Prompt 8: Smell
Set just after 'Betrayal'.

Terra had not liked the chapel the first time Slade had brought her there. Actually, she'd hated it. It was dark and dirty and smelled like rotten eggs. Slade had said that her powers would light her way, she wouldn't get dirty if she learned to manipulate earth correctly, and the rotten egg smell was sulfur from volcanic activity underground and she'd get used to it.

Slade wasn't very good at making her feel better about the chapel. Or anything, really. But that didn't matter. What did matter was that Terra couldn't control her powers for what her life was worth, and Slade had been the only one who could help her. She's asked her teacher lots of questions and quickly learned that Slade was not the type who liked questions. Or complaints. He really hated complaints. So in addition to earth moving, Terra also learned to shut up about the icky smell of sulfer. And a lot of other things too.

She got lonely a lot though.

Then finally, finally she was allowed to go back to the Titans with confidence in her abilities…and two tiny electronic camera contacts in her pretty blue eyes. They'd welcomed her back with open arms (with the exception of Raven, who got over herself eventually), and Terra felt like she was home. Clean, bright, pretty smelling home. Even the odors from Beast Boy's room that Raven was always complaining about had nothing on the rotten eggs that still lingered in the back of Terra's head.

And then it all fell apart. Everything. She thought she'd found friends, family, a home. She thought she'd found a place where she wouldn't be judged no matter what she did, even if it was really bad.

She'd thought wrong.

Terra stood once again in the damp, cold chapel that Slade had kept her in during her training, and this time she wasn't cringing. The darkness lived in her, the dirt was no longer a meaningless clinging annoyance but a means of ultimate destruction. And the rotten eggs? The smell of sulfur that invaded every little bit of the chapel?

The earth mover inhaled deeply.

It smelled like power, and it intoxicated her.

Are you ready for me?
-Shed My Skin/Alter Bridge-