Chapter 5
Heart and Soul
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or anything related to Teen Titans. Unfortunately.
Raven woke first, however much time later. The entire experience—that is, slipping into sleep from and waking into the same empty void of a world—had begun to take on an almost fantastical quality: as though she never truly woke at all, but instead merely shifted between different dreams.
This time, however, she had awoken to a feeling unrelated to the cold or even to the body still unconscious against her. A formless fullness in her center told her that her powers had returned, but that was not what had drawn her back from the other dreamland. No, instead it was a gentle tugging on her aura.
The muddled, myriad uncertainties of a mind returning to consciousness. Then, clarity. Recognition, worry, and regret. Jinx had awoken.
For a moment, the mustering of certain other emotions seemed to indicate that Jinx would speak, but hesitation set in at the last moment.
"So…" Raven began for her.
Jinx sat up. "Yeah…"
More worry, anxiety, snowballing in the pregnant pause between them.
Raven took a slow, centering breath, and then, compartmentalizing any other feelings she might have had, donned the mantle of practicality to address the elephant directly. "You want to talk about what happened, and we will. But now is not the time. My powers are back, and after a few hours of meditation to draw them out, I should be able to get us home. Then, we'll talk. It's…complicated. For now, just remember: I…didn't push you away."
Jinx seemed to take a few seconds to assimilate the information. Then, she smiled. "No beatin' around the bush with you, is there?"
Raven raised an eyebrow. "Empath." Then, her expression saddened somewhat, in preparation to broach a more difficult subject.
Before Raven could continue, Jinx perked up, but not at their conversation. She listened intently for a moment, then stood up, making it clear through her posture that she had heard something outside. A look down at Raven indicated that, whatever it had been, it hadn't been the wind.
Jinx flexed her fingers on her right hand and grimaced at the distinct lack of pink. "Tch. Got yours back, at least."
"Bad luck?" Raven quipped, retrieving their lights; the lights were enveloped in black before being levitated over, one for each of them, as well as Jinx's stick.
The lights flickered to life, and together, they moved cautiously toward the exit. When the mouth of the cave came into view, illuminated by the lights, they both stopped; Jinx took a step back, while Raven's mouth opened slightly in surprise at the thing shambling toward them by way of stiff, erratic movement on gangly, disproportionate limbs.
Vaguely humanoid in its size and shape, the frightful being exhibited no finer features of any kind, its body enshrouded by dim, white light that seemed to rise from it like smoke, as though the creature itself was not entirely stable but rather in a state of perpetual evaporation and reconstitution. It moved close to the ground, six discernable limbs of unequal measure dragging it along one or two at a time in awkward, disturbing semi-locomotion, and was, for its part, completely silent.
Clearly, Jinx had not heard it as she seemed to have believed. More likely, she had felt it, much the same as Raven; as it drew nearer, the tugging on her aura grew more pronounced, never powerful but ever more prominent.
A horror. Not the Hollywood kind, unconcerned with jump-scares or gore, not as frightful in its appearance as it was in its existence: a real horror, one that assaulted the mind merely to look upon the sheer wrongness of it, that made the eyes water and the hands tremble in the most primal, palpable fear.
"What…is that?" Jinx asked in disgust.
Raven set her jaw, hardening her expression. "You…know how, when you eat a peanut, you eat the inside and throw the rest away?"
Jinx turned warily to her. "Yeah…"
"Replace 'peanut' with 'soul,'" Raven said.
A jolt of fear, then an underlying sympathy. Jinx looked again upon the thing.
"I already told you that my father could alter reality," Raven went on, postulating out loud. "It would seem he changed the rules in this dimension and gave souls form. Either he…consumed them all at once and amused himself by allowing the shells to suffer, or he—" She stopped short as the next series of dots connected in her mind and their repercussions dropped her heart like a stone.
"Or what?" Jinx pressed her, the thing drawing closer.
Raven's eyes widened, still processing all the possible implications. "O-Or he…didn't consume them at all…used them like…batteries…"
Jinx furrowed her brow, confused by Raven's sudden shock and feeling like she'd missed a punchline somewhere. "So, what?"
"So my power comes from him," Raven insisted. "Two pools filled by the same water, and when I defeated him, I only did it by drawing more of it to my side." Her eyes held fast to the creature, its every misshapen, unnatural feature, unable to blink or to look away, captivated by an all new kind of terror. "By using them…just like…just like…" Her voice trailed off in a whisper.
Somewhere in the darkest, most paranoid corner of Raven's psyche, a sinister smile let slip a cruel and gravelly laugh in final, posthumous victory.
Keenly aware of Raven's precarious teetering over the edge of a panic attack, Jinx weighed her options briefly before taking the initiative—and Raven's wrist.
"Don't touch it!" Raven cried.
Empath in tow, Jinx used her walking stick to shove the creature to one side so they could pass. While not completely solid, the creature did move enough for them to get by.
Outside, Jinx halted, considering where best to go for Raven to clear her head and start her meditation.
Then, the ground around them began to radiate a feint glow. Up from the charred, brittle earth emerged a host of otherworldly horrors not dissimilar from the first. Their shapes, sizes, and levels of individual deformity varied greatly, but that they occupied the same tortured existence was unmistakable.
In short order, a small army beset them on all sides, crawling and lurching toward them.
"So, about those powers," Jinx pointed out with urgency.
"I-I can't," Raven declined.
Jinx's head whipped around to her in a flash. "Come again?"
"Think about it," Raven insisted. "We've been here for days and didn't see them. They only appeared when my powers came back. I can feel them pulling on my energy right now. I don't really want to find out what happens when I give them a hardline to my soul."
Swearing under her breath, Jinx latched onto Raven again and took off running in the direction they had walked the day before but with no place specifically in mind.
She knew they needed away, whatever that meant. And until they figured it out, the best they had was to move.
Even as they did, no matter how far or how fast, the ground glowed beneath them and gave rise to the legion of nameless blasphemies that flanked them everywhere they went. Thankfully, their stilted movements were not quick ones, and avoiding them required no special agility or attention.
They ran until the random appearances of the creatures managed to combine in a perfect storm that left them boxed in with their backs to the mountainside. Out of options, and with more of the things congealing from the mountainside itself, the twosome stood surrounded. Jinx more than her partner, they readied to put up whatever meager resistance they could offer.
The air around them crackled. Tiny but unmistakable arcs of electricity sparked nearby, stronger and more frequently over the course of only a few seconds before culminating in an ear-splitting snap and a blue portal.
Jinx grinned, her vigor renewed. "All right, Tin Man!" she praised, grabbing Raven and making a break for it.
Jinx was not wrong; Raven could recognize the energy that comprised the portal, and had no doubt that it would lead them home. The thought, however, triggered another realization. "Wait!"
"Sayonara!" Jinx sneered at the creatures as she passed the finish line, Raven only a moment behind.
A flash of light, and Raven found herself on her hands and knees in Cyborg's workshop, free of Jinx's grasp.
Jinx drew a mighty breath, spun once in place, and let out a satisfied, "Ah!"
Raven said nothing and did not move, head down and eyes on the floor. She pinched her eyes closed, her stomach twisting into a knot as she awaited the inevitable. It crept slowly in the aftermath of Jinx's elation, excitement, and relief at their escape: a strange curiosity stalking its way closer, tail swishing as it readied to pounce.
The portal closed.
Jinx's brow furrowed, there in the undoubtedly heated, windless room. She was still cold.
"Raven!" Starfire flew forward.
Jinx threw her arms up to block the impact as Starfire careened toward her, then lowered them when the Tameranean passed harmlessly through.
"You are…all right?" Starfire asked, stopping short of touching Raven.
"I'm sorry," Raven said.
Robin moved forward next, offering his hand to Raven. Jinx flinched but froze, his arm sticking through her.
Shock.
"Are you okay?" Robin asked Raven. "After we realized you teleported, it took Cyborg a few days to track your energy signature and rig up a machine to bring you back."
"Easier when ya stay in the same dimension," Cyborg added kindly.
"Where's Jinx?" Robin asked. "Was she with you? Did she make it?"
Dread, like a sinking stone.
Heart racing, Jinx lowered slowly onto her knees, arms held tightly around herself, every muscle constricting as though in an effort to hold her body together in the face of the storm of thoughts howling inside her: was she dead? Had she died? Was this what it felt like? Any moment, would she disappear? What happened next? Did anything happen?
And then: What if nothing happened? What if she disappeared and that was just…the end?
Horror.
"I…told you the hex field created a tether, because I reached out to you," Raven explained. "That's true, but…it's more than that."
Panic.
Raven struggled to set aside the woman's churning, toxic tide of emotions. "It…didn't tether your body," she went on, confusion overtaking the rest of their audience as they struggled to follow the strange monologue. "It tethered your soul. And because of…what I am…it bound it to me. The farther you were, the colder you felt, until you reached the limit and… This dimension is different. Souls…aren't corporeal here."
Cyborg caught on first. "Oh, man…"
And then Beast Boy. "Dude…"
Starfire clasped a hand over her mouth with a stifled gasp.
"She's…here?" Robin asked. "Where?"
Raven's only response came in the form of an agitated glare, indicating Jinx's position.
When Robin realized, his hand snapped back like he'd touched a hot stove, eyes wide under his mask.
Jinx fought the urge to cry, doubling over as she struggled in vein to come to terms. Her whole stupid life, that stupid giggly little girl, all of it leading to what? To this?
Frustration.
Raven grimaced, keenly aware of every ounce of pressure building inside the woman as she steeled her mind so as not to be blown away by the hurricane of emotion barreling through her.
A breeze kicked up in the lab, causing the others to brace for they didn't know what.
So, what? Everything she'd done, how far she'd come… This was it? This was how it ended?
Anger.
Raven tried to interject. "Jinx—"
The breeze picked up into a blustery wind.
"Raven?" Robin asked, confirming whether he should be worried.
Figuring out her powers, figuring out her life, figuring out herself, it was all over? Just like that?
A single droplet of rage fell into Jinx's emotional storm, catalyzing the recipe in an instant: Anguish.
A gale-force gust preempted any response from the empath, pinning Beast Boy to the wall and forcing the others to fight to stay standing against the miniature tornado brewing in the room. Lab equipment of insufficient weight was blown to the perimeter, Raven erecting a small barrier to shield herself.
"Raven!" Robin called out. "How do we—" He grunted when another gust knocked him back, caught by Starfire who helped keep him upright.
"You need to listen!" Raven shouted, getting to her feet. "I can fix this!"
Without eyes that belied the turmoil inside, Jinx spared her a look, and with a sobering voice replied, "I know you're new at…this, or whatever." She gestured between them. "But…little advice? Don't lead a girl on."
"I'm not!" Raven claimed adamantly, then lost some conviction. "I…didn't. I said it was complicated. I…made a mistake, got curious, lost control…"
The wind eased up a bit.
A spark of present concern entered Jinx's expression, and she turned her attention to Raven in earnest. "Was it? A mistake?"
Raven turned her eyes downcast, ashamed. "Your soul is bound to me. The walking stick, the firewood…everything else…no matter what I said, you couldn't say no. More than that, you wouldn't have wanted to. Even now: I told you to listen. I wanted you to calm down, and you are—reacting to my will and believing it's yours. I…never meant to, but I took advantage, and…I'm sorry…"
The wind died down almost completely.
"You didn't," Jinx assured her.
"You don't know that," Raven argued. "You can't. That's the whole point."
"No, but…all that stuff I said? About when…" Jinx trailed off, unable to say the words I was alive. "It wasn't a lie. Didja think about me like that before I brought it up?"
"No," Raven admitted, realizing after exactly what that meant.
"Then maybe ya made me an offer I couldn't refuse, but…I wouldn't have wanted to. Too bad, huh?" Jinx put on a sad smile.
"I said I can fix this," Raven told her.
Hope, the tiniest of candles. "How?"
"Like I said: your soul is bound to me. I can do what I want with it," Raven said. "The capsule meant to preserve your body in the event of catastrophic failure did exactly that, and draws its power directly from your energy. When I found you, I disconnected you from everything but the life support. There isn't anything wrong with your body," she insisted, adding afterward, "Well, except the obvious."
More hope.
"While I might not be able to go back there, the others can use Cyborg's machine to retrieve your body. And because I have dominion over your soul, I should be able to put it back. Think of it as…an extended out-of-body experience."
Tentative optimism, but tempered by trust.
Raven breathed an internal sigh of relief. "I…didn't know what sort of effect it would have on you, if I told you," she explained in defense of herself. "And we didn't have a way to transport your body anyway, so I thought… I…did mean to tell you, before we came back."
A few seconds ticked by in silence, no one else in the room willing to speak until Raven gave the all-clear.
"So…what now?" Jinx asked.
"Now, I start by answering some questions," Raven decided, opening the floor to the group.
Glancing between the others, Beast Boy slowly raised his hand. "What?" he asked, just…in general, about everything that had just happened.
Over the next half hour or so, Raven relayed the events surrounding Jinx and herself over the last few days, leaving the more personal points to implication rather than detail. For their part, the others recounted the turning over of Professor Chang and the disposal of his research. Then Cyborg explained how they had managed to track down the pair: figuring out that Raven had teleported had been the easy part, but to find out where she'd gone, they had resorted to taking a play from one of her spell books and blending it into Cyborg's machine in a little magitech of their own.
"After the first couple days, I was startin' to think maybe it didn't work," Cyborg admitted. "But if your powers were outta commission, that explains why it couldn't pinpoint your location."
"I'm impressed you managed to get the spell to work at all," Raven said.
Cyborg shrugged. "Nothin' too complicated. When your family needs ya, ya do what ya gotta do."
Raven smiled. "Thank you. All of you."
"We're just glad to have you back," Robin told her.
"And friend Jinx, as well," Starfire added.
"Feel the love," Jinx quipped, fully aware that no one but Raven could hear her.
"So…you made out?" Beast Boy asked.
The group turned to him, unimpressed.
"What?" he complained. "It's Raven!"
"I just told you that I removed Jinx's soul from her body before teleporting us to my father's home dimension where we were accosted by the husks of its former inhabitants, and that's your point of clarification?" Raven asked.
Beast Boy looked around, unsure how to answer, before venturing a guess. "Yes…?"
Starfire beamed. "We are most happy for both of you."
"Thank you. But I think exploring the particulars of any sort of relationship would be better saved for when I don't claim ownership over her immortal soul."
"Agreed," Robin said, back to business-mode. "On that point, what's our plan?"
Cyborg scratched the back of his head. "It's…gonna take me a while to get this thing up and runnin' again. Not to mention gettin' it to function without Raven's powers actin' like a beacon. It's doable," he promised. "But it's…gonna take some time."
"How much time?" Robin asked.
"Days? Weeks?" Cyborg guessed. "Hard to say. Won't really know until I get in there and start workin'."
"In the meantime, I can create paper talismans to help Jinx communicate," Raven said.
"Right here…" Jinx pointed out, scrunching her lips.
"Sorry," Raven apologized.
"Couldn't she just…blow stuff around, like she did before?" Beast Boy asked.
Raven shook her head. "That wasn't intentional. That was because her soul was in turmoil. Theoretically, if she had enough time, she might be able to develop enough control to interact with the physical world, but until then, paper talismans are easier. I'll make them in sets of three. Each one will have a bell, and we'll put a set in each room. One for 'yes,' one for, 'no,' and one just to let people know you're there. You'll be able to move them just by passing through them."
"Sounds good," Robin agreed. "Are there any other questions?"
Starfire raised her hand. "I wish to ask the location of friend Jinx."
"Right now?" Raven asked.
"Yes," Starfire affirmed.
Not quite sure of Starfire's point, Raven nonetheless indicated the spot where Jinx was standing.
Starfire floated over and, although her aim was a little off, did her best to put her arms around the disembodied Jinx. "We truly are relieved that you are safe, even if your present condition is less than desirable. We welcome you as our guest, and we shall do everything we can to assist you in your time of need."
Jinx looked to Raven, then to Starfire, not that it mattered. "Uh…thanks?"
"She says thank you," Raven relayed.
Smiling happily, Starfire retreated beside Robin.
"Okay," the boy wonder concluded. "I think that's everything. In light of your…condition…I'm exempting you from patrols and missions until this is resolved," he told Raven, then smirked. "Remember: you're living for two, now."
"Ha-ha," Raven deadpanned. Still, she couldn't disagree. Trying to do either of those things with another person's soul on a leash would've been cumbersome, risky, and dangerously irresponsible. If Robin hadn't volunteered the reprieve, she had intended to ask for it.
The others, save Cyborg, filed out while Beast Boy invited them to an honorary screening of Ghost.
Raven turned her attention to Jinx. "Now that my powers are back, it shouldn't be hard to extend your range to the rest of the island."
"Yes, mom," Jinx mocked.
"Don't push it. I need a shower. You're welcome to roam until I get your talismans in place. Just…try not to spy on people." Raven walked out.
Jinx followed, hands clasped innocently behind her back. "Right. And when ya say people, naturally, ya mean…"
"I mean I can sense where you are at all times," Raven clarified.
Jinx pouted. "You're no fun. I'm dead! Can't I at least get some gossip out of it?"
After they left, Cyborg stood alone in his workshop and paused in his work. He shook his head with a sigh at seeing Raven talking to herself. "That is gonna take some gettin' used to."
Later, Raven emerged from her bathroom clean, clothed, and refreshed in a billow of steam. She found Jinx sitting on the edge of her bed and sat beside her.
"How are you doing? Really," Raven asked after a moment.
Jinx smirked. "What happened to bein' an empath?"
"I could guess," Raven acknowledged. "But I would rather hear it from you."
Jinx shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, I don't even know the rules."
"Can I help?" Raven offered.
Jinx considered, then sighed. "Like, okay. When ya went to get your shower, I'm standin' here, and I'm about to sit down on your bed, and then I think, 'Does that work? Can I sit on it?' And then in the middle of tryin' to figure that out, I realize I'm standin' on the floor. People go through me, but I can stand on the floor. So can I sit on the bed? You're in there gettin' a shower when all I want is the world's hottest bubble bath, and here I am havin' a friggin' existential crisis over whether I can sit on the bed!"
Raven mulled over the story, letting Jinx decompress from having told it.
"Finally I just said, 'Screw it,' and sat down," Jinx finished.
"It's…complicated."
"I'm gettin' the sense that a lotta stuff is, when it comes to you," Jinx said.
Raven gave a slow nod. "It is. And so is this. Your ability to interact with the world, right now, is… You can walk on the floor because you know you can. You don't believe it. You expect it—intrinsically. The bed is the same. You could pass through it if you wanted, or you could sit on it like you are, depending on what you expect when you interact with it. It's like a contest, and inanimate objects automatically forfeit because they have no will, no expectation. Other people can't see you, never know exactly where you are, and so aren't capable of the level of certainty necessary in their expectation to make interacting with you possible. Whether they want to or not, it comes down to a contest of wills. Both sides need to be on the same page for it to work, and they can't be, so it won't."
"Great," Jinx flopped back onto the bed. "So that whole…your will is my will, thing…is that why I'm not still freakin' out?"
"Maybe," Raven said. "It's…impossible to tell, really."
"So…what about you and me?" Jinx asked. "I mean, I told ya what I think. What do you think?"
"I don't know," Raven admitted.
"Okay, new question," Jinx decided. "Whaddaya want? Like, if I wasn't under I-own-your-soul-mind-control."
Raven allowed herself some time to construct her response. Normally, she would have waived off the issue by repeating her answer to Jinx's previous question. But considering everything, she felt Jinx deserved something more substantial. In the end, she decided on stream-of-consciousness honesty. "I think that, while I allowed my curiosity too much leeway in an inappropriate situation, the fact that I harbored curiosity at all, much less enough of it for it to go that overboard, makes exploring those feelings further worthwhile. That is, assuming you still feel the same when you get your body back."
"I will." Jinx wasted no time in her response and made no attempt to conceal her enthusiasm at the prospect.
Raven failed to hold back a smile. "But, until then, I would be uncomfortable going…probably even as far as we have."
Jinx shrewdly picked apart Raven's precise meaning. "So, what're we talkin', here? Separate beds? Cuddles but no kisses? Kisses but no makin' out?"
Raven contained a chuckle. "Probably the second one. Closeness is fine, especially since you'll still feel colder the farther away you are."
"I can deal with that. Not an A, but not a C. Solid B+," Jinx said with a nod. Her jovial attitude slipped some, allowing a bit of worry to get through. "So, uh…about you fixin' this… On a scale of one to ten…"
"I'll fix it," Raven said in her most reassuring tone—whether she believed it herself or not.