First off, thank you's as always to everyone who has been reading this story, whether you leave responses, favorite/follow it, or just read without comment. I'm grateful for all of you and I'm touched to hear this fic is getting such a response from readers! Sorry for leaving you all on a bit of a cliff-hanger/tense moment last time, but as I wrote this chapter the conversations just kept getting longer and I liked where the characters went, so hopefully you won't mind another long chapter. :)

Standing in this room

Well, I wonder what comes now

I know I have to help her,

But hell if I know how

And all the times that I've been told

The way her illness goes

The truth of it is no one really knows

And every day this act we act gets more and more absurd

And all my fears just sit inside me, screaming to be heard

I know they won't, though, not a single word

-"I've Been", Next to Normal

Sometimes Beast Boy was grateful the Tower was big enough that despite having five permanent residents it wasn't too hard to find places to be alone. Usually he preferred to drown out troubled thoughts with company, TV, or video games, but sometimes the distractions just annoyed him and he needed to let himself wallow in his thoughts instead. When he was in those moods, he tended to go for a flight or swim in one of his animal forms, but today he resolutely remained human.

This left the more traditional places of solitude. He had initially gone down to the gym to work off his remaining aggression, pretending the punching bag was a four-eyed monster standing between him and Raven. While that wore out his body, his mind remained unsettled, plagued with the memory of that influence infiltrating it.

He remembered the pressure entering his skull, the red filter falling over his vision as the demon's will commanded him. He hadn't lost track of himself, as he had when the Beast took over the first time. He was conscious the whole time, aware of what he was doing, if unable to stop himself.

What scared him most was, in the moment, he hadn't wanted to stop. The demon did not just possess him; it had reached into his mind and made him choose to go to her, triggered his own protectiveness of her and turned it against their friends. He could still feel his paws impacting with Starfire, his teeth closing around the metal of Cyborg's arm, trying to get past it to flesh…

And so Beast Boy had taken to walking the quiet hallways of Titans Tower, unable to sit still until his mind got tired of showing his attack on instant replay and changed channels.

As the sun sank low over the Bay, Beast Boy found himself standing at the end of the girls' wing of rooms. He knew he should leave it alone. Cyborg was keeping tabs on her locator and he would have let them all know if Raven had left unexpectedly. She hadn't come back out on her own, meaning she wanted to be left alone. Yet he found himself walking down the hallway to stand quietly outside her closed door.

In a way, he wished he could hear something inside. Even if she was crying or raging at her belongings, he would at least know she was there and alive. But there was silence on the other side of the door. Instead, he was left with his imagination to fill in the gaps of how she was doing.

He hated that that monster was in her head. He now had a voice, a face, a presence to put with it, but was just as helpless to do anything about it. Inside that room, Raven was in a fight for control with everything she feared, and all he could do was stand there, as always, on the outside trying to look in.

"You know I can sense you standing out there."

He jumped back, startled by the voice coming through the door, but grateful for the familiarity of the situation. He never thought he'd be so happy to have her annoyed with him. "Sorry. I just…wanted to see if you were okay."

"I'm not," her voice responded bluntly. "But I am more in control again."

His heart was torn between sadness and relief at that answer. "So, that mean you're going to come back out of your room again soon?"

He thought he heard shuffling inside. "After what I did, I think that would be a bad idea."

"We all know that wasn't you. I mean, not the real you."

The door had gone silent again. He leaned against it, trying to put a teasing air in his voice. "Come on, Raven. You're not going to make me have a whole conversation with you through a door, are you?"

There was another pause, then a very soft voice close to the door, filled with pain, said, "I promise I'll never make you do anything again."

He cursed himself for his choice of words. "That's not what I meant. And you know, it wasn't that bad—"

"Beast Boy, don't," she interrupted. "The one thing you have always had the decency to do is not lie to me."

He hesitated, considering whether that was true. He was certain he must have at some point, especially when she was mad at him. But if she actually was giving him that credit, he wasn't about to argue.

"Okay, fine. But as long as we're actually talking about it, there's something I need to know." He swallowed, suspecting he wasn't going to like the answer. "Why me?"

"What?" Well, at least that had gotten her interest.

"If the demon had taken over Robin, that would have really freaked us all out and made us doubt if we could win. Even Cyborg and Starfire would've been super strong and pretty unstoppable. Why did it pick me?"

Raven was quiet a moment. He feared he already knew the answer. The demon sensed the Beast in him, that he was a monster too. That part of him wanted to hurt the others and only needed to be let out.

"You were the easiest for it to control," Raven said at last.

He blinked. "Why?"

She paused to plan her wording. "You were the most…receptive to its influence."

"Oh." He couldn't decide whether to be relieved or disappointed that that was all it was. Figured. He tried to throw a bit of self-deprecating humor into his voice. "From now on, maybe I should sit out any mind control bad guys we fight. Between this and Mad Mod, I guess I'm kind of a liability, huh?"

"No, Beast Boy, that's not what I meant." Her voice sounded closer to the door. "I didn't mean your brain was simple or corruptible. It's open, which is usually a good thing. But earlier, it seemed…especially open to me. I think you were hoping you could get through to me, and the demon used that against you."

Beast Boy stared at the door, stunned slightly. He thought back to the horror of seeing that monster wearing Raven's face, how he'd tried to look in her eyes, hoping he would catch a glimpse of Raven herself trapped somewhere inside. Apparently she had felt him reaching out to her; it just didn't have the outcome he had been aiming for.

"Huh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Guess that makes sense. And here I thought all of your emotions hated me right now."

He heard the confusion in her voice. "Why would you think that?"

"I mean, they pretty much told me, after what happened that first night and everything."

He heard something rattle in her room and her voice was just on the other side of the door. "After what happened?"

He frowned. "They didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?" she insisted, irritated. A thud of something falling over emphasized her words.

Beast Boy backpedaled, realizing this wasn't a conversation he really wanted to have. "Know what, it doesn't matter. If your emotions are cool with me now, then it's all good."

"Beast Boy." There was no irritation in her voice now, just desperate fear. "If I hurt you, I need you to tell me."

"No!" He said quickly, pressing his palm against the door as if he were touching her shoulder to reassure her. "You didn't do anything like that, I promise." He swallowed nervously, then added softly. "But I think I hurt you."

The tense energy seeping through the door vanished instantly in confusion. "What?"

Beast Boy winced. He had promised himself he would just forget that night ever happened, that it was a blessing she didn't remember. It was the best thing for both of them. But hearing her pleading voice, terrified of what she was doing when she wasn't in control, he knew it was crueler not to tell her. If she hated him once she knew, he would just have to live with it.

"Remember back when this started, when Cyborg asked if anyone else had seen anything where we thought you were acting weird at night? And I didn't say anything? Well…I kind of lied. A few nights ago, before your visits with Starfire and Cyborg, you came to my room in the middle of the night. I mean, it was you, but I could tell it wasn't you, you know? And, well…"

He tried to think how to explain without embarrassing her or himself. That encounter was etched in his mind in every detail. He remembered being jarred out of sleep by the knock on his door, his half-asleep brain guiding him out of bed and hitting the controls. The sight of her that greeted him burned away the haze of drowsiness. She had left her cloak behind, standing backlit in his doorframe with nothing to hide her figure. Her pose, one hand leaned against the frame, the other planted teasingly on her hip, only accentuated the features she usually downplayed. Her hair seemed to have extra buoyancy, a section of her bangs trailed forward to partially shadow one side of her face. Oh, her face… The expression on her face still hovered in his memory, an enticing phantom. The way the corner of her lips—which seemed unusually eye-catching at that moment—quirked up in a playfully predatory way. The warmth and confidence she exuded. The glint in her eyes that ignited a fire in him with what it promised…

Even though he hadn't spoken, he realized she must have picked up on the memory in his mind, or at least his reaction to it. He heard something crash, apparently taking a few other items with it, as her voice backed away from the door. "No."

"We didn't do anything!" Beast Boy assured her quickly, holding up his hands as if he could stop her mortified retreat. "I promise! Nothing happened!"

He heard her hesitate, voice wary. "It didn't?"

"Of course not! I would never do that. I swear! Never ever!" He pressed a hand to the door again.

Her voice steadied again. "Oh. Right." She was trying to sound neutral again, but he detected a different kind of embarrassment in her tone.

He smacked his forehead, realizing how she had interpreted his denial. He imagined her emotions were glaring at him disdainfully once more. "Raven, the reason nothing happened is that I would never take advantage of you like that."

Surprise colored the air around the room. "What?"

"I mean, you were acting really…un-Raven. I didn't know about your emotions getting loose at the time, but I thought maybe you were drunk or under some magic spell or something."

Okay, at first he had thought he was dreaming and was perfectly willing to go along with her unusual behavior figuring it was part of his own subconscious fantasy. But when she had actually leaned against him and touched his face, bringing her lips to his, a switch flipped somewhere in his mind, realizing everything was way too real for even his active imagination. Putting a stop to things had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done, but he knew he wouldn't forgive himself if he went through with it, even if she didn't remember.

"I told you, or whichever you was in charge, that I thought it was a bad idea and that you should go back to bed. You got really offended and stormed out, but the next morning you didn't say anything about it, so I figured it was better we just never talk about it again. I guess your emotions have been mad at me since then, but I just couldn't do something I knew you'd regret later." He laughed slightly. "Believe me, if I thought it was actually you asking me, I wouldn't have said no!"

He clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide as he realized what he had just said. He held his breath, hoping she would just write the comment off as him being a hormonal teenage boy.

When she spoke again, her voice was just on the other side of the door. "And that's all that happened?"

He breathed again, as she seemed to be letting his remark slide for now. "That's it. Now it all makes sense. One of your emotions took over and decided to…have a little fun. I guess my room was just closest or the other guys weren't in theirs."

She grunted noncommittally, then sighed. "All right. I'm glad you let me know, and not just so I can have a word with a certain side of myself later."

He shrugged lightly, feeling a tension that had been lingering in his chest since that night finally relax. "It wasn't a big deal."

"Yes, it was." He could almost feel her through the metal of the door, her aura was so tangible. "I owe you, and not just for keeping what happened to yourself. What you did that night means a lot to me. Thank you for looking out for me, Garfield."

His heart nearly swelled out of his chest. It wasn't just having his decision validated after so much fear and awkwardness; it was the first time he had heard her use his real name with sincerity.

He rested a hand on the door, convinced he could sense the warmth of hers directly on the other side. "Always, Raven. Any time."

The air began to feel heavy around him, like fog, but warmer. The intensity of the moment started making Beast Boy nervous and he found himself throwing a joke out to fill the silence.

"And hey, maybe that's another reason your demon picked me."

Instant self-recrimination blasted through him and he pounded a fist against his forehead at his stupidity. They were having such an amazing moment and he had to go and bring up the horrific thing that had traumatized her in the first place!

Through his anger at himself, he almost didn't hear her reply, "And I guess now I know why your Beast never attacked me."

He froze, wondering if he had misheard her, but the atmosphere around her room was still warm, not laced with anger or pain. He rubbed the back of his neck, marveling at the situation. "You know, we've gotta start finding better ways to say we actually like each other."

He heard a little huff of breath on the other side of the door and his heart soared. It was small and bitter, but he knew a laugh when he heard it, and in that instant it was the best laugh he had ever heard. After everything that had just happened, he had gotten Raven to laugh.

His joy was short-lived, though, as he heard her groan. "Raven?"

The walls began to rattle slightly and he thought he saw red energy shine through the gap at the bottom of the door. Fear ran through him and he felt the Beast getting close to the surface as there was a sound from within like claws scraping on metal. "Raven!"

"I'm all right," she said, voice sounding constricted. The red energy faded and the walls stilled once more. "The demon keeps trying to escape. It's harder to contain it, but I will not let it win again."

Beast Boy made himself calm down. There was nothing he could do but trust her to handle it anyway. Sighing, he slumped down to sit with his back leaning on her door. "I'm sorry."

"What did you do now?" she asked with a weak attempt at teasing sarcasm.

"I'm sorry your life sucks. That you can't be happy for more than a few hours before something evil spoils it. That you've never been able to just feel stuff without having to be scared somebody will get hurt." He let his head rest back on the metal. "That we can't do anything to fix it for you."

He was staring at the other side of the hallway regretfully when he suddenly felt the door disappear behind him. Yelping, he fell backward, his head landing on a pair of booted feet. He looked up and grinned sheepishly when he saw Raven standing over him, eyebrow arched in dark amusement.

"It does help knowing I'm not alone." She held out a hand to help him up.

He took it thankfully, getting awkwardly to his feet in front of her. "So, does this mean you're willing to come back out with us?"

She hesitated, the trace of humor fading from her face. Looking at her without her hood for the first time since she regained control from the demon, his heart ached again. There were deep shadows under her eyes even though her head was uncovered. Her eyes were bloodshot and looked exhausted. Tension was written deeply into her features. He would have sworn she looked years older than she had that afternoon. Huddled in her doorframe, she was, in nearly every way, the opposite of how she had appeared before him several nights ago. His urge to protect her, though, was mostly the same.

Raven looked down the hall, not at anything in particular, just clearly trying to avoid his gaze.

"Come on," he pleaded gently. "Everybody just wants to know you're okay."

"Why?" she asked wrenchingly, turning back to look at him with pained eyes. "I'm bitter and rude to all of you on my best days. I shut you all out. I ended the world once. And today I tortured and almost killed all of you. Why on earth do you all keep caring about me?"

Beast Boy cocked his head at her slightly. "Just 'cause you only remember the bad times doesn't mean that's what we remember."

She stared at him and he saw a glimmer of tears start to form in her eyes. Before they could fall, however, her eyes turned a red that had nothing to do with damaged capillaries and she squeezed them shut, grimacing.

"Raven—" He instinctively started to step forward to try to help her, but she immediately drew back.

"No! Everything's too unstable." She relaxed slightly as she fought the demon back again, then sighed, her voice becoming flat again. "I'll come down. Gather the team. Whatever else, we need to discuss a way to deal with this…problem." She looked over as she started heading back into her room. "Just give me a few more minutes to strengthen my shields."

"Okay," Beast Boy agreed sadly. "We'll be in the common room."

He watched the door close behind her, hoping she hadn't just made an excuse to get him to leave so she could lock herself in there forever. But he held on to the fact that she had willingly opened the door once. Maybe she would retreat again, but he hoped it was a start.

OOO

Raven decided to walk to the common room rather than teleport herself there directly. In part, she had to admit it was a means to delay the inevitable conversation that was coming with her friends. More importantly, though, it allowed her to gradually acclimate herself to her friends' current emotions, like wading slowly into cold water. The shock of sudden immersion into an emotionally-charged environment while in her state could be catastrophic.

While it was true she was in more control, she hadn't had the heart to tell Beast Boy just how tenuous that hold was. Rebuilding her mental walls felt like trying to construct a barrier of wet sand against pounding waves. It took continual work and every distraction cost her progress. He had seen it a bit for himself as the demon leapt at any sign of strong emotion, quick to take advantage of the holes in her armor again.

She was just grateful he hadn't tried to come into her room. Her initial meditation attempts had faltered repeatedly as her guilt and horror over what had happened provided the demon outlets to exploit. She had maintained control—she would never let it happen again—but her belongings had suffered the side effects of her struggle. The only pieces of furniture still standing were those already bolted down or made into the walls. Her books looked like debris in the wake of a tornado, though likely they were still salvageable. Deep claw marks, singed at the edges, scored her sheets and mattress. Anything metal was warped, every candle a congealing puddle of wax. The only thing untouched was her meditation mirror. Thankfully even the demon was wary of what might become of them all should that break.

Raven wished she could simply stay there, picking up the pieces or letting herself wallow in the devastation around her, but she owed it to her friends to try to make it up to them. And explain to them in person what she was going to have to do. Her inability to keep the demon permanently contained only reinforced to her the necessity of the solution she had been hoping to avoid.

She pushed aside her own mournful thoughts. She would need as much neutrality as she could muster within herself to be able to accommodate the incoming emotions from the others. The edges of those sensations drifted down the hallway like aromas from a kitchen. Most were what she expected: sadness, worry, fear, confusion, regret. One, though, made her pause. The familiar ache of guilt was emanating from the common room. Raven frowned. Who else could possibly have anything to feel guilty about right now?

Moving closer, Raven blended into the shadows near the entrance to the common room. Within, Robin and Lilith were engaged in an intense conversation, the others sitting nearby looking troubled.

"You don't have to do this," Robin was insisting. He actually appeared to be slumping, his entire posture revealing his weariness. Beneath it, though, was still an iron determination to hold the situation together.

"I just think it's for the best," Lilith said quietly. Raven was a bit startled to hear the energetic girl's voice sound so dull and defeated. "Wonder Girl said she can swing by tomorrow to pick me up. I can be out of your hair in the morning."

"Please, Lilith, do not feel you must leave," Starfire pleaded gently. "You have done nothing wrong."

"That's debatable, but the bigger issue is there's nothing else I can do to help." She scoffed bitterly. "Not that I actually did anything beneficial in the first place. You called me here to work with Raven to find a way through this, help create more balance in her mind. But what do I do? I end up breaking her instead!"

Raven's eyes widened. She couldn't believe Lilith was blaming herself for this whole mess. But then she remembered what she had heard the demon saying as Lilith's psychic touch roused her conscious mind back to wakefulness. Know that all that follows from here on wouldn't have happened without you… Raven winced. Lilith's doubt and guilt were on her head as well.

She was jarred out of a new round of self-loathing by Beast Boy's voice interrupting both girls' similar inner monologues.

"Raven's not broken."

His voice held no anger or recrimination, just firm conviction. Raven's heart warmed slightly at his steadfast faith in her even as she knew she was going to have to break it in a few moments.

The rest of the team said nothing, either looking down or awkwardly glancing back at Lilith.

Lilith sighed, rubbing her forehead. "I know. I didn't mean to imply anything—I just should have kept my mouth shut. Not just now; when this all started. If I'd just sat back and been a listening ear, this never would have happened. Raven had her own system going. I should have left well enough alone."

"But things weren't 'well enough'," Raven said as she stepped out into the room, unable to let Lilith berate herself any longer.

"Raven…" They all stood up at her appearance, their surprise and concern washing over her like the heat of an oven door opening. She was glad she had taken the time to reinforce what remained of her shields before coming down.

"How you doing, Rave?" Cyborg asked gently, hovering between the impulse to come over and offer comfort and the respect to give her space.

"I've been a lot better. But I'm functional," she replied, trying to put an edge of dry humor in her voice to soothe them. The pervading fear, guilt, worry, and sorrow wafting through the room were stifling and she was glad for the physical barrier of her hood providing its familiar security and illusion of isolation. It had the opposite effect on her teammates, though, as they had lived together long enough to know that if she felt the need to wear her hood up inside the Tower, all was not well.

Lilith grimaced. "Sorry, Raven. I didn't mean to be talking about you behind your back."

"I was holed up in my room. You didn't have much other choice," Raven deadpanned, walking further into the room, cloak still wrapped tightly around her to enhance her sense of personal boundaries.

"Well, however much you heard, I meant it. I'm sorry I pushed you to do something harmful—"

"You did exactly what we asked you here to do," Raven interrupted firmly, drawing Lilith's eyes to her own to convey her sincerity. "Stop blaming yourself. None of what happened was your fault."

Lilith shook her head. "The demon said—"

"The demon thrives on the suffering of others. And thanks to my empathic senses, it knows exactly what nerves to strike to get the reaction it wants. Maybe our exercises gave the demon an opportunity to escape, but it was only a matter of time anyway. The rest of my emotions were already getting loose in my sleep before you ever got here. One night, the demon was going to be the one to come out. At worst, we just sped things up."

She felt Lilith's guilt reluctantly ease a bit. "I'm still sorry. I came here wanting to help and I let you down."

"No, you haven't." Raven glanced at the bag Lilith had gotten out of the closet. "Unless you're still planning to leave now that I need your advice most."

Lilith's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You still want me here?"

Heaviness settled on Raven's heart and she closed her eyes. "I need all the help I can get."

She felt all of her friends' attention focus on her, alert and ready.

"What do you need us to do, Raven?" Robin asked.

She felt a slight, bitter smile twitch the edge of her lips. How was she ever supposed to repay their unwavering loyalty? "While I appreciate Beast Boy's sentiment," she began, "there do appear to be some lingering…complications from what happened."

"What kind of complications?" Cyborg asked, frown deepening.

"When all of my emotions tried to express themselves at once, they tore through every wall I had in their way. To bring Lilith's metaphor up to date, the dam is completely demolished. I've managed to build temporary shields to contain things for the time being, but I can already tell they're not going to last forever."

"Can you meditate and gradually rebuild them to what they were?" Robin asked. "I mean, you had the ability to create them in the first place when you were a kid, so with time…"

She shook her head, making him trail off. "I had hoped that was the case, but my emotions are a lot more powerful than they were back then, and a lot less obedient. But they're the least of my concerns." She subconsciously pulled her cloak tighter around herself. "I'm spending the vast majority of my energy just keeping the demon contained. My old techniques are no longer sufficient. Now that it has tasted freedom, it's attacking the shields constantly. If I give it even the slightest opening, it will get out."

The team took this in quietly, again suffused in a mixed cloud of fear and concern.

"Okay." Robin rested his arms on the table, fingers steepled. "So, if your previous meditation techniques aren't working anymore, what options are left?"

Raven paused, dreading proposing this solution as much as she feared the idea of actually going through with it. "The only chance for control that I can think of is…absolute emotional deprivation."

"How is that different from what you've been doing?" Lilith voiced the confusion of the entire table.

"Before, I had to restrict expressing my emotions, but I was still able to feel some level of them inside my head. Now, even that is too risky. Every emotional response is a gap the demon can exploit. So, the safest thing I can do is remove myself from situations where my emotions will be provoked."

"How can you avoid anything that might cause you to feel?" Starfire asked.

Raven closed her eyes again, trying to keep her voice level and mind clinical. "By avoiding human contact altogether."

"What, forever?" Beast Boy asked as shock rolled around the table.

"The demon is not going to get weaker with age and as long as I am around people, I will not be able to prevent myself from experiencing emotions forever. I would return to Azarath. The monks there know not to interact with me more than necessary. I could sequester myself in the temple and focus entirely on meditation to keep the demon contained."

"Just lock yourself alone in a room for the rest of your life?" Beast Boy asked. She could feel his confusion and hurt, considering how close they had just been less than fifteen minutes before. She hated having to repay his concern and compassion this way.

"Raven, what are the odds of that working?" Robin asked soberly.

She took a deep breath. "Best case scenario, I live out the remainder of my days in isolation and meditation. Worst case, it fails and the demon takes over. Or the isolation could drive me completely insane. Either way, as long as it happens in Azarath, someone there could cast me into Limbo before I can hurt anyone."

Despite her efforts to sound detached and matter-of-fact about the scenario, she felt the horror and denial growing in her friends.

"Rave, you have to know that's not an acceptable option," Cyborg protested.

"Well, it's the only one I have," Raven snapped back, "because I am not letting it—" She broke off in a hissed gasp as she felt tendrils of heat break loose in her mind, like floodwaters swelling the banks of a river. She clenched her eyes shut, focusing entirely on pushing the malevolent energy back where it belonged. Azarath, metrion, zinthos. My home, my family, my soul. None of them are yours to harm.

The demonic pressure slowly receded under her force of will, though she felt its sinister amusement as it seemed to reply, I can wait.

"I'm sorry," she said as soon as she could return her attention to the outside world. She opened her eyes and saw the others relaxing from battle-ready poses, Robin's hand letting go of his staff. She felt dull twinges of relief that her friends were ready to defend themselves and pain that they needed to. She pushed both sensations away.

Out of the corner of her eye she noted briefly that Beast Boy hadn't stood up with the others, simply watching her with a sad expression. She heard the demon purr approval that he didn't flinch in the face of its appearance, but ruthlessly pushed that down too.

When she recovered full control of her voice, it came out cracked and rough. "So, if anyone has any other ideas, I would love to hear them."

Lilith drew a deep breath, forcing it out in a steadying exhale that seemed to refocus the entire room. "Okay," she said, spreading her hands on the table to brace herself. "When you find yourself stumped with a problem, sometimes it's best to take it back to basics and make sure you're really clear on your definitions. I guess the best place to start from is to ask what exactly is your demon?"

Raven looked at her darkly. "You didn't get a good enough look?"

Lilith met her eyes, beginning to talk with her hands as she fell back into her all-business persona. "A demon, a literal demon, can be broken down into several parts. There's the physical body, all red skin and horns and stuff. You don't seem to have inherited much of that except when your psychological Demon takes control, which is an interesting point I'll come back to later. The second part of a demon is the spiritual or mental aspect. Its Evil spirit, if you will. I thought that's more what we were dealing with here, similar to a possession, but originating from within. However, the more I've been learning about your mental set-up, the less likely that version seems.

"You see, Trigon's not a traditional demon, although that's the closest term we have to describe him. He's not connected with the usual Heaven or Hell type of afterlives most demons are associated with. Trigon is entirely the creation of Azarath, Evil concentrated and manifested into a physical being. So while he has aspects in common with demons, I think trying to understand him and his influence on you in those terms has been leading us the wrong way."

"You're losing me a bit on how this ties in with how to solve Raven's problem," Cyborg admitted.

"We can't fix things if we don't have an exact understanding of what we're dealing with. Let's go back to definitions." Lilith turned to Raven, who had approached the table curiously. "The thing in your mind you call your demon, Raven; what is it literally?"

Raven's brow furrowed in confusion. "Literally?"

"Every other presence in your mind you can pin down as a certain emotional spectrum," Lilith clarified. "Whether it's ranges of happiness, sadness, fear, you always have referred to them as whatever emotion they're speaking for. Except 'The Demon'. So what, in the context of your mental construct, is that presence?"

"It's everything evil in my mind," she responded, wondering where this was going.

Lilith shook her head. "Definitions. 'Evil' is a societally-dependent term. What's considered evil in some cultures is acceptable or even desirable in others. What do you define as evil?"

Raven blinked thoughtfully, slightly taken aback. Her mental system had become instinct so long ago she had to really stop and think exactly what fed into the demon. "Uh, anger, hatred, sadism, envy, violence…" Embarrassment heated her face as she thought of another she had been taught to deny, one reinforced by her mother's experience and her own premature introduction to it thanks to Malchior. "Lust," she added quietly, hoping the others would let it pass without comment.

If any of her friends had any reactions to that, they seemed to keep them uncomfortably to themselves.

Lilith, though, snorted slightly. "I wouldn't take that one off the table if I was you, but we can worry about that later." Raven blushed harder, but Lilith was leaning back, eyes focused inward on her own train of thought. She shook her head. "Amazing how obvious it is you were trained by Azarathians just from looking at that."

Puzzlement helped Raven put her embarrassment away before it could give the demon an outlet to work with. "How so?"

"They created Trigon when they shunted all their quote-unquote 'Evil' emotions away into space, and that's basically what they had you do. You created your own Trigon-equivalent, but instead of sending it away, you kept it trapped inside your own head. Safer for the universe than letting it run loose, but man…" She clicked her tongue, shaking her head.

"Guess it's true what they say," Cyborg piped in, trying to lighten the mood. "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

"There was a reason we did it this way," Raven said, a bit sharper than she intended. She wasn't sure why she felt the need to defend Azar—Azar certainly would not have allowed herself to be offended by someone questioning her when she was alive—but some part of Raven was irritated at these challenges to the way she was raised. "The emotions I listed are potent, able to cause destruction and pain even if you don't count the dark energy they release. Allowing any one of them to escape would be dangerous. By grouping them together, I only had to worry about containing one avatar instead of many smaller ones. It simplified things."

"Smaller ones…" Lilith murmured thoughtfully. "That actually explains something."

"Why Raven's demon is such a gigantic pain?" Beast Boy said out of habit. Cyborg elbowed him and Robin glared, but Raven was too focused on Lilith to be distracted.

"It didn't make sense to me why your 'demon' was so strong," Lilith answered. "I could tell when I probed into your mind to wake you up that it was immensely more powerful than your single emotions I felt during our exercises and that's just not right. And it's not just because evil is supposed to be weaker than love, although I do believe that. No single part of your mind should be more powerful than you yourself are, but that's just it. It's not one part of your mind; it's multiple ones put together."

"Ones that were already harder to control individually," Robin added thoughtfully.

"Right." Lilith leaned forward, almost reaching out to put her hand on Raven's, but stopping herself and catching Raven's eyes intently instead. "I get why you and Azar set up your mind this way, but I think ultimately you did it backwards. You took all your dark emotions and concentrated them while keeping the rest of your emotions separate. You made yourself smaller than your demon."

Horror struck through Raven to the bone as the accuracy of that explanation set in, the words dripping down her spine like ice water. Suddenly, everything that had been so familiar and logical and necessary about her mind seemed wrong and foolish and she couldn't figure out how they had ever seemed like a good idea. All this time, while trying to contain the problem, she had only been making it worse. She had created her own monster and then put herself in a position where when it inevitably overpowered her, she would never be able to stop it.

Dark energy crackled around her hands as she vaguely realized she was backing away from the table, breathing heavily. Distantly, she could make out her friends' voices.

"Raven?"

"I broke her again?!"

"Raven!"

I did this. All my life I've just accepted that this was my fate, but I brought this on myself and now I've made my friends suffer because of my stupidity. The fear whirled around in her mind and she knew tendrils of dark energy were curling off her body, but her mind wouldn't stop its panicked rush. All this time she had clung to one method of damage control, so convinced it was only right way to handle her condition that she had never stopped to really question it and analyze if it was working the way it should be. And she had been wrong, so wrong…

Red fire began to creep through the fear, pressure battering her shields amidst the chaos. She heard a chilling laugh in the back of her mind.

And suddenly, it all crystalized.

Her vision focused back to the outside world and she found that she had backed up against the refrigerator. Someone was gripping her by the arms and she locked onto two green eyes staring into hers. For a moment, she wasn't sure if the terror she saw in them was his or her own reflected in his irises.

"Raven?" Beast Boy asked nervously.

"There's another option," she said dully.

The others, gathered around worriedly, straightened in surprise.

"What?"

"Another option besides locking yourself away in a monastery?" Cyborg asked.

Raven nodded mutely. The sense of helplessness and self-loathing had faded as she made her decision, but the fear lingered. If this worked, it would change everything. It meant the end of how she had always lived her life, everything she had been taught since her earliest memories, and an unfathomable new situation that she had no certainty that she could handle. But it just might be an answer.

Because if there was one thing she knew absolutely, it was that she had a responsibility to fulfill to protect her friends and their world.

With new resolution settling over her, Raven looked up at the questioning eyes around her.

"I'm going to take apart the demon."