AuThOr'S nOtE: Welcome back! Today, I am going to step out of character for a bit, and ask you all to please do me two favors I usually try not to flat out ask of my readers. 1) Please, all of you, review, even if you don't have an account, review. It doesn't have to be long, advice is wonderful, but at least just tell me what you thought of it. 2) Please recommend this story. Recommend it to your friends, to your family, fellow authors, to anyone whowill to listen! Reviews>More Happiness>More Writing. So, remember the two 2 R's: Review, Recommend. –Ok!

Back to the Past
Chapter 5:For All the Loyalty

"It doesn't have to be."

His voice cut through from behind, clear and distinct, like an arrow parting the air in its path. Beast Boy was the first to see him as he raised his eyes and looked past the dumb stricken faces of Raven and Cyborg.

Raven saw the surprise in the changeling's eyes and turned around, the surprise passing to her eyes, and then to Cyborg's.

Beast Boy felt like his brain was on ice. "How long have you been here?" he questioned; it was the only thing he could think to say.

"Long enough," Nightwing said stepping down from the edge of the wall onto the roof. "And you're right," he said looking at his green friend as he stepped into the circle. "It doesn't have to be over, in fact, it shouldn't be. Something's gone wrong; none of this is the way it should be."

He wasn't catching his former leader's drift. "What do you mean?" Beast Boy asked as he, Raven, and Cyborg looked at Nightwing in a confused way, critically, almost as if the man in front of them had completely flipped his lid.

But Nightwing was far too caught up in his theory to notice the madman's glare he was receiving. "Don't you see? I've been going over it in my head over and over. We sent Starfire back to the past with the Clock of Eternity, right? We all saw her enter the wormhole didn't we?"

"Robin--," Raven started, her eyebrows raising sympathetically, not even thinking about what she had just called him.

"Look, give me a sec here; humor me." Nightwing cut her off, raising his hands out before him, asking for a moment to make his case.

"Alright, Rob, we did. We saw her go back. Now, what are you trying to get at?" Cyborg said with some doubtful impatience.

"None of this is right. If Star went back, then we should have stayed together, and if we stayed together then none of this should have existed more than a second past the moment went Star stepped through that vortex," Robin concluded.

For a moment Beast Boy didn't understand. But then it came to him.

Raven stood sadly for a moment wishing that there was still hope, sad that her old friend had been so disillusioned as to fantasize this idea. She looked to Beast Boy. At first, she saw in his eyes the cutting stare of a man who knew he had just been told a lie. Then her surprise she watched the sharpness die away and melt into the softness of shocked understanding and joyful disbelief. For a moment she could have sworn she saw the glisten of a tear in them as she watched him look up to Nightwing. She looked to Cyborg who apparently saw it too, but as she, could not see the significance of this. What difference could this possibly make? she asked herself.

"You're right." Beast Boy said to Nightwing. "But that'd mean that something bad happened to Star…" he trailed off, suddenly realizing the full extent of things.

Raven's brow creased slightly as she thought about this. When she thought she fully understood she spoke: "So, what you're saying is if Star went back then she would've kept our friendship together, and we never would have had that fight--"

"—none of us would have left--" Cyborg filled in.

"—and we wouldn't be in such a bad way." Beast Boy finished.

"That's right," Nightwing said excitedly. "But we're still like this, so that means something must have happened to keep her from returning, not necessarily a bad thing, she may have just landed somewhere a year or two off. It's probably just a matter of finding her."

Raven's heart had been racing with hope, until it tripped over a major wrinkle in their grand plan. "But here we are faced with the same problem we had 20 years ago," Raven notified them despairingly, "we know what happened to her but have no idea or way to go where or when she went."

Beast Boy's heart fell from his chest at this. She's right he thought. The irony of it laughed evilly in his face for letting himself lift his hopes so high of out the dust.

"Not exactly," Cyborg spoke up as he looked at something in his hand. "This time, we have this," he said lifting the rounding object up into the light of moon; it was the piece that Starfire had ripped off Warp's suit in the wormhole.

"Do you think you could....?" Nightwing questioned hopefully.

"I can't promise anything, but I can try, if you guys are willing to."

"I'm in," BB said stepping forward wearing a ready grin.

"Me too," Raven added, a small smile on her face as her hair shifted slightly in the gentle, evening breeze.

"I'm game," Cyborg said with a warm smile that did the lines that had formed at the corners of his mouth better justice than his usual frown ever could.

They now looked to their former leader. A smile crept across his face and his eyes filled with sentimental joy as he was touched by their returned loyalty.

"Just like old times," Nightwing said quietly, his voice breaking a little.

"Alright!" Cyborg cheered happily as he took his friend's hand and shook it roughly as BB slapped him on the back and Raven came to stand between Nightwing and the changeling, placing an arm around each in one of her rare moments.

Above, the full, winter moon shined brightly down on them from the heavens, its silver rays gracing the beginning of something new.