A/N: I beg your pardon.
I can see how this goes to the end, perfectly in my head, but getting that to words on a screen is a struggle. I want to get it right. To promise you I haven't abandoned this, here's a chapter, short even by my standards, but I'm working on it.
I do very much appreciate your patience and your kind words. Writing is about the only thing holding me together at the moment. Bit worrying that it's a Nevermore story, but there you are. :) Thank you again.
- 'Foot
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There was nothing. No light, no darkness, no sound, no time, no sense of body. Nothing.
Raven waited. I expected Hell, she thought. Purgatory is better but boring. Is Rage destroying the world? Has the prophecy finally been completely fulfilled?
Regret and grief filled her and she murmured to herself, "And I can't help. I'm dead."
"No."
The voice sounded familiar, it sounded like - "-Wisdom?"
"Yes," said Wisdom.
Everything flooded back.
Raven was sitting inside a shield of black energy chased with yellow and purple highlights. It was warm and a muted roar pounded against her ears. The little girl was lying beside her, still asleep or perhaps unconscious. Wisdom sat at the other end of the shielded area, with Affection and Joy. Joy looked ashen and drawn, and she leaned heavily on Affection, who kept a steadying arm around her.
Raven looked around but couldn't see anything but the energy shield."Where are we?"
"We've been assimilated," Wisdom said simply.
"We're - inside Rage?"
"Yes. She took me first." Wisdom's voice was the same as always - calm and without inflection - but Raven noticed her yellow-gloved hands were fists and her shoulders were shaking under her cloak with the effort of keeping up the energy field. "She wanted me to tell her where the saecula was - the small Raven. I would not." She smiled. "She tried to force me. I would not. Then she took my energy into her, I suppose to destroy me. But I was able to put up a shield."
"Then she came after us," said Affection. "She tried to get Joy but - I couldn't fight her off. She took Joy. Then me." Joy nodded and huddled tighter in her cloak, slow tears running down her face. "I can help Wisdom protect us, but eventually..."
Raven leaned closer to the shield. Faintly outside, she could see what looked like black and red lava, roiling around the shield, attacking it. Touching the black curve overhead, she could feel the heat and the relentless pressure. Raising her hands, Raven gave her own energy to Wisdom's protection, knowing that she was only adding a little time. "And when the shield gives out..."
Wisdom sighed. "We are truly assimilated. Burned and then reformed in Rage's image. You will become part of Rage. Affection becomes Contempt, Joy becomes Cruelty. And I..." her voice trailed off. "Cunning, I suppose. I don't know. I hope I don't know." She shifted uneasily. "I'm afraid I will. I'm afraid there will be some small part of us that will remember, that will witness everything Rage does. She'd like that. If she could reduce us to helpless, eternally-aware sparks, she would."
Raven had a sudden vision of an endless black night with three stars hanging alone in the sky. Stars whose isolation almost seemed to accentuate the ribbon of darkness.
Not very good at stars, Beast Boy had said.
"Wisdom, what about - what about Cyborg and Beast Boy?"
Wisdom shook her head. "They won't be able to defeat her. And when we are lost and she has our energy and takes over your body - it might be better if they were already dead."
Raven felt her throat growing tight and tears gathering in her eyes.
"I am sorry," Wisdom said, with the gentleness of fatalism. "Even I understand, I think. But you know Rage has a special hatred for them. They will be the first ones to lose their lives."
Raven had spent months trying to reconcile herself to the fact that she had destroyed the world. This was worse, anticipating it for the second time, knowing that there was nothing she could do.
Maybe I should have made some time, there on the stairway, she thought to herself wryly.
Wait. "Can we still combine our energies here, inside Rage?"
"Of course," Wisdom said, "But we don't have enough strength. Even with Timid and Brave inside you, we don't -"
"We could have help," Raven said. "At least we may. This is the last thing we can try. I can't help with the shield. Will you be -?"
Wisdom glanced at Affection. "For a time. Not long. None of us have long."
"Let me have the small Raven," Joy said in a thick voice, apparently unable to stop crying. She shuffled across the shield and gathered the girl in her arms, going back to sit beside Affection. "I can make this painless. It's the last thing I can do. She won't have to know."