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“I did that once you know?”
Tim asked confused, “Go undercover.”
I've been undercover a gazillion times over the years.
As he well knows.
Countless times with Tim personally or as mission leader. Recently and before.
I forgive the man for being absent minded. Correlating a gazillion alias, in real time while his sister is in harms way embedded with the Inter Gang, can be somewhat distracting.
Though recently having Tim be visible somewhere and using one of his brothers, sisters or me going solo is much better for our cover.
“Not exactly,” I say.
Tim looks up.
He passes the cheque to Oracle, taking a much needed break.
Then he waits. Tim is good at waiting. He has learnt not to fill silences just because they are uncomfortable.
“I mean I once got to be someone else. Someone with no title, no prophecy, no father waiting in the dark.”
If people see Tim, they almost always assume I must be around somewhere.
Okay, I usually attach an illusion to Tim. It's a new thing I learnt. Attaching illusions to people, and the illusions functioning without me there.
Only works because Tim and I spend so much time together, we have left a psychic imprint on each other. So on those nights when I go undercover, and I will leave one of our apartments together get in the car, and then I will pour a little bit of myself into the psychic print, causing people to see me just of the corner of the eye, a shadow of myself when they lay eyes on Timothy Drake.
“You make it sound like being seen with me is a tactical disadvantage,” Tim says.
“It is.”
“And yet you keep leaving pieces of yourself with me.”
I look at him. “You make a very convincing anchor.”
The illusion, wears off on its own after a while. It's like he carries a shadow of me with him always, but I allow others to see it for a short while, in a specific place. For our own purposes.
“But that's not what I mean, right now.”
Tim holds my gaze, waiting for the story behind the answer.
After Brother Blood forced me to reform, brainwashed me, and then I was rescued by the Titans, who I later joined.
Before them I existed as a formless soul. I had lived eons, as everything and nothing. I could meditate into nothingness or be a part of everything and experience each experience all at once.
And then somebody reached out, grabbed me, pulled me kicking and screaming, stuffed me into a mortal form.
My self was contracted and contracted until I conformed to the shape of off my abductor’s choice. A teenager.
SHE, shared attributes to how I remember myself. But for what felt like eons, I have been formless, nameless, ever expanding. If not omnipotent, then definitely all encompassing.
Suddenly, I was tiny, and could be hurt.
The person who reached out and forced me into the shape, trapped me and had access to me in ways that left me broken.
So when the compulsion was once again forceable torn away, I found myself in a reality, where I was permanently encased a mortal form.
One night I ran away.
The Titans had a lot going on. I don't think they noticed. I just disappeared into nothingness until I found myself at a coffee shop 2 o'clock in the morning in rural Canada.
“In Canada, I wasn’t Raven. I wasn’t the daughter of Trigon. I wasn’t the girl who could end the world if she lost control.”
Tim’s expression softened.
“Who were you?”
“Rachel. Just Rachel Roth.” My mother's surname that I didn't even know I knew popped into my mind right then. For weeks, I subsisted on the charity of people who didn't even know me, but saw my need and took me in.
“And were you?”
I considered lying. Then I said, “More than I have ever been anyone else.”
Tim is a lot like Cass. They both have reading body language down like a science, though of course Cass is better at it.
Tim understands secret identities. The whole Bat-family does. But for me, Raven was always the true and only me.
There was obviously a boy then. They're always is. He was a pure soul. And I think he was sensitive. He must have felt my agony and decided he had to help.
The community for the most part rallied behind him. I was the most interesting/new thing they found amongst themselves in a long while.
I was like their new family pet.
When I left a couple of weeks later, they threw me a party. Which I insisted I plan.
I made all their favourite foods. I tried my best to cater to all the preferences, I learnt over the weeks. I wanted them to know that I noticed them. I’d felt seen, and I saw them right back.
I never told them I was Raven.
I was dressed like a normal teenager. Borrowed clothes from Cassie. A pink T-shirt. Old soft jeans. Grey sweatshirt. I think Garfield and Victor had come to see me and settle me in the Tower because I was wearing a baseball cap from one of them.
I still have a woven bracelet from that time. It’s wonky, never perfected the skill. I
Only three weeks, and if I wanted, I could've disappeared into the night. I could easily disappear thin air, people standing right next to me, none the wiser.
I'm glad I didn't do that. A bit of closure that we both got. I accepted their charity and they accepted my thanks. They obviously guessed I had a past. A few people were curious. But I think the village had been through enough to know that sometimes you need a break from yourself.
I needed a break from all the tragedy. The loss of life, I experienced with Brother Blood and my loss of freedom.
I needed a break to acclimatise to the new truth of my mortal form, that the person who did this to me was not my evil father, yet slowly forming day by day. But by a psychotic cult leader.
I had to acknowledge the reality that people had power over me. With the right knowledge and enough power, he put his hand into the ether and grabbed my soul, manipulating it to any shape and form.
That village with those people, I was the most myself I could ever be. Could be magical without the weight of the world. I could smile and be happy without regrets without being burdened by my past lineage.
Rachel Roth, was somebody, I needed to be at the time. Just like I needed a community of normal people with normal every day problems. No blood and rampart violence. You don't call the Titans unless they're needed, and if they needed something bad has happened.
Then many years later, when I decided on a life separate from Raven of the Teen Titans, I picked her up again.
Surprisingly, it was as natural as breathing.
I think I am okay with where I am right now because of that Community support.
Allowing me to see what I could be, helped me realise even in this new body, my soul was housed in, I could still be me.
I didn't even know I needed that acceptance of my reality. Much less, how to get there. But I think the universe must have remembered me when I was as big as it, and helped me through those people, allowing me to get there at my own pace.
Tim’s hand finds mine across the Bat-Computer.
“Rachel suits you,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
And really, I do.