"Life doesn't discriminate. Between the sinners and the saints, it takes, and it takes, and it takes."
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Ten Years Ago
The End, with a Capital "E," and yet... it wasn't. Not for the world, not for humanity, and not for her. She should be happy, relieved, but all she ever knew was the End. She never sought anything beyond The End. How could she? She was destined to bring it, and she had, and how dare she exist beyond it, how dare any of them? She feels the disrespect for prophecy, for inevitability.
She ended it all, but not alone. No, that title belonged to both. Her and his little messenger. She scoffs.
From that day, now more than a year ago, he came to her with sulfur on his breath, whispering vile, horrific words into existence. His own selfish desires for life, for freedom from his own damnation driving him; her father's devious promises constricting them, choking the breath from both of their lungs.
He did not know, could not know, the outcome he sought. But in the wakeless moments of their despair, when he would come with dark visions of the future, she showed him. They tore each other apart, hateful of the thread binding them together. But in the quiet following their destruction, they forged new bonds, seeking truth, understanding, redemption. What a pitiful hope she had, to be bound to someone who could be like her, to create him in her image. But humanity had a way of rejecting such darkness. While she yearned for the light, she would always be drawn into the darkest of places. Her hellfire all-consuming.
She hoped he could find that light, to escape this pitch-black cell of self-loathing. An unspoken desire that he bring redemption to them both.
They had forged an understanding, attempting to hide their deception from the world. While he performed his role well, she knew better. Instead of prophecy, he brought rebellion, instead of anguish, solace. Her father saw right through the charade. At least he was the only one.
When her father brought devastation upon her, tearing through her mind and shredding her once brilliant soul as retribution for their insolence, he alone remained. Silently picking up the shattered remains of her psyche as she desperately stitched them back together. She lay in ruin, the vessel her father sought.
She dared not raise her gaze to his, terrified of the pity she knew would be reflected in his own. She could not see his remorse, his heartache, his guilt at her downfall. The contempt he held for that small voice in his head, whispering that she slipped ever further into his darkness, that shade of grey nearly indistinguishable from black. He did not know her tightly held secret, that his soul would always be redeemable, but not hers. No, hers would burn in scorching infernos on its descent into Tartarus.
He easily remained in the pitch black with her. Their darkness for once a comfort, both shying from the light that seeks only to expose their faults and their frailty.
When they at last met The End, neither could bear the sickening gift of her father. She lay in the dust, reduced to a child hiding from her fears. Merely a shell of the woman he knew her to be. He lay abandoned next to her, and whether she was a gift to him as the bearer of Trigon's ill tidings or he a gift to her as thanks from her father for bringing damnation, he could not say. In the quiet, he could only be thankful for the thread that still bound them and hope she would return to herself. But as she fled from him without recognition, without the knowledge of the trials they had endured to be in this place, he knew his part in the story would soon come to its own end.
But as with all ends, new beginnings must follow. He brought her friends to her, leaving despite his impulse, his need, to stay. He stole back his soul from the devil, at last achieving the desire that brought him back from hell and bound his life to hers. His renewal; a revival in the truest sense.
They fought valiantly, and she won. But as life resumed, he knew it was The End for them. He had no place left in her world, no duty to perform. He still felt bound to her by the thread of prophecy fulfilled, but it felt taut, as if one strong pull would break it. He feared the day it would snap.
In the aftermath, she felt the loss of his companionship. She knew he would be gone if she turned away from her friends. And somehow, she knew they would not see him again, fading from her life like a shooting star in the night sky. She did not know whether to be relieved; her heart knew only sorrow. The darkness of nighttime no longer felt welcome, but suffocating. She yearned for the day starlight would shoot across the dark expanse of her life again.
Life resumed for the Titans; the "teen" moniker abandoned in the fire and brimstone of her destiny. Now, more than a year after the prophecy writ itself across her skin, she felt further from the light of day that she herself brought back when she banished her father from this realm. No longer a child, yet not knowing how to navigate this adulthood she never expected to live. She felt all the expectations of her life plucking at her as if angered by her impudence.
Life, death, fear. It was the never-ending cycle of her existence. Moments she never lived—not in this world, not in this lifetime—the constant backdrop of her mind. A woven tapestry of despair she left tattered in the wake of her rebellion. A hundred thousand Ravens ending a hundred thousand cosmos. The outcome always the same: death, for her, and for humanity; her triumph merely a child's fantasy. And even if humanity won, she would succumb, her life given to return the rest.
She was never meant to live, and yet here she was.
The discomfort of life chafes against her skin, the constant reminder that she does not belong. There are days she wishes it would end, moments she imagines acting on the desire. Peace? There could be no peace, not for her. That restlessness pulls, and pulls, and pulls.
Why again did she hope for more beyond The End?
As she stands atop the tower, her resentment crashing against the confines of her defiled soul like the waves pounding the cliffs and crags of the island below, she senses him. As if her spirit drew him to her without intention or guidance to help quell the raging storm inside of her. Her mind rejects the thought, concerned at once of her comfort in his presence, but her heart only embraces it.
The injustices of her existence nurture her inner turmoil, prolonging the devastation. They do not speak, as if afraid their voices will shatter the reality of this moment. He reaches for her, pulling her into him, into his essence, consoling her as he once did all those months ago.
He yearns to remain in this moment, his return to her igniting a spark thought long extinguished, forgotten in the wake of old endings and new beginnings. His absence was intentional, not wishing to revisit the truth of what they have become to one another, not willing to recognize what this could mean for them. He still struggles with his own resurrection, how it has changed his life, and how it hasn't. His own damnation is a constant reminder of his many failures, her triumph a stark contrast.
While she fears her darkness, he fears her light, worried he could only ever be the shadow of regret on the edge of its glow. Though she has once again shed the white robes of her purgation, he knows her soul, knows its blinding brilliance, even despite her father's best efforts to annihilate it.
That neither could see redemption without the other was lost to their shared unrest.
Before either was ready, they part. They both know it must be so, neither able to grapple with this new beginning forged between them. Perhaps in time, but not today. He would leave, she knew now. And she would move forward. Life would continue to take from them both, but they could accept it, they would accept it.
In time, they might once again meet as equals. Raven senses the rightness of the feeling, as if it was destined to be so.
For now, if there was a reason she lived when she was destined to die, she would wait for it.