Figure it Out
So, this is just a small shot. It's not quite a drabble, but it's hardly long. Currently working on a 'wordshots' thing, so that'll come up sooner or later.
Normally I've been doing some 'plot' stories – even if the plots are pretty weird (although compared to some other authors here, I'm completely normal!). I figured I was due for another story working on their emotions.
Little bit depressing, but not really. It's not really angst… it's just an acceptance of the inevitable.
Disclaimer: Don't own the Teen Titans.
Raven was the first to figure it out.
At seven years old, the monks of Azar told her that her destiny was to destroy the world. Raven had thanked them for telling her, calmly gone to her room, and let loose her emotions. She had shattered every one of her meagre possessions.
After an hour, she had felt drained. She had lain down on her bed and just thought about it, feeling the tears streaking her face.
That's when she realised that not only was she going to kill everyone on her birthday, that she was destined to die then too.
There could be no chance of her surviving what her father had surely planned for her. When she cast the spell – the spell some dark part of her sometimes chanted into the back of her mind at night – it would destroy her.
The young girl had felt at peace with that observation. If she was going to destroy billions of lives, it seemed only fair that her own would be among them.
Years later, she knew she had survived her father and her prophecy. Not only that, but so had everyone else. A peace had descended on her.
Once the relief had worn off, once she had slept her exhaustion off, and once she could think about it again, she wondered when she would die.
She'd spent years convincing herself it wasn't that bad to die young. Everyone died, so why not get it over with? And now… now she couldn't quite stop believing that her life would end relatively young.
But she wouldn't necessarily take anyone down with her. Raven was satisfied with that.
The next person to figure it out was Robin.
He had been nine when he realised how close mortality was. He'd seen his own parents die, and he learnt that death could happen to anyone.
But it took another few months to discover that 'anyone' included him.
He'd been so close to death. Joker had left him bleeding, bruised and injured, but still conscious for a few minutes.
With absolute certainty, the Boy Wonder had believed he was going to die. The black fog covered his vision and he slid into nothingness.
He hadn't died. Batman had taken him home while he was unconscious, and he woke up again. It took a month after that for him to be back to perfect health, but he was okay.
After that, though, Robin realised the chance of him dying of old age were slim to none. The only chance he had of surviving to then was if he hung up the mask and became a normal boy.
It was either civilians die now, or he died later. He picked saving hundreds, even thousands of lives over his own.
When Starfire had gotten back from a future time, he had been filled with a thousand emotions. Her story had seemed surreal, but then again, their entire lives were surreal.
But that night as he lay in bed, a vague feeling of guilt over why future-self hadn't tried to help the other Titans, he realised that that meant there was a future him. A Robin in the future (even if he called himself Nightwing) in his thirties and still alive. And still a hero to boot.
That had been a pleasant surprise. Robin knew there was no guarantee that he would live until then, and if it meant that everything else Starfire had told him would come true, he gladly would risk dying a teenager.
But it was nice to know there was a chance he could live until his thirties. Even older, since Starfire seemed to be of the opinion that Nightwing wasn't in much chance of dying any time soon.
Even if it was just a chance…
Almost surprisingly, Beast Boy was the next to figure it out.
After all, he had been a super-hero for years before he joined the Titans. And Mento hadn't had that many qualms about telling the young boy he was likely to die young.
It took until he was eleven for it to completely sink in. Until then it had just been something Mento told him, he hadn't quite realised the full implications. That not only was he unlikely to live until he was an old man, it was almost a certainty that he wouldn't.
The day it did, he had gone for a flight. He flew far and eventually landed in a tree, and began to cry. He sobbed for hours, and eventually fell asleep in the tree.
When he woke up, he was disgusted at himself.
If his life was really going to be that short, he didn't see any reason he was going to waste one second crying. He'd live it as much as he wanted.
Later, when he was with the Titans, they sometimes complained about the time he spent on the TV. He barely moved.
Beast Boy had retorted that not only did it come in useful, but it was how he wanted to spend his time. His definition of 'enjoying life' didn't necessarily mean the same thing as all of theirs.
Raven had been the only one to truly understand. Sure, she didn't watch the television with the same fervour, but her books held her in a trance sometimes. She would not call a day doing nothing but reading 'wasted', and she could sorta understand how Beast Boy felt the same way with the television. Didn't stop her from making a snide remark about it, but she did understand.
After all, life was too short to spend it doing something you don't want to do. And if what you wanted to do was watch TV, then so be it.
The fourth person to figure it out was Starfire.
Starfire didn't truly believe that she would die young. She still held a hope that she and her family would all live to an old age, staying the same way.
But she was no idiot. It would be foolish not to accept that there was a good chance at least one of them would die young.
When the Gordinians had captured her from Tamaran, she had been more terrified then she ever had in her life. She expected it to be her death, just a captured prize. She'd accepted that it was her fate. She didn't have to like it though. So when she broke out, she took it for all she was worth.
She had been planning on dying protecting this new planet, where they helped for no reason, when she joined in the battle against the Gordinians. She'd rather have died as a hero, like the others who had helped her, then to be a prize.
And although, amazingly, they had won that battle, some part of her still believed that would be how her life would end. Protecting a planet that was not her own. And as long as her friends were with her at the end, she was okay with that.
The last of the Titans to figure it out was Cyborg.
It wasn't that he was slow or anything. But his body had already been mangled beyond repair, and yet he got past it. He'd figured that he was a survivor.
There wasn't really that much anyone could do to him now. He did have a vague worry about the rest of his friends, but he knew what each of them could do. He dismissed most of the worry as groundless.
That was, until Terra.
Terra had been just as strong as any of them. Just as tough, just as powerful, and just as much of a survivor. And yet she had died.
Well, almost. That was still a controversial topic. But whether or not 'Tara' was truly Terra was irrelevant. The point was, Terra had been defeated.
More than defeated, Terra had been tricked. She had become the bad guy. But in the end, she had been good again – and yet was still killed. There went the theory that the good guys always survived.
Cyborg finally figured out that they were pretty unlikely to live for years.
What had truly confused him was that no-one else seemed to have the same surprise as him.
When they were at Terra's statue, the other Titans had been mourning her. Beast Boy was especially affected. But in their eyes… their eyes all said the same thing.
They had known that sooner or later, one of the Titans would die. And they were all hoping that the next one would not happen any time soon.
Cyborg wasn't sure how long his friends had known that. But they had. And now he knew it to.
These days, they all had a routine.
None of the others knew it. They all thought that they were the only one. But really, it wouldn't have truly surprised them if they found out.
Every Titan consistently swore to themself that they would keep their family safe.
There were different variations, of course.
Raven whispered the promise that she would look out for them as she said goodnight.
Each morning, when Robin woke up, he resolved that today would not be the day any of his team died.
About once a week, Beast Boy remembered why he was constantly joking. And he always told himself that he would rather he be the one to die first than any of the others – in fact, he'd make sure of it.
Starfire had placed a charm inside each of her friend's rooms. She'd often sneak in to make sure they were still there. On Tamaran, it was believed that those charms could keep you safe. Starfire wasn't sure she believed the superstition, but she wasn't risking it.
Cyborg worked hard on the security system, checking it daily and upgrading it as often as he could, because he knew that it would keep Titans Tower a shelter where his family would be fine.
And when they came back home from chasing the Brotherhood of Evil, they figured something else out.
They figured out that it was working.