"I know."
CHAPTER THREE
"I know.."
A lonely breeze blew through Beast Boy as he sat atop Titan’s Tower gazing into the never-ending sky. His mind was racing, yet silent. He felt it all over again. Why was it so difficult to just go back to the way things were?
“Maybe things won’t be the same after all.” breathing out a discontented sigh, Beast Boy rested his face into the palms of his hands.
“Beast Boy.” a commanding voice echoed over the long stretch of the tower’s roof. The young man’s ears twitched but nothing more. “I thought I’d find you here. Listen, we need to talk.” Robin said, throwing his thumb behind his head motioning to the door.
Beast Boy faintly sighed as he prepared himself. He lifted his head from his palms, straightened his posture, and put on a smile. “Sorry, Robin. I know I messed up. I just.. I had to. I really thought you guys wouldn't need me. Does it even count that I took down Cinderblock alone, or what?” Beast Boy, already standing and moving away to the exit continued, "I'm going to bed." Robin placed his green, gloved hand over the other's shoulder and halted him in his tracks.
“Beast Boy, wait a second.”
“Let go, Robin. Please.”
“No. Not until we talk about what's going on.”
“There’s nothing going on. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Beast Boy turned his sharp eyes to look into the mysterious mask covering Robin’s.
They stared at each other for a few more clicks before Robin crossed his arms with a sigh. “Beast Boy, I can tell when something is up with you. It’s about that girl you think is Terra, right?” Beast Boy flinched. He balled his fists trying to keep his cool, but he could feel the rising heat in his chest.
Robin continued, “Of course it counts that you took down Cinderblock, but you have to understand that you are a part of a team. Yes, Starfire is fine and everything turned out alright in the end, but it doesn't change the fact that you ran off." Robin paused and sighed. He resumed talking with a more gentle tone, "Beast Boy, I want to help any way I can. I've been running some tests on the rocks around the cave Terra was petrified in. Most of my findings were strange and inconclusive, but I was thinking if you brought her here to the tower me and Cy could--”
“Don’t go near her!” Beast Boy suddenly blew up. “None of us will go near her!”
“But, Beast Boy--” Robin held out his hand but the green Titan slapped it away with a stomp.
“She doesn't want anything to do with us! She doesn't want anything to do with the Teen Titans! She doesn't want to have anything to do with..” with realization seeping through his eyes, Beast Boy slowly trailed off from his rant and stepped back looking down at his violet shoes. Robin watched patiently with a concerned expression. “..Sorry.” he slowly fell to his knees, unable to expend his energy. “Talking about her... It hurts too much. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t even want to hear her name. I’m trying, Robin. I really am. I want to be normal, like how I usually am, but every time I think I’ve got it under control it comes crashing down. I.. I don’t know what to do.”
“..Beast Boy.” Robin knelt down in front of his little friend and placed his hand over his head. “I’m not angry at you. I understand. Truly. I’ve wanted to talk about this with you, but I was afraid it would cause you more pain. But, maybe if you tell me what happened when this all started two months ago, I can help somehow. Let us share your burden. Besides, she was our friend too.”
Beast Boy lifted his glassy eyes to the leader’s masked ones. He was silent for a moment before he heaved a shaky breath. With a heavy heart, Beast Boy told the leader everything. From bringing Terra to Teen Titans Tower and showing her her room, to taking her to all the places he and her had shared before her ultimate betrayal, Beast Boy even told him about the encounter he had with Slade's robot before coming full circle to their argument at school before Robin called him to help fight 'the creature'.
Robin listened intently. He took every word Beast Boy said and nodded in finality when he finished this tale. There was an abrasive silence before Beast Boy continued barely above a whisper.
“Slade was right... Terra doesn't want to remember us, and she's so happy now. I-.. I had never seen her smile so bright before. She's free of the burdens of being an outcast. She said she wanted to be normal and.." He gazed at his green hands as he recalled having the same feeling. He knew the pain of desperately wanting to be normal, "She's got a chance to live a normal life and I want to respect that. I want her to be happy.” he clasped his hands to where his heart would be over his chest with a mild smile. “I will step back. I’ll leave her alone. I’ll do what she needs from me to live her best life, and hopefully, I'll be able to move on like before.”
“Beast Boy..” Robin was taken aback by how mature his young friend sounded. A smile cracked over his features before he tackled him in an armlock and ruffled his hair.
“H-Hey!!” he squealed, grabbing his arms.
“Haha! It’s terrifying to hear you speak like some old philosopher. I like you better when you crack awful puns during battles and make tofu waffles.” Robin releases Beast Boy and stands up, helping the other to his feet. “I’m proud of you though.” he punched the other in the shoulder with a brotherly air before walking past him.
“Let's go out for pizza. Oh, and before you try and back out of it, just know that Starfire will drag you along.” Robin remarked with a smirk.
“Well..” Beast Boy smiled a little as he grabbed his arm timidly. “As long as it’s vegetarian then I guess I'll come.”
“Of course,” Robin said as the two of them walked through the door together. They paused at the door as Robin stood in the way of the other, “And, Beast Boy?”
The green Titan quirked his head to the side puzzled. “Yes?”
“When you’re ready to tell the others what you told me, I think they’d be happy to listen and support you.”
The two shared a beautiful smile as Beast boy walked behind his leader with his posture much straighter than before and a small bounce in his step.
“I know.”
….
“Mmmph.” The young girl tussled with the muffled voices stirring the silence in the air tugging her out of sleep. Her orbs fluttered open rhythmically and once she got used to the lighting she glanced around her surroundings. “Where am I--?” her words were destroyed as large arms enveloped her tightly. “Huh?!”
“Tara, my sweet baby!” her adopted mother wept as she embraced Tara.
“M-Momma?” Tara wheezed. She lightly tapped her mother’s shoulder trying to signal her discomfort. “Momma... Less breathing.. Too much choking!” she strained with an exasperated smile.
“Just a bit longer..” her mom nuzzled Tara’s cheek firmly before letting her go.
“What happened?” Tara asked as she sat up in bed. She looked to her mother for answers, but it wasn’t her that gave them. A young gentleman with deep red hair and black glasses smiled at her.
“Well, Miss Markov, you were subject to a pretty nasty encounter yesterday. Had you out the whole day.” the British man smiled disarmingly and it made Tara softly blush by how suave he was. “You’ve got a few minor cuts, bruises, and so on, but your ankle is the biggest concern. You’ll have to stay off of it and wear the cast on it now for at least two weeks.” as he flipped through the papers on his clipboard he glanced back up and leaned back on the wall. “Other than that you’re perfectly fine.”
“That’s a relief. The whole ordeal is beginning to come back to me.” Tara said, lacing her fingers through her cornsilk locks. “It was terrifying.” shuddering, she enclosed herself in her mother's open arms.
“And I was terrified for you! My god, if that boy hadn’t been there- oh! I don’t even want to think of it.” her mother dabbed the ends of her eyes with her fingertips.
“Wait- a boy?” Tara perked up. “I vaguely remember..” her features littered with discomfort as she tried to remember and it made the doctor spring into action.
“Beast Boy. He actually came to check on you when you checked in yesterday.”
“...Beast Boy?”
“Yes! He was very concerned about you.”
Tara casted her eyes down to her fingers clenching the sheets over her. That boy had rescued her? And then he came to see if she was okay? After the way she treated him, she was sure he wouldn't have done that. Perhaps it was his heroic duty that drove him to save her. But why would he go to the trouble of coming to see her in the hospital?
“I can’t believe he did that for me,” she muttered, dumbfounded.
“The good news is that you get to come home soon. They just need to check a couple of things and then we can go and you can get some rest in your own bed.” her mother chirped, grasping her daughter’s hands.
“Uh, yeah. That sounds nice.” Tara replied with a small grin. She turned to the young doctor. “Thanks for everything.”
“No problem. I’m not the one that treated you, but I’m glad they put me on duty here today. Ah, don't worry. I shall relay your gratitude to them. I hope you get well soon.” he gave another smile and went to the door to make his leave, “I’ll get the nurse to check your vitals and sign you out.” Dr. Peterson turned away with a wave and exited the room. He stood there for a moment reliving what happened. “..I also hope you take this chance to set things right.. You won't have many others left.” With that he began to make his way through the hospital halls silently praying for the two teenagers as the clicks of his heels echoed in the halls.
One month later:
“Alright, so, before class ends I want to give you all the format for your next assignment. This is a big one, so I hope you take this seriously and don’t wait till the last second to finish the first draft!” the bubbly, literature teacher grinned as she gathered papers from her desk and neatly slapped them together.
Tara had been staring off into space most of this school day. After the Cinderblock incident, she couldn't stop thinking about Beast Boy. She had too many questions running circles in her mind that she thought would never be answered. The most disconcerting one, however, that really rattled her was; did Tara mean as much to him as Terra?
If they weren’t really the same person, would he still care?
Would he save her life all on his own if he didn’t have an ounce of hope that she was this long lost friend?
“Who even is Terra, anyway?” she muttered with her sharp eyes staring through the window beside her desk. Her finger tapped against the wooden frame of her pencil as she felt her heart beating wildly in her chest. “And why does that name make me so- angry?”
“Tara, dear.”
The sudden voice of her teacher calling her caused the young lady to snap her attention away from her thoughts with a grunt of shock. She hurriedly apologized to the teacher standing next to her desk offering her a stapled packet. Tara hastily took it from her smiling teacher.
“Thanks, Miss. Thompson.” Tara said, glancing over the first page briefly.
“Now that everyone has their copy, I’ll tell you about the project. Each of you will choose a registered Titan and do a report on them and why they're your role model or favorite. I figured this would be a fun assignment since most of these young heroes are around your age!” clasping her hands together as she made her way back to her desk, she softly smiled, “There are so many to choose from so I don’t expect there to be many duplicates, but if there happens to be a fight between who gets to research who, I'll assign a Titan to you instead.”
“Man! I really want to do a project on Starfire, she's so hot!” a young boy said to his friend sitting at the desk beside his own.
“I don’t know, Bumble Bee is pretty cool,” he replied, sticking his nose in the paper to hide his blush.
“Don’t forget Jinx! She’s a Titan now too! And she’s on the list. I'm doing my project on her!” a third boy popped up throwing his hand in the air excitedly.
Tara watched as her classmates picked their Titan.
“Argent!”
“I’m totally gonna do Aqua Lad!”
“What about Más y Menos?”
“Don’t count out Cyborg!”
“What about Koel and her partner Gnarkk?”
“Oh yeah, but Robin is the coolest!”
“Are you kidding?? Raven is the coolest out of them all!”
Tara silently casted her lonely eyes to her own slab of paper. Most of the students had picked their Titan, but she was conflicted. She found herself disheartened looking over how many there were. It was almost like she felt jealous.
Her jaw became slack as she came to the realization and violently shook her head. No way! Her? Jealous of them? How could she be? She was just an ordinary girl without powers to speak of. How could she be a--
“You’re Terra, You’re a Teen Titan!”
‘Terra was a Titan.’ she thought. Pensively pulling her finger over the names, she scanned through the pages of registered Titans. Surely Terra was listed. Surely she would be here. Beast Boy was adamant about Terra being a Titan with strong powers. She hadn’t heard her name be called so maybe she could do her project on her?
But as she reached the final name on the list she was left even more bewildered than before. “She’s not here?” she breathed out.
“Has everyone picked already?” the teacher asked with a small laugh.
“Miss. Thompson!” Tara raised her hand high with a stern look on her face. The other students quieted down after her bold voice reverberated off the walls. Tara stood to the side of her desk holding the packet in her hands. “Sorry, I just couldn't find the Titan I wanted to do my report on.”
“Oh? I was very diligent, but I suppose I might have missed one. There are so many after all.” With a gentle smile she took her own copy of the packet and placed the glasses she had resting around her neck over her eyes as she glanced over the names. “What was their name, dear?”
“Terra, I think. T-E-R-R-A?” spelling it out, Tara rolled the packet in her hands.
“Terra? Who's that?”
“I think I remember hearing her name somewhere.”
Tara glanced around the class as whispers circulated. They all sounded confused and uninterested as if the name alone was an inconvenience. She felt the air around her grow dark and unwelcoming, pushing her farther away from the other students.
“Wait, you mean the poor girl that turned herself to stone?” the teacher pondered as she searched her desk computer for the name. “Oh, you don’t want to do your report on her. She's not actually a Titan.”
“Wait, she's not? But I thought--”
“She used to be a Titan, but that was for a short time. And she was working for the supervillain, Slade, all the while. She wasn’t a true Titan.”
“But--” before Tara could come up with anything to say, more students relayed their thoughts aloud.
“Oh! That's right! She totally kicked the main five’s butts!”
“Yeah, and she took over the city in like a week. It was totally crazy!”
“She was a despicable person.. Betraying their trust and selling them out after taking her in.”
“But didn’t she come around?”
“Who cares! She still betrayed everyone and destroyed the city. If you ask me, she was better off being turned to stone.”
Tara watched feeling tears come to her shaking eyes. She couldn't understand the emotions coursing through her veins. She felt like her body was growing cold and her slacked jaw along with her eyes watering made her feel a bewildered rage at herself.
It was like she was possessed with feelings not her own. But as she watched and listened to how her peers belittled and disparaged Terra’s sacrifice, how they scowled talking about her betrayal, she couldn't help but think of Beast Boy at that moment. How terribly heartbroken he would feel to hear them talk about her like that. With all they said about her, Beast Boy still talked about Terra as if she were some goddess to be respected. How could he hold such an opinion of someone they were labeling as a monster? How could he ever compare her to someone like that?
“But--” Tara cut through the whispers and grit her teeth. “But, she was a Titan nonetheless, and I want to do my report on her.” Her eyes shining from determination and restrained tears caused the teacher to falter back. The other students gaped at her quizzically.
“Well, you are right. I suppose that would be fine, Tara. Go ahead.”
“Who would want to give a report on her? Seems like a waste of time to me.” one of the boys from earlier leaned back in his chair with his feet on his desk and a pen tucked between his teeth.
Tara placed her hand over her chest and sat back down in her chair. At that moment she felt a lonely pang in her gut that almost felt familiar. Was she feeling her own pain or perhaps someone else's? As the other students chittered away before the bell for the next class rang, Tara kept her eyes locked to the window thinking. A dark cloud started to gather on the horizon as thunder softly boomed far away. A storm was brewing.
RING! RING!
The students' voices became louder as they all stood up, throwing their book bags over their arms, and pushing out of the classroom. Tara followed suit, tossing her bag over her shoulder, and walked out of the class after the bustling students with her mind swimming and her heart drowning.
Tara went straight home that day, not waiting around to see her friends. Never before had she been so motivated to uncover things about her past. Even when Beast Boy came to her the first time, Tara never even looked up any information on this girl, “Terra”. The more Beast Boy kept showing up and dragging her around the city trying to get her to remember certain things about the past made her more infuriated and defiant. Now, when she recalled those days three months prior, she thought it was hasty that she denied his claim to know her.
Why did it disturb her so much? It was that thought in particular that gnawed at her psyche. She was someone that had no memory of their previous fourteen years of life, and then this trustworthy hero tells her that she had been his friend and he wanted to help her shows up. Shouldn’t she be ecstatic to learn about her past and who she was? Why did that send her blood running cold and her mouth to go dry? Why did she feel a sense of disgust when he called her by that name? Why did it send sparks flying when he would touch her hand or smile at her? And why would she feel a pang of great sadness when his face fell into a sullen gape when she couldn't recall the things he showed her?
‘I just want to be normal. My life is good right now. I don’t want it ruined.’ That would be the answer every time she would internally question herself and it was always able to appease her. Not this time.
Not after today.
‘Terra? Who's that?’
‘She was working for the supervillain Slade all the while. She wasn’t a true Titan.’
‘She still betrayed everyone and destroyed the city. If you ask me, she was better off being turned to stone.’
She threw her school bag against the wall of her loft bedroom once she burst through the door with a frustrated scream. Tara heaved as she felt the pit of her stomach fill with resentment.
“She still saved people, right? Beast Boy said she was his friend-- and he’s a hero! So why.. Why didn’t people make the same mistake as he did? After everything she did, wouldn’t she be just as recognizable as all the other Titans? Why didn’t anyone bat an eye when they saw me? Shouldn’t they have been frightened of me?” She lifted her hands to look upon them. Her eyes shook as her usually calm demeanor was at war with something else deep down. Closing them into fists she closed her crystalline eyes. “But they weren't. I had never even heard of Terra before Beast Boy mistook me for her. And no one else seemed to remember her either.”
Her eyes flashed open once again, she briskly strode to her desk, plopping in the plastic rolling chair immediately typing away at the keyboard of her computer. Her brows furrowed as she first went to the internet to look up pictures of the girl. She almost lunged from her chair as the first picture that came up was an exact copy of her own face smiling back at her. Tara gawked with widened eyes of disbelief at her apparent twin for what seemed like eons. Slowly she lifted her fingertips to softly caress the screen over the picture's cheek.
“She.. She looks just like me..” she uttered, breathlessly. “Beast Boy..” again her mind thought of the sweet, green boy who so desperately insisted that she was Terra. Now, she understood why. “There isn’t a single difference. Nothing at all.” she clicked through several other pictures rapidly.
Every single photo was identical to her own likeness, even down to the same body type. She kept going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole until she stumbled across a different photo of the girl. One where the photographer was hiding under something as she stood in the middle of the devastated city with her hands glowing yellow and standing on a rock that was floating. She was wearing some strange suit of armor that had a symbol on the chest. Robots with strange bodies surrounded her as she looked at something far off. She looked miserable.
Accidentally clicking on the photo again brought her to a video. Unable to tear her eyes away, she watched in horror.
Tara watched as the robots were suddenly taken out by an unseen force. There was an explosion knocking Terra to the ground. It was then that the Titans began to attack her. Tara could see the fear and dread building in Terra’s eyes, especially when Beast Boy had his turn.
“Aren't you even going to talk to me?” she gasped in desperation.
“There’s nothing left to say.” a deep voice boomed from the dust flying around her.
“You attempted to annihilate us.” a more high pitched tone cut through the air like a knife.
“Did you think we wouldn’t take it personally?” another voice echoed across the desolate area.
“It’s over, Terra!”
“No!!” unable to bear it any longer, Tara slammed the laptop down and gasped for breath.
She scrambled from her chair trying to run away, tripping over her own feet, falling to the wooden floor. She panted uncontrollably as a cold sweat ripped her body apart. She cradled herself feeling tears form in the corners of her eyes. She pulled her knees to her chest sobbing as she covered her ears limply. “Please.. Stop it.. I’m sorry.” she wheezed but the voices wouldn’t stop, no matter how much she pleaded for them too.
When she pried her eyes open once again she found her room barely illuminated by a silver shimmer from her skyline roof. The moon had settled high above her home and was casting its soft light upon her. She meekly turned to lay on her back and placed her arm over her forehead staring at the moon beyond her windows.
“When did it get so late?” she mumbled to herself.
Tara slowly pulled her body up as she wiped the sticky, salty water from her cheeks. Her sniffle echoed across the room before she gathered the strength to stand up. Once on her feet, she turned to look at herself in the mirror. With her disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes, along with her puffy eyes and cheeks, she felt like the ugliest girl in the world.
“I'm starting to get a headache.” with a gruff moan, Tara sank into her bed beside the desk face down. She let her eyes flutter closed as she cradled a stuffed animal to her chest.
“...I’m not her.. I’m not… a bad person..” with her mind darkening she said these final words falling fast asleep.