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The cold metal presses against her temple . Raven remains calm, because she really doesn’t want to hurt the man in the ski mask.
It had started as an ordinary scuffle. Flying bank robber. Though his weapons were pretty standard, the levitation really took him out of the police’s jurisdiction, so it was necessary for the Titans to interfere. Since it was only one criminal and there were some teenagers on drugs that needed a speech given to them, Dick had been practical and only sent out Vic and Raven. Raven had wanted to stay and talk to the teenagers, but Dick was the leader, so she’d nodded and gone out to do the job assigned to her.
They hadn’t expected the electric powers. The criminal hadn’t even suggested there was anything out of the ordinary about himself apart from floating a foot off the floor and talking very loudly, so when he grabbed Vic’s arm and sent a wave of shock running through his body they were caught totally off guard.
Now Vic is paralyzed on the ground and Raven is standing with the muzzle of a gun pressed to her head , and she’s really wishing Dick had sent someone more competent than her. Gar would be fine. He would just turn into a fly and buzz away.
There are potential options: Raven could pull up a pocket dimension and use it to escape the grip he has around her. However, shocking him might not be the best idea, considering that he has a gun and is in a very bad mood. There are civilians still in the bank. She can feel their fear, pooling rancidly around them like urine, and it makes her heart pound and her stomach churn.
Raven feels no fear of her own, of course. Any unpleasant sensations running down her back belong to other people. Raven is calm.
“I saw that!” the robber shouts, and the gun against her head shakes slightly. One of the hostages on the floor makes a pitiful noise and she hears a phone clatter to the ground.
She thinks for a second-- what if he’d managed to make a call? She would have been shot. She doesn’t think she’d be able to survive a bullet point-blank to the head.
She thinks for a second of dying. If she died, Vic would be stuck on the ground with nobody to help him. Of course, she can’t really help him now, so it might not make too big a difference. The robber would have to pick a different hostage. It would make a mess.
She meets the eyes of one of the civilians-- a woman in a wool cardigan, huddled on the floor and shaking. If she were a few feet closer,
Raven would
be able to lay a hand on her forehead and cool her down.
Would she? Raven is feeling a lot of anxiety right now (none of it belongs to her, but that doesn’t matter, because she’s feeling it). Would she even be able to fit any more in? Has she reached her carrying capacity? If it dissipated, would she be able to help?
What good is Raven if she can’t help? If she’s not helping anyone , isn’t she just a demon?
“What’s wrong with you?” the robber asks, pressing the gun to her head so hard that she has to tilt her neck. “Why do you look like that?”
What is wrong with her?
“My father has a large forehead,” she says stupidly.
“Aren’t you scared?” the robber asks, prodding her again. “You look like you’re sitting through a fucking molecular chemistry lecture.”
Has he been to a lot of molecular chemistry lectures?
“I don’t experience fear like you do,” Raven says. “I’ve trained away distractions like that.”
“Really?” the robber asks, apparently offended. Without waiting for a response, he draws the gun away from her head and fires at the ground by her left foot. Raven cries out and jumps backwards, knocking further against her captor. In a second the gun is at her head again, the muzzle burning hot. Raven tries to ignore the discomfort and her racing heart (she thought she was past this) and takes a deep breath.
H er ears are ringing and the heat against her head is painful. She dizzily glances at Vic (still on the floor with motionless limbs), who mouths something, but she’s a little disoriented at the moment and can’t read his lips. The mist of fear in the room has thickened. She’s useless and her head hurts.
Her ears are ringing too loudly for her to understand anything, but the robber shakes her slightly and says something. A man on the floor shakes his head rapidly, but everyone else stays still. Raven looks down at the hole in the floor. The bullet has cracked the surrounding tile. Her foot was right next to it. It makes her stomach turn. She’s not supposed to get scared.
The robber shakes her slightly, saying something to the captive audience and pressing the gun to her skin. It’s going to leave a burn. She hopes nobody makes a fuss about it later.
Later. She’s not totally sure there’s going to be a later. There’s a fairly high chance he’s going to kill her. Again, this is disturbing. She feels as though something is bouncing back and forth in her head.
What exactly would happen if she died? Her friends would be sad, of course, and they’d probably have to find a replacement to keep the team stable. Maybe Lilith would be able to help. Would anyone be able to tell her mother, all the way back in Azarath? Does Raven want her mother know if she dies?
If Raven dies, what will her father do? Trigon has wanted her to help him invade their dimension since she was conceived, but she’s done her best to keep his influence as weak as possible. Would her death make it harder or easier for him to emerge?
With a bright flash of light the robber releases her, falling back. Raven feels a bullet from his gun graze her cheek, again hot and sharp. As he falls, Raven, who had begun to rely on his support at some point, collapses. She looks up, head spinning, and sees Kory, hands still glowing with residual energy from a starbolt. She manages to catch a glimpse of Vic, face relaxed in relief, before she blacks out.
---
She becomes conscious again in the med bay of the Tower-- she’d recognize it anywhere, because Gar painted the ceiling a horrible pink that he claimed had a psychologically calming effect. Her head is still pounding.
“She’s awake!” someone says, stabbing her in the head. She turns and sees Vic (the edges of the metal on his face have been thickly coated with an unpleasant-looking salve; he must have electrical burns). He looks excitedly to the side, then back at her. “How’re you feeling?”
“Bad,” Raven croaks out. Her mouth and throat are very dry.
Vic nods. “Fair.”
“You’re burned,” Raven says, trying to sit up. “Do you want me to…”
“No. You’re insane,” he says politely. “Dick, she’s up.”
“I heard you the first time,” Dick says, sounding annoyed. He bends down over Raven’s bed. “I shouldn’t have sent you out there.”
He shouldn’t have. Raven did a terrible job. She got Vic paralyzed and herself captured, and left a whole crowd of civilians trembling in terror on the floor. She had to be rescued . Still, she doesn’t want Dick to feel bad.
“You couldn’t have known,” she says.
“That doesn’t matter. You got hurt.” He looks at her earnestly. “I am so sorry.”
Was that what…?
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “Demons heal quickly.”
Dick sighs. “I don’t like that you got hurt at all.”
“But Victor will be all right,” she says.
“Right, but--”
“And the hostages.”
“None of them got hurt.”
“Then everything is…”
“God, you’re dense,” Dick says. He squeezes her hand. “Even if you heal quickly, I don’t like that you got hurt in the first place. None of us do. Just remember that.”
R aven squeezes back. Though she’s not quite certain, she nods.
“I’ll remember.”