Author's Note: Hello, I'm back. The epilogue will be posted at midnight (Pacific time) tonight (3AM Eastern). Just so you know.

He found himself coughing by the beach by the Tower.

"I'm sick of this," Robin said. "I can't even die."

"Maybe that's a good thing."

Robin looked up to see he wasn't alone. Raven stood there, her blue cloak fluttering in the wind. He smiled ironically and gave a curt laugh. "Of course. It's you again."

She kneeled down next to him in the sand. "It took a lot of effort to get here," she told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Don't screw it up."

"And what's happening now?" Robin asked her. "Am I schizophrenic? Am I engaged to Starfire? Am I in love with you?"

Raven withdrew her hand in shock. "I can't answer any of those questions."

"You can never answer my questions, can you?" Robin snapped, angrily. "Fine. I don't care anymore. About anything at all. You've put me through hell. I'm not playing anymore."

He fell flat on the sand. He really didn't care. So what if he was schizophrenic? OK. And if he was dying, in a coma somewhere… well then that was fine too. And if something was eating his soul, well then by now there must not be much left to scavenge anyway.

He was losing himself. He was losing his identity, his memories, his spirit, hell, even his stubbornness had faded away.

"I am not myself…" He muttered.

"And neither am I," said Raven. "Or more importantly, I'm not who you think I am."

"Don't you think I know that by now?" Robin snapped at her. "I'm not that dense."

"I mean," Raven explained, "that I'm not your enemy."

Robin scoffed. "No, then. I suppose you're here to save me."

She looked at him curiously and then rose to her feet. "Get up."

"What?" Robin said, with another scoff. She kicked him.

"I said get up!"

"What are you doing?" Robin asked with a sigh, but rising to his feet nonetheless.

"When you stabbed me," Raven began, "I was weakened. I needed a little help from our friends. So we combined our strengths."

"What are you talking about?" Robin asked, wearily.

"She is saying that we have come to help you defeat your villain."

The voice had come from behind him. When Robin turned, he half-expected to find Starfire bleeding in her wedding dress. But what he saw was not Starfire, the bride. She was like Raven: normal.

Robin opened his mouth to speak, when he was interrupted.

"We're not gonna let you go that easily, dude." To his left, Beast Boy stood proudly with that goofy grin of his. He wasn't cockroaches. He wasn't some giant animal. He was just Beast Boy.

"Face it, Rob," came a voice behind, "We're lost without you."

Cyborg was not the same. He was weary. He was worn. He was rusty. He did not look like the shiny, happy Cyborg who had replaced Robin so easily as leader of the team.

But Robin did not believe any of it for a minute. He screamed at the sky.

"For God's sake, Terra, you sly evil little parasite, just leave me the hell alone!"

Robin pushed past Beast Boy and walked up towards the fake Titans' Tower.
Of course, his pseudo friends followed him.

"Did you say Terra?" Beast Boy's voice trembled slightly when he spoke.

"You know what I mean," Robin muttered.

Raven cut him off. "No, we don't," she said, sounding angry. "Listen, Robin, I know you must have gone through a lot. But you have to accept that it's really us this time."

"Like I accepted it was really you last time," Robin snapped. "And then the time before that. And before that."

Raven grabbed his shoulders. "I brought the others with me so I could persuade you that we were real. I thought that if we all came…"

Robin pushed her hands off of him. "And then I'll wake up in the infirmary from a coma, or a schizophrenic episode, or because I fainted, or because you just stole all my organs, or because I just fell over and hit my head."

"Would it help if we told you something that only we could know?" Beast Boy asked.

"No good," Raven answered for him. She looked at Robin. "The leech is taking everything from Robin's own memory. Everything he knows, it will also know."

"Oh, so now there is a parasite," Robin said. "Great. Make up your mind, why don't you."

But Raven thought she'd made a break through. "Yes!" she said, catching his arm as he tried to walk past her. "It's called a succubus. It's a form of body snatcher. It plagues its victims with nightmares and feeds on their memories. It's eating you alive, Robin. And then it's going to become you. It will walk with your legs and talk with your mouth until it rots, and then it doesn't care where it dumps the rest of you."

Robin looked at his arm where Raven had grabbed him. He looked up at Raven and realized something. "You're limping."

Raven opened her mouth, then closed it. She nodded. "Yeah. I got stabbed. Maybe you'll remember."

He did, but only just. "Who are you?"

"I'm Raven," she said.

Robin paused. "I… I don't know where I am."

Raven looked at the other Titans. "We're losing him," she said. "Cyborg, what time is it?"

" Quarter to twelve."

Raven looked panicked. "Don't do this to me, Robin. Not now. Please."

He looked at her blankly. He had forgotten what they had been speaking about. "Raven…" he tasted the name. It warmed him. The emotion seemed alien to him now. "Raven."

"Yes!" she shook his shoulders. "And if you don't listen to me now, you will die. You don't have to believe me, hell you don't even have to trust me, you just have to realize that you have no choice. What's the worst that could happen if you listen to me?"

Robin knew that she was right. Something in the fog of his memory told him that there was something urgent afoot. And Raven sounded like she was willing to get him out of it. He nodded. "What do I do?" he asked her.

Raven looked to her friends. But they were all looking at her for what to do as well. She looked at Robin. "We fight," she said.

"Or we could just, you know, talk it out."

The Titans were stunned at the voice. They spun around to see Terra, smiling at them. Cyborg did a quick headcount. "Um… I don't think she's supposed to be here."

"Terra?" said Beast Boy, breathless.

The ghost girl smiled at him. And with a wave of her hand, they all looked different. Beast Boy grew into the monster. Raven was in a red dress. Starfire was in a bloody wedding gown. And Cyborg looked intimidating.

Robin backed away immediately from all of them, shaking his head, scared. "No." he said, and bumped right into Terra. He spun around and looked at her, and remembered the cat eyes. He pushed her away. "No!"

"I'm in a dress," said Raven, dully. "Yay."

"Mine is stained," said Starfire, studying her gown. "What is this?"

"Why the hell am I this thing again?" Beast Boy asked, his voice coming through in grunts and howls.

Cyborg was rejoicing. "Hell yeah, I have upgrades I didn't even know was possible! Booya!"

But Robin was neither confused, nor excited. He was scared.

His friends had never seen their Fearless Leader so fearful before. He backed away from all of them like a child who was facing the monster in his closet. He was especially wary of Terra. But Terra's eyes were on the intruders.

"How dare you interrupt me," she hissed, her voice sounding like a serpent. "Before I even began my finale."

"What finale?" Beast Boy dared.

Terra slowly morphed. Black and orange, the colors of Halloween, swirling. A haunting mask. Angry eyes.

It was Slade.

Raven looked at Beast Boy out of the corner of her eye. "You always have to ask, don't you?"

Slade laughed. The resemblance was uncanny. He was exact in every detail. Swiftly, he grabbed Raven by the wrists and held her in the air. "I told him you were dead," he said. "And dead you're going to stay."

Slade heaved Raven into the wall of the tower as the sky began to grow dark and cold.

"Titans, Go!" Cyborg screamed. Starfire and Beast Boy looked at him, both looking doubtful. Beast Boy's furry eyebrow was cocked unusually high. He gestured at his form.

"Uh… dude???"

"I do not know what he is saying, but I echo his doubtful tone," said Starfire.

"We don't have time for this," Cyborg insisted, already blasting Slade. Starfire shrugged and took to the air. Beast Boy rolled his eyes and bounded into battle.

A timid Robin crawled his way over to Raven as the Titans fought. He lifted her head gently.

"I never wanted to hurt you," he whispered. "I just wanted it to stop."

Raven smiled up at him and reached a hand to touch his cheek. She radiated with warmth. "Just keep me awake…" she said. "All that thing needs to do is beat us until our minds can't take it anymore. Just enough force that would render us unconscious in the real world, and then we're gone. You'll be alone again."

Tears leaked through Robin's mask. "I don't want to be alone." He whispered.

"I don't want you to be alone either," Raven said, her eyes set. "Now help me up."

Robin threw her arm across his shoulder and helped her to her feet. Slade was using all his firepower. Including that which was bestowed upon him by Trigon.

"He's pulling every nightmare you've ever had to the surface," Raven explained as Starfire and Slade exchanged blasts while Beast Boy prepared to launch into the fray. "Every doubt, every little fear, every twinge of guilt or anger or dread, it's all in here. The key to defeating him is just acknowledging it."

"I don't understand," Robin said, his voice weak. He was forgetting himself again.

"Try!" Raven insisted. "Everything you've seen, they were all made from your own head. Your own insecurities. Just admit that they're there. If there's a giant green elephant in the room, you're not going to be able to do anything until you say, 'wow, there's a green elephant in the room.'"

As if to emphasize her point, Beast Boy dropped out of the sky and landed on Slade as a giant elephant. Raven looked over her shoulder, then back to Robin.

"OK, that was completely coincidental."

"Hey! I got my morph back on track!" Beast Boy declared in triumph. But right as he reveled in his victory, Slade kicked him in the small of the back. Robin winced as he heard his spine crunch.

Beast Boy lay limp on the battlefield, face down in the sand. All of a sudden, all the memories Robin had of Beast Boy came flooding back into his mind. Every time Beast Boy had made him laugh, every little annoyance, every time Robin had snapped at him, every time Robin had underestimated him, every time Beast Boy always tried to prove himself, every time Beast Boy ended up saving the day…

"BEAST BOY!" Robin yelled as he left Raven behind and ran to the shape shifter. But by the time Robin kneeled by his side, Beast Boy disappeared.

Robin dug his hands in the sand where Beast Boy's body had fell.

"You see?" came Raven's voice. "The moment we die in this world, the moment we leave it."

"Is Beast Boy really…"

"No," Raven said. "I learned my lesson from last time. I cast a spell, so there was no correlation between what happens in our soul selves to our physical bodies. Beast Boy will wake up feeling a little sore, but he'll be fine. Consider it like playing a video game."

"It's not a game to me," said Robin, recalling his nightmares.

"I know," said Raven.

"Back in the graveyard, she told me… She made a deal with me. She said if I could kill her, I'd be free. But that the next time she kills me, I'll stay dead."

Raven looked stunned. "She actually said that???" She looked at Slade. "What an idiot."

"What?" Robin said. "I don't get it."

"That deal she made still stands, Robin," said Raven. "When a succubus makes a deal, its bound by hell to keep it."

"But I've died a thousand times since then," said Robin.

"But not by her, I'll bet," Raven said, narrowing her eyes. "You were killed by your own nightmares."

Robin was watching Slade fight. He finally caught Starfire in a stream of liquid fire and she screamed as her flesh began to burn. Her wedding dress blackened as it was charred by the flames. And in an instant, she was gone.

That just left Cyborg. He fought fiercely. Until Slade's forceful bunch jammed his sonic cannon.

When Cyborg fired, the canon exploded, sending him rocking backwards into the sea. He sank beneath the waves and did not resurface.

Raven turned to Robin desperately. "As much as I would like to fight beside you, Robin, this is your battle. I'll be gone in a moment, he'll kill me. But remember, you can beat him!"

Robin looked at her blankly. He wasn't sure what to do. For a minute, he'd forgotten who she was. She turned away from him and faced Slade who was coming towards her.

"Every minute you spend in my world," said Slade, "is another memory I steal from you as well." And slowly, he morphed, into something large and a sickly leathery red. He sprouted horns. His four eyes glowed red.

"Oh no you don't!" Raven hissed, and she dived at him, before he could grow larger. But he was holding the sword Robin had pierced her with before and like a marshmallow she was skewered. She rolled her eyes.

"Damn irony!" she moaned before she too disappeared.

Robin blinked and it was Raven again in front of him. The long-haired, red dress Raven he knew all too well. She licked her lips.

"Come to me, Robin," she said, seductively. "I promise I won't bite."

Robin clenched his hands into fists. Seeing his friends die like that invigorated his thirst for freedom. He was going to get out.

"I'm not playing your games anymore," he said to her, breathing hard.

"Robin, you have no other choice," she whispered. "I remember when I was alive. I used to be a lot like you. In love with two people. I married the wrong one. And he beat me every day of my life. The other, well, when I needed him most, he abandoned me for another, prettier woman. I sold my soul to the devil to get my revenge on them. And then I became this. It is my curse. Be glad you will not suffer like I have. Think of it this way, I am doing you a favor. I'm saving you from the torment of the broken heart you're bound to have. Whomever you end up choosing, she will destroy you."

"I think you're a little confused," Robin said. "About who's destroying who."

She smiled wickedly. She was inches away from him now as she caressed his cheek. She smelt of lavender and mangos.

Robin imagined he was holding a gun. He imagined he would blow her brains out right there and they would splatter everywhere.

Cold steel weighed heavily in the hand behind his back.

She kissed him and he hesitated. Her tongue danced with his. She was a succubus. She was a pathetic ghost.

She was not Raven.

Her passion was interrupted mid-kiss. Her eyes shot open. Her lips grew cold. Lavender and mango dissipated into the air and all Robin could smell was rotting flesh. Her tongue withdrew and she spluttered, baffled. Her hands clutched her stomach, which was bleeding through her red dress. She looked up at Robin in disbelief.

He was still pointing the gun at her. "You'll let me go now," he said. "That was the deal."

She tried to laugh and coughed up blood instead. "Chose the gun over the drugs," she said. "Good choice."

And in a second, she was gone. And so was he.