Title: Stone Cold Body, Warm Heart

Rating: I'd say PG-15 for future language and any other sort of twisted scenes that may enter into my strange mind.

Spoilers: Episode "Aftershock"

Disclaimer: The whole idea and related themes of the Teen Titans does not belong to me, it belongs to the Warner Brothers, so please – don't sue me…you'll be sorely disappointed.

(((Stone Cold Body, Warm Heart)))

Teen Titan, they called me.

A True Friend.

They gave me their trust, and how did I repay them? I betrayed them – I killed them, but more than that; I humiliated them, I taunted them for falling for my ploy, for believing that I was ever one of them, that I was ever their friend; I did those things – not Slade – it was all me, and I felt absolutely nothing for their passing – no guilt, no remorse, no regrets…and especially no sorrow for losing the people I'd called friends. They hadn't, after all, been my friends in the first place – I'd used them.

And then the unthinkable had happened.

They came back from the dead, defying all logic – breaking every rule in the book. I had drowned Raven myself, Starfire had been thrown off a cliff into the ocean, I'd crushed Robin with a boulder the size of a city bus, and Cyborg and Beast Boy had both been swallowed up by a bottomless canyon of my own creation.

Defying all reason, the Teen Titans came back…and they totally tore me apart. There had been no words this time – no entreaties for the blonde Earthmover to turn back from the path she'd chosen; I'd apparently worn through even their vast patience.

I'd worn through everyone's patience, it seemed – everyone's but one; even Slade had turned on me.

But in the end, when all was said and done, it seemed whatever God existed up there still likes me, because it turns out I was a Titan through and through. After I killed Slade – and I know he's dead this time; I can feel it – I saved the entire city.

And here I still stand, frozen in time; my stone cold, unmoving body endures as an eternal testament to the classic Fallen-Hero story, and nothing will ever return me to normal.

As if I'd really want to face them ever again…

That's right, I could hear them, but I couldn't see them. I even heard them when they came by sometime later to hold a memorial for me. They each had something nice to say, as if the last five minutes of my life had somehow erased every crime I'd committed – against them, and against the city they had sworn to protect. They said they'd be looking for a way to turn my stone body back to flesh, but even I could hear the despair in their voices; they had all given up on any hope that I was still alive inside this cold, slate-grey shell…just like me.

I don't know if I can qualify as alive anymore; I can't move any part of myself and I can't see, but I can't for the life of me explain how in the world I can still hear. I'm standing motionless in a rather wide spot of light in the middle of an endless expanse of darkness, just like I imagine my body is…out there in the real world. To tell the truth, I can't even feel my body. Heck, I can't even tell what time of day it is, or how many days have passed since I committed suicide; with no sunset or sunrise to use as a reference, it could have been an hour or a century after my funeral that someone finally came to visit me.

Alone.

The first thing I heard were the footsteps, which wasn't all that surprising, considering where my body was the last time I'd been aware of the physical world…the last thing I remember seeing of my surroundings was an enormous underground cavern; I'd made it easily three times larger when I'd finally gathered the courage and strength to fight back against Slade's control. If anyone ever wanted to visit me, it wasn't as if they just drive down to see me in my quiet little domain.

The footsteps echoed around the vast cavern, reminding me once again of the sheer size of my space, and part of me expected my unexpected visitor to step out of the endless darkness around me and into the circular spotlight in which I stood, but that wasn't going to happen. Whoever was approaching was a thousand light years away from wherever I now found myself. Sure, my body was still in that cavern, and I was still somehow tied to it in some inexplicable way, but I was somewhere else; I was on a whole other plane of existence, if that makes any sense at all. It's the best explanation I can come up with.

But, those footsteps kept coming, and I found myself trying to identify the first visitor I'd had since all five of the Titans were there for my memorial, if only to pass away a few minutes of the eternity that I would no doubt be forced to endure thanks to my sudden moment of heroism.

Not that I regretted that chance to redeem myself, mind you.

Not that my moment put me anywhere near redemption in the first place…

My visitor had to be a Titan – anyone else would have hesitated before coming so close to my cold body; these soft footfalls were too steady, too confident, as if the owner wasn't surprised at the sight that met them when they emerged from the subterranean tunnels – as if they actually expected to see my still form standing atop it's skyscraper-spire of stone in the middle of a stadium-sized hole in the Earth beneath Jump City.

That very same confidence in my visitor's step told me that it wasn't Beast Boy; there was a certain familiar, almost trademark clumsiness in his very nature that made the green-skinned Titan far too awkward to be sure of himself in his movements – unless he was on the attack that is. Each Footfall was light and quiet – made clearly audible only because of its echoes off the stone surfaces all around the two of them – so that ruled out Cyborg and his incredibly massive mechanical body. There was a very faint swish of cloth – like a cape or something close to a cape – so it wasn't Starfire unless the normally bubbly alien had changed her wardrobe.

My mental rationalizations left only two possible identities for the intruder of my eternal nothingness; one whose voice I didn't really want to hear, and the other one, whose voice I really didn't want to hear.

The footsteps stopped right in front of me, and I heard the soft whisper of clothing shifting, and then silence. With each infinite second that passed between us, I felt my suspicions growing that my visitor was the worse of the two evils.

"Okay," she said finally in that aggravatingly cool, controlled voice, "I'm ready to try this, so let's hope it wasn't all for nothing."

I would have cursed if I could – I really would have, but I was stuck standing unmoving in my very own lonely spotlight with nothing to look at or focus on save for the sounds around my cold statue of a body.

"Terra."

I wouldn't have answered the whispered words if I had the power to speak. This was the Titan whom I had taunted the most with my betrayal; this was the Titan who no doubt cursed herself for falling so easily for my deception; and this was the cause of a very large – unbelievably gargantuan – portion of my guilt…no doubt she would have some rather harsh words for me. Honestly, I didn't need to hear them – I was doing a fine enough job off punishing myself without her words to add to the overbearing guilt that weighed me down.

Unfortunately, God loved me so much he just had to play one more joke on me.

Because right in front of me, in my endless prison of darkness and solitude, there appeared a second circle of light, within which stood the very last person that I wanted to see right now – clothed as always in her black leotard and her dark blue cloak. Her hood was down, leaving her pale, grey-skinned face exposed with her equally pale, straight purple hair hanging loosely from her head, framing her face with its lightly closed dark violet, almost black eyes. My eyes widened at the sight.

Raven.

Author: Okay, so what did you think of my experiment into Teen Titans fanfiction? I can promise no romance because that kind of writing really drains me, but at the very least, there will be less animosity between my two main characters ( I seem to have developed a trend where I keep the focus of my story on only two characters and just throw other characters in from time to time. I think my writing works better for small groups.

And I'll admit, it's a shorter chapter than any of you who know me may be used to, but I'm just dipping my toe into the water to see what kind of response I can get. Tell me, and I'll write more because I have the notes, but I would like some feedback please.

(ie: where do you see this story going? Where would you like it to go? Etc…)