Book 11

The Solution to Peace.

The Doctor ponders why it is that any civilisation falls into war, why people cannot be content to live together in peace. Raven has the answer, 'they need an enemy to unite fight against, if you do not give them an enemy, they will look for and invent one.' The Doctor refuses to accept that, but they're both about to encounter a civilisation which succeeds in doing just that.

Chapter 78

Everyone needs an enemy.

The atmosphere was perfect. Two trunks set out either side of the bed with the Gallifreyan Trunk in the middle, on which sat candles. The low illumination gave the place a dark, creepy look. Which is just what Raven wanted.

She was really putting thought into her storytelling now, even down to the atmosphere she wanted to project. She even deliberately dialled down the heat in the room so both Beast Boy and Star Fire felt the cold like she did in this story.

Beast Boy eventually complained as he'd settled down on the boxes, which Raven had kindly produced a cushion for this time. Star Fire sat opposite but didn't feel the cold like Beast Boy did. He could be such a wuss sometimes.

Story-time had almost become a nightly tradition now. Each night for the past two weeks Raven had imparted a tale. Unless, of course, there were bad guys who needed to be stopped, which happened occasionally. But most nights, at six o'clock Raven, Star Fire and Beast Boy would gather to hear creepy or exciting tales from Raven's past life as a time traveller. Raven did consider maybe getting Cyborg or Robin in on these nightly tales. But in all honesty, Raven felt like she'd need to explain so much. About the Doctor and his shifting faces, the TARDIS and it's weird dimensions, about Time Lords, and so on that she'd spend half the night explaining all these things to them, only for them to look at her like she was mad.

Raven raised up the candles from the trunk with her powers, opened the box and fished for the object she needed to tell the next story. The Teen Titans had faced off against many enemies, but never anything like this. Never anything this cold, this calculating, this creepy.

"This tale starts when I was in the TARDIS zero room, practising my telekinetic abilities."

"Zero Room?" Beast Boy asked. Oh damn, that had been explained in the last adventure when she'd gone to Devils End.

"It's a calming room with a water pool. It's like a sensory deprivation tank." Beast Boy looked none the wiser. "Like a very quiet, shallow pool you lay in to help you disconnect from the world." Beast Boy looked like he still didn't understand, but nodded regardless.

"Anyway, I was practising my telekinetic abilities, and..."

"I thought you said you weren't using your powers anymore?" Beast Boy asked.

Oh damn, that's the problem when you miss a story out of sequence like this. "I changed my mind."

"Why?" The green boy asked.

"Because my powers needed to be controlled, not bottled up," Raven said simply.

"Can't we hear that story?" Raven was getting annoyed now.

"It's... a rather dull tale." Raven said fixing Beast Boy with laser-like eyes, "you won't like it."

"But I..." Raven sighed and burst out very quickly.

"Once upon a time I went to a place in England called Devils End in the early 2000s and while there I decided my powers weren't so bad after all. THE END!" Raven fumed.

"Jeez, sorry!" Beast Boy held up his hands defensively.

"Anyway, as I was saying..." But Beast Boy piped up again.

"Is it something to do with that Russel guy?" That tore it!

Raven held her hand out, fingers splayed and cast a spell. Beast Boy suddenly morphed and turned into a small, cute, quiet hamster. Beast boy had tried to shield himself with his arms, crossing them over his head. Now he was a hamster with its arms crossed over its head. Beast Boy had expected a worse fate. When he realised he'd only been morphed he relaxed, then he strained as he tried to revert to being a human. But nothing was happening. Raven had locked his ability too.

"You can stay like that until you can learn to be quiet." She warned as it wriggled its nose in annoyance. The lock actually had a limit of about a minute, but he wouldn't know that, and hopefully, he wouldn't find out.

Raven turned to Star Fire who continued to smile sweetly, a little too sweetly. Clearly, she wanted to know about Russel too, but Raven was done with that story and she didn't want to go back to it. Ever.

With Star Fire and Hamster Boy being numb lipped Raven delved into her trunk and pulled from it a very long pole. It was longer than the trunk itself. The trunk came from the TARDIS, so go figure. When the pole was removed Star Fire gasped at what was on the end of it. Hamster Boy looked clueless by the way he looked to Star Fire and then back to Raven as if to ask 'What? What is it?' He didn't know how much damage one of these things could do in the wrong hands. Well, he was about to find out.

Closing the box she let the candles settle back onto it. Then taking her own place on her bed Raven began to tell her tale.

"Listen closely, this one is epic."

*Start the theme Music*

The world was so peaceful and quiet. Even the chattering in her head had stopped. Can you imagine your mind just stopping? Everything. To the point where you can bearly hear the beating of your own heart because even that had slowed so much. Just being aware of the rhythmic rising and falling of your chest.

She didn't feel the water around her, nor the purple light above her. Her legs dangled from her knee joint into the deeper part of the pool. Every breath out felt like she was expelling toxins, dirt. Stuff that clogged her brain up.

Raven knew only blackness, and it was bliss.

Her mind reached out through her mind chakra and found a boulder which sat in the TARDIS Zero room like some form of feng shui decoration. She felt its texture with her mind, the smooth, cold marble. The microscopic pits on its surface. In her mind, she imagined cupping it with her hands, despite it being three times her size, and she focused on lifting it. She didn't need to look, she knew it was moving. Up into the air it went. Now keeping it in place she focused on another rock in the corner and preformed the same technique. Up it went. Followed by another boulder, and another, and another.

Raven took a deep breath, then exhaled, as she did she set the boulders in motion. Gently, they orbited the pool covered in darkness. She didn't do anything fancy, she just relaxed and let the boulders move. This was very therapeutic and felt like she was balancing herself.

It almost felt like sleeping, perhaps she had fallen asleep, but her powers had almost become like a reflex. She didn't need to focus entirely. She could just point her mind and everything moved so easily. Like learning to play a musical instrument, the more you practised, the more you would find you could do things without thinking about them. If you were distracted there was less chance of making a mistake and dropping everything.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." Went her softly speaking voice.

"Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead." She used both rhymes interchangeably. Both worked at focusing her mind. This meant there were now several things going on that her brain was able to focus on. But only because she was so relaxed.

There were no visions this time. She felt her mind in total balance. No warnings, no reflections of inner turmoil. Her dark, quiet, ordered mind.

Oranges and Lemons,

say the bells of saint Clemons.

You owe me two fathings,

say the bells of Saint Martins.

That rhyme rang in her head, the one she first heard in the Land of Fiction. She didn't mind it. It was still kind of soothing...

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of old bailey.

Later, when returning to the control room, dressed in her usual attire, Raven was puzzled when she found the corridor outside her room to be completely uneven underfoot. She'd been stepping on a set of train track's, tiny train tracks. She stepped off them just in time for an electric steam train model to whiz past her, whistling as it went. Several carriages were also being pulled behind it, red with green decorations.

Oh great, what has the Doctor been doing now to occupy himself? She began walking down the corridor, every now and then she had to stop to let a train go past. To let the same train go past, as it turned out. As it passed she saw there were tiny figures on the engine and in the carriages. The Doctor really went overboard with this, as he does with everything.

Slowly becoming irritated by the constant whistles and the racket they made Raven plan to kick it off the track the next time it came around. When she heard it approach she didn't step off the track. But she jumped out of her skin when she heard. "Oi! Move your backside!" Shout up at her from the train. She was instantly out of its way as it came past. The small model people were looking at her as it went past. Okay, that was creepy. The Doctor was a clever man when it came to building these things, but sometimes he didn't realise when his creations were just down-right disturbing.

She followed the train into the console room. Her face dropped at what she was looking at, and it annoyed the hell out of her. The track looped the console and went off in another direction, crossing other tracks. The entire console room was covered in train tracks, with dozens of trains running around it.

There were also so many flashing lights, bunting, and streamers, fairy lights and at the back near the small garden was a tree so tall it left the console room and broke into the void above.

From his gramophone came the sound of soft playing music.

'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.

Just like the ones I used to know.'

"This had better be temporary," Raven said in a moody monotone to the Time Lord.

"Rae-Rae!" The Doctor called. He was wearing a silly-looking floppy red hat with a white ball of fluff on the end of it. He lept down from a ladder he had next to the giant tree. "You're just in time!"

"I'm out!" She said instantly and she turned on her heel to walk out. She'd barely taken two steps before the Doctor called out.

"But it's Christmas!"

"We've already had Christmas." Raven reminded him.

"Yes, but that wasn't a real Christmas." The Doctor dismissed.

True, it was a delusion in the mind of a dying man. A man Raven failed to save. That kind of made Christmas a sore point to her, just as much as her own birthday.

"This time it really is Christmas, and we're going to have the full deal." The Doctor said, excitedly. "Christmas Trees, the shiny bunting, the fairy lights, Christmas dinner, plum pudding, and not forgetting..." he paused for effect, "decorating the tree!"

"I don't do religious holidays, Doctor." Raven said back.

"Come on, you spoilsport!" He laughed, holding up boxes containing balls and tinsel streamers. "Put on a Christmas hat and help me decorate the tree."

Raven held up her hand, all the balls and streamers flew out of their boxes and arranged themselves around the tree, same with some fairy lights. A star was placed on top too. Then the whole thing lit up giving it a warmly glow. The Doctor looked greatly disappointed.

"Can I go now?" Raven asked.

"How can you not like Christmas?" He asked with such excitement.

"Because it's pointless," Raven said flatly.

"Don't give me that argument again. Of course it's not pointless. We're supposed to celebrate friends, family, and peace."

"All of which makes me puke," Raven said, unimpressed. She turned to leave.

"You get presents."

Raven's ears perked up. "Presents? What do you mean, presents?"

"Ha! I thought that'd catch your ear." He laughed as he picked up a package that was neatly wrapped up. It was also tied up with coloured string with a bow on it. It was in her colours of dark purple, black and blue. He presented it to Raven and she took it from him, looking at it like he'd given her a sock. Without her noticing, he'd then moved around her back and placed on her head one of those stupid hats.

Raven didn't verbally protest, but her dark expression became one of livid annoyance. She shut her eyes tight and sighed to herself as she muttered. "No, I can't kill him, it'd be like killing Bambi."

That's a bad thing?

"Aren't you going to open it?" He asked, smiling at her in an expectant kind of way. Like a parent waiting for their child to burst with excitement. Ha, what could the Doctor have possibly gotten her that she'd ever want?

Gently, she tore into the packaging, removing the string and ripping the paper off it. Underneath all that was a cardboard box. What a wasted effort wrapping it up. She opened the box and within...

Raven looked unimpressed at first, she had to blink a few times as her face settled and took in what she was looking at. It was a book. But not just any kind of book. This was a spellbook, a spellbook that was really old. Raven had thought she'd never see it with her own eyes. It was the Book of Azar. Her tutor's spellbook. One she'd thought long ago lost.

Raven looked up at the Doctor, disbelief in her eyes. The Time Lord must've had it.

"It was gifted to me all those years ago in my first incarnation." He said, amused with her expression, "First printing, you could say. It's of little use to me, I can't do 'magic' as you call it. So I thought. Oh..."

Raven had her arms around the Doctor, hugging him. This meant a lot to her and in the split second she didn't know how else to show her appreciation. She broke it off just as quickly and acted as if nothing had happened.

"Say one word to anyone." Raven's eyes gave him a warning. The Doctor laughed with a look which said 'my lips are sealed, your majesty.' But now Raven felt a little wretched. "I... didn't get you anything." She admitted, sadness crossing her face.

"Honestly, just to see you so happy for a change is good enough for me." He said charmingly.

"Don't go soft on me, Time Lord." Raven bit at him but didn't say much else. Her eyes drifted from the Doctor and back to her new spellbook. Azar's first spellbook was said to contain some really original magics even Azar himself had forgotten from his youth, and she was about to read about them!

"It's time for Christmas dinner." The Doctor announced.

"Yeah, you carry on without me," Raven said, walking towards her reading chair. But the Doctor plucked the book from her hands, set it down on the console and turned to her with a stern, yet playful smile.

"We're going to have Christmas dinner now, young lady. I slaved over a hot stove for hours for this." Raven just sighed deeply as she gave the Doctor a look of, 'Are you kidding me?'

"Okay, for your Christmas present, I'll play these games," Raven said, allowing the Doctor to lead her from the console room. "But if I hear just one Christmas cracker joke, I swear, I'm launching that big tree into the Time Vortex."

They had barely made it down the main corridor when they'd seen it. A multiple train pile up on the corridor. No damage had happened, they were just plastic after all. But all the little people the Doctor had made were crawling out of the wreckage and were utterly angry at each other.

The Doctor knelt and reached out to put the train's back. But the little men didn't seem to want that, as they brandished their little shovels at his hand and began hitting him with them. Despite it not hurting, the Doctor retracted his hand. Something was going through his head and Raven couldn't understand what.

"You were supposed to maintain and look after yourselves." The Doctor said as if this was some great disaster. Was it an experiment of some kind? He sighed as he got up. "A perfect civilisation would somehow get the trains to run on time."

"Is that what all this is about?" Raven asked.

"I tried an experiment with these little creatures centuries ago." The Doctor said, "I created these small robots and left them in a controlled environment. I programmed them to try to get on, to live happily." The Doctor sighed, disappointed. "Their civilisation broke down, formed into two factions and began fighting each other. They made more of each other and further they fractured. I'd left them in the TARDIS trainset all those years. I came back not a decade later and they'd all but wiped each other out."

"They're not robots, Doctor." Weird to say of actual, tiny robotic creatures, but... "Okay, they are robots. But you programmed them to be like people. People will always find a reason to fight each other, to hate each other."

"Yes, but why?" He sounded like such an innocent child who couldn't understand an adult concept. "John Calhoun once preformed an experiment where he gave mice a paradise to live in. He called it Universe 25. Beautiful living accommodations, unlimited food and water. Within two years it had descended from a Utopia into its own Apocalypse. But the reason for that was just over population in a confined space, the mice couldn't live with each other."

"You're saying people are no different?" Raven asked.

"I had hoped intelligence would increase the odds of survival." The Doctor said, he sounded genuinely heartbroken about this.

"The potential for intelligence does not mean they'll be intelligent, nor moral." Raven dismissed. The Doctor sighed in agreement. "Every civilisation needs an enemy, Doctor, whether that be mere survival or an actual person. When you don't provide one, they'll make one, and usually it's out of themselves."

"Raven, that is something I will never accept about humanity, nor about any form of civilisation." The Doctor said coldly. Something about his manner told Raven he suspected what she said to be the case, but just didn't want it to be the answer.

"Give them an enemy, Doctor. Fifty pounds says they'll unite to fight it, and they'll have peace within their civilisation." Raven said.

"And who is your enemy?" The Doctor asked. "If everyone needs an enemy, who is yours? What is the creature you've made your enemy?"

Zagreus sits inside your head,

Zagreus lives among the dead,

Zagreus sees you in your bed,

and eats you when you're sleeping.

"I said every civilisation, not everybody." Raven corrected, "My enemy?" She thought for a second, then the teen fixed him with a look, her eyes relaxed and her frown straightened, "It's you, obviously."

"Careful, or I might ground you." The Doctor laughed.

"Isn't Christmas torture enough?" Raven challenged with a playful edge to her dead sounding voice.

"Raven, you will enjoy Christmas, even if it kills you." The Doctor said. Raven's face fell back down.

"Please, kill me."

"Come on," He said, his enthusiasm recharged, "Christmas Dinner, then I'm taking you to the frost fair. London,the 1800's, the Thames completely freezes over and they have a marvellous fair on the ice. Just keep an eye out for a young fellow in a cricket jumper and steer me away from him, if you wouldn't mind."

Raven was feeling her patience wear thin. If Raven was right then the Book of Azar was going to be left unread for a few hours, possibly days, because a bad habit with the TARDIS was that it never landed in the right place, and it always landed them in the middle of trouble.

In an hour, Raven was so utterly surprised that she had been one-hundred per cent correct.

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: Nothing much to add, except.

-Merry Christmas!