The Diary of an Empty Bedroom

"All around this house I see the signs. My daughter looks but does not see. This is a house that will break into pieces." -Ying-ying, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

He builds an empty bedroom.

Cyborg just puts it there as he's building the tower. A little empty bedroom with no real purpose at all. He'd never say this, he knows it couldn't happen, but he wonders if maybe, just maybe, some of his friends from the high school he had to leave behind after his accident know that he isn't really dead. He wonders if maybe, just maybe, Louisa, his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, really, because she thinks he's dead too, knows that he's still alive. He knows its not possible but he builds the bedroom for her anyway, in case maybe she knows and maybe she would want to move in. Cyborg know that Louisa, Louisa with the pretty brown hair, Louisa with the sparkling green eyes, his Louisa, will never know that Victor Stone is still alive. He knows that building this empty bedroom is crazy.

But he's in love.

And love can make you do crazy things, like build an empty bedroom.

So the five of them, three boys, two girls, all living on their own for the very first time, move in to this tower, to their new home. There are six bedrooms instead of five but no one really notices or cares. They're too excited about this new team, about this new life that they're beginning.

Cyborg is mourning his old life. The junior year in high school that he's never going to finish, the friends he's never going to see again, the football team he'll never play for at the college he'll never go to, Louisa. He goes into the empty bedroom almost everyday, just to think about what would have happened if things had been different.

But he's excited too, about his new home, new team, new life. And soon the visits become every other day, every few days, once a week. And they slowly trickle to a stop.

A year goes by.

Four birthdays are celebrated. Front row seats at a football game for a thrilled but wistful seventeen year old boy, a trip to the zoo for an excited but immature fourteen year old boy, an outing at the amusement park for an overjoyed but confused fifteen year old girl, a surprise party for an amused but unimpressed sixteen year old boy. A fifth birthday passes, one that a sixteen year old girl quietly mourns.

Louisa will always have a place in Cyborg's heart, but he's moved on, and he's okay with that. He forgets about the bedroom,

And a year goes by before anyone sets foot in that empty bedroom.

It's on a sunny, mild spring morning the door of that room finally opens, and a sixteen year old boy steps inside, trying to be a man. He's been answering questions for the past six hours but he might as well have been dodging bullets. He need somewhere to hide, to clear his head. Because the hours he's spent back with his friends have been almost as much torture as the days he spent with Slade.

Robin doesn't really understand much of what happened over the past few weeks. He's still trying to wrap his head around how, around why, around what he's going to say to his father. But there is one thing he understands. Robin understands that there was moment when Slade wanted him to kill Starfire. Robin understands that in that moment he risked his own life to keep her safe.

Because in that moment, he realized that he is completely and irrevocably in love with her.

And in this moment, as he stands here in this empty bedroom, he realizes that he always has been.

Cyborg returns to the room not too long after.

She came.

And he knows that Beast Boy wanted her to stay. They all did. But Beast Boy most of all. And he knows Beast Boy blames himself, because even though he didn't tell Robin, she thought he did, and she felt betrayed, and she left.

And he knows that if she had stayed, this would have been her bedroom.

Later that spring, the empty bedroom isn't empty anymore.

Because she comes back.

It's Starfire's idea to decorate a bedroom for her. It's Cyborg's idea to decorate this bedroom for her. It's a little strange for Cyborg to see this bedroom again, to decorate it for another girl when it was supposed to be for Louisa. But Cyborg can see how much Beast Boy likes her and he thinks that it must be the next best thing for her to have this room. If his love story can't happen here, why not someone else's?

So they all decorate the bedroom together, even Raven, who isn't so sure it's a good idea but she wants to believe it is, for Beast Boy's sake.

And that is how the empty bedroom becomes Terra's bedroom.

Finally, after over a year of being a failure, this bedroom is a real bedroom. Terra lives here. The stars painted on these walls are Terra's home.

She is so happy here. She has a home. She has friends. She has a boy who she really, really likes. She is so happy to be fighting crime and eating pizza and playing video games and watching movies and living this amazing life.

She is so happy that most of the time she almost forgets about the emails she sends everyday from this very room.

It's a safe haven, just not a very good one since it's not protecting anything worth protection. It's protecting a bunch of emails that she hates herself for sending. Protecting them from a discovery that maybe she kind of wants them to have, because at least then she wouldn't have to go through with this.

Every night, Terra sends an email with new details about the team, about their security system, about their weaknesses, about the attack on them that she is planning with Slade.

Another birthday is celebrated. A dinner at a really incredible restaurant for an eighteen year old boy, no, man, who is so happy and maybe just a little too pleased with himself when he sees the way that Beast Boy looks at Terra and the way she's looking back. He gets a lot of presents the day he turns eighteen, but the one that makes him the happiest is the way the room he built is doing exactly what he built it to do. And the way it's doing it better then he could have ever imagined.

And another birthday is also celebrated. A movie marathon for a fourteen year old girl who is so happy to be opening presents and eating popcorn and homemade birthday cake on the couch with the four best friends she has ever had and the one who's even better then that.

She doesn't send an email that night.

But she sends an extra long one the next night, because Slade emailed her to tell her that he was angry that she skipped a night.

She's trying to live a normal life despite what happens behind the closed doors of this bedroom. She thinks she's doing a pretty good job. No one seems to suspect much of anything. Well, not about Slade, anyway. She's hates what she's doing and she hates herself for it. She hates the way she looks. All she sees in her eyes, her face, every inch of her body is the training she had with Slade, training to build strength in this body, this body that he gave her. All the muscles make her feel too heavy and when she looks in the mirror she looks too heavy. She doesn't eat as much as she used to. Some days she doesn't eat at all.

One day, they're all watching a movie and pigging out and Terra practically eats an entire pizza on her own. And she's so furious at herself for it that she comes into this bedroom and makes herself throw it up. As she leaves to take the sheets on her bed to the laundry room, she thinks to herself that maybe she's not doing such a good job with this amazing life she's trying to live.

Because maybe they're not suspicious about Slade, but she's sure they can smell the vomit on the sheets she tried so hard to wash and she's sure they're suspicious about that.

She and Beast Boy spend a lot of time in this room together. They talk and play games and eat and just enjoy being together. It's almost like they're dating and they both really want it to be that, but they're both too scared to ask. But every time Beast Boy is in this room he thinks about her, about the way she smells like dirt and rain and peppermint, about beautiful she is, even if she is too skinny and she always looks so weak, about how lucky he is that she came back, and that she isn't still mad at him, and that she knows that he didn't tell Robin about her problems with her powers, that he didn't betray her, that he could never betray her.

Terra's never had good eyesight, so it doesn't surprise her when, while training one day, Robin says she might need glasses. So she goes to an eye doctor, who tells her she has an astigmatism and that she's slightly near-sighted. The glasses, a pair with really funky red frames, work just fine when she's just hanging around the tower. But for combat, she has to get contacts. She's not used to them yet and they feel okay once they've been in a while, but right when she puts them in, it hurts. She has to rush to get them in for a battle one day. But then she spends almost ten minutes sitting on her bed waiting for the pain to go away.

Later that day, she and Beast Boy are sitting in this bedroom, eating a bowl of cherries, which are as bright red as her glasses. Well, he's eating, she's just picking, really. She eats around the pits but he spits them out and she thinks it's cute. And she almost gets the nerve to ask him on a real date. And then she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the window and she chickens out.

And the next thing she knows, she gets an email telling her that it's time.

She tries to act normally that day. She even eats three whole slices of pizza at dinner and doesn't even throw them up.

And she goes to send Slade the final email, to say everything is ready for the final attack.

And there's a knock at the bedroom door.

She closes her laptop and answers the door. Beast Boy, holding a package wrapped with crudely recycled wrapping paper, is waiting for her on the other side.

They talk and he holds out the package, and she unwraps it, revealing a silver heart shaped box. When she opens it, she can see her face in the lid. She sees the smile on her face before she realizes how happy she is.

He asks her to go on a date with him tomorrow night.

But tomorrow night he'll be gone.

As much as it pains her to do it, she tells him no.

And she stands in her room with this heart shaped box and she looks at it and she opens it up and she looks at her reflection and she realizes this is the last gift Beast Boy will ever give anyone.

In this moment, Terra realizes she would risk her own life to keep him safe.

In this moment, she realizes that she is completely and irrevocably in love with him.

And in this moment, as she stands here in this bedroom, she realizes that she always has been.

She decides right away to ask Beast Boy on a date, tonight, so he won't be in the tower when it happens.

She tries not to think about how she isn't saving everyone else too.

And she closes the door behind her as she leaves the room.

The next time that door opens, it's a different girl who steps inside. And when she sees that the room is empty, the sound of robots destroying everything in the tower clanging in her ears, Raven realizes that she was right the whole damn time.

And this room is empty until Beast Boy comes home. He takes the box he made and he lies down on her bed as a dog, curled around that box. The bed smells like vomit but it also smells like her, like dirt and rain and peppermint.

He knows that she's not coming back and he knows that it's his fault that she's not coming back because he told her she didn't have any friends and he knows that she hates him now. And he knows that it's crazy for him to be lying on her bed, breathing in her scent before it fades.

But he's in love.

And love can make you do crazy things, like lie for hours in an empty bedroom.

When he leaves, the other four slowly make their way into the room.

Robin has been in the same place she is. There must have been warning signs somewhere. He must have noticed something was off. And he stands there wondering why he couldn't see it.

Starfire thinks of herself as an observant, empathetic person. And she stands here wondering why she couldn't feel it.

Cyborg knows this tower, this room, inside and out. He knows now that she tampered with the security system. And he stands here wondering why he couldn't know it.

And Raven saw. Raven felt. Raven knew. Raven stands here wondering why she couldn't let herself believe it.

A few weeks later, it's Raven who comes into this room first.

The night when Terra betrayed them, everything seemed hopeless.

Robin told her to fight anyway.

And Raven fought. But she fought Slade. She fought Slade's apprentice.

And now Slade's apprentice is gone. And all that's left of her is the memory and the statue of Terra, the girl Beast Boy is in love with.

Raven knows that even if she and Cyborg can't find a cure, Beast Boy is never going to get over Terra.

Raven is so angry at herself for letting Terra on the team when she knew it was a bad idea.

And Raven is so angry at herself for fighting Slade's apprentice, but never fighting Terra.

She saw that Beast Boy was in love with Terra. Raven just wanted him to be happy. She thought letting him be with Terra would do that.

Robin told her to fight anyway.

Why the hell didn't she fight anyway?

And she leaves the room to go what Beast Boy thinks is a temporary service for a girl who isn't really gone.

Raven thinks it's a funeral.

Beast Boy comes into this bedroom the next day, for the first time since the betrayal. And he lies there for hours. And the next day, he does the same. And the next, and the next, and the next.

It becomes a daily thing for him. After a while it stops being hours because Robin tells him he needs to fight crime and train and Cyborg tells he needs to hang out and have fun and Beast Boy knows they're right. But he comes in here every day, and he thinks about Terra.

A few weeks later, someone else enters the room. Cyborg opens the door and stands staring out the window. It's his first day back at the tower after spying on the HIVE. It was hard. Even though he knows they're villains, it was hard to betray the HIVE like that.

Cyborg doesn't have any romantic feelings for Jinx at all. But even looking at her face as he left was almost impossible.

Cyborg wonders how Terra did it.

How did she see the look on Beast Boy's face, that look that said that he loved her, and still go through with it?

Cyborg doesn't understand how the room he built for his first love became the bedroom of the girl who broke his best friend's heart.

A few weeks after that, Robin enters Terra's room. Robin thinks he might be going crazy. He has spent the last few days hallucinating Slade everywhere he looks.

Robin wonders why he is so obsessed with this man.

And Robin wonders if Terra really killed him.

Beast Boy comes into this room everyday for months. His fifteenth birthday is the hardest day yet. He wishes Terra were here to celebrate it with him.

Starfire's sixteenth birthday passes and she has a great birthday and Beast Boy would never tell her but he's a little jealous of that.

Raven's seventeenth birthday isn't so great.

That's the day when Slade comes back.

Beast Boy, of course, spends hours in Terra's room. Today was the first time he's spoken her name out loud since she turned to stone.

Does that mean she's really gone?

The other four all find themselves in her room that night, at some point or another.

This time it's Robin who can't believe he was right the whole damn time.

The next time he comes into this room, Robin wonders if he might have been wrong.

He and Slade just worked together.

The last time that happened, Slade tried to turn him against his team.

This time, Slade was trying to help them.

Even though they said it doesn't change anything, Robin knows that it changes everything.

There is one thing this has in common with the last time. All Robin can think about as he stands in this useless bedroom is Starfire

Later that month is the first time since Terra turned to stone that Beast Boy doesn't go into her room.

It's not because he forgot or didn't want to though. He couldn't. He wasn't home.

He was with his family.

Now he's packing to leave so he and the other Titans can travel the world to fight the Brotherhood of Evil.

He goes into Terra's room one more time before they leave, to say goodbye, in a way. He wishes Terra could be coming with them. He wishes she could have come with them to meet his parents, his family.

Because he wants her to join that family someday.

This empty room stays empty as the Teen Titans travel around the world, as they fight and defeat the Brotherhood of Evil.

And then, the day they come back, Beast Boy returns to Terra's bedroom.

He saw a girl today. She said she wasn't Terra.

He lies on her bed smelling the smell of dirt and rain and peppermint and vomit. And he knows that the girl he saw was her, because she smelled just that.

He doesn't understand why she won't come back.

He loves her. Doesn't she know that? Doesn't she love him back?

He wonders if she doesn't love him. If she never loved him.

He wonders if she loved Slade.

He's been thinking for a while that maybe she slept with him. That maybe she loved him. Beast Boy loves her. And he hopes, wants, needs, thinks she loves him back.

And he knows he will never get to ask her.

Over the next few weeks, there are only a few days when Beast Boy doesn't come to this room. Just a few days, here and there, when he isn't home. Like the weekend in Tokyo when Robin and Starfire finally start dating.

For a while, Beast Boy is the only one who comes into this room.

And then they find it.

The Teen Titans have gathered from all over the world at this tower, to help deal with a big mission that's going on. And the two of them, a sixteen year old boy and a fifteen year old girl, just come to this room for a little privacy. She's having a hard time because she just joined this team and left behind her old one and he'll do anything for her to be happy. She's only heard the bits and pieces of the story that were released to the public and he's only heard a little bit more then that so neither of them know who this room belongs to. So the empty bedroom becomes a place for Jinx and Kid Flash.

They come here a lot over the course of the next few weeks. They exchange a few I loves yous, not their first, but still meaningful. She calls him by his real name for the first time. They laugh and they cry. They're the first people who can really trust each other in this room. For the first time in a while, the room is full.

There is one day when the room stays empty. One day when the entire team goes to Paris to find out that the villains they thought were frozen have all escaped.

But the next day, Jinx curls up on the couch in this room with a dilapidated copy of Romeo and Juliet, and Kid Flash finds her and they read it together and they end up kissing.

And Beast Boy walks in.

At first he's angry that they're in here. Then he's shocked that they're in here. Then he's just shocked that he walked in on them making out.

And then he realizes this is a good thing.

Because for a room that's seen so many horrible things, a room that's housed a love story that could have been but couldn't, then one that would have been but wouldn't, it's good for this room to be a part of a love story that shouldn't have been but was anyway.

Jinx and Kid Flash are in love.

Beast Boy couldn't be happier for them.

Beast Boy comes in here everyday.

But something changes.

Maybe it's because something good finally came out of this empty bedroom, maybe that's why Beast Boy's visits to this room become every other day, every few days, once a week. And they slowly trickle to a stop.

For a long time, no one sets foot in this room.

And five years go by.

Beast Boy, no, Garfield Logan, is twenty years old, and he stands in this empty bedroom in a tower full of empty rooms with a filled up suitcase by his feet.

The Teen Titans are over.

They'll always be a family, but they're all ready to move on with their lives. Dick and Star are engaged. Jinx and Wally are still together, still just as in love. Gar is going to college. He'll see what happens from there.

Everyone is so happy, and Gar is so alone.

He wants to say good-bye to this room before he leaves.

He sees the box sitting on her bed. He takes it. He takes her pillow too. It smells like vomit and dirt and rain and peppermint.

Gar is in love with her.

He always has been.

And in this moment, he realizes that he always will be.

And he takes her pillow and her box and his suitcase and he walks out of the room.

And he closes the door behind him as he leaves.