A/N: Hey guys, long time no see. I'm still alive and hopefully I'll be able to post a little more frequently now. I'm not going make promises, I'll just let the continued updates speak for me. Thanks for your loyalty and patience.

The gym was alive with the music of repeated thuds and grunts, Beast Boy sought to release his pent up energy into the punching bag reserved for himself and Robin.

While Starfire and Cyborg could pass as human on the street if they wished, here in the exercise room their true natures made it difficult to accommodate such strength. Their punching bags were kevlar sacks filled with concrete dust, their weights little more than lead blocks on either end of solid steel bars. Such was the construction of their equipment that the one time Beast Boy had attempted to use it he had almost broken his arm.

Thus, the gym was divided into four sections, the Brawler Section (For Robin and Beast Boy) the Super Section (For Cyborg and Starfire) the Sparring Mat, and the Human Section (For Raven). The Human Section had an assortment of treadmills, light punching bags and various weight machines that one of the other Titans would have destroyed in the course of their everyday fitness routine. Something about Raven's partition being called "Human" had brought a half-smile to the sorceresses face, the wording reminding her that here, among aliens and shapeshifters, she was almost… Normal.

Garfield shook his head, trying to free himself of such thoughts.

Here in the training room he was supposed to be focused, fired up, a fitness machine. In the days leading up to the Gala he had let his physical training lapse, a fact Robin would be quick to pick up on if he allowed himself to continue the trend.

Fate, as it so happened, hated him.

Raven, the purple haired, pallid girl herself, walked into the gym in her shorts and tank top. Garfield all but growled at this development, slamming his fists into the bag with renewed vigour. Raven frowned at him before floating to her treadmill and beginning to run.

So they continued, the sounds of Raven's feet falling on the belt of the treadmill beating a tattoo in Beast Boy's head. Thud-THUD Thud-THUD Thud-THUD. Soon enough his fists sunk into the bag at the same pace, matching her rhythm, her gait.

The changeling realised what was happening and stepped back with a deep sigh, closing his eyes only to realise that the tattoo of Raven's feet was gone.

"Are you angry at me?" The Sorceress asked, inches from him.

Garfield gasped and spun, his hand clutching the space above his heart. "RAE! Don't do that!" He whined, breathing deeply from the workout and Raven's unexpected proximity. "No, I'm not angry at you. Not really. It's just… Why did you spring that on me at breakfast?"

"I didn't mean for it to surprise you." Raven said with a frown. "You wanted the others to know, so I told them. You don't have to keep secrets now."

Emotion whirled within the green teen, before his eyes lost focus and his lips began moving silently. Again, the taste of his consciousness left Raven, no joy or anger or self doubt. He became blank to her, as though he had ceased to exist.

But she could still see him, hear his laboured breath.

"Stop." She said tiredly. "Just stop Garfield"

There it was, a chink in that wall. For a moment, she caught the scent of his feelings, and just that small inkling was enough to almost bowl her over.

"Gar, you're scaring me." She said weakly, reaching out to grasp his wrist. "Tell me what's going on with you, with us?"

The shapeshifter paused, and then sighed, allowing his concentration to slip and the emotion within to pour out.

Rage and grief, jealousy and warmth, hope and utter, desolate doubt.

"I wanted to keep you to myself." Garfield muttered with self-hatred. "Like a possession, a shiny new toy. I'm so sorry Rae."

Beast Boy crouched down, grabbing fistfuls of his emerald hair. "Robin and Star have each other, and Cy has Sarah, but there's still this THING in me, this sick desire to keep you away from them."

Raven was blindsided. At the table she had assumed he resented her sudden honesty, but instead it was something far harder to deal with. She knelt down beside the distraught young man, careful not to touch him. "Is it your primal side?"

Garfield barked out a harsh laugh. "Sure, I could blame it on that. Penguins are known to cut off their mate's interaction with other males, so are lions and walrus's. No, this isn't like that..."

He took a breath, steadying himself, but the panic had already set in. "I'm scared Rae. Terra was just using me, but it hurt so bad when she left. Everyone leaves me, sooner or later. They get tired of me, or annoyed. I'm nothing, nobody, not worth sticking around for."

"Stop it." Raven said firmly, taking Garfield's face in her hands gently. "Please Gar. I'm here, and I'll be here tomorrow. A thousand tomorrows from now, I'll still be here."

"What if I'm not the one?" He murmured. "What if we can't make this work?"

"Then we go back to being friends." Raven said reassuringly, before leaning closer. "But I don't want to go back. I'll make it work."

They sat, Raven cradling Garfield's head in her hands, for a while. Before long though, Raven started desiring answers.

"How did you block me out?" She asked shakily. "No one outside the League has done that to me."

"Mento made us all train to keep people from our minds." Beast Boy muttered flatly, taking her hands from his face gently and getting to his feet. "I wasn't that great at it, could only keep a barrier up if I concentrated on saying the alphabet backwards. It was meant to be a last ditch attempt to keep people from attacking our thoughts."

"Do you feel like I'm attacking you?" Raven frowned, looking away from him.

"No!" Beast Boy yelped, as though the idea had stung him. "I just think… Sometimes I need to take a moment, to gather myself."

He offered her a hand and she allowed herself to take it, rising with his help. "Why though? You've never tried to keep me out before."

"I wasn't so close to you before, and I didn't want to scare you now that's changed." He admitted, looking away. "The Doom Patrol said my emotions were erratic and uncontrolled. Inhuman."

Raven scowled, Rage overtaking her for a single, indulgent moment before she exhaled slowly and let it pass. "I'm more scared by the nothingness than any wild emotion you might have." The sorceress smiled. "Inhuman is something I can understand pretty well, wouldn't you say?"

Garfield chuckled slightly, before sighing. "Rob and Starfire make this look so easy, but it isn't is it? How do we make this work… How do we make us work?"

"You're asking me?" Raven said bluntly. "This is the second relationship I've been in Beast Boy, I'm just as lost as you."

"You don't seem lost." The changeling muttered, giving the punching bag a half-hearted whack. "Do you know where do we go from here?"

"How about the roof?"

Sunset left the water of Titan Island sparking in russet hues and golden reflections. Across the water they could see the skyscrapers and bayside buildings glimmer as their windows caught the light of a sinking sun.

"I can see why you like it here." Beast Boy nodded appreciatively, slipping his hand into her own. "It's peaceful."

They drifted over to a corner of the rooftop, where Raven crossed her legs and levitated a few feet off the ground. Beast Boy sat down on the Tower's ledge, undaunted by the vertigo inducing drop behind him. "Now what?"

"You think I'm going to be scared by whatever emotions are rattling around in your head?" Raven asked with a raised brow. "My mother was a cultist who bore the spawn of a demon and then spent the next several years refusing to show me any kind of love in the fear I wouldn't be able to handle something so human."

Garfield recoiled slightly, shaking his head to try and catch up with the turn of events. "But you are human Rae."

The sorceress sighed, patting her companion's knee. "That isn't how you do this Gar. I say something, then you match it. Okay?"

The changeling frowned. "Why?"

"Just try it." She suggested wearily.

"Okay..." He rubbed the back of his head "When I was barely old enough to walk I had already been to five different countries. I don't know what language is my first because my parents refused to speak anything but the local dialect. Because we moved so much I never had any lasting friends, and when my folks died I was left with no one."

"The monks of Azarath wouldn't let me play with the other children because they thought I would hurt them instinctively. Azar was the only one who ever smiled at me, and after she died I was left with a mother I barely knew trying to teach me that feeling any kind of emotion was wrong." Raven salvoed, floating slightly closer.

"I spent the first three years after my parent's were gone with an abusive carer who forced me to shift into animals so that I could steal jewellery, then he tried to have me killed so that he would inherit my parent's money." Came Beast Boy's counter, his eyes tightening slightly at the memory.

Raven paused, slightly thrown by the new information before forging on. "When I came to Earth I tried to join the Justice League, but Zatana warned them against me and I spent the next year trying to avoid any of the "Heroes" that had spurned me, because I was afraid they'd lock me away."

The changeling's face went tight with fury, indignant at Raven's treatment. "The first and last gift Mento ever gave me was to hide my deformity."

As he looks down at his gloved right hand, Raven's left settles over it. "I killed more people than I can count, and it still keeps me up at night."

"You didn't-" He began, before Raven kissed him lightly.

"No, I didn't." Raven says with a smile, tugging off his glove and weaving her fingers between his. "And you're not deformed."

The sun had fallen, by the time either of them spoke again. Raven had taken to the ledge with Beast Boy and their legs dangled freely over the side. Raven lent her head on Garfield's shoulder before asking quietly. "What was his name? The man that you lived with after your parent's accident?"

"Gantry." He whispers. "Nicholas Gantry. The Doom Patrol sent him to jail after they stopped the thugs he had hired to kill me."

"And they adopted you after that?" She stated, more than asked. "Mento doesn't seem like the type."

"He wasn't." Beast Boy admitted with a slightly bitter tone. "Rita- Elasti-Girl, talked him into it."

"Was Rita a good carer?"

"I don't know about "Carer", but she was a great mom." Garfield laughed. "If she wasn't who she is, and I wasn't… me, I think I would have had one of those happily ever after deals that you hear about orphans getting in the stories. I missed out on that with the Doom Patrol, but I'm more than happy to try again here."

"Happily ever after?" Raven smiled lightly. "I suppose it could happen."

"Hmmm." Beast Boy hummed, watching the stars begin to appear. "Do you think Robin will just leave well enough alone?"

"No." Raven said flatly. "I think we have some heavy talking downs to look forwards to."

"Spectacular."