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 ringing with very 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 it's 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 on 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 on this side of the glass. I reach my hand 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 after being uninvited.

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.