Author's Note: Okay, more explanations! Yes, I know that Terra is dead, so I guess this is going to be somewhat of an Alternate Universe fic. This is not meant to be a Terra/Cyborg story (I write angst, not romance). But if you must infer pairings, feel free to do so, everyone is entitled to interpret as they like.
I also know that these chapters are moving pretty slow, don't worry, they'll get better later on, I promise!
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"Dead?" Terra repeated, a little shocked.
Cyborg wasn't looking at the photo anymore. He was turning away again, shuffling off down the hall, having completely forgotten her presence. He seemed to sag as he walked away, reminded of something he had not thought of in a long time. His voice repeated the word over and over as it echoed through the barren hallways and faded with his retreating figure, "…dead…dead…dead…dead…"
Terra watched him leave, and this time felt no desire to follow. She looked back down at the photo, surprised at the wave of emotion that had suddenly hit her. This was the first time she'd ever seen these people—until now, she hadn't even known of their existence. But somehow, the thought that they were dead made her feel more at a loss than it should have. She hadn't known them at all…why did she feel such a sudden, strong attachment to them?
Perhaps because they were so young. Yes, Terra told herself firmly, it was because they were so young, no one deserved to die at such an early age. The oldest one among them could not have been more than sixteen years old.
Still feeling subdued, Terra slumped against the hard, cold wall, letting herself fall into a sitting position. She paused for a moment, her hand lingering at the edge of the book page. Her curiosity and strange feeling of attachment prodded at her, and she gave in. Turning the page, she began to flip through the scrapbook, looking at all the pictures and the notes scribbled under them.
The Teen Titans had apparently all been very close. Terra found herself experiencing a pang of jealousy as she gazed at the photos, wishing she had had close friends and family such as this.
There were several pages showing the Titans on an outing to the beach. One such photo revealed Beast Boy, buried up to his neck in sand, wincing as a large crab scuttled close to his face and pinched his pointed ear in its claw. Another displayed Raven dripping wet and looking very displeased as a laughing Cyborg stood over her, an empty water bucket still swinging in his metal grasp. A third showed Starfire, Beast Boy, and Robin, all three beaming as they posed in front of a gigantic sand castle they had made.
Many of the other photos had been taken inside the tower. One displayed Robin, sound asleep on the couch, a book lying loosely in his hand. The photo was larger than most of the others, and had been given its own page. Whereas most of the other photos had whole sentences scribbled beside or beneath them, this one merely had Robin's name written under it, in very precise, well-scripted letters, with a single heart beside it. Terra gathered that Starfire, being the author of the scrapbook, had liked Robin quite a bit.
She was getting towards the end of the book now. Terra turned to the next page, and blinked, a bit surprised.
One of the photos was incomplete. It looked as though someone had cut part of it away.
What was left of the picture showed Starfire and Raven, and would have included a third person had they not been cut out. The writing beneath it listed Starfire and Raven's names, which were followed by a fuzzy, discolored patch where it looked as though the third person's name had been erased.
Frowning, Terra turned the page.
And found the same thing.
All the way to the end of the scrapbook, pictures were incomplete. Someone had gone through the book and completely erased any photo of someone, and the written mention of their name. Terra couldn't begin to guess who it might have been—it wasn't any one of the Titans from the front page. They were all still present in the pictures.
Confused, Terra closed the book and tucked it under her arm. She wondered why Starfire would have gone to all the trouble to put the scrapbook together, only to go back and destroy parts of it. Then again, it might not have been Starfire. Perhaps someone else had gone through and erased the person.
Terra moved down the hallway again, feeling the blood return to her legs with a stinging sensation, and wondering just how long she had been sitting there. Trying to get her circulation moving, she decided to walk around some and look into a few of the other rooms.
She had already seen Raven and Starfire's rooms, she was sure of that. Each of the Titan members appeared to have distinct enough personalities to guess what room had belonged to whom. Terra explored three more rooms, easily figuring out which ones had belonged to Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Robin.
As she exited Robin's room, she realized that there were still two more doors at the very end of the hall. The one closest to her appeared to be locked, and after a few moments of prying, Terra gave up on trying to get in. The other door, however, was open. In fact, she was surprised that she had not noticed before how it seemed to have been damaged somewhat. Terra pushed it gently to allow slightly more room for her to slip inside.
The room was a mess.
But not the same kind of mess that had greeted her in Beast Boy's room. That mess had been typical for a normal, healthy teenage boy. This…this was all wrong. It looked as though someone had deliberately gone through all the contents of the room with the intent of destroying them.
The curtains had been ripped down, left in tatters on the floor, with only a few faded scraps left dangling form the hooks above the windows. There were more than a few slash marks on the wall, where someone had sliced the wallpaper and then torn it. The sheets and mattress on the bed had also been cut apart. The tattered remains of the bedcovers lay askew with piles of stuffing from the sunken mattress. A lamp had been shattered, the glass pieces left on the carpet. Drawers had been yanked from their places in dressers and overturned, the contents broken and scattered. A large mirror above one such dresser had been cracked, marring the reflection in the dusty surface.
Terra picked her way slowly through the room, in awe of the damage. It had been a bedroom—that much was obvious. So there had been another person living with the Titans. There had been six of them, not five, and something had happened to cause someone to destroy that person's room and remove evidence of their existence from photos. Terra wondered if the sixth Titan had been connected to the other Titan's deaths.
Something caught her eye, and she bent down, pushing aside one of the overturned drawers to reveal a beautiful hairclip. It was broken of course, just like everything else in the room. Part of a it had been snapped off, but otherwise it was quite pretty. Terra brushed it off and clipped it gingerly to her hair. Turning, she looked at her reflection in the shattered mirror.
She was of average height, with clear, tan skin and a slender figure. Her eyes were a bright blue, and long, sandy colored hair fell past her shoulders. Where she had pulled the blond strands back from her face with the butterfly clip, a large scar was revealed. It traced a wide path down the side of her face, from just above her temple and down past her ear, where it ended just above her jaw line. She fingered the discolored scar lightly, as always wondering how she had gotten it.
Terra could not remember her childhood. In fact, she couldn't remember anything before five years ago, when she had woken up in a tiny cave on the outskirts of a nameless town. She'd woken with a headache and no memory of how she'd gotten there. The only reason she knew her own name was because she'd had a bracelet with the name 'Terra' strung on letter beads. The reason for her concussion was, of course, the large head wound that had been fresh at the time. In time it had healed, leaving only the scar that now adorned the side of her face. Sighing, Terra pulled the clip out of her hair and let the strands of hair fall back into place, covering the wound.
Suddenly, several loud thwacking noises were heard, coming from outside the window. Then there was a crash, and Terra whirled just in time to see a large rock come flying through one of the already-broken windows. It managed to take out some of what little glass remained, scattering shards through the air. Terra ducked as another rock followed it a few seconds later. More than a little annoyed, she grabbed one of the two rocks and moved to the window.
Sticking her head out, she saw two young boys on the ground below, tossing rocks at the tower and laughing whenever they smashed another window. "Hey!" Terra yelled, chucking the rock back down at them. "Knock it off!"
One of the boys caught sight of her and yelped, grabbing onto his friend. "It's the ghosts!" he shouted, and both boys instantly turned and ran, yelling in fright, nearly tripping over each other in their hasty retreat.
Their shouts of ghosts confused Terra for a moment before she realized that the boys had thought she was a ghost. She turned away from the window, surveying the destroyed room with more than curiosity now. Did they think the tower was haunted?
Looking back to the window, her gaze turned to the city spread out before her. Perhaps there was someone in the city who knew about what had happened in this tower—the two boy's shouts of ghosts had been proof of nothing more than rumors and the extent of young children's imaginations, but all rumors had to originate from somewhere. Besides, Terra reflected, exploring the city couldn't do any harm.
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Terra watched the large, older man behind the convenience store counter as he took the money for the few items that she had bought. "I was wondering…" she asked him as he handed her the change, "what do you know about the big tower at the edge of town?"
The older man raised an eyebrow, surprised. "Titan Tower? You'd best not be messin' around that place, missy. That's a cursed place."
"Cursed?" Terra blinked.
"That it is. Used to be the envy of the whole city; it was where the Teen Titans lived. Strange young ones, they were, livin' there without any parents, fightin' crime and such. They were darn good at it, though, better than the cops even." He began putting her things into a bag.
Terra leaned forward. "What happened?"
"Disappeared," the man answered, a sad tone striking his voice. "All of 'em."
"Just disappeared?" Terra took the bag as he handed it across the counter to her. "When?"
" 'Bout five years ago," he shrugged. "No one knows what really happened. One day they were here, the next day, they weren't. Lots o' people think the place is haunted now. Some think they see the ghost o' the metal man, walking around the tower, howlin' at night."
Terra thanked the man and left, heading back into the crowded city street and beginning her walk back to the tower. She paid little attention to her surroundings as she walked, wondering about what the man had told her, and finding herself suddenly determined to find out exactly what had happened five years ago in the abandoned building known as Titan Tower.