Chapter Two: Lunch?
Raven sat cross-legged on the couch, doing her best to keep an eye on Tyler. She kept hoping that the cell phone, which she'd slipped through her belt, would ring, but it had so far remained silent. She had sent Starfire into the kitchen to find something for the little boy to eat.
"Hungry," Tyler complained again. He grabbed onto Raven's cloak and, laughing, put his head under it. "All gone!" He said proudly, his little voice muffled.
Raven reached for him. "Come on out," she said, trying to fit her fingers around his wriggling waist. The child laughed and fell to the ground, pulling Raven's cloak so that it tightened at the neck. Reaching for it, she let go of Tyler, who crawled away, still trying to drag the cloak with him.
"Want!" He cried, pulling harder. Raven let out an audible gasp, barely able to breathe, and fussed with the clasp, which came undone. Her cloak fell over the child in a wave of blue, and he cried out from under it. "Dark!"
Raven bent down to the floor and tried to pull the cloak off the child. "Tyler, come out of there." She felt odd without her cloak. In the kitchen, she heard a loud crash, but ignored it, more focused on wrestling her garment off the wriggling toddler, who was back to laughing.
"Mine!" He yelled.
"No, Tyler," said Raven, fighting with him, trying not to hurt him. "That's mine!"
"Mine mine MINE!" Tyler yelled, and rolled himself over so that his head was sticking out, wrapped in the blanket as though it were his own cloak. He looked absurd. Raven started to laugh in spite of herself.
Tyler then pointed at her. "Like you!" He said, clearly delighted with his little game.
"That's great," Raven said, picking up the little bundle wrapped in her blue garment, "but I really need that back." She unrolled him from the cloak and set him down on the couch. She picked up the cloak and began to fit it back around her shoulders, but Tyler reached up and grabbed for the gem.
"Pretty!" He said, and pulled. With a ripping sound, the gem that had held Raven's cloak together came undone, and it fell back around her. She looked on with wide eyes, angry, and snatched the gem back from him.
"Stop it!" She told him very seriously. The child looked up at her with tears in its eyes, and Raven knew she had only a split second before it started to cry. Grabbing her now-ruined cloak, she handed it to him.
"Mine?" The child asked.
"Sure. Yours."
"Like you!" Said the baby, and began to wrap himself back in it. He arranged his face in a very serious face and said, "Stop it!" and then laughed at himself.
Raven sighed. Now the kid thinks I'm grumpy, she thought to herself.
Starfire chose that moment to come bustling through the door. "Hello, baby Tyler!" She said. In her hands was a bowl and an oversized spoon. The substance in the bowl was barely identifiable, and Raven instantly regretted sending Starfire into the kitchen to attempt to find food for the baby.
"This is a very special mixture of ketchup, mustard, and mint toothpaste!" Starfire told the baby. She pulled an apron that Raven had previously not noticed from over her shoulder and wrapped the child, oversized cloak and all, in it. 'Kiss the Cook' it read across the front.
Raven snorted in spite of herself. The scene before her was clearly not comical by any stretch of the imagination, and yet she was amused. She blamed part of it on sheer hysterical reaction to being alone with an alien who had no clue and a baby who wanted everything in sight.
She checked her phone. Still nothing. She made a silent vow to kill Robin as Starfire pulled the baby into her lap and picked up the serving spoon, heaping globs of it onto the spoon.
"You must eat for strength, Tyler," Starfire told the child. It took both of her hands to lift the spoon to the baby's mouth, and he sat, wrapped up and held tightly. The spoon was almost too big for his mouth but he opened it anyway.
Poor kid, Raven found herself thinking. She decided to take the chance to slip away upstairs and find a new cloak.
Laughter floated up the stairs, but Raven thought little of it. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw that her hair was out of place, her eyes starting to be worn by worry. Look me. A crime-fighter worn out by a kid.
She used the gem to fasten her new cloak. Just as she finished straightening it around her neck she heard Starfire's voice downstairs. "Tyler!"
Raven ran down the stairs in time to find that mealtime had turned into a mess in the living room. While she was gone, the baby had eaten about half of Starfire's disgusting meal- which was an achievement by Raven's standards- before grabbing the spoon and throwing it across the room. Now that he had freed his little arms, he had used them for destruction; the bowl had ended up face-down, splattering both Starfire and the baby in food.
"Bad bad baby! Look what you have done!" Starfire said. All at once, she shook her head. "But that is okay, because you are a good baby, and I like you very much!" She hugged the child.
Raven sighed. "Go get something to clean this up,"
The baby brightened upon seeing her. "Mine!" It said again, grabbing onto her leg.
Raven lifted the disgusting kid, ripped cloak and all, into her arms. "Time for a bath," she told Tyler, sighing.
"Ducky!" He cried, and Raven sighed as Starfire came back with a bottle of bleach and unceremoniously dumped it on the couch.
"It appears that our couch was white at some point!" She told Raven brightly.
Raven put Tyler down and took the bleach off Starfire. "You handle Tyler, I'll clean the couch," she said in a hurry, wondering how to undo bleach damage.
In the other room, Tyler started to laugh, and Starfire ran in to see what was the matter. Raven ran a hand through her hair; her nerves were shot, the day was stretching on, and her phone was still silent at her side.
"I really do hate to baby-sit," she muttered to herself.
"Friend Raven, please come in here!" Starfire screamed over the sound of something crashing. Knocking the bottle of bleach over as she went, Raven ran into the other room.