A big thank you to my reviewers! Your support makes writing this story so much more enjoyable.
Disclaimer:
I wish I owned the Titans.
But the Titans belong to me just as much as the entire earth can belong to one individual.
My Iconic Birthday
Chapter 3
They were standing on the fringe of Jump City. A dusty wind floated through Stella's hair and the afternoon sun baked their skin. Raven drew up the hood of her sweatshirt to protect herself from the light, but the stifling heat still seeped into her fevered body.
Both girls were jittery. Raven, because she felt ill and confused, and Stella because she was unsure as the why the world hadn't ended yet.
Stella led Raven up to a beaten down motel. The crusty tiled walls were covered in grime. Dirty old cars and trucks were parked in the small parking lot. The roof was poorly patched. Raven could smell the dank interior from the paved lot and hear the muffled moans of lovemaking from somewhere nearby. She grit her teeth and followed Stella to one of the doors, the ecstasy from two doors down driving into her skull.
Stella inserted a key into the keyhole of the damp, off-white door. It swung open, revealing a cluttered interior.
"I wanted to show you where I live."
Raven stepped into the dark room. A light flickered on and Raven turned to see her friend standing by the wall, hand hovering over the light switch. She observed a painting taped next to Stella's head: a dove sitting on a willow branch. Her eyes drifted to the rest of the room. The double bed was unmade, an intricate orange quilt tossed to the floor closest the door. The TV was unplugged, replaced by a microwave that seemed to have been scavenged from a dumpster. In front of it sat a mug of water with a thermometer dipped inside. She heard Stella's soft breathing and smelt the damp air from the bathroom. Her hair stood on end as a deep moan sounded from another room, piercing into her head.
"You don't have a home?"
Stella scrunched up her shoulders and stared off at the wall. "It's as close to a home as I can afford."
The rhythmic creaking grew louder.
"How did you end up here?" Raven asked. She drew her hands to her face and rubbed it tiredly. The headache gnawed deeper into her skull.
"I, uh…" Stella avoided looking at Raven. "I remember wanting to see my birth parents, and stealing one of your spell books the monks were teaching you to read…"
Oh god, she didn't.
"…and pronouncing the words wrong. I ended up here."
Raven assumed that by 'here' she meant Earth as a whole. Not Jump City. She heard another moan and clenched her teeth.
"Where are your parents?" she mumbled.
"Dead."
The sounds intensified and Raven rubbed her temples, trying to ignore it. Each creak, moan, or otherwise sign of lovemaking drove the headache one inch closer to forcing Raven into insanity.
"And you're not in a foster home because…"
Stella sighed, leaned against the wall and bit her lip. "I've already gone through three mothers. I couldn't stand the prospect of another one."
Creak.
"I hardly consider that as an excuse."
Moan.
"Well excuse me for not being emo and perfectly intelligent."
Groan.
"I am not emo. That implies emotion of some form."
"Don't deny you have emotions just because you don't show them."
Creak, groan. Thump. Thump.
"My emotions don't excuse your stupidity."
Thump.
"Screw my stupidity! It's over now." Stella was glaring now.
Raven clenched her eyes.
"You could have been normal!"
Raven's eyes snapped open at that, realizing what she had just said. Stella froze for a moment, hands clenched on her thighs in tight balls. A surge of anger rushed at Raven and she involuntarily stepped back. Stella's face contorted as she drew her lips into a sneer. Her eyes flickered, reflecting the light from her ceiling fan.
"You call this normal?" she said. She sidestepped a pile of laundry and drew a long knife from on top of a long, low dresser. It glinted as she raised it into the air next to her face.
"Stella-" Raven stepped forward, an attempt to stop whatever was about to happen.
Stella screamed, backing closer to the wall. "This is not normal," she hissed. Raven made to grab the knife but Stella pulled it away. "Get away!"
In one swift motion she placed the palm of her left hand onto the dresser and drove the knife into its core. Raven flinched as the squelching and cracking bone broke through her flesh. She closed her eyes again, feeling a new wave a nausea wash through her.
"Stella, calm down."
Stella was still gripping the knife with a steel fist. Her hand was trembling as she uttered in a low voice, "That should have hurt me." She took a shuddering breath. "But it didn't because…" She let go of the knife, shuddering. "I'm not normal," she whispered, and dropped to her knees.
Raven vaulted forward, unpinning the knife before the force of Stella's fall could tear her hand in two. She grabbed the bleeding hand and tried to heal it, but she couldn't concentrate due to the moaning and thumping from the other room.
"I can fix it," she said.
Stella looked up then and Raven imagined the young girl she'd seen in the park, clutching her doll with bloodstained fists.
"Let's just get out of here."
Stella swallowed, looking at the bloody knife on the floor.
"There's always that movie."
x-x-x
It was eleven o'clock at night. Garfield strolled down Bank Street with a happy smile. All three of his study group partners had shown up for the movie, and he'd enjoyed it thoroughly.
"Wasn't that great?" Starfire and Stella agreed with him. "Raven? You can't tell me that wasn't awesome."
Raven looked paler than usual in the moonlight. Her eyes peered out at him from behind a navy blue sweatshirt hood, arms drawn tightly around her body as if to ward off winter chills. She huffed. "If you say so."
"You liked it."
Raven rolled her eyes.
It had been a weird day, Garfield decided. He'd had a weird dream last night. He'd been standing on a cliff, looking down at a fast flowing river. His eyes adjusted to observe a small orange life-raft, bobbing in the waves. Despite the water rushing past on either side, it didn't seem to be moving in any direction but up, and down. Inside were three girls, huddled in a bundle. One had red hair, one had brown hair, and one had purple hair, which was weirdest of all.
As he dove to try and rescue them, a bright light flashed from the bottom, a hole puncturing it in some strange hieroglyph. It sunk in the roaring current and he felt a scream erupt from his throat. He woke up.
His foster parents had been irritated all day, and he wondered if they had had bad dreams as well. He looked at the girls standing with him.
Starfire's hair was the exact same shade he remembered seeing in his dream, and as he looked closer at Stella's hair, he was able to identify darker, brown roots. Raven, on the other hand, had a short crop of deep black hair, not purple like in his dream. Unless…
"Raven, is that your natural hair colour?"
She snapped to attention, stopping the sway of her feet so that she was standing a full foot behind Garfield. Her eyes narrowed, brow furrowed. "Why would you ask something like-"
Her question was cut off by a large man in a metal suit tackling her into an alley. Raven made a choking noise as his stone-grey fist gripped her neck, pinning her to a brick wall.
"Hey!" Garfield shouted. The man turned, a single eye peering out of the orange half of his mask. The green teenager had time to register the same burning symbol from his dream before he morphed into a bear and charged.
The masked man unclenched his fist, letting Raven crumple to the ground where she gasped for breath. He turned to the charging bear and took a stance. Garfield continued to run at him. When it looked like he'd be crushed under massive trampling claws, the man dove, grabbing a fist-full of green fur, and vaulted over Garfield's shoulder to land on the other side of the alley.
Stella, who had stumbled in to see the commotion, found herself standing next to the strange man. Her eyes widened and she tried to bolt out the exit, but the man clothes-lined her. She tumbled to the ground with a cry and scrambled backwards. The man bent to pick her up before a blast of green energy sent him sprawling back into the ally. "You will not harm my friends!" Starfire shouted. She stood at the edge of the street, her hands and eyes glowing fluorescent green in the dim light. As she fired up another surge of power, something dropped from the sky and smashed the strange man's head with a bo staff.
It was a boy who appeared to be around the age of sixteen or seventeen. His black hair stood up in obviously gelled spikes and though his eyes were masked in a strange misty material, Garfield imagined he could see an intense fire and determination eating at his soul. His yellow, green, and red uniform told the occupants of the ally that he was none other than Robin, boy wonder.
"Wow," Garfield said.
The strange man took the still silence as an opportunity to dodge a swing from Robin's bo staff, slide under Garfield's arm, and grab a recovering Raven around the waist. Raven swore, and attempted to pull away, but she froze as a burning symbol appeared on her forehead to match the man's own. Her breath-rate increased, but the man merely slung her over his shoulder as if she was his own personal loot, and scaled a nearby ladder to the roof.
Robin bared his teeth and pulled a grappling hook out of his belt. He was soon flying through the air in pursuit. To Garfield it seemed that Starefire followed as if gravity was nothing but a child's limitation. Garfield sifted through his repertoire of animals until he found one that could fly, and dove into the sky with the sweep of crow's wings. Bellow him he heard Stella shout in protest, but he ignored her.
On top of the roof he found the metal-clad man holding Raven out like a shield. Raven's eyes were clenched as glyphs seared through her clothes and Robin was advancing on the man, his steps methodic. Starfire stood behind him with an expression that swore vengeance. Garfield started forward, his sensitive ears picking up a deep whisper from the man's throat.
"It's starting Raven, and there's nothing you can do to stop it." Raven screamed as her body suddenly convulsed, her hair creeping out of her scalp in purple strings so that Garfield had to take time to register that it was actually growing. The man's grip tightened around her upper arms.
Robin seemed to have had enough and used his staff to hurtle himself over the man's head so he was crouching behind him. He swung a kick at the man's neck, and to retaliate, the man thrust Raven to the ground like yesterday's laundry. He twisted around Robin until he had the boy in a head-lock. "She's much more angelic than I imagined," the man said. And he launched himself backwards over the edge of the building, kicking Robin onto the dirty roof with his metal boots.
"Damn it!" Robin scrambled to his feet and skidded to the edge of the building. He scowled into the night air. "Slade."