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He was just reaching that age.
The age of exploration.
Mark would toddle around with wide eyes and sticky fingers touching everything. Investigating all.
The smooth marble of Raven’s favorite end table. Pale pink fingers gliding to and fro across the cold gray surface. It was a curiously compulsive thing, as if he couldn’t understand it unless his little hand had stroked the stone often enough to leave a dented track. She wondered what secret knowledge he gleaned from his investigation.
Other times he deconstructed dandelion heads in Starfire’s backyard. Though the alien had been told several times that the flowers were naught but weed she could not dare bring herself to pull them. Her home was so barren of vegetation, any growth was a celebration of life in her world. Thus Mark had free reign to collect buttery flower blooms, staining his pudgy fingers yellow. Raven learned quickly never to dress him in white for his visits. The two squealed in joy when surviving flowers burst into puffy clouds of gray and floated away to choke out more of Starfire’s lawn.
Eating became another exploration. Anything and everything that had a surface was marked for tasting. Tooth marks pocked the upper ridges of his crib. A sales receipt turned into a gummy mess before it was discovered. The ends of any hairbrush had been tasted at least once. One of Robin’s masks was a little squishier than in days past. And–oh yeah–food, too.
The night his father had transformed again before him had been a cautious journey. Mark had panicked at nine months. His father’s face twisting, melting, and rearranging into a ferret had been too much for the boy. He’d cried.
They tried again now in the age of exploration. Garfield approached slowly, then dropped to his knees. The boy blinked but made no move to leave. Green palms touched the floor, shifting a slow as he could allow without tearing himself apart. Mark followed the planes and slopes of the Doberman’s spine with hesitant finger tips. Gar gave a low huff and plopped down beside Raven who lay buried in a nest of pillows on the floor. He tucked his head into her lap in wait.
Mark hobbled close, blue eyes watching as his mother’s hand descended on the dog’s head. Her fingers scratched absently between the folds of his ears until it produced an approving groan. The baby moved to straddle one of Raven’s legs, reaching out as far as he could muster to touch without getting too close.
His hand descended in a gentle pat. Once, then twice, at the base of the neck. That was all. Satisfied, the boy moved away to crawl along his mother’s lap. He used a handful of her sweater to haul himself into a comfortable position tucked under her chin.
Raven thought that he might be done for the night. Bed time crept close, after all. Little fingers brushed the edge of her jaw and she glanced down to find blue eyes blinking slowly into hers. Mark's hands climbed her cheeks to fan out against each side. Smiling had been so rare in her life, yet it came so easily now, spreading out to each end to brush his thumbs. Mark hummed approvingly and tilted his head forward, dropping it down to rest his forehead against her smiling lips.
Raven was struck by the depths from which her soul cried for such tiny cuddles. It warmed a place in her heart she did not know was cold. It was different from the heat of Gar’s love; a slow burn that flared in places. This was a gentle heat that radiated a gentleness she didn't know she possessed.
It was love. It was hers. It was home.