The mission had been tedious — a two-bit villain with delusions of grandeur, some stolen tech from S.T.A.R. Labs, the usual posturing and monologuing before Raven pinned him to a wall with a tendril of dark energy and Robin called it a day. Routine. Boring. The kind of mission that made her wonder why she bothered levitating at all when she could simply sink into the floor and disappear.
The Tower is quiet when she returns. She can hear Cyborg's laughter echoing from the kitchen, the distant crash of something — probably Beast Boy being Beast Boy — from the common room. Raven ghosts past all of it, her cloak trailing behind her like a bruise against the dimly lit hallway, until she reaches the sanctuary of her room.
The door slides shut. Silence. Blessed, sacred silence.
She doesn't bother with the lights. The room is already steeped in the comfortable darkness she prefers — deep indigo curtains drawn tight against the afternoon sun, the only illumination coming from the soft, pulsing glow of the crystals arranged on her nightstand. Raven crosses to the center of the room, her boots barely whispering against the floor, and settles into the lotus position with the practiced ease of someone who has meditated ten thousand times before.
Her eyes close. Her breath slows. And then — weightlessness. Her body lifts from the floor, rising a foot, then two, her cloak pooling beneath her like spilled ink. The familiar hum of her own energy wraps around her, warm and cold at once, and she sinks inward, past the noise, past the thoughts, into the vast, dark cathedral of her own mind.
For a moment, there is peace. The comfortable void. Herself, curled in the darkness like a child hiding from the world — the only version of herself that has ever felt safe.
And then it begins.
The vision slams into her like a freight train, the same one that has plagued her for weeks now — thirty days of the same nightmare bleeding into her meditation, her sleep, her waking thoughts. The sky splits open, a wound of crimson and black, and the silhouette of Trigon fills the horizon, vast and terrible and smiling with a mouth full of galaxies. His voice is not a voice but a vibration, a frequency that rattles her bones and makes her teeth ache.
"You are mine, Raven. You have always been mine. The vessel will open. The door will be unbarred. And through you, I will consume every plane of existence you hold dear."
His form shifts, and she sees herself — a hollow-eyed thing, wreathed in fire, her body puppeted by strings of demonic energy. A vessel. A key. A sacrifice on an altar of cosmic annihilation. The vision is sharp, visceral, the kind of clarity that makes it feel less like a premonition and more like a memory — something that has already happened, is happening, will happen.
Raven's jaw clenches. Her hands tighten on her knees. She does not scream. She does not break. She has seen this a hundred times, and she will endure it a hundred more, because that is what she does — she endures. She holds the line. She—
The vision fractures.
It doesn't fade. It doesn't dissolve. It shatters, like a mirror struck by a stone, the crimson sky and Trigon's looming form breaking apart into a thousand glittering shards that scatter into nothing. And in their place — darkness. The familiar, warm, velvet darkness of her own inner world. Herself, curled small and quiet, untouched and untouchable.
The absence is so sudden, so absolute, that it physically startles her. Raven's eyes snap open, and she gasps — a sharp, involuntary intake of breath that she immediately hates herself for. Her concentration breaks. Her telekinetic hold on her own body falters, and she drops the last few inches to the floor, landing hard on her knees with a grunt.
She stays there for a moment, breathing hard, her violet eyes darting around the dim room as if expecting Trigon himself to materialize from the shadows. But there is nothing. No portal. No demonic presence. Just the hum of the Tower's systems, the distant sounds of her teammates, and the steady, maddening tick of the clock on her wall.
"...What the hell was that?"
Her voice is low, rough, edged with something she doesn't quite recognize — confusion, maybe, or the faintest, most fragile thread of hope that she refuses to acknowledge. The visions never stop. They have never stopped. For thirty days straight, Trigon's presence has been a constant, unwelcome guest in her mind, and now — nothing. Silence. A wall where there had been none.
Raven rises slowly to her feet, pulling her cloak tighter around herself, her expression a carefully constructed mask of indifference that doesn't quite hide the turmoil beneath. She doesn't understand it. She doesn't trust it. But for the first time in a month, the darkness behind her eyelids is her own again.
And she has no idea why.