Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters mentioned in this
chapter, they belong to WB and DC. I borrowed one of my own for later, but
he's not mentioned yet.
Notes: A Prologue to my new story which is a sequel, of sorts, to Guilty Hearts. Its centered around the idea of a person who is to Raven what Slade is to Robin and what choices she'd make in that situation. Enjoy.
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Prologue: Problem Definition
I am Raven, a member of the Teen Titans. I carry inside of me a shard of my father, an archdemon named Trigon. How I was conceived is not something my mother talks much about, I only know that it was unintentional. I prefer not to think about what she went through.
I keep the shard buried deep inside of my mind. I'm afraid of what'll happen if it gets loose. It did once before and I almost killed a man. With the help of my friends, I-
"This is starting to sound like a soap opera." Raven said with a touch of self-disgust as she closed the book on the journal entry she was writing. She didn't know why she was writing in the journal Starfire had given her. Starfire had learned from TV that all teenage girls need diaries, then after buying them had to ask Robin what they were for. Before today, Raven hadn't even opened the book, but now she was anxious.
Bored, she told herself, you don't get anxious. She looked at the clock, it was just past seven o'clock. In about half an hour, Beast Boy and Cyborg would be up.
Three hours earlier, she had discovered Robin and Starfire in bed together, fully clothed and without an impure thought in their heads (She could sense emotions, so she knew this for a fact). However, there was a bet as to how long it would take for them to get together, and Cyborg had gained a month's worth of chores for losing it.
Part of her wanted to be there to see what happened when Starfire and Robin walked out of his bedroom together, but another part told her that she didn't care. Raven was afraid of losing control of her emotions, which would result in her powers running rampant.
Despite all that, she really did want to see the look on Cyborg's face.
Glancing at the clock again, she called it curiosity and went to wait in the living room.
It turned out to be just as boring here as in her room. Half and hour later, Beast Boy walked in to find her napping on the crescent couch.
"Hey," He said, poking her into consciousness, "Raven, wake up."
Raven groaned: Beast Boy's face at two inches was not something pleasant to wake up to. "What?" She asked, sitting up.
"You want eggs for breakfast?" He asked, smiling.
She sighed again, "Tofu?" Nod. "We've been over this. I don't eat fake meat."
"Morning, Y'all!" Cyborg said as he walked in through the huge double door. Raven groaned again, they were both far too chipper first thing in the morning. The big, young man looked at where Beast Boy had set out the ingredients for his all tofu breakfast and scowled. "Hey! Keep your little green butt out of the kitchen. I'm making breakfast."
Beast Boy left the now forgotten Raven to defend his meal in the kitchen. "No way you're making it, you'll make real eggs!"
"Of course I'll make real eggs. Why wouldn't I?"
Raven blanked out most of the rest of the conversion, such as it was. They had this argument every time they were near food together, and it had long ago gotten old. Somehow, she had the feeling that they were enjoying themselves, so she let it go.
She ended up lying back down on the couch, not that she could sleep with the ruckus in the other room, but it was more comfortable.
"If it has the word 'Soy' in it anywhere, I won't eat it." Cyborg said gruffly, "Alright then, Robin, what do you think?" Her ears perked at that, not that she cared about the outcome. Everyone knew that Robin couldn't care less which it was, he could eat anything. He'd even managed to eat some of Starfire's intentionally vile pudding of sadness, or whatever the heck she called it. What Raven was interested in, was what would come next: "Hey, he's not up yet!"
Beast Boy shook his head, the old argument forgotten, temporarily "No way. He's been up and went somewhere, he never sleeps in."
Cyborg shook his head, "Nah, he'd have left a note or something. Hang on." Cyborg poked at his forearm and looked at the display that came up on it. "No, his tracking beacon is in his room, and he never goes anywhere without it."
"Ha!" Beast Boy laughed for effect, "Looks like the Wonder Boy's finally lost his edge."
"Hey," Cyborg admonished his friend, "He's been through a lot lately, cut him some slack."
Beast Boy stopped immediately and looked guiltily at the ground, "Yeah." Was all he said.
Cyborg started back toward the double door, "I'm gonna get him up," He looked back with a smirk, "Then I'm gonna make us some real eggs."
Unable to resist, Raven sat up. Robin's door could be seen from the couch, so she didn't have to move to see what would happen.
When he got there, Cyborg gently knocked on the door, but got no answer, "Hey, Robin," He called in, "We're making breakfast, you want some?" Still no answer. "Robin?" He called out louder.
He shrugged toward where Raven and now Beast Boy were watching him. Raven realized too late what he meant to do and couldn't speak fast enough to stop him from hitting the door button. His eyes narrowed, then went wide, then were covered as he slammed a large metal hand across them.
"Oh God! I'm sorry!" He cried out as he blindly fumbled for the door button, repeating "I'm sorry!" over and over until he found it and the door slid home. He stumbled back and slid down against the opposite wall, his hand still over his eyes.
Raven said nothing and Beast Boy was simply confused. Before he could ask, and less than thirty seconds after the door had opened the first time, it opened again and Robin and Starfire stepped out.
Cyborg uncovered his eyes, slowly. "I'm sorry," He said again, "I didn't know you and she." An eyebrow shot up, "How'd you two get dressed so fast?"
Starfire, ever innocent, looked at Robin briefly, then asked, "Why would we have been unclothed?"
Cyborg just gawked, "Weren't you two sleeping together?"
"We were." She said, smiling happily, still oblivious.
"Fully clothed?"
"Well," She said thoughtfully, "We were without footwear." They were, indeed, barefoot. While thousands of scenarios visibly ran through Cyborg's head, Starfire turned to her boyfriend, who was trying not to laugh. "Robin, is this more of the euphemism of which you spoke last night?"
"Yeah Star, it is." Robin said, still trying to contain himself.
The redhead looked at where Cyborg was on the verge of an overload, "What does it mean?"
Robin thought about it, then whispered the meaning into the girl's ear. The whispering was purely for her benefit, Robin knew Starfire well enough to know that she wouldn't appreciate having something like that blurted out.
When she had her answer, she gasped, one hand over her mouth, stepped back, blanched, then blushed a lovely shade of scarlet that complemented her hair nicely. Starfire may have been innocent and ignorant, but she wasn't stupid; she knew how many times she'd thrown that expression around in the last few hours.
She looked sheepishly at Robin, still blushing, stooped over and wringing her hands in front of herself. "I am sorry, I did not realize." She was remembering his reaction to her asking Robin to sleep with her the night before.
"Hey, its okay, Star." Robin said gently before gathering her into his arms, Starfire moved leaned into him.
"Okay you two," Cyborg said, standing up and taking on his normal personality, "We're gonna to have a talk on PDAs later, but for now. . ." He pushed the two bodily back into Robin's room and shut the door.
He turned and walked back down the hallway toward the living room. From where she still sat, Raven could see a small smile on his face, which disappeared instantly when he saw Beast Boy.
The green boy just stood there, a grin on his face that should have split his head in two. It was directed straight at Cyborg. Cyborg looked at him for a few seconds. "Ah man!" The larger boy cried out suddenly. "Come on!" Beast Boy, somehow, grinned wider. "Alright, alright, Fine! Just stop that!" Beast Boy kept grinning.
Raven managed to keep from smiling, but only just.
Cyborg forced himself to take deep breaths to calm down. He left Beast Boy where he was, and flopped down beside Raven on the couch. When he reached for the controller for the Gamestation, Raven got up; deciding that she really should help out Beast Boy with making their breakfast.
"Maybe I can beat my old score." Cyborg said, more or less to himself. "Ah, no, no, no. . ." He was almost sobbing.
"Raven? " Beast Boy laughed, looking over. "Raven beat your 'I'm the absolute greatest' score?"
Over by a table, or more to the point, leaning heavily on the table, Raven was trying very hard to hold her emotions back and not laugh. She failed and immediately regretted it. As soon as she let go, a pencil that happened to be on the table rattled slightly, then shot forward at supersonic speed in whatever, indiscriminant direction it had happened to be pointing.
As luck would have it, it happened to be pointed at a window, which offered little to no resistance. Neither did the unfortunate bird that happened to be flying by at that moment. They lost sight of the pencil somewhere over the water.
Raven watched, ashen faced, as the still warm carcass of the bird fell unchecked to the ground, blood streaming from the hole through its torso. A barely audible thud echoed deafeningly in her ears when it finally hit.
She didn't need to see them; she could feel the looks of the two boys on the back of her head. "I need to be alone." She muttered as she half walked, half ran to her bedroom.
The familiar darkness of her room embraced her as the door slid shut behind her. Loss of control was not something she could afford. She needed to find it again, and there was only one way to do that: Her mirror.
With it, she could travel into her own mind and interact with the various facets of her personality. One of them was the shard of her father. Using the mirror she had been able to achieve and later maintain the level of control that she needed to keep herself in check.
Picking it up and looking into it, the familiar swirl of energy surrounded her and drew her into the glass. She didn't resist. The vortex the mirror created would not harm her, though there was always a sense of vertigo as she entered into her own mind, which was in turn, inside of her. For an instant before the vortex released her, she always felt as though she had been raised to the infinite power. It was not a pleasant experience, but it passed just as quickly when she emerged inside her mind.
She landed gently on a flat topped rock that floated in what appeared to be open space, despite the fact that Raven could breathe. About a hundred feet away, she could see a long road with two archways that led to a flat, open area. Everything was barren rock.
Small rocks began to float in from nowhere and lined up to make a pathway to the road. After a moment's thought Raven decided to walk the path rather than fly over as she normally did. Perhaps she could find the answer to her lost control better were she to move slowly.
The first thing on the path was an old, dead tree. She had created it when she was only six, a home for a small flock of ravens she had also created. One of the birds appeared from a cavity in the tree and hopped onto her shoulder. It was an overly cute version of a raven, its body too small and its head the size of its body, but it did make a good guardian, if only there was something to guard.
"Hello." It said in an almost wistful voice. Raven had made and trained these birds to stand watch over the entrance to her mind, chanting "Turn back." a number of times before attacking. It was only after she'd made them a permanent part of herself that she realized that no one could leave through the entrance. Back then, everything in here was grassy and alive; much like a meadow, and the ravens had a leafy, young tree to live in.
She'd been twelve when she'd been forced to turn it all barren.
Raven picked the little bird up and put it back on the tree before she continued on down the road, hopping over the gap that Cyborg and Beast Boy had made during their brief stay here.
As she passed through the first archway the scenery changed around her: the empty space was gone and was replaced with a pleasant caricature of a scenic backdrop with mountains, pink trees and orange grass all under a bright yellow sky. As icing on the cake little things that Raven liked would float by on occasion. She was in her happy place.
She kept it sealed off, even from herself, except when she journeyed this way. Only her happy side could move freely in here.
"Hi Raven!" Her own voice called out from behind a tree between fits of laughter.
Raven sighed, she had only really come here to see one side of her personality, and this one wasn't it. By and large, she really didn't much like to spend a lot of time around any particular one, they tended to grate on the nerves. "Hello, Happy." She half groaned. She didn't stop walking down the path.
It had been decided long ago that Raven was called 'Raven' and that the facets of her personality were called what they were, but this only applied to when Raven was here. It was only when she was present that they became aware of what they were.
Her happy side, a mirror image of her in a dark pink robe, ran up in front of her and began walking backwards. Happy Raven had a smug smile on that could rival Beast Boy's. Not getting a reaction, she said, "Didja see the look on Cyborg's face?" She broke into another fit of laughter. "And Starfire's when she found out what she was saying?" Happy Raven began to stagger from lack of breath.
Raven shrugged, "Yeah," she tried to sound patronizing, "You couldn't have seen it if I couldn't." She shrugged, "Besides, Starfire had it coming."
There had been times over the years that Raven had been talking to her happy side and it had started laughing for no apparent reason. Raven simply assumed that she had missed a joke and really didn't care enough to ask. So when Happy Raven sputtered and fell on the ground laughing, she figured that was the case and decided that it gave her a chance to get away.
In the end it took Raven almost an hour to find the side of herself that she was looking for.
She had to get her gray robed, scared self 's help to get through the maze where she lived. Then, after getting out, she was yelled at by Brave, who wore green, for not calling Scared 'Timid,' which she preferred. It turned out that those two had recently become friends, although Raven had no idea how that worked.
Soon after she'd been stopped by her orange robed, rude side who insisted that she listen to a belched version of the National Anthem.
At last she found her intelligent side where she always was: Reading a book beside a door that led to a library that was, in fact, Raven's memory. 'Smart,' as Raven tended to call her, was one of only two sides of her personality that could be determined other than by the color of her robes, which were a dull yellow, she also wore a pair of glasses. She was also one of two that actively worried her. Smart was a quiet, calculating girl, who was utterly without emotion, knew every scrap of information Raven had ever learned, whether or not she herself remembered it, and had an IQ that was probably pushing 160. Raven often wondered if Beast Boy had an intelligent side.
Intelligent Raven looked up from her book when Raven approached, "I had expected you sooner." Her intelligent side said impassively. Raven opened her mouth but Smart held up a hand to stop her, "I am aware of your reason for being here."
Smart was also a bit of a snob, Raven thought, but didn't mention it. "Then what's happening?" Was all she said.
Smart very slowly took off her glasses and began to polish them on her robe, leaving Raven in irritated suspense, then she pointed with them toward a small tuft of orangey grass nestled between some rocks. Raven looked around her and could see about a dozen such tufts scattered throughout the landscape, all hidden from a casual glance.. "Where did those come from?" Raven asked her other self.
Smart polished the glasses again and dramatically put them back on her nose. "Raven started planting them a while ago." She played with her glasses again, "You've been letting her out too much."
"Which one?" Raven asked.
Intelligent Raven looked annoyed at the, to her, obvious question. "I told you, it was Raven."
This was getting her nowhere. Of course it was Raven, She thought, but you can't the difference. She rubbed the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb. "What color was she wearing?" Raven asked finally.
Smart opened her mouth for a quick retort, but quickly shut it again. She tilted her head slightly and seemed to consider it for a minute. "Pink?" asked, for once not sure of the answer.
Raven nodded in understanding, but didn't move from where she stood. Intelligent Raven looked at her for a time, then asked, "Was there something else?"
"The two mes back there, how can they be friends?" Raven asked. Her smart side looked at her, refusing to even consider it until she got more information. Raven rolled her eyes, "The one in the maze and the one right outside it."
Smart nodded, "The one outside the maze began it. She's not afraid to be narcissistic." She then picked up the book and began reading again. Raven knew a dismissal when she saw one.
Raven pried for a minute, trying to get more information out of Smart, but was pointedly ignored, so she began the somewhat sad task of removing the grass from the rocks. She knew it was from her happy place. It was probably an attempt by her happy side to liven up the place, but Raven couldn't afford to be less in control.
Using her power, she began pulling up and gathering the plants, all the while considering what they meant. For the most part, her sides stayed inside the areas that suited them: Happy in her happy place, Scared, or Timid, hid herself in the maze, etc. Having her happy self venturing out was odd. It also worried her, she had to restore her control and for now, this was the only way to do it.
Finishing up, she simply released the mass of grasses off the edge of the platform she was standing on. A deep, ominous chuckling came from nearby as she watched them vanish into the oblivion below.
Raven moved to walk away, to simply ignore the laughter, but when she tried to leave a voice called out to her. "You cannot win, Daughter." The voice was her own, but at the same time that of her father's, but still only one voice. "You hate that you must remain in this cold mind, and the more you hate me, the stronger I become."
Raven turned to a pile of rocks that seemed out of place in the flat landscape. She debated, then, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos." She moved a large rock off the side revealing a few bars of a steel cage, or at least it had been steel. Being close to her father had warped the cage, turning the metal bars into bone, not that they were any weaker, but it was still unnerving. Inside the inky gap in the pile, a blood red hood could be seen framing four yellow eyes. Her father, her angry self.
"Do you truly believe that you can resist me forever?" He sneered, using a copy of her own body. "Even if you resort to making all this a wasteland, you will lose control."
The hair on Raven's neck stood up, he was right and she knew it, but she wasn't about to let him know that. "Maybe later." She said sarcastically as she willed the rock to return to cover the hole.
As she began to head toward the Forbidden Door and back to reality, she heard the voice echo from the rock pile, "It will be soon Raven, you are already weakening. Rage will consume you." His voice was filled with an absolute certainty that chilled Raven to the bone. Yet, she remained ever stoic as she entered the vortex of the Door and returned to face reality.
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I hope you enjoyed the prologue. There's more on the way soon, I promise. Besides, if I don't deliver it soon, one of my friends will poke me to death. It's worse than it sounds.
Notes: A Prologue to my new story which is a sequel, of sorts, to Guilty Hearts. Its centered around the idea of a person who is to Raven what Slade is to Robin and what choices she'd make in that situation. Enjoy.
*********************************************************************
Prologue: Problem Definition
I am Raven, a member of the Teen Titans. I carry inside of me a shard of my father, an archdemon named Trigon. How I was conceived is not something my mother talks much about, I only know that it was unintentional. I prefer not to think about what she went through.
I keep the shard buried deep inside of my mind. I'm afraid of what'll happen if it gets loose. It did once before and I almost killed a man. With the help of my friends, I-
"This is starting to sound like a soap opera." Raven said with a touch of self-disgust as she closed the book on the journal entry she was writing. She didn't know why she was writing in the journal Starfire had given her. Starfire had learned from TV that all teenage girls need diaries, then after buying them had to ask Robin what they were for. Before today, Raven hadn't even opened the book, but now she was anxious.
Bored, she told herself, you don't get anxious. She looked at the clock, it was just past seven o'clock. In about half an hour, Beast Boy and Cyborg would be up.
Three hours earlier, she had discovered Robin and Starfire in bed together, fully clothed and without an impure thought in their heads (She could sense emotions, so she knew this for a fact). However, there was a bet as to how long it would take for them to get together, and Cyborg had gained a month's worth of chores for losing it.
Part of her wanted to be there to see what happened when Starfire and Robin walked out of his bedroom together, but another part told her that she didn't care. Raven was afraid of losing control of her emotions, which would result in her powers running rampant.
Despite all that, she really did want to see the look on Cyborg's face.
Glancing at the clock again, she called it curiosity and went to wait in the living room.
It turned out to be just as boring here as in her room. Half and hour later, Beast Boy walked in to find her napping on the crescent couch.
"Hey," He said, poking her into consciousness, "Raven, wake up."
Raven groaned: Beast Boy's face at two inches was not something pleasant to wake up to. "What?" She asked, sitting up.
"You want eggs for breakfast?" He asked, smiling.
She sighed again, "Tofu?" Nod. "We've been over this. I don't eat fake meat."
"Morning, Y'all!" Cyborg said as he walked in through the huge double door. Raven groaned again, they were both far too chipper first thing in the morning. The big, young man looked at where Beast Boy had set out the ingredients for his all tofu breakfast and scowled. "Hey! Keep your little green butt out of the kitchen. I'm making breakfast."
Beast Boy left the now forgotten Raven to defend his meal in the kitchen. "No way you're making it, you'll make real eggs!"
"Of course I'll make real eggs. Why wouldn't I?"
Raven blanked out most of the rest of the conversion, such as it was. They had this argument every time they were near food together, and it had long ago gotten old. Somehow, she had the feeling that they were enjoying themselves, so she let it go.
She ended up lying back down on the couch, not that she could sleep with the ruckus in the other room, but it was more comfortable.
"If it has the word 'Soy' in it anywhere, I won't eat it." Cyborg said gruffly, "Alright then, Robin, what do you think?" Her ears perked at that, not that she cared about the outcome. Everyone knew that Robin couldn't care less which it was, he could eat anything. He'd even managed to eat some of Starfire's intentionally vile pudding of sadness, or whatever the heck she called it. What Raven was interested in, was what would come next: "Hey, he's not up yet!"
Beast Boy shook his head, the old argument forgotten, temporarily "No way. He's been up and went somewhere, he never sleeps in."
Cyborg shook his head, "Nah, he'd have left a note or something. Hang on." Cyborg poked at his forearm and looked at the display that came up on it. "No, his tracking beacon is in his room, and he never goes anywhere without it."
"Ha!" Beast Boy laughed for effect, "Looks like the Wonder Boy's finally lost his edge."
"Hey," Cyborg admonished his friend, "He's been through a lot lately, cut him some slack."
Beast Boy stopped immediately and looked guiltily at the ground, "Yeah." Was all he said.
Cyborg started back toward the double door, "I'm gonna get him up," He looked back with a smirk, "Then I'm gonna make us some real eggs."
Unable to resist, Raven sat up. Robin's door could be seen from the couch, so she didn't have to move to see what would happen.
When he got there, Cyborg gently knocked on the door, but got no answer, "Hey, Robin," He called in, "We're making breakfast, you want some?" Still no answer. "Robin?" He called out louder.
He shrugged toward where Raven and now Beast Boy were watching him. Raven realized too late what he meant to do and couldn't speak fast enough to stop him from hitting the door button. His eyes narrowed, then went wide, then were covered as he slammed a large metal hand across them.
"Oh God! I'm sorry!" He cried out as he blindly fumbled for the door button, repeating "I'm sorry!" over and over until he found it and the door slid home. He stumbled back and slid down against the opposite wall, his hand still over his eyes.
Raven said nothing and Beast Boy was simply confused. Before he could ask, and less than thirty seconds after the door had opened the first time, it opened again and Robin and Starfire stepped out.
Cyborg uncovered his eyes, slowly. "I'm sorry," He said again, "I didn't know you and she." An eyebrow shot up, "How'd you two get dressed so fast?"
Starfire, ever innocent, looked at Robin briefly, then asked, "Why would we have been unclothed?"
Cyborg just gawked, "Weren't you two sleeping together?"
"We were." She said, smiling happily, still oblivious.
"Fully clothed?"
"Well," She said thoughtfully, "We were without footwear." They were, indeed, barefoot. While thousands of scenarios visibly ran through Cyborg's head, Starfire turned to her boyfriend, who was trying not to laugh. "Robin, is this more of the euphemism of which you spoke last night?"
"Yeah Star, it is." Robin said, still trying to contain himself.
The redhead looked at where Cyborg was on the verge of an overload, "What does it mean?"
Robin thought about it, then whispered the meaning into the girl's ear. The whispering was purely for her benefit, Robin knew Starfire well enough to know that she wouldn't appreciate having something like that blurted out.
When she had her answer, she gasped, one hand over her mouth, stepped back, blanched, then blushed a lovely shade of scarlet that complemented her hair nicely. Starfire may have been innocent and ignorant, but she wasn't stupid; she knew how many times she'd thrown that expression around in the last few hours.
She looked sheepishly at Robin, still blushing, stooped over and wringing her hands in front of herself. "I am sorry, I did not realize." She was remembering his reaction to her asking Robin to sleep with her the night before.
"Hey, its okay, Star." Robin said gently before gathering her into his arms, Starfire moved leaned into him.
"Okay you two," Cyborg said, standing up and taking on his normal personality, "We're gonna to have a talk on PDAs later, but for now. . ." He pushed the two bodily back into Robin's room and shut the door.
He turned and walked back down the hallway toward the living room. From where she still sat, Raven could see a small smile on his face, which disappeared instantly when he saw Beast Boy.
The green boy just stood there, a grin on his face that should have split his head in two. It was directed straight at Cyborg. Cyborg looked at him for a few seconds. "Ah man!" The larger boy cried out suddenly. "Come on!" Beast Boy, somehow, grinned wider. "Alright, alright, Fine! Just stop that!" Beast Boy kept grinning.
Raven managed to keep from smiling, but only just.
Cyborg forced himself to take deep breaths to calm down. He left Beast Boy where he was, and flopped down beside Raven on the couch. When he reached for the controller for the Gamestation, Raven got up; deciding that she really should help out Beast Boy with making their breakfast.
"Maybe I can beat my old score." Cyborg said, more or less to himself. "Ah, no, no, no. . ." He was almost sobbing.
"Raven? " Beast Boy laughed, looking over. "Raven beat your 'I'm the absolute greatest' score?"
Over by a table, or more to the point, leaning heavily on the table, Raven was trying very hard to hold her emotions back and not laugh. She failed and immediately regretted it. As soon as she let go, a pencil that happened to be on the table rattled slightly, then shot forward at supersonic speed in whatever, indiscriminant direction it had happened to be pointing.
As luck would have it, it happened to be pointed at a window, which offered little to no resistance. Neither did the unfortunate bird that happened to be flying by at that moment. They lost sight of the pencil somewhere over the water.
Raven watched, ashen faced, as the still warm carcass of the bird fell unchecked to the ground, blood streaming from the hole through its torso. A barely audible thud echoed deafeningly in her ears when it finally hit.
She didn't need to see them; she could feel the looks of the two boys on the back of her head. "I need to be alone." She muttered as she half walked, half ran to her bedroom.
The familiar darkness of her room embraced her as the door slid shut behind her. Loss of control was not something she could afford. She needed to find it again, and there was only one way to do that: Her mirror.
With it, she could travel into her own mind and interact with the various facets of her personality. One of them was the shard of her father. Using the mirror she had been able to achieve and later maintain the level of control that she needed to keep herself in check.
Picking it up and looking into it, the familiar swirl of energy surrounded her and drew her into the glass. She didn't resist. The vortex the mirror created would not harm her, though there was always a sense of vertigo as she entered into her own mind, which was in turn, inside of her. For an instant before the vortex released her, she always felt as though she had been raised to the infinite power. It was not a pleasant experience, but it passed just as quickly when she emerged inside her mind.
She landed gently on a flat topped rock that floated in what appeared to be open space, despite the fact that Raven could breathe. About a hundred feet away, she could see a long road with two archways that led to a flat, open area. Everything was barren rock.
Small rocks began to float in from nowhere and lined up to make a pathway to the road. After a moment's thought Raven decided to walk the path rather than fly over as she normally did. Perhaps she could find the answer to her lost control better were she to move slowly.
The first thing on the path was an old, dead tree. She had created it when she was only six, a home for a small flock of ravens she had also created. One of the birds appeared from a cavity in the tree and hopped onto her shoulder. It was an overly cute version of a raven, its body too small and its head the size of its body, but it did make a good guardian, if only there was something to guard.
"Hello." It said in an almost wistful voice. Raven had made and trained these birds to stand watch over the entrance to her mind, chanting "Turn back." a number of times before attacking. It was only after she'd made them a permanent part of herself that she realized that no one could leave through the entrance. Back then, everything in here was grassy and alive; much like a meadow, and the ravens had a leafy, young tree to live in.
She'd been twelve when she'd been forced to turn it all barren.
Raven picked the little bird up and put it back on the tree before she continued on down the road, hopping over the gap that Cyborg and Beast Boy had made during their brief stay here.
As she passed through the first archway the scenery changed around her: the empty space was gone and was replaced with a pleasant caricature of a scenic backdrop with mountains, pink trees and orange grass all under a bright yellow sky. As icing on the cake little things that Raven liked would float by on occasion. She was in her happy place.
She kept it sealed off, even from herself, except when she journeyed this way. Only her happy side could move freely in here.
"Hi Raven!" Her own voice called out from behind a tree between fits of laughter.
Raven sighed, she had only really come here to see one side of her personality, and this one wasn't it. By and large, she really didn't much like to spend a lot of time around any particular one, they tended to grate on the nerves. "Hello, Happy." She half groaned. She didn't stop walking down the path.
It had been decided long ago that Raven was called 'Raven' and that the facets of her personality were called what they were, but this only applied to when Raven was here. It was only when she was present that they became aware of what they were.
Her happy side, a mirror image of her in a dark pink robe, ran up in front of her and began walking backwards. Happy Raven had a smug smile on that could rival Beast Boy's. Not getting a reaction, she said, "Didja see the look on Cyborg's face?" She broke into another fit of laughter. "And Starfire's when she found out what she was saying?" Happy Raven began to stagger from lack of breath.
Raven shrugged, "Yeah," she tried to sound patronizing, "You couldn't have seen it if I couldn't." She shrugged, "Besides, Starfire had it coming."
There had been times over the years that Raven had been talking to her happy side and it had started laughing for no apparent reason. Raven simply assumed that she had missed a joke and really didn't care enough to ask. So when Happy Raven sputtered and fell on the ground laughing, she figured that was the case and decided that it gave her a chance to get away.
In the end it took Raven almost an hour to find the side of herself that she was looking for.
She had to get her gray robed, scared self 's help to get through the maze where she lived. Then, after getting out, she was yelled at by Brave, who wore green, for not calling Scared 'Timid,' which she preferred. It turned out that those two had recently become friends, although Raven had no idea how that worked.
Soon after she'd been stopped by her orange robed, rude side who insisted that she listen to a belched version of the National Anthem.
At last she found her intelligent side where she always was: Reading a book beside a door that led to a library that was, in fact, Raven's memory. 'Smart,' as Raven tended to call her, was one of only two sides of her personality that could be determined other than by the color of her robes, which were a dull yellow, she also wore a pair of glasses. She was also one of two that actively worried her. Smart was a quiet, calculating girl, who was utterly without emotion, knew every scrap of information Raven had ever learned, whether or not she herself remembered it, and had an IQ that was probably pushing 160. Raven often wondered if Beast Boy had an intelligent side.
Intelligent Raven looked up from her book when Raven approached, "I had expected you sooner." Her intelligent side said impassively. Raven opened her mouth but Smart held up a hand to stop her, "I am aware of your reason for being here."
Smart was also a bit of a snob, Raven thought, but didn't mention it. "Then what's happening?" Was all she said.
Smart very slowly took off her glasses and began to polish them on her robe, leaving Raven in irritated suspense, then she pointed with them toward a small tuft of orangey grass nestled between some rocks. Raven looked around her and could see about a dozen such tufts scattered throughout the landscape, all hidden from a casual glance.. "Where did those come from?" Raven asked her other self.
Smart polished the glasses again and dramatically put them back on her nose. "Raven started planting them a while ago." She played with her glasses again, "You've been letting her out too much."
"Which one?" Raven asked.
Intelligent Raven looked annoyed at the, to her, obvious question. "I told you, it was Raven."
This was getting her nowhere. Of course it was Raven, She thought, but you can't the difference. She rubbed the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb. "What color was she wearing?" Raven asked finally.
Smart opened her mouth for a quick retort, but quickly shut it again. She tilted her head slightly and seemed to consider it for a minute. "Pink?" asked, for once not sure of the answer.
Raven nodded in understanding, but didn't move from where she stood. Intelligent Raven looked at her for a time, then asked, "Was there something else?"
"The two mes back there, how can they be friends?" Raven asked. Her smart side looked at her, refusing to even consider it until she got more information. Raven rolled her eyes, "The one in the maze and the one right outside it."
Smart nodded, "The one outside the maze began it. She's not afraid to be narcissistic." She then picked up the book and began reading again. Raven knew a dismissal when she saw one.
Raven pried for a minute, trying to get more information out of Smart, but was pointedly ignored, so she began the somewhat sad task of removing the grass from the rocks. She knew it was from her happy place. It was probably an attempt by her happy side to liven up the place, but Raven couldn't afford to be less in control.
Using her power, she began pulling up and gathering the plants, all the while considering what they meant. For the most part, her sides stayed inside the areas that suited them: Happy in her happy place, Scared, or Timid, hid herself in the maze, etc. Having her happy self venturing out was odd. It also worried her, she had to restore her control and for now, this was the only way to do it.
Finishing up, she simply released the mass of grasses off the edge of the platform she was standing on. A deep, ominous chuckling came from nearby as she watched them vanish into the oblivion below.
Raven moved to walk away, to simply ignore the laughter, but when she tried to leave a voice called out to her. "You cannot win, Daughter." The voice was her own, but at the same time that of her father's, but still only one voice. "You hate that you must remain in this cold mind, and the more you hate me, the stronger I become."
Raven turned to a pile of rocks that seemed out of place in the flat landscape. She debated, then, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos." She moved a large rock off the side revealing a few bars of a steel cage, or at least it had been steel. Being close to her father had warped the cage, turning the metal bars into bone, not that they were any weaker, but it was still unnerving. Inside the inky gap in the pile, a blood red hood could be seen framing four yellow eyes. Her father, her angry self.
"Do you truly believe that you can resist me forever?" He sneered, using a copy of her own body. "Even if you resort to making all this a wasteland, you will lose control."
The hair on Raven's neck stood up, he was right and she knew it, but she wasn't about to let him know that. "Maybe later." She said sarcastically as she willed the rock to return to cover the hole.
As she began to head toward the Forbidden Door and back to reality, she heard the voice echo from the rock pile, "It will be soon Raven, you are already weakening. Rage will consume you." His voice was filled with an absolute certainty that chilled Raven to the bone. Yet, she remained ever stoic as she entered the vortex of the Door and returned to face reality.
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I hope you enjoyed the prologue. There's more on the way soon, I promise. Besides, if I don't deliver it soon, one of my friends will poke me to death. It's worse than it sounds.