"So Raven just takes off.", Beast Boy said. One would think Beast Boy had more issues than Time. He was sitting alone, on a picnic blanket. He was deep underground, in a volcanic flow tube. Aside from the single lantern he brought with him and a portable nightlight that had a bit of rock dust collecting on it, the cave was as dark as could be. If one didn't know better, one would have thought Beast Boy had travelled all this way to talk aloud to himself for no reason at all.
"I think she's gonna tell us she's going steady with this goth-guy soon.", he continued. He was sitting next to the statue of a girl. The girl wore a strange suit, designed to 'bring out the best' in her. Her goggles rested on her head above her hairline. But even these articles of clothing were stone. Everything about the statue was intricately detailed, right down to the wisps of straight hair that seemed caught in mid waft over her forehead.
"I hope something gets her in a good mood soon. Every memory I have of Raven is something bad happenning-Malchior, Nevermore, Wicked Scary..." Beast Boy had started coming down here regularly. He told himself it was for her-at first. He brought the nightlight, in case Terra didn't like the dark and could still see. He dusted her off every day...for two days straight. After that he had realized the question, what if he brushed too much off? He did still make sure to tell her statue about everything Robin's forensic analysis, Cyborg's inventivness, Raven's arcane research and even Starfire's recountings of different alien rumors in relation to restoring her.
"I, on the other hand, was in prime form that fight." Why Beast Boy really came down here for, even if he didn't admit to himself, is that Terra still could do one of the things for him he loved her for. Listen to him prattle on endlessly. Where everyone else found themselves annoyed, Terra would find herself enthralled. Terra spent so much of her life before travelling endlessly, restlessly. Yet she never found interest in it. Beast Boy could do nothing but sit in front of the TV for hours on end and have story to tell at the end of it.
"Ya see, the difference between an aardvark and an anteater is..." Long story short, Beast Boy was everything she wasn't. Terra, with her blonde locks and blue eyes, appeared as normal as anyone else while Beast Boy couldn't be mistaken for anything other than Beast Boy. Where the boy grew up living "la vida couch potato", Terra grew up running. Terra lived in constant fear her powers would give her one of many dismal fates (like the one she now suffered) whereas Beast Boy had a nigh innate control over his shifting, whether for pre-historia or even alien animals. Terra had consciously betrayed everyone she ever cared for, while even the Man Beast had protected his friends.
"So...", Beast Boy started. This was the uncomfortable part. "See you here tomorrow. Don't go anywhere." This always brought a tear to his eye and a lump to his throat. Rather than start the internal debate that would go nowhere, he abruptly turned. Beast Boy through everything but the lantern and the nightlight in his picnic basket. He hung the lantern around his neck. Shifting into a condor form, he grapsed the basket with his talons and flew away.
After a few moments, the Red X stepped out of the shadows.
"Beast Boy acts like he really cares about you...Terra, right?", the Red X pointed out. One of his gloved hands rested on the seat of her stone shorts. "But it's just an act. He needs a certain justification from you. His maid of honor-a focal point for his chivalry. After all, what use is being heroic if all it gains you is a regular beating? But what else is a shape changing, lounge about child going to do? School? A day job?"
"Of course not. So he does what he does for the payment he gets. He's surrounded by people living in worlds just as wierd as he is.", the Red X continued. By this time he was standing behind her and both his hands had found their way to her rocky breasts. "He gets to idolize someone wanting his heroic self conception. Even if it is a traitor that threatened the other friends."
"Do you see the classic double-think? His love for you is just cognitive dissonance-the mind game his brain plays with itself to justify his actions. The good news is that you weren't evil. The bad news is he isn't really righteous. Morality, high and low emotions-all are just a delusion bred from the marraige of the absolute terror of not being ensouled and the desire to be happy."
The Red X' hands travelled down to the front of Terra's corpse'...statue's shorts. "And I'm going to prove it. Even a strong willed mind would succumb to temptation over what it should do by any moral standards. It would even pretend that its actions are just as moral as ever."
"Do want to hear how? I mean, I am a supervillain. I have to tell some captive my sinister plan. And you won't tell anyone."
Terra's statue stood as motionless as the surrounding solid rock.
"I'll whisper it close enough that if you wake up from this, everytime your green admirer touches you you'll scream remembering me."