The Measure of a Titan (NEW ch.38 added)

[LadyTevar]

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"What, exactly, did you think this was?"

Flames had been a part of his world for so long that they had ceased to be a concern, but these were different. They loomed up before him like living beings, their roar and crackle stretched to a high-pitched scream, forming walls of impassable height, blocking the way forward.

He wasn't sure where he was, some cavernous open space, the dimensions of which he could not make out. It might have been a football stadium, a music hall, an open air amphitheatre. It might have been a cathedral, he simply couldn't tell. No lights illuminated his surroundings, save the flames that burned before him, their gyrations almost hypnotic in the preternatural darkness.

A shadow loomed in the orange wall ahead, indistinct and yet recognizable, its identity obvious. A slim figure with a scarred face and a cane of varnished oak topped with a silver handle. The fires parted before him as he advanced, stepping forth, whole and hale, a halo of flame dancing from his metal-shod walking stick. For a moment he stood motionless, watching David as though in expectation of some sign, and then he stepped forward, and reached out, and took him by the shoulder.

"We are only what we will to be."

His form rippled like water in the wind, shifting wildly in dimension and shape, the grip on David's shoulder hardening as though the hand that held him had been turned to stone. He tried to pull away, grabbing the arm that held him and pushing as hard as he could, but to no avail. It was like trying to break the grip of a bronze statue, and when he lifted his head, the face that greeted him was no longer his own.

It wasn't even a face.

He let out a warbling, awkward cry of horror, and with a single desperate shove, he tore his shoulder free from the armored giant before him, stumbling back and landing on the ground. Above him, the iron glare of a single eye glared at him through a featureless mask of orange and black. Ringed in flames, which dripped from him like water, he seemed to grow even as David scrambled back. Yet no matter how hard he tried to flee, Slade remained directly in front of him. Slowly, with infinite grace, Slade bent and lowered his head, his hand reaching out towards David's face, even as his cyclopean eye stared directly into David's soul. And then all was lost in darkness, as Slade's hand clamped over his face like a vice, and the world itself disappeared, all save for a single sentence, burned indelibly into his mind as if by branding iron.

"No matter how much you want to," said Slade, "you cannot destroy the Devil with a bomb."

David awoke with a shout.

It wasn't a full blown scream, for which he was more than grateful, but a strangled cry of fear and surprise, and for the briefest of moments he sat bolt upright, unsure of where he was or how he had come to be there. Only at length did his mind catch up with his body, and begin interpreting rationally the data his senses were feeding him.

He was sitting on one of the couches laid out within the main room of the emergency bunker, a wool blanket emblazoned with the Titans' symbol half-draped over him. The overhead fluorescents were off, and only the ambient glow of the security monitors still illuminated the room, but as he turned his burning red eyes on the rest of the room like a pair of flashlights, he saw Starfire fast asleep, floating half an inch above another couch, while behind her, the light from his eyes served to just illuminate the hulking form of Cyborg, plugged into one of his enormous power cell rechargers, seemingly dead to the world.

In an ideal world, of course, Cyborg would have detailed someone to remain on watch, to be relieved every two hours by someone else. David had been through several such routines, and while being woken in the middle of the night and instructed not to fall asleep for several hours was not exactly pleasant, getting woken by bloodthirsty monsters trying to devour your soul was a shade worse. But this was not an ideal world, and Cyborg had decided, given the battery of detection equipment radiating from the bunker in every direction, and the fact that Trigon's minions still not shown themselves, that it was worth taking the risk of letting everyone simply collapse. For one thing they all plainly needed it. And for another, nobody felt particularly up to staying awake, alone, in the middle of the darkened bunker. Not even with the others asleep nearby.

Or at least that was what David assumed, right up until his eyes fell on the third couch, the one Beast Boy had been upon in the form of a housecat, now empty save for the blanket draped over it. Beside it, the small cot Cyborg had dragged out of storage for Raven was also empty. Yet before David could panic over where either of them had gotten to, his ears caught the sound of muffled music coming from the next room, and he turned, and saw a bright glow seeping beneath the door.

He had no idea what time it was. The atomic clocks built into the bunker's computers no longer corresponded with reality in any meaningful way, and as far as he knew, Cyborg had set no alarms. "Tomorrow" was a wholly artificial concept in a world with no sunrise. Yet the faces of Slade and Devastator still danced through the back of his mind, and rather than trying to go back to sleep to face them again, he instead slid off the couch, and walked as quietly as he could over to the door to the back room.

The motion sensor slid the door aside with a hiss, suddenly drenching him in bright light. He squinted and shaded his eyes, only to find when he opened them once more, that all he could see was a vague, amorphous shape, shifting in impossible ways before his eyes. The mingled light, reflecting into the dark room, was such that he had difficulty making out what was actually going, and it wasn't until he stepped into the room entirely and averted his eyes directly the bright screen in front of him that his eyes finally adjusted and he saw Beast Boy smiling sheepishly at him as his form finished shifting back into the customary one.

"Dude," said Beast Boy, exhaling heavily as the door slid shut once more. "You scared the hell out of me."

Even after all this it still took David a moment to figure out what Beast Boy was talking about. "Sorry," he said. "I forgot about..."

"Don't worry," said the changeling. "I know how it is." He glanced back at the bright screen and music illuminating the small room, and then returned to David. "Did we wake you up?"

"No," said David. "I couldn't sleep is all."

"Oh," said Beast Boy. And he seemed to be thinking of something else to add, but came up blank. "Well... you can join us if you want," he said, gesturing to an open armchair even as he turned the television's volume down. "We couldn't much sleep either."

RIght now that sounded good. "Us?" he asked, moments before he walked around the couch and saw Raven, laying curled up on the other side, seemingly fast asleep.

"Um... yeah," said Beast Boy as David took another chair. "Raven couldn't sleep, and she sorta woke me up, so..."

David just smiled and nodded in silence. There wasn't much that needed saying on that account. He sat back and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, the soft sounds of barely-audible music trickling into his ears along with the sounds of Raven stirring in her sleep.

"So..." said Beast Boy, "I guess you're in the club now too."

David cracked an eye open at that. "The club?"

"You know," said Beast Boy, "the weird colors club?"

Such was David's state of mental fatigue that it actually took him a little while to realize what Beast Boy was talking about. "Oh, you mean... yeah."

"Don't worry, dude, it's not that bad," said Beast Boy, to which David responded by raising an eyebrow. "I mean I'm not saying I'd trade you or anything, but... you know it could be worse."

David had so far studiously avoided looking in a mirror since re-awakening from the dead, but gauging from everyone else's reactions, he was pretty sure he looked just like the other ashen-faced demons that Trigon had seeded Jump City with. "Worse?" he asked.

Beast Boy shrugged. "You could've been pink."

Despite himself, David had to chuckle a little at that, and Beast Boy smiled victoriously the way he always did whenever he managed to coax a laugh out of an unwilling target. "Oh, dude," he said, "that reminds me, we've got a couple more of your uniforms in storage somewhere around here. You can change back into one of your orange ones if you want."

The smile faded. "I um... I did already," said David. "This isa new one."

Beast Boy blinked. "But... it's grey."

So it was. The color of freshly-fallen ash, the same color as his skin and hair. "I know," said David. "It changed as soon as I put it on."

Beast Boy's eyes widened. "Really?" he asked.

"Yeah," said David. He couldn't think of anything else to add.

"Wow," said Beast Boy. He let it sit a moment, then followed up. "I wonder why Trigon did that to you."

"I'm not sure he did," said David.

"What do you mean?"

David sighed softly. "Maybe Terra did it when she brought me back to life," he said. "Maybe Trigon did it. Or maybe... maybe Terra never brought me back to life at all, and I'm just some demon who thinks he's David until Trigon flips a switch." He exhaled, slowly, his voice low so as not to disturb Raven, as visions of a man in a long coat with a cane danced before his eyes, standing triumphant in a heap of ruins over a pile of bodies. "Maybe I always have been," he said.

Someone else might have reacted violently to such a statement, or politely changed the subject to something less morose. Beast Boy just shrugged. "Well Devastator picked you to be his host." he said. "That's why you can still use him even now, right? I don't think he'd have done that if you were some demon."

David just shook his head. "Devastator will pick anyone," he said. "Even a demon. And besides, he didn't choose me because I was like you guys." He paused for a moment. "I know why he picked me and it wasn't that."

Beast Boy also paused, letting the soft sound of the television speakers fill the silence around them. When he finally did answer, his voice was hesitant and careful, like that of someone edging into a touchy subject.

"Was... it so you could fight us?"

David froze for a second, then slowly lifted his eyes to Beast Boy, his expression apprehensive, but bathed in the red glow of David's stare, Beast Boy did not flinch away. "You... you know about that?" David asked finally.

"Starfire did," said Beast Boy. "She told us while you were in the shower."

He winced. He couldn't help it. And seeing him do so, Beast Boy apparently felt he had to offer some sort of support. "Dude," he said, "it's okay..."

"No, it's not," said David. "It's even less okay than you think."

"Dude, it's probably just some trick," said Beast Boy. "Trigon sent a bunch at me while I was looking for Raven."

"It wasn't a trick," said David. "It was real."

"Well how do you know that?" asked Beast Boy

"Because I met him," said David. He let the statement sit, flat and uncompromising, and when Beast Boy said nothing else he followed it up. "I met him, and I talked to him." Another pause, long and empty. "And then I killed him," he said at last. It seemed, somehow, more real now, saying it to Beast Boy, than it had been just hours before, in the flesh.

It was some time before Beast Boy said something, and when he did his voice was gentler now, the vocal equivalent to kid gloves for use with a fragile object. A tone David recognized from several of Beast Boy's conversations with Raven.

"I ran into my own evil twin," he said. "While I was looking for Raven. I..." a slight hesitation, not the lengthy pauses David had used, but noticeable regardless. "He was all part of Trigon's game. They all were. To make us all confused and mess us up. That's all this is."

David could only sigh and shake his head. "He wasn't my evil twin," he said. "He was... me. The real me. The person I always knew I was." He looked up at Beast Boy. "I'mthe evil twin," he said. "That's why I look like this."

Raven stirred, softly, but did not awaken, murmuring something inaudible as she rolled over beneath the blanket Beast Boy had draped over her. Both David and Beast Boy paused, and Beast Boy gently stroked her hair as she settled back to sleep.

David waited until Raven was visibly asleep once more, and sighed, his voice reduced to a soft whisper to avoid disturbing her further. "I know it doesn't matter now," he said. "In a couple hours we're gonna be fighting Trigon, and I've gotta think about that, and Devastator, and Raven, and so do you. But... I just can't get it all out of my head." He trailed off, staring down at the floor. "I don't know how," he said at last.

It seemed like quite a while before Beast Boy responded, though it probably wasn't. "Why do you think I'm sitting here?" he asked, and David raised his eyes to see a soft smile on his face. "I can't get any of it out either. Terra, Raven, everything. If you ever find a way, you gotta let us all know."

Once more, despite himself, David smiled. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't be - "

"No, dude," said Beast Boy. "It's all right, I mean it. You went through some weird stuff tonight."

David shrugged. "You went to Hell," he said.

"Yeah, well, you died," said Beast Boy. "And then you got better and had all this stuff dumped on you. It'd mess with anybody."

David only shook his head. "It's not that." A pause. "Well maybe it is, I don't know. It's just this isn't the first time I've thought about this."

Beast Boy just nodded. "Star said you guys talked about it once, after that thing with Jinx in the mines?"

A soft chuckle. "You know about that too?"

"Dude," said Beast Boy, "it's me. I know everything. I found Raven's birthday, remember?"

Another chuckle. "Yeah," said David.

Beast Boy smiled. "She just told me because she said you were really worried about it all. Star doesn't always uh... getus Earthlings, you know? She wanted to know what to do to cheer you up."

David shook his head, still smiling despite himself. "Did you tell her it was a lost cause?"

"No, but I thought about telling her to bake you a cake."

This one brought on a full laugh, muffled of course. "Now that's just mean," said David.

"Yeah, I decided you hadn't done anything to deserve that," said Beast Boy with a broad, fanged grin. "Besides, I figured it was a bad idea to get into a prank war with someone who can turn anything into a bomb."

"Glad to hear it."

"I told her that you'd get over it in a little while. Which you did. And you will here too. I mean... if Trigon doesn't, you know... kill us all first."

From anyone else that would have sounded morbid.

"But you're not a super-villain, dude," continued Beast Boy. "Trust me, I've known lots of them. Maybe in some other world you were gonna be or something, but this isn't that world, and you're not that guy."

"But I'm not like you either," said David. "You know that, we all know that, even before this. If Cinderblock hadn't nearly killed me, and I hadn't met you guys, I'd never be a hero."

Beast Boy considered that a moment, and then shrugged. "If my parents hadn't died, maybe I wouldn't either."

A chill settled in David's stomach, and he closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to - "

"Dude, I told you, it's okay," said Beast Boy. "I'm just saying, if Star hadn't gotten shipwrecked with those weird alien dudes, if Cy didn't have his accident, if I hadn't caught Sakutia... I mean who knows what any of us would have done?"

"That's just it," said David. "I do know. I've always known. And now I know for certain. Maybe it was all a trick, but I don't think it was. I killed you. And Raven, and all the others, and like ten thousand other people besides. That was me." He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "That's who I am," he said. "The only difference between us was that I met you guys. If I hadn't..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. But rather than protest, or agree, or insist that it was long since time he stopped talking about this subject, Beast Boy simply sat in silence, as did David, until, finally, Beast Boy chimed in with an odd request, all things considered.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

David lifted his head. "Sure," he said.

Beast Boy took his time. "I guess it's not really a question," he said. "It's just something I really don't understand."

What Beast Boy could be referring to was beyond David, but then that was perhaps to be expected. "What's that?" he asked.

Beast Boy took a few extra moments to put all his thoughts in order, something generally unheard of as far as he was concerned. "All this time," he said, "you've been living with us, fighting, training, just hanging out. But even after all this, you still see us like we're... different than you. Betterthan you, even."

Part of David wanted to respond that the reason for that was because they were. But the rest of him retained enough sense not to.

"I mean," continued Beast Boy. "It's not all the time. Not anymore. It used to be that you were a civilian, and I know you still kinda feel that way, and there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, when something like this happens, it's like you go back to this idea that we're all a million times better than you're ever gonna be. Like you think we're perfect, and since you're not..."

David sighed, his eyes averted, letting silence swell up between them. "I don't think you guys are perfect."

"I know," said Beast Boy. "It's just... you see us take down some bad guy or save some people, and you think, 'okay, that's who they are'. And then you see your future self or whoever kill a bunch of people and do terrible things, and you think 'all right, that's who I am', right?" David managed to look up, but could not bring himself to answer. "But what I don't get is... you blew your own evil twin up. A guy who was like twenty times stronger than you. And then you blasted your way through an army of demons, so you could rescue Cy. And after you did that, and nearly got killed eight times, you came back here with us, so that in a little bit you can go fight the Devil, and tear Devastator out of his soul to save the world."

Slowly, David managed to lift his head, to see Beast Boy looking straight at him, red lights and all.

"So all I'm saying, dude, is... how come that'snot who you are?"

Had David been able to figure out how to answer that question, he might have done so. But all he could do was sit in silence, watching the light of his own eyes reflecting off Beast Boy and Raven and the rest of the room. Beast Boy seemed to take it for answer enough.

There were clocks in the room, hidden somewhere in the darkness. But David did not seek for them, preferring not to know how much time was passing, sitting in silence, lost in his own thoughts. It might have been one minute or many before the sound gently ebbing from the television shifted suddenly, and belatedly brought his attention around to other matters.

"Hey uh... Beast Boy?" he asked at length, breaking the silence between them that had by now gone on long enough for its absence to feel like a minor shock. "What's that?"

The television was turned down to its lowest volume setting, but the image was still clearly visible, not that that answered anything. The image was one of a number of people, a dozen or more, lined up on a stage with microphones in front of them, facing an enormous audience staring up at them in rapt attention. The actors, or whoever they were, wore strange costumes, the men in tricorne hats and ruffled shirts and waistcoats with epaulettes and brass buttons, the women in long dresses of greater or lesser shabbiness. Several carried muskets and other antique weapons, and those who did brandished them aloft as they cried out their lines, though the volume was so low that all David could make out was a soft murmur.

Beast Boy too was lost in thought, and seemed almost startled by David's question. "Huh?" he asked, blinking as he looked around. "Oh... um... its uh... it's a musical."

He fumbled at his side for the remote control, and pointed it at the television as he hit a button, causing the volume to jump suddenly just as an older man was stepping forward in the center of the stage, as if to begin some grand soliloquy.

'One day more.
Another day, another destiny.
This never-ending road to Calvary...'

"You ever heard this one?" asked Beast Boy.

David shook his head. Musicals were a subject he knew strictly nothing about. But then he'd assumed the same was true of Beast Boy, whose tastes in pop culture seemed defined by comic books and cartoons.

Beast Boy smiled. "It's called Les Miserables," he said. "It means... well... the miserables, I guess. It's pretty famous."

"I think I've heard the name before," said David. "I didn't know you liked this sort of thing."

Beast Boy shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I kinda like this one."

'One more day all on my own.
One more day with him not caring.
What a life I might have known.
But he never saw me there..."

"Rita liked this song," said Beast Boy.

The name didn't ring a bell. "Rita?" asked David.

"Oh," said Beast Boy, seemingly remembering all of a sudden who he was talking to. "Elasti-Girl. From the Doom Patrol. The... group I was with before I was with the Titans."

There was more to it than that, David could tell that much from Beast Boy's voice alone. But he did not pry. It wasn't his way. And this wasn't a night for that anyhow.

"When I was little, she took me to see the show," he said. "I don't really remember much of it. But Steve bought her the soundtrack, and she liked to play it sometimes." David had no idea who Steve was, but did not ask, even as Beast Boy shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I guess I just wanted to hear it one more time before... well..."

'One more day before the storm.
At the barricades of freedom.
When our ranks begin to form.
Will you take your place with me?'

Softly, slowly, Raven began to stir, her movement alerting Beast Boy, whose glance in turn alerted David. Gently, she opened her eyes, lifted her head, blinking as she took in her surroundings. Her eyes fell on David, and she drew a sharp breath, pulling closer to Beast Boy as if by reflex, her expression frightened. "It's okay," whispered Beast Boy as she took his arm with both hands, sliding over to him on the couch and holding him protectively. David tried not to take it personally. His appearance scared the hell out of him too.

Right now, a lot of things did.

'One day more!
One more day 'till revolution,
We will nip it in the bud.
We'll be ready for these schoolboys.
They will wet themselves with blood!'

Watching the singers perform, David felt his chest constricting, as though something were squeezing the air from his lungs. He breathed mechanically, feeling the air flow in and out as though some other force were animating him. "It's almost time, isn't it?" he asked, not bothering, perhaps not able, to look away.

"Yeah," said Beast Boy from somewhere to the left.

The knots inside him seemed to tighten imperceptibly. "Do you... think we can do this?" he asked, unable to stop himself, his eyes flickering over to the couch almost reflexively, bathing the entire thing in red light. Raven watched him like she might a dangerous predator, but Beast Boy only smiled, his eyes still glued to the screen.

'Watch 'em run amok,
Catch 'em as they fall,
Never know your luck when it's a free-for-all.
Here a little nick,
There a little touch,
Most of them are gonners so they won't miss much...'

"Of course, Dude," he said, flashing a fanged smile as he did so. "Don't you?"

David didn't know how to answer that. Or rather he was worried that he did.

"I... I don't know," he said.

"I do," came a voice from behind.

'One day to a new beginning.
Every man will be a King.'

David turned his head. So did Beast Boy. So did Raven. The light was poor, but David's spotlight eyes illuminated Cyborg, leaning against one side of the doorway, an expression of almost priestly calm written on both sides of his face.

"This is how it had to be," said Cyborg. "Always. I know that, and so do you. Trigon can split us all up, hide Raven, turn you chartreuse if he wants to. It don't matter at all. This is how it was meant to end."

There was a finality to that sentiment that should have pushed him over the edge into full on panic. And yet it did not. "What's gonna end?" he asked, not even sure himself what he meant by it.

'There's a new world for the winning
Do you hear the people sing?'

"All things end," said Starfire, stepping around Cyborg and entering the room outright, yet if the words were morose, her bearing and expression was anything but. It took David a moment to realize that something about her was different, but moments later he realized that she was no longer sheathed in metal. The jagged crown framing her head was gone, and instead of banded armor, she wore the purple skirt and sleeveless top that he remembered from better times. Her midriff was swaddled in white bandages, but she did not favor anything as she stepped around the couch and sat down on it next to David's chair. "Even Trigon," she said.

Sandwiched between Beast Boy and Starfire, Raven looked at each in turn, and at Cyborg and at David, and back at Beast Boy again, who gently picked her up and sat her in his lap, the better to hold her tightly. Cyborg walked carefully over to the couch, standing behind Starfire. David didn't move, yet as though by some resonant field, the tightness in his chest seemed to dissipate, merely through the proximity of his friends.

"What about us?" he asked.

Anyone could have answered. Starfire did.

"We will show Trigon what an ending is," she said, reaching over and taking David's hand with her own. "Together. As it should be."

They were all on edge. That much he knew from a thousand tiny queues he'd learned to read without even meaning to in the months he'd known them. Maybe they were as scared as he was. Maybe they were incapable of such levels of fear. He didn't really know. What he knew was that Starfire had the power to crush his hand like an origami sculpture, or channel energy sufficient to burn him to a cinder, and she would not. And had not. Not even when she had every reason to think him some monster conjured from Trigon's mind. He knew that Beast Boy was smiling, and holding Raven protectively, and that his expression was that quiet, blissful one he brought out so infrequently, only on the rare occasions that he felt safe enough to set aside the jokes. And Raven was holding onto him, her fingers knotted into his shirt, sparing glances up at Beast Boy that resembled the ones that her older self had used only when she thought that nobody else was watching. He knew that in a few minutes Cyborg would probably remember that he was supposed to be trying to do what Robin would in his place, and would start issuing instructions to them all. But right now, here, he was letting himself be Cyborg again.

He knew all of these things. He no longer remembered not knowing them.

'My place is here! I fight with you!'

"Yeah," he said. And thought he didn't know why he said it, he felt the remaining fear receding within him as he did, replaced by the warmth of a sensation he did not know how to name. One that only existed in the company of the people in this room.

Nobody spoke as the actors on the screen sang and cheered and filled the room with music and song. Starfire did not release David's hand, and David did not try to make her. Yet as if in response to some unspoken suggestion, Beast Boy slid over on the couch closer to Starfire, Raven still held tightly in his arms, and he took Raven's tiny hand in his own large glove, and Starfire took them both with her own. Perhaps it was his own imagination, or perhaps some facet of Starfire's alien physiology, but David thought he felt a tiny charge, warm and electrical, run through his fingers, the same way that his baton had always felt whenever he focused upon it, back when he had Devastator and was whole. Yet the tingling charge did not stop, and the emptiness that Devastator had left could no longer be felt, filled as he was with the simple relief of being, at last, exactly where he wanted to be. Perhaps for the last time. And he knew from the look on the others' faces that he wasn't the only one who could feel it.

"I'm really glad I met you guys," said David Foster.

'Tomorrow we'll be far away,
Tomorrow is the judgement day.
Tomorrow we discover what our God in Heaven has in store...'

A heavy, metal hand landed gently on his shoulder, squeezing it tightly.

"So are we, man," said Cyborg.

'One more dawn.'

"All of us," said Starfire.

'One more day.'

"Always," said Beast Boy.

'One! Day! More!'