Metrion and Zinthos

Notes at the start:

Background: In the TV series Teen Titans the producers decided to give Raven a three word chant.  She recites it when she has to do strong magic in combat.  She recites it when she is meditating.  These are obviously very different situations.  This gives rise to the question, "Just what are these words?"

The first word is Azarath, the name of her home.  The other two words, Metrion and Zinthos, have no canon meaning.  The writers just made them up without a thought as to what they might mean.  They're left as an exercise to the fanfiction writer.

One fanfic writer's version has attained deuterocanonical status to the point that when I posted this to Fanfiction.net the immediate response was someone "correcting" me with that version as if it were unalterable truth.

This conversation will eventually take place in With great power comes .?. but I haven't even gotten to the point where Raven knows that Lisa was Terra.  At the moment in that story, Raven got a bad read and is under the impression that Lisa isn't Terra.

Story:

⁂

"What do 'Metrion' and 'Zinthos' mean?" Lisa asked.

"How long have you been wondering that?" Raven asked in return.

"Ever since I learned that Azarath was the name of a place rather than the first word of a magic spell," Lisa said.

"It actually is a spell," Raven said. "Spells have to come from somewhere, after all, and I made that one. Quite by accident, I might add."

"You made a spell accidentally?"

"It was originally just an aid in using my power," Raven said. "Through repetition it became something more. Something else. I'd never be able to use it to center myself and meditate if it still produced the original effect."

"So .?." Lisa asked.

"My power is controlled by my emotions," Raven said, "the stronger the emotion, the stronger the power. But if I give in to negative emotions I lose control."

"I can relate."

Raven nodded. "To use my powers while staying in control I made a mantra that would summon strong positive emotions."

"Thus your home," Lisa said. "I'm only beginning to understand what that's like. To to have one, I mean."

Raven felt a pang of guilt. If Terra had been raised by a religious order of pacifists who taught her meditation, and Raven had been the one left to fend for herself, never knowing stability, never able to control her powers until Slade came with an offer to help . . .

It wasn't that Terra's actions were excusable, but they were understandable. Raven had been right to be suspicious of Terra's new control, but she could have shared her own means of control with Terra. If she had, maybe Terra wouldn't have . . .

Raven put those thoughts aside. It was too late for any of that. This girl wasn't even Terra anymore. She was Lisa now. Someone with a clean slate, a family, and a home.

"I'm happy for you," Raven said. It was a sign of how much had changed since her father was defeated that she could say that with the accompanying emotion free to control her tone, her expression, and so much more.

"Metrion is the name of a spell. It was the first major spell I ever cast. It felt like I spent forever researching it, gathering ingredients, making sure I understood the nuances of it. I almost failed, but when it was done it changed everything for me. I can't imagine my life if I hadn't cast it, and I don't want to either."

"What did it do?" Lisa asked.

"It made me more . . . me," Raven said. "Made the outside match the inside. More like my mother, less like my father."

"Were you red or something before?" Lisa asked.

"Nothing like that," Raven said. She felt herself smiling slightly.

"I don't actually know what your father looked liked," Lisa said.

"Well . . . you were right about him being red," Raven said. "But how I was before . . . it's not something I talk about."

"Oh," Lisa said. "Ok. I didn't mean to pry. Sorry if I made you-"

"It's fine," Raven said. "I hope your curiosity is sated."

"It is," Lisa said. "For that word at least. I tried to look it up, by the way, and things said Metrion was your real name but I couldn't track down the source."

"Guess," Raven said.

"Fan stuff?" Lisa asked.

"It's more than just fans," Raven said, "anyone who wants to write a story set in Jump City kind of has to include the Titans. Not to would be like writing a story set on earth in which you edited the sun out of the solar system. It wouldn't make sense. When they don't know but they want to delve, they have to make things up.

"It doesn't bother me that they think that," Raven said, "but Raven is my real name."

"I know; we talked about it," Lisa said. "What about the other fan stuff?"

"You mean the fact that I'm apparently dating Starfire?" Raven asked. Then she resumed her classic deadpan: "Wait, no. Robin. Or was it Cyborg? Definitely lots and lots of Beast Boy. I'm a regular Casanova."

"Jinx too," Lisa said, "though that kind of feels like less of a stretch."

"Why?" Raven asked.

"More common ground," Lisa said.

"I don't see it," Raven said.

Lisa shrugged.

"I didn't bring it up to talk about your many and varied fictional romantic escapades, though," she said. "I was wondering how you felt about it in general. People writing stories about you and all."

"I generally steer clear of it," Raven said, "but from what I've seen some is good, some is bad, some is positive, some is bashing Titans the author doesn't like, some is cathartic, some is art, some is drivel, and so forth. About what you'd expect."

"Ok," Lisa said, "what about Zinthos?"

"My first love," Raven said. "All romance; nothing physical. I hadn't even experienced physical attraction yet. We were young, and adults thought we were just playing, but the love was real, and the feeling was so powerful that sometimes I worried about losing control."

"But positive so it didn't risk you turning tentacley," Lisa said.

"Yes," Raven said. "So that was the mantra I used to be able to use my powers, then only something I considered doing for self defense, without giving into darker emotions. Over time it transformed into a personal spell. A very specific one. The effect is basically to let me do something tied to my emotions while avoiding the darkness. The upside is that it's more powerful than a mere mantra and can be used in more situations. The downside is that now that it is a spell, being interrupted before I finish saying 'Zinthos' can be a problem."

"Meditation is tied to your emotions?"

"Meditation is about my emotions," Raven said. "To control my powers I need to control my emotions so every day I meditate to face all of my emotions and make sure none of them can overpower me, slip out, bring me to a place I can't afford to be, or anything else that could lead to catastrophe."

"I should have asked you to teach me."

"I should have offered," Raven said. "It doesn't always work; sometimes I have to resort to more extreme measures, and even then I've lost control. Besides, it's all in the past since you've found your own control now."

"Are you sure?" Lisa asked.

"You're in a high school, a high stress environment if ever there were one, and there hasn't been so much as a tremor," Raven said. "I looked it up because I thought maybe chasing earthquakes would help me find you. You didn't even set off any of the tiny ones that are too minor for human beings to feel."

"That makes me feel better," Lisa said.

⁂

[more notes]

Mentioning that there's a theory "Metrion" is Raven's real name instead of "Raven", is paying homage to the the most widely accepted fan fic version of the words meaning.  In that version Zinthos is Raven's childhood pet raven who, presumably, was very important to her given that in that version of fanon she named herself after Zinthos' species.

Also it just seems like there'd be fanfic in-universe so I figured I'd have that come up.

"Metrion" being the name of a spell that was about Raven's outside matching her inside and whatnot is very much inspired by a fic by Shadokin called Makings of a Family, in which Raven is a trans girl and this fact is met by acceptance and kindness when it is learned.

So, yeah, my version of what Metrion and Zinthos mean.

With great power comes . . ? - Chapter 1 (Teen Titans Fic)

[Prologue here; Opening dialogue comes from the final episode of Teen Titans; Ashley is an original character; Scott is this guy.]

This was getting bad. Really bad. If Beast Boy didn't stop then other people would start to believe she was Terra too. Lisa had to get him to leave, and the only way to do that would be to talk. It was what he wanted. What she dreaded.

“Okay, you've got two minutes,” Lisa said.

“Maybe you don't remember, but I do,” Beast Boy said. “You're my friend. You're a Teen Titan.”

Lisa focused on other things she remembered. Slade was right. You don't have any friends. That's what he'd said before. Traitor. That's what Raven had said. Not a friend. Not a Titan.

“You're wrong,” Lisa said.

“You don't belong here, Terra,” Beast Boy said.

Damn it.

“Stop calling me that!” If he kept this up everyone would think she was Terra.

“It's who you are.”

Not anymore. Never again.

“What do you want from me?” Lisa asked. What would it take to be left alone?

“Why can't things just go back to the way they were? You were so happy then.”

No. She'd never been happy then. She finally had enough control over her powers that she didn't have to be terrified of setting off a natural disaster and killing more people, but the price was going back to the Titans, living with them, getting to know them, and setting them up to die.

There'd been no happiness. Submission, obedience, the grudging acceptance that she'd never have a happy ending, moments of joy that she tried to hold onto knowing they'd be crushed, resignation, then --at the end-- a fool's hope that if she could save just one then maybe there'd be some kind of redemption in that, her entire being being shattered when it failed, then hate filled in the cracks and making her whole again.

She wasn't happy then.

“Things were never the way you remember,” Lisa said. It was an admission that she did remember, otherwise how could she know? It was an admission that she had been Terra, otherwise her words would be meaningless. “Now leave me alone.”

“Here,” Beast Boy said. “Take this … in case you're in trouble.”

He was offering her a Titans' communicator. No. There was no way. Was there?

“In case you need me,” Beast Boy said. “You can call me anytime.”

No. She pushed any conflict from her mind. That was over now.

“I don't need it,” Lisa said.

“But . . .”

Lisa started to walk away. “Time's up,” she said.

“Terra. . .”

It wasn't her name anymore. It shouldn't have the power to stop her in her tracks. It did.

“Things change, Beast Boy,” Lisa said. He knew who she'd been, she'd admitted she did as well, no point in dodging the truth now. She turned to face him. “The girl you want me to be is just a memory.”

That's all the Terra he knew was. She wasn't even the real past, just a lie he'd believed in. How could he not understand that everything after she came back was . . . she might have felt conflicted, but she was planning on betraying them the whole time and with a slight deviation she'd followed through on that plan.

Beast Boy's communicator came to life. Robin asking for help. Sounded kind of desperate.

“Come with me,” Beast boy said to her.

Lisa shook her head.

“You go,” she said. “You're the Teen Titan. That's who you are.” She'd never been. She'd tried to be a hero, sure. But she'd always done more harm than good. Then she embraced doing harm and … “That's not me. I'm not a hero. I'm not out to save the world. I'm just a girl with a geometry test next period, and I haven't studied.”

The bell rang and she was able to disappear in the crowd.

∗ ∗ ∗

They were all worn out, but at least it was over. As the team shambled to their rooms, it hit Raven what that meant. She caught Beast Boy before he got to his room.

“Mission's over,” Raven said, “we can find out about Terra now.”

“I'm done with that,” Beast Boy said. Anger. Frustration. Shattered hope.

“Was she she not Terra?” Raven asked.

“I don't want to talk about it,” Beast Boy said as he reached his room. Disappointment. Pain. An open wound. A slammed door.

That went well, Raven sarcastically thought to herself as she went to her own room.

∗ ∗ ∗

“You're not here,” Raven said to the empty space where Terra once stood.

“Either someone took you,” she said, “or you left under your own power.”

Raven started to pace. “Obviously the first thing to do is meet the girl Beast Boy said was you, but apparently he won't be helping with that. He never did say where he saw you, either. Well, not beyond 'downtown'.”

“I hope you walked off. I swear, if some villain carted you away for experiments . . .”

∗ ∗ ∗

“I blame you,” Raven said to the, now monster free, construction site. She'd searched all day for signs of Terra in the city. Nothing. Now the sun had gone down and she'd gone back to the beginning.

Beast Boy had wandered off during the fight because he thought he saw Terra, so the girl must have been around here somewhere. But--

And that's when Raven spotted the school. She'd been so concerned about what had been torn down, she hadn't even noticed what had been built up.

Assuming the girl had come from the school, that didn't really tell Raven anything. Get a bunch of Terra age kids together and it wasn't all that unlikely that one might look a lot like Terra via random chance alone. On the other hand, a newly constructed school was just the sort of place a teen with no history might be able to slip in.

There'd have been so much paperwork and confusion because of the redistricting and fights over which students stayed where they were and which ones moved to the new school. And that assumed a public school, a private school might cover an even larger area making it even less remarkable that someone like Terra didn't seem to know anyone.

She'd need to come back in daylight.

∗ ∗ ∗

The feelings of kids getting out of school bombarded Raven, but she was able to find the emotion she was looking for: loneliness.

A student who felt cut off, left out, friendless, ignored, and invisible. Raven navigated the crowd and fell into stride beside the girl. “Hey,” Raven said. No response. “Hey,” she said again, this time accompanying it with a tap on the shoulder.

“What do you want? I didn't do anything,” the girl said quickly. Shock, fear, surprise.

“I was wondering if you were doing anything,” Raven said, “I wanted to talk and . . .” I feel better about using people for information gathering if I can make their lives a little better in the process and you, stranger, are desperately in need of someone to talk to. “And it seems like everyone is in the middle of something.” Raven gestured to the various boys and girls engaged in innumerable conversations.

“Just talk?” the girl asked. Uncertainty, hope, fear, doubt.

“Just talk,” Raven said. “I'm . . . well I'm not new around here, but I was away for a while and it feels like an entirely different city.”

“I guess we could talk,” the girl said. A bit of fear, a bit of relief, hope, even more fear that the hope would lead to a fall.

“I'm Rachel,” Raven said.

“Ashley,” the girl said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Raven had explained that she was mostly interested in learning about the new school that had popped up while she'd been gone, but she also encouraged the shy and lonely girl to tell her about herself.

When Ashley finally believed that Raven was genuinely interested, information poured out of the girl. How usually no one noticed her, but sometimes they made exceptions to torment her. How she hated the dress code because, without her clothes to attack, every single insult was now personal. How her parents barely noticed her. How she hadn't had a real friend since second grade.

In response Raven told the sanitized earthly version of her own story. That she had been raised communally after her abusive father left her depressed mother, that she'd had to learn meditation to control her mood swings and spent much of her life afraid to let anyone get to close to her, that it wasn't until she was a teenager that she finally made friends.

Raven felt Ashley's emotions lighten as she realized that Raven wasn't trying to set her up for some cruel prank, and her positive emotions strengthen as the two shared more with each other.

The subject of cruel pranks brought Raven back to why she'd come: a possible way to meet the girl Beast Boy thought was Terra on more or less neutral ground without setting off any alarm bells.

There was going to be a party over the coming weekend that most of the class was going to. At first Raven assumed that Ashley hadn't been invited, but it turned out that Ashley had been invited, and even told to bring a friend or two.

It was obviously a trap, the girls who invited her knew she didn't have a friend, certainly not two, and they probably had something nasty planned if she showed up anyway. Still, it was an opening. Even if maybe-Tara didn't show up, she'd be able to make connections and possibly set up some way to meet her.

“I think I could help you have fun that day,” Raven said, “elsewhere of course, if you could get me into that party.”

“I don't think you'd like the party,” Ashley said.

“I won't.”

“Then why--”

“Hey,” Raven interrupted, “I've got to have some secrets to maintain my mysterious allure.”

Ashley actually laughed.

“They said bring a friend or two,” Raven said. “So you show up, we go in and make sure they don't do anything to you right then, I'll stay, and 'or two' will take you somewhere less hostile and more fun.”

“Who's 'or two',” Ashley asked. Somewhat suspicious, but genuinely interested.

“A guy I've known for a few years now,” Raven said. “I think you and he would get along really well.” Raven paused and thought a moment. She did think that, but she could be wrong. “I should warn you though, he shares my fashion sense.”

“I like your fashion sense,” Ashley said.

Raven allowed herself a smile. When she was incognito she dressed as a typical goth teen her age because that was, in many ways, who she wanted to be. She'd never consider stopping being a hero, but in a world without superpowers, this was how she'd dress and this was who she'd be.

The conversation continued for a while after that. Raven hadn't really intended to do more than give the girl some friendly human contact and get some information out of her, but she found she liked the girl, and the prospect of seeing her again felt good.

It had been a year since her father, a year in which she'd had to come to terms with actually having a future, something she'd never expected. She'd started spending time in the world as a human, creating a new life for herself, and she thought this girl could be a part of it.

When it was time for them to go their separate ways, they traded phone numbers.

∗ ∗ ∗

Scott had just finished his soul crushing shift at work and messed up his hair as he walked away. They were always so insistent on customers being able to see both his eyes but as sure as anything was true in this pointless world, his hair wanted to fall down on the right side. Sure, it covered his eye, but it wasn't like he couldn't see through it.

Then he noticed someone coming his way. Rae, in civilian clothes.

“Hey Rae,” he said.

- - -

“Hey, Scott,” Raven said. She looked at his clothes. He looked like a respectable Staples employee. “You look weird in uniform.”

“Not everyone gets to pick their uniform.”

“I was wondering if you have plans for the weekend, 'everything's pointless' boy” Raven said. “I could use a favor.”

“Raven or Rachel?” Scott asked.

“Both,” Raven said. “Rachel's new friend Ashley is going to get her into a mindless party where Raven hopes to make contact with someone. Ashley would probably be picked on and otherwise suffer at said party, so I was hoping you could come with, and then take Ashley someplace fun after I'm inside.”

“I thought you didn't want to mix Rachel and Raven's lives,” Scott said.

“The situation is complicated,” Raven said.

“Since when am I fun?” Scott asked.

“You talk, you listen,” Raven said, “that's more than enough.”

Scott came the closest he ever did to smiling.

“Just . . . dress as you instead of soulless retail drone 421,” Raven said.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Well,” Raven said. “Ashley was right. I did not enjoy that at all.”

At least she'd found the girl who looked like Terra, but talking to her didn't help much. Raven was pretty sure that the girl wasn't Terra.

Raven had managed to set up a meeting where it would be just her and Lisa, the girl who looked like Terra. It would help her verify that the girl wasn't Terra if she didn't have so many people with so many emotions in so tight of a space interfering with her emphatic abilities.

Unfortunately she gave the the girl, at best, one in twenty odds of actually showing up at that meeting. Even if the girl did show, all it would do was confirm where Terra wasn't.

“Where are you Terra?” Raven asked the empty air.

Raven hoped that Ashley and Scott were having a better time.

-

[Previous]

With great power comes . . ? - Prologue (Teen Titans Fic)

[I've tried to do a quick "necessary background info" thing but there is too much.  Let me sum up.  Terra was a mole working for bad guy Slade.  In the end she turned on him, killed him, and saved the day.  Terra, a geokinetic, was turned to stone.  Raven was a half demon whose destiny was to end the world by being a living portal for her bad demon father, Trigon.  In the end she turned on him, killed him, and saved the day.]
[I've never actually seen the episodes with Terra in them.  In fact, I've never seen the ones with Trigon either.  Most of my knowledge is from secondary sources.  To top it off, my extremely limited research for this has been text.  All of this could be way off and the characters out of character and . . . stuff.]

-

“Still here, I see,” Raven said. Terra was petrified, same as ever. A perfect statue, like a monument carved in her honor. “I thought you might finally have come back.”

Raven floated to the pedestal they'd placed Terra on and sat there. “I destroyed all life on earth, you know?

“I never told you --I even didn't tell the others until I had no other choice and by then you were stone-- but I had a destiny. The entire reason I exist was that my father, demon lord, needed a living portal to come to earth. It was my destiny, and I didn't fight it when it came. I let him take over, and kill everything.

“Because I thought I didn't have a choice.

“Sound familiar? I was a pawn of someone far worse than Slade, and allowed worse things than you could possibly imagine, because I thought I didn't have a choice.

“I'm such a hypocrite for everything I said about you. For everything I thought. For how long it took me to let you in and how quick I was to push you out.

“When you thought you had no choice you ended up begging Beast Boy to kill you. When I thought I had no choice, I went through with what I thought my destiny was.

“It gets worse, Terra. You know who ended up saving me? Robin did much of the work, but he needed outside help. I'd managed to protect the team --they were the only human beings left alive-- but they couldn't do much on their own. With no one else alive, the help came from a dead person. Care to guess which one?

“Slade saved me, saved us, saved the world.

“Your dark master was so much less bad than my dark master that yours saved everyone and everything from mine. You did so much less evil than me, and I condemned you for it. You almost set off one volcano. The oceans burned after what I did.”

Raven floated off the pedestal and brought herself face to face with Terra. “Everything died, and --you'll love this-- it died in stone. Every person on earth was just like you, and I can only imagine what it was like for the fish, or the birds that had been in flight. But then it was all undone.

“Everyone and everything that had been turned to stone was turned back, everyone but you.”

Raven closed her eyes --for just a moment.

“I'm not giving up, Terra,” Raven said, “but I was already out of ideas. I already tried everything I could think to try, and if turning the entire world back didn't turn you back. . .”

Raven spun around in the air, her back to Terra's stone form. “Slade's back. He's not redeemed or anything. Everything he did was so he could be alive again. It's the opposite of sacrifice.

“He gets a resurrection. You're still stone. There's something wrong with this world.”

-

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