Police cars, police vans, ambulances and fire trucks were clustered in a small, brightly glowing half-moon on the largest avenue leading out of the old library district. Most of the buildings were new. Raven remembered how the four block radius had been slated for demolition when her sixteenth birthday was almost upon them. It struck her as odd that the streets were so very silent.

As they neared the barricade, Cyborg let loose an appreciative whoop. "Now there's efficiency." At the slightly surprised looks he admitted to have called in to have the area evacuated. "A lot of stuff could have gone wrong underground. We did things right by the looks of it, but I gotta hand it to Jump City Emergency Services, evacuating four blocks in the dead of night is hard."

The group paused, and the Beast lay Raven gently down on the ground, then took two, three, four steps away from them. After a beat, he slowly shrank back into Beast Boy.

His uniform was only slightly strained, and his eyes looked alert even as he pressed his hands momentarily over his ears. "Dude, I am never getting used to that." He had a five second reprieve before Raven stalked over and hugged him.

It was like Malchior all over again, her nerves and the looseness in his hesitant arms, but once he got them to move, he slung them easily across her back and waist. "Take it easy." His voice was quiet, like this was a secret between the two of them, and held a hint of a smile.

"Why?"

"You're all woozy and things." He lifted the arm on her shoulders to make an exaggerated mimicry with swiveling motions, not at all unlike a very drunk octopus, then grinned to let her know the joke was for her benefit. She graced his efforts with a tiny smile and got a monumentally goofy grin in response.

It was about then that she realized the sheer openness of her behavior and shyly retracted her arms, stepping away from his embrace. She turned around to find the rest of the team, clearly attempting to compromise between giving them space and not missing a thing.

Raven was beyond feigning ignorance. "Subtle, guys."

Cyborg shrugged. "Points for trying?" Raven snorted and clasped her elbows.

"Friend Beast Boy! You have been most amazing this night! If your speedy transformation into yourself does not lie, you have fully mastered the Beast!" Starfire's hug was much more exuberant than hers, but also considerably shorter.

Cyborg gave him a thumbs up. "What she said, BB. We thought we might need to knock you out again, to help you morph back. You handled it yourself more than pretty well."

Robin came up to him opposite to Star and quite uncharacteristically clapped him on the back, the way he did with people like Red Star and Aqualad. Raven stared, shocked but not surprised. "Incredible work Beast Boy. That was all you back there, wasn't it?"

"Mostly." The attention and praise was finally getting to him, evident in the faint maroon shadow slowly building in his cheeks. "Like I told you yesterday, the Beast is all me now. I get super hearing and super sight and super everything, and sometimes it's a little hard to think with all the sensory information I get, but it's me."

"So you can morph into the- I mean, into Beast form at will?" The question burned Raven's throat on delivery, but Beast Boy's eyes were soft and expressive when they found hers.

"No." He apparently lost his train of thought for a moment, looking at something in Raven, or perhaps inside her. "I mean, kinda. It's like a super transformation in a video game, I can't use it all the time, I've gotta wait for the power-up that makes it appear. But once it does, it's me choosing to morph, yeah."

Something fragile gently unfurled itself in Raven's chest, somewhere above her stomach, all in a flurry like a small butterfly. So brittle.

Too much.

She turned around, drawing her hood up for good measure, as Robin announced he'd have "a word with all the authorities" before they could all go home.

Raven was glad she'd been the one left worst off after the fight, at least this once: it left her free to mull things over in the relative peace of the infirmary as Cyborg gave her fluids to speed up her powers' return.

It being close to dawn, Robin had decided to debrief later in the day, and while Raven was glad for both the reprieve and the chance to let her barriers down while everyone's emotions were dulled in sleep, the questions pestering at her were about as distracting as any onslaught of emotions.

"Cyborg." Her friend looked up from where he was filling a syringe to let her know she had his attention. "What did Slade want with my f – with the Hand? And how did you figure it out?"

Cyborg didn't speak as he carefully injected something into her IV bag, a supplement of some sort. "You noticed Rob and I were already at the computer when the rest of you arrived?"

"I did."

"We'd been there the whole day cross-referencing stuff. The actual plan had to be put together while we walked there, because a lot of the pieces came up on the way, but we had a pretty good idea what was going on, and man did it help."

He checked her vitals on one of the only screens that was on. "While Titans East were manning the Tower, Slade was really quiet, but he wasn't static at all. They got a call from the local branch of an international bank, saying an account linked back to one Mr. S. Wilson had displayed movements. It wasn't a huge movement, and they probably only reported it because S. Wilson was discovered to be a dangerous criminal, and also happened to be reportedly dead. Bumblebee looked into it and filed it after a while, because it seemed to lead to nowhere, but we pulled it up."

"What was it?"

"He'd bought a copy of Prometheus Unbound by Percy B. Shelley."

The words of the play bubbled up into her awareness almost at once. Call at will/Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter/Hades or Typhon…Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge/Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades…

Raven shot to a sitting position when she realized. "It's a story about doppelgangers."

"Doppelgangers, yeah…evil twin types? Something that Shelley seemed particularly interested in."

And yet she remembered how Prometheus Unbound was about said shadow twins being separate from one another. In the play, Jupiter's shade had been called forth by Prometheus, who the real Jupiter had been punishing viciously, and the shade had revealed things the real Jupiter would never have. Raven's thoughts raced. "Slade wanted the Beast. I mean…he wanted the Beast, separate from Beast Boy, and somehow bound to him." That was why he'd bothered to lure them into the catacombs, a place built to contain magical backlash and perfect for ritual work.

Cyborg radiated pride and whistled low, both attempting to lighten the atmosphere and genuinely amazed. "That was fast. It took Robin and I a bit of digging, particularly since we hadn't read the source material. We figured you might have, given the author." He sped up the drip on her IV bag. "He wanted to split Beast Boy from the Beast. Since the Hand of Scath helped summon a transdimensional demon, we guessed he thought of using it as part of a really shifty sort of ritual he put together. The Hand would be the separation device, the axe would help him sever them into separate beings, and I guess he hoped he could either charm or subdue and take the Beast for himself. We clued into the Hand being a part of things when we were already down there, or we'd have taken more explosives, better ones, or just thought of a way to smoke Slade out of there in the first place."

Raven rubbed absently at her wrist, where the needle was taped securely. "You were right."

"How?"

"Slade has never been sane."

That earned her a chuckle from Cyborg. "He still plots things out pretty damn solidly. That book was his only slip-up, because from the carvings he made on the Hand? He's either got Merlin tied up in his basement, or his new interests include sculpture and Greco-Roman sorcery." He checked the bag and nodded. "Good to go now, Rae."

"Thank you. That was clever. How you figured everything out. A little creepily so, some might say."

"Hah! You know nothing. Being there, watching Robin go mini-Batman and pulling Slade's motives into something tangible outta thin air? I said exactly that, only I called it creepy right out. He told me Batman is even worse. "

"He can get worse?"

"He says sometimes he feels like Batman knew everything from the onset and basically planned along with the villain de jour, only he planned even further ahead and got him just by knowing how everyone would ordinarily act. They even have a name for it around the JLA, behind his back of course: Batman's Gambit."

Raven felt exasperated and affectionate all at once. "I'm glad he's on our side." Both of the hes. "I get why you did it, and this has no standing coming from me, but I wish you'd discussed this with the rest of the team."

"I don't know. It's kinda cool when all of you are too busy figuring it out and just follow the plan without argument."

"Cyborg, we're a team." She smiled, and she was teasing him a little, underneath the slight indignation at his implication that she was argumentative and hard to work with. "We do these things together. And this wasn't a team effort."

"Nope, it wasn't. We also don't use the bathroom as a team, but I don't see anyone complaining about that in the foreseeable future."

"Touché."

"You're welcome." As he unwrapped her wrist, slipped out the needle from under an alcohol-laden cotton ball, and carefully patched the resulting hole with tape and gauze, Cyborg acquired a slight inquisitive, doubting edge. "You haven't asked why we didn't want you engaging Slade, so I figured you clued in yourself."

Raven quietly fought the slight brush of nerves, saying nothing. She'd gone out to the fight laden with questions, and now she wondered if it was possible to have too many answers. Cyborg held his peace as well, but he was overflowing with a gentle, sad sort of affection as he saw helped her slide off the cot.

Dawn was coming soon.

Raven had been lying in bed, dressed in a loose black t-shirt and some ratty trunks in an attempt to relax, when a burst dam of emotions dispatched what little desire for sleep she'd had. It was an unexpected crescendo of fear and anxiety, tinged with something thrilling, something caught between the spectrum of Happy and Brave. By the time Beast Boy arrived at her door, Raven had a hard time separating his own nerves from hers.

She knew he would hesitate. And after everything that had happened, she doubted her heart could take it. A flick of her wrist had her panel door sliding open and despite all the shock he was exuding, Beast Boy did not cower.

"Hey Raven."

"Hi Beast Boy." She sat up in bed, sliding to the edge and bringing her knees protectively up to her chest. If she did not let him in, he would not ask, but he'd stay until exhaustion or disappointment drove him away. The dice were cast on my decision a long time ago. "You can come in."

He stepped in with a lot more certainty than he was feeling, but his fear didn't grow when the panel door shut.

"Uh oh. Didn't figure I'd be overdressed." He was still in his uniform, the one with the smallest indication of tears on his arms and legs.

"It's fine by me." Raven lowered her face into her knees, putting more of herself between her vulnerable heart and his eyes. For all that they were not evasive or probing, Raven felt like she'd been cut open from hairline to toes and her steaming, bloody guts were laid at his feet. No pretenses between them, no secrets.

Beast Boy took another few steps, reaching the midpoint between her and the door. He made as if to keep going, then stopped (not without some effort, she realized) and turned very shy. He dug into a pocket, then held the thing out to her, radiating nerves. "Uh. So. Penny for your thoughts? Heh…?"

"Are you actually going to give me a penny so I'll tell you what I'm thinking?"

"That was the plan. Sort of."

She knew it couldn't be her penny (his penny? Their penny?), knew the one he'd given her must have been obliterated when she practically died to become the portal. Even if it had returned, it would have reappeared in the Chamber they'd rendered unaccesible forever a few hours ago.

It still sent her heart racing.

"So…what is on your mind?"

The offered coin reminded her of Charon the ferryman, taking souls across the river Styx to the last leg of their final journey. The thought of rivers took her to another river of Choices, and to Julius Caesar cementing his rebellion as he crossed it with his army.

"Charon and Julius Caesar"

"Huh?"

She laughed good-naturedly, shaking her head. "Never mind." Raven's eyes never left his, but she didn't move a muscle, didn't gesture at him to move any closer or away.

As in both cases, the actual crossing I leave to you.

Beast Boy gave her a long look, the penny dropping from nerveless fingers. When he walked past the middle, he didn't hesitate again.

His hands were weaving into hers almost before Raven's mind caught up with her. He led her up – he held her hands and straightened, but the actual getting up part was left to Raven. Then they were eye to eye, and Beast Boy had the strangest expression, his mouth in a proud smirk and his eyes soft in what seemed an affectionate frown. Then he let go of her hands.

This time, Raven didn't wait for her mind to catch up as she brushed her lips over his.

They were warm, warmer than they'd felt against her small fingers, and her lips tingled where the small chapped patches dragged along her own smooth ones. Her heart tingled too, warm and full, the feeling of joy and amazement echoing from all around her and again she couldn't tell where hers ended and Beast Boy's began. She felt his lips part very slightly, felt him pull in a minute breath as she lingered, and then he was returning the kiss. Her hand had found his chin, and one of his was moving somewhere near her head, tucking a strand of her hair away behind her ear. He missed when she took a step back.

When Raven opened her eyes, Beast Boy was already looking back at her with the most tranquil smile she'd ever seen on his face. "Man, did we almost kill each other with all that no-please-after-you thing or what?" His tone was soft and earnest, and the hand that had missed was trailing fingers in her hair.

Raven wanted to retreat into the safety of chiding him for ruining the moment, but inexplicably, he hadn't. "Funny, I thought that was all me."

"I kind of knew you'd say that. So I tried to meet you half way. And not scare you. And not give you time to start thinking yourself into an emotional pretzel." He let her hair go, trailing down to where her hand hung, and threaded his fingers with hers. "It was a little hard, finding the midpoint between all those things."

"You didn't have to."

"I wanted to!"

"No, I mean…you don't have to just go along with this. It's going to be hard." If it's even what you want. If you're not here just so I won't feel rejected.

Beast Boy was nudging her face up, so he could look into her eyes. "Being a hero is pretty hard too. And it's also something I chose."

That left her with only one question, the one she'd been the most afraid of asking. "How can you be so sure what you feel is worth this, this leap of faith?"

"What, aren't you sure?"

"What do you think?" The defiance of her words didn't stop her oncoming blush.

"So why do you think I'm not sure? I mean, aren't you an empath? What are my feelings telling you right now?"

The fierce affection was tinged with nerves and edged in something else, something she remembered from after Adonis, something she might have called possessive. "Empathy doesn't really give you all the answers, funnily enough."

"Raven, the Beast only ever comes out for you. You must have noticed that. Even the first time, when I was really unstable, the only thing I knew clearly was that I had to stop Adonis from hurting you."

Raven was aware of that. And apparently everyone, including Slade, suspected it.

But Beast Boy took her silence for disbelief. "And I don't know if you noticed, but back when we first met, I was over the moon when you said I was kinda funny, but then I thought you didn't like me, and then in Nevermore it turned out you did and we were friends, but somehow you still wouldn't let me in…and then Malchior…" He gasped for breath and despite her best efforts, one short burst of a giggle escaped Raven. "And now you're laughing at me. Just awesome."

"You're kinda funny when you're babbling, no matter what I say most of the time." Beast Boy's face wasn't covered in fur. It was just green. And his eyebrows were most definitely dark green. She drew a finger through them, just because she could. "I did notice something. Back then I was a lot more unstable, and the onslaught of emotion was dangerous for all of us. You were…too much. Too much of a good thing could mean blown fuses, broken windows, anything at all back then."

"Oh. So you did notice I had a ridiculous crush on you." He ducked his head awkwardly.

"I did. And I'd be lying if I told you I was fine with it back then, but either way, the only coping mechanism I had was avoidance. Even thinking about it was too much, so I never really wondered what I felt. I'm…still trying to move past it. And…you feel different now. Not like back then."

"No…now I actually like the real you. And I know you can tell it's been confusing as hell for me to figure it out. But now I know, and you know, and everyone including Slade has known for like a bajillion years. So all that's left to do is…"

"Is?"

"Is ask you if you're up for a movie and maybe something from that Chinese place you like, down the harbor. Maybe on Friday. We can go and actually sit at the place for once instead of ordering take out. They do this thing called Mapo Tofu, awesome stuff."

He made it sound so easy.

"It'll be hard. I…might withdraw for no good reason, from time to time. And things might break a lot." And it might simply not work, despite our best intentions. But she knew better than to tell Beast Boy something he seemed to want wouldn't work.

"I know, it'll be hard. I kinda don't care. And I don't know if you've noticed, but nothing's broken the whole time I've been here."

That caught Raven off guard, and she turned away to look around her room, dimly illuminated in pre-dawn blue. Her pillows were whole, no telltale smattering of broken pottery was anywhere on her floor. Even her sheets were only rumpled from where her hands had twisted them. She looked back at Beast Boy, face slack with awe.

"Guess I'm not at disturbing as you figured I'd be?" His smirk turned into a round O of surprise when Raven's face inched closer to his once more. Shy, slow, but no longer hesitant.

"You are, believe me. But it's easier when I don't have to hold back the feelings." It's easier when I can just smile or just say I feel sad or just hold you and not let you go.

Beast Boy met her half way, eager hands behind her head, and Raven thought that she'd never surrendered to the inevitable with this amount of joy in her heart.

A/N: I would like to thank all the people who've left constant support and reviews. This is the first ever attempt I've made of many things: I'd never written a chaptered fic, never finished a chaptered fic, never even attempted action or action scenes, and never attempted romance in a long-haul, slow-build kind of thing. This fic has taught me a lot, and while I hope to do better in future attempts, it will remain my first successful attempt at a long storyline of any sort.

Once more, thank you for your views, and especially your reviews.