Transition
Disclaimer: I do not in any way, shape, or form own the show Teen Titans, nor the various DC comics on which this fanfiction is based.
Raven sits at the table, fighting hard to keep a frown from her face.
A week without Jinx has left her in a distressingly bad mood, and the conference summons from their leader after their training has certainly not improved it. Nor has the subject of said meeting.
"-I mean, if I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong, Raven. You've managed a ton of retrievals, but without figuring out who's pulling the strings, more are just going to keep vanishing. Clearly, you're getting intel from somewhere, and I'd prefer to know where, and how it's possible these people know so much without knowing the whole story. You should take one of us with you, at least, so we can cover your back. Has being on your own, following whatever mysterious leads you have that you can't share, gotten you anywhere?" Nightwing demands, exhaustion clear in his voice.
Raven, exhausted herself from the investigations she and Jinx have conducted, is sympathetic to her leader.
On the matter of him suggesting she needs to be leashed, as it were, not so much.
"Not to pick sides here, but he's kinda' right, Rae," Cyborg interjects.
Her slight glare has him raising his hands in surrender, a disarming grin on his face.
"Not what I meant. You've gotten a lot of items crossed off that list, but we don't know nothin' about how you're gettin' 'em. We could get more, faster, if ya' at least threw us a bone here, girl."
"That's all I'm saying, Raven," Nightwing adds. "Look, we know you enough to know that if you won't tell us how you're coming upon these leads consistently, then it can't be something good."
"I could take a few guesses," Zatanna mutters, having sat for the last half hour of pointless inquisition in irritated silence.
Raven raises an eyebrow at that, an amused smirk forming.
That the Titans had become used to the expression on her face recently speaks volumes to how much her friend has rubbed off on her, and she briefly ponders whether it is something to push away.
"Their reactions are amusing enough alone to let it go," she muses, taking a guilty pleasure in the curiosity and discomfort coming from her friends.
"Please, share with the class, Zatanna," she states, fighting to keep her smirk from growing at the patch of red brought out on the sorceress's face.
"Alright, look, I love a catfight much as the next guy, but I'm tired of this," Beast Boy says, glaring at the women. "You two've been passive aggressive since she got here, and I just don' get it."
"Friend Beast Boy is correct," Starfire adds. "The… discomfort… that comes from you two being incapable of civilly remaining in the same area as the other is making the tension nearly unbearable. Why do you two hate each other so?"
Raven meets Zatanna's eyes, an eyebrow raised in silent question.
Their concern is certainly not misplaced, given the open antagonism they'd mutually agreed to deal with since Raven's initial argument. It was uncharacteristic of her to openly antagonize someone other than a villain, undoubtedly making the Titans remember Tara's brief stint with their group.
"Whatever it is, I'm sure it can't be all that bad," Cyborg reasons.
Nightwing visibly winces, drawing both sorceresses' attentions.
"Going to weigh in too, Dick?" Zatanna asks with a perfectly icy tone.
"Oh, hell no, I'm staying out of this. Long as you two aren't on jobs together, I'm perfectly comfortable not opening that Pandora's Box," he states.
"You know of the cause for the tension, Love Richard?" Starfire inquires with a frown.
"Enough to know better than to get involved in it. We're big girls, we can handle it ourselves," Zatanna states with a hint of a snarl.
"Which is kinda' the problem," Beast Boy cuts in. "You two should be the best chance we got at hunting all this stuff down. If you're arguing all the time, that means you aren't working together on some spell or something that could just, like, make them glow on a map or somethin'."
Raven and Zatanna once again meet with mirrored glares, Raven's own showing clear signs of her exhaustion.
Finally, Zatanna gives an audible sigh, putting her head in her hands before quickly shaking them through her hair.
"Look, these kinds of things have a very niche information network connected to them. My contacts haven't gotten me nearly the results that yours have. It's frustrating," she admits.
Raven's eyes widen in surprise, temporarily forgetting her irritation as Zatanna's own tiredness makes itself known.
"I… It isn't that I hate you, or anything, not really," Raven finally sighs. "Look, we met under bad circumstances, and you undoubtedly made the already terrible situation that much more dangerous and harder on everyone based on preconceptions and prejudices."
Bristling, Zatanna's eyes narrow to their former glare, her mouth opening to growl at her.
"I didn't give you much thought, since then, if I'm honest. Since I gathered the Titans together and gotten accustomed to this dimension, I accepted that I went about my introduction the wrong way. But then you showed up, basically telling us that some of the most dangerous items in the entire reality were stolen from some rudimentary security glass in museums all over the world instead of being guarded in the Tower of Fate, or some other transdimensional stronghold. All the… negativity… of that initial encounter came flooding back, and I can admit that it's not fair to you."
When she finishes, she finds all of them staring at her in shock, her own mind reeling at the bout of honesty, and the grudge she'd thought dead and buried.
"Whoa… Okay, I gotta' ask for that story. I didn't think you did grudges, Rae," Beast Boy finally says, breaking the silence.
Zatanna takes in the story, shocked by the honesty as everyone else. And yet, her suspicions cannot seem to leave her mind.
For all intents and purposes, through both words and actions, the Titan had more than proven her wrong in her assumption about her demonic heritage making her a threat.
And yet…
And yet a cloud seems to take hold of her mind, making her thoughts become unfocused.
She realizes she has no reason to be suspicious of the demon halfling, and yet, the suspicions refuse to leave her.
And her instincts were wrong rarely enough that she knows better than to question them, regardless of how odd their reactions are.
The warning bells her mind sends her are utterly obscured by fog, going utterly ignored.
Outwardly, she sits up straight, meeting Raven's gaze once more.
"Alright, look, we don't have to like each other, but we should at least agree to be civil," the sorceress finally sighs, her mind and words disconnected. "They're right, we'll do better working together. I agree I screwed up, and you agree that I wasn't entirely in the wrong. Deal?"
After much consideration, Raven's head slowly nods, her body visibly relaxing.
"Now, let's move past this, so we can at least figure out what's going on with all these robberies. My original point still stands, Raven, and I can't apologize for bringing it up. If my contacts, covering multiple planets and planes of reality, aren't as helpful as yours, there are only so many possible explanations."
Raven ponders silently to herself, her own warning bells going off, and not being nearly as quiet as Zatanna's. Something about the sorceress seems off, yet Raven's usually impeccable intuition gives her nothing to work with.
"My sources are of questionable character, but their intel is always on the mark," she finally states, giving the Titans nothing to work with.
"How questionable?" Nightwing asks with a slight glare.
"Questionable enough. Zatanna is raising a point of exactly why I go to such sources; the less savory magic users are usually the most informed about items of a dangerous nature."
Raven finds herself inwardly amazed at how easy the lie slips from her, wondering if Jinx perhaps had a point about her potential at subterfuge.
"You aren't offerin' get outta jail free cards to psychos, are ya, Rae?" Cyborg asks, turning slightly pale at the thought.
"Nothing of the sort," she snorts dismissively. "I'm not talking of people like Mumbo Jumbo or Blood's cultists. They give me information, and in exchange, I trade them a book, or a contact they're interested in if the other party agrees, or some knickknacks I've acquired over the years, but nothing such as favors or free reign. There are dangers, of course, but I would say that the results have made me unable to question my methods. But I will focus more on finding those who would give me information on who's stealing rather than where stolen things are, from now on," she adds.
"Can you give us even one name to work with, Raven?" Nightwing sighs.
"They aren't the kind of people you find in a phone book, Richard."
That they believe she has a network of underground black magicians and creatures speaks volumes, but Raven chooses not to dwell on it too much.
"Is all this why ya' haven' been around the Tower as much?" Beast Boy asks, causing the empath to fight against a wince of her own.
"No. That is a… as you pointed out, our antagonism was uncomfortable to you all. I apologize for that. But as an empath, I was not unaffected, either, and so I have taken to removing myself from it as I can. It will hopefully become better now," she adds, giving them no indication of her enjoyment of said outings.
"Alright," Nightwing finally sighs. "I don't like it. Really don't like it, Raven. But as long as you and Zee can be civil and work on some better leads for the rest of us, you're correct about being unable to argue with the results."
The sorceresses nod, the tension finally leaving the room.
"Alright. Everyone, I think we all need some R&R. It's been almost two months non-stop on this case, and even the criminals have been laying low recently, a point saying that whoever's doing all this is a heavy hitter, if nothing else. Everyone, spend the day relaxing and catching up on much-needed rest. That's an order," Nightwing adds as he rises from his seat.
Everyone releases a sigh of relief, Starfire floating quickly behind her lover as he leaves the room.
"I'm gonna' go fix up my baby. Plasmus did a serious number on the paintjob last week," Cyborg says, jumping to his feet.
Sighing, Zatanna slowly rises from her own chair, her tophat popping into existence in her palm with a burst of smoke.
"I got a show I suddenly don't need to cancel in Vegas. Either of you want to come?" she asks.
"Seriously? Dude, I'm all for that!" Beast Boy shouts.
Jinx's previous statement comes to Raven's mind, and a smile takes hold before she can stop it.
"I have standing plans, actually. I apologize, again. Hopefully we can move past everything now that it's aired."
With that, she floats out of the room, missing Zatanna's suspicious glare.
As soon as she shuts her door, Rachel Roth's cell phone leaves her pocket, fingers dancing quickly over the numbers...
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Raven sits on a barstool, the cushion doing little to comfort her in the obnoxious beat flooding the club.
"Dear Azar, why'd I agree to here?" Raven groans mentally, fighting against a growing headache.
And then, Jinx appears on the booth next to her, a grin on her lips.
A part of her mind refuses to allow her focus to go anywhere but on the meta's clothes, a combination of leather skirt and sleeveless blouse.
"Because she's very persuasive when she wants to be," a voice in her mind offers helpfully, Raven refusing to acknowledge the blush burning away on her face.
"Hey there. What's someone so gorgeous doin' sittin' alone at a bar?" Jinx asks in way of greeting.
Raven briefly senses a pressure in the back of her head, a wave of panic going through her before she recognizes its source as internal. And annoying, even as her emotion is sturdy in its persistence.
"Feeling a lot less lonely, now," she says, both women's faces turning bright scarlet.
"That a fact?" Jinx asks, recovering quickly.
"Undoubtedly," Raven remarks with a smile.
"Two Ultimate Mudslides," Jinx says to the bartender eyeing the two.
In short order, two glasses slide their way, Raven glaring suspiciously at what, for all intents and purposes, looks like a milkshake with chocolate running through it.
"Alright, I know you're a huge tea fiend, so I figure we gotta' start somewhere. Try it. I almost guarantee you'll like it," Jinx says before taking a slow pull on her own.
Raven tentatively picks her glass up and brings it to her lips.
Throwing caution to the wind, she takes a decent-sized drink of it.
Her face immediately contorts as the vodka burns her throat. The chocolate and cream takes over, then, quickly easing the sensation.
"This is not a milkshake," she deadpans, staring contemplatively at the glass.
"As you had no doubt figured out already," Jinx laughs. "Other than the fact that it tastes different from what it looks, what do you think?"
"It… is not terrible," Raven finally decides.
Frowning in thought, she takes another drink, keeping it sitting for her taste buds to analyze before swallowing. With the slower flow, the alcohol burns considerably less, the taste greatly overpowering the booze.
"It is quite good."
Smiling from ear to ear, Jinx finishes her own off in two drafts, a dark red color staining her cheeks and neck.
"Told you. Certainly hits the sweet tooth, don't it?"
"I really must work on your grammar," Raven sighs before finishing her glass.
"I can talk just fine, Rae, thanks," she snarks. "Clearly one drink wasn't enough, if you're thinking of things that mundane."
"You can buy me as many drinks as you want, Jinx, but my physiology makes it a futile endeavor," Raven says with a shrug, not letting her amusement show.
"Alright, let's test that. Hey, a Blind Russian for my friend and an Angel's Lips for me," she calls to the bartender, receiving an amused smirk from him. "I like sweets. Sue me," she adds with a slight growl.
Shrugging, the man goes to work on the drinks, Jinx turning to meet Raven's stoic stare.
"Think she'd prefer demon's lips?" Raven's emotional avatar ponders, causing her blush to darken.
Two more drinks appear before them, and Jinx smirks at her, tapping a finger to the tip of her glass.
"Sweet enough to not burn your mouth off, but with enough booze in it that I'll know if you're messin' with me. Go on, then," she laughs.
Her mirth vanishes when Raven shrugs and downs half the drink, barely even wincing as the alcohol takes hold in her system.
"You are correct, that is quite good. I still prefer my tea, though. Either way, I'm just as likely to get drunk," she adds, grinning at the meta.
"Well that'll make tonight more interestin'," she finally says, tipping her own drink to her lips before Raven can comment on it.
When she finishes the drink, Jinx's face is a shade of red similar to Raven's.
"Not much point boozin' you up if it isn't going to make the club any better for you. I didn't count on that…"
Raven's eyes widen, a warm smile forming as she finishes her drink.
"You could have perhaps saved yourself the stress if you had given me the chance to offer another option," she muses.
"I… well, guess it's irrelevant."
Her dejected voice quickly fades as her grin reforms, her cheeks gradually losing their color.
"Now, then, much as I want to ever-broaden your horizons, it looks like my plan to loosen you up so you can enjoy our outing is not going to happen. But I'm nothing if not determined. I did pick this place for a reason. So… care to dance?"
Raven notices the slight nervousness in the meta and finds herself wondering at its cause.
"If you could call this music," Raven finally responds. "Really, Jinx? A club? Even if the alcohol did loosen me up, I'm an empath. You had to know the kinds of things that would be forcing their way into my brain."
Laughing, the meta grabs her wrist and pulls her to her feet.
"Yep, a club. If the things you're talkin' about are what it'll take to make you loosen up, then the booze wasn't needed anyway. 'Sides, nobody's going to think that pink hair extensions are out of place, and there's not a chance that we're going to be recognized in here. Especially not with you dressed so… well for the occasion," she adds, letting a hungry gaze drag up to the empath's ever-blushing face.
She had decided, when Jinx had told her unquestionably where they were going to meet, to dig into the box in the back of her closet. Until meeting Jinx, it had gone largely ignored and forgotten save for dumping new pieces she bought to appease Kori on their forced shopping outings into it.
With her increasing social visits with Jinx, she has decided to add considerably to her wardrobe choices since then, if for no other reason than that her uniform would undoubtedly draw attention to the pair.
For this evening, she had decided to go with a pair of tight black jeans. What would surely convince people that it was not the same person who frequently flew above their city protecting the citizens, though, was her shirt.
It is a purple, reflective material, coming down to just barely cover the tops of her hips. Some very rarely-seen jewelry adorned her as well, a thin silver chain holding a metal ankh just below the shirt's neckline and a thin band of silver covering the base of her right thumb, index, and middle finger each.
A simple illusion also shifts her features, making her skin appear to any but herself and Jinx to be a slightly mocha shade. The bluish shade to her hair is turned entirely black beneath the harsh club lights.
More importantly, her chakra gem, a sure giveaway of her identity, appears to not exist at all, and her usually bright purple eyes are colored a warm, intelligent shade of brown.
"Seriously, Rae, if this is the response, I'm going to drag you to clubs more often. You look… I mean, damn…"
"Thank you," Raven responds, sure her entire head is red at this point.
Raven gasps as Jinx pulls her off-balance, her body almost falling into her as she begins swaying to the music.
"Save your thanks for later," Jinx purrs, her breath burning hot on Raven's ear.
A shiver of unknown origin ripples its way through the empath, her blush and gaze both taking on a darker shade.
Her amorous emotion takes the distraction as a perfect opportunity to assert itself once more, and her grin visibly changes in nature.
Jinx shivers this time, not having any issues with knowing its cause.
The two quickly find their stride in the music, Raven shocking the meta with how quickly she begins matching her movements.
Raven recognizes the foothold she's given to her emotions. The sensations running through her, though, make her by far less inclined to see it as anything negative.
The sensations quickly intensify for both women, the heat and throbbing beat vibrating the floor working their way through the two.
Before either recognizes the time spent pressing against each other, they find themselves making their way into the cool night's air.
Their banter is light as they walk towards Jinx's apartment, nowhere near ready or willing for the night to end.
"So, I mean, really, what the hell, Rae?" Jinx complains as they take residence on the meta's couch. "It just ain't fair that you have the cool powers and you don't get smashed."
Laughing, Raven fails to react as Jinx leans against her side, the sensation that runs through her refusing to let her argue against her.
"I told you I have a strange physiology. Alcohol simply doesn't inhibit my self-control or level of comfort… I suppose if I drank enough of it, as in a distillery, I could become inebriated, but my metabolism simply works faster than any stimulant. If it makes you feel better, I also can't use painkillers."
"Okay, feel a little better, I guess, though that undoubtedly sucks. So… wait. Nothing psychoactive works on you?"
"I've never gone shopping around to test the limits, but that is correct," Raven agrees, not understanding Jinx's large grin.
"Does that make me like a fine liquor? 'Cause I definitely lower your inhibitions and make you less repressed," the meta laughs.
Raven finds her face feeling as though it has lit on fire, finding that the analogy is not inaccurate.
"Well, since you are drunk and likely won't remember much anyway, I suppose there's no harm in admitting you aren't wrong," the empath muses.
"Ha! Don' count on it, Rae. My metabolism's fast, too. Metahuman, remember? Still, you might be right. I don't wanna' run the risk of forgetting that kinda' leverage over you. Luckily, I know a sure-fire way to remember tonight," she laughs, slightly slurring her speech even as the alcohol burns its way out of her.
"Oh? And what would this mythical solution be?" Raven asks with a smirk and upraised brow.
In response, Jinx turns to face her, both of them quickly resembling tomatoes as their eyes remain locked.
Without warning, Jinx's hand fists in Raven's hair, and she leans forward, the kiss sending Raven's emotions and senses ablaze…
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Author's Notes:
For a reference of what Raven's wearing, I just went with a reference image of what she looks like when attending high school as Rachel Roth. Also, I'm not exactly an alcohol drinker, so for the scene, I basically went with the few that I know of off the top of my head that are sweet in nature.
I had quite a bit of fun writing this scene, once again with the entire scene spawned from the idea of Zatanna and Raven's confrontation and Jinx trying to loosen Raven up. Whether you liked the scene or not, be sure to let me know and why. See you next time!