I got on a brief femmeslash kick, it seems which explains the first two fragments. Last one is in the universe of one of my mammoth fics, Bright Line. 'Cos we needed some fluff. ;)

Didn't

(Post-Aftershock)

Terra was not pretty. She was sad and sick. Long, spindly legs and arms coupled with oversized hands and feet made her look like a puppy that hadn't grown into its own skin yet. A mop of stringy, lifeless, blonde hair overpowered her tiny body in a way that could never be considered glamorous. Her face was innocent but plain. Innocent face. The rest of her wasn't so innocent.

Terra was not her type. She giggled too loudly—the fact that she giggled at all was more than enough proof, anyway—and did cartwheels in the living room when she was happy and watched Laguna Beach. She was messy. Once, she'd spilled hot chocolate all over Raven, then tried to clean it up before she could push her away, and ended up smearing it into her cloak. It had burned.

Terra was not intelligent. Anyone could have seen what she didn't, seen the man for who he was and not some warped Prince Charming encased in metal, not some…Raven didn't even know how Terra felt about him, actually. Didn't know what synapses hadn't connected properly in the girl's brain to cause the attachments that ran deep, deep like the blood in her veins, deep like the places in Terra's mind that hid the secrets she'd never tell anyone, shameful and filthy and drenched in sweat.

But there was no Prince Charming. There was no castle and no spell and Terra would never wake up. It was her own damn fault.

Raven was not naïve. She'd known, right from the start she'd known, and she could remember a hushed conversation with Robin that first night Terra returned, with the unspoken doubt hanging in the air between them as if not acknowledging it would make it go away. Terra's shrill laughter and the cocky grin on her face as she commanded the earth with newfound precision had never convinced Raven. Emotions didn't lie, and Raven understood emotions. Terra could never persuade her that she was anything less than an attention-seeking valley girl, or anything more than an insecure child playing at being a hero. But she didn't need to persuade her.

Raven was not a romantic. She only remembered Valentine's Day because of the unending parade of red and pink repeatedly shoved in her face, she shuddered at the mindless, prepackaged sap at the movie theater, and she did not believe in love at first sight. She and Terra had never fallen in love and they never would; they fell in distrust. In misery. In spite. Something else entirely. It didn't matter. What mattered was the growing realization that the girl had coiled herself around Raven like a parasitic vine, because as she began to understand the little bundle of hypocrisy, Raven saw something entirely too similar to herself. And it wouldn't go away just because she said that it didn't exist, or shouldn't exist, or that Raven was different because it was all her father's fault that she couldn't control her powers, that the way she shut herself in her room at night with a book wasn't anything at all like Terra's abhorrent flirting with Beast Boy. That the sham of a life the girl built for herself, the life where she was somebody who mattered, somebody who was loved, somebody who wasn't afraid all the time…it was nothing like Raven.

Raven was not a victim. The fight in the mud hadn't been an exercise in role-playing a helpless damsel. She'd wanted to hurt Terra, to her core, past superficial injuries and into the vulnerable facets of her mind that she thought were kept private, the ones that she broadcast when she slept. There was something sinister and attractive about hurting Terra, and so she'd surrendered to the abandon, the rage, the unbound cruelty because it was the only way to communicate just how hurt Raven was, in ways that Terra couldn't or wouldn't ever understand. Kissing Terra's jaw or snapping it in half, running her fingers through her muddy hair or shoving her down into the dirty water and waiting for the moment when she had to inhale and the life left her eyes—it was all the same. And even now, weeks later, Raven would sometimes lie awake in bed wondering what Terra's arms would have felt like around her waist, wondering what she'd spiraled into and why, what monster the girl had awakened within her—but nothing that hadn't already been there. She would turn over onto her stomach and press her face into her pillow, counting out the breaths until she could sleep and dream about blue eyes and cartwheels and sushi mixed with ice cream.

The blue eyes were gray, now. Open forever, upturned in that typical, "It-wasn't-me" stare. Sometimes, Raven went down there—she never told the others because they wouldn't believe her, but she did, and not to spray paint the statue or throw rocks at it, either, as the uninitiated might conclude. She never said anything. Just silently dared the rock to come to life, to shudder and shed away the stone tomb and reveal a stupid little girl who liked Britney Spears and cried when someone killed a mosquito.

Raven was not in love. And Terra was not coming back.

Balance

(AU during season two)

It might be the Mall of Shopping, but that wasn't what Terra was doing.

She zipped up her blue purse, holding up the coin like some kind of artifact. "And see, what you do is you throw it in the fountain and make a wish, and if it hits the spray it'll come true."

Starfire grinned down at the penny in her own hand. Eyes focused in concentration, she gripped it in a fist, aimed straight for the fizzing column of water—and Terra cringed, bracing herself for what she knew was about to be a Bad Thing. Sure enough, she was right. The penny sailed right through the fountain, ricocheting off the far wall and smacking a mannequin right in the face, bouncing viciously a few times before coming to rest in some unseen corner of the mall.

"Umm…nobody saw that," said Terra.

Taking Terra's hand imploringly, Starfire mirrored her look of horror. "I must apologize; it seems that once again I have failed to adequately measure…"

"No, no, it's fine." Terra reached into her purse again, pulling out a fistful of pennies and presenting them to her girlfriend. "You can have as many tries as you want; that's the rules."

Of course, Terra didn't really know what the "rules," were, exactly, because it wasn't like she had all that much experience with shopping or malls or fountains or…or girls. Whenever Terra walked into a mall, her head was filled with the sick pounding of crumbling concrete, an echo of all the things she'd done when she couldn't control, couldn't stop, couldn't do anything she was supposed to. When she was on her own, at the very beginning, she would go into malls sometimes. She'd look into the stores at all the clothing that she couldn't buy—the frilly little sweaters and socks with hippos on them, stuff that normal girls wore. And after she got tired of that, she'd go to the food court, and if there was a fountain she'd find it; Terra would sit there, sometimes for hours because what else was she going to do with her time, and hope that somebody would leave a piece of a cinnamon roll or some fries so she could grab them.

And as for girls. Girls. Well. That was more Starfire's thing. Starfire knew all about that kind of stuff. She'd said that she liked boys, too, but sometimes she liked girls, and she especially liked Terra. At first, Terra hadn't been very good at it and she'd worried that Starfire would hate her, or whatever, but Starfire was quite eager to show her…well, everything. She liked teaching, she said.

Except today, because Terra had to teach Starfire about fountains and pennies and wishes. The second time Starfire tried to throw the penny, it sailed just beyond the fountain, tumbling to the floor on the other side and rolling underneath a potted plant. But the third time, she got it. Right into the middle of the fountain, slipping away invisible and mysterious; Terra loved to watch when somebody threw one perfectly.

"How delightful!" Starfire leaned against the damp tiles as if trying to see where the penny had gone, and the way her shirt moved with her made Terra feel funny. "…Friend Robin says that this sort of behavior is childish and ineffectual."

Terra knew that she must be quoting him, because Starfire would never say anything like that, wouldn't have the words in her head, even. Slipping her hand through Starfire's fingers, Terra grinned mischievously. "Well, friend Robin's not here right now, is he?"

"No, I suppose he isn't."

They were different, the two of them. Starfire was tall and gorgeous and looked like a fashion model; and that bright red hair that Terra couldn't stop touching if her life depended on it; and the way her eyes got round and full when she was happy. Terra was little. And skinny. And…little. She'd called herself ugly a fair bit, but two weeks ago Starfire had asked her to please not do that anymore, so she was trying to stop. And she supposed that maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was just different than Starfire. Blonde and flat-chested and a foot shorter, but just different, all the same.

"Terra, I believe it is your turn to throw the monetary units into the fountain." Starfire didn't call her "friend Terra." She'd stopped since…since the day they'd been baking cookies and Terra had gotten dough all over her cheek when she wiped her face with the back of her hand…and Starfire had moved to clean her off but somehow ended up kissing her instead…

Releasing her hand, Terra put down her purse. "Okay; I'm pretty good at this, so watch out." She narrowed her eyes and tossed, smirking triumphantly when the coin sailed through the spray, disappearing.

"Most excellent!" Starfire clapped her hands. "What did you wish for?"

Blushing, Terra shifted and drew the toe of her shoe along a crack in the floor. "Oh, umm…" In front of her, three teenage girls were making stupid faces at a photo booth, their laughter giving her strength, strength for what she needed to say, for something.

"I wished that we'd…that we'd always be together."

Suddenly serious (Terra had had to get used to the total, uncompromising changes in her mood), Starfire turned to face her, one hand on her shoulder, almost like an apology. "Terra…such an attitude will only bring you sorrow."

She squinted up at her. "Huh?"

But Starfire was not entertaining questions. "Allow me to reveal my wish," she continued brightly, exercising her trademarked strategy of daring the problem at hand to challenge her (it never did, not that Terra saw). "I wished for us to be together, in this moment, and to be happy. 'Always,' is a troublesome word. And I do not enjoy making wishes that may prove to disappoint me."

It kind of made her feel cold and frightened, and yet kind of not—how could it, with Starfire's smile and her perfect skin and the way her voice just made Terra so happy… And maybe…maybe she was kind of right. Maybe it was enough, just this moment, just this, together, with sunlight through the huge windows accenting the water droplets clinging to their hair.

You couldn't be frightened when Starfire was around. Terra was frightened and Starfire…she soaked up Terra's fear and absorbed it so you couldn't even tell it had ever existed. That's how they were. Terra could explain things like fountains and pennies and how not to destroy a mall with a superhuman throwing arm, but Starfire had to explain the other stuff, the stuff about belonging and need and happiness and comfort and…

"Star, I…"

Starfire smiled. It was sweet and serious and a little bit solemn. "Might we partake in some of the iced cream? I have learned which monetary units are appropriate for such purchases through much studying of…"

Terra was kind of glad she interrupted. Nothing good could have come on the end of that sentence. And Starfire knew that. She took Terra's hand in hers and started talking about the differences between five and ten dollar bills. Terra still maybe felt like she wanted to say something—it was sort of stuck in her chest like a cough that lingered after you'd been sick for a long time—but she was able to keep it down.

So Terra stopped thinking about whatever it was and kissed Starfire, right in the middle of the discussion about George Washington's face on the dollar.

Ordinary

(Bright Line universe, after chapter 13)

Raven was a fairly observant person—mostly because she liked to stay in the background and just see how others interacted. It was usually enough, for her, and she was quite good at picking up the little details. So that's why Raven would have been embarrassed if he'd happened to ask her what she thought about the movie they were watching. Because Raven definitely hadn't been watching the movie; she'd been watching Robin

Before all this, you never could tell just by looking if he was okay. He shoved it to the back of his mind so the uncertainties and the fear and the doubt were hardly visible. Far too much practice had led him to become far too good at it. Now that she'd finally gotten the mask off (sort of—he still clung to it when he was with anyone else but her, but it was better than nothing) he'd become much easier to read. Robin didn't have any practice with keeping his eyes impassive, because he'd never had to, so she could usually tell exactly what he was feeling without having to reach out with her gift. For awhile, that had been a good thing, because Robin hadn't appreciated being forced to share with her in such a personal way. Though actually, he'd told her the other day that he liked it now, that it felt good in a way that he had trouble articulating.

Of course, Raven didn't exactly mind that she'd gotten him to take off the mask. He had great eyes.

Robin was alright, though, and he was still alright when she cautiously leaned against his shoulder. When she touched him physically, he would immediately tense up and get a complicated, conflicted look in his eyes…and Raven knew what he was fighting. But she didn't see that now, and it occurred to her that this was one of the first times she hadn't seen it. Sure, maybe he was just absorbed in the movie but she was convinced it was more than that. The way he way he wrapped a hesitant arm around her waist told her that it was more than that.

It almost made her angry: that something so commonplace for anyone else was an incredible event for him. She drove the thought away, telling herself that it was not the time for that, that if Robin was okay with the lack of justice than she should be, too. One day. One day when she was older and stronger, he would pay. She couldn't worry about that now; Robin needed her right now.

He nudged her and asked her a question about one of the actors.

Raven looked up at him sheepishly. "I…sorry, but I wasn't really…paying attention. Can you—can you tell me what's going on?"

Grinning, he moved his arm into a more comfortable position, said that he'd figured she wasn't really watching, and launched into an elaborate explanation of what she'd missed. Raven told herself that she had to actually listen to the words he was saying, instead of thinking about how great it was that he was saying them—here—to her—smiling and relaxed and happy.