Chapter 100

Raven's Psychopathy

The Doctor was still in the forefront of Raven's mind as the TARDIS landed. She was eager to meet this person the Master insisted was her true, biological father. She had so many questions and she was hyper focused on detecting any form of deceit, any lie. If she did then suffice to say she would not be very pleased with the Master.

Once the TARDIS' groaning had stopped herself and the black cladded Master left the Police Box and emerged into a large, grand looking room. Clearly a place of some religious worship, or maybe even governmental, since for some the two seemed to be one and the same.

"What is this place?" Raven asked, her voice echoing around.

"Earth." The Master said. "A small, sunken temple a few hundred miles off the south-east coast of Madagascar."

What idiots would build a temple here, in the middle of the ocean? Raven asked herself. There must be a practical reason.

"It's an energy conduit, rather like a sink itself, used to reflect energy back to a main site of interest at its anti-pole." The Master explained in a way that didn't really explain anything. "It will serve our purpose."

"Anti-pole?" Raven asked.

"It links to another site of power on the opposite side of the planet." The Master said.

"Then why don't we go there?" Raven asked.

"Because, my dear, we won't find what we need." There was something the Master wasn't telling her. From what she knew of Earth geography the south eastern point of Madagascar would have its pole opposite somewhere in the America's. Specifically somewhere on the west coast. Mexico? Arizona? Nevada? California? Depending on where they were at this moment. Must be an Aztec temple she reasoned, there wasn't anything in any of those other states as far as Raven was aware. Nothing this old.

She was aware of the temple hidden within the Shador Building in the Upper West side of New York, but that was totally the wrong place, and the Doctor had already put pay to that one, at least according to one of his long winded stories where he name drops famous people he'd met while saving the world. Usually they were people Raven had never heard of.

Who the hell even were Ackroyd and Ramis? They sounded like a law firm.

Raven had stopped telling the story, waiting for Beast Boy to interrupt and proclaim the guys were writers and movie stars. But he remained unusually, respectfully quiet.

"Is something wrong, Friend Raven?" Star Fire asked.

"No," Raven said, "where was I?"

Raven followed the Master away from the glowing windows of the Police Box. He held aloft a large light which shone brighter than any torch, it practically illuminated the whole place.

Still they went lower into the building. They were under water, Raven could feel the pressure in her ear drums.

The markings and carvings along the walls were not ones Raven liked the look of. It reminded her of monsters from Lovecraftian horror. Creatures of many eyes and tentacles.

She made a mental note to push the Master into the path of any oncoming monster. While it's eating him it'd give her a chance to get away. She didn't need the Master to fly the TARDIS anyway. She'd remembered a switch on the console marked 'fast return' which takes the TARDIS back to its last known space/time coordinates. She didn't even need the Master to rescue the Doctor, she just wanted to give the dark Time Lord the opportunity to cooperate.

As they explored Raven's irritation for the Monks of Azarath grew. The more she thought about the Masters words the more pissed she was. This all meant Azarath had effectively turned her into a twisted version of Jesus Christ, someone who took on the sins of others so that they might be forgiven. Only Raven was more like a scapegoat. She was forced to take on the sins of others against her will because she was too young and dumb. If there was a hell, Raven imagined she'd be sent to it, first class, weighed down by the sins of the order while the goody-goody Monks got to go to heaven. At least Jesus had the choice of dying for everyone's sins. It had been decided for Raven before she was even born, whether she wanted to or not.

As they descended Raven's stomach began to sprout butterflies. She was going to meet her 'True Father?' Not Trigon. That just felt weird to think. If it was true then she began to wonder, what was he like? And why was he down here of all places?

To release some of the tension she mentally shoved the Master when he slowed down. "Hurry along, Master. I haven't got all day." She said, saying 'Master' in a mocking tone. He turned to look at her. "Eyes front!" She commanded and he snapped them back. He wasn't used to taking orders, she could tell. She wasn't going to give him the chance to dive into her head again. She was on her guard, both mentally and physically.

Though he didn't have a presence in her mind, she could see the surface of his. Thirteen voices chattered away to themselves quietly. Every now and then a strange pulsation of four beats would echo around and then fade away to nothing. It was like white noise. It would be maddening if you heard it all the time.

They descended stone steps into a spherical room with circular carvings around the wall. The Master approached a platform which held a large shard of mirror the size of a dinner plate on it.

"I shall need your help for this part." The Master said holding his hands out across the mirror. Raven sensed no danger, but was on alert as she moved her hands over the mirror. The Master laid his fingers on top of hers, she winced, his touch was like that of a snake. Cold, clammy.

"Dalli Mah..." he chanted, "Dalli Mah... Meee Kall, lorok aut-oc. Kiah." Raven had never heard of these magic words before, but she felt their power. "This place, my dear Raven, is like a gateway between the real world and nothing place of the universe that lesser beings call limbo." He waved his hands over the mirror. "Raven Roth, supposed daughter of Trigon." A shape began to form in the mirror, it blinked as it started to come into focus. Thin faced and long, purple hair tied back in a pony tail. "Allow me to introduce you to your father, Willard Roth."

Raven gazed into the mirror at the purple eyes that stared back at her. The man was in his forties, his complexation was pale, but not grey like her own skin. A thin goatee decorated a warm smile. She could see some subtle features in his face that matched hers. The red burn mark which decorated one side of his face was something clearly inflicted upon him.

"Hello." It spoke with a deep voice with an accent similar to her own. "Raven?"

"Umm..." was all Raven could mutter. "Uh-huh." She nodded, her eyes took fixated and her mind too numb to think.

"You're my little Raven!" The man exclaimed, he smiled, tears of joy flowing down his face. "My little Raven, all grown up." He reached out for her, but her hands went past the mirror but not out of the mirror.

"Fa... father?" Raven asked.

"Yes?" Willard asked, mistaking the question. "How is your mother? Is she doing well?"

"How come mother never mentioned you?" Raven quizzed him. This has to be a deception, there must be some hole in it somewhere.

"She didn't mention me?" Willard asked, surprised. "She must've had her reasons I guess. The Monks of Azarath don't much like me to say the least."

"Why have you been imprisoned in there?" Raven asked pointedly.

"You could call it a disagreement over politics and power struggles." Willard said, Raven wanted to snort, having her fill of political talk. "I was a quite powerful sorcerer in my time. A stellar student in fact. I understand you've inherited my magical talents as well as your mothers looks."

"I..." Raven began to say, but then remembered he hadn't answered her question, and called him out as much.

"Oh, well they didn't want a rival. That and I had discovered the truth. Raven, the evil we've been rejecting, it has coalescing into something big and nasty."

"Trigon?" Raven finished.

"Yes, I'm afraid so." Willard said, "you see, I am the one who brought this to their attention. I even proved it, much to my own displeasure." He said, feeling the scar on the side of his face. "Trigon wasn't exactly charitable to visitors. But Azarath wanted to keep this monster a secret. I however, disagreed. I stated we should be open with our mistakes and take responsibility for it. But that wouldn't make Azarath look good. They wanted to sweep it all under the rug. Then I did the most unforgivable thing. I leaked this secret to the universe at large."

"And they condemned you for it?" Raven asked.

"I was exposing them, I would've been surprised if they didn't want any revenge" Willard said, "The depths of their need for revenge I never guessed." He sounded grave and longing. "Not only did they lock me away in this mirrored realm to live out my days, they also took my daughter." he looked deeply into her eyes. "They took you. They couldn't use Trigon as their sink anymore, that would attract attention and expose everything I said as true, and they didn't want to risk creating a second Trigon." His familiar purple eyes stared into hers. "So they took the thing I loved most, my daughter and used her as their sink." His eyes began to tear up, but he was too happy to see her to be miserable. "Raven, for so long I worried. I had nightmares of the horrid things they implanted in your soul to keep their own clean."

She could feel it. The genuine connection one might have with their biological father. But no, this couldn't be true. That feeling could be faked. Couldn't it?

"Please," Willard said, "you can't help me. The spells that bind me are so great that even I can't break free, and I don't want you to hurt yourself. But whatever you do, don't let Azarath claim you again." He pleaded. Did he not think she could do it? A great spell is a lot like a puzzle, and Raven did like puzzles. But didn't he want release? Did he only care about her?

To test this out she looked blank and disinterested, shrugged and just said, "okay," before turning on her heel and walking away, she made it about a dozen steps before a voice called to her meekly.

"Goodbye Raven, have a good life." He said quietly.

Raven raced back to the mirror in an instant.

"I'm sure I can break you out." She said.

"No, leave me. Once I'm free we'll both become a target." He implored her.

"I don't care." Raven said. "I'm already a target. I have this... sort of... friend. A Time Lord, he can hide us."

"I am well aware of the Master and..."

"No, not the Master." Raven interrupted. "A Time Lord called the Doctor."

Had she said something wrong? Willard... she meant, her father had suddenly gone silent. "The... Doctor..." He muttered.

"What?" Raven asked.

"My dear," The Master said, "the Doctor was the one who put him there." Raven glared at him to be silent.

"It is true." Father said, "he helped seal me away within this prison also." Raven took a step back.

"No," Raven said, "No, the Doctor would never do that to someone, he wouldn't even know how." But then, she didn't know the extent of the Doctors true powers. He was confident enough to stand up to her and she felt that, despite being a mortal, he could punish her severely if she stepped out of line.

"It was the Doctor who turned me over to Azarath." Father said, "he believed I was a criminal. That I sought to release Trigon from where he is safely kept."

"Do you?" Raven asked. Father looked affronted.

"Do the scars on my face indicate anything?" He said irritably. "Sorry, I've been on my own for all these years, my social skills are a little rusty."

"But the Doctor took me away from Azarath." Raven explained, "He's been taking care of me."

"I suspect he took you away because Azar has finally passed?" He guessed correctly. "That would attract a lot of attention from the surrounding dimensions. There would be ceremonies, people would want to pay their respects, and some would quickly detect the evil within you and there would be some searching questions." Raven guessed that could be true.

"So... the Doctor would eventually return me to Azarath?" Raven asked.

"Eventually, yes." This time the Master spoke, Raven tried to silence him with a glare again, but it didn't work. "The man abandoned his own grandchild on a third rate planet in the care of an under-evolved ape. That was back in his first incarnation, and hasn't visited her since."

"That is true." Father said, "he has abandoned plenty of his companions over the years. He allowed one called Katarina to die, another called Sarah he forced from his ship. Another, called Adric he left to die, and he nearly killed one of his companions with his bare hands in a fit of madness when she wouldn't do as they were told."

Raven wanted to say that Father was lying, but she had been in the Doctor's head so she vaguely remembered seeing glances of these events.

"No, the Doctor wouldn't abandon me." Ravens tongue rolled in her mouth. I'm his little Rae-Rae.

"If he cared about you so much then why didn't he tell you about me?" Father asked, "why didn't he bring you to me? Tell you the whole truth about who you really are?" The Master had the sense to remain silent. "Is it because he'd fear what you might do? Or perhaps its because I know who the Doctor is."

"Nobody knows who the Doctor is." Raven said, and realised that included her.

"The Master does, and so do I." Willard said, "Doctor Who, indeed. There is a reason why he gave up his name and adopted that title. Have you ever wondered why he preaches the Time Lords none intervention clause and yet all he does is interfere? He seeks to shape the universe, one piece at a time, into the universe that he wants. He fights those who rival him, he demonises people he doesn't understand. Oh, he doesn't do it for power, or for recognition. He does it all because he truly think its the right thing."

"But the Doctor..." Raven stammered, "He does so much good."

"Does he? Or is it all a game to him? He overthrows dictators but never hangs around to rebuild things. Most of the rebellions he causes ends in tragedy." Father said.

"It's true. The Colony on the planet Uxarieus for example. A colony that was in the middle of a legal battle between its claim to the planet and the Inter-Galactic-Mining-Corporation. I had arrived to claim a Super-Weapon from a long dead people. True, I used the colonists to get to the Super Weapon, but the Doctor also used them to follow me. He caused a rebellion that forced IMC from the surface of the planet, and used them to fight me over the Super-Weapon. He won, and the weapon destroyed. But once he was done he left the Colonists without any protection. The Earth Federation came and rolled over the Colony, like Earth Alliance did with Safe Harbour."

Raven glared at the Master, she didn't trust the words from his mouth.

"The Doctor," Father said, "in his seventh self, was a master manipulator. He manipulated his companions into doing things they normally wouldn't." Raven thought of Ace and her harsh words of the Doctor. Then remembered she'll have to feed Ace sometime. "The Doctor kept you from me." Father said, "The Doctor kept you from the truth."

Raven made up her mind. She knew what she wanted and how to get it. She took the mirror shard in her hand and lifted it up off the pedestal.

"I'm going to release you." She said.

She was so focused on the mirror and her father within that she failed to notice an evil smirk on the Master's face.

Ace banged on the glass of the bottle, but it refused to yield. Ace wished she still had some Nitro nine, that would see this bottle shatter in an instant. Though, the yield she prepared these days there would be nowhere to properly concentrate the blast and Ace herself would be vaporised.

"I'm sorry I called you a bitch." said the Grey Raven. She'd been doing this all evening. Apologising, not just for stuff she'd said and done, but stuff she'd thought too. Ace honestly didn't care, if anything she wanted Raven to stop apologising for stupid stuff. When she told Grey Raven this she only apologised more.

"This is your mind too." Ace said, "Can't you get us out?"

"I'm only one part of Raven, and she does not want to feel me right now." Grey Raven said, "this happens to me a lot. I get locked in jars, shoved into cupboards, buried alive when they don't want me to speak."

"So they silence you so they don't have to feel bad." Ace snorted, "no wonder she's such a bitch if she has such a weak conscience."

Grey Raven swallowed, then tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"I... I... I'm a... I'm a..." she began, quietly she cried, "I'm a psychopath."

"As in you think you're a wacko? Because I'd agree." Ace said, not being helpful.

"No. I mean it. I'm a psychopath." Grey Raven swallowed, "I don't care about other people, even the closest thing I have to a friend. I don't feel... love."

"Oh, come on." Ace said, putting on a cheerful tone. She may not like the girl, but Ace never liked to see someone make themselves sad for no reason, or more sad than Ace thought they should be at least. "You must like the Doctor, or else why do you travel with him?"

"The Doctor... he made me feel safe. He made me feel like I could be good. That I didn't have to be evil." Grey Raven started, "but I've turned my back on him. I've left him in terrible danger, all because I heard sweet words from a velvety voice that promised to tell me 'the truth.'" Ace had no idea what she was talking about. "I've abandoned him."

"Is the Doctor in real danger?" Ace asked.

"He is, but the others are too driven and full of hate now. We've learnt that we were never born to do evil. We've learnt it was all a lie. Revenge is on everyone's mind now."

"So the Doctor is fine?" Ace asked.

"I don't know, and no one cares anymore. Except me."

Ace didn't know what to say. The Doctor was probably fine, he was like a snake, that one. But still, Ace did want to make this aspect of Raven feel better about herself, and not just because she was probably Ace's only way out of here.

"Hey, what about that kid the Pink one talked about, the one you liked?"

"Russel?" Grey Raven asked.

"Yeah, didn't you love him?"

"Love?" Grey Raven asked, then answered a little too abruptly. "No. I don't know."

"No?" Ace asked, baffled.

"I don't think I did. He was just a means to scratch at an itch. A psychological need brought on by puberty."

"The Pink one seemed to like him." Ace commented.

"Only because he made us feel special. He said we had pretty eyes."

Yeah, oldest chat-up line in the book. Ace thought.

"He liked me, only because he didn't know who I was, what I am supposed to do." Grey Raven explained. "Green hates him. She thinks we can do better. Yellow has no drive or appetite for that stuff. Red hates him, she thinks he'll treat us the way we'd ultimately treat him. Purple only has one use for boys. The rest are pretty much indifferent." Grey Raven shook her head.

"What about you?" Ace asked.

"He was... nice to me." Grey Raven paused before she said. "I sold him out too, because some girls said they wouldn't be my friend." Grey Raven moaned. "But I fixed it, turned on the girls and freed Russel..." Grey Raven looked, if possible, even sadder. "We didn't love Russel. It was just our hormones commanding us."

"Wait, did you?" Ace motioned with her hands.

"No... no we didn't." Grey Raven said hurriedly in shock. "Russel wouldn't anyway. Green called him a prude." Grey sniffed, "But then I left. I was gone for longer than I intended and when I returned..." Grey burst into tears. "I'd messed it all up! He left me for someone else. I was only gone two years, and he'd found someone else."

Ace put an understanding arm around her shoulder.

"We haven't thought about him since that night." Grey Raven said. "Not even once. Or they haven't. But... I loved him. I really loved him."

"Boys will be boys." Ace said bitterly.

"No, it was my fault." Grey said, "I should've checked the arrival time before I stepped out and solidified the timeline."

Grey Raven gently rocked back and forth.

"Kid, listen, you're not a psychopath, sociopath maybe, but you're not a psychopath. Do you want to know how I know that?"

"How?" Grey Raven asked, watery eyes looked up into Ace's.

"Because you exist in Raven's head." Ace said, "You only think Raven is a psychopath because you're probably the only reason she can't be a psychopath. You are what a psychopath lacks. Raven is just not listening to you, and she should. You need to stand tall and make yourself heard in her head, no matter how much she dislikes it. No matter how much the others try to shut you up. You need to make yourself heard."

Grey Raven began to cry. "All I want is to be heard."

"Most people are like that, even aspects of people, I guess." Grey Raven suddenly had her arms around Ace's shoulders and hugged the taller woman. She allowed the young shard of a personality her chance to blubber, but only as much as Ace could stand.

"Oi!" Ace eventually said, patting Grey Raven on the back of the head. "Give over, you're soaking my jacket."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologise for that."

She'd made this mental shard of a girl feel better. But sadly it wasn't getting them out of here.

A gentle rattling caught Ace's attention. It was the bottle itself. It was gently shaking.

Grey Raven held Ace tighter. "Hey, kid, what..."

"Shh!" Grey shushed the old woman.

"What is it?" Ace whispered.

"It's coming, don't let it find us!" Grey Raven hushed Ace. "It's just getting bigger."

"What's coming? What's getting bigger?"

Grey looked into Ace's eyes, the young girl was trembling. "Rage."

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: Edited March 13th 2023. I came back to this chapter and found it a total mess. So I've cleaned it up.