Chapter 32

Titans Tower, Jump City. April 25th, 2018. 2:14 AM.

Damian sat at his desk, pouring over everything he could find on Eddie Nashton. He'd been at this for the past hour, trying to prepare himself for anything Riddler could through at them, familiarizing himself with all his past schemes to see if there were a pattern to his riddles. He pushed his sunglasses up on his eyes as he scanned the words on the screen; he'd taken to wearing sunglasses as he did desk work in order to ease the strain on his eyes. Jon thought it was dumb, but it seemed like it was working.

As he looked over everything he could find, he found his mind drifting back to the false Red X he'd encountered in the library. It didn't take much to figure out she was from the League of Assassins; he figured everyone must have scattered when his mother disbanded it, but he never expected any of them to come after him… or, for that matter, where to even find him. She was obviously League, but something was different… even his personal Guard weren't that skilled. Where had he met her before…?

His train of thought was interrupted by a knock on his window. He turned to see Raven and Jon floating outside. Lord above, what are they up to now? Rolling his eyes, Damian pushed himself up to his feet and shuffled over to his window, pushing it open. He was greeted by a gust of warm morning air as Jon quickly scooped him up in his arms, a cheek-to-cheek grin across his face.

"Jonathan Samuel Kent, you put me back down right now!" Damian whispered fiercely. "I have a Kryptonite ring, and I swear, I am not afraid to use–"

"Oh calm down, grumpy gills!" Jon teased, rubbing his cheek against Damian's. "We just wanted to take you out and have a little fun before work today!" Ugh, why was he so happy? It was two in the morning, nobody is supposed to be this happy after two in the morning!

"Jon, I'm always working. You know that…" Damian groaned, rubbing his eyes. "What do you think I'm doing up this late on a night when we're not out on patrol?"

"I dunno. Videogames, I guess?" The hybrid tossed Damian over to Raven, who caught him with her magic. "Rae, does Damian like videogames?"

"I've never seen him play one, so I couldn't say," the mage replied, her hands up to maintain the speed holding Damian in the air. "Do you, Damian?"

"Never tried one, so…" the powerless Titan paused for a moment. "Hey, wait a minute. Why did you agree to this? You know I have work that needs to get done!"

"Yeah, but I also know that you're going to work yourself to death," Raven said with a half-smile. "And I don't want you doing that, because I actually like you."

"God only knows why," Damian quipped in reply, his lips curling into a smirk. "If you actually like someone like me, they oughta lock you up in Arkham. You're a psychopath."

"I like you too, what does that make me?" Jon asked, an eyebrow raised.

Damian looked over his shoulder, grinning cheekily. "An imbecile."

"Rude," Raven muttered, smacking Damian in the back of his head. "Come on, let's go out for a bit."

"Alright… but only because I like you two." Damian sighed, smiling and taking Raven's hand as they drifting out away from the Tower. "Can we try to be back by sunrise?"

Raven smiled. "I think we can make that work."

…

"Put your hands in the air, Harkness!" The sirens all around the Bank of Perez wailed as a swarm of policemen held up their guns at the entryway, where Digger Harkness stood just inside with a knife pressed to a young woman's throat.

"Ha! Yeh, like you buggers got anything you can pull on me!" the perp shouted, grinning wildly as he jerked his hostage about. "Now here's how we gonna do this: you lot drop ya pea shooters, me an' my boys in here head out without anyone gettin' any ideas about tailin' us, and the pretty lady here gets ta keep her jugulah! Ya hear me?"

"We can't let you go, Harkness! Not with all that cash," the police captain called, wrinkles forming on his weathered forehead. "Let the woman go and give yourself up, and I promise no harm will come to you!"

"Yeh, nah," Harkness called out with a wink. "Time's up, mate! We got plen'y more nice folks in here, so I'll be takin' this o–w-what the–?"

Digger looked down to see his whole arm, along with the blade in his hand, enveloped in darkness, like a shadow had stretched right over it, and pulled slowly to the side as the hostage in his arm was engulfed in the same inexplicable darkness, drifting into the air away from him and touching down to the ground behind the fleet of squad cars.

"Captain Boomerang… you have to be joking."

Harkness whipped around to see three kids inside the building behind him. He let out a grunt of agitation when he saw each one wearing a cape of sort, and two of them hovering just off the ground.

"You gotta be kiddin' me," Boomerang complained. "I skipped town outta Central City tryin' ta get away from you hero-freaks, and now yer tellin' me I gotta deal with the juniors!?"

"You know you can't take all three of us, Harkness," Raven said, her voice wishing through the air like a vapor. "Surrender now, and we won't hurt you…"

"Or better yet, try to fight back." Red X grinned as he cracked his knuckles. "I wanna have some fun with you."

"Don't listen to X here, he's got issues." Superboy smirked, one hand on Damian's shoulder. "Just put the knives and… boomerangs… down, so we can turn you in."

"Hmmm… sorry, mate," Digger replied, his irritation plain to hear in his tone. "I ain't got time for yer little play-date, I got places to be. Let's get this goin'."

Damian cocked an eyebrow as he crossed his arms. "Alright, Titans. Show this idiot how we do."

Harkness flung his switchblade straight for Damian as he reached for a boomerang on his belt. The Son of Batman caught the weapon with minimal effort, and Boomerang found his whole body covered in shadow before Raven flung him against the wall on the left side of the room, several bricks busting loose as he collapsed to the floor. As the crook slowly wobbled back to his feet amongst the debris, Jon rushed forward and shot his fist right into Harkness' gut, knocking him back into the wall a second time and leaving noticeably more damage to its surface as Boomerang fell back to the cold bank floor, completely unconscious. Red X dropped the switchblade, letting it clatter to the ground.

"Well that was lame," Damian said with a smirk. "I didn't even get to do anything."

Just as the words left his lips, a great red blur rocketed through the bank, sending papers and capes whirling about in the wind. When the air settled, there before them stood a man who looked to be about Nightwing's age, wearing a red suit with a white lightning bolt across his chest. His red hair poked out from the top of his mask, and sparks of static electricity bound to and fro around him for a moment before dying down. Damian immediately recognized him from the hospital when Tommy was born.

"Kid Flash," Red X called out, crossing his arms. "I believe this is your crook?"

The man turned to Damian with a smile. "Actually, it's just Flash now…" he replied. "But yeah, thanks for taking care of him! Woulda done it myself, but I've got other stuff going on. I'll go ahead and take him back to Central, think you could say hey to Kori for me?"

"Will do, Wally," Raven said with a smile and a nod. "It's good to see you again."

"Well thanks, Little Miss Sunshine!" Wally said grinning. "By the way, did I congratulate you two yet? 'Cuz I meant to when we were all in Blüdhaven, but I can't remember."

"Thanks, West." Damian took Raven by the hand and smiled back at the veteran Titan. "It's good to finally not hear the whole 'you're taking things too fast' routine."

"Oh please, Little D. I'm a Flash…" Wally replied with a wink as his body began to crackle with static. "To me, there's no such thing as 'too fast.'" Just as he said this, he turned into a red streak once more, whizzing his way out the door and taking Harkness along with him.

"Umm… who was that?" Jon said, a confused look on his face.

"That, Jon, was Wally West," Damian turned to Jon with a raised eyebrow. "formerly known as Kid Flash. He was a founding member of the Teen Titans, back when my brother Richard was still Robin."

"Whoa… that's awesome, man!" Jon grinned excitedly as he strolled towards his companions. "Ain't ya glad ya came out with us tonight?"

"Well, I'll admit that was… mildly entertaining," Damian mused. "But now that that's over with, we should head off to–"

"Helloooo? Testing, testing… is thing on?"

Damian froze for a moment. That voice was coming from his communicator. He whipped out the handheld com, and what he saw on the screen aroused an anger in him that nearly caused him to crush the device: on the screen was a green question mark.

"Riddler…" Damian growled into the device.

"Awwwww, the baby birdie remembers me!" Riddler taunted from the other end of the com. "Well, if you remember my name, perhaps that means you also remember my game: proving my intellectual superiority to the world, and demonstrating that no matter how intelligent your friend Batman might claim to be, I'll always, ALWAYS be one step ahead of him!"

"If you're so hellbent on proving you're smarter than Batman," Red X barked into his device, "then what are you doing on the other side of the country, in my city?"

"Ho ho! Someone's not asking the right questions! You'll never get anywhere with that mindset, my aggressively simpleton street-scrapping friend." The villain chortled heartily through the speaker. "But if you must know, I'll put it in terms you're hopefully smart enough to understand: I'm aware that Batman invested a substantial amount of time in grooming all of his past and present protégés to try and attain his level of competence, in their physical capabilities as well as their far more important mental capacities. I'm simply doing my rounds to ensure that he knows that this endeavor was a resounding failure. And that starts with you, my little friend; you're not nearly bright enough to track me down, that much is obvious! So after I utterly humiliate you for all the world to see, I'll move on to the other poor saps that Batman has tried so hard to educate. Maybe once he sees how pathetic his attempts at teaching you all have been, he'll finally come to his senses and admit that I, the Riddler, am truly the smartest man in Gotham!"

"And while you're at it, you make off with a cool 150 billion dollars' worth of gold, is that right?" Damian said through grit teeth, seething at his adversary's unbearably pompous attitude.

"Well, proving myself the intellectual pinnacle of the world is an expensive undertaking!" Riddler taunted. "It seems a fair settlement to me. Think of it as a spontaneous, non-optional crowdfunding event! And I'd like to thank aaaaall my generous benefactors for doing their part to help me achieve my dream!"

"Laugh while you can, you egotistical windbag," Damian's eyes squinted as he growled into his communicator. "Because when I find you, I'll take my time beating that smug smile off your face."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll try your best, my young friend! But as you'll see, you're wits are nothing compared to mine," the crook on the other end said. "Au revois!" With that, Damian's communicator went dead.

"… Maybe we should take a step back…" Jon said, putting his hands up as he floated towards the door.

"This still doesn't give us any answers…" Damian sighed, slipping his communicator back into his belt. "This didn't give us anything."

"Damian…" Raven gently put her hand to Damian's chest. "If you want to go home, we can do that. Just say the word."

Damian shook his head. "No… let's stay out for awhile. I wanna keep it off my mind for a little bit."

…

"This is a pretty nice place you found out here, Rae."

"I didn't find it, Jon. Kori showed it to me."

Damian sat underneath the inexplicably-placed pine tree beside the little body of water he'd decided in his mind to call "Rachel's Pond". (At first he called it Raven's Pond, but he figured that was bound to confuse people, start rumors that didn't need to be started. Using her legal name would be much more appropriate, considering that's what everyone would probably be calling her once her joining the Wayne family became public information.) Beside him sat Raven herself, who leaned her head on his shoulder as she let out a yawn, and Jonathan leaned up against the tree on the other side of him, having flown back to the Tower to retrieve his guitar. Truth be told, he was glad Raven and Jon had called him out for this; he needed the break from his work. He hadn't stopped his research for the past eight days, and he even had begun to see double as a result of staring at his confounded computer screen for so long. And if he really had to take a break, Damian was glad it was with these two; Damian felt like he didn't say it enough, but Raven and Jon really were his two best friends. Sure, they were his Best Man and fiancée, but he still felt like he should spend more time expressing his appreciation for them. Just… y'know, let them know he cared. That's why he came out with them tonight; they didn't spend enough time together as just their group.

"Man… what a year, huh?" Jon grinned down at his friends as he pushed off of the pine, dropping to the ground and resting his head in Damian's lap. "Think about last April. Where we all were. You two had just gotten together, man. How crazy is that to think about?"

"What's crazier is how long it took us to get together," Raven said with a soft smile as she nestled her head gently into Damian's neck. "Two years ago, I think, was when we first realized we liked each other…"

"Two years, three weeks, four days, and…" Damian checked his watch. 4:30 AM. "about eight and a half hours... For me, anyways. We were on the Ferris wheel…"

"I don't know how we ended up on that thing together…" Raven sighed. "Or why Garfield and Jaime kept cheering. Ferris wheels aren't that exciting." Damian couldn't not laugh at that; she had a REALLY good point.

"So wait… March 30th 2016, you guys first started liking each other…" Jon looked up at the two of them with an eyebrow cocked. "March 30th 2017, you started dating… and then March 30th 2018, you got engaged? That settles it, you have to get married on March 30th."

"I dunno…" Damian smiled, looking down contently at Raven's hand in his. "I kinda like the idea of a May wedding. Richard and Barbara got me into it."

"Oh, right… they wanted to get married next month, didn't they?" Raven lifted her head up, turning to look at Damian with sleepy eyes.

"They did… but all things considered, it was worth putting off," the Son of Batman replied. "This way, Tommy can actually be at his parents' wedding. He may not remember it when he grows up, but it'll be good to have him there."

"I agree…" Raven rubbed her eyes wearily. "Ugh, man… at this rate, I won't make it to sunrise…"

"Wait, noooooo, you can't go to sleep!" Jon picked his head up and put his guitar aside. "I can't carry both of you and my guitar back home!"

"Shhhhh, Jonno, juss…" Raven's eyelids drooped low as he sleepily pawed at Damian's chest. "Jussemme… wuh, whoa boy…"

Damian watched with a soft smile as his Raven fought back as best she could at the craving for slumber. "Come on, let's head back home. I'll carry you on foot, that sound alright?" The boy's cheeks went rosy as the sleepy witch nodded her head, leaning into his arms as he lifted her up.

"Aww, aren't you two just precious?" Jon snickered as he picked up his instrument and strapped it to his back. Raven curled in closer to Damian's chest as they started the long walk back to Titans Tower.

By the time they reached home, it was almost 6 o'clock. Just as the three heroes went to open the front door, the first beams of sunlight peered out over the river, making the flowing waters dance with a light that looked almost alive. Damian smiled at the sight, holding Raven to him just a little tighter as he and Jon watched the yellow ball of light emerge from below the horizon, illuminating the world around them. It was a new day… but they were tired. It was time to turn in. Damian pressed his lips to Raven's forehead as he turned and carried her inside.