Disclaimer – Since I'm pretty sure my desk hasn't eaten the papers proclaiming my rights to Teen Titans, I have to say that they're not mine. More's the pity.

A/N – Blah. About the only thing I can say about this is that I wrote it before I found the poem 'Lullaby', from which I borrowed the below quote. I was quite amazed at how accurately the words matched what I'd written. The fic itself takes place in the penultimate scene of 'Aftershock: Part II'. All feedback welcomed and responded to if a response is desired.

'Live Forever' By Scribbler

August 2004

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful. – 'Lullaby' By W. H. Auden.

There's a point in human endurance when conscious thought packs its bags and raw instinct kicks in. It's the point when a drowning man sucks in water because his body refuses to believe there's no air around it. It's the point when you're running away from something and fall down, and you just shut your eyes because if you can't see the danger then it's not really there.

Terra wanted nothing more than to run, but there was no place left to run to. Her survival instinct wanted to call up a rock bridge, but she forced it back. Even if she got out, what could she do? Where could she go in under thirty seconds that wouldn't be hit by the eruption of a volcano thought dormant since the Founding Fathers did their famous founding?

She'd told Beast Boy that it was never too late, but deep down inside she nursed a secret worry that this time it was.

What if she couldn't stop it? The question gnawed at the pit of her belly like she'd swallowed a sharp-toothed goblin.

In comparison, her geokinesis folded around her like a blanket, soft and comforting. It fizzed out the ends of her fingers and under her skin, under the ugly body armour Slade had given her, and suddenly she felt trapped by that costume – even more than when it had compelled her to move in unnatural ways. It was holding her back, holding her in, but there was no time to take it off, no time to free herself, no time, no time, no time, no time...

Something sticky ran down her back. It took a moment for her to realise that it was sweat trapped between her skin and the thin fabric of the bandage-outfit. Not nervous sweat, but the kind incurred by standing above a river of raging hot lava.

The granite was rough beneath her. The soles of her feet itched with it. Suddenly, it felt like she wasn't wearing any boots. She could feel the individual grains shifting, and deeper, molecules colliding faster than she could stop them. But she had to. This was her fault. She had to, or...

Or...

Terra wasn't a fool. She knew that she had crossed a line. Even if she did survive this, her old life was over. You couldn't do what she'd done and expect everything to just go back to the way it had been, happy go lucky, no problems here officer, honestly. And it was all very well for Hollywood to preach about redemption through sacrifice, but let those writers stand where she was standing right now and see how long it took for their altruism to crack and for them to wet themselves in the most primal terror of all: the fear of death.

The river surged closer. Terra clenched her fists, set her feet, lifted her chin and willed it backwards. She ghosted over cracks in the earth's crust, found vents where magma pulsed, and she tried to push everything back in, but it all popped out again. She felt like she was working with an overfull balloon, and if she pushed any harder then the whole thing would burst.

And then there was only one option left, and when it came into her head her survival instinct shrieked and tried to oust her from the helm. She sat on it, gritting her teeth, and gathered her power under her, around her, above her, sent it racing through her until she was so sated she would surely have keeled over, had she not been so stubborn about staying upright.

Yellow energy streaked towards the ceiling and curved around, encasing the entire chamber in a bubble of power. And suddenly Terra knew that this was it. This was finally it. The big one. The last stand. The part where the Oscar-winning score crescendoed and she went out in a blaze of hot, molten glory.

Except that she wasn't glorious at all. She was dirty in all senses of the word.

And she was frightened. She was so frightened that she retreated to that place in your head where you're always four years old, and the world is a place for adventure and swing sets and strawberry lollipops. It's a place where you run inside to have Mommy kiss away the pain of a grazed knee, then charge back out to get medieval on the ass of the kid who pushed you. It's a place of no responsibilities, no significant choices, and the constant sunshine chases away all the bad things that hide under the bed.

There was a kid in that place who played with face-paints and always painted himself green. She knew she could have a lot of fun with him, tracking and pouncing on bigger kids, then running away before they got caught. There was also a girl who played with dollies a lot and kept inviting her to tea parties, and another who sat on the stoop to read and tut at them like an older sister trapped in a peer's body.

Sometimes the boy from two doors down came over, and if she was really lucky he wore the robot costume his uncle bought him for his birthday. She loved to see that, loved to see him take it apart and put it back together again. He never got the order wrong, never left anything out or fastened anything upside down, and somehow she felt that he could put her back together again just as easily if she ever fell down.

Sometimes the kid who took his arms out his sleeves and fastened just the top button of his jacket by his neck was there. He liked to make sure she and the green boy didn't get hurt when they played, but that was just his role. There was no real danger here, because here you were always four years old, and at four years old you're selfish, like all children are, and you know you're going to live forever.

Except the illusion wasn't working this time. Terra knew she wasn't four years old. She was barely a month past her fifteenth birthday, and she could still remember what her cake was like: Victoria sponge with butter-cream filling and little marzipan boulders on top that spelled out her name. She'd made a speech about clichés over the sodas, and nobody had been quite sure whether she was talking about the cake, or Raven's drinking herbal tea at a birthday bash, or something else entirely.

Even she didn't know anymore.

It's never too late.

So easy to say the words. So difficult to follow them through.

Because it had always been too late. Right from the moment she met the Titans, it was too late. Things had been so simple then, but she'd carried her own complications. Terra, human spider-web. Enter blast radius at your own peril.

I am doing this because I need to, she told herself, but that didn't make it true. Not the whole truth. The whole truth had pieces missing anyway. It had ugly nubs and growths and bony bits. Sometimes the truth had spines, and they cut anybody who got too close; even her

The truth was that she was more scared of going back out there to face them than staying here and doing this. A few words of apology in the face of danger are infinitely easier than living in the day-to-day suspicion of their eyes. The truth was that she was a coward, which was why she'd accepted Slade's help in the first place. The truth was that she couldn't face the sight of that horrible, deserted, ruined city anymore, because it was no longer her baby, her job, her work, but a hideous monster she'd created and couldn't fix on her own. It wasn't about altruism or redemption or self-sacrifice. It was about running away. Again.

The lava was trying to break free. Waves of it battered against the bubble, creating a pounding rhythm that made Terra's head ache. In some ways, it was just what she wanted: a sort of affirmation of the beating of her heart, the blood and adrenaline rushing through her. She was a supernova of nerve endings, hyperaware of everything on that invisible plane her powers granted her access to. She could feel the high wail of the earth, as she shifted rocks over the vents and cooled them into plugs; could feel the tremors racking the entire area around the sunken cathedral. And she could feel the distant slap of footsteps on stone, running away and sometimes faltering like they wanted to go in a different direction.

The truth was that she lied a lot. She didn't know why; didn't care much now. But every now and then she told the truth, rose above the molasses of herself and did something stupidly noble or righteous. It was a character flaw. It made her look like a hero. For a short time it had made her feel like one, too.

You're the best friend I ever had.

That wasn't a lie. At least, she didn't think it was. The pounding made it hurt to think about it too much, but she was pretty certain she'd been having one of those stupidly noble moments when she pressed her face against his shoulder and let her guard down enough to shed a tear and snot a bit on that ridiculous lavender costume of his. It was nothing to do with being afraid and not wanting to stay here where the searing heat made her metal breastplate and kneepads rip away her skin in blistered red clumps when she moved. It was nothing to do with the gut-wrenching sadness of letting him down yet again, because she knew she's crossed that line and you couldn't go back after something like that.

She would never be four years old again.

She wasn't going to live forever.

Terra's geokinesis swept through the cavern, forcing each molecule to slow down and freeze, each object and current and pulsing thing to solidify. The power went to work, using her as no more than a vessel. She felt a buzz of fire in her belly, but even her survival instinct didn't stand a chance now. She was too exhilarated with the feel of it racing toward her, over her, through her...

She didn't even realise she was screaming until the very last second; didn't realise she was crying until the tears turned to pebbles on her cheeks, and by that point there was no time left to consider the whys and hows and wherefores.

Silence came. And it was absolute.

FINIS.