Epilogue
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.
Jinx's jaw hangs loosely open as light turns into a solid form.
Part of the column shifts on the ground, becoming more and more humanoid with every step it somehow takes away from the entire shaft.
As soon as the humanoid figure completely separates from the column, the light stretches like pulled rubber.
The next second, a man is walking towards them.
A very tall, very bronze man.
Jinx isn't entirely sure which feature to be more terrified of.
His body is at taller than Mammoth's, and only half as wide.
Despite the difference in mass, golden skin reveals that he has muscles making up every bit of him that she can see past the solid, shining silver armor adorning his body.
Four wings are furled at his back, each of them seeming like they'd have a wingspan twice his height.
The air bends around him as he walks, his aura seeming to suck the power out of the cavern itself.
Her assessment is only strengthened when he passes by the pit, and its magical glow dims significantly.
Despite the display, the sword is somehow more intimidating.
His hand is wrapped around a long, thin piece of steel, ending in a spiked and jagged black hilt.
A ruby glints in the pommel, seeming to cast a bloody light around him as he walks.
The blade itself is a mass of flickering, blue flames, and the closer he gets to them, the hotter Jinx finds herself feeling.
And then, he suddenly comes to a step several meters away from them, glaring imperiously at first Jinx, then her unconscious lover, and back again.
She doesn't understand what's stopping the walking death from simply killing them, as he so clearly wants to do.
Until the shaft of light pulses, and she feels her heart suddenly hammering in her chest.
Only when the fifth angel has taken form and walked to the first one's side does the shaft of light vanish.
As she stares at the creatures, she finds herself remembering one of Raven's moments of slipping into a deep-seated inner mythology buff on her.
She'd once told her that in comparison, angels and demons were so similar in nature that the average person wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
The power washing over her, though, makes her think that for once, her lover had been wrong.
Angels, at least the ones in front of her, give off a far more brutal and dangerous air, and she fights the urge to look at their auras lest she go insane.
Jinx finds a soul-deep terror running through her, a primal, animalistic voice in the back of her mind screaming to run.
If not for Raven being defenseless at her side, she's pretty sure she'd throw every last bit of her remaining power into smashing through one of the walls and doing just that.
Luckily, she's saved from having to find out, as Doctor Fate suddenly materializes between the women and angels.
"Your business here is settled."
Jinx shivers as Nabu's voice washes over her, but somehow, the Lord of Order's power is far less painful when compared to the angels'.
The angels look at him, seeming perfectly unimpressed.
"The key," a high-pitched, breathy voice demands.
Jinx whimpers, the sound coming from inside her own head and creating a burning headache the second she hears it.
"Your presence has knocked unconscious the one who holds the key, and unfortunately, you will need to await her return to consciousness to retrieve it," Fate returns.
At that, the angels look at Raven as one, all of them sneering down at the bloodied half-demon.
"There will be no need for that," one of the angels assures, this voice slightly deeper in tone.
"I assure you, it is necessary. You cannot enter her pocket dimension, keyed to her alone, unless she allows it."
"And if the minor god of her own realm dies, then that realm will collapse, and all contents within it will be released to the near area. On a scale of a small pocket dimension, it's hardly a concern," the voice sneers again.
Jinx's eyes widen as the angel closest to them turns their way, and brings his flaming sword high into the air.
There's no thought in the meta's mind.
One moment, she watches the angel's sword approaching her lover, and the next, a column of rock and bedstone is connecting the roof to the floor.
Jinx blinks at the sight of the angel, an old and charred sword lying at his feet where he's pressed unconscious to the ground.
Thick, golden blood leaks out from the angel's pierced body, collecting in the rocks.
Her eyes droop as the energy loss catches up to her, but the sight of four angels glaring at her helps to stave off the exhaustion.
She forces herself, wobbling and trembling the entire way, to her feet.
"A-anyo-one else th-think th-that's the r-right way to go ab-bout this?" she demands between gasping, whimpering breaths.
The angels seem utterly unimpressed with the way her lower body visibly vibrates, or the way her vibrant pink eyes are dimmed to nearly being grey.
"Jinx-"
"You… ungrateful p-pieces of shit!" she snarls, oblivious to Fate's warning. "She… we d-did your goddamn d-dirty w-w-work f-for you a-after you all screwed this up, a-and yo-you think h-her reward i-is to just kill her… while s-she ca-can't even fight back!?"
The oxygen taken for her speech leaves her vision grey and spotted, but Jinx refuses to fall until she doesn't have a choice anymore.
She doesn't see the angel move.
All she knows is that the next second, her cheek explodes with pain, and her body is bouncing off a rock wall.
She finds herself on her back before what happened catches up with her brain.
By the time she recognizes that her jaw has been cracked by an angel's fist, the same angel that hit her is standing over her with a sword poised to stab.
He barely makes the beginnings of his motion to end her life, and possibly her very soul, given what he is.
Golden light engulfs his body, and he levitates off the ground.
The glow spreads and becomes a brilliant ankh, and the angel finds he can't move a finger to resist as his body is slammed into the column Jinx had raised.
Fate stands tall where he'd been, a single hand raised and golden fire rising from the eye holes of Nabu's helmet.
"Cease this at once."
The statement is calm, and relatively tame.
From the expressions on the angel's faces, though, Nabu may as well have rammed a fist through their stomachs.
"We will not leave without the key."
"You will do as your elder says you will. Has the Host of Heaven truly fallen this far, to attack a defenseless woman and her nearly unconscious protector?"
"I see no defenseless woman. Only a demon's continued lineage, surrounded by her own kin, killed by her and the so-called protector. We will not allow her to hold the key for a single moment longer."
"If I need to draw Michael's attention to overrule your opinion, if this cannot be resolved without you killing the Roths, do not think for a single moment that I will not do so," Fate warns.
The angels wince again, and Jinx feels her lips curling into a grin at the sight.
"You are not our elder, insolent human, and you have no such authority," an angel hisses.
"This human is the avatar to Nabu, and your master made my species to govern Order. You creatures are no exception to that domain. Only the Endless and He are exempt, and even the Endless have been known to reach our laws' parameters."
The mention of the Endless widens Jinx's grin, and she weakly points at the angels before her arm flops weakly to the ground again.
"T-tha's wight... We… ain't on Death's wist," she slurs before the pain sends her into more quiet whimpers.
"Not yet, anyway."
Everyone standing, even Fate, visibly jumps at the new voice.
For her part, Jinx lets her eyes slip closed, entirely incapable of resisting the influence of all the magic in the room anymore, with the newcomer.
Death watches as Jinx turns limp, her labored breathing evening out as blackness rises through her aura like a comforting embrace.
She has no smile on her lips as she stares at the angels, her previous lightheartedness gone.
"This cavern is going to collapse sometime in the next five minutes. Even you won't make it under that," she tells the angels as she moves forward.
The angels gape at her, the cold power radiating from her nearly driving them to their knees.
She flicks her wrist, and a small computer appears from the air.
Her eyes move around the room, and she nods to herself as she traces a finger across the screen.
Each swipe draws a line across the text, crossing off the names of the Sons of Trigon as she goes.
"Human technology has improved some things," she muses as she slides through the entries on screen.
"W-what are you-"
"I'm here to make sure I ferry those who need ferrying."
She inclines her head to the slovenly, snoring half-demon nearby, a brow rising.
"Huh. More merciless than I thought," she murmurs before turning her attention back to the cowering angels. "You want to know how I know that you all are going to go back now?"
"H-how?"
"Your names are pretty low on my list. If you were meant to kill Raven for the key, as I suspect you or your commander thinks you are, you would be significantly higher."
She nods at Doctor Fate, who stands ramrod straight and utterly silent.
"He would jump you significantly up my list if it happened, under Nabu's influence. And what, do you think, it means if a Lord of Order deals with you?"
"The banished would be an agent of Chaos."
"Very good," she coos, with shocking condescension. "And what would that mean, then, if killing Raven and Nicole Diaz would incur that response?"
"They are aligned with the Lords of Order?"
"Yes, well, nearly killing herself to keep the universe in its status quo would certainly suggest that, wouldn't it?"
She gives her list one more look before nodding.
It vanishes into smoke, and she walks over to Raven's side, not a sound rising from where her feet meet rock.
Her mouth moves rapidly, and the angels cringe at the guttural sounds that brush like razors against their minds.
By the end of the incomprehensible statement, her hand glows black.
Raven's body arcs off the ground, her spine nearly bending into a 'u' as Death's hand flits back and forth as though in search of something.
And then, Death's hand loses its coloration, and Raven sags back to the ground, pouring copious amounts of sweat.
The angels gape at the sight of the key in her palm, seeming somehow less pale than her skin tone.
"That could have caused a great deal of damage," Nabu muses, breaking the silence.
"Not enough to put her any higher on my list than the last few weeks have already done," she retorts flippantly.
One of the angels steps forward as though to grab the key, and she quickly pulls her hand to her side.
"First, the terms."
The angels stare at her in confusion, but Fate violently jerks.
Then the angels feel it, and all of them drop to their knees at the magic pulsing in the air.
Death looks into empty air, barely twitching at the energy playing across her mind.
"They did work for you. Their death is not the way for this to end for them in repayment."
She frowns at something the others can't hear, shaking her head slightly.
"Of course I wouldn't wish them untouchable. Everyone has their time. Their times have been artificially sped up, though, and while not overly bright, what the metahuman said isn't incorrect. This whole situation is our fault. Lucifer's, Dream's, Duma and Ramiel's, and a number of others all made it possible to take decades off of what was originally a timespan most humans can't comprehend dedicated to fighting for balance."
A cold sensation brushes against Fate's soul, then, and he nearly drops to his knees.
Somehow, the sensation takes on a question, no voice needing to air it for the mystic to grasp what the inquiry is.
"Despite my moniker, I am not Destiny," he explains, leaving the angels even more baffled at the sudden change in his voice. "I cannot say for certain how everything will end with them, in this reality. They both have more than earned something in return, though. You know, I'm sure, that Raven is capable of passing through the Wall. If she didn't have a vested interest in protecting this world, and this dimension's set of people, she could have simply taken her betrothed and jumped to another universe."
The sensation rises again, though it has less effect on Fate this time.
"Maybe. Certainly, there are other heroes who may have risen in their stead if they hadn't been here. But without their aid, it wouldn't have led to here, now, with her brothers incapable of attempting this all again, and there would certainly have been more souls for Death to ferry than this entire ordeal has given her. The possibilities and other outcomes have nothing to do with this outcome, nor their hand in it."
"I'm not asking for a reset," Death chimes in. "Their heroics and deeds outside of this situation would still have put them higher on my list than the average creature, even if Raven's is balanced by her demonic nature. But I had a look-see, using Destiny's help, into the variables. In comparison to the universes that are similar, but deviated with them simply walking away, my list has them higher by nearly three hundred percent on the list. That's on us, specifically."
"They've had their time taken from them. Nicole's time is more precious a commodity than Raven's, surely, but in the end, even her near immortality has been decreased significantly as a result of this situation," Fate adds.
Death's head cants to the side, her eyes slipping slightly closed as she feels the Presence's input once more.
She nods, then, and the air turns frigid in an instant, ice forming along the entire cavern.
The angels watch as the key to the Hellmouth vanishes in a burst of thick, oily black smoke.
As the smoke evaporates, Death's eyes turn to pure light, forcing everyone to look away lest they have their minds burned to ash.
The same strange, incomprehensible language flows from Death's mouth, and her footsteps on the icy rock as she moves to the women goes entirely unheard in comparison.
And then, the cavern goes silent, and the angels look over only to find all three women gone from the room…
...
Jinx jerks violently awake, her heart crashing against her ribs.
Her muscles scream in protest, drawing a whimper through clenched teeth.
Even as she notices it, though, the pain in its entirety vanishes, leaving her shaky but otherwise fine.
A hand moves through her hair, and she barely resists jumping as she takes up the scene around her.
She's in an unfamiliar room, with disturbingly bright walls and a massive, golden-framed window.
The thick curtains covering most of said window doesn't make a dent in the pure white of the walls, the sight already giving her a headache.
Pulling her attention away from the strange wall reveals an uncanny sense of softness beneath her, as though clouds are trying to assimilate her.
Frowning in confusion, she looks down to find the largest bed she's ever seen under her.
She notices while examining it a long leg made of skin slightly less pale than her own.
Memories come flooding back, and she lunges.
Raven makes an undignified sound as the meta throws herself to the side, wrapping her arms tightly around her neck.
She runs a hand down Jinx's back in soothing circles as she stares to her own side.
Jinx doesn't see the raised brow, nor the blush on her cheeks, with her own head buried against her chest.
Death's lips curl in amusement at the display from where she leans against the nearby wall.
"Two weeks?" she asks, surprising Jinx out of her relief.
"Give or take a few human days," Death responds with a slight nod. "Enjoy your officially deceased status while you can."
Jinx's head jerks up, finally noticing their guest with a blush of her own.
"And the key?"
"Safer than before, and we're taking steps to make sure that it doesn't get captured again."
"Something I'll be sure to suggest happens to all the relics that made this entire ordeal possible, when we're discovered again," the demonling mutters.
"Yeah, that should probably be a conversation that should take place," Death agrees.
"And what…"
She licks her lips, suddenly looking unsure of her question.
Death seems to understand regardless, however.
"They're not coming back. They went into it with weakened souls, and Nicole broke what was remaining of her two kills. If she hadn't, their efforts would have killed them in exchange for the gate opening. Passed out as you were, you took the last two to die in, and even then, they stood no chance of taking over. Your brother Sloth is still alive, but there's no longer a soul in that vessel of his, so if you ever see him again, it's probably some lucky spirit that happened on him."
"Then… it's really over," Raven murmurs, her voice strangely hollow.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far. This specific situation, sure, but if you had no good left to do, my intervention would have changed nothing."
"As long as angels stay the fuck away from us, I couldn't care less," Jinx hisses.
"My father agrees."
Jinx's heart skips a beat, her eyes going shock-wide as she stares uncomprehendingly at Death.
"Y-your f-father? As in… Like, there's actually-"
"I'd always been under the impression that he strictly maintains a policy of non-intervention," Raven adds, allowing Jinx to compose herself.
"He does. We do. This instance is a very, very rare exception. There were a great deal of factors involved, but it comes down to our side screwing up. We nearly caused the balance to shatter entirely. With a lot of help along the way, you two stopped it, at least in this reality. We might try to stay uninvolved, but we'd caused decades of time to be lost, and that couldn't stand if we wanted to really fix the imbalance."
"Had caused?" Raven asks, her own eyes widening in surprise.
"I made a deal on your behalf. You're not immortal, and you don't get immunity that some souls have been afforded from my list, but we gave back the time we caused you to lose. As far as the list's concerned, you never took chunks out of your souls on our behalf."
"Hence why we're capable of doing more than writhing in a hospital bed right now," Raven guesses, a hint of wonder creeping into her voice.
"Nuh-uh. That was all you two," Death corrects. "I just got permission to return the life energy you'd lost. Everything else was the doing of your own link."
"You, uh, wouldn't happen to have any idea on that, would ya'? Souls bein' your thing, and all?" Jinx inquires in the ensuing silence.
"Of course. Why spoil it, though? You two have the benefit of not having omnipotence. Why ask for the answers to those kinds of things when you can enjoy being surprised later?"
"Well, when you put it like that," Jinx mutters.
"I believe that settles everything between us, then," Raven adds.
"For now," Death corrects. "We'll be meeting again."
"Hopefully not in any official capacity for quite some time," the demonling muses.
Grinning, Death shrugs at them.
The room briefly turns cold, and then, the couple is alone.
"Well that worked out," Jinx quips.
Grinning, Raven turns to fully face the meta, her red eyes alight with positive emotion.
Both women know that there will be more battles.
Two weeks is all the time they have before someone finds them, and drags them back into a life of fighting.
Awaiting their return is a laundry list of species and organizations looking to collect the blood owed over the year-long case.
But for now, both women force it out of their minds as they leave the strange room, and find themselves standing on an expanse of beautiful, white sand and crystalline water as far as their eyes can see, together, and enjoying only each other's company for the near future.
As they run towards the shore, they both let themselves begin to plan on how best to use their borrowed time, while they can…
...
Author's Notes:
And that is that, everyone. Finishing stories, I've found, has always been the most challenging part of my writing process. As it goes, though, I think this one works well.
It's been a very fun ride writing this story, and despite some admitted pacing issues, I think it came out fantastically, as I hope you all do, as well! I think I'll be taking a break from fanfiction writing for a bit after this is uploaded, because this taught me that if I sit down and just write, even once a week, I can come up with a full novel, very quickly. At 207,500+ words without counting notes, this is more than qualified as such, and I want to see what I can do with the multiple story ideas for entirely original fiction I have lying around my computer if I apply the same philosophy to them.
Also, a few people were curious what my title had to do with anything. Encroach means to intrude on, or to advance gradually beyond usual or acceptable limits. From the start, the title was what came to mind when I was plotting out how Raven's character would develop through the story, and it fit well, by the end.
I do expect to have a story on the site made of side-stories and extended/removed scenes at some point, and possibly a remastered story edited for better pacing and with the benefit of hindsight, at some point in the future. Until then, though, thanks a great deal to anyone with input, support, and critiques alike, and until next time, I'm glad so many people seem to have enjoyed the story along with me, and will continue doing so.