A/N: TRIGGER WARNING! MENTIONS OF RAPE, AND GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.

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Zatanna POV:
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I had been rearranging the shelves of my father's magic shop, when my two year old daughter, Giovanna, ran up to me with a picture in her hands.

"Mamma, Mamma! Look! Look!" She said hopping up and down at the foot of the ladder that I was mounted on.

"One second, baby. Mamma's gotta climb down from here first." I laughed, carefully coming down the medium sized ladder. As I reached the bottom, I squatted down to my daughter's height and she handed me the thin piece of paper.

Drawn with a multitude of different colored crayons, was the disfigured picture of a giraffe. Or maybe it was a cat with a long neck.

I really couldn't tell.

"It's beautiful, baby!" I praised the two year old mini-me, before placing a loving kiss on her head. "Let's go put this on the Special Wall."

The dark haired toddler giggled and clapped, before waving her arms in the air. This is like the universal sign that all moms should know, which means 'pick me up' if you didn't figure out that obvious little piece of information.

I stood up, before picking Giovanna up and placing her on my hip. She giggled as I bounced her little chubby self up and down on my hip, before making our way towards the Special Wall.

The Special Wall was the wall behind the cash register where I put all of Gia's pictures that she draws when she's here in the shop.

I had her 'hold' the page against the dark blue wall as I taped it up next to the picture of the purple and blue butterfly.

"Absolutely gorgeous, my little munchkin!" I said to the smiling child and placed kisses on each of her chubby cheeks.

I took the scotch tape from my daughter's hands, just before she tried to put it in her mouth. I turned my back from the entrance of the shop, so that I could put the tape away in the right drawer.

As I did this, the bell at the top of the door frame jingled, telling me that someone hand entered the shop.

"Give me a second, I'll be right with you!" I told whomever had entered the shop.

"I hope so, Z, considering it's already been so long since we saw each other last." A familiar male voice spoke, one that I hadn't heard in two years.

I froze as my body tensed and my face paled. I abruptly turned around to face the front, the toddler in my arms giggling at the spinning motion. My brown eyes widened as my gaze met with those of one of my oldest friends.

"Richard?"

"Hi, Z." He said with a small smile. "How've you been?"

"Cover you're ears, baby." I told my daughter, waiting until she'd done so to address the brunette man again. "Are you fucking kidding me right now, Grayson?!"

He visibly flinched at my sharp tone and tried to speak, before I cut him off. "Two years, Richard Grayson! You haven't even bothered to let your best friend know that you were okay, after two fucking years!"

"Zatanna, I–." Dick tried to explain himself, but I used my magic to send a deck of cards from the rack, racing towards his head. The brunette quickly ducked, the young girl beside him watched with an amused look.

"Another one of your ex's?" The blue haired girl asked Richard with a chuckle as she looked up at him.

"Ex-best friend, actually." He informed the younger girl with an awkward cringe. "We didn't really leave off on a good note."

"You left me to bleed out on a sidewalk in Coast Fucking City!" I sassed him, before asking the teenager. "Do you know how far Coast City is from Gotham, kid?"

She simply shrugged, and nodded for me to tell her. "Three hundred miles, sweetie."

I then lightly nudged my daughter, who still had her hands covering her ears, and told her when they were back to her sides. "Why don't you go color, while mommy talks to these nice people? Okay, baby?"

The toddler nodded enthusiastically and I placed a tender kiss to her cheek, before setting her down. I watched Giovanna waddle quickly to her coloring table at the far corner of the little shop.

"What the hell are you doing here, Richard? And why do you have a kid with you? And none of your usual vague bullshit!" I demanded with a cold and calculating stare towards the man.

"I could ask you the same thing, Z!" Dick exclaimed motioning questioningly towards Giovanna. "Why do you have a baby?!"

"You see, Richard, woman sometimes do this thing where we grow another human inside of us after having sexual intercourse." I told him sarcastically, making the blue haired teen chuckle.

"I like her." She told the Grayson man with a smug grin.

"I like you too, sweetie." I said to the younger girl with a kind smile. "What's your name, kid?"

"Rachel, nice to finally meet someone of the female species from Dick's past that he hasn't banged." She said, earning a loud laugh from me. Rachel then continued to joke, before pointing to where Gia sat. "Or has he and that's his kid?"

"Oh, please, Richard wouldn't be able to keep up with this fine Italian ass." I laughed, before jokingly flipping a strand of my dark hair out of my face. "Unfortunately, Giovanna's father was a sadistic bastard that I'm happy to say, will never bother my daughter and I again."

"Please tell me that you didn't kill someone, Z." Dick pleaded with a sigh and a shake of his head.

"I should have, but I didn't want Bruce bitching at me for it later." I huffed rolling my eyes at the Bat Family's honor code. "Although, the sick fuck would have definitely deserved it."

"What'd he do?" Rachel asked me curiously, her question making me breathe deeply and shake my head to try and rid my mind of the horrible memory.

"Oh my god, Z..." Richard trailed off, starting at me with wide and concerned eyes, apparently having pieced together what had happened.

"I don't want to talk about it, alright! Especially not with my daughter in the room." I hissed, sending them both a warning look.

"I take back what I said earlier." Richard told me with anger in his usually warm hazel eyes, before asking. "Why didn't you kill him?"

"It was tough enough just to severely mutilate him, considering that the bastard was enhanced as well. Some weird earth bender type shit." I scoffed bitterly, before saying with a casual shrug. "It's fine though, because I ripped off his dick and shoved it down his fucking throat."

"Bruce did say no killing, but he didn't say anything about no mutilation." The former acrobat chuckled dryly with a shrug.

"That he didn't, Rickie. That he didn't." I agreed, before noticing the bad shape the two of them were in. "You guys look like hell. How about you guys stay with us for tonight, you can clean yourselves up and get something besides fast food into your stomachs. You can rest up properly, before going wherever it is your headed."

"We could intrude like that, Z." Richard argued, shaking his head.

"Then why the fuck are you here, Grayson? If not for a place to hide out?" I asked, not buying a single drop of his bullshit.

"We were kind of hoping that you could help us fight off the crazy shit that is after Rachel, but I can't ask that of you, seeing that you have a kid to look after."

"So do you, Rickie. I think you've forgotten that." I chuckled, pointing to the blue haired teen. "Come on, we can talk more at my apartment."

"Come on, baby! Mommy's gotta lock up the shop!" I told the two year old, watching as she threw crayons. I placed Giovanna into her stroller and packed up her diaper bag, before locking everything up and meet Dick and Rachel outside of the shop. "Let's get going, before the seven–thirty train leaves."