His father's suit fit perfectly, as he knew it would.
All black and white, a classic tuxedo that had seen it's fair share of ballrooms, dance floors and Serengeti plains, not necessarily in that order. Smoothing down the already impeccably ironed and starched jacket, Garfield was struck by a gratefulness for the man he had barely known.
When he had turned eighteen, the Bank of Greater Gauteng had contacted the Titan on the previous instruction of his late parents. The message they passed on to him had been short and simple, delivered in Marie Logan's dulcet Swahili.
"Happy Birthday Gar, Dad and I have been keeping this surprise from you for so long now, we may have forgotten it ourselves. You're a man now, and as a man you're entitled to a piece of the people who got you this far. Today, we will be taking you to Johannesburg and opening a long overdue present. Please forgive us for hiding this from you for so long. Happy Birthday my baby boy."
After what seemed like hours of shocked and tearful numbness, in which all Garfield remembered was finding himself curled in the corner of his room on the tail end of what he assumed was a major breakdown, the name "Galtry" still lingering like poison on his lips, the Titan had booked a flight to South Africa and taken leave from the Titans, for this was something he needed to deal with alone.
There he had found, after many agitated conversations in Afrikaans, a small, yet quite upper-class bank.
The clerk had turned white when Beast Boy said he had come for the Logan account, all but sprinting to find his manager, a Boer woman with incredibly striking blue eyes, despite her advanced years.
A hurried conversation had followed in which he assured her that yes, he was in fact Garfield Mark Logan, that no, he was not dead and/or captured by Somali human traffickers, that yes, he was always colored green. She had produced a key from her breast pocket and ushered him down a flight of stairs, into a basement several times larger than the atrium above and boasting more than a dozen massive vault doors, along with thousands of various sized lock-boxes set into the floor.
She had moved to one of the great doors and inserted her diminutive key, before clearing her throat in an official manner and asking in halting English, "What was your first language?"
"Kookaburra." Beast Boy said without hesitation. "Because I was always laughing back at them."
The manager had given a terse nod, and swung open the door.
His parents had left their son with personal things, among them a few of his father's clothes, their wedding photos, and (Most importantly to Garfield) hundreds of journals written by the couple during their escapades. All of which had found their way to the emerald young man as a belated gift from people who had not known they would never see it's effect on their son, nor that all other traces of their fortune had been taken from him.
It was from the journals that the changeling found some insight into the people his parents had been, beyond the documentaries and shallow interviews they had done during their lives. From their own words he found out that his father had loved the smell of sea salt, that his mother refused to drink coffee as it made her light headed, they had written of him and how they could already see the fine man he would become, of their travels, their plans and a myriad list of things he relished in reading.
It was in these journals that Mark Logan had confided his reason for stowing the tuxedo away in the vault marked "G. Logan" along with the items that he could not have known would be the last worldly possessions his son would have to remember him by.
"I want Garfield to have my prom suit." He had written, the ink so black he could have penned it moments before. "I know it's all superstition, but that tux was with me the night I finally got to hear Marie say she loved me, hopefully my boy can use some of that luck on his big night too."
So, with his father's lucky suit fitting perfectly, Garfield breathed deeply and strode out of his room, marching resolutely to the door of a certain purple haired enchantress.
She answered before he even raised a fist to knock, but if there had been an amused quip about eagerness on his emerald lips, it died a swift death as all thoughts, intelligent or otherwise, fled from the mind of the shapeshifter to be replaced with nothing but the image of her.
Pallid skin contrasted vividly with the midnight black of her gown, the silk shimmering slightly beneath the fluorescent lights of the hallway and the lace offering chaste, yet scintillating glimpses of the skin beneath it. An emerald, glinting in the light, offered a splash of colour to the outfit that seemed only to emphasise the shadowy folds of the dress and the ashen body they clung to. Her lilac hair pinned in a loose bun atop her head, allowing wisps of hair to fall either side of her face, framing it as Starfire had said they would.
Raven, feeling the sudden and complete blankness of her secret escort's mind, mistook it for boredom and frowned ever so slightly in disappointment, the movement drawing Garfield's blazing evergreen eyes to her amethyst irises, and all at once, the strength of his lean muscles, of his hard life and rigid training, failed the super-powered young man as it became so very evident, that he was also just a love struck fool.
He fell to his knees as they buckled before the radiance of her, a whisper half noticed slipping from between gasping lips. "Jetez-moi à part, car je suis indigne…"
Raven looked around furtively, leaning down to help her team mate stand back up. "Beast Boy, stop acting so weird, if the others saw this…"
Garfield snapped from his stupor with a bleary shake of his head and stood up, laughing off the sudden outburst. "Sorry Rae, you just took me by surprise. That's… That's certainly one hell of a dress, you look amazing!"
Smiling slightly at the praise, the sorceress twirled a lazy circle in the air, levitating so that she needn't maneuver in the strappy heels Starfire had insisted she buy after passing them on the way back from their cafe lunch. As she turned, the all but transparent back of the dress threatened to put him right back down on the floor, but he maintained enough composure to remain upright and smiling as she completed her turn, shaking his head in wonder. "I was wrong, so absolutely and all encompassingly wrong. You don't look amazing, you look beautiful."
A slight blush crept across Raven's cheeks, she pushed him gently to diffuse to the tension. "You don't look half bad yourself, where did you find a tux? I thought Robin was the only one on the team who wore them?"
"It's a lucky tux." Beast Boy smirked. "I was saving it for a special occasion, and if seeing you in a dress, let alone that dress, isn't special, then I am at a loss for the state of this world."
Beast Boy held out his arm and gestured to the elevator. "Your carriage awaits my lady."
Rolling her eyes, the spellcaster slipped her arm through his as she had seen countless women do in those b-grade spanish soap operas Robin watched with Starfire when it was late in the day and there was no emergency in sight.
The elevator doors slid shut and they waited until the very last moment to unlink their arms, stepping into the garage and finding Cyborg, his holo-ring projecting a dashing suit and tie combo onto his form, already in the car, window wound down so he could shout at them. "Come ON guys! Star and Rob are already on their way and we have to pick up Sarah before we get there!"
Cyborg frowned when Beast Boy opened the door for Raven, but his anxiety to pick up his date ruled out any speculation for the moment. The door closed, the garage opened and as only the T-Car could do, they flew from Titan Island across the rapidly raising bridge.
Sarah had greeted them quickly as she stepped into the T-Car, complimenting Raven on how pretty she looked and admitting that Beast Boy could bring the A game when it suited him,but afterwards she only had eyes for Cyborg, laughing at his jokes and nodding along with his stories. Raven did not begrudge her that though, for Cyborg and his long time girlfriend found little time to spend with one another between Titan alerts, university courses, Cy's charity work and Sarah's part-time job as a bartender. The two took every opportunity to reconnect and the gala provided a welcomed middle ground between their respective worlds.
"So, Beast Boy, have you found anyone you're interested in?" Sarah glanced back at her boyfriend's best-friend.
"Ahhh, you know me, always a bridesmaid." Beast Boy chortled. "Honestly, I'm not doing any better than Raven is in the whole dating scene."
Raven, due entirely to Cyborg's erratic driving and tight swerves, landed an elbow in the changeling's ribs that elicited a startled "Oomphf" from him.
"Well, if you don't mind blind dates, there's a girl in vet school at my college that would love to meet you." Sarah told him affably, either not noticing or dismissing Cyborg's frantic head shaking. "She saw you in action against Mammoth and never really got over how cool you looked changing from a T-Rex to a rhino so fluidly."
"Oh!" Garfield squeaked, peeking at Raven from the corner of his eye. "I'm kind of... in a bad place to be going on blind dates at the moment, all this emotional distance and poor people skills y'know, sometimes I just feel like shutting myself off from the world. Not really a fun date prospect."
"Yeah, I understand, just keep it in mind okay?" The peppy blond acknowledged, smiling back at him in time to catch Raven glaring at him incredulously. "Is everything okay back here?"
"Peachy." Raven reassured her, the familiar monotone easing Sarah's concern and letting the other woman go back to telling Cyborg about her midterm being due next Wednesday despite her having to actually start the paper.
Thankfully, the Jump City Functions Hall came into view well before Raven could exploit Sarah's shift in attention to exact retribution on her covert companion.
They stepped from the T-Car to the flashing of paparazzi cameras, something that annoyed Raven and Cyborg for wholly different reasons.
So far, Cyborg had managed to keep Sarah from entering the spotlight of Jump City's gossip mill, using his holo-ring to disguise his robotic parts while they were in public, taking her to remote and discreet date locations, just generally trying to shield her from the well meaning but zealous reporters and pop journalists that thrived on information such as who one of the original Titans was involved with.
Sarah, for her part, didn't seem to mind all that much, waving in a friendly manner to the reporters and letting Cyborg steer her quickly up the carpet into the, relatively, reporter free interior of the Hall.
Raven, however, allowed a brief flash of annoyance to flicker through her, focusing on the cameras and trying not to smile as all of them flashed with dark energy, loosing their films, memory cards and tapes.
An anguished groan rippled through the crowd, but they resignedly took out notepads and pens. This was not the first Raven-fueled mass camera malfunction, and certainly none of them bemoaned her desire for privacy, but they had jobs to do damn it.
Beast Boy laughed easily and offered to comment on whatever questions they gave him, by way of apologising for their lost footage of the event, Raven huffed in annoyance but waited patiently by the entryway for him. Several tape recorders came out and what seemed to be an age later, Beast Boy concluded his questioning session and caught up with her, moving almost shoulder to shoulder through the door.
Inside was an array of people that were both familiar and foreign to the two Titans.
Bankers, attorneys, judges, high society people, aristocrats and CEOs milled all through the Hall, interspersed here and there by government reps and occasionally one of their team mates.
The Hall was a great steel and glass affair, windows above opened to admit a slight early autumn breeze and the hanging chandelier alight with the glinting luminescence it had provided for decades.
Robin was talking avidly with several businessmen, Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen key among them. Starfire wasn't by his side as they had expected, but was instead dancing with a group of children that they could only assume belonged to several of the smiling socialites that stood nearby.
Cyborg and Sarah were already mingling with the regional head of STAR Labs and a bald man that made Beast Boy feel like curling up and whining in distress.
He did not, instead an impish grin curled his lips as he nodded towards a group of what appeared to be college professors, making Raven click her tongue in annoyance, but she shrugged and drifted along with him to the scholarly gentlemen.
"Well, if it isn't the Mark Twain appreciation corner!" Garfield greeted them warmly, earning a surprised glance from his apathetic companion. "What's turning heads over here gentlemen? Is it the speed of an unladen european swallow? Or the migration habits of coconuts?"
Several of them chuckled, again surprising Raven, the changeling pressed his advantage. "This is my friend and team mate, Raven, though men as learned as yourselves would know that already! Honestly, we should be hearing your names, why don't we start with Captain Kirk's better looking younger brother over here?"
After they had exchanged pleasantries and Beast Boy continued to make references to things she barely recognized, Garfield had pulled his communicator from his jacket pocket and feigned surprise, glancing over at her. "Seems Robin wants us to meet some boring athletic types, better do it." He had said resignedly, leaving amid a cacophony of well wishes and invitations to Star Wars viewings.
"What was that?" Raven said in hushed tones once they were out of earshot. "As far as I could tell you might as well have been speaking in tongues back there, but whatever you said made them really excited."
"Well, basically everyone that commits so hard to the nerd personae that they OWN it, is going to know Monty Python." He chuckled, taking an apple from a nearby table and biting into it. "I just ran without whatever stuck."
"Amazing." She murmured. "You've managed to become some kind of nerd pied piper, an alpha geek."
"How dare you insult my people like that." Beast Boy retorted lightly. "We connect on a deeper level than you muggles, you're just jealous."
"You realize that I've read the Harry Potter books?" The sorceress said drily. "I know what a muggle is."
Beast Boy was staring past her, a line of doors marked "Conference" sparking an idea. "In, like, ten minutes, do you think you could phase through that middle door unnoticed?"
Raven glanced at it and shrugged. "Probably, but why-"
Beast Boy was already gone, mingling with the crowd once more.
Slipping into the room had been easy, leaning against the door and waiting for an opportunity to slide through was a simple game of patience, since even the most doggedly dedicated of fans would grow bored with a girl stood still, leaning against the wall.
Within the room she found a long, business table that was probably used by members of the public or visiting politicians. It was stained a dark oak and though it was large, the size didn't make the room seem smaller by comparison.
She didn't hear when he approached, only registering the familiar arms sliding around her waist. "Gotcha." The changeling announced quietly, speaking into her neck as his lips traced the curve of it, following the line of her jaw, going ever closer to her lips…
A chair shattered beside them and overhead, the light went out.
This didn't bother Beast Boy overly, his eyes glinting cheekily in the dark. "Bingo."
She slapped him lightly on the arm, turning to face the mischievous green boy, but not breaking free of his arms. "You were trying to do that!"
"Guilty as charged." Garfield grinned, the bar of light that gleamed from underneath the door illuminating his fanged smile. "But you weren't exactly Miss Pure just now."
"What if someone heard?" She whispered, finally moving back a little. "They might come looking."
"Well, I suppose the only option left to a magical, teleporting, phase-shifting girl and her shape shifting, instinctively sneaky secret date will be to come clean about our sordid relationship."
"...Okay, no need to be a jerk."
They had slipped from that room, separately of course, to mix back into the crowds of rich and influential people, only for another whispered conversation in passing to result in a quiet and brief, but passionate rendezvous in the conference room. Each time, Beast Boy swore he saw a peace of that wall Raven kept between herself and everyone else disappear.
What he did not see, was the chandelier above, already weakened by it's years of suspended vigil, drop a single, shaky, inch.
Just a little, and only a fraction each time, but it was happening, and she would smile fuller at casual remarks, frown with actual sadness when someone confessed heartbreak and best of all, laugh that small, Raven laugh that set him soaring better than any actual wings could ever achieve.
The chandelier shuddered, swaying in the breeze of open windows and popping, ever so faintly as another screw shattered.
The it came time for the dancing.
The DJ put on slow songs and each Titan took to the floor with a partner from the crowd. Starfire had picked up one of the children, a boy named Declan, and twirled with him ten feet above the dance floor. Robin had taken the hand of Oliver Queen's wife, Dinah, much to the millionaires amusement. Cyborg and Sarah came next of course, they moved without effort around one another as only those familiar with their partner in every way can do, Beast Boy took to the floor with one of the handsomer college professors, and they spoke heatedly about whether Firefly would be renewed while flowing easily through an oxford waltz, Beast Boy leading. Raven took a woman named Lois onto the floor and learned she was a reporter visiting from Metropolis, though she didn't hold that against her and even allowed her to lead.
As the song changed the other guests took to the floor and began dancing with one another and the Titans, Starfire floating gently back down to allow Declan a reprieve and give some of the adults a chance to twirl with her.
Raven paid little attention to her partners, only really focusing on them if she needed to issue a warning about hand placement or answer a direct question. In the chaos of it all, she barely noticed when a green hand slipped into her own.
"All we're missing is someone announcing us as Prom King and Queen." Beast Boy snickered, spinning her under his arm gracefully. "Then the whole night will have been just like a dream come true."
"Where did you learn to dance?" Was all Raven managed in reply, her breath coming shorter now that Beast Boy was holding her so close in plain sight.
"Rita taught me, she wanted to know that I could at least dance at my wedding some day." Beast Boy almost lost his footing when he caught her expression. "Not that I'm thinking about that!"
Relaxing somewhat, Raven spun with her confidential paramour, letting herself be lost in the moment for just a second, and picturing what it would be like, to let the dance go on forever.
Above them, the last weight bearing screw came loose.
There were several aspects of luck involved with the chandelier in those sparingly few seconds. The first being that Sarah was alone beneath the great work of crystal and iron as Cyborg was fetching her a drink, that was Bad Luck. The second was that from her vantage point on high, Starfire had seen the chandelier begin it's descent and launched incredibly fast, towards the lone girl, that was Good Luck.
Now, the third point is contentious, because as Raven opened her eyes from the embrace of a certain emerald superhero, she caught sight of the chandelier smashing into the ground where Sarah had stood mere moments ago, she saw the lingering black energy of her power twisting where screws once were and she knew in that moment what she had let happen through her carelessness. Black energy enveloped chandelier before it shattered, containing the damage and making sure no one was hit with a shard of glass or flying metal. That was Luck, in it's twisted, ugly truth.
Raven broke from the dance, as many others did in the wake of the crash, but unlike the others she did not gawk at the damage. Her dress rippled like an ink black wraith, her heels betting a fast paced retreat from the crowd, from him. She should have known he wasn't so easy to escape.
Out on the street, reporters clambered to be near her, but all she wanted was space. There was no way she could levitate in her state of mind and teleportation was even riskier. As they crowded her and option became sparse, the only voice she wished would not intervene cut through the paparazzi frenzy.
"Hey! Leave her alone guys, she needs to be alone right now." Beast Boy barked at them, moving to put his hands on her shoulders reassuringly, but lowering them when she flinched away.
"Alone." She hissed, gripping her elbows. "I need to be alone."
"Okay, okay, let's go into the alley over there." Beast Boy said, motioning to a side street that Raven lunged for, almost running to get away from the light and noise of the Hall.
Enveloped in the shadows of the alley, Raven tried her breathing exercises and repeated her words. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos" Over and over she said them until her breathing calmed and the emotions she had stupidly let run free reigned themselves in.
She sighed. "Didn't you hear me, Garfield? I need to be alone."
The changeling stirred from his crouched position beside her. "Of course I did, that's why we're in the alley, I didn't think you meant me though."
"No." Raven murmured. "I didn't mean just for a moment. I meant it for eternity. You saw what happened in there, if Kori hadn't- I almost killed Sarah!"
"You didn't though, and Star did save her." Beast Boy reasoned, holding his hands in front of him as though he was trying to soothe a wounded animal. "It wasn't your fault Rae, you didn't know."
"You're wrong." Raven deadpanned, and in that moment, Garfield watched every brick he had taken from that wall around her snap right back into place. "I've always known what the consequences are. Emotions lead to pain, either mine, or someone else's. I can't… For everyone's sake, I need to be alone."
Having calmed herself to the point of power use, Raven began to sink into the ground, her face impassive and blank as the monotone that in the moment, he hated, echoed in his ears.
"Bye, Gar."
