Priestess Aishisu: How is it that The Shadow Exploded has no reviews and this has eight? Anyway, I love you all, and I hope you enjoy this chapter! I promise the next one will be better (and longer.) Really!

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Central Park New York, Somewhere on Earth (though no one wants to admit it)…

It was a completely normal day. Granted, the world had ended earlier that day, but all that was left of that was a vague recollection of darkness in the back of everyone's mind. And one should not dwell upon that darkness, lest they go insane.

But normalcy, after all, is vastly overrated. Why do people keep looking at me like that?

A blustering wind picked up right in the center of Central Park, swirling round and round, picking up trash and scaring birds. When it settled, four teens and a sleeping infant.

"Hiya folks!" greeted Beast Boy brightly. "Remember us? The Teen Titans? We just saved the world today."

"Raven just saved the world today."

"Well, we're a team aren't we?" Addressing the goggling tourists, he mentioned, "We also do bat mitzvahs!"

The tourists murmured in confusion. The people who had been here before had already shrugged and returned to what they were doing. After three years, most of them were used to less-than-normal occurrences.

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"Can we wake her now?" asked Cyborg.

"But she looks so peaceful," pointed our Beast Boy.

"Is something troubling you, Robin?" asked Starfire.

"Yeah, man, you haven't said a word since we got back to Earth."

"Huh?" Robin glanced up from the sleeping child. "No, I was just…" he looked back down at her face. "Just wondering what we're supposed to do."

Cyborg pressed a button on his arm and a voice recording of Arella intoned 'give her what she never had…'

"Yeah, but what does that mean?" was Beast Boy's question.

"The woman with the eyes of Yujethid told us that Raven never had a childhood. Perhaps, were we to give her the joys of a childhood…?"

"What about the love part?"

"But she's less than one! That's…sick!"

"Not to mention illegal."

"You're sick," Robin told them in disgust. "I don't think that's what Arella meant, you know."

Metrion started whimpering.

"Oh!" Starfire grabbed her and shook her, licking Metrion just below her knee. "Do those of Raven's world not grow calm when their nichalf is lubricated?"

"Let go of her!" shouted Robin, grabbing the infant. Starfire's eyes grew huge and teary.

"I'm sorry!" he gasped out. "I didn't mean—I—"

But Metrion was squirming, face scrunched up, minuscule tears rolling from her eyes, her tiny fists beating at Robin's arm. It hurt!

"Don't cry," he crooned, rocking her back and forth. She blinked up at him with gargantuan sloe eyes. She hiccupped, and the Titans melted.

"That's better." He kissed her on the forehead, and she let out an unmistakable burbling coo.

"Can I touch her?" asked Cyborg. Without waiting for permission, he touched her head. His metal nerves could feel all the bones that would form her skull, and the soft feathery down of her thick purple hair. Beast Boy leaned over her, put his hands over mouth, cried "peek-a-boo," and parted her hands to show his face.

Metrion began crying again. Water spouted from a fire hydrant they were walking by. Robin felt a sudden burning rage.

"No! No! Don't cry!" protested Beast Boy. "Look…" he turned into a kitty with huge shining eyes. Metrion's tears turned into cries of delight.

"Kitty!" she stretched out her hands. "Kitty!"

"Isn't she a bit young to be able to talk?" Cyborg sounded skeptical.

She looks older already, Robin thought, and had an idea. He touched her hand, and her tiny perfect fingers curled around his. With another hand he stroked her little legs, half-expecting them to grow under his touch. Metrion giggled. He ran a finger over a bone of her skull. It seemed to grow to follow his finger as he went from one ear to the next.

She was still stretching for the kitten Beast Boy, which rose in the air. She hugged him, and Beast Boy made strangled sounds.

It's working, thought Robin, certain that she had been smaller than a kitten when Arella handed her to him. He traced a finger around her mouth. She wasn't giggling anymore, but she was cooing.

They weren't walking anymore, they were crowded around Metrion right in the middle of the street. Every few seconds Robin felt the need to remind them that she needed air.

"We want to play with her, too," Cyborg protested. "You aren't her dad." Robin gave him a sharp look, and he obediently pantomimed zipping his mouth.

But he was right, Robin supposed. Still…"We're trying to give her love, not suffocate her with it."

Starfire grabbed her and spun around twice, singing something as bad as usual. Metrion began to wail.

"The girl has good taste," Cyborg remarked.

Dropping Beast Boy, who unlike regular cats landed on his stomach rather than his feet, she reached instead for Robin. "Dada! Dada!"

"She thinks I'm her dad!" breathed Robin.

"Are you gonna take that from the Devil's daughter?"

Beast Boy, who had been nursing a bruise, pointed at Robin. "Ha-ha, you're Trigon!"

"Who're you calling Trigon?"

"Raven's 'Dada,'" Cyborg teased. Starfire handed Metrion back to him. Immediately she stopped crying and fell asleep with her thumb in her mouth.

"Oh my god she's sucking her thumb!" Beast Boy laughed.

"She looks about four now," Cyborg pointed out.

"If she grows so fast, how is she going to learn?"

"Perhaps as she ages, she regains the memories of her age," suggested Starfire.

Robin glanced down at Metrion and remembered how scared she had looked when he first found her in the destroyed church. Part of him didn't want that fear back, but the rest of him hoped Starfire was right.

He was not teaching her how to put clothes on.