speedy admitted.

"Trigon has eyes everywhere, Raven and BB will never make it to us," Aqualad put in.

"Please, friends, do not give yourselves to despair," I pleaded. "Raven and Beast Boy will come and rescue us."

"They must be pretty mad at us," Cyborg said. "And I don't know how much longer we can survive here."

"¡Tenemos que vivir!" (We have to live!) Mas y Menos exclaimed.

"They're right," Bumblebee nodded. "We just have to be patient."

"How much longer can we wait?" a girl's voice said from behind us. I turned around and saw who it was: the girl whose father had been executed. Her dirty black hair fell lankly over her clouded silver eyes. The mark from where Malefica had slapped her still remained. As I looked closer at her she seemed very familiar… but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"Come sit with us," I invited as she sat down next to us. Something on her wrists caught my eyes. "You… you wear cufflinks. What powers have you?"

She shrugged. "I don't have any powers. Malefica just put them on when I got here."

"What's your name?" Cyborg asked.

"I was never given a name. Everyone calls me Crescent, though," she replied.

I put my arm around her. "Are you ok?"

"I just witnessed my father's death… well my foster father's…"

"Foster father? But you called him daddy," Speedy said.

"I never knew my father. He left my mother and I when I was just a baby. About ten years ago my mother left me, saying she had to do something. I never saw her after that… the police found her body in a warehouse with terrible cuts on her. She had terrible scorch marks all over her and a note in her hand. It said for me to go live with someone named Rick. He's been my father for ten years, so I call him daddy. Before she died said that if I ever needed any help that I had one last relative, a girl who lived in Jump City… but I forget her name. It began with an R and that's all I remember."

"You poured your life story out to us: strangers," I raised my eyebrows.

She nodded. "You're the Teen Titans… you're the only ones who can stop this."

"We're cufflink-ed, we don't have any powers anymore," Aqualad sighed.

"Why would Malefica put links on you if you have no powers?" I wondered out loud.

"Well… strange things always happened around me. Whenever I got angry I would become unconscious and when I woke up, things would be destroyed. Once in fifth grade I was mad because some kid was bullying me. That day at recess he got me so mad and all I remember is a flash of red light… everything else is a blur, except that the next day he had vanished," she replied. "The only other big incident was last year when my boyfriend dumped me. That night I went to his house to talk things over with him and he infuriated me so much… and the next day his house was found burned to the ground. But there have always been little things."

"How did you get here?" Bumblebee asked.

"Four months ago Malefica came to the school that Rick was the principal of and that I went to. She said it was important that she see me… no one disagreed or anything. She was taking me to a car and I got angry because she was taking me away from Rick. I told her I wanted him to come with me. She seemed afraid and so she took him with me… now I wish I hadn't asked," she looked down, tears falling from her dirty eyes. "But how did you guys get here?"

Speedy answered. "Malefica came to our tower pretending to be a girl needing shelter. We let her stay for a few days, but we noticed she was always poking around the tower—"

"You didn't tell us?" Cyborg inquired.

"It never occurred to us, actually," Bumblebee said.

"Malefica cast her spell on you," Crescent whispered. "Just like she did to my school."

"And us," I added.

Speedy nodded. "Anyway, a few nights after she came we found her poking around the safe and crouching over a ring we had found some guy stealing. She didn't seem so innocent anymore… we were no match for her. She just waved her hand and we found ourselves here."

"No struggle, no anything," I whispered thoughtfully as I passed a crust of bread and bowl of tasteless soup to Crescent.

Speedy nodded again.

"Well," Crescent sighed. "What are we to do? Like Malefica said, she and Trigon hold all the power, and we hold none. The longer we wait, the weaker we get. Hundreds of people die everyday in these mines… what's to say we won't be next?"

"You keep saying we," Bumblebee raised her eyebrows.

"Please," Crescent whispered. "I have lost everything, if you escape, I beg of you, take me with you… I can help."

"Do not worry yourself, Crescent. If we escape I will make sure you are not left here," I assured.

"But don't get your hopes up, kid," Cyborg sighed. "We can't do anything…"

I had learnt not to trust people I didn't know, but Crescent seemed different… like I said, she reminded me of someone, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Crescent's POV

That night I slept by the Titans. We weren't given blankets or beds… just the hard ground and the chilly Azarath nights. I shivered as a cold gust of wind blew through the mines, and when sleep finally found me, so too did dreams…

I was floating above something… I recognized this place! It was the house I used to live in with my mother. Two people stood beneath me over a crib. One I recognized immediately… she had long dark hair and deep purple eyes. But she wearing unfamiliar garb… a long blue cloak and a black leotard underneath. The other was not so familiar… he was tall and frightening. He had red skin and long white hair, and a crown of horns was on his head. Four glowing, slanted red eyes glared at my mother, and he was wearing nothing but a loincloth around his waist. My mother however did not seem intimidated.

"Do not touch her, Trigon!" my mother cried, coming in front of the crib. I gasped silently as I realized the sleeping child in the crib was I!

"Move, Azara," the red thing rumbled.

Azara was not my mother's name… her name was Luna…

"What will you do to her?" she demanded.

"I will mark her as I did our other child," the one named Trigon responded.

Other child…?

"Why! So she, too, can be a way for you to gain power! So that if you were to fall, she would be able to release you!"

"Do not be foolish, Azara. This girl is not like the other, she cannot be the Portal… but she will be the Key!"

"NO!" Azara screamed. "I will not allow you to do this!"

"You have little choice," Trigon grumbled.

My mother shouted strange words: "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" White light struck Trigon, but it bounced off of him and he pushed my mother away, his hand aflame.

"Nooo!" I screamed, but realized that no one could hear me. Trigon put his hand up and touched my forehead with his claws. Pain erupted through my body… this was way too real to be a dream. Red markings covered both my current skin and the skin of the baby. I screamed as myself and wailed as a child as Trigon spoke, but I never heard what he said. The dream was melting around me, but I was still screaming…

I jolted awake. Cold sweat clung to my body and my dark hair was matted against my scalp. There was a stinging that filled my body, and I clutched my head, trying to focus my thoughts. What had that been? It was no ordinary dream… was it a vision? Or was it just a very vivid nightmare…? I was afraid to go back to sleep… what if another nightmare haunted me?

Trigon… So that was Trigon, I had never actually met him… just heard of him. I knew that he was responsible for everything, and that Malefica was just his servant. Why had he called my mother Azara? What was he doing in our old house? And what were they talking about? What were those strange red markings on my body, and why had they appeared on mine as well as my baby form? None of this made any sense at all… could I possibly have been that monster's child? No! That was impossible! My mother told me she was married to a man named Jonathan, and that he had left because of some argument they had had.

Had my mother lied to me about everything? No! That was impossible! Besides Rick, she was the only one who loved me. She would never have lied to me!

Then a thought came to my mind. In one week was my birthday… shudders ran down my spine. Strange things always happened on my birthday… at my Sweet Sixteen there had been a citywide power outage, and the one before there had been an unexpected lunar eclipse… what would happen this time? I wasn't exactly anxious to find out, but I knew that it could not be good.

Maybe I did have powers, I looked at the palms of my hand… and gasped. Pain stung my hand as a red S snaked its way across my palm.

"What the…?"

I closed my hands into tight fists… and when I opened them the S's were gone…

I spread my arms out like wings, but as soon as they collided with the ground weakness overtook me. My thoughts and vision became fuzzy and my nose began to bleed. My breaths came in ragged, sharp gasps. I moaned and tried to lift my hands up, but the weakness was quickly overtaking me. I tasted blood, sweat and tears… what was happening to me?

Darkness was taking over quickly and everything became blurry.

"Crescent!" someone said. Their voice seemed so distant yet a face hovered above mine. Someone picked me up and took me several feet away from where I had been lying down.

Suddenly, my nose stopped bleeding and my breathing became normal again. What was that all about? My vision and thoughts cleared and the attack was over as soon as it had begun. I batted my eyes a few times before I looked up and saw Stafire gazing tiredly at me.

"Crescent, are you OK?" she asked.

I considered telling her about my dream, but decided against it. "Yes, Star, I'm fine… thanks…" She nodded and smiled weakly as she got up and lay down beside me. I turned onto my side and my eyes slowly closed as I drifted into a dreamless, but uncomfortable sleep…