Chapter 18 – Lifted Nevermore

Raven stayed hunched over on the ground crying until she heard footsteps. Turning her head, she saw the Raven in bright purple looking back into her eyes. The Raven was unable to stop her flow of tears.

She turned her head the other way, to find her pink clad emotion. Being Raven's happiness, she was trying best she could to force a smile, but her lips were quivering and tears were forming in her eyes.

Raven stood up and turned around to find her other emotions had come to join her.

The one with the gray cloak avoided eye-contact with her host. Because her hood was up and she hunched herself so low, Raven could not see her face.

The Raven in red did not represent Raven's evil, but the anger in all human beings. And she was now seething with it.

The one wearing the green cape stared back into Raven's eyes, looking frustrated but at the same time helpless.

The Raven in the orange robe kept her eyes closed and tried to convince herself none of it was real, trying to paint a nicer image.

Lastly, Raven looked to the reflection of herself who wore yellow, who always seemed to have led with her reasoning and logic. Now she appeared as incapable and dumbfounded as the rest of them.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Raven begged her yellow clad emotion for a response.

"We…didn't know…"

"IT'S THAT ONE'S FAULT," the girl in red blurted out, pointing to her counterpart in bright purple.

The disturbed emotion turned to the other, tears rushing from her eyes, "NO!"

"YES, IT IS! OUR LOVE FOR BEAST BOY IS WHAT MADE US VULNERABLE! IT CAUSED DISORDER AND CONFUSION, AND OUR FATHER'S EVIL INFLUENCE FED OFF OF THAT!"

"No! No! I didn't want this to happen! None of it!"

"BUT IT DID!"

"Leave that one alone, it's not that one's fault," interjected the pink clad teen.

"WHETHER INTENDED OR NOT, THAT ONE CAUSED THIS! AND QUIT SMILING!"

Her smile broke. She buried her face in her hands, no longer attempting to hold back the tears.

The Raven wearing orange muttered, "None of this is happening…"

"THIS IS HAPPENING!"

The one dressed in gray whispered to herself, "We should never have allowed ourselves friends…"

"YOU JUST REALIZE THAT?"

The green clad Raven ordered, "Shut up."

"DON'T START!"

"It's not over, yet."

"WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT? EVERYONE IS DEAD; IT'S OVER!"

"There's still something we need to do!"

"WHAT? KILL OURSELF?"

"NO! WE HAVE TO STOP OURSELF!"

"ENOUGH," Raven screamed to silence the two. "She's right! There is something we need to do!"

Raven paused for a second, thinking. "Trigon's influence… It feeds off of all emotions… I was vulnerable, but the fact that my evil gained control while I was unconscious isn't any specific emotion's fault. We are all to blame.

"Love played a central role. This cannot be denied. I had fallen in love with Beast Boy, and my heart was what was struck first. And now the friends I loved are no longer here, the friends that made me happy. After joining the Teen Titans was when I first realized I was even capable of being happy… But through my evil's work our team was slowly torn apart until finally they would rise no more. And my being timid and afraid of what they would say kept me from telling them exactly how I felt. They may have been able to help me before things got worse… My fear brought my rage, which contributed to the others' worries. My calmness was disturbed, and whenever I had finally reached it I was taken advantage of by evil. But more often than not I brooded over the problems, trying to figure them out but to no prevail… That destroyed me…"

The world shook.

"Evil is incomprehensibly powerful," Raven went on, "but a great deal of goodness also burns within this soul. If there wasn't, how could we grieve? We cannot let evil win this war. For Beast Boy, Starfire, Cyborg, and Robin, we can't let them have died in vain! We must take this opportunity to band together and stop Trigon's power over us, once and for all!"

Now the world shook more powerfully. The Ravens turned to see a large evil Raven looking down at them.

Raven stood straight and crossed her arms over her chest. "TITANS, GO!" A wave of her arms summoned the emotions to suddenly ring about her. Rising from the ground, the emotions circled around her at high speeds until a white light began to flash.

Raven's size matched that of her evil self. This Raven contained no evil in her. The purified soul wore an entirely white outfit. As she opened her eyes she revealed to the evil Raven than hers glowed white light.

After staring each other down for a moment, they sent forth attacks of rays of energy at the same time. The evil ray was a demonic red, while the pure Raven shot black. As the evil efforts heightened her eyes began to glow even more powerfully, also with a light coming from inside her mouth. The pure Raven's efforts resulted in the same way, only she had one pair of eyes and the glow was white.

When the two realized this attack wouldn't defeat the other, the two gave up in unison and leapt backwards, avoiding a large explosion of the two energies that destroyed the rock they had been standing on. The two Ravens were floating within the mind until the goodness swooped down powering energy in her hands for an attack.

She shot the blast, but the evil teleported. Good only learned where she was when she felt a pang of pain strike her from behind. She turned around after receiving the blow, sending a two-handed energy towards her opponent. The evil Raven fell backwards, destroying a narrow bridge that had been behind her.

The good Raven headed for the cloud of dust caused by the destroyed bridge, but when she got there she saw no evil. It came from behind her, mercilessly pounding down with red energy. She landed face down in a deep valley.

"Don't you understand?" the demon influence questioned as she landed beside the fallen heroine. "This was why you came to Earth in the first place! It was all predetermined! You came here to feel emotion; you never were going to in Azarath! You came here to loose control and to learn that you are evil! Only then would you join Trigon in destroying the universe!"

"Even if what you say has truth to it," her good began, "it is not the whole truth. Maybe my father intentionally led me to Earth… Maybe I've lost control… But I am NOT EVIL!"

Her eyes glowed fiercely as she charged towards the evilness, pushing her by her shoulders as they flew through the air. Having raised high enough, she shot her down with strikes of black energy to her shoulders. The evil Raven fell down, crashing through a floating island of rock in her path. The ravens that had perched upon the bare tree that had been there were disrupted and flew elsewhere.

But the mind was completely ravaged; they had nowhere to go. As they fought, the earthquakes only became more severe; everything was crumbling to nothing but debris.

They continued their fight, shooting and dodging and destroying Raven's mind even further.

"Fulfill the prophesy!"

"I WILL NOT!"

The good had now knocked the evil face down, but as she looked backwards while picking herself back up she saw the white clad Raven with her arms outstretched above her head.

This was her chance to end it. Her emotions were in perfect harmony as she shouted, "AZARATH, METRION, ZINTHOS!" A great black energy was emitted and sent towards the evil Raven; helping its power was Raven's soul self in the shape of the bird.

In her panic, the evil unleashed all of the power she had, as well as her soul self. It also assumed the shape of a raven.

The two forces clashed with each other. The power was equal. The red and black combined into a humongous gathering of balanced energy. But rather than cancel each other out, they combined into an all powerful explosion.

Both good and evil were destroyed.

o-o-o

Outside of Raven's mind, Raven was nothing but a dying body slumped on the floor. With no emotion evident in her toneless voice, a verse of The Raven came from her lips.

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

"On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

"And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

"And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

"Shall be lifted—nevermore!"

"Lifted Nevermore"

by Kevin Kypers

The End

Raven opened her eyes in an instant; her heart was racing. Blurred, though somehow familiar, dark images flashed through her disorientated head. She heard dialogue from her teammates that she had never heard them say, but, within seconds, couldn't recall the quotes.

In that dazed moment she had completely forgotten what her nightmare had been about, but felt thoroughly disturbed by it.

Glancing out the glass of her window she noticed that it was dawn. The room now had a terrible air to it that she couldn't stand. She removed the covers she had been perspiring under then rose from her bed. She decided she'd get up early; she wanted to leave the ghastly room.

After putting her cloak on and pulling her hood up for some sort of comfort she walked briskly out of the room.

She could only pray that her nightmare, whatever it had been about, was in no way prophetic.

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

"Shall be lifted—nevermore!"

The Raven; Edgar Allan Poe