Chapter 5: Homeward Bound

When morning came, Beast Boy was very nearly purring in his sleep. Baby Emily was sleeping on his chest, and Olivia was snuggled beneath the covers beside him with his arm around her. When he woke up, Olivia was sitting up on her mother's side of the bed. For a split second, she looked exactly like her mother, sitting cross-legged and meditating. He supposed that Raven had taught Olivia to find her center and focus her energies every morning, just as she did. Whether Olivia eventually had powers or not, this was a good habit of daily meditation that any hero would find valuable. Moments later, Olivia opened her sharp blue eyes and smiled softly.

"Hi, Daddy," she whispered. Beast Boy couldn't help smiling back.

"Good morning, princess," he replied. "Did mommy teach you to do that?" Olivia nodded. Then she pulled something out of the deep pocket in her cloak. It was a leather-bound book that looked like it had been heavily used.

"Mommy gave this to me and told me to keep it safe," Olivia said, showing it to Beast Boy. Beast Boy rose from the bed carefully and placed Emily in her crib. Returning to the bed, Beast Boy gently took the book from his daughter's hands and gingerly opened the cover. Beast Boy's eyes welled with tears at what met his eyes. This was no ordinary journal. All of the five women had shared a single volume. The only thing separating their entries was the difference in their handwriting and the comments and doodles that they made on one another's entries. The first to write in the journal had been Torque. She carefully recorded how long they had been with the Master of Games, and what date they had come to be in the mountain retreat. The diary recorded their fears and heartaches, their successes, their joy at the birth of two new children, and the hope that they all desperately cleaved to in the darkest of times. Beast Boy kissed the top of Olivia's head, and bit his tongue as he struggled not to cry. Then Olivia fumbled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket.

"Mommy wrote this for you. She kept it in the back of the journal for safekeeping. I can't read so I don't know what it says. I only know she started to cry when she wrote it. She said that I would probably see you before she did. She said, 'if you see daddy before I do, you give him a big hug and a kiss and tell him that mommy loves him very much.'" Olivia recalled. Beast Boy clutched his daughter close and hugged her. He tucked the letter into his pocket, picked up the baby, and Olivia followed him upstairs.

After breakfast, Beast Boy showed his comrades the journal. Tears fell freely as Torque helped to narrate the girls' entries and answer any other questions they had. Though it made the boys feel better to know what had happened during those long months apart, it seemed to make them even more desperate to find their missing girls and bring them home.

This waiting seemed hardest not on the married men of the team, but on Cyborg. If Beast Boy thought it had been torture to watch Olivia's birthday and Raven's due date go by, it was nothing compared to watching Cyborg cancel the arrangements for he and Jinx's wedding as their wedding day drew near—and then passed. Cyborg had cried for an hour sitting alone in Jinx's room, looking at the long, opaque white garment bag hanging on the edge of her mirror. It was her wedding dress, and now Cyborg was sure that he would never get to see her wear it.

Far away, Raven and Starfire had become sullen and silent. In fact, Raven had not spoken since the day she watched Brother Blood shoot her children. She broke this silence after several days in their new prison. She had a plan, but she would need Starfire's help.

"No!"

"You can't! We won't leave you here!"

"This is the only way. If all of us up and disappear Brother Blood could come after all of us. If we disappear a few at a time, the rest of us can fight him and give the others a chance. We're farther from the Tower than we were before and I refuse to watch my friends die here," Raven replied to Jinx and Terra's objections. The plan was relatively simple: Raven would remove her inhibitor and use her powers to send Jinx and Terra as far from the new mountain complex as she could. If they were caught, Starfire could pull her own out and defend Raven.

"Raven, he could kill you!" Jinx said gravely. Raven just shook her head, effectively silencing her. In Raven's mind, there was nothing left to be cautious about. Torque and her baby were dead, Olivia and Emily were dead, and after nearly a year without her, certainly, the man she loved had moved on with his life. She would expect him to. Feeling the numbness of a completely desperate woman, Raven took a deep breath, bit her lip, and pulled the inhibitor from her shoulder. She felt her powers surge and rush inside her and wasted no time teleporting Jinx and Terra as far from the mountain complex as she could. When this was done, she turned to Starfire and hugged her.

"Sisters," she whispered.

"Sisters forever," Starfire replied.

Terra and Jinx emerged from Raven's teleportation portal still moving and Terra ran face first into a tree. Jinx tripped over the roots of the same tree and landed in a heap near Terra. Jinx shook her head and looked up. This looked so familiar…

"Terra, where are we?" Jinx muttered, rubbing her elbow.

"Oh my God…the park…Jinx, we're back! We're not even five miles from home!" Terra cried, rubbing her head. "Do you still have your communicator?"

"No, they took all of them from us eons ago," Jinx replied.

"Then we're just gonna have to get back ourselves," Terra said, gritting her teeth against the pain she knew was coming. She pulled the inhibitor from her shoulder and cried out as she felt her powers flowing back through her being. Terra helped Jinx remove hers and the two stood for a moment absorbing the sunshine. They were free! Terra carved a large section out of the ground and helped Jinx aboard. Taking a deep breath, Terra willed the earthen hover board to rise and she navigated it back toward Titans Tower.

Olivia and Jason were taking advantage of the cool fall day to play. The sun was brilliantly bright in the sky, but it only seemed to energize the two young Titans. Robin, Beast Boy and Speedy were trying desperately to rake the leaves, but they were finding the slight breeze in the air to be more of an impediment than they had planned. Robin shook his head as he watched the kids pretend to practice their battle skills. Every so often, Olivia would cry out, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" and Jason would cry out some sound that approached the sounds he had heard his father make when practicing his karate. The two fathers leaned on their rakes and chuckled. Speedy stopped raking, looked at them, then the kids. A second later, he dropped the rake and cried, "Hey! You got that all wrong! You gotta attack from where he can't block it!" With this, Speedy ran over, picked up Olivia and zoomed around Jason with her held high in his arms.

"Now try that spell!" he cried as Olivia laughed. Olivia gasped for breath between hearty laughs and Robin ran to his son's rescue.

"I'll help you, Jason! Here, try this move!" Jason did his best to emulate his father and the kids giggled as Robin and Speedy continued to enhance this little mock battle. Beast Boy laughed and then continued to rake. Minutes later, there was a soft rumbling of the ground and Olivia shifted her glance to the distance. Titans Tower stood on a small hill in the middle of an island, so the vantage point from where this little Titan stood now: on Uncle Speedy's shoulders, gave her a perfect view of what was coming. There was a gasp, and then a shrill, high pitched screech.

"AUNTIE TERRA!!" Olivia squealed. Beast Boy dropped his rake, Robin and Speedy stopped what they were doing and watched as the section of earth that carried Terra and Jinx came to a stop, melted back into the ground and the two girls made a run for the Tower. The guys were not about to wait. Robin grabbed his comm and yelled for Cyborg, Aqualad, Mammoth and Torque.

When Beast Boy saw Terra running toward him, he turned into a large dog and vaulted ahead of his friends. He leapt up and pinned Terra to the ground, licking her face and whimpering, his tail beating furiously. When Robin arrived on the scene, Beast Boy was just releasing Terra from a bone-crushing hug, and she immediately opened her arms to him. Robin threw his arms around Terra and swung her around in a circle. The last to arrive was Cyborg. He couldn't seem to believe that it was really true. When he looked past the forms of his friends and saw that indeed, Jinx was alive, he thought every circuit in his body would burst.

"Cyborg!" Jinx cried, beginning to cry. She ran to him and let him sweep her up off the ground and into his arms. Cyborg fell to his knees and held her.

"I thought I was never gonna see you again," Cyborg murmured.

"I told you I'd marry you. Breaking a promise is bad luck," Jinx quipped through her tears. With a passion that had waited nearly eleven months, Jinx kissed Cyborg, sending his sensors careening off the scales.

That night, Robin and Speedy made dinner, and afterwards, a plan was laid out to go back and rescue Raven and Starfire. There was nothing stopping them now.