FicWad

"Flight time, Cyborg?" Robin's voice crackled over the T-Ship's intercom system.

"3,000 miles?" Cyborg asked in confirmation. "She'll get us there in about six hours, unless you wanna punch it."

Terra debated vocalizing her worries while Starfire's voice asked something about why he would hit the ship, and she came to the resolution to do so. "How long will it take if we do?"

"Engines going full blast, Jump City to Steel City in three hours flat."

She opened her mouth to say "Let's do that", but Robin beat her do it. "The sooner we get there, the better," she thought instead.

"Hold on, y'all!" The thrusters flared as the T-Ship rose from the ground, then, after they shut off, with an exuberant shout from Cyborg, the main engines took over and launched the T-Ship into the east.

Terra (and, she was sure, the others) felt her body sharply sink into the seat. Cyborg was right to have said "hold on", she realized. "I hope we're alive when we get there, though," came her thought only half in jest. The sonic boom still ringing in her ears, she say back - as if there were any other way she could sit - and thought of Beast Boy, and wondered if he were all right.

"Attention, Teen Titans; this is Captain Cyborg speaking. We will be traveling at a constant speed of one thousand miles per hour, at an acceleration of zero to HECK YEAH! in point three seconds. The in-flight movie will be 'Coming to America' and can be seen by looking down or around you. Thank you for flying Air Cyborg; this is your captain saying-" he cleared his throat as he jammed his thumb against a button and sent the ship into full speed. "BOOYAH!"

Terra lurched back even further. "I already know Cyborg's not all right," she joked to herself to ease her mind. And it worked. Temporarily. After which, she just returned to worrying about Beast Boy, and whether Robin would fulfill his promise, and what Beast Boy would do to Robin, and what Robin would do to Beast Boy, and what she would do to Robin after whatever he did.

And what she wanted so much to do to Beast Boy.

-HG-

What are you doing, girl? You can't have fallen in love with him! He and you knew each other for what, a day? Less! Love doesn't happen overnight! It takes time! Commitment!

"Oh, shut up!" Terra mentally yelled at whatever part of her was saying all those things about her and Beast Boy. "Maybe I do love him! Maybe the time I spent fighting alongside him strengthened our relationship!"

Maybe the time you spent fighting against him weakened it, the voice in her head responded coldly.

"The fourteen days I spent crying for him mean something!" she countered herself and punched the air, hitting a button inconsequentially without realizing it.

The fourteen hours you spent laughing with him mean nothing.

"Shut UP!"

You only silence me because you know it's true.

"It's a lie! I do love him!"

You don't!

"I DO!"

You don't love him and you never have! The voice was a hiss in her mind. She was surprised - no, terrified that she could even think in such a tone.

"SHUT UP! I love Beast Boy, and I always will!" she screamed in a voice of such undeniable finality that, were it not for the engines, the entire T-Ship would have heard it.

Mission accomplished, the voice in her head said before slipping away.

"You love him?" Raven and Robin asked over the intercom and with equal incredulity. Cyborg nodded to himself as if to say /I knew it all along/. Only Starfire expressed more than three words and a head gesture.

"I am so pleased to hear you confess your love for Beast Boy!" Even though Terra could not see her, she knew Starfire was positively beaming.

Starfire had said more, but Terra was still stunned from having the others hear her confession. She looked down at her control panel and found the intercom light glaring bright red. Ignoring the others' transmissions, she swore under her breath and practically sighed, "Later. Let's just...get there." She pressed the intercom button off again, rolled her eyes back, and tried to relax to the best of her ability.

-HG-

Beast Boy opened his eyes to find himself out of his glass cell and free from any physical bonds - not the state he wanted to be in, because using brute strength to tear apart shackles would have given him a much desired hit of adrenaline to get his heart racing, his blood pumping, and his manbeast form ready to tear the Brotherhood of Evil - specifically, the despicable whore who had posed as Terra - a collective new one. He growled deeply.

"Show yourself," he ordered in a vicious voice to whomever could hear him. Any one of them would do; if she turned out not to show, he could force her location out of whichever one of them did. He stood there in the darkened warehouse alone, his ears twitching every so often with every drip of water or chitter of rat.

And then his ears rang and pounded with the sounds of engines landing outside the warehouse, the noise especially loud for him with all the attention he had been paying to every last detail of his environment. He knew there was no way he could trust his first reaction - why would they, of all people, unanimously agree to get him back, and why would they even care in the first place? - but for lack of a better explanation, he was left only to believe that the Teen Titans had in fact come all the way to Steel City, even though there was no way it was true.

Why would they have come? Well, he had broken out of jail. But wasn't Steel City out of their jurisdiction? And why all of them? After all, not all of them had wanted him to be locked up. And how had they figured out where he had gone? And why had it taken them so long?

Beast Boy's questions would have kept coming were it not for the very familiar, hate-inducing voice that came from the shadows just as the sound of the engines died.

"Beast Boy," the voice came from behind him. The green boy whipped around with a sneer on his face.

"Robin." He couldn't believe his former leader's gall. "Why the hell did you follow me? Did you come to finish the job?"

"I might have," the Boy Wonder shot back snippily.

"Where are the others?"

"They're at the ship, but I don't need them to finish what I started."

"You couldn't do it on your own last time," Beast Boy reminded with a barbed tone. "What makes you so sure you can do it on your own this time?"

Robin looked Beast Boy up and down, saw his torn uniform, and could practically feel the damage from earlier fights. "You're weak. I'm not. This'll be easy." Before allowing Beast Boy a chance to respond, Robin took out two birdarangs and pressed them together; through a mechanism of his own design they meshed to form the hilt of a sword, out of which the blade extended with a swishing noise. Holding the hilt in both hands, he charged towards Beast Boy with his sword cocked over his shoulder.

But Beast Boy was not as weak as he appeared; he was ready for Robin's attack. As the sword grew nearer, he dropped to the ground and transformed himself into the more difficult and much more deadly target of a yellow-skinned mamba snake. The move appeared to have caught Robin completely off-guard, since the sword came down through air and stopped prematurely before Robin knew where Beast Boy had disappeared to.

However, he found out soon enough. The slimy feel of a snake wrapping itself around his legs, binding them together and making him gradually lose his balance, was a very good indication of where Beast Boy had gone. He felt himself falling forward and jabbed the point of his sword into the planked floor of the warehouse, which stopped his fall but still left him vulnerable to the fangs of the snake. Even with the bonds on his legs, he still managed to kick free and deliver one steel-plated boot to Beast Boy's head. The kick shattered one of Beast Boy's fangs and, from the pain, he was forced to transform back.

"Titans! Go!" the same hate-inducing voice yelled into the warehouse from the front door.

Beast Boy was certain he was hallucinating; Robin's kick must have dealt more damage than he thought. There couldn't be two Robins any more than there could have been two of him, or two sets of the Teen Titans.

...But that was it, wasn't it? That woman was playing mind games with him again. There was Robin, and there was her. Of course, it mattered little to him which one of them he wound up fighting in the end. He had enough problems with both of them that the end result would be the same either way.

While he was being pensive, the Titans swarmed into the warehouse to surround him. Terra stayed right next to Robin with hopes that, in the stand-down, she would be able to find time to convince him against imprisoning Beast Boy again. Starfire, too, stood next to Robin for similar reasons, and Raven and Cyborg respectively covered the areas to the left and the right of Beast Boy, effectively caging him against the back wall. Terra saw that Beast Boy was bleeding from the mouth and asked, "What happened?"

Beast Boy coughed and stained small parts of the floor red with a splatter. "Robin happened," he snarled and lunged towards the Robin standing beside Terra, but a well-placed wall of dark energy stopped him from moving any further.

"What do you mean, I happened, Beast Boy?" Robin asked with irritation rising in his voice. "We just got here."

"You don't see the boy I'm fighting?" Beast Boy asked. "You don't see the boy I tripped? The boy I was just about to kill before he brought up his foot and gave me this?" He pointed at his still-bleeding mouth and now it was clear that he was missing teeth. "The boy I'd like to get my revenge on? The bastard I once idolized?!" He was positively seething at this point. "You don't see yourself?"

"Only you can see him, Beast Boy," a third incarnation of the voice said from behind him. "But everyone can see me, and I'm sure you'll see that I can be just as bad as your little hallucination."

"What?" Robin asked in a whisper, almost to himself. Less at what Beast Boy had just said to him - he would have time to think that over after he sorted everything else out - than at the fact that standing directly across from him was an exact body double of himself. He moved his eyes as much as he could manage to see both Raven and Cyborg staring at Beast Boy, then the other Robin, then him, alternately.

"If none of you are going to do anything," the Robin clone said, "then I guess it's up to me. Titan! Go!" he screamed mockingly, but made no moves anywhere. Instead, he put on a very self-satisfied smirk and watched the Titans look on, still in disbelief.

It was only when Beast Boy flew into the air accompanied with a sickening crunch of bones in his jaw that Terra took control of the situation.

"GO!"