There were few times that Garfield felt truly alone.

Not just in the absence of other people, but the true detachment of oneself from the rest of humanity. The feeling that even when you are in a crowded room, you may as well have been stood on an island surrounded by nothing but crashing waves and the great expanse of blank space that is the ocean.

Beast Boy felt this as he walked to Robin, taking no notice of those that greeted him or quickly stepped from his path. As he was, numb from the ordeal of watching the woman he adored tear herself apart over an accident, then the heart wrenching ache that her stone faced words had inflicted, he would not have noticed if they had been screaming at him.

The boy wonder frowned at the vacant eyes of his ever expressive friend. "Beast Boy? What's wrong?"

"Raven's gone." The changeling croaked. "She got too stressed and had to leave, I think... I think I have to go as well Rob."

A flicker of anxiety passed behind Dick's mask before his poker face settled back on. "Yeah, yeah sure. Do you want me to ask Cyborg to drive you back?"

"Nah man, I want to fly." Garfield said, already turning. "And I don't want to interrupt him and Sarah, she must be pretty shaken up."

The doors were open and he could see the sky, feel it's openness calling to him and in a moment of sudden claustrophobia, he leaped for it.

Skin tightening and stretching, bones rearranging and hollowing, his lips hardening into a beak and feathers exploding from his pores. Young man into a peregrine falcon, a mere heartbeat between the two forms.

He swept over the heads of party goers and out into the night, hearing the oohs and ahhs but uncaring for their attention. All he wanted to hear was the rush of wind in his ears, all he wanted to feel was the caress of night air on his feathers and the serenity of succumbing to that base desire in all wild things.

He wanted to soar free.

The others had their own forms of meditation, for Robin it was his training, Cyborg had the endless mechanical work he found to do on the T-Car, Starfire had her playtime with Silkie and Raven stayed true to traditional methods.

Beast Boy found that peace in two things, video games (duh) and the simplicity of his instincts.

Surrendering the thoughts and emotions of his human mind to the urges of a more focused form. A wolf knows nothing about the stress of crime rate reports or the critical judgements of the Justice League. A wolf knows to hunt, to find shelter, to run.

Just as a falcon knows nothing of a sorceress sacrificing a barely flowering relationship for the safety of others. A falcon knows the instincts that drives it, the instinct to nest, to scan the ground for small prey, to fly.

So he flew and allowed all else to drop away.

When he landed on the roof, some hours later, Raven wasn't there.

It was for the best, he told himself, as there were some hard truths that he had confronted when those all so human thoughts found their way past his desire to swoop at mice in a field.

There were two begrudging conclusions he had come to, the first being that Raven needed time to process what had happened, and the second was that she had been right to place the blame for what happened on their actions.

Neither of them had wanted to hurt someone, but the fact remained that Sarah had come so very close to losing her life that night, because of how Garfield had pushed the boundaries of Raven's control.

So, he didn't knock on her door that night, he didn't hold a boombox playing her favorite music beneath her window, he didn't try to slip a poem under her door.

He went to his room, he curled into a ball, and when the best and worst memories of that night stopped playing tug of war with his heartstrings, he fell asleep.

Beast Boy, though blessed with deep slumber, rarely enjoyed the dreams that this quirk brings him. There are the nights he remembers the boat accident that claimed his parents life, the nights Trigon comes to try and steal away all that the Titans had saved from him, the nights where animals chase him and jeer in his own voice about how he is little more than a mascot for the Titans, useless.

Given this common vein, it was surprising for Garfield when he found himself on a floating rock in Nevermore.

He didn't really mind the change of atmosphere of course, nor the nagging certainty that this place wasn't strictly speaking in his own head. He felt comfortable in this corner of Raven's mind, as though he belonged.

He turned a lazy circle and found Raven behind him, but it wasn't Raven at all.

She wore the face of Raven, but her head was clean shaven and all this Raven wore was the leotard of the true sorceress's uniform, no cloak, no belt, no boots. There was also, the matter of her four red eyes.

"I… I know you." Beast Boy frowned, for he realized it was the truth. "Which emotion are you?"

"I am no emotion, Child of Darwin." The clone told him, her voice was sonorous and in it he heard the crackle of flames, the frigid touch of snow. "You and I are made of the same thing, your other selves howl and hunt and mate because of me."

"Darwin? My father's name was Mark." The shapeshifter told her, uncaring of revealing his secrets, for this was Raven, or at least a fragment of her. "And if you're not an emotion, why are you here?"

"You are not Darwin's child by blood, Shapechanger, you are his child by choice. You adhere to his Law and walk on his path." The Not-Raven supplied, moving to circle the dreaming Titan.

Garfield growled low in his throat at the motion, slinking low to the ground and turning to keep her in front of him. "Darwin's Law? You mean like... survival of the fittest? Adaptation?"

"Yes, you change. You always have. In the beginning you were just a boy, then you changed to a friend, then to family, now you are changing once more." Barefoot, the unadorned Raven-clone padded around Beast Boy, watching in approval as he continued to keep her from getting behind him. "You change for us, for her. Whatever we need, you remake yourself to become that which we yearn for."

"Okay, so you're a facet of Raven that isn't an emotion, one that I have as well. What do you want? Are you like Happy? Do you want me to make Raven laugh?" Beast Boy pondered.

"I don't want anything." Bald Raven stated. "I need. I am what drives Raven to eat and sleep and fight. I am what drives her to the roof for sunlight and to the Titans for warmth. I am not greed, for I take what is needed and no more, I am not timid for I will fight when cornered, nor am I anger for I will flee if need be."

Garfield nodded, understanding making his stance loosen. "Basic needs, human contact, fight when you have to, run when you must. You're Raven's primal desires, her instincts."

Instinct growled with approval, her red eyes softer than those of Anger. "That's right, you know me as well as your own voice. You and your instincts are one and the same, but Raven tries to keep herself apart from me, in fear of her demonic heritage. I am no emotion however, I cannot be tamed as they have been."

"Tamed?" Beast Boy laughed, shaking his head. "She hasn't tamed her emotions, she's just better with them now."

"Is she?" Raven's primal self tilted her head. "She meditates to calm herself, to feel without feeling, tethering her emotions so that they may only roam as free as their chain allows. She is doing so right now, trying to beat down her anger, her happiness and her fear. All of this she is doing so that she may make the greatest mistake of our life."

"What do you mean?" Came his anxious response.

"From her birth to now I have kept her alive. I have made her seek nourishment, pushed her to fight in spite of her pacifistic upbringing, I have made sure that her needs were met. That meant bringing her to you as well." Instinct eyed him knowingly. "I do not seek trivial things. Raven's life, death and well-being are all I concern myself with, and you have become my concern."

Beast Boy tried to mirror her movements, shifting to the side as she went to walk around and feinting in the other direction when she changed paths, keeping her in the same spot. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because we need you to stop her. She wants to break the bond between us, so that her powers are kept in check. She doesn't realize that to try this would kill her, and I do not deal in metaphor. The emotional discord that cutting herself from you would bring will destroy far more than a pretty little chandelier." Instinct hissed. "She won't listen to me, so now I am appealing to you."

"What do you want me to do? She's made it pretty clear where we stand." Garfield fumed.

"Then change where you stand." The far more demonic version of Raven instructed. "She needs to see reason, and right now none of the others can show it to her. You've changed before, now do it again."

"This isn't some bottom of the ninth, in the clutch kind of deal you know." Beast Boy retorted. "I'm not Hugh Grant and she isn't Drew Barrymore, it's not like I can go to her door, say some cliché speech about the power of love and fix all this. We almost killed someone, she thinks being with me is the same as murder."

"Being without you is worse." Instinct spat. "And she doesn't need poetry, she needs comfort, company. Just be with her, so that she knows what it is she will lose."

"You think that by just being close to her I can change her mind? That easy?" Garfield asked skeptically.

"Oh, it's never easy Child of Darwin." Instinct purred. "Don't you know that life is pain?"

He awoke to the sounds of the other Titans returning home, his alarm clock read 1am and a toneless voice repeated itself over and over in the room down the hall as quietly as it could, lest he hear her no doubt.

His encounter with Instinct did not slip from his mind as the other dreams he had so often did, there was a quality to it that rang true as a memory, not some imagined scenario his brain cooked up to fill the space between his eyes closing and their opening.

Rolling from the bed and landing on his feet, he paced the room, once again cursing how small it felt when he walked it's length.

Lurching to the door in a sudden rush, Garfield careened into the hallway and found himself in front of her door, his hands twitched and his breath was heavy. What was he going to say?

"Hey Raven, I just had a conversation with the animalistic part of your mind and it thought we should have a chat."

He snorted lightly and beyond the door he was glaring at, the whispered chanting ceased.

She knew he was there, and he knew that she knew he was there, and she knew that he knew that she knew he was there.

He raised a fist and gave the steel door a single rap.

Silence met his unneeded announcement of arrival, but she had not vacated the room. So attuned was he to the small noises of her being that the muted breathing, the whispered rasp of cloak against skin, the heartbeat that he could only just make out amidst the ambiance of the Tower all told him that Raven was so very close, yet in her silence so very far away.

"Rae… I can help." He said to the door. "We can talk about what we did wrong, we can make sure that next time it's different."

"There won't be a next time." She murmured, footsteps taking her further from the door. "I can't be with you, I'm dangerous."

"Raven. We're all dangerous." The changeling said. "Starfire can tear a man in two with her hands that shoot lasers, Cyborg could crush a person's skull underfoot, Robin spent most of his life learning how to break bones and use weapons sharper than any knife you'll find in a kitchen. I'm every animal the nature channel warns you about, my fingers have razors at their tips, my fangs can cut through flesh like it's butter, my senses allow no secret conversations and that's without shifting!" Beast Boy cried. "Every one of us in this Tower has to work at keeping the people around us safe from who we are. Let me help you figure this out, I'll even stay out here if it'll help you."

"Will you leave?" She muttered, the mattress of her bed complaining as she sat on it's edge.

"And then what Raven? We go back to being friends? You avoid my eyes at the dinner table? Leave when I walk into a room? Your powers barely held together when you thought we were just friends, what do you think they'll do now that you know we can be more?"

"I could leave the Titans." The sorceress mused. "Move away, somewhere that no one will be hurt."

"I'll be hurt Rae." Garfield croaked. "And wherever you go, you won't be happy, not without your friends."

The spellcaster went quiet, and Beast Boy lent his arm against the door that separated them. "If we tell the others, come clean about what's happening between us, they can help too. Kori can help you deal with your emotions, Rob can give us rules and make sure we don't step over the line outside of the Tower, Cy… I'll let Cy make me a shock collar, if that's what it takes to reassure you. Anything Rae."

The door flew open, making Garfield stumble as the support for his arm disappeared. Beyond it Raven was furious. "Take it back."

"Take what back? I will do anything." Beast Boy insisted.

"No, the collar. I don't want you to say that again Garfield, you panicked whenever your shirt touched your neck after Soto kidnapped you, I could feel the emotional scars it left behind for months. Promise me you won't wear another collar." She grabbed his shoulder, grip so tight that it almost hurt. "Promise."

"Fine! Fine, I'll promise, but you have to stop this talk of being alone Rae. It won't help anyone, and you leaving would hurt me more than any collar ever could." Elfin ear drooping, the shapeshifter stepped closer to the young woman, almost standing toe to toe with her. Stooping slightly his emerald gaze pinned her where she stood. "We need each other, and even if you won't say it, you know it's the truth."

"I can't be a monster again Gar." Raven all but whimpered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "And being around you means I could hurt people. I could hurt you."

"I can take it." Garfield assured her. "And you were never a monster, not even close. If being around me is so scary, then I'll stay away."

He moved away, but Raven grasped the front of his shirt and tugged him back, frowning up into his inquisitive eyes. "I don't want you to, that's the problem. If you go, I'll fall apart and so will the Tower, but if you stay… I don't know, I just don't know what will happen. I've meditated and cried and read everything I own about how to deal with this, but it's all been worthless. There's never been anything like us, and that uncertainty… I'm terrified of it Gar."

"I know." Beast Boy sighed, enveloping her in his arms and drawing her close. "It scares me too."

"You're scared of what my powers might do?" She asked, vulnerability weakening her voice as he had never heard before.

"No, I'm scared of waking up one morning, twenty years from now, to find myself alone, having ruined what we have in a moment of poor self-control. So I'll make a deal with you, okay?"

"What kind of deal?"

"I'll ask, before I do anything that might overwhelm you, I'll give you warning so that you can be prepared, or tell me to stop." He pulled back so that he could see her face. "No more surprises, no more uncertainty."

Raven looked away. "What if you're not the problem?"

"I'm always the problem." Beast Boy said confidently. "But if my plan doesn't work, we'll see why and work it out, like any other couple."

Raven breathed in sharply at that, but allowed herself a small smile and a sideways glance at the green skinned hero. "So we're a couple now?"

Garfield smiled at her and lent down, pausing before his lips touched hers. "I'm going to kiss you." He whispered.

She let him.