9: Shadows of Fire

"No!"

Too hot, too hot, the flames and fire and hot hot hot, and ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and doesn't really matter and hot fire hot hot burning burning away all the screaming and calling and I can't help you I want to I want to so much but I can't and the hot fire hot fiery fire that burns burns burns and hurts and burns and –

"Terra! Terra, wake up!"

Terra came to with a start. Her hair was limp and matted to her head with the same sweat that slicked the sheet to her body like a second skin. For several seconds she lay rigid with terror while her brain struggled to figure out who and where she was. When, after another second or two, her memory returned, she levered herself upright and realised there were hands leaving her shoulders and the weight of another body on her bed.

Her bed. This place. This room in this complex in this desert city of lost and forgotten souls.

Beast Boy's eyes were huge in the gloom. The door was open, and the strip-lighting from the corridor cast an eerie blue-white glow that stretched a few feet into the room. "You were having a nightmare. I heard you right through the wall."

They all had nightmares. All of them. All the time. It was as much a part of their lives as breathing, but usually they could beat off the worst with pure exhaustion. That kind of sleep was dreamless.

But this dream …

This place …

There were no windows in their new rooms. Air ducts, but no windows. The enclosed space had become warm, the hot air hard to breathe. Terra's throat felt dry and scorched, her head swollen with heat. Her whole body ran with sweat, even though she'd stripped to get clean – water to wash! And soap! Soap and water for washing and scrubbing and rinsing and lather and bubbles and never clean never never never – and the only thing between her and indecency was a thin percale sheet pinned under her arms. She made washing motions with her hands, and the calluses felt seared.

She started to cry. She tried to force the tears back down, but something about the room, the dark, the dream and the way Beast Boy was just staring at her with those stupid expressive eyes made it impossible. A large bulb of water dripped off the end of her nose. Another seeped into the crease at the side of her mouth. And then she was sobbing, and it hurt her already parched throat, and she was maybe losing her grip but she didn't freaking care anymore.

"They could have been safe here. They could've … I could've kept them … safe …"

Beast Boy got up.

No, he moved over, came closer and reached out, but didn't quite touch her for a long and awkward moment. His fingers flexed, hesitant, and then he closed a hand over her shoulder. His touch was feather-light, like he was frightened she might break, but when she fell forward he caught her and was just as strong as she needed him to be. She didn't see his expression over her shoulder.

She was aware that, in a normal world, the fact that she was pretty much naked and pressed against him, and he was a teenage boy whose hormones hadn't been killed off when the world was, would probably have led to a very different conclusion.

But this wasn't a normal world, and she could open and shut doors in her head all she wanted because that one fact sucked all the eroticism out of … everything.

"They were all burnt up," she said, muffled against his costume – of course he hadn't got changed, of course, of course, of course. "They couldn't be moved because we had nowhere to put them. Just the Observatory. And this place was sitting here all along with nobody in it. And … oh shit, oh fuck, oh Goh-hoh-hod …" The word gained syllables as a spasm gripped her chest and she sobbed.

"You didn't know," Beast Boy whispered, only he wasn't being Beast Boy now, he was being Garfield. He was wearing another mask; the one he wore when they were alone and nobody could stop them from being who they were, saying what they wanted, doing what they had to do just to stay sane. "Nobody knew."

Terra was aware that these words should have made her feel better. Except that they didn't, and it was ridiculous, because he was right, they hadn't known, but there it was.

"All burnt up. All burnt up, with no place to go…"

Mechanic's stores didn't have alcohol, but they did have coffee. It was the freeze-dried stuff, and though there was powdered milk Terra drank it black. Her military-issue beaker was filled with something the colour and consistency of molasses, but when she put it to her lips her veins started singing.

She was so enjoying it that she didn't notice anyone else enter the room. So when the itchiness of a gaze blossomed between her shoulder blades she almost did a spit-take, like some character in those old anime shows she used to like watching.

Raven's hood was down.

"Um …" Terra wiped at her mouth with the back of one hand, wishing she'd gone back to her room to drink this stuff. "You want some?" She offered the beaker across, but Raven shook her head.

"I think it would be too much to hope for herbal tea in there." It sounded like a statement, but with Raven you could never be sure.

"I don't think so. But I think maybe I saw some sachets of powdered Earl Grey towards the back."

She raised an eyebrow. It was an involuntary movement, and all the more genuine because of it. "Have you ever tried Earl Grey?"

"Uh, no?"

"Don't."

"Is that your piece of early morning wisdom?"

"No." She turned to leave, stopped, turned back and narrowed her eyes at Terra. "Wisdom. Accumulated knowledge. The ability to use experience in order to make sensible decisions or judgments."

Terra blinked, nonplussed, and slid her eyes from side to side. "Ohhh-kay. So we've established the dictionary definition of wisdom."

Raven's gaze was probing, or perhaps reflective. It wasn't quite a brick wall, but Terra still felt like she was pounding her head against it.

"You sure you don't want some coffee?"

Instead of saying 'no', or shaking her head like a normal person, Raven said quietly, "Not sleeping won't make it go away. It never does." She slipped from the room through the gap where the door met the ceiling.

Terra looked down at her beaker. Then, a little defiantly perhaps, she downed the rest in one long gulp.

"But I can help!"

Terra gritted her teeth and ran a hand through her hair. "You are helping. By staying here."

Mechanic wrung his hands and glanced around like he expected Raven to fade in with more of her scary shadowy shit. He was excessively nervous around her, making Terra wonder just what had happened in their little 'admissions chat'.

"But I'm quick. An' I can punch. Uh-huh."

You can also die. Much easier than we can. The thought popped into her head before she could stop it. "Speedy'd say the same thing," she said, not at all certain he would. Why had Mechanic come to her instead of him with his request to join in patrolling, anyway? "It's better for all concerned if you stay here. Cyborg's almost up to scratch, but if he wants to make a test run anytime soon then he's got to be better than that. Which is where you come in."

Mechanic looked down at his hands and uncurled his fists, as if the answer he wanted to hear was in joint and tendon and knuckle. "I'm s'posed to be a Titan," he said, subdued. "Y'all said so. I thought that was what Titans did."

"Not all Titans."

"But I can - "

"Just because you can doesn't mean you have to."

He went very quiet. Then he turned his thousand-gigawatt smile on her. "Best - best get going, girlie-girl."

She smiled in that brightly forced way that wasn't really all that cheerful. "Girlie-girl? Who're you calling girly? Come here, buster, so I can stab you with my Malibu Barbie."

There were times when she could clear her mind and times when she couldn't.

Three nights ago, when she had the nightmare and Beast Boy – Garfield … that was a time she couldn't.

But right now? Right now she could quite easily zone out and think of nothing but the warmth and comfort of having someone use her belly as a pillow.

She was slumped against a wall, fresh from a minor scuffle with Speedy in which she'd proven that, yes, his hand-to-hand was indeed getting better, but no, he still couldn't beat her. Although it had been close. And it didn't irk her in that childishly competitive way it should've, because yesterday they'd rescued a couple of kids and brought them down here. Patti and Alice were the first rescues where Terra hadn't felt the bite of guilt at leaving the scene without them, and it felt even better than a peaceful night's sleep.

So here they were – she and Speedy and Beast Boy, the not-quite-newbie and leader and veteran of team dynamics. BB had cheered them both on from the sidelines, caught between rooting for the object of his affections and not pissing off his leader. In the end he'd plumped for nameless cries and whistles, then gone crazy when Terra pinned Speedy on his back and held him there with a knee to the throat.

"I win."

We all win, she corrected now, idly making little circles in the hair on BB's temple. He shivered, tickling her tummy, then shifted when her giggles bounced his head.

"Aw, man. I was comfy."

"Well this piece of furniture has pins and needles in her legs." Terra blinked. "Hey – is he asleep?"

Beast Boy looked at where Speedy was also slumped, fingers laced over his abdomen and head tilted down. He had his mask on, as always – "Why do we need secret identities again?" – so it was impossible to see if his eyes were closed or not.

"I dunno. Lucky guy if he is." He nestled against her. "But I bet I'm luckier."

"You're going to make me blush."

"Cool."

"Not cool. I'm all sweaty and yuk. Blushing will make it worse."

"Very technical there, dudette."

She smiled and gently thwapped his head. "I'm too comfortable to punish you for that remark, but believe me, punishment will be delivered." She yawned. "At some point."

"Yum. I'll look forward to it."

She thwapped him again. "Perv."

They lay in silence for a few minutes.

The metal wall was sticky against her back, and she could no longer feel her feet, but the alternative was getting Beast Boy to move. Speedy still hadn't said a word, so she concluded that he was indeed asleep. He looked very peaceful like that, like some kid who'd wandered out of a Halloween party and gone to sleep on the porch. Thinking about him like that, the mask was easier to take.

Cyborg was almost ready to try going outside. He'd been a little cautious about the whole thing, claiming worry he might lose control of his systems at some crucial moment and jeopardise them all. Now, however, he was getting on for almost a week without mishap. Terra had even caught him whistling this morning while Mechanic took a peep behind his chestplate to make sure everything was a-go-go.

Mechanic hadn't asked again about going on patrol. Speedy hadn't mentioned it either; leaving Terra to think that she'd been the only one he'd asked. It was flattering in some ways, disconcerting in others, because she wasn't leader and until then she hadn't thought she had any special connection with Mechanic. At least, nothing beyond what the others had with him – except Raven, of course.

Mechanic avoided Raven where he could, which was understandable, Terra guessed. The expression Raven wore when she saw him was no different, but the air around her seemed to drip ice. It froze anyone within a thirty feet radius and left prickles up and down their skin.

Raven the ice-queen. Raven the watching shadow. Raven the enigma. Raven the impenetrable. Raven was Teflon-coated and camouflaged. Terra kind of understood the others, but whenever she tried to look inside Raven she found her eyes drawn away, her questions repelled with stones and black-tipped arrows. Her curiosity seemed to slip and slide, leaving no trace – whenever they next spoke Raven gave no indication she remembered or cared about any previous conversations.

Terra sometimes wondered if Raven was hiding something. Or maybe she was just plain arrogant. Was she supremely confident or supremely insecure?

Terra didn't know.

She used to think she was getting to know her, but that was just fantasy. Raven was subtler than she was; she couldn't outwit her and reduce her down to a few neat labels. Every time she thought she had a handle on what made that girl tick, Raven would do something new or unexpected and turn the whole equation on its tail. It was like she was toying with them all, creating one image of herself but adding layers underneath, layers upon layers upon layers that were thorny and complex and so full of convolutions that to try and make sense of them was like emptying the sea with an eggcup.

Terra shook her head. No, not thinking about that now. Raven had this tendency to knot up her thoughts, and she didn't want knotty thoughts. Not now. Not when she felt so good. She wanted this feeling to last and last.

Speedy let out a tiny snore.

"Lucky bastard," BB whispered without opening his eyes.

Terra just smiled and ran her fingers across spot where his missing ear-tip should have been.

To Be Continued ...