Teen Titans - Second Chance

By BenRG

Disclaimer

The Teen Titans were developed for DC Comics by Marv Williams and George Pérez. The animated adaptation was created for Warner Brothers by Glen Murakami. They are the trademark property of DC Comics and its owners.

Mr. Black was created by author Rorschach's Blot for his story "Make A Wish" and was later adapted into the form of 'Joe Black' by Overkill for his story "Terminal Justice". The character is based on J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and is meant, amongst other things, to be an angel of justice and a living personification of the elemental force of death. He then proceeds on a bewildering multi-dimensional crossover adventure meeting the JLA, Naruto, the heroes of the Stargate TV series and many others in a seemingly-endless quest to protect the universe from itself, see that the good are saved and the evil punished.

All rights remain with the respective owners and creators. This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the world-wide web.

Author's Notes

This story is not canon for the Mr. Black universe in any of its forms. However, the Man on His Vacation has visited so many different worlds and universes, why could he not have visited this one two. This story is set an indeterminate amount of time (but not too long) after the end of the Teen Titans animated series and assumes that the schoolgirl really wasn't Terra.

Censor: T

For so long there had been nothing...

No sight...

No sound...

No smell...

No taste...

Only the constant, cool, unchanging touch of rock perfectly conforming to every square millimetre of her skin...

Not even the movement of breath or the pounding of her heart.

The girl... (Am I a girl? What does that mean?) had been here so long that she long since lost any sensation of the passage of time. She had long since lost any conception of identity (Am I even a person? Am I even an 'I'?) and, slowly, her last slivers of self-awareness were slipping away into the unchanging void that was her entire universe.

Then, without warning, her head resounded with a cracking noise, like rock splitting open...

And then there was pain. Pain Pain Sudden Stabbing Pain Pain!

If she could move, she would likely have cried out. Instead, she felt flesh that she had forgotten even existed cramp and tingle as its basaltic shell crumbled away from her body. The touch of air was like a freezing blanket of needle-sharp icicles, stabbing into her flesh, starting on her left leg and racing across the rest of her body as its rocky prison shattered and crumbled away.

The smell of air...

The clatter of falling slivers of rock roaring in ears that had long been accustomed to total silence... and the light...!

Light. Blinding sudden, overwhelming light. Stabbing through her eyes and into her brain and feeling like it was trying to punch its way out through the top of her head long before reflexes could slam her eyelids shut...

Limbs, long forgotten, collapsing underneath her like they were boneless, made of soft rubber. A solid, rocky surface rising up to meet her face with a harsh crack... agony flashing from her nose and cheekbone through her head and body.

A roaring in her ears... a sudden unceasing rhythmic thudding in her chest...

Her chest... inside... burning...!

Instinct took over, she tilted back her head, opened her mouth and air was sucked into her oxygen-starved lungs. Then she let out the breath... in a long, agonising scream.

Another breath, another scream. Then another... then another...

Finally, the moment of trauma passed and she lay face-down, naked, panting, shivering, teeth chattering, liquid flowing from in between her legs and pooling under her hips... Instinctively, she rolled onto her side and tucked herself inward, knees pressed to her chest and arms wrapped around them, her face pressed down in between her knees...

Am I alive? Is this what it is like to be born?

Suddenly warmth. Something fluffy but comfortable and warm being wrapped around her body. What she realised were hands squeezing her shoulders, the warmth of human breath onto her cheek and a touch from a gloved hand... Instinctively, her face nuzzled into the touch, which turned to a caress of her face.

"Welcome back, child. Be at ease. You are safe."

Blearily, the girl opened her eyes and focussed on the bewildering shapes and colours that her mind could not interpret. Her mouth opened and flapped uselessly as her tongue tried to remember what it was supposed to do.

"Hhh... Huuu... Hoooooo... Who... Who... What... am... I...?"

"Shhh, kiddo... You have been in hibernation. Give your wits a few moments to gather themselves. Be calm."

"P... Please... hurting... frightened..."

A gloved hand was pressed to a bruised cheek and there was a strange sensation... Water over skin... what is that? The pain was gone and the flesh seemed firmer and more whole. "Look inside yourself," the voice urged kindly. "You know the answer to your question."

An arm circled the girl's shoulders and another slid under her knees. She was lifted from the stone pedestal. Exhausted, she placed her head against the solid mass of a chest, which was throbbing with a sound not unlike that she could feel in her chest. Comforted, she felt her eyes closing. "No, don't fall asleep, girl. Come on, you know the answer to that question. Who are you?"

Who? Am I even a 'who'? I suppose that I must be to even be able to pose the question!

If I am a 'who', then I must have a name? How strange! Yet... Name... Yes, there is something there... If only I could remember!

Think! If I have a name I must have heard it!

Aaah... Aaarrr... Taaarrr... Tara! I remember the name Tara! Yet... I think that is mine but... There was another name! I think... Teeerrr... Terri? Is that it? No... It's okay, but that isn't my name... Terrrrrr... Terrr... Ahhh... Terra...?

"T... T... Terr... Terra?"

"Are you asking or telling me?" Warm humour was the sound in the voice... Masculine? Father?

"I... I am Terra... and Tara... Two names...!"

The girl was suddenly on the ground and a shape, one her now slowly-recovering mind could recognise as a human figure, knelt down beside her in a pool of light cast by one of the night-time spotlights in what seemed to be a large hall of some kind. "That's right." Kind now; the voice seemed pleased and relieved.

"T... Terra...! T... Tara...! I... I... am! I am Tara!" The girl's blue eyes looked up into kindly but sad green eyes in wonder and amazement. "I am Tara! My name! I am Tara! I...!"

Suddenly, her mind exploded. Memories... Images... Sounds... Sensations... Love. Friendship. Failure. Betrayal. Battle beside and then against those who loved her. Horrible cold, inhuman and pitiless hands stripping her of her will and mind... Metal armour closing around her body... pain as wires were implanted into her brain... Tara gasped in remembered horror and panic... Confrontation! Fighting! Disaster! FIRE!

"SLADE!" Tara's sudden scream echoed around the chamber and she began to look around in panic, trying to find the danger she remembered. "The volcano! My friends!"

"Safe," stated the black-clad figure kneeling beside her. A gloved hand squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "The volcano was stopped; Your friends and all the other innocents were saved, thanks to you, Tara. Wilson Slade was defeated and you need never fear him again. He has... gone to his just reward."

"I..." Tara blinked again, and took in the sight of the man kneeling beside her. Messy black hair framed a pale face with bright, sad and almost glowing emerald green eyes. The man wore a black duster over black jeans and a black tee-shirt marked only with a bone-white stylised skull extending from belt level to the centre of his chest. A livid red lightning bolt-shaped scar disfigured his forehead above his left eye. Tara swallowed as she looked around again at the empty cathedral-like hall, all those half-forgotten divinity lessons at school suddenly boiling out of her subconscious. "Am… Am I dead? Is this... Hell?"

The figure chuckled. "Ah, my dear Ms. Markov, still the proud one, I see. No, believe me, you have a very long way to go before you earn such a fate!"

"But my friends! I... I... I betrayed them!" Tara felt her chest clench with shame and she looked down, unable to meet the man's assessing gaze.

"Did you really?" There was compassion in that voice that made Tara look up again. "Believe me, Tara Markov, that I know that breed. I have met creatures like him on more than one occasion. Who cultivate your fear, your lack of self-worth and your certainty that you are nothing good. Then, when you're at your lowest ebb, they take you, twist you and use you as their tool. All those hopes... all those promises... they are cast aside and you're little more than another wa... another gun in their hands.

"You're not the first person to be tricked into becoming evil's slave and tool, Tara Markov. You are not the first and you are far from the wisest. Don't be so arrogant to believe that you are any more guilty than any of those other poor souls."

"But... But..." Tara was frustrated. Why couldn't he see? "I tried to kill...!"

"Did you do so willingly?" A gloved hand combed through Tara's long, blonde hair. Suddenly, Tara could feel again the control implants boring through her skull... The wires sliding into her brain... Electric shocks making her shackled limbs convulse... Flashes of hallucinatory sensation crashing across her abused synapses... Her screams for mercy... for death... echoing around Slade's lab as he glared down at her with his one eye, his lips twisted into a smirk of sadistic victory.

A gloved hand wiped the tears from her cheeks and the man waited patiently for Tara's eyes to focus on him again. "Do not make the mistake of claiming another's sins as your own," the man said quietly but firmly. "You have enough faults of your own, Tara. You allowed your fears and lack of self-esteem control you. You abandoned your friends, who could have helped you, and turned instead to reasonable-seeming promises from a source that you ought to have rejected out of hand. Did you think yourself too smart to be corrupted? Too powerful to be enslaved? Or, to a certain extent was it...?"

Tara finished for the man. "I... I thought that my place was with Slade. When he told me that I was like him... a monster… a killer... Evil... A part of me believed him... There has always been a part of me that felt that I was that way."

"You know that isn't the case now, don't you?" Tara looked up at the man in confusion. "Tara... how did you get here?"

Tara thought back to her last memories. Suddenly, she was there! The flaming lava streaming towards the city, millions at her mercy...! "I couldn't let all those people get hurt." The girl gasped around the vivid recollection, remembering the panic and terror in thousands of faces as they looked up at her. Remembering the agony as the overloading mind-control implants sent electric shock after electric shock crashing through her brain... Felt the unbearable heat as the trapped lava exploded up all around her... Felt the burning touch on her flesh as her armour boiled away... felt the volcanic rock suddenly cool solidify in response to her final, instinctive use of her power... the darkness... the silence... the cold... Tara looked down, shuddering with relived horror, feeling tears trickling down her cheeks again.

"You were willing to die, or worse to be condemned to a perpetual living hell, to save those innocent people and those whom the person who attempted to control your every conscious thought insisted were your enemies deserving only of death. I don't think that those are the actions of someone who is evil. Do you?" The man sighed. "There is a reason why you consider yourself evil though, isn't there? Someone who you consider to have betrayed? Someone who touched you?" Tara nodded jerkily, spastically. "Who?"

"..." Tara couldn't force a word out.

"Tell me." The voice wasn't demanding. It was gentle, sad and sympathetic.

"G... G... Gar!" The word was forced out as a sob.

"There is a lot of pain in that one syllable, you know. Whoever that is must have been something special. A boyfriend?" Another spastic nod. "What's his name?"

"Garfield," Tara gasped out, hugging her shoulders.

The figure smiled and nodded. "Garfield Logan."

Strangely, Tara was not surprised that this stranger knew his full name. "He hates me!" Those words were a wail of a shattered heart in a damned soul.

The figure in black sighed. "He could never hate you, Tara. He's thinking about you right now, you know." Tara looked at the man in amazement. "Right now. He's wishing that he could speak to you one more time."

"He wants...? How do you know?"

"I know a lot of things, Tara. I know that Dick Grayson, Robin, blames himself for not protecting you as he feels that a leader ought. I know that Koriand'r, Starfire, thinks of you as the most honourable and courageous warrior that she has ever known. I know that Rachel Roth, Raven, understands what it is like to be a slave and tool of evil and wishes that she and you could have had the chance to heal together. I know that Victor Stone, Cyborg, mourns every day a lost baby sister... And I know that Garfield Logan, Beast Boy, your Gar, wishes more than anything, that he had been granted time enough to tell you that he loves you."

Tara looked at the figure in amazement. "He...?"

The man nodded with a grin that seemed... embarrassed somehow. "To some a sister, to others a friend but to him... the only woman who he has ever dreamed of becoming his… lover." Tara's eyes were wide and she swallowed. She couldn't think of a reply to that. That was quite a concept to spring on a girl, especially one who was only seventeen and had spent an unknown amount of time in suspended animation, entombed in rock. "He misses you and wishes that you were at his side right now!"

That was all that she needed to hear. Knowing it was true, Tara was on her feet, ready to run to Titans Tower and confront that... green goof right now! Suddenly the girl stopped and looked down, blushing like a stop signal as she realised that she was buck-naked under a thick, black woollen blanket. The man smiled and gestured at her. "Transfiguo Vestmentes," he intoned. A misty violet light flowed from his hand and surrounded Tara. As the girl watched in amazement, the blanked reshaped itself to form clothes... very familiar clothes at that: Tan shorts, hiking boots, workman's gloves and a black tank-top marked with a golden 'T' in a circle.

"Th... Thank you!"

The man smirked. "All part of the service."

Tara... no Terra again... summoned the rock that had been the pedestal for her prison and leapt up upon it. The rock began to levitate forwards but suddenly halted. Terra turned back to see the figure had stood and had somehow gathered the shadows of the partially-lit museum room around him. "Wait! I want to thank you!"

The figure tilted his head questioningly. "For what?"

"Well, for bringing me back, of course!"

The man smiled. "Terra, really, I was only the conduit for... other powers." The young geokinetic woman was still puzzling over that cryptic statement when he added: "If you want to thank me, then treasure this gift that you have been given. You have a second chance. Use it to embrace good, kindness and friendship; To embrace love and live. Trust me when I say that the alternative is... not an alternative."

Terra looked up. "Who are you?"

The man's mysterious smile seemed to shine out of the shadows. "My card," he said. The girl took the proffered playing card-sized embossed card without looking at first. "I have had many names and many identities over the years but if you need to call me, you can call me... Joe Black." The man's smile was rueful. "However, really, all I've ever been is just a guy on his vacation."

Terra had been staring at the man's card in horror and missed him blending into the shadows as if he had never been there. She looked around frantically and, realising that he was seemingly gone, she looked down at the card again. She'd seen Raven using a card like this whilst engaging in divination. It was one of the cards of the Tarot Major Arcana. Card number XIII. Death.

The girl swallowed and looked around the museum hall that had been her prison, seeing no indication that anyone else had ever been there this night. Suddenly, more than anything else, she wanted to be in the warmth, in the light, to have her friends around her, to be away from this dimly-lit, tomb-like chamber and the memory of that enigmatic figure.

Then there came a voice and Terra never decided if she heard it or if it was something in her mind: "You have something with which few have ever been blessed. You have a second chance. Use it well."

Tara Markov, Terra, flung her flying boulder out of the museum and into the sky. Behind her, a wanderer smiled to himself and checked another task off of the mental 'to do' list his brother had given him. Then he, too, was gone.