"I don't understand," Raven said, her screams from the day's earlier therapy session having turned her usual tenor into a scratchy baritone. The little doctor across from her tilted her head at a put-upon angle, silvery blonde ponytail falling over her shoulder.

"It's really quite simple," Dr. Quinzel assured, glasses briefly catching in the overhead light and causing a glare to flash across Raven's eyes. She flinched. "Should you choose to take part in this program, we'd do a standard physical, a brief questionnaire, and if you pass both you're free to go. Released into the custody of the Justice League."

The young woman in asylum issued pajamas shifted awkwardly in her seat, amethyst eyes glancing up the long row of tables that had been set up in what usually passed for the cafeteria. At each table sat an equally polished and plastic doctor, chatting with forced cheeriness to various patients of the hospital. Men and women from different wards had been let out of solitary to sit there bleary eyed and listen to some pitch about a mysterious program run by the superhumans known as the Justice League.

Raven took note that none of her truly manic neighbors were present. Only occupants that could pass as typical if seen on the street were made to shuffle to this meeting. Ones who, unless you were very observant, you wouldn't notice had healing scrapes beneath their hair from tugging at it during honest fits of hysteria. Ones who could hold perfectly calm conversations until the rice pudding on their tray slid over and touched the mashed potatoes, at which point they'd shut down like a miscared for machine and have to be rolled away. Ones who, unless you'd shared paper-thin walls with them day in and day out for weeks, you wouldn't know howled at the ceiling during the odd hours of the night.

Raven acknowledged quietly that she could definitely pass for normal in Gotham. Even with the purple hair and red chakra diamond, she didn't twitch or stammer or bite or howl. So she guessed she was considered 'good enough' to be offered a spot in this program. Near across the other side of the hall she recognized the girl from the room across from hers. Small and frail looking, she had white-blonde hair that fell all the way down her back, brushing the metal chair she sat on as she rocked minimally back and forth, listening quietly to the doctor sitting across from her.

"How soon would I be released?" the purple haired patient inquired. Dr. Quinzel ticked her head the other direction as if it were the weighted end of a pendulum, keeping the time of her wasted morning.

"Immediately."

She agreed.

Without any further questions or fussing she agreed, the only thought permeating her mind that she would soon be released from hell, her delusions be damned. At this point the lonely teen was ready to continue facing them on her own as she had been doing for near a decade. The pretty doctor fawned fakely, noting her bravery and service to her race and then stood and left. In her place came to sit another asylum employee who had been lying in wait for her agreement. He held a clipboard and pen and a completely uninterested scowl.

"What's your name?"

"Raven Roth."

"Age?"

"Seventeen."

"Do you have any reason to believe you may be infertile?"

The inquiry pulled her up short and made her fold in on herself as her mind started to attempt guesses at what this program was really all about. Her reply was mumbled through chapped lips. Some half truth, half lie about being regular with her flow since the age of 12. Her period had indeed started at 12, but as she grew older and gaunter, there would be months when the blood never came. At that moment she had not even spotted since weeks before entering the madhouse. If the man thought she was being dishonest, he was not interested enough to follow up on his hunch. He went on with the questions, quite a few being related to her physicalities and history of pregnancies if any. She continued answering in a dead monotone, putting on the brave face she imagined she would need to dawn throughout this entire ordeal once she was handed over to the League.

Raven was pretty withdrawn from society, but even she knew about the super beings that had started popping up all over the country during her adolescence. The Justice League in particular, a fairly newer organization of metahumans, were at the forefront of the media coverage on these apparent aliens and Raven had spent many a chilly day curled up in the common area listening as the tiny ten inch spat out static filled news of the heros.

Most recognizable was Superman, of course. The Man of Steel as some reporters had taken to calling him. He had come into the public eye when Raven was only eight and she'd been awestruck at the shere size of him, gargantuan even through a TV screen. The S emblazoned on his chest had become a symbol of hope and dread as she made her way through her knobby kneed preteen years and she honestly wasn't sure which stories about the man to believe most days. Whether he was a hero or a monster.

At his side before any others was the one they called Wonder Woman. A true goddess among men, her blazing armor and glowing lasso had made Raven feel like maybe she could be as strong and beautiful as this woman one day. The Amazon had apparently lived for decades amongst the American public, hiding in plain view with her gorgeous face never aging through the years. But she was hard now, eyes like stone every time she glared out over a crowd during an interview. Her quiet contempt had chilled a 14 year old Raven and made her feel quite alone as her odd episodes had begun to grow in intensity. She was no Wonder Woman.

Two more were with them when they presented themselves as a team for the first time. Aquaman and the Flash. Physical opposites in every way, young Raven had marveled at the burly man from the sea and the skinny boy with the lightning bolts. All together they had seemed an odd assortment of folks, and though they had pledged publicly to protect mankind, the protests against them had been rampant and polarizing. Raven remembered walking through a crowd of angry people with red splattered signs, hood pulled low over her head as she moved towards Arkham Asylum.

The team's most recent members had not helped matters. Martian Manhunter was more alien than the ship that had come to claim Superman all those years ago and the Green Lantern admitted openly that he was only one of thousands. There had been panic in every home as they and more supers outed themselves everyday soon able to claim the title of a legit minority group rather than just a few oddballs. In every major city in America there was a family or team or league of metahumans that could take the metropolis hostage if the whim were to strike.

And Raven was surrendering herself into their care.

When the questions finally finished she was shuffled out of the room in a long line of patients that had apparently passed the 'test'. She saw her blonde neighbor in line, arms hugged tightly around her wispy frame as if attempting to keep herself from falling into pieces. They were marched through the halls silently and Raven had a brief thought that this had all been a farce. A cruel trick meant to placate them so that they moved quietly along to be lobotomized, or some other such horror. She tried to dig deep to find it in herself to care and was unable.

Her morbid prediction proved false as the patients were separated -males from females- and were pushed into the communal showers Raven had come to loathe during her time there. They were told to strip and shower quickly and with soap still in their eyes were pushed back into a different hall where a row of examination tables had been set up. Raven had wound up next to her neighbor in all the commotion and her oddly colored eyes flitted over the girls form quickly, own arms folded over her modest chest. The girl was thin like wire, her bones and joints sticking out in what could only be painful visibility. Her eyes were a cloudy blue color and unusually large compared to her nose and mouth which looked childishly small in comparison.

"Lines of five at every table," a nurse shouted through the muffling of her face mask, "Hop on for your physical."

It was a painfully slow process and Raven shivered violently as she waited for her turn. Though most of the women were done without much pageantry and then moved along to the next hall, a few garnered closer examination. A longer look into their ear or mouth, a higher number of pumps on the sphygmomanometer. Raven watched as her neighbor was made to lift and lower her arms above her head repeatedly for what seemed like an eternity, every time she was actually able to complete the task coming as a sincere surprise. Raven's own exam was done in a matter of moments, the doctor casting a glance to her wide hips and saying she 'looked healthy enough'. The young woman was positive doctors were not meant to make such comments, let alone base their diagnosis on them, but said nothing.

Seven women were made to return to their rooms after being examined.

In the next hall they grabbed greedily from piles of mismatched clothes that had belonged to some poor souls long before them. Raven wondered if her beloved hoodie had already been snatched up by some other unfortunate girl with features she wanted to hide within its depths. She ended up with a pair of ill-fitting blue jeans that she had to roll to her calves. The long sleeved black shirt she dawned fell off her shoulder, but was more her style. The underwear and white flats were hospital issued. No bras were provided.

Hair still damp from the frigid shower, they were circled back around to the now empty cafeteria where the men had already congregated looking equally disheveled. It appeared more of them had failed the physical than the women. Mixed together like they were, murmures of anticipation started to spread through the ranks. Every other person looked like they were in some sort of astonished daze.

They were really being released.

"Attention!" called a no-nonsense looking man from the front of the room. He was dressed in an army uniform, hair cut short to his scalp though he still had a healthy helping of dirty blonde facial hair. Beside him was Dr. Crane, Raven's psychologist. Beyond him, the exit. "My name is Colonel Rick Flag. You have all been carefully selected for a government backed program involving the superhuman team known as the Justice League. Me and my team are here to ensure you are safely delivered to Metropolis where Superman himself will explain the details of the program."

At the mention of his 'team' Raven noticed all at once that each door of the room was blocked by a person in what appeared to be riot gear, large guns held across their chests. She shivered, but reasoned to herself that they could not be too careful while dealing with people who were certifiably insane. She refocused on Colonel Flag who went on to explain his expectations as they made their way to transport. He made it profoundly clear that any attempt to rebel, or cause mayhem, would be met with harsh correction. More comments rippled through the patients like a babbling brook, some admitting they were inclined to make a run for it anyway, others declaring whatever the super humans had waiting could not be worse than their current situation.

Raven stayed silent, already knowing she would not attempt to run and risk being sent back to Arkham, or worse.

"Alright, let's move out!"

After that it was a organized dash to get outside as soon as possible. Somewhere along the way, one of the doctors had actually made a list of all the patients being released and they were called one by one to exit. Her neighbor was called and she found out her name was Terra Markov. The girl ran from the room as if a fire had been lit under her. Anyone left off the list had snuck into the proceedings at one point or another and were forcibly removed from the room, howling all the way. Raven was just glad when her name was called and hurried forward to present herself. She passed the colonel as she went and he shot her what could almost be considered a sympathetic look, but she ignored it and blinked in the sunlight as she stepped outside for the first time in three months.

Usually disillusioned with anything that the average person would consider beautiful, Raven was surprised to feel herself getting choked up at the sight of the sky. It was still blue after all this time and she found herself wanting to stand under it just a bit longer as a soldier gently grabbed her elbow and steered her towards a bus already stuffed to the brim with freed lunatics. She was passed along and along by soldiers until being deposited in a seat next to a pale woman with flaming red hair. She glanced only briefly at Raven, eyes finding her shakra diamond, before flying back out the window where she appeared to be gazing at the imposing willow tree that stood guard just within the asylum's iron gates.

It took nearly an hour to get them all situated into three different buses, a few getting turned right back into the asylum after attempting to run away. Raven's leg jumped and jittered as she waited for them to pull out, still half convinced they were only being toyed with. The bus was quiet but for a few uncontrollable outbursts and the silence only made her leg jangle faster. She stopped only when she felt a cold hand rest atop her thigh. Whipping her head around, she stared at her seatmate, scared of what this stranger would do.

"Relax," the woman's sultry voice coached. She continued to look out the window. "We're free now, no matter what they do to us."

Her delicate fingers slipped away, back into her own lap, and Raven nodded to herself. Even if they were corralled and shot now, at least she would not die in that awful place. She was free. She huffed and let her body relax resignedly, ready for whatever would come. When the bus actually hissed and jerked forward a trembling smile graced her lips for a moment. She glanced at the readhead and saw a similar smile reflected in the window pane.

"What were you in for?" she tried to joke, her tone falling flat even to her own ears. The woman turned to her fully for the first time and Raven was struck by her beauty. She had piercing green eyes over a smattering of freckles and when she smiled demurely, her naturally rosy lips spread over perfect teeth. She sighed daintily.

"I used to be a botanist," she said proudly, slender shoulders seeming to straighten as Raven's eyebrows raised in unoffending surprise, "I studied advanced botanical biochemistry under Dr. Jason Woodrue and was pretty damn good at it if I do say so myself."

"What went wrong?"

The woman's eye twitched minutely and Raven flinched right along with it, but nothing happened. Her seatmate shrugged, throwing her flowing hair over her shoulder as if at a real loss.

"I suppose," she mused lightly, eyebrow hitched up, "I may have been a bit too impressed with him. And invested in saving the planet." Her eye twitched again. "I let him run some experiments on me that left me a little…" she waved vaguely near her temple. Outside the window, Gotham zoomed by. "Worse for wear."

Raven nodded silently, not needing further explanation. The redhead asked how she had wound up under the care of Dr. Crane and the teen explained, with a rather cynic smirk, that she had delusions of horrifying grandeur in the form of visions and reading thoughts. The former botanist found this very interesting and the two discussed it briefly. Raven had not had a true chance to confer about this with anyone that wasn't trying to eradicate the supposed illness and found that talking to this gorgeous woman about it eased some of the tension that had been building in her chest since before she could remember. If only someone at the asylum had thought to talk to her about her problems.

"I'm Raven," she introduced some time later just as the bus began to slow. They had reached the train that would take them to Metropolis. The botanist gripped her hand in smooth fingers.

"Pamela."

The buses stopped and they were moved out again. The train station was empty but for their odd congregation and Pamela whispered to her that they had probably cleared civilians for their own safety. Raven agreed. Soldiers bracketed an impromptu pathway around them and they moved towards the one monorail present. Colonel Flag was waiting for them.

"You will board this train and be delivered to Metropolis at which time you will officially be under the command of the Justice League," he began without much spectacle. They all shifted their weight around in their uncomfortable shoes. "Do not attempt to disrupt the course of the monorail or you will be neutralized."

Pamela snorted under her breath, emerald eyes rolling beneath their lids, as Raven felt a shiver go down her spine. She glanced all around and noticed even more people seemed to have been left behind on the buses, set to return to Arkham. Flag turned it over to another soldier with another list and soon they were being separated again, herded onto different cars just as another set of buses pulled up. Emblazoned across their sides were the words 'Blackgate Penitentiary'.

Pamela squeezed Raven's hand lightly when she was called to board the first car and parted with a smile. The teen was sad to see her go and hoped they would see eachother again in Metropolis. She was put in one of the back cars and was granted the gift of the window seat this time around as she waited for everyone else to board. The benches around her slowly filled up, no person allowed to choose their own spot until one of Flag's men marched over a young girl with bubblegum pink hair whose fierce scowl made her opinions of the proceedings very clear. The soldier set her down none too gently beside Raven and stomped off after removing her handcuffs. Raven tried to keep her eyes trained anywhere else, but couldn't help glancing over at the girl as she scoffed loudly and crossed her arms.

"If I'd known this program was going to be just like prison I wouldn't have bothered," she grumbled, teeth grinding almost audibly as the last few seats were filled. Her outfit also looked like it had been thrown together with the odds and ends of other people's wardrobes, her khaki shorts falling well past her knees. She glanced over at Raven, eyes as pink as her hair, and glared. "Are you some sort of looney? Are you going to snap on me as soon as the train starts?"

Raven denied this and allowed the girl to continue to gripe without comment. It seemed many of the people brought from the prison weren't actually too happy to be there, complaining openly about the situation they all found themselves in. Raven wondered again what kind of program the Justice League was running if they accepted maniacs and criminals into it. Were they going to be target practice for super humans? Hunting game?

Once the train was full and under way the pink haired girl continued their conversation though it was less a conversation and more Raven listening to her prattle.

Her name was Jinx.

She was sixteen.

She had been locked up for theft.

She found this wholly unfair since her cohorts had fled without her and so escaped punishment.

She had hoped to flee during transition that day, but the guard placed on prisoners was even heavier than the guard placed on patients.

"What do you think they want with us?" she snapped, at last inviting Raven to actually participate in the discussion. The older teen blinked and shrugged, wishing for the millionth time that day for a hood to pull over her head.

"No idea," she admitted, glancing out the window. She had never left New Jersey before. "But I can't imagine it's really that good."

"You're telling me," Jinx scoffed, tossing a pigtail over her shoulder. "What type of program would need the likes of us?"

Raven agreed with this assessment, but didn't say so as a few people near them decided to butt into the dialogue. The soldiers had been clear they were meant to remain in their seats, but didn't seem to mind as they twisted around and raised their voices to converse about their odd circumstances. The prisoners more than the patients seemed to have some very hard hitting thoughts on the entire mess and spoke up grouchily about how even though they were criminals they were not cattle. Two women sat behind them, Cassandra and Selina, explained with damnably supportive details about how the whole thing reeked of an illegal sex ring.

"But there's men being transported too," Jinx argued, magenta eyes slitted in what Raven guessed was probably doggedly hidden worry. Selina raised a perfect brow at the girl as if she were truly naive. Raven could imagine her in her fondly spoke of catsuit, trickling into someone's life unannounced only to rob them blind as soon as their guard was down.

She challenged, "You think men can't be forced into that kind of slavery too?"

The teens had no reply and soon the talk had been steered in another direction by Cassandra who Raven saw aim a subtle elbow into her seatmate's ribs. Selina looked unrepentant. A flurry of theories were passed around the monorail, each less appealing than the last, before it was generally believed and accepted that they were being sold of into some form of indentured servitude to the metahumans to appease their alien bloodlust and save the nation from complete destruction.

A noble cause they all agreed.

Worth getting out of their respective prisons for.

Not the worst thing that had happened to them.

At some point Raven dozed off, head cradled between the window and her own shoulder, and the women surrounding her lowered their conversation to a dull murmur barely audible over the sound of the train engine. They were all surprisingly polite for a bunch of miscreants and lunatics. Raven dreamt in flashes and glimpses, no one thing taking solid form beneath her eyelids which was a blessing. She'd been plagued with nightmares since childhood and didn't relish the thought of waking up in a panicked sweat after the day she'd had. She let the motions of her transport rock her gently in and out of consciousness until a crackling sounded over the speaker system.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Colonel Flag's voice echoed around them, sounding sarcastic in his honorifics, "We are now entering New Troy station of Metropolis. From this point on your slate is wiped clean. Once you step off this train you will be amongst the general population who have volunteered for this program as well as under the scrutiny of the Justice League and their allies."

The train was abuzz with chatter; positive and doubtful, grateful and scheming. Raven blinked the last bit of sleep from her eyes and sat up straight, startling slightly when she felt Jinx reach over and clasp her fingers lightly. The pink haired villain was sitting poised on the edge of her seat like a hare ready to flee with small tremors shaking her frame every few moments. The locomotive rolled to a plaintive stop. Behind them Selina and Cassandra had gone quiet. Raven squeezed her seatmate's hand.

"Good luck."

The doors hissed open and they were ushered out, Flag's men doing an admirable job of staying hidden from the civilians already on the platform while still dictating their every move. Raven and Jinx had silently agreed to stay as a pair as they shambled out of their seats and then out of the car. The crowd on the platform was a lively bunch, with hundreds of people of varying ages, sexes, and races milling about talking animatedly about meeting the Justice League. Immediately it was impossible to tell inmate from school teacher from patient from storeroom clerk. They were all just people.

"This is wild," Jinx murmured, lips close to Raven's ear as they leaned into each other in an attempt to avoid being jostled. Raven's reply was lost in a weak groan at the back of her throat as she began to sweat.

It had been so long since she'd been in a crowd that wasn't being herded to a sad excuse for a cafeteria that she suddenly felt her heart rate increase. Each person that moved pass her, shoulders brushing near her eye line, caused her to flinch further into Jinx. The cacophony of voices pounded against her eardrums until it felt as if they were scattering around the interior of her skull. Excitement and fear and loathing and euphoria swirled through her all at once and Raven thought she may actually be sick.

Jinx in comparison seemed merely annoyed with the chaos and was eyeing everyone around them suspiciously. They'd been moved, against their will, towards the exit of the station were the 'general population' was beginning to pool out into a large quad across the street from the station. All mixed together like livestock they approached the area that had a large stage set up in front of a fountain from which a humongous statue of Superman was flying. Compared to Gotham, Metropolis was surprisingly cool and the sheep all subconsciously huddled closer together with their strange neighbors as they waited for something to happen.

"Raven!"

The teen whipped her head around at the sound of her name and searched the crowd. Over heads and around shoulders some ten feet away was Pamela, beautiful smile on display as she waved at Raven. Hidden near behind her was her blonde neighbor from the asylum, looking even smaller out in the world than she had in the stifling environment of the hospital. Raven waved, feeling like she was finally being driven to insanity as the white noise of a mic being cleared filled the air. A hush fell over the crowd and they all turned towards the stage. Where once there had merely been an empty plank of plywood now stood a plump man that appeared to be sweating even as his breath came out in foggy puffs before his face.

"Hello," his voice hissed through the system, causing a painful feedback that caused them all to wince. Raven frowned, barely able to see from their spot smack in the middle of the crowd. "I am Mayor Frank Berkowitz and it gives me great pleasure to introduce...the Justice League."

Raven could only think that the mayor did not sound pleased at all before the wild roar at the mention of the super heros nearly caused her to pass out. She leaned heavily on Jinx, one hand up to cover the ear that wasn't pushed to the other girl's shoulder as the thunderous noise washed over and through her. Up in the front, a group of absolute Gods had taken the stage and were basking in the attention of the crowd, still as stone. Raven normally would have been secretly awestruck herself, but she could barely register their presence as she tried to put up some sort of wall between herself and all these feelings.

Superman himself was at the front of the team and approached the microphone with all the calm reserve of a king, waving cordially to every corner of the packed quad. He allowed the applause to go on for a moment longer, to Raven's dismay, before raising his hand for silence which fell immediately. It was as if the entire city were suddenly in a vacuum hanging on the Man of Steel's every word. Raven, still shaken, felt herself angling forward as he himself leaned into the mic. He was even bigger in person and his voice fell over them like a thundering tidal wave.

"Welcome. Thank you all for volunteering for the Titan Marriage Program."