Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Evermore ❯ Beauty and the Beast ( Chapter 7 )

Chapter 7: Beauty and the Beast

With a grunt of pain, Raven went flying away from her darkened mirror image, a livid red mark growing on her cheek and still sizzling with the dark energies of telekinesis.

"You know this is the best way, because it's obvious that I'm the better of us." Raven, growling at both the insult and the stinging of her cheek from Anbu's powerful slap, threw her hands forward and sent a large chunk of rock torn straight from the ground hurtling toward the black cloaked figure. "I'm stronger . . ." She said with a horrid smile, breaking Raven's control on the boulder with an easy wave of her hand and then sending it right back at the dark magus just as easily, a move Raven just barely managed to avoid with a telekinetically enhanced leap. "I'm faster . . ." Even as the perversion of her voice reached her ears, Raven found Anbu directly before her, and felt a savage blow smash into her stomach, before she went tumbling back to the ground. "And I know the nature of our power far better than you do." She landed a scant three feet from Raven, and in her outstretched hand appeared a vicious blade of telekinetic energy, a hideous sword shaped with the images of demons and monsters scattered across its twisted form.

She closed the distance to Raven's fallen form with slow, leisurely steps, before setting the razor-edge of her black blade right over the girl's cowled head.

"So, why don't you be a good little girl and give up now, I promise to take very good care of you and your former body." She waited in silence as Raven gave no answer, remaining still on the ground with her face hidden from view by her hood. Finally, the black-cloaked demon's patience ran thin. "Well, Raven dear, what do you plan to do?" In a flash of darkness, Anbu's sword and the dark mirror-image herself were blown back and away from Raven's prone form. As the bubble of seething telekinetic energies receded, the dark magus slowly climbed back to her feet, eyes glowing white through the black light all around her, and cape flowing out behind her quite dramatically. Even after the globe had completely receded and there was no sign of continued use of her power, her eyes continued to glow utterly white.

"I won't lose." For a moment, Anbu looked truly surprised at Raven's sudden display of unbridled power, but the expression quickly faded into a feral, anticipative smile.

"I'm glad you think so, Raven dear, because that will just make it all the more satisfying when I break you." Raven spoke no words in response, only raised one hand from her side, right before a sword of dark energy sprang to life in her hand, forging itself into a double-edged, straight-bladed shape through the force of her will. The two weapons met in another instant, crackling as their powers clashed with one another, and just over their hard cross vied the intangible forces of Anbu and Raven's personalities and wills. Both strained against one another, swords causing a constant shriek of pseudo-metal on the same, as each razor cutting edge scraped over the other, falling back and pressing forward in a virtual dance, one never gaining the advantage for long before it was taken back.

That is, until the light flickered in Raven's eyes, and her sword faded from existence, removing the resistance to Anbu's sword and causing the deadly blade to come scything in at Raven's chest. She threw herself back from the attack, but still received a horrid cut across her right shoulder for the effort. Landing hard not far from her foe, Raven stared up in confusion as the sword-wielding demon advanced on her.

"Did I forget to mention earlier that I'm also considerably more intelligent and cunning, Raven dear?" She took another step toward her blue-cloaked quarry, letting her sword hang loosely at her side as she chuckled darkly. "You're been playing my little game for the last three days, and not only did my little minions weaken you, but your mind has been getting none of the benefits of all the sleeping your body has been doing." Her chuckle turned into a harsh, grating laugh even as she spoke. "You don't have the mental strength left to face me, much less defeat me!" Raven knew the words Anbu spoke to be true, feeling the fatigue of such a long time spent with "rest" quite suddenly and in its entirety. She no longer even felt the strength to lift her arm, and concentration was far beyond what remained of her weakened willpower.

Through all of this, though, whispered the promise Anbu had made earlier, the promise to murder Starfire when Raven lost control of her body. She drew strength from that knowledge, finding hidden depths of power she had never known to lay within her. She would not hurt Star, nor would she allow her to be hurt, no matter what. In a surge, the blazing white of Raven's power returned to her eyes, as did the magical blade she had formed before, and, with an intentional lack of speed, she levitated back to her feet.

"I'm impressed, even without my power bolstering you, and all the fatigue from my plot, you can still muster the power to pretend an opposition." Anbu jibed, slowly raising her own blade into a relatively relaxed defensive position. "You're more like me than I'd though, Raven dear." The dark magus' eyes narrowed only slightly, and her voice rang out.

"Do you know the main difference between us?"

"What?"

"You talk too much." And, with a focusing yell, Raven came roaring in at Anbu, blade leading.

* * *

"A name had now to be found for the royal babe; and the King and Queen, after talking over some scores of names, at length decided to call her Aurora, which means The Dawn. The Dawn itself (thought they) was never more beautiful than this darling of theirs." Starfire smiled warmly as she read the words from the heavily worn book to her friend, and briefly moved the tome aside so she could look directly at Raven. "Is that not wonderful, parents having the opportunity to bestow their child with such a beautiful name?" She looked at Raven in silence, not really waiting for an answer as much as simply examining her, as curious currents of electricity began to squirm their way through the alien's brain. "I wonder, why did your parents choose to identify you with your name, friend?" She reached out, and gently pulled the comforter lain over Raven's body a little higher, tucking her in. "Certainly, it fits your current personality, but your parents could not have known that it would be so when they held you in their arms as a newborn, could they?"

For a moment, the crimson-haired Tamaranian tried to imagine her mysterious friend and teammate as a baby, but found herself unable to do so, as everything that she considered seemed so utterly "un-Raven" that it wouldn't fit. Even taking into account the fact that introverts like Raven were made so by their environment and experiences and not born as such, Starfire could still not wrap her imagination around the concept of a care-free, smiling and giggling miniature version of the girl, the very idea was almost ridiculous to her. To get herself off of her relatively dead-end train of thought, Starfire opened the nearly forgotten book to its former position and began to read again, while it lay in her lap.

"The next business, of course, was to hold a christening. They agreed that it must be a magnificent one; and as a first step they invited all the Fairies they could find in the land to be godmothers to the Princess Aurora; that each one of them might bring her a gift, as was the custom with Fairies in those days, and so she might have all the perfections imagin-AH!" Her quiet reading was cut off quite suddenly as a small splatter of blood spread itself across the page she had been reading from, causing Starfire to scream in both surprise and horror.

She raised her eyes to Raven's form, and found a relatively small; compared to the previous wounds she had received, at least; gash open on the ashen-skinned girl's shoulder, from which poured a small flow of blood onto the mattress and comforter beneath her. Even as Starfire closed the tome to free herself to tend to Raven, she found that her left hand absolutely refused to let go of the book, or even to move her index finger from its position, holding the page that she had just been reading. And so, once she had stanched the flow of blood from the wound and then finished tying the towel she had been using around Raven's arm as a makeshift bandage with her teeth and free hand, she considered the fairytale collection in her lap. No matter how hard she tried, her hand refused to let go of the manuscript, ignoring all orders her brain sent it to do so.

Only one possibility existed for why it would do that, and so, after taking a moment to steady herself, Starfire opened the collection back up, and continued reading aloud.

"After making long inquiries - for I should tell you that all this happened not so many hundred years ago, when Fairies were already growing somewhat scarce - they found seven. But this again pleased them, because seven is a lucky number." Even as Starfire read, her lime and emerald eyes caught sight of a darkening spot in Raven's comforter, and without her eyes truly leaving the page or her mouth ceasing its oration, her hands moved to remove the blanket. It came away with a minimum of effort, revealing a light wound in the dark magus' side. Almost comically, Starfire went about bandaging the wound while still reading. "After the ceremonies of the christening, while the trumpeters sounded their fanfares and the guns boomed out again from the great tower, all the company returned to the Royal Palace to find a great feast arrayed. Seats of honor had been set for the seven fairy godmothers, and before each was laid a dish of honor, with a dish-cover of solid gold, and beside the dish a spoon, a knife, and a fork, all of pure gold and all set with diamonds and rubies." Yet another injury made itself known, a ragged slice along the inside of Raven's left leg, which swiftly carved its way down from just below her knee to three-fourths of the way to her ankle, where it then curved inward and away from her shin bone before finally stopping.

The leg was bandaged and the reading continued, though Starfire was growing more apprehensive with each new wound. What if she was wrong? What if Raven died because she was too busy reading pointless stories to truly help her? Somehow, though, the concerns could not truly stick, only hanging in her nervous mind and whispering, but not actually forcing her to change what she was doing. She simply kept doing her best while reading to Raven, and hoped.

"But, just as they were seating themselves at the table, to the dismay of every one there appeared in the doorway an old crone, dressed in black and leaning on a crutched stick. Her chin and her hooked nose almost met together, like a pair of nut crackers, for she had very few teeth remaining; but between them she growled to the guests in a terrible voice: `I am the Fairy Uglyane!'"

* * *

Swords crossed again and again as Raven and Anbu fought across the whole of the island battlefield, tearing over the ground while power exploded all around them. Raven's blade came slashing in from the right, but Anbu's was inevitably there to meet it, and even the riposte' thrust to the black-cloaked demon's return cut was dodged. Thus far, Raven had been unable to injure Anbu in any significant manner, though the dark mirror-image had notably also been unable to strike any more blows against the dark magus' person.

"Give up yet, Raven dear?" Anbu called snidely to her other self, producing a growl of indignation and a powerful two-handed swing from her foe. It was blocked with only a minimum of difficulty, but the lightning-quick kick Raven followed the blow with smashed solidly into Anbu's stomach, blowing her back a few feet.

"Just getting started." Raven called to her quietly, her voice falling into its normal, neutral tone. Letting loose her own growl, the black-cloaked girl launched herself into a thrust of preternatural quickness, one which Raven only barely managed to dodge by dancing to the side and throwing her arm out. Instead of receiving a fatal evisceration, the attack simply sliced a small wound in Raven's left side, leaving her more than capable of a counter-attack, easily continuing her spinning dodge through and bringing her sword in hard at Anbu's head. The dark mirror-image barely managed to leap aside before the razor-edge of her opponent's blade would have split her skull in two, but she still took a hard cut across the shoulder as she escaped.

". . . himself infinitely obliged to the good Fairy Hippolyta, could not help feeling that hers was but cold comfort at the best. He gave orders . . . "

The evasion became a very painful roll to the side, which left a trail of blood across the ground and Anbu in a crouch several feet distant from Raven, breathing hard and glaring at the ashen-skinned girl with all four blood-red eyes. "So, what happened to those remarks about me not standing a chance against you?" Raven asked calmly, a small smirk quirking up the corner of her lips. The black-cloaked demon continued to do nothing more than attempt to catch her breath and glare at Raven, giving no answer.

As Raven carefully watched her opponent, in the back of her mind, tucked away in the most primal part of her senses, something twinged. Before she even had time to react, something very large smashed into her back with immense force, sending her crashing to the ground in a heap, rubble scattered all over her back. With a smile, Anbu climbed back to her feet and languidly made her way over to Raven's prone form. After clearing some of the fragments of the boulder she had smashed Raven with from the girl's back, she let loose a triumphant laugh, and then mockingly spoke to her.

"A word to the wise, learn to tell the difference between feigned weakness and the real thing. Raven dear." The patronizing lecture was immediately followed by Anbu taking her sword in a double-overhand grip and going for the killing blow in a single swing, aiming to cut Raven clean in half at the waist. At the very last moment, Raven's eyes snapped open and in a spectacularly quick roll, she flipped onto her back and brought her own blade up, just barely stopping Anbu's only inches above her body. "Just give up, there's no way you can beat me." The dark mirror-image said through gritted teeth, putting even more force behind her sword to take advantage of her superior position. Raven had little choice, in a relatively difficult position to defend from, only barely fending off her darker side's sword due to her other hand holding the flat of the blade near the tip, but even so, she twisted her body just a little to the side . . .

". . . such numbers that the poor Princess Aurora would have been hard put to it for fresh air could fresh air . . ."

"Aren't you getting tired of fighting, tired of having to deal with everything in your dark little life?" She whispered surprisingly softly, almost catching the dark magus off-guard.

But Raven's will was adamant.

"I will NOT make Starfire cry!" One well-placed kick punctuated the girl's cry, slamming solidly into Anbu's right leg and knocking the limb right out from under her. A fast roll to the side once the lock was broken took Raven out from under the falling Anbu; though the red-eyed demon's sword carved a long, curving line in Raven's leg even as she did so; and a swing of her blade to her right almost took the demon's head off, but a similar roll put her just far enough away to avoid decapitation. Her follow up, and rather nimble, spring almost took Raven by surprise, but a jerk of her head put it out of the path of her foe's stab. Already knowing that removing the sword from the ground where it was embedded would be a time consuming chore anyway, Anbu simply let it vanish from existence, instead opting to materialize a set of long, black-energy formed claws and dove for Raven.

". . . find a passage through the briars and brambles. The Prince could not tell which to believe of all these informants . . ."

Her first swipe cute four lines across Raven's face, though the wounds were ultimately superficial, and the second was stopped with difficulty on the cross-guard of Raven's sword. The dark magus did not wait for another attack from Anbu's free claw, instead simply throwing herself bodily at the dark mirror-image, flipping them over and completely reversing their positioning.Now it was Raven's turn to stab at her foe, opening up a number of bleeding wounds in the demon's flesh while blockingall of the attacks made against her with that very same weapon. Finally, Anbu screamed in rage and indignation, fairly erupting with telekinetic force and sending Raven flying through the air. She landed; or rather smashed, into a large cropping of rocks; quite ungently, and only managed to shakily get to her feet with considerable effort.

Besides getting back to her own feet, Anbu had not moved an inch from where she and Raven had wrestled, the ashen-skinned girl noted. But, to her great dismay, the four-eyed demon fairly swam in a sea, a fog of savage, uncontrollable power, which crackled with menace and pure force.

"I tried to get you to come quietly, Raven dear, I tried to make you give up this pointless battle and just go to the back of my mind so that you wouldn't have to be destroyed, but if that's the way you want it, then fine." The fog spread and thickened, and in only a few moments Anbu's who body had vanished completely from sight within it, save her four, glowing red eyes. "You had your chance to survive, and you threw it away, so everything that happens from now on is on your head alone." the darkness gathered together, almost like a living creature, and then struck out as a whole mass, slamming Raven hard in the chest and knocking her right back to the ground face down.

". . . court was silent, dreadfully silent; yet it was by no means emp . . ."

Weakly, the dark magus tried to sit up from her prone position, managing to get her chest a few inches off of the hard rock before a heavy, cold boot fell forcefully on to her back, crushing her back down into the dirt. "Good bye, Raven dear." The harsh, and utterly sub-zero words reached Raven's ears, just before the sound of an unbelievably sharp blade literally cutting through the air reached them, and her eyes went wide.

* * *

Raven looked utterly horrible. Scratches had appeared across her face, and Starfire could also see a large bruise creeping up her shoulders, and none of her other wounds had stopped bleeding yet. Not only that, but she was growing even more pale, and was starting to look both sickly and exhausted. Still, though, Starfire read on.

"He stepped by them and passed across a second great court paved with marble; he mounted a broad flight of marble steps leading to the main doorway; he entered a guardroom, just within the doorway, where the guards stood in rank with shouldered muskets, every man of them asleep and snoring his best. He made his wa- . . ." Quite suddenly, a single, very shallow cut appeared on Raven's shoulder, not even deep enough to cause more than a drop or two of blood to spill forth, and so Starfire tried to ignore it. "Way, though a number of rooms filled with ladies and gentlemen, some standing, others sitting, but all asleep. He drew aside a heavy purple curtain, and once more held his breath; for he was looking into the great Hall of Senate where, at a long table, sat and slumbered the King with his council." Almost instantly, another twenty or so wounds flashed into existence on Raven's arms and shoulders, exactly the same as the first and only slightly more dangerous due to their quantity, but still a frightening reminder that Raven might well be fighting for her very life at that moment. Her voice and resolve quavered slightly as she went on, but she did so none the less.

"The Lor- . . . Lord Chancellor slept in the act of dipping pen into inkpot, the Archbishop in the act of taking snuff, and between the spectacles on the Archbishop's nose and the spectacles on the Lord Chancellor's a spider had spun a beautiful web. Prince Florimond tiptoed very carefully past these August sleepers and, leaving the hall by another door, came to the foot of the grand staircase. Up this, too, he went; wandered along a corridor to his right, and, stopping by hazard at one of the many doors, opened it and looked into a bathroom lined with mirrors and having in its midst, sunk in the floor, a huge round basin of whitest porcelain wherein a spring of water bubbled deliciously." With a horrible sound of flesh ripping apart and blood spraying forth, a rather large slash appeared in Raven's right calf, soaking the immediate area of the bed in no time at all.

Tension mounted in Starfire with every moment, as she tried to treat the injury as best she could while still reading the story to Raven. It seemed almost ridiculous for Starfire to be acting as she was, reading a silly little book when she should be doing her utmost to take care of Raven, and indeed, every rational part of the alien girl's brain was screaming at her to put the stupid thing down and focus on tending to her friend. Somehow, though, she simply knew that even just stopping to take care of Raven with her full attention as each new wound arose was a mistake. And so, she read on, even as she was stanching the flow of blood from the ashen-skinned girl's leg.

"Three steps le-AH- . . . led down to the bath, and at the head of them stood a couch, with towels, and court-suit laid ready, exquisitely embroider-Unf . . ." With difficulty, Starfire kept on, even as she bent her head and clamped her teeth down on the bandage end to help tie it. "Emfroidered an complede do dhe daindiesd of lace fruffles and dhe mosd delicade of body linen." Almost as soon as she fixed one difficulty, another showed itself, as was evidenced by the way that Raven's body looked to be fighting for breath, and even as Starfire's hand lay on the other girl's leg, she could feel an almost supernatural tension in the bone, as if it was about to snap. "Raven . . ." Starfire almost whimpered, as tears came to her eyes.

She felt so unbelievably helpless, as her friends body was virtually tearing itself to pieces before her eyes, and there was nothing tangible that she could do about it. With no other recourse, she returned to the only thing she had that even felt like it might help, the collection.

"Tha- . . ." With one slightly shaking hand, Starfire briefly reached up to wipe at her eyes, and let the words slip from her mouth in an attempt to calm herself. "Focus, find your center . . ." It stilled her for a moment, and though she was still quite in turmoil, it gave her enough strength to go on. "Then the Prince bethought him that he had ridden far before ever coming to the wood; and the mirrors told him that he was also somewhat travel-stained from his passage through it. So, having by this time learnt to accept any new wonder without question, he undressed himself and took a bath, which he thoroughly enjoyed." Quite suddenly, Raven's whole body seemed to "hop" in the bed, as if it had been struck with immense force from behind, and the smallest, barest of sounds escaped from behind her lips, one of such primal and complete agony that it didn't even require input from the brain to be made.

Starfire's heart skipped a beat, and for a moment, she could do nothing more than stare at Raven's body in abject horror, waiting, hoping, praying, for the ashen-skinned girl's chest to rise again, to draw in breath and indicate her continued existence as a living being. For an eternity that lasted only a handful of moments, Starfire sat and watched her charge with wide, unblinking eyes, fear and despair growing and mounting within the alien until it almost felt as though it was gnawing away at her inside. Eventually, though, Raven's body breathed again, and Star let a wan, weak smile of relief slip onto her face, though it vanished only a moment later. With shaking, sweat-covered hands, the crimson-haired alien lifted the fairytale collection up out of her lap and brought it closer to her face, as she was having a difficult time seeing by that point, and read on.

"N-nor, was he altogether astonished, when he tried on the clothes, to find that they fitted him perfectly. Even the rosetted shoes of satin might have been made to his measure." As Starfire spoke, Raven's body trembled, as if it had been struck, but when no actual wound appeared, Starfire resigned herself to being unable to help, and lifted the tome a little higher, so she could not see her friend's shaking body as much, and could better concentrate on her reading. "Having arrayed himself thus hardily, he resumed his quest along the corridor. The very next door he tried opened on a chamber all paneled with white and gold; and there, on a bed the curtains of which were drawn wide, he beheld the loveliest vision he had ever seen: a Princess, seemingly about seventeen or eighteen years old, and of a beauty so brilliant that he could not have believed this world held the like." With a spontaneity that startled Starfire; so much so that she nearly tore the fragile book she held in half; Raven's body moved once again on the bed, leaping up far enough to actually smash the girl's skull against the headboard with a loud "crack." Afterwards, she simply lay where she had fallen, her breathing having become extremely shallow, and beneath the alien's fingers, as she held Raven's wrist in the manner Cyborg had instructed her, the blood only pulsed through Raven's veins and arteries weakly and erratically.

Starfire wanted to run, and not even while carrying Raven to the infirmary anymore. She simply wanted to run away and hide, covering her ears and closing her eyes to block out everything else in the world so that she could just forget it all. But she could not do that, Starfire knew that no matter what, Raven would die if she did nothing, and she could not allow that to happen. She had only two choices, to rush Raven to the infirmary and hope that the machines there could save her, or continue reading to her. The only rational choice was to take her to the infirmary, but that hidden, intangible part of her being that so often guided her actions was telling her that reading the book was the only thing that could save Raven. How could reading a silly book of fictional stories help her friend, though, how could she gamble her friend's previous life on what amounted to nothing more than a hunch; her rational brain countered. But even as the questions flew through her mind, she knew the answer, that she could because it was more than just a "hunch," that it was a special knowledge that had come from the depths of her heart.

And so, she continued her oration again with final resolve.

"But she lay still, so still . . . Prince Florimond drew near, trembling and wondering, and sank on his knees beside her. Still she lay, scarcely seeming to breathe, and he bent and touched with his lips . . ." Starfire trailed off into silence as a faint blush came to her cheeks as she read what came next only to herself, her mouth only producing a faint, "oh my . . ." After a moment, though, she managed to regain her composure, and went on further. "With that, as the long spell of enchantment came to an end, the Princess awaked; and looking at him with eyes more tender than a first sight of him might seem to excuse:- `Is it you, my Prince?' She said. `You have been a long while coming!'"

For a long moment, Starfire was utterly silent as curious thoughts began to fly through her mind, moving through paths the alien girl had never even imagined existed. Then she spoke, as the whole of her unusual thinking could no longer be contained in her head alone.

"I am certainly not a prince, but perhaps a princess will do…?" She allowed the words to trail off as she looked over at Raven, as she lay still, so still on the bed, drawing closer to oblivion with each passing second. Starfire worried that she was going mad, for what she was going to do in her attempt to save her friend. But really, it was no more mad than thinking that reading to her would save her . . .

* * *

The blade came down, coming so close to Raven's jerked head that it actually shortened a number of hairs on the side of her head, just before it smashed into the rock beneath her, cutting more than a foot down into the solid stone, as if a hot knife through butter. It came back out with no visible resistance at all, while Raven struggled to squirm out from under the implacable weight pressing down on her back, ignoring the pain as she tried to escape her impending doom.

"Try to get away all you like, but I'll tell you right now that it's all futile, since you can't beat me anyways." The dark shadow that was Anbu and that was currently crushing Raven into the dirt said, giving a horrible, grating laugh as she raised her terrible sword over her head again. In her terror and desperation, Raven reached out to grasp up everything not firmly held in place and sent it all hurtling at the figure standing on her back. To her dismay, she felt her hold on each and every piece broken, a moment after which the rubble tumbled down atop her head. "I told you I was the better of us." Anbu murmured darkly, before her foot came away from Raven's back, allowing the girl to scramble away from her black-shrouded assailant and to her feet. "Let me show you, Raven dear."

". . . passed across a second great court . . ."

In the instant that Raven blinked while stumbling away, the dark shadow appeared before her, huge and monstrous sword held ready for a strike, and black mist just under the eyes twisted up into an unmistakably vicious smile. She thrust outward in a flash too quick for Raven to even follow, and the edge proved so unbelievably sharp that Raven didn't even feel the cut it made on her shoulder, though it was shallow and superficial at best. The dark magus stumbled back, her mind too stricken with terror to consider anymore intelligent of a tactic, and the black monster Anbu only laughed.

"Do you understand yet, do you comprehend how completely and utterly outmatched you are against me?" She swung the huge weapon left and right immensely fast, before she struck out again, inflicting another nineteen identical wounds across Raven's shoulders and upper arms in less than a second. Immediately after, the demon shadow pulled back, turning sideways as she spread her legs wide and brought her black blade back and over her head, the dust the movement kicked up causing the tiny slices on Raven's body to sting viciously, finally making Raven aware of their existence. Anbu spoke, her voice filled with bestial glee and inflected strangely with an odd echo and tone. "Raven dear, do my four little eyes deceive me, or are you shaking like a leaf caught in a hurricane?"

Raven was indeed quaking with absolute fear, which only grew worse when she found Anbu's indistinct, shadow-formed face right in front of hers, blood-red quadruple eyes filled with murderous intent and depraved enjoyment. "Oh, don't worry your pretty little head, my sweet little blackbird . . ." Her tone, disturbingly tender to Raven's ears, caused the girl only more apprehension, as did the transformed entity's abrupt action of pulling the two of them very close together. "It will all be over very soon, and you won't have a single care in the world . . ." Suddenly, she found herself roughly pushed away, and before she could do anything more than gasp in surprise, she felt the skin, fat, muscle, and sinew of her right calf torn into by a wicked swing of Anbu's blade, and she screamed.

She hit the ground hard and once again let loose a cry of pain as waves of agony radiated outward from the deep wound in her leg. Meanwhile, Anbu's black form slowly paced around Raven's, as she laughed raucously.

"How exactly do you think I should kill you, Raven dear?" She flicked her blade, spattering Raven and the ground around her with some of her own blood. "Should I rip you apart, piece by piece, and let you bleed between each cut?"

". . . complede do dhe daindiesd of lace fruffles and dhe mosd delicade . . ."

Without warning, Raven found an incredibly heavy weight atop her whole body, and the next time the demon spoke, she could feel her altered other self's hot breath falling directly on her neck. "Or perhaps I should just slowly crush you into a pulp, so you can feel as each and every bone in your body snaps in two." The weight that lay on Raven felt as though it grew even heavier, and she screamed once again, feeling the tension already growing in her skeletal structure. It continued to the sounds of Anbu's inhuman chuckles, until Raven was sure several of her bones were going to break all at once. And then it was gone, the sound of Anbu's hysterical laughter reaching Raven's ears.

"No, no, that would be far too simple, and not nearly painful enough to make up for the position I was forced into because of you." Raven heard the monster's footsteps, as she continued to muse on the subject. "Perhaps I could slice your stomach open and rip your insides to shreds, or give you a nice flensing and then let you very, very slowly bleed to death while you writhed in agony . . ." Without even bothering to try and disguise the sounds of her movements, Raven stumbled to her feet and did her best to quickly limp toward the exit portal from her mind, understanding quite well at that point that she did not stand a snowball's chance in hell against Anbu. Escape was the only option for survival at that point.

". . . mirrors told him that he was also somewhat travel-sta . . ."

Without even bothering to turn her head to view her fleeing prey, Anbu's whole black form shifted and tore through the air toward Raven, brutally crashing into her back with the force of a freight train and bearing her down to the ground with the same force, evoking a howl of anguish as her already abused back took even more.

"Tsk' tsk', Raven dear, you should know by now that anything at all you do is completely worthless." Anbu's perversion of her voice whispered into the ashen-skinned girl's ear, before she was lifted back to a standing position quite ungently. "Although I do adore your stubborn determination, since it's let me draw this out for so much longer than I'd originally expected." Not even allowing Raven a chance to respond, Anbu struck her hard across the face with a balled fist, causing Raven to sway unsteadily on her feet as the combination of fatigue and accumulated physical punishment began to hit her hard, leaving her barely awake and alive on her feet.

". . . rayed himself thus hardily, he resumed . . ."

A whole barrage of blows followed the first, and the dark magus, as weak as she was, could do little more than stand and take them, waiting for the end to come. `I'm sorry, Starfire, I failed you.' She thought ashamedly, just before Anbu's darkness shrouded fist came flying in to connect solidly with Raven's chest, physically blowing the blue-cloaked girl back and over several feet. The ground met her quite forcefully, but Raven was simply too numb by that point to notice, not even having the energy to make any sound at the event.

". . . lay still, so still . . . Prince . . ."

Anbu made her way to Raven easily, crouching casually over the girl's chest before grabbing her about the neck and pulling her up.

"For the final time: goodbye, my little blackbird." The transformed demon raised her other hand, currently encased in a seething orb of telekinetic energies, obviously intent on smashing Raven's skull in. But she hesitated, looking up at the nothingness that amounted to a sky in Raven's mind curiously.

"Well, I am certainly not a prince, but perhaps a princess will do…?"

The ghostly words reached the ashen-skinned girl's ears, causing her eyes to open just a little wider, before she murmured,

"Starfire . . . ?" Unceremoniously, Anbu let go of Raven's neck, allowing her head to drop back to the ground, before coming to stand over her other self. It was odd, even to Raven's pain addled mind, but it seemed as though the darkness that surrounded Anbu was fading, though the malice in her demonic eyes and the smug smirk on her lips were unmistakable.

"This isn't over, Raven dear, not by a longshot." The demon said, just before everything exploded into brilliant, blinding light.

* * *

Once Raven's eyes adjusted from the utter absence of real light in her mind to the presence of it in the real world, she found Starfire's orange-skinned face, eyes closed, directly before her very, very wide eyes. And, over her quivering, now moistened lips, Raven could feel the Tamaranian's soft, moist, faintly puckered lips, pressing gently against hers in a kiss. It was, really, a very chaste kiss, lips only pressed feather light against hers. But for Raven, it was absolute heaven. It was a kiss from Starfire, regardless of all other circumstance surrounding it's presentation, because that was all that mattered, that it was from Star.

Unable to contain herself in any manner, Raven tried to deepen the kiss, to begin participating in it by returning it. But, as soon as Raven moved beneath her, Starfire's eyes flew open and she pulled out of the kiss with a cry of joy.

"Raven!" The now super-charged alien girl quickly threw her arms out wide and then brought them around the dark magus in an almost bone-crushing hug. "You are awake, you are all right!" She cried out gleefully as she held Raven close, completely consumed by her elation that the friend she had looked after and feared for over the course of days on end was finally back to normal. Even as Starfire basked in that well-deserved relief, though, all was not well with Raven. Inside her mind spun a cyclone of wild, uncontrolled emotions, both conflicting and supportive, and they were only growing greater with each passing second.

In an instant, the kiss between the two super-heroines was renewed, though by Raven's initiative alone. It was deeper this time, though not incredibly so, and tender as well, Raven's maelstrom-controlled love personified. It took Starfire aback, leaving her utterly dumbfounded as to what was happening, and her confusion only grew when her friend slowly pulled away and out of the kiss. Because immediately thereafter, Raven's grey-skinned hands wrapped around Starfire's neck and began to squeeze with terrible, inhuman strength. As she felt the structures of her neck begin to bend and strain under the pressure of Raven's crushing grasp, Starfire looked to Raven's eyes in horror only to find a malice, an ultimate hatred so deep and livid in the depths of the other girl's violet orbs that she could not bear to look into them even a moment longer. So great was Starfire's bafflement at the events transpiring that she didn't even follow her most basic instinct to run from her assailant when Raven's hands suddenly unclenched from her throat. The next thing the alien's shell-shocked mind knew, she felt Raven's form pressed even closer to hers, as well as the soft-skinned hand of her friend sliding up her inner thighs and under her skirt. Once there, it began to unabashedly touch and caress Starfire through the thin cloth of her underwear, bringing a fierce blush to the Tamaranian's face and only adding to the turmoil of her own emotions. And, just as unexpectedly as it had begun, it seemed, the whole fiasco ended, with Raven literally throwing herself away from Starfire, and completely off of her own bed, in fact.For the brief moment she could see her friend's face as she fairly flew away, she saw features suffused with the utmost sorrow, grief, and remorse, and then Raven was gone, vanishing from sight as she fell below the edge of the bed.

And everything was silent and still, as Starfire's mind slowly began to work again, and started to sort through the incomprehensible occurrence that had just gone on. Eventually, after very slowly examining the whole of the room from her perch on the bed, observing the destruction Raven's emotion fueled powers had wrought, the crimson-haired girl began very carefully, and very quietly crawling her way across the bed to where Raven had gone over the edge at. Raven was on the floor right beside the bed, legs drawn up underneath her and head flat on the floors, hands covering her ears while she rocked back and forth in that position steadily. Starfire spoke not a word, instead simply watching Raven very closely as she continued to move back and forth, not losing nor gaining speed in the least. No orbs of green plasma came to her hands, despite the danger Raven might well pose to her then, simply because she found the idea of attacking, of fighting, of hurting her friend completely abhorrent, no matter the situation.

With time, Raven stopped rocking, and gradually came out of her odd position, though she kept her gaze to the floor and refused to look at the Tamaranian that she knew perched on the end of her bed just over her. Her emotions were once again under control, but there was one thing, one feeling Raven could no longer hid, that the dark magus would no longer hide. Deliberately, she raised her head, letting her gaze rise with the moment, until she was staring straight at Starfire's face, eyes locked with those of the other girl.

"Raven . . . ?"

"I love you, Starfire."

Author's Notes: Now that it won't ruin anything, I give full credit for the fairytale I used; The Sleeping Beauty, of course; to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. I only physically altered his work in a few places, and made a little fudge due to a realization I came to part way through writing this. I found the copy I used at <http://www.bartleby.com/76/1.html> , and you're welcome to go and look to figure out what I'm talking about. It'll give you something to do until the next chapter update. ^_^