Letters aren't.
It took nearly two hours to get back.
Terra covered the last twenty minutes back to her bungalow on foot. She hopped up the short hill that preceded that line of disused temporary housing, and decided to stop in at the church later that afternoon for her charity dinner.
She got to the door, and stopped with her hand on the handle. Someone was... oh. Her head tilted sideways, and she felt a mixture of emotions, sad, resigned... other things...
"Hey Raven," she said.
She was just guessing. But guessing apparently correct, because a fully solid Raven emerged, somehow, from the shadow of the adjacent building. The sorceress' face was unreadable.
Terra took her in without looking at her properly. Ravens hair was tied up in a ponytail. She had on a jacket and black trousers.
Obviously, she wasn't looking to be recognized. Or...
"We're you going to spy on me from across the street, or actually come say Hi?" Terra asked. She immediately cringed. The dumbest things came out of her mouth sometimes. Like when she was panicking.
Raven crossed the street slowly, and her expression remained unreadable. Terra wished she would say something. She stopped a couple of feet away from the door and where Terra was stood, and just stood there, with her arms crossed.
Terra looked at the wall, breathed in, and then exhaled audibly.
"Raven," she said.
"Terra," replied the other girl, flatly.
Terra had almost forgotten why she didn't like Raven. Until she said her name. Like that.
Why could they not have sent... or... why couldn't they just leave her alone?
What would she have done in their place?
"What are you doing here?" Terra asked.
"What are you doing here?" Asked Raven back.
"I asked first."
"And I want an answer."
Terra made herself count to five.
"Good-bye, Raven," she said, and opened her door. She closed it behind herself, and stared at the floor for a second. Then she leaned back against the wall, slid down it, and hugged her knees.
KNOCK- KNOCK- KNOCK.
Terra felt like wrenching the earth outside the door up, and flinging Raven across the street.
She couldn't see exactly where she was stood, but she could guess pretty well from here.
She decided to ignore the door. Raven turned into a symbol, of the clichéd horror movie doorknocker. She couldn't open the door; she had to hide until the knocker went away.
Terra sat on the floor, and eyed the masses of screwed up paper balls littering the floor around her bin.
Maybe later she would write another one. She felt like writing. Only this one would be to-
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
-Someone really annoying.
Terra grabbed a couple of handfuls of hair, ruining her neat braids, and growled, quietly, so that Raven wouldn't hear.
Horror movies had never really scared her anyway. She stood up, and wrenched the door open suddenly. Like she wanted to scare the other girl, or something.
Raven was still stood there with her arms folded. She looked quite different with her hair tied up, Terra observed, it put a peculiar emphasis on all sorts of features.
"What do you want?" She asked, trying to sound annoyed and busy. It came out more like a hiss.
"How long," said Raven. Terra had to work out that it was a question, because there was no hint of it in her tone.
"How long what?" She asked. She knew what Raven was asking, but she wasn't going to play along with this. Raven had nothing to do with her life anymore, and she didn't know anything. Especially anything about Terra.
"How long have you been..." said Raven, and she paused as if trying to work out how to put it, "... living here?" She frowned a bit. Or maybe Terra was imagining it.
"About four months," she replied, curtly. She didn't know what else to say. She wanted Raven to go away so she could pretend that this never happened.
And the morning had been going so well.
Ravens mouth opened, and then closed. Terra tried to make an annoyed glaring face. Raven then shook her head in an exasperated fashion (or as close as), turned around, and abruptly began to walk away, looking strangely as though someone had just yelled 'told you so.' Terra stared.
"So that's it, you're just going to leave?"
I really just asked that? Oh God, Terra thought, smacking herself in the face with a club. Mentally, of course.
Raven stopped walking. Terra fancied she could imagine Raven smacking her forehead right now, had she not been a stoic idiot. She wondered if Raven actually did have emotions that were safe, and she just acted like she didn't so that she could put people down and get annoyed at everything.
And then it started to rain.
She shouldn't have had that last thought, huh.
It was very sudden, as rain is during the wintertime. As though the clouds had just parted all of a sudden, and were throwing buckets of water down through millions of tiny sieves.
Terra sighed. Always. Every single time she tried to do anything related to those prats. She hated rain. She hated what she said next.
"Unugh... Do you want to come in or something?"
-
-
-
"...And then fourteen was held until the police arrived." Pause. "Sir."
"Sigh," said a deep voice.
"And I suppose the Titans never up-followed on the blonde at all?"
"Err... no. S'far as we're aware."
Silence. "And how aware is that?"
"Err, fairly, Sir."
"Fairly? Equally as aware as your opposition? You jest?"
"Err... yes. I-"
"Sniff," said the voice. "I suppose one shall have to make do. Recall an analysis of the progress on fifteen."
"Right away, Sir."
-
-
-
"They don't know," said Raven.
Terra blinked. "What?" She asked, stupidly.
"They don't know. No one knows I'm here. Or that you're here."
Terra stared at Raven, sat on one end of a pile of cushions. Terra was sat on what she thought was probably once a duvet, and some pillows and a towel.
"...How come?" She asked, the question holding more weight than it sounded.
"Because you clearly weren't keen on being sighted," said Raven, "and... I didn't want to do that to the rest of them. No one else even saw you."
Oh.
Terra looked out of the window. It was still raining.
"So why did you see me?"
Raven blinked. In the light, she suddenly looked a bit like a ghost. Terra felt a strange sense of foreboding... and then it was gone, and the light was normal again.
"I see a lot of things other people don't notice."
Terra leaned forwards, her elbows on her knees, just digesting that. Raven hadn't told the other Titans where she was going. They didn't know she was here. She could still start her life. She could still be just another citizen. She could still... sit under Ravens scrutiny while she daydreamed again. Terra blinked and shook herself.
"I... why are you here?" It sounded harsher than she'd intended. Never mind.
Raven was looking out of the window as well. She didn't speak for a while, and then she said, "I don't really know."
Terra's stomach chose that moment to growl loudly. She poked at it inconspicuously, as though that would erase the sounds and teach it a lesson. Raven eyed her. Terra noted the continuing rain. She weighed up her want for dinner against her desire to have dry clothes in the morning.
"Are you living okay?"
"What?" Terra's attention snapped back.
"Well," said Raven. "Are you living well?"
Terra scowled. Sees things other people usually don't... she thought, annoyed. "I'm fine," she said, also annoyed at how defensive that sounded. Then she added "I got a job today," because she felt it validated her independence a bit more.
Still unsure of which came tops, food or dryness, Terra scowled at the rain for making everything more complicated. And also so that she had somewhere else to look.
"I should go," said the other girl, at length.
"It's raining," said Terra.
"I can see that," she replied, standing up.
Right, thought Terra. Raven made it to the door without further comment.
"...Am I... is... am I likely to run into you any time?" Terra asked. "Ever again?" She added on the end.
Raven paused, and Terra may or may not have imagined the look that crossed her face. "That would be up to you," she replied, and left through the door.
Terra thought she understood. Raven made the first move. Now it was Terra's turn to decide whether or not to even keep playing.
-
-
-
Raven landed on the Titans Tower roof some time later, soaking wet. The cold didn't bother her so much as wearing so many clothes in the torrential rain.
She sank through the floor directly into the laundry room, before unzipping and removing the jacket to reveal the top of her leotard underneath. She snapped the elastic from her hair, toed off her boots, and peeled off her jeans, and then threw the whole lot in the machine and slammed the door shut.
"Hey, don't get moody with the machine," said a voice from the door. Beast Boy stood, a pot of something tofu in his hands. "Just 'cus you're all wet..." he added, eyeing her hair.
Raven phased through the floor down to her own room, and went sock hunting. Her room was noticeably colder than the laundry room, and she flicked the heat up with a spark of black energy.
"Raven," came through the wall, accompanied by a knock on the door. She ignored that she couldn't work out how Beast Boy had gotten there so fast. "Are you planning on being horrendously busy for the next two hours?"
"Yes," she replied, automatically irritated.
"Aw, how about the next ten..." Raven let the door slide open, and the changelings voice was immediately louder, "...minutes?" He asked. He blinked at the door. Raven was sat on her bed, efficiently lacing up a fresh pair of boots.
"What do you want?" She asked.
"To ask you something," he replied, quieter. His tofu pot had gone, she noted.
"What?" She prompted, when he didn't continue.
A cloak levitated its way across the room, along with her belt.
"I am so not the only one who saw Terra today," he said, eyeing her sideways.
The cloak and belt stopped a foot short of Ravens bed. She looked up at him sharply.
"I knew it," he said.
'Knew what?' she wanted to ask. But she didn't. She was, dare she admit it, a bit thrown by the amiable tone of his voice. "What?" She said again.
Beast Boy sighed at the door. "I just thought..." he trailed off.
Raven fastened the rest of her accessories.
The communicator that fastened her cloak began to flash, as did the one on Beast Boys belt. They dropped the conversation and headed for the control room.
This is annoyingly short. Following chapters are going to get shorter and shorter if I don't watch it.
I blame college. It sucks the chapter length right out a girl.
Blackshield, way2beme, Rhys Davies and nevermore-raven, thank you ever so much for reviewwing :)