Hello again readers. I shall shortly be off the the wonderful world of Cádiz, Spain. For the next two weeks, I shall be over-seas attempting to communicate with a third or forth grade vocabulary, the ability to speak in only two tenses, and the joys of charades and miming. :-) I'm looking forward to it. Sort of. I'm also terrified. No lie there. The thing I hate most about travel abroad is that it's all too easy to be stereotyped as yet another idiotic American pig-dog. That said, it should be fun. Have a sense of humor about the fact that you will make a fool of yourself multiple times a day and you're set.

Enough of that, however. There were a few hiccups in this chapter. I'm proud to say that I've ironed out most of them. The next update will, more likely than not, be unavailable until early to mid-June. So, I hope you're hooked enough by the end of this chapter to wait around for a bit.

As always, I extend a special thanks to my readers and reviewers. Enjoy.


Smile for the Camera

Beast Boy had experienced some scary stuff in his life, but none of it compared to the horror of nonexistence within his own mind. He could feel Raven moving around and probing, as if his mind was territory she had long been familiar with. Her presence was sifting through entire years of his life, small snippets of sound or color flaring into existence now and again. It definitely gave a whole new meaning to seeing one's life flash before their eyes.

Old conversations and sensations swirled around Beast Boy's consciousness, threatening to overwhelm him with their mere presence. Throughout it all, Beast Boy could feel Raven around him, soothing his fears and forcing back the swell of memories in a strange mental embrace.

The swirls of thought started to calm down and Raven went back to searching through his memories. Slowly, gaining clarity with every second, a hand solidified in Beast Boy's mind's eye. It was the only active thought – everything else was forced back and locked away. A strange feminine looking hand.

The flood started up again, but there was a new sense of control behind the deluge. Raven had set up a filter and was extruding the most recent years of his life through it. Beast Boy's focus on the images sharpened and he watched his life fly by in reverse. Most of the images passed too quickly for him to see clearly. Those that had similar characteristics to their current situation slowed down, sometimes enough for Beast Boy to read his own lips and recount the scene.

Beast Boy's life continued to play in reverse. The longer the sensation lasted, the more nervous the green teen got. Nonexistence didn't get any easier with experience. Raven continued to burrow into Beast Boy's mind as the last few days, the Brotherhood of Evil, Trigon, Terra, and so much more flashed before him. Thankfully, Raven seemed to be avoiding the most painful memories. Raven could probably still see them, but the empath was sparing Beast Boy those particular trips down memory lane.

The further back Raven went, the more Beast Boy started to doubt his certainty. Still, he could have been positive that now wasn't the first time they'd met Jefferson Sawchak. Eventually, Raven reached the private training sessions Robin had given him on maintaining his larger forms. Beast Boy would never tell anybody, but he knew that those training sessions had contributed largely to the initial animosity he'd had with Robin. Robin had not been a very good leader or teacher those first few months. All the lessons had been concentrated on a giant ladder to perfection that Beast Boy couldn't ascend quickly enough.

Think big. Think big. Think big. Think big.

The unbidden chant slipped into Beast Boy's thoughts. It had been a long time since he'd needed to use it. As soon as the private mantra finished echoing through his brain, Beast Boy felt like his gut was being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. The tugging was slow at first, tentative. Beast Boy could feel Raven's presence stretching out after the chant, trying to follow it to its source. What had started as a tentative tug quickly escalated to an uncontrollable surge forward. Beast Boy couldn't stop it, and something told him Raven couldn't either.

There was a crackling sound near him.

Flames lapped at dry bricks.

Angry black fumes flew into the sky.

The air was starved of liquid, pressing down on all sides and attempting to steal his sweat glands for itself.

A sound of splintering wood rang out.

A siren was shrilling nearby.

A shattering explosion and the tinkling of molten glass.

A strong grip under his arms, hoisting him skyward.

A crash as stone plummeted to the ground.

A name, called desperately around the banging of tiny hands on a metal surface…

"Lynn!"

Beast Boy bolted up again and gasped for breath. The dryness was still in his mouth, leeching moisture from his tongue. Beast Boy staggered to his feet and rushed for the open window. Raven's eyes were still closed. She was centering herself in her own body before resurfacing from Beast Boy's mental plane. Beast Boy stuck his head out the window and plunged it into a graying pile of slush. He took the dirtied ice into his mouth and waited for it to melt, ignoring the taste.

"That can't be good for you," Raven remarked dryly from behind him. Beast Boy pulled his head back into the tower and swallowed forcibly. He turned to Raven and shook his head. The empath's forehead was glistening with sweat and her breath was escaping quickly in wispy streams of white.

"Don't care," Beast Boy gasped as the invisible sand coating his tongue was banished. Raven rolled her eyes at the changeling's antics. The empath waved her hand and stuck it out in front of her. The arm vanished as it phased into a different part of the tower. When Raven drew it back, she was holding a glass of water in her hand. Raven took a small sip of the liquid before turning inward to sort through what she'd uncovered. It made Beast Boy uncomfortable to think how much Raven had just learned about him. It didn't help that she was currently categorizing all of it.

"What was up with that last memory?" Beast Boy asked when the silence became unbearable. "I saw all the others, but…"

"That one was broken," Raven finished for him with a nod. "You suffered some trauma that damaged the memory. That's why you couldn't remember it earlier. We should check the first reports," Raven said as she picked herself off the bed. Beast Boy stared after her, dumbstruck. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to be mad at Raven for ignoring her sojourn into his mind or grateful that she wasn't making a big deal out of it.

"How early are we talking?" Beast Boy asked, opting to be grateful for the moment. They had other things to worry about.

"Early," Raven frowned at the file cabinet. "Robin might not even have records going that far back."

Beast Boy thought that was unlikely. Robin always had records on everything. The Boy Wonder always controlled everything. It was one of the things that made him such an excellent leader and such a lousy roommate.

"You're not serious, are you?" Beast Boy asked when he saw Raven's expression. "This is Robin we're talking about here! Obsessive-compulsive know-everything-no-matter-how-unimportant-it-is Robin. There's no way he wouldn't have reported something as big as…" Beast Boy drifted off as he realized that the memory still had no context. There had been fire, explosions, broken wood, and shattered stone, but he still couldn't figure out why or how.

"He wouldn't have if the team wasn't formed yet, or if it was only a tentative arrangement," Raven corrected as she pulled out what must have been the oldest packet of papers in the entire archive. Raven read through the headings quickly before throwing the packet back in disgust. Beast Boy recognized it as something he had already read.

"With how much Cyborg and Robin were fighting in the beginning, Robin didn't start the archives until we got our first message from Slade."

Beast Boy waited for that to sink in. The HIVE attack on the tower had been almost four months after he joined the Titans. He hadn't realized the foundation of the team had been so unstable for so long. Sure, Cyborg and Robin fought a lot – Cyborg still had a hard time every now and then being the oldest Titan and having to take someone else's orders – but Beast Boy hadn't realized just how precarious the situation had been.

"So, what do we do now? I mean, if Robin doesn't have records of it, the only people who might would be like… old newspaper articles or something." Raven sighed and pressed two fingers against her chakra in response.

"I'm going to get back on the Internet and see what I can find. You're going to go get pizzas."

"Pizzas? I don't know, Rae, I'm not that hungry."

"Good," Raven said as she sat in front of the computer. "The pizzas aren't for us: we need a peace offering. We can't keep Sarah Rose and Drew locked up – the new cameras are arriving tomorrow – and if either of them say anything to Stewart, we're in trouble. So make sure their pizza isn't vegetarian."

"You want to let Drew and Sarah Rose out?" Beast Boy asked slowly.

"Not really, but we can't just let them starve in there. Go get the pizza. In fact, get two – you're probably hungrier than you think," Raven added after a moment.

Beast Boy jumped out the window and morphed into a falcon on the way down. Streamlining himself as he got closer to the ground, Beast Boy pulled out of his dive and shot across the bay for Angelo's Pizza Parlor. The parlor wasn't too far away, and Angelo had been making the Titan's pizzas at discount prices ever since they'd stopped a run-away bus from demolishing his restaurant.

ooooo

Beast Boy still couldn't believe he'd ordered a pizza with meat on it. That alone spoke volumes about how important it was that the two trapped crew members forgive Raven and him. Angelo seemed to think it was strange for Beast Boy to place an order for a meat pizza too, because the portly Italian spent a little too long saying hello and inquiring about how the changeling was doing. Beast Boy paid for the pizzas once they were out of the oven and headed back to the tower. Transforming into a pterodactyl, Beast Boy took a pizza in each of his talons and flew back to the tower. The green dinosaur landed on the top bunk with a small thump and morphed back into its human form.

"Alright," Beast Boy clapped after he'd flipped Raven's and his box open, "tell me now how much you want, because the smell's been driving me crazy for hours."

"You left forty minutes ago," Raven remarked wryly. Still, there was the tinniest hint of a small adorning her features. Raven got to her feet and snatched the vegetable pizza from Beast Boy's lap before he could dive into the meal. She left the other one with him; there was no danger of Beast Boy eating a meat lover's pizza. Raven backed slowly out of the door, waving the pizza box back and forth enticingly. Beast Boy bounded off the bunk bed and grabbed the other pizza.

The trip to the safe room was uneventful. It was actually a little creepy how quiet the tower was. When they got closer to the reinforced osmium doors, Beast Boy could hear a dull knocking. The changeling shook his head and glanced at Raven. The empath's eyes flared to a brilliant white, and freezing black light enclosed the two Titans.

When the darkness vanished, they were standing at the back of the safe room. Beast Boy couldn't resist the urge to shiver. He doubted he would ever get over that reaction. Surprisingly, the pizza box was still warm between his hands.

"If they didn't open the door the first time, the second time, the third time, or the fourth time you did that, they probably won't open it now." Drew was leaning against a particularly complex symbol that Beast Boy had always thought looked like a fish with an extra fin attempting a hula-dance.

Sarah Rose – Beast Boy forced the term pixie girl into the back of his head – ignored Drew's impassive observation and continued to slam her shoulder blade into the door. Beast Boy realized with a start that the only reason she wasn't using her hands was because they had been reduced to a mass of painful looking welts, blisters, and shallow cuts.

"Who wants pizza?" Raven asked when Sarah Rose took a break from her assault. Both Drew and Sarah Rose looked up like they'd been shocked. Drew's face split into a grin. Sarah Rose looked like she was trying to discern how to cause them the most pain. That could be a problem.

"I'm starved," Drew piped up as he climbed off the floor. "What type of pizza did you get?"

"We got one vegetarian pizza and one murder's pizza," Beast Boy supplied, gesturing to the two boxes Raven and he were carrying.

"I think Beast Boy meant meat lover's pizza. Didn't you, Beast Boy?" Raven added threateningly when the changeling opened his mouth to argue. Beast Boy closed his mouth reluctantly and shuffled his feet together like a scolded child.

The youngest Titan plopped down in the center of the safe room and crossed his legs. He flipped the pizza box open in his lap and was reminded that Raven had stolen the good pizza. Making a face that conveyed his disgust at the butchery in front of him, the green teen slid the pizza across the floor to Drew. Drew didn't have any of Beast Boy's inhibitions when it came to consuming meat, and the young shadow dove into the meal with unparalleled vigor.

"Raven, can I have dinner now?" Beast Boy's only answer was to be hit in the head with a flying pizza box. Beast Boy ignored the unprovoked attack and started in on his own meal. For the next few minutes, Beast Boy was oblivious to everything around him.

"What do you think you're doing?" Sarah Rose demanded, annoyance threaded through her words. "Do you think you can just show up with pizza and we'll forget that you locked us up like animals?"

"I'd hoped so. It seems to have worked on Drew," Raven answered with a tiny shrug as she walked over. Raven's hands started to shimmer with translucent blue light. Sarah Rose stiffened but stood her ground. Raven passed the wavering magic over Sarah Rose's battered hands and the cuts and bruises began to mend.

"Let's get some pizza, Sarah, before the boys devour them. Beast Boy and I will explain everything. Just…" Raven's mouth went dry at the hypocrisy of her words, "trust us. Just for a while." Sarah Rose frowned darkly at Raven, forcing a sigh from the dark girl.

Raven walked over to the door and placed her hand over the palm scanner. The scanner lit up and slid up her palm easily. When the port opened for an eye scan, Raven leaned forward, speaking clearly. "Raven: Primary Access, R1F2." The doors began to squeal open.

"Trust us," Raven repeated as she turned back to the boys and the quickly disappearing pizzas. "Now, let's get some pizza." Sarah Rose looked from the pizzas to the open door, obviously weighing her choices. Eventually, slowly, her hunger won out over her anger. It was hard to stay mad at the very people she idolized.

ooooo

"So, start explaining," Sarah Rose prompted once Beast Boy had helped himself to the last slice of pizza. Drew and the changeling had been joking around and talking as if nothing had ever happened from the first couple of bites. Raven had been eating quietly ever since opening the doors. Sarah Rose, however, kept glancing nervously back at the doors, fearful that they would close again.

Raven nodded thoughtfully, as if Sarah Rose had just said something exceptionally bright. She was mad, that was to be expected. But Sarah Rose wasn't as mad as she was acting. The girl was playing the role she felt obligated to fill.

"We locked you in here to get you out of our hair," Raven said evenly. Beast Boy's eyes widened at Raven's bluntness. Beast Boy hastily swallowed the pizza in his mouth and cut Raven off.

"What Raven means is... we're sorry. Right, Rae?" Beast Boy frowned at the demoness. Raven nodded grudgingly and allowed Beast Boy to take over the explanation. "We needed some time to think without you guys around. You didn't have cameras so…" Beast Boy's voice trailed off in pursuit of a fleeting insight.

"Hey, you guys like us, right?" Beast Boy asked suddenly.

Beast Boy swore he could hear Raven grinding her teeth together, but he had just had the most amazing idea. If he was right, they might finally be able to turn this whole disaster around. Drew's eyebrows arced in a manner that suggested it was a stupid question to bother asking. Sarah Rose's brow furrowed, no doubt going through what must have been a couple eventful hours with Raven, before nodding slowly.

"What does that has to do with anything?" Raven growled. Beast Boy shot Raven a wise glance shrouded in an aura of mystery. Raven fell silent.

"And you don't like Stewart, do you Drew?" Beast Boy asked quickly, his thoughts outstripping his mouth. "What about you Sarah? Do you like Mr. Doom-and-Gloom?" The silence was enough of an answer.

"And neither one of you knows Sawchak?" Beast Boy followed up.

"He's the guy who hired Stewart," Sarah Rose spoke up. "I don't know him, but he's the person who hired us. Why?"

Beast Boy completely lit up at that news. He could see comprehension dawning across Raven's features as she somehow managed to follow his incomprehensive loops and leaps of logic to its conclusion.

"Okay," Beast Boy jumped to his feet and beamed at the two camera-people in front of him. "Do you guys want a different job? We probably can't pay as much, but it's guaranteed to be more fun than following Rae and me around."

Both Drew and Sarah Rose balked at Beast Boy. He wasn't making any sense. They had a job right now, and they couldn't just walk out on it. Stewart would sooner eat them alive than let them quit in the middle of this documentary.

Raven rolled her eyes and started explaining Beast Boy's offer in a way that normal people could follow without suspending their grounding to reality. That involved telling them about Beast Boy's fanfiction reading, meeting Sawchak, signing the condemning contract, and moving up through the past few hours and their suspicions about why Sawchak was doing this. In short, Raven told the two shadows everything that they hadn't been told about their current project.

"When we were still building the tower, there was a fire. Beast Boy and Starfire managed to put it out, and Cyborg evacuated most of the people from the building. One of them was Sawchak. Sawchak kept trying to run back into the building, but Cyborg wouldn't let him. The roof collapsed when Beast Boy put out the fire, killing Sawchak's sister. He's been blaming us for his sister's death ever since," Raven finished the narrative with a sore throat.

Beast Boy couldn't believe his ears. He'd never killed anybody before. It felt so unreal. Sure, it had happened years ago, but he had still crushed a little girl under tons of cement. It wasn't his fault – he knew that. Still… there had to be something he could have done differently. Something he could have done better. Beast Boy's usually vibrant composure wilted. It could be seen in his face: the drooping ears, the downcast eyes, the utter horror threatening to run screaming from his eyes. Beast Boy's shoulders were slumped. He'd dealt with enough death in his life without causing it himself, and the revelation was closing in on him.

"You blacked-out," Raven supplied kindly. "It was the first time you'd ever been a whale. And the first time you'd stayed that big for so long. That was why Robin gave you those endurance lessons… and why he was so harsh when you didn't improve quickly enough. You didn't do anything wrong, Beast Boy. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control." Beast Boy looked up at Raven, as if making sure that she was really there and that her explanation was valid. If it hadn't been his fault, Robin wouldn't have been so hard on him. No, that wasn't true.

"So you were roped into a documentary and tailed by complete strangers without your permission?" Drew asked, obviously trying to redirect the conversation to the present. "And you want to do something to fight back? Count me in!" There was a long pause. "What exactly am I in for?" Beast Boy could feel himself being pulled out of his shock. There was a presence dragging him away from his depression – a presence that reminded him of Raven. Just like that, the old Beast Boy was back, barely able to contain himself as he uncovered the objective of his brainchild. When the changeling was done explaining, two of Stewart's cameras decided to start work on a different job.

ooooo

Beast Boy stood awkwardly in front of the camera. This was a new thing for him, and appearing in control and serious was not something he was well-known for. Raven would be better at this. Raven had insisted that he do it. She said something about personal growth, but Beast Boy had the sneaking suspicion that there was a desire to see him squirm factoring in as well.

The windows in Beast Boy's room were still thrown open. The darkening clouds hinted that it might be a good idea to close them soon. The early morning rays were all but extinguished, and Beast Boy could smell a storm off the ocean breeze. It tickled his keen nose and told tales of large waves, rain, and tongues of lightening.

After yesterday's early dinner, the four rouge moviemakers had snuck into Beast Boy's room to plan. Their plans, their lies, their purpose, everything needed to be decided and it needed to be decided quickly. Because of the constant activity and presence of other people, Beast Boy's carpet was still visible.

The camera winked at him innocently as Beast Boy tried to remember what he needed to say. They hadn't scripted anything; Sarah Rose and Raven agreed that would add to the level of sincerity and credibility. It also meant that Beast Boy had no clue what he should say. And Drew was hoping not to edit too much: Stewart had a chokehold on most of the tech people.

"Um… hi," Beast Boy started nervously. His voice broke and Beast Boy coughed self-consciously. "Most of you already know my name. Well, no. You all know me." Beast Boy frowned to himself. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. It almost gave him a grudging respect for people like Stewart, and then he realized what he was thinking.

"Look," Beast Boy started again, emotion sparking in his eyes. The shades of green washed out of his eyes and penetrated into the camera, searching for the souls and minds on the other side. "There's a documentary being made right now in exchange for the end of fanfiction. A really negative documentary."

Beast Boy took a deep breath to collect himself. He could see Sarah Rose give him an enthusiastic thumbs-up from behind Drew. Raven just nodded comfortingly.

"We can't stop the documentary. We don't want to," he added quickly, "but even if we did, we couldn't. The movie's going to be released and it's going to make us all look really bad. If you believe that, you can save yourself the money for the ticket," Beast Boy grinned at the camera, his canines sticking out from under his lip.

"What we wanted to do was explain why. Why we want fanfiction to stop, and why we agreed to the documentary. I mentioned that the documentary is going to be bad. We want to explain the why there too."


Author's Note: Well, there you have it. Now... I command you to stay interested until I get back. Then I can devote large portions of summer to my writing. As always, please review. If you've read the story with an active mind, it follows logically that you have something to say. Right?