Disclaimer: Not mine...make no money off this, blah, blah...

RATING: VERY important to mind the M rating, kiddies! This is more M rating worthy than anything I've written previously and although it's still not bad to say it's beyond an M rating, it's pretty darn close. So, if you're young, stay away.

A/N: Not beta'd except for plot details. Full A/N below.

Instinct 2: Impulse
by Emania

"If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin."
- Katharine Butler Hathaway

"Show me the woman, however loyal, who does not seek to rouse desire."
- Honore de Balzac

According to the lunar calendar, it was exactly one month, nearly to the hour, that The Incident had occurred. (He had, of course, researched Lunar Calendars) It was almost 28 days to the hour that he had encountered Raven in such a strange and disarming state of...being. The whole encounter, which she seemed to have forgotten about, had thrown his whole life for a loop.

Twenty eight days before, she had left him curious and confused, too exhausted and slightly woozy from blood loss to go after her for more questions. And even though the next morning she had knocked on his door and made quick work of healing the wound, as she had promised, she had been back to unemotional normalcy and said not a word about their late night interaction.

It had taken him weeks to figure out whether or not he had ever been close to her during her 'time of the month' as she put it. In the end, he couldn't. Besides the fact that Raven never really acted any differently unless there was some outside force prompting it, she wasn't one to complain or have mood swings or any of the other symptoms usually associated with women in the midst of their cycle. However, he had been able to remember, with a reasonable amount of certainty, that at least twice before, he had wondered at Raven's blatant and illogical desire to be alone and apart from them. The first time he noticed it had been a few months prior to the incident. That night, they had been called to infiltrate an illegal rave in the warehouse district and Raven had begged off. He didn't remember the excuse she gave anymore, but it had seemed strange to him, at the time, as to why she would want to stay behind. It didn't matter that the full Teen Titan force was a bit of overkill for some human drug peddlers, but no matter how minimal the task, Raven was never the kind of person to avoid participating.

That time, he had thought it had to do with her somewhat anti-social tendencies: he had told himself that it was understandable that she wouldn't want to go to a rave filled with people who were drugged, if not drunk and who had absolutely no control over their emotions. But it would make even more sense if she didn't have use of her powers.

He couldn't place another instance of it (after all, Raven was rather anti-social by nature and it was not strange for her to be alone in her room for whole days without emerging) for another few months, until the day, a month before the day of the incident, when the Titans decided to make an evening at home of their unusually slow day. Without warning or explanation, Raven had left the Tower. Just left. No invitations for the others to join her, no 'bye guys, see you later'...nothing.

And when he had confronted her about it, asked her where she was going, what her plans were, before she left, she had shot him a death glare and reminded him in no uncertain terms that he didn't own her off time and that she'd have her communicator if they needed her. He never knew where she went that night, but he did know she didn't come home until way passed 4 in the morning, when he had finally passed out.

But despite all those other strange moments that had occurred and that he had made a mental note about their strangeness, he had never put them together. Never thought to wonder if there was a pattern. He had simply blown both of those instances off at the time as Raven having an 'off' day...in one of her moods, as Beast Boy put it, and when she was back to normal (or whatever normal was for her) the next time he saw her, he had been content to leave it at that.

It hadn't been until she was so completely off during the night the previous month and he had thought about her words that he started to realize there might be a connection:

'Just that time of the month...'

It was such a confusing and mysterious puzzle. He thought he knew so much about her, especially after their bond and the whole Trigon issue had been resolved. He didn't think there was much else about her he didn't know. Without even trying, he knew so much about her everyday habits, her likes and dislikes, the way she was most likely to react to something and this new dark and shadowed facet of her character had him wondering every hour of the day not employed otherwise, in trying to figure out what it was.

It was more than just her period, he knew that.

So of course, it couldn't be helped that he'd need to get some answers. That was who he was, after all. There was no way he could be presented with such a puzzle and not try to figure it out. She probably was expecting him to do something, too. And even though she gave no sign of expectancy, didn't even change the way she dealt with him on a day to day basis or during fight or battle, he knew that she must be waiting for him to make his move.

So, with her surely at such a state of alert, how could he approach the problem to assure the best results?

He looked at the calendar and counted one more time to make certain of his calculations. Of course, they weren't any different this time than they had been the last fourteen times he had counted since the plan had occurred to him two weeks ago.

'The Plan,' he thought, chuckling self depreciatingly. 'That's a joke.'

The Plan, as he so graciously called it consisted of nothing more than waiting for the day he calculated must be the key and then confronting her. That was it. He tapped at the date on the calendar. 'Twenty-eight days exactly…tonight,' he thought.

In retrospect, it was surprisingly easy to arrange. And if she had thought it strange that he would be the one to suggest to the Titans that they take an evening off to party, she hadn't let on. She had, as expected, denied joining them all for their partying, claiming when asked, that she had been planning to spend the night meditating and that it wasn't a good idea to put off the balancing effects of her meditation much longer. The others had insisted, begged, pleaded, but Robin had been the voice of reason, reminding them that they should accept their friend's reasoning so that they agreed to leave her in peace.

She hadn't been around when they were all ready to leave, which was why she didn't notice how he took the R-Cycle instead of riding with the others in the T-Car. And she certainly wasn't around when he pretended to remember a previous engagement which he had 'forgotten' until they were already on the road.

If she had been, she might have been a little suspicious then.

But since she wasn't and since it wasn't particularly strange for him to have appointments that he didn't explain about (they always assumed it was dealing with his secret identity life) no one else was suspicious and he made his way back to the Tower, unheeded.

He hoped she had stayed in the Tower.

From everything he had gathered, she preferred to stay in the Tower on these nights rather than go out and only went out if the others were around. (Which in itself was another question he needed answers to: why did she need to be alone in the Tower? Wasn't it enough to be locked away in her room?)

Once he reached Titans Tower, it was a small thing to enter without setting off any of the proximity detectors they had set up by clicking the button on his bike that deactivated them.

She was also surprisingly easy to locate.

Even if he wouldn't have had access to the Tower's computers which could pinpoint humanoid movement anywhere within the Tower and in a twenty feet perimeter to all sides, it would not have taken a genius to know where Raven would likely be on such a bright, clear, moon-kissed night.

The roof was an obvious choice. What had been a bit of a surprise, however, had been exactly where on the roof she had been.

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A/N: That is NOT the end. That's just the beginning actually. The whole Impulse actually has something like 17 pages to it. And yes, I'm being cruel and stopping it there. But this is only for the people who have this story on your story alert so you can know that the full part 2 I posted as a seperate, new story. I don't know why I did it like that, I just wanted to, so there. (Mostly because I see this as a kind of sequel, rather than the next chapter, I think because so much time has gone by for the characters...so...yeah...that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

You can find it here: www . fanfiction . net / s / 2846302 / 1 / (without spaces and with thehttp colo slash slashbeginning)