Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all starts with Robin calling us to a meeting in the training room. I walk in a few minutes later than everyone else to find him and Raven standing side by side, the others arranged around them. I creep in pretending I can't tell Robin's throat clearing is about my being slightly behind schedule, but Raven coughs delicately and he lets it slide.

"We've been talking, Raven and I. Something new needs to make it into our training regime." Robin is usually trying to push us up to the next level, particularly since the weird shape shifty thing that nearly whipped our asses a couple of months ago, so him speaking of new training techniques isn't weird.

He doesn't just have us running around the training grounds and at the gym a few days a week: Robin has charts and graphs and blow by blow analysis sheets of our abilities and weaknesses, works out personalized training regimes, designs new team strategies, even makes time to personally work us out of ruts.

Honestly, people who think he just sits around flicking darts at a picture of Slade don't know how much hard work heroes do after the bad guy gets chucked into the back of an armored truck.

"So. It's been brought to my attention that, historically, we sometimes sweep pretty serious issues under the rug, then they explode and we're usually too late to deal." Robin looks around the room and not one of us can hold his gaze, even Raven looks slightly to the side of him. Robin probably realizes he's channeling Batman more than a bit, because his voice is a whole lot gentler when he speaks next. "I'm not trying to blame anyone of anything here. We're heroes. We deal with a whole lot. You're all capable and strong, and you've proved it time and time again under the worst circumstances. I'm proud to know each of you." His mask makes it hard to tell sometimes, but I know he's looking straight at me.

I smile. Robin-praise isn't rare, but it makes me feel glowy as a firefly.

"Which brings me to this. We're really good at saving other people. But sometimes we forget how important it is to take care of ourselves so we can do that. And we can't exactly phone Jump Mental Health Services for a few therapy sessions when things become a bit much, not without putting our secrets in danger. And even if we could, sometimes talking to someone else is just that much harder. I should know..." He smiles sheepishly. Out of all of us, Robin's probably the one who's gotten closest to losing it, even if it did involve a little help from Slade's special Double Whammer cocktail: accepting he's made mistakes that might have harmed the team is hard on him.

He looks around like he's waiting for us to yell at him the way we did after the Red X incident, but then Star walks up to him to lean her head on his shoulder and Cyborg gives him the slow smile and I give him two thumbs up. Come on, the big fearless leader is showing us Learned A Lesson, I'd give him four if I could. Then again, I can: I change into a chimpanzee and sit down to raise all my thumbs.

My four thumbs make him chuckle. Score!

He lightens up and turns to Raven, who's put her hand on his shoulder in her own supportive way. He nods to her and she knows what to do, gesturing us into a closer circle, then sitting down with her legs crossed on each other. "Raven is going to teach us some mental housekeeping. Her level of meditation is difficult and would probably take more time than we have to actually master it, but we've gone over some techniques that might come in handy. They'll help us remain aware of our feelings, our fears and whatever else might be running amok in our heads." He nods to her. "Your turn, Raven."

Raven returns the nod. A few stray tendrils of hair wave around with her breath and tickle her nose, so she brushes them aside a little irritably. "The monks of Azarath believe everyone has a mindscape they can access. Basically, your mind creates a place that your…spiritual self can visit. The state it's in, the things you see in it, they can help you become aware of what's going on with you and your emotions, even the things you don't want to think about or are deeply suppressed. Also called a dreamscape." The hairs float back onto her nose.

I feel a little bad for her, how she's trying to look in control and be engaging and easy to follow and those hairs are ruining her mojo, so I reach out and push the hairs onto her head where they won't bug her. Her eyes follow my hand as I retract it, looking at me when I finally put it back down. She looks at me funny for a split second before looking annoyed. I smile and try to look harmless. It looks like it works, because she looks away instead of kicking me into Herald's dimension or something.

Starfire perks up, clearly having heard of this before. "This sounds most difficult at first, but one finds it easier as time goes on, as the place is exactly the place one wants to be the most." She couples her statement with a smile. Raven is nodding too.

"Azarath lore also says that once in alpha state, most people will naturally gravitate there. It's the place that will feel the safest …remember that if the Puppet King ever breaks out again."

She takes us through breathing exercises, methods of keeping our thoughts quiet. Everyone is embarrassingly surprised when I can actually do it, like they always forget Mento was my first team leader, but because we're trying to put our issues at rest and stuff there's a round of apology almost immediately. Raven doesn't join in. I did see her funny not-smiling-but-pleased expression after the exercise though, so I'm pretty sure she wasn't as surprised as everyone else.

Finally, she tells us about finding our center. When telling us to find where we feel the most 'us' isn't that effective, Raven tries telling us to think of the place where we feel the most at peace. Normally, this would be my rock, the seaside rocky outcropping west of the tower I go to when I'm upset or emotional, but that brings up the time I took not-Terra there a couple of months ago, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. When I open my eyes Raven's are on me. It's then that I realize she's probably examining our emotions with her powers to make sure we're doing OK. Her eyes are soft, so I know she knows I'm upset.

"Something wrong?" Cy and Robin and Star are apparently making progress, so she's speaking softly. I can hear her, my animal hearing is sharp enough, but I edge closer so she can hear me too.

"Guess my happy place isn't really making me happy right now." I did tell the team about Terra not being Terra. I even mentioned the Slade bot. It got Robin all…Robiny for a few weeks until the false leads and radio silence from Slade made it obvious it wasn't phase one of an invasion or anything like that. He probably felt like leaving us a calling card after being away for so long, to remind us he's out there.

Jerk.

But some of the details I've kept to myself, things that were just for Terra and me, and now just for me, like the pies from Ben's or the rundown carnival. And how she ran from me out by my rock.

Raven sighs. It's not her impatient sigh. It's a slow, sad sort of sigh. I'm half afraid, half resigned, because I think she's about to pity me. But then she looks away from me, like she's looking for answers out our bay windows, before turning to me. Not just her head – she shifts her entire body towards me. "You lived in Africa?"

"Well….yeah. How-?"

"Your files." The ones you poked through to find out my birthdate, she doesn't say. I'd be a big hypocrite if I said anything. I'm not even sure how much information is in there, I'm guessing its files the Doom Patrol built up since I was a kid and sent over when we made the team official. "Maybe that can be your new happy place."

I shake my head. The jungles of Congo were a special place. It was home, a colorful, lush, living home, one that made the city feel dirty and dead when I had to be sent back. But the person I am now doesn't seem to want to actually live those times anymore. I would do almost anything to have my parents back…but I've done too much at eighteen to want to be eight again. I know. It's weird.

"Not Africa then. Well, there has to be someplace you find comfortable." I think, I think, and I think. Finally, a place comes to mind...kind of. I find memories of feeling safe after a long time of feeling anything but, and the place comes second. It's dark and it's quiet, but it's calm and pretty cozy. The details are hazy, but Rae talked about feelings mostly, right? I concentrate on the feeling hard.

I expect to feel something happening to my actual body, being sucked into somewhere or pushed up or anything really. Like Rae's mirror when it sucked us in. All I feel is weightlessness for a fraction of a second. When I open my eyes, I'm alone in the common room.

For a while I'm caught between freaking out and feeling awed. I might be the first one drooling whenever a hypnotic swirly board pops up, but I can tell this thing feels less real than reality, and just a bit more solid than dreams. Then it hits me: this is my mindscape! Dude, I'm in!

I pump my fist in the air even though I know nobody can see me. I can't even decide where to go first. I run to the window, our own familiar bay window, and I know I'm not actually in Jump City, but I'm not ready for what actually is out there.

The ocean is there, and so is the city skyline, but instead of looking far away it's right there, a human swimming distance away. And right up against the coastline are all my favorite places in the city: the pizza place, my favorite slice of the amusement park, even the old video rental place that went under. The bridge is gone.

And to my left, also a human swimming distance away, another land mass has appeared. There is no beach, which would be weird if this weren't my mind, just tall trees thick with leaves that don't thin out for miles. There is a small opening where the trees have grown into outwards curves to form a natural archway. I think of the closet from Narnia for a second, and I chuckle, but I know what I'm looking at: the Congo jungle. Okay, so Africa might not be the happy place I need to connect with my center, but it's important enough to be here.

I turn around, looking at the dream-common room, which looks pretty much the same. I walk up the stairs to look for the rooms, but instead of the network of corridors my room is right there. Huh? I walk back out the door to the common room, then rush back in: yep, still my room. I guess my mind doesn't really care to add all those other places from the tower.

I walk into my room. It's become huge. A part of it looks just like the room I've known for the past few years at Titans tower, with my bunk beds and my junk in the corners and my comics crowding the desk. But instead of windows and walls, darkness yawns out into infinity, like the room is just a tiny place under a spotlight in the middle of...someplace.

The darkness makes me feel funny. It's fear and something cagey, and frankly I'm not surprised. Maybe my fears live down there? If my fear looks anything like Rae's, I think I'll sit out visiting them for now. I so don't want another run in with the monster from Wicked Scary.

I poke around my room for a while. There are things here that I know are at my real room in the tower, but also lots of things that aren't, like my old wind-up monkey, pictures of my parents that never made it out of Congo, pictures I know nobody ever took of me with Rita and Mento, playing with Cliff while he doesn't look very amused, Larry playing with me while I look pretty unamused (c'mon, he cheated at hide-and-seek, always!). I take my time going through the pictures, then look back at the dark corners.

I'm not kidding when I say I expect the freaky fearmonster to come out. Do I even need to go down there right now? I remember getting kicked really good when in Nevermore. Could my fears actually hurt me? Could accepting them make them go away?

I've got too many questions. I'm not ready. I'm beginning to think of a way out so I can ask the actual expert when everything goes dim and I hear a voice like it's coming through water -

Beast Boy?

I open my eyes, my actual physical eyes, back in the training room, on the mat as someone pokes my shoulder. Star and Robin are looking at me, Star so close I could probably brush her nose with my eyelash, and Cyborg's foot to my left indicates he's the one jabbing at me. Raven hangs back, but she's peering over Star and Robin. She's the one who called my name.

"Uh, hi?"

"You were getting agitated." Raven says simply.

"You were also the last to return. You OK grass stain?" Cyborg adds in between pokes.

"It was awesome! There's a bit of Congo and all my stuff was there, but there were these huge blank spots in my room, they were dark and scary and I figured I had to look in, but it was creepy and I didn't feel ready to go poking through my fears and stuff, but then I thought of when we kicked butt in Nevermore and wondered if it could hurt me, and just when I was trying to come back you called me". Robin shakes his head. Raven, however, looks thoughtful.

"The next time you go in, try investigating the dark. It's your own darkness. If you confront it, it can't hurt you. There shouldn't be demons in your mind, and because you're not in there in a physical form, nothing you fight there should leave you physical damage." She doesn't say it won't. I wonder if I should be worried.

The exercise is concluded for the day and we file out of the training room. When I turn to challenge Cy to a round of racing games for tonight's dish duty though, I could swear I just barely missed catching Raven staring at me.

She isn't, not that she'll do it when I'm looking back of course. But there are two creases on her forehead I don't usually see when she's relaxed.

Chapter Text

I'm curious.

Robin used to try and get me with the old "curiosity killed the cat", but sometimes my being curious has actually been good. Like when I went all 007 and found the bad guy lurking in Raven's book.

So I figure it isn't that bad when the thing poking at my curious is my own mind.

That night after everyone goes to bed, I go through what Raven taught us. It takes a while, just like the first time, but I make it into my mindscape OK. I go back into my dream-room, take a good deep breath and choose one of the corners.

Perspective is funny in this place. As I get closer, the darkness seems bigger, until it feels like I'm standing at the mouth of a cave full of something dark and tangible like cloth.

Creepy.

I wonder if I can bring up a dream flashlight. It doesn't work, so I guess I have to actually face my darkness, not just in the metaphoric sense. My mind sucks though. How can it summon a whole continent and not give me a flashlight?

I stake another step into the darkness, and for a second it feels like stepping through a dense velvet curtain, but then I'm through and there's light. At the other side is Terra's room.

For a moment, my breath catches painfully in my chest. It looks just like it did a few months ago when I took Not-Terra to see it, the stars and the faux rock bed, the box I made her. Even the sky outside her windows is still orange and purple.

The walls are plastered with posters of things I know I don't have pictures of, just like my room: a poster of Terra on the day I met her, winking that flirty wink at me. There's Terra's profile out by the rocks, frozen in the act of tossing a pebble into the water. Terra laughing openly, my hand on her shoulder, and I remember the pizza eating contest. Terra crying and clinging to the purple and black of my uniform, lost, afraid and ashamed after losing control of her powers that one time underground. Terra rising over the edge of our roof framed by the setting sun, smiling and sure of herself – the day she came back while we played volleyball. There's a poster of Titans Tower sticking halfway up from the ground, and while there is no Terra visible, that memory is full of her.

There're other posters, but these look like I got at them in tiger form, because they're completely shredded. There's a poster by the window that has just enough left of Terra's head to let me know she's wearing Slade's neural interphase suit in it. Another, torn down the middle, looks like it has a border: up close I can see it's the moment before she closed a rift in the ground in my face, her mocking expression and the jagged earth around her. Several other ripped up ones have just enough left of a torso in a white shirt or bits of a black tie, so they belong to memories with Not Terra.

I walk further into the room, invaded by that feeling that comes just before you puke your guts out, when you know you're about to feel pretty bad, but couldn't stop it if you tried. In the wall behind the head of Terra's bed I can see a perfectly whole poster of Terra's face as seen from way up close, her eyes closed, her mouth just barely parted. The rusted old netting from the Ferris wheel cart frames her face.

The last poster makes me sad and angry. My date with her was one of the happiest days of my life. The almost kiss wasn't as happy, because she was so sad and sounded so desperate, but it was emotional, and I'd thought it was ours. Finding out that she was talking about my friends getting flattened by Sladebots while I was out eating pie with the person that made it all possible makes this memory feel wrong. Poisoned.

I lunge for it, but I don't even touch it before an invisible force rips it to pieces. And then the voices start. They're loud and sharp, not echoey like the movies make them out to be.

I'm just a girl with a geometry test next period and I haven't studied

Perhaps she wanted to keep you as a pet

I don't have any friends, remember?

I hope you're not expecting a goodbye kiss

The voices are coming from the walls, or the ceiling, I'm not sure, but they're cutting me to the quick. Mostly it's Terra's voice, with Slade adding his twopence every now and then.

What's the matter? Had enough?

Ok. Apparently Darth Beast Boy's voice is there, too.

No wonder "Terra dumped you"

When I turn around, he's right there. Gray and black and with eyes glowing red in a way that'd give Trigon a run for his money. And I still feel like I ought to be a little taller.

"Hey dipstick."

"Oh. I'm so scared. I just called myself a dipstick." I shudder dramatically. That infuriating little smirk doesn't go away as he passes me by heading for Terra's bed and dropping himself on it like a ton of bricks. Lounging on it like he belongs.

Dude, this is messed up.

"Weren't you only brought out by Trigon?"

"Yeah, I don't actually exist physically. But that doesn't make me any less real in here. Trigon can take me out of you, but you created me to begin with. I'm…Darth You."

"Tch. Very original."

"Yeah, you're pretty cliché sometimes. I mean, calling a game that uses your dirty socks for a ball stankball?" That smirk has a really nasty edge. I never smirk at anyone like that. He snickers at me, mockingly. "So, what d'you think of the place? Emo romanticky enough?" My jaw clenches. "Or maybe you'd like to mope on her empty bed for a bit, for old times' sakes?"

I don't answer. I just morph into a Grizzly and lunge at him.

"Aww, poor Garfield. Got you in the feels again?" He doesn't morph, probably because most animals can't keep up much of a conversation. Not unless he morphs into the same animal form I'm using- and that'd be a tactical mistake. Darth Me just keeps up dodging and avoiding, moving away or out just seconds before I strike. I don't know if he's reading my – our? – mind or anything. I don't know what I'm doing myself.

After a while, one that feels endless, I feel tired, feeling myself morph back. Darth Me snickers at me again from beside Terra's lava lamp. The more he does it, the higher the sound bumps on my anger triggers list. "Not a scratch." He plucks his black and gray uniform for emphasis. I look around. He's...right. The room should be in ruins after all the scratching and pouncing, but everything is just the way it was. Even the sheets on the bed are straight.

"Ugh…"

I feel tired, sore and angry, and Darth Me still lounges, fresh as a damn lettuce. Maybe this isn't the right way to fight the dark side. I'll need to ask Raven-

"Oooh. What's this I hear?" Darth Me stands up on the table and cups his hand around one ear. His red eyes open wider, but I can't tell if it's part of the act. "Is widdle Beasty Boo calling…for Rae Rae?"

Rae Rae? Isn't that what Mother May-Eye called her? Darth Me looks suddenly inspired. "Come on. Call her. Let Raven see just how messed up it is in here. Whad'ya think she'll say, seeing this here? How you still worship the girl who actually tried to kill her? Who knew all her weaknesses thanks to you?" He jumps off the table and walks, walks till he's all up in my face. "She'll be so happy to know…everything about you." You could cut glass with that smirk now.

But then I know Darth Me's messed something up, because I feel a thumping, four-legged run in what should be the hall outside, and his red eyes turn round with shock as my primal side, with the long hair and huge claws, lopes into the room, huffing and growling at him.

O-oh man, it is so my turn to be all mocking. "What's the matter? Had enough?" Darth Me backpedals into the window so fast he trips. The Beast is on him, growling menacingly.

"Dude, how'd I forget the dog…" Darth Me tries to push the Beast's snout away. It earns him a loud roar and not a little drool as the Beast, angry, shows him all its teeth. "Fine, I'm leaving." He crawls out from under the menacing snout and starts to turn towards the window. "Oh. But before I do? Catch." Darth Me chucks a small brown something at me "Food for thought." I catch it instinctively. Darth Me evaporates.

It's a penny. Why'd he throw me a- oh. We were talking about Raven. I guess this is the penny I found the day the world was going to end.

The Beast darts to my side, then kneels beside me. His ears are relaxed, and you could almost call his expression smiley. If he had a tail, he'd probably be wagging it: where Darth Me radiated aggression, the Beast is friendly, glad to see me almost. Which he should. We made peace a long time ago. "Good boy." I pat his arm and the Beast gives me a pleased drool bath with his huge tongue. Eurgh. I'm glad psychic drool doesn't travel into the physical plane. Then he rises onto his hind legs in a way so disturbingly human I almost gawk, grabs my arm and hauls me enthusiastically out the door.

Funnily enough, we don't pop up back in my room after the darkness. This time we reach a long room, barely lit by a wan moon that pokes in through a corner of the windows. It still looks like it belongs in the tower. The room is all floor-to-ceiling windows, no furniture.

Except for that long thing like a closet in the very center. As I walk up to it, the light in the room seems to increase marginally, and I'm looking at my own face reflected in a massive mirror.

It's not all elegant like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter. It's a plain full length, a little old-fashioned but not ancient. And really big. I take a step back, and notice that my reflection isn't holding the little copper coin, but a golden apple.

"So this is the part where I pull the Stone-I mean the apple, out of the mirror." I look around the room, but only the Beast is there, sniffing at a patch of floor with interest. No Professors in turbans hiding bad guys on the back of their heads lurking in any corners.

I look at myself in the mirror again. Other than the fact that I'm holding the wrong thing, it's exactly me there. I bare my teeth, the image bares them too, I make all sorts of funny faces and the image makes them back at me. Then the Beast finishes checking out whatever fascinating scent it found and walks up to the mirror: then everything gets weirder.

At first sight, the Beast's reflection in the mirror is perfectly ordinary, but then I notice his eyes aren't blank. I've morphed in front of my own nonmagical mirror, I know all my animal forms have freaky blank eyes. Everyone has told me so at least once, too. In the mirror though, the Beast has dark green eyes.

My eyes. I've seen them enough to know.

"Okay, I think I get it. You're not the Mirror of Erised, but you must be the mirror of something or other, because you do not reflect things as they are." But I put the penny in my pocket, just to be sure. It doesn't turn into the apple when it gets there, or the Sorcerer's Stone for that matter. Beside me, the Beast stares, then gives its reflected face a good lick: I can think of plenty of animals who can't recognize themselves in mirrors, but I guess he can tell.

I'm ready to sit down in front of the mirror and puzzle some more when my mindscape shudders, as if its made of water. As everything starts to dissolve I focus on the Beast standing very still, its completely perked ears moving sharply to capture sound and eyes wide like he's expecting something. His blank eyes are the last thing to lose their solidness. And I can imagine, maybe even sense a longing there, as if for something he'd been waiting for a long time.

Chapter Text

I wake up to a shadow beside my bed. I recognize the outline of Raven's head a split second after I've lashed out at her with my arm, elbow first… or tried to. I feel so thoroughly beat, it's all I can do not to groan when Raven reaches out, grabs the arm I missed elbowing her gut with and hauls me upright.

"Ow. Morning to you too, Raven." I might be being just a little whiney, because she actually handled me carefully. It's just that my muscles feel really sore.

She doesn't say anything, just puts the tips of her fingers in weird places like the top of my head, my throat, the mouth of my stomach. She runs a finger clinically down my spine to between my shoulder blades, like she's looking for loose bolts.

"Did I miss the memo on nighttime checkups or something?"

"No." She lets her palm rest over my chest for a few seconds, then pulls away. She's hovering beside me, level with the top bunk, I realize "Your mind was radiating very strangely. You were in a very deep state of unconsciousness, but your mind was sending powerful psychic backlash." I hear her sigh very softly. "I had to…use a bit of magic to call you back."

"That's weird. All I did was check up on my mindscape for a bit." At this, Raven tenses for a fraction of a second, before pressing a hand to her own face. It's as close as she gets to actually facepalming.

Great. I've gone and done something wrong.

Raven hits the switch with her powers. I could tell since I woke up that she probably wasn't in uniform, but now I can see she is clearly in something like pajamas, a plain black t-shirt about three sizes too large for her and loose shorts that dangle a little past her knees.

Am I gaping? I sure hope I'm not.

It's always a shock to see each other doing civilian. Our uniforms are a big part of who we are, and that goes double for those of us who don't really have a secret identity. We even sleep in uniform when calls are coming in too often, but it's not like we really need to, I mean, changing clothes fast is like Superkid 101. I must have learned to get into my Doom Patrol jumpsuit within ten seconds of an alarm my second week under Mento.

But Raven is so much her outfit in my mind, old-fashioned and simple but practical, that seeing her in clothes that could fit a couple more of her…it makes her look small. Vulnerable, even. She narrows her eyes at me, probably sensing my shock, but I smile and she softens. And then her face shifts into something a lot like guilty.

"I didn't think any of you would want to go exploring without supervision. That was a mistake." I blink. When it comes to magical mumbo jumbo (the thing, not the bad guy, haha!) I'm prone to messing up. So this means I didn't this time?

She takes the hand off her face and looks straight at me; irrationally, I wish she'd left the lights off: her look is just so earnest. I'm suddenly sure I would have felt it, even if I was completely blind, because it is intense.

It is the East, and Raven is the sun!

…man, the exhaustion must be getting to me.

Thankfully, Raven has no idea what kind of stuff my exhausted imagination is spouting. She hovers higher up and floats onto the bed, beside my feet, but she's still looking at me. "Staying in your mindscape for too long when you're alone and untrained can be dangerous. It's a lot like leaving your body behind. Like when the Puppet King removes us from our bodies." Her stare grows more intense still, a little like she's studying a specimen in a petri dish, only I'm sure you don't look at little spots of mold like she's looking at me right now. Worried and soft. "You must feel very tired." It isn't a question.

"I feel like I got punched in the face by Overload." My muscles even tingle a little.

She nods. "It's draining. When you're just starting, it takes a lot of energy." Then she pauses, contemplative for a moment. "You felt like you were having a fight."

I want to gloss over it. Really, I do. I mean, somebody kick me, Darth Me had a point there when he insinuated Raven might be conflicted over Terra. Sure, Terra threw me down a ditch, one I nearly broke my neck in and then sacrificed her life to save us and then pretended not to know me…but she actually stayed behind to suffocate Raven in the mud. We all saw it. Robin checked out the underground church-hideout-thingy while Slade was dead, and he found his cache of recordings about this thing he called Plan Gaia (dude, can you get any cheesier?): we all saw each other die. And Raven went under with Terra's taunts about her fragile control ringing in her ears. If I don't know how to feel about Terra, Raven is probably torn between pitying her and wanting to throttle her.

And, while nobody's pointing fingers? That last bit feels like my fault. I mean, Terra said it herself: I'd told her all about Raven's 'temper tantrums'. It feels like another not-so-small betrayal of Raven to be all messed up about her would-be killer, especially after everything that's happened.

But I can't hide this. I am just not the type to chuck things under the rug.

"…and then you called me awake." I want to stare at the blankets, but they're not very interesting, to be honest. I swing my legs a little over the edge of my bunk.

Raven is sitting at the end of my top bunk now, her legs over the edge too, but they're really still. She doesn't swing them or shake her leg or anything.

"You've got a lot of unresolved issues to face." She has more stuff to say, and Raven isn't the kind to hold back (especially when it's me), but I guess shrink-Raven and everyday-Raven have to be different. "I'll be around whenever you need me. But…I won't always be able to help you."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"I'm sorry."

"There's a lot going on up here that it seems I don't really get." I point up at my forehead.

"I know. But…it's a lot of stuff that I'm not supposed to mess with. Because it's yours."

I feel really lost all of a sudden…abandoned. Yeah, I know it's stupid, but I feel a little like I'm being dismissed. Like I'm dirty, and she doesn't want to get her hands soiled by the emoness. Raven wouldn't judge like that, not ever, especially when it's stuff I can't control. But I can't help the feeling.

"Beast Boy…Garfield." I jolt. Dude, nobody ever calls me that. Not since Rita outed me. "Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing. Maybe…I chose the wrong words. I won't always be able to help you because my insights can only guide you so far. Not because…not because of you."

"I know that."

"OK." She stays quiet for what feels like a long time. "I want you to try and sleep."

"OK, I can do that." I expect her to get up to leave, but she doesn't, so I raise one eyebrow.

"I'd like to stay until I'm sure you're not about to wander off into your mind accidentally. You might not come back if that happens."

What!?

"What!? That can actually happen?"

"Sometimes. The mind is an emerging product of the brain, not an area in the physical organ itself. The link between mind and body can be fragile."

I think I get it. "So my body might stay here, but the part of me that is, well, me, might wander off?"

"Well…yes. I can separate from my body with some measure of control, but its taken years." She reaches out, her open palm forward when she hovers it in front of the general area of my face, and I wonder if she's sensing my aura or something. "You feel OK…but I'd like to be sure."

I strike a muscle man pose. "I always look okay." Raven crosses her arms over her chest and raises her eyebrow at me, but she can barely contain her smile.

Huh.

I like moments like these, when I can tell Raven and I are friends. I mean, I know we are, we'd take a Sladebot for each other, duh. I just really like it when I can banter with her and it's not just me talking at someone, when there's actual give and take. When I tried this sort of thing back when we met, she'd look at me like I'd tried to poke her in the eye and phase somewhere far, far away.

Raven floats easily off the bed and onto the chair by my desk. Her inner bookworm makes her automatically reach for the reading material that she finds there – my graphic novels – before she catches herself and cringes.

"Someday, you'll read one of those and see how fun they can be." She doesn't answer, just looks at me pointedly. "For real. I'd even rec a few I know you'd like." Something dark and really layer-y like Spawn or Constantine Hellblazer or…

Yawn.

I recline on my pillows, and I wonder how I've been awake all this time because I'm about ready to drop like a ton of bricks. I hear a click and the world goes dark, so I figure Raven hit the lights again. I can't see her unless I turn around to look (which is far too much effort right now, rest required!), but I can hear her and I can just…tell she's there.

Raven watching over me in my sleep. It feels nice. Like when I first joined the Doom Patrol and everyone took turns to help me adjust to my new room at night…only it's different…cause…

Zzz.

My dreams are really, really convoluted. They're confusing and scary, and several times I feel like I'm alternating between my dreamscape and actually dreaming.

I'm in Congo, in my parents' research outpost deep in the jungle, and all around me I can hear disembodied voices. I recognize Robin and Cyborg, Mento and Cliff, and a voice I can't rationally recognize, but it's clear in the dream that it's my dad's. I try to reach them through the underbrush but they sound like they're over the place and I finally give up and try to call out, but my voice is gone. I panic and try to run back to the outpost but I keep getting lost.

Then I wake up – only I don't, not really. I'm back at the room of my mind with the mirror in it. I realize right away that I can't move as easily, it takes everything I've got just to put one foot in front of the other. I can see myself reflected in the glass as I power my way towards it – it's regular me, only every time I stop moving, I sink. Like I'm in quicksand, except as far as I knew, quicksand swallows you faster when you try to resist, and this is the opposite.

Only the image in the mirror sinks, because when I look down, my own feet are above the floor where they should be, but I don't want to know what happens if the me in the mirror goes under, so I keep walking with everything I've got.

I reach the glass after what feels like forever. Something pops up, floating above my head in the reflection: it's the golden apple! I look above me, but again the apple is still just a penny from this side of the glass. I reach up to it, pinching it between my fingers - suddenly it feels like they've fused to the copper. The penny floats up, taking me with it, and it feels funny, like it's carrying all my weight just from those two tiny points of contact instead of dragging me along.

Then it just feels way scary, because the penny rockets up into the ceiling, which gives way into velvety darkness, and then to some quiet, peaceful place beyond.

I wake up on the floor next to my bunk beds in a tangle of sheets and with the morning sun on my face. It's not really early morning sun or really late morning sun. There aren't any Ravens anywhere. I wonder if she left during the night. I wonder if this means I've been sort of wandering in my dreamscape all night.

Other than the pain in my head where I probably hit it on the way down, I'm pretty OK.

Yeah. All's good.

…

OK, I'm also so tired I don't even know what I'm going to do to get out of the Bedsheet Trap of Doom, let alone get to work today. Dude, am I in trouble or what?!

Morphing into a mouse does the trick with the tangle, but I need to figure out what to do about falling asleep on my feet. I'll need candy and a cold shower. Maybe coffee, because it always seems to perk people up on TV. Even though I've never cared for it.

My eyesight flickers and I panic for all of five seconds until I realize it's just my eyelids fighting to stay open.

I am so done with this day it isn't even funny, and it hasn't even begun.

"So, BB."

I'm groggy and unfocused, but somehow, Cy's words make it through the dreamy fog I'm wandering in. My brain seems to kick in right then and I realize he wants to be acknowledged. "Huh?"

"I'm not sure if I should ask about you or about that cup in front of you."

I look down at the mug of coffee. "What about it?"

I nabbed some of it, straight black and unsweetened from Robin's coffee maker, and I couldn't even bring it halfway to my face before the bitterness shot up my nose and fried my neurons. I don't know how Fearless Leader can drink this nasty gunk like it's water, but it definitely explains the Fearless part.

So anyway, I figured I needed this stuff, just for today. So I took off the edge with a half dozen spoonfuls of sugar and a squirt of soy milk. It started looking kinda like hot chocolate after the eighth squirt, and I was reaching for the sugar cup when Cyborg came in and saw me.

"Just a mug of coffee."

Cy peeks at the mug suspiciously. "Since when do you drink coffee?" He takes a discrete whiff and adds "if there's any coffee left in there" under his breath, but I can hear him.

"Don't know. Everyone's always talking about how this stuff cures sleepies and I had a bad dreahhhhhh…" I trail off with a yawn that makes my jaw pop.

Thankfully, Cy's a clever enough guy to fill in the blanks. "Must've been some nightmare you were having. What was it about?"

Here I hesitate. I'm not ready to talk about Terra and Not Terra and all the trash Darth Me hurled last night, but I've gotta say something. So I just tell him about seeing Darth Me and having him be a jerk about Terra, picking my way around the details so I don't have to tell him about the Terra room in my head. I mean, it sounds weird even to me, I don't want to know how it will sound to someone else. Well, to someone who didn't have a dream clone of her demon father in her head.

It's also making me a little desperate, how much Terra is in my thoughts now. She's around even more than when she turned out to be a double agent, and about as much as when she turned to stone, only the thoughts about her feel a lot more like they're intruding. Back then they were just the normal frequent thoughts you have about the person you're mourning. Now it feels a little like a return to that and a little like she's popping in there unwelcome.

And maybe also a little like something is changing, like, well, like something is about to happen and I know it is because it's happening in my mind and I guess stuff can't happen behind my back up there, but it's not happening yet and I can't put it into words.

That last thought rings a bell somewhere, but before I can chase it down I'm being poked by a metallic finger. "Raven said 'good morning', B". Cyborg points somewhere behind me.

Surely enough, Raven is standing a few feet away from where I'm slouching. She gives me a long, probing look. I decide Raven's eyes are the kind of eyes that make you feel like you're getting lasered when she decides to look at you hard. The more I look at them, the more I wonder if she's letting her emotions out more now, or if I was just too big of a clunk to notice how much she expresses with the upper half of her face.

"Sorry Rae. Ah, good morning. I'm sorry I…didn't say hello."

"It's OK. Don't mention it." I wonder if she got it that I don't want to talk about last night just yet, but Raven's crazy smart. And like a second later it hits me that she only went and answered verbally instead of just nodding after my apology because she got the message and she wanted to tell me it was OK with her to not share last night's adventure.

I can see her hide a yawn as soon as Cyborg turns away to keep tinkering around the stove with eggs and bacon, and when he asks how she slept, she gives me the quickest of sidelong looks and tells him she slept fine.

I wonder how long she stayed and if she had to poke my mind right side up. I wonder why she wasn't there in the morning.

And then I wonder why it bothers me, both that she might have stayed up late for me, and that she was gone when I woke up.

Chapter Text

I make it through the day.

That’s pretty much the only way to put it: I make it. I yawn all day and everyone has to keep repeating stuff at me because I never get it the first time and Robin gets all Robiny at me right at the end of the day, talking about Cy’s physicals and stuff. When he corners me after dinner, I finally break down and tell him I’d had some bad dreams the night before. Which is really dumb of me, because he gets even more Robiny. He gets the quiet, serious, concerned sort of Robiny that tells you he’s really worried.

He stares at me so hard I feel like I’m being x-rayed. “Maybe we need another session at our dreamscapes.”

I need that like I need some free, experimental brain surgery. “Nah, I just really need a good night’s sleep.”

He raises an eyebrow at me, then crosses his arms. He knows I’m not telling him something.

I sigh. “I just don’t think it’s serious. Yet.”

The Robin foot tapping begins.

“I swear there’s no monsters or bad guys running loose in my mind. I mean I haven’t really gone exploring very far, but…”

Robin goes completely still. Uh oh, here we are, at the crossroads of concern for me and the angry-guilt-about-mind-Slade thing again.  Quick, hunky comic relief guy! Do your thing! “You’re not gonna, like, pounce on me or something, right?”

His arms loosen just a little bit, and he almost smiles. “No. But I’d appreciate some insight into what’s wrong.” One hand goes to my shoulder, squeezing. “Please, Beast Boy.”

I know I can trust him. If this had all gone on earlier in the week, I might have – but I’m a little embarrassed about telling Robin the very last dream I had. So I’m not some sort of super psych reader type, but it popped into my head at some point today that his voice being there means he’s some sort of Dad figure to me, and that’s kinda lame on my part.

I know, I know, if anyone understands daddy issues, it’s Robin. And it’s not like he isn’t all ‘let’s adopt the orphans and be their crazy young authority figure’, Batman-style. But it’s a whole other thing to admit you might be a bigger baby than you let on to your leader. I’ve worked way too hard to make Robin understand he can depend on me! What if he thinks I need babying?

“I’m, ah, having some issues with the mind-body link thing, and my dreams are getting super weird. Beardy dude on a couch with a notepad sort of weird.” His eyes go wide. “But I’m talking it over with Raven. She’s keeping an eye on me.” I don’t want to tell him that she camped out in my room. I know I’ll make it sound weird.

(Why would it sound weird though? And why would it bother me to tell Robin? Or anyone, for that matter)

Raven’s name must be the magic word, because Robin relaxes all the way and lets his arms fall to his sides. “Just as long as someone knows what’s going on. That’s firmly in her camp, too.” He gets thoughtful. “I’ll be…glad to pitch in if you feel like I can be of use though, just so you know.”

Man, it feels all kinds of good when Fearless Leader treats me like an equal. “Sure thing, Fearless Leader!”

Robin shakes his head and laughs as he turns away.

I’m in my bed, digging my back into all the right spots, when my door panel whooshes open and Raven comes striding in.

I scream like a little girl, pulling up my sheets like I’m not in my PJs. “Dude, I could have been naked in here!”

Raven blinks at me serenely, then settles into my desk chair. “It takes you seconds to change, Beast Boy.” She’s in her huge shirt, huge loose shorts getup. Is she staying the night again? I kind of hope she will. Having her around is calming.

“You don’t need to.”

“Sure do.” She’s brought a book with her this time – it’s large, leather bound, black with gold letters, trademark vanilla-y old book smell - and she’s got it open in her lap already. “You slipped away again last night, after I left.”

“Um…”

Raven sighs. “It wasn’t a question. I knew it the minute you came in for breakfast.”

 “Well, yeaaaaah. But I’m, like, seconds away from falling dead asleep. Is that really gonna be a problem tonight?” I barely cover a yawn, then go on a little hesitantly. “’Sides, I’d hate to make you stay up late again.”

She just shrugs, eyes glued to her book. It’s her way of telling me what I’m saying is way too dumb for an answer. I feel a little bad being the reason she’ll lose a few hours of sleep to my desk chair, but I’m also glad to have her here.

Weird.

No, wait no, not weird, she’ll make sure I don’t just evaporate like Mara Jade Skywalker. But it’s more than that, too.

Look. I love all my friends. All the Titans are my family. After all this time, we get along like a well-oiled machine does, every part working together no matter how different we are (man, Cyborg would dig this mechanical allegory!). But Cyborg and I can talk for hours, Star and I can manage it too. Robin and I get along best when there’s a physical thing thrown in to focus both our energies, like a sport or even just whacking sand bags in the training room.

Raven and I? OK, so we have our famous comedic duo thing, where she’s the straight woman to my brilliant comic relief, but when that’s off the table, it’s a lot of being quiet together.

You’d think a loudmouth like me would get antsy at that. I thought I would, and I kept trying to fill in her silence when we first met. But sometimes, like right now, it’s just what I need.

I guess it’s just weird that she’s the person I want here right now. Except that doesn’t feel weird either.

Dude, what is wrong with me. Must be the lack of sleep.

I roll onto my side, back facing the wall. I look down on Raven for a while, flipping pages every so often.

“What are you reading?”

Raven’s eyes flick to me, then back to her book. She thinks I’m being a pest. Which I kind of am sometimes when I want her attention, but I’m honestly curious right now.

“No, I mean it. What are you reading?”

“The Necronomicon.”

I gasp. “No way! It actually exists?” Then it occurs to me that no, Garfield, of course Raven’s not reading a wicked book that pumps evil into the world and makes people go mad. “Oh. You got me, I guess.” Welp, this is embarrassing.

But Raven doesn’t look like I’ve embarrassed myself. She raises her head and stares at me. It’s Ravenese for really hella shocked. “You know what the Necronomicon is.”

“Of course! Just because I don’t like reading all those musty tomes doesn’t mean I – OK, it might have come up in comics,” I confess, “But that’s still a valid source! Besides, Lovecraft’s always going on about how his monsters are huge and terrible and ineffable, you can bet your sweet ass that comic writers realized they had a gold mine of big bads, no extra costs! I mean, I can’t believe more comics don’t have some version of the whole ‘sailors accidentally defeating Cthulhu’ thing.”

Without taking her eyes off me, Raven shuts her book. “You’ve read ‘The Call of Ctulhu’? The actual source material?”

“Sure. It was cool. I mean, I thought it started slow, and don’t even get me started on the slurs, but ohhhh man, when they got to the island? I wonder why it’s not a movie yet.” That Lovecraft dude did a pretty decent job talking expeditions, for a dude who never really went on any. I almost tell her I gave ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ a try, but it was too slow and full of science-babble to really get a grip on me. I might, one day, when I’m not enjoying the look on her face.

It’s subtle, like all Raven’s expressions, but I can see the tiny little smile of pleased surprise. “Oh my god. It’ll be locusts and a rain of fire next, won’t it?” She says it all mocking but I can see it in the way her eyes have widened ever so slightly. She is impressed. I’ve impressed Raven. I am the man.

“I know you’ve probably absorbed the whole ‘comics are lowbrow entertainment’ shit, but it’s actually not.”

Raven’s eyebrow rises.

“Well fine, sometimes it’s lowbrow. But there’s real quality plot out there!”

Her other eyebrow joins it.

“I mean it! And there’s something for everyone. Star would totally be an Archie comics girl, those are all about some dude who can’t pick between two girls, and Robin would probably appreciate Detective Conan for all the twists and stuff. And Cy’s more of an equal opportunity guy like me, but he’s a sucker for good characters.”

Raven’s eyebrows have relaxed back to their usual levels. Her stare becomes the slightest bit…shy? “And me?”

“Huh?”

“You seem to have all the others figured out,” she explains, setting her book on my desk, “What would I be?”

I swear, I’m not dense. It just throws me for a loop that Raven really wants my opinion on something so personal. It feels like I’m telling her more stuff than I realize, somehow…not that it’s gonna stop me from telling her.

“I told you yesterday! Or at least I thought it at you. Anyway, you are so a Constantine Hellblazer or a Spawn chick.”

Raven blinks slowly, like a cat when it’s being friendly. She’s listening.

So I don’t want to spoil the entire thing, because I actually hope Raven might actually try reading one of these comics someday. So I explain the premise of Constantine Hellblazer, lingering a little on the things I think she might really like, like how Constantine is a full-blown human being who feels guilty and beats himself up for failing his friends, or how the comics can get really socially aware about how bad justice or the prison system is, or how hollow the TV industry is.

“Huh. That’s really dark. And a lot more…substantial than I thought comics could be.”

I grin. “And that’s not even half of it!” I end up delving a little too deep into some of the arcs, until I can’t get through a whole sentence without yawning. I kind of like Raven’s rapt attention though, so I try to power through it.

Raven notices though. “I think you should sleep.”

“But I haven’t-“ I yawn so big, my jaw cracks, “- even gotten to the best part yet.”

“You can tell me all about it tomorrow. Now get some rest.”

“You’re coming back again tomorrow?” That sounds great, actually. It was real fun to entertain Raven. I'm happy at the thought of keeping her around.

There’s a short silence, and I can’t see her because my eyes closed at some point, but I can still hear her when she says, “fine. I’ll be here.”

The last thing I remember is smiling in the voice’s direction before sleep takes me.

Even though I didn’t get my solid eight hours, I do OK during the day. We have some non-metahuman crimes to deal with, which always gets dealt with faster than the metahuman kind. I even manage to get a nap in after lunch.

(For the record, a metahuman is anyone with more-than-average-human abilities, like me or Raven or even Cyborg. I guess whoever is in charge of paperwork in Jump City PD has classifications and stuff, like how sometimes its aliens like Star, or humans with big tech, like Adonis, but we just call them all 'metahumans' because it's easier. Metahuman robbing a bank? All ours. Human robbing a bank? Not totally our job, but we can do it, and it usually goes down a lot faster than metahuman robberies).

I’m in bed, but way more awake than the night before when Raven comes into my room with her book and one of her pillows. She nods at my hey raven, puts the pillow at her back and settles in with her book.

Yeah, that old chair isn’t exactly comfy. It’s so hard, it's actually handy for when you need to pull all-nighters. I’m gonna ask Cy if there’s a recliner or something I can haul in here.

She’s turned a few pages when she makes a small sound. “So. What was it about John Constantine and his lungs?”

Oh man. Did Christmas come in early or something? “That one was a really good arc. Someone should make it into a serial or a movie or something. Buuut," I say, raising a finger for emphasis, "I can’t spoil the entire series, y’know? How will my evil plan to get you interested in comics work if I just tell you everything?” Eyes still glued to her book, she does her ‘Beast Boy is being such a pain’ lip curl and looks ready to ignore me. Which is so not gonna fly. “But hey, I haven’t told you anything about Spawn.”

She snorts. “I thought you’d made that one up. It isn’t about some tadpole superhero, I hope.”

“Nope. A Spawn is actually a servant of Hell. So this guy Al Simmons, he’s military. But then something happens to him, and…he’s killed. When he wakes up though, he’s in, well, Hell.”

Raven’s head slowly rises from her book. In my head, I’m dancing.

An hour later, Raven’s leaning back in my desk chair, both hands on her abandoned book. Her entire attention’s been on me since I went into Spawn’s whole revenge thing. I can tell by the near-smile on her face that she digs it when I tell her about Spawn-hunting angel, Angela. And her mouth opens just a bit when I get into the whole different dimensions and the Greenworld.

“That’s messy world-building,” she says when I’m done. “I think it kind of detracts from the horror of Hell, having some third place. And the plot sounds all over the place in a few of the issues. But it’s interesting.”

“Yeah, plots are a little more ‘aaaah look at the gruesome monster!” than Constantine. And the plot holes can mess it up really bad in some issues. The art is real cool and creepy though. I can suspend disbelief for it.”

Raven smirks, not unkindly, like she’s a little exasperated that I disagree with her on the finer literary points of comic book worlds, but she likes me anyway. Then her expression shifts to seriousness. Uh oh. I thought she was having fun.

“So…it’s none of my business. But…” She trails off and stares at some random point in my room.

“Go on. Ask me.”

Raven’s gaze finally settles on the foot of my bed, then stares at it hard. “That’s…pretty macabre, Beast Boy. I didn’t know you read it for fun.” Her tone is super neutral, not chastising or judgmental, but is that a hint of worry I see in her eyes?

I might have used some humor to deflect if it were daytime. But it’s one of mine and Raven’s nighttime visit things, I can’t just sidestep the truth, can I?

“Yeah…Spawn’s not for every day. It’s probably not for every month. And not for fun, either. But sometimes, when the day’s been bad, or maybe the whole week, it’s – I guess it’s like putting on a movie and forgetting about how bad everything is, except sometimes, when it’s too bad, you need something sort of bad to balance it out.” Shiiiiit, nothing of what I just said makes any sense! But a memory pops up - a bad one. It should help me explain the whole mess better though. “Um…” I swallow. “Remember the, uh, serial killer?”

Her eyes flit back to me real quick. She nods solemnly.

Jump City has an above average metahuman crime rate - hello, reason Titans Tower is here - but it’s pretty safe for a big city. Sure, bad things happen, bad people, metahuman or otherwise, happen too, and sometimes…well, sometimes even we arrive on the scene and there’s nothing left to do but call the medical examiner. But it’s never big scary headlines, y’know? Even the bad is normal bad, or even not too bad. I mean, have you seen what an ordinary day’s newspapers look like in Gotham? We have it good here.

Anyway, Raven, Cy and I were sent to help the police department of a city a few hours away, after Trigon, but before our super world tour. They had trouble with kids, really young kids, disappearing. It was a crisis. There was a curfew, even talk of cancelling school. You could have made a tuning fork ring itself to pieces from the tension in the air the moment we got out of the car in front of the precinct. And that was with armed cops milling around everywhere.

It was a psycho, not in the hospital way, in the real twisted, sick, hateful kind of way. Not a metahuman, not a demon, just an ordinary human with some real extraordinary evil in him. We caught him. But it was too late for the kids he’d taken.

...I know. Being a superhero is really hard like that sometimes. Kicking villain ass is the easiest part of the whole job - the stuff nobody else sees, that's the hardest. Especially the stuff that reminds you how having super powers sometimes doesn't cut it, and the bad guys can win in ways you just can't fix.

Back in the present, I'm running the edge of my blanket between my fingers “Yeah, tough to forget huh." I sigh. "Once we came back, nothing cheerful would get my mind off of it. It even felt like I was doing something wrong, trying to ignore suffering.”

Raven slow blinks. “I remember.” I could tell that really bothered her back then. I can’t begin to imagine how that shitshow felt to an empath.

(When you think about it, Robin’s really on to something when he says we need to take better care of our mental health. I wonder if we could export the whole mindscape therapy thing to the rest of the Titan network. Maybe even the Justice League. Batman has Alfred, but who gets the rest of those workaholics to sit down and talk about their feelings?)

I fidget with the edge of my blanket a little more. “There was this issue where Spawn went after some sicko who went after kids. Really got him. The art was…” I shudder a little. “But I was totally involved in it. And it helped, in a twisted sort of way.”

 Raven’s giving me a look I can’t read. I know she wouldn’t judge me, not for this (though I know she considers stank-ball ‘the height of societal decay of the Western world’, and judges both me and Cy for unleashing it on the Earth). I feel really embarrassed though, like she’s walked in on me naked and looks horrified at what she’s seen.

“Uh…um, but there’s these two real cool cops who aren’t at all twisted and they’re always after Spawn, and one of them even has a family – “

Before I can get on the Babble-Train though, Raven raises a hand. “I get what you mean.” She runs a hand over her book. The silence stretches out so long, I'm about to ask if she's OK when she finally talks again. “I keep a few really bad grimoires. Kind of like real life Necronomicons, except they won’t break your brain. Sometimes I look through them,” she goes on, following a pattern on the cover, “it’s…dark. But it reminds me that I’ve got them, that nobody can invoke anything in them, or perform any of the rituals in them, because I have the only copies.”

“I thought you read all of that to keep tabs on any demons that might be running around.” Raven’s even on the Jump City PD’s speed dial for when things of the ‘occult’ variety are going on.

“That too,” she says, then shrugs. “It’s not very nice work - ”

“ – but someone’s gotta do it,” I finish for her. Just like the bad crimes and the sleepless night, and having to see things a regular teenager wouldn’t ever have to deal with. But that’s why we do it, right? So the regular teenagers can just focus on school and pizza and stuff like that.

(For a split second, I remember Terra, or not Terra, whoever she was, and it doesn’t really hurt. It just smarts a bit. Not just everyone can be a superhero. I just wish she’d been the person I thought she was.

I just wish I’d had someone who’d be my girlfriend and fight alongside me too.)

Raven gives me a small smile. I haven’t seen it before. It feels like I’m seeing the same gentle side of Raven I saw a glimpse of when she hugged me, right after the whole Malchior bullshit.

I don’t mean she’s not gentle always, she’s just usually gentle in a way that isn’t physical, if that makes sense. And OK, she’s not really touching me right now, either. But it almost feels like it.

…dude, is it getting a little warm in here, or is it just me?

I cough and wave my blanket around to distract her from what sure feels like a blush. I hope she’ll think I’m just feeling awkward about being too open. Which makes zero sense, because I’m an open book, but can you fault a guy for trying? I don’t really know why I’m even blushing! Or why the entire moment feels funny!

“Are you OK?”

“Sure! I, ah, just swallowed a dust bunny! Cough, cough!” I’m not convincing anyone here.

“I’m not really into precognitive magic, but I think that might be a sign for you to let a broom in here,” Raven says in a flat tone. She’s giving me an out. Man, she’s awesome.

“What, to fly around in? I thought you just flew without them?”

She yanks the pillow out from behind her back and tosses it at me, dead aim even without her powers. It might be the funny feelings, but I'm sure I catch her giving me a fond look just before the pillow smacks me right in the face.

Chapter Text

Raven doesn’t say anything when she walks in the following night to find a nice, cushy recliner where my desk chair used to be. I’ve actually moved the entire desk set across the room, leaving the recliner by my bunk beds. For a moment I’m worried she’ll still go after the desk chair and keep me company out of my sight, but she just sits down and puts the pillow she’s brought on her knees, then settles in with the book on the cushion.

She looks so comfy. I’m proud of myself.

I also notice this isn’t the book she’s been bringing so far. It smells newer, and it has a whole different binding.

She catches me looking, of course. “I’m worried you’ve got more evil plans than just getting me to read comic books.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. Specifically, that you’re using the fact that I’m here to stay up late.”

Oops. I guess that’s what I’ve been doing? Except I never planned it out this way, honest! It’s not my fault Raven’s fun to have around.

(Yeah, she’s fun. People think that because she hates huge crowds and dance parties that she’s all doom and gloom. Teen mags  - gag - keep calling her a goth too, and OK, she sort of does have the aesthetic, but the whole blue and black color scheme was apparently standard in Azarath. No offense to actual goths, but Raven is waaaaay harder to fit into high school cliques than you’d think. She’s complex. And, like I said, she’s fun. Even if she usually keeps her fun self cut off from civilization.)

“Oops.”

She glares, but not with any real annoyance. “I’m here to make sure you rest. Not to distract you from it. I’m going to focus on my book now.” Then she tucks her legs up and flips through the pages.

“I haven’t been wandering though, have I?”

“No,” she says, eyes glued to her book. “But the link hasn’t fully recovered. A few more days and you can sleep without a nanny again.”

She says it so nonchalantly. I feel stupid for feeling like I’ve stuck a foot in Lake Disappointment, because I should be glad that I won’t need Raven to watch over my sleep, that she’ll spend her nights sleeping, or whatever else she does in her room.

But I’m not glad. I like our sleepovers. I like this super-talkative Raven, our talks about comics and the moments when it slides into deeper stuff like it’s easy as breathing. I like this new level of friendship that we’ve unlocked.

(And yeah, this is what passes for talkative in Raven. I know. It’s lucky she’s got expressions that are worth entire sentences.)

I draw my blankets up to my shoulders and settle in, a little put out. Raven’s whole attention is on the book this time, and I wonder if this newer one is like fun reading, instead the other study-ee one she’d been bringing before. What does Raven read for fun, anyway?

Using animalistic stealth, I slip out of my covers and army crawl very carefully to the footrest to assess the situation. Raven’s holding the book at a tiny angle, but I bet I could catch a glimpse of the cover if I could just twist around enough. I move back up to the headrest, roll to the edge of my bunk, and then haul myself carefully over the edge. OK so, this is the plan: I’ll hook my feet between the bunk and the mattress, hanging down like Dracula, and…then I’ll be facing my wall and not Raven. Uh oh.

I do it anyway, because I’m sure I can fix it. Now if I bend, I can maybe arch by back enough to get an upside-down glimpse of -

“Unless you’re going to turn into a bat, that doesn’t look like a sleeping position. At all.”

- and my feet lose their already weak hold on the bunk-and-mattress sandwich.

The floor is coming fast. Good-bye, restful night! Hello, possible concussion! Once he’s done fixing me, Cyborg is going to point and laugh at me so much.

I brace myself for impact - then a tingly feeling tells me Raven’s powers have got my back. I’m turned until I’m horizontal, face towards my floor, and then lowered to the ground. It’s gentle.

Well, mostly it’s gentle. She drops my feet a little harder than the rest of me. I deserve it though, that was really stupid in hindsight.

She’s still absorbed in her book when I get up from my faceplant to look at her. Wow. That is both a lot of power control and a lot of self-control. I’d already have Cyborg running ragged with my antics.

“Sorry, I was just curious about your book.”

“You could have asked instead of doing gymnastics.”

“Yeaaaaaah, but I didn’t want you to tell me to go to sleep.”

She finally flicks her eyes at me, one eyebrow raised. “And almost breaking your nose was better?”

“Hey, nothing broke though, right?”

Her eyes narrow. They’re still narrowed when she turns to the book. Hey, pay attention to me, Rae!

“So…what’re you reading?”

She huffs, like I’m the single greatest pain in her ass. “Will you stop annoying me if I tell you?”

I gasp super exaggeratedly. “Never. Annoying you is, like, ninety percent of my personality.”

“What’s the remaining ten percent?”

“Bad jokes.” I smile wide.

Raven chuckles (score one for Beast Boy!) then glances between me and her book. “A Lovecraft anthology.”

“Ohhhhh.”

“Yeah…all that talk of horrors had me wanting to revisit some of the stories.”

“Which one are you reading?”

“The Dunwich Horror.”

“I don’t know that one. Is it good?”

“It actually is.” I can almost feel her attention receding back into her book.

“Can I read it too?” I hear myself say. Where the hell did that come from? There’s surprise on Raven’s face too, and I start to feel dumb. “I mean, it’s great and it might be what I need to stop annoying you and – “

“You mean I should read you the story?”

“Well…if you want to.” I’m blushing maroon. I can feel it. That was a stupid-ass request, and while I’m sure Raven won’t mock me for this, I don’t think I’ll let myself live this down.

Raven raises an eyebrow at me. “How will that help you go to sleep?”

I open my mouth to ask what kid doesn’t go to sleep to a bedtime story. Luckily, I remember who I’m talking to in time.

I wonder if the monks read her stories. An image of a tiny Raven pops up in my mind, tucked into the bed of an equally tiny cell, the kind a Catholic monastery from the Middle Ages would have, a pile of books beside her and a candle burning on her bedside table. I bet the monks would have had to hide books from her to get her to sleep.

“Fine,” Raven says, interrupting my wandering mind. “Get into bed.”

I haul my ass back up to the top bunk and dive under the covers before she can change her mind.

The set-up of the story is great. A little standard ragging on country people, but it really sets the stage for the super creepy Whateleys, complete with a general store and town gossips. But then an actual line of dialogue comes up, and the magic shatters.

“Whoa, wait wait. What kind of New England accent is that?”

Raven, predictably, raises her head to look at me in outrage. “You were the one who wanted me to read. Don’t complain if I’m not what you expected.” And though she looks for all the world like she’s just vaguely annoyed at me, I realize how shitty it is of me to criticize her when she’s doing me a hell of a solid, reading this huge long story without complaint.

“That’s not what I meant! Your voice is smooth and you don’t stumble over a single word. I’d listen to you read all day,” I say, meaning every word. “But hey, you can’t be expected to do the voices too.”

Raven’s stare is blank, but not angry blank. She’s shocked. “You…like my voice?”

Ooooh man, I so do not like this line of questioning. I have to divert, quick! “Sure! But I can do the voices if you want to, I’m the master of sound effects.”

Both her eyebrows draw down. “And don’t I know it,” she says in an undertone. Her body language is still open, so it looks like I managed to un-offend her while still distracting her from that total no-go of a topic.

We stare at each other for a moment. Then I put on my widest, goofiest grin. “So? What are you waiting for?” I pat the bed beside me. A minute later, I want to give myself a nice slap. Did I seriously just invite Raven into my bed like a creeper? Or like a really small kid? I’m not sure what’s possessed me tonight. Is there any creature in the Lovecraft mythos that possesses people, not to go serve the Old Gods or anything, but just to make them do really humiliating things?

Raven stares. She makes a small noise of annoyance. “You’re kidding, right?”

Whelp, can’t backtrack now. “Awww come on! I can’t read the book over your shoulder!” I hadn’t been thinking at all when I offered her a place up here, but it makes sense now: if she sits beside me, she won’t have to project her voice, and I’ll be able to just glance over to look at my lines. Yeah, I won’t be doing any sleeping while she’s reading, but if I’m not at least somewhat horizontal, we’ll scare away whatever sleepiness is left in me.

Raven goes quiet. For a few horrible seconds I’m worried she’s hit her limit and she’ll just open a portal to her room and leave. But she doesn’t; her nose wrinkles. “When did you change those sheets last?”

I’ve made sure every solitary part of my bedding is fresh and clean ever since I realized she’d be camping out in here. Cyborg’s started giving me funny looks when he sees me hauling stuff out of the linen closet. But I can’t admit that to her. “I can say for sure it’s been less than a year.”

“Ew.”

“I’m kidding! I have animal senses, remember? When they get too stinky, I can’t sleep.” Something in her expression tells me she’s close to caving. “Come onnnnnn Rae, that’ll tire me out for sure! Besides, do you really want me to go sit in your lap?” I smile at her as toothily as I can. “You could sit on my lap though.”

Is that a blush I detect on her cheeks? Wow! I’m not sure what the hell I’m doing, throwing in flirts along with our usual teasing, but now that I know it won’t make everything awkward it’s so. Damn. Fun.

With a sigh, Raven floats out of her chair and drifts over to my bunk. I roll away quick, giving her the side that meets the wall and ceding as much of my pillow as I can. She lands softly, making exaggerated sniffing noises once she’s settled.

“Welcome aboard!”

She raises her eyebrow at me in a mix between annoyance and amusement. This close, I can see how her eyes aren’t black, but a dark purple, and I can smell a hint of the incense that permeates her room (I think the scent of the week is sandalwood). It makes my heart speed up a hair, but mostly it’s nice. It’s nice to have her close by.

I don’t think she’s noticed it, but Raven has a sense of calm around her – when she’s not kicking villain ass, that is. Star’s great with kids, but Raven is the quiet, competent presence Robin assigns as an escort for shell-shocked people or traumatized people. And even some kids, too. I mean, Melvin, Timmy and Teether love her to pieces, right?

Raven pops the book open, and we find our place. I do my best reading of Old Whateley, which is good enough to make her turn and look at me for a moment with her impressed-blank look. But she doesn’t say anything about it, and we read on.

We make it to the part where Old Whateley explains that the birds around the valley hunt souls or some such – I can’t really say, because I’m asleep. The side of my face has made it to Raven’s shoulder by that point, and she’s not moving, and I think I manage a real sleep-slurred rendition of Old Whateley before I nod off.

My sleep is deep and comforting and dreamless.

Raven’s gone when I wake up. But there’s a strand or two of purple hair on my pillow, along with a hint of sandalwood clinging desperately to the top of my blanket.

It takes us another two nights to make it through The Dunwich Horror, which turns out to be so awesome, like a scarier episode of Ghostbusters. Then we move on to At The Mountains of Madness – and I realize that Raven kind of skips over the really long setup explanations, or cuts them down. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I weren’t almost cheek to cheek with her while she reads.

“Why’d you do that?”

“To keep the story interesting,” she answers, not looking away, “I don’t know if you know this, but Lovecraft was awful at letting his editor do his job.”

“Really?”

She nods. “They hated each other.”

“Well that explains a lot.”

She’s real quiet, but I can feel the vibrations of a chuckle through the side of her that’s close to mine. I bet she laughs at my dumb comments way more than she lets on. When we finish that story a few days later, I go on a little tangent about how it’d suck if we lost all the Arctic to global warming and all the Shoggoths came loose, and she tells me about an article she read about climate restoration and using the same tech meant to terraform uninhabitable planets to fix the Earth. Which is great, but ends up keeping both of us up waaaay past bedtime.

Next up is The Haunter of the Dark, which would fight The Dunwich Horror for its place as my favorite Lovecraft tale if it weren’t for all that bashing of Catholics and Italians. (Yo, Howie, I bet Don Corleone would like a word with you about that.) When the main character is trying to fight the Haunter’s influence, muttering about three-lobed eyes and stuff, Raven inches ever so slightly into me. My head’s already found its way to her shoulder for the night, so I nudge it against her in a show of comfort.

She doesn’t have to say anything. Trigon didn’t have a three-lobed eye, but he definitely had burning eyes, and he haunted the hell out of the dark.

We make it to the end, where the Catholics that Lovecraft spent most of the story bashing pretty much save the day, and Raven closes the book.

“You’re not asleep.”

“Heh. Yeah. The story was too good.”

“I was worried about that.”

“It’s OK though, I am sleepy.” A yawn catches me right then. Because yeah, I’ve been fighting sleep this time. We had a few villains to bust, some contract work for the Jump City PD, but hey, I needed to know if the Haunter busted out of the church!

“I’ll leave the –“

“Noooo. You always stay ‘till I’m asleep.” My mind’s all sleep-addled, and I’ll feel embarrassed about this tomorrow, but right now I need to keep Raven here. I need her. “Please?”

Her shoulder bobs like she’s sighing, or shrugging, but she settles back into the pillow.

Maybe it’s the animal part of me, liking the act of having a pack-mate close by to sleep. Maybe it’s something else. But I get a rush of giddy wellbeing that makes me sigh as sleep finally takes me under.

I wake up feeling a bit too warm, sandalwood with a note of something sweeter all around me. I open my eyes to find half of Raven’s hair thrown over my face. We must have fallen asleep sitting up, because we’re reclined on the pillow now, limbs thrown over each other. Raven’s half turned towards me, her knees against my left thigh and her arms pressed to my left arm. She must be the type that curls up in her sleep, and she’s done what she can with some guy wedged in beside her.

I don’t lose my cool. My heart does pick up, but I still feel warm and content, maybe a little giddy too, but mostly safe and relaxed.

Mom and Dad and I used to share small tents sometimes, sleeping bags crowded together. After I lost them and the Doom Patrol took me in, Rita would sleep in my room, or cram into my tiny bed (yeah, she could have just shrunk down to size, but she never did, probably so I’d be sure there was a grown-up there protecting me), and I slept on her, on Robotman or on Larry a lot when I was still small enough for it. When we’re roughing it, even the other Titans and I have shared small sleeping spaces.

This doesn’t feel like any of those times. This feels new, fragile and…well, precious.

It must be just before dawn, because no light comes from beneath the curtains, and no noises reach my ears from outside my room.

I’m not about to wake her up. Instead I squeeze a little, as far as I can without falling off the bunk, and remove my right arm from where it’s ended up. Which is flung across Raven. I’m not clutching any part of her, this isn’t a five cent romance novel, but it is stretched over her, and I’m a gentleman. So my arm is put back where it belongs. (Does it? I was comfortable like that. OK NO. I’m a gentleman, shut up dumb thoughts.)

She must be tired if she just clocked out like that here. And comfortable. She deserves her sleep. It’s the right thing to just…settle in as best I can while being a gentleman.

A gentleman would probably carry her to her own bed though…buuut how would I even do that? I’d wake her up and then she’d be tired and embarrassed.

I know, I know, I sound like I’m making excuses. It just feels good to have her there, and I want to seize the moment without doing anything I shouldn’t.

 In the end, I find a position that doesn’t feel too terrible, and I slip back into sleep a lot easier that a hyperkinetic dude cramped into a single bed with a (beautiful) girl he’s determined not to wake up should be able to.

Raven’s gone when my alarm goes off at the standard time, but I wake up feeling awesome anyway. There’s extra pep in me as I prepare for the day. I’m usually cheerful, but today it’s like nothing could bring me down.

If you ask me, that shouldn’t be unusual, but Cyborg stares at me a bit over breakfast. “You feeling OK, grass stain?”

“Awesome.”

He frowns at me, human and robotic eye darting all around, like he’s looking for whatever’s wrong. I watch him right back, until we’re in a bizarre staring competition, and only Robin clearing his throat gets us to stop.

Raven comes in next. She greets us and heads straight for the cupboard where her teabags live. My heart does a happy little cartwheel at the sight of her.

“Hey Raven!”

“Good morning,” she says to the room in general before heading towards the pans on the stove. It’s plain toast and eggs for her today, along with the unfailing mug of herbal tea. Robin starts a conversation with her about some report or other, but I make a show of looking over her plate and her attention is on me pretty quick.

“Do you need anything?”

“Nah, just checking. That’s not a lot of food. You sure you haven’t been looking into any crazy-angled stones?”

She snorts softly. “I’m sure. You might be a witch’s familiar though,” and she looks at my plate, bursting with unfertilized scrambled eggs with tofu and tomatoes, three pieces of toast and veggie sausage (hey, don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it!).

I scramble a little with the reference, but I’ve been looking up Lovecraft stuff on my off time. Witch’s familiar that eats a lot. This one is…Oh! Brown Jenkin, the rat-thing that eats people! From Dreams in the Witch House! “Well, you are the one who gets into people’s heads, right Keziah?”

She looks surprised. “I know for a fact you haven’t read that one.”

“Yeaaaahhh, I haven’t. But it sounds awesome.”

“I’m not so sure I agree with that sentiment.”

Is it because of the whole sleep-traveling thing? I hadn’t really thought about it. “Meh, is it really worse than Haunter and The Call?”

Raven concedes with a nod.

“Uh, Beast Boy?” Raven and I both turn to Cyborg. He’s looking from one of us to the other. “Are you two discussing…books?”

“Lovecraft, actually,” I respond with a grin.

Everyone else at the table looks on in shock. Then Cyborg shudders. “Well, guess that means the apocalypse is nigh. It’s been a pleasure fighting crime with all of you, but it’s pretty clear this is over.”

Star seems more pleasantly surprised than she is horrified. “I am gratified that friends Beast Boy and Raven have found such an educational common ground. I do not enjoy the Lovecraft very much, for his aliens are always evil, but it brings me joy that it has brought you...joy.” Star’s smile at that last word is a little weird, like some secret joke’s been made and she’s enjoying it.

“The Elder Things don’t seem bad though, just self-centered. I guess they have an alien morality though. Guess we’re supposed to take Dyer’s comment about them being men with a grain of salt?”

The table falls silent again. Cy stage-whispers “apocalypse”. But Raven doesn’t take it sitting down. “Maybe they just didn’t understand the humans enough to know they were sentient. Maybe just biologist-mentality-induced lack of apathy?”

“Wait, but Cthulhu was totally evil, right? So these things can be flat out Chaotic Evil.”

“Did you seriously just use roleplay game alignment to explain Lovecraft?”

I laugh. “Wow, so now it’s roleplay you know on top of comics?”

I see Robin glance at Cyborg. “I didn’t think I’d ever see the day when that sentence made sense.” Cy’s stopped trying to punk us with the whole apocalypse thing though. Now he’s serious, looking at me and Raven like he looks at the T-Car when he’s trying to figure out where some worrisome new noise came from. It’s weird, but I can’t think about that now! I’ve got to defend roleplay game systems from Raven’s derision!

By the time we’ve circled back to Lovecraft and alien morality, the table’s gone totally quiet. Raven makes as if to look at someone and freezes.

“What’s wrong?” I look around the table. Everyone’s left. “Hey!”

“Looks like we got a little carried away.” But she smiles her tiny Raven smile. The day is still awesome.

The alarm sounds close to midday, before we've started figuring out who's on lunch duty: there's trouble down by the seaside. Boo! There goes lunch, I guess. We can go out for pizza later.

We arrive at the docks to see minor chaos. It’s just the HIVE Five, minus Jinx, breaking stuff and scaring people.

Raven huffs in annoyance. “Remind me why they just got unfrozen?”

“Because they are considered minor criminals compared to the Brain and therefore were given different sentences,” replies Star, missing Raven's irony for a moment. “I believe it was the correct way, for to be frozen forever was too terrible a punishment for mere annoyances.”

I agree – and I’m sure Raven does too. The Brain, Monsieur Mallah, Madam Rogue and the rest of them also got unfrozen, but their trials ended in bigger sentences – and way more fancy prison complexes. Man, I hope they put The Brain in some sort of space prison. Anyway, Raven would have been the first to oppose permanent freezing, she’s just annoyed, because they’re annoying.

That’s all they are these days, thank god. The HIVE…Four, I guess, really don’t have big plans with Brother Blood gone and the rest of the big villains stuck in super secret, super secure jails post thawing. They still don’t like us though, so they make big shows every once in a while, with big, loud messes to go along with them, before hightailing to wherever in Jump City they’re hiding. Robin even calls them 'tantrums'.

Fighting these guys is paint-by-numbers at this point: someone distracts Mammoth while the rest of us focus on Gizmo and his mecha of the day. Get Gizmo, the cautious one and the leader since Jinx joined us, to call uncle, and the rest of them will retreat too. Raven decides she wants to tangle with the big guy, so the rest of us bat See-more and Billy away while Robin rails on Gizmo's gadjets.

('Gizmo's gizmos' is only a funny phrase the first one thousand times, in case anyone was wondering why I let that prime joke opportunity slip by).

Gizmo’s mecha suit is fizzing from bare wires and missing an arm when it happens. I’m pointing and laughing at him as his screams of “you barfbrains!” ring in my ears when the harsh thump of a body hitting the ground reaches my ears.

I swivel around to see Raven on the ground, clutching at her middle. Mammoth is lobbing shipping crates around, that idiot, but all I can think of is her.

I charge to her as a cheetah, then divert one of Mammoth’s makeshift projectiles as a rhino. He looks at me all annoyed, but Gizmo calls for a retreat right then. He probably never meant for any of us to get hurt and wants to beat it out of here before we counterattack.

Whatever. Good riddance. I turn back into myself and head to Raven.

She’s rolled on to her back and trying to rise. “Thanks.”

I push her shoulders back to the ground. “Wow. Wait. Take it easy. What happened?”

She points to the sky. “I didn’t move out of range in time.”

Huh? That’s weird. Raven’s aerial movements are really precise. Since she doesn’t fly as much as levitate, she knows to be aware of where she is, and where other objects are. “That’s weird.”

“I’m a little tired. Guess that dampened my reflexes.”

My heart sinks.

Raven caught a shipping crate to the abdomen, but no bones are broken and no muscles torn. She has a huge ass bruise, but she fixes most of it with her powers.

I still feel hella guilty though.

I should have realized it sooner, how she’s losing hours of sleep watching over me, and now prattling with me about books and comics and nonsense. She must have fallen asleep on me last night from exhaustion.

This can’t go on like this, or she might get hurt bad.

When she leaves the med bay in the early evening, I spring out of the shadows. She’s not surprised to see me; she’s just confused about why I’m there.

“You don’t have to worry. I’m OK.”

“Rae, you have to start sleeping in your room again.”

She blinks. “Are you cancelling our book club?”

I bat at my ears. “I hate it, trust me, I wish we could read every last stupid thing Lovecraft wrote together. But you have to sleep. I’d feel like shit if you got hurt from looking after me. Again.”

Raven looks down at her boots. “It’s my fault too for not enforcing your bed time.”

As nice as it is that she’s not blaming me, I can’t back down. “Hey, I can be pretty persuasive.” At her unimpressed frown, I laugh. “Seriously though. We can find some other time to do stuff together. So that nobody’s sleep-deprived.” I’m not sure why I’m phrasing it like that. But I like the way it sounds, ‘do stuff together’. “You said I wasn’t doing the mind-body break thing, right? And you noticed when it happened the first time anyway.”

Raven nods. “I guess.”

“Or maybe let’s just use today as a trial run. If I wander, you can camp out in my room forever. I’ll get you your own bed. And a bookcase. Anything. Just please get some quality sleep, OK?”

Raven is quiet for a long time, mulling things over. She exhales. “OK. But promise me you’ll call if something happens. And write down your dreams, first thing.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.”

She glares at me playfully before starting back down the hall. The med bay is far from her room; she must have really drained herself to be too tired to just open a portal there. It’s not even night time yet, and I’m already missing her, but it’s the right thing to do. And I’ve slept on my own for most of my life as a Titan, how bad can it be?

Chapter Text

How hard can it be to start sleeping on your own without your super stoic best friend reading to you?

The answer is: really damn hard.

I stay up waaaay too late on the night of the accident feeling guilty, so it doesn’t hit me right away. But on the night after that, with Raven healed all the way and after a nice pizza dinner, I still toss and turn past midnight. When I finally fall asleep, no dreams come, but I wake up to the sheets and covers all tangled up. Raven's not here, so I didn't wander.

On night three, I find a comfortable position in bed pretty early on. I feel calmer. But sleep doesn’t come either; just this endless deluge of weird thoughts. I wonder about the future, and whether or not there’ll always be a Teen Titans (we might need to drop the 'Teen' part someday). I mean, the Justice League has a pretty decent track record, but what if one of us gets bored and quits? What if Robin decides he just wants to be a regular super-rich kid and moves back to Gotham? Or if Star decides to reclaim the throne back on Tamaran? Even Cyborg might have somewhere to go as Victor Stone.

That would leave just me and Raven out of luck. Which makes sense too, I’d gone bald and fat while she’d gone insane in that weird, scary future dimension Star visited on Warp’s trail. Cy was demoralized, but he was OK in the end, and Robin had turned into The Second Coming of Batman, with all sorts of cool gadgets and a suit.

I try to feel optimistic that, Rekma-fueled craziness aside, I’ll at least have Raven if everything goes really, really bad, and it works for a moment, but then I wonder: what if she gets sick of me?

She could. We seem to do pretty great in a crisis together, but what happens if we’re the crisis?

I’m starting to lose it a little by day four. I take naps around the tower, but I always wake up from them with a start, anxious and looking for…something. Animal instincts keep telling me it’s a predator, but I can deal with that. A lot of people don’t know it, but animal brains and the primitive structures of the human brain are wired to think things are predators as a survival instinct, because running away from a loud noise in the jungle tends to be better than sitting there convincing yourself that it’s just a fallen branch.

 I’m lucky it’s a quiet day, because sleepy and paranoid? Not a good combination if some monster decides to attack the city.

I’m not so down in the dumps at dinner, and not just because I’m getting I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat burgers. It hits me while I’m trying not to nod off at the table: I’m exhausted, right? That means I might get a decent night’s sleep, and my suffering is almost over. Hallelujah! I just have to get through this meal, and I’ll be sleeping like a baby koala.

Of course, everyone decides to talk at me, and I do my best to keep up. Cy waves a fist full of straws in my face at some point, and I take one, which makes him and Star break out into whoops and cheers for some reason. I just smile and nod, then take another bite of my burger.

Next thing I know, someone’s nudging me awake. “Hey. Grass stain. It’s your turn to do the dishes.” Cy’s talking very gently, so I just give him a sleepy smile at first, but then my brain kicks up and I groan.

“Duuuuude. Nooooo. I’m so beat.”

“I know buddy. I’m sorry. How’s about you leave them there, and I’ll get to them when I get off my conference call with Titans East?”

They’ve got a system down or something and Cy offered to fix it, I remember. I also remember that he said it would take a good four to five hours. “What? But you’ll be up past midnight!”

“I know, but - “

“Get him to bed, I’ll do it.” Cloak swishing, Raven walks past both of us and into the kitchen like a purple-robed angel from heaven. She doesn’t even stop to negotiate compensation, she just rolls up her sleeves and grabs the skillet as we stare.

I could kiss her right now. I mean I’d kiss her, no dishes required, any other day, but I could kiss her so hard right now.

Wait…what?

“Wait what about what, BB?”

Oh shit, did I say all that out loud? “What did I just say?”

Cy’s looking concerned. “You stared at Raven, smiled and then said ‘wait, what?’”

Whew. “No reason, my brains just, like, short-circuiting right now.”

From in front of the sink, Raven raises an eyebrow at me. “More than usual, you mean.”

I laugh like it’s the best joke in the history of jokes, but I stop myself from telling her she’s so funny I might just have to marry her, even though the thought pops up in my head. Stupid brain. Stupid words.

Cyborg saves me from any more embarrassment by picking me up by the armpits. “OK big guy, let’s get you to bed.”

After Cyborgs sits me on my bunk, tells me to something something med bay tomorrow and leaves, I try to get out of my uniform – and fail. I can’t remember what I dream about, but I wake with a start just past midnight, only half out of my leotard. I’m not sweating, but again, I’ve made a mess of the covers. I’m still sleepy though, and I don’t want to scare away my last chance at a good night by getting up to hunt down some pajamas; I wriggle all the way out of my uniform and lie back down, eyes falling shut before I’m done burrowing under the covers. I sleep all the way into the morning.

I realize something is wrong the minute I walk into the kitchen to find Raven and Robin there already. Robin is sipping his straight black coffee, making horrible faces that I know aren’t because it tastes bad (even though it does). Raven is anxious as hell. You can tell by the way her face looks like it always does, except her eyebrow twitches every once in a while. It’s like a convention of the Doomsday prophets.

“Um, should I come back later?”

They exchange glances, and Robin frowns. “I thought you were a little out of it last night, but I didn’t think you’d forget.”

“Huh? Forget what?”

“He forgot. I wish I could forget,” Raven grouses. “We drew straws last night to see who’d go with Robin and I to this girly magazine interview. You won.”

“What?!”

Almost on cue, Cyborg appears with a smile and the screen on one of his arms open, video cued up. “Ooh, lemme help.” He always records it when we draw lots or rock-paper-scissors and stuff, for transparency, but also because it’s really funny to watch later.

I enjoy it most of the time. Right now though, I watch it with horror.

The recording starts with Robin’s griping about something called Teen Snazz contacting him, and not being able to back out anymore. He informs Raven that, "as per the magazine's demands" she at least has to go, which makes her send every condiment on the table flying. Then he asks for one volunteer, and everyone pretends to be distracted – except for me, because I’m there in body only for real. My head bobs like it’s fishing.

Video-Robin sighs. “Come on guys. Raven and I can’t go by ourselves!”

Video-Raven drums her hand on the table. She never does that – she must have been frustrated. “We could, but then I’d magic everyone into the bay after they ask me about goth fashion or whatever.”

“Since we are all unwilling, perhaps a drawing of the straws might help?” Video-Star suggests. Off-camera, Cyborg agrees, and Video-Raven nods. I keep bobbing, which they all decide is a nod.

I’m the first to pull one out and oh shit. My straw is so short, it might’ve been an eyelash. Cyborg whoops, Starfire grins, and Robing sits back with a sigh, because even with hunky comic relief guy on board to help, he still has to go waste a good two hours of his life answering questions about his perfect date and his favorite type of corsage.

Video-me smiles and nods like an idiot. I could smack that dude. Video-Raven shoots video-me a few concerned glances before video cuts off. I sink into my chair in defeat. “Do we have to?”

“Yes. Teen Snazz promised to partner up with us to help an ailing welfare project if we do this one interview. Just this once.”

I look at Robin, eyes pleading. “Any chance the project is something really dumb? I don’t know, funny haircuts and dye jobs for Karens?”

Robin shakes his head and I know, I know it’s something heart-wrenching before he even opens his mouth. “It’s a charity that helps recently relocated children who’ve lost their…”

I hold up a hand. That’s all I need to know. We’ll suck this up like the heroes we are. “When’s the big event?”

“Tonight.”

I plant my face into the table, hard.

Robin has Alfred look up transportation services, then hires a trustworthy driver and vehicle. This way Cy doesn’t have to drive us over and leave the tower only one Titan strong - and no, him entrusting the T-Mobile to someone else is out of the question. Robin makes sure they assign us a nice car, to “raise morale”, though not a limo, because that’s a dead giveaway for the crazier fangirls. He also makes sure the meeting point is secure, checked over for security threats, and has underground parking for added protection.

The interview is at six in the evening, and while it’ll just be printed instead of televised, the mag raffled off a few spots for fans to be there in person, so we need to be there early for makeup (gag). They need us to be recognizable though, so we can just go in uniform, thank fuck. I don't even know if I still fit into my suit pants.

Even though everything goes smooth and we exit our vehicle over an hour before the interview, Robin looks harried. I get it, I feel stressed too. Raven’s so calm and quiet, I’m worried she’s disassociating.

A blonde lady in a blue pantsuit is there to meet us. “Why hello, I’m Susan! I’ll be taking care of you for the night!”

Robin smiles at her. “Hello, Susan.”

“Hey! I’m Beast Boy!”

“Hello. Raven.”

“Hello to all of you. You’re a little ahead of schedule, which we love, so if you’d follow me through here…”

Even though she’s bubbly, you can tell she’s a professional by the way she doesn’t act star-struck or all grumpy. She takes us up the elevator to the studio and hands us to the makeup crew with a smile, asking us to holler for her if we need anything from drinks to food to directions to the bathroom. We’re sat side by side, though I’m a little put out that Raven is on the other side of Robin from me, and the makeup artists descend on us.

Mine is an older woman with pure white hair and winding flower tattoos. “Okay honey, is your skin green, or is it covered in green fur?”

“Oh. It’s skin.”

She nods and examines it for a moment, then goes hunting through her makeup kit. “I’ve never worked on anyone like you before, but I didn’t learn about the color wheel at beauty school for nothing! My name's Sharona, by the way." She’s awesome.

I look over to Robin, who’s staring down at his tech – a guy with spikier hair than his – like he’s daring him to tell him anything about his hairdo. “This isn’t so bad.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s –“ a soft beep interrupts us and Robin focuses on his wrist. “The background check is here.”

“The what?”

“I had Alfred run a background check on the fans. Teen Snazz swore up and down that they’d done it, but…”

Huh? “Alfred? Why not you?”

“I ran one, I just wanted a second opinion.” I laugh, and Robin smiles, but the expression falls from his face.

“Uh oh. What is it?” A chick with a criminal record? Oh man, I hope it’s not one of the ‘obsessed fangirl’ types, the ones who want to kill us and keep us in their closet forever. Or worse, someone without records whatsoever: that means they’ve come here using a fake identity. When that happens, your best bet is to call the whole thing off, evacuate the building, and call in the SWAT team.

(Is it awful that I kind of want there to be some crazy bomber in the building? Sharona’s great, but she’ll probably be the only thing to remember fondly from this experience.)

“The girls are clear,” Robin says in an undertone. “But most of them belong to the same club. The…Birds of a Feather club. It’s an, um, club that supports Raven and me. Well, Raven with me.”

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

I look over at Raven, who’s glaring at the young, super-preppy looking makeup artist who’s complimenting her complexion. Man, she is going to hate this.

Being a public figure is really tough sometimes. Having fans, fan clubs, being put into fanworks, it’s not too bad – just as long as you don’t go looking too hard for them. The worst part has got to be how much total strangers care about your private life, especially who you’re dating.  Shippers, people with preferences about who you should date, aren’t too bad either, but mix in a teen magazine and an interview and…things could get out of hand.

I don’t want to sling mud at Teen Snazz, but they’ve led us into an ambush. That, or they’re about to play up the romance angle for their fans. Either way, Robin and Raven are in for a long, uncomfortable night. I get off easy, I’ll be cast as the third wheel here, but I feel for them, I really do.

“Is it bad? I mean, some fans are cool.” Just because they have preferences doesn’t mean they’re crazy. Most fans are pretty great. Maybe they'll be the kind who love the Titans, with just a little bit of preference for Raven and Robin.

“In this case? Very bad. This particular fan club keeps getting banned from fanwork sites for harassing supporters of other relationships. Or fellow Robin and Raven fans” here he makes a funny disgusted toddler face, “who try to ‘fraternize with the enemy’.”

Oh well. Looks like we’re fucked. I try for some humor anyway. “It’s ‘shippers’ dude, not supporters of yadda yadda, get with the times!” Again, I think most shippers are cool. Bullies who happen to be shipper, and take their bullying ways into fan works? Yeah, not so much.

Robin looks downright miserable.

“I’m sorry dude. Can’t we, like call in a…thing that starts with a b threat?” Superhero rule number something-or-other: when around civilians, don’t use scary words. Sometimes hearing us say ‘bomb’ is enough to make someone panic.

That makes him choke out a weak little chuckle, but he goes right back to serious in a second. “How do we tell Raven?”

“Like this.” I raise my voice I little. “Hey, Rae?”

She turns and raises both eyebrows at me once.

“The audience is Robin and Raven shippers, the crazy kind.”

Her face doesn’t do anything, but six of the bottles at the makeup table Raven’s sitting at jump a foot in the air, hover, then drop back down with a clatter.

We sit in silence for the rest of the prep – a little. Sharona’s real cool, so I can’t resist bantering with her a bit. When Susan reappears to usher us to the interview’s set, Robin frowns at her.

“Nobody warned me this interview had an…angle.”

“Oh, just a little bone thrown to the fans. You won’t have to do anything you don’t want to, scout’s honor.”

I’ll bet you a moped Susan was never a scout.

The set, which is furnished like a little parlor, has two single couches and a large pink loveseat in front of a fake wall of smoked windows, where Robin and Raven are obviously made to sit: Raven closest to the host, Robin on her other side. I grab my couch and drag it closer to Robin, Susan’s discrete frown from beyond the circle of light cast by the modeling lamps notwithstanding.

The moment we’re all seated, a camera flash goes off, and a few high titters can be heard. Raven leans on the armrest, far away from Robin. “I think the bruise from that shipping crate is coming back. Oh, the pain.”

“It’ll only be an hour.” Robin puts a hand on her shoulder in a show of support. A few gasps and another flash.

“Get your hand off of me.”

Robin listens, of course. Then a group of people descend upon us to fit us with microphones. And then the interviewer arrives to save us – or at least, that’s what we think.

The lady, who tells us her name is Violet, is dressed down in jeans and a white shirt with an embellished TS logo, but enough mascara that I think she could stand on her lashes if she wanted to. She has the same brand of professional politeness Susan treated us to. “This is a candid interview. We won’t ask you anything political, or overtly intimate, and of course we won’t ask for any secrets, so just be yourselves!”

And then, with no OK ROLLING because there’s no cameras, we begin.

Things start mild with favorite color, favorite smell, favorite food, which gets me a few cheers for being a vegetarian. I go with the flow, Robin does too, and Raven lowers her hackles a bit. The train wreck starts when the deeper questions begin.

So I don’t know how many people have seen a train wreck happen. I’ve stopped a couple in my life. And the thing with train wrecks is that, 99.9% of the time, you can see them coming: you can see the other train barreling at you without changing tracks, or the car stuck on the rails, or the bridge that’s collapsed a mile or two ahead. And the conductor can’t do anything to stop the train, because it’s already got so much momentum that the brakes won’t stop it in time – hell, sometimes they won’t even slow it down too much.

We’re asked who our favorite historical figure is. Robin makes a short list of the usuals, like Marcus Aurelius and King Akbar the Great, then manages to get everyone teary-eyed by bringing up Liviu Librescu, the Physics teacher who barred the door of his classroom with his body to buy time for his students to escape from a school shooter.

Violet has to do that thing people who wear eye-makeup do of opening their eyes super wide to catch the tears. “That was wonderful, it’s awesome to see our super heroes can value the ordinary heroes.” She pauses so everyone can collect themselves. Once the mood has improved a little, she looks at me with a smile. “How about you, Beast Boy?”

I figured she’d pick me next, to provide some comic relief. “When it comes to all-American heroes, you can’t beat Curly Howard.”

I don’t even have to add that he’s that guy in The Three Stooges: everyone laughs, so much it sounds like canned laughter. Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week!

So if the mood hadn’t gotten all heavy, I might have mentioned resistance fighter Willem Arondéus, maybe even The Flash – and I’d second Professor Librescu, I love brave, selfless dudes.  But being the hunky comic relief guy means taking it in the chin and making everyone smile, even when some of them are laughing at you instead of with you.

 “I’m surprised you even know who Curly Howard is,” Raven deadpans. Her mouth quirks very slightly when our eyes meet: she’s amused. I’ve amused Raven! Score!

“Well when it’s either old-timey shows or….ick…books, you’ve got to make choices.”

“Is this a bad time to let everyone know you actually like them?”

I gasp. “Oh no! Don’t tell them I actually finished Where The Wild Things Are!”

Raven actually laughs at that, because I read that one out loud for a few groups of kids during our last citizen outreach event. Interviews? Suckage. Playing with kids just about as energetic as you? The best two hours of your life, easy. Superhero Storytime is a little more subdued, but I like it too - and I fucking love Where The Wild Things Are.

Violet clears her throat. “So, on the topic of books, what’s your favorite, Robin?”

Whoops. Forgot we had a literal audience for a moment there. Like any good comic relief dude, I try to read the room: they’ve gone so cold you could freeze juice into ice pops with them. Right, they’re all for Robin smooching Raven, and here I am bantering with her. I vow to do better next question.

Except there pretty much isn’t one. As the interview shifts to the dreaded “what’s your ideal date night!” territory, Violet focuses more and more on Raven and Robin. It’s not like she shushes me librarian style if I talk, but she’ll move on to the next question without asking for my reply if I’m not on top of things. This makes the audience more and more excited.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize she’s catering to them and their ship, but it doesn’t make it any more fun for me. She’s lucky those two get along great, Star and I would have given them a sibling display fit to turn their ship into a submarine.

Hmmmm. They really do, don’t they.

“…so we’re coming to the end of our interview, sadly,” Violet finally says a bajillion years later. “And we’ve got one last question, just for Robin: what is your dream girl like?”

Robin smiles, but he puts one hand on his knee and squeezes. Raven and I exchange glances, because that’s a telltale sign of nerves. And she should be: he gets asked that a lot, and when he’s not careful? Hooo man. The reporter for a tabloid once cornered him on a bad day and got him to say that he liked tall girls. Overnight, Jump City’s department stores were picked clean of high heels, platforms and even lift shoes. A girl actually approached Robin on stilts.

“I don’t really have a type, if you mean her appearance.” He squeezes his knee a few times like it’s a stress ball. “I think the most important thing a girl can be is true to herself, brave and selfless.”

Well, that didn’t almost give me an ulcer or anything. It was pretty good – and won’t be starting any new fashion trends. Whenever he and Star decide to go steady, and then go public, the rash of tanned redheads this city will grow overnight is gonna be a sight to see.

It’s also hard not to laugh, because we at least know he’s describing Star. Raven makes a face like she wants to scoff, but doesn’t, so Robin raises an eyebrow at. Excited whooping fills the studio, because of course only we understand what Raven’s faces actually mean.

But for a second, I think I see something. The way they look at each other, combined with the expectation in the air, turns them into...something. Maybe I’m nuts, but right now, I think Raven and Robin wouldn’t be a terrible match, like at all.

My stomach sinks as I chew over these facts a little. Robin listens to her, even when he’s determined to ignore the rest of. He was the one who went in to save Raven after raising Trigon made her vanish, and he was the one she hugged and called the “somebody” who believed in her after she banished Trigon for good. We didn’t take it personally, we know she knows that the rest of us believe in her too. But, wow, if I didn’t know any better…

…there’s no helping it: I wonder how things would be if Star weren’t in the picture. My stomach does a cartwheel, except cartwheels are fun and this feels like it should be called a doomwheel or a really-damn-bummed wheel. Or something. Raven’s just a seat away, but she might’ve been on the moon.

OK, she’s a Robin away. And that feels worse.

Susan is waiting for us in an office near the back of the stage, along with three baskets of goodies. One has a red, green and yellow bow, one has a purple and blue bow, and one has a dark green bow. Robin’s and Raven’s are handbaskets, but mine is this huge wicker thing you might see on a South American travel documentary, full of fruit, veggie-friendly junk food I’ve never seen before and wrapped packages. Each one has the latest issue of Teen Snazz on display too.

Susan smiles when we come up to her. “We’re sorry the interview took a turn. The audience was –“

 “It’s a little strange that you had these ready like this if you didn’t know this was going to happen.” Robin narrows his eyes at her.

Raven doesn’t say anything, but she stands shoulder to shoulder with me like she’s my bodyguard.

Susan has to take a moment to figure out what to say. “A local businessman, one with a lot of interest and a very large donation promised, has a daughter. She’s a big fan of ours.”

Raven growls like an angry pug. “And let me guess, she’s the president of Birds of a Feather?”

Susan smiles. We don’t need to guess what that means.

Robin frowns, then straightens his face into a creepy polite mask he uses to deal with people he can’t snap at. “We can’t block this interview from publication, but I hope you realize this means we won’t do further business with you.”

Susan’s professional façade finally breaks. “But - ”

“Thank you for your time. We’ll be leaving now.”

We all leave the gift baskets on the table as we move towards the elevator. I feel less broken up than I thought I'd be, not getting to sample the extra large bag of vegan, no fry chips.

The car is ready and waiting for us, so we leave fast. If anyone at Teen Snazz wants to clean up this PR mess, they’ll have to go looking for us, because we're sure as shit not coming back. Once Cyborg and Star catch wind of this, neither will they. We don't have an actual always-on-call PR team, but I think Robin might get Batman to help us get an actual apology of some kind from this place.

There’s enough room for the three of us in the back of the car, but Robin goes and sits at the front, beside our chauffer, leaving Raven and I at the back. I sink against the seat, feeling like a sea slug. “That sucked.”

She huffs. “You can say that again.” She waits a few seconds, then stares at me. “You usually repeat what I say when I say ‘you can say that again’.”

“Heh, right. Guess I’m a little off my game.”

She keeps staring at me though. “Don’t let all the idiots we just left in that building get to you. You’re worth listening to.” Then she drops her voice. “Besides, the only reason they cared about what I had to say was because of Little Miss Rich Girl, whoever she was. I'll bet you they think I'm a stand-in for them."

Huh? "A stand-in?"

"Yeah. You know I don't have much of a public image. I bet they feel like, by supporting me with Robin, they can pretend it's them with Robin. The public knows who Star is too well."

"That's crazy. Can't they just like you two together?"

"Nope. I'm the least popular Titan after all."

That shakes me a little. “That’s not true!”

“It is. But I don’t care.” She rubs the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the entire reason that lady with too much mascara kept shutting you down was…your wit.”

“Huh?”

“I mean it, even though I’ll regret it when you throw it in my face later. You were stealing the show with your funny asides, and she realized the fans they’d stupidly hand-picked wouldn’t like it.”

That makes me feel a little better, until Robin looks over at her from the front and gives her a thumbs up. Birds of a feather…it might not be too far off the mark.

I’m guessing there’s great stuff for dinner, since we just made it out of a war zone, but I don’t stay to find out. I pass our dining area by and go straight to my room, turn off my comlink, the lights, and activate the door’s lock.

So…I don’t really like to think about it a lot, but I’ve always known Raven lives in a soft spot in my heart. Is it any secret that I thought she was the coolest when we met during the Gordanian attack? Cyborg and I weren’t even friends yet, but he teased me about “having a crush on the girl from another dimension” for months. I guess I did.

I guess I always have.

Thing is, Raven’s never showed the smallest hint of liking me back. I mean sure, she loves me, and like I’ve said before, she’s taken hits for me. But I think she sees me like a super annoying kid brother or something, and believe me, no guy is going to put himself out there just to get the YOU’RE LIKE MY BROTHER line.

I guess I’m a huge ass loser for not getting over this after so long. But hey, I bet nobody knows, least of all Raven, so it’s not like I’m hurting anybody.

And you’d have to be blind to not notice Star and Robin’s mutual thing. Teen Snazz is a real mess, they should have just requested Raven and Robin; what if Star had won the remaining lot? OK, realistically, she would have gotten annoyed and then sad, then probably never brought it up again, but I don’t stop myself from imagining her shooting star bolts around the studio while Violet screams. Star would never attack a group of kids, of course, so the fantasy ends with the Bird of a Feather club unscathed.

I guess it’s not their fault, even though I’m salty. My imagination tapers off after that, and all I can do is relive all my miserable thoughts in the dark.

Is it stupid to feel bad that, in a world where Star's not there, Raven wouldn't give me the time of day? Not that she does now, but I don't think she'd need me at all if all of Robin's attention were on her. I mean, she's even been in Robin's head. They should be best friends. No, wait, I'm Raven's best friend, right? The doomwheels return: what does Raven think?

What if...what if she does has a thing for Robin? You don't have to go far to fall for the Boy Wonder, if you ask the female Titans. He's right up there with Aqualad. What if she's carrying a torch in secret and, someday...

...my head feels so heavy, it wants to sink through the pillow.

Depression must be a way better adjuvant to sleep than exhaustion, because I haven’t been moping face down on my bed for a long time before I start to nod off. Hopefully, this will be another dreamless night.

Chapter Text

You know that feeling when something’s woken you up, but you don’t know what it is, a sound or what, but you’re awake now?

That’s what happens, except I’m not in my bed, or even in my room, when I come to.

When my eyes open, I’m standing in the main operations room of Titans Tower. At least I think that’s what it is. It’s dark, like it’s close to sunset and nobody’s turned on a light, but also like someone took the color saturation on the TV and put it way down. How this natural-looking light comes in though, I’m not sure: there’s nothing to see out the windows. Thick, grey fog is covering up every last inch of them.

Worse, every wall, bit of floor, furniture and doorway looks weird, like it’s been put through a fun house mirror and then put back in its place. Take our main operations room door: in the normal world it’s got double doors that slide open, it’s rectangular, and it’s seven feet tall, six feet wide (which might seem a little excessive, but hey, Titans come in every size).

Now though, it’s got no doors, and it’s not even rectangular anymore. It looks more like the squiggly arrow from the ‘winding road’ traffic sign. Like a weirdly shaped doorway in an underwater cartoon, made for funny-shaped eels to go through.

My first thought is that we’re under attack from some illusionist-type villain, and that nobody else knows because there’s no alarm going off, or security system engaged. Guess it’s up to me! I turn and run to the Tower’s control panel, ready to hit the panic button – but my hand stops midway. I guess the panic button’s still there, technically, but it’s turned into a blot of paint, faded to maroon. Every other button and switch has turned into toddler finger paint too.

I have gotta get out of here. The top of the distorted main ops door curves shakily to the right after five feet, so I have to duck through it.

Once I’m out of there, I head for the wall right beside the door. We’re supposed to carry our comlinks everywhere, but we also have intercoms. At least, we had them, because the wall next to the distorted door is as smooth as if it had been made that way.

OK, so no intercom, and no way to call up anybody. This can’t be the Titans Tower I’m used to. Am I…dreaming?

Just to make sure, I make my way to the floor where most of our rooms are through stairs that stick out in ways that don’t look possible – or at least I try, with my sense of direction all scrambled. The elevator door is sort of still there, but like hell am I getting into the elevator when things are this level of crazy. The rest of the tower looks like that too: walls that look both concave and convex, doors with bonkers angles, hallways that look like they’re undulating away in different directions. It’s like an Escher painting, except all the right angles said ‘screw it, we’re out of here!’. It takes me a while to find the right floor, and once I’m there, I can’t find a single room, just smooth walls. Smooth-ish.

Oh no. Wait…is this like the non-something geometry all the Lovecraft stories keep banging on about? Non…Euclidean?

I had a hard time picturing it, so Raven and I went looking for books and things for reference. Real world non-Euclidean architecture looked pretty cool and futuristic, all curves but all orderly too. This all looks like a nightmare. I’ve got to give Howie kudos for deciding this is how scary alien places looked like. Thanks dude, I hate it.

It hits me then. Is this…my dreamscape? Why does it look so bad? Did I read too many books? I knew they’d rot my brain worse than TV ever could. It does feel like it could be my dreamscape, but it’s gone completely batshit insane in the time I’ve been gone.

Armed with this new knowledge, I try to locate the dreamscape version of my room – maybe the way out will be there, like Raven said, even now that it’s all gone bonkers. It was right past the main doors the first time, but of course it’s not there anymore.

Time flows all crazy-like in the dreamscape, but what might be an eternity later, I’ve got to accept that I can’t find my room, not in the hallways were it usually is in the real Tower, not in…whatever floors I can get to. It’s hard to tell up from down, east from west. The one good thing is that they all distort in different ways, so I can tell which floor I’ve been to before, and so I know I’ve been to a whole bunch of them when exhaustion gets the better of me.

Dejected, I sink down a funky wall, onto an equally funky floor. I wish I could see the weird Mirror of Erised Room, or even Terra’s room with all the awful memories. They’d be something familiar at least. I try one more thing. “Hellooooo? Wild Beast Boy?” Nothing. “Hey, I’m here again! I’m lost! Could you maybe come please?”

 Is it just me, or was there a dim, mournful howl from somewhere way off in the distance?

OK, no, calm down Garfield. There’s got to be a reason for this. Raven said this was all related to our emotions, right? So I guess that, for whatever reason, I feel like torturing myself with creepy, alien things?

Breathe. In, out.

What if all…this is confined to the tower? I don’t want to chance breaking a window and flying out, they all open up into thick fog. There was a Jump City and a Congo jungle in here the last time, so maybe I can get there on foot. All I need to do is find our ground floor door.

The tower has become this super impersonal lemon – no, liminal space thingy, so I try not to focus too hard when the familiar-unfamiliar pops up. The gym? In the dark, the equipment looks sharp and threatening. Evidence room? It looks as if Robin’s moved out. I find one of the bathrooms, but it looks like someone tried to make it into part of a movie set on a hell of a budget: there’s no tub, just a curtain hanging in front of an empty space, and the toilet is just a toilet-shaped marble thing, no real bowl.

I’m glad I haven’t found any of the rooms. I don’t know what fresh hell would be waiting for me in them.

Somehow, I reach the lower levels of the tower. My animal instincts are torn at that point: on one hand, the creepy architecture that’s taken over is making me nuts from the alerts of WRONG WRONG BAD. But if this is my dreamscape, then the outside must be crazy too. My heart speeds up with terror and my stomach bends with nausea at the thought of something important like the sky looking wonky, or there being no land, or…

…or nothing. What if it’s nothing?

But there’s no way out in here. I can’t just stay in here and wait for rescue.

Shit. Rescue. If telling the time in here is hard, figuring out the time in the real world from here just isn’t possible. It seemed like real time went faster than how it felt here all the other times. Someone, well, Raven should have sensed something was wrong already.

Oh no. Oh no. What if something’s gone really wrong and she can’t wake me up? Or worse, what if something’s wrong out there? What if they’re being pummeled by Slade right now? What if – no, I can’t sit still. I need to get out of here, pronto.

I barrel down some totally wrong halls to find our ground level door. And of course I get hit with all sorts of wrong feelings at every step, but I press on.

Finally, I find it. Our ground floor gate is twisted, of course, and in a creepy call-back to my dream room, it has no door, just darkness. Anything could be on the other side.

Do I even want to find out?

Being part beast isn’t easy sometimes. Animal instincts are great and all, but they’re not magical. You know how animals sometimes can’t tell a human is trying to help, or can’t tell something is way out of its instincts is dangerous to them? You have to learn to make decisions with them in mind too. OK, breathe, in, out…if this were the real world, I’d listen to my instincts and call it a day. In here though, who knows what could be on the other side? Sure, it might be something scarring, but it also might not be. And what if the exit is through trauma-topia?

I square my shoulders and clench my fists. I want to close my eyes, but that’d be hella stupid. So I walk through that darkness, ready for a fight.

The first few sights make me think ‘a jungle’, and for a moment I’m relieved that I’m not in some infinite dark space, but that relief lasts all of a second, because the vague shape of trees is all that’s jungle-like about it. Everything is very, very dimly lit in yellow, like the glow of a dying candle. Black trees, like an abnormal jet black from base to leaves, rise far up, thin but tall as skyscrapers. Worse, they’re wrong too, from the strange, awful way each trunk bends several times as it goes upwards, from the disturbing whorls in the wood – I’ve somehow managed to dream up creepy evil cult-meets-Lovecraft trees. Their huge branches open up into a sky stuck in some reddish twilight, with no clouds, no stars. Its colors would be beautiful if they weren’t speared through by the arms of these fucking satanic trees.

It’s like hell, or a nightmare, except it’s heavily inspired by the books and this one videogame Cy kept telling me not to play.

My head spins and I fall to my knees. My heart clambers up into my throat. I don’t know if you can black out or anything as your dream self, but I might be about to find out.

No, no, breathe, in, out. In, out.

It takes me a while, but I get a handle on my lungs.

So. What can I do? I turn around, where the door-like black shape is still there, thank goodness. It’s awful, but it’s an indoors I can go back to if things get too unhinged out here. I turn back to the black jungle. Should I fly to the tops of those trees and try to see where it ends – if it ends? OK so let’s try a…

…I can’t morph. What? Come on…no. Nothing. Um. Maybe my mantra from when I was a kid? Think small, think small…sparrow, magpie, eagle…

…nothing. Damn. Why? I morphed in my dreamscape before. Can I just do it in the Tower, not here, or can I just not do it at all this time around? I half want to go back to the twisted version of Titans Tower and give it a try, but it’s not like it’ll affect my morphing in the real world (I hope.) No, I don’t want to experiment, I need to get out of here. So human legwork it is.

Navigating places like these, with no artificial paths, is a bit like finding the constellations: you have to know the points you need and form the lines with your mind. The guides in Congo could map you out a path as long as they knew where you were headed, like magic, but out here I have no idea where anything is, so I guess I’ll have to make my own way. Literally.

I concentrate. It doesn’t take me long to realize there are parts where the trees are a bit further apart from each other; once I’ve noticed, I can ‘see’ a path that winds away to my right. It’s as good a way as any.

I walk this winding path, trying not to give into the urge to run like I’m crazy instead – gotta be careful, more so when I have no idea where the road ends. What if it doesn’t end? What if this place just goes on and on like some messed up, glitching video game?

No, no, breathe in, breathe out.

I swear, when I get out of here, I am going on a spooky diet. No movies, no books, no video games, just pure fluff for a month until I’ve detoxed all this shit from my brain.

Books…Raven.

I wish she were here. Any one of my friends would be awesome, but she’s the expert in dreams, books and spooky stuff. Not to mention she’s comforting. If I could pick one of them to come get me right now, it’d be her. She’d get scary dreamscapes like nobody else.

But there’s no Raven, no Titans. I’ve got to figure this out on my own.

I’ve been walking for a while when the gaps between the trees start growing. They open up into a clearing. I peek into it before I set even a toe inside.

Gulp…what is this?

There are four huge, really messy looking torches (they’re the kind that’s stick with rope, drenched in tar and set on fire, but the rope looks like it was draped by a parakeet with ADHD) buried in the ground at four opposite points of the clearing, burning very quietly for such large flames. They’re impressive, but somehow they barely provide any light, because there’s still just that half-candlelight glow to see by. There’s a stone arch, really square like in the temple of Hephaestus in Greece but not very tall. It has weird etchings that I don’t focus on. I don’t go through it, I’m not that dumb; beyond the arch is a patch, a very uneven four feet all around, paved with really old, broken tiles. And on that patch is a platform with (oh, man) something thick and dark.

I don’t lose my shit – I mean, this is really disturbing, I am disturbed. But I don’t think I’m in physical danger of cultists or anything. I guess there could be, but not with this kind of set-up.

Mom and Dad weren’t anthropologists, but they worked with plenty of them, and they absorbed stuff, like smart people do. I was way too young to be taught anything too complex, but I remember this: most of the spooky, evil-looking temples from movies and cartoons are made up, not connected to any culture or people. Figuring that out makes things less real, and less scary. I guess they must have told baby Gar to look for things that didn’t match, or things that looked super Halloween-y, because I’ve been telling myself to ‘look for the things that don’t belong’ in movies that get too spooky for as long as I can remember.

(‘Sides, now I know most actual evil cultist altars look nothing like they do on TV either.)

This admittedly messed up altar looks like a mixture of Halloween and my own memories. I bet the blood on top is just there to be spooky, and not from anybody. No culture, no people, no mental cultists. My mind’s programmed to fight hard against this.

And the etchings are –

- I fall back on my butt.

It’s…Terra’s face. Terra, wearing the neural interface headgear, eyes wide and glassy. She doesn’t look mean as much as she looks like she’s possessed, or out of her mind. Maybe even (gulp) dead. You know how some videogames have the main character’s face hidden in wallpapers or mosaics and stuff? This is the creepy, evil stepbrother of those fun little Easter eggs. I glance over at the arch, and I can’t really see in this bad lighting, but enough details are visible that I know Terra’s face is on there too.

A bloody sacrificial platform, with the worst of Terra etched on it. What if this is like a reoccurring nightmare, and something horrible and scarring happens here every so often? Like in this one horror story that I heard once about a fictional, horror movie themed amusement park where a witch was burned at the stake every 15 minutes? Does…does someone get sacrificed here?

An image pops up in my mind, and it’s of Terra, sure, but it’s of her sacrificing someone else, her face is crazy like in the etchings, beyond any reason, and the helpless sacrifice on the platform’s skin is pale – no, STOP. I am not gonna let that materialize, because in this weird mental nesting doll situation, who knows what such a powerful mental image might do. If anything can alter this damn place it won’t be conscious thoughts, oh no, it’ll be this kind of traumatic knee-jerk thing. NO. Think of grey smoke. No…think of how the ground feels under your feet, think of how your arms weigh in your shoulder’s sockets. Think of the here and now. Think hard, think hard.

The image vanished, thank fuck, but then a soft breeze picks up. It’s the first normal jungle thing that has happened in here since I arrived, but it doesn’t feel very comforting. As it reaches its zenith, a faint voice reaches my ears.

Beast Boy…?

It’s a whisper, so I can’t tell much of the voice, but it’s female.

It’s time to get the hell out of here. And fast. I bolt out the other end of the clearing, and I don’t even try to look like I’m not running away, cuz I am. I am fleeing.

I do look back for a moment and something new has gone wrong with what I’m seeing: the tree wall on one side of the clearing is doing some real abnormal shuddering. Like the wall’s not a real bunch of trees but a mural painted on a wall, and the wall’s got an active leak behind it. And the water is filtering into it, not giving a shit about gravity, so there’s this bubble growing outwards.

That thing does not bode well; my animal instincts all say so, and I can’t find a reason to second guess them at the moment. I flee harder now, with real desperation, not following an imaginary path at all, just wanting to get as far away from whatever is it as possible.

I don’t look back for the longest time. It’s not just ‘cause I’m panicking: a part of me knows that if I do, I might crash into a tree, or trip, or worse, see that the creepy whatever-the fuck that could be back there is too close and give up. Never look back, not unless you have to; I don’t. But my wild run takes me to another clearing, a smaller one, and it looks like a good enough place to rest. I pivot and leap sideways, hoping the sudden movement will confuse anything on my tail, and wait, gripping the trunks for support.

Nothing comes barreling through the tree line. Once I have a breath, I rip my hands away from the trees in terror, but nothing is stuck to my hand. Phew.

I look around this new clearing. It’s lucky I didn’t just bolt to the middle, because a few of the trees have grown in totally crazy ways, horizontal instead of straight up; I’d think they’re been cut if they weren’t hovering a few inches off the ground. If this were a video game, I’d assume I have to use them as platforms to climb to the top, that there’s a magical item or something up in the clouds. Part of me wants to, I might be able to see more of this place from a higher vantage point like I wanted to. But I don’t trust my feet on those twisted branches, those coal black leaves, and besides, this isn’t a video game. Thought there is something on the thinner branches.

I make to walk and look at them when I almost trip over something. Its…puppet Beast Boy? What are you doing way out here, buddy? I pick him up. He’s missing his head. Ugh.

That’s really shitty, My Own Brain. Really, really shitty. So he’s a memento of the Puppet King’s, so what? I like him. What did he ever do to you?  I hope the real puppet Beast Boy isn’t missing his head. And I’m not gonna drop the poor dude on the ground again, I’m sitting him against a tree, the way you do with your fallen troops – even when they’re toys. I’d bury him if that didn’t sound like a horrible thing to do in this place, claustrophobic even. You don’t bury people in unwholesome places like these.

I’m looking down as I try to find a nice place to lay poor puppet Beast Boy to rest, so I get a good look at what’s on the ground: all the things from my dream room are scattered on the clearing like trash. There are my comics, all upturned and spines broken, there’s my desk lamp with the neck hanging limp. The pictures from my dream room are there too, I realize; they’re the things on the thinner branches on the trees growing all horizontal. Except they’re not hanging from them, they’re speared like veggies on a kebab right through the middle, only the edges left to give me an idea of what they are…and they’re mostly the pictures of Terra.

Thoughts and feelings bubble around my chest like juice in a blender. I’m not a words guy, I’ve never been. I know people like Robin have, like, a mental word processor where they plan out and edit stuff at lightning speed before it comes out of their mouth. Not me. I just have a flash of many faces, Terra’s faces, both the ones in the pictures and the ones in my memories, except they pass through my mind like a movie reel, faster and faster until words are crowding my mouth.

 I look up at the weird sky. “Hello? Myself? I get it, I’m traumatized about Terra real bad, and I…I guess I hated her a little when she switched sides to Slade, then I may have worshipped her a little after she turned into stone…is that was the creepy altar meant? I worshiped her until I started to believe in a Terra that hadn’t ever been real? Or is it that the version of her is so evil, I feel like she could have killed us all and it’s all my fault? And now my feelings are all out of whack. ‘Cause that sounds really logical.” I’m kind of surprised I reached all these conclusions on my own.  “So…can I go now?”

Emotions swell up and crowd up in my throat. A few tears come loose, but nothing happens. “Come on, please. I know I have a lot of stuff to work out, and that putting it in a weird hellscape seems to be working like therapy on steroids, but I wanted to wake up like yesterday. I wanna,” a knot forms in my throat, “I…I wanna go home.”

I fall to my knees, holding headless puppet Beast Boy close. He’s broken in here, for whatever reason, but so am I. A few more tears leak out, hot and hurting, then a few more. I have a lot more left, but the few that I manage to squeeze out release the pressure in my chest a little.

I look up in time to see the wall of trees change, looking sort of two-dimensional now. I don’t know how I know, but I do: the bubble is coming.

Never mind putting headless Beast Boy to rest in this awful place, I am getting both of us out of here and then I’ll find him a nice dream-place to rest. I run to the other end of the clearing again and speed through the gap –

- but I barely manage to sprint for like six long lopes when I have to put on the brakes, because the trees are growing close together up ahead. A dead end. Oh no. A dead end.

I throw puppet Beast Boy over my shoulder and slap at the trees in front of me with both hands, but I can tell they’ve gone two-dimensional in the split second between me raising my hand and hitting them with it. I even poke the gaps between them, and yeah, it’s like a very realistic mural.

When I turn, the bubble is there, growing like an evil jellyfish and squeezing past the gap in the clearing that I just ran through.

Dead end.

OK, so I can’t outrun the bad bubble. The ground in my dead end is bare, no rocks, no twigs, no trash. No, I am not throwing my puppet at that thing. I…I guess all I can do is stand and fight. Yeah. Nobody’s around to see my last stand, but like hell am I going to go down like a coward. “Come on, you weird thing. Garfield Logan is going down swinging.”

It slows down as it comes near me, near enough that I could reach out and poke it, like it’s going for dramatic effect in a movie. It’s grown large enough to rub against the other side of the wall in my tree-dead end, no room to slip by, no escape overhead. My heart is racing as I put back my shoulders (careful not to send puppet Beast Boy flying, it’s good to have some company here, at the…gulp…the end?), and my fists are clenched.

The bubble splits down the middle…

Chapter Text

The bubble tears down the middle…

…and the world around it wobbles. Then it gapes open to a dim grey light, and Raven comes tumbling out. Raven. Raven, like, of the Teen Titans.

Oh, my god. I’m on my knees before I realize my legs have given out.

She falls in a heap on the ground in front of me. She shakes herself out, still on all fours, gasping, and then our eyes meet. Her eyes go wide, then her lips almost twist into a smile, but then her face contorts in anger.

“You. YOU. You are an idiot. I don’t even…you’re a total, complete moron.” And then she crawls forward and throws her arms around me, holding me in a crushing hug.

“Is it really you?” Tears prickle in my eyes, but these ones aren’t hot, punishing fear tears. They’re light and kind of gentle.

“Yes, you imbecile, it’s me.” Her voice is so tender when she says it though, just like the real Raven.

“It’s just – I’ve seen all sorts of shit in here.” I’m starting to panic, even with the reassuring presence of her here. “I need – tell me something only the real Raven would know.”

Raven lets go of me and sits back on her heels, pinching the bridge of her nose like she’s about to have an explosive headache from the sheer stupid. “So I’ll spare you the lecture, since we’re in a crisis, but that only works on real life impostors. We’re in a place where all the contents of your brain and your mind are out on display. If I were a figment of your imagination, I’d know everything you know. Including whatever proof you’d ask of the real me. You have to ask me to tell you something that you don’t know.”

It really is her. I lunge forward and hug her this time. “I am so, so glad to see you.”

Her arms are back around my shoulders and it feels like home. “Are you sure you don’t want to know how Cyborg keeps sneaking mods into your games so he can win?”

“That jerk. I’ll kick him in the shin when we get out.”

“Cyborg’s legs are metal, Beast Boy.”

I just hug her tighter. “I’ll figure something out.” Things finally start getting weird and I loosen my death grip on her just a little. “So, we should get out.”

“Exactly. Let’s get going.” She sits back on her heels again, without letting go of my arms. She examines the place, eyes tracing the tall trees until she has to crane her neck all the way back. “Wha…”

“Yeah. Something bad went down here, I think. I told you books rot the brain.”

She’s squinting up at them, frowning, but she doesn’t look horrified. “That’s…non-Euclidean geometry,” she says after a moment.

“Yeah. Too much Lovecraft, heh.” Shit, I hope she doesn’t think I mean I don’t want to read with her ever again! “I guess we’ll have to read some nice, safe fairy tales next?”

She ignores my jokes completely. “If crime fighting doesn’t work for you someday, you should look into something with art it in. Graphic design. Architecture.” That is awe on her face, there can’t be two different thoughts about it. Wheeeeeeeeew. Who turned on the heat in here? I hope I’m not blushing. Can I blush in here? I don’t want to find out, so I let go of her and stand up, pretending I want to look at the creepy cultist trees from another angle.

Hmmm. I guess, when you frame it that way, it is pretty amazing that this all came from my head. Maybe I could make my own comic books someday? I’d need to be a better writer first though, imagine being the kind of guy that gets dragged by the fans for drawing pretty pictures while ruining the characters. Maybe Raven can be my writer.

…she hasn’t been here five whole seconds and I’m already losing track of shit. Great. At least my dreamscape’s ignoring everything I think this time, it would be super awkward if it turned into a field of heart-shaped flowers, maybe with a statue of me kissing Raven in the middle.

Oh my god, the blushing is happening again. I can feel it. Stop!

“SO WHERE SHOULD WE GO?!” Whoops. That was a little loud. The creepy forest chooses that exact moment to act somewhat normal and makes my voice echo in ways that don’t match any natural rebound. By the time it’s died down, it’s like distant, evil creatures are repeating ‘go, go’ at us.

“This place is…a little unsettling.”

“I know. I’m not sure what happened to my dreamscape. Am I sick? Or, like, possessed?” Running a fever sounds like it might put a dreamscape out of whack.

“Not that I know of. We thought – never mind.” She walks around me and to the dead end. It’s stopped being a wall, but the trees sprung very low-growing branches while we were looking away, and now it’s them blocking our way. Raven grabs one and tries pulling. “If you’re going to take that headless puppet thing with us, you better put him somewhere safe.”

Oh, right, Puppet Beast Boy! I almost forgot about him. He’s hanging off my shoulder but about to fall, so I loop his strings around my forearm, securing him there. Wait a sec. “We?”

“Yeah. Me and the others.”

Uh oh. “Oh. So you guys…ah, noticed?”

That makes her release the tree and turn around, annoyed again. “Noticed? Try “frantic”. I’ve been trying to get through to this place for hours.”

“Hours?”

“Yes Beast Boy, hours. I could tell you slipped away ten, maybe fifteen minutes after you locked yourself in your room. I had to use shadows to get through. Then nobody could wake you up, and I couldn’t get into your dreamscape –“ she covers the lower half of her face with one hand and exhales. Is she…upset? She looks sort of upset, with how her voice is getting low and a little shaky. “Getting through was like trying to walk through a maze.”

“Hey. Hey, Rae. I’m sorry.”

She turns away from me, hugging her own arms. “Don’t apologize,” she informs the trees. “It’s...this is my fault. I should have realized at least one of us would have enough inner conflict to gravitate here on their own.”

“Huh?”

Raven turns back around, and she looks devastated – in Ravenesque of course. Her eyes are a little wider than usual, and her mouth is slack. “You know how loud noises make you turn without thinking? That’s what happens to the mind when the dreamscape is in turmoil, it’ll try to manifest in it. To fix it. The more upheaval there is in your dreamscape, the higher the chances of your mind just slipping away into it.”

“But I thought we were in my mind.”

She shakes her head. “Remember, the mind is an emergent product of the brain. And dreamscapes aren’t a place in your head. They’re sort of like little private pocket dimensions, created by our minds of course, but they almost have an independent life – almost. Like…um, the thought bubbles in comics? Dreamscapes are like a permanent little thought bubble-dimension you carry around.”

I can’t even enjoy the fact that Raven’s accepted comics as her lord and savior, or at least a source of equivalent to that. I’m scared. “So I’m…far from my body right now?”

She nods.

“And you! You’re like miles away from yours. Shit, We’ve gotta get back.”

Hints of upset come back into her face. “Don’t worry about me. I had a lot of trouble getting in here. I…I called to you. A lot. And you wouldn’t answer. I thought something very bad might have happened.”

So she was the voice I heard earlier? “I heard you, but it was so quiet, I had no idea whose voice it was. And your way in was this huge, landscape-bending bubble that looked like it wanted to eat me like a white blood cell in an eighties documentary. I kind of panicked.”

Her eyes go wide. “That does sound unsettling.” She sighs. “Whatever. I guess I can go do some remorse laps when we return. For now, let’s get out.” She turns back, stretching her arms in front of her like she’s going to try the trees again, when the branches blocking our path fall off of them with an almighty crash. The dead end is now a narrow corridor, with no alternate path between the trees for as far as I can see.

I look between her and the new little boulevard we’ve got. “Should we trust this path?”

Raven points at her back with her thumb. “What’s over there?”

“Titans Tower, the Lovecraft edition, and a sacrificial altar with blood on it.”

She grimaces.

I give the matter a little thought. “Going over there,” I say after a moment, pointing to where I’ve been, “sort of seems like going back, so I think we should go this way.” And I point to our new doorway.

“Is there any sense that going over there is right?”

I close my eyes and focus. Nothing but fear, a little despair, and the little thread of relief that comes with Raven’s presence come through. I hang my head. “No. But I came from there, and all I found were dead ends. Hell, this was a dead end until you showed up.”

Raven’s quiet for a moment before nodding, more to herself than to me. “OK. Lead the way.”

Once we’re through that little bottleneck, the trees lead us into narrower paths and wider paths seemingly without rhyme or reason. I wish I had some sense of direction, some way to know if we’re going the right way, but all we have is forward, no branching paths, no choices. All I’ve got is where I’ve been and where I haven’t been.

Guess it’s better this way though. It was a little overwhelming before, with so many choices.

And Raven being here helps. She walks to my right, really close to my side, and I don’t try to put any space between us. The backs of our hands brush every so often, which is great as far as I’m concerned. If things were different, if I thought I had any chance, I’d reach out and grab it, hold her hand in mine and feel her strength through it. I almost do, if only to see if the strength of the emotion that’s making my heart feel big, in spite of the fear, will make all these stupid trees bend over and die. But if nothing happened when Raven appeared, I don’t think anything will if I hold her hand.

(And what if she looks at me weird. What if…what if she shakes it off? No. I can’t do it.)

I’m so deep in thought that I only realize I’ve walked right past something once I’ve taken five steps away from it. It looks like…a branch in the path! We’ve got to check that out. “What’s that?” I turn around and jog back, Raven a purple-blue smudge at the edge of my vision, puppet Beast Boy doing funny little wooden creaks at my back.

It’s not another path, it’s just a little dead end that stops in a pair of trees with branches that grow so tight between them, it might as well be an actual wall. The Erised mirror is in it, or at least its frame is. The glass is spread over the floor in shiny pieces, but the penny, now turned into a golden apple permanently, is lying in the middle of the debris. “Hey, it’s our penny!”

“…call me crazy, but that doesn’t look like a penny.”

“It’s a penny sometimes, and a golden apple other times, but I guess it became an apple permanently after the mirror of Erised broke.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I think it’s supposed to be the penny I gave you when Trigon was about to return. So it’s yours.” I pick it up and put it in Raven’s hand.

“Um…”

“I’m not very good at symbolism and shit, but I could tell this was yours the moment I saw it.” When this place was back in the nice, normal-looking dream Tower, I knew this was the penny I’d given her, and you don’t take back gifts. Raven’s looking dubious, so I raise my hands. “Can’t give it back. Nu-uh, no backsies.”

Is Raven blushing? “Um…”

“You’ve got a pocket or something to put it in, right? I mean I guess it’ll just dissolve or something once we’re out, but it’s yours.” Puppet me might do that too, but I’ll at least try to get him somewhere nicer before that. If not, I’ll just pretend he melted off somewhere with Raven’s golden apple for company.

Yep, she’s blushing. She also looks like she isn’t listening to a word I say.

“He-llo?”

“Do you like mythology?”

Well that came out of left field. “Huh?”

“Do you like mythology? Greek myths? History?”

“Kind of. It was adjacent to my parents’ interests sometimes, and we did visit Greece once.”

“…OK. I…I’ll treasure this.” And she tucks the apple away somewhere.

Good. I look at the bits of glass on the floor and wonder if they could do any good. “Y’know, I don’t know if you care about them, but in the Harry Potter books, the Mirror of Erised shows you your real desires. Maybe one of them can help?” Nobody answers, so I swivel around, terrified that Raven will be gone when I do, but she’s just crouching right where I left her, lost in thought.

“Rae? Are you OK?”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah. Sure. Mirror of Erised, Harry Potter.” She cans the ground and starts frowning. “Beast Boy, the largest of these pieces is the size of a pinky nail. Supposing I could pick one up with energy, which I can’t, we’d still see just an eye or something at best. I’m not touching those sharp edges, and you shouldn’t either.”

“You can’t use your powers?” When she shakes her head, I suck my teeth in commiseration. “Yeah, I can’t morph either. It’s weird, because I could change before.”

She frowns harder, but doesn’t say anything. “Let’s keep moving.”

I don’t really notice it at first, even though I should. Once I do, I can’t believe it didn’t register before.

It starts like a sound of leaves being rustled by the wind, except it doesn’t stop, and there’s no breeze. I guess that why it sneaks up on me: I’m still half-convinced we’re in a natural, ordinary forest, and while the larger part of me realizes we’re not, the subtleties still get filed under ‘TOTALLY NORMAL PLEASE IGNORE’.

You know what sounds rustly but goes on and on, unlike leaves? Water. Running water. A lot of running water.

I freeze. “Rae...can you hear that?”

She stops and goes real still. “Is that a river…?”

Yeah, I was afraid she’d say that. “I – I guess.” I take a deep breath and keep walking. Can’t go back now.

So, Lovecraft went on and on about how the scariest things are the most alien, most different-from-normal things. But he wasn’t always right. True talk, his kind of horror really does it for me – hello non-Euclidean nightmare world all around us – but there’s times when what really horrifies us, me, is the familiar. And the sound of a river like this one, big and deep and strong, is horrible to me, the way recognizing the really bad bad guys on the streets is. You know the dude; you know his smug smile means he’s done something, something’s gonna blow up, and even though you know the drill, both of you know the realization’s come too late.

And just like it happens with the bad guys, there’s no escaping this: the path doesn’t fork. We’re being herded towards this river. We’ve got to keep walking

When we get to it, the path opens up wide and there it is: a huge river, bloated with flood waters, looking almost black in the half-darkness. Its low roar tells me everything I need to know about its depth and the strength of its currents. I’m suddenly glad for the creepy trees; they’re the only thing stopping this scene from turning into the exact one I relive in my nightmares sometimes. I bet there’s huge roaring falls a few miles (dream-miles?) down its waters. I half expect the phantom of a little research vessel to flow down as we watch, two biologists and a little green boy clinging to each other as they hurtle uncontrollably forward. I can’t morph; could he?

I paste on a smile before the goosebumps turn into shudders and turn to Raven. “So, what do we do, upstream or downstream? I can see the other side, but I don’t think we should swim across this.”

Raven is looking at me with soft eyes again. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“No idea, except not in there.” I don’t even want to consult my animal instincts on this, I am not going into that water. Hell, if some kind of watercraft appears somewhere around this place all ‘hello I’m just some innocent canoe thing, hop on, all aboard for the waking world!’ I am pushing it out into the river and waving goodbye at the thing as it tumbles down on the currents.  “Downstream. I guess.” If we reach the…gulp…the falls, it’ll be high ground we can survey the rest of this place from. I turn to the left of our tree hallway and start walking.

I…I don’t know what…how…I mean, Mom and Dad drowned. It’s a fact. I don’t know the specifics, and none of the people who…found them would have told baby Gar. And they’d be right. But for all I know, they were already gone when they reached that waterfall. I still got a sick feeling when I saw them, in bird form, as I tried to fly high enough to find help. I’m glad we haven’t been in a place like that since then.

(Mom and Dad had known I wouldn’t find help, even told me so, told me to go find a safe place. I think they were worried I’d feel guilty if the idea that I might have saved them somehow crossed my mind. I couldn’t have. That doesn’t make the guilt any easier.)

There are tears running down my face. I don’t even raise a hand to wipe them away; dead giveaway, I’d know that jerky hand-to-eye-level thing anywhere. I just let them flow, hidden from Raven’s eyes and safe under this dumb, fucking mom-and-dad-killing river’s noise. I can feel her eyes on my neck. I almost turn, surrender to her, I’m man enough to cry in front of her, but I feel like I’m barely holding it together as it is. I’ll break down. But not now.

The river’s wide, not Amazon wide of course. Less than a mile, maybe. But the narrow strip of patchy grass, black-green and short, and earth we’re walking is like four feet and a half, so the intense focus on not straying too close to the river’s edge distracts me after a while.

And, if that wasn’t enough to keep me busy, the same brand of messy torches from the Terra sacrifice site make a return not long afterwards. With so little space between the trees and the river, we have to kind of edge past them, and of course they’re still not giving light for shit – and super creepy besides, what with there being a whole-ass skull in there. I guess the burning rope was draped all terrible so we’d have the pleasure of seeing said skull, except I was too busy worrying about more important things the first time I found them.

Honestly, this just makes me angry. I look up at the sky, stuck near twilight, distorted by the huge trees, and raise my voice as high as it will go. “Really? Burning skulls, Brain? That is like soooo creative and creepy and not clichéd at all! Oh my god I’m terrified! What’s next, some Kali-inspired cultists? Are they gonna come at us all Kali Ma or Oogie Boogie or whatever is it they say, and try to take out our hearts? Actual Kali worshippers never even sacrificed people!” A hand slips onto my shoulder and squeezes – Raven – but I’m not pacified. “Come on! Come at me bro!” She squeezes again, and I can’t. I just can’t. I turn, and the waterworks behind my eyes are on again, because her other hand comes up and her thumbs are brushing tears away.

“You’ve had a hard time.” She’s telling, not asking. “No. You are, present tense.”

“Yeah, yeah…I am.”

“I realize this…this isn’t exactly the best time for words, but don’t be so hard on yourself. This is your head, not someone else’s brain. And definitely not the Brain’s work.”

Huh? Wow…I did actually say ‘Brain’, didn’t I? As in The Brain, the baddest bad guy barring perhaps Slade? Am I that angry at, well, myself? “Whoops. Didn’t notice.” Raven would clock that though. God I’m so glad she’s here.

“That’s what people call a Freudian slip. It’s OK though, I’ve felt like my own head is my arch nemesis sometimes. I mean, you saw.”

I did. A whole ass Trigon used to rampage in there. She just called it her mind, but I guess we went on an adventure in her dreamscape before we even knew it was a thing. “You sure you’re the real Raven? I don’t think she’s ever been this touchy feely.”

She smiles crookedly at me. “It’s…physical affection, touch in general, was really limited on Azarath. It wasn’t looked down on exactly, it’s just – awareness of your physical body makes it a lot harder to disconnect from it. The more separate you can be from it, the better for working on astral projection, meditation, everything. Or at least those were Azar’s teachings. I…I’ve learned a few different things about bodily awareness since. Guess I’d be a heretic to the monks now.” Her hands leave my face; I miss them right away. “But part of me always thinks I’m being invasive or violating some taboo when I touch people more than twice a year. Even if I know it’s helpful.”

This is why she’s great with really traumatized people, I guess. And don’t even get me started on how her whole misfit vibes makes kids in shitty situations relax around her. We all have a hard time saying goodbye to the teenagers at the shelters during outreach programs, especially the ones who got run out of their homes for dumb reasons like being gay or being unsure about their gender identity and all that, but they just flock to Raven. She is awesome. And I didn’t know the whole physical thing, so check another item off the Yeah This is Really Raven checklist. “Sorry. Just…for a moment there I was worried no help was coming, so I guess having someone in here is too good to be true. Woah, woah, I don’t mean I thought you’d all abandon me,” I clarify, seeing her eyes go all wide in shock, “I just thought I was that lost.”

“I know you’re the air-head comic relief guy, but I kind of brought down an interdimensional demon. I think I could have located some guy in his own dreamscape. I was more worried you’d gotten too hurt to call back when I called out.”

“You mispronounced ‘hunky’ there. And don’t look all surprised like ‘mispronounced’ is an S.A.T word!”

“I can tell you for a fact that ‘hunky’ isn’t an S.A.T word though.”

Just when the oppressive atmosphere looks like it’s lightening, just a little, a sound of branches being displaced rises over the running water. I turn to look behind Raven to someplace by the corner we turned, where the shadows are looking a little darker and more twitchy than they should be.

“Oh no.”

Of course, the thing resolves itself just as Raven is turning. I almost grab her, tell her to not look, don’t look, let’s run, never mind where just as long as it’s away from that…because it’s a dark, dark shadow, no features, no nothing. But I know it’s supposed to be Terra.

It was a matter of time, I guess. Every time I’ve been here, no, even before the first time I stepped into my dreamscape for the first, time, she’s either been on my mind, or right on the edge of it, for better or for worse. And after walking through that sacrificial site, I know she’s here to haunt us in the worst way.

Beast Boy.

This time it’s clear that it’s a whispery version of Terra’s voice, except it changes pitch all throughout every word she says. It goes from high to slowed-down-audio horrific.

Beast Boy. It’s me. Won’t you help me? Won’t you rescue me?

Never mind my insecurities, I grab for Raven’s hand and hightail it.

You left me behind. You let Slade destroy me. And now you’re abandoning me.

“Beast Boy! Don’t listen to her! She’s not real!”

I know she’s not, but that doesn’t make me any more calm.

You didn’t love me enough. You turned your back on me. If you loved me more, eeeeverything would have been OK.

I can’t tell if that’s the roaring of the river, the…falls…or just the rush of blood in my ears. I don’t know if what I heard at my back was Raven gasping from shock or gasping for air.

You didn’t love me. And I don’t like that. So now she’ll die too.

I’m a sneeze from going berserk, full on one-man stampede, when Raven’s hand in mine hauls me back and I trip over my feet, my back whacking her off balance too. I fall onto her, eyes to that damn sky for a second, whispers of Terra all over – and the unmistakable roar of falls right in front of us. I almost had us run right over the edge.

Raven squirms under me and I shoot bolt upright. “I – I’m sorry. I just. I…”

She’s getting to her feet. “It’s OK. But we have to stop.”

Beast Boy.

“Um…”

“Ignore her.”

“I can’t.”

Beast Boy. Do you know how long you were away? You never came. After Trigon, you never came once.

I cover my ears and sink onto the ground.

Beast Boy. You were too busy, weren’t you? I wasn’t gone a full year, and already…already…

“Garfield. Gar.”

Something twists in my entire heart when Raven says my name. It snaps me out of it. I look up at her from where I’ve ended up, in a little heap on the ground.

“Hey there. I’ve figured it out. Are you listening? I think I’ve figured out what we need to do to get out of here.”

Beast Boy.

“Gar. Do you trust me?”

Her eyes. My name in her voice. Terra’s voice is fading already, and I feel like I can’t look away from Raven’s eyes. I sit up, and I nod so hard, I feel like my ears might slap me in the face.

“Then – then we need to go out into the river, away from the falls. And we need to sink.”

“No!”

“Listen to me,” she says, grabbing both my hands. She’s trying to prevent them from moving and distracting me. Which would be a great idea if my eyes weren’t already glued to her face. “All the…the mental decay. The Terra monsters. It’s not a demon and you’re not sick. I suspected before, but now I know for sure. It’s…symbolism? I guess?”

“What?”

“I’ll explain when we get out of here, but basically, whatever inner conflict of yours created this entire world isn’t a fear of monsters or of the dark. It’s hiding something else. You’re safeguarding the real source of your fears with all of these more tangible horrors. But I think this is the dream’s umbilicus. This one part that represents the unrepresenta – OK, never mind,” she says, a little exasperated with herself, “I’ll break out the slides later. What I mean is that this one thing that scares you so much, more than the Terras and the forest, is the way into the inner conflict – and out of here. And that’s the river. So we have to sink.”

It sort of makes sense. When you think about it, this place is way out of sync with everything else we’ve seen: it scares the shit out of me of course, but it’s like I said before, super familiar, when everything else just went super not.

It also sounds real damn terrifying.

I’m shaking a little as I move my hands, weaving them as tight as I can into Raven’s. She can tell, of course, and her eyes widen just a little. Enquiry.

“My parents drowned.”

Raven’s eyes go soft in the light of my imaginary moon. “Your files just said it was a boating accident.” Oh. Right. She’s been snooping in my files too. I forget.

“Their boat went under on a river after monsoon season and the currents dragged them.”

Raven doesn’t say anything, just squeezes my hands tight. She turns to look at the river, and so do I. Terra-shadows, all weakly calling my name, have sprouted in every last place where the half-light shines the least. But, as personal as Beast Boy is, the core of me is Garfield Logan - a moment's effort is all it takes to separate myself from the way the Terra-shadows are saying it. I might change my hero name someday, who knows, I won’t be a boy forever. But I’ll always be Garfield Logan, Mark and Marie’s son. (Terra never even knew my real name).

“I trust you, Raven.” It’s me who takes the first step towards those horrible dark, murky waters. Did you know running water could be murky? If the flood makes it muddy enough, it is. I’d take it for oil if it didn’t run so smooth.

We walk to the river hand in hand. My toe touches it first; I recoil a little, before I can catch myself. “Um…so, how do you feel about stank ball?”

“Dumbest game in the history of planet Earth.”

“It’s America’s fastest growing sports sensation. But hey, I guess I know it’s Raven walking into who knows what with me.” At this point, I’m not really testing her for impostorship. I’m just doing it for comedic effect, because I feel like we deserve a last laugh if…if something goes wrong. I sneak a glance at my forearm: hold tight, puppet Beast Boy. We’re all in this together.

The river is ankle deep, then knee deep, then waist deep at the center. My heart is beating like a jackhammer as the water soaks into my uniform. “Rae, is it normal to have all these bodily sensations in here? Like, my pulse and my heart and my lungs?”

“The more you feel like that, the more…absorbed you are in the dreamscape. But don’t worry, we’ll get out of here.”

“What…what do I do?”

“I guess you just let go. Not of me though…just stop fighting whatever it is this river represents to you.”

She turns and tugs a little on our hands, pulling me towards her. I’m so, so done with pretense: I let go of her hands and throw my arms around her, gathering her close. The way I should have done after Malchior instead of just standing there frozen, like an idiot. I turn my head, my forehead pressed against Raven’s neck so hard I can almost feel the slight tick of her pulse.

And that is bad, because it means both of us must have become totally absorbed by this pocket dimension I’ve created, but right now all I want is to hold Raven as close as I can, screw keeping my cover as her completely sexless, super platonic friend or whatever. I love her, as my friend and as something else, and I’m so, so glad it’s her, here, right now.

I let the memories of the last time I saw my parents wash over me: the terror, the horrible, sinking feeling when I realized I could get away, but they couldn’t. Our last hug. Their last shouts. The sight of their boat getting smaller as I flew higher; I couldn’t control my morphing at all back then. I think I saw a flicker of relief when I finally managed to turn into a bird. The shock. The disbelief. The roar of those damn falls.

We start sinking. I can feel her arms grasping me back.

“Rae…”

“I’m here.”

She’s so close I can hear the words and feel them.

The sinking accelerates, and we’re swallowed in cold, dry, breathable but total darkness before I can say another word.