Raven pushed past the Witchboy, not waiting to see if the assassin had followed her before closing the door with an errant swish of magic. Klarion smirked. She was agitated. The man- the Al Ghul- that Raven had brought tutted at Klarion's expression. He looked to the cambion as she looked about the grand foyer of the House of Mystery; a comfortable collision of damp, creaking wood, rich carpet, and roaring furnace. Damian didn't know if it was the heat of the hearth or the  magical undercurrent that rumbled in the air that warmed him up from the inside out, but either way he wasn't complaining.

"You aren't going to introduce us?" Damian narrowed his eyes at Raven's back.

She skipped up a few steps and peeked her head around the corner of the oak bannister. 

"Huh..?" she called back.

Damian frowned in response, looking around the grand room. Whoever he was, this 'Klarion' evidently didn't concern Raven. In his years of service to  the Bat, Damian had encountered many a casual ally, and he knew by now not to stress over new faces, but discreetly catalogue them for later file-filling. But as the assassin approached the crackling fire to analyse the contents of the mantlepiece, it appeared that indifferent silence wasn't enough for this creature.

Lean, pale, and with a mouth permanently drawn in to a wicked grin, Klarion popped in to existence in front of Damian, holding a hand out.

"Sorry, terribly rude of me- Klarion. Spirit of Chaos. Single."  He shook Damian's curious hand.

"I thought you had that angel-" Raven said over her shoulder, her voice strained. Where's Orchid?" she asked the Witchboy.

Damian folded his arms, observing him intently, while Klarion declared that he'd seen neither head not tail of the spirit of the House. 

Raven humphed at that, unimpressed, and sighed, "We'll have to do the searching spell then-"

"Rather than retrieving the Scissors by ourselves?" Damian asked.

The House was a creature of magic, living, breathing, and stretching endlessly in spite of it's more concise outer shell. It constantly shuffled its rooms about, when in a particularly mischievous or grumpy mood. Damian recognised the necessity of magic. He also recognised Klarion's expectancy. 

Cross legged and hovering above the ground, the empath had begun to ease in to a state of tranquillity, eyes closed and energy stabilising.  She breathed in through her nose and out through the mouth.

"Robin." he said to the grinning Witchboy. "Son of Batman. It's complicated."

She dropped to the floor like a sack of spuds. Klarion cackled. Damian hastened to offer a hand to help her up, but Raven had already risen to her feet and dusted herself up, pink in  the face. 

Drowning Damian's concern out were Klarion's knowing laughs. They stared at him. Klarion buried his hands in his pockets, a refined move that, when combined with his arched black eyebrows and precariously horned hair, gave his all the appearances of a cat who caught the mouse.

"Oooh I can see it clear as day! And hell knows it more than suits me if this," he gestured to the two of them, "is a package deal."

Damian blinked. Klarion had an energy about him that declared that he'd go for anyone that looked in his direction. As entertaining as he seemed, Damian was preoccupied withboth thoughts of slipping between sheets with a certain lavender witch and breaking in to Hell with her. It was safe to say, centimetres from the warmth she knew lay in the man's hands, Raven struggled to focus on Klarion's insinuations.

So he made it plain for the both of them.

"Oh Hells you've had sex." He said. "I'm not the sort of spirit to miss that sort of thing- ask Jacob."

Jacob. The name rang a bell. A second later, Damian remembered- Raven's demon brother... Lust. 

Raven knew that, sly, coquettish, and backstabbing as he was, Klarion would supply no judgement and tell no tales. So she shrugged her shoulders helplessly. Surprised, Damian found himself being stared at for a response. He didn't fear Klarion; and deep within, some part of him wanted to be known that something had happened between him and the empath...even if she wasn't yet his anything.

"I'll get the details out of one of you later." Klarion said. "Or now if you prefer... but my methods of extracting information tend to take a while, and I don't know how much time you have."

Something about Klarion clicked, Damian found. Was the Witchboy overbearing? A little. Did he seem like promiscuity incarnate? Without doubt. But, in a queer way, the immediate assumed familiarity was endearing. As unwilling as Damian was to exist without walls, it was a habit of his to stumble in to friendships with people who lived free of them. That was one possibility; the other being that he had a soft spot for dark-haired demonic entities. 

"Tt. Don't bet on it."

Klarion flashed his teeth, "Oh I will. I'm a gambler." 

Raven smiled in spite of her fatigue at Klarion's antics. He was a lot of fun. And while the Witchboy's aura was a constant tide of hot and angry chaos and sin, teeming with desire, Damian's punctuated the air with a regulated clarity. He warmed to Klarion and that made her happy. It hadn't occurred to her before just how much she valued him until the assassin stood amongst the two of them and she wanted him to like Klarion. He was her smirking, hellish confidante.

Now all she had to do was get approval from Constantine and Zatanna and...Lucifer...but what was she thinking about? This man, wonderful one-nighter or no, was not hers yet. She was getting ahead of herself. Just in time to reel Raven back in from leaping down a toxic rabbit hole, the Spirit of the House made her appearance. 

Black Orchid walked down the stairs, announcing her presence with a not-uncomfortable tingle down the spine. 

"You require the Scissors." she said. Her voice had a quality that Damian couldn't put to name. Like layers of graphite sliding off of each other. Soft, somehow slippery. She wore purple the same way that Raven did, like the colour was the root of magic, but in her skin. 

If Damian hadn't known better, he'd have thought her an alien rather than a creature of magic. Then again, the difference was all-too-often indistinguishable.

"That's correct." he said on their behalf, sharing an unreadable look with the empath. 

What to expect from this being, he didn't know. But Damian was armed to the teeth, beneath and amongst the black cotton of his assassin's garb, most importantly with his wit. All the same, he sensed no hostility from the one Raven had detailed, the day before, as 'Black Orchid'. He looked up at her and in to purple eyes so similar to Raven's. For all their quiet, melancholy beauty, this Spirit's stare was probing, cold. Like she studied their souls through the windows in their faces. But Raven...her eyes were alive. Her eyes contained anger like pits of hellfire; an absolute stillness like heaven's pristine lakes. This Black Orchid was a curious picture. Raven was intoxicating.

With a kindness like she was speaking to a child, Raven took Orchid's hands tenderly and asked, "Would you guide us to them please? You felt we meant no harm." 

Damian remembered how she had told him about the House sensing their intentions.

Nodding, Orchid said, "Yes. I know." The House and this Orchid were truly connected then. "You're intentions...personal salvation...preventing the harm of others...and having her-" she looked directly, strikingly, at Damian.

"Yes! Yes those are our intentions." He hushed her before the Spirit could get any further along with that thought. He didn't know what she was going to say, and frankly he'd rather not have known. "Will you assist us?"

Black Orchid existed to assist. She said as much herself.

Raven sighed fresh relief when the House Spirit kindly answered that she would retrieve the Scissors for them. She had kept her niggling doubts hidden from Damian (what if Orchid hadn't agreed?); successfully or not, she wasn't sure.

 Orchid having disappeared, for something to do in the silence, Raven asked, "Who let you in anyways Klarion?"

This was a moment of smug triumph for the Witchboy. Reclined on a couch, the dancing flames reflecting their flickering sunset on his pale skin, Klarion said ," Zatanna. She's busy doing some Justice League thing, so told me to check on you."

That was a name Damian was very familiar with indeed- more worryingly, one his father knew well, "She knew Raven would come here?" 

Had the witch betrayed him? Conspired with his father and the magician?

"Oh she anticipated as much- wanted me to make sure you two are both alright." Klarion drummed his fingers on the armrest, staring in to the flames. "Apparently dear old daddy's been asking after you, handsome." His eyes didn't move but Damian didn't care about that. "Oh don't worry- she's keeping him out of the loop. Zatanna's just checking that you haven't died. Though I doubt our lovely Raven would let that happen. See she's been out of luck with sex and romance for a while now-"

"Klarion." Raven warned. 

He'd lost the coy smirk. Klarion stood in a tunnel. Himself on one end, the fire on the other. 

"-I doubt she'd want to let you slip out of her claws..."

"Klarion!"

Damian observed the two with a morbid fascination.

Raven's skin was red. Demonic, not embarrassed. She'd been the same the night before: slipping out of control; beautiful.

Klarion seemed to snap out of the fire's grasp just as Orchid returned. He cleared his throat and swirled a hand to bring a delicate glass resting daintily in his curled fingers. Something red sloshed about in it and he knocked it back. Klarion cleared his throat. Redness refilled the glass from the top down.

Orchid handed Raven a brief case. Task over.

Trigon's realm awaited them.

Raven opened a portal. Damian glanced at Klarion one last time, bemused, before following her.

Klarion waved them off with the declaration that, as much as he would've loved to accompany them, he had self-pity to drown himself in first.

Watching them disappear, Orchid wondered at love. The House of Mystery, in its breathing curiosity, searched through the layers of existence until it found Love and poked it. If something happened, Orchid didn't feel it. She disappeared to another part of the house where she sat amongst flowers and Peace answered her poking. 

A.N:

Welp! Another chapter over! Thoughts? Opinions? Feelings?

Again, I've not got much to say my darlings. Love youuu :) Stay tuned!

-Bats