Inspired by tumblr's 30 days of writing, and based off the words future, mad, and tremble. It's a TerRaven story, as in Terra and Raven, as in if this bothers you please just don't read any farther.
Solidified conception bored hatred into her soul, and causing terror and ruin took priority. A person born to the earth, she was shaped to be a defender, a hero of her people. And the one who sent her spiraling down, reaching out a hand only to form it into a fist and swung it forth, a person of only half humanity and sworn to bring about the destruction of all, once an ally, once a friend, now her sworn antagonist.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" Terra said, eyes lacking pity, remorse. Raven was below her, and there was blood on her face, though of whose it came from was difficult to discern.
"To be alone. To be abandoned when you need it most." Terra continued.
"I wasn't abandoned." Raven said. There was no doubt in her mind, but she was aware that it was a lost cause. Terra would only see things one way, however horribly skewed the perspective was.
"Raven," said the Terra of long ago. "Help me." She was crumbled, broken and beaten. Her voice spoke with a hurt she would certainly carry with her forever.
"I can't help you." Raven had said. "No one can." And she walked away. From a friend that needed her, that had trusted her enough to ask.
The sky was burdened with clouds, greyed with rain so heavy that the moisture could be tasted in the air around them. Raven got up. Magic beat through her body and outlined her skin.
"Don't make me do this, Terra."
"I never made you do anything! That was your choice."
Light flared, white and yellow ignited in a cycle of passionate brutality. The earth shook with Terra's might, and the air crackled with Raven's fury.
"And it was your choice to betray us!"
Strikes thrown across through the air, attacks made and missed. The distance was kept, both dancing through the battlefield but never making it any nearer to one another.
"I came to you, Raven! I wanted out." Terra's called over their self-inflicted storm. What a way the nature of the planet bent to their will. Raven's body remained off the ground, as separated as she could be from what remained tied to her opponent.
"You never should have been in in the first place."
Terra dodged a bolt of magic sent directly at her. It caught her wrist, a suction expanding up and shredding the sleeve, exposing her arm. The flesh was marred with white scars, evidence of the physical torment she's suffered over the years. Terra, perched atop a boulder, swung backwards, the muscles visibly tensing under her skin.
Then she swerved and started in the opposite direction. Running away. Again.
However familiar the tactic, Raven hesitated, if only for a moment. Terra's form was getting smaller, and if it were that easy to let this feud end with one flying off to the sunrise, then this battle of theirs would've finished long ago.
Raven sped after her, but Terra didn't travel far until she stopped and faced her once more.
"I can't believe you." Terra said, and there was a flash of real pain in her eyes that Raven couldn't not acknowledge. "You let me run then, and you never came after me."
It's deceit, it's despair. It's truth and lies and Raven didn't know which one was their reality, didn't know which one to pay attention to.
The pain went, like all things with Terra, running away. Hiding itself so deep down it became impossible to see its validity. Now was the Terra that Raven knew how to handle, the one with wild eyes and no innocence to defend.
"Poor little Raven has issues with commitment."
The battle continued, with Terra charging forth, but Raven moved back, out of the way, out of reach. Terra's eyes were covered behind the yellow glow, and she threw out her arms, twisting the landscape underneath, and in the distance birds escaped a forest, abandoning the trees and their nests behind to the shaking of the ground.
"Poor little Terra doesn't take rejection very well."
A truth, a lie, Raven hated herself anyway. But that hate was matched in her feelings for Terra, whose eyes were wide and mouth opened without words, looking as though she had been physically punched in the gut.
It all crashed down, literally, when Terra was upon her, jumping from her perch and hands grabbed Raven by the arms, bringing them down.
Raven's eyes covered in white and her magic circled around them, bubbling them in an enclosed space. Infinite darkness stretched beyond in all directions, though Raven knew they were still suspended in the same sky.
It must have disorientated Terra because where she had been ready to throttle Raven to death, now she clung to her in fear, head thrown close to Raven's neck and squeezing her body to hers.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Terra was muttering, and Raven wasn't sure if was meant for her. "Please make it go away. I'm sorry."
The cause of terror and ruin became such in Raven's arms, and she was swept up in the moment of it all that she clung back, hands pressed against Terra's shoulder blades and keeping her close. With the magic sustained around her, Raven could see this Terra, this person she hated and tried so hard to destroy, turn back into that façade of a young girl who tried to lure Raven into a trap those many days ago.
Because it had been a trap then, as it had to be now. Skin trembled against her, and Terra kept speaking words of apologies, but not what she was sorry for. Raven couldn't let go, though it was madness to continue, her arms remained wrapped around the one who had once meant so much more.
"Help me." Terra said, asked; voice a knot of the same cruel lies and poor mistakes that led them here in the first place.
"I like you." came the confession to a long ago Raven from a long ago Terra.
"I like you… a lot." Terra would continue because apparently she rambled when she was nervous. Except that she wasn't a rambler. Raven stood across from her, and watched the white of Terra's face turn pink in embarrassment, but she didn't run.
"Please say something." Terra said, brave face still on, unwilling to crumble until she had an answer. Raven stared, not ready, not knowing what to say.
"Help me." Terra said again, like her apologies to Raven, to no one, to whoever kept hurting her inside her head. Raven held on to the person, the child, the once upon a time friend and pulled her magic away. The bubble broke, and the darkness opened back up to the grey sky and broken earth.
Terra's face in her neck turned to Terra looking up, her chin dropping on Raven's shoulder and drinking in the sights as much as she could.
It almost felt that the betrayals on both sides were washed away, but they were merely held in suspense through Raven's magic. Now, Terra's grip on Raven changed from the clinging child to the cruel enemy that always ran away. Except that she wasn't running. Terra came back to herself, and she jerked, her body a trembling mess, in contact with Raven and not knowing what to do.
"Are we going to talk about last night?" the Terra of old asked Raven, and they're far from the Tower and the Titans, but Terra only felt truly far from the person standing beside her. The days were getting harder for her, the pull of her friendships with the team, her growing relationship with Raven, but sooner or later something was going to break, and she was afraid it was going to be her.
Raven didn't answer back, not with words, but she did speak with her eyes. If only Terra knew how to read them, perhaps she could let it go.
"You… you kissed me, Raven."
A frown crossed Raven's face, but Terra didn't know why.
"Did you not want me to?" Raven asked, and Terra shook her head quickly. No, it was exactly the opposite. She simply wanted a reason to go along with it, to know if it meant what she thought it did. Raven didn't do things unless without full knowledge of the possible consequences, she wouldn't just kiss Terra because she knew Terra would let her.
"Terra…" Raven said, and didn't stop her from pulling away. This person was her enemy, but she was also an accumulation of all the people she had ever been. Someone evil, someone precious, someone she had never gotten the chance to know.
The blame was evident; they shared it, they threw it, and it spun in loops, no end and no beginning.
Terra fell in the air, catching herself on another rock, her clenched hand outlined in her color of power. The wind swirled around them, and a storm, one of the world and not of their making, was forming.
Eyes turned from Raven, distracted by the clouds above. After their moment in the bubble, it appeared that Terra had trusted Raven enough to look away, a few seconds of vulnerability that she gave, whether through conscious action or not, and Raven felt a cold shock to her system. It was a moment that could forever change them, give them a chance to redo the past that they had failed in, or to seal their fate to a future of nothing but fighting.
It wasn't a decision Raven could make, unknown were the outcomes and too great were the risks. Yet she had held Terra in her arms, and Terra had clung to her in return. The friendship between them that Raven believed to be fake was still present and strong, and the reality they had been living in was a horrible twist of fate.
It was only a few seconds, less than, and Raven made her choice. Turning from Terra, ignoring the storm that was brewing above, she slipped to the magic shell of a black bird of darkness and flew away from battlefield and from Terra, and she flew away from the blame.