Chapter Text
Security alert…Tower breach…
Security alert…Tower breach…
Security —
A hand slaps the security override button on the wall harshly. The blaring alarms and klaxons turn off, though the halls remain bathed in the red light of the intruder alarm. Pressing a finger to the comm in her ear and running down the corridor, she asks, “Cyborg?”
“Got a blip in the command center,” Vic’s voice comes over the radio. “One unidentified individual, cameras are out in the room. Seems to be alone.”
Donna Troy rounds a corner and nearly slams into Beast Boy, struggling to get his uniform shirt over his head as he runs.
“Shit, sorry,” he yelps, but runs after her, shifting into a polar bear. “Where’s the fire?”
“Command center. Single intruder. Cyborg can’t get an ID yet,” she replies curtly.
“Excellent,” the bear snorts. “Just how I like to be woken up at two in the morning.”
“Intruder is unarmed,” comes the Flash’s voice over the radio. “Cyborg was correct. One bogey.”
“Walls, that’s military slang,” Gar says, his tone making it clear that he’s rolling his eyes. “Is the intruder a UFO?”
“Haven’t engaged yet. Remains to be seen if the intruder can fly.”
Within seconds Gar and Donna meet up with the rest of the Titans in the command center to find a lone individual sitting in the middle of the room. They’re wearing a sleek combat suit and a helmet, but makes no move even when nine other Titans enter the room in varying degrees of battle readiness.
“I’m not here to attack, Titans, so you can stop pointing deadly weapons at me,” the person says. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
None of the Titans relax at the intruder’s words. Arsenal actually draws his bow back a little further in response.
“Care to explain what you’re doing in a facility equipped with the best surveillance tech that money can buy, then?” Cyborg asks over the hum of his sonic cannon.
“I was sent to correct an error in the timeline. I’m here to help you stop a tragedy that will befall the Titans if not for my interference,” the stranger says. “It’s in both of our best interests to work together, if you wish to avoid that fate.”
Donna turns to Raven, raising a brow in question. She turns to the intruder and stares at him for a few seconds, before nodding and saying, “truth. They only wish to prevent harm, not cause it.”
Her statement makes the rest of the team relax somewhat, but some remain tense even as Donna approaches the stranger. “I’m Donna Troy, the leader of the Titans.”
“I know who you are, Donna,” the stranger says quietly. “I know who all of you are.”
“Are you from the future?” the Flash asks. “You said that you were here to prevent the fate of the Titans.”
The man nods. “Yes. I am Corax,” he says. “I am from a future that is best avoided.”
“You were our ally in the future?” Nightwing asks, putting away his batons.
Again Corax nods. “I knew you all very well in my time. I was a Titan too. But after the incident I am here to prevent, I am the only survivor of the team. Everyone else was killed.”
Gar narrows his eyes. “How? And what exactly are you here to prevent?”
“Before the Necrostar attacked, before Beast Boy had become a Star Conqueror, the Lords of Chaos had given the Helm of Chaos to Doctor Hate to further their goals,” Corax explains. Gar stiffens at the mention of the battle that cost him his sanity and nearly his life, but stays quiet. “But when Raven rejoined with her other half, they lost their weapon. Now they’ve come to collect their dues. They want to turn Raven into an agent of Chaos, which would grant them access to even more power.” (1)
Raven frowns. “First Neron, then Amanda Waller, then Trigon, and now the Lords of Chaos. Why am I worth the effort?”
“Because you are one of the most powerful beings in the world if you let go of your inhibitions,” Corax answers. “They want your power for themselves. In my time, the Lords of Chaos succeeded in turning you into their willful agent. The Titans tried to stop it, but an unfortunate sequence of events prevented them from securing their victory.” He turns to stare out the window. “All of them, including Raven, were killed in the ensuing battle save for me. For a long time I didn’t know why I was spared, but I’m hoping that being here will help me make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Nightwing steps forward. “When are the Lords of Chaos coming for her?” he asks.
Corax tilts his head to the side. “What is today’s date?”
“March 5th,” Donna answers, and Corax shakes his head.
“The first attack is in two days. I can’t tell you much more than I already have, if you want to secure your fate.”
Dick purses his lips. “Right. Well, there are spare rooms — ”
“On the sixth floor. I know,” Corax says simply. Donna and Dick exchange a look of concern, but she steps up to Corax regardless.
“Then I’ll show you to one and help you get settled.” The two leave the room without saying another word, and Dick turns to the other Titans.
“I don’t like him,” Gar says immediately. “He’s hiding something, I can tell.”
“He was telling the truth, but he was also not telling the whole truth,” Raven adds. “A necessity to ensure the stability of time, I suppose.”
Wally shakes his head. “He’s got no connection to the Speed Force, so he didn’t travel back in time because of that.”
“Magic?” Tempest suggests.
“Could be,” Dick says. “But I’m not sure that how he got here is relevant to what he’s here for.”
“How did he even know us?” Koriand’r asks. “If all of us are dead in his time and the first attack is in a few days, then when were we able to add him to the roster?”
Wally leans back in his chair, arms crossed. “Not every timeline is the same,” he says. “The events might stay the same, but the people involved can change. It’s possible that in his time, we did add another member before everything went wrong.”
Roy frowns. “He must still be someone that we know,” he argues. “He’s using a voice modulator with that helmet. Not once did he say how he met us even though we clearly don’t know who he is.”
“Let me and Donna worry about that,” Dick sighs, rubbing his face. “The rest of you…just be ready, I guess. Maybe Corax can tell us more about what to expect from the first attack.”
“Roy is correct,” Raven adds. “There is something familiar about Corax. I am not able to pinpoint why or how, though.”
Gar turns to Raven, a concerned look on his face. “How are you holding up with the whole Lords of Chaos thing?”
She sighs. “It is just another part of my existence that I must deal with. As my powers grow, so does the attention that I garner. They are just another powerful group of individuals who wish to use me for their own ends.”
“We won’t let that happen to you,” Gar says firmly, the others nodding their agreement. “I won’t let that happen to you.”
Raven gives him a grateful yet tired smile. “Something tells me that we might not have a choice in the matter.”
“So, why you?” Gar asks a few hours later when the team is eating breakfast with their new guest. “What makes you so special that you were able to travel back in time?”
“In truth, I don’t know who my benefactors are,” Corax admits, the space in front of him empty even as the rest of the Titans have a cup of coffee or bowl of cereal in front of them. “I was told that my timeline is flawed, that it shouldn’t exist because of a flaw in events. They didn’t tell me how I was going to be sent back in time, nor did they give me any specific instructions on how to avoid my timeline from coming true. I guess I have to rely on my own experience to prevent it from happening.”
“Don’t you have a family or something back home?” Roy asks in between bites of cereal. “Won’t changing your future cause you to stop existing?”
Corax shrugs. “I don’t know what will happen to me, should I succeed in preventing the future I came from. As for family…my wife was killed when the Lords of Chaos took over Raven. She destroyed a large portion of the city before she was stopped.”
Gar tenses. “Hey, that’s not Raven’s fault. Don’t blame her for what the Lords of Chaos made her do.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Corax says simply. “But my only family was my wife. There is nothing left for me in my time. All that I know is gone.”
“Oh, so like a lost Lenore kind of thing,” Roy says, nodding in understanding. “We’ve all lost something, but I can’t say any of us have lost a wife or husband.”
Corax goes very still at the name, something the other Titans don’t fail to notice. Roy quickly tries to apologize.
“Oh, uh, was her name Lenore? I’m sorry, Cor, I didn’t know — ”
“That’s not her name. It just reminded me of something about her,” Corax says. “She loved books. Would practically devour any literature she found.”
“Sounds like you and your ancient tomes,” Gar says to Raven, who rolls her eyes at him but smiles anyway.
“What can you tell us about the first attack?” Donna asks, leaning on the countertop across from Corax. “Anything we should know or do beforehand?”
Corax pauses, and looks around at the other Titans.
“Beast Boy was injured in the first attack, allowing the Lords of Chaos to take Raven away to places unknown using his life as leverage. When she returned, she had been corrupted by their magic. The Titans mobilized to fight her, but she easily dispatched them all.”
“Well, you have one of those contingency plan things for if Raven loses herself, right?” Gar asks, pointing to Nightwing with the spoon in his hand. “I don’t know if Corax here had those things in his world, but you definitely have one for her.”
Dick winces. “Ah, well, you’re her contingency plan. There’s not a lot of things that can keep Raven down; we saw that when the Spectre tried to fight the Dark-Winged Queen. You’ve been pretty good at talking her down without too much of a problem, so it’s you.”
“That won’t be enough, if we go by what happened in Corax’s time,” Garth points out. “If all of us died, then that means he wasn’t successful in talking her down.”
“Is there no other plan you have?” Kori asks skeptically. “Surely you have more than just ‘Gar annoys Raven to death.’”
“I do, but it’s not something that I wanted to default to right away,” Dick says. “That method is a little more…permanent.”
Gar’s face immediately hardens at his implication, the room suddenly filling with tension as Gar scowls at Dick. “Explain.”
For his credit, Dick meets Gar’s intense gaze head-on without fear or hesitation. “Raven is still half-demon, and all demons have the same weaknesses. Pure iron exorcises demons from mortal bodies, for example. I had something made of pure iron sanctified for this very purpose. Runes carved into it suppress her powers to the point of uselessness.”
Gar’s scowl deepens. “Spit it out, Grayson. What is it.”
Dick at least has the decency to look regretful when he says, “it’s a dagger.”
Raven stiffens as Gar’s tumultuous emotions wash over her. The calm, calculated way Gar puts down his spoon on the counter with a barely audible clink belies his fury. He leans in towards Dick.
“You. Made a knife. Out of pure iron. To permanently kill Raven?” he whispers.
“Yes.”
Gar’s eyes narrow. “That has got to be the stupidest, dumbest, most batshit insane, unnecessarily brutal, zero to one hundred, irreversible contingency plan you have ever fucking had, Grayson.”
The other Titans minus Raven and Corax watch the exchange with confused and bewildered expressions.
Gar rises to his feet, clenched fists shaking in anger. “Your backup plan for if Raven gets possessed is to default to me. And if that doesn’t work, instead of, oh, I don’t know, focusing on containment, you just go straight to killing her?”
“Uh…what’s going on?” Roy asks Wally, who just shakes his head, equally as lost as the others, merely continuing to wash the dishes.
Dick blinks wordlessly, then nods, seemingly content to let Gar work out his anger.
“Are you fucking insane?” he snarls, claws unsheathing without him noticing. “What the hell possessed you to jump straight from “talk her down” to “stab her and irreversibly tear her soul apart?’”
“I have my reasons — ” Dick starts, but Gar interrupts him.
“Don’t you fucking start with the holier than thou ‘if this person turns evil’ doctrine!” Gar shouts, pupils slitted and irises almost glowing in anger, pointing in Dick’s direction accusingly. “The Titans have always believed that allies who turn to the dark side have the chance to redeem themselves. Terra. Jericho. Cyborg. Superboy. Any of those names ring a bell? They can’t be redeemed if you kill them first! What if someone got their hands on that dagger, huh? What’s your continency plan for that? What the hell made you think “my contingency plan for if something goes wrong is to fucking kill Raven?”
Gar steps toward Dick, for what, the others can only guess. Corax nearly stands up to restrain Gar before a hand reaches out and grabs Gar by the wrist. He looks down to find Raven looking at him with an expression that clearly says ‘don’t do something you’ll regret.’ His eyes return to normal as she eases his anger with her empathic powers, and once Gar has calmed down, Raven speaks.
“I commissioned it. I asked Dick to make the blade.”
At her words, Gar completely deflates, shoulders slumping as the fury vacates his body entirely, collapsing onto the floor and sighing in defeat.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” Vic tries to joke in an attempt to relieve the tension in the room.
“Alright, is someone going to explain what the hell just happened and why Gar went ballistic over a knife?” Roy asks, gesturing between Gar and Dick.
“Despite my demonic nature, consecrated artifacts do not harm me because I am still half human,” Raven explains, gently running her fingers through Gar’s hair. “However, pure iron still works. In bodies possessed by the spirits of demons, the presence of iron can exorcise the spirit from the body. Quite violently, I must add. If I, a half-demon, were to be exorcised with pure iron, it would tear my soul apart and destroy it. I would cease to exist.”
“I used it in my future to stop Chaos Raven’s path of destruction,” Corax says, nodding. “It’s entirely mystical in nature, and I won’t pretend to know what exactly it does or where it came from, but it was Dick’s last line of defense.”
Dick narrows his eyes at Corax. “You used it…?” he whispers.
“‘Last line of defense’ being a permanent, irreversible solution. Sure, whatever,” Gar says bitterly. Dick opens his mouth, presumably to defend his thought process, but is interrupted by a voice booming from the radio intercoms.
“Watchtower to the Titans, we are picking up reports of a disturbance near the downtown S.T.A.R. Labs facility,” Oracle reports. “Seems to be mystical in nature, but reports are inconclusive. Blüdhaven PD are securing a perimeter around the area, but they’ve been told not to engage until you arrive.”
“We’ll handle this later,” Gar says to Dick, who merely shrugs.
“Corax? Anything you wish to tell us?” Kori asks, ignoring the drama fest next to her as she places her empty cup in the sink. Wally shoots her a conspicuous glare of annoyance, but she pretends not to notice.
“Odd. It’s early. That’s the first encounter,” Corax says as he stands up, looking around at all the assembled Titans. “Beast Boy, Raven. You remember Headcase, right?”
Both Titans nod in familiarity at the name.
“Um…” Wally starts, “who is — ”
“Barney Venton. Young telekinetic. A very powerful one, at that,” Corax says. “He absorbs the knowledge of those he touches, but he made a deal with the Lords of Chaos to gain more power and to take his revenge on Raven, who defeated him in almost every encounter with the Titans.” (2)
“What else do we need to know?” Dick asks, attaching his domino mask to his face.
“The Lords of Chaos were able to get what they wanted because they had used Beast Boy as a bargaining chip against Raven,” Corax adds, securing his gauntlets. “You can’t let him be captured, either by Headcase or the creatures that he commands.”
Donna raises an eyebrow. “What creatures?”
“You’ll see when we arrive,” Corax says cryptically as Cyborg opens a Boom Tube near the facility. Nightwing is the first to cross over, and after everyone else passes through, the portal closes with a bang that echoes through the streets even as some civilians run past the group in a panic.
Roy turns and grabs a man wearing a lab coat by the upper arm when he approaches the Titans. “Where’s the threat?” he asks, and though the man is clearly terrified, he points down the street.
“Over near the S.T.A.R. Labs building. Most escaped and I left through the back door, but I think he’s holding some of the scientists in there hostage.”
Nodding in appreciation, Roy lets the man go. “The BPD has a perimeter set up further down the street. You’ll be safe there.” The man nods in understanding before he continues running.
“Okay, Cyborg, Raven, you’re on evacuation of the east wing. Get anyone you see out of the area and investigate the lab building for any hostages,” Donna orders. “Flash, evacuate the west wing and take Beast Boy with you. Don’t let him out of your sight, but to everyone else, don’t get caught either. Any one of us could be used as leverage. Rest of the team, on me. We’ll find Headcase and his…monsters.”
The team snaps into action immediately, but Corax stops Gar from immediately following after the Flash when he puts a hand on Gar’s shoulder. “They won’t hurt Raven,” he says quickly. “That’s who they want to keep alive. You need to stay vigilant or you could set us on the path of my timeline.”
Gar nods grimly at Corax, shifting into a wolf and following after the Flash. Corax watches him go, before he turns and joins the others.
“So,” Cyborg says as he pushes open the back doors of the S.T.A.R. Labs building, “what do you think about Corax?”
“What do you mean?” Raven asks, following after him.
“Nightwing is suspicious of him, and he’s said some odd things. I don’t think he is what he says he is,” Cyborg answers, a flashlight popping out of his shoulder that illuminates the dark hallways.
“I am unable to feel his aura. I believe his helmet blocks my empathic powers to a certain degree, but I do not know if it is magical in nature or if something in its composition is blocking me.” She pauses. “What do you mean he is not who he says he is?”
Cyborg forces open a set of double doors leading to a large meeting room, but finds the room empty. “Nightwing told me that Cor talked about Gar being instrumental in bringing both halves of yourself back together. We didn’t tell anyone about that specific detail outside of the Titans. The others were too busy fighting Trigon to notice that Gar was absent from the battle.”
In the next room, they find two scientists huddled up in the corner of the room, and Cyborg creates a Boom Tube to the police perimeter for the two to escape, who both thank them as they leave. “Night thinks that Corax wasn’t a new addition to the team,” he continues before he starts thinking out loud. “He suspects that Cor is one of us, disguised. He’s clearly not me, though; he’s almost six inches shorter. I was thinking maybe a future version of Nightwing? It would explain the blue and black color scheme, but he’s not married as far as I know. Flash is, but Corax hasn’t demonstrated any powers. And he didn’t mention having any kids. But Nightwing thinks Corax was the one who killed the future you, which is why he’s the only survivor.”
Raven frowns at Cyborg’s mumbling. “I see. But I doubt that who he is matters as much as what he is here for.”
Before Cyborg can think to argue the point, the radio comm crackles to life. “Watchtower to Titans, we’re getting a mass reading of signs of life in the basement level of the building’s west wing, unable to confirm hostility,” Oracle warns.
“Yeah, I’m thinking that they’re definitely of the hostile variety,” Flash’s voice comes through. “Beast Boy, stay close to — Beast Boy? Ah hell…”
Dread creeps in on Raven when she reaches out with her senses but is unable to find Gar. She exchanges a look with Cyborg, who immediately transforms his right arm into a cannon and wordlessly starts heading towards the stairs to the basement level.
“It’s almost too easy to get you alone and away from the others,” Headcase says, his voice echoing with the power of the Helmet of Chaos as he watches Gar with mild amusement. “I thought you would have been smarter about this.”
“You were the one who just put a wall between me and Flash,” Gar points out as he fights off some kind of eldritch abomination creature Headcase summoned from the void. “And what are the oh-so-almighty Lords of Chaos doing with a high schooler afflicted with migraines?”
Headcase’s face is completely obscured by the Helmet of Chaos, but Gar’s sure that the boy is rolling his eyes from behind its surface when he retorts, “what is the daughter of a demon lord doing with a guy who can turn himself into a cockroach?”
“That’s what I was wondering!” Gar says cheerfully even as he nearly slices the abomination in half with a single swipe from a polar bear.
“Well, I’m not here for you anyway,” Headcase says, hands starting to glow with crackling blue energy. “You’re just a tool to get me what I need.”
Gar abruptly transforms into a hummingbird to avoid being vaporized by the beam of energy that Headcase shoots at him, which cuts the monster in half instead of him. “The Disorganized Dudes could probably say the same thing about you, Barney.” (3)
“They’re the ones who are giving me all this power, Beast Boy,” Headcase snaps. “Power you can’t even fathom if you tried.” As if to demonstrate, the energy around his body flickers into a sinister shade of dark red, and he reaches out, surrounding Gar’s body in it before forcing him to revert to human form, then throwing him across the room with excessive amounts of force.
“Heh…that’s a neat trick,” Gar wheezes when he gets back on his feet. He transforms into a wolf and tries to leap across the room to tackle Headcase to the ground, but just as his front paws are about to make contact with Headcase’s body something grabs him from behind and uses Gar’s own momentum to slam him into the wall. The wolf lets out a high-pitched yelp of pain before it reverts to human form, with Gar cradling an bruised arm as he looks up to find the creature that had just been cut in two up and on its feet again.
“Ah, shit,” Gar mutters before he ducks below the abomination’s fist swinging for where his jaw was a half second ago, only for its other fist to slam directly into Gar’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. It takes the opportunity to grab hold of Gar’s right arm by the wrist and twist. Gar howls in agony when the creature snaps his radius and ulna in two as easily as one might break a toothpick.
So much for not getting caught, Gar thinks to himself, attenpting to move away as it slowly advances on him like a horror movie monster. Bracing himself, Gar prepares to roll out of the way when the creature lunges for him, jagged teeth bared and monstrous claws prepared to slice him in two just like he did mere moments ago. Then Corax is suddenly in front of Gar, a katar-like dagger popping out of his right gauntlet as the creature, unable to change its collision course, impales itself on the blade. Hearing the signature noise of a Boom Tube opening nearby, Gar watches, eyes wide, as Corax brings his other arm up, something clicking into place before a beam of orange energy blasts right through the monster’s skull. He looks around to try and find Headcase only to find Cyborg and Raven moving towards him, with Corax letting the monster’s body fall to the ground when the blade retracts into his gauntlet.
“Shit, Gar, what…shit,” Cyborg curses as his shoulder-mounted flashlight turns on to assess Gar’s injuries.
“Headcase?” Gar asks, voice hoarse in pain. Raven shakes her head as Cyborg scans Gar’s arm with his bionic eye.
“Victor opened a Boom Tube to a magic-repressing cell in the Tower. Nightwing will interrogate him later…after the others are done fighting off the creatures Headcase summoned.”
“Okay, we’ve got a chalkstick open fracture and a few lacerations on the upper extremities,” Cyborg says. “Raven?” (4)
“I can heal it,” she says quietly, watching the blood drip down Gar’s arm. “The bone needs to be splinted before I do.”
“Hey, thanks,” Gar says to Corax, who has been hovering nearby since the monster’s corpse hit the floor. Corax turns his head so the front of the helmet is facing Gar. “You probably just stopped your entire timeline from happening, you know?” Cyborg helps Gar up, who winces when his arm moves.
“I did,” Corax says. “It would have been over the second that monster got its hands on you. We would have lost.”
Cyborg scoffs, opening a Boom Tube to the Tower infirmary as Gar leans on Raven for support, cradling his bleeding arm to his chest. “Really? Right then and there?”
“I would know,” Corax says, but offers no further explanation.
As the trio step through the Boom Tube, Gar thinks he hears Corax say something along the lines of “I was there.”
“Well?” Vic asks when Dick and Kori join the rest of the Titans in the common room later that evening. “What’d you get?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Dick sighs, taking his mask off and rubbing his face in exasperation. “The kid won’t talk. Not even when Kori threatened bodily harm.”
“He is very persistent,” Kori agrees, irritation in her green eyes. “Even a starbolt near his head wasn’t enough to convince him.”
“Now Kori, you know we don’t intimidate criminals with physical violence,” Wally says, but the amusement in his tone betrays how he really feels about the situation.
“Yes, well. How is he?” Kori asks.
Gar shoots her a groggy thumbs up from where he’s lying across the couch, head in Raven’s lap as she slowly heals his fractured arm. “Never been better,” he says with cheer in his voice that’s only half-faked. “Courtesy of John Wick over there.”
Corax shifts uncomfortably when everyone looks at him. “It really isn’t necessary for you to keep doing that. You’ve said thanks about eight times since we got back.”
“Well too bad because I’m gonna say it more!” Gar giggles to himself, and Dick turns to Cyborg with a raised eyebrow.
Vic shrugs innocently. “Yes, I gave him some painkillers. His arm was snapped in half, did you want to hear him complain about the pain for the next few hours?”
“Touché,” Dick acquiesces, watching as Raven gently runs her fingers through Gar’s hair.
“I mean, to be fair, what Corax did was pretty freakin’ cool,” Roy adds, his eyes not leaving the screen where he, Garth, and Wally are playing Mario Kart. “Vic’s got it recorded.”
“Hm.” Dick watches as Raven finishes healing Gar, who sits up and moves his arm around before nodding and giving her a quick kiss. “Corax has been doing a lot of things lately.” He mumbles that last part, but Corax hears it anyway, stiffening and turning his head to face Dick.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Corax asks slowly.
Guess we’re doing this now. “I mean that you probably thought you’d be able to get away with it forever,” Dick says, crossing his arms. “But when you’re the former partner of the world’s greatest detective, you tend to learn a few things.”
“What’s happening?” Vic leans in to whisper to Kori, who just shrugs in mutual confusion even as Garth pauses the game on the TV to watch the interaction.
“I know who you are. You weren’t exactly careful with hiding your identity as much as you thought you were,” Dick frowns. “So when are you going to tell us the truth, Corax? When will you tell us what really happened in your time?”
Silence reigns in the room for several minutes before Corax sighs, “damn you and your detective dad,” and reaches up to his black helmet, slowly taking it off and placing it on the table next to him carefully. Though Dick remains unmoved as he finally looks Corax directly in the eyes, the other Titans are unable to do much more than stare in disbelief at the person who stands before them.
With an awfully sardonic smile on his face, Corax gestures toward himself in an almost dismissive manner. “Is this what you wanted, Dick Grayson? Is this what you expected me to be?”
“Tell them, Corax,” Dick says forcefully, ignoring the question. “They deserve to know.”
Gar slowly sits up from his place on the couch next to Raven, realization dawning on his face as he gradually puts all the pieces together. “Corax,” Gar repeats. “Corvus corax.” He narrows his eyes. “Scientific name of — ”
“The common raven. Yes, I know who I named myself after,” Corax says, his tone icy.
Gar narrows his eyes. He was the last living Titan in his time, and he knew about the blade. “Then that means…you — ”
“Yes,” the future version of Garfield Logan nods solemnly. “I killed Raven.”
Don’t panic, no, not yet
I know I’m the one you want to forget
Cue all the love to leave my heart
It’s time for me to fall apart
Now you’re gone but I’ll be okay
Your hot whiskey eyes have fanned the
flames
Maybe I’ll burn a little brighter tonight
Let the fire breathe me back to life
Baby, you were my picket fence
I miss missing you, now and then
Chlorine-kissed summer skin
I miss missing you now and then
Sometimes before it gets better
The darkness gets bigger
The person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger
Oh, we’re fading fast
I miss missing you now and then
Making eyes at this husk around my heart
I see through you and we’re sitting in the dark
So give me your filth, make it rough
Let me, let me, trash your love
I will sing to you every day
If it will take away the pain
Oh, and I’ve heard you’ve got it, got it so bad
‘Cause I am the best you’ll ever have
Baby, you were my picket fence
I miss missing you, now and then
Chlorine-kissed summer skin
I miss missing you now and then
Sometimes before it gets better
The darkness gets bigger
The person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger
Oh, we’re fading fast
I miss missing you now and then
Now and then
Now and then
Now and then
Baby, you were my picket fence
I miss missing you now and then
— Miss Missing You, Fall Out Boy
Search for the answers I knew all along
I lost myself, we all fall down
Never the wiser of what I’ve become
Alone I stand, a broken man
All I have is one last chance
I won’t turn my back on you
Take my hand, drag me down
If you fall then I will too
And I can’t save what’s left of you
Sing something new, I’ve nothing left
I can’t face the dark without you
There’s nothing left to lose, the fight never ends
I can’t face the dark without you
Swallow me under and pull me apart
I understand, there’s nothing left
Pain so familiar and close to the heart
No more, no less, I won’t forget
Come back down, save yourself
I can’t find my way to you
And I can’t bear to face the truth
Sing something new, I’ve nothing left
I can’t face the dark without you
There’s nothing left to lose, the fight never ends
I can’t face the dark without you
I wanted to forget
I’m trying to forget
Don’t leave me here again
I am with you, forever, the end
Sing something new, I’ve nothing left
I can’t face the dark without you
There’s nothing left to lose, the fight never ends
I can’t face the dark without you
Holding the hand that holds me down
I forgive you, forget you, the end
Holding the hand that holds me down
I forgive you, forget you, the end
— Without You, Breaking Benjamin