Raven watched sunlight flickering on the waters of the lake. It was dancing as though it had been given an unexpected reprieve from winter's dark, had woken from a nightmare to find its whole life before it. Pathetic fallacy, she thought. But she could feel the unaccustomed sunlight stirring in her heart even so. Was this what peace felt like, she wondered?
Spring was turning into summer, alright. Somewhere a clock was striking eight, but a warm breeze was ruffling the trees across the lawn and stirring sweet aromas into the bright evening air. All these things she had lived with, but could not remember ever noticing before. Since the battle with her demonic father, Trigon, it was as though a whole new world was opening up.
Raven returned her attention to the board in front of her, and made up her mind. She concentrated for a second. A cocoon of black energy engulfed her queen and pushed it forward three squares.
She had been coming to the park for chess on and off for a couple of years now. The thought of playing outdoors with a lot of people watching had made Raven, a natural introvert, uncomfortable at first, but in the end her desire for competition had conquered her antisocial instincts. She just couldn't get a proper challenge at home; Cyborg, though good for an occasional bout, was not really up to her standard, and the others were just hopeless: Robin was too serious for board games, Starfire couldn't bear to let her pieces get captured, and Beast Boy... well...
Raven's eyes were caught by two butterflies chasing each other in long loops, buoyed up by the waves of heat that rose from the baked ground. As she watched them, she took another sip of herbal tea. Her opponent was drinking it out of an old Thermos which came with two cups, and upon discovering they both liked it he had offered her some. The flask was surprisingly capacious: they had drunk several cups and it hadn't run out yet. The butterflies soon flew out of sight, so she cast her eyes once again over the little man sitting opposite.
In most respects he did not stand out amongst the other middle-aged to elderly men who frequented the chess tables, whose eyes always lit up rather charmingly whenever Raven drifted incongruously into their midst. There was nothing particularly strange about the way he looked. He was dressed with somewhat shabby dignity in a brown suit, an old pullover with what looked like a question mark motif, and a silk paisley scarf and matching tie, and he wore a hat which he had doffed politely to her before sitting down. An umbrella with a red, question-mark-shaped handle leaned against the arm of his chair – okay, that was a little eccentric. But other than that, only his eyes were strange. At first they had looked a deep, dark hazel, but she kept seeing flashes of blue. During a previous game she had pointed this out.
"Your eyes are a strange colour," she had said forthrightly.
"So are yours," he had replied; and she had to admit that this was so.
They had played half a dozen games, she always choosing black and he taking white, and she hadn't won one yet, but they had been so compelling that she was feeling neither bored nor dispirited. Their first game had featured the Arkham Gambit variation of the Gotham Defence, in which, through a succession of discovered checks, the white e-pawn (the so-called "joker" pawn) is enabled to go on a rampage through the black queenside pieces before finally being stopped by the black knight. Although initially spectacular for white, the line is supposed to be worthless if black plays accurately: the "joker's" mad rampage turns out be self-defeating, because once it has been stopped the white pieces are left over-extended, out of position and ripe for the slaughter. Raven had played very accurately, ending up with a pawn on the second rank, poised to become a queen and finish her opponent off. But, with brilliant improvisation, he had produced a flurry of counterattacking moves that had to be beaten off. Eventually these ran out, and he had tamely shielded his king with a piece. Triumphantly Raven had promoted the pawn, only to realise he now had a very elegant forced mate with his remaining forces.
"I call that the Ace-Up-My-Sleeve Variation," he had quipped as her king toppled, mopping his brow with a paisley handkerchief in exaggerated relief.
Yes, the little man was a canny opponent; there was no doubt of that. But this time she had him, she was sure of it. They had embarked upon the New World System, Eternity Variation, which seemed to be his favourite line. They had played this opening several times already, but this time she had got him out of the textbook with a creative and innovative move that she had been calculating in the back of her mind for the past three hours. With great satisfaction, Raven had watched his brow crease at the unexpected turn the game had taken; he had visibly gulped. Now his knight was out on a limb; it would have to move, leaving her bishop unopposed on the long diagonal. With that, her mating attack would begin. It was daring, it was brilliant, it could not fail. It just depended on him retreating that knight.
"So," she said casually as he pored intently over the position, "do you live in Jump City, or are you just visiting?"
"Just re-visiting," he said. His Scots accent was rich and soft. "I was here once before, briefly, and I found it charming. I always meant to come back one day. That was many years ago."
"Oh, before my time, then."
"Well, time is relative," he said distractedly, his hand hovering over the knight, then withdrawing. "You know, I want to thank you," he announced suddenly.
"What for?"
"Just enjoying a game like this is something of a departure for me, recently. I seem to spend as much time setting chess problems – and solving them, of course – as I do playing. It's a very demanding art form, the chess problem. I once said as much to Vladimir Nabokov. 'Vlad, old friend', I said, 'a good chess problem is like a butterfly: beautiful, delicate, short-lived, but long in the making. There's a novel in that somewhere.'"
"You knew Vladimir Nabokov?" said Raven, surprised.
"Oh yes. Fascinating man. I've always been attracted to exiles." He looked frankly at her. His gaze was intense, but there was nothing intimidating about it.
"Could that be because you're something of an exile yourself?" she asked.
"Yes..." he said softly, half sighing and switching his stare to the middle distance.
"How long ago did you leave Scotland?" Raven asked, probing discreetly for the interesting and possibly sad life story she sensed beneath her opponent's ordinary-looking exterior.
"That's funny," he said, smiling faintly. "People usually think I come from somewhere in Ireland. No, it's been longer than I care to remember since I left home. I don't really think of it as home any more."
"They do say home is where the heart is," Raven remarked, which for some reason made him laugh.
He retreated his knight, leaving the kingside exposed. Poker face, Raven told herself, though she was turning cartwheels inside. Keeping her expression impassive, she began her attack, taking his bishop with hers and blasting her opponent's defences wide open.
He reached out, picked up his queen, and plonked it down beside her king.
"Check. And mate in three," he said.
Raven stared at the board. Her expression didn't budge, but black ethereal flames started flickering around her like an aura.
"Er, I don't wish to alarm you, but you seem to have caught fire," her opponent said, peering at her in concern that seemed so genuine, she couldn't help but laugh.
"Sorry," she said. "Just got bad-tempered for a moment. I really thought I'd won one at last. You're the best opponent I've ever played." He shrugged modestly and began re-setting the board.
"We didn't introduce ourselves," Raven continued. "We don't, round here; we just sit down and play. It's one of the reasons why I like it, because it's private and social at the same time. But you seem nice – and interesting. I've been hoping you'd tell me more about yourself."
As she finished speaking, she realised that she couldn't remember ever saying that much to anyone before. She felt the complex, bittersweet pang that comes with something important gained; the realisation that it had been missing up to now.
"You really don't recognise me, do you?" the little man said. "That's because I've become so adept at being secretive." He sighed, and she sensed he was feeling something bittersweet too, some complicated blend of loss and gain; and that on his side, there was rather more of the loss. An emotion-freighted moment stretched out like the half-set board between them.
"Recognise you?" she repeated. "We've met, then?"
He gently cupped her chin in one hand. Two strange pairs of eyes met across the chessboard.
"Contact," he said.
"Contact," she found herself replying.
Although to the other players and evening strollers in the park nothing outwardly seemed to happen, to Raven it was as though she had been swept up into some huge dark sky, vaster than midnight – or down, into an abyss star-bright and boundless; a secret realm that thrilled to a double heartbeat of clockwork and shadow, passion and mirth.
"I do know you," she realised. "I've known you a long time."
"Of course you do," he smiled, "I'm the Doctor."
She returned to herself, in her chair in the park at dusk, shivering but glad.
"Why have you come back?" she whispered. "Is there trouble? Evil on the attack again?"
"I came back because, when I was here last, I was invited back," the Doctor said. "No other reason."
Raven raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, if you must know – yes, I did have another motive," he admitted. "There were... loose ends."
"What kind of loose ends?"
"Things that, when I thought about them later, didn't quite add up. Wizzard, for instance. He didn't seem the most competent villain either of us had ever faced…"
"That's true," said Raven, with a smile.
"And yet he could happily have destroyed the entire world if we hadn't stopped him at the last second. Didn't you ever wonder how he came to hear of the Ragnaroctopus in the first place, when it only appears in one obscure Roman text? A text which doesn't mention that it comes from a higher plane of reality, or discuss how to summon it using technology?"
"So you think he had help?"
"I don't think, I wonder. Was there more going on that day than met the eye? Was there some hidden guiding hand? Were we all – you Titans, Romana and I, Wizzard, even the Ragnaroctopus itself – mere pawns in a cosmic chess game of infinite danger and complexity, with ramifications extending into both our universes, and beyond?"
He rested his chin on the handle of his umbrella and brooded darkly, his face in shadow beneath his hat as the twilight gathered around them.
Raven started laughing.
The Doctor stared at her, genuinely baffled.
"What was funny about that?" he asked.
"Oh, just... life isn't all doom and darkness, you know. Not every story is part of an arc. Sometimes you can just take them as they come. Perhaps you're right about the Ragnaroctopus, but you don't have to worry about it tonight. Come back with me to the Tower and have a catch-up with the others; I know they'd love to see you again."
The Doctor's face creased into a smile.
"You're absolutely right," he said. "Cosmic plots and schemes can wait. Perhaps I should adopt a sunnier outlook sometimes. You certainly seem to have. And if you don't mind, I'd love to hear that story."
Raven stood, and held out her hand.
"Come on, then," she said.
He took her proffered arm and allowed himself to be led away.
An unusual pair they made, the teenage girl with purple hair and the ancient old man with the question-mark umbrella, as they walked away across the park hand in hand, still standing out amongst the crowd even as the perspective changed, withdrawing to encompass the spires of the city, and the tower shaped like a giant T which stood before the westering sun upon a sea of light and flame; but it was clear to the observer, still keeping them in view as they dwindled, that however unalike they might be, however far apart the universes they came from, they were so much more the same than different – and that no matter what changes might come, what they represented could never be destroyed. And where they walked, the world around them became a little brighter.
Long ago on a Californian evening.
NEVER QUITE THE END...