Villain Trigon

Once upon a time, there was a door that Raven had been keeping closed for as long as she could remember.

It was not a door made of wood or iron. It was not a door you could see or touch. It was a door inside herself — a careful, steady barrier she had built with years of slow breathing and quiet practice and the patient teaching of the monks of Azarath. On one side of that door was everything she loved: the tower, her friends, the city, her books, her tea. On the other side of that door was Trigon.

Trigon was Raven's father. He was a demon of enormous power who lived in his own dark dimension, a place of red sky and broken stone where nothing gentle had ever grown. He was not the kind of father who sent letters or remembered birthdays. He was the kind of father who waited — patiently, endlessly — for a moment of weakness, so that he could push through.

He had been sending signals for a long time. Just small ones at first. A shadow that moved differently than it should. A whisper at the edge of sleep. A moment when Raven's own reflection seemed to look at her from a slightly different angle. She recognized all of these things. She had read about them in the old scrolls of Azarath, the ones the monks had shown her when she was still very small. She knew what they meant. She breathed through each one and kept the door closed.

But one evening, the door began to rattle.

A deep red shimmer appeared in the streets of Jump City, far below Titans Tower. The air tasted like copper and lightning. The walls of buildings vibrated as if something enormous were pressing against them from inside. Trigon's voice came through the gaps between things — low and grinding, like thunder moving through stone.

"Raven," it said. "You are like me. You will always be like me. Come and see what you truly are."

Raven sat very still.

Then she walked to the main room of Titans Tower and said, quietly, to her team: "He is coming. I need you beside me."

Robin did not ask many questions. He looked at her with steady, serious eyes and said, "What do you need?" Starfire flew to her side immediately, warm and glowing, and took her hand once, briefly — just so Raven would know she was there. Cyborg powered up his systems with a hum that filled the whole room. Beast Boy, who usually had something funny to say, looked at Raven's face and didn't say anything funny at all. He just stood close.

They went together into the city.

The red shimmer had grown by the time they arrived, spreading across the street like a wound in the air, crackling and hissing. Trigon was pushing harder now, his dimension pressing against theirs, trying to tear open a passage wide enough to step through. His voice was louder. It told Raven that she was his daughter. That darkness was her true nature. That the calm she kept inside herself was only borrowed and would not hold.

Raven closed her eyes.

She had heard these words before — in dreams, in whispers, in the oldest worries she had ever felt. She knew them the way you know a road you have walked many times. And she knew, just as clearly, that they were not true.

She breathed in slowly. She breathed out slowly. The monks of Azarath had shown her this — had shown her that feelings do not have to control you, that power does not have to be wild, that calm is not weakness but the most extraordinary strength of all.

Her soul-self rose around her. The great dark raven — her shape, her name — spread its wings wide against the red shimmer and pushed. Not with anger. Not with desperation. With the steady, quiet certainty of someone who has chosen who she is, over and over, every single day, and is choosing it again right now.

The red light cracked.

Trigon's voice rose for a moment — loud and startled, like a door slamming in a windstorm — and then it fell away to silence. The shimmer collapsed. The air tasted clean again. The walls of Jump City stopped shaking.

Raven opened her eyes.

The sky above her was full of stars. Ordinary, quiet, beautiful stars.

She folded her cloak around herself and stood very still. Then she looked at Robin and nodded once. He nodded back. Starfire exhaled with relief, Cyborg's shoulders relaxed, and Beast Boy briefly turned into a small dog — he always did that when something stressful was over — and then turned back and pretended he hadn't.

Raven almost smiled.

On the long walk back to Titans Tower, Beast Boy walked beside her and said, "You know what I think? I think Trigon has never met anyone like you before."

Raven considered this.

"He has not," she said.

And that was the end of that.