Author's Note**
Holy bananas it's been a while. What can I say? Life or something like it. Hopefully the offering of two chapters in one shot is enough of an apology.
###
Though technically the day had yet to end and the sun was still a sphere of fiery orange and red, the chill of night was already sweeping in on the wind. It sent the blistering temperature of the day spiraling down even as it sent patches of leaves and litter cycloning up. Boats on the bay were grateful for the breath in their sails that shot them toward the safety of the harbor while the teenagers hanging out on the wharves grabbed their baseball hats to keep them from flying off.
On the roof of Titan's Tower, Raven's long cloak curled and snapped satisfyingly in the breeze. The short strands of her hair, however, blew across her face, tickling her skin and proving to be just enough of a distraction to be annoying. After several attempts to just ignore it and a few shifts of her head, she opened her eyes and did what she found herself doing more often than usual.
She sighed.
As she pushed the hair back from her face, she tried to do the same to the frustrations that were coiling underneath her skin. She had been up there since the morning, vainly seeking the meditative focus she needed before making the trip to Azarath. But nearly every time she closed her eyes, she revisited the scene the night before when she had announced her intentions to her teammates.
###
Although she said it quietly, Robin being her only intended audience, the five words had nearly the same effect on the entire room as if she had jumped up and down on the couch, waved her arms wildly in the air, and professed her undying love for Katie Holmes. Like a vacuum, the quiet statement sucked all the noise out of the room. The four other Titans stared at her with expressions that varied from unreadable, to concerned, to confused, to even more confused.
And then, abruptly, they all began to speak at once. The sheer volume of it blew Raven's hair back from her face and nearly lifted her off her feet. Frowning, she folded her arms across her chest and tapped her foot lightly, waiting for them to settle down. Only Robin remained silent.
The noise only grew as each of the three Titans simultaneously tried to voice their questions to her and to each other.
Raven's hands slid to either side of her waist. "QUIET!" she barked.
The other Titans paused for a moment and then, each seeing an opportunity to be heard, began to launch a second barrage of questions.
She held up a hand to stop them. "I'm going because it may be the only place where I can find out how to defeat my father."
Beast Boy's head twisted left and right as he watched the others consider her answer. He meekly raised one hand into the air. Rolling her eyes, Raven glared at him.
"Yes, Beast Boy?"
Standing up as if he were about to get an oral presentation, Beast Boy first scratched his elbow and then his head. "Uh . . . maybe I'm the only one wondering, but . . . what exactly is Azarath?"
She tilted her head, her eyebrows shooting up. "It's where I'm from. You know that."
He waved that statement away. "Yeah, of course. We all know that. But its also part of your little Mantra of Doom. So what I meant was . . . what is it? Is it like a city in Michigan? Or is it a whole other planet? Or . . ." he trailed off, having run out of options that he could conceive of.
As she considered whether or not to throw something at him, Raven glanced at the others and was surprised to see echoing expressions of curiosity spread across their faces. Her forehead wrinkled. She had explained this all to them before. She must have. Her eyes drifted from face to face as she racked her own memory. It had been almost five years since she had crossed the void. Surely during one of the numerous sappy heart filled conversations that they had dragged out of her during that span she had spoken about her home. Hadn't she?
Her gaze stopped on Robin, whose own eyes looked back questioningly from behind his mask. Perhaps it was just the way the mask was designed.
Feeling nervous for reasons she could not describe, Raven set aside her mug and cleared her throat. "Well. Azarath is a city." Her eyes shot back to Beast Boy and because she found herself almost wanting to smile, she glared at him slightly, "Not in Michigan. Not actually on Earth. Nor is it another planet. It's . . ." she lifted her hands, "another dimension. I guess that would be the best way to put it."
Beast Boy's eyes lit up and he perched on the seat of his chair, rocking back and forth slightly. "Like in Quantum Leap? Or Sliders?"
Cyborg grinned and stuffed a piece of pizza into his mouth. "Man, I love that show. Remember the one where they're in the prison?"
"Dude! And the one where they don't slide in time and totally get stuck!"
"And when the guy gets smushed into the other guy?! Awesome!"
"But Raven," Starfire's voice could just be heard over the exuberance of the sci-fi enthusiasts, "when we last spoke of your home, you said that you could not return to Azarath."
The banter in the room dropped away abruptly. And, as she always did whenever she was reminded of the time she and Starfire had traded bodies, Raven felt her left eye tick. She pressed one hand to the side of her temple in an attempt to stop it.
"Yes, well. That's true. Technically I'm not really allowed to go back," she admitted.
"What do you mean, you're not 'allowed' to go back? What's stopping you?" Cyborg asked.
"It's something of banishment . . . self-exile thing."
CRASH!
Four heads whipped around in time to see Beast Boy drag himself back up from the floor. "Dude! They banished you? That's so medieval! What are they, Nazis?" he protested.
Raven felt herself growing defensive. It was her home, after all, that they were speaking of. "No, of course not. Azarath is a pacifist society." She folded her arms across her chest because she couldn't figure out what else to do with them. "And they didn't actually banish me. I left before they could."
Robin stepped forward, speaking for the first time. "Why?"
She knew that he was not asking why she had left just as she had known that he would be the one who would poise the question. There was no use trying to hide it. Still, she felt her stomach plummet to somewhere around her knees and tried to tell herself it was just the smell of undercooked tofu and pineapple pizza. Her eyes were steady on him. "Because I destroyed Azarath. Or . . . to be more accurate, I'm going to destroy it. But in Azarath, that means the same thing."
The statement settled over them like a dense fog and each Titan struggled to shift their way through it. They had each seen Raven's powers in action, knew what she could do when angry, let alone possessed by an immortal demon. So the idea of her being able to level a city was easy to picture. But in what manner did the past tense and the present tense mean that same thing?
Even Robin's head began to throb as he considered it.
After several seconds of trying to comprehend it, Beast Boy threw his arms up in the air and resorted to what always worked for him best. His mouth.
"Dude, is there like any way we could get the SparkNotes version? Because I have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about."
The fog rolled out. Raven wondered if perhaps she would simply die of an aneurism before the day of her father's ascension came.
"The dimension that Azarath exist within, is eternity," Raven began, and then stopped, remembering who she was speaking to. "Do you know what eternity is?"
"Yeah, it means like forever and ever, right?"
"Yes and—" she paused and shifted her thinking. "That's part of it. Eternity doesn't just mean time that lasts forever. It means all time, all at once. Past, present, and future all happen at the same time. And not just one past, one present, and one future. All pasts, all presents, all futures. And, in a great many of those futures, Azarath is destroyed and I have something to do with it. But the Azarath that I destroy exists in the future along with the old Azarath that was first formed and the Azarath that exists now."
"My head hurts. Is it just me, or is anyone else really, REALLY confused?" Beast Boy asked, looking around at the other Titans. Robin had one hand tucked thoughtfully underneath his chin in his classic there's-a-mystery-to-be-solved-Scooby-Doo poise while Cyborg merely sat staring at Raven, as if she had just slammed him over the head with a gigantic wooden mallet. Together, the three of them turned their confused eyes on Starfire, who was quietly seated at the end of the table, her hands folded in front of her. Her eyes shifted to each of them in turn.
"I thought friend Raven explained eternity quite well. The Tamerean explanation is somewhat more complicated." Without waiting for approval, Starfire launched into a very dry, technical description of space, time, dimension and other things that generally should not be talked about outside of an astrophysics lab. Outside, cars whizzed through the streets of Jump City and the moon drifted across the sky and the stars revolved. Businesses closed, street lights flickered on, and the citizens they worked so hard to protect wandered home.
"That is how we on Tameran explain it."
The silence in the room was nearly deafening. After a full minute, Beast Boy shook his head and held one hand out in front of him as if he were trying to ward off some kind of evil spirit.
"No . . . no one talk . . . to me. Ever. Room. Me. Going." And with that, he slid of his chair and stumbled through one of the doors in the common room.
Raven raised an eyebrow. "Does someone want to tell him that that is the storage closet?"
A second later a loud crash came from behind the door Beast Boy had stepped through. Cyborg pushed up from the table. "I'll get him." He started to turn, paused, and looked back at Starfire. "And you are not allowed to explain anything ever again."
Starfire blinked. "Did I in some way misspeak?" she asked.
Raven shrugged. "I think the bit about the worm holes might have been more than Beast Boy's tiny brain could handle."
The alien princess considered that for a moment. She frowned. "But Raven, if you are 'banished' from Azarath, then how are you to return? What I mean to say is, will they not be angry?"
"Well, I'm sure they won't be very happy about it."
Starfire nodded. "Then we shall accompany you so that we might hold their anger in check."
Pressing on hand against her forehead, Raven tried to remember what it felt like to not have a headache. "I appreciate it Starfire. I do. But I hardly need protection."
###
Sometimes though, when she closed her eyes, she found herself staring into four eyes burning as red as the sinking sun while runes carved with fire appeared in the darkness behind them. And though they wavered and shimmed like a desert mirage, she could understand their horrible meaning as clearly as if someone were reading them out loud in her head.
Raven pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, the pressure behind her eyes nearly unbearable.
"Headache?"
Squeezing her eyes tightly, Raven made the silent wish for just one more minute of alone time. Then she glanced to her right where Robin stood, one gloved hand outstretched, two small white pills in his palm. She stared at them for a long moment before she could convince herself that taking them was really a necessity at that point, and not a weakness.
"How could you tell?" she asked, as she picked up the pills and dry swallowed them.
"We knew something was wrong when the windows in the common room blew out."
Raven winced.
"Cyborg said it was probably time to change them anyway since it's been almost two weeks since the last time."
Her lips twitched slightly, but she managed to withhold the smile. The small movement still managed to send a line of heat up into the throbbing mass that was currently her brain. "Glad I could help," she replied, turning back to look out over the bay. After a moment, she felt him step up beside her on the ledge, adjusting his distance until he was no more than an arms-length away. Close enough for her to be unable to ignore his presence but far enough to be just outside her personal comfort zone. It suddenly occurred to her that she had been up on that very ledge a number of times lately and usually in some manner of emotion distress. Certainly enough times for the leader of her team to automatically assume she needed some sort of comforting whenever she was up there.
She found herself scowling. She did not need comfort. What she needed was a manner in which to commit patricide. Preferably without destroying the whole of existence.
And if she couldn't manage that, she would settle for saving the lives of those she had come to care about.
"You don't have to worry about us."
Surprised by the statement, so closely echoing her thoughts, Raven turned her head, blinking as the wind streamed into her eyes.
He was looking out over the bay, rather like a young prince surveying his kingdom. She supposed it was an apt enough description; he was the adopted son of Gotham crime fighting royalty. But on the other hand, it seemed too fussy a title for the way his eyes scoured the horizon, even when "off-duty". He was more like a Viking warrior, watching the outlying waves for signs of an invasion he was certain would be coming.
She remained silent, suspecting he had more to say.
When he finally shifted to face her, she was surprised to see in his masked gaze something other than the unwavering intensity that she had been expecting.
It looked like . . . acceptance.
"We all knew what we were signing up for," he intoned, as if he were quoting from something. With a start, Raven realized it was her, from their conversation on the same roof weeks earlier. She nearly sighed again, sadness wrapping around her chest tighter than her cloak; she had thought she had been offering him words that would comfort him. But hearing them directed at her, she suddenly understood how very discomforting they were.
How much easier everything used to be, back when she was unfeeling and unflinching. Though, truly, had she really ever been so? Hadn't she felt a searing rush of pain all those years ago when the Justice League had rejected her plea for help? Hadn't she felt a spark of hope when the dark cowled knight had directed her toward Jump City and the "team being assembled there"?
But it had been her pain and her hope. How much different and more difficult it was to experience the pain and hope of others.
"Do you remember when you told me that you didn't think you could bear to face the death of one of us?" she asked quietly, almost too softly for him to hear.
Robin nodded. Her eyes wanted to slide away but she kept them on his, feeling it was important.
"I . . . know how you feel now."
Though his face did not immediately change its expression, she could feel his surprise, followed swiftly by feelings of understanding and sorrow. And at the very end, like hope flittering near the top of Pandora 's Box, was a sense of . . . delight. It was small and restrained, but as it washed over her, it served to soothe the nerve endings rubbed raw by the past few grueling weeks.
He stepped forward suddenly and, before she could even think to react, reached behind her, tapping her lightly on the back twice, before stepping back just as quickly. She blinked, twice, utterly confused as she looked at his face and saw the playful smile tugging at his lips. In response, he arched one eyebrow coolly in an expression that was very familiar.
She had worn it immediately after offering him her awkward version of a hug.
The laugh that escaped her was the first true one she had made . . . in quite some time. She almost didn't recognize the sound. Part of the weight that was crushing down on her shoulders slipped away and for a moment, she managed to ignore the insidious whispers in her head that said time was running short.
Taking a deep breath, in which she drew up as much of her courage as she could muster, she did what she very much wanted to do; she stepped closer, wrapped her arms around his waist, and laid her head against his chest.
And felt the rest of the weight lift.
If Robin was surprised by her actions, he did not show it. Instead, his hands came up to rest on her back, rubbing up and down lightly. Her cheek was pressed against the smooth leather of his insignia and through it she could hear the slow, steady drum of his heart beat.
"Does this mean you're not mad at me anymore?"
At the sound of his voice, Raven glanced up without lifting her head. "I was never mad at you."
He scoffed, the noise vibrating in his chest and against her ear.
"I was irked. Severely irked. But not mad."
"Well then, does this mean you're not irked with me?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
"On whether or not you ruin the moment."
Raven felt, rather than saw, his smile as he fell silent. His arms tightened briefly around her and she could feel the hard planes of muscle underneath his uniform. Her stomach fluttered nervously as the warm, comforting feeling inside of her was suddenly replaced with something hot. She began to pull away, pushing lightly against him.
For a moment she wondered if he would refuse as his arms tightened again. But then his arms dropped and he took a quick step back, his eyes averted slightly as if he suddenly realized he had overstepped some invisible boundary.
"Are you sure about what you're planning on doing?" he asked hastily, folding his arms across his chest. The small space between them seemed to grow, though neither moved.
It took Raven a second to understand what he meant. She nodded, to give herself more time to compose herself.
"As much as I hate to admit it, Zatanna was right. My people did create Trigon. They must know of some way of destroying him." She kept the fact that it had been Malchior who had given her that particular insight quiet.
Robin frowned. "Why wouldn't they have told you before?"
"Because the people of Azarath are pacifists. They don't just believe in pacifism. They are pacifists. They would never consider nor are they even capable of fighting."
He looked unconvinced and Raven couldn't really blame him. They spent all of their time struggling to combat the evils of the world, whatever form they took. It was impossible for people like them to understand a society that not only refused to fight but was completely unable to do so. Raven's comprehension only stemmed from her having experienced it first hand, something Robin would never have the opportunity to do.
"It's difficult to explain," she admitted. "But even if they don't have any answers, I have to try. I can't just sit here and . . . wait for the end to come."
She knew that was something he could relate to and sure enough, he nodded.
"When will you leave for Azarath?" he asked, finally voicing the question that had brought him up there in the first place.
Raven frowned, thinking of the burning runes in her mind's eye.
"Something wrong?"
She wanted "no" to be her answer - the short phrase that had once been so incredibly easy to utter. But when she shifted her gaze and saw Robin watching her patiently, "no" became the only answer that she could not give. She wanted to resent him for that but knew it would be unfair of her. In some ways, she had forced him into the role of counselor. Hadn't she delved into his consciousness, connected their minds? On the night of her birthday, when the entire world had stopped, hadn't she unfrozen him to take part in that hellish "celebration"? Knowing his need to make what was wrong right, how could she resent him for trying to "fix" the world that was shattering around her? Even if it was impossible?
"I'm still having trouble with my meditations," she offered grudgingly.
Robin appeared curious. "And that affects your returning to Azarath?"
A wry smile wormed its way onto her face. "Only if I want to make it in one piece." His face screwed up in confusion and Raven felt compelled to elaborate. "When I teleport here, I'm only traveling between two dimensions of space. Traveling to Azarath requires passing through many, many more. The more dimensions you travel through, the more chances there are of . . . leaving pieces of yourself behind."
It was Robin's turn to wince. He recovered quickly, determination appearing as a line following the edge of his mask.
"All right. Let's do it then."
Raven blinked. "What?" she asked, as he sank to the ground, folding his legs underneath him. He glanced up at her with that infuriating expression on his face, the one that always had her telling him things she did not absolutely have to and was all but certain she did not want to.
"I told you that I would help you, didn't I?"
"Help me with what exactly?" she asked cautiously, feeling only more confused.
"With your meditation. I said you can use my head. The offer still stands."
Distracted, Raven sat down beside him, her mind rolling back to the past conversation. It seemed like it had been years ago that they had discussed it, down on the rocky beach below them.
"But that was before . . ." Trailing off, her eyes, though she tried to stop them, flickered over to meet his, ". . . things," she finished lamely, feeling the awkwardness that had been plaguing their interactions for weeks seeping in again. Would it always be like this, she wondered. Could they never return to the way things had been? The thought made her sad.
And lonely.
His only response was to close his eyes.
When she couldn't find the strength to refuse and discovered that she really didn't want to try, Raven did the same.
After being in the dying light of the day, the sudden plunge into the blackness of her mind was disjointing. But it took only a moment for Raven to steady herself and to find the "pathway" in her mind that connected her to Robin, despite the fact that it was not the only one like it. There were nearly a dozen or so swirling in the psychic mist, gateways to the minds of others she had formed a mental link with. Most were older and unused, carry-overs from her youth in Azarath under the tutelage of the priests and priestesses there, but there were also others more recently formed.
Though they had only swapped bodies, there was a brightly lit road to Starfire's mind that Raven had been shocked to find the first time she had meditated after the incident with the Puppet Master. She had never mentioned it to the alien princess and wasn't sure how she felt about it being there.
There was a twisting and curving path that led into Mumbo Jumbo's head, a curious side affect stemming from her trip into his magic hat. She had never followed it to its conclusion, had no desire or intention of ever doing so, and really hoped it would just go away on its own.
And then there was Robin's path, formed by smooth flagstones that led to a simple door with a stylized "R" emblazoned on it. Before she could give any thought to turning around, she grabbed the handle and, pushing the door open, stepped through.
Into a zoo.
Literally.
She found herself under bright blue sky and surrounded by a menagerie of animals, some behind glass, and others in large pens. Above her was a gate, the words "Gotham City Zoo" wrought out in iron. There were people milling about as well, a strange mixture of characters from his memory she supposed. In a completely surreal moment, she watched the Joker and Batman strolling together, passing a crinkled brown bag of what looked like roasted peanuts between them.
"Is this a better 'happy place'?"
Turning to look over her shoulder, Raven jabbed her thumb in the direction of the green haired criminal and the caped crusader. "I don't know if Batman would think so. Unless there's something you're not telling us about him. You know, beyond all the other things you've never told us."
Robin rubbed a hand under his chin as he followed her line of sight. "That is kind of disturbing. It's not, some kind of repressed desire of mine, is it?
"You mean, something along the line of seeing Batman and the Joker as substitute parents?"
His face paled. "I didn't even think about that. That would be creepy."
"Well I'm not an expert in psychology but I would suggest that sometimes a peanut, is just a peanut."
He cocked an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"
She shrugged. "You see Batman as a partner and the Joker as a hated nemesis. Your mind simply sees them as memories and is using them to 'fill in the blanks' of this place you're creating. A zoo is supposed to be crowded, so it's supplying you with the people to do that with."
"Makes sense, I guess. I used to come here all the time as a kid."
The off-handed remarked threw her for a moment. It was one of the few times she had ever heard him mention his life outside of the Titans and she found it difficult to imagine the dark haired young man next to her as a wobbly kneed child, entertained by the caged creatures. As if to prove her wrong, she suddenly recalled one of the images she had seen in her trip through his mind; a scrawny boy in an ill-fitted dark suit, sprawled out before two blocks of carved stone, while the rain poured down.
Shaking the image away she heard herself ask, "Why?"
Not noticing her momentary distress, Robin began walking down a cobblestone walkway, moving further into the zoo, forcing Raven to move with him in order to hear his reply.
"Well, the circus that my parents and I worked in was set up in the park next to it." He smiled. "And I'm a big fan of kettle corn."
"Kettle corn?"
"Yeah, you know. That sweet popcorn." At her blank expression, he shook his head. "You've never had kettle corn. Don't worry. I'm pretty sure that they probably have some at the zoo in Jump. It's kind of a staple."
"I hardly think that popcorn is a significant enough reward for wading through crowds of people gawking at animals in cages while small children run amuck, begging to be eaten."
"You've never had kettle corn."
Raven stared at him. "I don't understand you," she blurted out in exasperation.
"What do you mean?"
"We're fast approaching an event something very much akin to the End of Days. My father is going to bring Hell to earth and we have absolutely no way of stopping him. It's extremely likely that there IS no way to stop it. Meanwhile, several people have tried to hire a gun to kill me, one of which being the Justice League, the very group that, ironically, I came to asking for help to destroy my father almost five years ago. On top of that Slade is still out there, playing sidekick with his own agenda. And we're here, in your mind, talking about kettle corn. You don't find that odd?"
Robin opened his mouth to speak but Raven rolled right over him.
"And no, I don't want to talk about any of that. I want it to be over. But at the same time, I don't because I know, I KNOW, that it can only end one way and I would give anything to be able to change that." The last word felt like it exploded out of her and even as she drew in a long breath to steady herself, Raven could still feel the seething frustration rolling through her chest.
"Then why go to Azarath?"
She blinked, confused by both the simplicity of the question and the calmness of the voice asking it.
"What?"
He shrugged, an unimportant jerk of his shoulders, as if he were answering the question, 'what would you like for dinner?'
"If things are so hopeless, then why are you up here trying to focus enough to make a dangerous, interdimensional journey? Why bother?"
"I told you. I have to try." Even as the words left her mouth, Raven found herself glaring at the brightly dressed boy. "I hate when you do that."
"Do what?"
"Ask me some inane thing designed to provoke me so that I'll ruminate through my thoughts and arrive at whatever answer I need at the time. Why can't you just give me your opinion?"
Robin smiled slightly. "You're not exactly the kind of person that you give your opinion to."
She pressed her lips together in thought. "I suppose that was a compliment."
"Definitely. Now, what do you do when you meditate?"
The reminder of why they were there, in Robin's head, had Raven drawing her brows together. She suddenly realized that he was going to be part of what had always been a very private ritual for her. The only ones that had ever even met her emotions had been Beast Boy and Cyborg, and that had been in a limited capacity. They had not been privy to the type of conversation she would be having with them now.
There wasn't really any way around it; it was his mind, she couldn't very well ask him to wait outside.
"I need to . . ." she paused as she searched for the best way to describe it without sounding like a lunatic. ". . . speak with my emotions."
If Robin thought the description sounded weird, he kept it well hidden. Instead, he simply said, "All right," and stepped back, whether to give her room or privacy she wasn't sure.
She wished either were possible.