Thank you to everyone who reviewed, including TheForceIsStrongWithThisOne who suggested that perhaps the Justice League should be notified after such a blatant attack on Earth, and to Hellborne95 for your continued support!

I promised myself that this would only be a 10 chapter fic, but I may bleed the epilogue into Chapters 10 and 11 instead (hopefully no more but we'll see).

I feel like I put our characters through a lot, so I want them to be able to realistically come out the other side having changed or learned something about themselves. They've also been quite hurt, and that takes time to heal, so this chapter - and possibly the next - is a little more dramatic in tone (see warning below).

So, please enjoy Chapter 10!

CHAPTER WARNING: Angst & Hurt & Pain & Other sad things...

-Song

Robin, Starfire, and Raven rendezvoused back at the T-Car and found Cyborg still sitting on the road, leaning heavily against the T-Car's rear bumper.

Cyborg had paled when he saw Raven still cradled in Starfire's arms.

"What the Hell happened out there?"

"She will live," Starfire said, and the relief was still evident in her face. It brought Cyborg only a small amount of comfort.

"But Beast Boy is gone," Robin added.

"Gone?"

"As soon as Starfire gave Raven the antidote the Beast took him somewhere. Off into the woods."

"Shouldn't we go looking for them?"

"We can't right now."

"But…" Cyborg hesitated. He didn't want to say, what if this time he doesn't come back?

"You're exhausted and Raven needs immediate attention," Robin continued, "I'm sorry. Beast Boy will have to wait. Now, about getting home…?"

"Taken care of," Cyborg said. His eyes were heavy. He was exhausted and worried about his best friend. "My comms system finally booted back up. Called for the T-Ship. Autopilot should be here in less than twenty."

"Good thinking."

The sun was setting around them. There was nothing to do now but wait.

"So," Cyborg said, shifting a little to face them, "tell me everything."

It had been two weeks since the Xalta aliens had come to Earth to study its soil and plants to decide if it was worthy of colonization.

Robin logged the mission immediately after returning to the Tower. He recorded how they had been merciful to five Xalta aliens, but no Qival had survived. He also noted that the Beast had disappeared almost immediately upon hearing that Raven would live. Its mission fulfilled, it took their shared body deep into the forest and did not return.

Robin sat in front of his desk with a pen flicking absently between his fingers. It did backflips and front flips, and at one point, it slipped. Robin watched as it fell to the carpeted floor with a light thunk.

The open log document on his computer stared at him, the cursor blinking slowly on and off, expecting more. He began writing about Tamaran, about how Starfire had left to visit with her home planet, and to tell her people that Xaltan researchers had not only been spotted in Earth's sector but had been thwarted and their research destroyed.

Tamaran had decided to take offensive action; they wanted to put a stop to any Xaltan advancements immediately, for fear that their chemical weaponization of poisons was too deadly to ignore. Starfire elected to stay in Tamaran until a preliminary mission had been completed, whenever that was.

Robin missed her.

Cyborg and Raven had recovered. Cyborg had recovered fully, although he was now even more determined to fix his tech, to make himself stronger. Raven, in contrast, was slowly but surely coming back to some semblance of what she was before. There was, she noted, slight numbness in her left hand that caused her difficulty in doing normal tasks. Cyborg had promised to investigate it with as many scans and tests as it took. Raven had thanked him, but between tests, she kept mostly to herself, and Robin noted that her hopes weren't high.

Robin didn't log all of that, of course, just the important parts. Still, it seemed like the mission was finally being tied up in a neat little bow.

Except for one thing.

Beast Boy still hadn't returned.

Robin pushed himself back from the desk and swiveled in his chair to face the many monitors at his back, reading the data and compartmentalizing it. The city was at a temporary peace, Starfire was still in another world, and somewhere within the Tower, Raven and Cyborg were taking it easy. He would have to make an appearance at the Justice League soon who, like Tamaran, would need more information on what had occurred.

Robin took a breath.

The front door camera showed that the ocean was calm, and Robin knew that the summer air was finally cooling down into the end of August and the early hints of autumn. It would have been a perfect night to walk along the shore, but now wasn't the time.

Right now, Robin couldn't quiet his mind, which was still focused on the worrisome possibility that Beast Boy may never come back.

Each and every time, it was becoming harder and harder to come back from the Beast.

Sometimes, when the Beast was let out, the real Garfield didn't come back for hours. Sometimes even days. Being in the backseat of his own mind was scary, as though he were in a vivid fever dream of teeth and hunting and blood. The smell of deer or bear in his nose and flesh on his tongue. Sometimes he would black out altogether.

Those were the worst times.

Then, like waking from a fever dream when you're sicker than sick, Beast Boy would open his heavy eyes and see nothing but sky or ceiling. Or he would feel the grains of dirt clogging his nose as he woke naked in an unfamiliar forest or cave. His head would be foggy and pounding, his muscles sore and his skin hot to the touch, and his hair standing on end.

In the woods, before he had transformed, Raven had asked him not to do it; she knew that he was taking a risk, even if it was for her. It was always a gamble, embracing the Beast, letting him out, but it was also his most powerful weapon.

And like with every powerful weapon, there would always be a fallout, a price to pay.

It was getting harder each time to pay it.

Beast Boy woke those two weeks later lying on a small, secluded beach along the west coast of Washington State. The sound of the ocean was roaring in his ears. He blinked and stared over the wide expanse of water, squinting into the shining sunlight.

"Where have you brought us?" he asked the Beast, who was now hibernating, exhausted, in the back of his mind.

Garfield Mark Logan had finally come back into possession of his body, but all he wanted was to sleep. Yet sleeping naked on a beach, even a secluded one, was what he had been doing for possibly hours now. It was time to go home, however long it took.

He stood and winced. His ankle felt tender, and he could see a few bruises that had appeared all along his green skin. Without a mirror, it was too hard to assess the full damage, and he couldn't stand here naked for long. He ran his tongue over his teeth and felt the scraps of whatever meal the Beast had eaten before his hibernation. He stretched, felt the pop in his spine from sleeping on the sand, and morphed into whatever felt most comfortable at the time. For now, it was a spaniel dog whose padded paws trekked along the warm sand at a steady pace.

He pointed his nose south and headed for home.

Raven sat along the shore of the Titans island and dipped her feet into the still-warm waters.

That summer had been hot, almost unbearable. But it was sunset now, so she felt comfortable enough to crawl from her room – more like her cave – and venture outside.

It made her feel closer to life.

Her room was usually her sanctuary and would be again given enough time, but for now, it just felt like a sickroom—a place where someone went to die.

Or who had just come back from the edge of death.

Starfire had explained it to her before she'd left for Tamaran. How Raven's skin would peel away the necrotic flesh that had died and be replaced with new, sensitive skin, and that she would slowly gain her strength back. Cyborg had told her how her heart had been incredibly strained and that it would take time for it to recover fully; how her powers might leave her breathless.

He also said that he still wasn't sure why her hand was numb - "Might be nerve damage, too soon to tell." - and that she should just give it time.

Raven flexed her left hand and felt the fingers' slight delay in responding to her properly. She felt lucky to be right-handed, as she could still write and cook and craft her spells like before, but she'd broken a teacup yesterday when she tried to stop it from tumbling with her left hand. The nerves might have been damaged or deadened, but she could only hope that Cyborg would find a way to fix them; science, after all, was making leaps and bounds these days.

She stared out over the water and let the gentle, calm waves lap at her toes; it was a comforting touch. The sun was nearly gone, the lights of stars twinkling in the dark.

A tear slipped from her face and trailed down her right cheek, which was healing, and was the closest to pink her complexion had ever been. She winced and wiped at the salt on her tender face, feeling the drag of her left hand, which was almost alien to her. Then she really cried.

Raven cried because Starfire was on Tamaran, helping to start a war. She cried because Robin had left, off to the Justice League to give an in-person report and presentation, and no doubt to get a lecture for letting the aliens go. She cried because Cyborg was becoming obsessive about his body's power core; his paranoia of ever losing power again resulted in locking himself in his garage to work on his body in between researching Raven's nerve damage. She cried because the tests weren't coming up with results.

She cried because she was alone.

She cried for her hand and her heart.

She cried because Beast Boy hadn't come back.

Before he'd left for the Justice League, Robin had sat her down and said, "you took a scratch from an unknown enemy. A scratch and it almost killed you. How could you have known that when you took the hit? He did this to save you. This isn't something to blame yourself about, Raven. If he comes back, he'll tell you the same thing."

He probably would tell me the same thing, she thought, if he came back at all.

She knew Robin was right, of course. How could she have known that getting scratched would nearly kill her and that the Qival were poisonous, or that anything that had happened was going to happen? She couldn't have. She needed to stop blaming herself.

"I will," Raven said to the water lapping at her feet, "when you come back."

The water didn't say anything.

That same night, a green angel shark coasted along the sandy floor of Pacific waters and hunted for food.

Its wings frilled gently in the waning sunlight, and it glided from rocky reef to reef. It paused only temporarily to feel the shift in the water as a small school of fish swam by to evade it, and so it buried itself deeply in the sand to hide its green color and waited for the next school.

When they arrived, he struck, and, filling himself with enough to satisfy him, the shark moved on, heading for shore. Once there, a lazy sea turtle pawed up the sand in its place and lay exhausted on the still-warm sands from the afternoon that preceded the perfect sunset on his back.

He should have gone straight home, but he didn't feel right. He couldn't stop hunting; couldn't stop eating flesh. He was disoriented, he was afraid of himself, and so he slept.

On the shores of the Titans' island, Raven stood and went inside to find her own bed.

Beast Boy's dreams were violent and vivid.

Whitetail deer hunted were and torn apart, their antlers used to sharpen his teeth; he tasted the marrow. Cold rivers and wriggling fish against his skin. A victorious fight with a bear, which resulted in a twisted ankle. A group of hikers and their fear, but somehow, reigning in the Beast long enough to force him onward and away from them.

Beast Boy dreamed that he was insatiable; the bloodlust and the hunger of a large predator kept him motivated, traveling, running, running, and finally, collapsing upon a secluded beach when the hunt had been satisfied.

When he woke, he was a turtle on a different beach, and someone was poking him with a stick. Instinctively he lashed out and caught the stick in his beak and he snapped it. The little boy who had thought to check if the turtle was dead jumped back in surprise, and he fell into the hot sand in a pair of light blue cargo shorts and cried.

The mother came quickly and picked him up, eyeing the turtle without suspicion, because, of course, turtles were that deep shade of green, and carried her son away.

Beast Boy snorted some sand out of his reptilian nose and reentered the cool waters of the ocean. He couldn't put it off anymore, dark appetite or not, and so he swam the last length for the Tower.

When he arrived, he came as a dog. He wasn't sure he wanted to shock anyone with his arrival by showing up naked, his clothes ripped from his transformation. It was now three weeks since he'd been with his team, but he didn't know that. He wasn't sure how long it had been: a month? Forever?

Beast Boy barked at the front door security camera and waited. Nothing happened for quite a bit, and he assumed Robin must not have been in his office. Beast Boy padded back and forth, his impatience growing: he just wanted a vegan meal. He didn't want to hunt anymore, even if his long tongue salivated at the thought of rabbits at the park on the mainland.

He wanted to go back to normal.

Then he thought that he would settle for a tall glass of water. The sun was still hot, even with a cool, pre-autumnal wind that ruffled his fur. On that wind, he caught a scent, and he turned instinctively. It was lavender. Weak, but healthy.

The Beast inside stirred, but harshly Garfield quieted him.

The green dog left the front door and padded along the outer perimeter of the island to the beach. Rocky crags polluted the northern part of the island, but the western ridge faced the sun and was covered in a soft dusting of white snow.

He found Raven there, standing ankle-deep in the waves and staring out to the great blue horizon. It was blazing hot, so it surprised Beast Boy that she was outside at all. She wasn't dressed for swimming, but she wasn't wearing her cloak either. Her legs in her leotard were bare, and so she began to wade even further in.

Curious, he approached the beach and sat on the hot sand, his tail slightly wagging unconsciously. She looked… well, alive. That was the first thing that he noticed and was grateful for. Her steps seemed confident, if a little slow. Once she was knee-deep, she stopped, and he saw the rise and fall of her shoulders as she let out a deep sigh. Then she raised her left arm and splayed her fingers over the water. Her hair ruffled up, pushed by her magic, which was forcing itself out of her palm. Beast Boy tilted his head to the side, and over the waves, he could hear her saying her mantra repeatedly, but for some reason, nothing was happening.

Then, all at once, the waves in front of her blew apart, as though a massive stone had been dropped, and Raven flew a few feet backward and landed in the water, soaking her leotard and her hair. She surfaced and came to a sitting position, the water just below her shoulders, and she shouted a curse to the sky.

Beast Boy sprang to his four paws and morphed into a wolf, which would be taller than the spaniel, and jumped into the water after her.

Raven's eyes went wide when he reached her, and she stared up at the great face of the green wolf and into dark eyes.

"You…" she stammered, "you're home."

He couldn't morph back – he just couldn't in front of her – but then she reached up and wrapped both arms around his neck, pressing her face into his smelly, wet fur.

She hugged him hard, and he whined and made small barking sounds at her. He expected her to let go right away, but she didn't, and after a full minute, he grew worried. Raven didn't hug him like this. How long had he really been gone?

Finally, she let go, and she stood up in the water, lightly shivering. Water dripped over her face, and he saw that her previously darkened, webbed-vein face was pink and flushed; the skin was new and probably very sensitive to the touch. Her eyes were brighter than before, no longer cloudy with sickness and fever, and she looked at him with a mixture of relief and confusion.

"What's wrong? Why aren't you back to normal?"

He yipped at her and couldn't explain that he was naked under all this fur, so he turned and started for shore. She followed him and let him into the Tower with her human hands. He padded in after her, dripping and exhausted, happy to be home.

"I'm going to change," she said, "I assume you will, too?"

He yipped.

"Meet me in the kitchen?"

He felt the salivating hunger again and the desperate thirst for fresh water.

One more yip.

"Okay," she said, and she activated the elevator for him, and they got on together.

Beast Boy morphed back in the privacy of his own room after Raven had let him in and shut the door quickly behind her.

When he returned to his most familiar form, he looked at himself in the mirror and nearly collapsed.

The bruises were there, alright, and some of them were already turning yellow. Others were still black and blue – fresh and awful. Even worse, long and short scars accompanied his weak ankle that was swollen and discolored.

A particularly deep set of claw marks trailed from the back of his left shoulder blade and pulled over and down to the top of his pectoral. He raised a hand to it, and could barely even cover half of it. The scar would be impossible to hide, even with a shirt on.

His face was mostly left alone save for a small slit in his right eyebrow, which had taken away hair that probably wouldn't grow back. Finally, it looked like something had taken a small bite out of his ear. The flesh that had been healing there was now scarred over, but the missing piece would remain.

Raven hadn't said how long it had been since he'd been gone, but it was enough for most of his wounds to have healed – yet not long enough for his ankle and new bruises to fade.

He stared wide-eyed at his body for a few moments longer. It had never been this bad before.

And it wasn't over.

The Beast was dangerous, and it was part of him. It would come back. It would always come back - if he let something like this happen again, there was no telling how long he would be locked inside his own head again. Maybe forever.

If he let it, the Beast would do this to him, he feared, until the day that he died.

When he reached a hand up and felt his chipped ear, then his eyebrow, and trailed his hands down to his biceps and felt every scar, Beast Boy's breathing came quicker and more frantic. He began to tremble. He drew his arms in and wrapped them around his bare torso because everything hurt. He really did collapse then.

Beast Boy sat down on the floor of his room and cried.