[1]

Raven knew it was going to be uncomfortable at first. An inescapable tension whenever they were in the same room, particularly without the buffer of their teammates. And as much as she told herself not to, her curiosity sensed his resentment each time she saw him, thick and searing like hot wax to the flesh, and Raven didn't expect Garfield to be one to hold such a grudge.

The last few days of him finding excuses to leave the room, avoidant eye contact, one-word answers, had been irritating, to say the least. And bizarre. Raven never realized how cold and indifferent he could be, and she hated being on the receiving end of it. Especially when her anxieties craved his friendliness.

After drinking the last of the stolen riptide rush, Raven frowned at the empty Gatorade bottle in her hand. With each day, she grew more bothered that Gar wouldn't let things go back to normal, and that their friendship had genuinely taken a turn for the worse. She kept thinking of Roy's cautionary tale, fearing his dark words of things being weird until someone would have to go. But she'd only briefly entertain these concerns, shaking them off with a stubborn hope that Garfield would get over this. He had to.

Raven finished brushing out the long tangles from her drying hair when her eyes fell on the bright red and white DVD case that sat lonesome on her desk. The cover showed the portrait of a dubious-looking, blood-splattered samurai, whose cynical glare mocked Raven from across the room.

A couple days before, she accompanied Karen on a thrifting mission downtown, where she not only scored a pair of vintage combat boots in all their chunky-heeled glory, but she also found this old Japanese adaptation of Macbeth. But whatever misled and foolhardy confidence that possessed her to buy it in the first place has since fully abandoned her. At this point, Gar seemed unlikely to hold up a conversation with her, let alone turn off the lights and watch an old movie.

Raven rolled her eyes at her own reflection before noting the time on her phone. Even though she saw she was running late for the meeting, her phone's wallpaper, the same one she looks at countless times a day, kept her attention.

Though it was just one of the hundreds of group selfies the Titans had taken over the years, Raven chose this mess of a picture as her background because of its charming dysfunction. Koriand' r had thought it would be cute to kiss Dick on his cheek, but then so did Garfield, so as Vic angled the phone above them all, Gar shifted into a chimp before licking Dick's face. Sweet Kori took Dick's groaning as a personal offense and became visibly outraged. Vic looked annoyed to find a strange and hairy monkey foot on his shoulder while Raven smirked at the whole ordeal, looking into the lens like it was the most routine part of her day.

Faintly smiling, Raven tossed her phone onto her bed before wrapping herself in her duster sweater. After drawing a portal to the corridor leading to the Titan's OP room, she heard Karen calling from down the hall.

"Hey, Rave, how's it going?"

Raven waited for her to catch up. "Good, tired," she held up her hands that still trembled from exhaustion, "my arms will probably be useless tomorrow, but I guess that's a good thing."

"Ugh, I hate that," Karen groaned, "go eat some spaghetti after this and you won't shake as much."

"Can't argue with that," Raven said as they crossed into the OP's room.

"Huh, pasta sounds pretty damn good, actually," Karen said and held her hand to her tummy. "So, you seem fine? Kori said you tossed her at a window."

"Did she also tell you she punched me in the throat just seconds before?"

"Ha!" Roy snorted, spinning around in his chair to face them. He guarded a stack of pizza slices on a plate in his lap, taking a bite from several at once.

"Jesus, Roy," Karen grimaced at his overindulgence, "good thing no one else wanted any."

Roy just made a face with his cheeks stuffed to the brim with food, before winking at Raven. The cambion rolled her eyes from him to the empty doorway, anticipating her teammates to file in.

"So, how was it?" Raven asked, returning her attention to the monitors.

Across the center-screen was the STAR Labs ID badge man who had reached out to the Titan's for help. The ledger for Dr. Edward Meyers presented a picture of a young man, early thirties, maybe, who wore his undersized eyeglasses crookedly across his nose. Raven discerned a neurotic aversion when she studied his photograph, his beady eyes looking off slightly to the side as if he was afraid of the camera lens.

"Uneventful," Roy shrugged, sounding disappointed.

"You weren't gone very long," Raven noted, reaching over the desk to control the wireless mouse. When she minimized Dr. Meyer's ID card, she saw a progress indicator in the screen center, which told her Cyborg's log was still downloading. "I take it there wasn't much luck with the staff?"

"Besides the busted latch door into the facility, it was clean," Karen told her,

Down the hall, she heard the chime of the elevator cab, followed by laughing. She hated how her pulse jumped at the sound of Garfield's voice.

"Though there was apparently a strange smell...like musty chemicals, Gar said. Kept making him sneeze."

And as if on cue, when he, Kori, and Vic entered the Op's room, Garfield fell into a minor sneezing attack.

"Gesundheit," Kori offered excitedly after Gar's third sneeze, stoked to use the phrase correctly. Garfield chucked thanks before Vic clapped his hands together, his apparent way of commencing the debrief.

Roy wordlessly stood from the chair to for Vic, and once he swiveled in front of the primary monitor, he entered a code that instantly finished the log download.

"Lay it down for us, Tinman," Roy muffled through cheesy-stuffed cheeks.

"We got no evidence, no staff, and no idea who the thieves were or where they went."

"Nothing?" Kori asked incredulously after an awkward pause.

"Before they left," Vic started, typing away furiously. He pulled up footage from his log to show Kori and Raven the dimly lit corridors. When they reached the central lab, the monitors were dark save a few randomly blinking lights, but wouldn't turn on no matter what Vic or Karen did to the towers. "They damaged the main system's CPU's, yet the defense sensors were fully intact. No backup data, just boobie traps."

"What of the security cameras?" Kori asked.

"Since the sensors were still online, I was able to retrieve those files manually. But they're still downloading."

Garfield sneezed into his arm-crook again, and Raven silently handed him the tissue box from the desk, which he took without hesitation. To her surprise, he offered a quiet thanks, though his eyes were still avoidant of her.

"Hopefully, that footage will provide answers, other than that," Karen said, "They broke in, took the staff, tore up the motherboard which destroyed the facilities progressed data, and then rigged the place for the next lucky souls to come through."

"Who was there during the break-in?" Raven asked, and Victor pulled up Dr. Meyer's photo, "Security personnel? Technicians? Custodians? Anyone?"

"Given how small the facility was," said Karen, "I'm not surprised there was only one guard on patrol that night, but he apparently had driven into town for his break. The security systems were forwarded to his phone, but the staff was gone by the time he got back to the site."

"One person, to guard a kryptonite weapon? One that could be used to weaken Superman?" Kori asked, "One person?"

"Seems sketchy," Gar said.

"Very strange, indeed."

"Inside job, then, right?" Roy suggested, and the others quickly agreed.

"Who's the nerd that called us?"

Karen read from her phone. "Dr. Edward Meyers, the junior astrochemist on site. He is currently staffed by a Dr. Charles Costello, who, according to Facebook, is currently in Barbados with his wife for their thirtieth wedding anniversary."

"How sweet," Kori smiled when Karen showed her the mentioned scientist's picture with his wife, posted the evening before.

"Eddie called us to track the thieves down to save face for letting the staff be stolen on his watch."

"Well, the thieves must have known where the staff was, since there was little evidence of interior damage to the facility, implying a quick retrieval and exit."

"Shake the STAR Labs tree to see what falls out?"

When Vic fell quiet, Raven could see him trying to figure what Robin might do.

"I think that is a good idea, Roy," Kori said.

"Yeah, I'll try to update the Doc without spooking him," Vic said, and the others started turning towards the hallway. "We'll regroup tomorrow."

"Sounds good, Cy," Garfield patted Vic on the shoulder, "I need to clear the stench from my sinuses before I lose my mind."

"Yeah, you do that, B," Vic laughed.

"I'm gonna make some pasta," Karen nudged Raven, "want some?"

"I'll catch up," Raven told her, her eyes following Garfield.

Alone in the room with Vic, Raven watched him navigate different screens until he was able to pull them all up in small squares simultaneously.

"A bigger picture?" Raven with a small smile in her voice, echoing Robin's words.

"We gotta be missing something. It feels off." He told her as he ran his metal paw along his jawline. "He's always had a knack for those small details."

"Have you talked to him?" Raven asked as Vic eyed her questioningly. "Dick?"

"Nah, you?" Raven shook her head. "Star?"

"I don't think so," she shrugged.

After a lengthy sigh, Vic silently pulled up Dick's contact and activated the communicator in his arm, automatically projecting it onto the front screen. The call quickly led them to his voicemail before Vic hung up.

"East Coast time. It's gotta be late."

"Right," Raven agreed.

"How are you doin, Rae?" Vic asked, the abrupt change of demeanor throwing her off. "I don't like it when you're MIA. We need you out there."

"I know," she began a mellow pace, "I'm just trying to be careful."

"Have you had any luck with the research? The mind link thing, or whatever?"

"With the theory itself, yes, but not who's behind it or how it's reaching me. I will, though, don't worry."

"I'm not. I know you know what you're doing," Vic said, and Raven watched a small light glimmer in his eye when he looked up at her cautiously, "with most things."

During a heavy pause, Raven's irksome eyebrows wrinkled her forehead.

"You're the one who told me not to drag it out."

"Yeah," Vic chuckled, "if you weren't into him."

When Raven didn't say anything, Vic looked up at her in time to catch her hesitation. He pursed his lips smugly before turning his attention back to the monitor. Raven's eyes followed and watched as he began sifting through his different log screens again. Figuring she'd leave him to it, Raven turned to go, but a specific image gave her pause.

Raven!

"Wait," she mumbled, pointing vaguely at the monitor, "go back a couple, that one, what is that?"

"The cabin? That was the entrance."

"To the lab?"

"Yeah, it's an old hunting shed. Why what's up?"

Raven!

"Do you have any other pictures?" She asked, and Vic didn't like the rising sharpness in her voice.

"Uh, no, I mean it was dark, so that's the best we got," he told her as he played his log over, "It wasn't anything special, small room, bloodstained bench, one, maybe two stools...the latch was beneath the table there."

Rae-

Her eyes raked over the screen as she desperately tried to match the dark, blurry images to those in her mind. Dick's voice was a distant, distorted echo between her ears.

"You good?"

"Yeah, just seems familiar for some reason."

Vic looked at her, suspiciously, "Familiar, how?"

"I, uh, not sure yet. Where is this?"

"Two hours north," Vic watched the apprehensive consideration between her eyes as she stared at the looping video of Cy entering the cabin. "What am I missing?"

With a quiet ting, the monitors alerted them the security footage had completed its download, and Vic quickly swapped screens to open the files. As they began thumbing through reels, Raven's stomach grumbled loudly.

"This could take a minute," Vic told her, "go eat. I'll grab you."

"Yeah, okay," Raven sighed and turned to the door. "Want anything?"

"I'm set, thanks."

Raven nodded before leaving him.

[2]

After drawing a portal to her hallway, Raven was confused and privately excited to find Garfield lurking near her bedroom door. With his eyes fixed on the ground, he leaned against the wall with a bowed head, as if he talked himself in and out of knocking.

Even though she spoke cautiously, her sudden presence alarmed him.

"Gar?"

"Jesus," he whispered, his hand now clutching his chest.

"Can I help you?" she asked, suppressing the small laugh and trying to ignore the way his sleeves hugged his biceps.

"Uh," Garfield resumed an uncomfortable demeanor, scratching the back of his neck, "I was gonna ask to borrow, or wanted to see if you had any of those, like, diffuser oils? I was gonna use the steam room to help with the headache." Raven hung on his words, as this was the most he's spoken to her all week. "Karen said you bought some in town the other day, so..."

"Yeah, sure," Raven said as she crossed the hallway and into her room. As he leaned against her door frame, Garfield watched her sift through a drawer until she pulled out a small vial of lavender-sage essential oil. With a tight-lipped grin, he nodded when she handed it to him.

"What's wrong?" Raven asked as a strange look dampened his face.

"Nothing, uh," he quickly paused to smell it, "do you have any others? Different scent, maybe?"

Having thought she was being generous with her favorite oil, Raven only shrugged, "I uh, I can look. That's the one I usually get."

"Yeah, no worries," he spoke quietly, and Raven's gaze fell to the small flask in his hand. He thanked her as he shook the small bottles between his fingers, but still lingered in her doorway.

"Is there something else?" She raised a cautious eyebrow.

"Are you okay, or…?"

Raven exhaled sharply into a laugh. "I wish everyone would stop asking me."

"Yeah, alright, my bad," He turned to the hallway, and she quickly reached out to him.

"No, wait, I didn't mean," Raven laughed at herself, relieved that he swiveled back to face her. "Sorry. Yes, I'm okay."

"I heard about earlier, so just checking."

"What kind of deal did she make of it? She jabbed my windpipe. I think it's fair to retaliate." Raven quickly smiled when a small laugh escaped him.

"Well, when you sit out of missions–"

"I know."

"–just want to make sure you're good."

Raven assured him with a nod, her lilac eyes darting around the awkwardness of the moment.

"Cool," he hesitated longer before holding up the oil, "well, thanks again."

"Sure," she said softly and followed him out of her room.

"Raven!" Karen peeked around her head into the hallway from the kitchen, "Rae– oh, hey guys," she smirked as she noted them leaving Raven's room together. "Wait, Gar! You want some spaghetti? I made a veggie sauce for you."

"Set some aside for me?" Garfield called over his shoulder as he walked further down the corridor.

Raven hadn't noticed her face glowing until she looked over and saw Karen's complacent mug.

"What?" Raven grumbled with narrowed eyes.

Karen's smirk grew wider before she spun herself from the doorway. "Oh, nothing."

Though she bitterly shook her head, Raven's smile persisted as she followed Karen into the kitchen.