Damian was woken to the sound of a high pitched voice shouting and someone rocking the bed. He sat up with sleep in his eyes, messed hair, and a frown to freeze water. That frown melted away when he clocked in to reality. Belladonna was jumping up and down on the bed, giggling as she called to him, "Wake up Damian! Wake up! Daddy says we're going to the zoo! Wake uuuuup!"

"Alright, alright, I'm awake. Stop jumping before I suffocate you with this pillow.", he threatened, brandishing the aforementioned weapon.

She giggled and jumped once more, beaming with her little teeth showing- one hanging a little off- her first wobbly tooth.

Accepting the challenge, Damian sprain at her, playfully hitting her with the pillow. "SURRENDER FOUL CHILD!"

Between shrieks, Bella laughed, "Never!"

He narrowed his eyes at her, "Oh really?", and launched a second attack, using the dreaded weapon: tickles. "Try to escape now!"

Bella's screaming giggles echoed throughout the Manor as she rolled around, grasping for a way out. "Timeout! Timeout!", she said. The child wiggles away and ended up rolling off the bed, giggling like mad. Standing up, she looked at Damian, running a hand through his knotted bed-hair, and stuck her tongue out, "Bet you can't catch me-e!", she said, teasingly singsong.

Damian cocked his head, "Are you sure about that?"

She was off, sprinting through the corridor as fast as her legs would carry her, dodging one Selina Kyle- who'd come upstairs to see what all the fuss was about- and dashing down the stairs, almost tripping over her own feet. On her heels was Damian, who had given her just enough time to scuttle away to give her a chance. Bella ran in to the kitchen past Alfred (procuring a tray of fresh cookies ...yum... ) and everyone else, till she eventually hid behind her father's legs; almost tripping him over.

A moment later, Damian stood in front of his father, looking down at the little girl holding his knees and peeping her head out from the side. Impersonating a stereotypical, dramatic villain, Damian poked two fingers in front of him then towards himself in the classic 'I'm watching' gesture, and said, "You can't hide forever little Wayne. Just you wait...". Breaking character, as if nothing had just happened, Damian greeted coolly, "Good morning father. What's this about going to a zoo?"

Bruce stated simply, "We're going to the zoo."

"Waitwaitwaitwait! Hoooold up now,", Timothy stood up, his chair scraping against the floor. "Nobody said Damian's going!"

"Yeah, I'm with Replacement on this one, there's no way I'm going with that little shit.", Jason said, stealing Tim's abandoned stool, scraping it a few inches over, plonking himself down on it, arms folded to make a point. "Not after last time."

Jaime, who'd been convinced  *cough* forced *cough* by Kori to come along on the outing, reeled, almost spilling his sugary coffee, "What happened last time?"

Steph, Cassandra, Duke, Timothy, Dick, Jason, Bruce and Alfred all looked at the Titan. Jaime gulped.

"The chaos." -Duke

"The horror." -Tim

"The noise." -Cass

"The mess." -Alfred

The haunted glow in the butler's eyes told of a lifetime scar from the event.

"But what happennnned?", Bella asked, pulling her father's trouser leg.

Defensive, Damian took a moody sip of freshly poured tea. Lowering the cup, he mumbled, "I didn't do anything."

This getting nowhere, Dick sighed and massaged his temples at the memory, "Damian tried to free the whole zoo. He managed the parrots, the lemurs enclosure, four wild hamsters, the fox and rabbit pens (that was a mess), the elephants, the rhinos, a few penguins....and can't remember what else.", Dick took a deep breath. "He brought back a fully grown jaguar and her three cubs. A jAGuAR."

Damian smiled at the memory. Those cubs were adorable. He cried publicly for a week when Bruce found out about them and sent them back to the zoo.

Bella's jaw was hanging open. In earnest, she stepped out from behind Bruce's legs and asked her brother, "Were they soft? And cute? And beautiful?!", her grass green eyes wider than tennis balls.

With equal sincerity and eagerness, Damian nodded and replied, "The softest, cutest, most beautiful things in the world.", Bella's little face welled with such explosive excitement that Damian thought she might burst. When her face gradually became a tomato, there was a general wave of concern in the room.

"Is she good?", Duke whispered to Cass, who merely shrugged, "I don't even know who this kid is!"

Besides her boyfriend, Selina knelt, eye level with the child, "Bella, are you-"

The five-year-old finally burst, jumping up and down in a circle around the woman, "AAAAAAAAAAAAH! Yesyesyesyesyesyes!", she ran over to Damian, still jumping as she urged him, "We're stealing them again!"

Bruce buried his face in his hands. Those were his children. His actual children. What did he do in a past life to deserve this?

In that moment, Damian knew that Belladonna truly was his sister, regardless of her plant-mother.

"Yes we are little Wayne,", he shook her hand, "yes we are indeed.", and ruffled her dark, springy ringlets.

Raven, who'd just returned from wrangling with her recently secretive brother, entered the kitchen, saw Damian and Belladonna shaking hands in an accord of mischief, and left. Today was not the day to be dealing with that. She might just unleash Trigon and end the world to give her some peace of mind.

***

With everyone bar Alfred out of the Manor (and Adyn slipped off to wherever the heck he was) Raven was left with very little to do. She tried to read in her room- no use. In the library- no use. In the living room- no use. So she left the book, quitted the living room, and figured some exercise would do her good. A change in clothes, five minutes of warmup, and twenty minutes in the simulation room later, Raven acknowledged that her mood had not slightly elevated. Abandoning the training room, Raven made her way to the kitchen, wherein she poured herself a mug of tea. Taking it in to the living room, she sat down on one of the sofa's, staring out of the large window at the impressive Manor grounds, drumming her fingers on the arm of the couch.

A meow from the doorway alerted her to the presence of Mr Pennyworth: the cat. He waltzed over to her, leaping up on to the sofa besides her and settling himself on her lap, curling up. Apparently his own bed wasn't comfortable enough. Raven stroked behind his ears, smiling as the cat vibrated, purring even more as she rubbed under his chin.

Nothing was quite as relaxing as a cat. So regal, and so adorable. Like Damian.

Every moment in the future that Raven reflected upon it, she couldn't understand why she'd done it, but in that moment, Raven felt the compulsion to reach out. She let her mind open a closed gate.

Father?

Child? You've never sought me out before, Raven. What Earthly troubles are there that you've resorted to me?

No, no that's not it.

Then what child? If you'd wanted to join me in ruling the universe you'd have released me by now. What is it you want?

What...father, what do you know of love?

You come to me with questions of LOVE? Are your new friends, FOR WHOM YOUR LEGACY AND I WERE ABANDONED, not trusted enough to answer such a fickle question? Why do you with to know such a thing, child? Why do you presume I will answer your questions as you demand?

Maybe curiosity- to see what you'll say. Or maybe...Pride.

Hm. You always had such potential my child, such potential. Thrown away for the sake of morals. I do not value pitiful morals as you do, for the sake of AMBITION I do not value them. Why should I think upon love?!

You've loved before.

You know not what you speak of.

They all use to speak about it: the time when Trigon loved. Not a love for war, or bloodshed, or carnage, but true adoration.

STOP IT CHILD.

The Queen. Your queen. The mother of my brothers who died at your hand.

ENOUGH CHILD. ENOUGH!

You loved her. Didn't you?

ENOUGH! I SAID...I said...enough. Child, enough.

Didn't you?

Raven...my child. I loved her indeed. How foolish was I. I loved her until she  loved another. Fickle, fickle emotion. Guiding even the strongest of hands to build their own weapon of assassination. My child, I loved as every other foolish being to exist in this universe and every other.

You buried that love. Father, I heard the stories. I heard them all reminisce of the times when. The Hellish lands were at peace, beautiful, an ideal for all lands- even the fae. Before love fell.

Times long gone, child. Times of no ambition.

Times that will never be again?

...

Father, do you not regret it: letting go of your Love?

SHE BETRAYED ME! I GAVE HER THE WORLD AND SHE BETRAYED ME! How could I keep my Love after that?! ...How could I?

Then do you not regret letting go of love? Refusing to open space in your heart.

My child, my Raven, I have not let love go. Fickle as it is, it is a complex emotion, far too complex for complete dismissal. No being is worth anything at all without it- might they realise or otherwise. Child, I have obliterated planets, lain waste to billions, presided over the tortured souls of trillions and let chaos rule my hand, but even I cannot escape the inevitability of love. Know that, my child.

G-goodbye, father.

Raven sat on the couch, a sleeping cat in her lap, a mug of tea besides her, thinking on what Trigon had said. She couldn't fathom why she'd thought to reach out to him, but she did. Maybe it was because -in her frustrated state- she sought to appease herself by answering a question that had conflicted her heart for a long time.

Can evil love?

Because that's what demons -for the most part- were. Evil.

And evil is not good. Love is good. Hence the two shouldn't- couldn't- go together. No?

Or perhaps the question was, is evil worthy of love? Any being can love. Her father even admitted so. But do the evil ones, the not-good ones, the ones who kill and torture and enslave and destroy, are they deserving of love?

Trigon's recounts answered as much.

No.

Love finds a way to escape the wicked. The unworthy. The undeserving.

But Raven wasn't an evil, wicked demon. She wasn't inherently bad. But she couldn't be called good either, whether she'd aligned herself with the golden side or not. Wearing the badge of Earth-protectors did not stop the adrenaline pumping through her blood when she held a man within an inch of death or bloodlust urging her in to combat. Being a hero did not change who she was.

A demon. Non-evil. Non-wicked. Non-good. No matter how little sense that made.

Raven had given the world up for the sake of Good. Surely that made her deserving enough.

***

Whistling sharply, Damian caught Bella's attention. Behind his father's back (whilst Dick, Stephanie and Koriand'r enthused about the penguins; Duke, Tim, Jaime and Cass sipped on milkshakes and an ice tea; and Jason pulled a face at a moody preteen by the polar bears, flipping the kid off) Damian mouthed 'come, this way'.

Making sure that her dad wasn't looking, Bella tiptoed towards her brother, both prepared to dash of need be.

"Just where do you two think you're going?", Bruce asked, not turning around, ignoring the cameras flashing nearby. Billionaire heartthrob Bruce Wayne couldn't go out in peace without catching attention, at this point in life he was a bit too tired to even give a shit. Press had flown out of the roof when he'd officially declared Belladonna his daughter, and when they'd found out he was dating Selina Kyle: the Wayne-mania apparently hadn't died down yet.

"Uhhhh...somewhere?", Bella cringed, hiding behind her curls.

Before Bruce could protest, Selina stepped in, hands on hips, passing his kids a sneaky grin, "Don't worry Bruce,", she pressed a kiss to his cheek, "I'll go with them. Make sure they don't get up to no good."

Walking through the other people in the zoo, next to Bruce's hostile son and scheming daughter, Selina pulled them off to one side. Digging her hands in to her coat pocket, Catwoman smirked, "What's the plan?"

A.N:

I'm sorry that this update is late guys, but I've had a lot going on this week and last night I was out until reaaaaally late so couldn't update or finish up. This is partially a filler but still somewhat significant, so sorry again. I know that not every chapter has Damirae moments, but to make a good story I need to develop other aspects of it not just their relationship- I felt like I needed to explain that for some reason.

I'm apologising now for if in future I have another late update also, but you guys do know that that I'm a real person with a real life. As such, things happen that mean I can't update or don't have the time to write as much. You guys also know that I've always been regular with my updates apart from two-or-so incidents, so if I don't update, know that there's a justification for it and I'll update as soon as possible.

Well, with that out of the way, thank you my darlings.

-Bats