Disclaimer: We, or I, do not own Teen Titans.

Author's Note: Thanks again to all our readers. We'll try to update faster, school can get in the way.

You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.

-Morris West


Cyborg slowly looked over the clipboard he held in his hand. He'd read over the charts at least a hundred times, and when all the medical machines hooked up to his two friends spat out another set with updated data in a few minutes, he'd read over those a hundred times as well.

He hated not being able to go help Robin and Starfire fight the HIVE, but BB and Raven needed him more. He hated having to stand silent watch over two of his closest friends, with full knowledge that they could die at any moment. But most of all, he hated not being able to do one damn thing about any of it.

He reached the bottom of the changeling's chart and was once again about to start back up at the top when he noticed a small box in the bottom right corner of the data-abundant page.

"REM: Present?" He blinked and then looked at the little box again. He threw the chart onto the open countertop and raced over to the green Titan's bed. Cyborg had shut off the EEG's visual monitor because the one hooked up to Beast Boy's machine flickered incessantly, and he figured his patients would do better with their doctor's sanity intact.

At this point, however, his sanity was a luxury he could afford to risk. He had to see if the data was right, or if the machines needed another recalibrating. Flicking the device on, Cyborg stared intently at the series of fluctuating lines. In the middle, there were four lines that ran completely flat along the screen.

Cyborg sighed in disappointment before a flicker of movement on the screen caught his eye. Excitedly, he glued his face to the display and waited for confirmation that he wasn't just seeing things. There! The middle of the four lines rose almost imperceptibly, then fell an equally short distance.

The metallic Titan whirled around to check Raven's identical equipment. He watched silently for a moment, and was soon rewarded with a small blip, no bigger than Beast Boy's. He pushed the monitor on its hinged platform to the side and leaned in close to the purple-haired girl.

Her breathing was slow, rising and falling lightly, and did not disturb the peacefully pained look on the empath's face. Cyborg got closer, his own face only inches from hers, staring intently. Her eyelids wobbled slightly, her eyelashes vibrating like strings on a violin.

There was no doubt now, both of them, the actual people he knew, were still both very much alive. He quickly got back to work, trying to find a way to make sure that they stayed that way.

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Robin collapsed his staff and stowed it away in his belt. He reached out with his foot and towed over a prostrate Gizmo with his steel-tipped boot. The surprised/pain-filled look on the unconscious villain's face said it all: he never saw it coming.

He looked over to where Starfire hovered a few feet above the street. An unconscious Mammoth at her feet, and an equally lifeless Jinx a few yards away, closer to the large hole in the museum wall.

"That was even easier than I had hoped," he said, stepping over the bald bad guy towards Starfire.

"Yes, it appears that the Mammoth has, what do you say- a jaw of glass?"

"Glass jaw, " he said automatically, raising his voice to make himself heard over the approaching sirens of the ever-late police. "You know, Star, about what I was going to say earlier-"

"Guys, I've got some good news!" Cyborg's booming voice coming out of both of their communicators cut the Boy Wonder off.

"We're on our way back." Robin released the button on his communicator as Starfire was already wrapping her arms around him and launching into the air.

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Raven held her eyes clenched shut. Suddenly the pressure around her changed. She felt wind- dry wind- and heat on her back. How had she gotten outside? She slowly eased up off of her extremely tensed-up position, and very, very cautiously, opened one eye. She was in the city, people were walking down the street, around her, not even taking notice of her presence.

Bright sunlight cascaded down from high overhead, reflecting off the countless mirrored windows of the skyscrapers lining the downtown street she stood on. She checked herself for a moment, made sure she was real by pinching her leg, and letting out an 'ouch' that no one walking around her seemed to notice; the sidewalk beneath her feet seemed authentic though. She lifted a pale hand and gingerly touched a tree imbedded in the sidewalk by the city. It felt real enough.

She looked down; her clothes were back to normal, and- thank Azar- free of blood. The wind blowing lightly at her cloak was as warm and dry as the intense sunlight. Raven couldn't help but smile- a very small smile, but a smile nonetheless. It had all obviously been some sort of horrible nightmare. It's not as though her worst fears could just suddenly come to pass.

As she looked around, hand still resting against the very real feeling tree, the backs of both hands began to burn, as though someone had just dropped hot coals onto them, and pressed the same in her palms. Instinctively her hand's clenched up. The pain vanished as quickly as it came, and she looked at her outstretched hand, slowly opening it.

It was full of… dust… no, ash. Just then the wind intensified, wiping it out of her open palm and revealing a burning red rune. A small cry of fear escaped her lips and she looked around frantically. In an instant the whole scene around her had vanished and had been replaced with a derelict, worn-down, rubble strewn wasteland.

She turned her head away from the street and back to the tree next to her, praying that her eyes were deceiving her, but watched helplessly as the tree withered, and it turned to ash before melting away into the fierce wind.

Her dark cloak and purple hair fluttered around her as she staggered away from the spot where it had been. Everything was destroyed; the once teeming street was in terrible disrepair. The once gleaming skyscrapers of the city showed signs of decay, their mirrored glass windows broken or missing more often than not.

A voice behind her startled her, and she spun around to face it.

"I gotta say kid, you do good work." Mumbo had his hands on his hips as he glanced appraisingly around at the ruined city.

"What are you talking about?" Raven snapped angrily. "What happened to the city?!" She stepped back into a guarded stance, her hands glowing with black energy.

"Oh come on kid, you can drop the act, I just want to know how you did it. It's a pretty impressive trick…" He shrugged his shoulders

"I didn't do anything," she retorted, trying to keep her voice steady and failing, it cracked slightly as her eyes wandered to the broken down ruins surrounding her.

"Right, we both know that's mumbo jumbo!" The blue-faced magician raised his wand and a jet of smoke shot out. Raven raised her own hands, waiting for a blow to come from the cloud encompassing her, but it never came- she only got another voice.

"Wow, everyone's gone and the city's toast. Must be weird being the only person left in the world, huh?"

"What?!" Raven spun in the smoke and found herself face to face with Jinx as the smoke around them started to dissipate into the ever present wind.

"Well look around you little-miss-dark…you're all that's left."

"Shut up."

"I'm just sayin'-"

"Shut up."

Jinx glanced around at the destroyed metropolis. "Even if all the good nightclubs had to get destroyed along with the rest of it..."

"I said shut up!" Raven's eyes flashed red, and Jinx was gone.

"Who on Earth are you talking to, dear child?" A cold, menacing, and horribly familiar voice came from nowhere. "If you can't tell by the condition of your surroundings, the deafening silence of the city, or even those nice little marks on your hands; we are very much alone."

She turned on her feet even as a chill ran up her spine "Slade. And here I thought I had the pleasure of being in the absence of your company." She had recomposed herself quickly.

"You are alone, Raven. All. Alone-" Raven peered into his face with her amethyst eyes as his seemed to cut right through her.

"Then what are you?" she asked rhetorically.

He ignored her question. "-And you're scared. Scared I may be right; petrified that I just might be telling the truth. You're terrified that you really are all alone. It's no use trying to hide from me, Raven." He paused, and she realized she was holding a breath that she couldn't make herself release. "And you're right, I'm not really here either. This is all you. I suppose your subconscious, like your father, thought I'd be the most effective messenger."

Raven found her muscle control again and made herself breathe. She opened her mouth to respond but the villain had vanished. She blinked a few times then rubbed her eyes. Slade had not reappeared- she wasn't sure if she was grateful for this or not- and the city still lay in ruins before her. Slowly, she started walking down the broken-down street.

What if he wasn't lying?

No, he had to be. People don't just disappear, even if the city is in ruins, the population of the whole planet can't just suddenly up and vanish.

But there's no signs of life to be found. No people, no bodies, no… anything.

Raven called out for someone- anyone- but her voice was swallowed by the howling gusts. Ash whipped up around her, making it harder to breathe and choking her voice even further. She attempted to fly but found herself unable of even so much as hovering an inch off the ground.

So she lowered her head into the wind and started walking. Stopping every now and again to check for signs of life and to call out for others, she yelled herself hoarse even though she knew it was in vain. After what seemed like hours she reached her destination. A hill on the outskirts of town, and climbed to the top.

When she reached the crest, she allowed herself to look up. Everything before her was in ruin. Not just the city itself, but every bit of land she could see out to the far off horizon was scorched and barren.

She was alone.

She fell back onto the ground, covering her face with her hands as she sat in the thick ash of an annihilated world.

She was truly alone.

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Black. Everything was black. Beast Boy shot a hand to his neck, there was no collar. He looked around, he wasn't on Soto's ship, he wasn't… well… anywhere.

The green Titan blinked his eyes a few times. Everything was still black. He raised his hand to his face, but couldn't see it, so he brought it closer, then he could clearly tell its outline as he wiggled his fingers. Ok, so at least he wasn't blind.

But that did leave some rather large, pressing questions, such as…

"Where in the hell am I?" He got to his feet, scratching the back of his head in confusion. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, he realized he wasn't in a totally pitch-black area, there was a very, very dim ring of light around him. There was just enough light in the room for him to see for a few feet, but then his vision melted into unremitting blackness.

He stared down at the floor for a minute in contemplation; he couldn't tell whether there was something there or not. It was as though he was standing on extremely clear glass, but when he bent down to feel it, it didn't at all feel like glass, but cork. But when he tested it, there was no extra spring to his step, so cork seemed out of the question.

Something suddenly caught his eye off in the distance. Straining his eyes, he saw that there was a light somewhere far away from where he was now. It was just a little pinprick of light directly ahead of him, but it was more interesting than the nothingness everywhere else. "It's not like I've got anything better to do," he mused to himself, he tried to transform into a hawk, but found himself unable. He tried again with a dozen other animals, but gave up once he started trying to do single-cell organisms. "And I guess I'll be walking, too." He let out a long-suffering sigh, shrugged his shoulders, and set off towards the distant light.

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Raven removed her hands from her face and found, to her considerable surprise and discomfort, that she couldn't see anything. She blinked her eyes a few times, but still saw nothing. A horrible thought flashed across her mind; had she gone blind? No, she thought, it seemed much more likely that she was simply in an extremely dark room. She waited a minute; not getting up from the patch of floor she was sitting on.

Her patience paid off. After sitting in total darkness for a little while, her violet eyes slowly began to adjust to the near total darkness surrounding her. She could only faintly see a few feet in front of her, but that was a damn sight better than absolute darkness.

She picked herself up off the floor and very cautiously crept forward. She stopped after a few steps to look around and see if anything had changed. Just then she noticed a small pinprick of light way off in the distance, no brighter than a faint star in the night sky. "Well, let's see how far down this rabbit hole goes," she mumbled to herself. She tried to teleport to her destination, but found herself unable to form her soul self. Slightly unnerved, she tried to take off, but again discovered that her powers weren't cooperating. "I suppose a little walking won't kill me," she muttered under her breath.

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After a few minutes of walking, the light grew noticeably larger as Beast Boy came closer and closer. Stopping when he judged he was about 20 feet from it he examined it, and determined that it was roughly the size of basketball. Then he took another step closer, and the light vanished. Frantically, he looked around in search of it in the black haze. He quickly found it again, and just as the first time he had seen it, it was no bigger than a dot and very far away from him. He groaned in frustration and began his trek anew.

The green Titan was getting more than a little irritated by this light-ball-thingy, every time he got even a little close to it, it would disappear, and reappear in a completely different place, as far as possible from where he was standing. The thing had a mind of its own. He swore loudly and started trudging off in the new direction of the light source, completely unaware of a purple-haired girl in a very similar predicament.

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Raven growled in exasperation as the light once again vanished and reappeared far away for the fifth time in a row. Every time she got close it got away, but she couldn't help but notice that each time she approached it, she was able to get a few steps closer than before.

It was something to do alright, but the half-demon was well beyond the point of annoyed, and that there was nothing she could do about it did little to soothe her frustration. She just had to get to that damn light- whatever it was- because she was sure there would be some sort of answer there to explain just what was going on.

And if there wasn't, she could at least beat the crap out of the light-thing for messing with her head.

Again and again, she kept walking towards the light. Each time, it seemed to take longer to reach it, although she knew better than to trust her own sense of time in this darkness. Raven slowed her pace as it grew larger, trying to get closer than the time before.

She was almost on top of it. Cautiously, she reached out one hand and tried to touch it.

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The changeling reached out his hand slowly, standing only a step away from the refrigerator-sized block of white light. Gingerly, he inched his outstretched hand towards it, and just as he was about to brush it with the tips of his fingers, it flickered and vanished.

"Oh, come on!" he shouted as he swept his hand angrily through where it had just been. His eyes bulged in surprise as he felt his hand brush against something. For an instant he saw something stand out in the darkness. He thought maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, because for a split second, he was sure he saw Raven standing right in front of him and looking just as surprised as himself.

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Just as the light vanished, something hit Raven's hand, and for a second she thought she saw Beast Boy standing right in front of her.

"Beast Boy?" she called out. Her voice didn't even echo- the inky blackness seemed to just absorb it like a sponge. "Beast Boy!" she tried again, but still there was no response. Maybe her eyes had just been playing tricks on her after staring at that damnable light for so long.

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"Raven?" Beast Boy looked frantically around, trying to catch another glimpse of the empath "Raven? Raven are you there!?" There was no response; it was like the shadow around him was eating up all his words.

He took a step forward; and collided with something firm. For a split second he saw her, and just as he fell backwards onto the hard floor with a thud, she vanished.

He quickly scrambled back to his feet, shouting "Raven!" He was sure he saw her this time- it wasn't just some hallucination… but why couldn't she hear him? He ran a few steps forward to where he thought he had run into her before, swinging his arms like a madman, but found nothing but empty space.

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Raven couldn't believe what she was seeing, or, what she had seen. It was real, she really did see Beast Boy. But why couldn't he hear her? Even after he just bumped into her, she saw him falling for a split second, but the he vanished again.

She ran back to where she thought it had been. Spinning around rapidly, she scanned all over for the green changeling. As she took another step forward, Raven found herself staring into the back of Beast Boy's head and stumbled backwards, her mind already expecting the image to vanish like before.

But Beast Boy was ready this time. He spun on his heels and shot out his hand faster than her eyes could follow. He grabbed tight around her wrist and jerked the empath out of her fall, bringing her back up to stand only a foot from him.

"Hey Rae," he said, a triumphant grin plastered on his face. "Long time no see." The shocked empath blinked in surprise before glowering half-heartedly at the smiling changeling.

"Don't call me Rae."