Toxic

by PSI-Triforce

In which Raven fails to realise that love can be fragile, not the unstoppable force that she believed, and that finding someone who loves you even at your worst is no excuse to embrace your most destructive qualities. Angsty tragedy, long one-shot, one-sided BBRae. Frequent abusive behaviour. Two separate epilogues planned, first posted.

2. Epilogue: Hope

Like most mornings, Raven woke up crying.

The nightmares had been getting better lately… for the most part. The worst thing about Raven's dreams is that she would wake up from them, alone, in a panic, and have to reassure herself that they weren't real. She hadn't done any of the awful things that she had imagined. She hadn't mentally or physically abused any of the people she cared the most about in the entire world. She especially hadn't mocked them for their trauma. She was accepted and by her friends. She was not defined by her heritage. And she was capable of being loved.

And then, she would look around her bedroom, and notice that it looked different. It was smaller, and more barren. Her bedside table and dresser were both gone. Where was her meditation mirror? Where was her communicator? How was she supposed to get in touch with her friends? How was she supposed to get in touch with Beas-

And she would remember. And the crying would begin anew.

This morning had been one of the lucky ones. The nightmare had been horrible, but it quickly faded from memory, which meant that at least she hadn't been reliving anything that she was actually involved with. With every second she tried to recall it, more details disappeared, but she could've sworn it was something to do with a graveyard. It was raining, and there was an open coffin. There were voices, but she hadn't been listening to them. There was one voice, in her head, that she had been listening to, until it stopped, and… she couldn't remember anything more than that.

The reason this morning had been lucky was because, rather than waking up alone in the middle of the night, with nothing to do but curl up into a ball and cry herself back to sleep, she had woken up late enough that someone else was there. Before she even saw her, the door to her cell opened and Raven instinctively opened her arms. Dinah Lance knelt down and embraced the pitiful girl in a warm, motherly hug, while she clung onto her therapist for dear life.

"It's alright Raven, you're safe," Dinah reassured her, not letting her go until she was sure that the tears had slowed to a more manageable level. Black Canary never would have expected after first meeting Raven just how vulnerable and starved for affection she was; her first impression had been… rather radically different.

On the day that she had first spoken to Raven, shortly after her arrival to the Watchtower, the half-demon had threatened her, spat at her, tried to injure herself out of spite, and refuted any attempt at conversation with childish curses and intensely descriptive threats of physical harm. In the weeks that followed, even when Raven's mood was lifted by the implementation of a one-hour per day play session in which she was permitted to use crayons and paper – and always drew the same, clumsy drawing of the same green teenager with whom she was apparently obsessed – then she always remained distant and aloof, seeing her stay with the Justice League as nothing more than a temporary distraction, waiting for her Prince Charming to come break her out. She was sure that he would do so. She was happy to tell Dinah this repeatedly.

As such – and not just because she hated filling Raven's chamber with sedative gas so that she would retrieve the crayons and paper in relative safety (once, she swore she saw Raven peek a single eye open and giggle while supposedly unconscious) – Dinah was extremely relieved when, three months after their esteemed guest had arrived, J'onn J'onzz finally returned from his cosmic mission, and the powers of Martian Manhunter were able to take a look at the girl.

J'onn had touched his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes while he examined this unique subject. When he was finished, all he had to say was "Fascinating. Truly fascinating."

"Can you help her?" Dinah asked unsurely.

"I am… unable to say, honestly," J'onn responded. It wasn't a good sign if someone as powerful as him wasn't sure if they could help. "I have never encountered a half-demon before. I have zero cases I can compare her too."

"Well… if she was just human, then what would you say about her?" Dinah was desperate for at least some information that could be of use.

J'onn looked at Raven again, who was glaring at both of them in apathy, disdain and curiosity all at once. "You think a simple alien could comprehend the depths of my mind?" she cackled, then suddenly frowned at them and said no more.

"Her anterior insular cortex is stunted," J'onn declared clinically, before explaining in the simpler terms that he knew would be required. "It's where feelings such as empathy are understood to originate."

Dinah folded her arms. That made sense. But it wouldn't help them to help her. "Stunted how?"

"I am honestly unsure. It is unlike any physical condition that I have ever seen before. Hence why I believe her half-demon physiology may be somewhat connected to her case." Dinah would have preferred a solution, but the fact that J'onn was curious, and not defeated, filled her with hope.

"Anything else?"

"… Slightly elevated levels of activity in the amygdala." Dinah waited patiently for the explanation. "Home of the id, the desire for instinctual needs. Tempered by the ego, in conjunction with the superego, to-"

"Sorry, could we skip to the part that's useful?" Dinah interrupted. Had she and J'onn not had a close working relationship and even closer friendship, he would have found it rude. As it was her, he smiled and obeyed.

"Lowered compassion, and high activity in the pleasure centre. Could certainly be connected to her behaviour, from what I've heard."

"Low compassion?" Raven spat at the glass. "I'll show you low compassion, you hideous alien monster!"

"Can you do anything about it?" Dinah asked, ignoring Raven's outburst.

"Not medically, no." He stroked his chin, "I'm a psychic, not a brain surgeon. And as I said, I don't know how her half-demon physiology plays into this." He didn't need to be able to read minds to know that Dinah was disappointed. "… Although I could temporarily increase the internal amplification of the anterior insular cortex, and see if that alters her behaviour at all."

"Is that safe?" Dinah asked in genuine concern.

"I see no reason why it wouldn't be," J'onn replied. "And if anything occurs, I can change it back at a moment's notice."

For the first time in months, Raven appeared scared. "Don't you even dare think about messing around with my head. I will put you through pain that you can't even imagine; I will watch you beg for death and deny your wishes as you writhe on the floor in agony. Oh, if you think Beast Boy is angry at you now, you just wait until he hears you tried to mess with my mind; he will tear you, limb from limb, and I will watch, laughing as he-" she continued to rant, as J'onn looked to Dinah for confirmation, who nodded.

J'onn squinted at Raven, and her speech stopped instantly.

Her eyes widened more than was medically safe. Her face was frozen in a look of pure shock and horror. She continued breathing, but slow, small, laboured breaths, as if it was putting her in pain. Without even welling up in her eyes first, tears began to stream down her cheeks instantaneously. Her body trembled, and without warning, she fell to her knees, not even reacting as they struck the floor.

Dinah glanced to J'onn in immediate concern, who was observing carefully. "There's no need to worry, yet. Her brain is physically healthy, if not-"

"Oh… God," Raven whimpered as she continued to cry, tears pouring down at an alarming rate. As if she had only just spotted them, she hobbled forwards on her knees to the door, and tried to plead with the woman whose name she barely remembered.

"D… Dinah. Please, please Dinah. You… you have to," she sniffed loudly, snot joining the tears as it ran down her distraught face. "You have to send a message for me. Please, please send a message."

Dinah exchanged a brief look with J'onn, and knelt down on the other side of the door.

"Sure. What do you want me to say?"

"Thank you, thank you," Raven sounded so grateful, and yet so small. "I-I need you to tell the Titans. I need you to call them and tell them…" her eyes scrunched up as the tears became a waterfall. "Tell them that I'm sorry!" she sobbed. Dinah shot another look at J'onn, wanting his opinion on whether it was currently safe to enter the cell. "I'm sorry!" Raven wailed again as her crying became hysterical. "I don't expect them to forgive me, but I'm sorry!" she sobbed helplessly on the floor, collapsing onto her hands.

J'onn wanted to help her just as much as Dinah did, but they both seemed unsure. Inside the cell, Raven glanced around at her meagre surroundings; the surroundings that a psychotic criminal like her deserved. Nothing but a bed, a single blanket, a toilet, and… pictures. Several dozen crayon drawings of-

"B-BEAST BOY!" she half-screamed, half-sobbed as she curled up into a ball and cried her heart out with her arms wrapped around herself. Dinah frowned, and then decided that it was worth taking the risk. Opening the door, she did her best to pull Raven back up into a seated position, which the empath didn't have the energy to fight off. Until she did.

"NO!" she shrieked, "Don't… don't help me, don't touch… I don't deserve…" she was crying too much, and too hard, to be understood for more than a second at a time, but Dinah persevered, eventually wrapping her arms around the horrified girl as she cried and cried and cried and cried and cried into the heroine's arms, in broken, haunting despair. Raven had continued to cry in Black Canary's arms until she passed out from dehydration two hours later.

Although the circumstances hadn't been great, needless to say, it had been a breakthrough.

.

For the first three months, with no way to intervene, Raven had not been receptive to therapy, choosing instead to fling petty insults towards anyone – mostly Dinah – who attempted to get her to open up. After meeting J'onn, Raven was a lot less confrontational, but if anything, became even less receptive to therapy than before. She would silently stare at the floor, sobbing and refusing to respond to any questions. At night, various Justice League members would take turns watching over her cell. It took Raven only a short while to realise why; she was on suicide watch. Some of them would try to talk to her, and she would appreciate the gesture, but did not feel worthy of responding to them. Others would enter with a single statement of sympathy, complete their shifts, and leave without saying another word. Batman just stared at her the entire time.

It was another eight weeks after J'onn's actions that she finally spoke to someone.

"… I belong here," she whimpered sadly on her bed, as Black Canary sat in her chair outside the cell. It took a moment for Dinah to even realise that she had spoken, and while she didn't want to miss the opportunity, she hadn't exactly been expecting a conversation.

"Why is that?" she asked, although the answer was obvious.

"I'm a demon," Raven continued, in defeated acceptance. "A monster. All I do is hurt people." She turned to Dinah and said, calmly and sincerely, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For containing me," she stared blankly at the ceiling. "For keeping my friends safe. For keeping everyone safe. From me."

Dinah put the pen and clipboard down. "Raven… you know that we want to rehabilitate you, right?"

"A demon can't be rehabilitated. Only contained. Or put down," she said in quiet acceptance.

Dinah sighed, unaware of exactly how much she should disclose… and then opened the door to Raven's cell, strolled inside, and took a seat on the foot of her bed. Raven flinched, but didn't try to recoil.

"… You know Hal Jordan, right? Green Lantern?" Raven didn't know him, at least not well, but thought that she could recall him being one of the heroes who had watched over her one night. She didn't see fit to nod, though. She wasn't worthy of being talked to by an actual hero.

"Well, he had his own run-in with the dark side. Parallax…" Dinah's gaze drifted into the middle distance, clearly remembering some not very nice experiences. "It was a while before he came back to us. And he did things, Raven. Terrible things. But he faced up to them. He accepted the consequences. He put the work in, and… now he's one of the earth's strongest defenders again," she concluded, trying to sound more certain than she felt. "Living with the consequences doesn't mean that you can't still be a hero."

Raven pulled her knees up to her chest. "I was never a hero…"

Dinah scoffed. "We both know that's a lie."

Raven began to sob, again. Dinah placed a hand on her shoulder.

"I've done things… horrible things," Raven wept. "My friends…"

Dinah sighed, clearly contemplating something, before making her decision. "You know, we weren't supposed to tell you this…" that at least got Raven's attention a little, "but that was mainly because of who you were when you get here, and you're clearly not that person anymore." She stroked Raven's shoulder sympathetically. "You know that they've been asking about you, right?"

Raven looked up at Dinah in overwhelming fear, surprise, and… just the tiniest inkling of hope. Dinah felt relieved to know that she wasn't a lost cause. Yet.

"How's Raven doing? Is Raven ok? Have you made any progress with Raven? I hope Raven is doing well. You'll let us know if anything changes with Raven, right? Do you think Raven will be able to come back soon?" That last one made her jump. The thought that not only were they still concerned about her, but that they wanted her back? After what she'd done?

"And just to be clear," Dinah continued, "That's from all of them." She thought that it might help. Raven curled in on herself and began to sob harder.

"No, no no no no no," Raven wept. "I can't do that to him. I can't, I can't." Dinah cursed herself for trying to move too quickly, and set about trying to repair the damage she had just done.

"… Beast Boy?" she suggested. Raven raised her head and nodded solemnly before returning to her tears. Dinah didn't know if she should say it. The first mention had gone so badly, and yet if he was the key to her despair, he might also be the key to her recovery.

"… You know… he's the one who asks about you the most." Raven stopped sobbing, if only in shock. Her breathing quickened again. She sniffed loudly and rolled onto her side.

"Probably just wants to… make sure that I'm still as far away from him as possible."

"Doesn't sound like it," Dinah casually revealed. "Honestly, it sounds like he wants you back more than anyone."

Raven turned to Dinah suddenly, and for the first time since reverting back to her true self, there was a hint of anger on her face, albeit not aimed at Dinah, or at Beast Boy. At herself.

"He doesn't deserve to have me back," she sniffed, tears still falling. When she had first arrived, such a sentence would have indicated her residual anger at his betrayal, his failure to accommodate her needs, his insufficiency at providing for her. Now, it meant the opposite. Raven didn't believe that a soul as kind as his deserved to be tainted by the presence of… her. Even if he was too stupidly kind-hearted to realise it.

"Doesn't he get a say in that?" Dinah tried to continue without sounding too disagreeable.

Raven finally sat up. "I've done things, Dinah," she sniffed again. "Said things… I've hurt him. Physically, mentally… he didn't deserve to suffer through that," she asserted, the most confident she had sounded about anything since arriving. "And he doesn't deserve to go through it again." She barely maintained eye contact with Dinah. "If… if you only knew… some of the things-"

Dinah placed a hand on Raven's leg. "Then tell me."

Raven's lip quivered. Her eyes continued to water. But after five interminable seconds, she shyly nodded. And the healing could finally begin.

.

It was another three months of conversation, regular therapy sessions, and lots and lots of tears before Dinah and J'onn told Raven that they had some news for her. Raven hoped that the news was that they had found a suitable prison to hold her.

"Sorry that it took so long," Dinah apologized sincerely, which only made Raven feel guiltier, "but we actually found another demon to study. Deceased, sadly," she added, "and a few thousand years old, but enough to confirm J'onn's theory."

Dinah gave her green friend the floor – they had tried to minimize his presence, and it reminded Raven of her green former friend – as J'onn stepped forwards. "As I'm sure you are aware Raven, it is unusual for a demon to find themselves on the side of good. It would require considerable effort, resisting one's heritage, one's urges…" He really didn't feel the need to explain this to the one person in the room who probably already knew it better than anyone. "And while this is primarily a result of one's personality, their physiological traits do play a part in the development." Raven looked more interested now. This was news to her.

"In the demon whose body we examined, while the brain was long decomposed, we were able to estimate that the anterior insular cortex was practically non-existent. Which makes sense, given their behaviour; little to no compassion. And the amygdala was significantly larger, giving them a focus on their own pleasure, with no regard to how it would make anyone else feel. This was not what I saw when I first examined you, but… it was as if you had started on that journey, as it were."

Raven refused to cling to hope that it somehow hadn't been her fault, knowing that it was. It wouldn't be fair for her to just be able to write this off as a side-effect of being half-demon.

"From what we understand of your history, this is likely why the monks of Azarath were so rigid in their training. And their training contained several flaws that would have left you unprepared for how to deal with these urges as your body developed." Raven suddenly felt a tad self-conscious about all the talk about how her body had 'developed', but knew that in context, it was simply a clinical observation. "I believe that the turning point was the defeat of Trigon. You would have likely felt overjoyed, and relieved, and… free. Free to feel without restriction for the first time in your life. It's no wonder then, that your primal urges would take advantage of this freedom." Raven was fascinated.

"There was a physiological reason for your behaviour, for you to prioritize your pleasure above the emotional needs of those around you. But…" for the first time, J'onn paused. "There is an asterisk." Raven waited, knowing exactly what was coming before he said it.

"When you first arrived, and I rebalanced the activity in your brain, then you were immediately remorseful. You understood what you had done, and felt appropriately guilty. Having scanned your brain patterns since, I can see that this realisation was actually enough to cause a permanent – it seems – redistribution of activity levels in your brainwaves and thought patterns. There is honestly no clinical reason for this to be case, but there is a lot about you that we don't, and frankly, never will understand." Raven nodded, tears already forming in her eyes.

"… But, there is also no clinical reason why this outcome could not have been reached without interference. Without… manually making the decision to focus critically on what you were doing. Without-"

"So it was me," Raven acknowledged, defeatedly. "My demon heritage didn't help, but ultimately, it was still me." She lowered her head in acceptance, too tired to weep. She didn't need to look up to know that J'onn solemnly nodded, once.

"Hey, for the record," Dinah cut in, "There are perfectly healthy humans who do things a hundred times worse than what you did, and they don't even have the excuse of being half-demon. So don't even begin to think that you're some abnormal freak for this, just because you made a mistake."

"… I made several mistakes," murmured Raven back, slowly finding the energy to sob.

"Yes, you did," Dinah bluntly admitted. "But you had spent your entire life holding back your emotions, and now you were finally free to feel them, and you had absolutely no way of knowing that this was going to happen. How were you possibly supposed to predict something like this?"

"… Possibly," Raven repeated sadly. "It was possible. If I had only stopped, and… thought. About someone other than myself." She sobbed into her hands again, and rolled onto her side, curling up the blanket on the bed inside her cell.

"… Thank you for your help," Raven morosely offered, "I mean it. But it doesn't change who I am."

J'onn and Dinah weren't sure how to proceed… and so Dinah just barrelled ahead.

"Well, we actually had a second announcement to tell you." Raven didn't move. "How would you like to go home?"

Raven sat up immediately, tears still in her eyes. "Azarath?" she answered unsurely.

Dinah smiled and shook her head. "Your real home."

Raven raised a hand to her mouth in shock, and not a positive one. "B-but… you just-"

"J'onn's been checking up on you for weeks, and you are completely back to normal. You've exhibited great remorse for what you've done, and it's unlikely that you would ever do it again. You possess great power that could be used to help thousands of people every day." She smirked, "And most importantly, it would get your friends to stop calling us so damn much."

"B-but," Raven stammered, "I'm a criminal. I, I've hurt people. Not just my friends, Gizmo, he-"

Black Canary walked into Raven's cell with no fear at all. Raven drew her legs up onto the bed and wrapped her arms around them as Dinah sat at the foot of her bed, again.

"Raven. You have made mistakes. We have all made mistakes. But you also saved the world. You did that. Billions of people, alive, because of you." She placed a gentle hand on Raven's knee. "How could it possibly be a good idea to deny this planet one of its strongest defenders?"

"I-I'm not-"

Dinah let go of Raven's knee and grabbed both of her cheeks with her hands. She could still feel the traces of tears on them.

"You are, Raven." She was a little bit tempted to give the poor girl a kiss on the forehead, but thought against it. "You are a hero. It's time to be a hero again."

Abruptly standing up, Dinah left Raven's cell again, having given the empath a lot to think about, no matter how much she didn't want to. "If you don't want to, you don't have to, Raven. You can spend the rest of your life here. But that seems like a waste to me. That seems like a lot of missed opportunities to help people. And for a woman with your talents, your abilities… and your compassion. Then that just feels like a shame."

Departing the room with J'onn – Raven had been allowed to sleep without observation for months now – Dinah wished her well. "Goodnight, Raven. Just something to think about." And she was gone, leaving only the confused empath, full of doubts that had been there for months, wondering against all odds if she could ever be a hero again. She lay on her side on the bed and closed her eyes. Sleep did not come easy to her, and neither did answers.

.

And so, on the morning of Raven's nightmare, when Dinah comforted and consoled her, there was one thing above all that she thought might reassure the fragile girl.

"Hey… it's only natural that you'd be nervous," Dinah said with a smile. "You've got a big day ahead of you."

Raven stopped sniffing, looking hopeful and horrified at the same time. "That's… today?" Dinah nodded with a smile on her face. "What… what time?"

Dinah childishly blew a lock of blonde hair out of her face, which Raven knew she only ever did when she was either annoyed, or pretending to be. "Well, it's eight o'clock now, and we told your friend Cyborg to arrive around ten or eleven." Raven didn't know why Dinah seemed upset, that sounded reasonable enough. "So naturally, he showed up at half past five."

"W-what?" Raven gasped.

"And he's been waiting here ever since." Dinah gave Raven a gentle shake.

"W-WHAT?" Raven repeated, louder and more afraid. Dinah had expected that, and chuckled as she slowly released the shaking empath.

"I don't want to rush you, Raven. But if you're ready to leave, then-"

"I'm not ready!" Raven protested, hugging Dinah again, clinging to the mature woman like a koala bear. "I'm not… I'm not cured, I'm not fixed, I'm still… still the same."

"Raven," Dinah replied, a hint of command in her voice. "Breathe. Remember your mantra."

Raven obeyed, even if she didn't want to. She took a deep breath in, then out, and recited the words that she and Dinah had crafted together. "I am not defined by my mistakes. I am not defined by my heritage. I am Raven, and I deserve to be happy." She had never once believed the words, but the more she said them, and the closer she was to Dinah when she did, the more she felt as though maybe, one day, she possibly could believe them. And even if they didn't work, they calmed her down enough.

"Do you need any time to get ready? A shower, perhaps?" Dinah asked.

"I had one before I went to bed," Raven replied, although she had been tempted to lie. Tempted to put another fifteen minutes between her and this reunion.

"Then… is it okay if I call him in?"

'No,' Raven thought, but she swallowed her nerves and nodded all the same.

Dinah pushed a button on her Justice League communicator. Raven couldn't help but feel that the Titans' communicators were better. Something about the T. "Cyborg, she's up. Head on over."

"Roger," came the short reply, and even just the sound of his voice filled her with shivers. The last time they had spoken, just the two of them, Cyborg had come to her room to confront her over her mocking Beast Boy for a truly traumatic episode of his past. He must have still remembered that. Was he still angry? Should she apologize, or hope that he didn't bring it up? Was it him that she needed to apologize to? Raven shook her head, cursing herself for her selfishness. Of course she needed to apologize to him. She needed to apologise to all of them.

As if sensing her spiking anxiety, Dinah pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and shoved it into Raven's hands. Raven looked at the digits on the note, but didn't quite understand them.

"My personal cell," Dinah explained. "Any time you want to talk – and I mean any time, about anything – then let me know night or day, and I'll either answer it, or I'll get back to you as soon as I can." She hugged Raven tightly one more time, feeling a deep sense of empathy and an even deeper sense of pity for the poor girl. In their line of work, it was rare to find anyone who hadn't been through a lifetime of trauma by the age of ten, but the shaking half-demon had certainly had a hell of a head start in that department.

The door opened, and Raven flinched, clinging tighter onto Dinah. Victor Stone stepped through the doorway, took one look at Raven, and smiled proudly.

"… There's my little sis!" he shouted even more proudly, running towards her and scooping her up in a bear hug while she yelped in fear, and then embarrassment… but also couldn't bring herself not to return the hug as tightly as she possible could. Her anxiety was simultaneously spiking but also fading away as she held onto her surrogate big brother as tightly as she could, even when he went to release her, felt that she was still hugging him, and chuckled "Alright, that's fine by me," and resumed hugging her back.

It was another two whole minutes, in which time Cyborg began to feel her tears running down his torso and tried to wipe them away without relinquishing the hug, before Raven could finally bring herself to release him. Without hesitation, he handed her a tissue from the packet – well, several packets – he had brought with him, and she nodded gratefully as she tried to dry her eyes.

"Well… I'm ready to go if you are," Cyborg reassured her. "They're gonna beam us back down, and then we've got a long drive in the T-Car to look forward to." Raven nodded without speaking, and as Cyborg cautiously led the way, she wordlessly followed him, pausing only to glance back at her therapist, who was looking extremely proud. Raven faltered, and ran back to Dinah to embrace her in one final hug as well, whispering "Thank you," over and over to the woman who had pulled her off of the self-destructive path to hell that she had been firmly on. Dinah embraced her back, stroking the back of her head fondly, while Cyborg was perfectly happy to wait patiently for them to finish.

Raven's eyes did not remain dry for long – she expected that there would be more than a few tearful reunions today, and the prospect both encouraged and terrified her – and Cyborg was ready with another tissue when she finally let Dinah go, and walked with her former – and current, maybe – teammate back to the entrance of the Watchtower. Dinah accompanied them, and as Raven and Cyborg stepped into the teleporter, Raven took one last look back, held Cyborg's hand for support, and waved goodbye, before frantically adding "Say thank you to J'onn for me!" to which Dinah replied with a nod, and mouthed 'Good luck!' to the girl, before she and Cyborg disappeared.

Nine months after she had arrived, Raven had left the Watchtower.

.

She almost fell to her knees when she was back on Earth. She hadn't realised that she had missed it – there were so many more important things that she had missed – until she felt the change in atmosphere, the change in the oxygen, and just… the change. She was back on the same planet that her friends were, that seven billion people were. And for a fleeting moment, it was as if she could feel every single one of them.

It wasn't as if her time away had been a meditation retreat, but with little else to do for nine months – well, the six months that she had been of sound mind – then she had forced herself to keep her powers on a tight leash. After all, every time she closed her eyes, mental images of the things that she had done with those powers flashed in front of her eyes, and she shrank back into herself, breathing heavily and desperately seeking a distraction. But it also meant that despite the distraction, and despite the previously overwhelming nature of finding herself back surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people, it was… manageable now. Moreso than it had been. Cyborg and Raven departed the facility quickly, and Raven's nerves settled somewhat when she saw the T-Car parked outside.

"Better get comfy," Cyborg warned her, "It's a five-hour trip. I brought some snacks, if you're…" he trailed off. Raven had to resist the urge to burst into tears again from being shown any kindness at all. She predicted that she would be doing a lot of that in the next few days. Cyborg patted her on the shoulder, opened the passenger-side door for her, and she sat down, closing her eyes and taking a few more deep breaths. The T-Car. It was familiar to her. She could almost make out the scents of her teammates.

Five hours to go. Five hours of sitting in the passenger seat of the new and improved – it had undergone several iterations of 'new and improved' since she had last seen it – T-Car. Raven was trying to reconcile the relief she felt to be out, to be better, and to be with one of her trusted friends – someone who was, against all odds, happy to see her as well – with the horrific anxiety of knowing what she had done. And knowing that it would never go away. Not that she wanted it to. She deserved to live with that feeling, for as long as she lived at all.

The first fifteen minutes of the journey were carried out in absolute silence. Raven didn't want to speak, and Cyborg didn't want to force anything out of her. But eventually, one question rose to the forefront of her mind. She chastised herself for considering it a minor inquiry, given what she had done, but it would be rude not to ask at all.

"Um… how's-" she coughed quietly, a lump appearing in her throat. For almost a year now, she had barely said a word a day, and even after their reconciliation on the Watchtower, her voice was still out of practise. Cyborg handed her a bottle of water, which she gratefully accepted.

"He's fine, Rae," Cyborg could predict who she was asking about. "Better than fine, he's been doing great. And he's been asking about you, how you're doing, when you might be coming back-"

"C-Cy…" Raven quietly cut him off. "I was actually going to ask about Gizmo."

"… Oh," Cyborg chuckled awkwardly to himself. "Put my foot in it there, didn't I?" He laughed again.

Raven smiled meekly. "I… I don't think I'm ready to ask how… how-"

Sensing her nerves, Cyborg ploughed ahead. "Well, Gizmo is doing very well for himself. Rob got him a gig doing cybersecurity and all that – against my advice – but he's stayed on the straight and narrow." He chortled to himself, and the T-Car almost veered into the next lane before he corrected. "He-he was testing the defences of a bank in the first few weeks, and he found a dozen vulnerable entry points, so he agreed with them that if they paid him double his rate – since he's just there to test, not to fix stuff – then he would reconfigure their system and get them all taken care of. And they did."

Cyborg's smile grew broader. "So he comes back the very next morning to let them know that they can keep his system if they want, it'll probably keep out anyone looking to break in… but he just felt obliged to tell them-" Cyborg mockingly placed a hand over his heart "-out of the goodness of his heart, that just on his journey home the previous day, he thought of seventeen other exploits in their system. And if they wanted them fixed, it would cost them double. Again." Cyborg laughed to himself as he shook his head. "So yeah. He's still a… well, a crud-muncher, or whatever he would say."

Raven smiled, but as she glanced down at her lap bashfully, the pit of guilt in her stomach didn't go away. Because connected to her lap were her legs. Legs that she could still move, because Gizmo was the one paralyzed, not her.

"Is he… still…" she began tentatively.

"… Yeah," Cyborg's prediction of Raven's question was correct this time. "But you know what? Couple of months back, he got some grant – Wayne Foundation or whatever – experimental technology, would have let him walk again, and you know what he said?"

Raven shook her head, just to be polite. Obviously she didn't know what he said.

"He said… well, I don't know if it was exactly this – there were probably a lot more 'snot-eater's and 'booger-breath's – but it was something like 'Last year, I was a crummy two-bit crook running with a crew of losers. Now I have a cybersecurity contract with the Pentagon. No thanks.' Turned it down. He- he actually turned it down." He let that hang in the air a few seconds, before sighing softly. "He's not… look, I'm not trying to overdo it or anything. We all know that what happened was…" He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to finish the sentence. "But I'm telling you, straight up. He's doing better now." He had looked away from the road to speak to her, but his eyes returned straight ahead as he finished. "A lot better. Honestly, better than before-"

"Th-thank you," Raven cut him off awkwardly, anxiety and guilt still gnawing away at her insides. She knew that he was just trying to console her, but if Gizmo had turned his life around, it wasn't because of what she had done; it was in spite of what she had done. And even if he was doing better now – which she was not one hundred percent sure of; she trusted her big brother completely, but if Gizmo had actually taken his life a week after losing the use of his legs, there was no way he would tell her the truth about that – then it didn't detract from the horrible thing she had done. And the guilt that she deserved to feel for it.

Another fifteen minutes passed in silence. Raven was happy to just enjoy the view of the countryside as they drove, hampered only by the nagging feeling that she didn't deserve to be enjoying anything, when Cyborg broke the ice again.

"… You know, if you were ready to ask about Beast Boy…" Cyborg let the words linger in the air just long enough for Raven to object if she had wanted to. She remained silent, so he continued. "Then I would tell you that he's doing great. He spent four months with the Titans East before he came back to us. I wouldn't say that he's a changed man, but I think he learned a few things while he was over there."

Raven silently took the news in. She was a touch relieved to hear that he hadn't returned the moment that she had been removed from the team, although it would have been well within his rights. But that did raise the question of why did he come back. Cyborg did not read her mind or predict her question, but as luck would have it, he decided to cover that ground anyway.

"He almost became their second leader, kind of. If anyone needed combat practise tips or a battle strategy, they would go straight to him. Even Bee was asking his advice. Four months in, she asked him if he wanted to take over the team, and that was when he thought he should come back. He wasn't stepping on anyone's toes, he just thought that his being there was making Bee a little less confident in her own judgement. So they had a chat, and he was home a few days after."

Having covered Beast Boy's time at Titans East, Cyborg paused, not knowing exactly how much detail to go into regarding Beast Boy's behaviour since he had returned, but knowing that the truth couldn't hurt, and it could possibly assuage some of his surrogate little sister's fears.

"He asks about you. A lot. How you're doing, what kind of progress you've been making, how long before we think you'll be coming back." Cyborg didn't want to put too much pressure on his best friend – especially while he wasn't there to speak for himself – but realised that without further context, telling Raven that Beast Boy wanted to know when she would be coming back could have been misconstrued as fear, and he couldn't allow that thought to fester. "Honestly, I… I mean, I'm psyched as all hell to see you again, but I think the grass stain has got me beat in that department."

Raven still wasn't ready to speak… but she did dare to smile, and the sight made Cyborg smile too, before he suddenly announced "Oop," and leaned over the open the glovebox, trying to retrieve something from inside. Glancing back at the road, he let out an even louder "OOP!" and hastily corrected his lane position. "Hey Raven, there's a CD in the glovebox if you want to get it out."

Not hugely in the mood for music, but not wanting to deny a request from her big brother – and also not wanting to be responsible for him getting into a car accident on her first day back – then she checked the glovebox and quickly found an unmarked CD.

"B and Star, they wanted to be here for the ride but didn't want to overwhelm you. But they did… make you a mixtape." Raven immediately felt flattered, embarrassed and horrified all at once. The same way she felt when Beast Boy had won her that giant chicken at the fair. Cyborg held out his hand for the CD, glancing at Raven optimistically, and… well, if they'd gone to the trouble of making the CD, then she supposed she really ought to listen to it.

She opened the case and handed him the disc, which he entered into the T-Car's stereo system. Raven found herself feeling oddly nervous; if the first song had been something like 'I Don't Want You Back' or 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' then she thought she might just teleport herself to the bottom of a lake, and stay there.

Her fears were dissuaded when the first track began, a slow, soulful guitar piece that neither she nor Cyborg could place. It had a psychedelic rock feel, and while the smooth guitar played for just long enough that Raven was beginning to wonder if it was a lyric-less track, the vocals kicked in.

"Got a black magic woman. Got a black magic woman."

Raven tried to resist smiling, and failed. Cyborg laughed openly. "Geez, he's about as subtle as always, huh?"

"I got a black magic woman, got me so blind I can't see. That she's a black magic woman and she's try'na make a devil out of me."

Raven shifted in her seat, unsure if he was trying to say something through his choice of song, or whether he just thought it was funny. Or whether he just liked the song. Beast Boy had always had a rather eclectic taste in music. If he was trying to say something then it didn't sound too positive.

"Got your spell on me baby. You got your spell on me baby. Yes, you got your spell on me baby, turnin' my heart into stone." This still didn't sound too positive, until the last line. "I need you so bad, magic woman, I can't leave you alone."

Raven didn't know how she felt about this… but fortunately, none of the other songs seemed to be directly applicable to her. Or at least, to that extent; she had a sneaking suspicion that Beast Boy had fought for 'She's So High' to be on the CD. 'Kids in America' also seemed to be his kind of vibe. Either one of them could have chosen 'Piano Man,' which she had always enjoyed – something about an outlandish assortment of characters with their own quirks, all drawn reliably to a single location, was comforting to her – and she very strongly doubted that Starfire was behind the inclusion of a song titled 'Deadly Lethal Ninja Assassin'. But for the most part, it was just Beast Boy and Starfire selecting songs that they had heard and thought she might like. And she appreciated the effort, even though she questioned some of their choices.

It wasn't until just before song number eight that something happened.

"Hey Raven, it's me!" a recording of Beast Boy's voice belted out from the CD. She froze, eyes wide in horror and guilt, and the stereo was encased by dark magic. Her hand gripped the armrest of her seat, and Cyborg had to cry "Raven!" to get her to stop.

"So, uh, you and Cy are probably on the way here, and I don't want to interrupt anything, just, Starfire really wanted this next song on here, and I like it too, but… I just, uh, don't want you to think that there's any deeper meaning to us picking this one, okay? Anyway, enjoy the ride back, and see you soon!"

Her breathing had quickened so much that Cyborg worried that she was having a panic attack. "Rae! Raven… you okay?" he questioned in concern. Raven took a few more deep breaths, pushed down the anxiety, and slowly nodded back with a clearly not-entirely-honest smile.

"S-sorry," she replied, "just caught me by surprise." Cyborg wisely didn't push it, and let the CD keep playing. Raven could use a distraction; what was this song anyway?

"I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser. Midnights become my afternoons."

Raven didn't quite understand why Beast Boy had felt the need to interject at all; these lyrics sounded fairly generic, nothing overwhelmingly applicable to her-

"It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me." Ah. That explained it. She could see why he had wanted to say that it wasn't about her… but that didn't change the fact that, if it had been about her, it would have been accurate. It was her. She had been the problem. And now she was… 'better', she hoped, but the problem had been her. If he refused to see that, then was he in denial, or clinging to the past, or something else? She couldn't let him pretend that she hadn't done terrible things to him. That wasn't fair to him, and it wouldn't be justice for what she had done. What she had said. "Bill and Grayson certainly did." She cringed as the horrible words echoed in her head.

In trying to assure her that the song hadn't meant anything, Beast Boy had only made her think that it meant something. Not from them, but to her. She sat back further in her seat, unsure of herself, and tried to distract her mind with the rest of the music.

At least a small smile crossed her face when she heard the opening of the next. "This is the story of a girl. Who cried a river and drowned the whole world! But while she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely love her… when she smiles."

Cyborg drove on in silence, bobbing his head to the music. Raven wrapped her arms around herself and tried to remain calm. If she couldn't even handle hearing his voice, then… she didn't know how this 'reunion' was going to go, but she had her doubts.

.

Standing at the foot of the tower was almost giving Raven a panic attack. If Cyborg hadn't been with her, she didn't doubt that she would have turned tail and fled without thinking. It may have been the only place that she had ever considered home, but that didn't change the fact that all of her most recent memories of the place involved abuse. Verbal, physical, psychological. She could almost feel the weight of what she had done on her shoulders, pinning her down, keeping her from moving, keeping her from breathing, and she couldn't fight back against the feeling because she knew that it was what she deserved, she knew that-

Raven suddenly felt the very real hand of Cyborg on her shoulders, and managed to briefly wrest control of herself back from her anxiety.

"You okay sis?" he asked sympathetically. A little too sympathetically for her liking. Sympathy was for people who deserved it.

"… Nope," she admitted with a sad smile on her face. "But I can't put this off."

"You sure?" Cyborg offered. "We can get back in the car and drive around a little longer if you'd like. We're an hour early anyway."

Raven appreciated the offer, but shook her head. "No… I- it's going to feel like this no matter when I do it, so… best to just get it over with."

"Alright sis," Cyborg encouraged. "After you," he gestured to the front door.

Raven was a touch surprised that he wasn't taking the lead. All active Titans could enter the tower by inputting a code that could only be accessed via their communicator, and which itself required another code to acquire. Or they could undergo a quick full-body scan that somehow managed to identify their DNA in the process; Raven had never really understood half of the security measures that Cyborg and Robin had conjured up between them, she just accepted that they worked. And finally, there was a hand-sensor that Cyborg was indicating towards with a smile. Raven nervously placed her hand on it, and it scanned for two seconds before the door opened.

"Raven. Welcome back," a robotic female voice said. That was new.

"Got it to do voices now," Cyborg pointed out. "See? Even the Tower is glad you're back."

Raven didn't know if she appreciated the gesture. She didn't know if she wanted to be welcomed back. But she didn't want to let down her friend, so she forced a smile, and hoped that it was good enough to fool him for now. Cyborg's own smile faded slightly, but he quickly placed his hand on her shoulder again and they walked inside together.

There, Raven faced another choice. Slow, contemplative walk up the stairs, or take the elevator straight to the Common Room? The elevator would get her there sooner, which she didn't want. But every step up the stairs would offer her another chance to run away, another chance to hesitate and think about what she had done, another chance to collapse on the floor beneath the weight of her guilt and-

"Elevator, please," Raven meekly asked, as if needing permission to move. Cyborg walked with her to the elevator, and continued to rub Raven's shoulder as she took deep breath after deep breath as it ascended.

.

Raven's heart both leapt and sank as soon as the elevator doors opened. The first thing that caught her attention was, unavoidably, the spelling mistake.

W-E-L-L-C-O-M-E . B-A-C-K . R-A-V

The banner hadn't even been completed, but streamers and half-finished decorations covered the room, some completed, some in progress, and some very clearly not even started.

"Beast Boy?" Robin's voice called out as the elevator announced their arrival with a loud 'DING.' "They should be an hour away. If you've got the cake, just leave it on the table, the freezer is full of ice cream, and-"

He turned the corner and dropped an armful of paper hats, staring at them both in shock and awe. Cyborg was grinning like an idiot, but a proud and happy idiot. Raven meekly waved back. She could barely bring herself to return his gaze.

"… STAR?" Robin yelled to someone who was apparently a good distance behind him, before rushing up to Raven, immediately noticing that she was shrinking back in fear, and – wanting to give her space, but completely unwilling to pass up the chance to greet her back – offered up a gloved hand. Raven smiled at his consideration and accepted, shaking his hand. His was firm and welcoming, as always. Her hand felt as though it was just… there.

Cyborg chuckled. "Geez Rob, a handshake? Pretty formal."

"Well, I don't think Starfire's going to settle for a-"

Right on cue, there was a huge gasp from behind Robin. Wearing two oversized oven gloves and holding a tray of slightly-burned cookies, Starfire's lip trembled immediately, and the tray shortly fell straight towards the floor. Before she could caution herself, Raven caught the tray with her magic, and then gasped herself as she panicked – it was the first time she had intentionally used her powers in nine months – and proceeded to drop them as well, albeit a much, much shorter distance onto the floor.

Before she could say anything else, Starfire flew towards her at breakneck speeds, wrapping her arms around the empath and zooming around the room in a flying-hug that was completely out of her control. This kind of joy did not come often, but it was impossible to suppress when it did. And it wasn't just Starfire who was happy. As much as the guilt and anxiety refused to leave her alone, the feeling of her best friend embracing her so tightly, so warmly, and so utterly sincerely made Raven feel safe, and accepted, and even loved, and for just a few seconds, she was able to drown out the voices screaming at her that it was morally wrong for her to feel anything – however fleeting – that could be even remotely considered positive.

When Starfire reluctantly came to a halt in the air, squeezing Raven in such joy and relief, then they remained floating for another ten or so seconds, before Starfire could finally find it in herself to descend. When she even-more-reluctantly released her grip, Raven was sobbing, but smiling. Starfire smiled back, tempted to do the same.

"Thank you for the welcome," Raven murmured meekly. Starfire wrapped her in another hug instantly.

"Thank you for coming back," Starfire sounded and felt truly grateful. Raven's legs began to shake, and Starfire was quick to loop an arm around her and guide her towards the couch, where her teammates quickly gathered to be with her, bursting with questions while also not wanting to overload the poor girl. Decorating was abandoned; it didn't seem as important now that she was back.

"So," began Robin, pausing awkwardly as he tried to think of a question that didn't pry too deeply, but wasn't uncomfortable small talk either. "What was it like on the Watchtower?"

I spent the first three months wishing everyone else was dead, and the next four months wishing that I was dead.

"It was… unique. They were very welcoming hosts."

"Did you see Superman?" Cyborg asked excitedly.

He took two shifts back when I was still on suicide watch. I think he tried to say some encouraging words to me. I didn't feel worthy of communicating with him.

"Yes," Raven answered quietly. "But we didn't really talk."

"Are you excited to be back, friend?" Starfire asked, filled with hope and optimism.

More than you could possibly know.

Raven hesitated. "More than you could possibly know," she admitted with a smile, which earned a giggle from the Tamaranean, who quickly hugged her again. "But enough about me," Raven continued, desperate not to be the centre of attention, "What's been going on with you?"

Sensing that Raven would have appreciated a change of subject, the others did their best to regale her with their tales; Cyborg, despite having spent a four-hour car journey with her, still had more to say about the various upgrades to the T-Car. Robin had returned to Gotham for five days to work a case with Batman, and had successfully helped to shut down an international drug-smuggling ring. Starfire's news was a bit more down to earth, but she had been learning to cook exclusively following earthly recipes, to the delight and relief of her teammates, although that didn't stop her trying to add just a teaspoon and a half (and another half, and another, and eventually a whole jar) of mustard to things that her alien palette found slightly bland.

They were so wrapped up in this discussion – and Raven sat, trying not to cry as she felt their happiness, their unspoken forgiveness, and their acceptance of her – that it slipped their minds that they were awaiting a fifth, until the elevator dinged again.

"We are never using that stupid bakery again; they totally messed up our order!" Beast Boy grumbled disgruntledly as he stepped out. "So we don't have a Raven cake, but I searched around and we've got a Crow cake instead. You think she'll mind?" he glanced up at his three surprised friends. Three, because as soon as Raven had heard his voice, she had teleported away without a word. She was exactly as ready to see him as she had expected to be. Which was to say, not at all.

"… What?" Beast Boy asked in confusion, as they all stared at him.

.

Hyperventilating into her hands, Raven struggled to regain control of her breath, her composure, and her ability to just stop crying for five minutes as she sat on the floor of the corridor, her back up against the wall. Opposite her former bedroom. Was it still hers? Had they changed anything? Did she even want to go back inside? It used to make her feel safe, but with so many memories… there was a reason why her instincts had chosen the corridor instead.

She pulled out the note that had Dinah's number on it, and already felt tempted to use it. But what would that say about her? That she couldn't even go five hours without already needing support? She wasn't ready. She wasn't ready. Would she ever be ready to face him again? "This is the wrong tea." "Could you keep your mouth shut for five seconds?" "Bill and Grayson certainly did." "fulfil your destiny of dying alone in some God-forsaken alleyway, you worthless ANIMAL!"

How could she have ever thought that she could be forgiven? That she deserved to be forgiven? That she could ever be welcomed back as if nothing had happened?

Raven sobbed so heavily, and so unstoppably, that she barely heard the footsteps approach. She didn't have to teleport away; they were far too heavy to be him. Cyborg took a seat next to her and waited patiently while she got it out of her system. For now.

When tears were no longer obstructing her vision, Cyborg held his communicator up and shook it softly, looking at Raven as if to ask "Would you mind?" Raven understood, and shakily nodded.

Cyborg flicked the communicator open. "Found her. She's fine, just needed some space." He closed it again, easing their worries while continuing not to overload Raven with attention. He did sidle closer though, so that she could rest her head against his shoulder if she wanted to… although the height discrepancy meant that it was closer to his arm.

"I… I get it, you know?" Cyborg tried to console her. "I mean… I don't get it, obviously, I don't know what it must feel like to… but, I get that I don't get it, if that makes sense." Cyborg chuckled to himself. "Geez, listen to me. Beast Boy must be rubbing off on me." Raven smiled through the tears, but they were no closer to stopping.

"Look, if you're upset because you don't think he'll forgive you-"

Even through the hysterical sobbing, Raven loudly scoffed, and shot Cyborg a look of disbelief from beneath the thick veil of tears.

"… Oh," Cyborg continued. "So… you're upset because he will-"

"Of course he will," Raven's sobbing slowed just enough for her to be able to talk. "It's just what he does. He's just… so fucking nice," she stammered angrily. Cyborg looked her way and raised an eyebrow. He had never seen her swear before, and she was starting out with a big one.

Ignoring Cyborg's attention, she continued. "I-I tortured him. I abused him, I screamed at him, I physically hurt him, I put him through hell, I made him want to leave…" the brief moment of respite in which she had successfully held back the tears was over, and she wept through the rest, "And he's going to come straight up to me, give me a hug, and tell me that he's happy to see me again." She turned to Cyborg. "And he's going to mean it!"

Her despair seemed to be diminishing, if only because she was slowly getting angry. Partly at herself – she would never stop being angry at herself – but mostly at him. For being too naïve, too nice, too stupid to realise that he should have hated her. And she was taking advantage of that. Taking advantage of him. Again.

"I'm the worst person in the world," she shakily stuttered, "And he's going to forgive me." She was shaking her head. So was Cyborg, but for a different reason. "He's going to forgive me." Tired of waiting for her to rest her head against his arm, he wrapped it around her shoulder and pulled her in closer.

"I know, right?" Cyborg joked sarcastically. "The selfish bastard."

It didn't slow the tears, but a sharp exhale that could have been a laugh escaped through Raven's lips.

"Really though, Raven… the worst person in the world?" He chuckled to himself. "The worst person in the world would not be crying hysterically over the pain they caused someone nine months ago."

Raven knew that he had a point, which was why she disagreed so fervently. "The pain?" she repeated, although her tears were finally beginning to stop. "I-I threw him into Cinderblock." She stared at her hands as she could see the blood on them. "I made fun of him for-"

Even after all this time, she still couldn't bring herself to say it. The r-word. Bill and Grayson certainly did. Every time she recalled what she had said to him – to intentionally inflict pain and distress upon someone who had done her no harm – then a pit opened up in her stomach that she felt she would never recover from. Should never recover from. The only reason it didn't make her cry is that it made her feel more empty than sad. She had- she knew the word. It was what Trigon had done to her mother. The soulless evil necessary to willingly inflict that amount of trauma onto another human being. And what Trigon had done to Arella, Bill and Grayson had done to Garfield. And she had laughed.

And he wanted to forgive her. What a joke.

"Rae…" Cyborg began, "Don't you think he should get to decide whether he forgives you or not?"

Again, he had a point. And again, she hated it. "But if I'm trying to be a better friend, then… what kind of friend could I possibly be if I let him?"

Cyborg didn't know how to answer that. So he just rested his head on his little sister's shoulder, and said what they both knew was true, but that she didn't want to hear.

"You need to talk to him."

Raven sniffed, paused, and then nodded. "… I don't know how. I can't even be in the same room as him…"

Cyborg sat up. "What about the gym?"

Raven paused again, this time in confusion. "What about the gym?"

"I mean, it's big. It's bright. You can sit there facing a wall, and he can come in and stay behind you. That way, you don't have to see him, don't even have to hear him. You can just… talk. Say what you need to say."

Raven sniffed again. She didn't want to, but she wanted to. Needed to. She couldn't avoid him forever; if that was her plan, why even come back? She took a deep breath, and nodded. Cyborg rubbed her on the shoulder again.

"You want me to go get him now?" he asked.

'No!' thought Raven.

"… Yes," said Raven.

.

The gym. One of the few rooms of the Tower in which Raven didn't have explicitly abusive memories involving Beast Boy. There were benches along the side of the room, intended for teammates to sit and breathe while viewing sparring, or exercises. Cyborg had helped her move one of them closer to the centre of the room, and as she sat on it, idly kicking her legs up and down beneath her, she tried to recall some of the non-abusive memories. Mostly team workouts, in which she generally stuck to a low pace on the treadmills, meditated, and occasionally lifted weights with her powers. She had tried once to lift them physically, and did not enjoy it at all. She could lift significantly less than Beast Boy, who in turn could lift less than Cyborg, whose raw strength was then dwarfed by Starfire. She didn't know where Robin fit in on their rankings.

The door opened behind her, and she turned instinctively, before panicking and looking back suddenly. She had caught a glimpse of Cyborg, and the black and purple jumpsuit behind him. A flash of green. She was grateful that she had turned away before she could see his face.

"So… we're here," Cyborg announced. Raven stared at the floor, trying to keep her anxiety in check. "So if you just… sit here," Raven heard Beast Boy taking a seat near the back of the gym, "And… Raven's got some things she wants to talk to you about. Okay?" Raven heard nothing, but presumably Beast Boy had nodded. "And are you okay?" Cyborg asked, a little louder. Raven nodded without turning around.

"Alright then. I'll be outside. Not by the door, but… near," he finished, and then stepped outside of the room.

Raven was alone in a room with Beast Boy.

…

Raven was alone in a room with Beast Boy.

"A-are you there?" she asked softly. There was a second of silence, before three small thumps were heard as Beast Boy gently stamped his foot on the floor. He could've just spoken, but he clearly didn't want to upset her. The fact that he was still taking extra precaution not to upset her made her feel the tiniest bit happy, and the hugest bit guilty. She felt more upset than if he had just sworn at her and stormed out.

"I… I don't know how much you know. From the Watchtower. About… what I did." She paused. "So, I'd like to start with that." She waited for just long enough that he thought he had to respond, and tapped his foot on the floor again. She tried not to smile. It was so silly, but for a moment it made her feel like a child, communicating in a secret code. The guilt ate her smile up quickly.

"So, I… Dinah and J'onn did some… they found out some things that- sorry, Black Canary and Martian Manhunter," despite having spent months wondering how she would talk to him – if she ever had the chance again – then now that the moment had arrived, the words would not come easily. "They found out some things about me. About demons. About… my brain." She knew that this was the best place for her to start, because she knew that she had to rush. She couldn't leave things unsaid now. She couldn't leave him with hope that she hadn't been the one who had...

"There were a lot of things I didn't understand," she sniffed, "about… cortexes and amygdala," she had no idea if amygdala was singular or plural, and it didn't seem important right now. She doubted he knew either. "And- and it turns out, my demon physiology was… not helping." She briefly considered looking towards him, but fought the urge. To look at him would have allowed him to see how pathetic and pitiful she looked, and that would only encourage him to provide her with the forgiveness she didn't deserve.

"I was selfish," she confessed, "And… I had no empathy. No compassion. Solely focussed on my own pleasure. My own… power," she almost whispered. "And… abusing you made me feel powerful." She sniffed as the tears began to fall again. "It made me… feel powerful, to know that you still loved me. Even… even after I-" she abandoned that sentence. She hoped that he hadn't needed to say anything more at that point. She hoped that she had successfully conveyed what a horrible monster she had been. And still was. And always would be.

"But-" she charged ahead, wiping the tears, knowing that this was the most important thing to say, "-the most important thing, the… if you take one thing from what I am saying, then please let it be this," she forewarned. The urge to look at him was growing stronger again.

"I… I could have stopped it," she admitted, as if confessing to murder. "I… there was no reason I couldn't have. If I had just… taken a second, and thought about what I was doing to you… how I was making you feel." The tears began again, but it was alright. She had said the most important thing she had to say.

"There was no reason at all for me to behave the way I did. So… it was me, Beast Boy. It was always me. I-I have no excuse- there is no excuse. For what I did. And… I'm sorry," she lost the ability to continue as she began weeping in her seat, hating herself more with every word, and then hating herself for knowing that she looked so pitiful that he was bound to try to comfort her. He let her sob for seven more seconds, unsure if he should say something, move closer, or tap his foot again.

"… Raven?" he asked tentatively. Her crying slowed immediately, if only because she needed to hear what he had to say. He deserved that. Beast Boy hesitated, but continued. It was a good sign that she was still in the room, at least.

"Do you mind if I… come closer?" he questioned cautiously. It hurt her that he still sounded so considerate. It would've hurt if he'd yelled at her or stormed out too. Everything about him hurt.

Raven sniffed through the tears. "I-I don't think you ever have to ask me if I mind something, not… not after-" she lowered her head into her hands and sobbed. So wrapped up in her well-deserved misery that she barely heard his approaching footsteps. But she felt the bench shake a little when he sat down. Next to her. She was next to Beast Boy. She could've reached out and touched him, if she had wanted to. And she wanted to. But she didn't want to want to.

"… Rae," he murmured, and she froze. He still called her Rae. And it still made her heart flutter, no matter how much she didn't want it to. But then he stopped. Seconds passed with nothing more said; perhaps he thought there was nothing more to be said. She wanted to look at him, to try to tell what he was thinking; perhaps then, she could have helped, not nearly enough to make up for the things that she had done, but helped nonetheless.

"I-" Beast Boy cut himself off with a nervous chuckle. "I really should've figured out what I was going to say before I got here." She tried not to reach out empathically – the last thing he deserved was more mental probing and prodding and invading his privacy – but she could sense his nervousness and his sincere amusement at his own perceived foolishness, and it almost overwhelmed her for a moment. It was just so… him.

"Raven?" he asked. It seemed he had finally worked out what he was going to say. "I want you to do something for me, if that's ok."

Raven nodded through the tears. "A-anything."

"I want you… to read me," he confessed quietly. Raven's head shot up, almost turning to face him before her brain caught up with her body and she remembered that looking directly at him would not be good for her mental wellbeing, or her self-control. And the last thing she wanted was to lash out with her powers. Not again.

"I want you to reach out, and… see how I feel," Beast Boy asked sincerely. "Be-because, if I'm telling the truth, I don't even really know how I'm feeling, so it would nice if you could tell me," he explained with a chuckle. She couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Neither could he.

"I…" Raven finally stammered a response without looking. "I don't want to intrude."

"You wouldn't be," Beast Boy reassured. He didn't quite dare to place his hand on her own yet, but his right hand and her left were so close together. He edged his pinky finger towards hers until they touched. To his relief, she didn't pull away. "I want you to do this, Rae." He paused for a moment. "But- but you don't have to, if you don't want to."

Raven didn't want to. Because she knew him. She knew what she would feel. She would feel warmth, and forgiveness, and maybe even some lingering fondness, and all manner of things she didn't want to feel because they would give her hope that things could return to normal, and she could stop feeling like this. Stop feeling how she deserved to feel. Allowing the guilt to consume her was the only way she could make it up to him; if she couldn't even do that, then she was even more selfish than she thought.

… But…

One thought emerged in Raven's mind; one also borne of doubts and insecurities, but in that moment, it felt encouraging. What if… what if he wasn't asking her to read his emotions to show her that he cared, but to show her that he didn't? It seemed unlikely, but possible; she had given him more than enough reason not to. What if he was just letting her down gently? He didn't want to tell her in words that she had burned that bridge, that he would tolerate her presence, but that they would never have the same kind of friendship – or more – that she had once imagined. Would it hurt? Yes, but she would finally be able to close this chapter of her life and move on.

Maybe he didn't even want her to stay in the tower. She could handle that; she would welcome that. She would miss her friends terribly, but she would finally have closure. The one thing that she felt could put an end to the insurmountable grief that she felt at her own actions. She had to close the book on this chapter of her life. She had to accept that she would never be able to make amends for what she had done, and the best thing she could possibly do was go far, far away and never return. She knew that it didn't sound like him, but… it was possible, surely. And she clung to that possibility with all of her heart.

There had only even been two ways that this pain was going to stop. Forgiving herself, which she knew was never going to happen – and should never happen – or cutting herself off completely, leaving behind her old life – no matter how much she would miss it – and making a new start. She hoped that Beast Boy's feelings would make that decision easier.

"… I'll do it," Raven quietly accepted. Beast Boy had snuck his ring finger over her hand too.

She closed her eyes, because she knew she would have to face him. She could have done it without the contact, but there was always a chance she would miss something, and she didn't want to; not this, not now. She turned in his direction, too scared to open her eyes, and moved her right hand. Her left was still slightly touching his own, and while she thought herself selfish, she wanted to just… keep feeling him, for just a moment longer. She placed her right hand onto his chest.

…

And screamed.

…

Almost instantly, they were surrounded by a hurricane of dark energy, ripping machines and equipment from the ground and the walls as Raven remained in the epicentre, still screaming. Her eyes were finally open, but it was clear that she couldn't see Beast Boy. She couldn't see anything. A power was coursing through her body that she neither recognized nor welcomed. Beast Boy himself began to panic, calling her name, and then wrapping his arms around her in an attempt to calm her down. She didn't hear him, but she did feel him. She felt him too much, if anything.

She felt everything.

She was afraid that he still liked her. That he had allowed the years of good memories to blot out the poison that she had inflicted on his life. That he had convinced himself that she deserved to be forgiven, which she didn't and never would. That he still liked her. That his blind, sunny optimism had somehow overshadowed the pain that she had caused. That he hadn't changed, hadn't matured, hadn't realised that some people just weren't worth the effort, and she was one of them. That he still liked her.

She didn't need to worry. He didn't still like her.

…

He adored her.

"No," she thought, "No no no no no no no no NO no no no-" she panicked. "I can't let him… he can't still… there must be some kind of mistake, he can't, he can't, he can't-" the belief that he loved her, and that love was unbreakable and love was forever, had driven the darkest parts of Raven to do terrible things. Things that could not be forgiven. It just couldn't be true. It would be a spit in the face of justice, of the improvements she was trying to make, of the guilt that she deserved to feel, to the concept of consequences-

"Who knew we had a doctor in the house? Thanks." From the very beginning, his gratitude had been- "Maybe you should call me Beast MAN from now on?" she smiled, then cursed herself for smiling. The good memories… she didn't deserve the good- "For luck." The penny. She wondered if it was still in her room? "You may not like your birthday, but we're all glad you were born." When the chips were down, when it had mattered, how had he always known the right thing to-

"You think you're alone Raven, but you're not."

She was still screaming, could still barely control what was going on as she felt his memories, his concern, the forgiveness that she had been so afraid of, and even caught a glimpse of reality. He was holding her again. He had wrapped his arms around her and was first asking if she was okay, and then telling her that she was. He didn't even care that a tornado of dark energy was tearing the room apart. She was more important to him than that. And in that brief glimpse of reality, she allowed herself to be selfish one last time.

She grabbed him back, held onto him tight, and sobbed into his shoulder as chaos swept through Nevermore.

.

Ever since Dinah and J'onn had… nudged her brain into returning towards its natural state, Timid had been the only one present in Nevermore. Timid was okay with that, and Raven was too. Because they both knew that it was fitting that way. It was right that way, after what she had done. Why should she ever feel anything ever again except shame for what she had done? How could she ever feel anything else again? And so Timid sat, alone, in the graveyard where she spent all of her time. It seemed fitting; if not for the people she had hurt, then the relationships she had most definitely killed.

The ground began to rumble. Timid leapt to her feet and took a few cautious steps backwards. She had been alone in Nevermore ever since the incident. A change to that status could mean a return to… something that she didn't want to return to. She tiptoed with trepidation through the graves, wondering who – or what – was stirring. Determined not to let it-

A pale grey hand burst out of the ground, and before Timid could get there in time to stop it, the entire body followed. Panting heavily, her bright pink cloak covered in dust and dirt. Timid's identical twin stood, struggling for breath as she looked at Timid, and then skyward, because it was the closest thing to the direction that he was in.

"He…" Happy puffed and panted, "He still likes us?" She wiped a tear from eye. "After everything?"

"You- you can't be here!" Timid squealed. "Nobody can be here! It's not safe for-"

A yellow-cloaked Raven, clutching a heavy tome, burst out of a grave and scrambled to her feet. "I don't believe it. His capacity for forgiveness; it defies logical explanation! This… this requires further study," she announced, in both remorse and excitement, grabbing her glasses out of the dirt.

"No!" Timid squealed. "No no no, you can't-"

More and more Ravens emerged from the ground. One of them was wearing green. "If… if he wants us to look at him, then we're going to need to be brave, right? If that's what he wants, then… we deserve to try."

"It's not too late," cried a violet-cloaked Raven. "His feelings, they're still… I can't believe it," she sobbed.

There was a humongous rumble, as one emotion practically exploded out of the earth, scattering dirt and debris everywhere. The others covered their eyes at the sight of the sleeping behemoth rising from the grave. Red cloak. Red eyes. Timid looked especially horrified; she of all of the emotions could not be afforded a second chance.

Rage stood still, breathing in and out slowly, taking in the view of her sisters. And then, she spoke.

"… I can… protect him. If he… would let me," she slowly announced, tears forming in her own eyes.

"NO!" shouted Timid, her volume finally dwarfing the rest of them. "I'M NOT LETTING YOU HURT HIM ANY MORE!" She was floating into the air; as the only active one of Raven's emoticlones for a very long time, her power was more than enough to keep them subdued, if she could just focus. Focus on the hurt, on the regret, on the things that she had done that she could never take back. "I'M NOT LETTING US HURT HIM ANY MORE!"

Timid opened her eyes. She was elsewhere. She panicked; she couldn't afford to be elsewhere. She had to be back there, in Nevermore, keeping the others locked down. Keeping herself locked down. She couldn't afford to be wherever she was right now. Even if it felt warm, and safe, and- oh no.

Timid had exerted so much control in an attempt to subdue the others, that she had accidentally taken control of Raven herself. Which meant…

"Ssshhh, it's okay!" Beast Boy whispered as he kept his arms wrapped as firmly around her as he could manage. "It's okay, it's okay," he held her tightly, surrounding her with all of the love that she didn't deserve. She couldn't escape it, no matter how much she wanted. Or wanted to pretend that she wanted.

"Stop," Timid pleaded quietly. "Don't do this. Please. Don't forgive me."

Beast Boy knelt his head a little closer. "I can't help it. I'm sorry."

Timid sobbed and clutched him harder. "I can't… I can't let you forgive me."

"You don't need me to forgive you," Beast Boy whispered in her ear. "You have to forgive yourself."

Timid's eyes widened. The one thing worse than his forgiveness would be hers. How selfish, irresponsible, self-centred, reckless, narcissistic, egotistic and careless would she have to be to-

"Raven," Beast Boy's voice cut across Timid's doubts, and he steadied himself for a moment, and then began to recite. "You are more than your mistakes." Timid froze. How had he known… had Dinah told him? "You are more, so much more than your heritage. More than your actions, more than- you're more than a Titan, Raven." She wanted to pull away. She wanted to tell him that he didn't know what he was talking about. But she couldn't.

"You are Raven, Raven," he squeezed her with all of the fondness he could muster. "And you deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved."

Loved

Love

Timid faltered for a moment, and that was all it took for her to break. For the last six months of Raven's life, she had spent every waking moment obsessing over what she had done. How she could never make amends. How she would never be happy again; how she never deserved to be happy again. But he had broken her down. Just as he always had. Just as she had always counted on him to do.

And for one, small, magical moment, Timid let herself relax in his arms. She let herself fully experience his compassion, his love, and his forgiveness. And against all of her better judgement, every instinct telling her that this was wrong, and wrong in such a way that it would remain wrong forever, unfixable, irredeemable, out of her control…

She allowed herself to feel happy for just one moment. And she dared to smile.

The next second, Timid was gone, returned to Nevermore, where she was surrounded by a circle of sympathetic Emoticlones, torn between comforting her, and reassuring her that she had done a tremendous job taking care of Raven by herself for six months. Raven, the girl who was back in the gymnasium now.

Perhaps it was hypocritical, but Raven had never believed in magic.

She believed in her own abilities, sure, but she knew exactly where they came from and how they worked; even if she sometimes wished that they didn't work in the way that they did. She believed that Beast Boy could transform because of an experimental cure to Sakutia. She believed that Starfire could fly and throw starbolts because that was just something that Tamaraneans could do. She believed in superpowers and the supernatural, but magic? Things that defied all explanation and operated on a scale separate to logic and reason? Raven had never believed in that.

And yet, despite herself – in more ways than one – with every second that she had spent in Beast Boy's arms, sobbing, protesting, begging him not to help, then it was as if her body was healing. Her psyche was healing. It wasn't instant; she didn't immediately return to the hero she had once deluded herself into believing that she was capable of being, but… she was beginning to believe once again. That she could be forgiven, some day.

And what word was there to describe such a thing, how Beast Boy's touch had dragged her – against her wishes – back from the pits of a despair that she was convinced she deserved to wallow in for an eternity, if not magic?

.

"Raven?" Beast Boy repeated nervously. Maybe asking her to read his feelings had been a bad idea, he considered, as three weightlifting benches, a stack of shredded mats, and approximately twenty-seven cumulative tons across several weight discs continued to fly through the air. An idea crossed his mind, to test something, and while he wanted to keep both of his arms wrapped around her as tightly as he could, he let one arm go in order to lean it towards the storm. The entire mass shifted away from him, and he smiled. Despite how it appeared, she was still in control enough to prevent him from coming to harm. She had always had more control over herself than she had believed.

His smile faltered momentarily as he remembered that this hadn't always been a good thing.

"Raven… Rae," he tried to reassure her. "I'm- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. I shouldn't have pushed this on you… the first day you were back." It felt oddly calm, in the eye of the storm. "I guess, I just wanted… wanted you to know."

He sighed, defeated but still hopeful. "I-I just wanted you to know, that… I know that we don't know what the future holds. I don't know what you want. I don't know if I really even know what I want. But- but whatever happens, if you want to stay, or go, or… never see me again, then I just- I just wanted you to know…"

"I'm really happy that I got to see you again, Rae," his eyes filled with tears. He meant it. She knew that he meant it. She heard him over the chaos, and it was the last straw as her concentration finally shattered. The hurricane of overwhelming emotion slowed for a moment, and then ceased entirely. Dozens of items – hundreds of remnants of items – suspended momentarily in mid-air. Beast Boy glanced around them, and then at the terrified girl in his arms. He didn't look afraid, but in awe. Still in awe. Even now.

He giggled just before a humongous crash shook the entire room – the entire floor of the Tower, probably – as Raven's uncontrollable outburst came to an end. Several seconds later, Cyborg cautiously opened the door – he had been waiting just outside after all – surveyed the carnage, and silently stepped back again. He could always explain this to Robin later. Hell, he could always make Beast Boy explain it instead.

Whether it was due to exhaustion, or finally accepting that there was nothing she could do that would keep him from forgiving her – well, nothing that she could and would do – then Raven was finally letting herself relax. She kept her eyes closed, arms wrapped around him just as his were wrapped around her. It was another thirty seconds before she spoke; a single, quiet question.

"… How did you know my new mantra?" she asked, not accusingly, just curious.

"Your new what?" Beast Boy replied, sincerely confused.

"My new mantra. Dinah helped me make it. More than my heritage, more than my mistakes. That stuff about happiness, and…" she couldn't bring herself to say love.

"Oh," Beast Boy responded slowly, and bashfully. "I… didn't know that, honestly. I was kind of just making it up as I went along."

She looked at him in disbelief. That couldn't have been true. That the random assortment of words that had ended up coming out his mouth in a blind panic, had just so happened to flawlessly resemble the words that she and Dinah had discussed and decided on to calm her down in the event of a strong emotional reaction. The odds of that were so infinitesimally small that it would be akin to magic, and Raven did not believe in magic, no matter how warm and comforting his hugs were. And yet, she couldn't detect an iota of deception or insincerity as she took in his happy but slightly confused face.

It was only then that she realised that… she was looking at him.

He still had that little fang sticking out of his mouth in the way that she had always thought was cute. He still had that messy hair; but messy in such a very specific way that it was either completely natural, or he spent hours preparing it, and… he had never seemed like the kind of person who spent hours fussing over his appearance. Not that he had needed to. His eyes were still warm, and kind, and relentlessly optimistic. More than anything else, he was… unbroken. He didn't look as though he had spent the last nine months afraid of her, obsessing over what she had done. Not like she had.

He looked the same way he did on the day that she realised she loved him.

He looked the same way he did on the day that she discovered that he loved her too.

"Thank you," she whispered softly to him. "You always knew how to do this. I don't know how you always knew how to do this, but…"

"Do what?" he whispered back to her.

She squeezed him tighter. "… Make me feel like I deserve to be happy."

He squeezed her back too. "It's easy to convince people of things when they're true."

She giggled and sobbed and smiled and cried in his arms. He let her.

"Can I ask you something?" Raven asked meekly.

"Anything," Beast Boy replied instantly.

"… How long can I stay like this?"

Beast Boy chuckled, and kissed her on the top of the head. If his touch had somehow healed her, then that had somehow completed the process.

"For as long as you like."

And she could tell that he meant it. If she wanted to stay there for an hour, he would too. If she wanted to spend the night there, he would too. If she wanted to spend the next year in his arms… well, logically she knew that they would have to part at some point, but metaphorically speaking, he would be with her every step of the way, if that was what she wanted. And right then and there, she wanted it so badly. So she allowed herself to stay. She allowed herself to feel his heartbeat, his breathing, and the essence of his soul as she remained as close to him as she could.

Still gently rubbing the back of her head, Beast Boy idly glanced around the ruined gymnasium, and chuckled to himself. "Heh." It didn't distract Raven enough to move from her spot in his arms, but her head angled up towards his for a moment curiously. He looked back at her, smiling, and for the first time in months, the thought of him doing so didn't make her want to turn away in shame.

"Do you remember the first time it was just the two of us in here?"

Raven honestly couldn't at that moment; she had spent so much time focussed on the events nine months prior that her entire life with the Titans beforehand had merged into one blurry mess. If she did recall that time, it was only as the brief period of time when she felt happy, before she had ruined everything. She didn't need to answer for Beast Boy to continue.

"It was… two months in, I think. We hadn't talked to each other much. I still thought you were creepy and you thought I was an idiot." He laughed again. "I was wrong and you were right."

Raven opened her mouth to protest; even in retrospect, him saying that she was right about something felt wrong; it felt like much more than she deserved. He hugged her a little tighter and she paused long enough for him to carry on regardless.

"We had just done our first group gym session, and… I hated it," he continued with the same nostalgic smile. "Like, I knew that Starfire and Cyborg were stronger than me, but I had no idea how much." He glanced at the corner of the room where they used to lift weights, and occasionally still did. "Starfire lifted a hundred times more than I could. With one arm. And I don't think she was even trying," he admitted, still a hint of shame in his voice. Raven was engrossed, but also had no idea what he was talking about.

"So I came in here by myself, and I chose some weights that were way too much for me at the time… and I didn't even fasten them on right. And no-one was spotting me, I just wanted to do it by myself." Beast Boy felt a sudden rush of embarrassment and glanced down at Raven, who had been staring at him, completely enraptured by his story. As he returned her gaze, she shut her eyes and buried herself back in his shoulder, but he had seen in that moment that she was genuinely curious. Or at the very least, it was distracting her. A little shame was a small price to pay for that.

"So I lift these weights that are clearly way too much for me, and I barely get them over my head for a second when one of the discs slips off, and I stumble, and it falls right on my foot. And I screamed and I dropped the weight and I remember thinking that it really, really, really hurt. I thought that my foot was broken and I was going to have to call for help, and everyone would know how weak I was, and everyone would think I was stupid – because I was stupid – and… it's all hitting me. That I'm on a team with these four amazing people, and I'm just a stupid kid. And I start crying."

As Beast Boy talked about how his tears had begun, Raven's had finally seemed to stop. "And I'm, like… crying crying," Azar, she had missed his clumsy way of speaking. "Not like the refined way, with dignity, like you do," Raven felt an unusual surge of embarrassment as Beast Boy even found a way to praise the way she was having a breakdown, "But like, big ugly sobbing, with my whole body." Raven couldn't possibly understand why Beast Boy was still grinning as if this was a happy memory for him.

"And then you arrived," Beast Boy's smile widened as hints of the memory finally began to reawaken in Raven's mind.

"You must have been walking by, and you heard me crying, and you ran in looking so concerned…" he sounded so sincerely grateful. Raven's self-loathing started to peak again, but she contained it. "And I was scared that you were going to laugh, or call me an idiot, and call everyone else in… but you just ran straight over and started healing me." There was even a tear in Beast Boy's eye, and Raven didn't think he was a good enough actor to fake that kind of thing. "I'd seen you heal people before, but only little things like bruises. It was amazing, and… you were so focussed." Beast Boy was now smiling dreamily, which Raven knew because she had gradually worked up the nerve to look up at him without panicking and immediately turning away.

"And I was still crying, and neither of us had said anything, and you… looked at me like you understood, and took some tissues out of your pocket, and just wiped my tears away," Beast Boy paused telling the story to wipe a current tear away. "And there were lots," he chuckled. "And when you were done, I… didn't know what to do, so I hugged you. And I remember thinking that I'd made a mistake, because you tensed up for a second, and I remembered how reserved you were… but then you hugged me back."

Beast Boy's hug on Raven intensified again as he leant down and rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. "You hugged me, and I started crying again, and you just held on until I was done. You never said a word. Neither of us did."

Raven could now vaguely recall the story; she hadn't considered it that important in retrospect, although she remembered that it took her by surprise at the time. She had found Beast Boy crying in the gym, injured, and healed the injury as best she could, returned an awkward hug, and then left when he seemed to feel better. Her recollection of the story was that she had done a pretty terrible job of comforting him – not even a 'there, there,' – but it had seemed to matter a great deal to him.

"When I was done, you stood up, and you nodded, like you were asking if I was okay. And I nodded back. And you just turned around and left, but you stopped in the doorway, and you looked back, and you said "I won't tell anyone." And I don't think you ever did."

It wasn't an instant-fix – Raven wasn't sure that anything could fix how she felt – but the raging torrent of insecurities inside of her – sated by his forgiveness, but still very much there – had seemed to subside. Beast Boy paused for a moment, then decided that now was as good a time as any to answer her question.

"You wanted to know how I could forgive you." He spoke quietly, sounding more serious, but no less happy. "And it was because I knew it wasn't you, Rae. Not really."

Raven sniffled as she protested, having finally reached the point where she was happy to see him being happy to see her, but unwilling to let him deny reality.

"It was me, Gar," she reiterated. "It was… it was all me. I did those things."

"I know, Rae," he confirmed with a cuddle. "I-I don't want you to think that I'm in denial. I… I do know that it was you. But, it wasn't you-you. You know? You weren't yourself."

"It was all me," she repeated, sobbing softly. "All of it."

Beast Boy kissed the top of her head again. "Hey. Remember the Beast?"

"Of course I do," she sniffed, unsure where he was going with this. It didn't exactly make her feel better about her own darkness that his darkness had been single-mindedly obsessed with protecting her. Even his worst parts were his best. The same could never be said for her. "How could I forget?"

Beast Boy paused, and then laughed softly again. "I mean… yeah, I guess overall there were some bright spots in there." His face darkened for a moment. "But I still nearly attacked you. Over some stupid argument I started over nothing."

It was Raven's turn to hold him tighter. "But you didn't. And that wasn't-" she froze as she realised his point. He smiled, tempted to rub it in, but not quite sure that he wanted to remind Raven that he could also be irritating just yet. It was a little selfish, but with his own self-esteem issues, he would be lying if he had claimed that he wasn't enjoying the way she was looking at him on some level; as if he had never made a mistake on his life, when he would have described his life as one long series of mistakes.

"It wasn't me, right Rae?" he finished. "But it was. Those chemicals unleashed something inside of me, but… it was still me. But it wasn't me, you know? Just like how you were you, but… you weren't you-you?"

Raven tried not to smile, and failed. "… You-you?"

Beast Boy didn't try not to smile in the slightest, and giggled to himself. "Hey Rae, what do you call a yo-yo made of sheep?"

Raven sighed. "Beast Boy, we're-"

"A ewe-ewe."

He collapsed into giggles the second he said it, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes. She had missed rolling her eyes. She had missed the feeling of slight irritation, overwhelmed by an abundance of warmth and fondness. She had missed-

"I've missed how terrible your jokes are."

Even without looking up, she could tell that he was feigning a look of surprise.

"Whaaat? I thought that one was pretty good. Was thinking about adapting it into a film." She tensed up in his arms, pre-emptively groaning in her head. "Ewe-ewe. Rated U."

She buried her head further into him, blushing not out of fondness, but embarrassment. "Please stop," she muttered as she tried to keep from giggling.

"Ok, ok…" he conceded in that playfully stupid voice she had fallen in love with. "That's a U-turn on the ewe-ewe."

"Oh my God-" she laughed and groaned and sighed and still felt a little like sobbing, but he had done it. She had convinced herself that things would never – could never – go back to normal between them, and he had shown her otherwise over the course of one conversation and a stupid joke.

"… I love you," she murmured into his shoulder. She never would have dared to tell him that even five minutes ago; not because it was untrue, but because she didn't want to burden him with her feelings any more than she already had. But now, it felt right.

Beast Boy leaned down and placed a slow, chaste kiss on her forehead. "I love you too."

Raven sighed. The trauma was still there, but she had never felt so content, so relieved or so happy in all her life. And nothing on earth could take that away from her.

"… And I love you-you too," he giggled.

"Please stop," she whispered. Well, almost nothing.

.

The walk back to the Common Room was slow, but neither of them minded. They had each awkwardly greeted Cyborg outside, and Raven had wondered exactly how to explain where they now stood – not that she herself was particularly sure – but Beast Boy had gone first, with the vague but reassuring. "I think… I think things are good now, Cy." That had been enough for his best friend, who accepted the answer with no more questions, and also wisely chose not to comment on how they continued to hold hands as they walked the entire way back.

When they re-entered the Common Room, Robin and Starfire leapt from their respective positions – him on the couch, watching the news, her standing over the kitchen counter, staring sadly but with a hint of temptation at that delicious-looking Crow cake Beast Boy had managed to find – and greeted them both again warmly. They were clearly excited, but careful not to overload her. Starfire asked her if she was feeling better, and then squeaked in excitement when she noticed that the happy couple were holding hands, answering her question immediately. Robin tried to welcome them back, but was a tiny bit distracted by Cyborg behind them.

"Hey, so… how are you two doing?" Robin asked tentatively.

Raven looked at Beast Boy expectantly, and still a little bit nervously, as if it was up to him what her answer was. He felt flattered, but a little bit uncomfortable with that responsibility, and released her hand… so that he could wrap an arm around her shoulder and kiss her softly on the side of the head again.

"I think we're good," he answered honestly. Robin smiled, and his attention was then demanded by Cyborg, who was waving frantically to him, and then stuck up five fingers in Robin's direction, before making an 'o' with his thumb and index finger, and indicating it towards Robin no less than four times. Ah. That was fifty thousand dollars of damage done to the gymnasium then. Robin smiled anyway. It seemed a small price to pay to have their friend back.

"Um, Robin?" asked Raven, finding her voice.

"Yes?" Robin answered eagerly, happy to do whatever it took to help her settle back into the tower. Although he was pretty sure that Beast Boy had already handled the lion's share of that task.

Raven recoiled back as if in slight shame, before nervously posing the most important question of the day. "Um… when I came in with Cyborg, then… you mentioned that… there was ice cream?"

There was a moment of silence, before Cyborg and Starfire both cheered enthusiastically and charged towards the fridge to retrieve as many tubs of the delicious frozen treat as possible. And in no time at all, all five of them were sat back on the couch, eating, reminiscing, and catching up as if there were no walls between them. And it truly felt like there weren't.

There was no prize for guessing who Raven was sitting the closest to.

One third of his way through a tub of vegan-friendly chocolate ice cream, Beast Boy gasped and clutched his forehead. "Ah! Brain freeze," he grumbled.

"Oh, let me…" Raven instinctively lifted her hand to his forehead and soothed the aching immediately. He smiled at her in gratitude… and just a tiny bit of guilt. And before she could ask about it – if she would ever have worked up the courage to do so – he admitted,

"… Is it bad that I ate it quickly on purpose because I knew that you would do that and I missed how it felt when you healed me?"

Raven honestly did not know the answer to that question. But she knew that she was blushing, so she stuck her finger in her own tub of strawberry ice cream, and then booped Beast Boy playfully on the nose. He giggled and booped her back with a much larger dollop of his chocolate ice cream. When she squeaked in discomfort at the cold, he regretted it, and decided to clean it off again… and grinned.

Before she could ask him what he thought he was doing, he leaned over and placed his lips on her nose, giving her a thorough, sloppy and wholly awkward kiss, and when he pulled back, not a trace of chocolate ice cream remained on her nose. She was however, glowing as red as a tomato.

"… Oh!" Starfire interrupted, trying to spare Raven the embarrassment. "A funny thing happened when we were fighting Control Freak last week!" And just like that, the conversation was saved, although it still took several more minutes for Raven's blush to die down.

"Beast Boy?" Raven had asked quietly – but she was no longer whispering at least, gradually finding her voice again – some time after the Control Freak anecdote had finished.

"Mmm hmm?" he answered, immediately giving her his full attention. She couldn't help but smile at how normal it all felt. Her face was getting sore from all of the smiling; she was out of practise.

"… Why are there two L's on the 'Welcome Back Raven' sign?"

He glanced back at the sign, and then almost jumped in excitement. She had suspected that it hadn't been a simple mistake.

"Ooh!" he began to explain, "So, it's kind of a joke- me and Cy were playing this zombie game, right, and on the first day on the force, this cop-" She was still listening. Half-listening, at least, as Beast Boy regaled her with the fascinating history of the extra L in the welcome sign. But more than that, she was just overwhelmed by how… normal he seemed. Normal for him, at least; Beast Boy had never been normal, she doubted that even if he had never caught Sakutia and gained his powers, he could have ever been described as such. But she had spent almost a year thinking that she had damaged him. Wounded him beyond repair. And he was here, and he was happy and he was gushing on about some stupid video game reference, but he was happy.

"-the remake, then they fixed the sign, but they leave a little space, and there's an extra L on the desk, so it's like a-" Beast Boy paused suddenly, placing a hand on Raven's cheek. "Rae? You ok?" he asked tentatively.

Raven had no idea where his concern was coming from. She had never felt better in her whole entire life, and nodded quickly to let him know. It was only when she sniffed uncontrollably that she realised that she was crying again.

"Hey… I'm sorry," Beast Boy began, gently wiping the tears away with his thumb. "I didn't-"

Raven raised a hand and placed a finger over his mouth. "It's fine," she explained. "They're… happy. I promise." She was telling the truth, and the sight of Raven crying in joy after all that she had been through over the last year made him want to cry with joy, which would only make her-

"Hey, should we put on the movie?" Cyborg asked, hoping to avoid a vicious cycle of tears. It seemed to work, as Raven turned to him and asked "A movie?"

"Yeah, we thought we'd watch your favourite movie to celebrate you being back. I'll put it on now," Cyborg announced, standing up while also clearing away some of the empty ice cream tubs. He would return with five plates of Crow cake as well, and the team eagerly awaited the start of the film. No-one was more eager than Raven, who had never actually told the team her favourite film, and wasn't sure if she even had one, so she was curious to see what-

She let out an involuntary scoff as the opening credits of the 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast film danced across the screen. If she did have a favourite film, this wasn't it. Although she supposed that she didn't dislike it.

"No prizes for guessing who picked this," Cyborg joked, nodding his head towards the changeling, who appeared slightly ashamed. Almost as if he was a fan of the film and was using her as an excuse. Raven resisted the temptation to roll her eyes.

"Well…" she began diplomatically. "I suppose I like the part where the townspeople learn that looks can be deceiving, and that even if something appears menacing, it can have good intentions." Being a half-demon, it wasn't difficult to discern what she was talking about.

Beast Boy's take was slightly more immature. "I like the part where the Beast ends up with the hot girl who likes books."

Starfire and Cyborg giggled, Robin rolled his eyes, and Raven very lightly nudged him in the side before settling in to enjoy the film. Even if she could barely bring herself to pay attention to it.

After all, she had already found her happy ending.

.

They held hands all the way back to her bedroom as well. When they arrived at her door, she said nothing, but gave him another long hug; long enough for her to begin to cry, and long enough for her to stop again too.

"Thank you," she whispered again, which only brought about another kiss to the forehead that made her blush, smile and melt.

"Good night, Rae," he reassured her. "See you in the morning." She nodded, then turned to her bedroom door. She hadn't thought about it, but this was actually going to be her first time being back in her room in almost a year. "And Rae?" she turned back to Beast Boy. "Thanks for coming back." She smiled, opened the door, and nodded one final goodnight to Beast Boy before heading inside.

Beast Boy chuckled to himself on the walk back to his own room as he realised that even though they had been together non-stop ever since their chat in the gym… he missed her already. He missed her when he arrived at his room, when he opened and closed the door, and when he climbed into the top bunk of his bed and closed his eyes. But it was a pleasant feeling this time; not the same as when he had missed her every night for the last ten months.

…

In the time since Raven had left, Beast Boy's senses had improved considerably. Or rather, his senses had remained the same, but his experience in using those senses had grown dramatically. His vision now matched that of an eagle's at almost all times. He had once detected a bomb from four blocks away solely from the faint hint of sulphur in the air. He could hear almost anything that happened in the tower from any other room, which led to an embarrassing conversation when he had to practically beg Robin to invest in extra-strength soundproofing for Starfire's room, for reasons which he refused to disclose, and which took Robin an infuriatingly long time to comprehend.

Those senses were how Beast Boy now knew that, ten minutes after wishing her goodnight, Raven was standing on the other side of his bedroom door.

She hadn't knocked, although occasionally her right hand would twitch as if she was tempted to, only to return rigidly to her side as if scared of disturbing him. Beast Boy frowned, unsure if he should disturb her, before sleepily concluding that she was clearly uncomfortable about something, and there was no way that he would be able to sleep with her standing outside of his door for undiscovered reasons. He hopped off of the top bunk and stepped towards the door loudly; not loudly enough to indicate that he was irritated by her presence, but enough to hopefully let her know that he was coming.

When he opened the door, she flinched in fear and shame. His loud steps had not worked. Still, he kept a smile on his face as he calmly asked "Hey Rae, what's up?"

For a moment, she froze like a fawn in the headlights. But he had asked her a question, and her unwillingness to deny him was stronger than her embarrassment.

"… I can't be in my room," she meekly admitted, almost pleading.

"What's wrong?" he asked again, the concern making him less sleepy.

"When I… when I'm in there, by myself… it feels like- like before I went away. I just remember, all of the feelings, and the…" she couldn't bring herself to continue, but she didn't need to. Her legs were already shaking beneath her cloak, and Beast Boy understood the gist of her problem. He opened his door wider with a welcoming smile, encouraging her to come inside, which she did, with some anxious hesitation.

As he closed the door behind her, he asked "Top or bottom?"

She spun around, slightly flustered. "Wh-what?"

"The bunkbed," he smiled back. "Do you want top or bottom?"

She glanced back at the bed, her heart rate slowing again. If he had noticed her panicky assumption, he was ignoring it. "Oh… um, bottom please."

He led her towards the bottom bunk, held up the duvet and happily gestured for her to climb into the bed. She looked as though she suddenly felt worried that she was inconveniencing him, so he tackled that issue before it could even arise.

"Hey, you can bunk here as long as you like, as far as I'm concerned."

Her cheeks turned a little red, but she was more relieved than embarrassed. "… Thank you," she quietly acknowledged as she climbed into the bed, settling in under the covers. Beast Boy paused for one moment. It felt a little strange, seeing someone as dignified as Raven using a bunkbed. Someone as usually dignified, at least.

He knew that it was stupid. He knew that it was immature. And he knew that it had a very big chance of not helping her at all, but rather blowing up in both of their faces. But wasn't that the exact choice that he loved to make? And besides, ever since she had grown comfortable enough to look at him again, she always did so with these big, sad, round, puppy dog eyes, as if he was a perfect angel who she had taken advantage of. She could do with the reminder that he could be a little forward, a bit clingy, and frankly… annoying.

Making his mind up – and he was very pleased with the decision he made – he hopped into the lower bunk next to her, while her eyes widened in panic and her face turned red.

"Wh-what on earth are you-" she stammered.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind and her words stuck in her throat as she began to melt, blush, sweat, hyperventilate and experience heart palpitations all at the same time. He seemed to notice, and hesitated for just a moment, wondering if he had perhaps gone too far and too quickly. But if he had, he could at least… finish going too far and too quickly before backing off.

"I wanted to sleep down here, with you… if that's ok," he asked, somehow sounding confident and shy at the same time.

Raven took a second to get her bearings; she was not actually hyperventilating, and while her heart felt as if it was going to burst out of her chest at any minute, it was not threatening to do so in the manner befitting a medical emergency. Medically speaking, other than her high temperature and the fact that her face was redder than a tomato, she was… fine. Better than fine, actually. Significantly better than fine.

She turned shyly to Beast Boy, who still had that stupid, carefree grin on his face – not helped by the luminescent blush on hers – and summoned all of her courage… to nod. Beast Boy's grin widened as he squeezed her tighter, resting his head against the back of her shoulder, while she let out a whimpering squeak in surprise.

The guilt and anxiety and doubt and insecurities and self-loathing all continued to bubble beneath the surface, but… the simple warmth of his arms, the feeling of his breath on the back of her neck; she didn't want it to subdue all of that negativity – well-earned negativity, in her opinion – but his touch just… did. Because no matter how much she wanted to dispute it, she hadn't tricked him or manipulated him or taken advantage of his good nature. He had simply forgiven her because he truly, sincerely, genuinely wanted to. Because he liked her. Because against all odds, he cared about her. Still.

She shook in his arms. It took a few moments for him to realise that she was crying again. He leaned forwards and peppered kisses along her upper arm to her shoulder. "You ok?" he whispered.

"Just… thinking," she admitted. "Almost a year ago, I was on the other side of that door," she didn't need to remind him. No matter how much he loved her, had always loved her, and still loved her, that night had been terrifying. "Kicking and screaming and… threatening you." She couldn't hold back the heavy sob. "And… all I needed to do was be honest with you. Vulnerable with you. All I needed to do was just think about someone other than myself for a second, and I could have been here all this time."

He squeezed her tighter and continued to trail kisses up and down her arm.

"You're here now."

Raven tried to swallow the regret. She knew that it would always be there. But for at least tonight, she could force it away. For at least tonight, she could enjoy what she had been missing, now that it was finally here.

"… I'm here now," she repeated, calming herself. With Beast Boy's arms wrapped around her as they began to drift off to sleep, she finally felt at peace; with herself, with the world, but most of all, with him. "I'm here now…"

She really was sleepy. Unfortunately, while she wanted nothing more than a good night's sleep, the feeling of his arms around her was still causing her heart to race too quickly for sleep to be even remotely possible. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she had been in a cell on the Justice League Watchtower. It was a big step to be here.

"Beast Boy?" she asked timidly after about five minutes. He sleepily mumbled in the affirmative behind her.

She squeezed his arms tighter. "I don't deserve you…"

"Yeah you do," he mumbled back, eyes still closed with a big grin on his face.

"… No, I don't," she quietly disagreed.

Beast Boy paused for a moment. "Eh, ok." The sheer bluntness of his response, and his failure to disagree as she had expected, actually brought a surprised laugh from the empath, not that his arms grew any less tight or warm around her. "But you've got me anyway."

She had him

All she had wanted in all those years of silent admiration, which had eventually turned into an obsession, was for him to say that he was hers. Now he had, and she didn't know how to respond. She knew how she should respond; with guilt, and remorse, and if she ever had a shred of decency in her body, she should push him away until he found someone who was worthy of his love. It would take a long time for her to stop feeling like that. If ever.

And yet… he loved her. She loved him. Despite everything, they loved each other. Despite her, they loved each other. And something about that love was more powerful than the hatred, the self-loathing, the guilt that had threatened to consume her from the inside out, wasting her rehabilitation as she fell victim to an entirely different kind of obsession. She had been wrong about so many things. But maybe love truly was unbreakable. Maybe love really was forever. Maybe love was the magic that she had needed.

She waited until she was sure that he was asleep before clutching his arms tighter to her, and whispering, "I love you. I love you so much," to the sleeping boy behind her. How could she not?

Raven was happy.

More than happy, Raven was loved.