Disclaimer: Teen Titans isn't mine, in case there was any question on the matter.

Better

She was prettier. She'd always be so much prettier.

That was probably why, when she thought about it. There was a kind of confidence, a radiating enthusiasm for burning up life, and it made her attractive in a spiritual way, a way that she just didn't have. Watching was painful. Watching when everyone liked her better, immediately, because that was just in her character: everywhere they went together, people always chose her. Taller, grinning with a roguish sense of mischief and flavor and fun.

And they liked her better. They did. Starfire would have almost preferred the Gordanians to this.

Once, when they were seven and eleven, they'd been fighting, over some toy, and she had picked Starfire up and slammed her against the wall, getting up close to whisper in her ear.

"There are two kinds of people, little sister. People who go out and take what they want and people who just let things happen." She had dug her nails into Starfire's neck, punctuating those last words and burning them into her memory with pain. "Think, Koriand'r. Think long and hard about which one I am. And which one you are."

She'd thought about it, but obviously she had not thought hard enough, because now the words had meaning, now when all her friends were having fun with the uncomfortably loud music that made her ears throb. In all of it, everything that had happened, Starfire had been the one who let things happen. She didn't lead; she reacted. And that was why, she told herself, that was exactly why she was miserable and lonely.

She didn't care about belonging. And consequently, she belonged, all on her own, without even trying. She demanded it. Took it for herself. But Starfire…Starfire just let things happen.

Well. Not tonight. Not anymore.

Blackfire was prettier. And better. So much better. But Starfire wasn't going to let things happen anymore. She'd make them happen.

If they liked her sister so much, well, they could have her. Every time there was a choice between the two of them, people always chose her. But this time, they couldn't choose for themselves. Starfire would choose. She wasn't being kicked out. She wouldn't wait around to be kicked out.

She'd leave.

Rewind

(Major AU, pre-Divide and Conquer)

He wasn't wearing that ridiculous costume. A faded, green t-shirt and jeans: old but clean, because there was nothing about Robin that wasn't clean. It was very strange to see him as a civilian, like encoding conflicting information into a computer: the inevitable shutdown that would occur once you tried to process it. There was nothing about Robin that was ordinary. Nothing about him that was jeans-and-a-t-shirt.

The mask was off. That in and of itself could have shattered the fabric of space-time. At first, he hadn't even recognized him without it…but the movements, the hard, set expression; the power exuding from his every pore…it was unmistakable. It was him. His eyes were analytical, deep and intelligent. That had been expected, of course, though he hadn't guessed that they would be blue. Robin had very nice eyes, and it was a shame that he always wore that…stop it.

Robin was laughing, leaned against the bridge railing with his arm around the red-haired alien girl. It would be so easy—he could catch them both off guard and kill them, right there; or kill the girl and haul Robin away for his own uses. Or even just start a fight, make them both sweat…start him on the path of self-destructive obsession, running ten miles a day, waking up in the middle of the night nauseated and fighting back tears…

"Hi," said Robin, and it took him a few seconds to realize that the greeting was meant for him. He'd made himself known, unwittingly.

He nodded slowly, formally. "Nice weather."

After everything that had happened, Robin never would have started a conversation with a stranger, not ever, and unquestionably wouldn't be persuaded to talk about the weather. Just goes to show how different this boy was from the one that he had spent almost three years torturing. "Yeah—we're hoping it won't start raining or anything." Next to him, the girl nodded in agreement.

"Do you have a name, kid?" Both casual and antagonistic, wanting to see what he would say.

"Sorry, I don't do names. But nice to meet you, Mr.…?"

"Wilson. That's all you need from me, really."

For just a split second, he could have sworn that he saw it: recognition, deep-seated and under everything that was rational, because they had had that kind of relationship that not even time-meddling could wipe clean. And even then, he still could have started something. It would have been easy. This Robin was exponentially less paranoid: open and innocent, inexperienced and so, so not ready for a one-on-one fight with him. He would lose. Painfully. Spectacularly.

But it wouldn't be worth it. Wouldn't be worth what happened after. Not for him. And…somehow…even if he could…he didn't want to. This Robin was different: younger and without the lines and scars and demons. He looked…fresh.

And that looked good on him. Very good.

So Slade smiled cryptically, told them to have a nice evening, and walked away.

Blessed

(post-Things Change)

Jennifer was sure that she had failed her biology test. She'd failed it, and it was all that kid's fault, the green one, the stalker. Eukaryotic cells have all that DNA stuff, not prokaryotic, duh. That had been at least ten questions right there. And she'd completely screwed up photosynthesis. That had been another ten questions.

And that other question, the one at the top that was somehow more complicated than cell membranes and cytoplasm…

Name:

Well. That had been another two points off, anyway, because her teacher always took points away when you forgot to put your name on the paper. Except, Jennifer didn't forget. Jennifer didn't know the right answer.

She stewed about it, all through dinner with her foster parents, stared into her mashed potatoes and wondered. They'd been worried, she knew, because Jennifer always talked enough to make people's ears fall off, but she just couldn't bring herself to speak up. Because they'd want to know what Jennifer had done that day, and she couldn't say what she'd really done: because, oh god, normal people didn't run off with total strangers to eat pizza and visit giant, capital-letter-shaped houses and have mud thrown at them because apparently they were supposed to be able to move it. And normal people didn't get chased around by boys with superpowers…and Jennifer didn't think that normal people even had superpowers themselves.

But Jennifer didn't have superpowers. Almost-probably-definitely.

All the same, though, that was why she absolutely had to sneak out that night and just see, figure it out for herself after that awful boy had finally decided to leave her alone. She'd just try it once, only once, and when nothing happened she'd forget about the whole thing, but she couldn't sleep until she'd tried. It made her feel a bit badly, breaking the rules, because Jennifer had never been one to break the rules—but all the same, she had to, just had to. For some reason, sneaking out of her room was easier than she'd expected. Like when you're already done something but didn't remember doing it, so you got a funny, freaky feeling in a small, secret corner of your mind.

Jennifer's blue slippers crunched the leaves up as she padded across the backyard, towards the thing she'd been looking for: a giant pile of dirt in the neighbors' yard, the mark of a half-finished gardening project. It was clay-red, though in the nighttime it just looked gray like everything else, and it was big enough to be menacing with all the shadows and hazy darkness. It nearly came up to Jennifer's chest.

She stared at it, in challenge, wondering what on Earth the boy had meant when he'd said she'd be able to move it, or whatever. Right. Just how was she supposed to do that? Jennifer felt very stupid as she stood, feet slightly apart and anchored firmly in the yellowed grass, holding out her hands to the dirt pile in a 'stop' gesture, palms out. If she could do this, it would just, like, happen, right?

Maybe not. Jennifer thought about the giant, capital letter over on the rocky island, and the heart-shaped box that the boy had said he'd made for her, and anchovies (she wasn't really allergic) and skipping stones—and she told the dirt pile all of it, realizing after awhile that she was even speaking out loud, speaking everything that came to mind about what had happened, and about things that had never happened but somehow they were in her head to say.

A gust of wind blowing her hair. Heavy, painful lump in her throat. Deserts and mirrors and pie and swirling mud, mud everywhere, always mud, except when there was fire, oh god the fire hurt so much… And somebody, somebody big and much, much too old, doing things, doing things to her and why, why, why was she doing that, she shouldn't be letting him, she wasn't that girl, she was Jenny McCormack, Jenny who was good and clean and had never even been kissed or anything…

She woke up to her foster father stroking her forehead, bright sunlight pouring into her eyes and hard ground beneath her. When he asked her why she'd come out here, what she'd been thinking to do a stupid thing like that, and what had made her faint…Jennifer found that the answer wasn't there. It was hiding, a bitter recluse somewhere underneath her forehead, a lock that had been turned the wrong way and couldn't be opened. Jennifer thought that maybe it had something to do with the neighbors' backyard, which was covered from one end to the other in a layer of mud, perfectly spread, like icing on a birthday cake. But that was stupid. What did mud have to do with anything? It was all gross and icky and it ruined your clothes.

Jennifer did fail her biology test. The teacher passed them back the next day, and Jennifer looked at a poster on the wall while she chewed her pencil, the yellow one with the cats on it. She hadn't studied for this test and it was all…well, she couldn't think of anyone to blame, really. It wasn't as if anyone had been keeping her from studying. She did that all on her own. Crud.

Whenever Jennifer was about to do something disappointing, she always hated to meet the person's eyes, so she couldn't look at her teacher while the grades were being distributed. And, for some reason, she didn't want to look anyone in the eyes, ever again—Jennifer didn't think it had anything to do with the biology test. Something about mud. A binding shame. Permanent and irreversible. Jennifer wanted to go scrub her hands raw.

All the tests had been given out, all except hers, and the teacher held up a lone exam, asking with extreme vexation who had forgotten to put their name on the paper. Jennifer raised her hand slowly, almost afraid to admit it, and the anonymous paper was handed to her (she didn't look the teacher in the eyes). It was definitely her handwriting. 47 percent. Lovely. Jennifer rolled her eyes, almost unable to believe that even she would have done a stupid thing like forget to put her name on her test.

Except, Jennifer didn't forget.

Jennifer hadn't forgotten at all.

All through the rest of class, she ignored the finer points of adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Jennifer couldn't care less about guanine, and if it was on the next test, well, she just wouldn't know the answer. Because there was another question that she wanted answered even more, the one that she couldn't stop staring at under her desk, haunting her with a spectral fear of the unknown, of the unreal, of a half-remembered horror…

Name: