A sort of “Slade gone good” one-shot that was inspired by my other fic, “A Teen Titans Christmas Carol,” but it’s not directly based on it. I think it works as a one-shot, but maybe someday I’ll add more.

Twin Suns

By Remix17

In his private workroom, Robin surveyed the newspaper articles that lay on his cluttered table. Robin still wasn’t sure if he wanted to put them up on the walls with the other news clippings that heralded the Titans’ deeds and reminded the city’s residents that crime was still among them.

Robin frowned down at the carefully cut articles, re-reading their titles for what must have been the hundredth time. CRIME DOWN SIGNIFICANTLY, proclaimed one. TITANS AND JUMP CITY RECEIVE NEW ALLY? read another. And a third, perhaps the most frustrating of all. SLADE GONE GOOD?

Robin let out a slightly angry sigh. Even after all these months, it was still difficult for him to admit what even his own teammates had accepted by now: his most dangerous enemy, Slade, was his enemy anymore. According to the newspapers, and according to what had been happening the past eight months, Slade seemed to have given up his life of crime.

Robin still remembered the day things had changed. It had been after New Years, almost February, when the Titans had been too late to stop a rampaging Plasmus only to find that he’d been defeated in their absence. His victims had been protected before Plasmus could endanger them significantly, and thousands of dollars of property damage had been saved.

According to witnesses, Plasmus had been stopped by black-and-silver robots, all wearing the matching armor and looking identical to the other. The Titans had been in sheer disbelief to hear the news, because the robots described obviously belonged to Slade. They were his enforcers, his henchmen, doing his dirty work for him and eliminating anything that got in their way. The idea of one of them helping someone else, on Slade’s orders, was simply impossible to conceive.

But the good deeds kept coming. Sometimes when the Titans were battling a menace one side of town, the robots would be picking up their slack on the other side of Jump City. If they arrived at a crime in progress when the Titans did, they would pull back. Once, the robots had even aided them when the Titans had been overwhelmed by a swarm of killer moths, and saved a good section of the city as a result.

As time went on, more and more people in the city were forced to wonder if the always hidden criminal known as Slade had changed his ways.

Robin held out for months, certain it was all a trick, another of Slade’s devious and calculated schemes to claim the city. Slade was trying to win the city’s trust before he conquered it, or he was trying to make the Titans look bad. But after eight months Robin was running out of excuses as Slade’s war against crime suddenly looked more and more genuine as more criminals were put in jail.

But even now, with proof of Slade’s change of heart in front of him, Robin couldn’t accept the thought of Slade suddenly fighting o the side of good. Slade had committed hundreds of crimes without remorse, had played with Robin’s head for months before making him his apprentice; Slade had turned him against his friends, had given him the traumatizing choice of hurting them or condemning them to death. Slade had hurt Terra, and seduced her into his dark world, and now, she was all but dead. Slade was the most vile, most cruel, most irredeemable person Robin had ever had the misfortune to encounter, and now he was supposed to believe that overnight Slade had gone from despised villain to noble and repentant?

Robin glared down at the articles. He wasn’t jealous, or anything else his friends had accused him of being. He didn’t feel threatened by Slade’s success, at least, not as much as he’d been accused of.

What Robin didn’t like was the thought of Slade going unpunished, of getting away with all the terrible things he had done just because he had suddenly adopted a new lifestyle. Robin had lived, for the most part, by the clear-cut moral code given to him by his mentor, while Slade had broken that code’s mandates a hundred times over. Robin had tried to follow the rules of right and wrong as best as he could, always wondering if he was doing the right thing, desperately trying to learn what the right thing was in life, but Slade simply caused all the destruction and chaos he wanted before deciding to find the straight and narrow path.

It wasn’t…..fair.

And it wasn’t fair that Robin had been denied the chance to finally defeat Slade once and for all, to finally get peace of mind, because now Slade was truly untouchable. He was a “good guy.”

Robin glanced at the articles again, and wondered, if Slade was a different man, what he was doing right now.

(TT TT TT)

It hadn’t been such a long time since he had last seen the underground chamber, coated with solidified magma.

Slade had come here often in the past months, always on the days when the Titans did not come to visit their friend Terra, who was currently a petrified statue. Of course, it was easier these days to work around their visits, because even Beast Boy was now only coming once or twice a month, and his companions had stopped seeing Terra altogether.

So Slade had Terra all to himself, so to speak.

Slade looked upon the girl, who was nothing more than a statue of rock now, and he again wondered if a cure for her was possible even now. How did one return rock to flesh? Surely it was no easier than converting iron into gold, a sow’s ear into silk. The idea of transforming motionless rock into a human girl once more reminded him of the alchemists, trying to do the impossible.

For the past few months now Slade had set his sights on Terra and on finding a cure for her. He knew the Titans were also looking for a way to free their friend from her stone cocoon, but they, unlike Slade, didn’t have the time or the resources to research a cure properly. So the task was largely his own. In time the Titans might have found one but Slade was not going to wait for them.

He was here because he knew that he could never truly feel as if he had changed his ways unless he tried to undo Terra’s condition. It was partly his fault that she was no longer with the living, and Slade knew it. While everything Terra had done had been of her own free (if coerced) will, and Slade had not actually controlled her until the last hour of her life, he knew that he had set all the wheels in motion. He had drawn her away from the Titans and picked her up when she was vulnerable; he had taught her to control her powers and then told her that she had a debt to pay to him; he had used her as a spy and ordered her to betray her fellow teammates. And then, in the end, he had been the one to betray her.

It was time to set things right, if they could be set right at all. Slade drew closer to the girl, gazing upon her. He had spent many days and nights researching and experimenting, from reading all he could about Geokinesis to tracking down all the individuals who had the gift or curse of possessing that power. He found old legends, discovered rumors, and everything had been stored away in his files, nothing deemed unimportant as he labored for a cure.

Eventually, Slade’s research had taken him to a small, virtually unknown village in Thailand. He read that there stood a statue in the village, a statue of a young man who, the locals claimed, had turned to stone one day and never turned back. He had sent a contact to Thailand to look into the matter further. There was in fact a statue that the locals claimed had once been a man. The statue had been in the village for sixty-five years and was likely to stat there for some time.

Slade worked harder, knowing that Terra’s petrifaction was not unique, and, months later, just when he was wondering if perhaps there was no cure after all for Geokinetic Petrification (as he called it), he found another local rumor from Morocco. A young girl could make earthquakes and control the earth, and one day, using her powers to such an extent that she had saved her entire town from disaster, the little girl’s powers had consumed her as well, and she had become just as Terra was now. The difference was that the little girl had been set free of her prison.

Now, as he stood in the stone chamber that seemed to echo with memories, Slade set to work.

Slade had constructed three small devices that, if all went as planned, would set Terra free as he knew she deserved to be. Each device was as large as a calculator, the wires and chips and power cells visible where they rested on a flat disk. In the center of each device was a small, smooth stone. All of them were a soothing light blue and they had cost Slade more than any rock should be worth.

Slade placed the first device against Terra’s chest, using an adhesive kept it there. He repeated the process, placing the others against her back and at her feet. He connected all three devices with a length of wires and cables, which were hooked up to a small self-sustaining power cell Slade had made for this experiment.

As he worked, Slade was careful to move as quickly as possible. He had to time this entire process, because today, this afternoon, Beast Boy would be coming to visit his friend as he usually did. Slade’s plan was to free Terra and, once he was sure she was safe, leave her for the green changeling to find. If all went according to plan Beast Boy would assume that Terra’s powers had finally awoken and freed her, similar to the way certain animals awoke after a long hibernation. Slade knew for a fact he could not take Terra home, and he also knew that he could not take her to the tower. This way, leaving her for the changeling, would be best. He could rush her home where she would be given the special care she would require by people who loved her.

Slade looked over the odd devices he'd constructed to make sure he had arranged them properly, then knelt down by the power cell. It was as large as a car battery, and it would be easy to get rid of before Beast Boy came.

Slade turned on the power cell, and a low hum began to fill the chamber. He glanced up at Terra, and his eye settled on the one device he’d placed on her thin, solid chest. Slowly, the stone in the device’s middle began to glow. The glow intensified, and began to pulse. Behind Terra, a halo of light assured Slade that the other stone was doing the same, as did a third glow at her feet.

The stones pulsated, as if they were matching the rhythmic beating of a heart. The pulsations started to increase, doubling their rate, and the stones themselves began to glow more brighter, until they were almost white. Slade forced himself to keep his eye on Terra despite the sharp light, but as the stones brightened even more and he was forced to look away.

Perhaps it was best that he hadn’t seen what came next.

As Slade covered his eye with his forearm, he began to hear something, a sound that reminded him of rocks grinding against each other. He heard cracking and crumbling, and the clattering of stone against the chamber floor, but mostly he just heard that grinding, which gave way to something that sounded like stretching and rearranging. It was a sound he had never heard before, and he could only imagine what was happening to Terra—he could only imagine if he was just making things worse.

As the light brightened even further, pulsating excitedly, Slade heard something that was much more familiar to him: he heard a small cry. He turned into the hot light to see what was happening, but the statue was gone. Barely visible in the blinding light was a small form, writhing about on its side and covering its face.

Slade quickly turned off the power cell, almost not believing that he actually seemed to have brought his former apprentice back from a half-death. With a slow drone the stones died, and the light dissipated, returning the chamber to its natural gloom. His eye filled with spots from the light, but he blinked them away as best he could. Slade all but scrambled to his feet so he could inspect Terra, striding quickly toward her.

Slade had known she wouldn’t look her best when she was revived, but seeing her was disheartening. She was lying across her stone perch, her arm now fallen against the plaque that the Titans had inscribed for her. Her entire body was limp and her eyes were closed. The armor he had given her so long ago was destroyed, rendered useless by the stone it had been encased in. It had fallen from her body, still mostly rock, and she would never wear it again. The armor’s cloth was mostly destroyed as well, revealing her pale flesh. She was sweating profusely, her entire body drenched and her hair hanging damply about her face. Slade saw that she was shaking, trembling and jerking in short, confused spasms. Small, barely audible whimpers escaped her throat, and she began to hug herself, her body curling inward.

Slade knew he had to be very gentle, and very careful. After removing the two devices from Terra’s body, he slowly reached beneath the girl. He waited for Terra to pull away from him, or fight, or suddenly wake fully, but she remained barely aware of him. Slade lifted her from the rock upon which she was resting, shifted her in his arms and carried her a few paces before kneeling down to look her over further.

Terra was more pale now than he remembered, but he had been expecting that. She looked thinner too, but then, she hadn’t eaten or drank anything in a long time. She would be weak for many days to come, and of course there might be psychological side effects as well. Slade hoped she would readjust to the world again. One of his fears was that, after being awakened, Terra would want to return to the stone that had encased her. To himself and the Titans, it had seem ed a prison. To Terra, it may have been peaceful rest. Freeing her could become yet another cruelty delivered to a girl who had already experienced a very cruel life.

Terra’s eyes were fluttering, barely revealing the blue irises beneath her eyelids before closing once more. She was probably going to have difficulty seeing too for the next few hours or days, until her eyes learned how to focus again.

Slade reached down, and wiped a few wet strands of hair out of the girl’s face. Terra pulled away slightly, whimpering at his touch, and Slade wondered if a small part of her knew he was here. The last they had seen of each other was when he had grabbed her beneath her chest plate, lifting her off her feet as he prepared to deliver another blow to her. Her eyes had blazed like suns and she had attacked before he could, sending him down into the deep chasm her powers had created. The hatred between the two of them had been palpable in that final moment before they had parted ways, had been as fierce and passionate as her glowing eyes. Both of them had wanted to destroy the other, and both had nearly succeeded.

As Slade held his former apprentice, he reflected that, had he wanted to, he could have sent the Titans the blueprints to the devices that had freed Terra, or he could have sent the devices themselves to Titans Tower. That way, he wouldn’t have had to worry about leaving before Beast Boy could spot him, or hang around unseen to make sure that he actually did show up.

But, Slade had wanted to be the one to free Terra. He wanted to be the one to gather her up and look at her for the first time. He wanted to beat the Titans to a cure. He knew that he and Terra would see each other again after this, but when that happened her eyes would be filled with anger, fear, or hatred at the sight of him. He wanted to see her now, when she wouldn’t look at him that way, when her mind was too dulled and blank to register that he was here.

In his arms, Terra was quieting. Her trembling began to cease and her tensed body relaxed a little. Knowing he was running out of time, Slade returned her to the place where her petrified body had stood only minutes before. He gave her a small, almost casual pat on the head as he became his more detached self again, and then went about gathering up his equipment.

He stuck around in the shadows just long enough to see Beast Boy, head lowered, expression solemn, coming into the chamber to pay his monthly visit to his friend. Slade left as he saw the young Titan make his way into the cavern. He didn’t want to witness Beast Boy finding Terra, or see what came next after that. He’d lost one apprentice to the Titans, and now he was going to lose another. There was no reason to see another failure, especially when he was handing the Titans the victory.

And besides, there was a village in Thailand that was about to get some good news.

—THE END—

I really wanted to write this, because I had this mental picture of Slade holding Terra after he freed her, and I wanted to write that. Is this the end? Maybe I’ll come back to add more, but for now, yes, this is the end.

None of this was supposed to be romantic or anything; I know it felt like that sometimes. It was just Slade righting a wrong, freeing his former apprentice, then leaving her for Beast Boy to discover.