Chapter 4

Pathos

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or anything related to Teen Titans. Unfortunately.

"Where?!" Jinx shrieked.

"My father's domain," Raven reiterated.

After the immediate shock, Jinx eased a bit at another thought. "And ya know that…how?"

In response, Raven moved one hand to better illuminate the obelisk's fractured face.

Jinx paled. "Th-That's your…?"

"Was," Raven corrected her.

Jinx forced a smirk. "Well…looks like somebody was overcompensatin'."

Raven considered the relative size of the statue. "No, that's…pretty accurate."

Jinx snapped her attention to Raven in disbelief. "I thought your mother was human!"

"She is," Raven defended, then realized Jinx's point. "He…looked human at the time. Demons don't…really have physiology in the way other creatures do. They choose forms that best reflect them, or that suit their needs at the time."

Jinx mouthed the word out loud—demon—still processing it, eyes once again fixed on the monstrous face.

Raven detected a very distinct, very sharp spike of horror in Jinx's mind.

"Does that mean we're…in…?"

"Not in the way you understand it," Rave was quick to assure her. "The way it's used in reference to my father, the word 'demon' is more symbolic of his nature."

"Which is…"

"An inter-dimensional being of cruelty, hatred, and rage incarnate, empowered by the souls from countless millions of worlds," Raven clarified.

Jinx rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah. That makes me feel better…"

"At any rate, I believe that's where we are: the original seat of his power."

"His home planet?" Jinx asked.

Raven gave a half-shrug. "Dimension," she more-or-less agreed.

"So why's it all, like…" Jinx gestured around them at the dark, the wind, and the cold.

"First, he enslaved worlds," Raven explained. "Then, to strengthen himself, he drained them of all their energies, all their life." She looked up at the starless night, empty and infinite. "Everything here is dead, and has been for a very long time."

Jinx did the same, turning in place to take in the scope of it all, nearly stumbling when her equilibrium suddenly wobbled.

Raven knelt, taking a handful of the crusty earth and crumbling it in her hand amidst the wind. Her mind returned to the day her father had arrived on Earth, the memories colored by dancing pillars of flame and the sinister glow of molten rivers. It had taken great and painstaking work for him to break through into their dimension, and an extraordinary amount of his power.

She looked out again into the impenetrable dark: an entire dimension turned into a veritable kiln of fury and suffering in the face of her father's wrath undiluted. How hot those fires must have burned, she wondered, to allow them even to survive here now, however uncomfortably, by virtue only of whatever residual heat remained in his absence.

When she returned her attention to Jinx, Raven found her engrossed in looking up and around, presumably having it settle upon her that they were the first two Earthlings ever to witness pure, unabated darkness. No suns, no stars, no light-giving energy of any kind anywhere beyond their little bubble. One of two living things alone in a starless universe. Raven saw a shiver wriggle through her, though, the empath could sense, not from the cold.

Then, Jinx turned to her, eyes slightly wide. "And you…?"

Raven felt the change in Jinx's emotions as they swept and swirled from one to the next, landing somewhere between awe, terror, respect, and disbelief. She stared forward at the statue. "He was…severely weakened, when he arrived on Earth."

At that, Jinx's eyes widened in earnest, as though the two thoughts—Raven's residency on Earth and her claim to have slain her father—had not truly connected until that moment.

Rather than allow her to ask, Raven gave a brief recounting of…well…the end of the world: the day itself, her role in it, the prophecy that had accompanied her birth, all of it.

"It's…why I became a hero," Raven continued, losing herself in memories. "I…decided to do good, as many good things as I could to try to make up for… And then, I met the others, and I started to think that maybe it wasn't so hopeless. Maybe they could…we could fight."

A pause followed, Jinx's eyes on Raven while her cloak flapped in the wind.

"When it finally happened, all of our fighting, everything we did to stop it, nothing mattered." Raven's shoulders fell, remembering. "My father arrived, and as his inaugural act, he razed the Earth and turned everyone, everywhere, to stone—in an instant."

Jinx blanched.

Raven, however, saw only the dead dimension that surrounded them: an eerie reminder of how much worse it could have been. "At his peak, he was…all but omnipotent, able to alter reality on a whim. Forcing his way into our dimension weakened him, and eradicating all the life there exhausted him. My connection to him spared me, and their connection to me spared the Titans, but…don't give us more credit than we deserve. It was my father's arrogance that ended him. His pride."

Jinx's gaze moved slowly to the four-eyed face carved in the crumbling stone, her imagination trying in vain to wrap itself around that kind of power, that kind of being. Raven had called her father a demon, but her description sounded closer to a god.

"Well…'least he's gone now, I guess…" Jinx offered up what meager plus-side she could find.

"More or less," Raven, once again, half agreed.

Jinx gave a look of clear concern.

Raven turned her head up at the void. "Death, in the permanent sense, is a very mortal concept. Some very poor choices by some very stupid cultists woke up something that had existed since before the universe, gave form to a force of nature. We put it back to sleep. That's all."

"So he's not dead?" Jinx asked, trying to clarify.

"He is," Raven assured her, adding, "for now." She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. "Anyway, we should go back. My powers will likely return tomorrow, and we won't find anything more by wasting energy wandering. We know that now." Raven turned and started back.

A few moments more to look upon the fallen monument, and Jinx stepped in alongside her. They walked quietly for a while, even Jinx's distinctly not empathic self having little difficulty in detecting the tension and regret their discovery had dredged up in her companion. Without really thinking about it, she did what she always did to diffuse a situation: cracked a joke.

"Guess I'm not the only one who didn't go to the League with her problems, eh?" she quipped as they traversed a few chunks of rubble.

"I did," Raven said from in front, keeping a good emotional distance from the feelings those memories conjured—keeping her distance and listening to them beat their rage and resentment against the wall she had erected around them, again and again. "They…sensed what I was, and…" She searched for the right words. "I imagine they thought it was some kind of ploy. Either way, I found the Titans, so it worked out."

Not that she was bitter.

A howling roar, and a prodigious slam from the other side of that wall.

No, not at all.

Jinx screwed up her lips. Well, that hadn't worked.

When they reached the cave, Raven stopped at the entrance, seeming to take it in a second time now that the truth of the mountain had been revealed.

She started in mild surprise when Jinx moved past and took her by the wrist, dragging her in tow.

"Uh-huh, yeah. Super, mega, giant daddy issues. Got it." Jinx released Raven, rekindling the fire. "Gotta say, though. Not really sure what the deal is with the whole angst…thing. Ya kicked his demon ass so hard he…poofed…back into the aether, or whatever, like some video game bad guy. Handicap or not. I mean, congrats. Ya won. So…what?"

Raven stood in the doorway, as it were—somehow, she felt, in more ways than one—and considered the question. Perhaps, for the first time. Yes, almost certainly. As strange it as it was, as it seemed to her, she had never before truly considered that point of view. Or rather, that option: that she could simply…choose…to feel differently, about discussing her father, her heritage, the destiny afforded her at birth that she had so vehemently denied.

For her entire life, attached to those subjects had been exactly what Jinx had described: sullenness, angst, regret, sorrow, fear, doubt, nihilism, and a host of others. Until now, there had been two realities: emotions could be compartmentalized and shut away, or they could conduct themselves. She could choose to feel nothing, or she could choose to feel whatever emotions happened to surface. So foreign were they to her in their intricacies and actual natures that she had never even before entertained, never even had the thought that she could simply choose how to feel about a thing.

Her father, her past, her nature—she could choose to feel differently. She didn't need to feel the way she did and, indeed, just as Jinx had pointed out, her victory over all of those things, by all accounts, indicated that she should have felt differently now than she had before. They had been so deeply seated, so firmly ingrained in her mind since her birth that, even after her moment of triumph over them, they still shackled her with the feelings they continued to inspire.

But they didn't have to.

"I…don't know," Raven admitted honestly, only a few seconds having passed during her entire mental exchange.

Jinx chuckled quietly, smirking. "Yeah, well… You're kind of a big damn hero, sounds like. Maybe try lettin' yourself feel like one for once. Some of us went bad, y'know, 'cuz we thought we didn't have a choice. Oh, I dunno. Bad luck powers, random example. Meanwhile, your dad's gonna end the world, and you go girl scout anyway and still let yourself feel like shit about it. I don't mean to force-feed advice or whatever, but like…it sounds like ya did everything right. So…why feel bad about it?"

Jinx glanced over when Raven approached and knelt beside her, watching the fledgling flames.

"You're right," Raven said.

Jinx grinned smugly. "Yeah? And?"

In the moments that followed, Raven took the first steps in reorganizing her feelings toward certain subjects, casting her old point of view into the fire in favor of the new one she had chosen to embrace: that she could choose—not only when to feel, but how. It would take time, certainly. And patience, and practice, and many missteps while she adjusted. But the thought of it gave her peace, and in the meantime, she smiled.

Somehow, in the glow of their little fire there in the cave, secure in the hope of rescue when Raven's powers returned and nestled in the remains of the toppled effigy that had once represented the truly insurmountable, an inexplicable sense of comfort shook off the cold and settled over them both. The pangs and growls of unsated hunger came and went. They had more water, though spoke little, neither finding it particularly necessary. For the moment, all that needed to be said—aloud, at least—had been said, and that was enough.

After a while, they again prepared to bed down, in the same manner as the previous night. Raven lay flat, looking up, while Jinx lay on her side facing the fire. Although it took a bit longer than it had before, her mind turning from one thought to the next as it mulled over the day's events, or even whether it had really been an entire day in the absence of any method by which to tell time. But after a while, Raven, too, succumbed to sleep.

Sometime later—hours, perhaps, though she couldn't say for certain—Raven found herself awoken when she had, apparently, made to roll to one side. Her inability to do so had drawn her back from a dreamless slumber to find a weight on her sternum. When her eyes adjusted, she found an arm. At some point, Jinx must have turned over, one arm and part of her body slung over the empath.

A simple thing, as Raven understood it. The byproduct of conditioning during infancy to search for sources of warmth during sleep, instilled first by a person's mother and then reinforced by any number of stuffed animals throughout childhood. She had even read studies indicating that fully grown adults often slept better and more soundly by holding a pillow in a way not dissimilar to the way Jinx's arm draped over her now. Unconscious and, to Raven, innocuous, the act represented nothing to her upon first viewing.

However, in the context of a question she had posed to herself earlier—did she reciprocate certain feelings—it began to take on a new light. Whereas Raven would normally have dismissed it entirely, now she found herself examining it: how it felt, not just how it made her feel, but how it literally, physically felt.

A lifetime spent at arm's length from just about everyone had left her both accustomed to that distance, now thoroughly invaded, and unaccustomed to the otherwise simple sensation of human warmth, of contact. Something people like Starfire mightn't even have noticed gave her pause at its…strangeness. A thing that even young children could simply appreciate at face value as a natural part of being human, she found herself forced to deconstruct, struck by its seemingly oxymoronic nature: a long-gone familiarity and simultaneous, undeniable alien-ness.

Why should it have felt that way? At what point in her life had human contact, outside of a fleeting hug or handshake, become foreign? Of course, she had never been overly fond of such things; that was her personality, a part of who she was. But when had it slipped so far?

Her heart sank a little at the idea of it. How sad a thing had she become, really?

And so, rather than remove the offending appendage and merely allow herself back into the arms of sleep, Raven found herself compelled, somehow, not only to allow it to continue, but to drink in its every sensation: the light weight, the faint but radiating heat, the sound of her companion's slow, restful breaths and the tiny movements of her arm that came along with them—hyper-aware of them all.

Raven's right arm, poised to squirm its way from underneath her slumbering companion, instead came to rest, even to her own surprise, on Jinx's back rather than back down on the ground. Emboldened somewhat by the harsh accusations swirling against herself in her mind, Raven allowed her curiosity some freedom.

Her fingertips touched gently against the slumbering form, experiencing the temperature, the firmness and the give of skin, flesh and muscle with each rise and fall, all the unique qualities of another body not normally given such careful consideration.

Then, a break in the rhythm.

Jinx stirred, awareness congealing slowly as conscious thoughts and feelings took shape: fatigue, then comfort, followed by confusion. At that point, realization struck like a static shock, and Jinx moved sleepily but quickly to get off once she realized her position.

A second wave of realization came when, in the course of doing so, she noticed Raven's hand on her. Surprise, then. Uncertainty and that unnamed emotion brought alive with the fluttering of a heart. If she had been unaware before, there could be no question when, looming above after pausing halfway through moving, Jinx allowed her eyes to focus down: Raven was awake.

They stared in silence, Raven a step removed as she allowed her curiosity reign, Jinx a stark contrast in her rising crescendo of indistinguishable emotion, a torrent of wants and doubts at once pulling her away and forcing her still.

Raven's eyes widened, her own heart skipping a beat or two when, without warning, Jinx darted down and touched their lips together. After a moment, she withdrew just as quickly, wracked by a sudden surge of elation, horror and guilt at what she had done. She made again to move.

Raven's arm remained still against her back.

Although she could not be certain, Raven entertained the thought that, just then, she had perhaps moved her head slightly forward, just a bit, out of some unfamiliar reflex or compulsion.

Her eyes betraying her every fear, even so, Jinx leaned in again, more slowly, seeking validation or asking permission this time for what she had taken before.

Raven supposed she must have given it, however and in whatever form, because not long after, their lips touched a second time—an entirely closed-mouth affair, but this time, Jinx did not draw back.

Raven closed her eyes in examination, to remove the distraction so as to better focus on the new litany of sensations: the feel of strange lips on hers, of foreign breaths against her face, of the veritable onslaught of relief, incredulity, and excitement emanating from her partner that seemed to permeate into her as well.

She noticed her own heart begin to race, her face begin to flush and grow warm, the muscles in her chest and stomach tighten at the realization that she was kissing back and had no idea when she had started to do so or why.

Utterly inexplicable. The entire series of events, a whirlwind of emotions inspiring actions inspiring emotions: Jinx's every feeling projecting so strongly onto her, causing her to react, and her every reaction evoking more feelings in Jinx as more and more wordless momentum continued to rebound and build.

A particularly heated emotional bombardment saw Raven's other arm join in their activities, wrapping them both up around Jinx's shoulders as if to pull her in; Jinx moved on top in earnest, fueled by the consent into an even more feverish display: kisses, short or long, pulling back only briefly to return again for more, both with eyes shut and both utterly afraid to speak or to slow down.

To do either invited time to pause, time to think, time to consider the reality outside of the remarkable sensations being so freely given and received. For Raven, something she did not, could not understand but could not and would not attempt to argue that she did not enjoy. For her partner, the realization of some long-held and closely kept fantasy, being made manifest right before her eyes. And neither one willing to risk losing whatever incomprehensible but inarguable rightness upon which they had managed to stumble.

It felt good, and that was as much as either one of them cared to know.

Jinx's head moved to one side, down to Raven's neck, and Raven jolted slightly at the guttural, wholly uncharacteristic sound that escaped her when she felt teeth, not enough to have left a mark but certainly enough to have been noticed.

Raven opened her eyes at a particularly odd…something…rising inside her in swells the longer they went on. Her heart pulsed heavily, causing her vision to go fuzzy when it did, and with a sudden urge she failed to control, her fingernails pressed into Jinx's shoulders and dragged down her back. Not even enough to tear clothing, let alone the skin beneath—Jinx even seemed approving, in fact—the largely involuntary act brought Raven thoroughly back to that dreaded reality they had kept so busy to avoid.

Reluctantly, she eased Jinx up and away, her chest rising and falling in quick succession as she met Jinx's wanting, half frightened eyes. "We have to stop," she breathed.

"Why?" Jinx asked, breathing heavily. After a few seconds, she returned more to herself. "Okay," she said, thankfully not in disappointment or discouragement, but with sincerity, out of respect for Raven's wish to stop.

No more talking, Jinx settled back down. Even through her own mental deliberations, Raven could not help but be aware of the worry creeping into the back of Jinx's thoughts, concern that she had done something wrong. Unwilling to let the experience be ruined, before the meta could attempt to move back to her own side, Raven took the initiative to position them much the way they had been when she had awoken. Reassured, Jinx rested against her, her arm over the empath while Raven's held her there.

How long it took for Jinx to return to sleep after that, Raven could not have said. She did, eventually, as did Raven herself, when the adrenaline had fully faded. But in the meantime, Raven found her thoughts caught in the gravitational pull of that peculiar impulse, the one responsible for the curiosity that had instigated their volatile intimacy. The one responsible for that unadulterated sound she had uttered, for the way she had raked her nails—much, much more lightly than she'd wished at the time—and for a host of other thoughts that had so unsettled her as to bring the entirety of their momentum to a dead stop, for fear of what might have happened if they had not.