Next Night: Dick

It felt like we were rushing all over again to make sure that Cyborg, Beastboy, and Raven got back to the tower. We don't know truly if he had seen anything and I guess we won't know until Jason has a chance to send us the code. It was his idea to send him with one of the Molar Mics. Those things are retro but they work, only problem is he turns it off at the wrong times. We need to hear what they are planning, we need to know what he knows. He's been keeping us so far in the dark to the point I worry if sending him was a good idea. What if he finds he likes that side better? He always was a rule breaker, he liked the bad side of things.

We have bigger fish to fry at the moment. We put Cyborg in charge of filling in the Flash Family, no doubt Barry is already on his way there or gathering Impulse and Wally. I can't help but wonder if this is part of their plan all along. Reverse Flash doesn't work with other people unless it helps him, and what better way to help him then to help him get rid of his greatest enemy. It could be overthinking, I just can't help but worry about my Best friend who is going to be putting himself in danger.

I am broken out of my thoughts by Kori walking into our bedroom and closing the door behind her, she joyfully exhales removing her skinny jeans and throwing them in the hamper. I try not to stare too much at her but I can't help myself. She is breathtaking. I don't say anything just staring at my girlfriend in aw as she changes into something more comfortable. As she finished she turns to me getting onto the bed next to me nuzzling her face into the nook of my neck.

"When were you going to tell me you and Raven made up?" I ask lightly, at least I try to make it light, I can't help the feeling of jealousy. How is it that everyone has been able to get her trust and friendship back except for myself.

"I wasn't. I knew you would see it when we saw her" She replies drawing small circles into my chest with her finger

"How did you do it? I mean is she just throwing trust at everyone but me?" I ask I sounded more hurt than I meant to, but there was hurt.

"No, she doesn't trust Jason right now either" She says, I scoff wondering if she is actually trying to help or if she is just rubbing it in that I am now on the same level with Jason.

"That doesn't help Kor, he cheated on her." I reply, she nods and I only know because I can feel it against my neck as she does. It is two very different situations that apparently both ended the same. She doesn't trust us and we can't fix it the way we fix everything else. I don't know how else I can win back her trust, I have apologized, tough love, been there but given space. I just don't know what else I could try.

"Dick, none of us forced ourselves into her lives. How did you get Jason to trust you?" She asks

"I just left him alone honestly, I gave him time to work through his own shit but showed I would be there for him if he needed me to be" I answer, I don't see how any of it is similar. I didn't give Jason up to anyone. I was just an asshole to him from the moment we met and then when he died realized he was actually the person I cared about the most at the time.

"That's what we did for her too. She doesn't need us to be the pushy Dick. She just needs to work on herself but know she has friends" Kori replies, I guess it makes sense a little but I don't know why. I don't get why she has to make it so hard.

"I miss my best friend" I admit Kori nods getting up and leaning on her elbow to face me, she drags a soft finger across the side of my face gracefully smiling softly at me.

"I missed her too. She told me she will never be the same person from before. Though that doesn't mean she still isn't her. I like being her friend again. I just know I had to be a the patient with her" Kori replies, since when did she get so wise?

I feel calm as she continues to move her finger onto my skin, she rubs circles into my temples and behind my ears giving me a small head massage which makes my eyelids heavy. She smells like citrus and the beach which makes me feel like home. I don't remember when I relaxed enough to fall asleep. I just know that every sound seemed to fade out into nothingness. A warm nothingness but nothingness. When I open my eyes next there is a soft twilight blue light coming through the curtains. It's not late enough for me to want to wake up yet, the sting behind my eyes tells me I could go back to sleep if I wanted. I turn over putting an arm around Kori's waist pulling her closer to me while she sleeps.

When I open my eyes again it's brighter outside. Kori is shifting through the room, probably getting ready for the day as I rub the sleep out of my eyes but don't get out of bed yet. She sees me awake and moves to sit on the bed, she smells like she just showered.

"The others will be calling us shortly to tell us if they have gotten the Flash...group? To free them, I don't think we are ready to do anything today. We barely have plan" She says, I nod yawning and scratching the back of my head.

"Even if we don't have a plan I think we will be able to figure it out, for now we just need to make sure he doesn't see anything" I say half slurring my words from my brain not being fully functional yet. I honestly don't know how we don't have a plan by now, it seems like everything we could do will in some way be screwed up. Taila did pick a good group of people to go against us, Witch Boy by himself somehow held four of us mentally captive for three days. Raven can go against him but it isn't an easy feat. Cheshire has been known to be a difficult opponent and we don't even know why she joined up with Taila. Reverse Flash? What better way to get around the Bat Family than with Super speed? Their plan with Tess? Almost perfect until she decided she wants her girlfriend back safe and doesn't want to risk dying defending them.

"You seem worried" Kori replies rubbing my shoulder

"What if Jason doesn't want to leave?" I ask, she has to know I have thought about this. She has to have maybe thought of it herself a little bit.

"I think Jason has a lot of reason to come back. We just need to trust him" She answers.

Present Day- Garfield

Rae won't go down for a nap but I need a nap too. This is the third time I have put her back in her little bed hoping she does actually go to sleep. She lays there under the covers giggling about whatever babbling she just said. Near bed time she doesn't even try to speak real words. I think she gets that laziness from being around me. I rub her back slightly hoping it will calm her enough to let her drift off to sleep but she turns over staring up at me.

"Daddy" She whispers, I smile at her

"Yeah?" I ask

"Why doesn't Mommy put me to bed anymore?" She asks, the question takes me off guard mostly because I thought she would know that Terra isn't around anymore. She doesn't even live with us anymore so I don't know how Rae thinks she will put her to bed.

"Mommy is very busy, she is saving people's lives somewhere else remember? She can't put you to bed" I lie, we have been telling her that Terra is saving prisoners lives, trying to help out the people who no one else will help. I just don't have the heart to tell her anything else.

"But we see her, so why can't she come here?" She asks, I am also surprised by her willingness to speak this close to nap time.

"Mommy can have visitors sometimes but she can't come home baby" I reply, she doesn't say anything else. She lays face up holding one of my hands with two of hers tracing the lines on my palms. I let her because sometimes this is how she falls asleep, by tracing the lines or by counting the freckles I have on my arms. The darker green shades that stand out against my medium green skin. Sometimes I wish I looked more like her, so there wasn't any future questions to her if she is mine.

"I sleepy" She mumbles, I nod letting her continue her line work until her eyes gently close. I don't leave the room or take back my hand until I hear her soft snores, they are so small it's hard to describe. Soon enough I pull my hand away moving out of the room and into the hallway as Conner is passing he smiles at me stopping in the hallway to face me.

"Finally get her down?" He asks, I nod scratching the top of my head.

"She asked about Terra." I say, it worries me because I know at some point someone is going to have to tell her where Terra really is, and how she got there. Who her real dad is. Someone is going to have to tell her that and it's going to hurt her.

"She's a smart girl, and she's growing up so fast. I think you still have time" Conner says, sometimes I look at him in shock of how much he looks like Clark.

"She is smart, and that is what worries me." I reply he nods as if he understands which I know he doesn't.

"Well hey I was supposed to tell you, Cyborg and the Gem have gotten the Flash Family on call in the office" Conner says, I nod but then stop looking back at him.

"The gem?" I ask he pauses but then nods.

"Yeah the Gem, that's what she is isn't it?" He says, I suck in a breath not wanting to start any problems with him but wanting him to know for sure we won't be letting him talk to anyone like that.

"Sure, I guess you won't mind if from now on everyone started calling you the clone right?" I ask simply, his eyes narrow and his lips press together. "Listen to me very carefully, Raven is not just the Gem, she is a person. A person who has saved our lives more times than I can count and never faltered in her steps to get away from her father. The only reason you were even told to fear her is for the same reason we could fear Clark."

"Superman is a good guy" Conner argues

"So is Raven, but that doesn't mean that neither one can turn evil if they felt like it. The world would be in trouble if they did. So how about talk to her and about her like she's a person and count your blessings that you and Clark don't get treated the way she does" I finish walking away from him, I don't bother to see if he will reply back or if he even cares about anything I said.

I finally find myself in the room mid-call. Cyborg is explaining the situation and how we know he is here but we don't know where. It feels like there are only so many places he could be that could see us without drawing attention to himself. I mean one of the only places he could probably do that is...well here. But we have censors that would have gone off if they were disrupted for even one percent of a second. There is no way.

"So all you know is that he is running back and forth to keep their base of operations going, and then back to you guys to make sure you guys don't go back to Gotham" Barry repeats, we nod to ourselves but obviously he doesn't see that.

"Yeah, well we also know that he would need to be keeping his calorie intake high is he is running back and forth, so he is probably eating a lot here" Cyborg replies, is that how they keep their speed up? Eating? I thought it was just magic or something. "You know this guy better than we do, where do you think he will be hiding himself"

"He can't come into the Tower right?" Barry asks his voice sounds kind of urgent but more so hopeful.

"No he can't. We have censors that even if they are disrupted for any length of time the whole tower would go off in alarms. He couldn't have gotten through any other way either, Conner said he can see faster than we can he would have picked it up" Cyborg replies, his answer makes me feel better even though I already knew the answer to that. It is better if the person who designed the alarms knows he can't get through them.

"It would be stupid of him to be in here anyway because, he would need to keep up his food intake and we don't have much food that he can just eat. It has to be cooked and prepared." I reply

"Cameras?" Barry asks, I pause looking around the office for any type of camera, we don't have any in here for this reason so if there is one it's not ours. Cyborg pauses telling Barry to give him a second as he uses his arm to scan for electronics, nothing is picking up or Cyborg would have alerted the rest of us.

"Nothing, not so much as a bug in here, I will do a full sweep of the Tower later" Cyborg replies, there is silence on the other line as if Barry is really thinking about this one, it can't be easy to figure out the move of someone who is working in such a different way.

"Let's look at this another way, I will send Impulse and Kid Flash out to find his trail, there are some roads that can't handle the speed force so it'll leave a trail, it'll be how we find how he is getting there so we can intercept him in the middle of his travel. Speed force energy can only last in the way he is using it every three days, so if he just got back today then Thursday will be when he is going again. " Barry replies, Cyborg smiles at this response but doesn't show it in his voice.

"Thank you so much Flash, I'll holla at you later when I finish the sweep" He replies

"Talk to you then" Barry answers as they both end the call, Cyborg turns around looking between the two of us.

"I need permission to go into your rooms" He says Raven nods

"Yeah go ahead." She monotones, I nod too but signal for him to keep it down. I just got Rae down for a nap and I don't need him waking her. He nods as he brings his scanner back out.

He begins his scan from the office, working his way around the hallway and the rooms. Raven stands besides me watching him as he does this. Neither one of us say anything as we follow behind him slowly, watching for anything to blink, usually when he finds something it blinks to us so we know where it is. It feels strange doing this type of stuff in our own place of living, though if we were smart we would do this every weekend to make sure no one is spying on us. It would save us a lot of time and trouble. I will have to bring that up with Cy a little later. When we reach my bedroom I pause him letting the door open with a hiss, I step in first seeing Rae snoring, her hand underneath her face smushing it. I smile and wave for him to walk in. Nothing beeps except the baby monitor which I had forgotten to take the other half too. God I am tired.

Cyborg gives me a thumbs up as he walks back through the door letting the door close. I decide not to go back out with them, and use this time to take a nap. My bed is on the other side of the room, most of the room I have given to Rae, it's filled with her toys and most of the closet as her clothes and shoes. I only have my dresser for my clothes which I don't mind. I am glad she has more than me, it just shows how much she is loved and I always want her to feel like that. I lay down on my bed not bothering to get under the covers, I just sleep.

Present Day- Raven

I didn't think I would ever see the day where Garfield's bedroom was clean. I was proven wrong though when we three walked in there, his sleeping girl on her bed snoring away oblivious to what is happening in the world around her, I sometimes envy her innocence but would not change anything about mine. I like knowing things and what is going on in the world. I just don't like how knowing makes me feel.

Vic and I continue looking for any kind of Bug or video camera we didn't place, so far the tower is clean, we haven't seen anything which means he may not be listening to us, he probably can see us though. Which means we may need to do better at hiding when we leave. Vic and I finish checking my room, nothing in there but this was the room I was most worried about. If they wanted to make sure I am staying away from Gotham why not have something to hear my plans in the room I hardly ever leave.

"We only have a couple days until this thing takes place, are you sure you are ready?" Vic asks, I am shocked by his question but I don't show it.

"What do you mean? Witch Boy is not too much stronger than me." I reply, Vic shakes his head.

"That isn't what I meant. If we are doing this thing, the chances of you running into Jason is so high. Are you sure you are ready for that?" He asks, I press my lips together softly not sure how I really feel about that. I haven't really thought about it much.

"I really don't know, I haven't thought about it much" I admit, the mention of his name no longer twists a hole into my stomach. I think that is mainly because I know he didn't cheat on me because he wanted to, it was because someone used a Meta skill on him which he couldn't fight against. That doesn't mean the words he said to me don't still replay in my mind pointlessly.

"Have you thought about the situation at all?" He asks, I get the question. Am I going to forgive him after all of this? To be honest I really don't know.

"I have but I never made a choice. He may have not gotten to choose cheating on me but his words were all him, and those for some reason hurt more" I answer, Vic nods as he continues his hunt for unknown electronics.

Doing this will probably take an hour at least, the tower isn't small by no means, it used to take the whole day on Sunday's to clean it when I loved here before, trying to get this place looking like five teenagers didn't live here. Even then, even when cleaning it every Sunday by the next Sunday it would still take all day. Luckily we only had someone attack the city a couple times, which means most Sunday's we didn't get interrupted.

"Well that makes sense, he didn't get tricked into saying those things to you, he said them to try to convince himself why he did it" Vic says, this confuses me and I don't say anything which I guess tells him that it confused me.

"Think about it like this, he was confused on why it happened to. He didn't know why he slept with her and didn't know why he felt like he couldn't fight any of it. So he needed something that made sense, and so he brought up something he shouldn't have in order to tell himself that was the reason. He also needed to hurt you with his words to convince himself he is an asshole and cheating on you wasn't that far off from something he would do" Vic explains, I guess it makes sense but it also doesn't. Why wouldn't he just talk to me? I mean I would have been hurt but we could have figured out he was used by a meta human. It didn't have to turn into this clusterfuck of a situation.

"Why couldn't he just talk to me?" I ask

"Jason doesn't know how to communicate like everyone else, you should know that." he replies, I guess I should have, Jason really isn't someone who knows how to talk about things that confuse him, sometimes he just works himself up and then doesn't talk to anyone to bring him back down. I guess this was a little different, he just decided to make himself an asshole to make sense of what he did.

"I guess." Is all I say as we continue on our search, we haven't found anything. Not that means we are in the clear, Vic still needs to go into the existing security system and make sure no one has decided to piggy back off of it.

As I said, it took about an hour to finish sweeping the Tower, so we have made sure there are no cameras not that he would have been able to put any in here unless he waited until alarms were going off already. Though if he did that I would have sensed someone else in the building since I don't go with them on their missions. So now it's just about making sure he can't hear our plans on getting him taken off the playing field. Hopefully we do get him taken off too, because there is only so many of us that can battle one of the fastest men alive.