All she can taste is iron.
Revenant spits blood at the forest floor. There's a bristle of a touch to her senses - something odd. A kind of smell, but not really, coming from her nerves and trailing all of the way to her brain. She could sense it before, snaking from her kills, and now it drifts away.
Revenant doesn't recall this part of the forest. Maybe she'd wandered a little too far east, but these trees are new - no, not new. Unfamiliar. Her bare feet feel up the worn dirt path, and though the bleeding in her shoulder wound has dried up - faster than she remembers, faster - she feels every bit of torn flesh and the dizziness that follows. She kicks at a pebble in her way, sticking closer to the tree line as she advances.
It is painfully slow. Painfully silent. Her earlier scuffle has cleared off the majority of the animals in her area, and the blood she's lost is making her clumsy. This weakness... she dislikes it. A hundred feet on, her knees are starting to shake and there's a ringing in her ears. Just as she reaches the next tree, her legs give out from under her. She's drifting, too. The next moment, she's on her front, on the floor, with the pebble at the very edge of her vision.
This is a huge shame, considering she can sense someone nearby. Not the same man from before - smells too clean - but Revenant needs to get out of here quick. She knows the stranger could easily be working for the same people. She tries to get up, but all she can manage is dragging herself behind a tree.
Her body doesn't feel much like responding after that, and everything becomes dull. She can hear only her shallow breathing and- rustling. She tenses, pointed ears flickering up, though her hope for remaining free is fast escaping. No- no.
Footsteps in the grass. Fingers on her wrist. On her neck.
She's rolled on to her side, and the pain forces her to groan. So much for that plan, then. The next thing she knows, she's floating, and then- she's fading again.
»»-¤-««
The sunlight is warm on her face. In the apartment, Raven is the only one awake. She sighs and puts her tea down. This particular reading had started fruitful - one of the tea leaves rose to the surface before Raven had time to take the first sip, and Raven didn't miss the early sign. Tasseomancy has long been practiced on Earth, through tea, coffee - any liquid that leaves dregs.
Once she finishes the tea, she picks it up in her left hand and swirls it three times, and then upends the cup onto her saucer to let the liquid drain. This time, the keyhole shape at the bottom warns of idle curiosity, but it's a little too late for Raven at this point. Such is life.
Raven crosses her legs after muting the television. The newswoman reporting about the weather mouths wordlessly, pointing at some place three miles to the east at a florescent orange sun. Tacky.
Keeping her emotions in check through meditation requires focus and dedication. For Raven, these two things tend to rely on a quiet corner, the lack of distractions, and three particular words.
"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos."
Some time into chanting, she feels herself lift into the air. She focuses on balancing her emotions, on pushing down her inner rage. The world dims and fades out of her focus, though she skirts at the edge of her mindscape.
There's a feeling of unease at the edges of her mind - not her own. Raven turns in her head. Where she had been expecting to see stars, everything is quiet and still. Unburied nightmares rise to the surface and Raven finds herself staring into two pairs of opening red eyes.
Pain.
Her back meets with the floor of Victor's apartment two seconds later, and Raven drinks what feels like an entire jug of herbal tea before her nerves pull themselves back together. That's enough meditation for now, she thinks.
She's about to settle down on the couch when her phone rings. She answers it - Robin and Cyorg are the only ones with her number, so she assumes it's one of them.
"I'm going to need a hand," Robin says, "Or two."
Business as usual. Robin sounds grim, though, so Raven pays attention.
"What's happening?"
"We've got a situation- injured female, late teens."
"And you can't take her to hospital because-"
"Just come here. Meet me at East Sedgehill Path."
Raven hangs up, walking to the door... and then vanishes into her soul self, teleporting away.
»»-¤-««
Victor's apartment is opposite some pub that usually wasn't that much of a bother. Victor had only been in there twice, and both times it was to pay rent. Victor hadn't known the landlord too much, either, just that he lived close and he didn't ask questions about why he was always so covered up. He considers it a bonus.
Coincidentally, it turns out that the pub's landlord is also his landlord. Before Robin, Beast Boy, and Raven had moved in, Jason had also been one of the people that Victor was in regular contact with. Usually, it was just to discuss rent or questions about the property, but over the months the two had started talking about other things. Not enough for Victor to trust him with any of his secrets - but enough so that they weren't complete strangers.
It is only on his way back from his walk that Victor suddenly finds himself wandering into the place again. He shrugs, rolling along with the direction his feet are taking him to push open the door. The lack of a creak signifies Jason has finally gotten around to oiling the hinges, and Victor is greeted to the smells of alcohol and smoke.
As expected, it isn't particularly busy. At high noon, there aren't many people there to appreciate the atmosphere. A few people Victor recognises as regulars are having their lunch and there's a woman snoozing in one of the corner booths. Victor squeezes himself onto one of the vacant seats at the bar - onto a stool that just about supports his weight, torn as it was - and waits for his landlord to finish serving one of the other women.
"Didn't you just pay your rent?" Jason's voice is crisp. He comes up on the other side of the bar, and Victor shrugs.
"Well, yeah," Victor says, "Just paying a visit."
"You wake up before noon for once?" Jason smiles. "I'd nearly pegged you as some sort of nocturnal bird."
Victor snorts at the mental image. "Do I look like I have wings to you?"
Jason leans onto the bar, setting his elbows onto the wood. "I dunno, man, you could smuggle another human under there."
"I don't think I'd want to," Victor says with a laugh, met only with Jason's shrug.
The red haired woman walks to the booth behind Victor, nudging the snoozing blonde awake. Their voices are hushed, and Victor pays them no mind.
"Anyway, want a drink? Free on the house." Jason's already turning around to look at the pints, though Victor isn't so keen. Robin would freak out, definitely.
"Nah, I'm cool. Boss'd kill me if I turned up drunk."
Jason frowned. "How's that going, anyway? Last I heard he was being a bit..."
"Obsessive? Yeah. That's just him, though," Victor shrugs, "Doesn't matter that much."
Before the two can say any more, his phone starts ringing.
»»-¤-««
Raven moves forward and crouches down in front of the woman. At some point before her arrival, Robin had rolled the woman onto her side and had gone about to try and stem the bleeding - but that had been it. The wound had dried.
Raven went to take her pulse, but Robin shook his head.
"She's alive, Raven."
"So you found her here... and she isn't dead?"
"Yes, and no. She's got a strong pulse and the wound isn't bleeding. Couldn't see a bullet."
Raven goes to say something else, and then she notices something else. The woman's ears are pointed, and on opening her mouth - pointed fangs. This wasn't a human. Not a demon, either - Raven couldn't sense that in her.
A flash goes off in her head. A blue sun. Purple planet. A spire to the skies.
Her hands wobble as she smoothes the woman's hair back. She's around their age - only young. Seventeen at most, Raven thinks. She understands now why taking her to hospital wouldn't be a good idea.
"Alecian," She whispers.
"What?" Robin queries, brow raised.
She shakes her head, raising her hands to the wound. The healing process is slow and Raven can only boost it a little bit as is. The wound closes slightly, but then reopens - the bleeding starts again, and Robin steps forward - Raven raises a hand, stemming the bleeding .
Not good.
"Call Victor," Raven says. In moments, the three of them have vanished back to the apartment.
»»-¤-««
Things are meaningless in this part of the void.
Or all parts of the void, Revenant figures. There's nothing here. No light, no time... everything turns out to be irrelevant here. Perhaps she's been here for minutes. Perhaps she's been here for years. The existence of non-existence.
Restlessly floating, Revenant learns that it lacks the anxieties her waking life did, too. No chains. No captors. No escape from the handful of memories she had left.
She's been shedding them steadily since her escape, has been pressing them into the back of her mind - but such things remain fruitless to complete, and the sediments stain the insides of her head. Vague. Not everything got locked up.
No amount of scrubbing at her mind can remove these, so she tries to block them out. Covers her stinging eyes with hands made inky in the dark. She thinks they're hands - she isn't keeping track of what's come with her, because none of it really exists here.
None of this stops the whispers.
The whispers. For all of the memories she has left, she's always had them. Only in her sleep, of undercurrents and the slightest touches to her ears. A gross feeling creeps up her stomach, trickling into her throat and through her nerves.
If she opens her eyes, will she be alive? She has to be - she's dreaming. But where would she be? In the forest? Back in the cell? Maybe she shouldn't wake up at all.
»»-¤-««
"How is she?"
Raven looks up as Robin steps into the room. Raven can hear Beast Boy complaining - Robin's finally gotten him out of bed.
Her eyes land on the female on the bed. Her chest is rising and falling, and she's done all she can to heal the wounds on her body, though the thinness is concerning. Raven could count ribs - that wasn't healthy.
"Healing. Cyborg's stitched her up," She says, eventually, though it's a lot more complicated than that.
Robin picks up on her shortness and crosses his arms. They share a look, but her eyes flicker up to the door when Beast Boy walks past.
"You said something about Alecians," Robin leans against the wall, "A kind of species?"
"There isn't a lot of information on them," Raven says, "Mostly because they were reclusive."
"So a lot like you, then," Beast Boy remarks from the bathroom, but goes ignored. Raven looks pensive for a moment, and then touches the white haired girl's wrist.
"Her race heals fast, it's a part of their blood, but..."
"... But?"
"She's a little far from home. Her planet hasn't been seen in years."
Robin frowns.
"Destroyed?"
"I don't know, Robin. The planet-"
FWOOM.
There's a loud noise outside - something crashes with force into the ground a few blocks away. The windows in the apartment crack. There's a frustrated yell from Cyborg in the living room.
"No time for that," Robin exclaims, "Hurry up and let's go, Beast Boy!"
Raven goes to stand up as well, but Robin fixes her with a gaze.
"Can you stay here? She might wake up."
Raven sighs, pulling up her hood.
"Fine."