It's official, Raven decided as she sat down in front of the mirror, I no longer bear any resemblance at all to myself. The eyes that scrutinized her back were slate, the hands that sat so neatly folded in her lap were still pale, but no longer tinged gray. She resisted the urge to run a finger over her chakra-less forehead, knowing from experience that glamours worked to fool more than just sight. Starfire chattered happily behind her as she worked Raven's – no Rowan's jet black hair into complicated twists and knots, only to redo them. Raven vaguely wondered how Starfire, an alien who had been on earth barely two years, had managed to learn so many hairstyles, but soon returned to her previous train of thought.
Tsuri On'na, an unusually straightforward tree faerie she knew, had been happy to provide the glamour. That was not to say she didn't have conditions, of course, but they hardly could be counted as such. Raven had already explained to Tsuri how she had come to be in the competition - an explanation that ended up encompassing why she joined first the muggle world and then the Teen Titans – so Tsuri insisted that Raven come to her grove whenever she practiced her violin. This had come as something of a relief to Raven, who had been wondering how she would be able to practice in the Tower with so many people.
The hours spent in the cool forest passed quickly for Raven, who sometimes spent whole afternoons working at refining her legato, meticulously checking for out of tune notes as she went. She altered between composing pieces that matched the weather and melodies that seemed to match the overall mood of Tsuri and the small crowd that had taken to listening from behind trees and within the underbrush. The quiet assortment of listeners was made up mostly of tree fae and dryads, but among them were goblins and ravens, and even a water nymph from a nearby brook.
She was just thinking that she ought to go to the forest more often, when Starfire finally announced that her hair was done.
And so it begins, she thought dryly.
)o(
Raven sat perfectly still as she waited backstage with the other contestants. There was very little conversation between them, as they had come from as far away as the Great Plains to be here, and as such everyone's attention was riveted on the small screen in front of them. One of the few exceptions was a duet sitting next to her. The two violists, apparently from British Columbia, were prattling to each other in whispered French, presumably analyzing the other entrants as they performed. Numerous violists, violinists, cellists, bassists, and even an erhu player had already played, sometimes as soloists and other times in groups. Currently on screen was a harpist, who was strumming the final chords of a lilting ballad. And then it was Rowan Sherwood's turn, the final act of the night.
As she walked on stage, she took note of her surroundings. The Jump City Opera House was far larger then she had anticipated, though she could only barely see beyond the stage under the glaring lights. She could, however, hear the slight titters the audience produced at the sight of the blue violin; they no doubt thought it was one of the cheap colored-plastic ones that were taking the internet by storm. However, they had enough etiquette to silence themselves when she positioned the violin on her shoulder. She glanced briefly at the panel of seven judges in front of her, before lifting her bow to the string, and closing her eyes to better see the colors.
Raven began to play.
At first, the colors were predominately pink, a color widely interpreted as happiness. But this pink was faded and muddied. Superficial. It was the life of Angela, her mother. Gradually, the music began to become darker, black suspicion lacing the rapidly lowering notes. And then, almost out of nowhere, the song intensified. Her bow slipped onto the E string and the notes became short and fast. Raven began to speckle the quarter notes with slurs, building the tension, before abruptly drawing out a single, clear note. She let the note ring for almost a whole measure, and when she started playing again, it was as if a whole new song began. In the space of three measures, she had gone from an anguished blood red to an almost unnaturally calm shade of palest blue. The melody was simultaneously calming and dead, devoid of any emotion. The bow moved in a controlled, almost stiff fashion across the strings, for after Angela had been forced to bear the demonic daughter of Trigon, she had almost eagerly thrown off her past to become Arella, a dedicated monk. The story of Arella finished, Raven transitioned seamlessly into her own story, the story of little Naano. The story was hopeful and emerald tinged, and the music reflected that as she picked up the tempo with a new swing to her bow. But as was the pattern in this narrative song, the mood darkened again, this time into disappointment.
She had waited a very long time for this, this day where she would be allowed to see, and play music for, her mother. She did not know much about Arella, only that she lived somewhere in the temple and had entrusted her daughters caretaking to the other monks, a common practice in Azarath. Naano found herself bouncing slightly as she walked, and quickly calmed herself before a monk noticed and 'suggested' an extra hour of meditation. She had practiced violin with Azar since – well, it had definitely been before she was able to read anyway – She knew the perfect song to play for Arella, an earth song by someone named chi-KOV-skee.
She was ready to know her mother, but Arella wasn't ready to know her.
When Naano walked into the room, Arella flinched and stared at her with wide, wet eyes that seemed to be halfway in another time or place. Naano didn't see colors when she played music yet, but she was still an empath, and the wave of horror and sadness hit her like a whole shelf of books. She had never felt anything like that before, and the monks hastily ushered her away, deciding that this was a bad idea.
That was to be her last memory of Arella for more than eight years, as it was not long afterwards when Trigon kidnapped her, tortured her in his fiery domain, and then threw her to Earth, the transition from dimension to dimension messing with her still relatively young mind, twisting its interpretation of things and altering her thought pathways.
Rowan didn't play anything to describe Trigon's domain, for how could a violin capture anything as terrible as Limbo, eighth level of the underworld? Instead she skipped to the disorienting confusion of the portals between worlds. But hope, being stronger than a façade of happiness, crept back into the song, and she was just ending the song with the calm of a pizzicato forest, when the lights went out.
)o(
Red X had been waiting in the rafters for a very long time, and he was both disappointed and extremely bored. He preferred his music with words, especially after listening to so much classical music over the past couple of months. It did not help that all these people were playing the exact same centuries-old songs, one after another. Seriously, didn't classical musicians have any creativity? If it wasn't for his latest job, he'd have been out of here by now. Some ritzy old heiress had recently taken up violin playing in her retirement, and had hired him to find 'a violin better then all others,' so that she could become the world's next great violinist. Red X thought she probably had some old-people disease, and knew from experience that she made a nail on a chalkboard sound like it had musical potential; however, she was offering enough dough to make him stick around a while longer. He had already presented several violins to her, but each had been rejected. The last one he brought her had even earned him a swipe of her cane, because apparently it wasn't a violin at all, but a viola.
Red X had done some research since then. Who'd have thought there were so many different variations of the same stupid instrument? And then there were all these different related instruments too, cellos, bases, violas, violones, erhus, sihus… ugh, the list went on forever. So far, none of the contestant's violins fit the bill, and it didn't help that there were a bunch of non-violinists there too, wasting his time. He could be robbing a museum somewhere, messing with that walking traffic light, Robin. At least it was the final contestant's turn now. Wait a minute… he hadn't heard this song before. After the initial happy-go-lucky intro, the song became pretty good - dark and depressing, but good. And the sound quality was better than anything else he'd heard earlier. He squinted, and was surprised to see that the violin was blue.
Okay, definitely not Guarneri or Stradivari made, but it could be mistaken for one if you didn't actually see it, He thought. The blue would be a dead giveaway in identifying the stolen violin, but it wasn't his job to tutor whoever happened to be paying him at the moment. He would deliver this violin to the Crazy Lady, collect his payment, and get out of there.
But first, he wanted to hear a bit more of this song.
As he heard it coming to an end, he sighed, stood up, and readied an X. Ready, aim, fire! He thought jokingly as he threw the projectile across the theater. No one noticed the flying red X, but they did notice when the lights went out. He smiled as he heard the people shriek at the bit of darkness, and then he swooped.
)o(
The moment the lights went out, Raven was on guard. She was scanning the theater, when suddenly someone grabbed her from behind. Raven sucked in a breath through her teeth as she felt herself swinging upward. Whoever was holding her landed nimbly in the rafters above the stage, then promptly dropped her, sending her reeling. Catching her balance, she turned around.
"Red X?" She asked, slightly surprised. Since when did Red X kidnap people? He must have very strange clientele.
"Oh, so you've heard of me then? Are you from Jump City, or has my reputation exceeded that boundary?" Raven scowled at his egotistic manor, and went into a defensive position, at which Red X laughed. "Somehow, I doubt that your violin practicing is going to help you escape me."
He must have been shocked when his punches hit air. The violin severely limited her ability to throw punches, and the skirt was annoying when it came to kicking, but she had always been better at dodging anyway. While she ducked, jumped, and blocked, she searched for something that could help her without giving her identity away. She found what she was looking for in a metal rod and a rope. Jumping back lightly she reached for the rod, but as she felt her fingers close on it, she felt something small and sharp enter her upper arm. Her automatic reaction was to bang the pipe against his head. While he rubbed his cranium, she realized that he had injected her with something.
Narcotic, she guessed, and probably a strong one. That would explain why none of the victims have any memory of where they've been taken; they were asleep the whole time!
Knowing that she would not be able to resist the drug indefinitely, she launched herself at Red X, swinging the metal rod wherever she saw an opening. Gradually, Rowan forced him back, until he tripped over the rope she had seen earlier, a line actors and actresses used to 'fly' onto the stage. Before he could get back up, Rowan was behind the fallen thief, her violin tucked under her arm, yanking his hands together and securing them in that position with the Weird Silver Hair Thing.
She tried to stand up, but it was like she had suddenly gotten Orthostatic Hypotension. A black fog, that was simultaneously an all consuming darkness and a shiny green cloud, obliterated most of her view of the theater, and what little she could see was spinning beneath her unsteady feet. She knew that even if she was bale to keep her eyes all the way open, it wouldn't make much difference, and it was like she was falling…
"Are you okay?" she heard someone ask her. Turning towards the speaker, she forced her eyes to cooperate long enough to see a domino mask and spiked back hair looking back at her through a swirling tunnel of the greenish-black fog.
"Red X… sedative," Raven said urgently, "good thing I'm not – not a cellist. Cellist or a harper…" She mumbled, before drifting into unconsciousness, and leaving behind a very confused Boy Wonder.
)o(
A/N – For those who didn't understand that last sentence, I was referring to chapter 2, in which Robin says that it wouldn't have mattered if Raven played cello or harp. Synesthesia is real, but no, I don't have it. Hopefully I managed to describe it somewhat accurately, although Raven's form of synesthesia appears to be sound color emotion, which doesn't exist (as far as I'm aware) and is unusual because there are three intertwined senses, as opposed to two. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the last two chapters, FanFiction-dot-net omitted Raven's fictitious email address; Rowan Sherwood at orc-dorks dot net.
Review! Please, I don't know how many people actually have seen this and liked it because my stats went offline for a couple of days, and your reviews are what keep me posting!