Author's Notes: Can I be honest? I absolutely LOVE the 'Husky scene' in this chapter! I hope you guys do to!

Beta-read by Moofy-Fan.


Two years. Two dreadfully, painfully, excruciatingly long years for everyone involved.

And these stupid +Anima brats hadn't learned a thing.

Batman growled to himself as he leaned against the wall outside the room the three were STILL squealing about their friend within. Of course, he was Bruce Wayne right now, so he really shouldn't be quite so terrifying. But he still couldn't get over how stupid children could be, even after three of his own. Well, almost his own. And not that he had the best of luck with any of them… well, Tim was turning out to not hate his guts so far…

"Think we should get him tonight? Or should we wait for tomorrow and grab him at school?"

"Tonight! We can't possibly wait that long! And it can't be that hard to dig up his address, right? Like, all the kids are the children of Gotham bigwigs, so…"

"Sooner the better."

Honestly, after two years living with the Titans, you'd think the brats would have learned the definition of 'kidnapping'. Planning to snatch a kid right out of his own house? Or at least what he thought of as his own house. Even if this kid was their 'Husky', he obviously didn't remember them. And VERY obviously, at least to people with thinking ability, he was not likely to take being kidnapped very well.

He took a deep breath, stood up tall, ran a hand through his hair, and put on the friendly father mask he used to persuade CPS he was not adopting kids just for publicity.

"Hey, guys. What are you all so excited about?" he asked casually, smiling and raising a cup of coffee. "I could hear you all the way from the kitchen!"

"We found our friend!" squealed the girl. "The Titans told you, right? Two years ago our friend Husky got kidnapped? Well we found him! He goes to Gotham Academy and he's in Cooro's class!"

Bruce raised the hand not holding the coffee mug and gestured for her to calm down, chuckling slightly. "That's great, Nana. What did he say when you spoke to him?" he asked. There wasn't any need to let the children know that he'd been eavesdropping, after all.

The absolutely giddiness that had been coming off of the three in waves dipped ever so slightly, replaced with a hint of confusion and determination in Cooro as he started to explain.

"He didn't remember us, but I know it's him! Something must have just happened to him, he even said his name was different, but that's why we need to go get him as soon as possible!"

Bruce nodded, even though he didn't think that their plan was the smartest move in the least.

"Alright, alright. Just what did he say his name was, first?" he asked, hoping to calm the children down and figure out as much as he could about the situation.

"Harley!" shouted Cooro excitedly, his energy starting to pick right back up again.

"Harley? Harley…" Bruce froze for all of one whole second. "Harley McLavain?" he finally said, a hint of apprehension in his voice.

Harley McLavain? Orphaned nephew of Yuri McLavain? That man had enough money and connections to travel in the same circles as Bruce Wayne. Heck, there where actual photos of the two posed together at various parties, functions, and the like in newspapers and magazines. Oh, damn, this could get messy. He (as Bruce Wayne) couldn't just call the police, let alone the Justice League, and accuse Yuri McLavain of having kidnapped a boy that was well-documented as his nephew. Batman might have to step in on this.

"You know him?! That's great! So you can tell us where he lives so we can go get Husky back!"

Bruce stared at his coffee for a second, brows furrowed. The three teens seems to sense something was wrong and their excitement took a noticeable dip. Not that they weren't still bouncing on their toes.

"Something wrong, Mr. Wayne?" asked Nana.

He put a half-smile back on his face, letting his expression show concern. "You might want to slow down a bit, guys. Yuri McLavain is a friend of mine." Inside his head, Batman gagged at the thought, but he couldn't let that show. "Are you absolutely certain? Perhaps it's merely a very strong resemblance. Have you done any research? Have you actually talked to Harley about this?" He chuckled almost nervously. "I don't want my new charges getting arrested on some mistaken kidnapping, you know?"

Their excitement went from dip to nosedive.

"But…" began Cooro, huge brown eyes filling up with tears. "But it's Husky!"

Nana took his hand in her own. She was no longer jumping around, but her eyes shined with confidence and determination. She took a second to think before commenting. "I believe you, Cooro. But Mr. Wayne's right. We can't just take him back. Not as soon as tomorrow anyway. We need proof."

"You're welcome to use my computer for your research," said Bruce Wayne kindly. Just not the Batcomputer, he thought. Alfred will be working on that.

"But…"

"I'm sure you'll see him tomorrow at school," added Bruce. "It would probably be better for him if you tried to talk to him a bit more before throwing something like this at him."

Cooro nodded, looking miserable. Senri patted his head comfortingly, same as he did two years ago when the boy was upset. Nana took his hand. Though her eyes were strangely focused on nothing in particular… and Bruce recognized that look from when Dick was rebelliously planning to do his own thing regardless of what his guardian thought. He'd have to make sure they didn't end up doing anything foolish.

He sighed internally. "Well, goodnight, kids. See you tomorrow."

"Night," they all politely responded.

Bruce waved as he left the room, heading straight for the kitchen to dump the mug in the sink. Tim was waiting.

"Suit up and meet me in the cave."

"So we'll be scouting the McLavain house and doing some digging on whether Yuri's got any underground connections we hadn't noticed before? While Alfred looks up the kid's birth certificate, family history, and medical and school records?"

Bruce gave the brat a sideways glance. "Why do you ask when you already know?" he asked, trying not to let the humor show through.

Tim laughed anyway and ran off, reminding him ever so much of Dick. Before the rebellious stage.


Yuri McLavain paced his basement lab, almost grabbing at his hair in his anxiety. Damn. Damn. Damn!

How had they traced him? He'd been sure he'd gotten away with it! Who was this damn Cooro brat to interfere with his personal life?! His research?! HIS nephew!

All the work and planning that went into Harley – he'd never be able to recover from it if they took him away! His life's work… he felt like he'd barely started! How can they possibly want to end his research only two years into it!?

It was a master stroke of luck that his beloved sister and her husband and child had all died in the car accident that was more along the lines of 'fireball' than 'crash'. Another stroke of luck that the forensics team had been so disgustingly sloppy, with one exception that was easily bribed off. And it all was made so much easier that he didn't actually live anywhere near or around Jump City, where he'd snatched the beautiful mermaid he'd heard about from the papers, that was now oh so much more, right off the street. Straight to the airport, into his private jet, back home to Gotham.

He couldn't live without Harley. That much was certain. His life now revolved around the boy. Not just his far from complete research on the child, but his daily life. Harley was his. As proven by the fact that they boy listened to everything he said, lived in this very house, and heck, the boy even took care of the cooking! (They did have a housecleaner come in twice a week to do the rest of the chores, but no one else. He hated the idea of maids or butlers poking into his research.)

"No," he growled to himself. "I'm jumping to conclusions. They have no proof. They can't possibly take Harley away from me…" He snatched a fat leather-bound book from a table and flipped it open to a beautiful image. A stylized wave, or maybe gills or something, resembling a tattoo. He stared at it fiercely, almost glaring, but with a hint of something extremely, obsessively possessive.

"No one's taking my mermaid away from me," he whispered, snapping the book shut and setting it back on the table.

"Uncle!" shouted down Harley's clear voice, though still with that slight trace of a husky undertone. He never had been able to work out that strange accent. It was just good luck that no one in Gotham's top circles was enough of a linguist to question the difference between his own rough accent and the boy's. "Time for dinner!"

"Coming, Harley!" he shouted back up. His eyes glanced over his cluttered desk before pullingopen the bottom drawer. He rifled through at least two dozen small vials, then pulled one out and slipped it into his coat's pocket.

"No reason to take any chances," he whispered to himself, though he was frowning.


Husky laid on his bed in his pajamas, staring at a framed photograph of a beautiful young woman.

His mother. It was the only photograph of her left, taken by Uncle Yuri when she was still in high school. All of the other photos had been lost. Uncle Yuri felt dreadful about it, but he admitted to having not even thought about them in the aftermath of the accident. And, with his experiments and research, he wasn't one to have photos lying around. His mother had been the one to hold all the albums, and now… She was gone. Forever.

He didn't look much like his mom. Uncle Yuri said he took after his father, who was uncommonly good looking for a man. But he did share two traits with his passed mother.

His lithe, athletic figure. And his long, blonde hair.

Honestly, he didn't care for his hair's length. It made him look like a girl, from behind anyway. But he'd given up asking his uncle, who would just look at him with sad eyes and make excuses about him looking "So much like Nadia…" And he'd learned from experience that he was terrible with scissors.

Not that he was really supposed to be anywhere near scissors, considering his uncle was scared that his obsessive dreams about water were related to a secret desire to commit suicide. Apparently a common problem with teenagers with PTSD, especially if connected with amnesia. And there was always a chance of depression as a side effect of the drugs.

But his hair's color was identical to the woman in the photograph. She even wore it in a low ponytail similar to his own.

Her eyes were dark blue, just like his uncle's, with light skin, a small, athletic figure, and a bright, bright smile. She looked like an extremely kind, loving person. From Uncle Yuri's stories, she had always been smiling and optimistic and loving. She had absolutely adored Harley from the day she discovered she was pregnant.

Uncle Yuri loved to talk about his baby sister Nadia, Harley's mother. He didn't know much about Harley's father, Kenneth Rodgers, simply because he had been a little upset about someone "stealing away" his baby sister and hadn't yet gotten over that. He hadn't even seen them since Harley's birth, only talking to his sister over the phone a couple times a month.

The first time he'd seen them in twelve years... was to identify their bodies as next of kin. He'd confessed that if it wasn't for Harley, he'd didn't know what he'd have done with himself.

Harley had retorted that his uncle was an idiot for not getting to know them when he had the chance. Uncle Yuri had not denied it. Though he had later given Harley grief during their psychiatric session by insisting Harley was trying to push an internal guilt over not remembering his parents onto his uncle to make himself feel better.

Jerk.

Harley chuckled to himself.

His uncle was so weird. The very definition of an obsessive weirdo researcher scientist of who-knows-what. His lab downstairs was filled with hundreds of books and thousands of printouts of senseless material. There were dozens of charts tacked to the walls, strange machines and tanks and jars lining shelves and stacked on tables, and just so much clutter that it was incredible he even found the doorway out of there! He often lost track of time and had to be summoned by Harley up to dinner, and would've worn the same clothes for weeks on end if Harley didn't insist that he would NOT tolerate the stink.

Very, very weird indeed. That the same man also drove a black Mercedes, owned six tuxedos and twenty suits, and held over sixty million US dollars in various banks around the world. No one would believe him if he told them his suave, sophisticated, obviously wealthy and extremely well-mannered uncle, often seen alongside the likes of Bruce Wayne and the rest of Gotham's elite at various social functions … was a total hobo at home.

Though they did believe that he was a little obsessive about caring for his orphaned nephew, simply because it was so obvious. People said he was even worse than Bruce Wayne, but at least he took in a kid that was actually related to him. Bruce was on his, what, third?

Not that Tim wasn't a nice guy. They spoke a bit at school and parties, but neither was very social so they left it at that. Not like living in the same city and going to the same school meant they had to be best buddies or anything.

School…

Harley lowered the photograph to his chest, now staring at the ceiling. School made him think of that weird boy. Cooro. Why did that boy bother him so much? When he'd finally given in to the buzzing in his head and just asked his uncle if he'd ever known a kid named Cooro, Yuri had responded with a firm no. Which Harley had retorted with a "Well how would you know if you never visited!" To which his uncle had rolled his eyes and said Nadia liked to talk about the who and what her little boy was up to.

He'd had friends named John, Eric, Richard, Andrew, Timothy, Mary, Samantha, Elizabeth… yep, not a weird name like Cooro in sight. Yuri was sure he would've remembered a Cooro.

So why…?

…best friends…

Why…?

"Why do I feel closer to him than you…?" he whispered, lifting the photograph and staring in the beautiful woman's eyes.

As soon as he let the scandalous words loose from his mouth, he was overwhelmed with guilt. Guilt that he didn't remember her. Had no idea what her voice sounded like, what type of laugh she had, what her hugs or goodnight kisses had felt like. A wonderful woman, a perfect mother… and a part of him still felt she was a complete stranger. But he couldn't admit that to his uncle. He hated even admitting it to himself in the sanctity of his bedroom.

He stared for a while longer, then set the photograph on his nightstand.

"Sorry, mom. I'll remember someday. I promise." He stroked the edge of the picture frame, smiling sadly, then turned off the lamp and slipped under the covers to get some sleep.

That night he dreamed of a beautiful queen, dressed in white silks, a sapphire circlet on her head. Long, silver hair hung past her thighs, so silver-white it shone blue as it shifted under the sunlight. Huge catlike eyes sparkled, a pretty light blue with the barest hint of lavender, shining with pride and love and joy. Her figure was tall, slender, and majestically graceful.

She knelt before him, pulling him into her arms. She smelled of roses and something unique, something that was just her. Her pale skin and silver hair were softer than even the silks of her clothing. He felt her tears slide down from her face onto his as she pressed him as tight as she could against her.

The tears of a woman who thinks her only child has come back from the dead…

He awoke crying. Filled with an ache and empty loneliness that couldn't possibly ever be filled. He had no idea why. It didn't occur to him that the woman in his dream resembled him far more than the lady in the photograph ever could.

He finally got back to sleep, and dreamed of black wings, silver fish scales, bear claws, and a bat's screams. But those were nothing new.


Author's Note:

I'm calling what Husky's mom wears a circlet, even though the closest actual term I found was 'necklace chain head ornament'… which just sounds ridiculous. If anyone knows the actual term for that type of jewelry, please let me know in a PM or review? Thanks.

Hope you guys enjoyed, and feel free to speculate on what Yuri's immediate plans involving a certain vial might be! Also, I'm totally open to ideas and wishes! To be honest, with the plot I have in my head, this might very well be over in just a few more chapters, so actually please review with ideas to help me extend the plot out a bit!