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Chapter Three: Know Your Enemy

Raven came back to the Titans Tower infirmary, cup of herbal tea in hand, her head starting to clear. At Cyborg's insistence, Mr. Fixit had been given recharging priority, and he (Cyborg) sat in a seat next to the bed. Despite the fact that he must have been much more tired than he looked, however impossible that might have been, Cyborg still wore a look of triumph on his face.

On a nearby couch, Starfire, her arms around Robin as one of his own arms encircled her shoulder, rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed in contentment. Robin's own head rested on hers, his eyes shut and as at peace as hers was.

Beast Boy walked in, a bag of tofu chips in his hand, munching, looking more at peace with himself than he had been since Terra went. He went over to check on the recovering Mr. Fixit, and spoke to Cyborg about minor matters, probably the latest game or cartoon on, the feeling of doom that hung over them but less than an hour hence quickly evaporating.

Tonight was rough, no doubt about that. But seeing her friends, her family like this, gave her a strange combination of sensations, of peace, of ease, but always lurking somewhere behind, feelings of loneliness and yes, jealousy, that she could never truly experience what they were going through.

Loneliness...

"Where's Blackfire?" she asked.

At the sound of her name, the look on Beast Boy's face immediately changed. "Last I saw her, she said she was going up to the landing pad. What? Whaat?" he asked, seeing the look Raven gave him. A moment later, she walked out.

"All right, what was the argument about?" Robin asked in resigned ease, opening his eyes.

"Argument? What argument?"

"Beast Boy, I know a day is not enough time to get to know a person, but maybe you have to give Blackfire a chance."

"A chance? Dude, don't you remember what happened the last time she was here?" Beast Boy said, almost shouting.

"Raven seems to trust her," Cyborg said slowly, his tiredness evident. "And I trust Raven,"

"Well, maybe Raven's wrong!"

"She wasn't wrong before," said Starfire, discreetly pushing a lock of hair from her face.

"What do you mean?"

"Terra," she replied quietly.

Beast Boy was silent for a long time. He started to say something, but paused to say something else. "She was wrong," he finally settled.

"But," Robin tried to point out, "Raven did think-"

Beast Boy cut him off in his tracks, suddenly exploding with anger. "SO WHAT? So what if Terra was working for Slade? Raven thought she was evil, but she wasn't! Terra was - Terra was ..." his voice grew quiet and choked, as he struggled to find the right words.

Finally he said, "Terra was one of us. Blackfire isn't. I thought you guys knew that. I thought you guys would understand." He got up to leave the room.

"Beast Boy," Starfire coaxed, getting up to follow him.

"Leave me alone. Just - just leave me alone," Beast Boy said, motioning for his friends to stay away, before he started walking in the opposite direction Raven took.

For better or worse, Raven did not hear any of that, walking up the stairs to the landing pad, to where she herself often sat in meditation.

Tonight, she found Blackfire, sitting down with her head resting on her knees, arms around them. "Blackfire," she said.

"Raven? Didn't notice you coming up," Blackfire said, her mind obviously on other things.

"What happened?" Raven asked, as she too sat down.

"What do you mean?" Blackfire asked, playful innocence all of a sudden.

"Between you and Beast Boy," Raven insisted.

Blackfire's teasing air disappeared as she continued, "Nothing."

In the loud silence that followed, Blackfire said, "Well, what do want?"

"To talk."

"Hey, guess what? We're talking! Wow!" Blackfire said, placing her hands on her cheeks and her mouth in a wide, open smile.

Raven simply sat silently, looking directly at Blackfire. She had known her for little more than a day, but it was enough time to become accustomed to Blackfire's tendency to cover up what she deemed 'weaknesses' with flippant, often sarcastic humor or their relevant actions.

Raven did not know which hit closer to home; the fact that she could understand why Blackfire did so, that it was simply a mirror image of what Raven did, or the reason behind it: that it was nothing more than a form of emotional self-defence.

Or rather, she admitted to herself reluctantly, emotional cowardice.

And then the guilt hit her as she realized she was making Blackfire go through what she was too afraid to face.

"Never mind, Blackfire," Raven said, getting up. "If you don't want to talk about it, it's alright."

Blackfire got up as well, her rage evident. "No, I don't, and do you know why? It's because every time we talk, we end up talking about me. Oh, let's talk, Blackfire! Let's talk about how you feel, let's talk about why you don't have any friends, let's talk about talking about talking! Yeah, let's talk, Blackfire! I want to know all about you! Just don't ask me about me, because the minute I tell people about how I feel, I'll probably explode or melt, or maybe just drop dead!" she finished, before sitting down again, scowling into the night sky.

For a moment, Raven felt angry. How dare Blackfire speak to her like that? If it weren't for her, none of this would have happened! If she hadn't come to Earth on her mission of vengeance, if the Centauri Lord Caretaker had been less merciful, if Raven had been less accepting of her-

-if she had not just repeated Raven's own thoughts with different words and the tone of voice it deserved, if she had not made Raven aware of just how much Raven's aloofness hurt both of them... "I'm sorry, Blackfire," Raven said quietly, sitting down again.

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"What's that again? I can't heear you," Blackfire said.

Raven did not rise to the bait. "I said I was sorry," she repeated, as quietly as before.

Blackfire turned to Raven, intending to tease her further, but when she saw Raven's eyes starting to mist over, she decided that maybe enough was enough. "Yeah, well, just remember I'm not your pet psychiatric experiment, okay?"

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the wind as it whispered past them.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Blackfire finally asked. There seemed no point in small talk.

"What happened between you and Beast Boy," Raven replied.

Blackfire was about to say something, when they heard the sound of the roof door opening, from which they saw Starfire emerge.

"Robin asked me to ask you to come down."

"Why?" Raven and Blackfire asked in unison.

"Mr. Fixit's woken up."

Blackfire and Raven looked at each other. "Looks like we'll have to talk about this later," Blackfire said.

(scene change)

"Where am I?" Mr. Fixit asked, sitting up in bed. Next to him, Cyborg had just begun his own recharge sequence.

"You're in the Saint Titans' National Hospital, Mr. Fixit. Dr. Cyborg here, assisted by all his lovely nurses," Cyborg joked, indicating the rest of the Titans in the room.

"You're a new one," Mr. Fixit said, indicating Blackfire.

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Blackfire replied.

Mr. Fixit held his head in his hand. "How long was I out?"

"About half an hour. Your mechanical and cybernetic parts were easy to repair, but your biological systems needed more time to recover."

"And I'm still unarmed, I see," Mr. Fixit said, looking at his shoulder. Beast Boy, just entering the room with Starfire in tow, laughed.

"Hey, that's funny!" he said. Then he noticed "Blackfire."

"Beast Boy."

Nothing else was said as they stood at opposite ends of the room. Mr. Fixit looked at Cyborg, who shook his head in a 'don't talk about it' gesture.

"Well," he said, still glancing back at Blackfire and Beast Boy, "Apart from that, I seem to be in good condition. My compliments." Then he remembered: "My workshop. " He turned to face the Titans, eyebrows furrowed. "What happened to my workshop?"

"Apart from the doors and console, it's surprisingly mostly intact. Don't worry, Mr. Fixit, most of your inventions are still okay."

"And ... and my robots?"

Hearing Starfire's shocked gasp as well as seeing the offended looks on some of the Titans' faces, Mr. Fixit hurriedly added, "No, no, that wasn't what I meant! I mean, was anyone hurt, or..."

"No," Robin answered, shaking his head. "At least, no casualties were reported."

"Thank goodness for small mercies," Mr. Fixit sighed, leaning back onto his pillow. "Please," he continued desperately, "You must believe me, I was not responsible for what happened!"

"We kinda figured that out when we found you in a coma in your lab," Cyborg told him.

"But we would like to know what happened," Robin said. "We could not find any recordings from your security cameras."

"That's because they were kept in the console's memory banks," Mr. Fixit replied. "You do realize that you do not have any reason to trust me now."

"That's for us to decide, Mr. Fixit."

"Of course, Robin," Mr. Fixit said, before he told the Titans about what had happened.

"So, long story short, some crazy Chinese guy with weird fashion sense came into your workshop and just started trashing things?" Beast Boy asked when Mr. Fixit had finished.

"I know how it sounds, Beast Boy, but that is the truth. I had never seen him before tonight, and if I had done something to wrong someone, then I have no awareness of it."

For the last few minutes, while Mr. Fixit was talking, Robin had been deep in thought, weighing Fixit's words, before saying "I don't think you had anything to do with the attack, apart from being the unwilling supplier of the robots."

"Yeah, man, where did you get so many of them anyway?" Beast Boy asked.

"Most of them I built simply because I was bored, from junkyard materials," Mr. Fixit sighed, "Some I needed for purposes of security. And as my passion for all things mechanical grew, so did my workshop need to grow, and that's when I built most of the more dangerous machines, to help in the construction."

"So you must have got hold yourself some pretty high tech stuff," Cyborg said. "If you can tell us where you got them, we can run traces, background checks, all kinds of stuff."

"Well, er, Cyborg, there's a problem with that..."

Blackfire laughed. "You stole them, didn't you?"

When everyone turned to look at her, she sighed and said, "It's what I would do."

"Yes, it is what you would do," Beast Boy said pointedly. Blackfire stuck her tongue out at him.

"She's right," Mr. Fixit said ruefully. "I did steal what materials I needed that I could not find in the junkyard, but I swear to you, it was nothing more dangerous than what you would find in a gun shop or military surplus store." He then added sadly, "As if that was any different."

"You know, there's one thing I just don't get." Robin said.

"What is it, Robin?" Starfire asked.

"Why anyone would do something like this."

"Er, hello, Earth to Robin? We almost died out there! And I'm not just saying that!"

"Yes, Beast Boy, I know. But why stop at killing us?"

Ignoring the 'I can't believe what I just heard' looks the other Titans gave him, Robin continued, "The city was on high alert, law enforcement concentrated in the junkyard area. So why didn't we hear about any massive bank robberies? High profile murders? Big crimes! If you were a criminal who knew, or thought you knew, that we would die tonight, wouldn't you take full advantage of the situation?"

His brow furrowed. "I just wish we knew who he was."

"His name's Legion," Shift said into her handphone, as she stood outside the warehouse they rented, sure that Legion, busy analyzing the tapes inside, was out of earshot.

"Legion, you sssay?" growled the deep voice on the other end of the line. "I have heard of him. You could not have picked a better candidate for...dissstraction purposssesss."

Shift smiled. "I know, inspired, wasn't it?"

"Inssspired indeed, my dear Ssshift, inssspired indeed. The quessstion now becomesss, will he sssussspect hisss unwitting role?"

"I don't think so. So far, that idiot seems to be doing this just for the money. He hasn't even asked who his mysterious paymaster is."

"Ah, the greed of humansss, how it blindsss them to the truth, drivesss them away from it."

Humans? "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Nothing, Shift, jussst thinking aloud. Jussst make sure Raven isss obtained. I will sssuffer you no failure, and the reward ssshall be great ssshould you sssuccceed."

"Thank you. It feels so nice to be appreciated." But her benefactor had hung up.

She placed the phone back in her pocket. For a moment, she wondered about what she was getting herself into. Whoever that was, he definitely wasn't human, and that's where you got into trouble. All Earth still remembered the Imperium and Thanagar.

Then she shook her head. What did it matter anyway? Whatever happens, happens. She was a bounty hunter; she didn't ask questions. And so what if someone took over the world? They would always need someone like her to weed out people they didn't want.

Just like the Imperium did. Just like the Thanagarians did. And she was never caught.

She threw her hair back. It was as the saying went: "/Ave duci nuovo (similis duci seneca)/!"-"Hail to the new boss (same as the old boss)!"

With that happy thought in her mind, she walked back to the warehouse.