Man, this chapter took a long time to write! I apologize to any loyal followers of this story and thank you all for your patience and lovely support in the reviews so far! I'm so glad people are enjoying reading this story as much as I am writing it. :) At least I should be able to update more quickly for the next few chapters they are partially written already (containing the original scenes that inspired the rest of this fic). So thank you all again, and enjoy!

Mountains make you crazy
Here it's safe and sound
My mind is somewhere hazy
My feet are on the ground
Everything is balanced here and on an even keel
Everything is perfect
Nothing's real

-"I Miss the Mountains", Next to Normal

When they got back to the Tower, Cyborg made a beeline for the kitchen. "All right, we had a nice victory over the Feeble Five and we've got company staying over. I say this calls for a celebratory dinner!"

"Kind of early for dinner, isn't it?" Robin asked, ducking the stream of pots and pans Cyborg was unearthing from the pantries.

"Fine, celebratory lunch, then. Either way, I'm making spaghetti!"

Starfire's face lit up. "If we are welcoming a new friend, then I must make a traditional rorfgar!" She hovered around Cyborg, helping lay out the cutting boards and various utensils.

"You have any food limitations, Lilith?" Cyborg asked.

"No," she said, leaning against the counter. "I'm pretty easy-going."

"Good. BB won't eat anything he can turn into, so he's on his own."

Beast Boy was already digging in the freezer. "I've got enough soy meatballs and tofu to go around if anyone wants."

"Oh, awesome," Lilith smiled. "Count me in."

Everyone froze, staring at her. "What?" she asked.

"No one's ever said that before," Beast Boy said, jaw slack.

"You know, you don't have to say yes just to be polite," Cyborg pointed out, concerned.

Lilith laughed. "Seriously, I like vegan cooking."

"How wonderful!" Starfire pulled the still-stunned Beast Boy into a sideways hug. "Beast Boy has finally found someone to share his favorite foods!"

Raven rolled her eyes and walked over to the windows as Cyborg made another plea for Lilith to come to her senses. She hopped slightly into the air, crossing her legs beneath her, and settled into a relaxed position, starting to recite her mantra. As the sun warmed her, the sounds of teasing voices behind her faded into the background and she focused inward.

In the kitchen, Lilith glanced over, then stared, curiously. "Is she meditating?"

"Yeah, she does that a lot," Cyborg said, adding pasta to the boiling water.

"Didn't take her for the Zen type."

"Raven's powers are affected by her emotions," Starfire explained, stirring eggs into some sort of purple dough. "Maintaining control is very important to her."

If Lilith caught the slight sobering of the team's mood, she didn't comment. She simply said, "Huh," and kept watching Raven. "I've always found meditation fascinating, especially as a telepath. It's kind of beautiful, like watching someone do a Zen garden."

"You're not spying on her thoughts, are you?" Robin asked, frowning.

"Huh?" Lilith looked over. "Oh, no way! I can just sense the energies she's giving off. Trust me, I've got very strict rules about using my telepathy. I don't like getting into people's minds any more than I have to."

"Really?" Beast Boy asked, pouring the package of soyballs into a saucepan. "Dude, if I could read minds, I'd do it all the time!"

"Which is exactly why you shouldn't have that power," Cyborg commented.

Beast Boy rolled his eyes and snuck a soyball into Cyborg's pile of meatballs. "Seriously, imagine how much easier life would be if you could actually tell what other people were thinking."

"It's less fun than you'd expect," Lilith said solemnly.

"It's gotta be a little fun, though, right?" Beast Boy leaned on the counter, staring at her with an attempt at a poker face that didn't hide the mischievous gleam in his eyes. "Hey, see if you can tell what I'm thinking right now."

"Beast Boy…" Robin groaned.

"You don't want me to do that," Lilith insisted, waving him off.

"Come on! I dare you." He waggled his eyebrows and resumed his blank expression.

Lilith sighed and leaned forward, resting her chin on her fist and staring directly into his eyes. "Surface level or deep?"

His expression faltered in confusion. "Huh?"

"At the front of your mind, you're focusing on an image of some kind of dragon-panda hybrid that you're now clarifying for me is the boss from the final level of Chainsaw Ninjas 5. That's now surrounded by surprise and awe. Beneath your conscious thoughts, I'm picking up background levels of worry, insecurity, and a few other things that you're obscuring… And there're the walls blocking me out of your mind again."

She sat back as Beast Boy sank awkwardly against the counter, chuckling nervously. "Uh, lucky guess?"

Lilith took a sip from her glass of water, arching an eyebrow at him. "See why I'm so careful about when it's appropriate to use my powers?"

"That was very impressive," Starfire said, molding pieces of dough into unfamiliar shapes.

"It's also a gross violation of privacy," Lilith said firmly, setting down her glass. "That's why I tend to keep my mind in a receptive state most of the time, just picking up whatever other people are intentionally projecting. Whatever they keep behind a wall, I don't probe into unless invited. Which you did, Beast Boy."

"Yeah, I know, I brought it on myself," he said, offering an attempt at a reassuring smile. Still, he stood slightly further away from her than he had before.

Robin was watching her thoughtfully. "I know you wouldn't, but could you get past those mental walls if you had to?"

She looked over at him, knowingly. "If you're asking could I use my powers to help interrogate criminals, yes. And yes, I have done it before. Only a couple times and only when it was a metahuman and the lives of civilians were at stake and every other method had failed. That's a line I don't like to cross more than I have to."

Robin nodded. "I can appreciate that. Raven has similar rules with her empathic senses."

"I bet." Lilith looked back over at the hovering girl. "She's got incredible mental control, doesn't she?"

"Way more than most people we've met," Cyborg agreed. "Why? What's she doing?"

"Well, when most people meditate, it's pretty freeform, you know? Letting their mind wander, relaxing. But this…" She gestured toward Raven. "It's like watching a computer defrag. Whatever she's doing, it's insanely precise and regimented. Girl's got some serious focus."

"She needs it around here," Cyborg snorted, draining the spaghetti in a colander. "I've never understood how she could meditate out in the main room with all of us being distracting."

"Speaking of distractions, someone should tell her the food's ready," Beast Boy said, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

"Beast Boy, with her mood today, that seems even less wise than usual," Starfire said worriedly.

"Come on, you know she does this out here because she likes a challenge," he said innocently before morphing into a mosquito and buzzing across the room.

"I'm not cleaning up if she swats him," Cyborg said wearily.

As soon as the green mosquito got within five feet of Raven, a sphere of black energy appeared around it, trapping it in the air.

"Sometimes the challenge is a welcome exercise," she said as she unfolded her legs to stand on the ground, releasing Beast Boy to revert to his human shape. Looking back to the rest of her team, she added, "But there is also more than one kind of peace of mind."

Robin smiled slightly at that as she walked back to the kitchen, Beast Boy pouting on her heels. "Good timing, Raven. We were just getting ready to eat."

"Speaking of pieces of mind, is everything…" Starfire trailed off, quietly, trying to gesture subtly at her own head.

Raven just looked back with her habitual lack of expression, face betraying neither embarrassment nor irritation at the reference to her situation. "I'm fine. Everything's in balance." She dropped the topic there, going to make a cup of tea to accompany the meal.

Lilith watched the exchange from her place at the counter, but said nothing.

They all made up their plates with piles of spaghetti and polite amounts of Starfire's doughy concoction, which apparently was to be eaten raw. After the initial silence that accompanies the appreciative eating of a home-cooked meal, Lilith was the first to start a conversation again.

"That was an interesting mantra," she commented to Raven as she swirled more noodles around her fork. "It didn't sound like Latin or Sanskrit."

"It wasn't," Raven replied, examining a slice of the purple rorfgar. "It was Ancient Azarathean."

Lilith looked up in surprise, her pasta forgotten. "Azarath was real?"

"Still is, last time I checked," Raven said, arching an eyebrow. "I grew up there."

"You have heard of Raven's world before?" Starfire asked.

"Yeah. I've studied the occult and mysticism a bit." Lilith fingered her pentacle necklace demonstratively. "But I thought it was just a myth."

"You live with Amazons," Raven pointed out. "We have friends from Atlantis. Why is Azarath so hard to believe?"

"It just sounds like one of those moral allegories, you know? A society that is pacifistic to a fault, separating itself from the rest of the universe to completely embrace peace. Too good to be true."

"What do you mean 'pacifistic to a fault'?" Robin asked.

Lilith flicked a glance at Raven. "Sorry. I don't mean that to sound criticizing to your people—"

"It's all right. It's accurate." Raven folded her hands in her lap, distracted from her food. "Violence and aggression are forbidden in Azarath. All darker emotions are. But the monks are so committed to this peace that they will not even fight in their own self-defense. They believe it is better to accept your fate than to risk contaminating your own soul with anger." She looked up at the others. "Why do you think I left to come to Earth?"

"That…actually explains a lot," Cyborg said thoughtfully.

"I'd love to learn more about it sometime," Lilith said, intrigued. "For now, if it's not too personal, can I ask what your mantra means in Ancient Azarathean?"

"It doesn't mean anything, right?" Beast Boy asked, forking seconds onto his plate. "I mean, it's just magic words."

"All words mean something," Raven said.

"Oh, yeah?" He grinned, challengingly. "What about 'blabbadabba'?"

"It means you're an idiot," Cyborg muttered, deflating Beast Boy's smug look.

"The purpose of a mantra or a magic spell is to focus your mind, to concentrate your will on what you hope to accomplish," Raven explained. "The actual words themselves can be anything as long as they help you to focus on the task."

"So it's a command?" Robin asked. "Telling your powers what to do? Except you use the same words for everything."

Raven hunched slightly into her cloak, eyes on her plate as she spoke. "They're not instructions. They're my motivations. Reminders of why I'm doing things this way. 'Azarath' – my home. 'Metrion' – my family. 'Zinthos' – my soul. The things I value most." Her voice got smaller. "And which would be destroyed if I lost control."

The others stared at her, utensils gone still.

"I did not realize those words had such meaning," Starfire breathed.

"Seriously." Cyborg shook his head. "All these years, how did we not know that?"

Raven shrugged, trying to defuse their attention by returning to her meal. "No one ever asked."

"You said mantras have personal meanings to help you focus," Robin said. "But after you became the Portal, we used your mantra to activate the piece of your powers that you left in us."

Raven looked up, surprised. "You did?"

"Yeah," Beast Boy scrunched up his face thoughtfully. "How did it work for us if we didn't know what it meant?"

Raven looked at her friends, feeling her throat go a bit tight. "I guess, even though you didn't know what the words themselves meant…you knew what they meant to you."

The others smiled slightly at that, not quite sure what to say in return. The warm silence was broken by the sound of a throat clearing.

"It pains me to interrupt this sweet moment," Lilith said, "but…portal?"

Raven glanced at Robin. "You really didn't tell her anything?"

"Like I said back then, Raven, this is your story," he replied, a small smile still directed at her.

She sighed, pushing her plate away. Her appetite had disappeared now that they were on this topic anyway. "I guess you deserve to know why you're here," she told Lilith, who leaned forward attentively. Raven debated where to begin. "When you told me about your mother, I realized we had more in common than I initially thought. I have…similar issues with my father."

"Really?" Lilith's eyes widened. "Who is he?"

Raven realized she had folded her hands in front of her, fingers intertwined so tightly the tips were starting to go numb. She willed them to loosen, stilling her nerves before any dark energy was generated. "How much do you know about the origin of Azarath?"

"A bit. The original inhabitants left Earth to start an entirely peaceful society in another dimension. To purify themselves, they cast out all their negative emotions. Everything they considered evil."

"Hate, cruelty, anger…among others. All those emotions didn't disappear, though. They joined together and became a being of supreme evil. A physical manifestation of every dark impulse and evil thought."

"Trigon," Lilith murmured, her voice hushed as if his name might summon him. Suddenly her eyes widened and she stared at Raven. "No…"

Raven just held her gaze, eyes grim.

Lilith looked to the others for verification, unable or unwilling to believe it. When they simply nodded sadly or met her eyes steadily, she huffed out a breath, running a hand through her hair. "Man, my family tree doesn't seem so bad now."

"Glad to help," Raven said drily.

"So, hold on, that means you're the Gem, aren't you?" Fear filled her eyes. "Is the prophecy coming true? 'Cause if that's what you called me here for, you'd do better with the Justice League or something—"

But Raven was already waving her off. "We already dealt with that. The prophecy did happen, but we…fixed things."

"You fixed things," Robin corrected quietly.

Lilith's eyes darted between them, baffled. "It—? How does the world end without me noticing?"

"Raven kind of undid everything," Beast Boy explained.

"Craziest clean up job I've ever seen," Cyborg agreed. "One minute everything's fire and lava, then one wave of light and it's like nothing ever happened."

Lilith looked thoughtful. "When was this?"

"About two years ago?" Cyborg said, getting nods of agreement from the others. "Man, time flies."

"That actually solves a puzzle for me," Lilith said, eyes distant. "Two years ago, everyone I know of with psychic abilities sensed the aftermath of a massive metaphysical event, but none of the telepaths, magic users, or time readers in New York could figure out a source for it. It's like seeing ripples on a lake, but there's no stone that could have caused them." She looked back at Raven with a kind of awe. "You reset reality."

Raven shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I just repaired what Trigon did to the world. And Azarath."

"In one move, you restored not just the entirety of Earth, but a world in another dimension?" Lilith asked, incredulously.

"It was my responsibility." Raven shrugged, feeling defensive. "I had to undo everything Trigon caused before I banished him. It wasn't a big deal."

Lilith sat back, rubbing the back of her neck, her eyes never leaving Raven. "Don't take this wrong, but that's a scary amount of power you've got, girl."

She nodded slightly, looking down at her abandoned plate. "I know."

Lilith shook her head, scoffing. "That still doesn't explain why I'm here. I mean, you defeated the Trigon and you're asking for help? What could possibly be worse than him?"

Raven's violet eyes were dark and serious. "Me."

"Raven, do not say that," Starfire said sadly, putting a hand on her friend's arm.

The girl sighed, closing her eyes. "Fine, but you know what I mean. My powers are scary, even more so because they are affected by my emotions. Fortunately, this has given me a way to keep them contained. As long as my emotions are under control, so are my powers."

"Okay." At this point Lilith was beyond expressing surprise, simply accepting whatever new craziness they laid out.

"The reason you were called in is because lately my emotions have begun escaping my control." Raven looked at her twined fingers, feeling shame creep up her spine.

"Escaping?" Lilith sat forward now, all-business. "What do you mean 'escaping'?"

"You sensed my mental walls when you arrived. Since childhood, I was trained in methods of meditation to keep my emotions contained, so that they did not affect my powers. However, they are now starting to find ways around the barriers when I am asleep."

"Huh." Lilith frowned, leaning her chin on her hand. "Now, what effect do your emotions have on your powers?"

"The more I feel, the more dark energy is released. Destructively," Raven added grimly.

Lilith nodded. "That would be problematic. How do you know they're coming out in your sleep? You have a partner who spends the night or—?"

Raven shrank back into her cloak, cheeks flushing. "No."

Lilith held up her hands at the awkward atmosphere that surrounded the table. "Hey, I'm not judging. I don't know what the situation is with you guys. Besides, we're all adults here anyway." She glanced over at Beast Boy. "Right?"

He blushed a bit as well. "I'm nineteen. I know what you're talking about."

"See?" She turned back to Raven. "So, if nobody's there, how do you know they're being expressed?"

"She's sleepwalking," Cyborg said when Raven hesitated uncomfortably. "Or, sleep-emoting, I guess? Either way, one emotion or another takes over and gets whatever repressed feelings it's dealing with out of her system."

"Really?" Lilith arched an eyebrow. "They're that strong?"

"They do seem to have the minds of their own," Starfire nodded.

Lilith looked back to Raven, thoughtfully. "What meditation techniques are you using?"

"A unique method developed for my situation by Azar, the leader of Azarath when I was a child," Raven said.

"I think I'll need to know more about exactly what you're doing to figure out the weak spots you say the emotions are seeping through."

"It's kind of hard to explain."

"Well, if you consented, I do have a shortcut." Lilith pointed at her temple.

Raven grimaced. "No."

"Can it really be worse than me and Beast Boy messing around in there?" Cyborg asked. "At least she's a professional."

"It's all right," Lilith said, holding up her hands again. "I was just offering. Describing it's fine."

"As much as I hate to say it, you will be able to offer more insight if you have a full understanding of the situation," Raven sighed. "I should be able to open up just enough of my mind to demonstrate my system."

"Great." Lilith folded her napkin, arranging to get up. "Do you want to go do this in private or—?"

"I'm not giving you a tour," Raven retorted. "I can show you enough here."

"All right." Lilith braced her elbows on the table, focusing her now-intense gaze on Raven. "Ready when you are."

Raven closed her eyes as she carefully lowered a few of her mental walls, allowing Lilith access. The others waited, almost holding their breaths in an effort not to distract either girl.

After a moment, Lilith shook her head, as if trying to snap out of something. "I think you redirected me. I don't know if you sent my mind through a portal or what, but all I saw was some other dimension."

"No," Raven said, opening her eyes again. "That was it."

"That place with all the floaty rocks in outer space?" Cyborg asked.

"Yeah…" Lilith said, puzzled.

"Yep, that's Nevermore," Beast Boy said, nodding.

"It's not called that," Raven said, rolling her eyes. "It doesn't have a name."

"My way's cooler," he said dismissively.

"You've seen it too?" Lilith asked.

"Yeah, BB and I wound up in there by accident one time," Cyborg said, casually gathering up some of the plates from the table. "It's a trip, isn't it?"

Lilith looked back at Raven, a sort of horror filling her eyes. "That's your mind?"

A corner of Raven's mouth twitched ruefully. "Told you it was hard to explain."

Lilith's mouth opened and closed a few times. "How?" she finally managed.

"It's a construct Azar helped me create as a center in which to interact with the rest of my thoughts and emotions," Raven explained. "I based it on the outskirts of Azarath because I used to go there to meditate. An island of order and calm surrounded by chaos."

"There were people in there!" Lilith sputtered.

"Those are avatars representing various spectrums of my emotions. It helps me sort out and compartmentalize them."

"You represent your emotions as people?" Lilith asked, incredulously.

"Yes. They're all versions of myself, just giving voice to distinct emotional ranges. That way it's easier to suppress them than if they were part of my conscious self. At least, it was until recently."

"So you've shaped your mind into a physical world which you then use to concentrate and suppress your emotions so they don't manifest as dark energy?"

"Basically," Raven nodded.

Lilith sat back, raking one hand through her hair as she blew air out through clenched teeth. "How long have you been doing this…exercise?"

"Since I was old enough to begin meditation, so almost 18 years," Raven said.

"Oh my god." Lilith covered her mouth with her hand, her expression crumpling in pity and shock.

"What is it?" Starfire asked. "Why does that upset you so?"

"I'm sorry, I know, I'm being rude, but…It's like meeting someone with bound feet. When you first see them, you think, 'Wow, this person's got an amazing, unique feature.' But then you realize the amount of mutilation it took to make them like that."

"Mutilation?" Robin asked as Raven's eyebrows shot up, then lowered in a scowl.

Lilith scrubbed a hand across her face. "Okay, that's a loaded word, but it's not entirely inappropriate here. Don't get me wrong, Raven, it's incredible what you've created, but it's also deeply disturbing. No one's mind is supposed to be that structured and restrained. It's completely unnatural, especially if you're implying you practice absolute denial of emotions. The strain and pressure you must be under every day just to maintain that is… I mean, the fact that you haven't had to be straightjacketed in Arkham by now is absolutely amazing."

"This is the only technique that has worked to contain my powers," Raven said, a bit defensively. "I won't say it's not challenging, but it's effective."

"Just because it's effective doesn't mean it's right or humane." Lilith shook her head. "They made you do this since you were a toddler? That's when your mind should be at its most flexible!"

"No one made me do this," Raven said coldly. "I've been aware of the risks all my life. I didn't know why I was so dangerous until later, but I have always known that I must maintain control or people would get hurt."

"Control is fine, but this is extreme to the point of cruelty. What was this Azar person thinking encouraging a child to do something like this?"

Raven's eyes had narrowed warningly. "She was thinking about the safety of her people, and by extension the universe."

Lilith scoffed. "What can a two-year-old do that warrants that kind of intervention?"

"I destroyed a building!" Raven snapped.

The others froze in shocked silence, the only noise coming from the dishes rattling on the table. Raven's eyes widened slightly and she closed them, drawing a deep, calming breath until the dishes stilled.

"Rave…" Cyborg started softly.

"My powers were not always as strong as they are now," Raven interrupted, voice flat, eyes still closed. "But they set in early. When I was two, I threw a particularly large tantrum. The dark energy released destabilized the entire floor of the building I was in. That caused more to fall. It didn't collapse the entire building, but there were…extensive injuries." She took another steady breath. "They told me no one died, that the worst areas were mostly uninhabited, but…they may have been trying not to upset me more."

Raven swallowed. "After that, something had to be done. Some of the monks thought I did it on purpose, that my father was influencing me or that I was just like him. They felt I was too dangerous to allow to continue existing. Azar was the first to speak in my defense. She made it her mission to teach me how to manage my powers safely, by whatever means necessary."

Raven opened her eyes then, looking straight at Lilith. "If it weren't for this technique, I would either be dead or as bad as my father."

Silence fell over the room again, heavy with sympathy and sadness. Starfire reached over to put her hand on Raven's arm reassuringly, persisting even when her friend flinched at her touch.

"Well, I understand now why Azar was so thorough," Lilith conceded, breaking the awkward pall. "I guess the only thing I don't get is why does 'control' mean suppression?"

"What?" Raven asked, confusion cutting through the memories.

"Of course dangerous powers have to be controlled, we all do that, and if your emotions are what triggers them, then that's part of the cost. But why does that require you to suppress them completely?"

"How many times do I have to say 'releases dark energy'?" Raven said drily.

"That's what I'm trying to narrow down," Lilith leaned forward again, gesturing as spoke. "Does every emotion cause the same amount of energy to be released in the same way?"

"The stronger the emotion, the stronger the energy released," Raven answered.

"Okay. So you can allow yourself to feel smaller amounts of emotions, right?"

Raven shook her head. "It's not worth the risk. I can't let myself show any emotion."

"That's not true," Robin interrupted, thoughtfully. "I mean, you're not a robot. You've expressed emotions lots of times without blowing anything up."

"Yeah," Cyborg agreed. "How many times have you smiled when we were down in the garage working on something and telling stories? Or that little smirk you get when you get a really good zinger in at Beast Boy? You can't tell me you're not feeling something then," he grinned.

"Or how warmly you hug Melvin, Timmy, and Teether when they come to visit," Starfire added enthusiastically. "And I know you show the fear whenever I invite you to have the hair done."

Raven snorted. "Fine. Sometimes small reactions get out, but just momentarily and just the weaker ones."

"What about with Malchior?" Beast Boy winced slightly as Raven's eyes shot to him, warningly. "I know, bad memories, but before he started being a jerk, you were happy. You were relaxed and laughing and almost glowing. And even after he broke your heart, you never lost control of your powers."

"And when the prophecy was coming true and you thought you were going to destroy the world, even though you were scared and even when you cried, your own powers never did anything," Robin said.

Raven tried to come up with something to respond, but found herself speechless.

"This is great news," Lilith beamed, a new energy flowing through her. "I think we can fix this situation, no problem."

"You have a solution already?" Robin asked.

"Well, yeah, I mean, the problem's obvious." Lilith started illustrating her explanation with her hands. "When you dam up a river, you're trying to stop the water from going any farther, but new water keeps coming in behind the dam all the time. The pressure starts building up as more and more water pushes on the dam. If there are any weak spots in the material the dam is made of, the pressure will exploit it and some water will start breaking through. That's your sleepwalking emotions finding a way out."

"Not the first time someone's described me as dammed," Raven muttered, barely realizing she said it out loud.

Lilith grinned. "That sense of humor about this is going to help the process a lot. Okay, so if you let the leak continue, the hole will just get wider and wider until the whole dam collapses. So what you need to do is create a pathway for the pressure to be vented in a safe and desirable way, rather than trying to create its own, destructive ways out."

"A relief valve," Cyborg said.

"Exactly!"

"So you're saying I should routinely go vent dark energy somewhere?" Raven said dubiously.

"Not dark energy." Lilith shook her head. "I know you think your emotions and dark energy go hand-in-hand, but your friends just confirmed that's not always the case. If you let out your emotions in small, safe ways, the pressure won't build up high enough to have these dark energy outbursts."

"I thought we just established I already do allow small amounts of emotion to be expressed."

"Yes, but this is where it gets tricky." Lilith steepled her hands on the table. "You know better than anyone that there's not just one well of Emotion. Especially in your mind, each emotion is a discrete unit. You let certain feelings out, ones you know you can handle, so they're probably doing okay. But that means the stronger ones are the ones feeling the pressure build up the most because they're never getting vented."

Realization dawned on Raven's face and she drew back sharply. "No."

"Hear me out."

But Raven was shaking her head. "There is a reason some of my emotions should never see the light of day."

"You said it yourself: each of your emotions exists as a spectrum. Even your darkest emotions have a weaker range. Whatever you classify as Hate probably scales down to Irritation or Annoyance at the lower end of its range, and I know you're willing to express that one," Lilith countered.

Raven growled slightly, proving Lilith's point, and looked away. "Even if it doesn't release dark energy, feeling some of those emotions is an even bigger danger. I'm abundantly aware of my lineage. Giving in to some of those urges puts me at greater risk of becoming like my father."

"Bull."

"Excuse me?" Raven arched an eyebrow.

Lilith held up a hand, calmingly. "Sorry, that was blunt. Okay, yeah, if you started killing people, then you'd be more like your father. But just because you feel a bit of anger or jealousy or schadenfreude now and then doesn't make you like him. If anything, it makes you more human. And I think you deserve a chance to feel like a real human being for once."

Raven looked away again, but with more regret than anger this time. "Even if I did, it's hard to be normal when there's a demon inside you always trying to get out."

"Hang on," Beast Boy said suddenly, perking up. "Lilith, you're into all that witchy voodoo stuff, right?"

"The occult?" she said, somewhat amused.

"Yeah! Couldn't you just do an exorcism and get rid of her demon side once and for all?"

Lilith's eyes widened sharply. "You can't do an exorcism on a half-demon! Exorcisms are for when a demon is invading someone's body. Raven is part-demon. That'd be like doing a lobotomy!"

"Besides, removing the demon wouldn't solve the problem," Raven added. "Trigon was created because the people of Azarath tried to get rid of their negative emotions. The lesson is to take responsibility for controlling your own dark side, not release it where it becomes someone else's problem."

"Look," Lilith said, leaning forward on the table again, "I think my plan will work. All I'm proposing is that you find a range for each of your emotions that can be expressed safely. I'll work with you, since I can provide a bit of psychic guidance in case things start getting hairy. We'd start with the easier ones, get comfortable with those, then work our way up to the bigger, badder ones if the plan seems to work."

Raven shook her head. "It's a dangerous idea."

"It is," Lilith agreed, "but I think it's clear you're going to have to do something soon. While I think Azar did what was best for you at the time, she may have been a bit…overcautious. From the sound of it, they didn't teach you this technique to stop the prophecy from happening, just to run damage control until that time. I really don't think they considered the possibility that you might survive this long."

When Raven remained silent, Lilith leaned forward. "Don't get me wrong, Azar gave you a wonderful start. She saved your life and gave you control at a time you desperately needed it. But you're not a two-year-old throwing tantrums anymore. You're a grown woman who understands her own power and limits. And you seem to have a really solid moral compass, so I doubt you should seriously be worried about Trigon finding ways to corrupt you now. Even if he tried, you've already beaten him once, so you know you're stronger than him.

"Just give this idea a try for a little while. If it doesn't work, you can go right back to doing things your way, whatever that involves. Is it a deal?"

Raven looked down at Lilith's extended hand. She hesitated for a long moment, a muscle in her jaw clenching just visibly.

"No one gets hurt," she said finally.

"I promise," Lilith agreed.

"That wasn't a question. Those are my terms. The slightest risk to any of my team or our city, I'm done."

"Of course," Lilith nodded quickly. "Goes without saying."

Raven drew a deep breath. She looked at the expectant faces of her friends, the hope and support radiating off of them. And she thought about the destruction she had woken up to that morning. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and clasped Lilith's hand.

"Deal."