Disclaimer: Sorry I've been gone for forever and a day, but there was a family emergency which, among other things, caused me to be confused with Dial-A-Shrink. I'm back from the dead now and have informed the rest of the family to go kill things in video games, as it's more productive than trying to get psychiatric help from me- I could use some myself, and I like being crazy.

This chapter beta'd by ShinobiCyrus. Thanks, Cy!

One Which Makes the Heart Run Over

"It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place- everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it."

---The Winter of Our Discontent;John Steinbeck.

11.

Bolthole

"Starfire, when I said to think of Beast Boy…was there anything else on your mind?" Raven gritted her teeth and found she was devoutly thankful that her powers did not have adverse consequences inside her friend's minds. "Anything at all, Star."

"Er…"

Raven turned slowly and glared at Starfire- or would have, if she hadn't noticed with a jolt that Beast Boy was looking around curiously. He was showing more interest than he had in days.

"W-well, Raven, you see I was…I may have been…somewhat distracted. I was thinking of what you had told me at our last session, about…er…Robin…"

"That's what I thought," Raven said absently, still watching Beast Boy and then glancing around herself. The most noticeable thing in the area was also the biggest, a portrait that took up an entire wall. She moved towards it; it had lifesize images of her, Beast Boy, Robin, and Cyborg, but painted in shadows behind them were Trigon, the Beast, Red X, and 'Stone', respectively. At the far left was an empty space. She could tell quite easily who it belonged to, because Starfire had her own picture off to the side, minus the dark side shadow.

It was pretty impressive, actually, that Starfire could bring them into Robin's mindscape. Beast Boy had no psychic shielding to speak of; his mind almost welcomed others in. That might have been a curse when fighting Mad Mod but it was a blessing in the situation they were in now. Robin, on the other hand, had the mental equivalent of a reinforced brick wall.

With armed guards and turrets.

It was exceedingly difficult to make any sort of mental jump into his mind- unless, apparently, you were Starfire.

Starfire. Where had she gone? She'd been right next to her a minute ago!

Starfire, not noticing Raven's caution, was looking around with wide eyes and flew towards the ceiling of the cave for a better view. Bats flew at her from the shadows and she dropped back beside Raven with a startled shriek.

"W-what is going on?" Star asked, shaken.

Raven felt Beast Boy shift into a cat and leap to her shoulder. She didn't rebuke him. "Robin's mind is much better guarded than Beast Boy's. It's not safe here." She was very, very glad Starfire wasn't an empath in her own right. Bad enough that her nervousness was echoing down her link with Beast Boy- there wasn't enough of her to go around to keep both him and Star calm.

"How is it not safe?"

"I-"

But Raven never got to finish, because something suddenly slammed into her and knocked her not only out of Robin's mind- but out of her own as well-

-and suddenly she was tumbling, falling, drowning, reaching, and her reaching found a swirl of emotion and memory that was and wasn't hers and she felt so strongly that she had to get away that made it hard to breathe, hard to think. There was a strong sense of this is not home, mixed with aching longing and the lurking thought that if she could just-go- get away- there were a million other places she could try-she could shift into a wolf or a hawk or a dolphin and just go, join a pack or -

Those were the thoughts that snapped her back to herself, mind still vibrating with an intensity of feeling. She was in Beast Boy's room still, though Starfire was nowhere to be seen. Beast Boy had shifted to a cat in reality and was curled up tightly at her side with his tail flicked over his eyes.

She gathered him up in her arms, unlatched the window and stepped out onto a dark disk of energy, before bolting towards the forest. She knew she should stay, report to Robin, check on Starfire, but she was half in Beast Boy's mind still. Her sight was doubled, she still felt the overwhelming urge to flee deep into the woods and the wild, and with her consciousness split the way it was she couldn't fight that urge. She darted out across the ocean until she came to shore again some miles away in a heavily wooded area.

Raven set them down in the lower branches of a towering oak. She felt safe, finally, beneath the thick cover of the branches. She recognized the spot, which was alarming because she'd never been there before.

Now she could sit down and analyze what in hell had just happened. Beast Boy meowed loudly and she set him down, half-hoping he would return to his human form but knowing he wouldn't. He darted past her on the wide branch and pawed at a knothole in the trunk. Raven frowned and twisted so she could reach in and pull out whatever he was worrying at.

She found herself with a battered journal in her hand, the kind of tiny notebook general stores sold for under five dollars. It was green. She stared at it until Beast Boy placed one paw on it and meowed plaintively. The message was as clear as words to her.

Open it. Read.

Raven opened it. She would have read the first page, except that it was a drawing of a raven, or the second, but it was in a language she didn't know. She flipped to the third page, then rifled briefly through the rest of the little book before coming back to the beginning.

Drawings. Song lyrics. Quotes. Poems. Letters in another language.

Picture of a raven. A bear. A monkey, a rabbit, a tiger cub. Several of rock formations and of Terra.

She recognized some of the sayings. Some of them made her smile. "Communism is when man exploits man. Capitalism is exactly the opposite." "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." "When you do not like the fight, change the rules." "It is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."

Raven smirked at the last one. He lived by that most of the time. She flipped through the pages again, found a song, and read some of the lyrics quietly. "It's the beginning of the end/You know nothing lasts forever/ The beginning of a trend/You need someone there to care for you…" Raven trailed off. She knew the song, but she wouldn't have expected Beast Boy to know it. She snapped the journal shut abruptly and set it aside. On a hunch, she reached back into the knothole, hoping absently that no animals happened to live in it. One half of her split mind assured her that none did.

She drew back slowly and looked at what she held- a tattered photograph and a silver choker. She looked at the choker first. It was a gift from Terra, though she wasn't the one who remembered that, and it had a worn golden tag in the shape of a bone that had Beast Boy's name on it. Originally it had been a joke, but…

Raven shook her head firmly and glanced at Beast Boy, who had curled up against the trunk and flicked his tail across his nose. His eyes peered out at her. "Keep your memories to yourself," she said flatly. "I can't think with them crowding in like that." She put the choker back.

She picked up the photograph. A little blond boy with his parents, grinning as his father tousled his hair, somewhere deep in a jungle. There was a rip at one edge that was sealed over with clear tape.

The edge of the tree branch crackled with black energy.

Raven swallowed hard and put the photo back, then put the journal back as well. Beast Boy stretched, returned to hole and knocked a rock he'd apparently shoved aside earlier back to block the opening.

She twisted around on the branch, swinging her legs out into the air so she could turn and out her back to the trunk. Beast Boy mewed and leapt onto her lap where he curled up trustingly. The sun was sinking; they'd been gone a while. Raven closed her eyes and thought.

Robin's mental defenses were just as good as she had feared. Somehow, he had not only knocked her out of his mind but through her link with Beast Boy into the shifter's mind. That would explain why she was suddenly feeling his memories and thoughts as strongly as her own. Well, maybe not that suddenly, she amended after a moment. She'd been having flashes of his emotion and memories since she had first begun Dreamwalking to his dreams, but this…this was different. Before they had been distinct flashes, while now they seemed to be merging with her own. Although…she couldn't remember exactly when she'd stopped thinking seeing his memory flashes had become a regular part of life. That troubled her.

Focus. She had to focus. Robin would be wondering where they went. They'd been missing more than long enough for him to be truly alarmed, and he'd been a wreck recently. She shifted her weight and was again hit by emotions. Here. Here is safe. Deep in the forest. The branch above them snapped with energy and fell. Raven sat back and reached for Robin instead. She dropped almost unthinkingly into Beast Boy's dreamscape, where the wolf waited for her on the carousel. She went to him with Beast Boy's soulself and they all stepped together onto the red metal, which was softly glowing.

They emerged back into the Birdcave. Raven immediately dodged in one direction with the soulself close behind as the wolf dove in another direction. She skidded to a halt and turned to see the apparition of Red X vanish. That Robin would have the Red X persona as a defense, even now, alarmed her. That wasn't the problem right now, she told herself, and steeled herself to wait.

In moments Robin's soulself appeared before them. "Where are you?" he demanded immediately, agitated. Raven could sense his worry and frustration. The wolf slunk up beside her.

She started to say "in the woods," then thought better of it. Obviously this place was special to Beast Boy and she wouldn't be the one to betray it. Judging by the state of what was hidden in the knothole, he hadn't been coming here long. "We're somewhere safe, and it looks like we'll be staying here a while. Starfire made a bit of a wrong turn Dreamwalking," now there was an understatement, "and your defenses threw me all the way down the link with Beast Boy." Raven paused, considering what else she should say and how to phrase it. "Our minds are linked too strongly for me to undo right now, and he wants to stay right here, so I'm not going anywhere. Even if I could, his emotions are having an effect on my powers. Can you handle things without me for a bit?"

He didn't like it, she could read that in his face. After a moment he acquiesced. "You have your communicator?"

She nodded. "Always." They'd had too many mishaps in the past for her not to carry the thing, the Brotherhood of Evil mishap notwithstanding.

Robin frowned. "I've been calling you on it." His tone stopped just short of an accusation.

"I didn't hear it," she told him honestly. "I was distracted." Then, "Can you do group sessions with the others until I get back? I'll Dreamwalk to Starfire as often as possible, but that may not be very often."

After a moment Robin nodded. Raven sighed, then reached down to ruffle the wolf's fur as they withdrew from Robin's mind, through Beast Boy's mind, until she was back in her own body. She opened her eyes and saw that it was full dark. Beast Boy was still in her lap; as she glanced down at him he turned slowly back to his human form, his legs now dangling slightly off her lap as he huddled closer. She wrapped one arm around him and settled more firmly against the tree trunk. The branch was wide, and comfortable, and she didn't really feel like trying to find somewhere more secure in the dark. She would sleep here, and worry about finding them some place more secure in the morning.

She could feel Beast Boy's emotions and memories teasing at the edge of her own, and knew with an almost-certainty that she was going to share his dreams whether she wanted to or not. At least now she'd still be able to feel rested.

She'd been trying to fix everything from the start, but it seemed things were just spiraling downhill.

Her last thought as she drifted into sleep was Dear Azar, I hope I can fix this.

Their dreams were strange that night. They ran, ghosting through the trees, silent and intangible as a phantom even as they plunged up to their haunches in swift clear water and drank deeply from the stream. They were free, no one would ever collar them again. They were of the good clean wild. Their head shot up and their ears laid back at a distant sound echoing through the forest. They leapt back to the bank and then they ran and ran and ran, nothing existed but the sharp fresh air that carried the scents of the world around them rushing by.

Raven woke disoriented at first light. She stretched and felt muscles pop. Sleeping in a tree probably wasn't good for them, she noted wryly. She looked down at Beast Boy, still huddled against her. His chest was still rising and falling in sleep, so she shifted herself around a bit to get more comfortable and lay back again, not wanting to wake him.

She knew what the dream had been about, but that didn't make it any less odd. She'd been running with the Beast in the part of Beast Boy's mind he claimed. She moved one arm carefully around her friend's sleeping form and rubbed wearily at her forehead and wondered how hard Robin had thrown her through the link if she was now able to feel the Beast as clearly as Beast Boy himself. The Beast was…wild. Not the unthinking wildness she had always privately expected, but a wild that was constituted of a life in the now. Anything that was not immediate was of lesser importance.

She could see what was calling so strongly to Beast Boy.

A life of freedom, without responsibility, without answering to anyone but herself. Living wild and free. It called her, too.

She couldn't have it. Neither could he, and somewhere, he knew it. That didn't stop… either of them… from wanting it. The branch crackled warningly again and Raven forced her emotions back into a semblance of control.

Beast Boy was stirring. When he was mostly awake, she slid off the branch onto her dark energy disc and set about looking for somewhere more secure to sleep, and something to eat.

GuardianSaiyoko: Credit to ShinobiCyrus for being beta, for the header quote, and for the photo in the knothole. The journal is the equivalent of one of mine, with the exception that my twin brother periodically steals mine and writes/draws in it. To anyone who thinks you can't sleep in a tree- I've done it. It's quite comfortable unless you roll over or something startles you. Plus my favorite tree was above a bike path, and well, people don't look up. Oh, the prank potential. Of course, I can sleep just about anywhere that isn't on fire, so that doesn't say a whole lot.

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