Disclaimer: Yep. I don't. Wanna trade for them? I have chocolate...

But Home Was No Where

There was nothing.

Nothing but smoldering ruins, bloody corpses and the dark sky, overlapping everything and making Starfire shudder.

Tears streaming down her face she looked around, hoping, somehow hoping...

But there was nothing.

She hiccuped, and tried to fly over the body of her friends, only to find that she could not think of the happy thoughts she had previously needed to achieve her joyous flight.

Crumpling on the ground the alien princess began to cry in earnest, grieving for everything that she had lost.

Her home.

Her friends.

Her boy...

All of them were gone, like the citizens they had sworn to protect. She had managed to find a few of them. Beast Boy's lifeless, limp corpse, laying by the statue of Terra. Cyborg, wires and chips shattered and clipped, heaped underneath what used to be the Pizza Joint.

Robin... he had been out by a local primary school when it had happened. He had thought he had successfully evacuated the grounds, when he had seen a small girl huddled in one of the classrooms. He had gone to get her, when the first wave of explosions wrecked the city, taking both him and child out.

Starfire had not been able to find any clear pieces of him left.

And then there was friend Raven. She had been out by the ocean, patrolling the area, looking for the bombs that would destroy everything they had known. All Starfire knew now, was that her dear friend was now floating along the bottom of the river with everyone else.

What was she to do now? The bombs that had annihilated Jump City had also covered the rest of Earth. As far as she knew, there was no one but her left.

No one, but her and her memories.

But how did she survive? She had helping a local orphanage, when everything happened. All she could remember were the children, and their crying. And the heat, scoring, like the flambus nahbar of her home planet. And then the terrible, cold darkness...

When she had awoken, she was on this plain of wasted land that used to be her City. That used to be her home.

There was a crunch of feet behind her, and Starfire turned, defeated. When she saw who it was however, she gave a gasp. "Friend Raven!"

Raven smiled, a real one, and held out her hand. Starfire didn't notice how her dark cape was flapping out behind her like a pair of makeshift wings, or how the normally pale girl was now glowing like the healing light she used to use. To Starfire, she was a glorious as the Nimbur Flavneck.

"Friend Raven! I am so happy to see you! I thought that you had perished, like... like the others..."

Shaking her head slightly, Raven said, "Star, there's something that you must understand. I'm not alive, Star. I died, like the others." Here she gave a crooked smile at the alien girl's horror stricken face. "It's not that bad, I promise. You see Star, the only reason I'm here, is to show you the way home..."

"The way home?" Starfire whispered timidly. "I do not understand..."

The light around Raven grew brighter as the Goth came closer, still holding out her hand. Swearing she could hear the others voices coming from the light, Starfire glanced at Raven in confusion. "Starfire," She explained gently, "The reason I'm here, is because you died too"

Had she... passed on from this life as well? Looking down at her normally golden hands, Starfire realized with a jolt that she could see the scratchy earth through them like the transparent creatures in the films of horror the others used to watch.

"I am... dead?" She whispered fearfully.

Raven just smiled. "Yes Star. But I've come to take you home"

"NO!" Starfire cried, pushing herself away from the light of her friend. "No! This was my home! This was!"

In concern, Raven reached out to her. "Starfire..."

"NO! I will not leave!" And crying, Starfire ran as fast as she could, ignoring her friend's desperate cries. She would go home, she would.

Stumbling, tripping, she carried on, ignoring the voice of reason in her head that was telling her the one truth she refused to believe.

Home was no-where.

Story behind the Story: The title and the general concept was inspired by the track ...but home was no-where by AFI. Check it out sometime.