Raven had gone through every possible scenario in her mind. She had even gone as far as to imagine what the Titans would say if they were here to help with her dilemma. She didn't want to die; she knew none of them did either. Long ago, Robin had taught her how to hope, how to overcome the fatalism that so readily bound her with the emotive caffeine for tired times - Hope. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she knew that none of the Titans would consider their own lives to be worth more than the fate of the universe. When they committed themselves to crime fighting, they had essentially pledged away their very lives. The problem with Raven was that unlike the rest of the Titans, her partial but strong demonic nature made her far from unselfish. Though she wanted to make the sacrifice and if need be, consequentially die in a hand-to-hand battle with the Decibo rather than to become Trigon, there was another side of her that wouldn't allow it. She wanted everything and she wanted it all.
The sound of splintering glass and warping metal ripped her from her meditation. Instinctively, she whispered her incantation and phased through the wall in the form of a massive black raven, her powers spreading through the walls of the spaceship that she had taken great pains to hide from the outside world. As her soul self spanned the length of the spaceship, she became acutely aware of what was happening in each room - but that was all she knew. Holed up in the library of the little oasis of her creation, she knew nothing about what was happening on the outside. She had no clue that Aurora and Ausatia had come back to Earth in search of Gordon only to find Robin going completely insane. She had no idea that the Starfire that she had taken from Curatoria was really Slade, nor was she conscious of the fact that the two warriors had taken Cyborg into their custody and that they were, incredibly, searching for her as if their lives depended on it. What she did know however, was that the search party sent by the mutinous demons had discovered where she had moved the spaceship to and that they had come with the intent of flushing her out before the Decibo came. The demons no longer underestimated her cunning. They had already preempted that she would try to hide herself before the Decibo was complete.
Spiralling through the walls with her wings spread out, she reached the place where she had trapped Beast Boy in no time. Descending upon the room in her human form, the empath was shocked to find him slumped on the floor like a cucumber in the midday heat. "Ugh, what have you done to yourself?" She groaned as she turned him over on his back and fanned his warm face with her hand. Thankfully, he was breathing yet she mentally kicked herself for leaving him in this room full of hazards.
I should've left him in one of those fully padded psychiatric rooms instead. She thought to herself as she wrapped her arm around his waist and tried to pull him to his feet. That was no short order, considering that he was now taller than her. Closing her eyes, she wrapped them up in her soul self and disappeared through the floor. Down they went through the bowels of the spaceship until they reached a utility closet. Releasing them both from her soul self's hold, she gently laid him down a pile of towels that she had once chucked there for lack of a better place to put them. Having done so, she whirled around and stooped down such that she could place the palm of each hand on the tops of two overturned buckets at the corner of the room. This was her contingency plan.
The moment both palms rested fully on the buckets, the room immediately morphed into a second control room that was equipped with the capability to override the controls in the main one at the bridge of the spaceship. Raven had created this room knowing that the demons would think nothing of a utility closet and that if they ever hijacked the main controls like they were doing now, she needed a way to wrest control from them without exposing herself to them. There was only one problem. Despite having enabled the strongest protective spells she had in place to secure this 'utility closet', Raven still felt insecure about her safeguards. Normally, she would have trusted herself but with Beast Boy here with her, even the slightest bit of risk felt like an enormous liability to her.
Her lips hardly moving, she whispered a little rhyme to centre herself. "Take the soul that's mine to keep, cut it in half right where they meet. Let my right ascend right to the star, let my left be left with me afar. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos..." Half of her soul self left her, engulfing the little box of a control room in its powerful hold. The other half remained in her physical body. Her consciousness being split into half did little to affect her judgement or her actions for she still had complete control over what she was doing. Having pressed the lockdown button with her left thumb and pulled a red lever all the way down with her right hand, she reached below her and produced a black keyboard with an array of strange symbols printed on it. Each symbol stood for something that only she would know; she had in actuality created her own symbolic language not unlike the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. This was her way of ensuring that even if Slade or the demons discovered and breeched her controls, they would have no clue how to operate them.
And so, she simply stood and waited, her eyes never leaving the panel of screens before her with which she tracked the demons' every move. She had spent enough time thinking to know what their strategy was and fortunately for her, she had enough time to figure out how to counter it. Once the demons entered a particular room on the lowest level of the spaceship, her index finger immediately slammed down on a button with a symbol that looked like an asterisk superimposed on an ampersand. The room instantly disappeared, leaving a gaping hole at the bottom of the spaceship which she quickly filled by pressing another button to close a gate. Flicking a switch to her right, she pulled down a steering wheel from the ceiling and launched the spaceship off the rock that she had parked it. In a matter of seconds, they had left the Earth.
The demons on the other hand, were now in for a very nasty surprise. Raven had rigged that particular room to be a portal right to the gates of Curatoria, in case she ever needed to get there fast. It now served the alternate purpose of transporting the demons right smack into the place they least wanted to be: before the warriors of Curatoria. She almost laughed at the thought of them emerging from the room all high and mighty only to receive an immediate beating from Aurora's capable comrades. If the thought ever crossed her mind that she might be abusing her connections with the Curatorians, she paid no attention to it because now that she had parked her spaceship in a place that she thought the demons wouldn't find them, she had other things to worry about.
Kneeling down before the unconscious Beast Boy, Raven allowed herself a few precious minutes to just gaze at his face, thinking. Now that they were alone again, she suddenly felt extremely nervous. She wondered what he would have to say to her after what had happened earlier. She wondered why he had knocked himself out. The minutes ticked away, waiting for her to realise that she would not get any answers to her questions unless she asked them. She didn't immediately do so - choosing instead to toy around with ideas to sabotage the demons. When she finally did settle on one and allowed herself to face him once more, she found herself faced with the prospect of having to wait for who knows how long for him to wake up. Having teleported them back to her bedroom, she opted to take a shortcut instead, staring deeply at him and thinking the words. Thanks to her training with Azar, she had currently developed her powers to a point that she could access some of them without speaking.
des Sinnes vau emblem, lara borra shay wrathe, demma demos fiere!
"I hate bacon!" Beast Boy suddenly leapt to his feet, his green eyes glazed red with fury. There was no transfer of energy, no manifestation of her soul self, nothing. Raven was learning the most dangerous form of magic; the kind that manifests itself without being traceable to its castor.
"Wow... Not what I was expecting." Raven deadpanned, mentally preparing herself for the vigorous anti-meat speech that she was sure was coming. Raring to spare herself the agony, she quickly thought the spell to reverse the effects of the Wrath that she had induced in him to snap him back into consciousness.
"You're back!" Anger morphed to joy as he annoyingly reached for her like a little boy with sticky fingers.
"No touching." She snapped. He recoiled as though he had been shot - she was pleased but she didn't show it.
"I'm sorry." His voice was gilded in gentleness that somehow touched the weak spots of her hardened heart. The empath felt strangely moved to let her guard down, inching closer until the edges of her cloak brushed against his knee. He looked down lovingly upon her, his gaze wandering wonderingly in awe over her stilled form. Purposefully, he reached out and parted the doors of her cloak with his hands before resting them on her slim waist and slowly pulling her in. There was an initial resistance but eventually, she relented, burying her face in his chest and wrapping her arms around his neck. She could hear his heartbeat quicken like a colossal gong as she felt a slight pressure on her head from where he had rested his chin. It was then that she realised just how much he had grown. They used to be the same height.
"Ikneedtomorrowyoursoul." She mumbled into his chest, unwilling to delve into the real details of her plan. She had thought that having so much power would compensate for her insecurities yet strangely, the mortal changeling that held her in his arms made her feel safer than any of her abilities ever did.
"Come again?" She drew a breath, admiring the deepness in his voice. Indeed, the boy was no longer a boy.
"I need to borrow your soul." She took a step back to gauge his reaction. Though she had pulled away from him, he kept his hands on her waist and stared at her with the kindest eyes she had ever seen.
"You don't need to borrow it." He said evenly, reaching even lower to take her slender hands in his. "You already have my heart and soul." A slight shade of crimson hugged her cheeks as she returned to her safe place on his chest, queerly sated and touched by those seven words. "I love you." His breath tickled her ear, his voice caressed her heart. "I've waited a long time to tell you this." His words plucked the harps of contentment as a feeling of relief washed over them both. They had both waited too long for this moment.
"I love you too." Her voice came out in a tiny whisper - a tiny whisper that sufficed. He reacted instantly, the little hairs on the back of his neck standing straight like sheaves of wheat. He could feel her left hand bunching up the sleeve of his uniform, her body tensing up against his as though she felt afraid of something. "It's really hard for me to admit it because my demon nature goes against love... But what human emotions I can manage, I give to you."
His heart flushed with emotion as he felt the heat rising to his cheeks. She loved him back. Raven, the most powerful demon-hybrid in existence had overcome her demonic tendencies to profess her love for him - the goofy green doofus who thought that he deserved her love the least of all. Her standing in front of him with her head on his breast made everything worth it. None of his past pain mattered now, not when he had the only person that he loved more than himself safely snuggled in his arms.
After a few minutes of silent basking in their little world of bliss, he began to shuffle backwards towards the bed, pulling her along until the backs of his legs struck wood. Flopping down on his back, he brought her down with him before letting out a sigh of contentment as he felt her weight gently pressing down on him. As tall and strong as she had grown, she hardly felt heavy to him. He watched as her eyelids slowly drooped to dreamland. As she wriggled slightly in a bid to make herself more comfortable, her body slid off his and came to rest at his side. Her left arm remained draped over his chest, rising and falling with each heavy breath he took.
Turning his head to his side, he studied her peaceful face, observing how worn and tired she seemed. Though she looked more beautiful and mature than ever, he could see the exhaustion written all over her body. She still retained her hourglass figure but she seemed far thinner than he had remembered - her hands had felt so small and frail in his. Yet for all her tiredness, he found himself lost in starry eyed wonder like Romeo in the tales of Shakespeare. She had since grown out her violet hair till it cascaded in royal silk down her back, the comely teen girl she used to be now a grown woman. Her soft eyelashes fluttered occasionally as if she was having a nightmare in her dreams. Raven's skin remained as pale as always but the more he looked, the more it seemed to glow in this light. He wished this moment would last forever.
"Hi." He averted his gaze back to her face to find her staring at him lovingly, her previously icy cold violet eyes now brimming with warmth and affection. He glanced at the clock, wondering in vain how much time had passed for he hadn't noted the time then. "We've been here for an hour now." She answered his question softly, having followed his gaze to the clock.
"We can stay for another hour." He whispered sweetly, intertwining his fingers with hers.
"I can't." She said regretfully, rising from the bed and smoothing out her cloak. He reluctantly let go and sat up as well as she stood in front of the mirror and stared at her own reflection. "It won't be long until the Decibo is complete. I need time to complete my plan."
"And that plan involves you borrowing my soul?" He asked curiously.
"Yes, but first, we must go back to Earth to retrieve the rest of the Titans." Raven said resolutely. Pulling up her hood over her head, she motioned for him to come closer with a stifled yawn. He found her strangely calm for someone who was facing the might of all the demons in the universe. Nevertheless, he stood up and joined her, wrapping his arms securely around her like a warm parka. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos."
The moment her whispered incantation left her mouth, she assumed the form of her giant raven that wrapped its wings around Beast Boy before taking off from the room. He hardly had the time to enjoy the rare privilege of being transported by Raven before she landed in the middle of the forest and reassumed human form with him by her side. There stood Aurora and Ausatia, with Cyborg standing between the two of them. Sensing Raven's presence, the warriors whirled around - he had never seen Aurora this angry and frazzled ever.
"There you are! Where the hell have you been and what the hell did you do to Robin!"
Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait! I included some BBRae fluff in this one. I hope you enjoyed this chapter :) On a side note, WHO ELSE IS EXCITED FOR THE NEW TEEN TITANS VS JUSTICE LEAGE MOVIE!