Deep from within him, a guttural groan pushed up his throat as he shifted his legs slightly. The horrible feeling of being hazily aware of one's surroundings washed over the changeling again and by now, he had already lost count of the number of times he had been knocked out only to be 'mercifully' brought back into consciousness again. He opened his eyelids and immediately found his eyes being assaulted with bullets of light that shot down from the ceiling. Snapping his eyes shut, he scrunched up his face and gingerly opened one eye. Nope. He closed it again. It simply hurt too much. That was when he smelled it - that soft lavender scent that washed down his nostrils filling and caressing the depths of his lungs. He took in a huge lungful of air, savouring the calming effect that it had on him as it swirled around in its glorious flowery magic. As took another few deep breaths, enjoying and appreciating the scent that seemed so vaguely familiar and yet foreign at the same time.

Prison smells nice for a change. He thought as he wiggled his back against the wall he had been leaning on and stretched out his arms. Suddenly, he jerked back his left arm as though he had been burned. His fingertips had brushed the soft clothes of someone who was sitting beside him. As his senses sharpened, he became aware that his left shoulder felt warmer than his right and that there was a slight pressure leaning on him from the left. Having been slightly more acclimatised to the light, he opened his eyes again and glanced to his left... and immediately snapped his eyes shut as his heart began to accelerate to light speed proportions palpitating and smashing against the ribs that imprisoned it as his mind sprinted into overdrive and filled with the confusing cries of desire and disbelief that mixed and mashed within him while his whole body screamed for air. He didn't have to force his eye open this time. Fuelled by curiosity tingled with exhilaration, he opened them and looked down at the blue hooded head that rested snugly on his shoulder. Her? Raven like how is she even next to me now? I thought she sacrificed her life for me what the - I don't even, what?

He leaned forward a little slightly to get a better look at her face. His heart was drumming so loudly that he was certain that she could hear it. She remained stoic however, staring right ahead at the blank wall in front of her as though Van Gogh had blessed them with a drawing on the wall that only she could see. His entire being melted into a quivering puddle of love as he stared at those expressive violet eyes that gleamed with such exquisite perfection that it was like looking at the eyes of Aphrodite herself. Whether Aphrodite actually has violet eyes is questionable but to Beast Boy, those shimmering windows into the soul of his love were more worthy of adoration than anything he had ever seen. For all the involuntary fidgeting he was doing, she remained strangely unperturbed and seemingly lost in her thoughts.

"Ra-ven?" He nervously cut her name into two syllables when his heart finally pushed his mouth to speak. She jerked her head up and met him full in the face and at that moment, the entire world became lost to them.

"You're awake." She said in her characteristic monotone by her eyes betrayed so much more as she stared into his handsome face, starting from his clear emerald eyes and tracing all the way down his knightly jawline. From that point onward, she didn't know where to look so she kept staring at his chin as though he had a raisin sized mole on it. He had grown so much in these years of separation. He finally looked like a grownup to her. He finally looked like a man. She felt a warmth spread under her chin when he placed three fingers under her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze.

"It's really you." And in that moment, he simply collapsed, choking and crying like a little child who had lost his marbles and didn't know how to verbalise it. The roller coaster ride of emotions that he had been forced to endure on Curatoria had traumatised him more than he ever expected it would. He was the ultimate but unintended victim of Raven's scheming. Thinking that she was alive in one minute before fearing she was dead in the next had torn him up emotionally. Men are not supposed to cry - that's what society had always told him, especially because he was their hero. But here she was, next to him in the flesh, fully sane without those demonic red eyes that had robbed him of his Raven. Here she was, his love of the ages, alive and well and looking attentively into his face. He didn't know why and he didn't know how but he certainly didn't care now. Pulling the astonished woman onto his lap, he hugged her close and simply cried.

Raven could feel his heart beating her from inside his chest as he held her and buried his face onto her hooded head. She was perplexed and very, very surprised. For her, this whole experience had been more stressful than it had been traumatic; mainly because she knew what was going on and for the most part, she was in control. She surmised that he must be simply overjoyed to see her but it really ran deeper than that. One of the deepest fears of the human heart is the fear of the unknown and the feeling of helplessness that we get when something bad happens and we simply do not know what to do or have the power to change it. Then there's the secret fear of losing everything that is important to you and losing everyone you love because despite taking them for granted at times, they mean more to you than you let on. Having nothing, knowing nothing and having no control is a terrifying thing - a thing that Beast Boy had to endure over and over again since their ordeal began. But of course, poor clueless Raven had no idea what he had been through so she merely leaned her head on his chest and let him cry his heart out, all the while with a befuddled expression on her face.

"Raven." She looked up to see the fearless leader of the Titans looking down upon her with Starfire - who was really Slade in disguise - hanging on to his arm. She had been too busy spacing out just now as she formulated her most dangerous scheme yet in her head to notice their reunion. When she had first entered and found him curled up on the floor, she had merely assumed that the demons had put him in the same cell as the rest without her permission and paid him no more heed.

"Robin." She eyed him from head to toe, more than a little bit confused by the chilly reception.

"What have you been up to?" He demanded as he folded his arms crossly and glared at her from behind his mask. "All of these stunts you've been pulling, what is it really for?"

"Stunts?" Raven's eyes widened in surprise. Like an octopus locked in a jar, she tried to extricate herself from Beast Boy's hands so that she could stand up and face Robin but he clung to her like a child so for a moment, she hesitated.

"I'm sure you know what I'm talking about." Having spat out that sentence tinged with the lemons of sarcasm, he pursed his lips.

"I've been trying to save you from the demons." She offered more than a tad bit defensively, her anger incited by his rudeness. This time, she forcefully entangled herself from Beast Boy and rose to face their iron-faced leader.

"Save us from the demons?" The moment she squared off with him, Robin immediately flipped and lost his cool. "You were the real demon who was torturing us! I'm sure of it! You were in control of every single one of them!" Raven leaned back a little to avoid the steady splashes of saliva shooting from his mouth. Clearly he had too much time to think and brood in prison. As he raved and ranted on and on, Raven began to wonder if the demons had been secretly torturing the Titans behind her back. "So what you're telling me is that you were trying to save us from yourself?" He finally upped the volume having noticed that Raven had spaced out.

"You - I don't have the time to tell you the whole story." Raven exclaimed a little bit exasperatedly, trying to cover up the fact that she had no intention of telling him what she was really up to. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Cyborg and Terra had just come to and were trying quite unsuccessfully to register the contents of the argument in their fuzzy minds.

"Make time." Robin challenged her. Their faces were a mere four inches away from one another. Though both had grown taller, they were still the same height so they looked each other dead straight in the eyes. Beast Boy and Starfire exchanged dubious glances as they stood on opposite teams: BBRae and Robstar.

"I can't. The entire universe of demons is gathering - somewhere and they want to destroy us. Now that you're all awake, I need to tell you what the plan is." She spoke with quiet determination.

"Go on." He remained unmoved, his jaw set like concrete.

"You five have to go into hiding in Jump City." She stated simply, unsure of how to even feed them fake details about her plan without Robin raging at her and insisting that it was too dangerous for her to fight on her own, that she was being too fatalistic and that the Titans could fight it together.

"And what are you going to do?" His sharp voice rapped at all their eardrums.

"I'm going to deal with the demons."

"Alone?" His whole body and demeanor was strung tight like a stretched rubber band.

"Only I can deal with them." She chose to say less in a calculative attempt to keep a lid on her plans. Out of all the Titans, she knew Robin was the only one who could truly match her when it came to scheming and that he had the most suspicious personality of all. He had already caused her enough trouble before and she wasn't about to let him do it again.

"I'm not sure if you understand what the concept of a team is, Raven." Oh goodness, he sounded like the father that she never really had. "Teammates stick together. A team fights together. No one individual goes on a fight alone. You're not the team Raven, you're part of the team and you need to realise that if there's a mission, then we're all going together."

"I'm not sure if you understand what the concept of life is, Robin."

"Oh no. Now she's imitating him." Thought Beast Boy fearfully. Robin never took it easily when anyone mocked him.

"Try me."

"You don't get an engineer to be your defence counsel in court, just like you don't get a lawyer to fix your broken generator. It's ridiculous to try to force someone to do something that they haven't been trained do when they could be doing something else that they have been taught how to do. Logically speaking, who ever dumps a Literature major in a Chemistry lab when you could easily staff it with trained scientists instead? These are the demons, this isn't your fight. You know nothing about them and trying to fight them as a team would only result in your deaths. These are my demons, this is my fight. I don't have the time to tell you the whole story from start to finish, I just need you to trust me."

"I'm with Raven." Cyborg spoke up from where he had been quietly standing behind in silent observation. "Us going against the demons like that is quite pointless. Raven knows them better than we do so I think we should trust her on that."

"It is this independent, selfish attitude that almost resulted in our loss to the demon Trigon." Robin insisted. He was and would be forever stubborn as a bull. "You think that you're all powerful since Trigon gave you so many gifts. You think you're all that and you can handle this on your own. You're just looking down on us. You don't see us as equals. You don't see the big picture!"

"You're the one who doesn't see the big picture!" Raven suddenly exploded, much to the fear and chagrin of everyone in the cell. "You saw nothing! You didn't see how I got rid of those nanobots that Slade injected in to you with the sole purpose of using them to blow you up! You didn't see how I tricked him and manipulated him into delivering you into my hands where you'd be safe! You didn't see how I got you into Curatoria so that you'd be safe from the demons and how hard I worked and schemed to get you out of their hands when all of you had death sentences hanging on your heads! You didn't see how for this entire time, I've been working every single day on my own to keep all of you safe! I know what I'm doing Robin. I'm not the silent follower that I used to be."

So it was you. You're the one who's been messing with me. Thought Slade as he literally stared at the ranting demon queen through Starfire's eyes. You've tricked me more successfully than anyone ever has and you Raven, you will pay.

A stunned silence reigned the room for a whole minute.

"You know what, just forget that I said anything." Raven turned towards the cell door and busted it down with a blast of her powers. She kept blasting through wall after wall beyond that door until they could see a clear path to the outside world. "You go do whatever you want. Where I'm going requires my powers to travel there. You can't follow even if you wanted to."

Robin just stared at her for a moment, his face as unreadable as hers. Then, with a purposeful deliberation in his step, he turned and grabbed Starfire's hand. Pulling the somewhat reluctant 'alien' along, he walked right out and not once did his gaze stray from his North. Cyborg and Terra looked helplessly at Beast Boy and Raven, unsure of what to do.

"We will go and do as you say." Cyborg finally decided. At this point, he trusted Raven more than Robin for the simple reason that she had earned it. She clearly seemed to understand the situation much better than Robin did and was less blinded by fantasies of the 'ideal' team. At this point, he felt that the ideal team wasn't one where all the members blindly fought and died together - but rather a team who knew how to rely on the strengths of one another and play to a strategy. "We can remain incognito for a while." Whatever Raven's strategy was, he was willing to play along.

"When you finish the fight, come look for us." Terra added softly, having developed a whole lot of respect for Raven in light of what had happened. Raven nodded ever so slightly before glancing at the door. They both got the hint and were about to start off... but not before turning back.

"BB you comin'?" Cyborg raised an eyebrow.

"I'll come in a bit." He promised hastily, never once taking his eyes off Raven's face. The other two nodded and made a beeline for the exit to give the two obvious lovers some time to themselves.

"You're coming with me." Raven declared once they were out of earshot.

"But what about what you said just now?" He questioned quizzically. He wasn't afraid of going with her. In fact, he wanted more than anything in this world to go with her. Right now, he was simply confused.

"It doesn't matter." She closed the gap between them and put her arms around his neck, studying his eyes for the telltale traces of demonic influence. "After I save you... I need you to save me." Her voice broke at the last two words and this time, the actress was the one crying on him. No further words were exchanged. Pushing the doors of her cloak aside, he pulled her fully onto him and rested his chin on her head.

"We will save us." He finally whispered in a voice strong with manly confidence. Fortunately for her, she couldn't see him staring angrily at the doorway through which all of their teammates had walked out.