Echoes
by Em

"Take me to a place so holy / That I can wash this from my mind/The memory of choosing not to fight"
- Sarah Mclachlan, "Answer"

A/N: About #2 – again, here I am messing with the Titan mythology, specifically Raven's Azarath. The fact that Azar gave Raven rings is from the comic books, and if you look at pictures of Comic!Raven you will see her with rings, only I think they're gold.

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Destinies
(02: Rings)

She wore naught but two pieces of jewelry and both were rings.

Terra had once asked her about her rings and Raven had been vague as usual. She had told her nothing. Which, in retrospect, had been a good thing.

Malchior had asked her about the rings as well. From him, the query had seemed like a natural question, an act of possession and protectiveness. He had wanted to know everything about her then and like a fool, she had thought it was because of some reason other than that he was using every piece of information about her to better cajole and control her.

She had told him everything he wanted to know. Everything, but about the rings. For some reason, the details that resulted with her wearing the etched platinum circlets around each of her index fingers was a memory too frail to expose to even his scrutiny.

"You don't have to tell me."

The deep, expressive voice broke into her memories and brought her jarringly into the present. She blinked up at him as if he had suddenly appeared before her as if through magic, which she knew he hadn't.

Catching something unexpected in her eyes, fearing he had overstepped his bounds, he tried valiantly to backpeddle, "Nevermind, it's a stupid question anyway, forget I even asked..."

She could do just that, she knew. Of everyone else she had avoided telling the story to, he was the one person who would understand and not judge her silence.

From some place inside her she had rarely explored, the words came as if they had been waiting patiently there for someone to ask the right question: "These rings are all that is left of the Priestess Azar."

Her eyes were fixed on the worn, familiar grooves of the metal that never felt cold and grew warm and comforting during moments of greatest strife. She didn't have to look up at him to know he was waiting for her to continue, if she would continue. "They contain what's left of her essence."

"I've seen them glow," Robin's voice came soft and unobtrusive. His words finally brought her eyes up to meet his. "When you battle," he offered her a wry grin, "mostly when you're really pissed off or in trouble, they give off this warm glow and I've often wondered whether or not they burn you."

"They..." she hesitated. She had never tried to explain to anyone what the rings did for her mostly because she could not bear to think on it at all. "...aid me, help me focus and...protect me, as well." She lowered her gaze to the rings and the tip of her right finger traced the symbols on the left ring. "They never burn me."

"She must have been an amazing woman, this Azar," Robin voiced.

Raven nodded, "She was," she confirmed. There was silence for some time and she was loathe to continue on to the next part of the story, but now that she had started telling someone, she couldn't seem not to. "On Azarath these rings..." she spread her hands on the table before her and thought how strange it was that looking at her hands was like looking at the hands of a stranger. "...are the symbol of the High Priestess," she finished, no emotion whatsoever to her voice.

"She was training you to take her place?" Robin asked.

Raven exhaled, "It would appear so."

"Would you have accepted?"

Raven wasn't surprised that Robin had managed to hit right on target to what had always bothered her about the rings. "I don't know that I would've had a choice," she admitted.

"Because you would have been forced to take her place, you mean?" he assumed.

"Because I might've been killed before I could," she answered.