Teen Titans
Fragile Dreams

A/N - For whomever it was who asked; yes, Tara Markov is Terra's real name. I think I'm doing a terrible job of writing Starfire's dialect, so please forgive me. I just hope I'm keeping her in character. Anyway, the darkness from the last chapter continues here. This chapter is equally ominous, if not more so.

Disclaimer - Think about it. If I owned Teen Titans, I wouldn't need to be rewriting the show, now would I?

Fragile Dreams Chapter 12 – Only Impossible
Starfire looked around in awe. For a cave in the middle of the desert, she never would have predicted it would hold a quarter of the gadgets it had. Terra's home was cooled, and had computer facilities to rival the best Titan Tower could have offered. All the systems were meticulously maintained, and every system was running.

Starfire stopped her gawking and turned to face the woman behind her. She looked to be around 35, approaching middle age, but retaining all the beauty of youth. "So this is where friend Tara lives?"

Tara's blue eyes looked back at Star. "Yeah, you could say that. I'm pretty much the only protector of this city left. As you can see, it's a little too big a job to do alone, and I can only do so much." She looked to the ground sadly. "I won't mince words. I failed to protect Bloodhaven. I couldn't do it."

Starfire's fists clenched with anger as she spun back to the wall of computers. She walked over to a map of the city displayed on one screen. "This is to be our future?" She said, disheartened, in impotent fury.

"It's ok, Star. We'll get you back to your own time, and then this future will never happen. Warp's interference in the timeline will be undone." Tara told her, her soft eyes meeting Star's green ones.

Starfire's rage disappeared to be replaced with resignation. "It is not possible," she told her savior. "History cannot be mended, for history is not broken. It cannot be changed."

Tara's eyes twinkled. "So your telling me it's impossible?" Starfire nodded. "Well, that's a relief."

Starfire head unbowed, and she looked back up with confusion and a little touch of hope. "I do not understand you, friend…"

"Richard once told me that it was the job of the Titans to do the impossible." She said, wrapping her long hair around two fingers as she typed furiously with her other hand. "We'll consider this the last action of the Titans."

'Richard…' Starfire thought. "Friend Robin… what happened to him? What did friend Raven do?"

Starfire's new friend stopped typing, but still looked at the screen for a moment to recover. Tara turned back to the Tamaranian, and Star could see small tears in her eyes. "It's a long story Starfire. You had better sit down." The heroin raised her hands, and a small pillar of stone came up from the floor. Starfire sat, and prepared to hear the story.

"After you disappeared, the Titans quickly fell apart. Your vanishing act destroyed the feeling of invulnerability the team had developed. Once Warp gave them a startling reminder of their own mortality, petty differences and arguments quickly escalated until the team started to fracture under it's own weight."

"I joined the Titans shortly after you disappeared. I saw what was happening and so did Beast Boy, but we couldn't do anything to stop it. Robin and Cyborg stopped being able to stand each other, and they broke up the Titans. Cyborg stayed in the tower, and Robin left. When he left, Raven went with him. Beast Boy and I also went off together also. We had a relationship for a while, but…" Terra paused to wipe a tear from her face. "Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself."

"Robin and Raven lead the protection of Bludhaven for the next few years. They pair grew closer together, and they finally married three years after you disappeared." Starfire couldn't believe a word she was hearing, but didn't interrupt, and let Tara's story continue. "They were the ultimate team… No one could stop them. The pair forced Slade to flee the city, and for a while, Bludhaven was one of the safest cities in the world."

"Then he came."

Tara's voice broke as she finished that sentence, and she paused for a moment in a struggle to keep her composure. Starfire noted that, like everyone else she had met, this was a traumatic memory for her. Tara regained her voice, and continued. "Raven wasn't completely human, it turns out. She was the half demon offspring of Trigon."

Starfire's eyes widened at this declaration. Like anyone who knew about the state of being in the galaxy, she had heard of Trigon the Destroyer. The Lord of Hatred was one of the most evil and most powerful demons The universe had ever known. So far, he was bond to his own dimension, but only the constant attentions of the Justice League and Green Lantern Corps. had managed to keep him from finding a way to Earth.

"Details are unclear because no one ever managed to ask Raven about it, but it seems that daddy's little girl fled from him in her youth to Earth, looking for help fighting him. When she turned 20, Trigon finally found her, and apparently wanted to rule with his daughter at his side."

"Somehow, Trigon corrupted Raven completely from the inside," Tara continued. "The girl's emotions were always unstable… Trigon's corruption tore them apart and set them loose on the world. Raven turned on her former friends and became a servant of her father. She fought all of us… and Richard had to kill her."

"Friend Robin killed friend Raven?"

Tara's composure snapped, and she started crying freely. "Starfire, he didn't have a choice! She was too powerful to stop, even with the five remaining Titans trying. She was ripping the dimension apart with her powers, looking for a hole to let Trigon in. He had to. HE HAD TO!" She started sobbing harder, losing control of her voice. It was a few minutes before she finally recovered it. "He had to… she said softly.

Starfire was also crying, but trying valiantly to stay in control. "What happened after that?"

"Richard was haunted by being forced to kill the woman he loved. The other former Titans tried to help him, but he grew more distant from everyone with each passing day." Tara turned back to the computer screen, and resumed typing as she spoke. "Beast Boy didn't do much better. He grew bitter with Raven's betrayal. He always considered her a friend, and when she turned on him he took it harder than anyone would have guessed. It changed him, Star. After that, we sort of had a bad breakup. He hasn't spoken to me since." Tara tried very hard to hide the tears now streaming down her cheeks, but Star could still see them. Displaying an unusual amount of tact, she didn't call them to attention.

Star was lost in her own thoughts. 'Friends Robin and Raven… together?' This could not be so. Even more incredible was the story of Raven's fall and the final battle against her. 'If I were in friend Robin's place, would I have been able to do that?' Starfire doubted it, and she wasn't sure how that should make her feel. Her eyes reopened as a thought occurred to her. "Friend Tara… if the bad Raven was so mighty, how was Robin able to kill her?"

Tara froze again, visibly trying to contain her memories, before she continued typing. "That's the real question, isn't it? She didn't try to stop him. She essentially committed suicide."

Starfire was confused. "But if enough of our Raven was left to help us destroy her…"

"We know, Star. That is what haunts Richard, what keeps him up at night. That is why Cyborg doesn't want to even try to leave his tower and face the world. That is why BB has given up on the world, locking himself away from it. We're all tortured by the thought that somehow, there might have been another way. Somehow, we could have saved her." Tara paused, wiping her arm across her face. "Star, right before she died, the red in her eyes faded and they returned to normal… and she smiled at us. Our final memory of Raven isn't one of an enemy: It's one of a friend. A friend that we killed, that we couldn't save." Terra blinked twice, forcing the tears from her eyes. "And that is why I'll do anything to change the past and fix this future: Because I can't even stand to think that this is the way it needs to be." She turned to look at Starfire again, and for the first time, Star could see that the innocence in her eyes was forced. She projected that attitude of childlike, carefree happiness so she wouldn't have to think about how dark her world had become with the loss of Raven and Beast Boy. She had been affected as negatively as any of the others; she just put on a mask and refused to face it.

"Friend Tara… you truly loved him, did you not?"

Tara knew exactly what she was talking about without asking. "Yes. I did. As much as Robin and Raven were meant for each other, we were as well." The computer beeped, and Tara turned back to it. "Looks like I've found Warp. He's in the Wayne Enterprises Scientific Research Division, Eastern Bludhaven."

"But we cannot take the man alone."

"No, we can't." Tara held out a small, black device, which Starfire recognized instantly. "Would you like the honors?"

Starfire reached out, took the communicator, and recorded a small message into it. "Friends, this does not have to be our future. We do not need to separate, evil does not need to triumph, and our friend Raven does not need to perish. It was once the job of people such as we to do the impossible: I ask of you to accomplish the impossible one last time. Soon, Warp will escape to the future, and destiny will be sealed. This is not the way it should be. Please, help me… friends." Starfire triggered the device, and smiled as the copy on her own uniform began to pulse red and beep.

Garfield Logan never thought he'd hear that sound again. The pulsing noise continued as the balding Titan located his blinking communicator. Starfire's message played, and Changeling wept for the first time in years.
Victor Stone was kneeling, working on some piece of machinery, when his communicator started flashing. At first he ignored it, but when he heard Starfire's message, he couldn't pay it no mind for any longer. He started to head for the counter it was on, but the cable attaching him to his generator went taunt before he reached it. Cyborg growled, and pulled sharply on the chord, ripping it from his back.
Richard Grayson was writing up a proposal for Bruce when he heard a soft pulsing noise, followed by another just slightly out of sync. It was coming from behind the wall. A look of dread crossed his face, but he held back his tears. He pressed a button under the desk, and a panel on the wall popped open, beckoning Richard forward as he walked into his old command room.

Two of the old Teen Titan communicators lay blinking by the computer. As he stood listening to them beep, Starfire's voice started playing. 'Raven does not have to die.' Raven. Reluctantly, Richard looked over at where a faded cloak hung on the wall. Despite himself, he had always kept it even if he was afraid to ever look at it. 'Raven does not have to die. Raven does not have to die. Raven does not have to die…' It echoed in his head over and over, until he had to cup his hands over his hears to try and stop the dangerously loud echoes.

Almost unwillingly, Nightwing turned his head looked over at his suit, still hanging next to Raven's cloak.

Starfire and Tara burst into the science building, startling Warp as he worked on his regulator. "Sorry hon, but your time has just run out." Tara taunted, her eyes glowing gold as rocks went flying for the time traveler.

"You are beginning to annoy me now." Warp said, again raising his force field. The blond hero was waiting for this, and ripped the ground up from under him again. Warp redirected the force field to keep it from overloading, and Starfire struck. Warp recoiled in the explosion of energy as a green bolt blew one of his cannons right off. Warp gave a disgusted sigh. "You must insist on being a pain, mustn't you?" The villain threw disks that exploding in flashes. While the two heroines were forced to look away, Warp blew up one of the steel girders over them.

Starfire went down under the weight of the beams. "STAR!" Tara yelled, and raised her hands to call on the powers of the earth to clear away the debris, but caught a red energy blast soon after and went down as well.

"Silly girls." Warp turned back to where his table was, only to catch a sonic blast to his back and go flying. The two Titans looked back at the doorway they had entered through to see Cyborg standing there, his circuitry glowing with a full charge. He lowered his smoking cannon, blowing away the smoke from the top.

"Boo yah…" he whispered. He lowered his human hand and helped Tara and Starfire up. "Hello, Tara."

"Victor." She said, her eyes still blazing. "Nice to see you've finally decided to leave your generators behind and actually use a power cell."

Cyborg's human eye widened, "You knew?"

"Always did," she replied, smiling as she turned back to where Warp was getting back to his feet.

"So sorry… perhaps I should finish you first." Warp rose up to a combat position just in time to be hit from behind by a green blur as Changeling entered the fight. A tiger slashed him across the chest twice before he managed to raise his shield again, and then threw a disk at him that encased his attacker in a field of energy.

Tara lost it, her eyes and hands pulsing with golden energy. "Get Away From Him!" she screamed, biting out each word like a complete sentence. Her hair swirled about her face as if blown by a strong wind. The entire ground of the building started to rip free from its foundation, as Tara called on all the earth nearby the attack the force fields containing Changeling and protecting the time traveler. Both shields quickly overloaded, and the Titans charged.

Before they could reach him, the dark figure of Nightwing attacked from the shadows. Warp was backpedaling under heavy blows almost before he knew what was going on. Starfire looked on with a sort of mild amazement… this was the Robin she knew, only with what looked like 20 years more experience and training. He didn't fight like someone rusty from avoiding his talents for close to 15 years – he fought like a god of war who had nothing left to lose. Warp didn't stand a chance against the five Titans, and he knew it. "Perhaps we should continue this elsewhere?" he yelled, grabbing his regulator off the table and pointing his blaster to the roof. He blew a huge hole, and then boosters in his boots lit up and he soared out the window.

"Give to him the persuit, friends!" Starfire yelled, and made ready to fly after him. Nightwing grabbed onto her, and she held him around the waist as she took wing. Changeling turned into a pterodactyl and grabbed Cyborg, following Starfire out the door. Tara levitated a large chunk of rock from under her and followed her fellow Titans through the roof. The team pursued Warp all the way across Bloodhaven, flying at a breakneck pace. When he finally started to descend, Nightwing stiffened in her grasp. Before she could ask what was wrong, she was landing. Starfire let Nightwing go and looked around for Warp. Despite arrive just a moment before they had, he had disappeared. "Robin, where are we?"

He looked at her, hisface so obviously full of emotion that the mask couldn't completely contain it. "I should know," he said, staring to the left and slightly down. "I come here everyday. Bloodhaven Military Cemetery."

Starfire followed his gaze to a small stone with a trapezoidal slab on the bottom, even as every other Titan landed around her. There were flowers,very fresh, laying on the slab… Black orchids, as rare as they were expensive. The flowers partially obscured the words on the gravestone, but Star didn't need to really read them to know what the stone said. It read:

Here lies Raven Grayson
(1989-2009)
Teen Titan
the softly spoken words you gave me
even in death our love goes on
and i can't love you
anymore than i do…

Richard was barely managing to keep himself from crying, and now Star knew why. 'How dare the Warp take friend Robin here,' she thought, 'Has he not felt enough pain for this life?' The other Titans, one by one, locked their eyes on the tombstone. No one spoke: everyone was left alone with his or her thoughts. To complete the desolate scene, rain started to fall.

"Touching, isn't it," Warp's arrogant voice called out from somewhere in the darkness. "Your fallen teammate. How very appropriate that this will be the final resting place of the Teen Titans." With those final words, Warp flung handfuls on tiny grenades all over, and the Titans scattered with precise movents as they trackedthe attacks to the source and countered. Flashes of green and yellow lit up the night as Starfire and Taraunleashed their fury on this presumptuous thief. The reason for Warp choosing this battlefield was obvious: Richard and Garfield were frozen, lost in memory. However, this area's increased access to the Earth more made up fortheir absence as Tara attacked Warp with all the fury Raven could have offered him. Despite his many tricks, Warp was severely outmatched by the furious Titans, and he knew it.

Warp touched his chest, and a gateway opened up. He hefted the clock from the ground, holding it in his left hand. "I'm off to enjoy my future, Titans." Nightwing, however, wasn't about to let this sadistic criminal escape. In a grim parody of his last attempt to stop Warp's escape to another time twenty years ago, Richard finally unfroze himself and threw one of his birdarangs at Warp. The time traveling thief countered with a futuristic disk of his own. This time however, it was Nightwing's weapon which proved triumphant, and it impacted against Warp's chest with a shattering sound. The regulatorhad cracked. "No… NO!" Warp screamed, as he began to shrink. "This can't happen to me! This can't…" his voice, which had been getting higher and higher pitched as he spoke, finally cut off into silence. Cyborg pried the chest plate off of his armor to reveal a baby inside… Warp.

"The portal is closing!" Changeling yelled, and Cyborg wasted no time taking the damaged regulator from the armor and affixing it to his arm cannon. A quick reprogramming job, and he fired it into the gateway, keeping it open.

"It's set to return you to your own time, Star. Time for us to say good bye." Cyborg said as he gave her a little smile.

Starfire looked around for Nightwing, but couldn't see him. She did, however, see Changeling and Tara awkwardly looking at each other. "Gar." Tara said, her voice almost cracking.

Garfield wasn't in much better shape. "Tara…" After he spoke, the two stared at each other for a few seconds longer, then stepped closer and fell into a warm embrace… the kind shared by two lovers who had been apart far too long.

"Starfire." Nightwing's voice called out from behind her, and she turned. The pair stood, looking into each other's face, for several long seconds. Neither knew what to say to the other. Finally, Nightwing removed his mask, and he was just Richard again. "I need to ask a favor of you, Star."

"You wish me to carry a warning into the past for you?" Starfire asked. It was the obvious choice, but it made her uncomfortable and filled her with dread. She did not want to denounce her friend Raven. To her surprise and vague relief, he shook his head no.

"No Star. I want to ask you specifically to not to."

Starfire, although relieved, was very confused. "I do not understand, friend. Is not what happened in this time preventable with warning?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. I do not believe Warp was right, and the future can never be changed. Perhaps it is Raven's destiny to serve her father, and perhaps destiny doesn't exist. It doesn't matter." He paused as he collected his thoughts, and tried to put them into words. "Star, before Raven died, she showed me her eyes one last time. I saw in them everything she'd ever felt for me. If you had asked me when we met earlier today if I wanted a warning in the past, I would have said yes. I would have been wrong. I realize now that even with all the pain and suffering, every hurt I had to take… if I could do it all again, I would still love her the same way."

Starfire's heart fell a little with those words, but she found herself more accepting of them than she would have thought. "So, you feel that friend Raven and yourself truly were made for one another?"

"Yes, Star. I'm sorry."

"It is… expected." She said, and she was only half lying. Turning away, she headed for the portal clutching the clock, and with one last gaze back at her friends she disappeared back to her past. Nightwing's last words floated through the portal at her.

"Just don't give up on her…"

Starfire materialized mere seconds after she had vanished, still in the museum and still clutching the clock. The Titans all looked towards her and stared, but she was lost in her own thoughts as the fact that she had the clock registered. She stared down at it as though it were the greatest object in the world. "History said it disappeared…" she said softly to herself, "but history was wrong."

Several hours later, Starfire had finished reciting her story and Raven had repaired the necklaces for the celebration of Blorthog. Telling the story had been difficult, but she had managed to tell a very un-detailed version. She was uncomfortable telling such half-truths to her friends, but not as much so as she believed she would be. Sometime in the course of her trials in the future, Starfire had come to understand the concept of a white lie.

Starfire remained seated on the couch long after the celebration had ended and everyone had gone to bed, lost in her thoughts. She was startled out of her reverie when the object of her consideration, a certain dark empath, sat down across from her on the couch. "Starfire…" she started, and it looked like she was gnawing on her lip nervously. Starfire tried to keep emotion from her face, but it was very hard. She would probably never be able to look at friend Raven quite the same again. "I couldn't help but notice that I never appeared in your story."

Starfire wanted to hit herself. 'How could I be so foolish?' she thought as she realized there was a difference between being able to tell a lie and being good at it. As Star tried to come up with a suitable explanation, Raven continued.

"Star… I need to know." Starfire wasn't good at concealing her emotions, and she knew that she was probably broadcasting everything Raven would want to know straight into her friend's empathy, whether the girl was trying to read her or not. Raven's face fell. "I was dead," she said, and it was a statement, not a question. One look into Star's eyes, and Raven knew everything.

The two looked into each other eyes in uncomfortable silence for several minutes, hazel meeting amethyst as each tried to consider what this meant. Raven was the first to speak. "Are we still friends, Star?"

"Yes, friend Raven, we are." That, Starfire knew, was the one thing between them that had not changed. After the events of today, it would probably never change.

Raven got up without a word, and walked to the door. As it opened before her, she turned her head just slightly back towards Star. "Thank you." She said, and was gone.

'Thank you for what?' Star thought. 'Being your friend? Not telling the others? Or for being honest with you?' Probably a mix of all three. As the alien girl watched her dark friend depart, she thought to the clock locked in the Titan's evidence room. 'History said it disappeared, and history was wrong,' she considered, 'which proves that Warp was wrong, and history can be changed. But can a destiny?'

Star hoped so.

End Chapter 12
A/N Ok, next chapter won't be quite so depressing, I promise. It will actually have a little fluff in it... nice change after this... exceedingly dark future. All I have to say is: How's THAT for foreshadowing? duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. The reason for Raven being buried in a military cemetary is that in the comics, Terra's was "buried" (empty casket) as a Titan in a military funeral... it made sense Raven's death would match.

Next time on Teen Titans: Fragile Dreams –

-Well… a LOT happens
-The Titans get a new member… someone Starfire thinks is very familiar
-Slade is back, with new plans for the team
-Raven finally confronts her gold-cloaked emotion
-2 perspectives I haven't used before!
-More Robin/Raven in real time. About time we got back to that!

Next Episode – Terra