3: Entrapment

Terra was getting better at closing doors inside her head.

She could stand, and breathe, and think of nothing. She could close her eyes and look at the blankness there, let it spread, and pretend that there was nothing else. She pretended there wasn't the ever-present low hum of pain around her, that she didn't wake up after each sleep, unrefreshed and not wanting to wonder why the hell she wasn't dead already. She pretended she was back home, on her threadbare blue couch with a bowl of Frosties and the TV remote. She pretended she was watching cartoons. She pretended life was one big cartoon, and everything would turn out okay by the time the end credits rolled. She pretended Superman was still alive. She pretended her belly was full, that the landscape was not caked in rubble, and her ears free from the peculiar hunting cries of the Misshapens.

But when she opened her eyes the doors reopened. It was all different on the outside.

Things would never be the same again, and no amount of pretending was going to change that.

She was retching over a sewer grate. There had been no battle, no heroic rescue. The old couple had smiled at her, climbed into their car, and stuck the cigarette lighter into the can of petrol they'd been carrying. The whole thing went up so fast she'd been blown backwards, hit her head on a rock, and not come to until 'fiery wreck' had become 'smouldering remains'.

Someone lifted her hair from her face. Soft fingers brushed her neck, tracing down to rub at one shoulder.

"We've really got to stop meeting like this," she said weakly.

Beast Boy gave a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. He didn't look at the car, but his nostrils flared at the acrid smell. It was like roast pork mixed with eau de gas station.

"I guess they thought it was best." Terra wiped at her mouth. Her arms felt shaky braced like this, but she didn't dare sit up in case the jolt to her stomach proved too much. It was ironic, in a not-really sort of way – all the terrible things she'd seen and done and smelled, and an old couple who didn't want to stick around anymore caused the biggest reaction.

"It doesn't get any easier," Beast Boy told her, forgoing small talk. "First time I saw it was back at the beginning. A knee-jerk reaction, Raven called it. A whole bunch of people decided it was best to do it themselves instead of waiting. Especially after… when they heard about Wonder Woman. Once, a group of five people put stones in their pockets and walked into the bay. They held hands. It was like some Girl Guides singalong thing." He sighed. "One of them got angry when I went giant squid and fished her out. We found her washed up on shore the next day."

"Oh, BB…" Terra couldn't think of anything to say.

"Raven seems to find them the most. You can always tell, because she comes back with this… this look on her face, and… you just know." He shrugged, like that would explain it. "I can't speak for everyone, but I can sort of understand the why, even if I don't like it." He didn't clarify whether he meant he didn't like that it happened, or that he didn't like finding the bodies afterward.

"Yeah." Terra reached around to her shoulder and laid a hand awkwardly on his. "Sort of."

"What are you doing in here?"

Terra jumped and whirled around, a mixture of alarm and guilt on her face. "Not touching anything! I wasn't touching anything at all."

Raven's eyes narrowed. She swept in on cat-feet, inspecting everything before turning to regard Terra with an imperious stare.

Of all the Titans, Raven had somehow managed to salvage the most stuff from their old home. Not that Terra could understand why she'd want half the things stacked in this, her portion of the caves. Three dusty old books with leather bindings sat in a pile next to a cracked hand-mirror. The cover of the top book had been almost completely burned off, and some of the pages were browned from exposure to fire. The other two had spines plastered in intricate looking sigils, some embossed in gold and silver, and all grimy from being handled by many hands. A black throw and a pair of small ceramic spheres completed the look, lending Raven's personal area a mysterious, half-eastern allure.

Terra toed the dirt. She was the very antithesis of this eastern grace: earthy, basic, and expressly ordinary. She felt like a sparrow sharing a cage with a macaw. "I just wanted to say thank you for the assist," she mumbled, the walls eating her words.

"Excuse me?"

"At City Hall. I never said thank you."

"And you felt the need to do so now."

"Well… yeah."

"Hm."

"Call it… call it a case of delayed gratitude. Which I wanted to put right. So… I am."

"And that's it?"

"I guess so."

"All right. Now leave."

Terra raised her eyes. "Huh?"

Raven wasn't looking at her, but at the hand mirror, which she had picked up and now held lightly in one hand. "I see no reason for you to stay when you've said your piece and I've heard it. That seems to cover all bases for gratitude, doesn't it? And I doubt the delayed variety is much different. You say, I hear, you get lost."

"Oh."

"What?" She folded her arms and tilted her head to one side. On anyone else it might have indicated curiosity – on Starfire it might even have looked endearing – but on Raven it seemed almost accusing. There was a serrated quality to her grace. "Did you expect me to shake your hand? Give you a 'you're welcome' hug, or sing you some tradition Tamaranean ode?"

"Not quite. But I was kind of hoping for… I dunno. Something."

"Very specific."

"Geez, Ray. Why do you have to make things so difficult?" It was a rhetorical question, but Raven answered anyway.

"I don't make them difficult. They already are."

"I don't mean like that," Terra said, a trifle petulantly. "I mean… why are you always to hostile to people? I thought the Titans were your friends."

"They are."

"So why don't you ever treat them like they are?"

"You say that after you came here to thank me for saving your life?"

"That's not what I - " Terra paused. She'd been tripped up. "Okay, so you got me there. But seriously, things are bad enough as it is. It's already doomy and gloomy enough out there. Robin's nearly out of him mind trying to predict the unpredictable and make sure we don't all end up smeared across the asphalt. Starfire's exhausting herself making sure he doesn't exhaust himself. Cyborg's up in arms every time we go out, and Beast Boy… BB's like me – just trying to stay sane. Would it kill you to show a little warmth now and then, to lift people's spirits and junk?"

"Possibly."

"Excuse me, was that a joke?"

Raven closed her eyes for a second. Her lips moved around silent words, and when she reopened her eyes they showed nothing approaching kindliness or irritation. They were like the glass eyes of a doll – pretty, but thoroughly expressionless. "I don't make jokes," she said quietly. "I've been the punchline all my life."

Terra threw up her hands, made a comment about valiant efforts, and left on that note. She spent the rest of the evening pondering what Raven had meant and avoiding the pseudo-Eastern part of the caves.

Apart from conversation with whoever was willing, Terra's main distraction between outings was a battered notebook she'd found in an abandoned stationary store. It wasn't a flashy thing, but the pastel cover brightened up wherever she stood or sat. She used a serviceable pen found in the same store, and had a whole stash of unopened boxes of pencils and biros in her personal area.

She didn't write stories, or poetry, or anything like that. Those things required her to think beyond the present moment, the here-and-now existence that was the only thing keeping her sane. Plus, she'd never been very good at English in school. Where she imagined flowing prose and skilful imagery, she wrote clunky paragraphs, full of ugly metaphors that she scribbled out so hard she tore the paper. A diary involved writing about her own experiences, which were bad enough living through the first time. So she jotted down lyrics to songs she could remember, old quotes and one-liners, and doodled silly things in the margins like bumblebees and floating eyes. Sometimes she just tapped the paper with the end of her pen as a means to mark the seconds passing and enjoy each one.

She was currently trying to remember the words to Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, having written out all the other songs from The Wizard of Oz, but the last verse was proving difficult. She looked up from where the notebook was balanced on her knees, lit by the glow of the fire Cyborg was cooking their meal on – rabbit for most, baked beans for Raven and Beast Boy. Two cans from their rapidly diminishing stockpile sat in the centre of the flames.

"They done yet?" Beast Boy asked. He was playing Cat's Cradle with a piece of string.

Cyborg consulted his inner chronometer. "Not yet."

"How long?"

"About three and a half minutes."

"Aw, man." Beast Boy leaned backwards, rolling his eyes. "I'll have starved to death by then."

Raven was levitating near the ceiling. Her eyes flicked down at him, then back to her book. It was a thick tome, but not the one with the burned-off cover. This one had looped writing in some unknown language, interspersed with pictures of stars and what looked like mouths with big teeth.

Terra called up to her. "Hey, Ray? Whatcha reading?"

"My name is Raven. And I doubt you'd understand it, even if I told you."

"Aw, go on," Terra insisted. "Try me."

Raven sighed and reeled off what sounded like a cough mixed with a phlegmy sneeze and an obscene word. It took one of the remaining three minutes to say it all. When she was finished, Terra blinked.

"Uh… okay. Can I get that in English?"

"If I translated it, the words would cause your brain to liquefy and drip out your ears, which would then shrivel, drop off and burn through the ground."

Terra made a face. "Nice."

Cyborg raised an eyebrow. "Y'all really know how to kill a conversation, Raven."

Raven said nothing.

"Shh." Beast Boy held a finger to his lips. "Be vewy, vewy quiet. We're pestawing Wavens." He shifted into as cute and fluffy a bunny as he could, and batted impossibly long lashes at her.

"Your childish behaviour isn't funny," she replied without looking up. The near-presence of an exclamation point in her voice was enough to convince Terra that she hated them all.

"I think he is most adorable," Starfire declared. She scooped Beast Boy into her arms and squeezed him hard enough that, had he possessed stuffing, it would have been hugged out of him. He wiggled and gasped and made a great show of covering up just how much he enjoyed it.

Terra laughed. It felt good to laugh. There wasn't much cause for laughter anymore, and as with all simple pleasures, you didn't notice how much you missed it until you did it again after a long dry spell. Cyborg guffawed loudly, poking fun at BB, and even Robin gave one of those enigmatic smiles that made you think he was a smidge more Boy than Wonder. It made Terra lean back and try to soak up the moment, so she could remember and relive it in darker times.

Because there were always darker times.

When she did, she noticed that Raven was feigning disinterest and watching them all from the corner of her eye. She was the master of disguising her emotions, or just plain denying them. Yet Terra, for whatever reason, thought she could glimpse a kind of hunger in her right then; like she wanted to join in, but couldn't, or at least couldn't bring herself to.

Then Raven met her gaze and her face slammed shut. She went back to reading for real, and Terra spent a moment in contemplative silence, before sinking back into the lower part of the cave and the warmer, more comfortable part of the team. They folded around her, and she laughed and talked and wrote and laughed some more. But it was a long time before she forgot that lonely figure by the ceiling.

Raven and Robin were arguing again. They did that a lot. Probably it was because their personalities were similar enough to step on each other's toes, yet different enough to conflict on outside problems. This time it was about recruiting. Robin thought they needed to pad out the ranks. Raven didn't trust anyone enough to ask for their help.

"You're being unreasonable," he said. "We can't deal with this on our own anymore. It's too big for us. When are you going to accept that? When we're all dead?"

"If you try to find Jinx and Gizmo so you can ask them to join us then that might be faster in coming."

Terra hadn't meant to eavesdrop. Honest. She'd been looking for Cyborg, and BB had told her he was around Robin's personal area. He wasn't, perhaps having been scared off by this rapidly intensifying altercation – the same one that was now gluing Terra's feet to the floor with curiosity.

Who were Jinx and Gizmo? And what was up with not wanting more firepower in the ranks? More allies meant less chance of going splat, right? And she was a real big fan of not going splat.

Robin made a strangled noise. "Okay, I understand about those two. But Aqualad? What've you got against him?"

"He has other commitments to Atlantis. He'd always have divided loyalties. Would you trust your life to someone who deserted us once before?"

"That was an exception - "

"There are no exceptions. Every time is important."

"His King was dying! His father was dying."

"And we might have died because he abandoned his post when we needed him. You can't excuse him for that, Robin. He let us down, and there's nothing to suggest he wouldn't do it again if Atlantis called him."

Terra could easily imagine Robin's expression at that moment: jaw set, eyes narrowed, brow pulled together in such a way as bunched his mask on the bridge of his nose. He might even be snorting slightly, a sign of escalating irritation.

Robin wasn't exactly quick to anger, but it was sometimes difficult to know if he was pissed at you or not. His self-control hid too many complex, convoluted layers to count, much less see or try to understand. He was a master of contradiction, of concealing his true self behind a mask – any mask.

As far as Terra could judge, something had happened in Robin's life that made him feel he constantly needed to prove himself. She didn't know what. He wasn't someone who talked about his past much, even though secret identities didn't count for squat anymore.

The truth, however, was that whatever had made Robin insecure and so resolute to prove himself worked to the Titans' advantage in this new world. Maybe all real heroes had some sot of 'got to be a manly man' thing going on at the backs of their minds. Maybe they all were so brave and courageous and strong because they needed to prove that they could do this thing, be worthy of this heroic calling. Maybe it had been that way before everything went bad.

Maybe.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, whenever they crawled from their caves and struck out into the ruins of Jump, the Titans all turned to Robin as leader – even Raven – and he accepted the burden. It was unfair of them, but they did it. Robin was the responsible one, the one with the plan. He was the Boy Wonder. There was a lot to be said for that kind of mythos in this kind of landscape.

But it was unfair, really, and Terra was reminded of that fact as she listened in. Raven spoke a lot of truth in her arguments. There was a lot of her natural suspicion in there, too, but there was also hard, ugly truth. Robin couldn't get around that, and the slightly desperate note he'd adopted showed he knew it.

He was trapped by her. He was trapped by them – his squad, his friends and teammates. He had to be brave and strong. He couldn't let himself fail. Failure was not an option. He had to be the strong one, and they accepted and used that, even though there was something to it that made Terra feel a little squeamish. Robin was tough. He was dependable. Robin was the Titans' leader. He was the Boy Wonder. But every time she saw him do his thing, that thing, the thing that made him Robin, it felt like putting an anorexic in charge of a food stash, or hiring an obsessive-compulsive to clean your house. It got the job done, and done well, but was it right?

The lines to everything were so blurry now.

There was a time she never would have even considered doubting Robin as leader. Then again, there was also a time she'd thought Superman was invincible, that life was a constant thing, and that her world stretched to the schoolyard and the grocery store at the end of her street.

"What about Thunder and Lightning?"

Raven's distaste was almost palpable. "Too unpredictable."

"People change, Raven," Robin insisted.

"Do we even know if they can die or not?"

"Well, no…"

"They're elementals, so it's unlikely. So how can we be sure this entire business isn't just some colossal game to them? If they don't feel threatened, they won't work as hard. And who picks up the slack if that happens? We do, of course. We always pick up the slack."

"We wouldn't have to if we had more people on the team."

"Look, there might be something to having more individuals on our side. Might being the operative word. We just have to be careful who we approach."

"Raven," Robin said slowly, "we don't have a lot of options. If they're alive and willing, those are two really high points in their favour. It's not like we can hold auditions and weed out the weaker candidates. We need help, and we need it soon. You saw Cy's stats on the Misshapen population. Pretty soon we're going to be overwhelmed if we stay as a six person unit."

"Be that as it may, you're being rash - "

"No, I'm not. I'm trying to do what's best with the resources we've got to hand. And you're really not helping. Seriously, Raven, your trust issues are going above their jurisdiction."

"You're trying to do what's best. I'm trying to make sure what you think is best really is the optimum decision for all concerned."

"You trusted Terra enough to sanction her membership. And we'd barely even met her."

There was a long silence. Terra held her breath. When the voices came again, they were low and soft. She missed a lot of what was said, but sensed a new tension coating the area. Raven sounded pissed. She spoke in short, sharp sentences. Robin replied in a somewhat subdued tone, which was unusual for him. Once or twice Terra was sure she heard Raven muttering that strange incantation of hers.

When it became apparent that she wasn't going to hear any more juice without blowing her cover, she slipped away, resuming her search for Cyborg with a few new questions in her mind.

"What do Raven's weird words mean?"

Beast Boy tipped his head forward and blinked rapidly. "Huh?"

Terra waved a hand, as if swatting a fly. "Avalon metronome zincky. What's it mean?"

"Oh." Understanding crept into his face. "Um… not sure."

She punched his arm – missed. He slewed to one side and gurgled a damp snigger.

Amazingly, the bottle of Famous Grouse whisky he'd found in the rubble was still intact. The lid had been on and everything, leading them to half-wonder where the owner had gone. They didn't dwell on it long. There had been a few brownish-red stains on the label, so they tore it off. They were both underage, but that hardly mattered either, and it made Terra's brain only a little more fried than usual.

"You're a fat lot of use," she said as she reached for the bottle. He gave it up easily, taking advantage of his newly freed hands to rub at his eyes.

"Better than being a skinny lot of use."

"How?"

"Um… because… because bigger is better."

"Whatever happened to 'size doesn't matter'?"

"That's always been a load of crock. People made it up to compensate for… stuff." He sniggered again.

Terra punched him on the arm. This time her hit connected. "You're such a prude, BB."

"Am not! I've got a feelthy leetle mind."

"Are too." Terra tipped her head back and her throat moved as she swallowed.

Changing the subject, Beast Boy whistled. "Pretty good. For a chick."

"Oh please. Keep your chauvinist comments for someone who thinks size doesn't matter." She wiped at her mouth with the back of her wrist, sending a sooty smudge up one cheek. "Anyway, all the 'chicks' you know could kick your ass in a heartbeat. I should get a bunch of us together to teach you… teach you your place." She wobbled a little. Her head felt pleasantly fuggy.

"Okay, kidding, kidding." He held his hands up in defence. "I take it back, my little feminist."

Terra nodded and took a quick gulping shot straight from the neck of the bottle before passing it back. The whisky burned as it went down, but her throat had been numbed after the first taste. Warmth radiated from the pit of her belly.

"Do you trust me?" she asked suddenly.

"Huh?" Beast Boy seemed puzzled, and it was only half to do with the Grouse.

"Do you trust me?"

"Well, sure. Why shouldn't I?"

"No reason. Just curious."

He squinted at her and shook his head. "You're weird, even for a girl."

"Weirder than Raven?" she said slyly.

The bottle paused on its way to his mouth. "Okay, so maybe you're slightly less weird than ol' dismal britches."

Terra snickered, absently hiding it behind one hand. "Miss Can-find-the-cloud-around-the-silver-lining."

"Exactamundo." He knocked back three quick swallows and sat just opening and closing his mouth for a second. "I think you're about as weird as Star when she's cooking."

"Why thank you." Terra made a sort-of bow and nearly fell off her rock. "Whoa - "

Beast Boy grabbed at her, hand closing around her upper arm and yanking her back into place. He'd given up trying to find a replacement left glove, but kept the right one on for some reason. Terra didn't know why. It was battered and thin enough to be little protection. Filled with new inclination to ask questions, she quizzed him on it.

He looked at the glove like he'd never seen it before. "Huh. I dunno why I wear it. Superstition, maybe. Maybe it's my good luck charm."

"Does it work?"

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Point."

"So… do you trust me?"

"Weirdo."

Beast Boy's brows pulled together. "No fair. I answered when you asked. Now you gotta do the same for me."

"Why?"

"'Cause it's good manners. S'polite. Etiquette n' protocol n' all that junk." He was slurring his words a little more now, and scrubbing furiously at his left eye. It watered when he took his palm away.

"I think you're drunk," Terra informed him.

"Sure. Whatever. So, answer my question? Or do I have t'force an answer by getting all medieval on yer ass?"

"You keep away from my ass, perv."

"I'm the perv?" He seemed shocked. "Since when? I'm a total gennelman."

"Yeah, sure. Totally."

"You insult my honour, fair maiden!"

She shoved him. "Oh, dry up Lake Melodrama, BB."

He squeaked and nearly toppled over backwards. A malformed tail sprang to his aid, but the alcohol had obviously warped his powers of concentration. It crumpled bonelessly and he went sprawling, Famous Grouse slopping everywhere.

Terra giggled. It burbled up her throat and propelled itself between her teeth, coming out as a snorting hiss, like the neck of a full balloon opening and closing in quick succession.

Beast Boy jumped to his feet, the bottle still on the floor. He spent a few seconds patting himself down until he noticed it. Then he groaned. "Aw, man. You made me do a spill-kill. You must be punished."

"Ooh, I'm so scared," Terra said, sounding less scared than she ever had before in her life. "Whatcha gonna do, klutz me to death? Make me bust a gut laughing?" She giggled some more, appreciating the liberating sensation and only stopping only when she noticed she was the only one laughing. "BB?"

He stared at her oddly, head tilted to one side like that cute puppy-dog he sometimes shifted. He blinked a lot, but she got the impression it was less to do with the booze in his system, and more to do with him just generally trying to concentrate really hard. The expression didn't look right on him. It was as if someone had painted a frown over his smile in magic marker, but you knew the picture that was supposed to be there, the one underneath.

But then… that was a lot of what made him Beast Boy. After a fashion. Terra always got the feeling he'd ended up as someone he wasn't really sure how to be.

"Don't you trust me?" he asked quietly and with forced earnestness.

She sighed. "'Course I do. You're my best friend, remember?"

The weird expression faded. His eyes lit up. "Cool." He climbed back up to sit next to her. "So… best friend, huh?"

"I never told you that before?"

"Don't think so."

"Really?"

"Um…" He tapped the side of his head with two knuckles. "Well. Maybe? It's possible I forgot."

"You make me feel so appreciated."

"I should. That's what best friends are s'posed to do, right?" His grin showed fangs, but it was less than terrifying.

"What, is there some sort of handbook I didn't know about? I feel uninformed."

"Chapter Three, Subsection Two, parts one through six," Beast Boy intoned. "A best friend should always make a person feel good about themselves in whatever way possible."

"By forgetting they are a person's best friend?"

"Minor detail."

"Goofball."

"I don't think that's very good BFF behaviour, missy."

"BFF?"

"Best Friends Forever."

Terra arched her eyebrows. "We progressed quick, didn't we? Two minutes ago you didn't even know you were my best friend. Now we're into blood pacts and interesting wordplay."

"Hey, whoa, less of the blood pact thing. I like the red stuff right where it is, thankyouverymuch."

She stared at her feet. Her belly still held a burning residue, but the edges of her mind had started to twinge with lucidity. She was going to have a hell of a hangover after this. And after all those theories of metahumans having increased healing abilities, too. Huh. Go figure.

"BB, I think we may have skipped a vital part of this formula."

"Like what? We've got the witty repartee, the bonding, the shared experiences, the conversation over drinks." He checked each one off on his fingers. "All the things vital to create BFF."

"So how come I still don't know your real name?"

The moment froze. It dripped ice. Beast Boy's gaze became fixed on some point in the middle distance.

"BB - " Terra started, but he cut her off.

"Shh. Someday it might still matter."

She frowned. "What might? The secret identity schtick?"

He nodded.

"Oh, come on. If and when civilisation rebuilds itself, that's not going to be its first concern. Besides, you know my real name."

"Yeah, but that was different. You gotta admit, the way you joined up wasn't exactly usual. You didn't even sign a contract saying you wouldn't tell."

"What, and you did?" She laughed. Then she looked at him and her eyes widened. "My gosh, you did. Wait, let me guess: Robin's doing?"

Beast Boy shrugged. "Something like that."

Terra thought for a moment. She clutched her thumb in one fist, squeezing and unsqueezing, cutting off the blood supply and letting it back in again. "Did this contract have anything in it about what you can and can't say after the apocalypse? You know – after all lawyers who could call you on it have gone bye-bye?"

"Uh… Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't exactly read all of it."

"Why does that not surprise me?" She sighed. "Come on, BB. It's not like the world'll end if you tell me what's written on your birth certificate." She snorted a little at the unintended irony.

Beast Boy shifted his feet, rearranging himself on his perch. He twisted his boots a little in that way he did when he was wriggling his toes. "It will if Robin finds out."

"As if. He's got enough to worry about without our chitchat." Terra thought of Robin and Raven's argument. She thought of the way Starfire looked at Robin like he was torn wet paper, and the way his jaw set rigid whenever they were too late at a scene.

"You don't know Robin. He's so anal retentive he practically breathes through his colon."

"Ew. Not a mental image I needed."

Beast Boy gave her a rakish grin that only pulled at one side of his mouth. His eyes seemed flat, perhaps a little cloudy still from the whisky. He still blinked a lot, and his left eye was pinkish where it should have been white.

"You look really terrible, you know that?"

"Gee, thanks," he sarcasmed. "You're not exactly catch of the day yourself."

Instinctively, Terra reached up and tried to pat down her hair. It was full of snarls and knots that made it poof above her head in interesting peaks and troughs. One side was a little ironed out because she'd slept on it, but the rest looked like it'd just got in from the Windy City. Her face was streaked with dust and dirt and everything else that refused to come off without soap they didn't have, and she knew there weren't bags under her eyes so much as industrial sized black bin-liners.

"I'm thinking the freshly-crawled-out-a-tumble-drier look is going to be really big this season," she said, pretending to finger-comb the split-ends. She hit three snags within two seconds, all of which yanked at the roots. "…Owie…"

Beast Boy didn't try to hide his snigger. "Who's the goofball, again?"

"Oh ha ha, real funny. You should go on the comedy circuit."

"Nu-uh, tried that. Being introduced as the 'Giant Lima-Bean' isn't one of my life's high-points."

"Giant Lima-Bean? You're kidding, right?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

She looked at him for a long moment, trying to figure out the truth in that remark. Beast Boy flashed her an even wider smile that threatened to split his face in two.

"Goofball," she finally pronounced.

"No, you're the goofball," he replied.

"Goofball times a hundred."

"Goofball times a thousand."

"Goofball times a million-billion-trillion."

"Goofball times infinity."

"Goofball times - " Terra began, but stopped when Beast Boy leaned forward and pressed his mouth over hers. He was at an awkward angle, one elbow locked, the other hand braced against the rock to stop him falling off. The kiss itself was a little sloppy and bitter tasting, and not at all how she'd imagine her first kiss would be. It lasted all of a few seconds before he pulled away.

Terra just blinked at him.

"Um…" he said sheepishly. He bounced one heel off the rock in a clumsy rhythm. "Sorry. But you can't get bigger than infinity, anyway. So I was saving you from saying something stupid."

"That's what that was?"

"Sure."

"You were saving me from saying something dumb."

"Uh-huh."

"Because you can't get bigger than infinity."

"Yup."

She shook her head, hiding a small smile. "You goofball."

He paused a second, before saying quietly, "Garfield the Goofball, if you don't mind."

And Terra felt warm inside for quite a different reason.

To Be Continued...

It made sense to me, Jefepato.

Beast Boy is a bit of a bugger to write, so you'll get no arguments from me there, Water81. He's just so ... capricious, but he's exhibited a serious side in the show before, and it's difficult to make the two match up in a way that isn't wildly OOC.

Aw, thank you, Forlorn Melody. I don't believe you, but it was sweet to say that about my work anyway.

Will do, Squeegee779. And there are really 776 other people called Squeegee on this site? O.o

I figured that ina seeting like this, romance would come second to survival in the character's books. That said, here's some of that smooching Beast Boy and Terra missed out on in the canon, Raven's Girlfriend. And I agree, those who abuse Terra's character deserve disdain. She's massively complex, provided you don't judge her by appearances only - as I tried to emphasise in my other fic The Sound of Silence. Pimppimppimp

Tergon rubbing off on me? Witht the kinds of things we write together, UnknownSource, that could be so very misinterpreted. Regardless, I'm pleased you liked the last two chapters, seeing as how they were written for you an' all.