Raventhedarkgoddess: Before I go any further in this, I want to dedicate this and it's prequal, Mistake, to Krazy4Robin, my coolest, kindest, and perhaps the most annoying, reveiwer. Keep it up.
Chapter Ten: The Truth Can Hurt
The shriek was immidatly silenced by Raven, one hand over her mouth, the part of her mind that screamed for control taking over and silencing her completly. Robin looked over at her with concern he needn't have wasted: He mearly ignored his look of sympathy. "I'm fine," she hissed, her voice low, but not low enough that Slade, circling them like a hawk circles it's prey, couldn't hear them.
"Fine?" He quipped, mouth twitching slightly. "My dear, you and Robin are far from fine. You made the mistake of coming here, all by yourself. You don't think you can escape, do you? That you can beat me on your own? You two all by yourselves, filled with delusions of love and hope and forever, thinking you're immortal, means nothing. You can be eliminated. You can...."
"I want you to be quiet," Raven said in a death-quiet voice, kicking the side of the mask in. Robin watched Raven in a mix of horror and satifaction. The metalic noise echoed around the small room, it's noise reassuring to Raven, who dropped back down into a fighting, ready stance, hood up, next to Robin.
"Fine. Fighting is how the Teen Titans want to go down, that's the way they go down." He moved forward, smirking, pole extended, ready to fight. Robin and Raven looked at each other, nodded, and prepared for the hardest fight of their lives.
"Come on, Starfire." Beast Boy yanked on Starfire's hand, dragging her forward. Starfire realized that she couldn't keep moving along with Beast Boy until she asked him an important question.
"Beast Boy, are we truely lovers, or are you just mourning Terra's loss with my presence?" Please let him say he does not like me, she thought. I do not really love him as much as I thought I did the other night in the rain.
Beast Boy opened his mouth to answer her, cursing her poor timing, when one of the black-robed figures stepped out of the shadows. "Beast Boy." It was apparently the female, her voice cold and distant. She raised her knife, but then stopped and lowered her hood only inches from Beast Boy's face. "Beast Boy, it's me." The curtain of blonde hair fell into her face, but there was no mistaking the pale, ashen face: Terra was staring at him with here blue eyes wide, as if she expected him to have forgotten her.
"Terra?" He squinted, attempting to figure out if she was one of Slade's tricks. "You're dead." The words hit him, hard, in the chest, as he began wondering if there was even the slimmest chance that she had not been dead, that Slade had thrown her aside only to make himself look good. "Terra, is it you?"
"Of course it's me, Beast. Look, I was told to eliminate you. I can't do that. Come with me. We'll get out of here. We can come back for the others, come back later. They'll be fine," she added to his doubtful look. "If we take time to try to get to everyone now, no one will live." She started forward, backing away, and then noticed that neither of them was coming. "Beast Boy..... Something wrong?" She studied him, but could not come up with a reason for him to be glaring at her.
"Terra.... Look what you did last time. I can't.... Terra.... It's not all about love. I have to trust you. And right now, I can't trust you. Look.... You almost took a knife to Lecita, to Raven, and you would have taken one to me. Did you even love me the first time? Or was it just a sick game? I've been going over this since I thought you died. Now, answer me, and look at me when you speak." The angry creature had replaced her warm, joking Beast Boy in an instent.
Terra raised her head, out of it's shame, to stare at Beast Boy. "Beast Boy, of course I loved you. I'm here now, defying Slade, to try to save your skin and not mine. Everything I said, everything I did.... Do you think I didn't regreat it? I almost died last time, doing something that wasn't worth dying for. The only thing worth dying for is you guys, and you know that as well as I do." She set her hand on his green hand, which slowly came out of it's balled state and touched her pale one.
"Come on, Starfire, let's go." Terra set off at a run, Beast Boy keeping up in the form of a horse, Starfire floating behind, full of relif, regreat, and fear. Where do I go now that you are gone? I have lost Robin and Beast Boy, and yet I am all alone. Is no one for me?
She remembered, for some odd reason, standing on the docks with Raven a week after Raven and Robin had gotten together. They had been talking about boys and love. "The truth is," Raven had said, "The truth is nothing but things you don't want to know. I didn't want to belive I was in love with Robin, but look at us now. You may not want to belive that Terra is gone, but you learn to ajust. The truth is hard, I guess. Love is in hand with truth. Don't lie to Beast Boy, no matter what the truth is."
Now, thanks to Robin and Lecita, I have no friends at all. Is the truth now that I am friendless, Raven? "Star, hurry up," Terra called from the lead. "I need to come back for your friends!" At that statement, a tear fell from her jem-like eyes, because there was no way Terra could have understood what she had just said.
"Who do you think screamed?" Asked a perpelceted Lecita.
"Sounded like Raven," Anna responded in an uninterested voice.
"Raven usually doesn't scream for nothin," Cyborg pointed out.
Lecita didn't bother to respond to that. "ANNA!"
Anna stood, looking confused. The black-cloaked figure behind her continued to edge closer and closer to her head, steely knife raised.
Raventhedarkgoddess: Okay, chapter ten.
