Chapter 13

Joke of Despair Part 3

The rape was vicious. He forced himself into her mind, violating her memories, baring them in the full spectrum of their experience for her compatriots to view. The physical rape that he had enacted on her beforehand was nothing compared to what she was going through now.

Soon, it was finished. He cleaned himself of her fluids, orgasms forced from her against her will. She had raped and tortured several of the agents under his command, men and women both, and he had returned the favour several times over. Her screaming had echoed through the chamber, cunningly wrought acoustic channels bringing it to the cells of the prisoners. Her head lolled, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. He called in the medical team to attend to her before exiting the interrogation room. As he left, she curled up into a foetal position and began to sob, her will broken, her dignity destroyed.

He looked on as the numerous prisoners were forced to undergo the horrific torture of the 'Embrace of Pain', a creature bioengineered as a teaching tool, used both to restrain and torture prisoners. The Embrace of Pain resembled a living rack, with its prisoner suspended facedown by restraint bands. When the victim was tortured, the creature's sophisticated nerve web read the electrochemical output of the victim's nerve impulses and evaluated the victim's brain chemistry. The Embrace of Pain used this data to keep pain at constant and optimum levels. It covered a whole spectrum of pain, from a minor irritation to full-blown agony, with every single pain receptor in the body amplified to maximum levels. He had endured it for over a thousand hours as part of his training, eventually becoming immune to its effects altogether.

Similarly, other prisoners were subject to nerve induction; agonising pain, as well as incandescent heat, freezing cold and hard vacuum were simulated by direct electrical stimulation of the nerves. Again, he had gone through that, forced himself to go through that. His threshold for pain had increased to the point where he could break a bone and still keep operating at near peak efficiency.

Based in the MIO-N stealth frigate at the edge of a Jarhaila frontier star system, they were performing reconnaissance and other intelligence-gathering, as well as sabotage, in advance of the main Sons of Mediter assault, aided by several auxiliary units from the Janthril Royal Custodians, Saharan Warguard, the Ilham-Janthril military and the Demons of Abzenor Space Marine Legion from the Nuevo Arcturus Star Imperium. The Black Tiger Society's Military Intelligence Office-Neraka was simply providing the advance intelligence, as they were the nearest available personnel with the requisite skills.

When he was back in his bunk, he looked at himself, stared hard into the mirror, at the one face in the entire universe he hated more than anything. Without a word, he smashed the mirror, and kept on punching it, until it finally fell to the floor in fragments, coated red with blood. He held his dog tags, squeezed the cool metal in his palm, felt the serial number and rank engraved into them. He knew what they read; Aziz Yap Gang Hu, alias Chirag Nair. That and a hundred other aliases, courtesy of working in the espionage trade for the past hundred years.

He looked at the quote pasted on his door.

"The man who conquers himself in his mind is superior to the one who conquers a thousand others in battle."

Slowly, he realised that he was inferior indeed.

Aziz was 384 years old.

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After several tests, they had a single lead. After applying CPR to the infant, who was now recovering in the pediatric ward, Aziz had simply collapsed. The infant was doing well, the mucous having blocked any drugs from entering his system.

ECGs showed abnormal brain activity and neurochemistry was unbalanced. If anything, the attending doctors had said they had never encountered anyone as healthy as Aziz, in the physiological and physical sense of the word, excepting perhaps his current neurochemical state.

Raven and Starfire had watched as they had placed electrodes on his body, hooked him up to monitors. They had already made a call to Robin, who had told them to stay with him, while Beast Boy remained at the crime scene, his sensitive nose needed for tracking any possible trace scents.

As far as medical science could tell, he was in some kind of coma. Oddly enough, Raven found he was in a catatonia usually associated with a powerful psionic backlash. Raven had sensed a power unlike anything she had ever experienced, as if time was a waterfall cascading in resonance, when she had briefly touched his mind, powerful mental barriers keeping out unwanted psychic intrusions, even unconscious. Barriers that she doubted even the Martian Manhunter could overcome.

She sometimes wondered what he was thinking, this mysterious boy with eyes of grey, filled with sorrow and danger, yet somehow opaque, never revealing the depth of emotion she had sensed beneath.

Raven had finally found someone even more mysterious and less forthcoming than herself, and she was not entirely sure that she liked it.

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Because he suppressed his prescience so much, sometimes the feedback was tremendous. However, when it had come to him then, the shatterpoint in time, combined with the trace amount of the strange chemical compound within his body, had shocked his system.

Shrugging it off as much as he could, he fought and clawed his way through the various layers of his mind, back towards consciousness, as impressions and emotions associated with the visual scenes revealed to him. The power was struggling, trying to rise within him, but his grasp on mortality was strong…for now. The prescient visions ebbed and flowed, inundating him in a morass of time, fluid and relative, paradoxically deterministic and asynchronous events happening.

A powerful shatterpoint had been revealed to him, and the infant had something to do with it, as far as he could interpret. The infant was initiating a shatterpoint in time, in the process leading up to his death, an immutable, unchangeable event. Somehow, he sensed the infant changed events for the better, in regards to the Titans. Its presence shaped the future in a manner favourable to the Titans, as well as to Anya, he sensed.

His death was a fixed, immutable event. He hadn't dared to look beyond, for the power could claim him if he extended his abilities, physical, mental, psionic and spiritual in any way, in any domain. He only used his chi, and even then, a miniscule amount, to be able to be as strong as he was. He imposed limits on himself, at the event horizon, teetering on the edge of mortality and transcendence beyond all that he held dear.

If he had to die to maintain whatever remained of his mortality, to finally end this wandering after so long, to exist in these worlds of suffering and joy that he had endured as no human should endure, he would follow that path to its very end.

Yet, now the visions were flowing backwards, showing him his past, his present. Those he had murdered; infants, children, women, men, soldiers, lovers, parents, siblings, families….

As did the universes and countless cosmic entities; non-physical and spatial, abstract and spiritual, magical and divine, celestial and infernal, unholy and hellish, supernatural and metaphysical; even the gods and deities and countless spirits and beings of all forms and shapes. Those he had devoured when taking upon himself the burden of Rukt.

And in the end, after he had given all of himself, all he had left in the void was his guilt.

Applying himself, Aziz battled against the tide of personalities and memories, branching off a portion of his consciousness; a physiokinesthetic awareness of his biochemistry, as he rapidly disassembled the exotic chemical structure before him, taking it apart a molecule at a time. While most toxins had no effect on him, being that he was able to metabolise it, he had been shocked by the revealed shatterpoint.

As the prescience slowly ebbed, and the power receded, once more suppressed, he accelerated the process. Within minutes, he would be conscious again.

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Why do we laugh at clowns? Very often we see them performing the routines that were named after the main tool of their trade; slapstick, where the clowns engage each other in seemingly funny exchanges involving ladders and buckets of water. One of the clowns invariably gets hurt… and yet we laugh at them.

So what does this mean? Do we like laughing at other people's misfortunes? It would appear so.

But that only holds true as long the misfortunes continue to happen to other people; the clowns. What would happen if the clowns decided that they wanted to see somebody else's misfortune for a change?

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Joculare snapped the neck of the night shift nurse, feeling bones give way beneath the powerful grip of his hand. However, he took none of the joy he usually did in carrying out his 'art'. For the first time in a long time, he was angry.

How dare the child survive? How dare these… imbeciles rescue a child that was supposed to be a part of his artwork?

He had organised it perfectly, passing the tainted drugs to a dealer, to test its efficacy. He had observed them all die with the customary satisfaction of a job well done… yet an infant had the temerity to defy him; to survive and live despite the insurmountable odds he had arranged for it.

This was something Joculare could not and would not condone. He would kill the infant, return with the corpse to the crime scene, depositing the infant in the corners of the room, dissecting its fragile body and using the blood to create a masterpiece in homage to Pollock.

It had been an easy enough task to infiltrate the hospital. After all, how many people suspected a clown bearing balloons, who claimed to be entering the paediatric ward? Of course, the fact that it had been midnight had aroused suspicion from the night nurse. Breaking his back in two and folding him before shoving him into a cupboard, he armed himself with syringes filled with air, taking a detour at the maternity ward.

He would take his time and work his way down there, but first he had to apply his skills to the death of newborns. He had always wondered how newborns died if air was injected into their bodies. Would they suffer greatly from an air embolism?

As he entered the hushed room, filled with units of swaddled, children, a twisted smile came over his face. His one thought was simple.

Let's see if the Joker can ever top this.

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Starfire shuddered, shivers running down her spine. Somehow, she felt uneasy, her intuition firing off like a Thrombul before slaughter. Or like the time Galfore had taken her on a hunt of a Novok, a mighty beast of the plains and the most feared predator of Tamaran.

She looked to Raven, hesitating, before asking. Raven was always composed, and now her face was no different as before.

"Friend Raven, please…" Starfire began, trailing off; afraid to ask in apprehension of the answer she might receive. "Will he be alright?"

"He will Star. Aziz is nothing if not the most stubborn, annoying person in my life at the moment, next to Beast Boy. He'll make it." She remembered how since entering the Titans and creating the position of her bodyguard, he was somehow always near her, always ready to intervene on her behalf, and in the process absorbing several attacks for her, always guarding her back.

"But, Friend Raven, do you feel…the shivers?"

Raven knew for a fact that Starfire was never cold. Even when they had been in the Siberian tundra where they first met Red Star, she had miraculously managed to ignore the subzero temperatures, wearing her normal miniskirt and top.

It was a virtue of Tamaranean physiology, which allowed her to absorb ultraviolet radiation and powered her in much the same way as the now (almost) extinct Kryptonians, fortifying her cellular structure and allowing her to create her powerful star bolts and survive the vacuum of space. Apparently they did not even have to breathe.

'So,' thought Raven, 'how is it that a race so amazingly resilient can still be so susceptible to emotion?'

Intuitively, she reached out for Starfire, holding her hand in a rare display of physical familiarity to her figurative sister. She felt the unease, and took it away, soothing her and easing her mind. Raven did not betray that somehow, she felt the same unease as Starfire. Possibly the worst thing was that she couldn't even identify exactly why. As Raven knew full well, the one thing that humans fear most is uncertainty, and the fact that she was only half-human did not change matters.

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Idimmu sat silently outside the infant's room. It had been one of the few instances where Aziz had actually done a limited kything with him; a sort of wordless, mind to mind communication in which one person, in essence, almost became another, seeing through their eyes and feeling through their senses. In such a frame of mind, the two people involved intuitively knew the meaning of what the other was telling them, disregarding such things as words or pictures.

As such, he had shown up at the hospital unannounced, acting as a makeshift guard for the infant.

Given that Aziz seeing a shatterpoint was a rare event, he was taking this seriously. If the infant was the beginning of one, he would defend the infant. Time paradoxes were not something he liked to play with. He trusted Aziz, and Sophia above all else, with his life.

Anya was inside, playing with the child and soothing it. She had a natural affinity for infants, able to soothe and calm them down when they were distressed. She was a clairsentient; able to sense and perceive the auras of beings around her. It was an ability that was both a curse and a blessing.

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Joculare twirled the syringe around his fingers, before jabbing it into the soft, yielding flesh of the infant. In the room with him were 15 dead infants, looking like they were soundly asleep. He would find the infant that had escaped, and would rend his body apart, before preparing an infusion of the blood for his backer. His backer found infant's blood to be a delicacy on par with foie grasHe covered the mouth and felt the delightful shudders of the dying body, the life slipping away.

Checking the patient records, he had found the child. One 'Baby Doe' in Room 412, right next to the nursing station. The child's life belonged to him.

Putting on the fake smile that filled children with laughter yet an undercurrent of unease, he walked out of the maternity ward, having claimed a total of sixteen lives. As far as he was concerned, it was a good start, much as a good background is to a painter.

As he left, he nodded to the nurse that came into the ward, going from unit to unit, checking on the individual children.

As he entered the elevator, he heard a muffled cry of shock, and then heard the sound of pounding footsteps, as the woman raced to alert the resident paediatrician. A contented smile crossed his face as the door closed.

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Idimmu was on the fire escape with the duty nurse, chatting and taking in the night air. It was a quiet night in the hospital, and he'd decided to strike up a conversation with the resident nurse, given there wasn't much else to do. Surprisingly, he'd found out she was a nursing student part-timing as a lingerie model, to pay her way and her brothers course through medical school, but had though of going into modelling full time once she finished her course. Her name was Izusa Hurley.

Then, a terrible screech came, as Anya screamed; "DJADJA!" Idimmu jolted at the sound of her scream, before racing to the room as fast as his legs could, while Izusa rose in alarm, a look of fright on her face.

He leapt into action, accelerating as fast as his cybernetic legs could. The door fell away before the power of his charge as though it were plywood. He saw a clown in front of Anya raise a syringe, bearing down on Anya and the infant. She was shielding it with her body, trapped in a corner of the room.

With a yell of rage, Idimmu launched himself at the clown, grappling with the clown in these close quarters. The syringe slipped, falling onto the floor. Clinching the clown, he delivered vicious knee strikes to the rib cage and abdomen, making sure to crack the bones with hammer blows from his hardened knees. He slammed his forehead against the clown's chest, winding him and sprawling him backwards.

The clown fought back, drug fuelled muscles gripping tightly at the arms that were throttling him, before the clown picked a scalpel and sliced it across his face. Idimmu was sent reeling, as he clutched his eye, the pain radiating outwards as the fluid leaked from his laceration. He screamed in pain, before he felt a powerful blow strike his head, stunning him. The clown had picked up a bedpan and was using it to bludgeon him.

Powering through the pain, he grabbed the nearest object and thrust it into the clown's face, before delivering a powerful front kick to the groin, to make space between himself and the clown. He felt the fragile organs rupture beneath the blow.

He activated the fight calculator, in preparation for dealing with the intruder, letting the pain disruptors subdue the pain radiating from the injury, blood drooling down his face from the ruined mess of his eye socket.

Raising himself up, he stared at the clown, legs awkward from the crushed organs in between, but ignorant of the pain, adrenaline suffusing muscles and giving him the strength to endure.

From his good eye, he noted the clowns' eyes following Anya as she inched towards the door, Idimmu partly shielding her, the swaddled infant crying from the noise and disturbance. Already, he could hear the foot steps of the hospital orderlies as they rushed to the room, drawn by the disturbance, while Izusa appeared at the door, trembling hands clutching a fire extinguisher.

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Joculare was not a trained fighter, but had brawled long enough to know when to attack, and when to retreat.

He was taller, at 183 cm, or six feet, while his opponent was just under five foot seven, or about 170 cm. Similarly, their builds were different, products of different lifestyles. He was rangy and tall, his muscles fuelled by exotic combinations of narcotics and steroids, while the other was lean with muscle, adhering to a trim frame that exuded physical fitness and power, screaming endurance and strength in fluid movements. The one in front of him was bionically enhanced in some way. No one had legs that hard or strong.

His opponent knew what he was doing, and frankly, Joculare did not want to fight. His ribs were cracked, the pain rising even through his mental haze, while he felt his testicles swelling with blood, the damaged tissues ruptured from the force of the blow. It came through a haze of a Bamapana cocktail with steroids, synthetic epinephrine and endomorphines and psychoactive chemicals distilled from psilocybin mushrooms, more commonly called 'magic mushrooms'. In an extended fight, in close quarters like this, with no space for him to use his acrobatics, he was very likely to lose in a fight.

He searched the probabilities, seeking a way out for himself; an escape. He had always been naturally lucky, and now he put that luck to use, as he felt for the probability strand and grabbed on to it, his actions instinctively following the smooth flow of it.

Besides being an incredible acrobat, though nowhere near Robin's level, he had the metahuman ability to turn probability to his favour. It was a primary reason why he had started murdering randomly, simply to add more chaos to the beautiful weave of luck, fate, probabilities and random chance. He saw a beauty in it, rendering the probability of life in the individuals around him as random and asynchronous as possible.

Staring hard at the bleeding man in front of him, he chose the way of escape, flipping and throwing sharpened razors at the girl and the child she held. He doubted that they would escape; spaced as widely as they were, the razors were also tipped with Bamapana and Joker toxin. The nurse ran to shield the child, screaming, while the injured man moved, headed straight for the girl.

The man raised his legs, letting several of the razors smash into them, shattering on the hardened titanium alloy, before his body shifted into the path of the other razors, which by then were already behind him. He was too late.

A split second before the razors slammed into the girl and infant, a black blur formed a protective shell around the child, resolving into a figure costumed in black, stripped to the waist, the razors slicing into his body, cutting through the flesh. A brief overpressure followed, a minor shock, as the air was displaced by the rapid movement.

Just then, Raven and Starfire appeared. Joculare knew them; the resident heroes of the city and the powerhouses of the Titans, Starfire with her strength and Raven with her telekinesis.

Setting off a smoke grenade, he back-flipped and somersaulted like a master traceur of parkour, launching himself off a wall, his legs tensed and knees bent as he threw himself forward through the emergency exit. The orderlies who had come to the aid of the nurse were in confusion. Using what valuable time he could, he threw more razors into their general direction, before he saw a telekinetic barrier form, protecting them.

Behind him, he threw more melta grenades, letting the blast's flash melt the concrete walls as their molecules heated up under the heat of the fusion reaction caused by microwave radiation agitated pyrum-petrol mix that sprayed from the grenades.

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Abruptly, Aziz's eyes popped open. In a flash of movement, he ripped the IV needle and electrodes off his body, as he rose from the bed and dashed for the emergency stairs.

Anya.

Starfire and Raven stared blankly before it registered that their formerly unconscious friends was now a blur of motion, before Starfire flew after him, barely able to keep up, as she watched him bodily slam through the six inch thick steel door before leaping down the stairs a flight at a time.

Raven followed closely, unsure of where he was headed. She could have teleported to wherever it was he was going, but with no idea as to where it was, it was best to follow him.

Aziz cursed silently. The trace amount of narcotic could have easily been metabolised by his body with no ill effect within minutes, but it had come at the same time as seeing a shatterpoint, hampering his ability to do so. A glance at the time told him it had been only a few hours. It was already nearing midnight, on a Friday.

He had felt Anya's danger; her fear. It radiated through the paternal bond that held him to her. Somehow it had reacted with him, and produced anger. But this was not the unfocused anger known as rage; this was anger compressed into a smaller space, cold, clinical and lethal.

He careened through another door, before seeing the open door, the trembling nurse wielding a fire extinguisher. He dashed for the room, just as he saw the nurse rush in. It all happened in a split second. He saw Idimmu throwing himself in front of Anya, legs extended to intercept and kick the razors out of the air; saw the razors as they followed their path to impact directly on her. The nurse was moving too slowly.

He moved in a burst of superhuman speed, before decelerating enough to cradle her, forming a shell around his body. He felt the razors slam into him, the toxin flowing into him.

Within a few seconds, he had neutralised it, his biochemistry metabolising the poison and rendering it inert, as carbon linkages and intermolecular forces reacted in the fluid medium of his blood, chlorine and fluorine structures coming apart under the biochemical reactions consciously induced by him, brute force disassembling the toxins.

The clown was fast, moving out in a cloud of smoke and throwing explosives behind him. Raven and Starfire would handle the situation outside.

He bent over Anya, as his spirit reached out to her. She whimpered slightly, breathing out a single word.

"Dad"

He felt her terror, at having touched an aura so insane and foul that she had retreated into her mind, locking herself away from the outside world. Then he felt the dead, the souls of the infants and the young nurse who had been killed in such an irreverent manner, like so much refuse… he felt them tell him their stories, as they poured their short lives into him, as he lived them until their moment of expiry.

Joculare… you will die. You will suffer for violating my daughter. You will suffer for the murders you have done. I promise you this. I will cut your life short. Ecthul' kurnda haseath el'a Karas'thy Raksa.

Slowly, he held her forehead to his chin, rocking her and whistling underneath his breath a series of tunes he had subconsciously implanted to purge her conscious mind of any taint and memory, putting her into a state of sleep. He felt the psychic damage, and he slowly dropped his barriers, letting a part of his chi dissipate into her, a tiny mote, before sealing it off as it became too dangerous for him to do so. With the flow of energy, the dead went with it, the brief stream of light flowing from an ocean of darkness and death, shrouding the heart of a galaxy.

Idimmu was worse off, as he clutched his bleeding eye and the nurse fussed over him. His pain receptors were still suppressed, but one could see the damage to the soft tissues there.

He briefly bent over him, sending his chi into Idimmu, clotting the bleeding and closing the flesh. It would not do to let the Titans bear witness to his abilities. Not too many of them. It would raise questions, and the burden was his to bear alone, and no one else's.

Talking to Idimmu, he shifted to Malay, a language from the Indonesian archipelago and the Malayan Peninsula. Most people in the U.S.A. were not even aware of Malaysia's existence, so speaking in this tongue was a fair bet to retain secrecy.

Idimmu, go to Sophia's penthouse. I will handle the infant. She'll flash clone a new eye for you. Make sure the Black Dragons take care of Anya.

Affirmative… Aziz, you will have to tell us about the infant. Sophia wishes to know. A warning as well; they are here. Achyuta has deployed one to here covertly.

They will be handled. Just bring her to Sophia. The infant will come with me.

With that, he picked up the infant and calmly walked out of the room.

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Robin wasn't sure exactly how to react when he was told by the hospital authorities that they had released an infant into the custody of the Titans. Moreover, he wasn't sure how to feel when he was told that their newest member had not only precipitated the entire event, by calmly telling the hospital administrator exactly what he was doing, but had also told the police exactly where they could shove it, in an extremely polite and non-confrontational manner. A rookie cop had put a gun to his face and had been promptly disarmed when they'd tried to stop him from taking the child away.

The hospital authorities were tentatively supportive of placing the infant in the Titans' custody, as there wasn't much they could do about it in the first place. Similarly, it made the most sense, and they were rather public about it, to avoid a repeat of the massacre orchestrated by Joculare. The junior police inspector present at the scene had agreed with the assessment, and recommended it as such. If there was a single safe place for the infant, it was at Titans tower, given the demonstrated ability of Joculare.

In the process of trying to kidnap the infant, as well as the massacre in the maternity ward, Joculare had signed his death warrant. Aziz had silently put out a directive for him to be killed, already transmitted to Sophia and her Black Dragons. While he followed a non-lethal policy as part of the Titans, and based in the U.S.A., he had resources he could use to deal permanently with certain opposition.

Right now, Robin was seated at the dining table, across from Batman, the others having retired to their rooms. Starfire was waiting in his room, as was now usual. The change in the status of their relationship had raised some eyebrows, but then again, it was none of their business, as far as he was concerned. It was his personal life, and it did not concern them in the least. Sure that they now had privacy, he took off his mask, while Batman remained with his cowl on.

"Bruce, what do you have so far?"

"Not much, but I have other business in Jump City. Specifically, Bruce Wayne has business in Jump City. I'm negotiating a deal with Creed Pharmaceuticals to buy out their 'R & D' unit. Not only that, but I am pursuing some clues that link the assassination of a Mafia godfather in Gotham to an assassin called Jaras. He's supposed to be as good, if not better than Richard Dragon or Deathstroke for that matter."

"Good luck with that." Robins' eyes visibly narrowed at the mention of Deathstroke's name. He was still an obsession, though less of one now that he had a strong relationship to counterbalance his innate obsessive drive.

"Ha, you know me Dick. I'm the 'World's Greatest Detective' after all." As he rose to exit the tower, Batman gave a final warning to his young ward; stopping and glancing backward, the following was said in a soft, low tone; "I suggest you watch out that your relationship with the alien girl does not get too intimate. Remember Dick, professionalism. Get in, have your fun, get out. And I suggest you watch your newest member as well. Something's off about him…"

Dick stood up rigidly, muscles visibly tensed. Until now, he'd been able to suppress any anger and remain civil to Batman, had even begun to warm to him again, to the man he respected above all else, his father figure. But no one talked about Starfire and their relationship that way. Slowly, memories of an aborted friendship and young love rose to the surface, before he hissed at Bruce in a rare outburst.

"Get out. Before I lose it Bruce… get the hell out of my home."

Batman looked at Robin with the dark look he favoured everyone with, before turning his back to him and walking down the staircase. Trembling with rage, Dick slowly sank back into the seat, before standing up and going back to his room. He needed her.

He needed Starfire.

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Raven lay on the sofa, cradling the sleeping child, which was swaddled in a blue cotton towel. It had been distraught at first with the change in environment, until she had started to hum a quiet tune, lilting and beautiful in its structure, a quiet, wordless tune that had reached into her subconscious.

She reached out to the child, projecting warmth and protection to it, remembering what it had been like for her as a child in Azarath, hearing her nursemaid sing to her, the closeness and protection. She summoned it all, cocooning the sleeping child in a peaceful, serene aura of safety.

She felt its roiling emotions quieting down, now that it knew safety. As she hummed, a complementing note began to rise as she turned and saw Aziz in his customary pose, sitting in a lotus position on the lounge next to the sofa, his figure visible against the faint backdrop of lights from the city, shining through the window.

It was a complex weave, a low whistle overlaying a harsh baritone note, then a tenor, adding a profound depth to her humming. As her humming slowly died down, it became a song of beauty, as he sang silently to the infant, in a language not of that universe, ethereal and soft, comforting, summoning memories of a place that all beings had to leave behind, of parents love and of family, security and laughter.

She sensed in her heart a primal ache, and felt a sudden empathy, as she heard an obvious longing in his words, as the song came to a close.

"What language is that? I've never heard that song before," she asked in a soft voice, careful not to wake the child. Even at her volume, she knew he could hear it. His senses were acute.

"It is Teza. An… uncommon language. It is a song of memories and times you might have had as a child."

In the darkness, she reached out a hand and grabbed his, just above the wrist. Slowly, she moved it into his palm, intertwining her fingers with his and she squeezed, feeling comfortable warmth, the powerful sinews, and she reached out to him with her heart, before she felt a bond she had never felt before, linking him and her. Maybe the bond had been there before; maybe it had just never been acknowledged yet.

She looked into his eyes, and saw a flicker of something, of a compassion layered on top with a frightening ruthlessness, of kindness hardened by war and strife, but a powerful kindness nonetheless, and knew intuitively that here was someone who would always be loyal. Even if she stood before the power of hell and death was at her side, he would be. Just like Robin.

So unlike any male in her life so far, he was far too serious and mature for someone of 16 years, and too much unlike Robin at times, with a quiet, contemplative nature and staggering indifference, and diametrically opposite to Beast Boy, that precious fool whom she always had to prevent herself from laughing in front of. No, he was a different species altogether, like one of the ethereal beings she had briefly encountered once as a child, when sitting beside Azars' throne.

"Aziz, please tell me about your childhood. You're so enigmatic, and you never share anything of yourself with us. We're your friends. Even I don't know what your favourite colour is, and you're practically my shadow."

Silence reigned for a full minute, before he began to talk. The timbre of his voice was even, betraying little emotion, as he started matter-of-factly.

"I had a… difficult childhood…"

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Robin looked on surreptitiously from the kitchen, as he drew a Gatorade pack from the fridge. He watched as Raven held hands with Aziz, and briefly, a spark of jealousy flared in him, then shame. It could be nothing. They were close friends, and nothing more. But as anyone like Robin, who had trained under the likes of Batman, could quite easily tell you; there are always 'if's.

When the Titans had first formed, he'd been torn between Raven and Starfire. Eventually, he had chosen Starfire. As dedicated as they both were to each other, sometimes he felt ashamed, feeling as if something was missing.

While he was Starfire's boyfriend and close friends with Raven, he couldn't deny that Raven was an attractive girl, and he did have an intimate mental bond with her, something that he shared with no one else; not even Starfire. While it was mostly dormant, it was there. Ever since he had gone to the borders of Trigon's Hell itself, for the sake of the world and the sake of a close friend he held dear.

Raven had a darkness that appealed to him, just as it did to Beast Boy. Starfire had noticed it first, the tension that existed, the sidelong looks at times from Beast Boy. Robin knew exactly how he felt, had gone through the same thing. She possessed an… inviting darkness, like the night that brought the peace of sleep; contentment.

Yet, he was afraid; ashamed. Was it nothing but the desire of lust? Didn't Starfire offer him enough; improve him? She was so loyal to him, so loving, so committed to him, and yet, he felt as if there was something lacking. The feeling; that he wanted more. Did he even deserve Starfire?

Leaving the kitchen, he returned to his study room, saw the photos of the Black Tiger scattered on the wall, the thin folder that had been all he could find so far, minimal clues pointing to something. Their new member had a hidden past, and he was determined to find out what it was, if he wasn't forthcoming with them.

Leaving the folio on the table, he opened the door connecting to his own room, and saw Starfire stir in the blankets, her eyes glowing expectantly as she looked at him in the darkness.

Hesitantly, he got under the sheets, reaching for her, feeling the warmth of her flesh as they drew closer together under the sheets, and he embraced her, falling into her as he stared into the eyes of the person who loved him even more than she loved her own family. And slowly, sleep overtook him, as both faced the other.

WWW

Beast Boy was finding it difficult to sleep, as he often seemed to these nights. Fortunately, he was saved the agony of uncertainty by actually knowing what the problem was, but that lessened the sting of the problem only by a fraction of a degree.

Everyone knew about Robin and Starfire's recent 'escalation' in their relationship, even if they did not talk about it. Beast Boy admitted to himself that he found Starfire gorgeous in physical appearance, but… that was not enough. The blithe Tamaranian may have helped Robin see the lighter side to life, but Beast Boy already knew about all that. He wanted something different, and Raven had that something.

He had, of course, as Robin had earlier, come to the inevitable argument that he only really wanted Raven for her body. It was definitely exceptional, but so was Starfire's, if not more so, and he did not feel anywhere near as much an urge in her case. In the end, decided Beast Boy, it is as the old saying goes; it is not so much what you have as how you use it.

In the same way that it is more likely that partners will find each other more attractive if their genetic code is as different as possible, Garfield found himself constantly intrigued by her nature, which was about as diametrically opposite to his as possible. It was not anything as simple as the ancient erroneous cliché of 'opposites attract'; humans, as far as physical science knows, do not generate strong magnetic fields.

There are many kinds of opposition, depending on which feature you choose to compare. For example; people say fire and water are opposites, but how is that so? If you choose to compare them in terms of temperature, there is such a thing as hot water, which becomes another classical element in any case once it evaporates, and if it is indeed opposite to fire by being cold then it becomes ice, proving the entire argument completely without base. The only sense in which fire is opposite to water is in terms of aridity, and even then it is possible to generate fire within water.

A particular feature of opposition between Raven and Beast Boy did indeed attract; one way if not both. She possessed a rapier-sharp cynicism that could devastatingly dissect Beast Boy's more jester-like humour when she chose that it should. Most people in his position would find this infuriating, but to Beast Boy it was more like a challenge.

In the same way that the mere existence of a mountain is a challenge to a mountaineer even without any provocation, the wall that Raven put up around herself whenever he tried to talk to her only made him more intrigued. He was apprehensive as to what he would find on the other side, but Garfield decided it would be worth it. So far, the only person he could truly say she had opened herself too was Starfire.

After all, it was better than staring at your dark ceiling and eternally wondering, swamped in uncertainty. And, as Raven knows all too well, uncertainty is what the human mind fears most…