A WEEK LATER:

Even after she woke up, Raven wasn't right for awhile. The others weren't even sure she'd come completely out of her trance state. She didn't respond to them for days, so they left her in her room, hoping the quiet would help her come back to herself. She sat on the edge of her bed, looking at her bare feet. Her usual uniform and cloak lay on the bed next to her where Starfire had left them. She still wore the green dress.

As awareness returned to her, memories crept in after. There were still some sore sucker marks on her arms and body. She remembered Beast Boy clinging to her as a squid, begging her to stop. How long ago had that been? It was so quiet in the Tower she could hear the TV on in another room. Most of the time it was news footage of the devastation in Nevada. I did most of that, she thought, and tried to feel bad about it, but couldn't.

The memory of that other place was still painful. A sense of bone-numbing loss hung over her. She had seen the other place, had opened the door, but had been unable to reach it. Anyone with less experience in repression would've been driven crazy. There's a new me running around in my mind now, she thought. And this one's cloak is a swirl of fairy colors. The colors of desire. A pang of grief caused a chair across the room to twist into a pretzel knot. She had been so close! If only she had been able to get free of Beast Boy and Cyborg!

What if I had? a more rational mental voice suddenly took over in her thoughts. What if it had been me instead of Harry? What would I have done if I had gotten through the portal? She wondered at that. There was no reason she could think of to want to go. Why had the need to enter the spinning lights been so consuming? Another memory of Beast Boy's voice, high with fear, came back to her. He had said she would die inside there, as the creatures had died when they escaped it. Much clearer was the memory of Harry Lee in his madness leaping into the maelstrom.

That could have been me, she realized. A stab of envy sent a crack through the mirror on her wall, and then one of embarrassment made the silver melt off the glass. It COULD have been her, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth, missing great handfuls of hair, hysterical and shrieking with delight while an unknown force tore her to pieces. What siren song could have made her lose control so easily? What exactly was it that had compelled everyone who saw it to such insane measures??

Something soft touched her arm and before she could jump, an abnormally long, and fluffy green mink ran up her shoulder and twined around her neck. She sat tense for a moment, then relaxed, even letting her chin rest on his silky-furred back. The others must've had heard the noise from the chair and the mirror and come to check on her. Even so, it was a long moment before Beast Boy spoke.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked, his voice sounding little and scared.

"No," she said, after a moment of searching for that particular emotion. The urge to rub her face into his pelt flared up and was quickly quelled. "I lost control. That's my fault, not yours." His relief that she was speaking coherently again was not as strong as his relief that she didn't hate him for holding her back.

"We returned the techno stuff to BAX-TECH," he told her. "It hadn't even been used. Robin says Slade staged the break-in just to lure us to Las Vegas. He thinks that Slade somehow got hold of Harry Lee and learned about the book. He wanted the power there, but wasn't willing to give himself up to it the way Harry had. He was afraid to open it himself, so he broke into BAX-TECH and gave us enough clues to get to the right spot."

"He knew I'd use my powers to tap into the ley lines," Raven said, thinking out loud. "He knew I'd see it and want it." Somewhere inside her, red-cloaked rage screamed. Her hands clenched and a book on her nightstand flew open, the pages rustling.

"Easy!" gasped Beast Boy. "We were had. That's all. Slade wanted the book and he had to get Harry back to the Whirling Whirlpool of Doom to get it. Robin thinks Slade will try to make himself strong enough to take it on for himself before he tries to open it again."

"He'll never be that strong," Raven said flatly. "I sure wasn't."

"You were with me and Cy to help you!" He chirped. She gave him a level look and he flashed a sharp-toothed, minky grin at her. "Slade was all alone, so he can only rely on himself, so you're right about him never being strong enough by himself. But you've got us and we wouldn't let anything happen to you. We were two members short, but we were still a team and we still made it."

"That sounds like one of Robin's speeches," she raised a haughty eyebrow at him and he grinned again.

"Parts of it are! Our fearless leader is occasionally right about these things."

"Henh," she said. His ears perked up, perhaps detecting a bare trace of amusement in the sound. As they had spoken, she had shaken off more of her daze and looked enough like herself for him to risk another question.

"So, whatcha going to do tonight?"

"Throw you out, so I can change," she said, getting carefully to her feet.

"Just your clothes, I hope," he teased. "We've missed the old you."

"Well, you can wait a few more minutes," she said, opening the door. She picked him up off her shoulders and set him on the floor in the hall.

"All right! So you'll come down for dinner?" His enthusiasm made her wince, but she paused anyway.

"Who's cooking?" she asked warily, visions of Starfire's fungus-rich cooking dancing in her head.

"It's Robin's turn," he said, sitting up like a prairie dog. "So that means takeout." She hesitated another moment.

"I'll be there," she said and shut the door before she had to see the goofy look of happiness light up his little mink face. Even so, the brief sputter of happy in her own chest made her uniform turn itself inside out on her bed. She took a deep breath to quiet her emotions and then went to dress. She caught herself hurrying. For what, she asked herself. Another container of Chinese noodles? Or to get back to normalcy? She was grudgingly looking forward to being fussed over by the rest of the team at dinner.

She fastened her linked belt and threw her cape around her shoulder. She made sure her Titan's brooch was on extra tight and stepped into her boots. She stepped into the hallway, but as she leaned in to turn off her light she found herself wondering how Slade was handling the book. Before that thought could go any farther, she flipped the switch, and slammed the door shut.