Chapter Five: A Haunting of her Past

"It's an outrage!"

"Blasphemy!"

"The Mother has commanded it!"

"She isn't one of us!"

"She wasn't born like us!"

"She was taught by The Mother!"

"Why should we follow her?"

The shouting and arguing was so confusing. I hated it. Why in the name of Mothers would they be fight about it now? Mother said this would happen she gave them all plenty of time to complain earlier.

As I sat in the attic, away from all the yelling there was a small plink on the one window. I crawled carefully, wary of the loud voices bellow. The Rokakas Five would seriously have a fit if they knew I was listening to them. It wasn't bad enough that they locked me up here to begin with; they even thought they knocked me unconscious. Idiotic old fools. So caught up in how things 'use to be' they won't even let me try to be The Mother.

Mother would have set them straight.

I peered out the window and saw an imitating set of full orange eyes. Two black slits widened slightly when I smirked it them. Arsenal.

"Bout time." I mouthed at him. The man was from the Second Section. Tall and menacing, the Second imbed their young to be strong and fierce. Males and Females were taught nothing but the art of killing and combat. Arsenal was also one of my dearest teammates. We grew up in our clan together. He had been here only a year before me and never missed a chance to teach me everything he could.

All the things my Mother couldn't anyway. The kinds of things all children should learn.

The man grinned. He slipped a tool into his hand and began to work on the steel bars of the window. It was one of his inventions. It was quiet and quick, absolutely beautiful.

When the bars were gone the tool disappeared and another tool took its place: a glass melter. I slithered through the hole he made and when my bare feet touched the roof, Arsenal began reattaching the bars. Dark red skin covered in thick scales reflected the two moons' light. Arsenal's six foot five inches hunched awkwardly as he worked. A sharp face with sharp angles and high cheekbones frowned in concentration. His clothing was torn and there were different colors splotched haphazardly across it. I recognize two: one was Arsenal's blood; the other was a Deffer's blood. It wasn't hard to guess what the other stains were.

I turned to watch our surroundings as he worked.

The barren House of Five gave the feeling of being abandoned and wretched. Inside, it looked like any other aristocrats mansion. The front yard supported no greenery however; and the two old Blackwood Trees were always bare, their limbs stretched towards the plum sky with desperate need I didn't understand. I each time I was brought to the House of Five I though the Blackwoods were asking the sky to retch them from their roots and take them away from this inhospitable place.

"What took you so long?" I muttered under my breath, what with Arsenal's delicate hearing and all.

"Sorry Bing, I had to get this." He whipped out my wrist blades. "I knew you'd have a rightful fit if I forgot them." And the man smiled at me.

Katines don't smile often. With all their sharp teeth everyone assumes they're baring their fangs in warning. But I was sure Arsenal would never look at me like prey. He told me once, that one day when I became The Mother he would be afraid of me.

I took my favorite weapons and caressed the metal before I strapped them to my wrist holsters. Such a small comfort only an inanimate object could bring me settled into my stomach. My body had been so tense since the Rokakas Five had captured me from the Celebration of Mother's Death. As I shook my arms out, I strained my ears to the nasty yelling still ensuing inside.

"She should know her place."

"We shouldn't have allowed The Mother her whims."

"Who else could lead us? She knows everything The Mother knew!"

"There is no time to train another!"

"She is a child! We can't kill her!"

That last one had Arsenal whip is head at me. I shrugged. I didn't know that had been an option. But I couldn't show fear now. I was The Mother now.

"No fear, my dearest. No panic. Always be clam and collected. They will look to you for strength, my dearest."

"Let's move Bing." Arsenal grabbed my hand then let me go just as quickly. I couldn't let it bother me though. "No panic." I also hadn't told him to stop calling me by my nickname. 'Bing' was a term from the Second; it meant trouble.

"Where? I can't run from the clan now Arsenal."

"I know." I jumped from the roof on the side of the house where no widows were. He turned to watch me land gracefully before he took of into the dark. And without any hesitation I followed him.

"Then where are you taking me?"

"After the Five took you away, the clan began to grow restless. They began to fight. I couldn't stop much of it." I knew what that meant: It isn't my place to stop riots.

"So you're taking me back to the Celebration?"

"No, half of the clan wants you to be The Mother. They left most of the other half alive. But once the Five hear of what has happen, and you know they'll only hear one side of the story, then we'll be hunted."

I nodded. "So, where is my clan?"

Arsenal picked up his pace and I stayed with him easily. "Near the boarder. We are prepared to leave."

I bit my tongue before I ask where. I need to be calm. "They will look to you for strength, my dearest." My clan would want a battle plan. I quietly thought about our options. We couldn't stay in the Third Section. The Forth and Sixth were closest, but they wouldn't take us in. Both were strong in the belief of You and Yours. I was responsible for my clan now.

The First and Second would simply murder us once they got word that my clan killed their fellow Rokakas. It doesn't matter if the others had attacked first; there were no laws that said we could not attack one another. The Greatest Rule was to never kill fellow Rokakas. My clan had done the killing, we were the villains now.

My brain was starting to grow frantic. The Fifth Section was our last hope. There was no other option. I couldn't run to the outer limits of the Seventh Section. The Fifth Clan wouldn't turn us away. They wouldn't slaughter us with the first word. They were unstable and kept to themselves.

Fresca, The Fifth's Mother, was insane and thought the whole galaxy wanted her dead or to steal her beautiful hair. She truly believed the First's Leader was in love with her and wanted to capture her so she could become his concubine. Not the most stable ship ever. However, she was deadly in her defenses. No government could infiltrate the Fifth Section. Fresca was a mad genius.

She was also my Mother's blood fellow. They grew up in the third together, but when Fresca's mind began to fray Mother sent her to the Mother of the Fifth and begged for the Fifth's protection on her blood fellow. How Fresca became The Mother of the Fifth was a mystery it was said, that most of the Fifth Clan couldn't explain.

Fresca knew I was my Mother's prodigy. If her mind hadn't completely disintegrated maybe she would help us.

When Arsenal and I reached the Docks my clan cheered. I was greeted with shouts of glee and congratulations, but I heard the relief in their cries. They did what they did without any proof that I would even come back to them. They condemned their lives with only the certainty in their hearts that I was their true Mother and nothing else. I smothered the fuzzy feeling in my gut.

I moved with sturdy grace as I past Arsenal and boarded the Tracktor, a large carrier that could last for several days without a fuel stop and plenty of room for my clan. Without even signaling a command the others boarded the ship; not a one looked back.

The Fifth Section was also the Wild Section and Fresca's red planet was my home for a year before things went bad, about as bad as I had ever seen them.

Fresca was the spitting image of my mother and I truly trusted her as such. She wore her grey-blue hair long-down to her waist- and her soft ice blue eyes always looked at me with such admiration. It was difficult not to trust her. She had never taken a girl child from her clan for training, as was tradition for Rokakas Mothers. They were never taken from outside the race. Prodigies were always born as a Rokakas.

My Mother had been ahead of her time with the idea of training a freshling. She had thought that because I was a freshling I was untainted, ready to be molded the way she saw fit. I saw no error in her thinking; neither did Fresca.

She ended up training me for her own clan, something no Mother had ever done; taking the prodigy of another Mother was completely unheard of. But Fresca was a brilliant and crazy woman. I already knew all my Mother had; The Wild Mother saw it as a time-saver to use me as her prodigy. And the best of it all was that her clan agreed to the act without any mutiny.

"Always be calm, Me Star. Ne'er show 'em yer terror. Ev'n when the fire of Oden is upon ya, kick the Dratsab in the arse!"

"I understand."

"Me Star, I've said to be less rigid. You'll grow old before ye know it! Too long a woman is rigid and tight, too long she be unfit for a man!"

Yes, Fresca favored me. She was my Mother and she taught me to be fearless and powerful. Although my first Mother taught me the same guidelines, Fresca taught me to be a person all my own while being a Mother at the same time. I didn't have to be Fresca, I could be Maeve and still be as great as a Mother.

When the Rokakas came for me a year after I lived in the Wild Section, Fresca died. So did Arsenal. So did my first clan. So did my new clan. So did my murdering clan members. All but one. A Trad, sniveling at me feet, begging for his life. So unbefitting for my clan. He disgusted me. But his words were worst. The Sections had allowed the Rokakas clans to genocide Me and Mine. They figured that if we could kill each other off, then they would get away without a mark to their record. The Sections had encouraged the proud people of the Rokakas to hunt me down and kill Me and Mine.

With a lock of my silver hair I sent the Trad on his miserable way to the First Section to tell them of the Great Rokakas battle. He was to tell them that we were all dead. That I was dead.

I knew I was sending him to his own death march when I let him go that night under the cracked moon.

And then I made a break for the only clue to my old life. Azarath. When I learned that I was not born as a Rokakas my Mother had told me I was from Azrath. A beautiful, peaceful planet in the Third Section, it was my only hope to escape my old life.

The wanted posters in the Sixth Section told me that I was a fool to have thought I was safe. I had been charged with too many crimes. I was charged with all the crimes of my people. From that coup in the Second to the high quality bank robberies in the First to the assassinations in the Forth, I wasn't safe. Never safe.

Then that woman tells me suddenly I have a little sister and she is in grave danger and that her home was going to become the playground of the frightening Trigon! I could never catch a break! The universe- Hell! Every universe- was out to get me. Maybe to collect the reward money?

I wasn't a Mother long enough to actually do any kind of 'crime.'

I wasn't a Mother long enough to even prove I was capable of any 'crime.'

So in my time of fear and desolation I turned to the only hope I had. The one connection to the word 'family.' Raven was all I had to hang on to sanity and hope to be apart of society. Without her… without Raven, I was nothing again. Nothing but a reward.

TheNewAbomination.

She was a misguided ghost. Traveling endlessly in fear and isolation and pain. This woman whose eyes wielded her shadows as a shield to kept herself safe from the world. Any world; every world. When the galaxy had been her enemy she had to turn into something she could never leave dormant again. An animal released from its cage never wants to go back inside willingly. It isn't its nature.

I could almost understand her. She never had a choice. Raven's mother had sold her to save her daughter from a hellish kind of future. Her clan leader, her master, taught her student to be nothing but the sharpest of all the swords. That her student needed to watch her back instead of how to share her toys. Then in the moment to prove herself, her role as a leader was jeopardized by some old fools' notion that she was different; something she could not change. As if being born in Azarath made her a mutant, she grew up with the idea she would forever be alone. Forever to do what she was told. Forever to follow the old fools. Forever to live suffocated.

But what could I say to her? Raven looked horrified, Starfire could've been on the verge of tears or beating the woman to a pulp, Beast Boy might end up sick, and Cyborg was shaking his head in confusion as he stared at me, his leader. None of them were ready for that kind of story. She had glazed the details during the war. She spouted facts and numbers but no emotions. What could she have felt when she watched her second master die or when she saw her best friend fall in combat? What had she felt when she sent the second to the last Rokakas off to the First?

And what was I suppose to do now? Starfire had set negotiation terms and we, the Titans, had agreed to them. The band on my wrist is proof of my consent. She was a criminal- through and through. The things she had been charged with, the ones she shared were heavy misdeeds. They were the kind of transgressions that 'community service' could not save her from. Was this deviant woman seeking redemption? Did she really want to even be saved from her old life? It sounded like she did. The self-loathing was so thick in her words. It was frightening how someone could hate themselves so much and still be alive. What did she have now? What was she living for?

I could almost understand that kind of self-loathing. What other options did she have? I had killed people, when the situation had called for it. And the situation had called for it several times. His laugh resounded in my head and I gritted my teeth. I understood that line. The line that defined good and evil. The line that was so easy to cross; and I had crossed it. On more than one occasion the leader of the Teen Titans had crossed that line. And it had been such an easy thing to do. Not once did I not regret the wrong choices in my life. There were excuses, sure. But aren't excuse merely a way to avoid the truth?

I stared at Maeve. She looked so dejected. Arms wrapped around her midsection, head hung low, disheveled hair hid her face; she was the picture of dejection. How could I hate her? How could I, above all the Titans, hate her? Despise her? Scorn her? She was so fragile right now as she stood surrounded by heroes. Anything I said right now could break her. Am I to be her executioner? And with Cyborg staring at me like that, he expected me to say something. Something that could what? Something to condemn her? Something to save her? Something-what Cyborg?

Finally, she moved. Her sliver hair shifted away from her face, her posture straightened, her eyes grew hard; she was steeling herself against whatever I was going to say to her. Or whatever Raven said to her. The sisters locked eyes and I wondered if they could speak telepathically, like Raven and I. The silence was hard and uneasy. I needed to say something. I am no executioner, but I am the leader of this team. It is my duty to be whatever this woman needed me to be right now. In this moment I would have to meet that line once again, I had to show this woman the same line. And then, I would have to become her judge or her teammate.

"Maeve?" She tilted her head in my direction but her eyes stayed on Raven's. "Maeve." I called more persistently and she looked at me. I took a deep breathe to stall for a moment longer. "What you have said… Your past… The things you lived through…" I stopped to steady myself again. Christ, this was hard. "Do you regret your old life?" I paused.

Starfire gasped. "Robin, you cannot possibly be thinking-"

"Maeve." I said to shut Star up. I swear, it's difficult to think when she interrupts me. It's not like this whole leader-thing is easy or anything. "Do you regret all of your past?"

The woman's eyes grew impossibly large as she comprehended what I was asking her. To her credit she waited a moment. She thought about her life and thought hard.

"No." She finally said. "I do not regret all of it, there where some moments that I may always think fondly of. But my misdeeds, the things that hurt my heart to think about, I do regret it." Her eyes shimmered for a moment. But she didn't cry.

I nodded and waited for a few seconds. "You are under our protection because you can help us defeat Trigon. You are to finish your community service. You are to try and do nothing but good so long as you live on this planet." I wanted to flinch as I watched her face hide every last bit of emotion.

"I understand your terms, Robin."

"Then Maeve, starting today, I want to dub you a Titan Representative." I didn't pause for the others to stop me. "In your last life you didn't have a choice. Here, you will have nothing but choices. You could do all the things I told you to do, or you could walk away right now."

The woman faced my glare head on as she gave her answer. "I will stay and accept your offering, Robin" Then I watched her whole body give the slightest relaxation, as if a great weight disappeared from her. And her mouth quirked slightly at the corners, like she was thinking about smiling but decided against it at the last moment.

She couldn't hide the smile in her violet eyes though.

I gave her a nod. "Also," she quirked an eyebrow, "I am the leader here. You will also treat me as such. Do you understand?"

A moment past as the cold wind blew around us until Maeve smirked. "Finally a challenge!" And this time the smile was free to show itself.