Reasonable Doubt: Telling Terra
M. Tsukai here. Just wanted to add to my little arc o' fanfiction, "Reasonable Doubt". To grasp the little I created, you should read "Reasonable Doubt: Sancta Terra" and "Reasonable Doubt: Method Acting". I really want to thank SamuraiStar and TT Fan for reviewing my stories, and I dedicate this installment to them. Someone asked me why I refer to Beast Boy as Garfield...and from the information I've been reading (via the net, so I'm not super sure) that was his real name. I don't write for reviews, but it's nice to know that someone thought well of my work. I don't really have a favorite Titan, and while most of this arc is about Terra, it's not just her exclusively. My Other, Sophia, pops in here for a while, so...to the story.
She was interfering with my concentration. She brought that traitor back into our home, and she is very close to becoming the object of my wrath.
I don't even bother meditating anymore, and, well, it's not gone unnoticed.
I left the Tower after Terra came back. Packed up a bag full of books and my mirror and my communicator and as much as blamed Blondie for the predicament Garfield was in.
He could not seem to function without her. They weren't a couple, because Garfield was too upset, but he followed her around and they got into huge fights that no one would dare break up.
Robin watched both with a suppressed air of irritation, while Cyborg did his best to welcome back Terra and make her feel part of the team.
Starfire has not spoken directly to her, to her credit.
And I...Terra and I had a six hour conversation that ended with both sides trudging to bed with the weight of the world once more upon our respective shoulders.
We were too different.
"Not so much, Raven."
Sophia.
"Don't you need permission to go fishing?"
"From you? Right."
I flew that afternoon, with a short terse note relating my reasons and when I'd be back. I've never traveled around the planet (or this city, for that matter), but I had the sense to go incognito. As far as I was concerned, I looked as normal as any teenager. Which didn't explain why every freak in a ten mile radius found a reason to harass me.
I gave up the walking plan, and took to the sky. No one knows this, but to me, flying is like being free.
Which is something I don't know a lot of. Oh, theoretically, I do. I can build a house of the abstrations I am able to understand and use to my advantage. But they are just words, just facts crumpled in form, sound and fury that, in reality, signify very little.
It was my fault. My mind, heedless of my Intellect, withdrew to a portion of reality that I knew. That I couldn't tell without admitting something to myself.
Damn Terra.
I'd like to tell you that it was easy to have her as an enemy. Oh, the others thought I retained a completely neutral feeling towards her. And you know the story, that my powers are wired, for lack of a better term, through my emotional states. What you might not know is this: that it's not the normal course of emotions that does it. It's only an unhealthy balance, when I can't control what happens. I discovered this to be true not too long ago, when I found I had...feelings for a certain young man. Because it's a true emotion, one that is felt and lived through and not hidden, even though he probably doesn't know what I'm thinking.
There's a difference between privacy and denial.
Privately, inwardly the tears ran from my cheeks to the oceans of my Nevermore; outwardly, the feature that has defined me within our little band of heroes did not change.
The real question, the one that really haunts me, is whether there is a difference between betrayal and bad judgment. And I'm not so sure how to answer.
I have to say, I was completely shocked when I sensed the petrified traitor-Titan in the sky, waving a mute goodbye. Unlike the others, I knew why she'd appeared so..it was a ploy, but one she really didn't think through, because, for all intents and purposes, she couldn't get out. I knew this and also knew that she could not live with the guilt and the shame and the agony of complete isolation. She's like Garfield-Beast Boy sounds so...childish- she can't function without other people. She'd slowly drain her mental resources, succumb to insanity, and pass the last segments of life in an emotional and mental vaccuum. I knew all of this, and knew, even if her 'consort' felt deeply for her, it, in the end, could not save her.
But I could.
It's a simple spell that unbinds a soul from their misplaced guilt. And after such a sacrifice, it would have been nothing to me to make it happen.
"I'm surprised, really."
"You're not."
I blinked and the near-ethereal creature fixed a solemn stare in my direction. She was approximately six inches from my face before I noticed her- a feat considering the empathic abilities I wield. Terra brought this...person (I don't know what else to call it, though I'm tempted to suspect that she is, or might have been human) into our lives, and she's been meddling ever since. I've spied Starfire wandering around the Tower, conducting an invisible interrogation of this...Other. Robin's done everything short of homicide to get rid of her, and Garfield claims she's our Guardian angel. Cyborg-Victor- won't even discuss her. He's the only one who hasn' t had a real reaction to her since her extended visit.
"Why didn't you, Raven?"
There was an answer on the tip of my tongue, suspiciously sounding like "Mind your own d---ed business" but something made me stop. And the thought that her...humanity might have given way to something I'd be very stupid to anger.
Privacy, denial. Only one could give me an out.
"That's a very personal question."
"I know."
"Tell me something." I took a moment to light on the roof of the Tower. I realized as I circled the City that all my attempts to disappear in order to find myself were both useless and a product of a guilty conscience rather than righteous indignation.
"Can you read my mind?" I turned to her, my index finger touching my head. So many others had claimed to be able to do that very thing to me, both in Azarath and here and everywhere else I've ever been. Even my father...they didn't know. They unlocked one door, maybe, one that acted as a warning signal to me and hid a 'dummy file' on myself.
"No." The other girl shifted her gaze to another site, this time, the sandy beach where we'd met the traitor Terra.
"Then..?" I tried to extend my mind to reach hers. She smiled, a half-sad hybrid.
"I have my sources."
Denial.
"You knew that I...you said so yourself."
"Sources, Raven. That doesn't really have anything to do with me."
I paused. She allowed me access into her mind, and the things I saw...
The things I saw...
It wasn't much information, I still didn't know why she was visiting us, and I didn't know how she knew so much, and I really couldn't conceive what she was.
I returned to the Tower, to the shadows of my room, to the silence of my own mind.
End Part One
