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To Walk in Darkness, by Netherwood

Chapter 1: Self-Control

Some days are worse than others.

Some days my morning meditations leave me calm, refreshed, in control. And when I'm in control, I can deal with my teammates and actually enjoy it. On days like that, it's no problem to smile a little at Beast Boy and Cyborg's fight over whether tofu or bacon gets cooked first. I can humor Starfire's latest discovery of Earth delights—last week she found out about sock puppets, and seems to think they're analogous to an ancient Tamaranian tradition of reenacting glorious battles. On days like that, I can make small talk with Robin over drinks. Tea for me, and tea for him if his morning training routine left him feeling particularly zen. Usually, hard black coffee for him when getting up before the sun and splitting practice dummies just puts a chip on his shoulder. Everyone has their off days.

My off days, though, are worse. Some days, my father Trigon's demonic taint pulses in my eyes and throws the whole world into shadow. On those days, my morning meditations leave me barely composed enough to drift into the commons, cloak pulled tight around me, to face the torrent of emotion my empathic powers leave me open to. Those days are when Beast Boy and Cyborg are interrupted when I blow up the bacon and tofu just shut them up. It never helps, because then their fear oozes through the room, choking the air with smoke. Those days, I snap at Starfire, and she sends up a drizzling sorrow that clouds the whole tower for hours. Those days, Robin just nods his understanding of my bad mood and keeps his distance.

This is one of the bad days.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." The meditation isn't even done yet, but I know it's going to be a bad day. The words circle around my mind, but the stillness of void, of perfect emptiness, eludes me. Ha. It doesn't even get a chance to elude me. Today, I couldn't catch it with both hands and Robin's whole utility belt. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." The sunlight from my window is making me flush with heat, the pull of fabric is pulling across at my skin, the incense candles are outright acidic—

That's another thing. On my bad days, on the days Trigon's curse runs fast in my blood, everything is more…intense. My blood runs just as fast as the curse, my senses overload, my mind feels… raw.

"Azarath, Metrion…" Clangclangclang. "Azarath, Metrion, Zin…" CLANGCLANGCLANG. "AZARATH, METRI…"

"Hey, Raven!"

Oh, Azar help me.

Beast Boy keeps trying to beat down my door. I sweep toward the door. "Check it out, Raven," he shouts through the metal. If we could bottle the pitch he squeals at, we wouldn't have to fight supervillains. We'd just open a can of Beast Boy and watch them crumble. "Cyborg and me figured out how to totally keep breakfast good for you today! See, we got a second frying pan, one for both of us! Now I won't have to taste bacon on my tofu, and he won't have to…"

I punch the keypad, and the door slides open to reveal the intruder. He starts to smile big, but sees my rampant need to break him and freezes like a rabbit sensing a wolf. The frying pan CLANGS to the floor.

Instinct tells me to push my shadowy soulself right through his eyes and down his throat and watch him writhe—but instinct, in this case, is just Trigon whispering in my ear. Always whispering. Instead of brutalizing my teammate, I lean forward until he's flattened against the hallway, arms spread against the wall to brace himself and eyes widening into perfect glassy orbs. I take a deep breath. "I. Was. Meditating."

He nods, and his fear clouds the hallway. Genuine fear, not surprise or discomfort from, but real terror. Beast Boy believes that I may well give in to my nature. Part of me wants to drink that terror in. "Um, right then." He waves vaguely down the hall. "I'll just go tell Cyborg to batten down the hatches—I mean, to start breakfast without you." He dodges away and slinks down the hall, then breaks into a full run.

Some days, I have to be cruel and alone. Some days, I need to push everyone back to arm's length, because I might hurt anyone who gets closer.

The tower alert flashes red, the communicator in my gem lights up, and the voice of our commander Robin echoes around me. "Titans, assemble in Ops for briefing. We have a jailbreak."

*****

We're soaring, Starfire with arms looped around Robin and a green pterodactyl squawking and beating its wings to stay aloft with Cyborg beneath him. I'm still within shouting distance of the others, but not by much. The wind is fighting me, trying to throw me across its currents and out of the sky. The others are putting up with it too, but I'm the only one who wants to scream defiance back into the empty, uncaring air.

The city had the good sense to build a new special containment prison in the forest outside the city limits—this way, when the supervillains escape again, we at least have a chance to catch them before they find a residential area to redecorate. The building, grey and squat, rises up from the forest—it was meant to be Prometheus's cliff and chains to unendingly punish the uncontrollable. Now, half a wall is a crater, and smoke drifts up from a courtyard. Lines of shattered trees cut through the forest surrounding the prison and toward the city. Kardiak, Cinderblock, Overload, and Plasmus are on the loose, escaped in one break—but the odds are staggering. Of course they had help. But for now, we focus on the courtyard. Sparks crackle from burning spotlights dotting the wall, soldiers from every window and corner rain a hail of lasers on the sole occupant, who sends back arcs of power. Overload, the lumbering electromagnetic anomaly, dominates the field.

But we're Titans, we have the drop on him, and Robin worked out strategies and tactics for every one of our enemies. Without a word, Robin drops a cloud cover from smoke bombs. We land, and I resist the urge to rip into Overload and blot out the sky with an ebon shield as large as I can create to stop his escape. Cyborg and Starfire distract Overload with sonic blasters and starbolts, and Beast Boy darts in as a monkey holding a few pellets Robin handed him—he throws them straight into Overload's circuit board—Overload's center of being, the only thing holding his energy form together—and they explode into a foam that won't hold an electric charge, causing immediate short circuit. The electricity vanishes with a crackling scream, and the foam clump drops to the ground. It's over in seconds, and we executed flawlessly.

"Great job, Titans!" Robin yells, and then he darts off to get the latest situation from the prison's warden. Cyborg busies himself extracting and containing Overload's board. I walk a few paces away from the fight, but Starfire and Beast Boy follow me.

"Woo, what a knockout!" Beast Boy yells, leaping up and down beside me. "Didja see that, Raven? I didn't even have time to make a 'Charge!' joke! We bad, ladies! We are bad!"

Starfire twirls through the air. "He did indeed fall in round the first! Robin's plan could work no better than it did."

Any other day, I might chuckle at the image—Starfire doing air ballet, Beast Boy barely touching ground, and a scarecrow in my cloak standing absently between them. Today, I'm just trying to stay calm as their elation threatens to crumble my control and sweep me along. But I would celebrate by shoving Cyborg out of the way and tearing Overload's circuit board into pieces. I only snarl quietly.

"Titans, get over here!" Robin waves at us from a side entrance to the courtyard; rubble clutters the ground, and a flickering bulb above him struggles to keep the hallway lit. The others rush over; I follow, slowly. "The Warden said Kardiak took the path straight north, Cinderblock went northeast, Plasmus went northwest. We'll need to split up to get them all before they hit the city. Starfire, Cyborg, your strength will work against Cinderblock. Raven, if you can contain Plasmus before he grows too much, I can flash-freeze him with my tools. BB, you can take Kardiak… just be sure to stay in a form too big for him to capture you."

Beast Boy rolls his eyes. "I wasn't planning on a hummingbird. Have you noticed how creepy Kardiak is? I'm not letting him get those tentacles, um, vacuum hoses, um whatever they are around…"

"I'm going alone," I interrupt. That would have been a good time make a pun about how much Beast Boy sucks, because I like getting a rise out of him, but I need to get into the air fast.

Robin gives me that blank-masked stare of his, the one that says he's looking through me, taking in my stooped, guarded posture, my slit eyes barely visible from the depths of my hood, my harsh voice, and even though this is the first time today I've said more than two words to him, he knows exactly why I need to go. Some days, working on this team would be impossible without Robin. "Starfire and I will take Plasmus," he says. "Cyborg, Beast Boy, go for Cinderblock. Raven, Kardiak."

"Dude, when did Raven get to be team leader?" Beast Boy asks. "And when's it my turn?"

Cyborg puts a hand on his shoulder. "Best drop it, BB." He gives me a wary look I've seen him give malfunctioning defense systems. "C'mon, let's go make dust out of Cinderblock."

Beast Boy whines for a minute more, but he and Cyborg set off, annoyed green pterodactyl dragging his load. Starfire, hand over Robin's hand, drags him over to me. Of course she can't let a teammate stay surly. And Robin, the faithful concubine, just gets dragged along with his Tamaranean slave master—no, stop. Stop. That's Trigon talking. I don't hate them. They're my friends, and I won't think ill of them. "Oh Raven," Starfire says, on the edge of weeping, "You seem as unhappy as Klegdik! Is something the matter, friend?"

"I'm fine."

She lifts off the ground and hovers in close. "But you do not look it! Please, tell me what it is that is making you blue!" Would she please get those gooey green eyes out of my face?

Robin pulls her back. "Let her be, Star. Raven, can you hold yourself together?"

I turn away. No. I can't. Not when they're trying to pry me open and drag into the light everything I'm trying to keep hidden and safe. I want to tell them to stop, to just go and let me breathe and concentrate on controlling myself, but I know it'll come out as a tirade, as a threat, so I keep it short. "Of course."

Starfire stamps her foot. "I will NOT let her be! My friend is unwell and needs our help!" She jumps into the air again and puts her hand on my shoulder, ready to pull me around to face her…

I snarl and reach into myself. My shadow bursts out, throwing her backward. Robin has a birdarang out—ha, even Mr. Understanding is ready to fight me—and Starfire's face and feelings are full of… not fear. More like shock. Hurt. "Leave me ALONE!" is the best apology I can force out. I escape into the sky, sick in my chest and stomach. Robin will fix it. Robin will poison her, make her hate me. No, quiet, Trigon! Robin will try to make her understand. I'll have to apologize later, fix it myself when I can look at her calmly again, but for now, I soar, I rip into the sky.

I wish I had some proper thunderclouds. The gale winds suit me, but the cheerful blue sky and fuzzy clouds are wrong. I rip off to the north, looking for Kardiak, looking for a fight. It's harder to follow than the strips of sludge or ripped up trees Plasmus and Cinderblock left to my right and left—Kardiak flies, and only ripped up or mangled a few trees on his way out.

I try to breathe slowly as I search, try to make my pumping heart loosen its adrenaline grip. I run through simple meditation exercises. All in vain, and when I finally reach the city proper, I'm not calmer than I was.

I open my mind anyway, searching empathically for trouble. I can feel a lurking menace, a predator alien to the human mind, but it's hidden by a rankness of a different sort—pettiness, mundanity, thousands and thousands more small-minded individuals in the city running the treadmill day in and day out, grinding at my senses. I curse quietly, try to shut it out, and begin searching manually.

If I were a monstrous abomination recently sprung from prison, I would hunt. With Kardiak, that means schools, playgrounds, theme parks. I dive for the first one I see in the city limits, a little park nestled in suburban sprawl. A thin, high scream tells me I'm right.

I land ten seconds later. A swing is still rocking and someone's icecream cone is splattered in the woodchips around a slide. No other life, meaning the other kids ran.

BaDUMP.

With my empathic powers, I can feel Kardiak now. Its presence seeps from somewhere in the wild bushes bordering two sides of the playground. Near him, a small mind is panicking. BaDUMP. Kardiak saw me land—or sensed, or smelled, or whatever it's capable of, and it's waiting. "Come out, come out," I mutter. "I'll only hurt you a lot." I almost just start ripping the entire hedge up at once, but I make myself focus my mind and walk down the overgrown hedge, searching with eyes for glinting metal or shifting branch. BaDUMP.

Its mind tenses, and I have a second's warning. By the time Kardiak bursts from the bushes and slams into the ground where I stood, I've teleported twenty feet away. BaDUMP. I can never quite get past the unnatural half-machine, half-organ appearance of Kardiak, and I know the Titans have an even harder time. Its enormous, gleaming wet heart chambers pulse faster now, and the metal tentacle-valves that sprout from beneath the muscle writhe in an effort to push it up from the grass. The clear dome at its top shows a little girl, pink ducky coveralls and white-ribboned pigtails, crying in terror. BaDUMP.

"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" The mantra does nothing to make my powers focus, and the black light erupts from my mind and ricochets across the playground, crumpling a swing set before it shears off a set of Kardiak's metal valves. BadumpBADUMP! It flinches and shudders backward, and I sense its thoughts. Kardiak's mind is very simple—seek prey, capture, and use them for its purposes—and it hates me. Badump. It does not understand me. I am not prey. I am too powerful, too boiling and angry and corrupt to serve its purposes. It needs children, weak and innocent. BaDUMP. But why do I hunt it, it demands. Why do I interfere with its hunt? Why do I not seek my own prey elsewhere? It knows nothing of battle or protecting others. I take to the air and swoop toward it, eyes glowing red and dark power curling in my hands, and all Kardiak sees is an angel or demon, incomprehensible and vengeful, a monster descending in hungry wrath. I decide to oblige it.

My soulself sheathes Kardiak in hungry ebon. BaDUMP, BaDUMP, BaDUMP. I imagine how beautifully he'll twitch when I rip his tentacles off, but some part of me is screaming that there's a child still in there, that I must be gentle—I snarl, and reach out and snatch the child with my mind, rip her through the shadow and teleport her away. She lands by the slide, soaked in fluid and sobbing. I immediately forget about her.

BaDUMP. My mind reaches past the metal tentacles. I could just rip them off and watch Kardiak squirm defenseless until it's too weak to fight, but I have a better idea after all. BaDUMPBaDUMP. I find the muscles of its heart, the tendons and hot meaty bits that quiver and contract. I feel the rhythm, the fast BaDUMPBaDUMP of a predator slamming against a cage. My demon blood rises, and my eyes, already burning crimson, split into four. "You're revolting," I tell it. "Nothing but a devourer, a thing that only knows how to hurt. And I'm going to show you how alike we are." I grab the muscles with my dark kinesis and yank as it tries to constrict, smash as it tries to spread. BabadumpbadumpbaDUMPbabadubababa… It struggles like a man underwater, it suffers, it twitches, and I laugh, I hold on tighter. Here, for one moment, far away from my friends, far away from anyone I need to keep safe, I let go and do what comes naturally. I feel its mind—abhorrent, simple, but sentient, and scrambling to hold on to consciousness. badump. ba…

…

I let my soulself slink back into my body.

Kardiak lies there, slumped, deflated, silent and still, leaking a clear liquid that smells like a hospital. Dead.

I shudder, once, then sink to my knees and throw up. The demon blood withdraws, goes back to its corner of my mind. I can feel my father's influence, smug, but finally quiet—for now. Sated. It dawns on me that I held a heart in my psychic grasp, and I made it stop. That's all Kardiak is, a giant heart. How much easier would it be with a smaller heart, the beating life of any one of our enemies? I almost never touch my enemies with my soulself. I throw rocks, streetlights, even buildings if I must, but wrapping my mind around their body and soul and feeling the things that make them tick... I could end so many of our fights in the space of heartbeats if I would just drink the power, the god-like judgment over life and death, the ecstasy of feeling their lives cease… All I would have to do is stop trying to be one of them, one of the Titans, one of the moral-bound humans around me.

I roll over, away from my sick, and stare blankly into the sky as I thumb a message into my communicator: coordinates, enemy contained, please rendezvous at my location. I could vanish again, soar back to the tower and lock myself in my room and panic and meditate and hide in my bed until I'm ready to face the other Titans again, but moving might make me sick again. The grass pushes around my tangled cloak and tickles me, the smell and taste of vomit keeps me nauseous, and the first tentative birdsong starts up again now that the battle's quiet. Time flows, and flows, and flows.

A sniffling head pushes into my view. "Lady? Are you okay?" Scared, concerned, still crying—the girl I saved.

"No," I tell her. "Are you?"

She hugs herself, trembles, and bursts out balling again. Her fear and pain wash over me, but I keep myself together—maybe because she's acting so much like I want to. Beast Boy would make faces. Cyborg would tell her everything's safe now. Robin wouldn't have any idea what to do. Starfire would fuss and rock her back and forth and sing a glass-shattering Tamaranean lullaby. I can't get up yet, the world is still heaving, but I reach out and draw her down and hold her as she sobs into my cloak. I feel like if I can help her get through her fear, maybe I'll survive my own.

More to come. Thanks for reading! Please leave a review.