Chapter Text
The med-bay smell of ozone and blood clung to Garfield's skin. Cyborg's human eye was wide, searching his face for the shock that wasn't there. 'B, you aren't even fazed right now.' Garfield met his stare, the ghost of a smile that didn't reach his eyes. 'Well,' he said, voice flat as stone. 'It's not my first.' Robin's breath hitched. The words landed in the silent ops center like a thrown knife.
The silence that followed was thick, physical. It pressed against the hum of the mainframe, the soft drip of water from a damaged conduit somewhere down the hall. Cyborg’s metal hand clenched, servos whining faintly. He opened his mouth, closed it. Looked from Garfield to Robin and back again.
Garfield didn’t move. He stood in the center of the room, still in his uniform, the dark green fabric stained with ash and something darker. He looked relaxed. That was the worst part. His shoulders were loose, his weight balanced evenly on both feet. No tremor in his hands. No distant stare. He was just… present. Waiting.
‘Not your first,’ Cyborg repeated, the words tasting wrong. ‘What does that mean, “not your first”? You mean… before the Titans? With the Doom Patrol?’
‘Yeah.’ Garfield’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘With the Patrol.’
Robin finally moved, stepping forward. His cape settled behind him. ‘Garfield. Explain.’ It was his leader-voice, but it lacked its usual steel. There was a crack in it, a plea for the answer to be something else.
Garfield’s eyes flicked to him. That cold calm didn’t break. ‘Mento didn’t believe in the revolving door policy the League has. You know, where you put a dangerous monster in a cell they can just… walk out of.’ He said ‘monster’ the way someone else might say ‘problem’. A fact. ‘He believed in permanent solutions. To protect people.’
‘Permanent solutions.’ Cyborg’s voice dropped. ‘You’re talking about execution.’
‘I’m talking about putting down rabid animals who would never, ever change.’ Garfield’s tone was matter-of-fact, instructional. ‘Brother Blood was one of those. He was going to peel Raven apart to get to her power. He told us his plan while he had her strung up. There was no prison that could hold him. No therapy that could fix him. So I did what I was taught to do.’
‘Taught,’ Robin echoed. The word hung there.
‘Yeah, taught.’ Garfield finally looked away, his gaze drifting to the large monitor showing a silent, empty Jump City. ‘It was a lesson. A pretty important one. If something is a direct, immediate threat to someone you’re sworn to protect, you neutralize it. Permanently. You don’t gamble with your friend’s life on the chance a monster might feel remorse someday.’
Cyborg shook his head, a slow, disbelieving motion. ‘B… man. That’s… that’s not how we do things. We don’t kill. We subdue. We incarcerate. We—’
‘And how many times has Blood broken out?’ Garfield interrupted, his voice still calm. ‘How many people did he hurt between escapes? How many more would he have hurt after this one?’ He looked back at Cyborg. ‘I followed the playbook, Vic. Right up until the playbook got Raven killed. Then I used the one that worked.’
‘You didn’t even hesitate,’ Cyborg whispered. ‘I saw the footage from the security drones. He had her in that ritual circle, he was monologuing, and you just… shifted. You went for the throat. Literally.’
Garfield didn’t deny it. ‘Hesitation gets people killed. Another lesson.’
Robin had gone very still. His jaw was tight. ‘The Doom Patrol trained you to be an assassin.’
‘They trained me to survive,’ Garfield corrected, a flicker of something harder in his green eyes. ‘And to protect the team. Their team. Now my team.’ He held Robin’s gaze. ‘I follow your orders, Rob. This is your show. But I won’t let my friends die if I can stop it. That’s a line I don’t cross back over.’
The ops center door hissed open. Starfire floated in, her expression somber. She had changed out of her battle suit into simple Titan’s sweats, her hair damp from a shower. She’d heard. They could all tell by the way her eyes went straight to Garfield, not with horror, but with a deep, weary understanding.
‘I have listened,’ she said softly, her feet touching the floor. She looked at Cyborg’s stricken face, at Robin’s conflict. ‘On Tamaran, I was a warrior. I fought in wars. I have… taken life. It was the duty of a royal heir to sometimes carry out the execution of criminals. Or prisoners of war who were too dangerous to keep.’
‘Star…’ Cyborg began, but she held up a hand.
‘I wish to believe in Robin’s way. It is a better way. A more noble way.’ She looked at Garfield. ‘But I understand that sometimes, the universe does not allow for nobility. Only necessity. I understand the weight you carry, Garfield. It is a lonely weight.’
Garfield’s calm facade fractured for the first time. Just a hairline crack. His shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. ‘You didn’t have to say that. You didn’t have to out yourself like that.’
‘We are family,’ Starfire said, simple and absolute. ‘We stand with each other in the light and in the dark. It is a bond forged in shared burden. I… I hope the others never have to share this one.’
He nodded once, a sharp, grateful motion. ‘Yeah. Me too.’
Robin watched the exchange, the bond between them that excluded him by experience. It was a club he never wanted to join, and their mutual hope that he never would was its own kind of mercy. It also highlighted the chasm that had just opened up in his team. He took a slow, deliberate breath.
‘I need to think,’ Robin said. The words sounded hollow even to him. ‘About this. About… protocol. About the team.’
Garfield just looked at him. ‘Cool.’
‘I’ll let you know my decision.’
‘Just let me know.’ Garfield turned and walked toward the door. He didn’t slam it. He didn’t stomp. He just left, the door sighing shut behind him, leaving the three of them in the heavy, ozone-scented silence.
Cyborg let out a long, metallic breath. ‘What just happened?’
‘Our teammate revealed he’s a trained killer,’ Robin said, his voice tight. ‘And that he doesn’t lose sleep over it.’
‘He saved Raven,’ Starfire said, not arguing, just stating the counterweight.
‘He did,’ Robin conceded. He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘And I don’t know what to do with that. I need to… review the protocols. The League’s stance. Everything.’ He looked at them, his leader-mask firmly back in place, but the uncertainty was still there in the tightness around his eyes. ‘Dismissed.’
Starfire nodded, giving Cyborg’s metal arm a gentle squeeze before floating out. Cyborg lingered for a moment, looking at the door Garfield had exited through.
‘He saved Raven,’ Cyborg muttered, echoing Starfire. ‘But who saved him from whatever the hell the Doom Patrol did to make him like that?’
Robin had no answer. He just turned to the main console, calling up files, building a wall of data to block out the image of his friend’s utterly calm face admitting to murder.
Garfield didn’t go to the common room. He didn’t go to the gym. He went straight to his own room, the door locking with a soft click behind him. The cheerful, cluttered space with its video game posters and beanbag chairs suddenly felt like a museum exhibit. The Garfield Logan Experience.
He stripped off his uniform, letting the stained fabric pool on the floor. The cool air of his room hit his skin. He stood in front of the full-length mirror on his closet door, not seeing the lean muscle, the defined lines of a gymnast and a fighter. He saw the map.
The barcode was just above his navel, a raised, pale pink scar against his green skin. A product number. To the left and right of his spine, on the meat of his shoulders, were the circular scars. Perfectly round, the size of silver dollars. Surgical. Precise. One on each side.
He raised a hand, his fingers tracing the scar on his left shoulder. The skin was smooth, hairless. He could remember the cold press of the restraint against his cheek. The bright white light. The sound of the bone saw. He’d been awake. Of course he’d been awake. Drugs were for patients. He was a specimen.
A soft knock at his door. Not the firm rap of Robin, or the heavy thump of Cyborg. This was almost inaudible.
‘It’s open,’ he said, not turning from the mirror.
The door slid open. Raven stood in the threshold, her cloak drawn tight around her. Her eyes, usually half-lidded and distant, were wide and clear. They took him in—his bare back, the scars, the barcode—in one sweeping glance. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t look away.
‘You didn’t have to come,’ he said, his voice quieter now, the flat stone tone gone. Something tired had replaced it.
‘Yes,’ she said, stepping inside. The door closed behind her. ‘I did.’
She moved closer. Her gaze was clinical, but not cold. It was absorbing. She stopped a few feet away, her eyes tracing the circular scars. ‘Your shoulders.’
Garfield finally turned to face her. He didn’t try to cover up. What was the point? ‘Yeah.’
‘They are too precise for battle wounds.’
‘They’re not battle wounds.’ He took a breath. ‘I can regrow limbs. Fast. A few days for an arm. Less for fingers, toes. They… the people before the Patrol… they wanted to document the process. See how many times they could do it. So they’d take one. Wait for it to grow back. Take it again.’
Raven’s expression didn’t change, but the air in the room grew colder. A faint, dark aura flickered at her fingertips for a second before she reined it in. ‘It must have been… difficult. To wake up and find a part of yourself missing.’
Garfield let out a short, hollow sound that wasn’t a laugh. ‘No.’ He met her eyes. ‘I was awake the whole time. They weren’t going to waste anesthesia on an animal. I was awake. I felt it all.’
Her composure broke then. Just a tremor in her lower lip. A rapid blink. She hugged her arms around herself. ‘How old?’
‘I was six when they bought me from the black market. Eight when the Doom Patrol broke into the lab to get intel on The Brain. They found me instead.’ He shrugged, the muscles in his scarred shoulders rolling. ‘Saved me.’
Raven stared at him. At the barcode. At the scars. At the calm, tired green eyes of the boy who joked about tofu and video games, who could turn into a puppy to cheer her up. The boy who had just killed a man without blinking to save her.
She took one step forward. Then another. She stopped right in front of him, well within his personal space. He didn’t move. She raised a hand, her fingers pale against his green skin. She didn’t touch the barcode. She touched the space just beside it, where his skin was smooth and unmarked. Her fingertips were cool.
‘Garfield,’ she whispered.
He shuddered. A full-body tremor he couldn’t suppress. It was the way she said his name. Not Beast Boy. Not B. His real name. And there was no pity in it. No horror. Just a profound, aching recognition. He’d shown her the monster, and she’d seen the boy trapped inside it.
His hand came up, covering hers where it rested on his stomach. His skin was warm. His grip was tight, almost desperate. He was holding onto her like she was the only real thing in the room.
She didn’t pull away. She leaned her forehead against his chest, just below his collarbone. He could feel the cool whisper of her hair against his skin. He smelled ozone and blood on himself, and beneath it, the clean, herbal scent of her.
‘You’re not an animal,’ she said, her voice muffled against him.
He didn’t answer. He just stood there, holding her hand to his scar, feeling her breath on his skin, and for the first time since they’d returned to the tower, his calm felt fragile. Like a sheet of ice over something bottomless and dark.
He was awake. He felt it all.