Titans: Last Light

One month after Starfall, Earth was still learning how to breathe normally again.

From orbit, the planet looked whole. Blue oceans, white cloud systems, city lights returning in patches across the night side. From far enough away, recovery always looked cleaner than it was.

On the ground, the truth was uglier.

Hospitals still had full wings sealed behind hazard curtains. Some patients had been burned by ordinary fire. Others had been touched by Crown-Flame heat that no doctor on Earth had words for. Their charts were half medicine, half apology. Coastlines carried dead zones where the oceans had boiled too hot for too long. Glass towers in Metropolis still reflected the sky in warped lines. Parts of Gotham's east side had rolling blackouts twice a week because half the grid had been rerouted during the Blackfire crisis and never properly repaired. San Francisco, Jump City, Blüdhaven, Coast City, Amnesty Bay, Central City — everybody had damage. Everybody had stories.

Earth was alive.

Alive did not mean healed.

Titans Tower stood in the bay like a promise that had been hit, burned, patched, and told to keep standing.

From the outside, the Tower looked almost restored. New glass. New structural ribs. New landing platforms. New shield emitters folded into the architecture so smoothly that tourists on boats probably thought they were decorative. At sunrise, the Tower still caught the light beautifully.

Up close, the scars were obvious.

Some hallway panels were newer than others. Some floors still made a faint hollow sound where Victor had replaced internal supports after Starfall. A whole eastern maintenance corridor was still sealed because Kori's starfire had melted the old pressure lines into the walls. The training field had been re-laid, but the grass grew unevenly where Tamaranean heat had burned through the soil too deep. No amount of Wayne money could make grief grow on schedule.

The Titans noticed all of it.

They noticed because the Tower was not just headquarters anymore.

It was home.

And home kept evidence.

Koriand'r stood barefoot on the edge of the training field one morning, watching the new grass move in the wind.

She had been there for almost twenty minutes before Billy found her.

He did not ask if she was okay. They were past that. Kori had taught him that sometimes the question was too small for the feeling.

Instead, he stood beside her and looked at the field too.

After a while, she said, "It does not grow evenly."

Billy nodded. "No."

"The earth beneath remembers burning."

"Yeah."

Kori's hands were clasped in front of her, one thumb moving over the knuckle of the other. "On Tamaran, after royal fire touches ground, nothing grows there until the bloodline that burned it has made peace with what was done."

Billy looked at her.

Kori kept her eyes on the grass.

"I do not know if Earth has such rules."

Billy wanted to say Earth was different. He wanted to say grass was just grass. But he had learned, slowly and painfully, that comfort built on denial was not comfort. It was just noise.

So he said, "Maybe it's making peace."

Kori breathed in. The morning light made her hair look like it had caught a private sunrise.