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“Go with your instincts.” Raven coaches me through her ability to sense others emotions as if they are my own.
It’s as if she’s saying, trust yourself in my very mind. But she can’t be. Because that’s not possible.
“I can’t. How am I supposed to know if this confusion I’m feeling is mine or the person who is standing next to me, who’s had her body taken over by my soul and standing now in a man’s body?”
Raven sighed. The sound came out through my mouth. I very rarely heard my own voice this way. I’ve heard recordings of myself, this is jarringly different.
She’d had his boxers and his T-shirt. I wear them now. In Raven’s body.
I feel like I'm losing my mind.
“Tim.” Again, my voice, Raven’s tone in my body. “Your soul knows. Trust yourself. You are smart and tenacious, and as a master manipulator yourself, you know when somebody foreign is manipulating you. The same way you will know when feelings aren’t your own.”
“What I am feeling right now, suddenly occupying a body foreign to me. I mean I’m a guy. My soul has left my body so many times. But to occupy your body wholly like this feels alien, and I want it to stop right this second”
She’s telling me, she understands.
The thing is, lives are on the line. This isn’t a normal Sunday morning. It’s the first weekend of the summer. millions of families are going to commute from the city to which ever; beach, hill station, Casino, Lake, they prefer.
With them, they will take an unknown pathogen, of unknown origin.
“What if I’m wrong. What if, how you describe the disease or whatever isn’t how I perceive it?”
Bruce glances over his shoulder. “You won’t be wrong, Tim,” Bruce says to me. “Because you can’t be.”
A wave of despair hits me.
It’s my own. It’s a familiar friend. I can perceive it more clearly now, through Raven powers.
Fathers, mothers, children, people.
They could all be exposed. If I don’t perceive the unknown pathogen in the way Raven does, it’s going to get much worse.
And none of this would’ve happened, if I hadn’t been suspicious of the woman I’m sleeping with.
We’ve been partners for a short time.
In the grand scheme of things, what are a couple of months? But I’d find myself relying on Raven, believing in her.
Agreeing with her theories and hypothesis. It was like our time with the Titans never ended. We just picked up where we left off. Even after so many years. And Raven isn’t Stephanie. Or Cassie. How am I feeling these things for her so quickly after such a short reunion, feelings that are all consuming?
So the only thing I think of is get curious. Which is another way of saying suspicious.
I sabotage myself. My relationship. One of the things that made me happy in this world and now the whole city, the whole county, the whole state, the whole country, the very world could suffer.
As much as I hate Batman right now, he’s right. If I’m wrong, I can’t live with myself.
So I can’t been wrong.
This is gonna be the hard part. I will admit it to myself that my curiosity was suspicion. I’m terrified with these feelings about Raven.
I remember the first time I met her. I saw her across the room. I wasn’t sure if she was with the church, their victim, a willing sacrifice.
She wasn’t ordinary. That much I could tell from the start. The old guard found out and fawned over like a lost precious memory. They; Jason, Kori, Garfield. And Victor. She looked like younger than them. My age even.
She looked to me – Confused.
But with so much power bringing off her. That was unmistakable.
We already had a Superman. A wonder girl, Kid Flash and a Robin. And now we had a Raven.
The same Raven that brought the teen Titans together. To save Koriande’r. To protect the world from Trigon, her own Father.
I thought I could handle her the way I handled the rest of my team. I knew super-boy’s deepest secret. WonderGirl had no where else to go and Kid flash was happy to follow.
But this girl could read my emotions as if they were her own. There was no hiding micro expressions from her. None of that mattered with Raven. You could be three states away in a lead lined room, and she could still perceive you if she wanted to.
And it took me the whole of my run with the Titans to realise she didn’t want that. She wasn’t some peeping Tom. But her friends were hurt, and she felt it, Rae’d intervene.
The time Raven showed up in Smallvill .When Connor was contemplating his soul.
The bond Rae shares with Cassie. The way she disappeared when Kid flash confronted her over her supposed dislike of his girlfriend. Rae’d rather cut her arm off than hurt a friend.
I remember all the times she’s had my back. Raven tried to find me when I died. Raven was the only one who supported me when I said Bruce was still alive.
But the suddenness of my feelings didn’t get explained by any of that. The truth is, I freaked out. And now we’re in this mess because I couldn’t trust my feelings, because I thought I couldn’t trust anyone, especially Raven.
I want to explain everything to her.
Why I was snooping. How I'm sorry. How scary and wonderful these feelings I have for her.
That I do trust her.
With my life.
With the life of my family.
And with the world.
So I’m gonna have to work on shutting down the fear response connect with her. Perception is reality. I believe that. And ultimately, if our body’s don’t swap back, I need to be able to track this unknown pathogen.
“Believe me, Tim. Believe in yourself. Believe in the love that you feel for everyone, even those you haven't met. Even those who you will eventually hurt to stop them from hurting others.”
I raise a brow.
It feels weird doing it on her face. Weirder than seeing such an earnest expression on Mine.
Love! What a joke.
I do this because I am an intellectual, and this is the greatest use of my intellect.
Not helping rich, getting richer.
Not, helping those who have all the resources.
Fighting for the underdog is truly exhilarating because of the obstacles I have to face. I have to overcome. The calculations I have to make. It’s stacked deck and we still win, every single time.
Raven looks at me through my face. Her expression is petting.
I sense Raven's feelings for me. It's as easy as reading her face.
“I remember what I told you once,” I say. “You cover yourself, but my eyes still see all of you.”
And it is as true now as it was then. Even through my face, through all that bizarreness, I can see Raven in my face, as clearly as I ever could.
There she is: the small crease between her brows when she is worried, the patience she saves for people she loves, the softness she treats like a weakness even though it has never been one.
My face should not be able to hold her like that.
And if her expression is anything to go by. She doesn't believe a word I say.
“You really think you joined Batman simply for your intellect? You really think you sacrifice yourself the way you do simply to win.”
I can feel in a separate part of myself, that Rae really believes what she’s saying. And if she feels, she needs to say it, I stop myself from interrupting her.
I had always wondered what it would be like to have Raven’s power. It’s like bees buzzing all the time. Mixed in with the call of crickets and cicadas.
Chitter chatter, pitter patter. On steroids.
Shaking her head at my stupidity, she goes on.
“Love. You do it out of love. Of course, you enjoy putting yourself against the hardest problems. You help people. You intervened with Batman. You approached Dick out of love. Compassion and empathy.”
Is she right? I don't know what I'm thinking, I've never known her to be wrong.
Maybe she believes that, that doesn't make it true.
I had never doubted Raven’s intelligence, but to me, her empathy made her weak. I always hypothesised that Raven had the power or ability to empathise because it was a part of her personality. A part of her programming she couldn't reject. But now in her body, feeling what she feels, I know for certain she chose the more difficult path of being kind. Because with this Power, it is very easy to choose a more sinister path. To easily be a spider in a web, controlling everyone like a puppet master.
I can feel Raven’s convection, her trust in me, choices she makes in my body, and it influences my own.
She's right.
I can sense the difference between her emotions and mine between bruises, scepticism and hope. Hair emotions feel like cotton, cool with a backbone of titanium.
I feel the same emotions, but different textures. Different Wieght.
I take the same information, and I am calculating with it.
Bruce may appear attached, but he feels deeply. More deeply and I thought it was possible for a person who has been doing it as long as he has.
I feel everything.
Each person has their own signature. Each animal and insect are the same yet different.
“If you’re up for it?” She smiles.
All of this, being in a man’s body with my constant pains and lack of spiritual power must be jarring for Rae.
She’s willing to put it aside. Because this is important. Unknown. And time sensitive. The explanations. My confessions. These are selfish wants. There will be time for them later.
So yeah, I’m up for it.
At the back of my mind, I recall Raven’s description - the pathogen. All the carrier of the pathogen.
I fall back on meditative techniques that have worked for me. And I feel my senses expand.
Out the room, beyond the cave, beyond the mansion, beyond grounds, further and further.
The buzzing the chirping and the clicks are all background noise. All are unimportant. I flit from information to information focusing in on one thing. Everything else becomes background noise.
Like a muscle responding better and better as Raven guides me, just a little rusty & unused.
The city opens up in my mind’s eye. Vibrant and ready to take me over the data overload, but I focus on the micro. It is layered and vast. It fights my breaking it down into its basic components.
I can feel warm around my fingers. “Slow. Steady. Trust yourself.”
One area at a time, I say to myself. I overlay the map of the city, using myself as the centre point. Working from where Raven last ‘saw’ the unknown pathogen.🦠 I tighten the search grid. Looking for patterns of movement second nature to me, through Raven’s power.
I don’t know how long we’re at this.
Time loses all meaning in this perception of reality. This new dimension that the universe has revealed to me through Raven's abilities. I have a better appreciation of how Raven can get lost here. Lose track of time. Of reality.
A straw touches my lips.
I startle, then drink. Cool water slides down my throat, sweet with electrolyte powder. My body is probably dehydrated from holding Raven’s power open for too long.
Raven has thought of that. Of course she has.
“Slowly,” she says, and it’s strange to hear my own voice become gentle. “You do not have to prove anything to me.”
I want to tell her that I have been trying to prove myself to her since the day we met. Instead, I drink until she takes the cup away.
I mentally smack myself. I am beyond grateful to have Rae here. I appreciate what she is going through, but she has it in her to walk me through this. To hydrate me. Take care of me.
THERE.