(A/N: Hello, and welcome to the madness! I originally posted this on ao3, but I thought the TT fandom might enjoy it here as well. It's 19 chapters and a whopping 107k words, so buckle up and enjoy!

Relevant information: Beast Boy is pulled into the future a few months after season 4 and before season 5. The three-years-later Titans go by their real names, and Terra/Tara has been reinstated on the team. Also: In this fic, Gar is a bisexual, ADHD icon. Raven is pansexual. Both of their identities are relevant in this story.)

Chapter One:

A MAN OUT OF TIME: the spell and the shapeshifter

Raven is familiar with the book clenched between her fists. The smell of new parchment, the scrawling ink, the fresh stains in the margins and dog-eared pages. Raven is familiar with the book clenched between her fists because she has spent the last year with it. Practicing, reciting, rolling the syllables around her head until the letters twirled. Raven is familiar with the book clenched between her fists, but today, she trembles. She paces, and her feet cut trenches in the floor, right through the old linoleum and into the pipelines, and if she keeps this up, she will probably fall into nothingness forever.

She feels she is suffocating.

Tara's voice on the communicator is a plunger draining her back into time, tinny and strained. "I'm heading down now, keep you updated. It shouldn't be a problem, but I'll call if I need backup. How are you guys?"

She thinks the rest of the room looks at her, expectantly, like she is the one with answers, who is holding this painstakingly translated spell book, who has spent months digging through tomes for the right combination of Azarathian words and engineered this entire expedition. Rather than pretend, she ducks beneath the cowl of her cloak. She thumbs another page, feigning concentration. There is something, deep in her magic, that pulses against her throat. A long-forgotten memory, or an old dream.

Gar—long, lithe, flippant—is rested against a standardized white cabinet at the edge of the white-walled lab space, one black-fingered glove delicately extended with the Titans communicator. He grins, as he always does, fangs and taut cheeks. "Great! We'll be ready to go in, what, five minutes? The docs are going through some more equipment checks. They were supposed to be done half an hour ago."

He is met with six pairs of resentful eyes, placed strategically around the whirring machines that crowd the corners of the lab. With a dainty sniff, Dr. Jace—bespectacled, pale, with a lined face—pushes away from a keyboard of knobs to cross her arms at him.

"I am finished," she says, heavily accented, as Vic adjusts a monitor with a slow-blinking blue light, Kori miming for him to twist a half-revolution more. Pivoting by the windowless metal door, Raven aggressively turns another page.

But Tara is perceptive. "Raven, I can hear your anxiety from over here."

"I am trying to concentrate," Raven hisses, tracing book lines with one finger. "Don't distract me."

Black gloves tilt innocently, Gar's cheeks puffed out, and the communicator screen levels at Raven. She glowers beneath the shadow of her hood; Tara's expression flattens in that way that curdles her spine.

"Relax. You're making me antsy. It's real easy, okay? Just light the candles, say the words, and bada bing, bada boom."

Another hum of magic sputters down her spine, cold and icy like a warning, and Raven draws the window blinds forcefully shut. As the broad slats of afternoon sunshine narrow into thin strips of pale yellow, everyone's faces pale beneath the artificial lights. "Right. Because nothing has ever gone wrong with time travel." She rolls it out dry, fast on her tongue, practiced sarcasm and cynicism.

Vic and Kori exchange glances, like she can't see them, can't feel their emotions smoking like clouds against her skin.

"You know," says Vic, and his arms stretch toward the low-hung ceiling, nearly knocking the overhead lights. "We can always reschedule again. No pressure."

Stiffly, Raven turns away from the window blinds. No pressure, but today took months of preparation, spell work, and consultations with the Justice League and STAR Labs. No pressure, but they never take no for an answer. "It's fine."

"We have back-up Titans and a trained team of specialists," adds Kori. "Do not think over it."

From the corner of the room, Gar's eyes sparkle in that familiar way; life is a joke, and he knows the punchline. He draws close, the perfume of his aura wafting like green groves and rivers. "You literally froze time on your eighteenth birthday, and you've been fine-tuning this for years. You've practically got a B.A. in time travel. You'll be great."

His presence is gravity, and she falls into it. Their palms collide like comets, the empathic link unfurling between them. The usual muted murmur of the wild roars inside her, laughter and power and old throbbing pain. I'm here,his thoughts whisper. We can do this.

She is almost grounded when Tara cuts in, voice muffled from somewhere near Gar's hip. "Yeah, if you can freeze the literal devil, I think a paperclip is a piece of cake. Um. No pressure, though."

No pressure, but she does not want to be reminded of Trigon, or Slade Wilson, or the months of intensive study afterwards, tentatively trying to access the threads of time while STAR Labs pushed her faster than she was ready.

"Bye, Terra," she says instead. "Good luck with the fault line."

"Hey!"

Shaking gray fingers slide over Gar's, closing the comm screen; Tara's face disappears with a slight crackle. Another day, she would call and apologize, confess that her magic is a staticky buzz against her skin and her mind is a melting pot of apprehension, but today she is walking on unstable tectonic plates that threaten to split beneath her. Today she is on a schedule, and she paces and prays to Azar nothing goes wrong.

She shuffles away from Gar's steadiness for another circuit around the square-box room, soft-heeled boots thumping that trench deeper. If she is forced to wait another five minutes, she will fumble the spell. The words are already blurring in her head, thick consonants and missing vowels, and the room—sterile and chemical—turns her stomach. "Is Nightwing in position?"

Red hair flickers in the corner of her eye, Kori adjusting a screen nine feet above the ground. "Yes. He and Zatanna have successfully secured the perimeter of the building." She bobs twice in the air before lightly adding, "Just in case."

Raven jerks her cloak tighter. "Great."

No pressure, but they've tried this before, six long months ago when she slipped on a pronunciation, tripped one consonant in her mouth, and froze STAR Labs and its entire population in time. No pressure, but she spent two weeks sleepless, scouring books and scrolls and ancient tomes until she finally found a way to reverse it. No pressure, but Dick will stay outside this time. Just in case.

Another pivot—she nearly rams into Dr. Richards, polishing the lens of a camera.

"Watch it! This equipment is irreplaceable."

"Sorry," Raven mutters shortly.

Her spell circle is already on the floor, chalk and dust and incense surrounding twelve symbols of power. It almost looks silly next to the enormous machines and barren lab space, like a child playing at magic or scribbling pictures in crayon on the wall. Swallowing her misgivings, forcing her magic to settle back to her core, Raven turns to Vic. "Is the room ready?"

He checks the monitors on his arm one last time, rising up from his knees and the wires at ground level. "Yeah, everything looks good. You okay?"

"Fine." She is not. "Positions, please."

Kori plants herself on Raven's left, stance sturdy, Gar to her right. His mind brushes against hers, so much louder than she can handle right now, screaming with the entire animal kingdom, squeaks and growls and purrs and buzzes. She squeezes their overflowing link to a dry drip. Just while I'm casting.

A flicker of understanding barely slips through, and Raven shifts her attention down to the book. The familiar book, the one her fingers have memorized, the one whose smell she dreams about in her sleep. The one whose white pages glitter like starlight, loose and dog-eared. Complete focus. As the physicists circle the room, murmuring with excitement, she wonders how long they have been waiting for someone like her to come along. A half-demon with all the magic shortcuts that science has yet to replicate.

"We'll start at the beginning of the next minute," she says, looking at her elegant silver wristwatch. The seconds tick slowly onwards. She marvels at the design for a second, at Rita's eye for accessories and Steve's eye for endurance. Nearly a year since she started wearing it, but there's not a dent.

Lukewarm, brimming with quiet composure, Gar's knuckles brush hers for a split second. They retreat almost immediately, but she's grateful for the gentle reminder. Inhale deeply. Hold for five. Exhale. She lets her eyes flutter shut, reaches out for her magic, and embraces the soft hum of energy that immediately ripples through her.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos," she chants, the beginning to every spell, her focus words, her magical foundation. Her eyes fly open, black and white energy unfurling deliberately across the floor until it sheathes the entire room, her fingers quivering with crackles of raw magic. The paperclip in the middle of the spell circle judders at her attention.

And then she starts casting, the words rolling off her tongue after months of practice, the twelve symbols lighting up on the floor, white energy spattering outwards. The lab rumbles slightly, a low trembling hum that teases the soles of her shoes. Not part of the spell.

All four communicators buzz.

The ringtone echoes.

The ground heaves.

Her whole body listing sideways and down, Raven's legs stagger across the floor. She keeps chanting as she starts to fall, because the magic is already surging through her, and worse things happen with unfinished spells, she knows this from experience, but everything is happening at once. The scientists bellow at each other, mouths moving in shapes she can't read, and the entire building creaks, loose metal noises that ring in her ears, and machines crumple, debris skidding across her spell circle, knocking candles askew, papers shuddering across tabletops and out of cabinets, and she finally loses her balance, right when she realizes it's an earthquake.

"RAE!" Gar's hand claws forward as her knees slam into the ground, his thin fingers wrapping around her elbow and holding her soundly, and she clutches the spell book in her white-knuckled hands, still trying to read, but the words blur into hazy stripes, and she doesn't know if it's her shaking or the building.

"Zinthos," she finishes, and the resounding moan of the building shoots straight up her legs, knocking everyone off kilter. Vic clangs to the ground, his metal scraping lines into the linoleum, and Kori's forehead claps against the ceiling as she cartwheels downwards. Raven searches for Gar, his long six-foot frame and all-black costume, and she watches him fall in slow motion, his fingers slipping from her wrist, sailing straight into the spell circle right as she says the last word, the symbols pulsating blue, and then the paperclip scutters across the floor, and Gar vanishes with a blinding flash of light.

"NO!" Her mind desperately reaches out, but there is nothing. She drops the spell book, listening to it slide to the left as the entire room bends, and sprints toward the spell circle, dodging rolling candle jars and flickering flames, and Vic meets her eyes and shakes his head, and he seizes her waist, holding her back from the circle, where it is still smoking and glittering. An explosion of hot white light infuses the room, legs smash into the spell circle, and the yellow artificial overhead light finally flickers out.

Gar is just twisting the copper faucet off, shaking water off his dripping hands, when he buckles forward and cracks his forehead against the bathroom mirror. Blinking through hot sticky blood, he wonders what the hell just happened—and something rams into the backs of his knees.

"Hey!" he gasps, squeezing his bare hands hard against the sink, barely upright, but there is no one there. An invisible something twists into his naval. It tugs hard, fast, ripping through his organs like a rusted metal hook. He is a fish on a line, and it…won't…let…go.

"Robin!" Gar shouts, but he is almost definitely still giving his speech, and the bathroom is empty.

But then he remembers Raven, the quiet way she always has a read on the team, magic humming and buzzing in the dip of his lower back every time he thinks to feel for it. She'll know—she'll come for him—

"RAVEN!" he bellows, as the line slices into him again, higher…higher…His hands flex into great gorilla pads, his body bulking with muscle and thick green hair. He desperately broadcasts his emotions toward the general direction of the banquet, hoping she'll feel it.

The sink crumbles in his hands, marble shards flying everywhere, and he snaps through the ceiling, higher, deeper, twisting and squeezing through some sort of fast, whipping tunnel…It's dark, cold, slippery, and metallic. His body refolds into a human, blood drying against his forehead, lungs compressing into thin tubes as he is hurtled forward…faster—faster—faster—

—until his feet slam into the ground, force jolting up his body and buckling his knees. He rolls intuitively with the shock, and broken glass shards crunch under his back, spearing his suit coat and pricking his palms as he tries to stop spinning.

Gar pants against the ground, face pressed into the floor, but it's not the gilded tile of City Hall's overpriced bathroom. It is hard and pale, reeking of strong chemicals and hospital. Footsteps patter, kicking aside glass and metal, and he half-expects to see dress shoes, pant legs and twirling dresses…some civilian from the fundraiser, who got bored halfway through Robin's speech and hid in the bathroom and found him collapsed instead.

He half-hopes it's Raven, because his body is infused with her magic, fuming with it, full of that characteristic staticky buzz and dripping with the familiar smell of lavender and woodsmoke. But the footsteps stop several feet away—his aching neck attempts to look—and a wave of muscle spasms rip through his arms and chest like hot metal wires. He sprawls limp, his chest tight and breathless.

Okay, he thinks. Okay.

One finger taps experimentally against the cold floor, against razor-sharp glass and linoleum, but his ribs creak and groan and threaten to shatter. To his left, several people whisper dissonantly. Where is he? Someone screams something—something that sounds like "Beast Boy!"—but it's meaningless, stranger's voices and a stranger's room.

Quickly, teeth clenched through the effort, Gar flips to his side and twitches through the pain, which is turning numb now, numb and cold and staticky, and he is too dizzy to think straight, to even question it when a warm body shoves him onto his back and then envelops him, smelling like incense and dust.

"Are you okay?" a voice vibrates in his ear.

It warms him down to his toes, like a hot gust of sea air. "Raven," he gasps against her, fingers clawing into the armored fabric of her biceps and blinking angrily. He can't see quite yet, vision full of spotty gray and dancing with fireflies.

"Thank Azar," she mouths against his neck. Her hands trace slow circles on his shoulder blades. Ragged breaths rasp on skin, and Gar tenses at the feeling—how harshly she is shaking against him, how tender her fingers trail up his spine. He wants to pull back, tries to, but her arms hold him in a vice-like grip, her hair tickling his ear and bloody temple.

And he is not at City Hall, he realizes suddenly, blurry edges sharpening and lightening. Instead of white marble and velvet hand towels, burnt-out candles and tipped over silver machines line the walls. Cracks spiderweb the busted overhead light, and only a few chinks of golden sunlight stripe through the window blinds to his right. The dark air is thick with bobbing dust particles and smoke. He doesn't know this room. Maybe that should surprise him, set him back a few seconds to process, but he is too focused on the people—half a dozen men and women in pressed slacks and lab coats, a blur of red and purple in his periphery, Raven's body pressed up against him and trembling.

"Hey," he wheezes, gritting one hand into a fist—the glass is pushed deeper—and fitting it between their flush chests, wishing he had room to breathe. The fumes of her magic billow between them, crackle, pop beneath his skin like sparklers. He barely manages to wedge her an inch away when thumbs dig forcefully into the skin behind his ears. He whines.

In a sudden burst of Fourth of July fireworks, her mind overwhelms him, a whirlwind of colors and sounds and memories that race too fast for him to feel. And he hasn't ever mind-melded with anyone before—has never let her go deeper than brushes—so it is overpowering, loud images and feelings and heart-wrenching something that he can't sort through, and it is screamingat him, too much, too much—

"STOP!" he bellows, shoving her away so quickly that his muscles pinch and blaze white-hot, and he is on the floor again, body curled into a ball, his glass-shard hands pressed over his face. Raven pulls back from him at the same time as her thoughts…painful, loud, confused…

"You're not him," she breathes, and he doesn't care, even when her hands, light and tentative, fall to his bruised kneecaps. Energy sweeps over him, pixelated and staticky fuzz—lavender, woodsmoke—making the hairs on his arms prickle and goose bumps streak down his smoking skin. He recognizes it as the body scan Raven usually leads with before healing, but it is so much stronger than he remembers, like roaring water in his ears, in his throat, drowning him; the soft murmurs of the strangers build into a frenzy. He can't understand what they are saying, so he lets the numbing wave of restorative magic course up his legs and torso, peeks through his lashes at the scientists milling around the room as they pull at outlets and lift heavy machines. Where are the suits and formal dresses? Where are the toilet stalls? Where is the broken marble sink and copper faucet?

"Damn it," says Raven near his feet, her healing spell snapping back like a rubber band.

With a whimper, Gar squints his eyes open, and three Titan alarms blare in sync. For the first time since he crash-landed in this white-walled room, in the middle of burned-out candles and chalk dust and glass, and as Raven pulls her comm off her studded belt with a sigh, Gar can finally seeher.

She's not Raven.

It is a woman who looks like her at least, the same gray skin and red jeweled chakra. But this Raven stands tall and erect, shoulders broader with new muscle, wearing a pure white bodysuit with cloak, her bob cut off into a crew cut.

"What—?" He gapes, readjusts, reconsiders, remembers that she was wearing a fitted suit not five minutes ago, a navy blazer with crisp white button-down, her hair pinned back for the fundraiser. But mostly it is her face that floors him, pinched in that way he rarely sees, like her emotions are bleeding over, black ink, and she is up to her elbows in it. She is supposed to be the steady teammate, familiar chapters and predictable plot twists, once he was patient enough to read her. This woman, smoothing one hand through her choppy hair and snapping open the comm to answer, is not the book he memorized.

"Hey, Terra," maybe-Raven says into her palm, "we noticed."

And Gar's mind blanks, fizzes, burns out.

He loses time.

Terra? Did she say Terra?

"—get back to you?" Maybe-Raven's voice teeters off. A woman responds, voice distant and echoing, like she is somewhere deep underground.

Images flash behind his eyelids. Terra as a statue, arms spread wide, protectively, frozen tears half-dribbled down gray-stone cheeks, sobs in his ear, glowing yellow—

He refuses. The memories fizzle as he sits up with a great rush of effort, and demands, "Where are we? Why—ah"—he cradles his obliques as they pulse—"do you look different?"

A firm hand props against his back. "STAR Labs," they say in Starfire's gentle voice, but what she's saying doesn't make sense.

"Are you okay?"

"Cy?"

A breeze chills his neck as metal creaks behind him, and Cyborg's face bends down on his left, eye level, leaned on the crook of one knee. Gar flinches back, though—seeing new dents in the armor, new creases around his eyes, shadow around his right jaw. He is just as much a stranger as Raven, and this is worse. Much worse. Cyborg is quick smirks and sparked words and bright metal-gray eyes. Not this. Not tired, not lined, not frowns creased like they're permanent.

"—slow down—" maybe-Raven barks.

"—calling himself Geo-Force, and—"

Old-Cyborg pivots him by the shoulders, directing his eyes away from the woman with the ink-black emotions that buzz at the back of his skull. "Yeah, man, it's me. What…what are you wearing?"

Smoking ash, bits of glass, and debris coat his knees and elbows, glittering in the low light. He is not sure he believes this man, this impersonator wearing his friend's armor, but nevertheless his fingers cling tight to cold metal fingers. "A suit? You…helped me pick it out, remember? I thought you said it looked good. We—we got it tailored together."

"What do you mean you lost him—" maybe-Raven hisses.

Hopefully-Starfire's fingers dig a little too hard into his shoulders, impatient pinpricks. "What is the last thing you remember?"

It is a good question, probably, faded next to the fish line and smoking ash and chalk dust and scientists—but he knows. He knows so intensely that his stomach twists over with nausea. "We're supposed to be at the fundraiser at City Hall, for mental health awareness. After the whole end of the world thing? Robin was giving a talk, and I—I just had to pee…"

"Robin?" Hopefully-Starfire whirls around his right side, releasing his shoulders, and oh!

She towers over him, six and a half feet of solid orange muscle, bracketed metal plates covering all those places that used to be skin. She glows in the dim lighting like a flame, silver and scarlet and alien green. She is not smiling, her face cold and warrior-hard, and so she is a stranger.

"Who are you?" he snaps, falling back onto his elbows without the support. "I don't—" But the words peter out.

Not-Starfire ignores him as she snatches the blinking comm off her breastplate, hair smoldering like a fist of firecrackers. It flips open easily. "Nightwing and Zatanna should be available. We will join you when we can. There has been an emergency." She snaps it closed and addresses the room. "This Beast Boy is from the past."

Gar fumbles his balance at the same time maybe-Raven says, "I know," and the scientists start murmuring again. Reality is a twisting carousel that won't stop, circles and circles, and he wants off.

"I should go," maybe-Raven says harshly, face stony. "I should help her. I'm the only one who can tunnel as well as she can. If we lose him now—if he had anything to do with this—if he knew what we were doing here…"

"The natural fault line does not reach STAR Labs," a woman with a thick accent says, scowling so fiercely that her yellow eyes blaze. "This is his fault."

"Help who?" Gar asks weakly, tongue lolling uselessly around his mouth, unable to form more than a couple words at a time.

Not-Starfire's expression tightens, the corners of her lips thinning. "Raven—"

"I can't."

"We need you here. We must take notes of what has happened. You are the only one who fully understands the spell, what might have gone wrong."

"What spell?" Gar breathes, so softly that no one notices.

"I can't."

Old-Cyborg lifts himself from the ground, hands raising placatingly. "It's okay. Star, it's okay. Raven, you go blow off some steam—jump a portal and try to get Geo-Force, or whoever. I can stay here, go over the tapes, the equipment."

"Thanks," maybe-Raven says tersely, snapping her communicator open again and punching the screen. "Make sure he's stable. I'll figure this out as soon as I get back." Fingers swirl in a broad circle, summoning an inky black portal in the middle of the metal door that blocks the exit. For a split second, their eyes meet, purple and green and a connection that pulses harder than his vital organs—she feels like his Raven—but the communicator buzzes once more, and the moment is gone. She is gone. The white cloak curls after her.

It is a long moment of silence, suspended like a pendulum, voices still and breath held, before old-Cyborg coughs lightly, and time swings back down. He directs the scientists to assess for damage, to save the recordings, to file reports, to—it is a long list. Milling around the room, producing brooms and dustpans from a collapsed cabinet, their stares finally shift away from Gar.

It's strange, he thinks, how he can feel so unbalanced next to people he knows so well. A rug has been pulled out from under him, and he is stuck in that split second of freefall, wondering where he might land.

A gunmetal-gray eye fixes him in place. "Alright, B, you think you can stand?"

"Yeah," he hears himself say, old-Cyborg's cool hands pulling him up and holding him steady. He clings to his side as blood streams down and blacks the edges of his vision.

"I'm not sure what your body just went through, so we're going to take it slow, okay?"

"What spell? What happened? Where's Robin? What—What's STAR Labs?"

"It's a scientific research building. You probably haven't been here before."

"No," he squeaks, fingers tightening around this almost-stranger's forearm. Panic whirrs to life in his chest. "I haven't. What about the fundraiser? Were we—were we attacked?"

Not-Starfire appears in front of him, towering and smelling like citrus and old batteries. It is familiar, at least. "No, we were not attacked. But that fundraiser was a very long time ago."

Barely registering the hot smoke trailing from them, Gar adjusts the sleeves of his suitcoat. "I don't—I can't—"

Her hand grabs his and squeezes, so hard that the pain helps him focus. "It is okay. You are okay. Breathe deeply."

"Time travel isn't—" He is hyperventilating now, his chest pulsing like a hummingbird's wings, faster and faster. "You said—you said even Tamaran doesn't mess with time. After—we watched Back to the Future—"

"I remember that. Breathe, friend. Breathe with me."

He shakes his head, pushes her hand away and staggers away from old-Cyborg's support. "This isn't happening. This is—I don't know how—"

"Beast Boy! Hey, sit down. Just, sit down, okay?"

He is breathing so quickly that the air has stopped working, and one hand claws at his chest, aches to rip into his ribcage and let the oxygen in. "Time travel isn't real."

"Magic is different," not-Starfire says. "Raven has been working with STAR Labs for the last few years in order for their scientists to study it. Do you remember when she froze time?"

Years.It is the only thing he hears. He feels ready to faint. He studies the floor, half-cleaned but still covered in glass and broken everything, and his head is full of rushing blood, his muscles shriveling every time he moves.

"Her eighteenth birthday?" prompts old-Cyborg. "When Slade showed up."

It was only four months ago. Of course he remembers, is still remembering the hot ache of hopelessness, the copper penny, the endless army of fire and molten rock. He remembers fighting until his legs burned, his arms fell, and he took punches he didn't have the strength to block. His chest heaves beneath him; his vision swims.

"You were trying to"—he pants—"to pull me into the future?" His hands swing wildly at the smudged chalk on the floor, the floating dust and burned-out incense. "Why—why would you do that?"

"There was a mistake," not-Starfire says softly, trying to approach him again. He dances back. "It was not supposed to happen like this."

"No shit," Gar mutters, head spinning. "This is—this is a lot." He takes a few steps toward the window, wondering why his legs feel so weak, and reaches one hand out for the wall, hoping to steady himself. His nails catch in the blinds. "How—how long has it been exactly?"

"Three years," not-Starfire says, floating over to him, hands extended, like her words aren't a sucker punch straight to his gut. He just shakes his head at her and clutches the wall even tighter. Is he going to faint? Three years.

"Take it easy," cautions old-Cyborg, voice low. "You just time traveled, and your body was unstable to begin with."

Gar's throat makes a sort of whining sound, his fingers digging into the walls. He can feel his brain start turning again, like this is just another mission, another fight, another thing to get past. "But you guys should remember this, right? Me disappearing?" The idea reinvigorates him. It means he'll make his way back home, away from spell circles and staticky magic and lungs that can't breathe.

Not-Starfire and old-Cyborg trade dark looks.

He continues pleadingly. "Because it's already happened, right? So, you know how to send me back?" The blood rushes into his head harder, and his knees lock in on themselves; the room sways under him.

"No," not-Starfire finally says. "We have no memory of this."

His knees finally cave. He feels his body falling, puckering in on itself, and stickiness gushing on his temple, before his vision blacks and someone screams.