A Slippery Slope, A Green Horizon.

Instinct

There were few times that Garfield felt truly alone.

Not just in the absence of other people, but the true detachment of oneself from the rest of humanity. The feeling that even when you are in a crowded room, you may as well have been stood on an island surrounded by nothing but crashing waves and the great expanse of blank space that is the ocean.

Beast Boy felt this as he walked to Robin, taking no notice of those that greeted him or quickly stepped from his path. As he was, numb from the ordeal of watching the woman he adored tear herself apart over an accident, then the heart wrenching ache that her stone faced words had inflicted, he would not have noticed if they had been screaming at him.

The boy wonder frowned at the vacant eyes of his ever expressive friend. "Beast Boy? What's wrong?"

"Raven's gone." The changeling croaked. "She got too stressed and had to leave, I think... I think I have to go as well Rob."

A flicker of anxiety passed behind Dick's mask before his poker face settled back on. "Yeah, yeah sure. Do you want me to ask Cyborg to drive you back?"

"Nah man, I want to fly." Garfield said, already turning. "And I don't want to interrupt him and Sarah, she must be pretty shaken up."

The doors were open and he could see the sky, feel it's openness calling to him and in a moment of sudden claustrophobia, he leaped for it.

Skin tightening and stretching, bones rearranging and hollowing, his lips hardening into a beak and feathers exploding from his pores. Young man into a peregrine falcon, a mere heartbeat between the two forms.

He swept over the heads of party goers and out into the night, hearing the oohs and ahhs but uncaring for their attention. All he wanted to hear was the rush of wind in his ears, all he wanted to feel was the caress of night air on his feathers and the serenity of succumbing to that base desire in all wild things.

He wanted to soar free.

The others had their own forms of meditation, for Robin it was his training, Cyborg had the endless mechanical work he found to do on the T-Car, Starfire had her playtime with Silkie and Raven stayed true to traditional methods.

Beast Boy found that peace in two things, video games (duh) and the simplicity of his instincts.

Surrendering the thoughts and emotions of his human mind to the urges of a more focused form. A wolf knows nothing about the stress of crime rate reports or the critical judgements of the Justice League. A wolf knows to hunt, to find shelter, to run.

Just as a falcon knows nothing of a sorceress sacrificing a barely flowering relationship for the safety of others. A falcon knows the instincts that drives it, the instinct to nest, to scan the ground for small prey, to fly.

So he flew and allowed all else to drop away.

When he landed on the roof, some hours later, Raven wasn't there.

It was for the best, he told himself, as there were some hard truths that he had confronted when those all so human thoughts found their way past his desire to swoop at mice in a field.

There were two begrudging conclusions he had come to, the first being that Raven needed time to process what had happened, and the second was that she had been right to place the blame for what happened on their actions.

Neither of them had wanted to hurt someone, but the fact remained that Sarah had come so very close to losing her life that night, because of how Garfield had pushed the boundaries of Raven's control.