Authors notes: Updated 06/Jan/2020

I will admit, Russel is a little awkward in this chapter. There is a reason for that, that will be written into the story later when I update it. So please, bear with me on this.

Some might notice there are aspects of Beast Boy in Russel. That was no accident. ;)

I noticed in the episode 'Spell Bound', Raven's personality and attitude changed a little while she was with Malchior. She became more secure and confident. This is the reason why she's behaving a little out of her usual character for this adventure, it's in a similar vane to the TV show. I get the feeling her lighter-hearted version is more the person she wants to be, but the fear of judgement and betrayal makes her lock that person up in her head.

[EDITS]28/10/2019: Altered some of the language because after reading it back a few times it didn't get across what I was actually trying to describe.

Chapter 66

At the Devils Hump.

Unfortunately, it turns out Raven was terrible at fake magic as much as she was at socialising. She tried the Doctors go-to penny behind the ear trick. But she messed it up so many times it was embarrassing. She couldn't even make the coin 'disappear' between her fingers without it poking out from between them. A couple of times it fell through and landed on the floor. Russel laughed when she screwed it up and she felt embarrassed.

These tricks she could easily pull off if she just delved into her powers. He wouldn't be laughing then.

He tried it himself, he seemed to know the trick. Though he could make the penny 'disappear' from his hands, but he couldn't make it 'reappear' behind her ear. The reason became clear. He couldn't do it either. He'd slipped the coin down his sleeve instead of hiding it between his fingers. Raven called him out on this, so he let the coin fall into his hand and he quickly tossed it away in plain sight.

"Ta-da!" He announced as if that was part of the trick. Raven found herself rolling her eyes, though she had to admit she was amused. It did make her feel better knowing Russel couldn't do it either. At that moment they both looked foolish to each other.

"Are you a fan of Tommy Cooper?" He asked suddenly.

"No. Who's that?" Raven asked.

"You've never heard of Tommy Cooper?" He said in a mock outraged tone. "Tall guy in a fez who goes, 'Just like that!'" He said in a deep, gravelly voice clearly mimicking someone as he waved his hands around. Raven was confused and just looked at her own hands, she had no idea who he was talking about.

"I guess he wasn't that big in the States." Russel laughed, "He was a magician and a comedian. He was actually a very good magician, but when his tricks failed his audience would laugh so hard that he decided to make 'mistakes' part of his routine, and so he just rolled with it."

Just roll with it. Raven's mind echoed. She didn't see the funny side in a magic trick failing. How could that be funny?

As she hung out with him Raven began to wonder, didn't Russel have any friends of his own in the village? Why was he hanging out with her, the weird, skinny goth girl? Did Russel not have any friends of his own?

How sad and pathetic... Went a darker part of her mind.

Remember, you, technically, have no friends.

SHUT UP!

Despite feeling calm and at peace, Raven still felt a little shy. After all, nobody tended to like her for very long.

Wait, was he leading her into a trap? At some point would several of his friends suddenly ambush her and try to beat her up for being weird? If they tried that then they were in for a surprise. Raven may have sworn off her powers, but if she was in danger who knows what might happen when she releases power. But looking to Russel Raven couldn't detect a hint of malice, or dislike in him. Maybe what she was expecting was not going to happen, maybe he was just being friendly. Despite thinking that, Raven was still on edge.

Raven thought she had all of her emotions under lock and key in her head. But this new one she wasn't used to feeling and she hadn't had a chance to chain it up yet. And it needed to be chained up! A sobering reason why came but a few minutes later, when her powers escaped through her confused mind and struck down a tree just ahead of them. Russel instantly stood in front or Raven as if to protect her from the falling tree, a tree that was much too far away to hurt them.

"I wonder what caused that?" Russel said.

"Yeah, I wonder..." Raven trailed off, then took a deep breath.

"You alright?" He asked, concern on his face.

"Yeah, because that tree really posed a danger to us." Raven rolled her eyes, Russel laughed.

"Better to be safe." He shrugged, and they continued walking, moving around the fallen tree. Russel held a hand back to help her over it. She looked at it like it was intrusive, but took it, and he helped her over the tree.

Raven looked back. Something had tickled the edges of her senses. She wasn't sure what it was, but... Nah, it must've been her imagination. She was almost certain they were being followed.

They were both walking down a road towards a place Russel had called the Devils Hump. Russel described it as another place of devil worship where ceremonies used to be held centuries ago. Raven, naturally, was very interested in seeing it, she loved dark stuff like that.

"Though it's not much of a hump any more." He'd said, "It's a crater. Apparently, something blew up there at the same time the church did. Some mumbo-jumbo to do with this Azal demon again." He seemed very dismissive about it. Though Raven didn't know if it was true or not she still kind of felt insulted by his dismissal of the existence of demons. She really wanted to show him her powers, just to put the guys arrogance in its place.

"When was this." Raven had asked, it must've been a long time ago.

"Sometime in the seventies, before I was born."

"The nineteen seventies?!" Raven exclaimed. She'd never expected all this to have happened so recently. Usually, events like this happen centuries in the past. But this was within living memory, relatively speaking from her point of reference. It felt weird to be back in her home time. Even weirder to think there was probably another Raven back on Azarath, a Raven who was so removed from who she was now.

They passed over a bridge which ran over a small river flowing from a large pond of water that was maybe an acre or two big and who knows how deep. Russel stopped to look over the edge.

"I learnt to swim here." He said. "See the small waterfall over there?" He pointed at a small waterfall which helped feed the pond, no taller than Raven was. "It looked taller to me back then, but we used to slide down that into the river."

"I can't swim." Raven admitted flatly.

Russel turned to her. "How come?"

"I..." she wanted to speak, but what could she say? "It was never important to learn it."

"It's not important to me either, I spend most of my time on dry land. I thought everyone learnt how to swim." Russel said.

"Why bother learning?" She asked him directly.

"Because otherwise, you might drown in the bath." Russel shrugged. Raven just raised an eyebrow at that; then she groaned. Maybe she was wrong about this guy. He just seemed a little off, but it wasn't a threatening kind of off, it wasn't just eccentricity, it was something deeper.

Is that how people see me? She wondered. Not threatening, but 'off'. What were they talking about again? Oh right, swimming.

"I have been trying to learn how." Raven said, looking down into the water. "But it's difficult when you're by yourself. As soon as water closes over me I just panic."

"Do you want to learn a tip?" Russel asked. He had her attention. "When you find yourself underwater, there is one important thing to know." He said, "It's absolutely important that you do this, are you listening?" Russel had her full attention now. "When you find yourself underwater, the important thing is... to hold your breath." He smiled again.

Raven's brow and expression dropped.

"No shit."

By the look of it, they were just coming up on the Devils Hump after walking down this road for a good hour. Raven still hated the country, but for some reason, the summer air smelt sweeter than she'd remembered yesterday.

Raven was wondering if she really was under some kind of spell. It would make sense, but she didn't sense any kind of fluence on herself. Nothing about this was even remotely logical. The immediate infatuation she had with him was starting to cool, but still, she wanted to hang out with him. He was so odd himself that it actually made Raven feel normal, paradoxically.

The crater, that was paradoxically called the Devils Hump, lay in the field by the road and they both walked up to the edge and stopped, The crater was at least fifty feet wide and looked like an explosion had flung dirt out.

Russel stopped as did Raven. There was a used coffee cup on the ground by his feet. Russel looked at it with disgust, knelt down and picked it up.

"You don't know where that's been!" Raven hissed at him, disgusted.

"There's a bin just down the way." Russel said back pointing, "I wish people wouldn't just fling their rubbish out on the road like this." He ran down the incline and dropped the cup into a bin which had a faded sign on it which read, 'Keep Britain Tidy' and ran back up to join her again.

"You know, my dear old uncle used to work at a coffee plant." Russel said, "It's a sad tale. He was working the late shift one night and he fell over the railings and landed in the coffee vat." Raven felt a little sorry for him, but she wondered why he was telling her this. How could a coffee cup bring up such a story?

"He didn't suffer. Apparently, it was instant." And he stopped.

Huh? What was that? Raven wondered as the words rattled in her head. Instant death at a coffee plant. It was a sad story but...

Hey, wait a minute! 'Instant Coffee', And looking at Russel he was smirking. It was a joke, and he'd said it so deadpan that Raven couldn't help taking it seriously.

A little irritated, Raven slapped him roughly but gently across his arm, and he laughed.

"I shouldn't laugh actually." Russel said, "He actually did die. Heart attack. He was a ripe old age and it was his time. His final wish was to have his remains scattered around Disneyland."

"Did you?" Raven asked, interested in this macabre story.

"Yeah, but the officials weren't happy." He paused, Raven wanted him to continue. "You see, they were happy for me to scatter his remains. But they said I should've cremated him first."

The images Raven dreamt up in her head were gruesome. Bloody body parts being scattered around a children's theme park. It just sounded so silly. Then the penny dropped.

Raven stared daggers at him and roughly, yet gently and playfully tried to shove him aside. "Stop it!" She insisted, suppressing a smile.

Russel began waving his arms because she'd shoved him too near the edge of the crater and he was about to fall in!

Quickly, Raven grabbed his arm, but he was too heavy for her to haul back up again. He lost his footing and fell, Raven refused to let go and so she was dragged over the side with him. They both fell into the crater and began rolling around each other as they fell to the bottom. Once they stopped, Russel was on top of her and he shielded her as a dirt trail followed them down and rained down around them.

Once the dirt cleared the two then just stared at each other for a few seconds until the penny of where they were and what position they were in, dropped. Raven swore he was starting to blush a little.

"Sorry." He said hurriedly and he got up off of her and dusted himself down. Raven sat up and raised her hood to try to hide the fact that she felt herself blushing too. Her face felt so warm she felt like you could see it from the moon. Russel held his hand out to help her up like a gentleman. Raven looked at the hand he'd offered, then she looked up at Russel. Gingerly, she raised her hand and allowed Russel to help her up.

"Sorry." She said in a low voice.

"It was an accident." Russel shrugged. "No big deal." Though he rolled his arm a little, Raven could tell he'd hurt himself though it apparently wasn't serious. Raven raised her hand to use her healing powers, but thought better of it.

"Are you alright?" He asked, she was fine.

"Are you alright?" She echoed, looking at his arm.

"It's nothing serious, I've had worse falls." Russel said, trying to hide the pain. A quick scan of his aura told Raven he was fine. Once her blushing had faded Raven lowered her hood and she turned to her friend.

"Shall we get out of here?" Russel asked, gesturing up the crater.

"Gladly."

Russel led and helped Raven along up the steep sides of the crater. It wasn't difficult, but the crater did get steep as they got closer to the edge. Once they broke the edge of the crater and could see the wilderness around them Raven saw something she wished she had not.

It was the Doctor! What was he doing way out here?!

He had some kind of strange, brass device strapped on his chest with what looked like a cars wing mirror bolted to it and he was scanning the forest.

The Doctor had his back to them so he hadn't noticed them. Quickly, Raven jumped back down into the crater, stopped, and reached back and tugged Russel's arm to pull him back down.

"Hey, what gives?!" He protested.

"It's my Dad. He can't see us together!" Raven protested and Russel obeyed. They both laid down in the grass on the edge of the crater and watched him.

"Why can't he see us together?" Russel asked. "Is he 'that kind' of Dad?"

"He's unusual." She admitted. She knew the Doctor wouldn't mind, in fact, she knew he'd be all too pleased. That was the annoying thing. The pleased look he'd give her would be unbearable.

"What's he doing?" Russel asked Raven, as if she had any idea.

"I don't know." Raven admitted, but clearly this meant their little 'Holiday' was anything but a holiday. The Doctor was up to something, and Raven wanted to know what, and why he didn't share this mission with her.

If she and the Doctor were investigating something together then she'd probably have gotten out of this place faster. What exactly was he up to that he couldn't take her along? Why was he being so secretive? She watched as the Time Lord walked into the nearby forest, too preoccupied with that strange device.

Raven was up and standing at the edge of the crater with Russel beside her.

"What's he doing?" Russel asked.

"I'm going to find out." Raven said a little irritated at the Time Lord. "Come on!"

As Raven walked towards the forest she didn't notice she'd unconsciously reached back, took Russel by the arm with her hand and she was now leading him towards the forest. She stopped and realised the irony of what she had just done. She looked back at Russel and gently she let his arm drop.

"Listen, Russel." She should tell him to go home. If the Doctor was investigating then what he was looking into was likely dangerous. But... she didn't know. She wanted Russel to come with her.

"Yes, what's wrong?" Russel asked as Raven paused in thought.

"Two things. Stay close," She advised, then looked him dead in the eyes to show she was serious, "and remember. I'm in charge!"

Russel just shrugged and let Raven lead him into the forest.

How like the Doctor. Her mind said to her. You've picked up your own little companion.

SHUT UP!

To Be Continued...

Authors notes:

It occurred to me that Raven would have to get used to contemporary Earth at some point before leaving the TARDIS and joining the Titans, which is why I've added in that bit about the TARDIS hanging around Earth. It's also a slight dig at the early revival Doctor Who TV series for constantly sticking to Earth.

That device the Doctor has strapped to himself should be familiar to some. ;)