Chapter 17

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Beast Boy sat in the middle of Raven's room, books open all around him and a few of her trunks overturned with their contents spilling out. He had thrown her drapes wide open, and the space was illuminated with afternoon light as he poured over two large tomes, each hand tracing out lines of words that seemed to melt into one continuous, unintelligible jumble.

He had only been at it for two days, but already his mind was caving under the pressure and strain. He only understood a third of what he had read so far, and the meager amount of Swahili, Somali, and Arabic that his birth parents had taught him only worked on a handful of Raven's archives. Everything else required at least two dictionaries and an encyclopedia set before he could translate it. And he was never one for patience.

"You would think that after all these years you would have written us a how-to manual on your mind," he groaned out loud, giving up and flopping onto his back. He rubbed at his face, exasperated. "And you would think that after all this time I would have opened my eyes and tried to understand you more." He lowered his hands and tilted his head back, looking at the pile of wood that had once been her bookshelf. When he had come to her room the first time he had been surprised to see it destroyed. She had loved that bookshelf, and had gotten angry with him more than once for putting his cold drinks on the wood. But now it was in splinters and Raven was gone.

"I did it once before," he whispered, reaching out a hand to where he knew the hand mirror was. He picked it up and held it over his face, staring at his reflection. "We got into your mind before. How do I do it again?" He touched his fingers to the glass surface and was disappointed when they didn't pass through.

A knock sounded on the door and Beast Boy sat up to look at the entrance, his hand gently lowering the mirror. Cyborg was there, hovering just in the hallway.

"Everything's ready," he said, and he sounded more than a little bit upset with what he was referring to. "Rob's waiting for us in the viewing room."

"Waiting for you," Beast Boy corrected. "I'm not going. Staying here and doing my part of this whole thing."

"Gar, I am not going to do this without you there-,"

"Yeah, I know," he cut him off, heaving himself into a sitting position. "You've already said it to me before, but my place isn't there. It's here, in this room, trying to pry my way into Raven's head. Those are my orders."

"Garfield." Cyborg started to enter the room but then pulled back again. It had never been easy for anyone to enter the place before, and old habits died hard. "I don't know what you talked about with Robin, but this weirdness between the two of you the past few days isn't exactly helping with our bigger problem. I've never known you to blindly follow his so-called 'orders'."

"It's because he knows everything now, and he's trying to process the truth, and it's so freaking awkward," Beast Boy breathed, dropping his face into his hands once again. "I tried to spare myself the embarrassing details, but some of it I couldn't just glaze over, and do you know what it's like to have him look at you like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like he doesn't know who the hell you are anymore."

Cyborg dropped his gaze, shaking his head. "No, I don't."

"Well, it totally sucks ass," Gar said crassly. "And it's made worse because it's him, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"I know he doesn't agree with me or how I've approached everything, but I don't know if he also hates me or pities me," he went on. "And honestly, I can't imagine which one would be worse." He groaned out loud again and clawed at his hair in frustration. Cyborg just sighed and rubbed at his forehead.

"Okay, okay. I get it. After seeing how the air gets way too heavy when the two of you are in the same room, then I'm glad I don't know the details. But specifics aside, what the hell are we doing here? You're holing yourself up in Rae's room trying to think like her, and right now I'm on my way to turn the failsafe into a torture chamber?"

"Robin's just trying to make it easier for me to get into Rae's head. It's his plan."

"So you're okay with this?"

"No."

"Then why am I the only one who's trying to stop it?"

Beast Boy just turned away from the door and reached for the mirror again. "Because I've run out of good decisions on this, man. I've botched this up every step of the way." He bowed his head low. "I don't mind if Robin takes the lead from here on out."

That response didn't seem to sit well with Cyborg, and he bounded a heavy fist against the doorframe, aggravated. "Fine. If you're okay with going about it like this then I guess I have no right to fuss." The furrow in his brow softened then and he cast sad eyes over at his friend. "But just…don't think that everything you did up until now was wrong. I know it sounds damn cheesy, but you weren't wrong for…for loving her." He stared at the doorframe, hit it again, and then turned to leave. "I don't know how much it means, but I'm glad you found your way there. Even if it wasn't the cleanest road." And then he was gone, leaving Beast Boy to stare at the hand mirror and listen to the quiet that followed Cyborg's words.

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"Neurological activity is still abnormal! Damn it…and her body is continuing to reject the aerosol," Cyborg practically yelled, working frantically with the projected touch screen on his right as sirens blared their warning. At the viewing window Robin had tossed aside his clipboard and was bracing himself against the glass, his expression tight and strained. "We gotta pull the plug, man-,"

"Not yet," Robin cried, throwing up a halting hand. "She can take it! We have to see if it'll work!"

"I already told you it's not going to work!" Cyborg shot back, grimacing at the red lights flashing on his screen. "This medicine is pointless without Raven's magic!"

"We have to try, Cyborg," the Titan leader said firmly, his eyes still glued to the viewing glass. "We don't have many options left."

"A lack of options shouldn't be an excuse for this!"

"Don't stop it yet!"

"Robin!"

"It's an order," Robin cried, turning a heated stare to his friend. "Don't make me say it again."

Not another word passed Cyborg's lips, but an impassioned cry filled the room, its agonizing volume causing static to come over the intercom. Both boys redirected their gazes to the safe room below them, were a thin sheen of gas just barely obscured the image of Raven coughing violently on all fours. The boys watched—one with a guilt-ridden conscience and the other with a hardened resolve—as Raven glared up at them past swollen lips and convulsing muscles. She didn't say anything save for her groans of agony as the chemical laden mist filled her lungs and wracked her body. Alarms continued to resound off of the computers, each one boasting the painfully obvious limit of Raven's body to the haze.

"Robin," Cyborg barked, punching in a passcode to silence a majority of the alarms. "Two more minutes and she's going to pass out. If that happens we risk causing severe neural damage."

Robin ignored his friend as he dropped to his knees and stared even more intently at the writhing girl in the room. His hands curled into fists as he pounded them on the glass, mumbling aggressively under his breath.

"Come on," he hissed, pushing his heated forehead against the glass. "Come on, come on, come on…" Another siren started to wail. Cyborg's yells became more frantic. "Come on, Raven. Come on…break through. Break through…"

"Rob!"

"Come on…"

"She's going to go into cardiac arrest!"

"Damnit Raven, take the opening!"

With a frustrated growl Cyborg attacked his control panel, coding in the right sequence before pounding his fist on the enter key. The vents in the safe room opened immediately and a vacuum began to purge the space of the harmful gas. Raven sucked in the clean air with desperate gasps before collapsing onto her side, her chest rising and falling rapidly as her body continued with involuntary muscle spasms. At the window Robin frowned.

"You could have given her a couple more seconds," he said dully, rising to his feet with a weighted disappointment. "It could have been the difference-,"

"Shut up," Cyborg snapped, squinting at his touch screen as he moved digital commands through the air. "Seriously, I don't want to hear it right now."

"We're going to try it again in a few hours anyway," Robin went on, clearly ignoring the agitation growing in Cyborg's tone. "We're just postponing the same outcome that we'll-,"

"Rob, it's a neurotoxin, not just some tear gas or a physical inhibitor. The kind of dosage we were pumping into that room could have fried the synapsis of any normal human being! The only reason I developed it was because it's supposed to act as an aid to Raven's meditative powers; and even then it was created as a serum for direct application, not an aerosol that could target her entire nervous system!"

"I am aware of the statistics of the situation, but you're not factoring in the variable of Raven herself," Robin said in a clipped tone. "Her biology is different as is, but take into account that this entity has been spiking Raven's normal levels across the board over the past thirty-six hours. If there was ever a time to push her to the limit then it's now."

"To the limit of what?" Cyborg demanded. "The limit of a complete neural breakdown?"

"She's stronger than that."

"She used to be! Not anymore!"

"You keep bringing up the logistics on your screen, but you're ignoring them yourself! Look at her adrenaline count! Look how much stimulation her limbic system alone is-,"

"Just because she's forcing herself to ignore a majority of the pain doesn't mean she isn't experiencing it in full capacity-!"

"You can argue with me all you want, but we're going to proceed with the second dosage regardless."

"Is that going to be an order too, sir?"

"If it has to be, then yes."

"You're getting unhinged."

"I'm trying to save Raven!"

"So am I, but I'm not going to kill her in the process, you raving hypocrite!"

"Yet your precautions are costing us valuable time."

"Too bad! I am not going to jeopardize her body for the unbelievably slim chance that her mind will slip through the impossibly narrow gate that we might be able to open for her!"

"Cyborg-,"

"Rob-,"

"Victor!"

"Dick!"

The loud and bone-chilling sound of solid metal being crushed into itself shook the entire space and both boys instantly went silent, their heads whipping around towards the back of the room. Standing there, with all the silence she had held for the entire ordeal, was Starfire, her hand pulling away from the wall…and from the four-foot deep crater she had just pounded into it.

"Stop this arguing," she said calmly, although the shaking of her fists betrayed her true emotions. "None of this useless back and forth is helping the problem. So just stop." She walked forward and right up to the glass, her sad emerald eyes carefully watching the girl that wasn't Raven drag herself to the wall and lean heavily against it. The alien's usually easy expression darkened, and her brow furrowed deeply as she hugged her arms closer to her body. "None of this will do. Drugs and torture will not help us return Raven back into herself."

"It's not torture," Robin defended quietly, but Cyborg shook his head in disagreement.

"She's right, it is torture. We're needlessly killing the girl."

"You had said that the serum was meant to be given through the needle," Starfire pointed out somberly. "If it is through the needle, then will it still be torture?"

"No, because that was its intention. We created it to soften her mental state and allow her brain to experience chemical and hormonal freedom so that she could manage her psyche more easily." He glared back at Robin. "If it's direct application then we pass over the terminal risks."

"Which is impossible to do unless we physically go into the room," Robin finished off, throwing out his hands in irritation. "Which is a different risk I am not going to take."

"You do not need to bite any heads off," Starfire said lowly, casting grim eyes at their leader. "This is a serious matter that requires us to do the talking through."

"I know it's a serious matter, Star. And I seem to be the only one who truly understands that," he hissed, turning away from her and knocking over a chair as he started to pace the room. Starfire did not flinch in the slightest, but Cyborg did stride over to stand right in Robin's way.

"You are not allowed to unravel right now," he said lowly. Robin's feet halted and he stared up into Cyborg's face. They used to have such a difference in height, but their dynamic had changed over the years as well. "And you have no right to snap at Starfire."

Robin didn't say anything right away, just stole a few moments of silence to process his own thoughts. Finally he let out a silent sigh and turned towards the alien girl. "I'm sorry, Kory."

"I understand that you are frustrated," she replied, nodding at his apology. "And I know you are caught between being angry at friend Raven and being scared for her. I am confused with my feelings towards her as well, but I know for certain that I do not wish to harm her in any way." She turned towards the viewing window again and her breath caught a little in her throat. Raven was looking right at her as she leaned against the wall, her hands pressing down on her chest as she continued to quiet her rapid breaths. "If our goal is to weaken Raven's mind to allow Beast Boy to do the passing through, then we have to do it right. The serum will work if it is injected?" she tried to confirm, directing her gaze to Cyborg. He nodded.

"It will. It will do exactly what it's meant to do as a mental inhibitor, but it's a moot point if BB can't figure out how-,"

"Then we must do it that way, if that is the way it must be done," Starfire interrupted, turning back to the window. "If Beast Boy can find a way to pry into her mind, then we must be sure that he can get through. We must do the testing of it." She winced a little. Raven was now smiling up at her. "I will go in and restrain Raven enough so that we may administer the serum."

"No," Robin said immediately, walking over to Starfire and standing between her and the window, as if blocking her view of the failsafe room would change her mind. "I won't let you go in there. No one can go in there."

"It must be done, Robin."

"She'll hurt you again."

"I will be more ready this time."

"You're not going to make me stand here and let you walk into a trap!"

"Then do you wish to accompany me?"

"No one is accompanying anyone! We are doing this safely from the outside and nothing more!" He grabbed her hand in a vice-like grip. She didn't waiver in the slightest. "I am not going to let her take you again."

Starfire let out a breath and covered Robin's hand with her free one. Across the room Cyborg had dropped into a chair, his elbows on his knees and his hands over his head. And in the safe room below, unheard through the thick glass and commotion of the viewing room, the Raven that was not Raven chuckled quietly to herself even as she tried to steady her still shuddering muscles.

"This," she whispered to herself, letting out a shuddering breath, "is a lot harder than I had anticipated."

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Raven sat up abruptly, her tired eyes snapping open and frantically searching around the blackness of her surroundings. Next to her Happy mumbled and burrowed her head deeper beneath her cloak.

"Did you say something?" Raven asked, tugging at her cardigan and hugging her arms to her body. It had gotten so cold.

Her emotion just groaned next to her, huddling herself into a small ball. "No," came her croaky reply.

"Are you sure?"

"What do you think?" she huffed sarcastically, then turned on her side to face away. Raven frowned at her surroundings, slowly and cautiously rising to her feet. "What did you hear?" Happy asked lowly, too polite to let a rude response go unattended. Raven shook her head, walking to the edge of the floating rock and peering over into the depths below.

"My own voice, I think."

"Did we say something?"

"Yes."

Happy glanced over her shoulder and peeked out from beneath her hood. "What did we say?" she asked curiously. She watched as Raven pulled back from the brink, touching her temple and looking up.

"We were calling out," she replied. "For Garfield."

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It took the fourth time of hearing his name before Beast Boy finally looked up from his notepad and stared around the room. He had moved to Raven's bed and had been staring at the 'nunc lento' verse that he had translated when he first heard the whispers of his name. He had blamed it on the deafening silence and figured it was just a figment of his imagination. By the second time it was clear that the voice was purely Raven's, and that just added to convincing him that it was all in his head. His eyes had already begun to close by the third time, but it was the fourth time when his lids snapped opened and he sat up slowly, staring at the foot of the bed with a deep frown creasing his face.

His imagination was always vivid, but not enough for there to be a fourth time of hearing his name in such clarity. He set the notepad aside and slid off the bed, bowing his head and concentrating.

"Garfield."

He stopped moving and stared at the floor…at the hand mirror glowing feebly on the carpet.

"Gar."

He rubbed languidly at his temple, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" he breathed.

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"Keep your hand on the button," Robin said, his nose practically pressed into the glass as he stared into the safe room. "If we get even the smallest inkling that things are going south then you knock her out in a second."

"Yeah," Cyborg said cynically, sitting down in front of the control panel once more. "Because that's totally keeping a level head about this situation."

"I'm not going to let anything happen to Kory again."

"There's more to it then just protection," Cyborg started. "Both you and Star were attacked, but she's not treating Rae the same way you are. She's upset, yeah, and she's hurt, of course. But she's not angry at Raven. She doesn't hate her for what happened because she knows there's more to it. But you hate Rae right now."

"I don't hate her."

"Bull. I've never known you to willing place any of us in physical pain unless it was yourself. Yet here you are, unabashedly gassing the girl and then giving orders to nuke her if she so much as bats an eyelash wrong."

Robin breathed heavily and leaned his arm onto the window. "So you're telling me you're okay with everything she's done up until this point?"

"That's not what I'm saying at all."

"Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that you're treating her like a criminal about to be processed into Arkham* rather than our friend of the last ten years!"

"In the last ten years Raven has never pulled anything as dangerous as this-,"

"Did you forget about the end of the world?!"

"She never kept secrets from me," Robin barked, cutting the air with his emphatic hands. "Raven never did anything—not even end the world—without telling me what was going on! She doesn't keep secrets from me! We don't keep secrets from each other! She betrayed my trust when she closed off her mind!" He turned away from Cyborg abruptly and started pacing the room again, his chest heaving with his heavy breathing. At the control panel his bionic friend narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms.

"Wow. So that's it, huh? That's what's got you so upset?"

"If she had just said something I could have helped her fix it before-,"

"No, you couldn't. We all know that Raven has always told you everything, but she can change too. And she has. You're not the only one she goes to, Rob."

"Clearly."

"Yeah, clearly. She comes to me because she knows I'll always listen. Sure, sometimes I'll be like you and judge her horribly, or sometimes I'll be like Star and just cater to her and give her whatever the hell she wants, but I've been straight with her from day one and it's why she comes to me."

"I'm not disputing that she comes to you-,"

"She's come to me more than you about this whole thing, and that's what's got you so upset."

"Cyborg-,"

"Oh no, but it's not just who her confidante is that's got you angry. It's who her problem solver is. Because if there's one person in this entire tower that is her number one right now, it's the grass stain, and you hate that."

"You're twisting the perspective to rile me, but it's not going to work," he said, but then turned around anyway. "And going to Beast Boy has proven what, by the way? That it's the worst mistake either of them could have made," Robin said, jumping on the subject matter. "Look at the end results, Cyborg. This isn't exactly how a harmonious household should be. My girlfriend is preparing to forcibly take down one of our closest friends and we're standing here making sure no one gets maimed in the process. This is not how I'd like the Teen Titans to be run, let alone how I expect my friends to live!"

"So you're going to take this out on Rae and Gar? I'm not overlooking the circumstances, but you know that this is more complicated than what's on the surface."

"More complicated than the fact that they were engaging in a toxic relationship that's hurt both of them?"

"They fell in love, Rob. You can blame them for their handling of that, but you can't blame them for-,"

"They did not fall in love!" Robin's cry was rare and impassioned and intense enough to shock Cyborg into momentary silence. The room rang with it, and he pushed against the wall to steady himself, both hands flat against the metal as he leaned his body into the sturdiness of the room. Cyborg sat with his mouth slightly agape, surprised with where the conversation and gotten to.

"Do you…not want them to be together?" he asked cautiously but callously, making it no secret that he was disgusted with that sort of intention. But Robin shook his head vigorously before pushing off the wall.

"You've got it wrong," he said, his tone returning back to its usual solid cadence. "Because they didn't fall in love. Raven doesn't fall in love. Beast Boy does. And that…that is what makes this wrong." He ran a hand through his hair, practically clawing at the black strands. "I'm not blind," he said. "I've noticed how Beast Boy looks at Raven, and I knew how Raven went out of her way to tolerate Beast Boy. I think we all figured it out before either of them did. But I always knew..."

"Knew what?"

"That they'd do this wrong…that if they ever came together they would be a clash of all the wrong choices and the results would be disastrous, and it would leave one person feeling trapped and the other feeling broken." His head bowed with heavy, self-inflicted guilt. "Because it's Beast Boy, Cyborg. No matter how many years pass by I can't stop thinking about the way he looked when I first met him. He was so damn young and idealistic and naïve, and I've always felt like I had to…to protect him. And Raven…." He hit the wall again, grumbled angrily, and went back to pacing. "Raven was never any of those things. She never got to be young or idealistic. She was always burdened, always carrying the weight of her own existence…and if the wrong person is given a share of the load then…"

And that was when Cyborg realized that the majority of Robin's anger stemmed from the well-known fact that he held his friends to a certain high standard. And if someone didn't live up to the expectations he had for them, well…the results were always a little more than mere disappointment.

"He's not the same kid who used to have your action figure on a shelf in his room," Cyborg said sternly. "I'm not saying this to be cruel Rob, but I'm saying it because you need to hear it. Gar's grown up. When he was younger you were his idol. Now you're his friend and he is your equal. You can't hate him because he grew up and started to make decisions on his own."

"I don't hate him-,"

"But you're disappointed in him."

"Well, aren't you?"

"No. Pissed off that I was kept in the dark, yes. But not disappointed."

Robin shook his head. "You don't understand, Cyborg. You don't know the whole story."

"I don't have to know the whole story to know that this isn't 100% bad all around. This entire ordeal is probably worse case scenario for anyone, but did you ever consider that maybe this is the only way it could have happened? Maybe the only way someone like Raven could learn to love?"

"That's ludi-,"

"It's not. You said it yourself that Raven can't fall in love, and we all know why. She has deep-seeded issues that reach beyond the spectrum of normal people, not to mention that she has problems showing and controlling emotion. Like you just said, she's always been burdened. She can't open up, even when she wants to. But she found a way to get past all that and have an actual relationship with Gar. Not something plutonic and safe like she has with you or me, but something real and passionate. Yeah, it was toxic and yeah, it was totally a crap road for both of them…but in the end all I can see is that Garfield did for Raven what no one—not even Raven herself—thought was possible. And it happened with love present, Rob. The guy is totally in love with her, and I'm sure he knew better than anyone that going that route was going to be a hell all its own."

"I can't believe you're trying to justify what they've been doing all this time."

"I'm justifying it, man. Quit making it black and white. I'm just saying that I understand."

"Understand that love isn't all white curtains and rose petals?"

Cyborg let out a cynical 'hah' and shook his head. "Wow, BB was right. Um, no Rob. It's not all white curtains and rose petals. It's a whole lot of shit hitting the fan, and that doesn't make it right. But you can't call what's between those two anything else but love."

Robin pursed his lips. "And what has that 'love' done to them?"

Cyborg shrugged wearily. "Broken them both, apparently."

"Exactly," the Boy Wonder pointed out. Cyborg just nodded defiantly as well.

"Yeah. Exactly."

"And you're okay with that?"

Cyborg let how a low breath, his jaw tightening with frustration. "Understanding, not condoning. Remember?"

"I can't believe you-,"

"I am ready," Starfire's voice interrupted, coming off steady and calm on the panel's communication system. Cyborg dropped his eyes down to his keyboard and Robin immediately turned back to the window, both of them swiftly putting aside their argument for the safety of their comrade and the procedure ahead of them.

"You've got the injection gun?" Cyborg asked, punching the talk button in front of him.

"I have it," she confirmed. "It is prepped and ready to go."

"We're not taking risks with this one," Robin called out, making his voice heard from across the room. "I'm shutting this down at the slightest indication of danger."

"I know," was all Starfire replied with. Rob's fingers tapped rapidly on the glass.

"Kory, you can still-,"

"No," came the calm reply. "I will not quit this thing before I have even tried to do it. I want…no…I need to do what I must to stop this girl that is not friend Raven."

"Powering down the sonic barrier on the doors," Cyborg announced, his red eye glowing as his cybernetics collaborated with the computer. "And closing off the ventilation system," he added, glaring at Robin. Starfire breathed into the comm a few times.

"How long until the doors will be clear to open?"

"Three minutes."

"Okay."

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"Maybe it's her," Happy whimpered, sitting upright, fully awake and attentive. She was carefully eyeing Raven who was still teetering on the edge of the rock. "Maybe she's luring you into a trap."

"It's not her," Raven said, closing her eyes and letting the constant whisper that surrounded them fill her ears. "I can't feel her, but I can feel this. This voice is mine, but I'm not speaking."

"Who else could it be? We are all under her control now. We're all a part of her thoughts and whims."

Raven shook her head, opened her eyes, and looked down. "Not all," she said under her breath. She pushed the hair from her eyes and lifted one foot. "Protect yourself," she called back to her doppelganger. "Stay safe until this is over."

"Raven, no! Don't leave me!"

But it was too late. Raven had stepped out into the darkness and was plunging down into the black.

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"So it's either a trap or a trap," Beast Boy muttered to himself, leaning against the wall as he stared at the glowing mirror on the floor. It was pulsating now, with the ghost of Raven's voice calling out his name in a continuous whisper.

"Garfield."

But it didn't sound haunting, or taunting, or eerie in the sense of delivery. It was simply her voice quietly calling out his name.

"Garfield."

Like the countless times she had said his name before: as a greeting in the morning, or in response to some silly comment he made, or when she wished to speak to him and him alone.

"Garfield."

He walked over to the mirror and picked it up quickly. He stared at the glass surface where no image reflected back at him save for the white light still emanating from its depths. He glanced back his notepad and tried whispering the Latin incantation to the mirror. Beast Boy tapped his finger on the glass, hoping that maybe he could push through to the portal…but he was met with only a solid surface.

"What's the point of calling me if I can't get through?" he growled, his grip tightening on the handle. The voice continued to speak his name, and it only heightened his frustration.

Partially because hearing the voice made him feel anxious, as if he should have been doing something but couldn't figure out what, and partially because just hearing Raven's voice—the real Raven's voice—made him realize just how long it had been since they had spoken. The last time he had seen the real Raven it had been on the roof of the Tower, in the dead of night, when he had wanted nothing but to run and hold her after such a long absence…and he hadn't because he had had no right…

"All right, sorry Rob, but this plan bites," he mumbled to himself, striding out of the room and yanking the door open. "You call? I'll come." And he raced down the hallway towards the failsafe room.

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"Activating the force field," Cyborg recited, pulling out his projection screen again. "Once you pass through the threshold the electrical current is going to rise up behind you," he said into the communicator.

"I understand," came Starfire's reply.

"The runes embedded into the walls should contain most of Raven's magic, but that's just preventing it from expanding beyond the room. Remember, you'll be more vulnerable to her once you step inside, and we are all aware that this Raven doesn't practice the magical restraint that the real one does."

"Prep the gas ducts as well," Robin instructed, leaning into the window. Below him the Raven that wasn't Raven stood in the middle of the room, her eyes trained up at Robin. "And double the dosage from before. Incapacitation needs to be instantaneous."

"Right," Cyborg replied disparagingly, but he carried out the command anyway. "Okay Star, the field should be fully charged in about a minute. Once it's ready I'm going to throw the lock on the doors and they're going to clear out for you."

"Get in there fast," Robin called out. "Don't give her time to react."

"We are of the same mindset," Starfire replied. "I will attack promptly."

"Be careful."

"I will keep aware of her. I do not wish to hurt this Raven at all."

"I was talking about you."

"And I was talking about Raven."

"Forty-three seconds," Cyborg warned, shooting a subtle look over at Robin. "Almost there."

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Gar bounded up the staircases, too riled up to use the elevator and just stand. The glowing of the mirror was brightening slowly, and the increasing light made him more and more anxious.

"I get it, I get it," he heaved, pulling on the rails to help him climb. "You're calling out to me. But how do I get to you, Rae? How do I slide past Depravity's barrier?"

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Cyborg grasped the lever that would pull back the locks on the doors. "Thirty seconds," he announced. Down in the room the Raven that wasn't Raven at all suddenly dropped her gaze, her eyes going wide as she stepped backwards a few paces. Robin immediately perked at her change of demeanor, and he threw up his hand in a halting motion.

"Wait, wait…something's happening to her," he said, but Starfire's voice protested over the communication.

"We are not stopping this, Robin. How many more seconds?"

"Twenty-three," Cyborg replied. Robin shook his head.

"No, I'm serious. Something's happening to her." Below them Raven was staring at the floor in unmistakable surprise, shaking her head every now and then as if she were trying to rid herself of an irritating fly. She touched a finger to her temple and grimaced, her lips moving as she spoke. "Cyborg, turn on the intercom!"

.

.

.

She had thought it was a nuisance only, just one of the whinier emotions complaining at the back of her mind and annoying her with the ghost of a plea for help. But now the voice and the intent were growing stronger by the second, and it made Depravity realize that it wasn't just any of the emotions…it was Raven herself.

It felt like her, sounded like her, even had the same aura as her. But that was impossible. Depravity had severed her hold, had pushed her away just as she had been push away for nearly two decades.

"Garfield. Garfield."

"You call for him but he won't come for you," she said evilly, her feet staggering beneath her against her will. "Unfortunately our favorite little pet hasn't come to us in quite some time, and he's not going to start now. You're helpless. You're trapped, and he's mine."

"Garfield."

"Stop it!" she suddenly shrieked, angry with how calmly the voice said his name. She was so distracted by the voice that she didn't hear the lock on the double doors pull back, releasing their hold on the metal. "He is not here! He won't come for you, anymore! From now on he'll only come for me!"

"Now!" Cyborg's voice cried out, crackling through the intercom. Raven flinched in surprise, and then the double doors flew open to her left. She whirled around and saw Starfire careening towards her, zipping through the air and colliding with her. The breath was knocked out of her as she was slammed into the wall, her wrists pressed into the giant runes etched there, their magic making it impossible to blast Starfire away.

"I do not wish to hurt you," Starfire breathed. She lifted one leg and pressed her knee into Raven's arm as she reached for an injector gun hanging off her belt. Raven saw the clear liquid swishing around in the vial, and she squirmed helplessly against the alien's strength.

"You cannot win with that," she hissed, her desperation making her usual drawl sound ugly. "It will only buy you seconds, maybe minutes at best."

"Maybe that is all we need," Star replied, and shoved the barrel against the back of Raven's neck. It forced her head to the side, and when her eyes peered over Starfire's shoulder her expression changed from agitation to genuine surprise to pure malice.

Standing in the hallway, holding the glowing portal mirror in his hands, was Garfield.

.

.

.

Raven was in a space she couldn't even begin to think was her mind. The ground was smooth and the air around her was warm and extremely comforting. Darkness still surrounded her, but it was soft and felt safe rather than exposed. Gentle light seemed to illuminate her immediate surroundings, and a calming breeze grazed across her skin. It was quiet, quieter than it had been on her hovering rock, and instead of her Happy emotion to share her company there was another in her place.

She sat cross-legged on the ground wearing the exact same clothes Raven was wearing now. That in itself was odd, for Raven had always projected an image of her costume onto her emoticlones, yet here she was, a mirror-image of what Raven looked like at the moment. They stared at each other, with the doppelganger staring up avidly into Raven's face.

"Who are you?" Raven asked quietly. The emoticlone didn't part her lips to speak and did not make any movement to stand up. She just sat there, staring, as a voice that was Raven's whispered into her own ear.

"I am patient, I am kind."

Raven brow furrowed the slightest bit. "Impossible…"

"I do not envy, I do not boast. I am not proud."

She swallowed hard against her throat. "You will always protect, you will always trust." Her emotion smiled the slightest bit and nodded demurely.

"I will never fail." *

Raven breathed deeply, her body shaking as the air left her lungs. "I know who you are," she said softly. "I just never knew you truly existed."

.

.

.

"Garfield! Get out of there!" Robin cried, punching his fist onto the talk button and yelling into the intercom. "Cyborg, close the doors!"

"I thought you didn't want—," Cyborg started to protest, but Robin whirled to look at him.

"You have to close the entry before Raven gets out!" He was already leaping over the control panel and heading for the door even as Cyborg rushed to implement the right coding sequence.

"Then Star will be trapped inside."

"I know."

"But I thought you-!"

"The plan has changed!" Robin screamed, kicking the door open. "Starfire's safety is still a top priority, but Gar takes precedence. She can't reach him!"

Cyborg was working as fast as he could, but it wasn't fast enough. "The sonic barrier needs time to react and the electrical-,"

"Turn on the vents!"

"But Starfire!"

"Victor! NOW!"

.

.

.

Gar remembered experiencing key moments in battles with an unnatural awareness, as if the world was working at half-speed so that he could soak up every miniscule detail around him. All the Titans had talked about that adrenaline rush that came when the stakes were high and their senses seemed to multiply to balance out the odds. They would talk about the events as if they passed around them at a sauntering pace, allowing them to absorb the world outside of the usual stream of time.

But this wasn't one of those moments.

As Beast Boy's eyes locked with Depravity's, everything that followed after happened fast.

So fast.

Too fast.

Rage seemed to emulate from her like a vicious, hungry beast, and she struggled against Starfire's hold like a caged monster. Somewhere in the booth Gar heard Robin's muffled screams, and the crackling sound of the safe room's electrical barrier coupled with the blaring, white light that had awakened in the hand mirror. Gar dropped the thing in surprise and backed up against the corridor wall. From within the room he heard Starfire cry out and pull aggressively at the trigger in her hand just when the gas valves above them opened up and doused the area in a thick haze.

Depravity shrieked.

Beast Boy saw Starfire's knee slipped.

The gun fell to the floor.

Robin came flying out from the stairwell, screaming Gar's name.

There was a loud metal cracking sound, and something in the room sparked violently.

Garfield blinked against the blazing light of the mirror.

Then, through the haze, he saw Depravity struggle and fall to the floor, her hand reaching out towards him and her fingers glowing with black, flickering power. Her eyes started to roll back, the light from the mirror flared even brighter, and the voice that had been calling out so fervently before seemed to whisper itself right into Beast Boy's mind.

"Garfield. Now."

He said the words without thinking, at the exact moment when he felt Robin's hands clamp down on his arm.

"NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT NOVO."

And then all the noise…

…all the wailing…

…all the screaming…

…all the crackling…

…all the booming…

…all the hissing…

…all the howling…

…stopped.

And Garfield felt himself simply disappear.

.

.

.

He didn't feel himself re-manifest at all.

It was just as if one moment he was nothing and nowhere, and then the next he was standing on smooth ground with a wondrous quiet surrounding him and darkness that somehow still seemed warm.

He didn't move at first. He was too wary, too unsure of where he had ended up.

Had he passed through the mirror?

Had he made it through Depravity's barrier and infiltrated the depths of Raven's true mind?

Was he even still alive?

He started to take half a step back but realized that he was stepping into nothingness. "Whoa," he breathed quietly, catching himself and turning around. He had been seconds away from tipping into a pitch-black chasm that waited at the edge of the ground he was standing on. He looked up a little and saw that a few feet away was another edge, just close enough for him to reach an arm across. He started to crouch down towards it, to see if maybe he really could reach across, but then a prickle crawled up his spine and he looked up fully, his defenses on alert.

Standing a few yards away, staring at him with violet eyes and her arms wrapped around herself, was Raven.

The real Raven.

His Raven.

Finally.

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*1 Corinthians 13:4-8 = "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."

A/N: Yes, it has been a long time. Please, do not hate me. XD Read and review. Cheers!