One rather typical day for the Titans, the team rose at dawn to blaring klaxons and spent the next hour chasing down Control Freak. After turning the pudgy criminal over to the proper authorities, they returned home to relax. Robin retreated into his layer, too obsessed with preventing crime to resume sleeping. Starfire settled down on the couch to watch World of Fungus and was soon snoring peacefully. Cyborg returned to his room to recharge his batteries, but Beast Boy was nowhere to be seen. Alone in her room, Raven meditated to relieve her inner turmoil over the date. Though the others seemed not to notice, today was the anniversary of the Terra statue's disappearance. She could sense Beast Boy in the cave where Terra had sacrificed herself; his emotions were a tangle of grief and anger.
Raven gritted her teeth. No matter how many times she repeated her mantra, the blonde geomancer stayed lodged in her head. Her eyelids bunched at the memory of Terra's savage grin at her nose, eyes, ears, and mouth filling with mud, causing her to suffocate. Her demon immunology had saved her; Terra had assumed she was dead prematurely and left her to drown in the quicksand.
For a split second, Rage took advantage of the memory and Raven's eyes split into four crimson ones, but she reigned in the anger. Those events were in the past, and Raven's logical side reminded her Terra was not truly to blame for being brainwashed, abused, and physically controlled by Slade.
"Azarath metrion zinthos."
Raven reflected on the period directly after Terra had been petrified. The team had acquiesced to the carving of "Terra: A Teen Titan and True Friend" next to the statue, but that had been to appease Beast Boy, who harbored feelings for her at the time and believed it to be true.
She had, of course, searched for days to find an antidote to Terra's predicament, as she had told Beast Boy. However, she had done so to fulfill her civic duty as a hero of Jump City and out of pity for Beast Boy, not because of any fondness she felt for the geomancer. In fact, at the time, Raven thought, she probably would've just as quickly sent Terra to hell for what she had done to her friends as embrace her.
Earlier memories came flowing back. Raven chuckling together with Terra after having some fun at Beast Boy's expense, fighting villains side by side, and refusing to fight each other for the Master of Games.
The sound of an ornate vase shattering caused Raven to open one eye. The reason she avoided thinking about Terra was because of the whirling emotions the subject prompted, which promised her powers would misfire. The irony that she, the least accepting of Terra and the quickest to mistrust her, had freed the geomancer from her stony prison did not escape her.
Raven sighed. Beast Boy had spent weeks trying to convince the team that Terra was back when the statue had vanished, and she had faked skepticism alongside the others. However, she knew for a fact that Terra had rejoined the living and that her memories were intact, whatever façade she had presented to Beast Boy when he confronted her "clone". The geomancer's emotional aura was strong enough that Raven could feel it from several miles away, and the mystery girl at the local high school was indeed Tara, crown princess of Markovia.
She had never revealed this truth to Beast Boy, recognizing that telling him would ultimately cause him more strife over the blonde's lie to him. In a way, preserving Terra's secret was a gift to a girl who clearly wanted to forget the darkness of her past and start over.
Raven could understand wanting to forget one's inner demons, and she felt a stab of jealousy at Terra's seeming ease doing so. It must be easy to pretend to be someone else if you didn't have gray skin and purple hair. If she really wanted to, she could cast a glamour charm for the rest of her life, but the cost of that was worth more than anything she might gain from it. Besides, she thought, once again fighting back Rage, she was not a coward. Even if Terra wouldn't, Raven would face her own faults and fear.
Despite the geomancer's cowardice, Raven found that as time passed, she gained a deeper understanding of Terra's actions and the motivations behind them. She couldn't promise that she wouldn't have reacted the same way in Terra's situation.
In the last few years, Raven had come to forgive her former friend. She couldn't forget, but if Terra was to return, she would make an effort to accept her for who she was, not who she had been. Then again, an "I'm sorry I tried to drown you in quicksand and that I tried to kill everyone you care about and destroy the city you protect," would be appreciated immensely.
As Raven hovered in the lotus position, a small smile graced her lips. For however much Rage snarled for revenge, she had found the mercy within herself to begin forgiving Terra. Alongside that forgiveness, much to her surprise, came a sense of peace.