Cognitive Dissonance

Chapter Four: False Dilemma

Terra was naked.

Some people had absolutely no problem with waltzing around without any clothes on, but Terra wasn't one of them. She didn't like her body and didn't want anyone to see it. She didn't even want to see it. So when Terra undressed to take a shower, she did it mechanically, quickly, looking at herself as little as possible—and when she did have to look, she tried to be objective, an outside observer who didn't really have to live in her skin. Terra stepped out of her green sweatpants, kicked them to the floor in a heap. A flick of her wrist and water started dribbling out of the shower head, slowly at first until she found the correct setting. Cold water was disgusting, and Terra refused to deal with it. When she'd lived in the desert, there hadn't been much opportunity to shower, but Terra would take being dirty over enduring cold water any day of the week.

Reaching for the shampoo, Terra tried not to think about the fact that she was naked. But whenever you told yourself not to think about something, you always ended up thinking about it even more, of course, so that didn't really work. She tried to focus on the shower caddies instead. The other girls had one each, suctioned to the wall, one beside the other. Starfire's was hot pink. Because no one had had a chance to really go shopping since Terra had joined, she'd been offered the use of everybody else's stuff. Even so, Terra tried not to take much of it, because Raven was just starting to like her and she didn't want to mess all of that up. It wasn't like she needed the razors or shaving cream or anything, anyway—though, more than once, she'd had to suppress the desire to try them out.

Looking at all the stuff that she didn't know how to use reminded Terra that Raven and Starfire were older. Well, not so much older: a year, maybe two. But it might as well have been ten years. It made her feel…inferior, or something. Terra covered her body with soap so she wouldn't have to look at it.

It had been six days. Six days since she'd last seen him. If something didn't happen soon, Terra was going to go crazy. She had been trying, really she had, because she did not want to know what would happen if she failed him twice in a row. Her heartbeat stuttered unevenly, steam collecting in little beads around her shoulders.

She hadn't talked to him, hadn't exchanged so much as an email, but he was always there. Sometimes she was sure, just sure, that she could feel his eye watching her fall asleep at night. And then, she'd shudder and pull the covers over her head, fighting a battle between the rational part of her brain and something else, something that wanted him to watch her, wanted him to…something.

He had a nice name. It was smooth and slick on her tongue when she whispered it to herself, trying to see how publicly she could do it without being discovered; a shameful, secret game. His name could do unexplained things, like some kind of hex. And it ensured that he was always there, just under the tip of her tongue. Even when Terra was naked.

Especially when Terra was naked.

Bar of soap slipping from her hand, her stomach got heavy and she almost fell over when she realized what she'd done. Even so, she stared at it for a few seconds, in delicious horror, reading the thing she'd written in loopy, cursive soap bubbles.

Just one name. His name.

Hands hastily wiped at the light blue tiles, even though it was only soap and soap didn't condemn you, didn't make you a bad person, didn't… She breathed deeply, trying to swallow…and fought a terrifying need to write his name somewhere else, with something more permanent than soap. The hot water trickled down her back and it suddenly felt either frightening or dirty: Terra wasn't sure which, wondered if maybe it was both. Gulp down another breath, turn around and twist the faucet in the other direction, all the way to cold, ice-cold.

She stood that way for a long time, eyes closed, the freezing water seeping into her hair, her ears, down the tips of her fingers, down, down until that awful, tingly feeling went away.

The hairbrush caught on a blonde snarl that Terra had to untangle with her fingers. Her hair had looked much better in the past few weeks and it didn't fall out in little, lifeless clumps anymore—Terra wasn't sure why, but Robin had said something about it having to do with iron and protein, and that she'd better start eating right or she was going to get in big trouble. Of course, eating wasn't exactly a huge demand (Terra adored food) but she didn't like all the gross vitamins he made her take. She figured that if she didn't do it, though, he'd probably make her run on that awful treadmill until she fell over. After a week of practice, she decided that she hated running, but at least she could go for ten minutes without stopping, now. Truthfully, what she really wanted to use in the gym were the weights. They looked shiny. Robin still wouldn't let her touch them.

Squeezing some more water out of her hair, Terra wondered if she should go brush her teeth. Then she wondered if she was just trying to think of ways to get out of doing the thing that she had to do.

A careful glance over at her sock drawer, where she'd hidden the folder with the instructions. Sure, she was supposed to burn it—but she hadn't finished with it yet, so it was okay. Besides, how in the world was she going to burn it, anyway? Terra had no idea if there were even any matches in the Tower. Well, Raven probably had some, for her candles, but the day Terra knocked on her door to ask for something would be the day Terra lost the ability to eat solid food.

Six days. Six days, and he hadn't written. He would be contacting her soon, and then what would she say to him? And his voice would get that cool, muted viciousness to it, that undertone that she hated, the one that hinted at all the things he could do. He never did them, of course, not to her. But, all the same, he could. Terra liked him better the way he was most of the time, when she was being good.

So she had to be good. Had to go get that…stuff…for him.

Terra opened the sock drawer, digging way down to the bottom until she found it. She had almost hoped that it would have disappeared. Hesitant fingers pulled out the papers she needed, skimming them briefly before hiding them down her shirt. For some reason, that seemed like a suitable place to put them, given where they had come from.

Closing the door carefully behind her, Terra padded down the hallway, trying not to look suspicious.

The only constant about evenings with the Titans was their unpredictability. It was impossible to tell whether any given night would involve shouting matches, video game tournaments, very inappropriate pranks, something else entirely or all of the above. Sometimes, the whole place was utterly silent by eight o'clock, with everyone either going to bed or collapsing on the couch or finding a quiet place to think. This usually happened after really tough battles, and it was always a bit unsettling for Terra, though Beast Boy had told her that it was worse whenever somebody got hurt. Terra hadn't seen anyone get hurt yet. She didn't want to. Superheroes didn't get hurt—it was practically a law.

Tonight was fairly informal and not unusually noisy, but definitely not that disconcerting, bittersweet quiet that Terra didn't like. She could hear voices coming from the living room—they were playing a card game, she thought.

Well, nobody knew she was out of the shower. They wouldn't miss her.

She got a little lost trying to find the right place because she hadn't had a reason to ever come down here before, of course. It wasn't hard to remember, though, mostly because of who had shown her.

His open, trusting face. Big smile. "And then through there is the main computer, but don't bother going in there because Cy is the only one who has a clue how it works. Well, I guess maybe Robin might, but anyway!..."

Terra didn't even like computers.

The door was open when she tried it, and that almost made her laugh—almost made her feel better, even, because if they didn't want somebody to steal their security, maybe they wouldn't have left the door unlocked. They were practically asking for it, really.

Of course, they probably weren't expecting one of their teammates to sneak in and…

The door closed behind her with a woosh, and she found herself in total darkness. Terra wondered in a brief panic whether she had opened the wrong door (Oh god, oh god, I'm in Raven's room; she's going to rip out my intestines…). But then, her hands found the button that turned on a milky, overhead light. The room was dimly lit; there was certainly a way to adjust the brightness, but it was beyond Terra. It was definitely the computer room, though. There were at least ten of them, lined up one right next to the other—unless they were all one big computer, linked together, or something. Didn't really matter.

Cold hands reached into her shirt and pulled out the papers, trying to read quickly. She had read them several times before, consoling herself with the idea that they would make more sense when she actually had the computer in front of her. But of course, nothing made any more sense. Great.

She touched the large button on one of the monitors, waiting for it to load, thinking about how this would make a great spy movie. An image with a lot of boxes and buttons flashed onto the screen, glowing menacingly. Terra consulted the papers, flipped through to the right page. They had gotten all crumpled up from being in her shirt.

Most of it looked harmless, mundane; a large portion of the options looked suspiciously like games, almost certainly installed by Cyborg. She ignored them, regretfully. Another glance at the paper. Right. She needed this one, here.

The computer screen was instantly a lot less friendly and even more complicated, if that was possible. Numbers and symbols and all sorts of things that she didn't understand. But Terra wasn't just here to look at it. There was stuff in there that he needed, and she had to put it all on a disk and bring it to him. She was also supposed to disable a few firewalls. Personally, Terra thought that was pretty useless. It would take Robin about six and a half seconds to get them back up.

Okay. According to the papers, if she used her security signature, she would be able to get in.

Access denied.

Terra gulped, leafing nervously through the instructions, reading them again. No, she hadn't made a mistake. That was definitely what she was supposed to do. She tried again. The computer beeped an error message at her, chirping smugly. She hit the keyboard with her fist and tried again. The computer didn't change its mind.

This was bad. Really, really bad. He had said that his instructions would tell her everything she needed. He'd promised. Had he sent her into this, knowing that she wouldn't be able to do it?

A few more tries. The only thing that kept her from screaming was the vague hallucination that she could hear footsteps outside in the hallway.

Wait. Not a hallucination. Real. Somebody was coming, and they weren't going to be happy if they saw what she was trying to do. Terra turned back to the computer, fitfully closing windows and turning off buttons. Did everyone want to keep her from being good tonight?

The high-pitched beeping noise outside indicated that someone was entering an access code. No time to hide, definitely no time to get out. Terra did the only thing that came to mind: turned back to the computer, pulled up the game closest to her mouse, and pretended to be very, very busy with it.

She didn't see the door open because her eyes were glued to the computer screen, some game with a mouse and a lot of ladders. It had silly music. Figures that she'd pick the most retarded game of the bunch. Her heart felt like it was going to implode on itself, but she took a deep breath, schooled her expression into something that resembled composure. One thing about Terra: she was the best actress that she knew.

"Oh, hey, I didn't know you were down here!"

Terra jumped, but then realized who it was. The sickness in her stomach immediately began to subside, like soaking up sauce with a piece of bread. "Hey, Beast Boy," she said pleasantly, twisting around in her seat. "What's up?"

"Umm, nothing much. Boy Wonder just sent me down here to check something, is all." He noticed the computer screen and wrinkled his nose. "Woah, that game is ancient. Why the heck do we still have it? And why the heck do you want to play it?"

"I thought the mouse was cute," said Terra with an easy shrug. "I didn't know where you guys were, so I got bored and decided to find some cool games, or whatever." Sometimes, she didn't know where the lies popped out of—they always sounded better than the truth. Even when the truth wouldn't get her disemboweled by Robin and Raven.

"Oh, I guess you didn't know: we're upstairs, doing something really lame and really complicated that I don't remember the name of, and it involves cards—but it was Raven's idea so I guess that explains it." He paused. "And besides, Robin's whining about being sick, so you didn't really miss anything."

"Sick? That's too bad," said Terra, though she couldn't suppress a rebellious, half-cruel feeling of joy. This meant almost-probably no more running for at least a few days. Maybe it was contagious: that would mean definitely no more running.

Beast Boy nodded. "Yeah, so I have to be his slave, of course. Cy told him not to come down here and get germs on the computers, and all that stuff."

"What did he want with the computers?" Terra asked slowly, squeezing all the anxiety out of her voice.

"Dunno," said Beast Boy, glancing over Terra's shoulder at the game. The little mouse tried to vault over a hole in the platform, missed, and plummeted back down to the first level. "I think he was just being all paranoid. 'Cos, you know, Slade's down here right now trying to swipe all of our security." He leaned against the back of Terra's chair and rolled his eyes.

His name made her throat close up in a very uncomfortable way. Terra giggled, hoping that she didn't sound nervous. "Umm, yeah, well, if I see him, I'll tell him that Robin misses him so much." Right—so he was being paranoid…that had to be it. Robin was incredibly smart but Raven was the only one who did the freaky mind-reading thing. Terra hoped.

"Oh, he totally does. If Slade's not causing trouble, there's nobody to obsess over." He seemed to consider that for a moment. "Well, all the same, I wouldn't suggest bringing him up around Robin. The guy's almost normal when he's not talking about Slade."

Terra wrinkled her eyebrows. She really hadn't seen enough of Robin to say, herself, but he didn't seem all that obsessed to her. Of course, the subject had never really come up in their conversations. Something rebellious within her wanted to bring him up just to see what Robin would do. And, anyway…a second opinion might be nice. It had long since become hopeless to think about the man in any objective way, because the minute she tried, her stomach settled somewhere between her knees…

"Hey, you're gonna die if you don't go through that door up there!"

His words made no sense, in an almost nauseating way…until Terra realized that he was talking about the game. She turned her attention back to the screen, where the mouse was being attacked by something that looked like a fox. Why a fox was interested in a mouse was beyond Terra. "Oh, okay, that door, sure…"

"No, no, that door, on your left—the other left! Oh, just let me do it." A warm hand covered Terra's, moving the cursor for her, causal because he was so focused on the game that he didn't realize what he was doing. No matter how ancient they might be, Beast Boy liked video games, and he really liked to win at video games. So that's probably why it took him at least a few seconds to notice that he was close enough to hug her and that he was holding her hand and how nice that felt…and how they totally should not be doing it.

He pulled away, suddenly, and Terra wished he hadn't. "Umm, well…yeah, so that's how you do it. I mean, the game…you know." He took an embarrassed step away from her.

Terra had known for a long time that the way she and Beast Boy acted wasn't the way you were supposed to act with your friends, that she didn't feel the same around him as she felt around Starfire or Cyborg or anyone else. But she was at a loss for what to do about it, and anyway, it somehow seemed wrong to even try to do anything about it—he wouldn't like it. She'd probably get in trouble, big trouble.

Beast Boy smiled at her, and Terra wondered how long she would continue to care whether or not she got in trouble.

Terra focused on keeping the mouse from being eaten and decided to steer the conversation back into safer territory. "I have been wondering, though…I mean, do you have any idea why he… Well, why Robin's such a…a…"

"Spazz?"

"Yeah, exactly!"

Confidence restored, he had moved closer to her again, and that made it hard to concentrate on what he was actually saying. Of course, Terra only moderately cared about what he was saying, anyway; she mostly just wanted to hear him talk. "Y'know…Robin's the fearless leader. He's kind of crazy, no matter what—as I'm sure you've figured out with the whole training thing—but I guess he feels like he has to take responsibility for us."

"Yeah," said Terra, mostly to indicate that she was listening.

"He's definitely something else, though, so don't think you're the only one who noticed. Actually…" He paused, tone becoming more contemplative. "He's been acting weird for a long time. You might have a point; he's gotten crazier, even for a crazy spazz like Robin."

"What do you think the problem is?" Terra asked. She didn't like it when Beast Boy got serious. It usually meant that he really thought something was wrong.

He poked the back of her neck, which made her jump and caused the mouse to fall through another hole. "Oh, nothin' to worry about. He's probably just mad that we've finally got a team member cooler than he is."

"And that would be…?"

"You, of course. Hey, how about you put thatstupid mouse out of its misery and come upstairs? We can make fun of Robin and stuff: he's all miserable and it's really funny."

She considered that. She was in trouble, no question about it, but she was going to be in trouble anyway, and she'd tried to get the codes, really she had, but it wasn't her fault that the instructions were wrong… And anyway, she didn't want to think about that, not when Beast Boy was being so nice to her. Terra's lips turned up in a smile, of their own accord, and she let the mouse meet his gruesome end at the hands of a particularly violent fox. "Sounds great! Like I said, I would have been up there in the first place, but I didn't realize that you guys were doing something fun."

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'fun,' but it'll be less horrifyingly obnoxious if you're there." He flashed a cheesy grin, offering his hand to her.

Terra took it, and he'd probably meant to just help her out of her chair—but for some reason, neither one of them let go.