April. Baby's first villainous motivation p.2
Dick's plan to tail Jen and her entire group of friends was made redundant after the first day of it being implemented. At three in the afternoon, the Five were among the students redirected to exit school through the south door, because the front entrance had been glued shut. The day before, Jen and her group –all seven of them- had all gotten caught smoking in the premises, and were already in detention at the other side of school during the only logical interval of time the front door could've been vandalized.
Now Victor looked worriedly onto a fuming Dick. "Look at it this way. We have seven fewer suspects?" he tried.
Dick seethed in place. The results from their previous last-ditch investigation attempt had been that out of all the stores nearby that sold any type of paint, only one remembered a teenager buying spray paint lately, but the clerk described a blonde girl. And now this.
He took a deep breath before he faced his friends. "Do you guys feel like they somehow knew they were suspects and got detention on purpose to get in the clear?" he asked, needing to voice the ridiculous notion.
Gar would never tell him he was dismayed for another reason; he'd had the perfect image in his head of Terra heroically catching one of the culprits in the act singlehandedly, and being hailed as a true Project Club member beyond the shadow of a doubt. He realized that had been a bit far-fetched, but he was still let down now the possibility was totally gone.
Looking at her now –she was with them in the clubroom because Dick had stopped being so particular about not letting her hear the innings of the mission now that all their active attempts had failed-, he thought she looked a bit upset, and he wondered if she'd had the idea in her head as well.
"We just need to wait for the next mission. Then you can chip in and prove yourself," he told her later, when they were alone.
Terra made herself smile and airily reassured him it would happen eventually, and then changed the subject—because his suggestion was the exact same thing Jenny had told her she needed to do the day before.
There were two aspects to Terra's assignment. One was finding out as much dirt on the Five as she could before some big occasion, an unspecified event Jen was only referring to as D-Day.
She didn't have to do anything for Kori; she was taken care of before Terra arrived into the roster. As Jen eventually told her, Jade and Angel rounded up the last of Hive, and they had extensive dirt on Kori by virtue of having known Kori's big sister.
For Vic they were going to take his leaving the football team the year before and spin something about him being kicked out for cheating with his prosthetics, based on stuff Jen knew from when they had dated, and vouched for by the current captain Adam Kelley, who was currently dating Jade or Angel or someone –Terra was sure Jen had told her the name of both girls at different points-, and therefore was honorary Hive.
At that point Terra had asked Jen, "If you have all of this, why'd you even need me?"
"It's not gonna work if we don't bring out the big guns," Jen explained. "Jade already tried to sink Kori last year, and she failed miserably." (Jade pouted in the background at this.) "We need to sink all of them, at once, or they'll float back up."
And Terra had no idea how she was going to pull that off, because she was soon aware she'd been saddled with two of the most difficult members of the Club; ice queen Raven, whom Terra wasn't even sure had feelings, let alone any worthwhile secrets, and the very smart and vigilant Dick, who was obviously one of those kids who'd just been born perfect.
But she kept her eyes and ears open, and it paid off: her chance with Dick came, and it was easier than she ever could have hoped.
The Club had been telling her about the big case from last year, busting a fake foundation, and they had talked about how they all had a police record now, and Victor had teasingly alluded to Dick already having one from before. Kori had checked him with a look, and Vic had backtracked, but Terra had already noticed.
(That's how sloppy they were. The ease with which they had relaxed around her made Terra feel a little less smug about her duplicity. Anyone could betray them, she thought. It's too easy.)
Terra waited a while, biding her time. Then, after a day or two, she went to ask Kori about it. She was direct; with Kori, she felt she should be. She'd just asked her what Victor had meant. Kori first told her she should talk to Dick, but she did say that Dick had gone through a period of delinquency in middle school, and that they didn't hold it against him. Terra assured her she didn't see Dick differently, and asked her not to tell Dick she'd asked.
Then she went to Dick, and did some of the best acting of her life.
She told him she was having a lot of doubts about wanting to be back in the Club, because she hadn't been completely forthcoming with them; she had a past of shoplifting she was ashamed of, and she wasn't sure she deserved to be with them. Dick had listened to her, reassured her, and eventually leveled with her: he revealed to her he had a similar story, he told her about his old friend Rex, his problems in school, and his uncle's disappointment, and the reason why he always told them not to break and enter and held the team back from pursuable offenses. He told her she had nothing to worry about—they were on the same boat, and she belonged as much as he did.
So Terra went to Jenny and told her everything. Terra's proposal was that Hive should get a hold of Dick's permanent records, as he'd spoken a lot of getting in trouble in school. When Jen asked how the hell she was going to get into Blood's inner office without the Secretary going up in arms, Terra showed her how to navigate the vents the way the Five had shown her.
"Raven will be trickier," she warned Terra. "You'll need time to wear her down."
"Yeah," nodded Terra.
Jen eyed her. "Then there's still Gar."
Terra frowned. "I know."
So Terra's first duty was well under way.
The second part of her assignment was even more delicate. It involved her getting on the Club's computer and making transactions as Jenny dictated.
Jen fed her as little information as she could, but it wasn't hard for Terra to see what they were going for. One day Jen tasked her with making a purchase of blue spray paint, and after it arrived, the doors of the trophy cases in the main hallway got painted blue. One day all the volley balls disappeared from the gym, and the next Terra was publishing an online bid for two dozen volley balls. The account she had created had all of Dick's real information. All except for the destination address, which was (Jen didn't tell her this, but Terra checked) Seymour's house.
When she had these tasks, Terra got to school early or left her last class in a hurry in order to be in the clubroom without the other Five, and it didn't always work. When she could be alone, she made the transactions by the skin of her teeth and turned the computer off again seemingly moments before someone arrived. The Five thought she was super dedicated when she was so often already there before them.
The rest of Terra's time was spent hearing Dick brainstorm about Hive, helping out with other random missions, and focusing on finding out dirt on them at the same time. During the school day, she was focused, anxious, pretending, and always jumpy, always looking over her shoulder.
But in the afternoon, everything changed. When Club was over, she'd meet Gar at the front door and they'd go off somewhere, anywhere. They'd take a walk or go to an arcade –they went to the fair for three nights in a row at one point- and they'd always have fun. She'd mute Jen's texts and just be Terra —the version of her she liked most, the one she was with Gar.
Terra didn't remember when she'd decided to open up to Gar. By the time she'd caught herself, she was telling him things she'd never shared with anyone before.
"I've never stayed in a single city for more than eight months," she told him once.
"I'll do you one better," he said. "I'd been through twelve cities before I was twelve."
She didn't remember how the conversation had started, but they were now comparing traumas.
"I've run away from every home I've ever been in at least once," Gar said.
Terra scoffed. "I'd run away so often when I was a kid the folks at the police station got worried if they didn't hear from me in a while."
"At my house in Dover, the older boys made me shoplift for them as a test."
"I had to shoplift in my house in Washington because the older girls always stole my tampons."
Gar leaned back and thought hard. "Shit. Okay, you win. Have the last cookie."
She'd never talked to anyone like that before.
As for the rest of the Five, Terra had been unofficially accepted a while ago.
From the first time she got into Vic's car, she was entered into the aux cord system. One minute she was listening to a frankly depressing folk tune of Raven's choosing, the next Vic announced it was officially Terra's first turn choosing the music for the next ten minutes. He made it a whole announcement—those dorks even clapped. Terra felt included despite herself.
Terra knew for sure Kori appreciated her—she was the only one who liked her food. Terra had grown up with all kinds of food, and she ate absolutely anything. She had preferences, but she could as easily ignore them. Kori's food tasted weird, yes, but it wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever tried. And it was always homemade, so it had that depth and that love. Terra was floored as to how the others didn't appreciate it.
Dick signified no opposition either. He'd accepted even before their delinquency heart-to-heart, and after it, he behaved almost paternal with her—which was hilarious, because Terra had had to repeat third grade, so she was pretty sure she was older than everyone else except Vic.
The last frontier was Raven. Terra had turned to Gar for help for that one.
"You have any idea how I can get her to like me more?" she'd asked him.
"Oh, Raven is easy," Gar had said. "You just have to remember to respect her boundaries. So like, don't take her favorite spot by the window, don't touch her stuff, don't crowd her personal space, don't distract her when she's reading, and don't sing next to her, and you'll be fine," said Gar, counting off with his fingers.
Terra had cocked her head at him. "I've seen you break all those rules today."
"Yeah," Gar had smiled. "Don't do anything I'll do and you'll be fine."
Terra had laughed. He hadn't helped, but he had cheered her up.
One of the days she went to club early –she'd needed to put twenty calculators up for sale- was one of those days Terra didn't find it empty. Raven already sitting on her chair by the furthest wall, reading. Raven looked up, saw it was Terra, and Terra was pretty sure she saw distaste darken her already permanently grim expression, before she turned back to her book. Regardless, Terra had decided it was her chance, and took it.
She gingerly approached the other girl, who did nothing to acknowledge her even though she was right in front of her. She opened with, "Okay, Gar promised me you're like a cat."
The vague dismay in Raven's eyes turned into a clear glare. "Excuse me?"
"You know, he said you're like a cat. Cats ignore you, act like they don't like you, and you have to pay a lot of attention to see it, but deep down…," Terra met Raven's icy glare and almost couldn't go on. So she cast her eyes down. "They're… nice. They care about you. He said you were like that. So that I should just be patient. But, I'll be honest?" she went on, raising her gaze. "I have no interest in groveling so that one day you might look at me kindly. If you don't like me, don't like me. I'm not gonna fight for your approval. I'm not like that."
Raven had been telling herself to be fair to the new girl for days now, ever since she'd comprehended she was here to stay. But somehow that always seemed easier when Terra wasn't physically in front of her. Something about the girl seriously ticked her off, and every single time she opened her mouth made it worse. This was the worst yet.
When had she asked anyone to grovel? And what was the point of Terra notifying her she wouldn't try on her? Also, the idea of Terra relaying something Gar had said about her rubbed her off the wrong way and sent her straight into a foul mood. For that reason, and because she seriously feared there was way more to this speech Terra had prepared, she cut the other girl off with a, "Then. Don't."
And she went back to her book.
From the corner of her eyes she saw Terra's feet planted frozen on the ground. Then they turned around indignantly and moved to the other side of the room. Raven felt so relieved it took her aback. And only when Dick and Kori arrived, making it so there definitely wouldn't any more confronting for today, Raven could actually focus on the words she was reading again.
She was aware her friends wondered why she seemed to dislike Terra so much, and she'd come to wonder that herself. As much as she told herself they just didn't click as people, sometimes Terra repelled her so violently, she was forced to think it was something bigger. Raven couldn't brush off the idea that she was sensing something about Terra—something bad no one else had caught.
It wouldn't be the first time.
But Terra was a person, not a lead or a place or a course of action she could veto for the team and make them turn away from. As much as Raven trusted her intuition, she wouldn't accuse someone without proof. She couldn't figure out what it was about Terra that bugged her, and so she kept quiet. She simply couldn't see what else to do.
"Wait, I'm confused," Gar said. "What's the use of mapping where the pranks have happened? They've already happened."
The Club were meeting on a picnic table in the park, because that was where Raven had told them she was babysitting two out of her three charges. Five Club members actually sat to the picnic table, while Raven walked around them, baby in arms. Dick was holding the map of the school he'd rolled out on the table on both ends to keep it from being taken by the wind.
"It's a tactic detectives use," he explained. "By studying where pranks have taken place, you can predict where the next one will happen. It's probability."He had recently been finally fired from his delivery job, and so he'd had a little extra time to brainstorm solutions.
"I think I saw that in a TV show," said Terra, whose mere presence invalidated the purpose of a prediction no matter how plausible it might be. If by any chance they got it right, she'd just tell Jen to choose another place.
"We need to take into accounts what days they pranks have happened," said Dick. "Because if this is a group of people, they'll have different schedules. But a good thing is, they'll be tied to classes no matter what, so if we can figure out what classrooms they're operating near, we can narrow the suspect list from what classes they're taking. Raven, do you have to walk around? You're distracting me."
Raven maintained eye contact with Dick as she sat down. Tommy immediately started crying. She stood again, point proven, and the baby stopped crying.
"You could have just said yes," Dick told her.
"My main activity here is babysitting, Dick," Raven said. "I said I could spare a moment for the mission, but the kids are my priority."
Right now her attention was mostly on Timmy: he was at the play structure about to go down the fireman's pole, and he'd never pulled that off before. It seemed two other boys had taken him under their wing, and were instructing him how, which was also a first. It was a groundbreaking moment for the little boy.
Dick started, "I get that you're doing your job, but-"
"Aaand my kid just fell," said Raven.
They all looked over. Timmy was on the ground, where he'd landed on his butt, and he looked confused.
Get up, get up, get up, Raven thought.
He burst out crying instead. The two boys had gone down the pole after him and now stood awkwardly to the side.
Raven sighed and went to him, with the baby in tow.
Dick resumed talking. "Okay, even if we don't get anything done today," he started. "I want you to get this: from now on always note where the pranks take place, and approximately how long a prep time they could take…"
While he talked, Terra watched Raven. She'd taken Timmy and the baby to another bench, to calm him down away from other people. The boy sobbed at her as she talked to him calmly, and dabbed his tears. Eventually he started to calm down. Then Raven seemed to ask something, because he shook his head. They stayed in that bench as she continually talked to him, or maybe she was telling him a story; Terra guessed she'd asked if he wanted to go back to the games and he'd said no. Eventually the boy's head fell on her shoulder and he seemed to doze off.
Then she noticed Gar was looking at her—watching her watch Raven. He smiled when she turned to him, and Terra knew what he must be thinking: she was seeing another side of Raven and it humanized her, and it made it easier for her to like the aloof girl. The truth was a little different. Seeing Raven like this made Terra hate her more, and she couldn't have said why.
Perhaps it was the fact that Raven could be so impassive and distant, and then turned around and acted so maternal and gentle; it proved that she wasn't the way she was because she couldn't help being that way, but because she was comfortable with it: with both sides of herself. That meant she wasn't a work in progress—she was finished. Even with all the flaws Terra saw in her, the traits that made her recoil, Raven herself was where she wanted to be. It made Terra dislike her on principle.
One day, in Math class, Gar raised his hand and asked Mr. Bill if he could make an announcement. Then he whipped out a guitar, turned to Terra and started singing the song he'd written just for her.
"You don't need to say you're my girl, 'cause I've already won," it went, with a light tune and an questionable rhyming that was just so Gar. "We don't need to go official, you've already changed my world / Sure we could make things formal, but you're already my favorite person / You don't need to say anything, 'cause I've got enough." The tune changed as he got into the chorus, and the crowd around them wouldn't have let T hear it if she hadn't been sitting right next to Gar. "But I have a feeling, oh I have a notion / I can see the future, and it's wide as the ocean / We'll go a long way / And make it ti-ill the end / But either way it's okay, I'm still gonna say / I'm so glad I met you / Babe!"
Terra hid her face in her hands for most of the show. From the outside, she was sure she looked like any embarrassed, flattered, extremely lucky girl. Kids she didn't know were smiling at them. Vic was clapping along the loudest, shaking his head but wearing a wide smile. Raven massaged her temples with her eyes closed, looking like she was ashamed of being associated with them. Further away, Jen was cracking jokes she couldn't hear with Seymour, and to anyone else it could look like she was just making fun of Gar's sappiness. But Jen caught Terra's eye and smiled at her, and Terra felt cold all of a sudden.
"I have nothing to report on Gar," she told the female portion of Hive later, in Kitty's bedroom. She shrugged obstinately. "He's an angel, he's never done anything wrong in his life. What'd you want me to do?"
Leaning on the wall, Jen just rolled her eyes. The way she stayed uncharacteristically silent put Terra on edge more than anything she could've said.
Kitty made up for it by dictating, "Fine, we'll have to make something up for him!" She might be the only person in the room who didn't know why Terra was drawing a line in the sand about Gar, plainly because she didn't care enough.
"I don't want you to," said Terra. "You've got dirt on everyone else, that's enough to sink the club. Leave him alone."
"Are you even dating the little guy?" asked Jen. "Why do you care?"
He's the best person I've ever met, thought Terra. Even if I don't deserve him, I can protect him. "Don't spread shit about Gar," she told them slowly, looking from Jen to Kitty, giving her best rendition of a Raven glare. "That's the condition for me staying on the plan. You leave him alone, and you get to have the rest."
Now Kitty flew up in a rage to Terra's face. "Why do you think you get to set conditions?"
Jen got in between them. "Alright, alright, girls. Kitty, it's fine," she said, in a perfectly calm tone, which to Terra sounded incredibly foreboding. "She's right. We're sinking the whole team. We don't need Gar too." She turned to Terra. "We can spare him."
"Good," said Terra, taking comfort on the fact that Kitty was sulking. Then she could at least pretend she believed Jen meant it.
At the beginning of this Hive business, she'd only felt the power. When she led Dick in circles, she felt smarter than anyone. When she so much looked at Raven and thought about what was to come, she felt giddy. When Kori hugged her and called her friend, or when Vic made a fuss about including her—then she felt a little bad. When Gar sang that song, she started to feel really bad. Suddenly she couldn't remember about the power, and felt only the guilt.
Jen was right; she changed when she was around those guys as opposed to when she was around Hive. And when she left Kitty's house, when she was all alone, she felt like a third self: just a lying kid who'd gotten tangled in something way too big for her. She ran all the way home.
Gar's song had rung in her ears all days, and it stayed with her as she got into her current house and locked herself in the bathroom. She stared at her face in the mirror.
"What the hell am I doing?" she said out loud. In movies, people always did that when they were about to hit a breakthrough. She wanted to incite one of those moments. She desperately wished she knew what to do next.
Later that afternoon, Terra lay on the rubber flooring of Dick's home gym, where Kori had sent her after a throw that had made Terra lose the sense of up and down.
It was the first time they invited Terra to training. She knew they were going to wipe the floor with her… but she'd only lasted, what? Three seconds? It was a bit much.
Dick rushed to offer her a hand up, which she took. "Don't feel bad," he said, "Kori's our undefeated champion."
Kori gave her a sheepish smile from afar. She was glowing, but only in terms of happiness, because she hadn't broken a sweat—she clearly loved sparring.
"Is this the part where you tell me you all started this way?" Terra asked Dick.
"We did!" piped Gar, from the punching bag. "…Well, I did."
When Dick decreed they were done training –he decided on a short session since it was Terra's first-, the conversation turned again to Gar's performance in Math class.
"Oh, I wish I had been there, Gar," Kori said. "Or I wish someone had filmed it."
"Sorry Kori, I was busy living the moment," said Vic.
"All I know is you interrupted Mr. Bill's class," Dick teased him. "He must hate you now."
"Nah, Bill doesn't mind, he's so nice," answered Gar. He looked right at home as the center of attention.
"At one point I looked at him and he was glaring at you," said Vic. "Trust me, he hates you a little after today."
"What I wanna know is how you snuck a guitar into class," was Terra's shy contribution. Gar smiled at her and his eyes twinkled, and she couldn't help smile back. Everyone else smiled conspirationally at each other.
Vic was probably the happiest out of all their friends. Gar hadn't even run the idea of the class serenade by him; if he had, Vic would have told him not to do it. But Gar hadn't asked; he'd just barreled ahead, because he'd apparently already decided to take a leap of faith on Terra, and it looked like it was actually working out for him.
Whenever Gar told him about the great, long conversations he had with Terra, how she was different and much more open with him, Vic couldn't help but wonder how much he was building it up in his head. He couldn't be happier to be proven wrong.
He translated his excitement by clapping his hands. "I'm hungry for waffles! Who's in?!"
"Waffles at five in the afternoon?" asked Terra.
"Vic gets his pastry cravings at this time," Dick explained. "We've learned to roll with it."
Terra smiled. "Well I'm in."
"Me too!" said Gar.
"I'm out," said Raven.
Victor turned to her. "Aw, come on, it's Friday!"
"And it is Terra's first training day," said Kori.
Raven was already picking up her stuff. "I have homework, and I have to babysit tonight and I don't know when. Mrs. Tanner said she'd call me and knowing her, it'll be five minutes after she wants me to go in."
"We could all go to yours," offered Dick, "and leave when you have to leave."
"No, that's okay."
Raven's tone was light, but Terra noticed she gave Dick a look as she said it. She also noticed Dick dropped it immediately after that. Alert as she was to anything that might help her, Terra could tell—something had happened there that was begging for her to blow open.
Raven found herself stomping home. She'd had no good reason to pass on waffles. She didn't have that much homework, and she knew Mrs. Tanner wouldn't be calling her before eight. But she couldn't stand to be in that group any longer.
What was it about Terra that bothered her so much? Everyone else was firmly in the We love Terra boat. There had to be a reason Raven had needed to physically remove herself from the company of her friends, where she'd once felt at perfect peace, because she couldn't stand that one girl. Seeing her and Gar all over each other in particular made her feel violent. Each of them alone was bubbly; put together, they were too sugary to stand. Especially now, where everyone was giving Terra and Gar knowing smiles, hoping for a relationship upgrade soon. Raven was afraid if she stayed they'd get together right in front of everyone at any second.
She wasn't jealous.
To her credit, Raven had considered it.
It was a logical enough conclusion—for someone looking at it from the outside, objectively, and naively, it was an obvious answer: because Gar had kissed her once, now she felt a little sensitive because he'd gone and gotten himself a girlfriend, almost. It would make sense for a person, theoretically, to feel that. But Raven wasn't that person. She didn't have any leftover feelings for Gar. Why would she? It was Gar.
Raven got home and went straight up to her room, opened her window wide, and laid on the bed. The apartment felt empty, seeing as she never had her friends over anymore. But she didn't trust Terra enough to let her know about Azarath yet. And now not even Gar was climbing up her window, busy as he suddenly was…
But she wasn't jealous. If she was, it wouldn't even be about Gar—if she could say to be jealous, it would be about the shift Terra brought into her friend group. And that wasn't even jealousy, really: it was just… distaste that more things were changing in her life. That was it: this probably had more to do with her mom than anything else. Raven was probably reeling after Arella left, and now another factor came to throw her off.
It couldn't be anything other than that.
"What is it with Raven never wanting us to go to her house?"
That was how Terra chose to breach the subject with Gar. She figured that with him, there was no more artfulness needed.
He'd snuck her up to his room and they were talking in whispers, pretending she wasn't there. He'd been on his way back from closing his door and now stopped in his tracks, and his expressions got cautious, which made Terra realize she'd been right—there was something there.
"Oh, uh… Raven's house is kinda weird," he said.
"How so?" she insisted, feigning innocence.
"Well… I don't think she'd want me to tell you. Not a lot of people know…" he trailed off.
Terra smirked. "Don't you trust me?" She was liking her role as a double spy today. Maybe it was the prospect of finally finding something about Raven that erased her doubts from previous days. The idea of taking Raven down a notch was too delicious not to savor it.
And Gar had been turned easily at the playful accusation. "Okay, you can't tell her I told you," he said quickly, sitting next to her on his bed. Terra eagerly nodded. "She lives in a kind of… okay, look, it's not a cult."
"A cult?" She hadn't been expecting that.
"It's not a cult," he emphasized. "It's like a… it's a shelter, it's just hidden from the government."
"…What?"
He had to chuckle at Terra's face, which made her smile too.
"Yeah," he said. "She lives in a big building with tons of other people, in uh, three houses pretending to be one house. It's not as weird as it sounds, once you get used to it. I mean, if you think about it, a lot of people are in cults, and those people have kids, and those kids go to school, and they have to have friends, right? So, some kids end up being friends with kids who are in cults. It's no big deal. If it was a cult," he was quick to add, "but it's not."
"You believe everyone automatically deserves to have friends," said Terra, forgetting her mission for a moment. "I love that about you."
Gar's eyes twinkled. "Love?"
Terra froze, then pulled down the cap he was wearing to cover his eyes. "Shut up."
He pulled the cap off his head and sat with hair in disarray. His expression was serious now, and it made her swallow the nervous laughter bubbling on her throat.
"Terra, I…"
"Sh."
Gar obediently stopped when Terra took a finger to her lips. He was stumped; he'd never almost confessed feelings for someone and it seemed like she didn't want him to. Her expression was unreadable. He didn't know that was because Terra herself couldn't decide how she was feeling.
She said, "Wanna go somewhere?" at the same time as she got up and took herself to his window in two strides.
As she tried to open it soundlessly, the way he did when the Daytons were home, she heard him get up and move behind her. She didn't look at him when she moved aside to let him expertly work his window open. When he was done, then she dared look up at him, and he was giving her an easy smile. "Wherever you want," he said.
Had he always been so handsome? And had she ever felt so safe in her life?
Suddenly she couldn't remember all the many, many reasons she'd felt like getting up and whisking herself away. Suddenly she didn't feel like running at all.
Raven left the Tanner's home and picked up her phone to find a text from Vic. All caps, no punctuation.
Vic (7:01pm): RAE DID YOU SEE WHAT GAR POSTED?
Raven (9:22pm): What is it?
Vic (9:22pm): Get on his Insta now
Raven (9:23pm): But what is it?
Vic (9:23pm): You'll know when you see it.
Raven sighed. Going through Gar's Instagram meant having to wade through obscure animal facts, horrible puns, candid shots of the group she never knew he'd taken, and annoyingly unflattering selfies.
But Vic was right, she knew it when she saw it: it was the latest post, and it was a photo of Gar and Terra. When Raven saw it, she put her phone down automatically. It was almost like her hand did it by itself, to get the image away from her eyes.
She didn't pick up her phone again until she was in her bedroom. This time, she forced herself to look.
In the photo, Gar was kissing Terra's cheek. It was the caption that did it this time: 'This lovely lady agreed to be my girlfriend'. Once she'd read that, her hand put the phone down on her bed again.
Yes, there was that feeling again—it physically hurt her to see that.
She focused on her wall, breathed, and tried to work through the feeling weighing on her chest.
…She was jealous. She was jealous. There was no way around it—she was jealous.
It pained her to admit it, and still she fought it, still her brain went around in circles latching onto other options, because she couldn't believe it. All her animosity towards Terra—what she'd assumed was her intuition, her good judgment of people—all boiled down to one petty, horrible emotion that didn't even make sense to her.
Raven operated on the basic notion that she always knew exactly what she was feeling, all the time. She'd been raised to always know. She thought she knew better than most people. But the proof was against her, because this had completely snuck up on her.
Vic would be awaiting her reaction. She forced herself to reply as he thought she would, with a Yay for them. Can I go back to my life now? And then she put her phone away for the night and got in a mediation pose.
Her mind still rebelled against the notion that all this time, this was what had been at the bottom of her heart. She kept having to make her pride shush and face the evidence. If she wasn't jealous—if she didn't have feelings for Gar, she wouldn't feel so bad when she looked at that photo.
As she closed her eyes, it was Gar she puzzled over. Just what was it she felt about Gar? How had she harbored feelings other than friendship and not known it? Had it been growing without her noticing? In her mind, she thought she felt the same way she'd always felt about him.
Maybe she'd never understood what she felt about him in the first place.
In my head I know exactly what all of Gar's songs I've done here sound like, and if I could find a way to embed them here I would!
This chapter was self-indulgent as fuck :D Villain!Terra, Contrite!Terra, BBxT puppy love that's absolutely doomed, AND one-side love-like feelings from Rae? I treated myself here, and I really hope you guys enjoyed it toooo!
~The Lighthouse
