Who: Leon Orcot and Raven What: Raven’s distressed by her latest dream and goes to see Dick at work, only to get Leon instead When: June 1st, 2020, early morning Where: Irvine PD Warnings: Talk of death, violence, suicidal thoughts Status: Log | Complete
In a way, Raven had known that the battle against Darkseid would end badly. Because the Teen Titans were to be the defense for Earth, they had been included in the meeting that the Justice League had on him, on the plan for them to go to Apokolips. Superman wanted him destroyed, Flash pointed out that it would lead to a global war and the people weren’t ready for that. But there was no time for discussion. The Justice League would put an end to Darkseid and the Teen Titans would stay on Earth as back up.
Not to mention the Trigon factor, the fact he was getting stronger and pushing to get out. The threats.
That didn’t matter though, not when a couple days later Paradooms were invading the Earth. This was unlike before, and the Teen Titans were outmatched. Oh, they tried, they fought to the best of their abilities. But they were still outmatched. Starfire dismembered on the ground, Kid Flash dead, Nightwing impaled and dead… There was so much blood, so much death and terror. It was overwhelming for the empath and yet she kept fighting until she could fight no more.
Titans Tower was in disarray. She had at least managed to get a promise from Damian he wouldn’t use the Lazarus Pit on Dick. There was no guarantee that it would work. Then he was asking her to help him lead the League of Assassins because she was a good fighter and as much as she would have gone with him, to not be alone, she couldn’t. Not with the threat Trigon was making on killing the boy.
So she was left alone. Trigon was getting stronger by the day. She couldn’t keep this up and she had to ensure that he never broke free. So in a moment of desperation, despite knowing that she had to be more than dead for this to work, Raven was at the end of her rope and with a jagged pipe she was prepared to kill herself. Only for Superman, no Clark to show up and stop her from what she’d been prepared to do, what she had needed to do to keep Trigon from his freedom.
There was so much pain now.
Waking up, Raven was aware of the tears. She could sense that Dick and Kory were alive and yet seeing their bodies in the Dreams, the pain from the Dream not going away. It was only then she noticed the pipe in hand leveled at her throat that she fully woke up, dropping the pipe in the process.
She needed to see them. But it was too early to do that.. At least in theory. Using her mental link with Dick, she realized he was at work and well… that solved that issue. Quickly getting ready, Raven made sure to stop by a coffee shop to get him coffee and some pastry he’d want to make her arrival less suspicious. After all, stopping by at random hours with food or juice boxes was part of the routine. Even so, after that dream….
Arriving at the station, the 21 year old blinked as she saw he wasn’t at his desk. Well, she knew he was there (empathy and mental link and all) so instead she just sat at his desk, working to get her head back on straight. It was just a stupid Dream. God Raven hated the emotional bleed over of the Dreams at times like this.
Leon didn’t know Grayson very well, but he did know that he wasn’t an upset looking, long haired girl, and so when he came back from the break room, mug of coffee in his hand, he had to do a double take. He kind of recognized her, now that he took a better look. He thought he might have noticed her hanging around before, but some civilian hanging out at a detective’s desk without any supervision was generally frowned upon.
“Hey,” he said, approaching her. “Can I help you?”
Raven did have a tendency to show up at random here, just as she had before Dick had moved to New York years ago, as she had done while they were in New York and had thus started up again. She was familiar with the bullpen. True it probably was generally frowned upon for her to be sitting there while Dick wasn’t at his desk but that required logic and not trying to push down the images of her friends dead because of Paradooms. Honestly it was better than her having tried to portal to where Dick was since then she could have ended up in the bathroom or interrogation. Bit harder to explain that.
Still, she probably should have expected someone approaching her even if she was just keeping to herself, not touching anything since she knew not to do that.
“What, oh, no. Thanks.”
No one said Raven was the most expressive of people or talkative. Especially with strangers.
Leon frowned. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that something was bugging the poor girl, and he wasn’t prepared to kick her out entirely, but he couldn’t really leave her there either. He didn’t have any pressing work at the moment, so he sat down in the desk across from her. “You’re Grayson’s girlfriend, aren’t you?” he asked. “Everything okay?”
Not being kicked out was always a good thing. True, Raven could have just stuck to an interdimensional portal to wait, or surprise Kory or anything like that as she knew that technically the two were fine and it was more a matter of her just needing to actually see them for it to sink in. But given her closeness to Dick, it made sense she would come here first.
So she wasn’t too annoyed when Leon sat down. While she wasn’t one for small talk or the like, she knew that it would give the impression that she wasn’t just sitting around unsupervised. So mental note to thank him for that.
Or he could ask if she was Dick’s girlfriend which had her nearly choke on air since she wasn’t drinking anything and just...what???
“Uh..no, he’s more like a brother…” It was always hard to define just what they were. She knew that Dick often could see her more like a daughter and honestly given her actual father, she probably had needed that. Either way, they looked after one another. Especially since Ruby’s death, “But yeah, just a...really upsetting dream.”
Empathy meant that she was usually more aware of who Dreamers were and she was pretty sure she had seen Leon on the network, so the comment would have more weight than if it had been a regular civilian. Because who shows up at a police precinct to see their brother/father/friend type over a bad dream?
Leon frowned; like Raven thought, Leon did immediately attribute more weight to Raven’s words than they might carry for someone else who didn’t dream. He hadn’t had a lot of strong emotions come through his dreams - he’d managed to escape anything particularly traumatic, if one didn’t count seeing people being torn apart by a variety of animals and getting shot a couple times as traumatic - but he had seen it often enough.
“Well, I think he's in an interrogation right now,” Leon said. He was pretty sure, at least. He didn’t tend to keep tabs on his fellow detectives. “I can have him give you a call when he’s done?”
Raven was a half demon and had seen plenty of things that were traumatic. Both in her Dreams and also in the waking world. And after five sets of Dreams, one would think she wouldn’t always have such issues with the emotional bleedover. However, the death of her friends? Her family? Especially when they were here and not just Dream!friends? It hit a lot differently and the sheer violence of the deaths because of the Paradooms….
It was annoying but Raven knew herself well enough, knew how her powers reacted to emotions, meant that she knew better than to try and ignore it. Even when she was more than aware that Dick and Kory were fine. She’d have felt it, noticed it, if they weren’t.
“Had a feeling. I’d rather just wait here, though…” She knew it was probably not possible. And yet? She was going to try. Just in case. Her mind was in too much chaos despite it all that made the thought of leaving and just going about her day made her uneasy.
Leon sighed, leaning back in the chair, arms crossed loosely across his chest - not guarded, simply thinking. A part of him thought that it would be the case that she’d rather stay. He didn’t know how long Grayson was going to be, and if he was caught spending too much time hanging out at another detective’s desk, he was liable to get yelled at for slacking off.
“Listen, I can’t really leave you sitting at a detective’s desk without supervision,” he said. “I figure you’re probably not likely to start looking through case files, but that’s policy. I’ll tell you what though, that’s my desk over there,” he said, nodding to to an empty desk a few desks away. It was disorganized and was covered in papers, but the name plate read
LEON ORCOT Detective
and it had a full view of Grayson’s desk, and the doorway where he was likely to appear from if he was doing interrogations. “Why don’t we move over there and you can hang around until he shows up?”
Raven remained quiet as Leon thought. She wasn’t one for talking if she didn’t have to as it were, and she could tell that it wasn’t like he was planning on getting rid of her. He was just thinking. And it was fair, she could understand the avoidance of being held liable because of a stubborn empath half demon waiting to see her brother type detective person because of a dream. Policy was important, especially in places like a police station. Just like it was at the Agency.
Still, she did appreciate that he was coming up with a solution, especially since it didn’t involve her leaving or having to hide out in a portal.
“That works for me.”
Never one for words, the 21 year old did stand up to go over to Leon’s desk so that he could do whatever he needed and she could keep an eye on Dick’s desk until he got out of interrogation. And maybe by then her mind wouldn’t be whipped asunder in chaos. That would be nice.
Leon let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief that it was an easy fix. This girl didn’t seem like the type of person who would pester him when he tried to work, either. “I don’t think I caught your name, by the way,” he said, getting up from the chair and starting to walk over to his desk.
Pestering people while they worked was essentially the opposite of who Raven was. If there was a conversation she found herself engaged in, that was one thing. But that was rarely the case. She was the creepy girl who sat alone most of the time. And causing a scene wasn’t really her thing either. She would have found a way around it if she’d been forced out, but otherwise? Raven was just content to sit and wait. Mostly because she knew this was ridiculous but seeing her team dead just left her raw, let alone the suicide attempt. So sitting in silence while she either read (she had a book in her bag, she always did) or tried to sort through her thoughts while Leon worked? Not an issue.
“Raven.” It might not be her ‘legal’ name, but it was the name she’d been going by for most of her life. Only her grandfather could call her Rachel.
Of course her name was Raven. She looked just like someone who would be named “Raven” of all things. He wondered if she ever smiled, or if it was just last night’s Dream that made her look like she didn’t. He sat down in his seat, and started tidying up his papers and crime scene photos so Raven wouldn’t accidentally see anything she shouldn’t. “So, your Dream last night. That bad, huh?”
While it was rare to get a genuine smile out of Raven, she wasn’t nearly as...distressed as she currently was. She was usually much better at keeping her emotions in check and not being so obvious in her thoughts. However, the empath felt that she was allowed in this instance. She’d had plenty of traumatizing Dreams. Honestly, most of them could be considered dark and messed up and emotionally draining. But they were never so….this.
As Leon cleaned up his files to keep her from seeing things she shouldn’t, the 21 year old turned her head to the side to give him that ‘privacy’ as it were. She did her patrols, her father ran one of the Russian crime families, she had used that connection in New York to get information about Ruby’s death despite keeping herself out of it. The photos would just be par the course. But she understood and so she instead gave him the chance to get them sorted and out of view.
“Yeah. Though that would also be an understatement.”
“I’m sorry,” Leon said, frowning as he crammed the rest of his unnecessary papers into his desk drawer. “These dreams are such bullshit. I wish I could figure out who was behind them.” He’d looked. He’d spent a lot of time looking, even going so far as to get one of the police IT guys to try to track down who had created Valarnet, but none of his searches had ever turned up anything concrete.
“You know, I haven’t had any new dreams since I deleted my account,” he offered. He’d heard of people who’d Dreamed even before they ever made an account, like that one British Navy officer who was on the Network, but he was under the impression that that was more rare than not.
Wait, he seemed to think a person was behind people getting Dreams and abilities? Raven well knew that there were conspiracy theories when people first got on the network, but those often disappeared once it became obvious there was something more to it, even if it was intangible. Leon was a detective, yes, but…. RIght then.
“Pretty sure there’s no who involved.”
But then the comment about the Dreams stopping after he deleted his account.
“They started up again not even 24 hours after I moved back here and I hadn’t reactivated my account at that point. Think I’m stuck with them whether I like it or not.”
Raven really had hoped she would have avoided the Dreams if she just worked at the Agency but not be on the network. Once she started a new set of Dreams though? She figured she might as well get back on the network since it wasn’t like she was being spared anyway.
“There’s always a who involved,” Leon muttered. “It’s not like it was divine intervention or something. If God does exist, I doubt that he cares enough about a tiny area of California enough to make our lives Hell like this.” Leon didn’t know if God did exist or not, he just knew that he had nothing to do with whatever was going on here.
He frowned when Raven said her dreams had come back even if she wasn’t on the Network. “Well, that sucks,” he said, frowning. “Sorry to hear that.”
Raven just shrugged, “I dream of things that involve multiple dimensions or timelines and so called source walls and rifts between reality. So to me it feels more like that than a person…” Because yeah. It made more sense than a person, especially since people woke up with abilities and that would involve experimentation and she would know if that happened to her.
At the apology, the twenty one year old could only shrug.
“Yeah. I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised. Five sets of Dreams, so it makes sense. Still I had hoped if I just avoided the network, I wouldn’t be dealing with it again. Once they started, there wasn’t really a reason not to reactivate my account.”
“Listen, someone obviously made the Network,” Leon said. “It didn’t just mysteriously pop out of the middle of nowhere, and the Network and all this bullshit is obviously connected. All I gotta do is find out who made the Network and I bet half the questions everyone has about this place will be answered.” Problem was, as far as the IT guys he’d given the job to could tell, no one had created the Network.
He breathed out through his nose; some of his coworkers were giving him bemused looks and he probably shouldn’t go on some rant that would make him look like a crazed conspiracy nut.
Raven had learned to just...go with it. It was entirely possible that whomever made the Network had done so because of their own Dreams or trying to find a community. She honestly couldn’t say though. All she knew was that there was no way a person was giving people dreams, maybe numerous sets of dreams and how some people would share dreams and others would be alone in them.
Let alone the abilities.
So instead she just shrugged. Then noticed the looks he was getting.
“I guess I’m just not ruling anything out, so who knows. Maybe that’s it, or it’s something else entirely.”
Well if anything, she wasn’t thinking about the death and destruction she had seen or the pain she was feeling from the fight with Trigon, let alone the grief of everyone’s death and the feeling of needing to kill herself to prevent her father gaining his freedom and adding to all the destruction.
“Who the fuck knows,” Leon muttered. It had been years and Leon still wasn’t any closer to an answer. He breathed out through his nose, and shot Raven a glance from the corner of his eye. Well, she wasn’t exactly what he’d call cheerful, but he felt that she was maybe a little less gloomy than when she’d shown up. “I’m gonna grab a coffee from the breakroom. It usually tastes like ass, but it’s filled with caffeine if you wanted me to grab one for you? We’ve got tea too.” After spending so much time with D, Leon had started drinking the tea more often than the coffee, even if he was one of the only guys in the precinct who did.
That was something she could agree with. Who even knew. Raven had been around Orange County long enough and was now part of the Agency and there were no answers. Dreams gave her abilities, not a person. What it all meant? Who knew. It was simply a matter of life now.
The empath was about to reply to the question about tea when she noticed Dick coming out of interrogation.
“No thank you. Looks like Dick is out. Thanks though.” She gave a slight smile, before she got up, “And for letting me stay at your desk.”
Leon gave her a half smile back. “No problem,” Leon said. “Anytime you come to visit Grayson when he’s not around and I am, feel free to come say hi.” Leon said. Of course, she was also welcome to come say hi even if Grayson was at his desk, though Leon didn’t think it needed saying.
“I’ll remember that.” Nodding some, Raven grabbed her bag before heading over to Dick’s desk. He was probably confused but that didn’t really matter. What did was that part of the internal anxiety and depression was relieved now that she could see he was okay. There was a difference between knowing because of the mental link and with actually being able to see him.