AN: Thank you for the kind reviews.

Damian cannot forget his father's face even if he wanted to.

"Damian," comes his rough voice but Damian's mind is somewhere else. It lingers in the manor, stuck in a room where he could not leave, and then of the strange people who kept him trapped there. Then his thoughts squirm into a spiral of rationality and his eyes carefully take in possible escape routes. It would not be hard to kick down the glass of a nearby window, hanging over the werewolf's couch, but would he be prepared for the fall that would come after? The chase that would follow?

"You know him?" The officer asks, his voice lacking surprise.

"I do," Damian's father grunts and nods briskly. He takes a step forward and Damian takes a step backward.

Damian, for a short embarrassing moment, feels a tint of fear. The man who had taken him from his mother was ready to capture him once more. Then he feels angry. Angry at his own stupidity. Angry at himself for not being able to defend himself despite having trained under his mother since infant-hood. He feels angry at the man who stands before him; an obstacle on his path to escape from the hellhole that was Gotham.

"You will not put your filthy hands on me," Damian's mouth is in one of his heaviest scowls to date. "I will not be treated like a prisoner."

"Did he do something?" Damian's host asks after the boy's angry declaration.

"He's my son." His father answers shortly.

The officer makes a clear noise of choking on air. His mouth hangs open and then he looks at Damian's father with eyes filled with disbelief. The man's honesty is obviously not something that the officer experiences normally but Damian wouldn't bother attempting to examine his reactions any further. All he understood from his father's interaction with the officer was that they knew each other. They knew each other well enough that his father would admit to Damian being his son even if Damian believed otherwise.

"Who?" The officer stumbles out, "Wait, no, I can figure that out myself."

He sniffs the air like the mongrel he is. Damian cannot understand how a humanoid wolf could act so much like a mutt without being embarrassed by his behavior.

"Talia." The man deadpans after his sniffing adventure. "Are you serious? I can smell her mark on him but it's faint. Have you been trying to get rid of it?"

"Yes," Damian's father claims and Damian stiffens at his admittance.

Damian is no longer angry. He is infuriated.

The officer takes a long look at his father and then heaves out a heavy sigh.

"You know, trapping a child in a few wards isn't going to get rid of her influence on him, remember?"

"I know," his father replies quickly, "I was the one who taught you."

The officer stays silent for a few seconds, far too long for Damian's liking, but then he continues even though no one had invited him to do so, "You could try something else," Damian listens to the officer rattle on until he offers a foolish proposition, "leave him here. You know how adept my people are at getting rid of scents."

"He's my blood son," Damian's father begins to stress. "I can't let him go. Not with Talia on the prowl."

"The Al Ghuls know better than to enter someone else's den," Officer Grayson deflects his father's reasoning immediately. For a moment, both are at a standstill, and Damian believes himself to be finding the window a lot more attractive than usual. He could imagine the glass flying all over the place after he kicked his boot into it.

A kitten's cry breaks him out of his fantasies.

The kitten huddled to his chest reminds him of the excellent tracking abilities of a werewolf. He could escape, he could try, but the officer would be right on his tail the entire way.

"I know what having family means to you," the officer lowers his voice, saying gently, "and no other creature could relate as much as my own species. Remember when you last had a binding of blood? You became extremely possessive and overbearing."

Damian's father stiffens.

Good.

Damian liked to see his father outmatched even if it was by a distasteful mongrel.

"Just a few days," he compromises with Damian's father, "and then he'll be back in your care."

His father grimaces.

"You know that if he stays too long that you might..." his father glances over to where Damian stood, between them both, trying to get a grip on the conversation that was flying over his head, "Unless you've already..."

Damian finally gets a clue of what his father is talking about. The man may have been trying to speak in vague terms but werewolves became territorial over the things they thought belonged to them. That is what his mother told him, anyway, and that was why she had warned him to stay away from them. This didn't happen to everyone but he didn't want to risk the chances of it happening to him. There were rare cases of werewolves taking an instant liking to someone and adopting them into their families. Whether it was for, or against their will, mattered not to the furry brutes.

His father does not change his posture but his voice sounds his defeat loud and clear.

"Fine."

Damian does not feel lucky.

Perhaps he was indeed going to be free from his father's clutches for a while longer.

However-

The officer.

He did not want to be with him either.