30Kisses Theme Ficlets
Robin/Raven
By Kysra
Theme #10 (#10): Baby
The only clue they had was a large, underscored 10 written on a single sheet of folded paper.
"Jeez, can you shut the kid up already!"
Cyborg had been trying to hear the blaring bells and beeps of his newest video game while Robin jostled, rocked, and patted the constantly crying baby left on the Tower doorstep three days ago.
"I'm TRYING. Why don't you give it a try if you think it's so easy!"
Three days without sleep. Three days of non-stop wailing. Three days of trying to find a chance kidnapping/missing person report or sign as to the child's identity. It was no wonder tempers were short and growing shorter.
Even Starfire was looking pale, tired, and generally demoralized. If an attack were to happen now . . .
Raven sighed softly. She was the only one of them who had not tried to calm the child, mostly because she knew that if she got too close, she would become entangled in the baby's pain. Experience had taught her the hard way that children, particularly infants, felt loud, hard, and completely. There was no room for logic or control in them.
Settling down on the far end of the sofa where Robin was trying to soothe the unknown baby boy, Raven allowed the very edges of the child's aura touch her, testing it's composition and trying to identify the problem since they had already exhausted the possibilities of hunger, thirst, hygiene, and warmth.
There was fear there, confusion, and overwhelming bereavement. He missed someone achingly familiar, someone who had left him behind with strange people and strange smells. He wanted to hear that comforting sound again as his special one held him tight to her.
. . . that comforting sound . . .
"Give me the baby." She was suddenly standing before Robin's seated figure, his masked eyes looking up at her, surprised and confused. His tired arms happily stopped bouncing the baby.
"Um, ok."
The bundled, little body was eagerly passed, and Raven - unaccustomed to the new, living weight - gingerly held him in her arms, his tiny neck supported by her elbow. There were long moments of continued crying as she watched impassively, staring into the scrunched up, red face as he was shifted so that his ear was pressed against her left breast, arms cradling him tightly, securely. Waiting, she began to hum under her breath, remembering the soft strains of Azar's voice and sharing that much beloved memory with him.
The baby still cried but his screaming had stopped, and the new, softer volume drew the attention of the other Titans as Raven began to pace the length of the common room, still humming, eyes still locked on the baby in her arms. Soon enough, the little boy's cries had dissolved into minor hiccups, his eyes no longer screwed shut but open and tired and looking at her. She smiled, never breaking the slow melody of her song, and bent to drop a kiss just between his eyes. He had missed feeling loved and safe. The hand beneath his bottom began to pat rhythmically at his haphazardly diapered behind, soft enough to be a non-disturbance but hard enough to be felt.
Her humming became a full-blown lullaby, her words almost echoing in the awed silence as her friends watched, completely taken aback by this new side of their Dark Witch; and, under Raven's protective stare, the baby boy in her arms gave a quiet burp before falling into a deep sleep.
That sweet little smile still fixed on her face, Raven looked up at her friends and whispered that they should get some sleep while the baby was quiet. Cyborg, Beastboy, and Starfire thanked her before quickly running for their respective rooms. Robin stayed behind a moment more to ask if she was going to sleep.
"I'll stay with the baby," was all she said before settling the child on the middle sofa cushion and curling her body around him, acting as a baracade to protect the baby from falling to the floor.
Hours later, Robin went to the Common Room to check on Raven and their unexpected charge. She was where he had left them, sleeping, body curled around the nameless little boy; but the baby was awake, gurgling and probably in need of another diaper change.
Robin smiled down on them for long moments, thinking to himself that - someday, if she were ever freed from whatever force it was that required her to control her emotions - Raven would make an excellent mother. Then, giving into a compulsion he couldn't explain, he bent and kissed her upturned lips before smiling again and moving to wake her.