Terra's alarm-clock was blaring at her from where she was sitting on her bed. Guess that meant she was supposed to be getting up now. Problem was that she had been up for the past few hours. Sleeping was not something that she had become very good at lately. She had been sleeping (so to speak) for almost a year in stone, and any more than two or three hours seemed like overkill. She clicked the alarm off and then on again setting it for her tomorrow morning, just in case she had a sudden fit of narcolepsy.
She stood straight up and padded out of her room dressed for school in her uniform, her hair combed, falling neatly into place. The kitchen was empty, except for a still steaming plate of eggs that had been left on the tiny kitchen table. She dumped them down the garbage disposal despite the kind thoughts that were behind them. Food seemed unappealing to her lately, and she had not been able to make herself eat like she used to, despite the fact that she had not eaten anything since yesterday afternoon.
Wow, I function perfectly in normal society. She thought to herself with an ironic bite. How late was it, only seven? She still had an hour to go before she had to go to school... but at this point, why not go in early? She had nothing else to do and maybe her friends could distract her from how bland her life was. Sighing, she shouldered her bag and slipped on her shoes to start her walk to the prestigious private high school she attended.
She ignored the ground beneath her. The rocks that were whispering to her, telling her to use them. She was itching to grant their request, but the control she had worked so hard to build worked better than she had ever expected it to.
Her day went by as normal. Mundane. Repetitive. She let loose on one of the catty girls at her school which relieved some of her tension, but not nearly enough for her to be anything more than mildly content.
Outside of her school, waiting for her after her lackluster day was and ancient mustang, refurbished to look brand new. She smiled at the driver, waving her hand hello to him and watching his face change from a cheery smile to that of shock and terror.
Terra spun around quickly, just in time to see a car come flying right towards her. She got to the ground, hands over her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut. From behind her, she heard the crunch and screech of metal either splitting or being crushed while glass shattered. She felt small pieces of debris plinking down around and on her.
"Terra!" Several familiar voices cried amongst screams of frightened school girls. A few were from the titans, and the other was from her older brother.
Lifting her head, she peered around herself and planted her hand on a patch of glass-free ground for balance. The wreckage landed a few feet away from her, sliding off the slate of rock Brion had used to protect her and hitting the ground noisily. Her gaze slid to the titans, who were battling something swift enough no to be seen and apparently strong enough to throw cars.
Or her former friends were throwing them at her on purpose, which Terra wouldn't hold against them.
A strong arm came around her shoulder, helping her up. "C'mon. You're safe now. Are you alright, Tara?" Brion asked, concerned despite the tight formal undertone in his voice.
"I'm fine." Terra said certainly. Swallowing, she said her next statement with less sureness. "You should help them."
"No." he said immediately. "We need to get you out of here." The students were scattering, doing their best to distance themselves from the fight, but Terra's focus was being pulled to the group in front of her. Beast Boy was running up, a perplexed look on his face. Probably in reference to her brother.
Oh yeah, she had forgotten to mention Brion to him before.
"Terra, who is this?" Beast Boy asked, his voice was raspy and high pitched, just like she remembered, and he had that hurt tone that he always seemed to get when she was around.
Before Terra could open her mouth Brion growled and yanked her up by her shoulders, guiding her away despite her half-hearted struggles to look back at Beast Boy. "Hey, leave her alone!" He shouted running towards her. She could hear the rest of the Titans calling his name, and his struggle was tangible. Just go with them. She pleaded in her head. He belonged with them, and she belonged with her family. She owed Brion that much.
"Beast Boy just go." The sound of her own voice, so certain, made her nauseous.
"Terra!" Beast Boy called again, in the background, the sound of Starfire's starbolts tinkled and made impact, telling her that the fight was not over just yet and that Beast Boy was being persistent at an inopportune time.
"Don't talk to him." Brion growled, tucking Terra into his car and jogging over to the other side.
"It wont help." Terra told him, turning her attention out the window to Beast Boy's dejected face, her hands clenched at the edge of the window as she held desperately onto the last strands of her resolve. "Whether I talk to them or not. They've seen you. They're going to come looking for us"
"Then we'll leave." The mustang peeled out of the parking lot, the screech of the tires loud enough that Terra could force herself to believe she had heard him wrong.
"What?" She asked, turning back to him, her hands set neatly in her lap.
"We're leaving, tonight. Before they have a chance to come find us." Brion's gaze was narrowed as he glared at the road ahead of him. Terra had seen him like this only once before, when she had asked to go see the titans the first time.
Since her return to the world of the living, Terra had not really felt that many emotions. They were all bland, at best, and none of them struck a chord to her heartstrings. Although her heart was beating, it was as if she had been living in limbo ever since Brion had released her. Like she had come back from the dead, but had been stuck in a stuffy waiting room until she could really come back into herself. She hadn't felt like Terra. She had been something mildly mindless, a random school girl, some face in the crowd, and she probably would have been intent to continue as such had Brion not threatened to take her away. Jump City was the first real home she had had; she had lived and loved there, saved and destroyed it, and she was most definitely not going to give it up.
While Terra's insides boiled, alive again as if they were new, Brion had been listing off what they were to do when they arrived home as if she was actually going with him. After all, she had not given him any reason to believe she had changed from the compliant little sister, Tara, he had been nursing back to health. All his plans floated in one ear, sat on her brain, and been shoved out immediately. His babble meant nothing to her because she wasn't leaving. "No." Terra said softly. Rage nestled into her like an old friend. The range of deeper emotions had eluded her until now as she felt the capacity to feel them again swelling inside her.
"What?" Brion asked, unruffled.
"I'm not going." Terra said more forcefully. Her eyes, which had been focused solely on her folded hands in her lap, snapped up and narrowed.
"What do you mean?" He chanced a glance over at her, but it was the kind that meant he was paying her little mind. Like she was some child demanding a cookie for dinner. This simple look infuriated her. "Of course you're going. It's not safe here anymore."
"No, I'm not going." Confidence, she wasn't sure she would have been able to create it on her own. Slade had practically force-fed it to her, and before then she had mocked it, mimicking the movements and speaking it's language, but always privately doubting herself and her abilities. Forged from her hardest moments, this feeling was new and genuine. Something she'd created all on her own. It pushed her further. "I'm not going and you can't make me." Her voice was sturdy, she hadn't been expecting that.
The mustang's breaks screeched and Terra rode the lurch forward and back, slamming into her seat unexpectedly. Slade's mask haunted her, her eyes painted the sleek bronze onto Brion's face and fear, boundless and suffocating as water in her lungs, tightened in her throat. "What are you talking about? We need to leave. You're in danger here." Brion had a strange way of showing he cared, and Terra had a way of constantly forgetting his special kind of affection. He always got angry at her when he should have been sweet. It reminded her a lot of Slade, actually, to the point where she had been simply taking his word as law, much like she had been during her darkest hour. Brion's voice was loud and rough, completely out of control and on a different level than her former dark master who exuded calmness and control at her every failure.
"No, I'm not. The titans are my friends, and I'm staying." She moved down to unbuckle her seatbelt and as it came zipping back to where it usually hung, Brion grabbed her arm and drew her attention to him with a firm tug.
"You died Tara. You're not thinking straight. You need a normal life, away from powers, villains, saving the world. You can't keep putting your life on the line for people who don't even care. You're not a hero." His face was a sneer and while words stung, she knew they held no truth.
"My friends care about me and I can take care of myself." She pulled her arm hard but Brion's grip only tightened.
"Tara-" She hated her new name. She hated this 'Tara' who did everything she was told and wore a stupid skirt that was too short.
"It's Terra." She barked. "Terra, I'm not Tara and I never will be. Let go of me or I'll make you." The ground rumbled once before she stopped herself from losing control. She licked her lips as her gold glowing eyes dimmed, her body aching to practice, to put the dirt back underneath her fingernails.
Brion ground his teeth, his voice a growl, "I only want what's best for you."
"What's best for me is going to help my friends. I can't take this anymore." When had her voice gotten so loud? She was angrier than she had thought she was, it was like she was reliving the day of the volcano somewhere deep inside her. "Now let go." She said it louder, her voice closer to a scream.
Tight enough to bruise, Brion's huge hand locked around her tiny wrist in a near unbreakable grip. Terra pulled back her free hand, a sizable rock lifting out of the sidewalk at her command and the scream of a terrified civilian reached her ears. "Let go." Her own jaw set.
For a second, Brion's anger was directed at the boulder, but he returned her glare to her with a new level of venom. "You wouldn't."
That was the only invitation Terra needed to let her powers loose. The rock launched past her head and hit Brion squarely in the jaw, knocking his face towards his open window it flew out of. The second that it connected, Terra yanked her hand out of her brother's grip and shot out of the car, heading back in the direction of her school at a full sprint.
Her anger reseeding due to her newly found freedom, another emotion came to fill it's place. Sheer joy erupted from Terra's inner Vesuvius and she leapt into the air, sailing perfectly onto the boulder that she had tugged out of the earth. The seamless motion delighted her as she bent down into a low crouch ideal for flying. Her school shoes lacked the proper grip for the speed at which she had propelled herself through the air but she hardly cared. The wind in her hair, earth under her command again, she was blinded by the sheer ecstasy of it. Everything felt right, nothing could touch her.
By the time she had skidded to a halt on the steps of her (old) school, the titans were gone, as was the slippery fiend they were after. Determined, she set forth following the path of destruction. A few patrons were sweeping the sidewalks in front of their shops and they all eyed her warily, as if her superpowers would reap more destruction on their perspective establishments.
For the next three hours she combed the streets over and over again, hoping that the titans were out in the open, somewhere neutral. Now that she had had time to work past her split second decision to part ways with Brion and 'Tara' and return to the titans, she had realized what this implied. She was going to have to tell Beast Boy she had lied to him about not remembering. That she had willingly hurt him (again), and taken out all her pent up anger on him. Little did he know that she had really been more angry at her own inability than anything he had ever done.
There was a chance that they were off looking for Brion and her elsewhere, but she did not want to bank on that too much. They were, after all, still chasing that creature. They had better things to do than babysit her, and if they wanted to find her they had their ways and there would be no hiding from them.
A breeze ruffled her hair, her skirt floating up ever so slightly, as she sat down. The stars were starting to peek out into existence, the sight alone tugging her the corners of her lip up ever so slightly. Maybe she could just sleep under the stars tonight, she felt like they were old friends that she had abandoned. She only wished that she had had pants to wear instead of a skirt. A girl sleeping alone in a park was practically asking for trouble nowadays, even if the titans were back in town cleaning up the streets. Shrugging it off, she stood up with new resolution and walked deeper into the park. Bending the rock to her will, she turned the boulder into a tiny cave, just enough to keep her safe.
Tomorrow she would wake up with new meaning and an old name, flushing out Tara and her stint in the waiting room and failed geometry tests. Tomorrow she would get rid of that stupid uniform and replace her skirt with a proper pair of shorts that suited her better. Tomorrow she would go to Titan's Tower, apologize to Beast Boy and the rest of the titans, and maybe - just maybe - they could go back to how things used to be.
At least, that's what she told herself.