Author's Note: First of all, I have to thank everyone who has sent me reviews. You guys have no idea how encouraging you've been—I was really afraid that everyone would get bored with this story, since it's moving so slowly. But all the reviews are good ones, and no one seems disinterested, so I'm going to see this through to its conclusion. I hope you'll all stick with me until then!
Just to let you all know, I'm not terribly fond of Terra myself, but as Sage of Story mentioned, she's just being used to show what happened.
And in response to ChocolateCurlz's question as to whether or not there will be misery and pain, I'll give you a hint. Within the next few chapters, the rating on this story will go up to PG-13. Heh heh heh…

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Terra sat in the room that had belonged to Robin, sifting through the countless newspaper articles that were stored there, tacked to the walls and piled on the desks. Having long since lost count of how many she had read through, Terra tossed the most recent one back onto the nearest pile and leaned back, rubbing her bleary eyes.

It had been nearly a week since she'd arrived at the tower. She had taken quite a liking to the large, quiet building, despite the rumors it held of the Titan's deaths and their ghosts. It was comfortable, and the first real place that she might have been able to call a home.

Cyborg didn't seem to mind her presence, although sometimes he would forget that she had been living in the tower with him, and he would point his handless arm at her, repeating the word 'truder' as he did so. Terra had had to remind him several times who she was, and each time he would listen her explanation with blank expression and then shuffle off, unperturbed—at least, until the next time he needed to be reminded.

Once, she had sat down with him and tried to teach him her name. He had seemed to understand at first, and had almost been able to pronounce it correctly. But the next day, she had been 'truder' again, and after her third failed attempt to re-teach him, she had finally given up.

Most of her time had been spent in the tower, going through old records such as the newspaper articles and more photo albums that Starfire had collected. One of the things she had noticed in her search was the recurring name of someone called Slade. Apparently, the man had been a crime lord of some sort, and a major enemy of the Titans themselves. Terra wondered if he might have had anything to do with their disappearances—after all, if Slade was the criminal mastermind he seemed to be, it made sense that he would want to see the Titans dead.

Terra stood and stretched. Her muscles stung in protest, tired and cramped after several hours of doing nothing but sitting cross-legged on the floor and reading article after article on the Teen Titans. She exited Robin's room with the intention of taking a walk along the shoreline of the city, but became distracted as a sudden thought crossed her mind.

Instead of heading down to the elevator and the exit, Terra turned and moved further down the hallway to stand in front of the locked door. She regarded it silently for a moment, wondering how she might be able to get inside. It was the only room left in the tower that she had not been able to explore, and her curiosity with what might be behind the locked doors was now coupled with the idea that it might hold something she was missing in her search.

Unlike those commonly found in normal houses, each door in the tower was similar to a pair of elevator doors. As such, there was no real lock; the doors just seemed to be stuck, and would not open automatically when she walked in front of them, like every other one in the tower did.

On the wall next to each door in the tower was a small control panel, probably meant to be used as a manual override device. The panel beside the locked room, however, had been smashed, leaving a gaping hole with charred edges, exposing bundles of melted, frayed and detached wires.

Seeing no obvious way to get the door open, Terra was debating how best to proceed when she heard the familiar shuffling sound of Cyborg's approach. She didn't turn to acknowledge his presence; most of the time, Cyborg would ignore her completely, so she left him alone, not interfering with his distracted manner and strange habits.

It came as quite a surprise, then, when she suddenly realized that Cyborg was deliberately coming towards her. She looked up to see him staring at the locked door, a strange look on his face. Then a thought struck her, and she tried to get his attention.

"Cyborg, do you know how to open it?"

For a long moment, he gave no response. Then he turned his head slowly to regard her, and she could suddenly see fear reflected in his face.

Confused, Terra tried again. She placed a hand on the door and repeated, "Do you know how to open it?"

It was then that Cyborg did something she would never have expected. Moving faster than she had thought possible, his single hand grabbed at hers, pulling it away from the door and dragging her several steps with it. Shocked and a bit frightened at Cyborg's sudden change in manner, Terra stared up at the large android as he continued to hang onto her arm.

He was shaking his head fervently, still staring at the door. "…don't wanna go, stay back…"

Terra reached up with her free hand and tried to loosen his grasp. "Cyborg, let go, what's wrong?"

"…stay back, leave 'lone, go away…"

He seemed completely focused on the door, even as she desperately tried to get his attention. "Okay, Cyborg, you don't have to go in if you don't want to." Frustrated that he was still ignoring her, Terra suddenly realized that he was not acting aggressively towards her, but towards the room. He had pulled her away and was now holding her slightly behind him, as though shielding her from something dangerous.

Although she would see nothing dangerous about a locked door, she wasn't about to argue with a cybernetically enhanced human who was nearly twice her size.

Slowly, Terra began moving away from the door, back down the hallway towards the elevator, trying to get Cyborg to see that she was leaving the locked doorway. He was still holding onto her arm, and it took a few tries and several hard tugs to get his attention, but when he realized that they were going to leave the locked room, he moved with her readily. Halfway to the elevator he let go of her arm and seemed to forget the entire incident.

Terra followed him down to the main room of the tower, lost in thought. There was something in that room that frightened even the formidable-looking Cyborg. Perhaps it would be best to leave whatever was locked inside well enough alone.

Pushing her irritating curiosity aside, she sighed, trying to think of where to go next. Her efforts of investigating the disappearances were painstakingly slow, at best, and were probably more at a dead end than she wanted to admit.

As she stepped out of the tower and into the sunshine that lighted the nearby shoreline, an idea began to form. Perhaps it was time to focus not so much on the Titans themselves, but on those who might have had something to do with their disappearance five years ago--their enemies.

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Terra stood on the empty sidewalk, looking up at the old house before her. She looked back down again at the address that she had scribbled down on a scrap of paper, making sure it was correct.

Just over two weeks of research in the library and the Titan's personal archives had finally paid off—this was the closest she had come to finding out who this mysterious Slade was. Delving through every shred of evidence she could find, Terra had actually been able to track down someone who had apparently worked for Slade at some point. Finding him had been a formidable task by itself, but once she had, he had yielded the vital information that she now held in her hand.

Slade's address.

To be precise, it was the residence of the man who had once been known as Slade. Five years ago, the apparent crime lord had 'retired' so to speak—at least, that's what the former employee had told her.

If this turned out to be a dead end, Terra wasn't sure what she would do. She wasn't even sure if it was wise to be here. After all, did she really want to cross paths with a former criminal who might have caused the deaths of five young teenagers?

At the moment, her sense of curiosity was outweighing her sense of caution, and Terra decided to get it over with before that changed. Crossing her fingers, she climbed the short stairway to the front door and knocked.

After a few long moments, the door opened slightly, revealing the face of a young woman, not much older than Terra herself. The woman stared at her, a strange mixture of suspicion and confusion on her face.

"What do you want?"

Terra had to clear her throat before she answered, having suddenly found that it was dry. "Hi, hope I'm not interrupting anything, listen, my name's Terra, I'm looking for someone named Slade—"

The woman's eyes suddenly widened and her eyebrows shot up. She yanked the door open and virtually dragged Terra inside with one powerful haul. As soon as Terra was through the threshold, the door was slammed shut, and Terra suddenly found herself backed against a wall with a shocked and furious woman hissing in her face.

"Look, I don't know who you are or how you know about him, but what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Terra was stunned into silence for a moment, but finally found herself saying, "Hey, I just need some information and I thought he could help me out."

The woman regarded her strangely. "If you know who he is, then you should know better than to just come waltzing in here, throwing his name around like two-cent candy, thinking he's going to give out information. I suggest you get out of here and forget about it. Now."

Before Terra could make a move for the door, a low voice called out from one of the rooms down the hall.

"Who is it, Audrey?"

The woman immediately turned to face the direction of the voice, calling back, "It's no one, sir."

The voice was smooth and controlled, sounding almost dangerous in its calmness. "There is no such thing as someone who is no one, Audrey. Tell me who it is."

"She says her name is Terra, sir, she's of no importance, she's leaving now—"

"Terra?" The voice interrupted, holding a hint of interest.

Audrey, who had been pushing Terra towards the doorway, paused when she heard the change in the voice. She stood motionless, waiting for the man's next response.

"Let her in, Audrey. I would like to speak with this…Terra."

Audrey shot Terra a venomous glance, but gestured for move inside, indicating an open doorway slightly down the hallway and to the left. Terra gave a slight nod of appreciation, and stepped into the darkened room.

It wasn't a large room, more like a formal sitting room with an old-fashioned couch and two high-backed chairs. A long, antique, wooden coffee table rested near the center, slightly angled, creating an island amongst the other items of furniture, and a similar looking side table sat beside one of the chairs. A tall Victorian lamp stood in one corner, casting a yellowish light across the room; the windows were adorned with thin, amber hued drapes, casting the filtering sunlight into the same color as the lamplight. The carpet was a deep red, surprising in its unusual color, but fitting with the rest of the room décor.

A man sat in one of the upright chairs, his hand lingering near a book that lay on the side table next to him. He was tall and apparently middle-aged, with graying hair and an eerily calm aura that seemed to surround his presence. His eyes locked on Terra the moment she entered the room, catching her attention in a penetrating, unblinking gaze.

Terra halted just inside the doorway, unsure of how to proceed under the intensity of his eyes. He remained motionless and silent for a moment that seemed to last longer than it should have. Finally he moved his hand, gesturing towards the couch.

"Please, sit down."

She obeyed, crossing in front of his gaze to sit lightly on the edge of the couch. The atmosphere of the room and the strange demeanor of the man himself made it impossible to relax.

He nodded at her slightly, the expression on his face and in his eyes never changing. "Terra. What brings you here?" His voice was low and smooth, almost hypnotic.

Terra had never been good with tactfulness. She would always find herself getting straight to the point of everything, and more often than not, being too blunt. Idle chat was not something she tolerated easily, much less a practice that she would instigate herself. This was no different. She had known that a conversation with a former criminal was more than likely to be uncomfortable, if not downright unpleasant. Delaying the discussion of the true reason for her visit would only serve to make the situation more uneasy.

Taking a deep breath, she asked seriously, "Are you Slade?"

It disoriented her, the way his face didn't change. He made no reaction to the question, as though it were meaningless. After a moment, he responded, his manner still unperturbed. "That name has not been used for quite some time."

Terra tried to calm herself, wondering why his lack of emotion unnerved her so much. She reassured herself with the fact that even if the conversation was exceedingly unpleasant, it seemed that the man was willing to cooperate at such a direct pace, and it would not last long. "I've been doing some…research. About the Teen Titans. And I wanted to know if you could tell me anything about what happened to them."

He moved, leaning slightly forward on his chair, bringing his intense gaze immensely closer to hers, even though the distance he moved was so little. "You are asking if I killed them," he answered.

Terra's eyes widened. It was then that she realized just how potentially dangerous a situation she had gotten herself into. This man was intelligent—far more intelligent than anyone she had ever met, and her realization did not come from the mere fact that he had been able to see the question through to its inevitable resolution. She understood now that everything about him—his manner, disciplined intensity, calm patience, the intent eyes—reflected the existence of a mind that was far above and beyond her own.

She sat in silence, unable to respond as she fought to contain the uneasiness that had suddenly blossomed into sickening fear.

He leaned back, resuming his previous sitting position, regarding her with the same gaze that he had held from the moment she entered into his presence. "I believe that if this were something you were meant to know, Terra, you would not have to be searching for it."

Again, she said nothing. Because there was nothing to say.

When he spoke again, he did not raise his voice, but somehow, it managed to carry farther than it had before. "Audrey."

The woman appeared after just a moment.

"Please show Terra to the door."

Only when Terra was several blocks away from the house was she able to breathe again.