"The only reason for your existence, Terra, is suffering"
- Slade
A girl runs through the desert.
She is being chased by a man she used to know, but never thought she would see again. A man who controlled her; corrupted her. A man who forced her to get away and find herself.
She knows that she can not go on for much longer. This man has been chasing her for forty-eight miles. She is exhausted. Her clothes are drenched in sweat; it drips off her skin, like she has been in the rain. However, it is not raining; it is a sunny August afternoon. In the distance, she can see Jump City. Her salvation.
Behind her, she hears an engine being pushed. Gunfire. The man is shooting at her. She dodges and somersaults forward, bullets narrowly missing her head. She's getting dizzy now, knowing that she could collapse at any moment. She had run out of food four days previous. Her blood sugar is dangerously low; she had checked it herself earlier in the day. She feels faint, but sees the city in the distance. On the outskirts, a tower. A tower where she was accustomed to staying in. The tower is her only hope. The tower is her home.
There are others at the tower, as well. Others who want to help. She knew all their names, yet referred to them as their aliases, not only to keep their identities out of the public's eye, but in a sense of camaraderie.
There is one she loved there. The curious green-skinned shapeshifter. Everyone affectionately calls him "Beast Boy", but his real name is Garfield Logan. He had lost his parents. He had lost this girl, but she had been revived.
He has not seen her for five months. Five long, painful months where the only communication they had was over a communicator. She left this place five months ago, because she needed to get away. She did get away - to Gotham City, across the country. While there, she had undergone intense medical care and several psychiatric evaluations. Her body and mind alike were weak and frail when she left, and it was all because of this man chasing her.
She thought she had destroyed this man. She thought she had destroyed this man when she buried him in an avalanche of rocks five months ago.
This girl is not normal. She controls the earth. She is a geomancer, if you will. She knows this, running fast as she can, trying to get to the tower desperately before she is shot by the man chasing her.
She is on foot, and the man chasing her is in a jeep. She knows that he could easily catch up to her if he wanted to, yet he does not. To her, all of it is mind games.
Mind games he played before that left her doubting her sanity. This man had left her crippled, both emotionally and physically. She swore revenge, and she thought she had it.
There was a time ago when she served this man. When he had manipulated her; made her see things from the other side. A fantasy, if you will. A harsh, dark fantasy. She had managed to survive, but not without paying a price: she had fallen into a coma, entombed in a stone statue for four months. She was alive, and even before, she thought he was not. She thought she had destroyed him then, too; not often does one survive a fall into lava. However, he came back. He came back to torture and torment her.
The others had helped her survive. The others. She had heard that there were more of them now. Four new members. She knew about Robin - Timothy Drake, martial-arts master trained by Batman. Starfire - Koriand'r, princess of the planet Tameran. Cyborg - Victor Stone, a promising athlete whom, after a tragic freak accident, was rebuilt into a half-human, half-machine hybrid. Raven, the one most like her - the daughter of the demonic Trigon. She did not know the identities of the new members.
She had hoped tomorrow would have been a joyous occasion; when she had finally returned home, feeling better than ever before.
She gasps for breath. She begins thinking that she is not going to make it. The world is spinning around her, but she can still see the tower; a beacon of hope in the darkness. A bullet misses her head by inches, bringing her back to reality. It's only another mile. She feels the need to remind herself of why she has to get there. Something painfully clips her in the side. Has she been shot? She does not know. The adrenaline numbs the pain.
These are all people she used to know. The man chasing her knows this. He also knows what incredible, untapped power she possesses. He used her as his puppet, and he has been craving her power ever since. He knew that she was going to return. He made sure to be waiting for her, because he wants to capture and destroy her. She is only human; he knows she can not take much more. Her appearance has changed slightly, but he knows that it is still her; her cold blue eyes, soft and frightened as she looks over her shoulder at him, verifies the fact. He knows that his chance to take her gets slimmer with every passing moment.
Half a mile now. Her clothing sticks to her skin. A small gust of wind blows her hair out of her face. Her vision begins to fade. She is so close, yet she thinks - no, knows - that she will not make it. This saddens her. Her legs give out from under her. She falls forward, and struggles to get back up. The ground is so warm. She hears the engine of the jeep stop. Footsteps. Defiantly, she tries to crawl forward, but she is too weak to move. She struggles to keep her eyes open. So close. The back of her throat stings; she feels as if her lungs are on fire. The man steps on her throat. It's getting hard for her to breathe. She thinks she is going to die. Her head pounds.
Suddenly, an explosion. The jeep has gone up in flames. The man falls to the side, arms flailing wildly. A green bear charges the man. She gasps for air, and realizes the futility. She passes out. Explosions occur around the man, and he is driven back. The man disappears in a display of fire. The bear shifts into another form, this one more human. This new form walks over to her, passed out and laying on the warm ground in the hot sun. Sweat drips down her cheeks and off her hair. The form feels conflicted. It feels great joy for seeing her, but deep regret that she had to re-enter its life under these circumstances. She has a pained look on her face, trying to run from her nightmares. The form scoops her up in its arms, and it and the rest - the nine of them - walk back to the tower.
She wakes up, startled. She slowly looks around. She seems to be in familiar surroundings, but she can not determine where. Her head is still burning. She squints to try and reduce some of the pain. She remembers her side, and looks. A blood-stained bandage. Her head is throbbing now. She tries to get up, but she can't. She pulls back the blankets and tries her hardest to sit, but she finds that she cannot. She begins to panic. She is scared. She thinks she sees a flash of fire in the corner, but then it is gone. She begins to feel sick. She clutches her stomach. She tries to shout, but no sound comes out. The room suddenly lights on fire. She tries to scream, but again, no sound comes out. She knows she's going to die.
She wakes up, sweaty and panicking. It was just a dream, she tells herself. She reaches down to feel her side. To her horror, the same bandage that was in her dream is there. A wave of fear washes over her. She checks over her body for burn marks, but there are none. There is something, though. A rash, running down the small of her back. Sunlight streams through the window, warming her feet. She tries to move, and much to her relief, she is able to. She walks to the bathroom, wondering where everyone is. She takes off her clothing and gets in the shower, turning the water on as she does so. She places her head against the cold tile; she's now experiencing a numbing sensation. She washes and dries herself off. She's in the only place in the tower without monitoring equipment; isolated and alone. She walks back to her room and changes, selecting some of the new clothing she had bought herself in Gotham: a short pair of blue jeans (although, in this heat, she'd be crazy to wear them), and a pink white-striped tee-shirt that reveals the lower part of her midriff. She looks around her room. She knows it is her room, remembering. So much pain had taken place here, and now that the man was back, she'd have to be careful. The only thing that bothered her was questioning if the man really left to begin with. She walks out to the main room. So many memories. She looks around; no note or anything. She supposes they were not expecting her to awaken. This does not surprise her.
She moves over to the refrigerator, looking for something to eat. She subconcsiouly scratches her arm, and notices there is a red liquid on her fingernails: blood. She looks at her arm, covered in blood, dripping it. Is it her blood? She does not know, but she does not feel weaker. The blood somehow shifts down her arm, towards her hand. She is frightened, but has to remind herself to stay calm and focused. The mind games the man played before taught her to do that. She turns around to try and find something to clean up, and stops. The water outside has turned to lava; the city destroyed. She feels compelled to scream, but does not.
"You shouldn't have come back."
She looks around, startled. A black aura envelops the room, and someone stands before her. Someone she used to know.
"Raven?" She asks. The figure nods. She notices a change in Raven; a miniscule change, but a change nonetheless. Raven has grown her hair down. "What is this? Where are the others!" She feels herself begin to slip into fear.
"They're all safe, in the real world. This is just a vision." Raven replies, calmly. "None of this is real. Calm down, and I'll explain." She tries her best to calm herself down. The blood on her arm seeps into her skin, which frightens her, but she forces herself to stay calm. "Trigon, my father, is trying to take over the world. He tried to use me to help him, but I resisted. I'm afraid that now, he's come after you." She merely stares at Raven, wide-eyed in horror. "This is all in your head. The others are trying to bring you back." She doesn't understand this.
"If this is in my mind, why are you here?" Raven smirks at the question.
"Let's just say I've learned a few new tricks since you've been away. We all have." She closes her eyes, and opens them again. She's still there, but Raven is gone. She suddenly begins to feel very weak. She recognizes this as the attempt to bring her back to reality. She slips into unconsciousness.
"She's waking up." She opens her eyes. Everything is a blur, but her vision adjusts. There are three people looming over her: Raven, and two others she recognizes. Robin and Cyborg. Tim and Vic. Her friends.
"So, how are you feeling?" Cyborg asks, concernedly. Robin hands her an ice pack, which she holds against her head.
"What happened?" She asks, confusedly. "Here, I mean. Rae made everything else clear." She glances at Raven, who nods.
"You wore yourself out. You know you shouldn't have overexerted yourself so soon after surgery, especially heart surgery. Never go that long again without eating, too. You almost died."
"Wouldn't be the first time." She replies, which gets a chuckle from everyone in the room.
"Oh, one more thing." Cyborg adds. "I raised your glucose levels back to their normal limit. You should be glad we found you when we did."
""I am." She replies, somberly. She was going to add the part about the man chasing her, but they already knew it. "Rae and I need to talk."
"Of course." Robin responds, suspiciously. He and Cyborg leave the room, leaving her and Raven.
"I like what you've done with your hair." Raven blushes.
"Thanks. So, what do we need to talk about?"
"Rae, you're the one who's most like me. That makes you understand me more than anyone else. Well, except maybe Gar. Before you woke me up out of that vision, I woke up out of another dream. It just makes no sense."
"You're feeling stressed and insecure, and also disappointed that your return didn't go the way you planned. Show me your arm."
"Why?"
"I need to see something." She complies, holding out her arm - the arm that was soaked with blood in her vision - to Raven. Raven gasps.
"What's wrong?" Raven shows her what she gasped at: a small, red mark located on her vein.
"Do you have any other physical marks?"
"I have a rash on my back."
"When did you notice?"
"In a dream."
"Let me see it." She lifts her shirt up a bit. She feels Raven's cold hands on her back. "It's not important. It'll go away. What was your first dream about?"
"I was... in my room. I couldn't move my legs. The room lit on fire."
"You've been marked."
"Marked?"
"I need you to, from now on, not show any fear or anger. The stakes are too high. Besides, you and I are of a kind: we have tremendous power, but don't fully understand how to use it yet. When's your birthday?"
"Um... next week"
"How old will you be?"
"Fifteen." Raven sighed. Whether it was of sadness or relief, she couldn't tell. Raven began to walk towards the door.
"Come on. I know Gar wants to see you, but... just one other thing. No one else can know about this, and any physical changes you make to yourself when you dream will be evident in reality. If you start to feel dizzy or tired in any way, come see me. We'll need to rely on each other for what's coming up."
"Wait, you mean... I was actually bleeding? She asks. Raven nods, and walks out of the room. She follows, close behind. The two walk out to the main room, where everyone is waiting. She's able to scope out the four new members: two males, two females. There is one there, though, who has missed her for longer than she can imagine, and she has missed him, as well. There is another she used to know, too. Starfire.
"Oh, friend, it is good to see that you have returned!" Starfire exclaims, entrapping her in a loving embrace.
"Good to see you too, Kory." She replies. "So, what did I miss while I was away?"
"Vic was able to put away Brother Blood." The younger male, sitting down on the couch, says. In the next second, he's standing beside her. He extends a hand. "I'm Bart Allen. Kid Flash." She shakes his hand enthusiastically. "That, over there," - Kid Flash points to a female, looking not much older than she herself - "is Cassie Sandsmark. Wonder Girl." Kid Flash speeds over to where the other two are sitting. "These two are Kara Zor-El and Kon-El, or, if you prefer, Kara and Conner. Supergirl and Superboy, respectively."
"Good to see you've expanded the roster a bit, Tim," she mentions, "but what about the Titans East?"
"Are you kidding me?" Cyborg asks, laughing. "Speedy and Bumblebee are always busy. Busier than us. There's been a crime spike in Steel City." She's beginning to feel anxious. She feels a pulling at the back of her mind, and looks over at Raven. Raven's eyes are locked onto her, and they make her feel eerily calm. Her slowing heartbeat becomes audiable, but no one else seems to notice. It slows... and slows... and stops. She shuts her eyes, bracing herself, but she feels something touch her shoulder. She opens her eyes to see Raven standing beside her, looking concerned.
"As long as you are in this tower, you are safe. I'll help you keep your emotions in check. Nothing bad will happen, alright?" She nods. "I'll try to make sure nothing physically bad happens to you, either, but if it does, expect myself and Vic to help you." She understands this, and nods again.
"This is worse than what happened with... him before, isn't it?" She asks. Raven looks at her feet.
"Yes. I sense no change in your mind. What did they tell you about it?"
"Nothing. They said I was fine. No drugs, no explaination."
"That makes no sense. You're not fine."
"I'm as confused as you are."
"What did they do there?"
"They kept me trapped six days of the week, drugged and under constant observation. I think they were trying to steal my powers, and I think they succeeded."
"You can't just take powers away."
"I can't use mine anymore. I haven't been able to since my heart surgery. It makes no sense." She senses someone approaching. It's the one she loves. He extends his arms, and they embrace.
"Gar!" She exclaims.
"Welcome home," Beast Boy replies, enthusiastically, "Terra."
