Beast Boy briefly looked back, seeing Raven streaking farther away in an attempt to catch him back at the Tower where she presumed he'd be. Looking back up at the looming cliff face, he beat his little wings to make the near completely vertical ascent to land on the grassy lookout she had just vacated. Sure enough, the young woman Raven had been conversing with was still there, her gaze resting gently on his landing form.

"Hello, Beast Boy," she greeted as he returned from his animal form, unfolding himself to stand up straight.

"Hey," he responded casually. He, much like Raven, wanted to be on guard around this strange woman, particularly after seeing the effect she seemed to have had on Raven. But there was something about her that wouldn't allow him to be anything but completely relaxed, even more so with his animal instincts. He had never seen her before tonight, yet there were urges in him that begged for him to transform into a dog and simply curl himself around her feet contentedly.

"How long had you been in the tree?" she asked suddenly, moving to sit and lay back on the grass. Despite the light pollution from the city behind them, there were still a fair number of stars sprinkling the night sky. His body moving of its own volition, he found himself mimicking her motions as he responded.

"'Bout the time you started talking about having a purpose," he answered honestly, unable to do anything but. For once, it was his human instincts that were more on guard than his animal ones, though the inborn trust that side of him seemed to have in this woman completely overrode any human fears that voiced themselves. "I thought you knew I was there the whole time. You looked right at me."

"Only because your heart rate picked up when I suggested that Raven let the rest of the team help her. You simply confirmed my suspicions when you flipped out and rustled all the leaves." He turned his head from the sky and stared at her in awe.

"You heard my heart? I was a bird! And at least five feet above you!" She merely smiled without turning, as if sharing a private joke with the stars.

"These ears catch more than most people think. I'm more like you than you would think." Beast Boy turned skeptical, his face contorting, though she never turned to see it. "Tell me, how do your powers work when you are in your human form?"

"All of my senses are super-strong," he explained easily, a little unnerved and unsure of why he was so comfortable about speaking to her. "For a human, anyway. I still need to be in an animal form to get the full effect."

"Are you so sure that your powers are what give you those abilities?"

Beast propped himself up on his elbows, staring at her as if she had suddenly turned into a zombie from one of his beloved B-grade movies. "Where else would they have come from?"

"I'm assuming you can hear the squirrel family shifting around in their little tree-knot home, and the birds that just rustled in their nests to get more comfortable. You can hear the waves hitting the rocks below as clearly as if you were standing on the rocks themselves, and smell the salt from the ocean mixing with the grass we're lying on and the faint scent of the night blooms from the shrubs near the gorge." She smirked as his jaw-dropped, his ears coming perking upward a bit to a shocked point. "I can feel the utter shock pouring off of you, just as easily as you can feel the calm radiating off of me. All of these things, and I know for a fact that I don't have a drop of animal DNA in me."

"Ho-…how did you…you can…all that?" he stuttered in typical Beast Boy fashion. "Dude! You must be some kind of freaky psychic alien or something! There's no way any normal person could hear and smell all the stuff I can!" Her eyes suddenly closed slightly, and her face softened into a much sadder expression.

"I never said I was normal."

Beast Boy cringed, a soft sorrow in her voice shriveling up his excitement. His ears drooped as his whole body seemed to take on a posture of a chastised puppy without ever changing form.

"Uh…I…that was…I didn't mean…I mean you seem normal enough, you just aren't…wait! No, I meant you can't be normal but still look like…I mean…um…can we just start over?" he practically whimpered, letting his upper body fall to the ground once more.

"All I'm trying to say is that you are more human than you might think. You've become so used to being Beast Boy, that you might be ignoring another part of you. The you that came before Beast Boy was born."

Silence settled as Beast Boy's eyes darted across the sky, mimicking the rapid fire thoughts bouncing around in his head. True, he never did reflect much on his past, almost a completely past life the way he looked at it now. Short of probably Cyborg, he was really the only Titan to have had something that could pass as a normal, human childhood…all up until the disease.

What was I like back then? he asked himself, actually finding it difficult to remember. But he tried; pushing past the loss of his parents, past the birth of his powers, past the green skin and the initial diagnosis. As if traveling through his mind, much like he had Raven's, he came face to face with the image of a cute little sandy-blond boy, staring up at him innocently.

Beast Boy blinked at him, realizing intellectually that he was looking at himself, but on some level not recognizing the kid in front of him. Suddenly, the child spoke.

"D'you wanna play with me?" he asked enthusiastically. Beast Boy looked around them. They seemed to be standing in a black void, just hanging in the middle of space. What're we gonna do, play patty-cake?

"Um…sure?" he answered uneasily. "Whaddya wanna play?" The boy sat down on the non-distinct ground and took up a very dignified pose.

"Let's tell a story! I'll start, and then you go, and then I go, and we keep going until one of us stops!" Beast Boy smiled at the energy his younger self exuded, the excitement written on his face. He sat along with the boy, moving himself a little bit closer. Soon they launched into a tale, one of the old folk-stories he'd learned in Africa. The two were gesturing and laughing, eyes glazed as if they were actually living the story as opposed to just telling it. Beast Boy felt a weight he didn't know was there fade away, a sort of natural peace coming to take its place.

"That's more like it," a gentle voice spoke, interrupting the dream he hadn't realized he'd lost himself in. He opened his eyes, wondering when they'd drifted shut, seeing the stars above him once more.

"Dude! What just happened? Did you just voodoo me asleep or something?" He propped himself up on his elbows again, noticing he could suddenly feel that same unnamed weight rest on him once more. His brow furrowed in response, a slight frown creeping onto his features.

"You calmed. You relaxed, you centered, I don't know what you want to name it, but you basically found you. You were…" she drifted off, trying to find the best way to voice the nature of what had happened. "Complete."

He almost instinctively denied it, almost argued that she wasn't making any sense, almost explained the whole thing away as a ludicrous plot to a cheesy horror flick. But something stopped him. He thought back to the…dream, experience, vision, whatever it was, and realized she was right. It wasn't necessarily clear how…but she was right.

"How…could you tell?" She shrugged.

"You can just feel it. Same as everything else." He nodded, understanding what she was trying to say, and realizing there was really no way to say it. It was just something you got, or you didn't. "How you did it, only you know," she added. He laid there quietly, trying to sort out the jumble his mind was in again, desperately searching for that feeling he'd discovered for so brief a time. His lack of success, however, began to show in the frustration that slowly tensed up his body.

"I don't get it…why won't it come back?" She didn't respond, which only served to frustrate him more. "I don't know what I did! I just…didn't do anything! All I did was tell a stupid old story, and it felt like…like everything was going to be okay!" he said angrily, though not with any great volume.

"Why isn't everything going to be okay now?" she probed.

"Because…because….well, just because!" He was sitting up completely now, indian style with his elbows on his knees as he squeezed his head in his hands. "Everything obviously didn't turn out okay then, so why should it now?"

"But you weren't thinking about what could go wrong, then. Why do you now?"

"I'm a Titan! My whole job is to fix things when they go wrong, how am I supposed to do that if I'm not ready for something to go wrong?"

"So the five of you are on constant alert, twenty-four-seven, ready to fly out the door and save the city at the drop of a hat?"

"Well…no…that's Robin's job."

"Then if nothing's going wrong, why can't you just…relax?" He drooped, as if all the tension had suddenly left his body. Turning his head, he found that the woman was looking at him for the first time the whole evening. He almost cried, lost in her eyes. Eyes that somehow seemed to understand everything he didn't know how to voice, that could see every flaw in him and not care, that could see every wound and ignore the scars they left. Eyes that saw every mistake he felt he had made and still looked at him with love.

"Because…I could make something go wrong," he whispered, broken. He turned his head, feeling unworthy of her gaze, even though he wanted nothing more than for that feeling of acceptance to never end.

"Beast Boy, we can't live in fear of screwing things up. We have to be ready to fix our mistakes, but trying to fix something that's not broken…well, you become so busy trying to find what's wrong that you can't really appreciate what's right." He lifted his head slightly, looking out across the ocean as he tried to digest what he was being told.

"I've known you for maybe an hour, and somehow you manage to turn my life upside down. How do you do it?" he asked, looking over at her again. She, however, had resumed her star-gazing, to his delight and slight disappointment, and simply shrugged.

"I just listen. Both to what's said and what's not said."

His typical response would have been to voice his confusion at such a cryptic statement, regardless of the fact it kind of made sense. He realized then that he was selling himself short…he understood her completely, but just wasn't confident that he did. Is that what she meant? Trying to fix what isn't broke to begin with? A remnant of that peace he had felt settled on him again, and he felt his mouth slightly turn up into a genuine smile. Not a trademark, pearly-white Beast Boy goofy grin. Just a smile.

After a few more moments of reveling in his new discovery, he remembered his original purpose for turning back to talk to this woman. Opening his mouth to get her attention, he realized he had no clue what her name was in order to call her and get her attention. Well…that makes things awkward, he thought. We can't have this deep conversation with me calling her "hey you" every time I want to ask a question.

"I believe you had a question you originally wanted to ask." Beast Boy's eyes widened a little. Now that was just creepy.

"How…how can I help Raven?" he asked quietly. "You told her to let us help her…but how do I do it without turning her away?" He looked over to find her smiling. Not at him, but at the stars. He was somewhat glad for that; he wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't either melt into a puddle or break down crying if she turned that smile toward him.

"I think you're already well on your way to figuring that out. She needs help seeing who she really is before she can try to accept it. Who better to trust than someone who has already accepted himself, and therefore has nothing to hide?" He felt a little bit of pride well in him at that, but just as quickly deflated, his ears drooping ever so slightly.

"She'd probably much rather turn to the others than me, anyway." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman shrug.

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean she won't need you. You will see things in her that only you see, that only you can see. It might take time, it might not. Just remember, part of asking her to let you in will require letting her in, too." That, for some reason, struck him with fear. He suddenly wondered if that was what she felt every time he tried to pry.

"We may have more in common than we give ourselves credit for," he responded with uncharacteristic insight. The woman smiled again.

"That you may, my friend." After remaining a few more moments in silence, she suddenly sat up, managing to rock herself in a standing position. "It's getting late. You'd best be getting back to the Tower before they start to worry." Beast Boy stood as the woman turned to leave.

"Wait a sec!" he called out, causing the woman to stop, turning her head slightly. "Who are you? I know Raven doesn't know your name, but she enjoyed talking to you…and, well…I did, too. It'd be a lot easier to do this again if we knew how to find you." To his surprise, she simply laughed.

"If you want to find me, all you have to do is come here. I tend to come quite often, so chances are we'd run into each other if either of you showed up." With this she started to walk off once more.

"Can I at least give you a lift over that gorge?" This caused her to pause, not in response to being spoken to as before, but at the actual question. "I know it's not the safest, and even if you are as special as I think you are, I'd feel better if I knew you weren't taking such a big risk," he explained, not really thinking twice about what he was saying. She didn't turn, but something in her body language suddenly became…coy.

"Why Beast Boy, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were flirting with me." He blinked in shock, replaying what he'd said in his head. Part of him reared up to fire off some kind of joke or play of words to cover his mistake. For once, he ignored that part.

"I…was just saying what I thought. I mean, I know you can probably take care of yourself…but I'd still like to help. You know, to kind of…pay you back, I guess, in a way," he finished bashfully, scratching the back of his head. She turned with a slight smile on her lips; he did nearly melt into a puddle.

"Like I said, if I didn't know better, I'd think it. But thank you, anyway. I guess…" she trailed as her eyes lost focus, locking onto something only she could see. "I guess tonight I'll play it safe. Shall we?" He smiled back at her, and they walked the rest of the way to the gorge. Turning into a pterodactyl, he gently grabbed onto her arms and lifted her over to the other side. Once she was safely on the ground, he landed once more and resumed his normal shape.

"Can I ask you one last question before we split?"

"Sure," she said as she made a motion of brushing her arms off, as if attempting to straighten sleeves that weren't actually there.

"How can you know so much about being whole, but not seem whole yourself?" She stopped suddenly, but only briefly, a motion caught by Beast Boy only because he was paying very close attention.

"Who's to say I'm not whole?" she countered.

"I am," he answered gently, confidently. "It's like you said…you can just feel it." She simply stood in silence a while longer, no longer moving in any fashion. After a few moments, she finally spoke.

"There is knowledge, and there is experience. People know that oxygen exists without ever seeing it, and people feel the affects of love with ever knowing they've fallen for someone."

"But you…you seem like you've…been there," he said, slightly unsure of himself. She sighed, and the sound brought an unexpected pain to his heart.

"There is also a fuller knowledge that comes from knowing and experiencing. That knowledge never goes away, even if the experience does." She turned, then, and started to walk away. "It's getting late, Beast Boy. We'd best be getting to our homes."

"But-"

"Don't worry. I'll be fine. And I'm sure we'll meet again," she called out, walking closer and closer to the city. Beast Boy couldn't shake the sadness that had fallen on him in that brief moment, that somewhat unexpected moment where it felt like she'd revealed a very deep, hurting part of herself to him. But he knew she was right; while it was by no means late enough for the others to worry, he had been out long enough for them to probably start to wonder. Especially if Raven had returned looking for him.

He turned toward the bay and after briefly looking back toward the area the enigma of a woman he had encountered had walked off in, he changed into an owl, taking off toward home.

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