5.

Beast Boy slumped into a stiff wooden chair in his room, grinding a palm into his forehead. He felt on the verge of so many things, like relief for one. Long he'd feared that Terra would be quietly swept into the sweet nevermore, and the Titans would all move on without a further thought of her. But this, a vote? Did Terra make that sort of impression on the group? Beast Boy knew how he'd be voted, as did everyone else, he was fairly sure. But the others, he had no idea. The idea that the Titans would actually vote to keep the poor girl frozen in stone was bordering on horrifying, and went against everything he thought the Titans stood for. They had to save her, it was the only option a group of people dedicated to truth and justice had...wasn't it?

Oh, but he could see the argument...out of all the super baddies the Titans had fought in Jump City, she was the one who'd closest to destroying everything, and the closest to killing them all. To release her was to risk a lot, even Beast Boy could see that.

All of the emotions that he'd been repressing since Terra was frozen in stone were flooding back, and hitting him hard. He started to pound his other palm into his knee, over and over, very hard, he didn't know why, and didn't care that it would leave a large fist shaped bruise on his skin at the contact point. He rubbed his face with an open hand, trying to come to some logical thought. Of course he wanted to see Terra again, she wouldn't be like she was, he'd heard her apologize, he knew that. Everyone knew that she was the one that saved the whole city from being buried in molten rock. But...she did so many bad things, to him more than anyone. She broke his heart in so many ways that night at the amusement park. The way she held his arm, laughed at his stupid jokes, walked with him hand in hand, he'd never thought he could be that happy. Then Slade showed up, and ruined everything. Before he was there, there was time, Beast Boy was sure that if Slade had stayed away just a few minutes more, Terra would have told him everything, what she'd done, and the consequences of it. They could have worked it out if he'd just stayed away. That was it, it was Slade that was to blame, to hell with Terra doing it all on her own, it was Slade that manipulated her. If not for him, she never would have done such horrible things. It was Slade...Slade.

He stood and walked over to the desk in his corner, absentmindedly flipping on the radio.

"Hi! You're listening to Bad News Jeff on 109.6, the Shock! We've got another non-stop Shock Box on the way, starting RIGHT NOOOOOOW!" A crushing guitar riff started and the song began. The Shock was a heavy metal radio station which Beast Boy occasionally put on, when he needed to drown out the audio in his own head. As the song played, he opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out an old shoe box, which was covered in a thin layer of dust, and the logo's plastered all over its outside were worn and faded, other than that it was in relatively good shape. It looked as if it held something heavy, for, indeed, it did. He dropped the box carefully onto the desk, tipping the lid off of it as he did. In the box were shards of glass, silver on one side and polished to a mirrorlike reflectiveness on the other. Picking one shard out of the box, Beast Boy held it carefully by the flat sides to make sure he didn't cut himself, and went back in the seat.

He sat, stared at the shard as his brow knit in deep thought, he felt fluid building in the corner of his eye, and tried to sniff it away. It was then, as he noticed the small dollop of Glue gun glue on one side of the glass shard, that the chorus of the song on the radio was played;

Save me from myself,

If you ever really cared!

Save me from myself,

And tell me you're not scared!

Beast Boy let the shard fall to the floor, and broke down into tears, holding his head in his hands.

6.

There was this flashing red light, one in every room of the tower, all of them going crazy, spinning and buzzing. It was the alarm, which meant that somewhere close, the was evil transpiring.

Robin awoke with a start, rolled out of his bed, and crashed onto the floor, dragging two sheets and one pillow along with him. For all the hero jazz he'd done, all the training he'd received, he was just horrible at waking up early.

Still half asleep, and cocooned in his bed dressings, Robin shook his head and looked at the clock on his dresser, it was 5 am, it was sleep time, not loud buzzing alarm time...someone was going to be in big trouble real, real soon. He kicked off the sheets and ran out of his door, meeting everyone else, all of them sharing similar stories of the last several minutes, in front of the immense view screen in the communications room of the tower. On it was the head of someone dressed in a white skull mask, and a dark, impossibly dark black robe. Everyone was gathered around, looking up at him, yawning and stretching. The only one who looked fully alert was Raven, who stood with her cloak wrapped around herself, and the hood of it up over her head, casting a shadow over the whole of her face. She stared at the view screen with its immense white skull, arms crossed and head tilted a little. When the head spoke, however, all of them immediately woke all the way up, and listened to the deep, growling, almost mechanical voice.

"I am the Reaper," it said. Its eyes began to glow a deep, ominous shade of red that made Starfire back up half a step. Robin moved next to her, looked into her eyes, and put a sympathetic hand on the small of her back, which gave her needed strength. Together, they looked back at the screen (Robin silently returning his hand to his side after a few moments, Starfire noticed but didn't voice her feelings of protest).

"I am about to do very bad things, unless someone tries to stop me." He spoke in a sarcastic tone, as if he fully expected the Titans to try to stop whatever it was he was going to do. The truth was, he did expect that, as any criminal in the city could expect it.

"Just tell us where you are, and we'd be happy to oblige," said Cyborg, with a heroic pump of the fist. He was standing beside Beast Boy, who was sporting unusually puffy, bloodshot eyes. Everyone thought they knew why, however, and never did ask him about it.

"Now, now," the head...The Reaper said. "What would the fun be in just telling you?" The screen went blank for a moment, then showed a panoramic view of the city, much like the one you might find on the roof of Titan Tower, but this was from the opposite side of the city, evidenced by the way the Tower slid into the background, behind the wall of buildings.

"In thirty minutes all of this, all you see, will be gone. The only way to stop it, is to come to the place where the earth met the earth, and became one. Hurry up now, my little kiddies, time's a wasting." The screen switched off with a loud click, leaving the room oddly empty and quiet. The Titans all started to look at each other with the same question on their minds, which could be summed up with a resounding 'what?'

"Ok...so that was different." Raven offered, more to break the silence amongst them than to say anything important.

"Where the earth met the earth?" Said Cyborg, a vexed look on his face.

"And became one..." said Robin.

Beast Boy was only half there for the conversation with the Reaper, but the riddle had caught his attention...earth met the earth? That sounded oddly topical given the situation. Immediately the word 'earth' reminded Beast Boy of Terra, and that sent a hot cramp to work on his gut, but didn't cloud his train of thought. Now, Terra was Latin for earth, which he knew only because Terra had told him once. After that, his train of thought took off, and quickly pulled into the answer station, and for once he had out thought the rest of the Titans, even Robin.

No one noticed Beast Boy as he walked with quick, confident strides towards the exit. He looked determined, he knew where he was going, and went to leave so fast he forgot to tell the group. Starfire turned to look at a sound she'd heard, which turned out to be one of his footfalls, and saw him leaving.

"Beast Boy, where are you going?"

"He said to go where the earth met the earth, and became one, right?"

"Yeah, and that means something to you?" Asked Raven in a tone of voice that was not well suited to the situation, as was her way. As usual her eyes conveyed more emotion than her voice ever could, but they were currently hard to see from under her hood.

"There's only one place where the earth and the earth ever met and became one," he said. "Terra's cave."

Without a word he continued out the door, as the rest of the Titans looked dumbly at each other. All of them wondered if he was right, and how he'd gotten to his perfectly logical conclusion so quickly.

"Well, you gotta admit, the description fits," Robin said after a few moments. The rest of the group tried to come up with some other explanation, but there simply wasn't one. Terra, it seemed, was the hot topic of the day, and about to get a whole lot hotter. They all headed towards the door.

They managed to catch up to Beast Boy only when he stopped in the garage, beside Cyborg's car. They all piled in, but Robin pulled Beast Boy aside when everyone had closed their doors, and put themselves out of earshot. Beast Boy had damp cheeks, he'd been crying again, and Robin couldn't blame him. He could only guess at how hard this all must be on him.

"That was pretty sharp man, you came up with the answer so fast Beast Boy, I'm impressed," Robin said, smiling genuinely, knowing that a genuine smile was something Beast Boy could have done with just then.

"Thanks...guess I've been thinking about her a lot lately...her name means 'earth', and now she is earth. It all just made sense."

"I'm sorry about this, all of this," Robin said. "I wish I could just go and get her out of that rock, but I think you know why I can't, why we all have to think about this."

Beast Boy bit back his initial response of a violent reaction, as he quickly decided it would have been largely inappropriate. He knew exactly what Robin was talking about, he hated to admit it, but he knew.

"Yeah, well, just know what my vote is going to be tomorrow, you can't change it."

"I hope you get what you want." Robin turned round and got into the passenger side seat, beside Cyborg. Beast Boy waited for a moment, with his back to the car, then got into on of the back seats, beside Raven.

"You ok?" she asked casually. Beast Boy turned to face her, eyes still rimmed with pink.

"No, not by a longshot."