Always A Titan

Once upon a time, Titans Tower got younger.

Not the building — the building was the same, standing tall above Jump City Bay. What got younger was the sound inside it: lighter footsteps, laughter at different pitches, the crash in the training room of someone still learning their powers. A new group of young heroes had come to train.

There were seven of them, ages twelve and thirteen, from different cities and different circumstances, and they had in common that particular uncertainty of people who have been given something large and are not yet sure what to do with it. Some had had their powers for years and still flinched when they used them. Some had had their powers for weeks and were startled every time. All of them had come because they wanted to be better, and that was exactly what the Titans had always looked for. Cyborg ran physical training, patient and careful and encouraging, the way someone is encouraging when they have fought their own doubts and won. Raven ran academics — history, strategy, the long record of what heroes had learned across many decades. Beast Boy ran morale, which was organized chaos and magnificent. And Starfire taught navigation.

Not the ordinary kind. She did not teach star charts or compass headings. She taught something in Tamaranean that translated roughly as: the practice of knowing where your heart is.

On clear evenings she brought her students to the Tower roof and had them lie on their backs under the sky. She named Earth stars — Betelgeuse, Vega, Sirius. Then the stars she used to navigate by in open space. Then, in late autumn, she pointed southwest. Faint, far away. That one is Tamaran.

She told them her story: the Citadel ship, the explosion of freed power, falling through space toward a blue-green planet she did not recognize. A parking lot in Jump City. Smoke and heat rising from the asphalt. A crowd of humans staring. A young man named Dick Grayson stepping forward with his hand extended and calm, steady eyes that said: you are safe here. English arriving in her mind like sunlight, immediate and full and warm.

"That is what I am teaching you," she said. "Where you are in yourself. Not on a map. That is what navigation means."

One October evening, a trainee named Ari sat still while the others pointed at stars. Ari could generate force fields — strong ones — but was afraid of open spaces, and even the roof sometimes felt too wide. She sat with her knees pulled up.

Starfire sat beside her.

Ari said quietly: "I don't think I'm brave enough to be a Titan."

Starfire thought carefully — as she always did with important things.

"I did not feel brave when I arrived here," she said. "I felt lost. For a long time I waited to feel ready before doing difficult things. That is not how it works. You do the thing that matters because it matters. You do the next thing. The bravery grows in the doing, not before."

Ari was quiet. Then: "Which one is Tamaran?"

Starfire pointed southwest.

"You left your whole planet," Ari said. "Your people."

"I left some of my family," Starfire said. "And I found the rest."

She looked at Jump City spread out below the Tower — the bay and its lights, the streets she had flown a thousand times, the harbor where there had once been a parking lot with a smoke-scorched crater in it and one outstretched hand. She thought of Robin, steady and clear-eyed and always there. She thought of Cyborg's enormous laugh and the way the Tower smelled good when he was making chili. She thought of Raven, quiet and deep as a still lake, and the small private smile she occasionally allowed herself. She thought of Beast Boy, who had once turned into a golden retriever for two full seconds in the middle of a battle just because he was glad to see her. She thought of every rooftop and every fight and every ordinary evening in between.

She had chosen this. She chose it every day. And choosing something with your whole heart, every single day, was the deepest belonging there was.

Ari uncurled her knees and let her legs hang over the roof edge.

"I think I'll stay," she said.

"Good," said Starfire. And her smile was easy and real — the smile of someone who had traveled very far to find exactly this place, and had known from the beginning it was right.

Close your eyes. The stars are out over Jump City. The Tower is full of young people learning to be brave.

It is exactly what it should be.

Sleep well.