Warning: Spoilers for Aftershock, obviously, and beyond that, there's a lot of darkness and some foul language. These things don't come out of Beast Boy's mouth incidentally.
Chrome- VNV Nation
The cave echoed with shuffling footsteps, scraping and dragging along the rock with reluctance. There was a slow and determined rhythm to them, like a self-imposed death march. Not long after the first sounds reached the cave's sole resident, a green figure game into view.
Beast Boy wasn't sure whether to be grateful to Raven or hate her for the permanently-lit path she had placed with her magic. It meant that the Titans could visit Terra at any hour of the day or night... and he was coming far too often at all hours.
Really, though, he would have come anyway; there just would have been more scraped knees involved.
He finally reached the statue of his... what was she to him? She had been everything, nothing, friend, almost-lover, enemy, Delilah to his Sampson. He snorted at the thought of himself, musclebound and hairless, blinded and put on display for Slade's pleasure. It actually seemed about right.
At least Sampson had probably gotten a kiss.
But he wasn't here to be bitter; he was here to try to reconcile the thoughts in his head with the girl who was standing there. How was he supposed to approach this, though? It wasn't like talking with his parents at the cemetery; they were dead, but the caskets were empty and the headstone had never been alive. Terra's statue was her, flesh and bone turned to rock... and he didn't even know if she was dead or alive in there. Maybe she could hear him... probably not.
"Maybe I should just ask you if you can hear me or not, eh?" he said with a forced chuckle that died in less than a second. "Then again, stone isn't exactly the best conductor of sound. SO MAYBE IF I TALK LOUDER, YOU'LL FINALLY HEAR ME AND COME BACK?" His hands were balled into fists, claws cutting through his gloves into his palms. It took quite a bit to get through Kevlar.
"Then again, I don't even know what I'd do if you did come back." He stared down at his feet. "I don't know if I'd beat you up or kiss you... maybe both at the same time. Sounds fun, doesn't it?"
Silence.
"Y'know, Terra, I really liked you. And I screwed up big time telling you that you didn't have any friends. I wish I'd told you the truth, but when I get hurt I say things too fast. I know what hurts, and I say it. If I hadn't said that, maybe you would have stayed. Then you'd be alive."
He raked his fingers through his hair, heedless of the scratches he left on his scalp. "I killed you, didn't I? I'm going to kill everyone I love, I think. First my parents, now you. The Doom Patrol's days are numbered if I come back to them, too. And everybody says it's not my fault but I know it is! They don't understand... you always understood me. Maybe you killed somebody too?" He walked up to the statue, a gleam in his eye. "Now, come on, you can tell me. I mean, you're dead now; it's not like they're gonna put a hunk of rock in jail."
A shaking began in his belly, growing to a laugh, then to a full-fledged shriek. Tears streaming from his eyes, Beast Boy fought to gain control of himself. "Nobody would think that was funny except you... and now not even you laugh at my jokes. Oh well... I know you would if you could."
As he ran his fingers over the statue's face, he paused. "You know, if I could have saved you from all of this... I don't know if I would have. I think I'd still have let you die. I hate you that much right now. But I think I love you too... I want to keep you in your room and bring you all your meals and have you be so grateful for everything and know you're safe all the time... but that's crazy, isn't it? Yeah... it's gotta be."
Terra said nothing; merely stared, expressionless, hands at her sides.
Resisting the urge to swipe a clawed hand across the statue's face, he stood stock still. "I think sometimes I come down here for my own good... but the things I say... well, I don't know if they're for me or you."
"I can still hear you screaming. The others said it lasted for just a second or two, but I heard it for longer. I can hear better than any of them; you know that. I heard how it lasted... your breath gave out, but you still needed to scream more. That was the sound that stuck with me." It was getting hard to stand, so he knelt. There was no conscious thought behind the process.
"Why did you have to leave me with all of this?" His voice was barely audible, even to his own ears. "I would have been fine if you had just stayed evil, stayed on one side or the other, but this... I don't know what to do with it all. I don't even know how much of what I loved about you is real and how much was a disguise you got from him."
The boy took a deep breath, trying to let it out smoothly and failing as it degenerated into a shuddering sob. "I could smell him on you." He tried to find words, but there were none. Mouthing a silent scream, he pounded and clawed at Terra's stone memory. "Why? Why did you give him everything when we never even kissed? God damn it, Terra... why? And him? Did he love you? Did he at least tell you he did?"
He scrubbed the back of one hand across his face, sniffling to rid himself of the evidence of his weakness. "Y'know... I think we used to have a lot in common, but maybe not so much anymore. I mean, I'm a superhero, which means I have lots of responsibilities and I do lots of cool stuff, but you... well, nowadays, you're just such a stoner."
The cackle that broke from his mouth would have scared away any living creatures if there had been any left in the cave. Tumbling backwards, he hit his head on the hard rock. He sat up and rubbed the back of his head. "Bad joke? Tough shit. You got my good jokes... you got everything. I have nothing left, Ter. I keep coming down here, hoping for something; I don't even know what. Maybe I hoped you'd hear me one day. But you know what? I'm still talking, and YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!"
Seething with rage, boiling over with grief, Garfield Logan fell apart at Terra's feet. There were no more words.
Minutes or hours later, he arose. He wiped his face clear of offending salt tracks and mucus, then dug in his pocket and pulled out a compact mirror. Flashing his trademark grin, he searched his eyes for any hint of a lie, any giveaway as to what lay beneath. Once he was satisfied, he closed the mirror and strode off towards the cave's entrance, never once looking back at the statue.
He promised himself he wouldn't be back.
That was as much of a lie as his smile.
AN: Releasing this without much editing; I didn't want to take away the raw emotion behind the dialogue. When I heard this song, I immediately thought of the aftermath of Aftershock. BB just couldn't have been okay, no matter what the rest of the team thought he might have felt. He could pull it together after Betrayal, certainly, but that's just a bandage on a gaping wound. It had to get lanced sometime.
This is the very first time I've written Beast Boy swearing, even mildly. He's just not that kind of person. It takes something truly terrible to pull that out of him... but what happened between Betrayal and the aftermath of Aftershock would have done it, in my mind.
